Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

Republicans don’t trust women.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Russiagate Open Thread: Did You Know There Are African-Americans on the Voter Rolls in DC?

Russiagate Open Thread: Did You Know There Are African-Americans on the Voter Rolls in DC?

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… The Washington, DC, grand jury, which meets only on Fridays, handed down its first indictments in October, charging Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, and his partner Rick Gates with money laundering and failing to register as foreign agents. The two are pleading not guilty.

Mueller’s team is expected to bring more charges against Manafort relating to his work on behalf of the Ukrainian government in the years before Trump became a candidate.

Sol Wachtler, the former chief judge in New York, once called for abolishing grand juries because they are so easily manipulated that they would “indict a ham sandwich.”

My source said, “That room isn’t a room where POTUS gets a fair shake.”

“Not that this investigation has anything whatsoever to do with Our Fearless Leader, of course.”

Reader Interactions

199Comments

  3. 3.

    Mnemosyne

    One of our resident lawyers below was saying that the Post could get themselves in some very hot water by reporting the proceedings of a federal grand jury. Here’s hoping someone brings this to the judge’s attention.

  4. 4.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Beat me to it, Adam. Someone is confoozled about Bernie’s popularity in the Black community. But then again, if they’re not Trumpanzees, they all look the same to another Trumpanzee.

  6. 6.

    Michael G

    “indict a ham sandwich.”

    What if the ham weighed 317 pounds and wore an ill-fitting suit?

  7. 7.

    eemom

    fwiw, Sol “ham sandwich” Wachtler was forced to resign 20 some years ago because he was a sicko stalker of his ex-girlfriend.

  11. 11.

    Mike J

    @Mnemosyne: I doubt anyone is going to go after a newspaper for reporting. They might go after the person who testified and then talked to a reporter, but witnesses are no obligation to keep proceedings secret as jurors or prosecutors are.

  13. 13.

    Adam L Silverman

    @rikyrah: I just read it. It was interesting.

    I was considering doing a Floriduh Man! post, but AL put this up. We’ve got an early contender for Floriduh Man! of the week.

  15. 15.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    “The grand jury room looks like a Bernie Sanders rally,”

    Don’t think they’re Bernie voters.

    Hillz won the DC primary by 79%

    Drumpf got a pathetic 4.09% of the DC vote in the general election. Maybe it was something he said.

  17. 17.

    ruemara

    I’m at my first live basketball game. I hope the slaughter the Kings are suffering is a mild foretaste of the Republicans this year.

  19. 19.

    Aleta

    By the way, just want to thank you Anne Laurie for so much work esp during this hard year. Honest, I have no idea how you keep so steady. Thanks.

  24. 24.

    hilts

    The NY Post is not even worthy enough to be used as the lining for a bird cage or a cat litter box. It’s nothing but a putrid steaming pile of excrement.

  25. 25.

    tobie

    I just love how Trump and his collection of hucksters, trust fund babies, and all-purpose crooks always see themselves as the aggrieved party. Although we control the government, there’s a deep state working against us; although we violate every norm, law, and precedent, the justice system is against us. These people really are grievance-meisters.

  26. 26.

    SFAW

    So they’re letting the coloreds serve on grand juries now? What’s next, letting them vote? (I know, I know — “Not if I have anything to say about it” said every Rethug officeholder, everywhere)

    Those people being allowed to serve on grand juries degrades my own, real-American-ability to serve on a grand jury. Or get married. Or something.

  28. 28.

    SFAW

    @tobie:

    These people really are grievance-meisters.

    It’s the whole fucking Partei. And yet people still believe it when they are referred to as the “Party of Personal Responsibility.”

  29. 29.

    Aleta

    @rikyrah:

    You see, all our people are business men. Their loyalty is based on that. One thing that I learned from Pop was to try to think as people around you think. Now on that basis, anything’s possible.
    Michael Corleone

  30. 30.

    Mary G

    Russia’s not even pretending anymore. Politico:

    Two Republican senators have called off a planned trip to Russia after the Kremlin denied a visa to a Democratic colleague, New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.

