Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

I was promised a recession.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Come on, man.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

After roe, women are no longer free.

The words do not have to be perfect.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

This really is a full service blog.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Monday Morning Open Thread: Branding — That’ll Leave A Scar

Monday Morning Open Thread: Branding — That’ll Leave A Scar

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.

Is “I only watch it for the ads” still a thing?

Apart from post-game recovery, what’s on the agenda for the start of another week?

Reader Interactions

157Comments

  1. 1.

    eclare

    There should be consequences for the exec at Dodge and whoever at MLK’s estate approved this ad.

  2. 2.

    J R in WV

    Bob Dylan. We are so lucky he’s still with us and still preaching with his music. But that was Jimmy Fallon, because I’ve seen Dylan recently, and he is no longer a young man. A good job Mr Fallon did, too.

    And Ely and O’Dell Beckam, that was hilarious. All the team members were hilarious. and After such a good football game, too.

    Good Morning eclaire, rickyrah, everyone. Now I’m going back to bed, in the middle of a very restless night. Thanks Annie Laurie!

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    What’s in a name?

    Hundreds of thousands of Greeks rallied outside parliament in Athens on Sunday to protest against the use of the term Macedonia in any settlement the government pursues with the ex-Yugoslav Republic to end a decades-old name row.

    The two countries have agreed to step up negotiations, mediated by the United Nations, this year to settle the dispute, which has frustrated the aspirations of Greece’s small northern neighbour to join NATO and the European Union.
    [snip]
    Greece objects to Macedonia’s name because it has its own region called Macedonia, and argues that its neighbour’s use of the name, along with contentious articles in its constitution, imply territorial claims over Greek land.
    [snip]
    Due to Greece’s objections, Macedonia was admitted to the United Nations with the provisional name “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” in 1993, which remains its official title in international organisations. A majority of countries in the world refer to it simply as Macedonia. Source

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    Two candidates with the same last name and opposing stances on gay marriage, an issue that came to dominate Costa Rica’s presidential campaign, led election returns and appear headed to a runoff to decide who will be the Central American nation’s next leader.

    With nearly 87 per cent of the ballots counted late Sunday, Fabricio Alvarado, an evangelical whose political stock soared after he came out strongly against same-sex marriage, had 24.8 per cent of the vote. Carlos Alvarado — no relation — had 21.7 per cent and was the only major candidate among 13 to support gay marriage.
    [snip]
    Costa Rican election rules say that if no one finishes above 40 per cent, the top two advance to a runoff that would take place April 1. Source

  8. 8.

    opiejeanne

    @rikyrah: Good morning. I should be asleep right now but sleep will not come despite the cough syrup, which is really suppressing this cough. Maybe in a little while. It’s 2:39 where I am.

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    How long before a Nunes memo blames this on Hillary?

    Freezing rain accompanied by 43 centimeters (17 inches) of snow blanketed the capital within 24 hours. It was the heaviest day of snowfall to hit the Russian capital since the country’s weather records began, Russia’s meteorological service said.
    [snip]
    At least 2,000 trees around the city collapsed due to the snow, officials added.

    The severe weather also caused massive power outages in hundreds of towns around Moscow. Source

  10. 10.

    Elizabelle

    I wonder if Dodge considers it a win, because we are thinking of Ram trucks even though they egregiously misused MLK’s words.

    Saw the reboot (with timely words on consumerism and advertising) before I saw Dodge’s literal white bread commercial. What a shambles it is. I’d like to hear some folks got fired for that one. And shame on the MLK Foundation.

    We’d all be better off having MLK’s words out in the public sphere, as he spoke them, rather than wheeled out to sell cars and make his (in this case, horrible) heirs some moolah. Shame on them.

  11. 11.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Here’s a photo of Drumpf prior to the start of his Super Bowl party. He looks pained, not happy. As if he’s about to be indicted for money laundering (photo)

  17. 17.

    Mustang Bobby

    Oh, cool; I just noticed that the coach in the red shirt in the Eli/Odell ad is Gary Lee Mahmoud, who was in the first production of my play “Can’t Live Without You” in New York in 2008. Way to go, Gary!

  19. 19.

    satby

    @rikyrah: Good morning! Miss being in the same hemisphere as you all, we’re about to get on the tuk-tuk to go for some dinner.
    My cold is back, 24/7 dust is probably why.

