“White House aides advised the president against golfing so soon after the tragedy, so Trump spent much of the holiday weekend watching cable television news and grousing to club members and advisers.” https://t.co/QXApCb6tNF
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 19, 2018
Uneasy squats the arse that warms a throne… and one can only hope it’s chafing the Oval Office Occupant’s something fierce. Per the Daily Beast:
… According to the White House, Trump on Saturday made phone calls to Parkland, Florida, Mayor Christine Hunschofsky, Broward County Commissioner Michael Udine, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Principal Ty Thompson to offer continued support and gratitude. On Saturday, the president also made an appearance at a fundraiser thrown at Mar-a-Lago for Orphan’s Promise, a special ministry of televangelist Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network. (Recently, Robertson had linked the Las Vegas mass shooting to a nationwide “disrespect for our President” Trump.)
Despite staying off the green, the president largely spent the weekend attempting to settle some scores with political enemies and perennial adversaries, binge-watching cable news, rage-tweeting late into the night, lashing out as his own national security adviser, and making the solemn moment about himself and his personal grievance…
Pool report says Trump and his motorcade drove past a billboard advertising Stormy Daniels tonight and her upcoming Florida stop on the "Make America Horny Again" tour. You can't make it up.
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) February 19, 2018
The New York Times, turning on their man-crush:
President Trump began the weekend believing that something good had just happened to him. An indictment leveled against 13 Russians for interfering with the 2016 election had not accused him or anyone around him of wrongdoing. “No collusion” was his refrain.
But once ensconced at his Florida estate on Friday, Mr. Trump, facing long hours indoors as he avoided breezy rounds of golf after last week’s school shooting a few miles away, began watching TV.
The president’s mood began to darken as it became clearer to him that some commentators were portraying the indictment as nothing for him to celebrate, according to three people with knowledge of his reaction. Those commentators called it proof that he had not won the election on his own, a particularly galling, if not completely accurate, charge for a president long concerned about his legitimacy.
What followed was a two-day Twitter tirade that was unusually angry and defiant even by Mr. Trump’s standards. In his tweets on Sunday, Mr. Trump sought to shift the blame to Democrats for Russia’s meddling, saying that President Barack Obama had not done enough to stop the interference…
CNN: The president dined with his children last night at his Mar-a-Lago club. Don Jr, Eric, and Lara Trump.
Melania Trump was not at dinner.
— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) February 18, 2018
EVERYBODY IS LAUGHING AT YOU AND YOUR TINY, INADEQUATE POPULAR VOTE TOTALS.
The presidential stages of grief:
1) Outrage
2) Denial
3) More outrage
4) Shitposting— Gary Legum (@GaryLegum) February 18, 2018
… Throughout the weekend, the president’s mind remained on Russia after an indictment from special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday charged 13 Russians with a plot to interfere in the U.S. presidential election…
He has fumed to associates at Mar-a-Lago that the media “won’t let it go” and will do everything to delegitimize his presidency. He made those complaints to members who stopped by his table Saturday as he dined with his two adult sons and TV personality Geraldo Rivera.
Initially pleased with the Justice Department’s statement, Trump has since griped that Rosenstein did not go far enough in declaring that he was cleared of wrongdoing, and grew angry when his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, gave credence to the notion that Russia’s meddling affected the election, the person said.
Trump’s frustration bubbled over on Twitter, where he stressed that the Russian effort began before he declared his candidacy, asserted that the Obama administration bears some blame for the election meddling and insisted he never denied that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 U.S. campaign.
By late Sunday night, Trump shifted his wide-ranging Twitter critique to Oprah Winfrey, who has played down suggestions she should run for president in 2020. Trump said her appearance as an interviewer on “60 Minutes” was “biased” and “slanted.” ″Hope Oprah runs so she can be exposed and defeated just like all of the others!” Trump tweeted.
James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the president was not focusing on the bigger threat.
“Above all this rhetoric here, again, we’re losing sight of, what is it we’re going to do about the threat posed by the Russians? And he never — he never talks about that,” said Clapper. “It’s all about himself, collusion or not.”…
YOUR FATHER NEVER LOVED YOU AND NEITHER DO ANY OF THE WOMEN YOU’VE PAID TO SCHTUP.
“He spent much of the time watching cable news, venting to friends about the Russia investigation and complaining that it has been driving so much press coverage, according to people who have spoken to him.” @jdawsey1 @PhilipRucker report https://t.co/JJLaje58rM
— Robert Costa (@costareports) February 19, 2018
… Even for a president known for his jolting tweetstorms, often sent over weekends from his Florida estate, the missives this weekend were noteworthy. Aides chalked up at least some of what triggered President Trump the past couple days to the avalanche of criticism he has received in the news and social media, post-Parkland-massacre and post- Robert Mueller indictments. Also, according to two sources who spoke to the president this weekend, he has spent some of his Presidents’ Day break confiding in longtime friends and allies about how unfair and “nasty” media coverage has been of him lately.
Other West Wing officials simply said that this is who the president is—self-centered and vindictive in the face of atrocity and national tragedy, and all.
“This is who the American people elected,” a senior Trump aide stressed…
Speak for yourself, Vladimir, and the rest of your basket of deplorables, Senior Trump Aide.
He even said this to reporters the other day: you always say she was a bad candidate, why don’t you say I was a good candidate?
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) February 18, 2018
SUCH A ‘GOOD CANDIDATE’, YOU NEEDED ALL THE HELP A FOREIGN OLIGARCH WAS WILLING TO SELL YOU.
AND YOU GOT CHEATED, AT THAT!
oldster
“Those commentators called it proof that he had not won the election on his own, a particularly galling, if not completely accurate, charge for a president long concerned about his legitimacy.”
No, that is completely accurate. And FTFNYT for lying about it.
I don’t think the Russian intervention was the biggest assistance he got–that came from Comey’s norm-violating letters, and in particular from the NYT’s reaction to Comey’s norm-violating letters. And he got some good assistance from McConnell’s treasonous refusal to go along with the consensus of the Intel community at a time of national crisis.
But however you slice it, he did not win this election on his own. He lost it, fair and square.
OzarkHillbilly
@oldster: If he’d lost it, fair and square, he wouldn’t be in the White House.
Chet Murthy
Brutal, you are, AL. Brutal.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
The sheeple spent the last 3 years screaming blue lives matter. But now the atttack the FBI cuz Dear Leader tells them to hate team blue.
they were for team blue before they were against team blue
Ryan
This is not how an innocent man acts. This is how a man who wants to get away with something he knows is wrong acts when he’s drunk or otherwise allowing the voice inside his head out into the open.
danielx
Always and forever about him, no matter what happens. If there is ever a major nuclear exchange, which may god forbid, his first question afterward will be about which of his golf clubs survived.
Joyce Harmon
How soon before he’s twitter-feuding with one or more of these Parkland kids? And what nasty juvenile nicknames will he come up with for them?
OzarkHillbilly
@danielx: No, his first question would be, “Wasn’t I awesome?”
danielx
@OzarkHillbilly:
Possibly “wow, wasn’t that a great fireworks show I put on? big round of applause for me!”
Anne Laurie
@Joyce Harmon:
I sincerely hope his “aides” (Javanka) are able to wrestle the phone away before he finishes any tweet calling Emma Gonzalez ‘wetback’ — or worse.
magurakurin
The other mean, shouty granpa and the mean, shouty granma both had bad weekends, too. One got incensed when Chuck Todd suggested he was less than stellar on his gun control votes and views and the the Granma went full cray cray and ranted out pretty much every single Russian Troll Talking Point there ever was. She would do well to search for a country without extradition that will have her. She’s goin’ to jail, I’d reckon.
OzarkHillbilly
@danielx: “The BIGGEST BESTEST MOST AWESOMEST FIREWORKS SHOW EVER!!!!”
danielx
@Ryan:
Complete lack of an internal editor is the least of his personality defects.
satby
@danielx: hell, it may be the thing that helps convict him eventually.
JGabriel
AP via Anne Laurie @ Top:
Hey Traitor Donald, you delegitimized your presidency your own damn self the minute you first entertained the idea of conspiring with a hostile foreign government to get elected.
OzarkHillbilly
@magurakurin: Do granpa and granma have names?
Sm*t Cl*de
The fact that sickening, opportunistic little maggots like Robertson are treated by media as genuine religious leaders is a symptom of what is wrong with your country.
Arguably, sickening little maggots like Robertson are genuine religious leaders… they claim to lead religions, after all, and the suckers put them in mansions rather than prison. Perhaps that is the symptom of what is wrong.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
how pathetic is that. the only thing missing was al capone’s vault
JGabriel
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m not 100% sure, but I think magurakin is referring Bernie and Jill.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: no shit
rikyrah
Good Morning,Everyone ???
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning ?!
Mary G
You are on fire tonight, AL, especially
Amir Khalid
@danielx:
And won’t he be steamed at the answer: “The putter, Mr President.”
magurakurin
@OzarkHillbilly: it was Vermont Jesus and Jill Stein. Fending off the revelations that their campaigns were aided by the Russians. Curiously, in the indictment, it is specifically mentioned the attempt to claim fraud in the Iowa Primary. This was a Russian project. One should remember though, that the Vermont Jesus campaign ITSELF, threatened legal action and demanded a recount claiming fraud and irregularities. I suppose they themselves could have simply been dupes and not in on it…but neither is a good look. Jill Stein was in on it. She’s goin’ to jail when this is all over.
Waldo
Don’t worry, Donny. Vladimir thinks you were a very good candidate. The bestest!
OzarkHillbilly
@JGabriel: Thanx, now it makes sense. I don’t have TV so a lot of times I have no idea who people are talking about without specifics.
ETA @magurakurin: Thanx
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@magurakurin:
Who is the mean shouty grandma?
And does it seem to anybody else that Trump spends more time watching cable news and shaking his fist at the TV than most?
Amir Khalid
@satby:
Indeed, it may have already. He did make that voluntary confession on TV.
danielx
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Sort of makes one wonder whether he spends more time doing that than doing, you know, his actual job.
