I don’t know if Andrew McCabe was a shining beacon of apolitical law enforcement in the FBI, and it sure looks like a dick move to fire him a day before he could collect a full pension, but this part of his statement made me roll my eyes:
[…] The big picture is a tale of what can happen when law enforcement is politicized, public servants are attacked, and people who are supposed to cherish and protect our institutions become instruments for damaging those institutions and people.
The FBI has always been at least a somewhat politicized institution, and their role in the 2016 election from the top down was to damage Hillary Clinton. My guess is that Comey’s memo and the New York field office’s leaks were probably more calculated to weaken the inevitable Clinton presidency than they were to elect Trump, but who knows. All I know is that these guys wanted to play a high-stakes game and now they’re getting fucked. I can’t muster a hell of a lot of sympathy for them, since their actions had some really shitty consequences for all of us.
MJS
Even after being fired, he can’t bring himself to point the finger at one political party in particular. The “big picture” is that this is what Republicans fucking do. Not anyone else. Republicans.
SalterWobchak
For me the big story here is that Trump pressured Sessions to launch an IG investigation of the FBI, with the intent of smearing perceived political opponents, and then to fire McCabe. And Sessions bent to that, because he’s probably assuming that if he didn’t he’d be the next one to be fired by Twitler. Hell, he probably will be fired soon anyway.
None of it is good for the country.
SalterWobchak
Isn’t McCabe a lifelong Republican himself? The whole thing is nuts.
rikyrah
Phucking with someone’s pension is a big tell.
Remember the Governor in Alabama?
Everything was cool as phuck, until he tried to take away that State Trooper’s pension.
Then, it went downhill so fast, his head didn’t have time to spin.
Betty Cracker
True, and this needs to be said again and again. The Fox News framing — that the FBI was undermining Trump — is becoming the default framing, and it’s bullshit.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: The average person who isn’t following this story will understand that firing someone two days before they can collect their pension is wrong and that there’s something else going on. It’s a stupid thing to do because it changes the story from “FBI agent fired for cause” to “FBI vindictively fired.”
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: What did you end up having for dinner last night? Hope it was easy to make and delicious.
debit
@Yarrow: I hope she made something requiring a timer, and as it came close to being done, she muttered to her food, “Tick tock, motherfuckers.”
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Jonathan Turley is on cnn defending the McCabe firing and attacking Comey, saying he’s a leaker and mishandled classified material. .
Man, he really drank all the orange koolaid.
Bobby Thomson
Yes, tarring all members of an institution as equally culpable is completely valid. Also, too., Mark Felt was just an authoritarian Nixon enabler. P.S. I am not a crackpot.
Bobby Thomson
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Turley’s just a partisan right wing Republican. He signed onto the bullshit challenge to the ACA based on the idea that Congress intended for the exchanges to fail.
Baud
Theyre trying to weaken the obstruction case. I guess we’ll just have to focus on the money laundering and treason instead.
Baud
@Bobby Thomson: Oh wow. That’s is discrediting.
rikyrah
He attends an elite university but lives in a trailer with no heat or sewer hookups
By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times
HAYWARD, Calif. – Ismael Chamu wakes up at sunrise, shivering in the drizzly morning’s chill. He rises from the floor of a small trailer, where he sleeps wedged next to his younger brother and an arm’s length from his two sisters, who share the only bed.
As he cooks breakfast, the smell of scrambled eggs and ripe sewage combine. There is no sewer hookup so when the storage tank is full, as it is this day, everyone holds on until they can get to a nearby gas station.
“Hurry up so you guys can eat,” Ismael, 21, tells his sisters Jocelyn, 14, and Yazmin, 17.
At 7:40 a.m., he shepherds his sisters to high school, a 30-minute walk through gang territory in Hayward, just south of Oakland. At the school gate, he hugs them goodbye.
Then he heads to his classes at the University of California, Berkeley, the nation’s most elite public research university.
Ismael looks the part of a typical college student, with his backpack, black jeans and stylish fade haircut. But he bears extraordinary burdens.
He’s one of tens of thousands of California college students slammed by the state’s affordable housing crunch.
Ismael constantly scrambles to find shelter and enough food for himself and his siblings while working a campus job, leading a student club and trying to earn a bachelor’s degree in sociology.
