Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

That meeting sounds like a shotgun wedding between a shitshow and a clusterfuck.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

This blog will pay for itself.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Stay strong, because they are weak.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

How stupid are these people?

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Russiagate Open Thread: The FBI “Secret Society” REVEALED!

Russiagate Open Thread: The FBI “Secret Society” REVEALED!

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… On Friday, the Justice Department handed the Senate Homeland Security Committee and other committees a new batch of more than 1,000 messages sent between Strzok and Page. The messages newly obtained by ABC News were in that set.

Asked Wednesday whether he believes there’s a “secret society” inside the FBI to take down the president, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., said, “That’s Strzok and Page’s term.”

“Everything I take with a grain of salt,” he added. “[But] I’ve heard from an individual that … there was a group of managers within the FBI that were holding meetings off site.”

So “when Strzok and Page had described a secret society, that didn’t surprise me because I had corroborating information,” Johnson said.

He declined to describe the “whistleblower” in any way, and he said he did not know what the FBI’s “off-site” meetings might have entailed.

Nevertheless, he said he is “trying to be as transparent as possible.” …

Oh, you’re certainly “transparent”, Sen. Johnson…

Just yesterday…


Throw Back Wednesday: Ron Johnson’s previous work…

Words of the master:

Reader Interactions

108Comments

  9. 9.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Yarrow: Johnson? He was just reelected. The economically anxious WWC of WI picked the multimillionaire free-trade plutocrat over Russ Feingold, by a very small margin. One of the outcomes most strongly linked to voter suppression, I believe.

  14. 14.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    Some people seem to think I’m pedantic for arguing that humanity needs a sarcasm font that is consistently used and understood throughout the internet. I feel as though I am justified in reading this news story as a vindication of my argument. Of course, it might not have been used in private text messages among two people who knew each other well. But if it had been, that would definitely vindicate my argument.

    @Omnes Omnibus: In Ron Johnson’s defence, he’s also a lying sack of shit.

    (apologies to Jon Stewart for stealing his probably 10-year-old joke)

  16. 16.

    Mike in DC

    The most obnoxious thing is that the parties conversing in the text messages can’t really publicly defend themselves right now.

  17. 17.

    randy khan

    Since it’s an open thread, the Department of Veterans Affairs apparently has lost my father’s grave.

    This is funny, by the way, not like the stuff that was going on at Arlington – I know exactly where he is and visited recently. But he’s not in the online grave finder, something my wife discovered by chance today. I’m going to call the cemetery in the morning to find out how to fix it.

    It is kind of cool that there is an online grave finder for national cemeteries, though.

  22. 22.

    The Moar You Know

    Damage is done. Ten million people will go to their graves insisting that Jesus Christ hisself told them personally that there was a secret society within the FBI dedicated to overthrowing the greatest president this nation ever had.

    That’s the problem with stupid. It catches instantly, it’s contagious, and it’s incurable.

  23. 23.

    Old Dan and Little Anne

    I hate follow a douchebag I knew in college on FB. He is my window into insanity. He is fully on board with the release the memo secret society conspiracy crowd. Good times.

  24. 24.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
    Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
    We do, we do!
    Who holds back the electric car?
    Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
    We do, we do!
    Who robs cavefish of their sight?
    Who rigs every Oscar night?
    We do!
    We do!!!

  25. 25.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Villago Delenda Est: The tradition at LGM (and to a lesser extent here) has always been the monospaced code font, but I completely agree that Comic Sans would be much more appropriate. In fact, apart from doge, that might be the only other appropriate usage of Comic Sans that I can imagine. It definitely helps that using Comic Sans for sarcasm is self-explanatory, because no one in their right mind would typeset a serious statement in it.

    (The only flaw that comes to mind is that an awful lot of mobile devices currently don’t have Comic Sans. Clearly, after the revolution when Dean Baquet is flown into the sun and the sarcasm font is mandated worldwide, this will have to be remedied.)

  27. 27.

    rk

    Which adult talks about secret societies in a serious way? Plus, first rule of secret societies is you don’t call them secret societies. I knew that when I was five.

  29. 29.