WereBear
President Toddler.
Though even at two years old, some can learn to not pull the kitty’s tail or step on the doggie.
I don’t think Trump was one of those.
NotMax
Inexorably heading toward ‘What if Adolf could have tweeted from the bunker?’ territory.
magurakurin
@danielx: without question, he doesn’t do his job at all. But that is probably a blessing. Not really, though.
the whole situation is horrific. He’s sick and he’s dangerous. This can’t continue for four years. Something will give. I hope it’s his heart and not civilization itself.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
satby
OMIGOD, I think NPR just said that Drumpf will attend a “listening session” at the school. I hope I heard that wrong.
Edit: not at the school, apparently.
NotMax
Anyone happen to mention or notice if flags at Mar-a-lago were at half-staff?
Wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out they screwed that up, too.
Lapassionara
@danielx: The less time he spends on his job, the better, in my view. He only screws things up.
I saw where he asked some of the Mar-a-lago members and guests if he should do something about gun control. I am trying to imagine what he could do that wouldn’t tank his numbers with his base.
danielx
@rikyrah:
Good morning to you!
NotMax
@satby
What, no reading of My Pet Scapegoat?
magurakurin
@OzarkHillbilly:
Here is the mean, shouty granma. It’s tough to watch. I couldn’t get through it all. She’s cray.
Vermont Jesus get’s shouty about gun control at 4:29 The first part is just a lot of yadda yadda whocouldaknowed about the russians
Baud
For the record, I am not related to any of these people.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@danielx:
He’s always been a lazy, fat fuck. Mentally, emotionally, physically, morally, he expends zero effort and has no natural ability – he simply has always escaped the consequences of being himself due to inheritance.
Ask yourself how many times he’s gone out of his way for Barron. Has he used his unique access to take the kid to an Air Force bade and ride in a simulator? To an army post to watch artillery practice, or to an aircraft carrier to watch operations? Done home plate seating at a baseball game, court side seats at a basketball game? Fifty yard line seats at a football game? Shit, he doesn’t even take the kid golfing to teach him to swing or putt, and he sure as shit doesn’t share meals with him.
I guarantee you if I had a young teen, I’d be having a blast doing things with him or her as time permitted as POTUS.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: It’s called ‘Executive Time’.
Kay
God, the NYTimes political team is awful. This is supposedly a piece about Russian intervention in the election. It’s 80% about “Clinton’s deficiencies”
Just to cap off this opinion piece that literally any 2nd string Right wing pundit could have written, they conclude with “both sides”.
We’ve gone from “no one could have predicted” to “no one will ever know”. Add this to Nothing Can Be Done as our national mottoes. No one could have predicted, nothing can be done and no one will ever know. Pack it in, folks. Resistance is futile.
I disagree with this constant use of “chaos” by the way. We could still find out some of what happened in the 2016 election as long as Mueller still goes to work. Specific facts. Not “chaos”, which implies facts are unknowable and no one should bother thinking about any of this too deeply. It could become much clearer, much less “chaotic” and that’s what Trump should be worried about. Not “chaos” but clarity. He has HUGELY benefited from chaos. He better hope no one clears out the swirl of bullshit and lies he bellows out every day.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Neither am I thank dog. Just the thought of dinner with one of them is enuf to give me suicidal thoughts.
satby
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: oddly enough, Melanie doesn’t seem to do anything fun in public with the kid either. That poor kid has a pretty sad life.
danielx
Because a day should start with kitteh goodness…
Natasha is attracted to water. Or, perhaps, to the vicinity of water.
Baud
@Kay:
So much like the NYT’s self-examination of their own conduct during the election.
They are garbage.
satby
@danielx: cuteness always welcome in the morning. Anytime, really.
debbie
Bogus. Trump’s taken care of the delegitimization all by himself. A year in and he still hasn’t realized that every time he shoots off his mouth, it only gets worse for him. Idiot!
magurakurin
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
lazy, fat fuck. Well, he hasn’t always been fat. But everything he has ever touched has turned to shit. Case in point, the USFL
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
I had figured granpa was ex-Preznit McCain. Glad a key was provided.
danielx
@Baud:
What, to yon local jackals or the denizens of House Trump?
debbie
@satby:
Your ears are fine. It will be held “somewhere” with “someone,” and mysteriously it will be held just before CNN’s televised townhall with Parkland students. Surprise!
magurakurin
@SFAW: I wound up too tight for my own good. Plus I have a cold. Spinning out of control today, I was, with anger and rage. I just assume everyone is privy to my own personal two-minute hates. Of course that is a mistaken idea.
Cadet Bone Spurs is the enemy. But some of these other people are purported “allies.” I think I hate them more for that.
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
The most amazing thing to me is that Trump expected, after his eight years of spewing bile about Obama, to be treated differently and with respect. That’s the real seed of his sickness.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Dammit, you need to channel those thoughts into something more productive. For example: “Why, Dr. Stein, what a pleasure to see you! Our appetizer tonight will be an entire bag of salted dicks. No, I don’t partake, I’m …. uh … vegan, yeah that’s the ticket! But you can wash them down with an aperitif. I have some delicious Eau de Prestone — it has a lovely color, don’t you think? Or is vodka more to your liking? Maybe polonium-infused?”
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Ha! No, he doesn’t. Instead, he pushes the kid aside, jumps inside the big truck, and honks the horn himself.
danielx
@satby:
Wonder if he’ll listen when some high school kid tells him to go fuck himself, immediately.
Baud
@danielx: Probably all of the above, but I was specifically referring to people who are being described in familial terms.
NotMax
@magurakurin
Too early in the a.m. wee hours here to go on a quest to find it again, but there’s an article from a while back (pre-dating the election) with descriptions and pictures documenting the decrepit, unkempt, uninviting, and unsafe status of the public park spaces in Trump Tower required as a condition of construction permission.
SFAW
@magurakurin:
Not to worry. I hope you feel better soon. (Re: the cold. For the other thing, I hope we ALL start feeling better soon, aided by a prescription from Dr. Mueller.)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@debbie:
He’s an older white guy. He feels an entitlement to respect and praise just by being.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie:
Geeee… Between the 2, I wonder what is the difference?
NotMax
@SFAW
Does Hallmark make October Surprise cards?
Asking for a raft of friends.
WereBear
I am still fuming that apparently, THIS is what it took.
The willing Republican collusion with an enemy of the nation to falsely elect a candidate so blatantly unsuitable, so flagrantly corrupt, and whose utter inadequacy is so screamingly obvious the bare fact is unarguable by anyone who is above room temperature.
What does it matter that most of us saw the writing on the wall in the year 2000 and we’ve been warning ever since? That this was going to be the inevitable end game?
I guess I should just be happy I lived long enough to see the End Game, come what may. Considering it started in 1980, when I was embarking upon adulthood, and now, with retirement on the horizon, it still hasn’t been eradicated.
It is just as well Young Me wasn’t told; it would have been terribly depressing.
Betty Cracker
Did Pat Robertson really suggest that the Vegas massacre happened because people were insufficiently deferential to Trump? Robertson has always been a hateful, thieving charlatan, but wow! People like Robertson make me wish I believed in a literal, burning hell so I could have the satisfaction of imagining him roasting in it for all eternity. Alas, as a nonbeliever, I just look forward to Robertson taking a dirt nap at the very soonest opportunity.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s hysterical in a way. They should put “no one will ever know” on the masthead. It’s like the opposite of journalism, whatever this is. There is LITERALLY no way to find anything out unless the special counsel issues an indictment, Baud. A grand jury has to find probable cause or they’re not pursuing it. There’s now a legal standard for journalistic inquiry.
Once Mueller issues an indictment what do we need them for? We can read. We’ll just wait for the next installment of What Happened in the 2016 Election and read the indictment.
If they announce that Clinton not going to Wisconsin affected the election don’t they also have to credit a huge Russian political campaign backing Donald Trump? No. Because. Political campaigns are hugely effective unless they’re run by Russia and assisting Donald Trump. Then they’re meaningless.
p.a.
@Lapassionara: Ooff. Crowd-sourcing policy ideas with the M-a-L crowd. That could be worse than ALEC policies.
magurakurin
@SFAW: thanks. I am much better today. It was a short lived infection. I had a weird feeling in my nose for about a week and then on Saturday it just blossomed into a runny nose and cough. It seems to have run its course though. I am wondering if it isn’t a relapse of a little cold I had a few weeks ago. Maybe it just hid out for a while. I’m fairly chipper today.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: You forgot how he blamed 9/11 on the abortionists and gays (or something like that).
Baud
@Kay:
Not true. They will also give equal time what Trump says about his malfeasance.
Magda in Black
@WereBear:
As a history major, I try to look at it this way: we are watching history being made. With that being said, I’m glad I’m old with no kids.
“May you live in interesting times”
NotMax
@Baud
“Da gays, boss, da gays!”
Kay
When the last Mueller indictment came out I though “well, this poses a problem for political pros because now they have to argue that campaigns don’t matter, and campaigns have to matter or 150,000 very well-compensated people have no justification for getting paid”
But I was wrong. I didn’t consider the obvious. ONLY Clinton and Trump’s campaigns mattered. Putin’s did not.
magurakurin
@NotMax: I remember that article. It had lots of pictures of how run down all those public spaces were. The building itself destroyed a beautiful landmark, the Bonwit Teller Building and he destroyed the sculptures that the Met wanted to save out of pure spite.
magurakurin
@Magda in Black:
ditto
different-church-lady
Listeners, this man is a fool.
Kay
@Baud:
We have a local family owned newspaper that is quite successful – because they cover high school sports out here and no one else does. I have some affection for them, because they don’t really claim to be investigative journalists. They do a lot of “we love Chip the Ford dealer who is our largest advertiser and is also a super-awesome person, here he is donating 5 dollars to post-prom”. It’s okay because they gotta make a living and their reason for being is high school sports.