In the last 18 months, he has slept on couches and floors, in trailers and attics. Since November, he and his 20-year-brother Edward have rented the 20-foot-by-8-foot mobile home, parked in a Hayward driveway. His sisters joined them in January after their parents fell on hard times in the Central Valley and were forced to live in their car.
But Hayward has outlawed living in residential trailers. The family is due to be evicted Tuesday. And so the scramble will begin again.
“You do what you gotta do,” Ismael says gamely.
Financial aid covers tuition for the state’s growing number of low-income students, but they mostly are on their own when it comes to paying for places to live. Many UC campuses are in some of the priciest real-estate markets.
Elizabelle
Clean out that nest of rats in the NY FBI Field Office. They are not above the law. And they endanger our democracy. Fire them. Retire them. Get them gone. (I realize Trump will do nothing, but it’s something to be done, pronto, once we have a better POTUS. Like President Nancy Pelosi. Let’s make that happen.)
Amir Khalid
@MJS:
McCabe most likely believes in an idealised version of the Republican party, which has been taken over by a cabal of the corrupt and inept.
JMG
McCabe’s statement indicates he has never read a biography of J. Edgar Hoover, or maybe even ever heard of him, despite Hoover’s name being on McCabe’s former office building.
bystander
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Turley must be dreaming of a SupCt appointment.
MattF
McCabe broke the rules in the Code of the Schoolyard. I won’t say that’s beneath contempt– contempt is a pretty good response.
Lavocat
Well said.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: I read that last weekend. Amazing kid, and family. Good on the LA Times for highlighting the case.
And I think the LATimes should get rid of its reader comments feature. It’s ugliness and vitriol, and useless, really. Some readers might have a meaningful comment, but too much sewage to wade through, and no thank you.
ETA: Think I will write to them about it. Don’t know if they have an ombudsman….
Betty Cracker
@Yarrow: Enchiladas! Not quite as non-labor intensive as I was thinking, but they turned out well! Bookmarked that thread for next time I’m out of dinner ideas — lots of great suggestions! :)
Elizabelle
@SalterWobchak: Are any senior government executives safe from a Trump witch hunt? It seems not.
Treason, on yet another level.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
MattF
@Betty Cracker: I resisted the impulse to reply ‘roast chicken’– it occurred to me that I eat a lot of roast chicken.
debbie
@rikyrah:
Absolutely. It shows Trump for what he is, and I look forward to our country fucking with his.
MattF
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Illustrating what ‘beneath contempt’ entails.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Also that IGO.
eyelessgame
Yeah. I note the tell in that eyerolling sentence – the sudden disappearance of actors in the wash of passive voice.
The only way to maintain our reputation as a nonpartisan, independent institution is by equally blaming both the party that has declared war on law enforcement and the party that hasn’t.
Elizabelle
@debbie: What is IGO?
Kay
I’m curious if the fact that Trump and all his low quality hires are such petty assholes will start to resonate politically.
They can’t change that, you know. They’re mean-spirited assholes to the core. I know there’s a belief on the Democratic side that (base) conservatives love asshole authoritarians and there’s truth to that, but we already knew Trump’s base would follow him into hell. What about regular people? At some point does the overwhelming atmosphere of meaness get to be too much?
They go out of their way to be assholes. They are STILL publicly humiliating Tillerson and they fired him! This is what they are.
I keep going back to what Trumpster voters (supposedly) said about Lamb- “he’s a nice young man” – does pure mean-spiritied nastiness wear well? I don’t think it does.
Quinerly
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: I could be wrong and probably should Google before I post this but need to step away from all things political this AM. Pretty sure Stormy’s new atty (and he will be on AM Joy this morning) was Turley’s research assistant in law school (rather a big deal). Turley was on MSNBC talking about how brilliant he is….plus, Stormy’s atty also cut his teeth doing oppo research work for Rahm Emanuel. He’s tough.
Ok, I did Wiki him…right about the Turley and Rahm connection. He’s brilliant….plus a racecar driver: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Avenatti
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
The President is working on discrediting and threatening the police agency charged with investigating him.
The thugs in the Trump White House want to send a message- go along or we take your pension. Oh, by the way? The attorney general of the United States is now leading this effort.
