Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

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

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

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

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

White supremacy is terrorism.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: The Sorrow of the Repubs

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: The Sorrow of the Repubs

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Paul Ryan’s tears, they are delicious! From the Washington Post, “GOP increasingly fears loss of House, focuses on saving Senate majority”:

Republicans are increasingly worried they will lose control of the House in the midterm elections, spurring an urgent campaign to hold the Senate with a simple message: Only the majority will ensure confirmation of conservative judges and President Trump’s nominees.

To many, the Senate is emerging as a critical barrier against Democrats demolishing Trump’s agenda beginning in 2019. Worse yet, some in the GOP fear, Democrats could use complete control of Congress to co-opt the ideologically malleable president and advance their own priorities.

Democratic enthusiasm is surging in suburban districts that House Republicans are struggling to fortify, causing GOP officials, donors and strategists to fret. They have greater confidence in more-rural red states that Trump won convincingly and that make up the bulk of the Senate battlefield.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his allies are seeking to capitalize on ­concerns about the House. He is leading an effort to motivate ­conservative voters by reminding them that his side of the Capitol has the unilateral power to confirm federal judges to lifetime appointments and Trump administration nominees.

Trump is showing a keen interest in the Senate landscape, raising money for a highly touted challenger, helping clear the primary field for an endangered senator and playfully engaging in an intraparty contest…

Oh yeah, Donny Dolllhands is gonna be such a big help right now — in the time he can spare from avoiding Robert Mueller. And Stormy Daniels. And all the other Trump-scam-victim plantiffs…

While some Republicans believe they can expand their 51-to-49 Senate advantage, simply holding the slim majority has grown increasingly more complicated. Hard-right Republicans running in Arizona and Mississippi and a competitive open race in Tennessee could lead to Democratic gains. An even better pickup opportunity exists for Democrats in Nevada.

But on the whole, the Democratic path to the Senate majority is more daunting: They are defending 26 seats to just nine for the Republicans. Trump won in 10 of the states where Democrats are playing defense. They include North Dakota, West Virginia, Indiana and Missouri — all states he won by 19 points or more.

In the House, Republicans have built their ranks on locking down seats in suburban and exurban districts. But in these areas, Democratic turnout has been high in elections over the past year, ­fueled by anger with Trump. If Democrats can gain 23 House seats, they will clinch the majority.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) put the chances of holding the House majority at “50-50.” The veteran party strategist warned that “the environment could easily continue to deteriorate,” and said he didn’t begrudge McConnell for pitching his case for the Senate….

But how does Pauly Blue Eyes feel about getting thrown under the Trump bus caravan?

Michael Steele, a former Republican National Committee chairman, said the House “may be further gone than people like to admit publicly.” While many in the party worry about a Democratic House and Senate launching an endless string of hearings and investigations into Trump, Steele said he has a different concern — that Democrats will work with the president to pass legislation that Republicans won’t like.

“Trump will cut whatever deal he can get a vote on,” he said. The president, he argued, “is an opportunist.”…

After the way the GOP dumped Michael Steele a hot second after promoting him as their ‘Black Best Friend’ was no longer so important, the man has to be enjoying his former employers’ plight, just a little. What’s the old Chinese proverb — Sit by the river long enough, and the bodies of your enemies will float past…

Reader Interactions

187Comments

  1. 1.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Blech.

    the man has to be enjoying his former employers’ plight

    ,

    I first read that as “employer’s blight“. I think mine more accurately describes the GOP’s situation.

    What’s the old Chinese proverb — Sit by the river long enough, and the bodies of your enemies will float past…

    My t-shirt attributes it to Confucius.

  2. 2.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Josh Campbell
    @joshscampbell

    This tonight from a former FBI colleague:

    “I’ve been an FBI special agent for 20 years and have only seen a handful of searches executed on attorneys. All of those attorneys went to prison.”

    423 replies 10,109 retweets 28,966 likes

    Tick…tock!

    Tick…tock!

  3. 3.

    WereBear

    the ideologically malleable president

    I have never thought I would ever see this in print. But so many strange things have happened, it just gets added to my Impossible Things Before Breakfast list.

  7. 7.

    rikyrah

    All those lawyers who turned down Dolt45 were watching the TV yesterday and going,
    “Better you than me, muthaphucka ?”

  9. 9.

    Schlemazel

    I know this got mentioned here a couple nights ago but all of a sudden I am seeing tons of this crap & people falling for it so I thought I might mention it again.

    Even if the poster is not phishing you FB stores the info & sells it (or allows it to be stolen) and it is more than just password potential it is profile info that can give away your age, income status, educational background etc. to make it easier to target you by Russian bots
    Don’t Give Away Historic Details About Yourself

  11. 11.

    Bruce K

    @WereBear: “Ideologically malleable” is such a nice euphemism for “opportunistic”, or to be more accurate to the cheeto, “unprincipled”.

  12. 12.

    rikyrah

    I really appreciated that each show on MSNBC went into detail about the hoops that the Feds had to go through in order to get the Search Warrant. People needed to understand that.

  15. 15.

    Amir Khalid

    To call Trump “ideologically malleable” suggests that his ideological principles are inconstant. It’s closer to the truth to say that he doesn’t have ideological principles, unless you count greed and vanity.

  18. 18.

    bystander

    @Schlemazel: I read somewhere that those “see what you’d look like as a drag queen” photo makeovers on FB are just a way to get your facial recognition info.

    How long before Moanin Joe is comparing Twitler to Clinton?

  19. 19.

    Schlemazel

    @bystander:
    Yes, that was the goal of that ‘see what you look like’ posting. They are perfecting facial recognition. I posted 3 or 4 pictures that were random people & claimed they were me. I don’t know if it really makes a difference in the long run but it makes me happy

  20. 20.

