I mean come on when your memo is crapped on by Alberto "torture memo" Gonzales, you're up shithole creek I think @DevinNunes https://t.co/GSDCnOSmzI
— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) February 3, 2018
It was never about good governance. It was always about shielding Trump from the consequences of his own actions. It’s not worth it.
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) February 3, 2018
At least Carter Page, assuming he ever gets out of jail and the Russians don’t terminate him, will be able to support himself by taking his maniacal performance on the road. Devin Nunes, on the other hand…
Devin Nunes admits he didn't view the underlying intelligence his memo was based on https://t.co/Fm1xZgm0OH
— Joe Perticone (@JoePerticone) February 3, 2018
New report notes Nunes has used memo crusade for personal political gain and – this seems relevant – Nunes has never actually “read the warrant from which the memo” is drawn. https://t.co/njP6mO9mNo
— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) February 2, 2018
Devin Nunes: “This is just the first memo. There will be another one dealing specifically with the State Department’s role in all of this.”
— Ned Ryun (@nedryun) February 2, 2018
"And if you don't like my principles, I have others" https://t.co/cukBiN5eWp
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 2, 2018
With your help I'm going to beat Devin Nunes in November. Unless Mueller gets to him first. #removenunes pic.twitter.com/RL1h2S8Wxf
— Andrew Janz (@JanzforCongress) February 2, 2018
For Dems hoping to take out Devin Nunes in #CA22, let me pour some cold water on that idea:
-Trump won district by 9.5, Romney by 15
-Nunes has $3.8 mil COH
-Best D challenger COH mark is $85k. Money isn't everything but yeah…— Geoffrey Skelley (@geoffreyvs) February 2, 2018
Some news: Devin Nunes’ Democratic opponent, @JanzforCongress, raised over $100,000 today alone with news of the memo release, per a senior campaign aide.
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) February 2, 2018
Baud
We need to take down Nunes and Paul Ryan (among many others)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: …Trump, the Turtle…
I’m working on a time lapse of the eclipse, it’s complicated*.
*I must have not properly aligned my skytracker so I have to manually align everything…ugh.
Jeffro
@Baud: agreed
With Nunes falling on his face so spectacularly, someone should stitch together an ad with that clip of Nunes saying he didn’t read the intelligence and a clip of Ryan saying the FBI needs to be cleansed. “Cleansed”? Equally powerful against either/both politicians
Kay
Will it work though? Will there be this ridiculous week-long media coverage and hype if they do this once a month?
Yes, probably.
It is AMAZING how Republicans direct news coverage. They managed to get a weeks’ worth of front page coverage on this stupid memo that reveals nothing. This has absolutely no relevancy to anyone except Donald Trump, his low quality hires, and Republicans in Congress. This is ABOUT THEM, personally, yet it dominated coverage for a week.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
NotMax
Food for thought: Bananas with edible peel developed by Japanese farmers .
Now if only they could only make it chocolate flavored.
lowtechcyclist
Skelley’s comment that Trump won Nunes’ district by 9.5 hardly means it’s beyond reach. Dem candidates have been turning races by that much or more, all through 2017. Sure, still the underdog, but.
Now the money thing is real, but if Janz comes across as a credible candidate and looks like he’s got a chance, he’ll get money.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax:
“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try real hard, you’ll get what you need.”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Sab
@Kay:
raven
@NotMax: Or caramel!!!!
NotMax
@raven
We must close the banana gap!
:)
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
ThresherK
A real Marxist wouldn’t fumble the quote. Even from memory I think it’s more like
Baud
@Kay:
It’s one of the three legs they have for maintaining power.
Kay
This reminds me of the IRS “targeting” scandal, which was also wholly fabricated.
I think someone had to resign over that invented “evidence” and fake trial, so that’s a shame. I wonder who will have to resign over this fabricated scandal?
How can people work in that place? It’s like a hall of mirrors.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Sadly, I have had occasion to wish that my banana were banana-flavoured.
raven
@ThresherK: calomel
Derelict
This truly is a confederacy of dunces. Nunes’s next target is the State Department? I suppose that memo will expose the horrifying truth that State has contact with foreign governments! Indeed, the State Department has a network of people around the world in almost every nation on Earth! Can’t you see the conspiracy!?!?!?!
gene108
@Kay:
Their backers have spent 45 years and billions of dollars setting up partisan media outlets, with respectable veneers like “American Spectator”, “The Washington Times”, etc., to influence media coverage, think tanks, political groups like The Club for Growth, before Fox News came on the scene and further helped drive Republican friendly coverage.