It isn’t holding. We just dropped down a coupla more rungs. That next net just broke.
MattF
@Kay: Trump is comfortable with assholes, asshole-ness is a basic part of his own behavioral repertoire. Some people think that’s a good thing, but I think that for most people it’s a bad thing. You’re not going to change people’s minds about that– the hope is that the ‘not a good thing’ side can be motivated to get out and vote.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@rikyrah: @Kay: The average working person is going to be shocked at McCabe’s firing being hurried along so his pension can be taken away. That will feel personal
matt
@Betty Cracker: they’ll happily lie and lie and lie and say it over and over and over until people are tired of debunking them. we’re living in the People’s Temple.
Kay
I get that the FBI has huge problems and I agree that they worked to a certain extent to damage Clinton. I have a problem though. They’re the only national police agency we have and if they’re threatened into submission that means no one is checking the thugs in the Trump Administration. So pick your poison. As a practical matter they’re all you have.
Kay
@MattF:
I’m not talking about “changing people’s minds”. I’m talking about people getting tired of what is an overwhelming atmosphere of pure vindictive nastiness in that administration. Because they’re not succeeding in appearing “positive”- they never say anything positive and if they do it’s overwhelmed by one or another of them expressing their actual personality and character.
All of those warm and fuzzy moments you see in a normal administration? NONE of those with these people. You can’t get way from them either! They never fucking shut up! Trump could have done NOTHING else but ride on the economy and play golf but he’s such a nasty piece of work he can’t stop attacking people. None of them can. Kelly is as bad as Trump is.
Bailey
Reminds me of a favorite movie quote: “The DA framed me. Not knowing I was guilty!”
The idea that the FBI, top to bottom, was trying to dismantle poor innocent Hilary Clinton is laughable. As though she did nothing to invite federal scrutiny. As though her husband did nothing to result in Lynch having to recuse herself.
We are partially in this mess because of some incredibly stupid political decisions, that were not made by the FBI.
Quinerly
For those not watching Joy…breaking news: https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-lawyer-its-time-to-fire-robert-mueller
debit
@Bailey: Welcome to Pie City. Population: You.
Bailey
@debit:
Welcome to Dumbfuckistan. Population: You.
Kay
@MattF:
It’s a contrast. It doesn’t have to be made explicit. There’s the decent person and then there’s these assholes. No one has to say it, and Lamb didn’t say it. It just is :)
Cermet
@rikyrah: How add this to 90% of all students that get “free tuition” even at Ivory league schools. That is, besides food and board, they are on the hook for lab fee’s and supplies/books. Why most rich schools, despite offering “full” tuition” can’t get many disadvantage students to attend. A few (MIT) does offer some money for board and some money for supplies but this is the exception and often used by wealther students since there are very few really poor students. Tragic that the gov doesn’t help considering the school is providing the tuition.
I don’t care about the FBI getting fucked over: First, good! They have ignored white terrorism forever in this country and still do. Second, most are right wingers and will overlook this or just ‘forget it” as soon as a dem is president. Third, the top people certainly did hurt Clinton with the leaks and email bull$hit – so, again, fuck them. Finally, they have been a rightwing group relative to most liberal groups and always manage to attack them while giving a free ride to fasist militia groups.
Elizabelle
@Bailey: Fuck off.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bailey:
Yes, absolutely, because being born female and later marrying a Clinton are both federal offenses.
Quinerly
I’m thinking Trump will fire Mueller next weekend….just before The 60 Minutes Stormy interview airs.
Elizabelle
Ignore the troll. Bailey is not here for any reason but to derail the conversation.
I plead guilty. And: encore: Fuck off Bailey.
Bailey
@MattF:
I’d say, judging from my own social media observations, that the people who voted for Trump aren’t fazed by this at all and consider it a “good” thing, indeed. It may be a hella lift to get those otherwise not inclined to vote out there, even on something as morally indecent as this.
Elizabelle
@Quinerly: But can Trump fire Mueller?
I hope you’re wrong. But way to divert the shiny object MSM from the massive anti-gun march planned for next Saturday.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Sorry, I was referring to the Inspector General’s Office.
ETA: I have to let you know how much I love your posts, veering from the lyrical to a well-timed, “Fuck off.” Thank you for your service!