    Steve in the ATL

    Long day of bargaining just wrapped up. It’s late for us east coast folks, or folk since I’m the only one at the table. But I’m the chair, and I demand that we start at 6 am PST tomorrow!

    Anyhoo, what I have missed today?

  34. 34.

    jonas

    In what other modern, Western democracies are high-level government representatives visibly mentally disabled?

  37. 37.

    debbie

    According to this bright bulb, the secret society’s spread beyond the FBI:

    The “secret society” that is attempting to bring down President Trump includes federal judges, former Attorney Generals and one sitting Attorney General of a large U.S. state and its members are using burner phones to evade detection, according to a new report.

    On Monday, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) revealed that congressional investigators learned from a new batch of text messages between anti-Trump FBI investigators Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that a “secret society” within the DOJ and the FBI had schemed immediately after Trump’s election win to undermine the president.

    That secret society doesn’t just include rogue anti-Trump FBI agents but also federal judges, federal prosecutors, one sitting Attorney General of a large U.S. state and potentially former Attorney General(s) of the United States, according to a new report.

    “They communicate with meetings over cocktails, at homes, via encrypted chat rooms, texting on drug-cartel-inspired burner phones, and even via an email list, according to sources. Others have secured phones in the names of relatives to try to stay under the radar.”

    “Potentially former” is an interesting turn of phrase.

  39. 39.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Major Major Major Major: Or you can just be sarcastic and rely on the majority of jackals to get it. And then tease those who don’t by mentioning “adjusting snark meters.” Like we have for years. Why not leave it alone?

  41. 41.

    scav

    Only possible problem with using Comic Sans is that many dyslexics would find their easiest native language to be sarcasm. (It’d definitely work for some, but I assume others might enjoy a break once in a while.)

  44. 44.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Major Major Major Major: I was specifically thinking for Latin script (and Comic Sans would also work for Cyrillic and Greek script, apart from, AFAIK, a few rarely used diacritics, mostly from ancient Greek, that could be added to a future revision of the font), but this is a good point. Surely there are other fonts that serve similar purposes in Asian/etc. alphabets, but since I only just started seriously entertaining the Comic Sans idea, I haven’t really thought about/researched it that long.

    @scav: Is that actually a problem? Those dyslexics would certainly find themselves right at home on this blog, at least. :p

    @Omnes Omnibus: Because someday a pigshit stupid Republican will find a snarky comment you wrote and think it’s a serious admission to a secret conspiracy to rig an election. Didn’t I already go over this? :p

  46. 46.

    dmsilev

    I’m reminded of a column Art Buchwald wrote during Watergate, where he listed all of the groups that Nixon categorized as ‘enemies’; buried in the list was ‘heterosexual constitutionalists’. We’re getting to that point, though of course in this modern age we must also include the homosexual constitutionalists.

  48. 48.

    dmsilev

    @debbie: They even used an email list? Will the horrors never cease?

    One of course must ask whether ‘they’ also had their own email server.

  49. 49.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @(((CassandraLeo))): If that is your concern, stop commenting on blogs. A fucking font won’t matter. If they copy and paste, the font will go away. And, if they actually link, will any RWNJ know our bloggy sarky code? I doubt it. If they do know it, will it stop them? If you say yes, you are a fool.

    Now, why does it matter?

  51. 51.

    Feathers

    @debbie: Because my college coursework included a class on conspiracy theories, I can say with some authority that this is bullshit. A real conspiracy gets smaller the closer you come to it. A conspiracy theory expands to contain all possibilities.

  53. 53.

    Corner Stone

    @The Ancient Randonneur: Little story. My son’s class in Jr High has a type of trivia game like you may find at BW3, etc. The faster you choose the right answer the more points you get. There’s no beer involved. Yet.
    He keeps registering his screen name as “Mike’s Pence”. The teacher always deletes it but he CTRL+V’s it back in place until she quits trying. So, when he wins, as he inevitably does because, yeah, the winner is displayed as Mike’s Pence.
    This is *MUCH* funnier than it sounds here.

  56. 56.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Omnes Omnibus: …did you really not pick up that I’m really not being completely serious about this? I even used emoticons.