Unfortunately no one with lots of money ever thought to set up liberal equivalents or fund them at the same level.
I give conservatives credit, they have spent decades undermining the New Deal idea of government providing a safety net, and now with Trump and the current crop of Republicans it looks like they are actually able to reverse a lot of what has been put in place for the last 85 years.
Their investment is finally starting today pay off.
Edit: Consdier how badly they lost on privatizing Social Security, but they are still coming after it. They have money and want to order this country to match what they think ? s right. They are vile, evil people.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Pretty sure it’s not native there, but is durian a thing in Malaysia?
@raven
I see what you did there.
;)
(The Chico Marx line is misquoted, at a guess, somewhere around 98% of the time.)
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
No it’s not. The GOP has learned how to play the media like a fiddle.
It is up to DEMs to use the media to make it dominate coverage for 9 months.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
The durian is native to south-east Asia, including Malaysia, and it is a very big thing throughout this region — though not with me personally. “Durian” itself is a Malay word.
NotMax
In light of the Nunes’ memo(s) and other recent goings on, for the umpteenth time will recommend a listen to the (apparently) timeless satirical radio play The Investigator, originally aimed squarely at the heart of the McCarthy era. (Split into four parts at the link for reasons known only to the archivists.)
The backstory (precis at the link) is as dramatic as the production.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: I dare say that you are more qualified to work for the EPA than this guy
His company is Steve’s tools in motion.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/02/trump-household-aide-government-job-386727
Montanareddog
@NotMax: Durian – “like eating custard in a latrine”, I once read. Tried getting the teenage offspring to eat some in Sri Lanka last summer. He is an adventurous eater but durian was a gastronomic experience too far.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Thank you. Live and learn. (And smell ;).) Several Filipino markets here carry durian flavored snacks, all triple-wrapped.
Juice Box
Nunes wants to clean the Clinton out of the State Department. He may not realize that she hasn’t been the SoS since 2015.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@ThresherK: Groucho was very witty.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Well, yeah… Seeing as I have a long history of personal contact with and immersion in the, you know, environment.
ETA also I know environmentally things like clean water-good, polluted water-bad, and clean air-good, polluted air-bad.
JWR
In the last thread, I posted links to a couple of articles detailing how this memo business is likely to redound in Trump’s favor, but now, I’m not so sure. I mean, for whom is this memo going to have any appeal? Certainly not to anyone who isn’t already in the Fox News bubble.
Amir Khalid
@Juice Box:
Since 2013, actually; Kerry succeeded Hillary that February, at the beginning of Obama’s second term.
SFAW
Traitors, all the way down.
That fuckhead didn’t read the underlying intelligence? Why am I not surprised?
He should be glad his suck-muffin, Vladi Vladimirovich, has not yet completely take over US intelligence services. Were that the case, we’d be reading about Ryan’s “thoughts and prayers” for Nunes’s family.
And fuck you, too, Paulie, for aiding and abetting, you smarmy fuck. I hope Mueller has something on you, too.
Fuckem.
Roger Moore
@Derelict:
He has in his hand a list of 205
communistsDemocrats who have infiltrated the State Department!SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
What the hell kind of Republican ARE you?
Apostate.
Sam
It is going to take longer than I had thought. What started as a relatively simple case of a very compromised scumbag becoming President has morphed into a concerted effort by one of our two political parties to maintain power by any means. Trumpism: the crimes multiply so fast it is hard for investigators to keep up.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: I’d trust you more rather than some guy with a company called Steve’s tools in motion.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
But the terrible influence of her e-mails* could not be expunged from State, until St. Rex of Exxon exorcised them — and competence — from that Department.
*ETA: and Benghaziiiiiii!!!!!!!!, of course
p.a.
I’ve had durian bubble tea here in the US. I’m sure it was doctored up to be more palatable,as it’s smell was pungent but not overwhelming. Tasted like a combination of a sweet fruit (not citrus-y IIRC) combined with raw garlic, with the garlic especially prevalent in the aftertaste.