Cermet
@Bailey: Then name anything Hillary was guilty of that warranted an FBI witch hunt? If you rehash thugs lie’s, then we know you have nothing.
Kay
I myself lost quite a bit of faith in the FBI when they couldn’t catch the abortion clinic bomber who was happily camping for 2 years, and picking up supplies, so once again I find myself in a position where I just feel like I knew the human weaknesses in “our institutions” and priced that in.
Apparently the whole country was much more confident than I EVER was. I don’t have another national police agency to compare them to, in fact, I don’t have another national police agency at all, so here I am, back to where I started :)
To me saying the FBI is flawed is true, but it was always true and if there were a huge group of people who didn’t know that I’m sorry their dreams have been crushed. You were never safe as houses. You’re less so now because the President and the Attorney General are thugs. So take that in and adjust your expectations.
Baud
@Elizabelle: Betty Cracker mentioned yesterday that there was an uptick in social media of people attacking Dems from the left. Guess we are seeing the spillover.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Has Putin unleashed the leftie anti-D kraken?
Bailey
@OzarkHillbilly:
What? You are displaying some true Ozark intelligence there. “Later marrying a Clinton?” Where does that even come in?
I’m used to the chorus of “nothingburger” but perhaps its time to realize that in a political system of prosecutorial discretion, it would not be hard to find at least as many prosecutors who would have moved on Clinton’s email server as those who wouldn’t. It’s created quite a divide, wouldn’t you say? And being married to a Clinton wasn’t a crime (where do you even get that?) but having Clinton corner Lynch in private conversation during an investigation makes a recusal required.
How did that all work out? Nothingburger?
Elizabelle
@Kay: I agree. There is nothing kind or decent about the Trump administration. Those who continue to support him are the Good Germans who enabled Hitler and the Nazis. It’s sad, but true.
schrodingers_cat
Meanwhile, Boris in Petersberg seems to have completely disappeared.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
You give Sessions too much credit.
hueyplong
These threads read like a checklist of Trump diversionary shots:
Nancy Pelosi must go (the nearly always misogynistic demonization + divide-and-conquer) .
McCabe is dirty, too (blame the victim + discredit a key Mueller witness)
Crooked FBI (discredit one of the few institutions remaining to stop Trump in context of servile GOP)
Gin up anti-Sessions feeling for firing McCabe (so that Trump can fire Sessions next week)
With Mueller closing in, Trump has to make some kind of play, and they’re dumb enough to telegraph it. It’s something like, weather the storm by axing Mueller and others while the country– and the opposition– are divided enough not to be able to present a united front against him.
I hope the odds are against this plan working, but its chances are better than zero and he’s got Putin, the entire GOP, and a pair of national-in-scope TV empires (Fox, Sinclair) ready to play along for reasons strong enough that they’ll be willing to see it through.
.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
Quinerly
@Elizabelle: Don’t want to get into a round robin about “can” or mechanics of how a firing can be accomplished. My opinion is Trump will try anything to divert attention from 3/25 Stormy interview. If he just fires him…whether he can or cannot legally do it…it certainly will divert attention.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
Yes, the version where you stick to dogma and never, ever admit in public what you think about the [Insert Slur Here].
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Also, calling trump a thug gives us thugs a bad name. Real thugs like me have ethics.
Belafon
Yeah, I figure the actions by Comey and others were misogyny, just to make sure that everyone understood the men would be in charge.
And our reactions to Comey’s and McCabe’s firings are not about them, it’s about why Trump is doing it and what it does to the particular positions those two held. He fired them because he was petty. And I’m not sure how you write a law that says “can’t fire someone for pettiness.”
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: It would appear so. No matter. We are winning elections in deep red areas. That’s what’s important. Let’s keep doing that.
Bailey
@Cermet:
I know that you will not admit this, but transmitting “secret” and “top secret” communication outside government channels may be investigated as a federal crime. This is by statute.
Or did you think David Petraeus was also wrongly investigated?
Honus
@Bailey: please name one action she took to invite FBI scrutiny.
Elizabelle
@Baud: Good point.
Happy O’Saturday there.