    Shaheen, an outspoken backer of a Russia sanctions bill that Congress approved overwhelmingly earlier this year, had been scheduled to visit Russia along with GOP colleagues Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and John Barrasso of Wyoming. But a Shaheen spokesman said the senator believes the Kremlin has placed her under a travel sanction, prohibiting her visit.

    No icky girls allowed in our clubhouse! Especially friends of THAT WOMAN!

  31. 31.

    lamh36

    @JoyAnnReid
    Following Following @JoyAnnReid
    More
    To reiterate what you just heard on @TheLastWord – Trump pulling the U.S. out of the TPP didn’t kill globalization or reopen factories. It simply allowed China to create its own version which will be the largest trading block ON EARTH, with the U.S. left out. Well done, America.

    @ReasonVsFear
    Follow Follow @ReasonVsFear
    More
    Replying to @JoyAnnReid @TheLastWord
    I remember President Obama talking about it, and saying that this trade agreement would be crucial. That it would either solidify our place in the world of trade, or leave us out, and make other countries much stronger.

    Not enough people heard him, sadly.

    @JoyAnnReid
    1m1 minute ago
    More Joy Reid Retweeted Leesa Brown
    Correct. Oh and by the way, Mexico is a Pacific nation. Good luck junking NAFTA, MAGA faithful. The recession will begin in Texas and go from there.

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36:

    To reiterate what you just heard on @TheLastWord – Trump pulling the U.S. out of the TPP didn’t kill globalization or reopen factories. It simply allowed China to create its own version which will be the largest trading block ON EARTH, with the U.S. left out.

    I seem to remember someone around here explaining that this was going to happen back in 2015 and then in 2016 and then again at the beginning of 2017. And that person being told he didn’t understand what he was talking about.

  34. 34.

    Suzanne

    @rikyrah:

    You mean that it looks like a DC voting pool?

    TRUTH.
    In fact, it looks like all of the places where sTrumpets fear to tread, be they major cities, border towns, music festivals, H&Ms, etc.

  35. 35.

    SFAW

    Since this is an OT:

    My visits here have been sporadic the past few days, but I haven’t seen efgoldman’s name recently. Is he OK? I’m hoping he’s just visiting his daughter and grandkid.

  43. 43.

    B.B.A.

    Suppose this gets the grand jury proceeding thrown out, and suppose Mueller empanels another grand jury. How many times can this be repeated until somebody loses patience and snaps?

  45. 45.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @SFAW:

    Hey, at least Alfalfa had better hair than Putin and Shitgibbon combined.

    This is, oddly, a true statement.

  46. 46.

    Jeffro

    “The grand jury looks like Black Lives Matter” “This is an FBI coup d’etat” “Abedin, Comey should be in jail” “I’m going to hand out Fake News awards”…

    …as far as I’m concerned, the entire control panel is blinking red here, folks. Buckle up.

  47. 47.

    Lyrebird

    @Villago Delenda Est: Yes.. y’all keep me sane. And hey, the jury members who weren’t standing there proving that Black Lives Exist Whaddyaknow might well be, let’s see, in DC:

    Salvadoran or Nicaraguan Americans, with relatives at risk?
    Korean Americans, ditto?
    Somali Americans, who might not be enthused about this administration either?

    And all of them citizens doing their duty. Hmmmmm.

  51. 51.

    tobie

    @lamh36: Never forget the assholes at the Democratic Convention screaming “No TPP” during every speech. Populists on the left have been just as dumb about trade as populists on the right precisely because they both look at it in the most simplistic terms as an exchange in which if one party wins, the other must lose. Elizabeth Warren should know better than this. I’m not sure why she’s chosen to demagogue this issue.

  53. 53.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @rikyrah: The desperation of the Trumpanzees commenting on that thread jumps off the screen at you. Those who still have more than three working synapses know their Dear Leader is in deep, deep kimchi.

  54. 54.

    Adam L Silverman

    @B.B.A.: Mueller didn’t impanel this one. He is using/borrowing the Federal grand jury for DC. It is empaneled by the US Attorney’s Office for DC. Just as the one he’s using in the Eastern District of Virginia is empaneled by the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

  59. 59.

