Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

This really is a full service blog.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Motown is Joe-Town!

Cole is on a roll !

White supremacy is terrorism.

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

“But what about the lurkers?”

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Republicans in disarray!

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Let’s Recap Yesterday…

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Let’s Recap Yesterday…

by | 220 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

THERE IS TOO MUCH NEWS. Even just the Russiagate-related material, in roughly chronological order*:

*(Kicker for President Obama fans near the bottom of this thread)

******


******

******

******

******

******

Leave a comment if I missed anything!

Reader Interactions

220Comments

  1. 1.

    Quinerly

    Good morning from Poco and his chauffeur from Las Cruces, NM. We are digging the vibe here. Have a great day, everyone!

  3. 3.

    NotMax

    Repeating from comments late last night about Ursula LeGuin’s death.

    For those who might be interested, pretty true to the book film adaptation of LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven which aired on PBS close to 40 years ago is available in full on YouTube.

    Not the bestest video quality but certainly passable.

  5. 5.

    satby

    Good morning everyone! Having a quick cup of my liquid crack before jumping in the shower. Packed this morning, had the household stuff mostly handled yesterday; one more doggy potty break and I leave for the first leg of my trip. Oy!

    Try to get rid of Trump and his criminal gang while I’m gone, Bobby III!

  8. 8.

    NotMax

    @satby

    Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.

    (Which may be in the Guinness book as world’s shortest list of strictures.)   :)

  19. 19.

    Amir Khalid

    So Trump asked the FBI’s acting director how he voted in 2016. I hope the reply was, “In private, Mr President.”

  22. 22.

    different-church-lady

    Mueller sends his regards!@cspanwj pic.twitter.com/MkrYr5VeU4

    The idea that both those guys became president is so hard to believe.

    The fact that both those guys became president back-to-back makes my brain implode.

  30. 30.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Amir Khalid:

    So Trump asked the FBI’s acting director how he voted in 2016. I hope the reply was, “In private, Mr President.”

    That would be a perfect response to such an intrusive and totally inappropriate question.

    I remember seeing (on Election Day 2016) a photo of Trump and Melania at their polling place. He was actually peering over at her ballot as she cast her supposedly sacrosanct private vote. (Of course, given all we’ve witnessed in the months since then, it barely registers. But it was a telling little moment, regardless.)

    ETA: So did Eric

  32. 32.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    1) Head of the FBI, Chris Wray, is taking no **** from Trump or his elven toadie, Sessions

    sadly, this isn’t true.

    Mccabe is retiring is retiring in March. And the chief of staff Jim Rybicki has ALSO been forced out (3 years shy of retirement).

    So he didn’t directly fire Mccabe, but instead forced him out. That’s hardly standing up, and more like on bended knee.

  36. 36.

    bystander

    @OzarkHillbilly: Welcome back! Glad to hear things are looking up.

    Although the professional standard for the head of the FBI dictates that he resist any actions that smack of political bias, I’m glad to see Wray is living up to that standard, given how all other standards and ethics have been wrecked by twitler and his minions. You have to wonder if Wray has already seen where this all ends and he’s keeping his hands clean.

  38. 38.

    bystander

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I remember seeing (on Election Day 2016) a photo of Trump and Melania at their polling place. He was actually peering over at her ballot as she cast her supposedly sacrosanct private vote.

    Peering? Hope that’s not an auto-correct you didn’t catch.

  39. 39.

    Bobby Thomson

    Bone Spur Bully already copped to obstruction last spring to Lester Holt. Deep down, everyone in America already knows the guy committed obstruction and some are just defending the family in public. The bigger problem is that so many really don’t care. Jessica Chastain’s SNL sketch was too on the money to be comedy.

  42. 42.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Got back home late last night after a very long two days transit.

    To recap:

    1. Monday in Laos (Sunday for you guys), we check into flight in a chickens, ducks and pigs terminal in Luang Prabang after an exhilarating and exhausting 16 day trek across Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The Air Lao counter looked like the afterlife administrative office in Beetlejuice, and we got handwritten boarding passes to Hanoi, with our luggage checked through to Louisville by a handwritten tag left over from 40 year old paper stock, as “the internet is down”. We weren’t hopeful about the luggage.

    2. Long layover in Hanoi is scheduled, but our handwritten boarding pass is an issue for hours, we’re stuck in the transit area and can’t go out to the ticketing area because we only had a single entry visa, which was used up. We’re eventually told our flight to Narita in Tokyo is cancelled due to the snows there. We are switched to Vietnam Airlines and told that it is still running. I assume that it is an inventory disposition issue, and we spend a few hours in the executive lounge awaiting the flight which is supposed to take off at 12:30 am (an hour later than original).

    3. I was wrong. That flight canceled, too. We are led to the Vietnam air lounge and told that it may be two days, that they can put us up somewhere. Faces go blank when we mention our little immigration problem and the rep thinks they can maybe fix that. They end up bringing pillows and blankets, and maybe 30 people bed down for the night. Wife takes couch, I make a floor pallet with seat cushions – there is plentiful food, liquor and shower facilities.

    4. I finally fall asleep using my eye mask from my original JAL flight to Tokyo. At 2:30 am, my rep is earnestly apologetic. He’s offering up seats on Dragon Air to Hong Kong, and AA (which we’d deliberately avoided when originally selected our flights) for the transpacific to DFW, and then home. I’d seen enough stories about the Japan problems to take whatever.

    5. Tiny seats to Hông Kong on a longish flight, and then we find out how buggered we are – our paid upgrades we had for the JAL flight weren’t possible. We got two economy seats next to the toilet for the transpacific, all 13 hours of it.

    6. On the good side, our luggage showed up.

  45. 45.

    Kay

    @mkraju
    Follow Follow @mkraju
    Ron Johnson, chairman of Homeland Security, tells me that the missing FBI texts is not what he thinks the story is: He says he’ll “dig into” that Obama knew Clinton used an email server “outside the classification system” and “what she was doing was illegal.”

    Part of the reason they renew the email charge once a month is because they told their base over and over and over that Hillary Clinton committed a crime and would be arrested and locked up.

    And then they won, and it never happened. Why not? They control the whole federal government. If Hillary Clinton committed a crime they should arrest her. But they don’t. Because she didn’t. So they needed a reason why and the reason is Deep State Won’t Let Us.