Kay
I feel like this theme comes from some Greenwaldian frame that goes “well, you never liked the FBI BEFORE”
True. Still true. It isn’t about “trusting” them or “hypocrisy”. It’s not a campaign. I’m not voting “FBI”. It’s just that they’re the police agency and I have some concerns about lawlessness in the Trump Administration. If you have a suggestion on a better police agency I’m open to ideas!
It isn’t really about intellectual consistency. I’m not overly fond of fireman, I don’t worship them in some “yay for the first responders” way- it’s just that my house is on fire.
Bobby Thomson
@Cermet: @Kay: mix and Bailey are closet Wilmerbros.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bailey:
I understand you’re a little slow but it will come to you.
and impossible to find the # of prosecutors and federal agencies who investigated the e-mail practices of Colin Powell and Condi Rice.
Is it all coming into focus yet?
Chyron HR
@Bailey:
Buddy, it’s over. You won the 2016 election. The country and possibly the planet will be destroyed by the morbidly obese, orange-skinned, sundowning instrument of Bernie’s holy wrath. All will suffer for failing to recognize His divininty. Congratulations.
Quinerly
@Quinerly: Daily Beast has now changed their headline. You see the change when you click the above link.
Bailey
@Honus:
Violation of 18 U.S. Code § 1924
Bailey
@Chyron HR:
I didn’t win jack shit. But clinging to a losing candidate sure got us far, didn’t it? Continuing to make excuses now will reap even further rewards in the future.
Cermet
@Bailey: LOL: Besides degrading one of our best people here, you use of foul words is just childishness. I work with both a high level clearance and with people with far more involved levels and know the rules very well. That server of Hillary was legal and not in any way something not permitted. Also, if someone sends you anything classified, you are not at fault in any legal sense. What secret or top secret did she send that she was responsible for – NO one has ever said she did that. The highest level that was sent to her was classified (a joke level.) As for back classifying a few as secret after the fact, she has zero legal liability for that and anyone with knowledge in classification rules knows this – the sender alone is responsible when using an open system and NEVER knowingly sends secret – ever via unsecured systems. You are showing ignorance on this topic yet posted on it. That is just being stupid. That said, I have no issue with you making shit up but attacking posters with that language is showing you are both a troll and ill mannered.
Bailey
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ll try to explain it to you real slow.
1. Neither used their own server. Full stop.
2. Rice appears to have not used email at all, so not sure what you’re talking about there.
3. State Department guidelines changed and codified after both of their tenures in office.
Just stop this absurd defense now. It’s incorrect and embarrassing that you’re trying to hide behind this.
Kay
@Bobby Thomson:
So much of Greenwaldianism is “hypocrisy!”. It’s weird because we’re not that powerful, right? My “endorsing’ the FBI just wouldn’t mean that much, even if I did it, which I’m not. I’m just a regular person. It’s not like I issue a statement of support for the FBI v Trump and anything happens.
I will say as a working person I think pulling his pension is petty bullshit and typical of low quality hires like Trump.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bailey: Yep, r…..e…..a…..l s…..l…..o…..w.
WereBear
@Kay: I’m surprised they pardon the Thanksgiving turkey.
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: I started reading a book called The Subversives, which manages to give the history of both the FBI and the UC Berkeley, including free speech movement. I made it to around 1962 when I got diverted. This is just to affirm that without a doubt, the FBI was extremely politicized, but there WAS an effort to depoliticize it after Hoover, when the extent of FBI surveillance of the anti-war movement became clear. It’s just a constant struggle because law enforcement tends to attract people who by their nature are authoritarian and comfortable with the idea of using power to achieve political ends.
Bailey
@Cermet:
LOL. Do you need some smelling salts for your lightheadedness?
You’re either lying or stupid. This is an absurd claim easily rebutted by the OIG report.
That’s not what Comey’s detailed report showed at all. Would it kill you to keep up with the facts?
You have demonstrated some profound ignorance on the matter and have stated things that are completely at odd with the facts reported on the record. Have any explanation for that? I’ve provided links to my work. Have you?
Bailey
@OzarkHillbilly:
So other than display you’re absurdly slow wpm typing skills, have you actually been able to refute any facts? No? Okay then.
Aimai
@OzarkHillbilly: im sad that because I pied bailey i cant see your response either?