    Republicans are gonna Republican. Regardless, an awful lot of misunderstandings through text would be prevented if there were more easily understandable conventions for denoting snark.

  58. 58.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @(((CassandraLeo))): People do it seriously. I addressed this in my comment where I mentioned “adjusting snark meters.”

    Someone who drops nearly 5000 word comments in threads just doesn’t get a benefit of a doubt about sense of humor. Sorry.

    ETA: Would threaded comments help?

  59. 59.

    chris

    @jonas:

    In what other modern, Western democracies are high-level government representatives visibly mentally disabled?

    USA! #1!!!! I just saw a clip of Matt Gaetz going on about the missing texts. There aren’t enough meds in the world for that boy. He’ll never be right.

  62. 62.

    danielx

    @Patricia Kayden:

    It does seem like any Republican with a big mouth and a penchant for idiotic statements and actions looks in the mirror and sees presidential timber. By those standards Johnson is well up there.

  64. 64.

    MisterForkbeard

    You know, I thought the “secret society” message would be stupid and innocuous, but I had no goddamned clue it would be THIS stupid. “Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society” is such an obvious joke about calendar unavailability that any Republican that pushed this needs to publicly apologize after being tarred and feathered.

    /angry

  65. 65.

    Manxome Bromide

    @Feathers: If you don’t mind me asking, what does a syllabus in conspiracy theories look like? How is it situated in a broader curriculum or field of study?

  66. 66.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Omnes Omnibus: I cannot, in any of my 20+ years on the Internets, ever recall seeing anyone use “:p” as an indication of seriousness. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to recall anyone who’d ever used it to indicate anything other than not-seriousness (usually, flippancy). And as pedantic as it surely is to cite an encyclopaedia for an argument about emoticons, Wikipedia does seem to confirm this as at least one of the most commonly understood usages: “Tongue sticking out, cheeky/playful, blowing a raspberry”

    And that’s 5,000 words that had several jokes in it, thank you very much.

    As for threaded comments, having spent significant enough amounts of time both here and at LGM, I find it difficult to imagine a blog format topic I care less about. I’m sure one exists, mind you. It’s just not coming to mind. If I had to force myself to develop an opinion, I’d probably say that I actually find it kind of nice that one blog I post on uses one format and the other uses the other. Most of the time I don’t care, but sometimes I’m more in the mood for one of those formats than the other. (The fact that this doesn’t happen consistently is why the rest of the time I don’t care.)

    In any case my understanding was that Cole doesn’t want threaded comments so it’s kind of irrelevant.

  72. 72.

    Corner Stone

    @Mike J: Oh, my WA guy. We were just in downtown Seattle. Nobody told me you have to walk straight up five blocks to get anywhere away from the waterfront.

  78. 78.

    jimmiraybob

    Well duh. “Secret Society Membership” is the campaign contribution level i would check off during Obama’s and Hillary’s campaigns. That’s the level that included the secret decoder ring and secret meeting password: Secret Society.

  79. 79.

    lgerard

    @chris:

    USA! #1!!!! I just saw a clip of Matt Gaetz going on about the missing texts. There aren’t enough meds in the world for that boy. He’ll never be right.

    ‘Gaetz is a blossoming star in the world of batshit wingnuttery. He just needs to come up with a catchy phrase like Steve King’s cantaloupe calves or Louie Gohmert’s terror babies

  80. 80.

    Groucho48

    People occasionally do mistake snark for a serious comment here. But, I don’t think there’s a need to do anything complicated to indicate snark. Just use a little used symbol to show a snark is coming. ~ seems a good choice, but, I’m sure there are others.

  85. 85.

    trollhattan

    @Corner Stone:
    ‘Tis a hilly place to be sure. Used to be hillier but they hosed one of them into the Sound. Enjoy, even if your calves will scream tomorrow.

  86. 86.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Major Major Major Major: I agree with this, but I find it important that the number of exclamation marks and exclamation mark-like symbols I use is always exactly five. Five exclamation marks is, after all, a sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. (So in other words, !!!11, !!!1one, etc.)

    Really though, Comic Sans remains the most brilliant suggestion I’ve heard overall, aside from its absence on some mobile devices. It should be immediately clear to almost everyone what its meaning is.