But they do print the grand jury indictments every month. So you can read those. Same with the NYTimes.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@p.a.:
“If you eliminate the minimum wage, we can all have butt wipers, shoelace tie-ers, zit-poppers and pillow fluffers for like a dollar an hour. Think of the positive headlines from a zero employment rate! Plus, if any of your house workers gets uppity, they’re easily replaced!”
Baud
@Kay: The most recent indictment is very readable and interesting, unlike the prior ones.
IIRC, there are a number of indictments still sealed.
raven
Lahm should like this
“Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.”” And perhaps no one knows that better than Jean Lahm, a woman who penned a funny and touching obituary for her dad, Terry Wayne Ward, who passed away at the age of 71 on Jan. 23.
different-church-lady
@Magda in Black:
A hundred years from now people are going to be reading about this on whatever the 2118 version of Wikipedia is, and be saying to themselves, “Wait, that actually happened?”
debbie
Never mind. It was a different builder.
Kay
@Baud:
I read on Twitter from some uber-serious person that the Russian indictments were partly about informing the public. I don’t know how they know this because Mueller, to his credit, can keep his mouth shut, but it seemed to be accepted as true.
If so, I appreciate that. I’m waiting for the Wikileaks/DNC theft. I knew they were corrupted during the election but even I was surprised by those DM’s. Assange is fucking poison. He’s a hater. Does not much care for women, Mr. Assange.
satby
@magurakurin: and that article quotes Trump via his sock puppet John Barron.
Baud
@Kay: I heard about the DMs but haven’t read them. Are they risotto-recipe bad?
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I’ve had nothing but contempt for the man for decades because of hateful, crackpot pronouncements like that. But the Vegas thing seems worse somehow. He’s putting Donald Fucking Trump on the same plane as Jesus, which is pretty fucked up, even by the subterranean standards of a bigoted, thieving liar like Robertson.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@different-church-lady: you mean the Red Sox gave Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Wait, that actually happened?
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Ridiculous. Jesus was much poorer.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
He did say that. Video clip of the old snake oil salesman embedded in this HuffPo article.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@danielx: pootieful
Tata
@Anne Laurie: Remember when President Obama got to keep his blackberry and everyone thought that was adorable? And when his desire to upgrade to a smart phone was too risky for the security professionals?
Why does the Orange Menace still have a phone?
Kay
I took my youngest to the DMV Saturday and I speak wingnut fluently so while we waiting our turn one of the clerks was grilling this Laotian man on whether he was a citizen. We have a Laotian-American community here- they’ve been here since Reagan brought them out- they’re completely assimilated except they don’t borrow money at usurious interest rates.
Why do they have to be such dicks? He’s renewing his driver’s license. All she needs is an affirmative answer to “are you a US citizen?” But she takes it upon herself to ask him 4 slightly different ways.
They’re like this as pollworkers, too. They act like they’re cops. The hostility is unacceptable in what is a customer service position. Just check the boxes and give him the license. No one asked you to play interrogator. No one cares about your suspicions.
I was hoping I wouldn’t get her but of course I did. My husband says I “could have” traded numbers with someone. “Here- you take 27- I’ll take your 31- I don’t want that mean wingnut”.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
It’s his smarmy, patronizing smile that has driven my hatred for him.
SiubhanDuinne
@magurakurin:
I remember it too, although am now unable to find it. IIRC, there were photos and descriptions of everything from dead plants to inoperative doors to exposed wiring. I think there was one small area, supposedly accessible to the public, that was filled with trash bags.
raven
WTF is Joe talking about??? He’s trying to say the military tried to replace the M-16 with the AR-15!!!!!
Magda in Black
@different-church-lady:
There will be entire forests of publication on this era.
(Or acres of hemp, if we get our act together)
Betty Cracker
@debbie: Wasn’t he the one years back who said a hurricane was headed to Orlando to punish Disney World for allowing Gay Day, and then the hurricane looped back out into the Atlantic and slammed into his megachurch in VA Beach? You’d think the hateful, smarmy shit-bag would have taken the hint!
Magda in Black
@Kay:
Its the only power they have, so they “kick down.”
So much of this is “kicking down” at the next most powerless group.
manyakitty
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Kinda like how the Obamas took every opportunity to show their daughters the world, right? THAT is how to parent, and their kids reflect it. Out of all of them, Baron is the only one deserving of sympathy and concern. Poor kid.
Bostondreams
He called Oprah insecure. A real billionaire who actually worked for her fortune. It just, the mind boggles.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
LOL, I didn’t know about that hurricane’s loop-de-loop, but I love it. Once again, the Universe is proven never to be wrong!
Waldo
@Betty Cracker: Rev. Robertson, Jesus would like a word with you. Don’t keep him waiting.
debbie
@Bostondreams:
I watched 60 Minutes last night. I thought she was making a real effort to understand the Trumpists’ hatred of liberals. I would have walked out of the room in mid-conversation, myself.
manyakitty
@danielx: Awww…sweet baby! I’m looking at her and Boris on my calendar even as I type this.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Not knowing the first thing about anything has never stopped Joe.
Sab
@Kay: Lol.
Eric S.
@Anne Laurie: I hope they don’t wrestle the phone away. If he attacks a high schooler that many more eyes will open.
MomSense
@Kay:
The media aren’t talking about what an advantage it is for a campaign to know the election strategy of the other campaign. How do we know that the trump campaign saw the DNC and Podesta emails at the same time we did? How do we know if they saw the same things we did or if what we saw was incomplete or doctored? How do we know they only got emails? Seems like they could have accessed anything and everything the DNC had. How do we know they only hacked the DNC?
Jesus, Watergate was a break in to get the other sode’s campaign intel because that is incredibly valuable info for the opposing campaign to have.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Maybe this time really is different: Top GOP Donor Cuts Off Opponents of Assault Weapon Ban
GregB
Dirty Don has been a cheater all of his life.
I think one of the paths to redemption for America is understanding that Trump did cheat and steal the election.
We really didn’t want him.
Also,when will they start calling Mar-a-Lago the Versailles Florida.
Immanentize
Imagine you are Mueller. You are investigating Trump. He has not yet been indicted (this is a bit of a legal point necessary to the plan). He has dinner with family, friends, Geraldo! And he craves friends who will support him, listen to him, love him. And he can’t keep his mouth shut about himself in any circumstance.
Just how difficult would it be to get one of his “friends” who may end up in prison because of things you’ve discovered, to chat with you about every word he utters in “private?”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Jesus wept.
I hate this couple, but I hate the wedding announcement columnist more.
The thing has Milton Friedman’s grandson, seasteading, an Atlas Shrugged/John Galt reference, extralong ceremony, and enough douchiness from both people to nauseate me over a dozen lifetimes.
Magda in Black
@MomSense:
Maybe they didn’t have to hack, maybe they already had full access……
manyakitty
@Kay: Rachel Maddow’s take is that this set of indictments establishes the crime, and that part of the case will build out from them. Also, I full-on sobbed when she lost it a little bit, saying that Mueller is the first person since all this started who she feels is actually trying to protect us.
raven
@Eric S.: Like that will matter.
GregMulka
@Ryan:
There’s only one voice in his head but such an empty space creates echoes.
The Thin Black Duke
@manyakitty: Huh. I thought it was Hillary who accused Trump of being a “puppet” way back when, but I must have been mistaken. And who am I to argue with a talking head armed with a Ph.D. Silly me.
Anne Laurie
@SiubhanDuinne:
IIRC, it was in Vanity Fair, before the election — possibly by Tina Nguyen? Around the same time as the devasting review of the Trump restaurant in that same NYC tower…
(Insomnia break — now I go back to bed.)
Immanentize
Also, about last week’s deal with Gates. IIRC, it was Gates who was in charge and directing the Republican Convention platform process in which there was a 180 on the platform item regarding Ukraine, moving from arming them against Russian invasion to something like, be nice to Russia because we can’t tell who is responsible for that mess. Can anyone say, “collusion?”*
*Ok, y’all know I hate that term, but had to use it this once.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: What is your hypothesis behind the Russian interference? Why do you think they installed T in the WH.
different-church-lady
@MomSense:
You know, I think at long last we’ve got a name for this thing: “Digital Watergate”
WereBear
I teared up a little just reading that.
I have hoped that throughout this ordeal, we do have a long stretch of history, and periodically revamped institutions, that will get us through this. So many fascists rose to power during times of chaos that now they create it on purpose. But the Weimar Republic was only between 1919 and 1933, and the citizens were unused to democracy… and didn’t trust it. Both China and Russia aspired to democracy in the visions of some of their revolutionaries… but making such a thing from scratch in one leap from feudalism is a real stretch no one has done successfully.
The United States has not only a few hundred years of training and tradition, it has roots stretching back to 1066 via our British origins. There are still Americans alive who know who we are supposed to be.
I’m staking my future on that.
manyakitty
@The Thin Black Duke: Oh, absolutely. Obama tried, too. I think she meant since 45 took office. LOTS of people tried to protect us earlier.
JPL
@debbie: The transcript is on CBS sixty minutes online. I read about half of it, and was amazed that some found Trump’s language acceptable. I just couldn’t finish it.
gvg
@oldster: I recall that the polling showed a significant drop in Hillary support after the Comey letter but maybe that is less significant than the Russian meddling. the Russian’s were attacking through out the campaign in secret on going ways, thus their impact would be hard to measure and prove, wheras the Comey was a public letter which could be noted and polled. It is possible that if the Russian’s hadn’t attacked, Clinton would have won by 63% to 27% or even more likely someone else would have been the nominee and the results completely different. The Russian’s attacked Cruz and Rubio too. Guess they didn’t bother with Jeb.
Have any journalists asked the other Republican candidates what they think?
manyakitty
@WereBear: Amen.
Shalimar
@WereBear: Toddler Trump learning: “Doggie’s tail tripped me. I hate doggies. No more pets, ever.”
Baud
@MomSense:
I kind of want to revisit that Sanders staffer who hacked into Clinton’s data in light of subsequent revelations.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@schrodingers_cat:
Multiple factors.