Cermet
The FBI investigated the use by Hillary of her separate and private email and found no violation of any law (the other parties error-ed in sending her those emails; she never generated any classified information – so, you are wrong); I guess, you think you know more than the FBI on federal law? LOL. OK, you are just an embarrassment to yourself and your idea on this subject. Ignoring you is the best option.
Baud
@Cermet: The only way to win is not to play.
Bailey
@Cermet:
Petraeus didn’t generate any top secret information, either, but he still removed / housed it. Same difference?
And to be fair, Comey had to invent a new standard of “recklessness” that does not exist in the statute in order to find no violation of the law. As you can probably see, there are other investigators and/or prosecutors who would disagree with that assessment.
Seems valid to question him on this.
Chyron HR
@Bailey:
So my takeaway from the multiple Bernie-bros who showed up on this site within an hour of each other freaking out in the comments of specific posts is that Trump seriously fucked up last night and you need to work (literal) overtime to deflect from it.
Have you, uh, have you considered getting a frontman who doesn’t seriously fuck up all the time? Just a thought.
H.E.Wolf
It cheers me up when any one of this blog’s Occasional Trolls shows up for a nasty little drive-by, because their pop-ups correlate so closely with bad news for the Republicans now in office.
Tick tock!
[ETA: I noticed that I wrote the word “up” 3 times in 1 sentence – apparently it really does boost my spirits!]
OzarkHillbilly
@Bailey: The facts are all out there for you to see, not my job to take you by the hand. Maybe some new glasses would help. Never mind, you will never see what you are willfully blind to.
OzarkHillbilly
@Aimai: You ain’t missing anything.
Bailey
@Chyron HR:
Your takeaway is miles off base and misguided, as usual.
Trump did fuck up last night. (Oh wait, I think Cermet will have a fainting spell over your language.) . How does it change the fact that partly the reason the FBI is politicized is that stupid and wholly avoidable actions by a candidate triggered a necessary investigation that half the country was going to find profound disagreement with, for reasons that are legally understandable?
Call it Bernie-Broism if you like, but if that’s the analysis you’re clinging to, you’re missing the entire point.
He’s not my frontman. But he’s the frontman we all get when we get mediocre candidates that can’t figure out a way to beat the biggest steaming pile of garbage imaginable.
Kay
Getting worse faster now. My personal measure is when they fire Mueller. That’s when there have to be mass protests- mass- not a permit for a date in DC- that’s when we just have to go out. A lot of us. Basically “all” of us :)
Bailey
@OzarkHillbilly:
Are the facts out there? Really? Because I’ve linked you to statutes, fact-checking, and official reports. And yet you have gone on some bullshit tirade about things you just made up and would like to be true.
Maybe Ozark Hillbilly education isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be?
afanasia
@hueyplong: Well said.
Elizabelle
@Kay: I personally hope Trump never fires Mueller, and that Mueller takes out the whole Trump administration and complicit GOP.
That said, if Trump pulls this shit on or before next Saturday, you already have scads of people out there marching already. We can have multipurpose signs at the ready.
I agree. We need to be in the streets, and get news coverage for being there. Probably not too early to start informal organizing for the shit that is coming down the pike.
chopper
@Aimai:
just imagine “BBBUT HER EMAILS!” repeated over and over again.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bailey:
Run along little boy, I have things I have to do now so you’ll have find somebody else to play with.
Elizabelle
Could you guys put up the pie filter again, and info on how to use it?
Despite threats, I have never pied anyone before. I just scroll past. But am thinking Irish Cream Pie, in honor of O’Saturday.
Bailey
@OzarkHillbilly:
Do the things you have to do include substantiating your claims with factual backup or record? Or will you just be spinning more nonsense in a slightly different way?
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: There is a small box below the comment box, you just have to add the name of the commenter you want to pie.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Agreed — if Trump gets away with shutting down the investigation, it’s game over. Now might be a good time to post a link to MoveOn.org’s “Nobody Is Above the Law” Mueller firing local protest finder — it’s here.
rikyrah
The pie filter is wonderful.
Bailey
@chopper:
For what it’s worth, I would consider Clinton’s email / server issue to be completely dwarfed by anything and everything Trump has done.