  47. 47.

    Elizabelle

    @satby: wishing you the best trip ever, satby. When do you get back? Might traipse through HoosierLand before too long. Elderly aunt to visit, once I get back.

    Good morning, jackals

  48. 48.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Baud:

    I need it. I was so amazed to lay in an actual bed last night.

    Woke up with a hellish leg cramp about 3 am.

  49. 49.

    Baud

    @Kay: Hasn’t the statute of limitations run? As soon as it does they’ll pull a Comey and have a big press conference where they’ll make stuff up and they’ll demand she waive the statute of limitations so they can charge her. When she doesn’t, that’ll be evidence of her guilt on Fox News.

  52. 52.

    MJS

    @David Merry Christmas Koch: I’ll be leaving my employment on the day I reach 35 years of service. I’ve planned that for a long time. If McCabe is retiring in March, he may have had those very same plans. It doesn’t mean that he’s being forced out.

  53. 53.

    Kay

    Sen Ron Johnson claims “informant” who has news about the FBI “Secret Society” working to overthrow President Trump.

    So what do we do if they succeed in convincing media of this? It’s entirely possible. Get a couple more GOP senators to parrot it and “FBI Secret Society overthrowing President Trump” could successfully become the 2018 election narrative.

    I guess there’s not much you CAN do, other than hope regular voters – not the Trumpsters but everyone else- don’t fall for it.

  54. 54.

    Peale

    @Kay: they also know that their best shot this fall is convincing voters that Hillary Clinton is on the Democratic ballot. And yeah, I mean ballot. They’ll convince their voters that even though you don’t see her name there, that’s because there’s a secret democratic ballot that only illegals and African Americans have access to.

  56. 56.

    OzarkHillbilly

    And the Academy Award for Best Tourism Documentary goes to … (dramatic pause) … “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”

    Just when Missourians thought they were living down their reputation as violent, heroin-dealing money launderers centered around Lake of the Ozarks (the Netflix series “Ozark”) and fierce, meth-decimated families in the Ozark hills (the 2010 film “Winter’s Bone”), along comes “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” the fictional movie set in a fictional town where rape, murder, racism and corrupt law enforcement join poverty and violence as the daily diet of life in Missouri. Tourism commissions throughout the state are serving sides of Pepto Bismol at their monthly luncheon meetings.
    ……..
    In Missouri:

    • Our governor is under investigation for allegedly photographing and blackmailing a shackled, semi-nude woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair.
    • Fodor’s, the international travel guide, named Missouri among the 10 places around the world not to visit in 2018.
    • A bill became law in 2017 that makes it almost impossible to win an employment discrimination lawsuit after a private business owned by the bill’s sponsor, a state senator, was sued for racial discrimination.
    • Lawmakers have refused to expand Medicaid for Missouri’s working poor, leading to the closure of seven rural hospitals.
    • A Republican legislator said extending discrimination protection to LGBT Missourians infringed on religious liberty because most religions don’t consider gay people human.
    • A tax bill introduced this season would give 91 percent of its benefits to the wealthiest 20 percent of Missourians while the bottom 60 percent of earners would actually see a tax hike.
    • Missouri ranks 15th in the country in per-capita opioid deaths.
    • Missouri ranks 48th in the nation for state funding for K-12 education.
    • The governor cut $68 million for higher education in his first year in office and proposes another $68 million cut this year.
    ……………….
    Is this really representative of Missourians? Based on no objective, quantifiable evidence, I say unequivocally it is not. Missourians are caring and compassionate. When it comes to the voting booth, though, Fox News and rhetoric that blames immigrants, the poor, the media, intellectual elites and minorities for the struggles felt by rural and small town Missourians triumph over care and compassion.

    Cognitive dissonance much?

  59. 59.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    a fictional town where rape, murder, racism and corrupt law enforcement join poverty and violence as the daily diet of life in Missouri. 

    It’s practically sci-fi it’s so fictional.

  60. 60.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Hasn’t the statute of limitations run?

    I don’t know. But “that will be evidence of her guilt” is meaningless re: Clinton and emails. The NYTimes tried and convicted her. If they want to do anything more to Hillary Clinton on those emails they’ll have to charge her with something. She really got the maximum sentence available from political media for “unspecified email infractions”. There’s not much more they can do to her.

  64. 64.

    guachi

    @Kay: That doesn’t seem to make any sense. How can her server be “outside the classification system”? It was an unclassified system. If she were using a .gov email address she wouldn’t have been classifying the emails, either.

  66. 66.

    ThresherK

    @Kay: She’s still consuming oxygen and has been raked over the coals for the just-invented sin of not becomig a hermit after an election. FTFNYT will find a way to do more to her.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    We have a scandal where a police officer from a (tiny) jurisdiction close to here responded to a call in THIS jurisdiction. When the police officer who wasn’t supposed to be there got there, that officer shot and killed the suspect.

    It came out yesterday that the officer who wasn’t supposed to be there but responded to the call KNEW the suspect, and had some kind of long running personal dispute with him.

    So it looks like this police officer went to the scene and killed someone he had a prior personal dispute with. Just a cold-blooded murder but because he was a police officer and “responding to a call” (even though outside his jurisdiction) it wasn’t investigated as a crime.

  75. 75.

    Chet

    That story about McConnell refusing to condemn the Russian interference needs to be connected to his refusal to vote on Obama’s SCOTUS nominee. He had an ace up his sleeve the whole time.

  77. 77.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):

    I was just grateful for the relative tranquillity and comfort that came with lounge privIleges. The lounge was on the second floor with windows over the rest of the terminal; I could see some other less fortunate folks spread out the best way they could make out. That would have been lots worse.

    Next time, I leave a couple of clean shirts in the carryon, and I buy the multientry visa. Lesson learned.

  80. 80.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: On my trips to India, the flight to get there and get back is always the worst part. At least your luggage showed up.

    One time Swiss Air lost my big suitcase, it showed up after a week, all the nuts, spices I had bought mixed with the cotton and silks.

    The last time I was traveling back from India I had a lot of jewelry (fine and the costume kind) in my hand luggage. Most of it gifts from family and friends and That pinged those x-rays machines and I had to open all my gift boxes to show them that I was not carrying any weapons. Plus all the chargers and electronic equipment also attracted attention (Kindle, iPad, laptop and camera)

  81. 81.