Enabling corruption, ethnic superiority, cultural conservatism are all mixed in. Great Russians have long been mired in a stubborn form of social conservatism and ethnocentrism that dates forever and also was endemic during the days of the USSR.
One interesting part of the Mueller indictments is that even though Russia may never hand any of the names conspirators over, they can’t travel outside Russia or closely allied states – they’ll get picked up. No more fun, sunny trips to Cyprus, Dubai, the Caribbean, Panama, etc. More importantly, they can’t shift money around as they were able to before. It is now parked, unusable in a lot of places.
The good times got less good on Friday.
Baud
@manyakitty:
Sorry, that’s bullshit unless she is limiting that to people in the Executive Branch.
schrodingers_cat
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Thanks. I have my theories too. I specifically asked Kay because she has asked this question several times and none of the answers given seem to satisfy her. That’s why I wanted to know what exactly did she have in mind or what answer she was looking for when posing the question.
Just One More Canuck
@raven: A friend’s father passed away recently – the obituary included the line, “He also leaves behind a terrified population of garden squirrels.”
raven
@Just One More Canuck: Nice.
Thoughtful David
@Immanentize:
This works for Putin too. They’re all compromised, so anyone with a little knowledge of that can use it as a lever to get them to sing, sing, sing. I’m betting Jared has passed terabytes of strategically useful info to Vlad. Vlad just has to ask, “Well, what did you talk about today?”
schrodingers_cat
Tangential but related: Russian bots are spreading rumors on Twitter that the Florida shooter was a DACA recipient.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: The president is tweeting again?
mai naem mobile
Dolt45 is losing it right in front of us. I am a little worried on how this listening session is going to go with the school. Are they going they go to some redneck area and do it there instead of Parkland? These kids are doing a better job of putting out the gun control position then the Dems and they don’t seem to be fearful. I don’t see how this come out well for Dolt45.
japa21
@Baud: The correct phraseology is not “again” but “still”.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t know. I’ve read the Chaos Theory and I just don’t find it complete. They realized they could influence a US election and no one took advantage of that for Russian policy goals and/or self-interest by certain corrupt Russian plutocrats?
They were able to achieve this generalized weakness by which they may move up in the national order, but maybe not, depends on which way the chaos spins? I just fundamentally don’t buy that. Even if they started out that way an actor or actor would know by now it could be exploited for specific measurable goals and gains.
But I don’t know what they want. I’m just convinced they want something. No one puts this much effort into creating a situation where there isn’t some tangible guarantee of benefit. Even if I give them “chaos”- okay- but chaos to what end? What’s the specific pay-off?
For a long time we were told that they didn’t want “Trump”- they wanted to create mayhem. But, all of their efforts to create mayhem accidentally benefitted ONLY candidate Trump. That’s the message in the indictments. Jill Stein? Advantage, Trump. Promoting Sanders? Advantage, Trump. Stein and Sanders were incidental – a means to a goal, but the goal never wavered- always to benefit Trump.
Not Rubio. Not Cruz. Trump. THAT person. So what do they want from him and his supporters? We know their POLICY goals overlap. Is that it, or is there more?
The Thin Black Duke
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think that bullshit is going to get any traction at all, not now.
manyakitty
@Baud: Sure. I didn’t really overthink it; instead I got the impression that this was the first effort that was actually getting somewhere. Regardless, I appreciated the glimmer of hope.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
The Russian bots are spreading disinformation ON GUNS, but I must ignore that specific policy lobbying on a policy outcome and instead assume they want only “chaos”?
Or they want more guns. Right? What if it’s a horse and not a zebra? What if they want racist policy and closed borders and guns in schools and voter suppression? What if they share those policy goals with the far Right in the US? Those are the goals of the far Right in every country now. Why would THIS situation be different?
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: They own him and he will do what they want. For example, he hasn’t enforced sanctions on Russia that passed the Congress, yet. I am sure they have other plans for him too.
ETA: You are right, its not just chaos. Chaos is a means to an end. The end of the US led international order.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Right, and their efforts in the Netherlands, France, UK and elsewhere reflect the same pattern: white nationalism. Sounds like a very specific agenda to me. In this country, they chose a weak, incompetent, idiotic vessel, and that’s their bad luck AND ours, in one sense, but in another, it might save us.
Just think, if Trump and his absurd family were half way competent, they could have pulled this whole thing off slicker than owl shit. They may yet, but if so, it will be despite their tireless efforts to shoot their own feet.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Let’s try it with another country. Trump is bungling trade policy right now so let’s use Germany.
Germany hires hundreds of workers to flood social media with their trade position. Wouldn’t that be about trade?
The Facebook guy said most of the ads were purchased after the election, which he seems to think is exonerating (and FB lied to Congress so they may be lying again) but what if the Russian goal is Trump policy? One can even roll chaos in there- what if the Russian goal is Trump policy that creates chaos and delivers some specific advantage to Russia?
Gin & Tonic
Having been largely off the net all weekend, let me just say how delighted I am that reports of Gates flipping on Manafort came out on the anniversary of the 2014 Maidan massacre that sealed Yanukovych’s fate. Here’s hoping that the reports are true, and that Paulie spends his declining years as a guest of the Federal government. It won’t bring back the “Heavenly Hundred”, but it would be sweet news in Ukraine, which had been trying to warn the world about Manafort for a long time.
JPL
Since the president has been a good boy on twitter today, he was allowed to go to his golf course.
MomSense
@Baud:
I’ve been wondering about that as well. My uneducated hunch is that Wilmer’s digital guy fell for a phishing operation. He is a friend of Booman who vouched for him. The Wilmer campaign was convinced that what happened was a set up by the DNC and it very well may have seemed like one to them. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out that was a Russian op.
Magda in Black
@schrodingers_cat:
The end of the U.S as a “functional” democracy?
schrodingers_cat
@The Thin Black Duke: Are you sure? People believed that the central American child refugees were Ebola carriers working for ISIS. This is far less outlandish than that.
Jeffro
@manyakitty:
I think this is exactly right. “Here’s where it started, here’s who was engaged in this crime/attack…and now here’s who was helping them, and how…”
J R in WV
@magurakurin:
So who are these two people… and why would shouty granma wind up in jail??? ‘Cause I follow this stuff like daily, and have no idea who you’re talkin’ about.
Please?
Thanks!
Ladyraxterinok
@satby: And some people thought it was weird that the Obamas had Michelle’s mother with them in the WH, giving the daughters daily support and stability!
MomSense
@Gin & Tonic:
I’m hoping that the pressure they are putting on Manafort is because they want an even bigger fish (or fishes!). Given what we know already about Manafort, that would mean some YUUGE stuff is still to come.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
Look at the possibility that they’re supporting the aims of right wing paramilitaries with separatist inclinations, all while consolidating at home and reconstituting the Russian Empire. Putinism allows them to control the economy and leverage international transactions; the right wing discord trashes opposition in the West.
Magda in Black
@Ladyraxterinok:
” Some people” are idiots ☺️
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
It adds clarity for me because I don’t have to object to Russian interference based on illegality or some notion of “within our borders”. I legitimately object to Russian interference because their policy goals seem to be identical to the far Right and since I’m not afar Right wackjob I’d prefer if they didn’t run US campaigns.
We don’t have to just beat the far Right in the US. Now we have to beat Putin too :)
Jeffro
Btw, I know this is several steps ahead of where we are right now, but this is the start of a path forward: We, the people, were attacked. We need to respond as a people, as well.
Looks like we’ll need not just leaders who work for unity, but people who want that as well. Americans who are willing to stick together and not fall for foreign instigating (spread on unchecked social media):
Sign me up for the truth & reconciliation commission, I’ll be there.
Baud
@MomSense:
Booman allowed Steven D to publish conspiracy theories about the California primary on his blog and never apologized for it. I’m not sure his vouching means much to me.
Everything else you said makes sense.
germy
Jill Stein: “My European Vacation”
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/watch-jill-stein-comes-unglued-asked-visit-russia-bonkers-msnbc-interview/
MomSense
@Baud:
True. Steven D did seem to have a painful break with reality.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: It is, the President’s policies diminish our country’s standing internationally. Be it immigration, trade, or science.He has reduced us from being the envy of the world to a laughing stock.
One third of our Nobel prize winners in science are foreign born, many talented youngsters will think twice about pursuing graduate studies or a career in science in the United States with the anti-science jihad that the Rs have going on. I know of a well known researcher who repatriated back to his native Germany after the stupid sequestration cuts went into action. In many ways what our Rs want is what the Russians want. The question to ask is why do the Republican goals parallel Putin’s agenda.
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
That I would buy. “Chaos” may be correct but it’s insufficient. It’s also not at all useful to Trump/Putin political opponents because what are we supposed to do with that? You can’t do anything with chaos except passively ride it, which would really be quite helpful to the other side, don’t you think?
Nothing Can Be Done. It’s chaos. Trump takes it one step further. Opposing him is now part of the chaos theory!
THAT’S pretty fucking convenient. Shut up or you’ll create chaos!
germy
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker: Wow. Missed a lot of this thread due to living in California time.
Trump fanned the fires of racism with his birther nonsense and seems intent on cultivating and exploiting the ugliest bigotry of his supporters. He may be more competent than people give him credit for, especially with Sessions and other long time racists in place.
ETA. Was there a BJ thread about the NYT “Gossip Economy” story of how Trump suppressed salacious stories?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/18/us/politics/michael-cohen-trump.html
debbie
@Immanentize:
Speaking of, what’s being done about Trump’s refusal to enforce the sanctions imposed by Congress? Anything?
Humdog
@Kay: I think they wanted the Magnitzki (sp?) repealed and they want to continue to gobble up old client states like Ukraine along with a weakened NATO. Hillary was onto them so they knew she would not play. I do not think they thought they’d succeed in putting a puppet into office but wanted to taint her win as rigged so she would have to spend all her time fighting Whitewater 7.0 and that would allow Russia to make its moves.
debbie
@JPL:
My hand kept reaching for the remote as if it had its own mind. I held off because I think I was hoping they’d see the light. Stupid me.