JMG
I would not bet the media will give any further efforts by Nunes much coverage. Washington reporters don’t like being played for obvious suckers, as it strikes at their self-image, one nearly as inflated as Trump’s.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: Nunes didn’t need to, Putin told him what it said, and if you can’t trust a guy named Vlad, who can you?
@SFAW:
The best kind.
SFAW
@Sam:
That started long before Lying Littledick was installed by Russia. In many ways, he’s the result of that effort (i.e., lie, cheat, steal to maintain power), not the other way around.
Voter (probably) illegal) disenfranchisement happened in 2000 Florida, for example. Without that Katy Harris/Jebster bullshit, Al Gore would have won FL by 100,000 votes, probably.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Good point.
Not according to the Kochs, ZEGS, Turtle, and the rest of the POT. (Party of Traitors)
Cheryl Rofer
This is the message a lot of people will take away. Look at the numbers of retweets and likes.
Baud
@Cheryl Rofer: When you say a lot of people, you’re talking about people who have already drunk the kool aid. They are immovable so there is no point worrying about them.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Face it, you’d trust me more than anyone in the trump administration.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Maitre d’: “Best Republicans, party of one….”
;)
OzarkHillbilly
@JMG:
If Nunes does something with his committee, by default it is news and they will cover it. That is their job after all.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Maybe. We’d need to know more about your IT management practices.
Peale
@JMG: remember when Trump had a press event at the old post office and started shilling his hotel? We thought they’d turn on him then. Or when his campaign thugs went after a reporter? The press isn’t going to stop hoping that they’ll treat them better anytime soon.
Sam
@SFAW: Sure I agree there have been a lot of legally dubious efforts to tilt the playing field. This is different. This is a situation where one political party has backed a clearly compromised, compromised by a foreign adversary, individual for President and then proceeded to assist him in obstructing inquiries into this fact. I guess i put on my tin foil hat and call that a conspiracy to undo the United States. This isn’t about wanting lower taxes or an abortion ban, it is about grabbing and retaining power. I don’t see yet why that is so important, but I imagine we will be treated to the big reveal before this is all over.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@p.a.: I remember reading an article about durian and why we wouldn’t know it here in the states because it’s impossible to ship.
Couple months later I started seeing durian in the Chinese markets. So apparently they solved those problems? I did buy and attempt one. It was not a hugely positive experience but I suspect that’s because I don’t know how to pick a good one.
The Asian restaurants have durian drinks and I find those completely palatable. An odd flavor, but interesting.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW:
They don’t get a vote, only jackals do.
Cheryl Rofer
@Baud: That is true. I worry about the marginal people who may be convinced, although at least the media seem to have a better grip on reality this time around.
The Thin Black Duke
@Baud: Seconded. This is a nothingburger that’s going to give anybody that bites into it a stomach ache.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Cheryl Rofer: I skimmed some of that thread. There are some people pushing back on her from the Real World where none of that happened. But not enough.
Now I’m depressed.
Baud
@Cheryl Rofer: It’s a legitimate worry since the media convinced many marginal people that Hillary was worse than Trump. But it’s harder to do because the GOP controls everything and there’s no single foil like Hillary right now for them to focus on.
JR
@Cheryl Rofer: The professional wingnut class is the professional wingnut class. They were always going to work this, no matter what.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Everything you need to know about my IT management practices is in Stephen King’s book. (they even made a couple movies about them)
Baud
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: If your emotions fluctuate based on Twitter threads, I suggest you stay off Twitter.
JR
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Durian is easy to ship, the stuff is bulletproof. It wasn’t shipped here because growers/importers were rightfully concerned that it wouldn’t be popular enough to be worthwhile. I’m not particularly fond of it, in case you’re wondering.
Zinsky
@Baud: I am giving my support and a couple of hundred dollars to the “Iron ‘Stache” Randy Bryce, who is going to kick Eddie Munster’s (Paul Ryan) nuts so hard, he will be singing soprano in the church choir for the next five years!
debbie
@Baud:
Don’t leave out Orrin Hatch, that f’ing harpy.
NotMax
@JR
Do recall reading, years ago, that it is illegal to carry a durian fruit on to public transit in San Francisco.
?BillinGlendaleCA
This is a work in progress, but I’d thought I’d share it anyway…the lunar eclipse time lapse from the other night.
JPL
@Baud: What concerned me the most was Ryan’s comments before the memo was released. He thinks that Rosenstein is okay, but the department needs to be cleansed.