    Suzanne

    @tobie: I don’t know why the Dems haven’t made a full-throated defense of globalization. A more stable world with better relationships between trading partners, improving length and quality of life worldwide, lower prices. Everyone who bitched about the TPP should be prepared to give back their flat-screen TVs from Walmart.

    We just suck at messaging so badly sometimes that it is tragic. Like, I know they want to appeal to the white working class in S-towns across America, and global trade is not popular with those people, but why are we once again ceding rhetorical ground to the right? The world is connected and if we want to truly be the sole superpower, we need more connectivity rather than less.

  60. 60.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @tobie: To be fair, with any trade deal, some folk get screwed even though the entire economy benefits. Since government is making the deal, government should make these people whole(by whatever means it takes, including direct income support). Conservatives just think that those folk that got screwed should just pull themselves up by their non-existent bootstraps without any role for the government who fucked them over in the first place.

  63. 63.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Suzanne: Hey, Star Trek was popular.

    Seriously though, where are you from? What are your loyalties to your hometown, your home state, your adopted town, your adopted state? Most people stay near “home” and marry people from near “home.” Humans aren’t natural internationalists.

  64. 64.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SFAW: as noted supra, efgoldman has been around but only sporadically. He apologized for his absence but advised that he recently discovered clownsex.com and has been spending the bulk of his internet time there.

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Suzanne: The Democrats are, unfortunately, bad at politics. Pretty good at policy. The Republicans are good at politics, but pretty bad to horrible at policy.

  67. 67.

    tobie

    @Suzanne: I hear you. We ceded the ground on NAFTA when it seems like the point that should be made is that the growth of a large middle class in Mexico has meant increased demand for goods and services from the US. But this would again require people to understand that trade is not a zero sum gain. The loss of jobs in one sector is matched by the creation of jobs in other sectors.

    Listening to coal miners who supported Trump on TV, I have the distinct impression that much of the white working class think it’s their god-given right to do what their fathers and grandfathers did, even if such trades no longer make sense in the developed world. I don’t know of any other group in America that has the same sense of entitlement. Certainly not immigrants who have no choice to but to go where the market is.

  70. 70.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    just saw on MSNBC that Willard today changed his home location on Facebook from MA to Holladay, UT. I was curious to see is Holladay was, as I suspected, near Deer Valley or one of the other resorts. It is not. It a suburb of SLC, just west of Gobbler’s Knob.

  72. 72.

    Fair Economist

    The TPP was a bad deal because it wasn’t a trade deal. Trade barriers were already minimal with most of the countries involved. The only meaningful liberalizations were agricultural products with Japan, and the inclusions of Vietnam and Malaysia (not big trading partners). Small potatoes.

    The TPP was a copyright deal that extended nutso US copyright laws onto the other countries, and a local government disenfranchisement deal that allowed unelected corporate boards to repeal local and state ordinances for almost any reason, in effect. Possible reductions in future profits was enough of a reason in itself.

    It’s a good thing it got nuked. If any countries get sucked into a similar bad deal with China I’m sorry for them but at least they got one chance to get out.

    It did have some environmental and labor provisions, but sadly with minimal enforcement provisions. Well, you could have appealed to those corporate boards. I’m sure they’d have been very sympathetic.

  75. 75.

    Lyrebird

    @Omnes Omnibus: Not trying to build the “oh no oh no” argument here, but I was also wondering, based on things you said about jury nullification back when various Bundys were being tried… Do you think that if they keep up with their racist noise and get criticized for it that they’d then turn around and say, “oh see this jury isn’t fair” and get away with it?

    The nullification things you were talking about (IANAL obvs) had to do with people refusing to keep certain stuff out of the conversation, not the same, but I was wondering if there was a risk here.

  78. 78.

    tobie

    @Fair Economist:

    The TPP was a copyright deal that extended nutso US copyright laws onto the other countries.

    This is a huge deal when one of your major exports is intellectual property.

  79. 79.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Lyrebird: not a risk with a grand jury.

    That said, you may want to double check with some of the competent lawyers who post here.

  80. 80.

    B.B.A.

    @Omnes Omnibus: With 5 wingnuts on the Supreme Court, all things are possible.