  27. 27.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Stephanie Farr ✔ @FarFarrAway

    People yelling “Everything is free,” looting, trashing this gas station. Damn it, Philly we better than this.

    max ✔ @MaxOnTwitter

    They ripped the dang steeet poles out of the ground

    Macy’s was looted. They even stole the mannequins (photo)

    Julia Terruso ✔ @JuliaTerruso

    Reaction to this has been equal parts “that’s not right” and people posing in front of it for photos.

    White privilege is a hellva drug.

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    @raven

    Get a deja vu-ish sensation when locking and unlocking the lid on it because the digital musical sequence is either the same or close enough to not notice a difference as some of the ones used in the Dark Tower game from 1981 (which I still have and which still works).

  30. 30.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Sounds of streets of Philadelphia

    Julia Terruso @JuliaTerruso

    Honks, sirens, “F Tom Brady” chants

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The Whitechapel fatberg that made headlines in September was among our most infectious social media exports of 2017. The units in which it was routinely measured gave away its birthplace. This being a London phenomenon it was invariably described in local currency: at 820 feet, the fatberg was “longer than Tower Bridge” or “twice as long as Wembley Stadium” and “the weight of 11 double-decker buses”. Having once led the world in sewer engineering with Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s cavernous underground network of marvellous tunnels, London was now the undisputed global leader in sewer blockage. TV crews were dispatched from Moscow and Montreal and Madrid to stand above manhole covers along Whitechapel Road and hold their noses while Thames Water flushers in white protective suits used high-powered jet hoses and picks and shovels and vacuum pipes to break the fatberg up and then remove it in tankers at the rate of 20 to 30 tonnes per day. Ninety three per cent of its complex structure was said to consist of the element “wet wipe”. By the time the clean-up was over, and its notoriety had spread, lesser fatbergs were being unearthed in Belfast and Denver and Melbourne.

    It was in the first week of the discovery of the Whitechapel Monster (the hyperbole was part of the attraction, no nomenclature for the Subterranean Beast was too extreme) that the Museum of London, halfway through a series of exhibitions about modern city living, decided it must have a slice of it. Sharon Ament, the museum’s director had been thinking about the possibility of displaying a fatberg in the museum – whose collection includes a variety of valuable objects retrieved from drains and cess pits and sewers from Roman times on – since the previous big find in Chinatown in Soho. On that occasion the museum had not acted before the fatberg was destroyed; this time it was ready. (Apparently there was some talk that the Science Museum wanted a chunk of fatberg too, though when it discovered the Museum of London had first dibs there was, by some accounts, a collective sigh of relief among the curators there.)

    At the end of this week, a representative chunk of the Whitechapel Leviathan will be put on display at the Museum of London. It is likely that no lavatorial exhibit will have caused quite as much a splash in the capital since Marcel Duchamp’s famous urinal went on display at the Tate, and invented conceptual art, exactly a century ago.

    ……

    When you walk along that stretch of road it seems extraordinary that the fatberg could evolve to such a scale beneath your feet without Thames Water noticing it – or without the sewers backing up and flooding. Part of the reason for that is the sheer volume of the London network, Saunders suggests. The pipework is “hundreds of thousands of kilometres long” and “you cannot be sticking your head down the same bit of sewer every week”. The Whitechapel sewer, part of Bazalgette’s original brick-built labyrinth, has an inverted egg-shape cross-section; the bottom is narrower than the top so during a time of low flow there is a thin channel to keep it moving and when it rains the sewer amplifies. The fatberg had formed along the upper part of the tunnel. Below it there was still a good flow and therefore no warning signs. “Then suddenly,” Saunders recalls, “during our normal inspections the guys popped down there and found this thing that turned out to be bigger than Tower Bridge.”
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    The Whitechapel Behemoth had hardened into a kind of concrete. The flusher teams have a variety of high-pressure jets, some revolving, some with chains and drill bits, to break up the bergs, which they try to use like keyhole surgery, careful not to damage the sewer itself. “We have lots of weapons at our disposal,” Saunders says, “but sometimes, as with the Whitechapel one, it is so impacted that a lot of it is the teams going down and chiselling away by hand.”