Border agents are boarding buses and trains and asking for citizen papers. How long before they set up road blocks. I just want to know how this story ends.
Montanareddog
@Cheryl Rofer:
I expect a significant proportion of those retweets and likes are bots and student part-timers in an office in St Petersburg.
debbie
@Cheryl Rofer:
Really? When did Townhall become credible?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: There have been ICE(fka INS) check stations for years on roads within 50 miles of the border.
Immanentize
Ok. I have a new insight on Nunes and his steps. Sure this is to discredit the Mueller investigation, but his claim that there will be a State Department memo suggests he is just fulfilling the President’s promise to drain the swamp. As a longer term strategy, that puts Ryans’ purge (cleanse) comment in a different light. This may be (a poorly executed) purge tactic.
Have any neutral or pro-Obama military or DOD peeps been forced out yet?
ThresherK
@Montanareddog: What about the retirees?
Oh, that St. Pete.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Baud: In fact I’m not on Twitter. Wading through comments on YouTube or news articles is much the same experience, this overwhelming despair over the magnitude of the Stupid.
So I try not to read those either.
debbie
@Immanentize:
Hopefully, Nunes will be forced to read the intelligence before writing the State Dept. memo.
What what?
@Cheryl Rofer: Got curious and looked her up–Katie Pavlich writes for Townhall. Looks like her claim’s being amplified by the likes of Twitchy, but didn’t see anything else on the search page. (Not tech enough to know if bots can like and retweet.)
JPL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The retirees in FL won’t be happy when there trips are slowed down.
All of Florida is within the 100 mile zone. Recently I read that they can search houses without warrants, if you live within twenty five miles of the border.
Baud
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Good. Makes no sense to wallow in swamps we know to exist. Might as well put it posters of genocide in your bedroom.
NotMax
@Immanentize
Nunes’ instructions (I’m loathe to suggest he possesses sufficient cognitive acumen to craft a strategy solo) are to muddy the waters.
Period. Full stop.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Neato.
Immanentize
@JPL:
I watched the Electric Dreams series on Netflix — shows based on Phillip K Dick short stories. I fear it ends with “Kill The Others.”. (Episode 10)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: There’s a checkpoint just south of San Clemente on I-5, I remember it being there all the way back to the 60’s. I’m just saying that a lot of this isn’t new.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Thanks, still has some weirdness in the middle.
Immanentize
@debbie: They have already written reams of memos on the State Department after Benghazi. I want to see Tillerson’s reorganization memos.
Amir Khalid
@JR:
The durian fruit is heavy, fairly large (as big as an American football or thereabouts), and encased in a hard rind. That rind has duri (thorns) all over, 1cm long and dangerously sharp, which makes handling durians tricky. The guys who sell them by the roadside here wear heavy work gloves. Also, wear a crash helmet if you walk through a durian orchard when they’re in season. A falling ripe durian could kill you.
Immanentize
@JPL: I know a bit about the fourth amendment and I haven’t seen anything about warrentless border exception searches of homes. I need a link, please.
Lapassionara
@Cheryl Rofer: Did you see Don, Jr’s tweet? He considered the memo proof that the Obama admin had been spying on Trump. So for him and his ilk, the memo means whatever they want it to mean.
The interesting tidbit to me was that Trey Gowdy read the supporting documents for the FISA warrant for the R’s on the committee. He not long after announced his resignation and yesterday sent out a Mueller-supporting tweet. He has a prosecutorial background, so he put what he saw in that framework. Hmmmm
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Organize a campaign to sent durian in bulk to the White House?
They could use it as air freshener.
Matt McIrvin
Oh, God. International nerds all over my Google+ feed right now expressing concern about how James Damore was the victim of cruel reverse discrimination, and American affirmative action has gone too far. Oh, well, at least they don’t vote here.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Baud: Wait… the genocide posters might be depressing me too? Dang, I have to rethink a lot here.