    No, honestly, I was trying to think of a way this could be spun into an intentional victory, like the novice lawyer who bragged about his own witness tampering causing a mistrial (and then sued every blog commenter who pointed out how dumb that was). That’s the best I could come up with. But then I’ve never dealt with grand juries and I view them as an obsolete relic of the days of private prosecutions.

  82. 82.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Lyrebird: No. Grand Juries and Petit Juries are different things. It is too late at night to go into the details, but GJs do indictments and PJs (or regular juries) determine facts during trials. The processes are completely different. You can’t nullify a GJ.

  85. 85.

    SFAW

    @Steve in the ATL:

    as noted supra, efgoldman has been around but only sporadically. He apologized for his absence but advised that he recently discovered clownsex.com and has been spending the bulk of his internet time there.

    I was about to write “Don’t make me sorry I asked,” but that ship has sailed.

    You just wait ’til raven gets home! He’ll give you a paddling something fierce. (Of course, that threat is pointless if you’d actually look forward to that …)

  87. 87.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Fair Economist: The TPP was intended to lock the PRC out of regional rule making in the Asia-Pacific region for at least another generation. I’m not going to dispute the specifics you’ve delineated because my understanding of TPP conforms to what you’ve laid out. But that really wasn’t the point of the TPP. The bottom line was to lock the PRC out. By just pulling out we have now ceded the role of Asian-Pacific regional rule maker to the PRC. That in and of itself is not a good thing.

  94. 94.

    Mnemosyne

    The most annoying thing about having a daylong light-sensitive migraine is that it’s BORING. Ugh. ?

  97. 97.

    Suzanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: I am probably somewhat unusual in my outlook. I spent the first half of my childhood on Long Island, and we lived there because my grandfather had gotten a job with PanAm in Seattle, and then he got transferred to headquarters. Then the entire family did the big New-York-give-up and fled to Arizona. I don’t like it here, never have, and don’t intend to stay once I don’t have to. So I don’t have deep roots anywhere. My husband moved here because a friend had moved out here and he wanted to go to graduate school. The friend is gone, and we are planning on leaving for a blue state once I no longer have to share custody of Spawn the Elder with ex-Mr. Suzanne. We will go where the job offers work out the best. I get that some people feel tied to a place, but there are sacrifices to make for that. I am not really willing to sacrifice the greater economic good of the country and a significant amount of world stability so that people don’t have to relocate.

    @tobie:

    Listening to coal miners who supported Trump on TV, I have the distinct impression that much of the white working class think it’s their god-given right to do what their fathers and grandfathers did, even if such trades no longer make sense in the developed world. I don’t know of any other group in America that has the same sense of entitlement.

    Agreed. It is mindblowing to me that these people just expect to do the same thing that their grandparents did and that they aren’t going to have to adapt. Like, for God’s sake, when did they become so goddamn mentally lazy? Use your fucking brain. It’s such a terrible work ethic to think that someone owes you a job doing what you want to do, without considering if that’s a job that needs to be done at all.

    Lord, grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man.

  99. 99.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Marcopolo: Given how it is written it makes it sound like someone with the Trump Organization provided info. Given Sater’s longstanding work as a confidential informant for the National Security Division of the FBI, and that he got another plea deal in a case related to the Trump Organization last year, I immediately thought of him. If it was someone inside the campaign, I have no idea who it might have been. Perhaps someone who didn’t last long or quit quickly.

  101. 101.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @B.B.A.: No, you are just dropping a negative thought and then having medical reasons for taking a walk. It can happen, but when it comes from a person who confessed to trolling issues by taking opposite issues on different blogs (for fun:) I tend to a jaundiced view. I hope you feel better.

  102. 102.

    SFAW

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Exactly, Trump would on be on a Grand Jury.

    More like a Grand Mal jury. Or a Morbidly Obese jury?

    [N.B. Not making fun of epilepsy, the French just seemed to fit. Not that I speak or read French, of course.]

  103. 103.

    Marcopolo

    @tobie: For informational purposes please provide a link to Warren dissing trade agreements. I don’t recall her doing in any kind of broad brush way but am not omniscient.