    Another Scott

    @satby: Have a great time! I admire your bravery in jumping out of a job you disliked and into volunteering. Send us updates!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  82. 82.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Kay:

    Sen. Ron Johnson claims “informant” who has news about the FBI “secret society” [. . .].

    Wow. You expect a certain percentage of unhinged nutcases in the House, but not in the Senate.

  85. 85.

    chris

    Sometime before Christmas I booked an appointment at the groomer for Pumpkin. Poor old thing was getting more and more unmanageable matts and I was inspired by Steve’s cool new look. The day before the appointment the groomer fell and sprained her wrist… flash forward to yesterday:

    A tiring day: https://i.imgur.com/osRWiOD.jpg

    WTF have you done to me? https://i.imgur.com/Rp5DHVS.jpg

    ADMIRE the mohawk! https://i.imgur.com/Hx3NjqK.jpg

    She’s so little! And she seems quite happy with her new do.

  87. 87.

    Betty Cracker

    I’ll admit I’m biased against FBI Director Wray simply because he was willing to take the job from Trump. Did Trump extract a loyalty oath? Wray told the Senate no, but given the events that preceded the hire and the ongoing investigation, there’s no way Trump hired Wray without some assurance that he (Wray) would serve Trump’s interests. The “central casting” looks might have gotten Wray the interview but probably didn’t seal the deal. Maybe Trump asked for and received Wray’s assurance that Wray had voted for Trump.

    Regarding McCabe: the man is 49 years old and an ambitious, lifelong public servant or he wouldn’t be in the position he’s in. He has been treated abominably — subject to outrageous, unethical questioning for the crime of being married to a Democrat and publicly ridiculed by the childish dickhead in the White House. I can only imagine what kind of crude abuse and death threats Trump’s taunts on Twitter and the follow-up lies by partisan hacks like Hannity and Dobbs have inspired against McCabe.

    Sounds like he’s “retiring” to get away from that madness. I don’t blame him a bit. But I also don’t give Wray a lot of credit for refusing to fire McCabe, especially knowing McCabe was on his way out anyway. I’ll believe Wray is a mensch when I hear him publicly speak up on behalf of an employee who has been treated in an outrageous manner.

  88. 88.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @rikyrah:

    That’s how I looked at it – it was simply a weather event and an adventure in itself.

    We learned that several of the lounge employees actually sleep in the back, and start working at 5 am getting the buffet set up and the showers tended to. It makes sense if they live dozens of miles away and have to ride scooters, as traffic in and around Hanoi is pretty horrendous, and doing it by scooter would lead you to want some different solution.

    The problem for us was in not having the ability to stand at a counter and offer up suggestions about routes while considering our potential upgrade status. We were working with reps who had to keep running to ticketing computers. We had a lot more potential options (even Beijing, as we have valid 10 year China visas), but that lack of real time info exchange crippled us.

  93. 93.

    Tenar Arha

    @Steeplejack (phone): OMG they’re starting to sound like 45 too. Mnuchin was quoted saying

    ‘As you know there’s tremendous investment in the U.S., okay? There’s tremendous trade deals going on. I think we’ve been very clear and the president has delivered. Look where the stock market is again. The president is delivering for American workers.’

    He added: ‘So this trip is all business. I can assure you it has nothing to do with anything other than that.’

    Eww

  96. 96.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Ugh – and I bet those spices stained the fabrics.

    My wife’s suitcase got the security going through somewhere in Laos or Vietnam, and they wrinkled some elephant design paper mache wall hangings. We think we can fix them.

  98. 98.

    Immanentize

    Just an observation. Everybody is focussed on Chuck Shumer and the Senate. At this point they are meaningless to the budget process. For government to stay open in three weeks, the House has to pass a bill. All appropriation bills have to start in the House. My guess is that Democrats are counting on Republicans in the House (just before another long weekend) to be unable to pass any appropriation bill.

    If the House does manage, then, the Senate will matter….

    ETA Clarity

  99. 99.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: It was mainly the raw cashews with their shells/husks on that I had bought from Goa that had scattered everywhere and left a fine dusting. The spices had been nicely double bagged so thankfully they didn’t cause much damage. Thankfully, I had left behind some homemade halwa that my MIL wanted me to take, I knew all the buttery goodness from the ghee would be everywhere in my luggage.

  105. 105.

    Immanentize

    @schrodingers_cat: another possible play — the Senate does come up with a bipartisan immigration package that (again) passes in the Senate before three weeks is up. That bill goes to the House which refused to act on it and can’t get it’s act together on the budget. That would be the best place for Democrats….

  107. 107.

    Steeplejack

    @Tenar Arha:

    All business, right. I wonder why, say, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen needs to go. Wonder what deals she’s cooking up.

  109. 109.

    Lee

    This is the thing I’ve been wondering about Trump versus the FBI:

    From most reports the FBI is/was a very Republican organization. Is this going to make a dent in that? Of course there are going to be some holdouts (the NY Office) but they have to see how Trump is treating them and the rest of the Republicans are not giving them any cover.

  111. 111.

    Baud

    @Lee:

    From most reports the FBI is/was a very Republican organization. Is this going to make a dent in that?

    The military hasn’t changed. The FBI probably won’t either.

  113. 113.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Immanentize: Yes, he is.

    in light of Wolff’s hints that trump is having an affair with someone on the WH staff, and Melania’s decision to stay home, maybe that delegation deserves some responsible speculation.

  114. 114.

    Yarrow

    Good morning everyone. Ozark, so glad to see you back and that the news on your son is as good as can be hoped for.

    AL, noticed you didn’t include the news about Rick Gates.

    Gates may be negotiating with Mueller's teamhttps://t.co/nVAtjLT9Sk— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 24, 2018

    Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates has quietly added a prominent white-collar attorney, Tom Green, to his defense team, signaling that Gates’ approach to his not-guilty plea could be changing behind the scenes.

    Green, a well-known Washington defense lawyer, was seen at special counsel Robert Mueller’s office twice last week. CNN is told by a source familiar with the matter that Green has joined Gates’ team.

  115. 115.

    Steeplejack

    @Immanentize:

    Yes! (And I know what you’re thinking.)