    In London, which has a magnified version of a universal problem because the sewers are so large, this work never stops. Thames Water has teams working full time; usually they are aware of five or six fatbergs that are growing. Some cause immediate blockages, others like the one in Whitechapel don’t. Saunders estimates the work costs £1m a month, but that doesn’t include the collateral damage of “sewage flooding living rooms and public spaces cordoned off and out of bounds because they are contaminated”.

    In many cases the job of flusher in London is a family occupation, the work traditionally passed down from father to son, much like the job of undertaker. Saunders was out with some second- and third-generation sewer flushers, the other evening, men who have been doing the job for 30 years themselves. In the past, they suggested, there was a good deal of job satisfaction in the work; it had a nice psychological trajectory: they started a shift with a blockage, and ended it with the sewer flowing freely. It is only in the last few years that they have found themselves routinely hacking away at fatbergs.

    No thanx Dad, I think Ill just stay in school.

  38. 38.

    Kay

    This is a good piece, because instead of just saying “there was manipulation” it explains how, specifically, it works:

    On Tuesday morning—the day after the House Intelligence Committee voted along partisan lines to send Rep. Devin Nunes’ memo, alleging abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to President Donald Trump for declassification—presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway was confronted with the idea that Russian trolls were promoting the #releasethememo hashtag online. She was offended. Russian trolls, she told a television interviewer, “have nothing to do with releasing the memo—that was a vote of the intelligence committee.” But her assertion is incorrect. The vote marked the culmination of a targeted, 11-day information operation that was amplified by computational propaganda techniques and aimed to change both public perceptions and the behavior of American lawmakers.

  41. 41.

    NotMax

    @raven

    Fun game then, still is now. The very rudimentary proto-AI, when set to four player mode, managed to consistently pick one player to f*ck with. Per Wikipedia:

    Working copies of Dark Tower are increasingly difficult to find, and thus highly sought after by collectors. This is primarily due to two things: (1) wear and tear on the tower unit, which tended to experience technical faults with the light bulbs and carousel after prolonged use, and, (2) the fact that the game went out of print shortly after release due to a lawsuit brought against Milton Bradley for intellectual property theft.

  43. 43.

    Rich2506

    Is “I only watch it for the ads” still a thing?

    Oh yeah! My sister was always more interested in the ads than in the game. Never had much use for the game myself. When my niece was about 7, my sister asked me if I wanted to stay and watch the game. I hesitated a bit and my niece said “Oh, Uncle Rich, you just want to watch the cheerleaders!” Had to admit she had a point.

  44. 44.

    Kay

    So what are the lessons of #releasethememo? Regardless of how much of the campaign was American and how much was Russian, it’s clear there was a massive effort to game social media and put the Nunes memo squarely on the national agenda—and it worked to an astonishing degree. The bottom line is that the goals of the two overlapped, so the origin—human, machine or otherwise—doesn’t actually matter. What matters is that someone is trying to manipulate us, tech companies are proving hopelessly unable or unwilling to police the bad actors manipulating their platforms, and politicians are either clueless about what to do about computational propaganda or—in the case of #releasethememo—are using it to achieve their goals. Americans are on their own.
    And, yes, that also reinforces the narrative the Russians have been pushing since 2015: You’re on your own; be angry, and burn things down.

  46. 46.

    germy

    I have our local TV news on. They just did a (very) brief segment on the “celebrations” going on in Philadelphia.

    Footage of fires and an overturned car.

    White people celebrate. Only Black people riot.

  49. 49.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: More:

    In the meantime, Saunders still exists in a world of fatbergs. Having had a great deal of experience with the substance how would he describe it?

    He had a big lump in his gloved hands from Whitechapel. “It is browny, yellowy, greeny in colour, a bit slippery to hold but also very heavy and very hard, and when you cut into it you find a stitching of wet wipes holding it together.” He was with a team extracting a big lump the other week; it was like exhibit A: “there was a condom hanging out one side, a wet wipe the other, big globs of fat holding it together.”

    At the Museum of London, the curatorial challenge has centred on the question of whether the fatberg was more like a soap or more like a candle. On balance, they have decided it is more like a candle. The sample that broke up has been sent to experts at Cranfield University to run a “fatberg autopsy” to discover exactly what it is made of.
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    Having worked with it for a few months, has Sparkes lost any of her sense of disgust?