Gin & Tonic
@MomSense: Part of me hopes that Manafort is just stupid enough to think he’s smart, and says “fuck you” to Mueller. That takes away one path of getting to the top, I know, but I really want Manafort to go down. I want him broken and penniless and in the Supermax, frankly. If he deals that doesn’t happen.
Kay
@germy:
God did they get played on “the war machine”. Obama left office and the Left decided Our Wars were over. They’re not. It simply isn’t covered anymore.
Good job! The wars aren’t over but now they’re invisible. Excellent work, Lefties.
Baud
@Kay:
That’s actually straight out of W. Oppose him and the terrorists win. I’m sure Reagan and Nixon had similar statements with respect to communists.
The Thin Black Duke
@schrodingers_cat: The people who would believe this hateful nonsense are the hardcore Trump supporters and those idiots are a lost cause anyway.
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: Nothing. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism. They passed a law, and it’s up to the executive branch to, um, execute.
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
Ah, I see reading 5 or 8 more comments would have revealed all, and I agree about shouty Jill, hoping shouty Bernard does to. Jail would be a learning experience for both of them, learning humility in the face of massive oppression by Corrections Officers.
debbie
@Kay:
I think Trump was the proverbial cherry on the top. Russia’s goal was always chaos and diminishment of democracy. It’s what they’ve hoped for since the end of WWII.
Kayla Rudbek
@Kay: I’ve seen discussions over at Charles Stross’s blog that the end game is to keep the oil and gas industry propped up for as long as possible. Can’t remember the exact article that he was citing but I think if you google “carbon bubble” that you might find it. Always follow the money, and where are the Russian oligarchs making their money from?
Barbara
@debbie: Even if it had zero effect, a proposition that I find hard to believe, obsessive coverage of Vlad the bad’s interference in our presidential election would be no more than well-earned karma for the guy who spent years and years trying to delegitimize his successor by pushing outrageous “birther” claims.
Baud
@germy: Tick tick, Dr. Jill Stein.
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: Booman is an Eeyore who runs a blog that caters to gibbering loons.
Barbara
@KickBoxBanana: So your true colors come out. The alt-right network angle to Franken’s travails was well-covered here, apparently before you bothered to show up.
WereBear
Both want bad things to happen to the United States? Because that IS what happens.
If Republicans had been in charge in the late 1930’s, we would have lost WWII. And they would have still made money, which is their only concern.
Immanentize
@Kay:
Well it is true that we don’t know — yet — all the motivations. And there may be many overlapping ones.
For example, on guns, I recall that Obama’s last set of sanctions would have prevented US purchases of the AK-47 because the. Kalashnikov Company (in bankruptcy) was owned by one of the sanctioned corporations. But the Trump admin with the NRA worked very hard and successfully to prevent the sanctions from reaching AK-47 sales
ETA you often say it’s all about the Kash
germy
@debbie:
Which is why I’m glad his idiot sons are goading him into being more aggressive. By all means, be more aggressive. Keep talking. Keep digging. Follow your idiot spawns’ advice.
MomSense
Mental health playlist on this holiday is Mavis Staples’ If All I Was Was Black. My oldest took my youngest to see her in concert with Bob Dylan last fall. She had them so fired up to keep fighting. She’s indefatigable.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig:
I liked him and read him pretty regularly before 2016 (although I rarely read the comments). Not so much since all that happened.
Kayla Rudbek
@Kay: I also have seen David Brin’s blog where a recurring theme is democracy vs feudalism—his argument seems to be that there is an international oligarchy that wants to destroy democracy
MomSense
@KickBoxBanana:
A bunch of us didn’t, thank you very much.
Brachiator
CNN report that Trump is making noise about supporting stalled legislation strengthening federal gun background checks.
A possible tiny crack in the gun lobby wall?
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/19/politics/trump-background-checks-florida/index.html
Immanentize
@MomSense:
I heart Mavis. I also heart Dylan. I also heart(ed) Pops Staples. His version of the Talking Heads song, Papa Legba, is just chillingly great.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie:
That sounds right. Thanks.
germy
@Brachiator: Marco Rubio seems to be backing up a bit, as well. Saw him interviewed and he was flustered. “I never said we should do NOTHING about gun violence. Obviously there are government solutions!” But of course vague about solutions.
Maybe he got a call from that Florida donor who vowed to close his checkbook unless something is done about assault weapons?
MomSense
@Immanentize:
Oh yes. So good. Have a listen to her new album (yes I’m old and get off my lawn already). The lyrics are made for this moment.
J R in WV
@NotMax:
I remember reading that article, public space in Trump Tower deliberately kept so uninviting no member of the public will go there!!
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator:He will do nothing, except make noises. If anything he will kill legislation that has any D support, just like he did with the DACA issue.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic:
And, I am sure the Ukraine has shared their Manafort receipts with Mueller.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kayla Rudbek:
I’ve noticed that energy prices are increased this year, govt support for renewables down and attacks on solar are through the roof. Even then, there may have been enough new means of production created during the Obama years that we’re over the tipping point on scaled knowledge and capacity – it may be too late for the carbon barons to exert total dominance over all of it.
In any event, I’m relying on Asian innovation and good intentions.
Betty Cracker
Okay, the suspected troll, who has been banned at least twice (I think) by folks other than me, finally uttered his catch-phrase for a positive ID. Hammer time!
Kathleen
@magurakurin: I want to subscribe to your newsletter. Kay’s link to FTFNYT just pushed me over the edge.
schrodingers_cat
@germy: Marco Rubio is spineless. We are not going to get any help from the elected Rs. Not Marco Rubio, not Jeff Flake, not Mitt Romney*. They are brothers in arms with the Russians and their chosen President.
* When he is elected as the Utah senator.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: While I don’t approve of the drone war, I always suspected that the extreme emphasis on it we got from some quarters was just because that was the one and only military-policy area where you could arguably paint Obama as worse than Bush (simply because it was just getting started under Bush). Making Obama worse than Bush (and exposing Democrats as hypocrites) was very important.
Now Trump’s massively stepped up the drone war, and what are these guys complaining about? The supposed overhyping of Russian interference.
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: Please, no definite article there – “Ukraine”.
Jeffro
Hey look, even a stopped Mustache of Understanding is right twice a day: Whatever Trumpov is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now
“Totally compromised, a towering fool, or both”
Nice to see ol’ Tom come around to where we all were about two. frickin’. years ago. But…better late than never…
MomSense
@Kathleen:
Put on some Mavis and dance around your living room. Then call your Congress critters and play some more Mavis. It helps.
Brachiator
@WereBear:
I don’t know. A piece in the puzzle is missing. It is hard for me to reconcile GOP short sightedness and Russia’s attempts to undermine the elections.
You would think that even a dope like Ryan would understand that Putin cannot be trusted.
Matt McIrvin
@debbie:
That’s because it’s not getting worse for him. He’s getting more popular; the conservatives are all coming home and deciding this crap is really what they like.
Immanentize
@debbie: nothing. Congress could write a bill with specific sanctions, like they did for Iran, but that would never make it through Congress. The whole thing was a sort of theatre, Congress voted overwhelmingly for sanctions republicans were pretty sure the administration would never impose. Hell, we aren’t even enforcing sanctions imposed earlier.
Kay
@Kayla Rudbek:
They anti-immigrant thing on the far Right interests me, because what if they don’t want to keep people OUT so much as they want to make it impossible for people to leave?
Russia is really fucking poor and old. They probably don’t want their young people getting any ideas about moving to Norway or something. We always start immigration with the assumption that people will want to go FROM there to HERE, but what if the Bannon fake-revolutionaries are more “it will suck so bad here we’ll have to keep them IN”?
I have questions! Chaos Theory is not answering them! :)
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: If Trump and Dim Son had kept their big, fat, stupid yaps shut, the GOP congress almost certainly would have made this Russia thing disappear. Trump could have relaxed the sanctions on Russia to pay Putin off — and been hailed as a peacemaker by dupes like GG and Jill Stein! That’s what I mean by incompetence. Yeah, Team Trump has been good at riling up the millions of stupid bigots with whom we share the country, but that’s not exactly rocket surgery.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Do we know he trusts him or is afraid of him? How would we know the difference.
Baud
@Immanentize: Politically, it’s good for the Dems that they didn’t impose the sanctions. It’s another pressure point they can apply to the Republicans up for reelection.
Immanentize
@Baud:
She is clearly setting up her “political prisoner” defense. But somehow it will be the DNC that has imprisoned her.
Baud
@Immanentize: Ugh. I misspelled “tock.” But, yes, she will certainly blame the Clinton machine for her incarceration.
Kay
@Jeffro:
He has to go away though. He’s a discredited elite. He basically single-handedly discredited elites.
They have to retire. They’re all loaded so they’ll be fine.
They’re not credible because they missed an earthquake. Some mistakes are too big to overcome.
Magda in Black
@Brachiator:
The GOP isn’t too fond of a functional democracy either.
As for short sightedness: They dont think past the current “news” cycle/ end of their nose/ checkbook/the next fiscal quarter.
And they certainly don’t study history.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: I agree. It’s too blatant to ignore.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Heh all the Russians I know are first gen immigrants. Let’s see, I at least know at least a dozen or so. So they are leaving and have been leaving since before Putin was in charge.
Brachiator
@debbie:
I am not certain that the goals of Russia and the old Soviet Union are necessarily the same.
I think that for all of Putin’s crafty plotting, Russia can never be more than a second tier regional power. They have nukes and they can make trouble, but Putin can never control the competing interests of the oligarchs.
China on the other hand is a formidable superpower and the number two world economy.
Jeffro
@Kay: I hear you. I’m just glad to see the op-ed’s basic argument out there: Trumpov’s either so compromised or so stupid or both that he is betraying the country to a hostile foreign power.
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: You’re aware that Vermont Jesus was one of only two Senators voting against the sanctions? Hope that bites him in the ass as well.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic:
Ok. So what is Eastern Ukraine? Can that be The Ukraine??