    The one I haven’t found confirmation on is the Possum Queen. But I can’t believe she’ll be left out.

  116. 116.

    Adria McDowell

    @OzarkHillbilly: Hope he continues to recover.

    Good morning to rikyrah, and everyone else. Hope satby enjoys the travels, and Qunierly- GO AGGIES!! (NMSU alumna)

    That George Monroe Twitter meme in savagery! I love it! I’ll be in and out- determined to do something productive today instead of letting the depression get to me.

    See ya!

  117. 117.

    Yarrow

    Also, this news broke this morning. The hubris is kind of jaw-dropping, but then these people think they’re all the smartest people in the room.

    Flynn kept FBI interview concealed from White House, Trump

    WASHINGTON — A year ago today, Donald Trump’s newly sworn–in national security adviser, Michael Flynn, met privately in his West Wing office with FBI investigators interested in his communications with Russia’s ambassador, without a lawyer or the knowledge of the president and other top White House officials, according to people familiar with the matter.

  118. 118.

    JGabriel

    @NotMax:

    For those who might be interested, pretty true to the book film adaptation of LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven which aired on PBS close to 40 years ago is available in full on YouTube.

    Not the bestest video quality but certainly passable.

    To be fair, I watched it when it first aired and even then, if I recall correctly, it was a little grainy and desaturated.

    Still a good movie though.

  119. 119.

    clay

    @Steeplejack: Speaking of Possum Queen, on Morning Joe they were playing all the clips of Trump & Co. publicly stating that Comey was fired because of the Russia investigation. And they played the clip of PQ stating that Comey had lost the confidence of the rank-and-file FBI members; that she had personally spoken to “countless” FBI agents about it.

    I would really like her to be questioned under oath about this. Let’s see how truthful she’s being with the American people. If it turns out to be “not very”, then… well… lying to post ex facto justify a wrongful firing would seem a lot like conspiracy after the fact, wouldn’t it?

  122. 122.

    Tilda Swintons Bald Cap

    Ron Johnson’s accusation of a secret FBI society confirms the actual story about the NY FBI anti-Hillary cabal. Republican accusations are always confessions.

  124. 124.

    SFAW

    @clay:

    that she had personally spoken to “countless” FBI agents about it.

    All that means is that she can’t count very high without help.

  126. 126.

    SenyorDave

    Its pretty amazing that a significant portion of the US Congress has decided to go all in on attacking the FBI to protect Trump. I have to think somewhere down the road they might regret that. Senators and House members have lots of power, but the FBI has information. I sure as hell would not want the FBI as my enemy.

  127. 127.

    Chris

    @bystander:

    Although the professional standard for the head of the FBI dictates that he resist any actions that smack of political bias, I’m glad to see Wray is living up to that standard, given how all other standards and ethics have been wrecked by twitler and his minions.

    And by the FBI itself in the not-very-distant past. (Hello, Comey, you invertebrate douchebag).

  129. 129.

    Steeplejack

    @Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:

    Re the New York FBI office: I would love for some of their e-mails to be leaked. They would probably blow the doors off the trivial bullshit from Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and reveal actual illegal actions.

  131. 131.

    tractarian

    Anne Laurie:

    I just feel like saying thank you for your periodic Twitter roundups.

    They are invaluable.

  133. 133.

    mai naem mobile

    The news about Sessions being the first cabinet member to be interviewed by Mueller . I’m surprised Mueller hasn’t interviewed Wilbur Ross yet regarding the Bank of Cyprus .

  134. 134.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Seems he’ll get to keep his leg for a little while longer.

    Very very very glad to hear this! Welcome back and continued healing thoughts to your son.

  135. 135.

    Chris

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Is this really representative of Missourians? Based on no objective, quantifiable evidence, I say unequivocally it is not. Missourians are caring and compassionate. When it comes to the voting booth, though, Fox News and rhetoric that blames immigrants, the poor, the media, intellectual elites and minorities for the struggles felt by rural and small town Missourians triumph over care and compassion.

    Conservatives are, or at least can be, caring and compassionate when it comes to their own family. Or sometimes their in-group, i.e. church or professional community. It’s the leap to stepping outside of your tribe that they’re utterly incapable of making.

  136. 136.

    Calouste

    @Yarrow: Flynn is up to his neck with Russia and Turkey, he probably thought that the US was going to be exactly like them. Of course he kind of forgot that it took Erdogan and Putin 15 years to get where they are now

  137. 137.

    SteveinSC

    @Baud: Well, I am not surprised there is a group of senior FBI agents who meet over beer or darts outside the Malevolent Imp’s eavesdroppers in the Hoover Building. These people are patriots who likely were recipients of Comey’s trump information salted in safe locations. There could be so much concern over trump’s and the gop’s sedition, criminal conspiracies, and Russian money corruption that they see the country in peril.

    If there is a such a secret cabal to protect the nation, then they are welcome to have their meetings in my house.

  139. 139.

    Chris

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    Rachel reported that Davos is crawling with russians “financiers” lookin for ways to launder their money. What a coincidence.

    My mother grew up in Switzerland, though not Davos, and lives there again now. Which is interesting, because it’s always been one of the spots where the world’s super-rich come not only for banking but to buy up property for new fancy homes where they live part of the year, so you kind of get to a window into what’s happening in that world just by seeing who’s coming into town. Russians were already there during her childhood (fifties and sixties), but those ones tended to be Romanov & co. aristocrats who had to leave because of the Revolution. For much of her adulthood (late twentieth century), it was Arab oil sheikhs and their hangers-on who took over the “super rich foreigners of the moment” spot. Nowadays, it’s Russians again, but gangsters and oligarchs rather than royals.

  141. 141.

    Chris

    @Lee:

    I wish I could believe that, but I doubt it. Especially if the anti-Trump paragon that the agents cling to in this fight is Comey, which I suspect is what will happen. They’ll decide that Trump was a freak accident and that Republicans are generally fine.

  142. 142.

    clay

    @But her emails!!!: That reminds me of a scene from one of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” books.

    “How many escape pods are there?”

    “Zero.”

    “Did you COUNT them?!?”

  143. 143.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Amir Khalid:
    While that would be fun, the report I read was that he told Trump he did not vote in 2016.