Found the durian article I remember, from Smithsonian Magazine in 1999. You can see in those first couple of paragraphs how it does paint the picture of a limited shelf life fruit not suitable for export.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: Anything is better than the current stench wafting out the WH windows.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t know whether to support Google for being the target of right wing hate or despise them for hiring so many right wing employeees.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax: @NotMax:
I can see the news pictures already: the Trumps evacuated, the White House in lockdown, SS agents in hazmat suits removing the durians in wheelbarrows.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I don’t really blame Google for hiring them. You’re going to get some percentage of those “maybe women are genetically inferior, I have the right to just ask questions!” guys if you hire from the pool of modern tech industry, and you’re going to get in this kind of trouble if you make efforts to discriminate against them in advance.
debbie
@Matt McIrvin:
He has the right to his beliefs, but not to force others to accommodate them. What made him think there would be no consequences to emailing his odious beliefs?
Amir Khalid
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Not suitable for export? That can’t be right. Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia all export tens of thousands of tonnes of durians every year.
Lapassionara
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Thanks!
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
People dismissing the effect of the memo must have forgotten recent history. Emails, emails, emails. Many people who did not drink a lot of GOP coolaid drank the email variety.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Amir Khalid: I know. I’m merely reporting what I read in 1999 in the article that introduced me to durian. And as I said upthread, it wasn’t very many months between reading that I would never see them in the US, and actually seeing them in the US.
(Depressing side note about aging. Events in the 90s just happened in my memory. Sometimes I’ll do the math and realize it was 20-25 years ago! But I just read that!)
You were still playing with crayons in 1999 I guess.
Immanentize
@debbie:
He is a white guy, no? Ipso facto his opinions are the most important and can result in no consequences.
gene108
@Cheryl Rofer:
I don’t think there are that many marginal people left.
Trump is so polarizing, you have to have a for-or-against opinion of him by now.
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin: Hmmmm…. Discriminating against ignorant asses never got me into any kind of trouble. In fact it has actually helped me avoid trouble.
JMG
It seems to me that the real significance of the Nunes memo is that it proves Congressional Republicans and Trump are happily willing to manufacture false evidence to support their conspiracy theories. This won’t be their last effort, as Nunes himself has promised. He’s going back to Benghazi. Probably come up with a one-page document saying “I did it,” signed Hillary Clinton with her name misspelled.
gene108
@JPL:
They already set up road blocks/check-points. I was in one, in NH, about 9-10 years ago. They stopped everybody and asked about your immigration status.
CPB can do this within a hundred or two hundred miles (forget which) from any US border, which includes coast lines.
Edit: This was on the highway. They stopped all southbound traffic.
Schlemazel
I think you all might enjoy this, you’ll know the tune
Just vote this fall
And you’ll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip
That started with a tycoon jerk
Aboard this elephant’s ship
The mate was a mighty praying man
The skipper fat and dumb
The pachyderms set sail that day
For a 4-year tour, a 4-year tour
The evidence started piling up
His tiny hands were tossed
If not for the courage of Mueller’s crew
America would be lost, America would be lost
The ship ran aground on the shore of this
Unwanted elephant pile
With Turtle-maaan
The Tяumper too
Some billionaires, and our strife
A porno star
Old Bannon and the Ku Klux Klan
Here on history’s pile!
Amir Khalid
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
1999 was the year I turned 38. I’d already given up playing with crayons, as I recall.
Schlemazel
@Amir Khalid:
When we buy them they are frozen, I assume that is to preserve them.
Their reputation is not unearned. The smell can be overpowering. The odd part is though if you can get past that the taste is nothing like the odor. They are sweet and creamy with a nice fruity flavor.
Emma
I am starting to think I am pie-ing the wrong people. Can we please stop worrying/moaning about the fact that there are people in this country stupid/evil enough to believe/pretend to believe Republican bull%hit? They have always been with us. Always. It isn’t even a particularly American disease. Every society seems to have its share of morons/psychopaths.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Amir Khalid: Really? Somehow I got the impression that despite your accomplishments, linguistic and otherwise, you were a much younger guy. (Your Americanized English is scary good, your German seems damned good too but I’m not qualified to judge it)
OzarkHillbilly
@gene108: Shorter lines are part of the reason I always try to cross the border late at night.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@JPL: How are people on a randomly stopped bus supposed to prove their citizenship? I couldn’t do it. I don’t carry my passport or birth certificate. So I assume border patrol is using racial profiling. And my naïve little cry is how can this be legal?
But then, judging from the Rs, no one cares about legal any more.