Kathleen
@MomSense: So I wonder why Bernie keeps repeating how he knew Russians were involved. Either he knew or he didn’t. And if he knew as he claims he did why didn’t he do more? I’ve believed all along he did know and welcomed their assistance.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic: Maybe in 2020? I don’t see it as affecting his reelection this year.
Brachiator
@Magda in Black:
Perhaps. But this doesn’t mean that the GOP would be happy to see the US become so weak that it would become another country’s lap dog. That would be bad for business.
aimai
@Baud: I, too, never forgave Booman for that. Took him off my reading list because of it.
Immanentize
@Baud: I agree. Sadly, that is the only type of power Democrats currently have. It seems we are using what power we do have pretty well….
Kathleen
@Magda in Black: I agree with that and white nayionalism as Betty pointed out. They worked hand in hand with rethugs. I still maintain it was fascist coup.
J R in WV
@Ladyraxterinok:
No one thought it was weird… the RWNJ racists tried to make it look bad, like Obama’s MIL was taking advantage of his position, as opposed to helping parent two kids who were going to need lots of parenting, when Mom and Dad were going to be really Really busy with the world.
Didn’t work at all, too many people have had great success with grandparents helping raise the kids.
kattails
@WereBear: Well, 1066 was the Battle of Hastings which (ahem) the British lost to the Normans. I was in a medieval recreation society once and there was a t-shirt that said “1066: Not enough Saxon violence”.
;-)
Kayla Rudbek
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: there are patent analytics businesses out there that will go through the publicly available patents and applications and do the number crunching about activity in a given technology, etc. so they could tell you all about innovation by country and technology.
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: Why do you want to use “the”? Ukraine doesn’t want you to. The occupied territories are just that, occupied territories, but actually a fairly small area. In fairly general terms, “Eastern Ukraine” refers to the entire territory east of the river Dnipro. The area in which the Russians and Russian-backed forces are operating is, generally, “Donbas.”
WereBear
@Jeffro: Master of the Bleeding Obvious.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Good question. I don’t know the answer to this.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: I’m kidding, friend. Just poking you a bit. No more coffee for you!
So what is your favorite Christmas cookie? ?
ETA. My wife and I decided that we would occasionally torture our son by adding “The” to band names he liked. We would say, “Is that a song by The Massive Attack?” Just to rile him up. But he caught on to our game quickly.
WereBear
No. I don’t think that. Ryan is just like the rest of the greed-addled Libertarian-Bro hacks the Republicans bought for pennies on the dollar. They wanted willing shills and they got them.
That is their only feature.
Kayla Rudbek
@Kay: I remember reading Heinlein’s commentary about visiting the Soviet Union back in the 1960s and how the Soviets weren’t even replacing their population back then. Also remember reading The Women’s Decameron by a Soviet dissident woman about the same time, and seeing how much propaganda was wielded against the Soviets by their own leaders.
SiubhanDuinne
@Barbara:
Oh geez, is Kicky back?
(I guess one of the mods sent him to time-out.)
Magda in Black
@Brachiator:
Which would require them “thinking” they are somehow immune to the effects. Much like they seem to feel they’re immune to the effects of climate change.
They live in an odd alternate reality bubble.
Just thoughts runnin’ thru my head. Ain’t sayin’ I’m right. Just pondering.
debbie
@Matt McIrvin:
Not so. His approval rating has dropped from 45.5% at Inauguration to 41.4% now and disapproval has grown from 41.3% to 53.1%. Conservatives are opportunistically agreeing to go along because they can exploit the office for their own ends; that’s not the same thing as approval.
WereBear
@kattails: My bad, I was thinking 1215 and Magna Carta, but got the wrong date.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Thank you. I didn’t even see what he wrote today — just a couple of responses — but he was annoying as all fuck the other day when I had occasion to mix it up with him.
Magda in Black
@Kay:
Almost my entire condo complex is Eastern European immigrants. I hear a variety of different languages, and i rather like it. Far NW side Chicago and attached suburbs are heavily Eastern European, from right after the wall came down to very recent immigrants.
Many of my technicians (collision repair) are Polish.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: My question is why has the Republican party fallen in line with whatever T (Putin) wants.
Is it because:
1. Both Rs have the same goals
or is it because:
2. They are afraid of Putin
ETA: To me racism, the answer trotted out by many is not enough to answer these questions. Yes it may be a part of the answer but it does not answer everything.
Magda in Black
@schrodingers_cat:
Both.
The racism is a tool, not a goal.
debbie
@Brachiator:
I disagree. I think Putin’s longing for a return to the days when the Soviet Union could frighten the United States like they did during the missile crisis. I would agree he doesn’t want the same things that Khrushchev and others wanted for their country. Putin’s clearly more self-involved than his predecessors. Emperor, maybe?
Kathleen
@FlipYrWhig: You are mich kinder than I am about him, his hack blog and his commenter cesspool.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Very interesting and plausible speculation. The purity ponies love finding ways to love the old Soviet Union even though it no longer exists.
Yeah, but changing immigration policy into something blatantly racist and marginalizing nonwhite people again is a big deal and takes some savvy.
WaterGirl
@magurakurin: I have no idea who you are referring to here. Can you clue me in?
Immanentize
@WereBear:
Last night on our local public radio station, there was a show about the white supremasist origins of the US. There was this discussion about how Jefferson was a big “Saxonist” writing often about the superiority of the “Saxon race.” So too, it turns out, was Ralph Waldo Emerson, which depressed me.
Kay
John Kasich is apparently reinventing himself as some kind of reasonable centrist on guns, so know this- Kasich gave the gun lobby everything they demanded thru 2 terms.
He should be ashamed of himself for misleading people on his views. He’s lying.
Kathleen
@MomSense: Thank you. Good advice! Love Mavis.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: Dr. Jill Stein and Vermont Jesus.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: There can be no bipartisanship that helps T advance his goals, like cutting legal immigration, for example. I am glad that other than Ds like Manchin and Heitkamp and Donnelly all senate Ds are in agreement about that issue.
Brachiator
@debbie:
We found out that a lot of the Soviet threat was over-rated. Putin has to deal with massive internal weakness in Russia.
kattails
@WereBear: I figured something like that, but it was an excuse to sneak in an old joke, if you read it slowly–“Not enough Sax–on violence”.
Better go get some coffee and try to earn a living…
Jeffro
@schrodingers_cat: @debbie:
I think Putin’s aim is to cause chaos and weaken the US…at a minimum…and continue to press wherever, whenever he can get away with it.
I think the various GOP factions enabling Trumpov (and by extension abetting the Russians) didn’t fully think through how this would play out…they just saw like-minded authoritarians giving them a hand (and big bucks) and that’s why they allowed/allow it. They didn’t think they’d get caught and they certainly don’t fear the consequences.
Immanentize
@kattails:
Like David Bynes “Sex and Violins”
JPL
@Immanentize: Oh no! Not Emerson..
Kathleen
@aimai: I hope you have a newsletter also. I left when his hand wringing about lack of Dem purity and became Bern curious. Plus the Commenters.
WereBear
@Immanentize: We can’t expect people to so transcend their cultural environment that no one would have listened to them back then. Or we wouldn’t be where we are now.
WereBear
@kattails: And I did love the t shirt!
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
O/T, but I’m glad the Cat Came Back :-)
Kay
@Kayla Rudbek:
This is sort of silly and entirely anecdotal of course but I started to think about this a little differently when my son and his wife said they want to get out. Of the US. They’re serious. It’s not a political hissy fit. He’s (actually) sort of a cold person- he’s harsh, not emotional at all. He’s doing a straight up cost benefit and the US is not faring that well. I’m more conventional than they are so I’m making this lame appeal based my own fuzzy “patriotism” and this idea I have that they are “bailing” (I value loyalty) but I feel like I’m losing this argument on the merits.
Then I started to think what if that happened, because it isn’t 1820. People travel much more easily and he goes all over hell already for work. That’s a problem for authoritarian politics and politicians, right? That (certain) people CAN MOVE? You’d want to nip all that moving around in the bud.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t trust the Democrats to get this right. We shall see.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: They got it right last week. We have to keep up the fight and keep reminding them what is at stake.
ETA: Bob Menendez gets it. Did you see his speech on the Senate floor?
Magda in Black
@Kay:
A big beautiful wall, keeps people in, too.
( no I’m not a conspiracy theorist, just sayin’)
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The hell of it is that the people who can practically leave the US are the people who are the least likely to suffer, and would have the most political pull to keep things from getting worse. So leaving is really another form of FY,IGM. But beyond some point it’s hard to blame people.
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne:Thanks. Took a little sanity break. I did say that I would be back.
Immanentize
@JPL: Sadly, yes. It seems Ralph gave many speeches — and wrote articles — extolling the great superiority of the English and Anglo-Saxon “stock” as he referred to it.
This made the Kkkeebler Attorney General’s slip about Anglo-American Heritage even more historically insidious.
Gin & Tonic
@Jeffro: For those interested ,I can recommend the valedictory piece by Shaun Walker, long-time Moscow correspondent for The Guardian. Long, thoughtful and thought-provoking piece.
Immanentize
@WereBear:
But many people did. There was an interesting discussion about how Jefferson was constantly having to write letters to Europeans who challenged his racist views. There is a record that this issue was not so settled as we were taught.
ETA I should add, I generally agree. I am not a fan of artists biography for just this reason — people are products of so much stuff — cultural, biological, timing of birth, etc. But still, Emerson?!
germy
@Jeffro:
I agree. I think this comment hits the nail on the head.
Racism, a preference for oil (instead of renewables), the idea that the former soviet union is “open for business” like us.
Matt McIrvin
…Also, if someone is going to run there’s the question of where to run to. Many countries are not as far gone as the US, and some like Canada or New Zealand seem to be moving in generally good directions at the moment, but the danger of right-wing authoritarianism is global. It’s happening everywhere, and it’s probably only a matter of time before any given country has a run-in with the equivalent of Trumpism.
I think sometimes people sort of have an idea that if they move somewhere else, the local politics there will not be their problem and they can just ignore it.