    She suggests it has become one of those uncanny objects where it is not immediately apparent whether it is animal, vegetable or mineral. Somewhere between compost and coral and bin juice. “It is really hard to classify,” she says. “Bits of it were wet to start with, now it is more like a crust. It is going slightly mouldy. There is a risk it will deteriorate on display.” The only distinctly synthetic thing you can quickly identify on its surface is, fittingly, the tiny purple and orange of a Double Decker chocolate wrapper. When they first received it, it was hard to get the smell out of your nose. “It has calmed down a bit now,” Sparkes suggests. “It is like a damp basement smell now, like someone has lived in a house for 70 years and done nothing to it.”

    Though it clearly has some historical value, she views it very much as a one-off. “For us Whitechapel was the key moment in this story. We are not in the market every time there is a blocked pipe.”

    Why does she think it struck such a chord?

    “I think it is the grossness, and the size above all,” she says. “I was talking about the display to another curator and she suggested that basically I had designed the perfect exhibition for teenage boys.” The name is also critical; the Museum of London has added an exclamation mark for effect. “If you can’t use an explanation mark with a fatberg, when can you?”

    I wonder if she would like to see the fatberg in the permanent collection, taking its place as a defining monument to our age of waste. She suggests it remains to be seen. “If it goes on display and ends up as a pile of dead flies then ultimately it has no display value obviously.” In the meantime, for five months, museum-goers can look on this unnatural wonder and perhaps reflect that a culture is most clearly understood from the things it makes and the traces that it leaves behind. As Ozymandias once observed: “Look on my Works, Ye mighty, And despair!”

    Just in case anyone still had an appetite.

  52. 52.

    Baud

    WaPo

    Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) plan to formally introduce a bill that would grant permanent legal status to immigrant “dreamers” and start bolstering security along the U.S.-Mexico border. But the measure would not call for spending the $30 billion President Trump is seeking to fortify the border with new wall and fence construction.

    And the McCain-Coons plan would grant legal status to dreamers who have been in the country since 2013 — a larger pool of immigrants than the 1.8 million Trump supports legalizing.

    The bill says nothing about curbing family-based legal migration or making changes to the diversity lottery program — two other priorities for Trump and conservative Republicans.

  53. 53.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Kay: And apparently Nunes has five more memos to unleash on the public. I can’t see the other memos being more impactful than the first one which has proven to be a dud. Russian bots haven’t figured out that only Trump supporters believe Nunes’ propaganda.

  57. 57.

    NotMax

    @OzarkHillbilly

    Brings back pungently scented memories of cleaning out the big (as in knee high) cast iron grease traps on the exit lines of sinks in a commercial kitchen.

  58. 58.

    germy

    @debbie:

    I can’t believe there weren’t people at the ad agency who thought this was a really bad idea.

    I’ve worked with ad agency people. They’re not known for their good judgement.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Right, it does, which is actually more believable to me than a united conspiracy.

    The more interesting part, to me, is how they choose almost representative Trump supporters to see what they’re saying online and then amplify THAT. I wondered how they knew, in ’16. How they knew what would resonate. Duh. They know because they read the most fanatical Trump supporters.

  67. 67.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax: One of the worst jobs I ever had to do.

    True story: Was working on Jack in the Boxes upgrading them for ADA compliance (wheel chair accessible, etc). Had to tear off the drywall in the bathroom so I could put in blocking for handrails. At the bottom of each of the stud spaces there were 4-6″ of grease.

    I made the laborer clean that out.

  69. 69.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: I’ve got my fingers crossed but I’m not holding my breath. These clowns couldn’t pass a parked car.

  79. 79.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:
    Now that people know what to look for, I have seen many places talking about Russian bots pushing Release the Memo. Exposing that also helps to point out that the memo is a fraud

  80. 80.

    Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)

    Within the last half hour, some tweets with random subjects. I assume they reflect what’s on Fox and Friends.

    Little Adam Schiff, who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan and Clapper! Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally leak confidential information. Must be stopped!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2018

    Thank you to @foxandfriends for exposing the truth. Perhaps that’s why your ratings are soooo much better than your untruthful competition!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2018

    The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working. Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2018

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I also thought it was originating with Fox. But it’s not. They promote it TO Fox.