    Also too, over the last decade I’ve found myself in arguments w/ folks repeatedly over the “value” of trade agreements. I always come back to the idea that global trade is gonna happen whether you like it or not. If you’re not at the table negotiating the agreements you are on the menu.

  104. 104.

    Fair Economist

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Intellectual property rights is a big problem in East Asia. While I agree that US copyright law sucks, there needed to be some protections for IP.

    That’s mostly China these days, which obviously wasn’t in the TPP. Japan and Taiwan have laws that are plenty strict already. So that would have been South Korea (which is already trying to improve), Vietnam, and Malaysia. Hard to see how IP enforcement in 2 1/2 countries is worth codifying the crazier aspects of US law into a treaty.

  109. 109.

    tobie

    @Suzanne: Don’t leave Arizona just yet! We need your vote there. I don’t get the attachment to place or family profession either but it seems to have become more virulent in the last decade.

  110. 110.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @B.B.A.: Maybe you should give up on trolling. You aren’t good at it. OTOH, you are a decent real commenter. Why troll?

  111. 111.

    efgoldman

    @SFAW:

    I haven’t seen efgoldman’s name recently. Is he OK?

    I’ve been around. Various impediments to commenting. Strangely, retired and homebound in poor (but improving) health, I actually have less coherent time to join comment threads. Also I don’t have a lot to say that I haven’;t said many, many times over in the last 18-24 months.

    Thanks for asking. I try to show up at least once a day.

  115. 115.

    Jackie

    I’m ready for a maximum age limitation for first time Representative, Senator, or President. Romney = too old. Biden (as much as I adore him) too old. Somebody qualified south of 60 would be nice.

  119. 119.

    Fair Economist

    @Adam L Silverman:

    By just pulling out we have now ceded the role of Asian-Pacific regional rule maker to the PRC. That in and of itself is not a good thing.

    The PRC isn’t the rule maker, just one of the major participants. That is not entirely a bad thing, given the #1 participant is still us, and we have not been well-behaved in what we try to create in international trade.

    A TPP to lock out the PRC, minus the garbage, would have been a decent geopolitical idea. It ended up a Frankenstein’s monster of sorts: part PRC lockout, part NAFTA renegotiations (whence the labor and environmental protections), but mostly corporate gravy train. It would be interesting to see how the corporation interests largely side-tracked the other more laudable interests but I assume the relevant info will never be publicly available.

  122. 122.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:

    Also I don’t have a lot to say that I haven’;t said many, many times over in the last 18-24 months.

    In other words, a typical Juicer.

    Glad you’re improving, and glad my worries were groundless.

  126. 126.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Mein Fuehrer, I can walk!

    Not sure if that’s the best last line ever in a movie, but it’s pretty effing close. {The end of Some Like It Hot is also a contender.]

  129. 129.

    Mnemosyne

    @Aleta:

    As I suspected but was waiting for ef’s response, the boys were being boys and ribbing each other. I usually ignore them when they start acting up like that. ??

  130. 130.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SFAW: I still think: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room” is right up there.

  131. 131.

    tobie

    @Marcopolo: Warren was the most vocal opponent to TPP before Sanders came along. Here’s an article in Politico from 2016; and here’s video she did for Credo.

    One of the objections sounds good on the surface–that trade deals supersede state laws and regulations–but I think the matter is far more complex. Whenever a country signs on to a multilateral agreement, it also signs on to multilateral mechanisms for enforcement and conflict adjudication. This is true in peace agreements, climate agreements, and trade agreements. No one would sign an agreement with the US, if we refused to commit in advance to the mechanism for enforcing the agreement. I guess with Trump this is becoming more of a reality but I would have hoped for a more nuanced understanding of multilateral agreements from the left.

  132. 132.

    Chet Murthy

    @tobie: There’s a joke: “Bill Gates walks into a bar, and the avrerage network is $10B”. Sure, it’s great for owners of IP. But that’s not most Americans, and it’s not even most well-off Americans. It’s a vanishingly small slice of the population — the 1%. So @Fair Economist: is right — the TPP was a bad treaty, that further-entrenched the very rich and corps at the expense of the people of the signatory nations. That it was the only deal on offer is a sign of how our elites are so contemptuous of the rest of us, that they’ll give us these Solomonic choices — b/c even still it was a bulwark against the rise of China.