But I will remain mystified as to why myopic Dems deny the federal statute violation which triggered the investigation to begin with. And for a supposed “reality based community” it certainly has invited some incorrect, unsubstantiated, and wildly wrong analysis. Thinking like that doesn’t bode well for evaluating future candidates. Or, more topically, understanding why FBI is in the cross-hairs it is in.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: The LA Times(aka Trojie Times) was just sold to a local owner(and UCLA alum).
Robert
@Bobby Thomson: My thoughts exactly. AFAIK, McCabe was a career FBI guy who pretty much stayed out of politics. Is there evidence that he did not, and was involved in the vendetta the NY office carried out against Hillary? If not, “no sympathy” is the wrong reaction. The FBI as an institution may “deserve what it got,” but surely not all of the people who make up that organization. As far as I’m concerned, McCabe is on the “good guy” (if not the “perfect guy”) side of the ledger.
Chip Daniels
Well, yes, but its important to keep in mind that “the FBI” isn’t monolithic, and has different factions with different agendas.
The FBI was infiltrating the KKK and at the very same time, harrassing MLK; It doesn’t have a coherent political view the way we think the Stasi or any other secret police do.
If there ever was a coherent philosophy of the FBI it was a zealous defense of the established order from any direction.
This is the big story here, is not that there are political actors within the FBI, but that Trump and Sessions are attempting to shape the entire Justice Department into a coherent political force aligned with the Republican Party and that the Republican Party itself has become a radicalized revolutionary force.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: Thank you!
Someone on previous thread mentioned that replies to a pied commenter disappear too, so holding on the pie treatment. For now …
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, waiting to see what happens with that. Am addicted to California news, and it seems the LA Times might be the best. OC Register is good because it does not have a paywall, and co-publishes several stories with the Long Beach Press Telegram.
I heart California. Hope I will be back there one day. If not in Barcelona. (Dreamscape: a few months each year in both favorite locations.) Barcelona seems more affordable …
GregB
@Chip Daniels:
Bingo.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Thank you. Saved your link, and emailed it to a local friend.
I hope we demonstrate in the streets, a lot, but that Mueller is NEVER fired. Who knows, though, maybe that would be the beginning of the last act for the Trump administration. We will not have a democracy if Trump succeeds in evading Mueller and a full and complete investigation (with resulting justice).
tobie
I don’t think any member of the BJ commentariat is naive about the FBI’s history from J. Edgar Hoover onward. We’re all pretty furious about what Comey, McCabe, the NY office, and others did to hurt HRC in 2016. But we’re also at the point in US history where if you support Mueller (himself a former FBI chief), you have to support the FBI’s ability to do its job in as nonpartisan a manner as possible. It’s really that simple.
ETA: I see ChipDaniels said this much more eloquently in #107.
stinger
@Elizabelle: They don’t disappear, but they show as pied. There’s a little double-arrow icon below any pied comment; click it and the comment is translated from Pie back into English.
I just like to complain about All The Clicking, sigh.
Washburn
Yes, what America really needs now is for the left to attack the FBI as being political and deserving of contempt.
Brav-fucking-o.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: I have pied people on my phone but not on the laptop. When I want a quick check of the news I don’t need unnecessary aggravation.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
I have only three people pied, all of them for attacking Ds in an attempt to shift the narrative from our current national crisis. You have to ask who that benefits.
tobie
@tobie:
Correction: it was Comment 108.
@Chip Daniels: @Washburn: we’re on the same page. Attacking the FBI right now, when we desperately need some institution, any institution to hold this lawless administration in check is not a smart move. Save the critique for when the FBI becomes Trump’s and Session’s personal paramilitary force used to hound anyone who disagrees with the administration.
mai naem mobile
Dolt45 has built up and.continues to build up so so much bad Karma, I would not want to be in his shoes. This fuckwr is going to have a downfall like no other. From the little contractors he fucked in his real estate career to the women he screwed to the shit he’s pulled as POTUS.
Bailey
@mai naem mobile:
When does this Karma finally kick in, though? One would think that after a lifetime of doing this, by age 71 there would be some blowback.