Amir Khalid
@Schlemazel:
A supermarket manager would have to be pretty brave, or to have lost their sense of smell, to want to sell whole durians. You don’t see them sold as whole fruits in Malaysian supermarkets either.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
There is a big, big difference between a twenty year unanimous insult campaign and a week of conflicted coverage of a stupid issue.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: I’m 59 and I still play with crayons.
germy
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m sixty and I’m old enough to remember “flesh” colored crayons (light pink/beige).
chris
Twitter delivers the morning LOL
germy
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: I remember them too.
Sab
Only just woke up, missed the thread so far. Don ‘t want to be appearance shaming, but I will . It seems to me the Fox idea of ideal male anchor would be described by normal people as a blockhead.
Cheryl Rofer
@Lapassionara: I don’t pay a lot of attention to Don Jr or even to Don Sr on Twitter. I don’t follow them, but people do retweet them into my feed, so I see them. I figure Don Jr is just going to say on Twitter what he thinks exonerates his old man and himself.
I figure it’s worth paying attention to a pithy summary like the one I posted above. I’m curious how long it will take for one of my Facebook “friends” to pick it up, for example. Also sensitizes me to echoes in the MSM.
Trey Gowdy’s actions are interesting. He came in with the Tea Party rush, but he is disavowing Nunes’s antics. Chuck Todd is openly skeptical too. (Chuck Todd!) Other reporters, whom I have more respect for, are mocking the memo in ways I wouldn’t expect them to. This is all to the good, but we can’t get complacent.
I’ll guess that Nunes won’t release another memo, but he is durable, so I’m not sure I’d put money on that.
I would so love to see how the history books from 2070 write this up.
Schlemazel
@Amir Khalid:
Every Asian market here carries them at least some of the time. They are in the freezer. I can believe nobody would want them on the shelf if they were not
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: Just checked. Still have a nubbin of one in my ziploc bag of crayons too short for the box.
chris
@Cheryl Rofer: The front page of RedState (Link? Never!) has a very skeptical piece on the memo by Patterico. Commenters are, mostly, not happy with it. When you’ve lost RedState…
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@chris: They were promised a bombshell and can’t figure out where it is
Amir Khalid
I remember the first mention of durian I saw in these threads: Anne Laurie wrote about her husband, I think, buying a whole one out of curiosity. I don’t remember what they did with it, though.
JPL
@Immanentize: Your correct. They can enter private property, except dwellings
https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-factsheet-customs-and-border-protections-100-mile-zone?redirect=immigrants-rights/aclu-fact-sheet-customs-and-border-protections-100-mile-zone
PAM Dirac
@Immanentize:
Well, any good consequences are entirely due to his stable genius. Any bad consequences are certainly someone else’s fault. And that is by definition, not a conclusion, so there is no argument or evidence that will change it.
Sab
@Schlemazel: I normally enjoy living in Podunk, Midwest. But I don’t think we will ever get durians, and now I am wildly curious. Our Korean grocery just went out of business and it was only two years old.
Turgidson
@Kay: you’d think the media would respond to future Nunes memos with “fool me once” cynicism.
But then you realize that the GOP has been duping the very same media into covering their bullshit over and over again for decades.
Yep, Nunes’ memo accusing the State Dept of being full of libtard poopyface meanies will get just as much credulous coverage as this atrocity did. And Cillizza will dutifully note that it causes big problems for Democrats who took money from Harvey Weinstein and none of this would be happening if Hillary didn’t have lady parts.
We’re fucked.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): This bomb shell really bombed.
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Outside of Syracuse, NY they boarded an Amtrak train to check status of individuals a few days ago.
germy
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
That’s what they get for listening to Gorka and Hannity.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Just wait until the memo about the State Dept. is released. That’s gonna be huge!
Aimai
@Matt McIrvin: why does nobody get in trouble for discriminating against women “in advance?”
Turgidson
@Kay: and the person who resigned should have been Peggy “yard signs vote Republican!” Noonan, who spent multiple columns “it would be irresponsible not to speculate”-ing about how the IRS was probably a hive of criminality all at Obama’s direction and it could at long last be the Dems Watergate.
Yet she still receives generous compensation for her flowery-prosed martini- soaked nonsense. Including from MSNBC, who are apparently determined to create a full employment program for “respectable” anti-Hair Furor Republicans.
kindness
Not meaning to pour cold water over the idea but a Democrat isn’t going to win in Fresno. It’s red California. I live about 100 miles north of it and I’ll contribute to the Democrat, don’t get me wrong. But here in the valley the people that need the programs governments enact to help citizens….far too many of them don’t vote. The poor don’t vote out here. I wish they did because if everybody voted out here we’d be Democratic party everywhere almost.