    @Kay:
    The deep state WON’T let them. Career prosecutors know damn well even conservative judges would throw that case out of court, and won’t even try. I would not be surprised if one of them has had to explain to Trump that prosecuting Hillary and Obama is a fantasy that cannot be done. More likely they’ve told Roger Stone about twelve times, and he has grimblingly let Captain Attention Span forget it.

  144. 144.

    rikyrah

    The Unconscionable Claim that Medicaid Fueled the Opioid Crisis
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    January 23, 2018

    Republicans like to talk about the need to “reform” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But most of us know that their real desire is to either kill these programs or so damage them that they can effectively be drowned in the bathtub (as Grover Norquist would put it). House Speaker Paul Ryan said the quiet part out loud when he suggested that he had dreamed about slashing Medicaid spending since his kegger days in college.

    While we’ve all be talking about shithole countries and government shutdowns, the Republicans have launched what might be their most malicious attack yet on Medicaid. The country is facing a severe opioid crisis, and they are actually trying to blame it on Medicaid. Here is the conclusion Sam Adolfsen reaches at the National Review:

    As legislators debate the specifics of repealing and replacing Obamacare, they should resist the feel-good talking point that Medicaid is a silver bullet for solving the opioid epidemic. In reality, Medicaid may be fueling the problem and may be largely responsible for starting the epidemic in the first place.

    Claims like that led Republican Senator Ron Johnson to issue a report, write an op-ed and hold a hearing focused on blaming Medicaid for fueling the opioid epidemic.

  148. 148.

    glory b

    @Bobby Thomson: This a.m., Joe Scarborough said if the interview conversation with Holt was found in an email or overheard, the media would be exclaiming that they had Trump dead to rights.

  150. 150.

    Kay

    @Yarrow:

    or the knowledge of the president and other top White House officials, according to people familiar with the matter.

    This news seems a little self-serving though, doesn’t it? Serves the President and “top White House officials” quite well.

    I don’t know. I think they need a named source on that one. There’s all kinds of allegations around obstruction and everyone in the Trump White House lying compulsively swirling around this thing and we get this “news” that no one knew what was going on? Okey doke.

  151. 151.

    Another Scott

    @Immanentize: Yes, according to the Constitution, funding bills have to originate in the House. But that’s an easy-to-get-around technicality these days. They just take a bill that’s already introduced there, strip out everything, and insert the bill of interest. That’s what they did with the PPACA after all:

    Introduced in the House as the “Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009” (H.R. 3590) by Charles Rangel (D–NY) on September 17, 2009

    Committee consideration by Ways and Means

    Passed the House on November 7, 2009 (220–215)

    Passed the Senate as the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” on December 24, 2009 (60–39) with amendment

    House agreed to Senate amendment on March 21, 2010 (219–212)

    Signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010

    Yeah, the House is the blocking body for a DACA bill, but the mechanics of how it happens and in what order don’t really matter.

    /pedant ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  153. 153.

    japa21

    @rikyrah: In actuality, if there were to be one thing that fueled the opioid crisis (particularly prescription opioids) it would not be Medicaid but Workers’ Compensation programs. Employers want people back to work ASAP and push physicians to prescribe opioids to get the employee back. In other words, it is corporate America even more than the pharmaceutical industry.

    ETA: This link is to a special blog post by a guy who follows all things WC. This post is scary in its own right. http://www.joepaduda.com/2018/01/much-opioid-crisis/

  155. 155.

    manyakitty

    One more thing since this is an open thread. What is Roger Stone playing at? He’s an inveterate ratfucker, so telling 45 to avoid an interview with Mueller, while sound advice, might work toward an unpredictable response. I has confuse.

  156. 156.

    randy khan

    @Amir Khalid:

    Apparently he told the President he hadn’t voted.

    There’s this little group of high government officials and journalists who take some pride in not voting as a sign of their neutrality. Personally, I don’t get it. If you are deep enough into the government or the news that you’d think voting might display bias, you should realize that voting or not voting has no impact at all on your opinions – it’s your opinions that decide how you vote, not the other way around. So not voting is merely a form of virtue signaling, not a demonstration of actual neutrality.

  157. 157.

    tobie

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    And the chief of staff Jim Rybicki has ALSO been forced out (3 years shy of retirement).

    So he didn’t directly fire Mccabe, but instead forced him out.

    I linked last night to an article in the Post on Wray’s appointment of Dana Boente and the dismissal of Rybicki that also suggested that Wray may not be the hero he’s being made out to be. Money quote:

    Boente’s move to the FBI is notable because some might view him as a Trump loyalist who has shown himself willing to go along with the president’s controversial agenda, and he now might be able to advocate the president’s position inside an institution that is supposed to enjoy independence.

    I don’t know enough to say but I’m skeptical of anyone who was appointed by the Shitgibbon.

  159. 159.

    worn

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Holy money, your story brought back some memories. I was in Laos way back in 1999, traveling with a friend. Because of time issues, we decided to fly Lao Air out of Luang Prabang down to Vientiane (there were also horror stories floating around at the time of bandits waylaying the buses mid-way if one opted for wheeled transport). After getting our tickets and meeting the airport manager – who came running over to us when he saw the cheap, $15 Thai guitars strapped to our backs – we retired to the airport restaurant to await our plane. I use this word liberally, for all I remember them serving was shrimp chips and beer; we purchased both.

    After a bit, a kid asks to join us. We let him. We soon learn he is head of immigration there. Then we are joined by another kid, a friend of his wearing coveralls. We then slam several beers with these two and are having great, broken English fun as we wait.

    A small puddle jumper flies in. As the passengers disembark, the kid in the coveralls takes his leave from us. A few minutes later we spy him out on the tarmac, wrenching on the plane (!). Later, it completely filled with interior clouds (for lack of a better term) during the flight. But it did stay up in the sky.

    Ah good ‘ol Laos, every day was a great adventure. Glad you managed to make it home, though I feel you on avoiding American if at all possible. That outfit is a real study in active, diffident immiseration.

  160. 160.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @manyakitty:
    He’s nuts. He’s absolutely bugfuck nuts. Maybe he was some calculating evil mastermind once upon a time, but now he’s a loon. He pushed Trump to prosecute Hillary and Obama. Everything it comes out he’s told Trump makes sense only in a twilight world where all conservative conspiracy theories are true.

  162. 162.