    Not saying that well: yes, it wasn’t much of a free trade pact. What it was, was a pact binding together Pacific trading partners, in an attempt to keep China down and out. But the rich couldn’t just do that — they had to lard it up with bennies for themselves. Like always.

  136. 136.

    Adam L Silverman

    @tobie: I’ve fixed this for you. You’d manage to capture the reply button with the embedded link to the youtube video.

  138. 138.

    jl

    On TPP I agree with @Fair Economist:

    That said, there are good ways and bad ways to approach fixes/renegotiations TPP and NAFTA, and I think Trump has chosen only bad ways. Actually, Trump has chosen bad ways to approach US international trade generally. I don’t think the biggest problem is TPP, or NAFTA so far (though Trump could cause a mess by blowing up NAFTA with nothing to replace it, that could end up worse than a BREXIT scale mess if Trump does it as wrongly as possible, which I guess he probably will). Trump may have dynamited his 2018 US jobs boom prospects by going with Bannon tariff scares and then not doing jack shit about it. That prompted exporters to US to proactively send goods into US to beat imposition of possible tariffs, and thereby the news of some sad and unexpected manufacturing layoffs in US at end of 2017.

    So far, from what I have read, China’s work in trying to form an alternative trading bloc is to weaken US style IP protections, which could actually work to advantage of overall US trade balance, particularly regarding manufacturing job intensive industries.

    There is an alternative to a patchwork of dinky little multilateral deals, which US can claim are humongous simply because the US is involved. And that would be return to real global trade negotiations, which have been moribund since Doha Round stalled in early 2000s. As far as I am concerned, Doha fell apart because US and a few other high income industrial countries would not budge on giving emerging economies any concessions or transitional relief, while same high income industrialized countries would not budge on their special goodies wrt to special protections for domestic agriculture, and US corporations would not budge an inch on pushing extreme US IP law on the rest of the world. It was a silly and sad stalemate, IMHO.

    So, I have great faith that Trump can cause great damage by mishandling TPP and NAFTA concerns, but that doesn’t mean that TPP, or NAFTA are the best possible policies for world trade overall.

    I am enough of an economist to think that regional trading blocs are silly things, that don’t really do much of anything economically, If there are some advantages to them for geopolitical hocus pocus, then someone will have to explain that to me.

  140. 140.

    Adam L Silverman

    @tobie: No problem. I looked at what you did and couldn’t tell why it was capturing the reply button. This happens all the time. I’ll mention it to Alain tomorrow so he can see if something needs to be tweaked. Honestly, I’ve seen people not close the link command and it captures the reply button. And I’ve seen people close the link command and it still captures the reply button.

  142. 142.

    Suzanne

    @SFAW: Huntington.

    @Omnes Omnibus: I know. My mom grew up in Seattle, my grandfather in Juneau and Seattle, my husband in the Bay Area. I sometimes miss Long Island so much that it is distracting. But, like…..success takes sacrifice, and you don’t always get what you want. That was pushed into me since I was very young.

    I see these people who are pissed that they can’t get a factory job in West Bumfuck making 80K with a high school degree, and I regard them much the same way that I judge the people on those HGTV shows who want their FIRST HOME!!! to be their DREAM HOME!!! and who have budgets of $750K even though they are part-time hamster trainers just starting out in the Big City!!! Which is to say that I think they are completely crazy and entertaining from a distance but by no means the basis upon which a society should be constructed.

  144. 144.

    Suzanne

    @tobie: I can’t leave until May 2021. Not that I am counting.

    But fuck this place. It’s hot and full of stupid people.

  148. 148.

    jl

    As for the topic of the post, I wonder who the anonymous source was. I guess it could have been any of the Trumpster clowns called in to testify. The artless brutality of the bigotry makes it sound like a Trump son, but not sure they have been called in.

    Anyway, apparently half of this particular grand jury look like African-Americans from a distance, and looks like the other half are white women, Clearly biased against poor insane demented old bigot president. I hope they keep up this toxic nonsense through to November 2018. I think the sentiment is just too vomitous for general voting public.