Nunes is helping us by showing himself to be so bad at what he’s trying to do. Fox will continue to act like it’s a real controversy, the memos I mean. The MSM needs to pull it’s collective head out of it’s prim and proper ass and admit to everyone Fox is Pravda for Republicans and not something that should be treated any different than advertising. Damn MSM.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Turgidson: I turn off any interview that includes Peggy Noonan. She’s a silly person.
Bill Arnold
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
Apologies in advance if these links have been posted before. (probably doesn’t hurt though)
Here’s a very recent Snopes piece (True!)
Did Customs Agents Board a Bus in Florida Asking for Proof of Citizenship?
on an instance of this practice. I don’t know how common it is.
Obviously, INS like any human enterprise (especially ones that attracts authoritarian employees) can be recklessly error prone, resulting in stories like this:
U.S. Citizen Who Was Held By ICE For 3 Years Denied Compensation By Appeals Court
Choice quote:
(bold mine)
GregB
Nunes has a an entry in the neo-logism dictionary: Bumshell.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): My thought exactly. One word: overpromised. The Republicans do it all the time and haven’t figured out that it keeps getting them into trouble.
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
I agree. Mostly the bananas have no flavor and if you let them ripen they just taste mealy.
I have more luck cooking with plantains and red bananas than eating yellow bananas raw.
Don’t get me started on mangoes. I can’t find a ripe mango with flavor and I crave them all the time.
Tenar Arha
@Matt McIrvin:
I can’t not point out that the way you’re phrasing this is problematic. It’s really not discrimination to dictate the behavior of your employees on employer property. If anything Google is suffering from a combination of:
1. For white cishet guys, who’re used to being deferred to in our culture, equality can feel like oppression.
2. Nothing worse than a libertarian bro-culture realizing that an employee has only the free speech rights the corporation allows them on company equipment. And that as a salaried employee in a work-as-play culture anything you do on your downtime on company equipment could be covered under employee conduct codes.
3. An inside job combining with the paradox of tolerance. Google clearly has Nazis and white supremacists and MRA’s (these groups overlap a lot) inside their organization, & they are using Google’s stated values of “free speech” or “honest inquiry” against the company, in order to privilege their speech. They will goad people by “just asking questions” (like “Isn’t math harder for women? Aren’t Jewish people into money management or media?”) until fellow employees are constantly arguing for their normal personhood at work. Eventually they push someone into telling them to “fuck off” then report that person to HR. They have by then destroyed your community/organization by obliterating any hard earned trust by punishing the person who didn’t instigate the interaction.
Best way to think of it is like how you could wind a sibling up by “not touching you” until they lost it, but using “you’re not a real person” instead. Punishing my brother didn’t stop it. Punishing both didn’t stop it.
The only way my parents stopped me from winding up my brother in the car is they started punishing me more than him, or punishing me & giving him a cookie. But HR isn’t usually good at that, especially if you overload the system.
Schlemazel
@Sab:
There are tradeoffs everywhere you live. Minneapolis/St. Paul are not huge cities but we do have sizable immigrant communities & have opportunities not available in many Midwestern places. We suffer many of the ills of big cities so we fall someplace in the middle between Chicago and East Armpit Iowa I guess
Chyron HR
@Cheryl Rofer:
I figure Don Jr is just going
to say on Twitter what he thinks exonerates his old man and himself.debase himself in a futile attempt to make his father love him.It’s actually kind of sad.
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer: Yup. The RWNJ echo chamber won’t give up on this, no matter how objectively empty it is.
We can’t easily sway their true believers. We have to work on our base as vigorously as they work on theirs, and [Geico] More [/Geico].
Eyes on the prize.
Cheers,
Scott.
Frankensteinbeck
@germy:
THIS.
@kindness:
A Democrat was never going to win in Alabama. It’s been a weird year.
WaterGirl
@Frankensteinbeck: Completely agree. Even if the odds are against us, it’s impossible to know what will be happening by November – and we have to have a good, serious candidate in place. Conditions on the ground might just allow a pick-up of that seat, and we need every single one.