Kayla Rudbek
@Magda in Black: the right wing here is thoroughly infected with the fundamentalist ideology that Jesus won’t let them destroy the world, and the right wing in Russia wants climate change in order to have winter access to sea ports and a dethawed Siberia.
Immanentize
@Magda in Black: I’ve always thought that a good suspense film could be made about a microcosmic of the fences keep people in too idea, in which a group of bad people take an entire gated community hostage (for seemingly overt reasons actually hiding covert ones).
Brachiator
@Kayla Rudbek:
Oil and gas can be viewed as separate industries. Even if oil lost value dramatically, Europe would need natural gas and Russia has massive amounts to export.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Until T came to power, United States (citizenry as well as the government) has been typically more welcoming of immigrants . I know at least two families of Indian origin who left New Zealand for the United States
ETA: I have met people from all over the world in my time here.
Matt McIrvin
@Immanentize: Because he’s a local guy, I was looking into the history of John Greenleaf Whittier, the poet and abolitionist who a lot of things are named after around here. Abolitionist, sounds like a cool guy! But I read a poem he wrote about our town–a big chunk of it goes on about the noble Anglo-Saxon Puritan stock heroically taking the place from the savage and murderous Indians.
Neldob
@germy: not to mention all the money that can be stuffed in preferred people’s pockets. Lots and lots of that.
Spanky
@Brachiator:
Uhhhhhhhm ….
WaterGirl
@Kay: On Friday night, Lawfare had a Special Emergency Podcast about the indictment. At least one of the 3 people on the show made that same point. They described the indictment as (in part) as a “call to arms for the American people” and discussed how the interference can no longer be denied or played down as some guy in a basement. They made the point that this was very clearly carried out by an “intelligence service” even if Putin was smart enough to run the money through his good buddy who is a famous chef billionaire.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
The lying scares me. It rattles me because like it or not it’s become the norm.
I keep thinking about Obama’s careful speech. Some of that was his temperament and some it was “he’s a lawyer” but there was such an effort to speak precisely. You got the sense that what this person says matters to him and maybe more importantly to US. The worse pundit analysis of Obama was “just words”. He is a person who believes words are REALLY important!
Now it’s just this blabbing bullshit. They’ll say anything. It’s hard to fight the sense of futility that comes with that.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: Though there was a lot of panic about illegal immigration during the Reagan era, he always made a big deal about the US being welcoming to legal immigrants, in a way that the right just doesn’t now. I think it was largely because one of his bases of support was immigrants from the Communist world–Southeast Asia particularly, and of course Cuba, and the few Russians and Eastern Europeans who could get in–who admired his staunch anti-Communism.
rikyrah
Peanut’s School had a party at a skating rink. I am now freezing, watching the kids skate around.
Magda in Black
@Immanentize:
As I recall, The Berlin Wall…..was a fence.
So, there’s precedent.
Also see : ” The Spy Who Came in from The Cold”
( im rereading LeCarre’)
gvg
@Kay: Maybe you have stated the reason russia is doing this without realizing it because it’s too obvious. Russia is manipulating the US into becoming more like Russia; racist, nationalistic, paranoid, isolationist etc. Russia has those tendencies more than we do and we have a stronger rival tradition, but our white conservatives do actually have a lot in common with the power structure in Russia. If this was able to work completely, we could reject our long standing allies and realign with Russia. Trumps been acting like that with his insults and indifference to NATO and the UN.
The only thing holding him back is that there really is not much support for going that far. It would be economic suicide too and plenty of people who think they are alligned with the GOP care to much about nice piles of money to go along with it.
This is why it was always stupid to worry about Obama’s religion. Even if he had been a secret Muslim, his election wouldn’t have changed anybody else’s religion. Trump can’t change how many American’s like being the wealthy west. However the anti NATO anti established allies is from what I can recall unique to Trump. Jeb wouldn’t and I don’t think Rubio nor Cruz would either. Romney in 2012 said Russia was our biggest enemy (was laughed at for being so out of date remember?) If Rubio or Cruz had had a news story about how they dissed our long standing ally fill in the blank, they would have reacted with excuses and immediate make up attention. they would not have ignored the criticism I think.
Brachiator
@Immanentize:
There was a view held by many in Europe that prolonged living in. America reduced “vitality.” In his responses, Jefferson was saying that white people were A-OK, but Native Americans and black people, well …
Immanentize
@Matt McIrvin:
In our country’s original census (Act of 1790), there were five categories:
Free White Male over the age of 15
Free White Male 15 or younger
Free White Female
Slave
Other Free Person (by sex and race)
schrodingers_cat
Adding to comment #278, especially after the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act.
Van Buren
@different-church-lady: i admire your optimism that there will be sentient life on the planet then.
Kay
@gvg:
That I would buy. That’s a goal.
Immanentize
@Magda in Black:
Sex Pistols
WereBear
@Immanentize: It was an enjoyable film based on a novel by Robert Crais, Hostage.
Jeffro
@Gin & Tonic: Bookmarked for later reading, thank you!
Immanentize
@WereBear:
Damn! All my best ideas were/will be/have been stolen by time travelers!! (I’ll check it out, thanks).
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Nope. I will check to see if it is on YouTube or elsewhere.
Jeffro
Btw, the NYT does have a good piece up where left, independent (though still right-leaning-argh!) and right historical scholars were asked to evaluate all 45 presidents from best to worst. Even the independents and Republican-leaning scholars have Trumpov very near the bottom. Lots of other interesting info as well.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: I remember when Peter Brimelow’s book “Alien Nation” came out in the 1990s and all these newspapers gave it polite analytical reviews, like this was an interesting new strain in mainstream conservatism–it was this old-fashioned racist-nativist screed, about how there should be a total moratorium on immigration for some period of time, and non-white people were making a world with no place for his little blond kid (note, Brimelow was himself an immigrant, but he was white and British).
And it shocked me to see this POV being discussed, because I was used to even the American right being relatively pro-immigration, though they did often draw a distinction between undocumented Mexicans or Haitians and everyone else. This was just so much more radical.
And now that attitude toward immigration, that we need to shut the legal stuff down or cut it way back for some nebulous cultural-protection reason, is the Trumpian mainstream. Brimelow himself just got more and more obviously white-supremacist/alt-right as time went on; dude’s really a straight-up Nazi of the Anglo-American variety.
Kay
I would add that self interest plays a role here, too. If your job is to cover elections and you missed just what we know so far about the 2016 election then you didn’t succeed at “covering” that election.
It;s a counterfactual of course but we’re looking at a very different political environment for Mr. Trump if the “debate” had included Russia helping Donald Trump win. That there is a FACTOR.
Clinton did her best but for some reason it wasn’t picked up. She was the Secretary of State! This is in her wheelhouse! Why was she ignored? Say there’s 100 “top” government people who would know a lot about Russian aims and such. The SOS would be in that group, would they not? I’m baffled why a real estate and scam businessman and reality tv star was treated as more credible on Russian interference than a former Senator and SoS.
MomSense
@Kay:
Meanwhile parents everywhere tell their children to use their words.
Immanentize
@Kay:
Really? Baffled? Can’t think of any reason? Matt Lauer?
WereBear
@Immanentize: It’s not an entire gated community, but the fact that it is a sealed environment becomes some major plot-shaping elements.
See also Robert B. Parker’s Trouble in Paradise, where the gated community is an actual island.
J R in WV
@Magda in Black:
…Far NW side Chicago and attached suburbs are heavily Eastern European, from right after the wall came down to very recent immigrants.
Many of my technicians (collision repair) are Polish.
Kay
@Immanentize:
Ugh. The Mitt Romney comparison. Clinton was a carpetbagger who should just STFU and go knit but Mitt Romney is a statesman returning to glory.
My goodness. Doesn’t get much more blatant than that. What does Trump say? “Out of central casting”.
germy
“The Americans are very impressionable people and they see what they want to see,” declared Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, who bankrolled and helped direct the propaganda attack, in response to being indicted. “If they want to see the devil — let them.”
The Golux
@NotMax:
I’d love to see a mock twitter account consisting of Hitler’s reactions to events of the last days, written in the TSG’s tweet style.
SiubhanDuinne
@Magda in Black:
Robert Frost, Mending Wall
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@schrodingers_cat:
I know for a fact that McConnell has a huge skeleton in his closet, and that there is a nonzero chance that Russia has photographic evidence of it – he has a known history of liking chicken.
Magda in Black
@Immanentize:
Another person who has a verse pop into your head…for every situation?
Itsa curse…?
Kay
@Immanentize:
I think we’re getting closer to the truth here:
They were and are “skeptical” about the Russia story so they made a decision that no one in the public needed to know anything about it.
Now that it’s determined that Russia interfered the bar for information is higher- we will only hear about it if there’s “collusion”
Other than that? Gosh, they decided years ago! Nothingburger!
Magda in Black
@SiubhanDuinne:
And another verse thinker ☺️
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Did Reagan have INS check people’s papers on buses and trains? Because that’s happening right now.
germy
Magda in Black
@J R in WV:
Exactly. You had to be able to repair anything, with what was available.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Why was it in the Republican party’s and prestige media’s interest that T be elected President. What is in it for the Vichy Times. Are they victims of blackmail or is it something else.
ETA: Either could have scuttled his candidacy but they didn’t. They aided him instead.
NotMax
@kttails
Should you have or know any history averse kiddies, a clever, appetite whetting entry into the subject of English history is the slim volume 1066 and All That. Say, ages 13-ish and up. Not to say it isn’t equally fun for adults, the intended audience, as well. Appears to be still in print.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Is that the guy behind VDARE? Tanton’s acolytes always get called on PBS and NPR as immigration “experts”.
Kay
Just waiting for a smoking gun. A billion dollar political campaign coverage industry and they see themselves as waiting for someone else to uncover something. Has to be “collusion” too! No coverage or inquiry unless and until there is an actual arrest.
That makes them identical to the public. We don’t know anything either. Except this is not our job, and it is theirs.
Nothing Can Be Done.
Baud
Why no President’s Day post?