DonL140
The oligarchy tries to pull the strings, push us in the direction most favorable to what Carlin called “the Owners.” The oligarchy is at odds with the working class. The oligarchy never wins long term, but has had a good run since Goldwater. Trump has made a shambles of the oligarchy and left them exposed. Comey was the front man, and was unable to find a way out of the hole pressure from his clan put him in.
It’s really simple. Us. Them. Who benefits? There is where the lines are drawn.
Mike in NC
Front page headline in today’s paper: “Trump Readies Sweeping Tariffs on Chinese Imports”. This will seriously upset Congressional GOP (who will roll over and play dead) and more importantly hurt the idiots who voted for him. Hooray!
James E. Powell
It certainly was when Hoover was running it, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., notwithstanding.
No doubt the FBI, like law enforcement generally, is filled to the brim with RWers and RW adjacents. If they aren’t wedded to the specific list of policies, they have a shared worldview.
A lot of people want to give Comey and McCabe consideration because they had to placate RW congress-creatures. Had to? That’s bullshit. Did they ever have to placate Raul Grijalva, Barbara Lee, or – gasp! – Maxine Waters? They don’t give a fuck about liberal or Democrats because they feel no need to serve them. They are viewed as enemies or enemy sympathizers.
mai naem mobile
@Bailey: having a downfall as a POTUS with the whole fucking world watching would pretty humiliating especially for Dolt45 who really gives a shit about how he looks. On top of that there’s a decent chance there will be financial penalties.
pat
I would be seriously disappointed if Bobby Three Sticks had not anticipated the attempt to fire him, and left a lot of stuff that will see the light of day if that happens.
But it does seem like the time for tRump to do it would be to take attention away from Daniels’ appearance on 60 minutes.
But soon the only distraction from bad news for the white house will be….bombing something.
wasf
fuckwit
@schrodingers_cat: yes. the trolls are working hard
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Holy Christ, you’re stupid.
The fact that you ate up the anti-Clinton propaganda that the right wing fed to you and begged for more is why Trump won. You actually thought that ratfuckers like Roger Stone were giving you the truth about Hillary Clinton.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Because the investigation found there was no violation.
That’s what drives you nuts — there was a full investigation, and the investigation showed that the law was not broken.
You can whine and cry that you totally would have prosecuted Hillary if you had been in charge, but saying that only reveals the fact that you don’t have a clue how federal prosecutions actually work.
Hint: the fact that someone is accused of a crime doesn’t automatically mean they’re actually guilty of that crime. Even if that accused person’s name is Hillary Clinton. We still investigate accusations and prosecutors decide whether to pursue a court case based on that investigation. The fact that an investigation found nothing prosecutable should have been your first clue that the charges were unfounded.
firusan
I understand there is a movie treatment already being worked up: McCabe and Mrs. Mueller.
James E. Powell
@Kay:
I wouldn’t hold your breath for public outrage in support of Mueller. For the most part, Americans are not the demonstrating kind.
For reasons I don’t understand at all, the depth and breadth of the corruption in this regime has not penetrated into the minds of that great mass of low information voters we need to be animated & activated in November.
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
It doesn’t drive me nuts that she wasn’t prosecuted. The outrage that was spawned, however, came from the fact that Comey invented an entirely new standard in the statute (i.e. “reckless” as opposed to “negligent.”). Other prosecutors may not have done that at all; many within and outside of the FBI have voiced just that opinion. Given the reading of the statute (which I’m quite sure you’ve never done) it is a valid opinion. That is the heart of prosecutorial discretion.
Ha. Really? Please tell me what law school you went to. What year you passed the bar. What your bar number is. I’ll be waiting for that information.
Holy fuck. You are dumb. By your logic, Cyrus Vance’s failure to prosecute Harvey Weinstein means he did nothing wrong, right?
Gretchen
@Bailey: You’re taking up a lot of space in the pie filter. I wonder if you’re the primary occupant. I don’t think I’ve ever pied anyone else, but goodness, you’re tenaciously dim.
Bailey
@Gretchen:
What useless information you’ve just shared. Be proud of your contribution.
J R in WV
@Bailey:
Welcome to PieVille, hope everything is tasty, asshole!!
I see you’re still slinging pie just above this late to ended thread comment, I will never again read a comment you have posted by accident. Steaming ass!
TerryC
@Kay: I’m ready to go, have extra vodka packed.