Cthulhu
@kindness: Fresno has been slowly moving left though probably not enough to be in reach even in a wave in 2018. But at least one Fresno paper has been highly critical of Nunes and Jeff Denham to the north is definitely vulnerable to a wave. Nunes is probably less safe than he thinks he is.
Captain C
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): They’re desperately ignoring the utter stench of bull extrusion coming from the inside of the bomb casing that they were fapping over.
Bill Arnold
@Another Scott:
I don’t agree; people can always be reached. (This is orthogonal to decisions about where to spend efforts, but should inform them.)
FWIW, here’s a useful toolchest of links:
Tools of Resistance
(Note: This material is often rather unaware of how beliefs flow/amplify/transform(/self-sustain)/etc through a society. Looking for a good academic treatment of this that is more accessible than e.g. Deleuze. Anyone? )
What would you say to something like this (off the cuff, i.e. needs work)?:
The RWNJ echo chamber is rife with fault lines. It is fragile, not least because it is filled with untruths, many of which are deliberately, calculatedly injected lies. Fracture it, and it might or might not reform around new or tweaked narratives. Participate in the process; there are narrative gatekeepers (e.g. Breitbart) but there is also a lot of narrative emergence from the ground up. Influence (attempt to) at all scales.
Also, build up skills at recognizing such manipulation directed against progressives (&US Democrats), and in general against the non-RWNJ outgroup. There has been a skill asymmetry but progressives (and the US press) have been rapidly improving.
MomSense
Regarding the Janz campaign, I do think that fundraising on the Russia mess is effective as donors tend to be political junkies.
If I were running a campaign right now though I would start buying ads on social media that tie the massive tax cuts for corporations with the layoffs of Sam’s Club, Carrier, etc. Tax cuts are handouts for corporations and big donors. They won’t do anything for you if you’re not a multimillionaire or billionaire.
I’d start now to define Republicans as corrupt and to push the message of my candidacy (insert D candidate) will fight for better schools, better jobs, better future for hardworking Americans.
MomSense
@MomSense:
Some other messages will be fair play, everyone pays their fair share, no more free loading for the very wealthy, etc.
I’d also use the discrepancy in campaign funds to my advantage. Nunes has 3.5 million to spend. Billionaires sure did love those tax breaks. It’s time to have a representative in DC who represents you.
Don’t wait Democratic candidates. Define your opponents and the issues now because you will be overspent later. It’s much harder to run on defense once the perceptions have been established. Attack now.
J R in WV
@Cheryl Rofer:
I would just point out to Ms Pavlich that just because a Democratic person points at the sky and says “What a beautiful blue sky and sunshine!” doesn’t prove that it is black as midnight and storming. And just because a British former MI6 agent gathered facts into a document says nothing about the falsity of those facts.
Ms Pavlich is a Fox News personality and has worked to oppose President Obama in the past, so her concern with facts is remote. She is just trying to cast shade wherein Trump’s treason may prosper.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kay: Worth keeping in mind that memo made the House Republicans look like idiots and they are the ones up for reelection in November.
MisterForkbeard
@Cthulhu: I used to listen to local Fresno radio and it was always really interesting – very conservative and condescending towards democrats without actually being crazy and they adopted Democratic positions sometimes. They also thought Nunes was a dick.
I’m willing to believe ines could lose there, but it’s be a real uphill battle.
No One You Know
@Bill Arnold: Might be OT, but I liked The social life of information. I don’t recall who wrote it. I read for my HR communications course.
Vhh
@Cheryl Rofer: And the Dems pressured Comey to re open the email case to throw the election to Trump.
SgrAstar
@JPL: We already have roadblocks, as any habitue of the southern border lands can tell you.
SgrAstar
@kindness:
That’s why field organizing is so important. We have the time and the $ to get people registered and drive them to the polls if necessary. We just can’t write any districts off. Wishing won’t change anything, but boots on the ground will. I would love to help unseat Devin Nunes. If voter turnout can be improved, it’s a long term investment in a Blue future. Maybe we won’t win next time, but the time after that….✊️
cain
@Baud:
No, that is Russian bots in action, spreading the information high and low for the masses. Now the news really about Clinton. Nice.
Duane
@Baud: I thought that tweet was trying to be sardonic. Makes more sense that way.
tychay
@Cheryl Rofer: ?? bots