    Fox isn’t even creating that crappy content they have. You can’t even give them credit for that much work. They’re parroting the most vehement Trumpsters, as amplified by the Russian government.

  85. 85.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    The piece predicts that Democrats will “catch up” and use a system like this themselves- not Russian, obviously, but the same idea.

    That will happen. In 2004 everyone was talking about how advanced the GOP were in data collection and analysis. By 2008 the Democrats had caught and surpassed them. It’s like an arms race.

  87. 87.

    JR

    @Kay: maybe that will cause twitter to disappear once and for all. That or just the fact that it has no intrinsic value and no path for capitalization.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    The piece doesn’t talk about the kind of “borrowed credibility” they’re using. If major media picks it up GOP lawmakers can point to that as endorsement. So instead of saying “this obscure guy in Michigan and 50,000 Russian bots” they can say they learned it in the NYTimes.

    That’s what Cheney did with Iraq. He wouldn’t say “well, me and 150 neocons promoted this and the NYTimes picked it up” he would say “the NYTimes says this morning…” He did that in interviews.

  91. 91.

    Kay

    @JR:

    Well, I suggest we all start following that guy in Michigan and if he starts tweeting about bombing NK head for the shelter.

    Because it will be on FOX in 20 minutes and on all major news org in 20 hours and then to the Trump Administration for execution.

  92. 92.

    Kay

    @JR:

    It’s such a joke that Twitter and Facebook are going to voluntarily pour tens of millions of dollars into stopping this.

    Yeah, right. They’ll voluntarily regulate when pigs fucking fly. It’s the dumbest approach. “Let’s beg these corportations to solve this problem!” Oh, sure. They’re on it.

  97. 97.

    Another Scott

    ‘Morning everyone.

    Thanks for checking in, satby. Glad things are going well, hope the cold/allergy settles down.

    Adam (?) posted some tweets last night that there was going to be some big new story on Lawfare this morning. I don’t see anything obvious yet, but it might be something to keep an eye out for.

    Have a good day, and a good week, everyone.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  98. 98.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @debbie: No, that’s throwing crap on the wall and see what sticks. This is different, it’s taking bunk and putting it though a legitimate channel. As Kay points out, this is exactly what they did with Iraq; funnel it though the NYT(which is still garbage), and they quote the NYT as an authority.

  99. 99.

    Jeffro

    Absolutely great article in The Atlantic by Benjamin Wittes and Jonathan Rauch btw – it explains why any and all ‘true’ conservatives (i.e. never Trumper‘s) must vote against GOP candidates wholesale.

    So this is where we’re at: conservatives calling on their fellow Republicans to vote straight party Democrat (!)

    Not quite a endorsement of the Democrats but another step in the right direction

  101. 101.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    OT: Just figured out that I drove right by the Spahn Ranch* yesterday.

    * For you young folk, that’s where Charles Manson and his “family” hung out in LA.

    ETA: There’s a large church across the street now.

  102. 102.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JR:

    it has no intrinsic value and no path for capitalization.

    Nonsense. I’ve seen countless Trump tweets IN ALL CAPS.

  103. 103.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Jeffro:

    This, then, is the article we thought we would never write: a frank statement that a certain form of partisanship is now a moral necessity. The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy. The problem is not just Donald Trump; it’s the larger political apparatus that made a conscious decision to enable him. In a two-party system, nonpartisanship works only if both parties are consistent democratic actors. If one of them is not predictably so, the space for nonpartisans evaporates. We’re thus driven to believe that the best hope of defending the country from Trump’s Republican enablers, and of saving the Republican Party from itself, is to do as Toren Beasley did: vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former).

  107. 107.

    MomSense

    @Mustang Bobby:

    HA!

    @SRW1:

    I honestly can’t tell what she is thinking because her face is so frozen. I’m sort of over all the speculation about what she thinks of trump. She was a birther, defended his boasting of sexual assault as locker room/boy talk, and on and on. The whole thing feels so creepy that I feel gross every time I think about it.

  108. 108.

    Chet

    I’m biased because I hate Eli Manning and OBJ, but that commercial was lame and derivative. As soon as the first notes of “Time of My Life” sounded, I knew exactly how the next 25 seconds of the commercial would play out. As if no one had ever recreated that scene before. Oh, it’s edgy because two dudes did it? No, I’m pretty sure that’s happened in dozens of movies, tv shows, and commercials in the 30 years since the movie became a pop cultural touchstone.