    Amir Khalid

    @manyakitty:
    As I understand it (please correct me if necessary), if Trump refuses to meet with the Special Counsel’s team then Mueller can subpoena him, and it has already been established with Bill Clinton that POTUS must comply with a subpoena.

  163. 163.

    rikyrah

    Poll: Majority of Americans thinks Trump is biased against black people

    Source: The Hill

    BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY – 01/24/18 10:02 AM EST

    A majority of Americans thinks President Trump is biased against black people, according to a recent poll.

    The Washington Post-ABC News poll finds 52 percent of respondents think Trump is biased against black people. Forty percent of respondents believe strongly that Trump is biased, according to the poll.

    Another 41 percent of adults, however, don’t think Trump is biased against black people. More than 80 percent of Democrats see Trump as biased against black people, according to the poll, while less than 20 percent of Republicans feel the same way.

    Pollsters also found that about 80 percent of black people think Trump is biased against them and about two-thirds of Hispanics agree that the president is biased against black people.

    http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/370462-poll-majority-of-americans-thinks-trump-is-biased-against-black

  166. 166.

    James E. Powell

    @Kay:

    So what do we do if they succeed in convincing media of this? It’s entirely possible.

    They don’t have to convince the press/media that it’s true, they only have to convince them to keep repeating it. In my adult years I am not aware of a time when the press/media did not eagerly repeat whatever bullshit the Republicans wanted them to repeat. Pretty much another one of those “since Reagan” things that the Democrats have never been able to duplicate. I’m not saying the public always goes along with whatever it is – Clinton’s impeachment being one of the best examples – but the low information voters usually accept the Republican propaganda.

  167. 167.

    No Drought No More

    It’s only occurred to me recently that Mueller’s investigators most likely have the goods on select congressional republicans, those guilty of their own corrupt bargains with Putin’s Russia. The historical weight the investigators are now shouldering is no less than the weight of the world in both scale and consequence.

    The good news being Americans can handle it. Watergate was a righteous bust; the Iran-Contra prosecutors threw the case (and the perps walked); Clinton’s impeachment was perhaps their first major assault upon our democracy (committed by the same republicans that 6 years later lied the nation to war). All of which is to say that multiple generations of Americans alive today know the drill. It doesn’t phase them any longer. What will happen when Mueller presents them the facts in black and white terms? To paraphrase George C. Scott: “When the American people stick their hand in the pile of goo that a minute before had been the government of their inheritance, they’ll know what to do”.

  170. 170.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @James E. Powell:

    Pretty much another one of those “since Reagan” things that the Democrats have never been able to duplicate.

    Reagan told the well-off white men who are the founding lights of the cable news reporter social club that they they can’t possibly be racists, but instead are wise, mature, and responsible. They will never abandon that revelation, and since then everything Republicans say is obviously true.

    I’m not saying the public always goes along with whatever it is

    What I have consistently noticed and said before is that the national press is terrible at convincing the American public how to feel about anything. What they are great at is controlling what information is out there, and especially what topics are discussed. Even here on Balloon Juice, I noticed that power during the Obama era. Obama’s policy speeches didn’t exist and weren’t part of the conversation, because the national news decided they didn’t want anyone to know they happened. Stuff like that.

  171. 171.

    James E. Powell

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    What they are great at is controlling what information is out there, and especially what topics are discussed. Even here on Balloon Juice, I noticed that power during the Obama era.

    Agree completely. And I’m at a total loss as to what can be done to change it.

  173. 173.

    bemused

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Has he ever been a mastermind? Maybe in his own mind. I’d say he’s always been a loon with tattoo of Nixon over most of his back and cooking up schemes. I had to laugh last night on msnbc when either Maddow or O’Donnell brought up that he and his wife advertising, pre-internet, for swinging partners.

  174. 174.

    rikyrah

    Twitter truth

    Allow me to reiterate: There is NO WAY Obama could have 1) had an affair with a porn star 2) while Michelle was pregnant! 3) paid her $130k to keep it on the low 4) and STILL have religious folks defending him! There would have been a mob at the WH demanding for his removal!!!

    — Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) January 24, 2018

  176. 176.

    Spanky

    @James E. Powell:

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    What they are great at is controlling what information is out there, and especially what topics are discussed. Even here on Balloon Juice, I noticed that power during the Obama era.

    Agree completely. And I’m at a total loss as to what can be done to change it.

    Create the next Air America! That worked so well last time.

    Media found out real early on that what sold newspapers/radio time/TV time was aimed right at the amygdala – pretty much directly the opposite part of the brain us liberals like to operate out of. So right there, mass media and Conservative thinking go hand in glove. No one has yet found a viable way to break through that.

  177. 177.

    rikyrah

    hat tip — TOD

    Derek Thompson: Thanks, Obama

    ……………………………

    President Obama has cultivated a reputation for approaching politics with a kind of medical clinicism. But with the full panorama of his presidency coming into view, Obama’s economic legacy is impressive, even historic. First, the centerpiece of Obama’s anti-inequality legacy is the policy that bears his name. Obamacare, a.k.a., the Affordable Care Act, has reduced the uninsured rate from about 16 percent in 2010 to less than 9 percent today, the lowest level in U.S. history. Second, several subtle yet significant tax changes under Obama have made the tax code more progressive. The stimulus bill passed in 2009, a.k.a., the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (or, simply, the Recovery Act), included the most important changes. The law created the Making Work Pay credit, expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, and created new tax credits, like the American Opportunity Tax Credit for college attendees. The most significant change to the tax code since 2010 has been the eleventh-hour agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts for all families except for an increase in the top tax rate for households making more than $450,000 and an increase in the estate tax rate to 40 percent.

    ………………………….

    Third, the Obama administration has supported initiatives outside of the tax code and health care policy to help the poor and middle class. They have been advocates for higher minimum wages at the national level, which have arguably buoyed the state-by-state effort to raise minimum wages toward $15 in richer areas. They supported extended unemployment benefits while long-term unemployment was perhaps the country’s most insidious economic plague. Unemployment insurance kept more than 11 million people out of poverty in Obama’s first term, according to Census analysis. The president also expanded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) and Temporary Aid to Needy Families (grants that states can use for a variety of measures including helping the poor). His Department of Education spent more than $60 billion to support states’ education budgets and prevent more layoffs of teachers and administrators. In sum, he grew anti-inequality spending more than any president, as a share of GDP. But at a time when both liberals and conservatives have become exquisitely aware of income inequality and its ills, the seemingly placid, cold, philosopher-in-chief did more to combat that inequity than any president in at least 50 years. For that, two words suffice: “Thanks, Obama.”