  150. 150.

    Mnemosyne

    @Chet Murthy:

    Sure, it’s great for owners of IP. But that’s not most Americans, and it’s not even most well-off Americans. It’s a vanishingly small slice of the population — the 1%.

    If by “IP” you mean “movies and TV,” you might have a point. I personally know quite a few published authors, and there are more who comment here. An author having their IP stolen — aka plagiarized — costs them money out of their own pockets. And I guarantee you that very few of them are in the 1 percent.

    Tangentially, it really pisses me off that the assumption by techbros (not you personally) is that IP and copyright are things that only affect corporations and not the artists, writers, and musicians who are the ones who create that “IP.”

  155. 155.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Suzanne: If you judge things by HGTV, you have no idea what some peoples’ lives are like. What about someone who has an income of 12000 and gets 6000 in EITC and other credits.

    Their tax credits are 1/3 of their yearly income.

  157. 157.

    Adam L Silverman

    @coin operated: I’ve fixed your comment as well as just like tobie’s, the embedded link to Youtube had captured the reply button.

    Also, I used to love the Durex and the Tenants lager commercials when I lived in Scotland.

  159. 159.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: OK, thanks. I don’t know enough about Sater to know if he is capable of such toxic. stupid, and, from public opinion point of view, counterproductive, bigotry.

  160. 160.

    coin operated

    Dammit…how did I manage to embed a video. Was just supposed to be a link…

    ETA…Thanks Adam.

  163. 163.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Yeah, that’s why I usually just roll my eyes and scroll on by. I have four older brothers, I know when it’s best to tune out and keep walking.

  165. 165.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: I think I crossed a wire when replying to your comment. I was referring to who was the inside source from the Trump Organization and/or campaign that the Fusion GPS folks referenced independently approached the FBI during the campaign about connections with dubious Russians.

    I have no idea who spoke to the Page Six reporter. Sorry to have confused you.

  166. 166.

    Davebo

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Been there. In the 90’s I tried so many anti-piracy strategies. Many backfired on me.

    These days with SPA’s and annual contracts it’s so much easier. Thank you Angular!

  167. 167.

    Fair Economist

    @jl: Agreed there is little so bad Trump can’t make it worse. The threats to blow up NAFTA are particularly problematic for the US, as there’s a lot of economic activity dependent on it, and Mexico and Canada are both friendly neighbors and good-faith negotiators.

    Of course since Trump seems to be working for Putin catastrophic consequences from blowing up NAFTA might be an intentional goal.

  170. 170.

    Adam L Silverman

    I’m racking out. You all have a nice night. For those in the freeze, deep or otherwise, stay warm!

  171. 171.

    Mnemosyne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Yep. “IP” isn’t just what corporations distribute, and that’s even before you get to the part where corporations have to distribute residuals and royalties to artists based on sales. If there’s too much bootlegging, artists don’t get paid for their work and can’t make a living as artists.

  172. 172.

    Adam L Silverman

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: In this case it was all on me. I saw “anonymous source” in jl’s comment and immediately went to the Fusion GPS op-ed, not the Page Six grand jury story. This one is all on me.

  173. 173.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: OK, thanks. I think the GPS Fusion piece was important, and an interesting read. I wonder how much play it will get in the news, and I wonder whether the pretty TV news actors will use it when Trumpsters start lying about it again.

    OTOH, if the brain dead ‘Trump boom’ economic reporting is any indication, nothing will be any use and we are all doomed.

    With that happy thought, I wish everyone Happy New Year, and good night.

  176. 176.

    jl

    @Mnemosyne: I agree. But one of the biggest controversial IP issues in TPP concerned rules for protection of large telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and large software corporation expenses. And very particularly, an attempt to cut and paste domestic US law into the treaty regarding corporate R&D (and maybe marketing and kickback) expenditures, which greatly concerned smaller US and Canadian companies that felt they would be put at a disadvantage. They had deep misgivings, in addition to the purity pony lefty professional ‘aginners’.