  110. 110.

    GregB

    Trump stapled himself to the stock market firmly, as did the GOP.

    They won’t be able to pivot to an Obama ruined the economy talking point now.

  111. 111.

    Jeffro

    By the way, nice to see McCain & Coons put forth an immigration reform proposal – and to see Coons have a minute on the national stage

  112. 112.

    Steve in the ATL

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    OT: Just figured out that I drove right by the Spahn Ranch* yesterday.

    * For you young folk, that’s where Charles Manson and his “family” hung out in LA.

    ETA: There’s a large church across the street now.

    Too bad the neighborhood hasn’t improved

  117. 117.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    King’s speech and the commercial (capitalism speech) go well together actually.

  119. 119.

    rikyrah

    New letter shows Trump adviser bragging about advising Kremlin
    02/05/18 08:30 AM—UPDATED 02/05/18 08:34 AM
    By Steve Benen

    As part of the coordinated Republican pushback against the Russia investigation, Donald Trump’s GOP allies have become heavily invested in Carter Page. That was almost certainly unwise.

    …………………

    Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the Kremlin in a letter obtained by TIME that raises new questions about the extent of Page’s contacts with the Russian government over the years.

    The letter, dated Aug. 25, 2013, was sent by Page to an academic press during a dispute over edits to an unpublished manuscript he had submitted for publication, according to an editor who worked with Page.

    “Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,” the letter reads.

  120. 120.

    Peale

    @Patricia Kayden: trump supporters may be enough if you can rile them up to protect their man at midterms. If they can turn the topic to “Hillary is up to her old tricks” they might pull out of their rut.

  124. 124.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Jeffro: I’ll take it!! Would love if Jennifer Rubin and David Frum also encouraged their fans to vote a straight Democratic ticket in November. We need a flip.

  126. 126.

    Another Scott

    @Another Scott: Ok, the Lawfare story is out. 100 pages of FOIA FBI e-mails on reactions to Comey’s firing:

    Over the next few days, a wealth of evidence emerged to suggest that Trump and Sanders were playing fast and loose with the truth. But we now have the documents to prove that decisively. Their disclosure was not a leak but an authorized action by the FBI, which released to us under the Freedom of Information Act more than 100 pages of leadership communications to staff dealing with the firing. This material tells a dramatic story about the FBI’s reaction to the Comey firing—but it is neither a story of gratitude to the president nor a story of an organization in turmoil relieved by a much-needed leadership transition.

    Within a few days of the firing, both current and former FBI officials began pushing back against the White House’s claims. Then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that Comey “enjoyed broad support within the FBI” and that “the vast majority of employees enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey.”

    Here at Lawfare, Nora Ellingsen—who served as a counterterrorism analyst at the FBI for several years—talked with roughly 20 of her former colleagues. She characterized the opinion of Comey among the FBI’s rank and file as almost universally positive. “Nearly everyone loved him,” she wrote, and the “degree of consensus on this point … has been incredible.” She went on: “All of the people I talked to described having the same reaction when they heard that the director had been fired: complete shock, followed by deep sadness.”

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  127. 127.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Peale: Possible, but doubtful. Too many people despise Trump and the energy and results of the special elections over the last year point to a wave this fall.

  129. 129.

    gvg

    if some of the bots are automated, can they be tricked into retweeting this is false, or this is illogical because…sometimes when a false narrative is being pushed? Could we map the rightwing universe links and direct real info when ever a narrative is being pushed? by sending directly to all the linked parties?

  133. 133.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Maybe the fact that this is coming from McCain, who is dying, will give cover for enough senators that this could have a chance at passing?

  135. 135.

    Yutsano

    @WaterGirl: Between the Democrats and the Republicans there are more than enough votes to pass a DACA fix. Yertle knows this. Yet he’s not allowing the vote/.

  136. 136.

    Amaranthine RBG

    But have you seen the 2019 Rams?

    12 inch nav screen, stitched leather dash, ventilated seats, electric motor for low end torque, 12,000 pounds of towing capacity.

    Strength and elegance – I can see MLK choosing to drive one.

  140. 140.