  178. 178.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @James E. Powell:
    I don’t know, but I hear now and have always heard constant refrains that Obama/Hillary/Democrats should be doing X, and they’re *doing* X, but the news doesn’t care, so even among the politically informed hardly anyone knows. The two that grind me the hardest are “Obama should do a cross-country tour explaining how the ACA helps people” while Obama was doing a cross-country tour explaining how the ACA helps people, and “Hillary needs to talk about how she can help people economically,” when that was two-thirds of her speeches.

  180. 180.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Frankensteinbeck: One of the reasons Obama succeeded and Hillary didn’t is because he bypassed the traditional elite media. They are not our friends. We need to tune them out, create an alternative. Media that focuses on how policies of the two parties affect the citizenry and the country, it doesn’t have to be an echo chamber like Fox.
    ETA: Bypass them and make them irrelevant.

  181. 181.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Spanky:
    You cannot possibly convince me that making up shit about ’emails’ for the thousandth time was anywhere near as viscerally exciting and thus profitable as Trump’s mountain of pre-prepared scandals. The email story was tedious, but it went on and on, sucking up airtime and headline space. Trump’s wacky campaign trail antics were cute, but holy shit, the field day they could have had with stuff like him having attended parties with 13 year old prostitutes. But emails and Trump the brazen populist were the narrative that made them feel good as Republicans, so that’s what they went with.

    EDIT – @schrodingers_cat:
    Difficult to do. Incredibly difficult. But it’s our only option. They will never, ever be on our side.

  182. 182.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Frankensteinbeck: Indian freedom fighters had to do that. The British administration responded by imprisoning and trying for sedition one of the most influential editors of such a newspaper.
    His words are outside the Mumbai High Court on a plaque.

    Freedom is my birthright and I shall have it.

  183. 183.

    Spanky

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    But emails and Trump the brazen populist were the narrative that made them feel good as Republicans, so that’s what they went with.

    Yup. Cuz Trump was one of the tribe. Nobody in the tribe will listen to the Fake News about him. But Hillary! That gets the bile going!

  184. 184.

    Chris

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    What they are great at is controlling what information is out there, and especially what topics are discussed. Even here on Balloon Juice, I noticed that power during the Obama era.

    Quite.

    This especially works wonders on people who think they’re too smart and canny and savvy and cynical to be taken in by the mainstream media’s narratives, so therefore they don’t have to worry about being brainwashed by it, maaann… and don’t realize that since their thought process is still defined by what the media chooses to let them hear, they’re actually far deeper in the rabbit hole than they think. I see this periodically with “Bernie was robbed!” far-leftists, “a plague on both your houses” centrists, disillusioned conservatives, not pundits but ordinary people who are basically dropouts from politics and think of themselves as a lone voice in the wilderness raging against the tyranny of politics-as-usual. When in reality, if you actually stop and listen to them for five minutes, their radical insights into politics are just bog-standard David Brooks gibberish that you can hear from pundits on any mainstream media platform any day. (“Partisan extremists on both sides are destroying America!” “Identity politics will destroy us all!” “Why didn’t Hillary Clinton talk more about policy!” “BUT HER EMAILZ!!!”)

  185. 185.

    clay

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    But emails and Trump the brazen populist were the narrative that made them feel good as Republicans, so that’s what they went with.

    I’m not as big of a Bernie derider as some folks around here are — I think Bernie himself is mostly fine; it’s (some of) his supporters that need a thwack in the head.

    But that was Bernie’s shtick — the brazen populist. The media bought into this narrative: populist Bernie vs. insider (i.e., corrupt) Hillary. (Even though Bernie had been in DC longer than Hillary had, he still was able to claim to be an outsider, go figure.)

    Once the primaries were over, Trump co-opted Bernie’s shtick. He used the same rhetoric, the same criticisms of Hillary, and the media simply shifted this already-created narrative (populist outsider vs. corrupt insider) from Sanders to Trump.

    The national media has a lot of faults — as has been documented repeatedly — but I think they can mostly be boiled down to this: Once they coalesce around a narrative, it is very difficult for them to depart from that narrative, no matter what new evidence may be in play.

  187. 187.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    THere is this horrible thing among religious conservatives though, where your actual behavior doesn’t matter. Not all religious people, but religious conservatives of a certain stripe.

    That’s why they’re always going on and on about what is in peoples “hearts”. Because behavior doesn’t matter for some reason. The way I understand after all these years exposure to it (albeit as an outsider to it) is one can do or say anything, because there’s some mysterious measure of what’s in your “heart” the completely trumps words and actions.

  189. 189.

    Another Scott

    In other news, Nasser was just sentenced to 175 years according to Reuters.

    Too short. Grr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  190. 190.

    lollipopguild

    @Kay: Their “Christian” appearance is just a facade designed to help them achieve power and control over other people. Money and power are what they really believe in.

  191. 191.

    Groucho48

    @guachi:

    I’m pretty sure what it actually means is that her system was incapable of receiving any emails marked as classified. Which is true, though you’d never know that from the investigation or the MSM reporting.

    What they probably want you to believe is that her system was outside of some official list of allowable systems.

  192. 192.

    clay

    @schrodingers_cat: Well, I said he was mostly fine. Yes, he behaved badly during the campaign, but he’s solid on policy and (for whatever reason) seems to be able to reach people that others can’t.

    Regarding the convention… who knows what was going through his head at that moment? It may not (or it may) have been due to pouting. He might have been upset because his supporters were acting like God damned embarrassments on the convention floor.

    (This was hardly the point of my post, though. In fact, I prefaced my post with that disclaimer specifically to try to avoid another Bernie flame war. Oh well…)

  194. 194.

    Immanentize

    @Another Scott: Scott,. Lunch break reply — All you say is True, but what I was saying in shorthand (sorry) is that the Dreamer relief bill cannot start in the Senate if the plan is to make it part of a CAR or debt ceiling increase unless the House agrees.