Oh….right….
mai naem mobile
@Kay: you keep bringing this up. I honestly don’t think anybody thought Dolt45 was going to win. I think a lot of stuff Hilary said was ignored because he was more entertaining to cover and she was covering the ‘boring’ and ‘unsexy’ stuff. The top echelon of American reporters,especially broadcast journos,are for the most part lazy. That was part of the problem with the Obamacare coverage.Healthcare is hard. Russian troll farms, Cambridge analytica stuff, redistricting, and voter suppression is hard and unsexy.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: Not to my knowledge.
And the whole attitude was different. Reagan was pretty racist, but if someone was coming here from an oppressive or war-torn place, they were clearly someone who was seeking freedom and probably politically sympathetic! Someone you want to have here. Now, there’s this idea that refugees are probably fake refugees, terrorists or radicals in disguise who are bringing their scary ideology with them. Contaminated–keep them out. Like it’s in the blood.
9/11 probably had a lot to do with changing the attitude in the electorate.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: The very same. It’s amazing how blatantly racist they are, spreading work by pseudoscientific racists like Rushton and Lynn.
No Drought No More
It just now occurred to me that Hunter Thompson was a true American political poet-and-prophet. Still, there wasn’t enough acid, even in his world, to have foreseen a Trump presidency in a vision. That noted, he would have understood it all perfectly…
rikyrah
@Kay:
Keep telling us the truth, Kay.
Magda in Black
@No Drought No More:
I’ve been meaning to reread Mr. Thompson
Immanentize
@Magda in Black: a blessing and a curse. But I like it…
NotMax
@Magda in Black
Read it? (
slaps forehead
) I thought you were supposed to smoke it.:)
Immanentize
@The Golux:
Adolph at Mar a Lago. Excellent idea! Maybe we can get Amir to do German translations??
Immanentize
@Kay:
What do they think a smoking gun looks like?
Russians actively worked on Trump’s campaign for Trump. Maybe as a silent partner, but still a partner.
Smoking gun. Emails? Benghazi? Is this the friggin attitude they took on those stories?
opiejeanne
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Can you put up a link to the wedding announcement? It’s underlined when I click on it, but nothing happens.
Magda in Black
@Magda in Black:
….helps to smoke “it” while reading it…..I’ve been told….
cwmoss
@satby: The kid is almost certain to be a monster, just like his parents.
Heidi Mom
@Matt McIrvin: The “we’ll always have The Shire” philosophy.
Aleta
@Kay: The paragraph you quoted is the conclusion to Martin and Haeberman’s piece. What kind of conclusion is that –“both his admirers and detractors found themselves in agreement (about chaos)” ? It’s not even true. His ‘detractors’ (people who read the indictment) found so much more than chaos to focus on. The conclusion of the piece is an outright manipulation that tells people what to believe. To me it’s a sign that NYT will be a dangerous opponent to the exposure and justice we hope for.
Ruckus
@debbie:
If he had never opened his burger hole about President Obama he’d still not have earned an ounce of respect. He’d still be the same worse than useless fat fuck that we all have to suffer through daily, waiting for him to make everything worse because worse is the only direction he knows.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Since the president takes an oath to faithfully execute the laws of the United States, not moving forward with the sanctions would be an impeachable offense. In a sane world, that is.
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: I think it’s a defensive move. “Maybe if we give them this one little thing, the possible tsunami that is brewing for gun control will be pacified.”
schrodingers_cat
What does Putin have on the owner of the New York Times. They drove the emailz story, day after day, week after week to the exclusion of everything else. Maggie H is T’s favorite scribe, his mouth piece. They wanted to put a Nazi friendly person on the editorial page. What gives?
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
His delusion is total and he has no idea what a hint is. He’s so engrossed in his own bullshit that he believes it. I could understand this in a man with such an advanced length of self imposed ignorance but he’s been this way all of his life.
afanasia
@Immanentize: Nope.https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/02/17/lets-call-ukraine-by-its-proper-name/#260980ce5d8b
Immanentize
@afanasia:
Nice,. Thanks!
ETA. Still, oddly, Ukraine means Borderland? I was thinking what if the USA decided it would be called Colony, but the Brits refused to drop the “The.” PS. I Love learning new little things like this every day!
afanasia
@rikyrah: Get some skates! Even if you don’t like to skate, you can stick close to the kids – after 5 minutes on the they’re radiating an enormous amount of heat.
Aleta
@mai naem mobile: Like you say, the media ignored Hilary’s policy stuff. But they didn’t ignore her. They went after viewership from stories that exposed Clinton as secretly bad. Untrustworthy, greedy, a women to be scorned. Just as covering T’s outrageous behavior was great for ratings. Republicans and the fake newsers knew the media would go for money over ethics.
Origuy
@Kay: Don’t overlook the effect on the Russian population. Russian elections may be a sham, but public opinion still has a part to play. By destabilizing the US and Europe, Putin can point to them and tell the Russian people, “See, democracy isn’t all that great after all. It leads to weak and unstable government. Better to have a strong man in place.” A lot of Russians still long for the tsars, especially in the Orthodox Church.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
How are those two things different?
WaterGirl
If you want to know what Russia gets out of this, try watching one of Preet’s podcasts on Stay Tuned – I am pretty sure it was this one: The Death of Sergei Magnitsky (with Bill Browder).
He explains that what Putin is doing here is what he/they did in Russia years ago, and they are trying to propagate that here in the US. Learning about the death of Sergei Magnitsky was horrifying, but that podcast gave some pretty good insights into Putin’s goals here. I should listen to it again now that I have read the indictment.
Aleta
@rikyrah: It’s nice to think of that scene, kids on ice.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I think Vlad saw in drumpf what we see in him. And they saw that they could use that to sow chaos in their mortal enemy. A lot of chaos. And it’s worked. That chaos has rendered us basically powerless in the world. Vlad couldn’t render our military powerless, he couldn’t purchase the power he wanted because he’s stolen all the money and isn’t giving any of it up. It doesn’t really matter what specific goals he had in mind at the start, he got the biggest prize of them all, the one every Russian leader has been trying to get since Stalin, he gets to tear down our flag and plant his on the top of the heap. In his mind and quite possibly in reality he’s moved the US way down in the eyes of the rest of the world. And it really hasn’t cost him jack.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
Because “create mayhem” indicates or implies there is no goal outside of mayhem, and I don’t believe that.
This is pretty organized “mayhem”, I must say. All of the Putin policy themes during the election are the same as Trump’s.
If it were “mayhem” or “chaos” wouldn’t we see some light between the GOP policy agenda and that of Putin? The “Mayhem” only spins hard Right. Weirdly there’s no “chaos” that veers Left. Straight, hard Right.
WaterGirl
@Kay: If you listen to the podcast I mentioned in #347, I think it will connect the dots for you. He spells it out pretty clearly.
Aleta
@Ruckus: Exactly, a way to destroy power. Makes me think of how Shakespeare showed it, how chaos is created from lies or conjured illusions or treachery or delusions. Then either power shifts or sanity is restored.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Putin has money. Ryan can be purchased, and for pocket change.
Don’t make it any more complicated than it is. Remember money is god. People complain about Pat Robinson not actually being a man of god. Maybe not your god but he sure is about his. And his god’s name is money.
Matt McIrvin
@debbie: He’d gotten down to the mid-high thirties by December; ever since the tax bill passed, his approval has been rising, I think because conservatives saw him actually for once accomplishing something they wanted. He’s not back up to Inauguration Day levels yet, which were near parity. I’m hoping the complete loathing of him by liberals and many moderates means he has a low ceiling.
Aleta
Here’s a Russian goal, courtesy of Stein. (From Think Progress last year)
Matt McIrvin
What this thread reveals about the “what does Russia want?” question is that their support for Trump was really, really overdetermined. There are just so many reasons. Trump is himself ideologically sympathetic to Putin; he’s easy to manipulate through financial connections, his admiration of macho strongmen, and his sheer dopiness; he’s doing things that favor Russian geostrategic dominance and weaken the position of the US in the world; he’s in deep with fossil-fuel interests that are the backbone of Russia’s economy; turning the US into a global embarrassment strengthens Putin’s position in domestic politics. Putin gets a whole lot out of it.
Matt McIrvin
@Aleta: She sounds a lot like one of our former regular commenters!
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Have authorities detailed the money trail to Ryan?
sukabi
@OzarkHillbilly: that would be the team of Sanders and Stein
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve been thinking a lot lately, that it’s quite disconcerting the way we were able to tell Bill was a Russian troll, and would taunt about him being paid by Putin, long long before we ever suspected it might actually be true.
Bill would mystify the ‘eff out of me — just the sheer “why here?” factor was crazy-making. Daily Kos, sure. Facebook, of course. But here?
stinger
@schrodingers_cat: Porque no los tres?
Ruckus
@Kay:
John Kasich, a republican, lying? No, say it isn’t so.
OTOH, this really isn’t news is it? It isn’t to me and I only lived in OH for 11 yrs. and that ended 13 yrs ago.
He was a sack of dung then and hasn’t changed in any way, shape or form.
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s actually pretty simple.
What’s in it for them is that woman won’t be president. And BS and JS would be lost. (Oh wait!) But I’d bet that’s it, HRC wouldn’t be president, nothing more, no further thought, no introspection on who would. She wouldn’t, everything else will sort itself out. I don’t think their plain is working so well.
gvg
@different-church-lady: Now that is a good point. It has to mean their were a LOT of them with time to spare and money because we know we aren’t a big fish blog. I seem to recall a few others who really seemed possibly Russian, or maybe just amazingly ignorant of American backgrounds. There have even been a few odd ones lately.
However even some hardcore Righties have hit me that way. Dinesh D’souza for one “accusing” Obama of being anti-Colonial. Still don’t get why he wasn’t laughed off the stage then.
No One You Know
@Magda in Black: Hemp: saving trees and making great paper since 1524. Maybe earlier!
Denali
The main goal of the Russians has been achieved. The sanctions have not been put in placed. It was all about the sanctions.
CindyH
@Denali: agree