    Barbara

    @PaulWartenberg: I am more measured in how I react to this. On MLK Day, I watched Isaiah Thomas do a pre-game interview of one of MLK’s daughters and one of Malcolm X’s daughters, together. It was so uplifting. I think that MLK’s children do care about his real legacy but from what I have read, they also have a sense that they lost their father and lived hand to mouth for a long time and don’t see why they can’t monetize his work. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when they don’t let other people “use” MLK’s words in charitable and political works without paying big fees, yes, it does, but I think we need to be careful we don’t veer too far into being annoyed that an African-American family is protecting its property rights, something that happens every day in America among whites. For instance, the heirs of J.D. Salinger, Sylvia Plath, and many other luminaries whose works are of significant scholarly interest tie them up for various personal and financial reasons. To me, if I were Dodge, I would have thought a lot harder about doing this because, basically, it makes zero sense.

  144. 144.

    Amaranthine RBG

    @Yutsano:

    Wha? King loved to play pool and carried a .38 concealed. He’s part of the target market for upscale pickups

    Why walk across the Edmund Pettus bridge when you can float across on Ram’s class exclusive air suspension?

  146. 146.

    Barbara

    @eclare: Ditto with the African American history museum that opened in Washington last year. The Washington Post reported that the museum basically gave up negotiating with MLK’s heirs over anything they controlled. They were able to obtain mementos from other people but nothing from MLK’s family. One of the reasons given, of course, is that they control a private museum in Atlanta dedicated specifically to MLK and civil rights. But the report was that, for enough money, they would have provided something. I don’t exactly feel sorry for them, but they grew up in a fish bowl and it doesn’t surprise me that they are wounded in various ways by the experience. The experience of the children of heroes and martyrs is often not one that generates a second generation of altruism.

  147. 147.

    Barbara

    @JR: The one and only. I don’t follow all of this closely enough to know his bad boy history. His parents were apparently at the fabled march on Washington and he grew up venerating both Malcolm and MLK. It’s my guess that he was the one who probably reached out to Malcolm X’s daughter. Malcolm X, of course, has a close association with Detroit, as well as Harlem.

  148. 148.

    eclare

    @Barbara: I linked to that article, there was a bit about how former ATL mayor Shirley Franklin spearheaded an effort to raise $32M for some of his letters to go on display at his alma mater. She then said she thought that would be enough for four people to live on, but they kept suing each other. I certainly take your point that they are wounded, but Dodge? Really? And whoever greenlighted that at the ad agency and Dodge should be canned.

  149. 149.

    Barbara

    @eclare: Agree re Dodge. It goes a long way to proving that the children’s motivation is almost exclusively monetary. From the article (which is the one I had read) I think the following pretty much sums up how I feel:

    Clayborne Carson, the Stanford University professor selected by Coretta Scott King to edit her husband’s papers, said that the challenges of working with the siblings are no secret. “They’ve made clear that they’re not going to just give away his legacy, so I just think realistically you have to move on,” he said. “Yes, it would be nice if they simply donated what they had inherited from their father but I’m not sure how many people put in the same situation would. If your father was Frank Lloyd Wright and you inherited one of his famous homes and somebody said you should donate it to the public because it’s an historic structure, you would say no. It just happens with King there is a sense that we all own him.”

    I am not giving the kids props for being no better or no worse than anyone else would be, I just don’t think it makes sense to be disgusted by them in particular.

  153. 153.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @WaterGirl: Trump has said often enough in the past that he prefers to see women in dresses and skirts rather than trousers. I took her pantsuit at the SOTU to be a personal Fuck you message.

  156. 156.

    J R in WV

    @debbie:

    Some GOPer stated on Friday it wasn’t released because, at 10 pages, it was too long.

    Well, for a Russo-Republican, sure, it is too long at 10 pages. They barely speak American, you can't expect them to read it too!!

    Really, for staff, you would be shocked into firing support staff who actually believed such a thing, but would love and protect staff who could lie so well in defense of their Congressman they work for. And that’s not sarcasm, that’s Russo-Republicanism at its core. Nothing loved more than a really competent liar.

  157. 157.

    Kathleen

    @WaterGirl: I always love the “white people will be white people” smirk from whomever is covering those types of stories.

    The closest rage emoji I can figure out is the grimacing poop emoji.

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