    The House knows what the play is and will not agree. This time around, the House conservatives we’re willing to both cave on S-CHIP and fund for another 30 days because DACA was NOT addressed (and the S-CHIP plus government shutdown jammed the Dems proper). That worked. But what is the hostage the Dems want now besides the dream Act?

    So, the House has to start the CAR ball rolling. The Senate will not stick out their necks on that. The Senate then adds the compromise DACA relief to that CAR which the House then has to pass to keep the government open. This can only happen, probably, with all democratic votes and a number of Republicans (which Ryan is loathe to do). Or, House Republicans shut down the government just to deport a million dreamers.

  195. 195.

    Kay

    @lollipopguild:

    I don’t know. I spend a lot of time around them because we have a lot of them here and I just don’t get it. What’s the point of having all these rules if there’s this “what’s in his heart” exception you can drive a truck thru?

  197. 197.

    Kay

    @lollipopguild:

    I watched PArt One of the Putin doc on PBS and George W Bush follows this kind of religion. Putin knew it so he spiced up the convo with some fundy Christian code words and Bush fell for it. That’s why Bush said he “read his heart” or whatever the fuck he said. Heart-related blather.

    They show Obama meeting Putin and the difference is extraordinary. The body language is SO hostile. Obama had no use for that bullshit. He has that disgusted look we became familiar with when he’s leaving the meeting. I think they really disliked each other.

  198. 198.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kay:

    Sadly, I’m not surprised at all. This is the direction we headed in when we decided that cops can never be prosecuted for on-the-job killings.

  199. 199.

    Kristine

    @Kay: Years ago, I worked with someone who believed that as long as they had accepted Jesus as their personal savior, it didn’t matter what they did–they would be saved and would be forgiven. I don’t know if that belief is prevalent, or if this jerk was just making an excuse for their entire life.

  200. 200.

    lollipopguild

    @Kay: I know a lot of these folks and the rules are designed to make sure that they and the people like them always “win”. It’s tribal. Their tribe must be in control and have the power to make sure that those others tribes never get to run things. All of the rules were created to make sure that they could tell their fellow tribe members from everyone else. Once you are a member of the tribe you will always be forgiven. Trump told them what they wanted to hear and they made him an honorary member. trump will always be forgiven as long as he does and says what they want him to. Rules along with obeying the law and paying taxes are for the loser liberals.

  201. 201.

    Another Scott

    @Immanentize: I have no idea how this plays out, but I like how Schumer said explicitly that Donnie’s Wall funding is off the table. Donnie really, really wants his wall. The Teabaggers really, really want their $60+B (IIRC) DoD budget increase and want the Budget Control Act (sequester) restrictions removed. The Democrats still have lots of tools in the toolbox that they can use beyond beating them over the head about Dreamers – it’s not at all clear that Donnie and the Teabaggers will get what they want this time.

    Also too, there’s going to be another CR after this one expires on February 8. They said so explicitly yesterday (according to TheHill). So even after February 8 there are going to be battles over 1:1 DoD vs non-DoD budget increases and all the rest.

    This isn’t over yet, and no matter what the House does Schumer and Team D has ways to make Donnie and the Teabaggers negotiate.

    But, ultimately, the GOP will determine whether there’s a DACA bill this year or not, and everything they have done since September 5 when Trump killed Obama’s policy indicates they don’t want one.

    Maybe the federal courts will keep enough roadblocks in the way to protect most of them until we can flip the Congress.

    Just my $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  203. 203.

    Chris

    @schrodingers_cat:

    The ones I’m talking about rarely even know who David Brooks is. They just imagine that the mainstream media is a ragingly biased Fox News For Democrats.

  205. 205.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Chris: I have a friend who has recently become interested in politics. She is a D voter but worshipful of bipartisanship, thinks DB and Maggie H are neutral observers and agrees with whatever is said on PBS and NYT.

  206. 206.

    Chris

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Well… if she’s only recently become interested in politics, one can hope that she’ll learn. (It took me years of following politics before coming around to this point, too).

  208. 208.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Chris: I hope so too. She is a naturalized citizen, my husband neighbor from when was in Mumbai, works for a pharmaceutical giant is smart otherwise.

    ETA: She also likes Bob Woodruff’s horrible books.

  209. 209.

    Chris

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    You cannot possibly convince me that making up shit about ’emails’ for the thousandth time was anywhere near as viscerally exciting and thus profitable as Trump’s mountain of pre-prepared scandals.

    This is why I’d say any belief that the media isn’t in the tank for Republicans or at least against Democrats should’ve died with the 2016 election. There is no universe in which email server management was a more eyeball-grabbing story than literally any one of the scandals Trump was involved in. It took a very heavy lift from the media to make it that way, and it’s not the kind of thing you do without conscious effort and bias.

  211. 211.

    Mnemosyne

    @clay:

    Once the primaries were over, Trump co-opted Bernie’s shtick. He used the same rhetoric, the same criticisms of Hillary, and the media simply shifted this already-created narrative (populist outsider vs. corrupt insider) from Sanders to Trump.

    This. It’s what drives me nuts about the few remaining dead-enders — they refuse to acknowledge or even see what Trump was doing and how Sanders’ clinging to the primary and criticizing the Democrats fed directly into the MSM’s narrative.

    In fact, it gave the MSM what they love most: a “both sides!” narrative that required zero thought on their part since they could say that people on the left and both hated Hillary.

  212. 212.

    schrodingers_cat

    @clay: He was one of the reasons that T is in the WH. His stupid campaign continued way too long. T later weaponized all the ammunition BS used against HRC. As for policy, he has some good sound bytes. And even now whenever he gets on TV he is attacking Ds. He remains a very real danger to our chances of flipping the House and the Senate.

  214. 214.

    Mnemosyne

    @Yarrow:

    It probably makes me a bad feminist to say that an incompetent but attractive blonde couldn’t possibly become head of the Department of Homeland Security without sleeping with her boss, but let’s be realistic here.

  215. 215.

    stinger

    @rikyrah: No, no! Don’t put it out there, what he did! That just points the current administration to what they should tear down next, and how to go about it.

    Kidding. Sort of.

  219. 219.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Glad you’re back home, and that your son seems on a road to recovery. There were people asking everyday if we had heard from Ozark again yet? and the answer was always not yet.

    Best of luck to your son and you too.

Comments are closed.