  87. 87.

    Anne Laurie

    @(((CassandraLeo))):

    In fact, apart from doge, that might be the only other appropriate usage of Comic Sans that I can imagine. It definitely helps that using Comic Sans for sarcasm is self-explanatory, because no one in their right mind would typeset a serious statement in it.

    Some of us lysdexics are quite fond of Comic Sans, dammit.

    (On the other hand, some of us are also extremely sarcastic… and I would put this in Comic Sans if I knew how.)

  89. 89.

    NotMax

    Gads, an entire political party directed by Ed Wood after guzzling a fifth of gin.

    Plan 9 From the Deep State.

  91. 91.

    J R in WV

    @(((CassandraLeo))):

    Don’t let anyone give you any static over your 5000 word comment. It was a great comment, and made good sense. I’ve been known to make large or long comments as well, not to your magnitude yet, but working on it.

    And I think the monotype shown by [bracket] code [/bracket] works OK to show snark... it was first implemented on LGM, which I don't hold against it. I actually kinda like Comic Sans just as a font.

    But keeping one’s snark detector properly tuned is also important. I’ve fallen for snark once or twice, the better the snark, the easier it is to fall for it.

    Did anyone see that the President of MSU resigned earlier this evening! Good news keeps happening even in the Bizzarro World of D J Trump, President.

  93. 93.

    Mezz

    A thought occurred to me last night on Mueller’s potential strategy. If Trump sits down within the next month (I know, I know), that would be a timeline much faster than I was led to expect. And not a complaint, but just sooner. I mean, the racketeering, money laundering stuff is already buttoned up??

    So this was the thought: is OBSTRUCTION the one thing they have Dipshit Donny dead to rights on? Like, it’s pretty clear and undeniable a pattern of conduct exists that he deliberately tries to obstruct investigations into him.
    Mueller’s thought then maybe is ‘get Trump out of the White House where his pardon power is negated, and then drop the whole truck-load on all of them’? Would anyone think this is reasonable?

    Because then the obvious problem is that Mueller is expecting Republicans to do the right thing and stand up for process and the rule of law, and he’s gonna be disappointed!!

  94. 94.

    NorthLeft12

    He [Johnson] acknowledges not knowing what they meant – and says the focus now on his committee is the Clinton email scandal.

    Of course it is.
    I am beginning to wonder if “Clinton email scandal” has become some sort of code for Republicans that really means sit around and do nothing.

  96. 96.

    different-church-lady

    I suggest “THIS IS SNARK” in flashing letters (what’s the old code for that?), and then five groups of five exclamation marks.

    Eh, who am I kidding? There is no end run around Poe’s Law.

  97. 97.

    SFAW

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    The economically anxious WWC of WI picked the multimillionaire free-trade plutocrat over Russ Feingold, by a very small margin. One of the outcomes most strongly linked to voter suppression, I believe.

    What bullshit. I have it on very good authority — the best authority!! — that it was because Hitlary refused to campaign in MI PA WI.

  98. 98.

    SFAW

    @JR:

    I know Ron Johnson and Woody Johnson are not brothers
    But they should be

    That would create the unintended consequence of RonJon (potentially) doing to The Pack what Woody has done to the Jets.
    Why do you hate Omnes?

  99. 99.

    debbie

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Know you’ve gone, but to answer your question: I needed something to push myself past the despondency I felt after reading about Ron Johnson. Alex Jones does that every time. I can’t help but laugh at him.

  103. 103.

    ET

    Is watching too much Fox News turning Republicans in to credulous idiots willing to believe anything that fits within their world view no matter how nutty, or are credulous idiots just attracted to Fox News? Chick or egg?

  104. 104.

    Chris

    @Old Dan and Little Anne:

    I hate follow a douchebag I knew in college on FB. He is my window into insanity. He is fully on board with the release the memo secret society conspiracy crowd. Good times.

    That’s what my relatives are for.

    I used to actually follow wingnut blogs on the general theory that it was good to at least have some insight into their world, but after a while it just becomes too exhausting. So now the only windows I keep into their world are the Facebook and Twitter feeds of people I can’t get out of my life anyway. It’s plenty painful enough.

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