  178. 178.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Josh Marshall on the Fusion op/ed

    @ joshtpm
    Reading this piece you get the sense that Trump and crew may have erred by making such scurrilous attacks on people who appear to be sitting on mountains of evidence abt Trumps involvement in the Russian criminal underworld and money laundering.

  181. 181.

    Mnemosyne

    @jl:

    Oh, I’m not going to claim that TPP was awesome. It’s just that people who sneer at “IP” are usually the same ones pirating material and pretending that only the corporation that distributed the material gets hurt.

  183. 183.

    Suzanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: I don’t judge things by HGTV. I think that the HGTV people are living in a total fantasy world, and I think most of the MAGA people are also living in a fantasy world (albeit a different one, probably). All the Cletus safaris have shown me how many (white) people have unbelievable resentment that they can’t make an upper-middle-class lifestyle on exclusively their terms. And they are hostile to globalization, which has brought heaps of benefits to the country and the world, because they aren’t getting everything they want handed to them on a silver platter.

    And the Dems should fucking stand up and remind everyone that fewer American kids die in foreign wars because of globalization. And that they can buy flatscreen TVs at Walmart on Black Friday because of globalization. And strawberries in February. And pickup trucks. And fast fashion. And the fucking cellphones in their pockets and the computers they’re typing on…..all because of globalization. Remind people of the good part.

  184. 184.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Mnemosyne: better?

    as noted supra, efgoldman has been around but only sporadically. He apologized for his absence but advised that he recently discovered knitting-birdwatching-Hamilton-and-clownsex.com and has been spending the bulk of his internet time there.

  186. 186.

    Mnemosyne

    @jl:

    Also, too: the major driver of copyright distortion in the entertsinment industry is that its industry standard for a movie company to purchase the copyright to a screenplay when they buy it from the writer. That is, when a screenwriter sells a screenplay, s/he also gives up the copyright and the movie company becomes the copyright holder.

    So what happens when a movie company “dies” — goes out of business or gets purchased by another company? Who is now the copyright holder? Nobody really knows, and entertainment companies are afraid to find out, which is why they keep extending copyright rather than trying to write new laws to deal with the fact that corporate “persons” hold copyrights just like normal, living persons do, and maybe corporations shouldn’t be allowed to keep copyrights for as long as the company survives.

  188. 188.

    tobie

    @jl: Do you have a link for the concerns of smaller US companies regarding IP provisions in TPP? I’d be curious about this. The people I know who have start-ups (usually the outgrowth of a NIH and NSF-funded research) are more worried about IP in the absence of any agreement.

  190. 190.

    Sab

    @Omnes Omnibus: I read all that two hours later. Thanks, jl. Also thanks Fair Economist. Also thanks Mnemosyne for long thoughtful comments sort of on the other side.

  191. 191.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Mnemosyne: that’s because of several problems: 1) lack of a chain of title. Patents in contrast are supposed to have a chain of title registered with the USPTO, and that database is searchable. There may be something similar for federal trademarks but I haven’t practiced over in that area for almost 10 years now, and trademarks are different from patents and copyrights because they last as long as they’re used in commerce. 2) current copyright terms are so long that it becomes very difficult to determine who’s the heir as opposed to patents which are currently dead after a certain term or trademarks which live as long as there’s a use in commerce and enforcement of the trademarks 3) whacked out and inconsistent law for copyright terms as opposed to the bright line rules for patents and trademarks.

  193. 193.

    NobodySpecial

    Perhaps people could quit pushing the assumption that everyone wants to live in a Mcmansion while working part time at 7-11 and recognize that in some places U6 is pushing 20% and there’s no help coming. Especially not from people more worried that Disney might not get a cut from that bodega stall in Hangzhou.

  196. 196.

    J R in WV

    @Yarrow:

    Anyone can insert a link to anything on the internet. Frontpagers can have the video play right there on the front page of B J . Or on their post. We commenters have to link to our material where we found it, and viewers have to go there to see it.

  197. 197.

    Annie

    @Suzanne:

    I agree completely, and would just add that coal mining jobs, even with the (minimal) health/safety precautions that the mineworkers’ unions fought for, were awful jobs, dangerous to the miners in both the short term and long term.

    Why would anyone want them back?

Comments are closed.