    Gravenstone

    Trump didn’t take over. The GOP surrendered, meekly and without shame. Seriously, there is zero reason this moron should have survived the primaries other than the establishment pols are all craven cowards. Everything that has happened since follows from that cowardice.

  23. 23.

    TS

    How the senior military officers can sit there and listen to his b.s. is just amazing. They obviously have nerves of steel – for use perhaps in conflict – probably never thought it would be needed in the White House. Having Bolten sitting next to the President in such a situation – do they all realize their advice will be ignored?

  24. 24.

    Kay

    Chris Hayes
    ‏@chrislhayes
    Follow Follow @chrislhayes
    More
    Today the National Deputy Finance Chair of the GOP was raided by the FBI.

    True. I’m hoping it reaches the Party. Why not all of them? While we’re at it :)

    It can’t be the Daniels payment. The theory there is that Cohen is a “conduit” which is an actual crime in campaign finance- you can’t funnel in-kind contributions to your campaign thru a conduit anymore than you can do it yourself, and people have been prosecuted for that- this guy was a GOP conduit and he’s still in prison:

    It is probable that Tom Noe funneled money into Gov. Bob Taft s 2002 campaign through former state Rep. Sally Perz, according to a report released yesterday.
    Investigators from the task force probing the expanding scandal involving Noe and the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation uncovered a Noe check to Ms. Perz for $2,500 on May 10, 2002 the day she gave the same amount to the Taft campaign.

    but this seems like an extreme response for a campaign finance violation.

  26. 26.

    Chyron HR

    Feds Are Treating Michael Cohen Like a Mob Lawyer, Trump Allies Say

    Whereas everybody knows he’s actually a “criminal conspiracy to trade political favors to Russia oligarchs in exchange for millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions laundered through the NRA and acts of cyber-espionage against the United States carried out on Trump’s behalf by the GRU” lawyer.

  28. 28.

    Kay

    @Chyron HR:

    illegal campaign contributions laundered

    And there’s that of course. The amount. I guess if it were huge dollar amounts it could be campaign finance- the response wouldn’t be extreme if it’s tens or hundreds of millions. I was wondering why the RNC would get involved with Trump’s sleazy lawyer at all, why give him a title and a position, but maybe it was for that reason- that he was the perfect and only person for that particular job. That area of fundraising. A specialist.

  30. 30.

    Kay

    My grown son and I call days where a Trumpster is indicted “indictment days” and now he added “raid day”.

    Hopefully will be raid day(s).

  32. 32.

    Marmot

    I feel like I only comment when Anne Laurie disparages Star Wars or one of y’all says some ill-considered thing about Texas.

    Anyway, good on you Anne Laurie. Day/in, day-out, before-the-crack-of-dawn, quality blog posting. That’s why I come here.

  33. 33.

    evap

    I really hate reading about how the Dems are sure to take over the house, I am reminded about how confident I was that Hillary would be the next president, and here we are…

  34. 34.

    Amir Khalid

    @Kay:
    Maybe at some point there’ll be a raid week, as Der Müller Gottes starts grinding it ever smaller. Oh, to see Trump’s reaction then …

  35. 35.

    Kay

    @Schlemazel:

    I think you do have to deal with that with the FB stuff, though. That a lot of people just don’t care if they have or collect this info. I have trouble with it myself just because my “personal” info has been breached so often. All of my info from long-ago federal employment was breached a couple of years ago (I got a letter) and my and my youngest son’s health info has been breached – I got a letter from our health insurer. I’ve had credit card info stolen twice. If I ever thought any of it was “safe” or “protected”
    (and I’m not sure I did) I no longer believe that. I don’t participate in FB but was any of this ever protected?

    All those people who were so gleeful that Clinton’s campaign emails were stolen- are they really so confident their emails won’t be revealed? If they are they’re kidding themselves.

  38. 38.

    satby

    @Amir Khalid: I’m wishing his brain trust advisors would tell Twitler that it would all go away if he resigned. He’s stupid enough to believe it, and lots of them are dumb enough too.
    Yeah, Pence, but I assume he’s going to get caught in the middle of the investigation too. If Drumpf quit, his deplorables would stay home from the election this November.
    And a unicorn, I want a unicorn too.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    I feel like these people still aren’t getting it- like their INCREDIBLE self-regard sort of tragically insulates them from how they are actually perceived:

    @KellyKborn
    Follow Follow @KellyKborn
    More
    Today we announced a partnership with the Sloan, Koch, Knight, and Arnold Foundations, Democracy Fund, and Omidyar Network, SSRC and Facebook on a new research initiative to increase public understanding of Facebook’s role in elections and democracy.

    You’re all familiar with the Kochs, but the Arnold’s may be new to you. Enron. The Arnolds came out of Enron.

    “Let’s put together a team of unaccountable and opaque billionaires to tell people about how our product promotes democracy!”

  43. 43.

    Schlemazel

    @Kay:
    There are some companies that do things right, I have consulted as some. But that is the minority. But what FB is doing is a whole different level and could lead to much worse ends.

    raven & I are not going to be here much longer so we can not care for us but I care about future generations.

  45. 45.

    Steve in DUVAL

    @Schlemazel: I was at a party recently thrown by a musician friend. Each guest wore a name tag listing the first concert he or she attended. Didn’t realize the bastard was stealing our security question answers!

    For those of you hacking into my Hello Kitty fan page, it was Blue Öyster Cult.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    @Schlemazel:

    Oh, I see your point. I agree. I care about future generations too and this is anecdotal based solely on polling conducted in my living room but the 15 year old set don’t seem to care that much about privacy. I can’t get them to care. I cannot STOP them from revealing too much online. Sometimes they are arrested and prosecuted for things they post or transmit or trade online and they STILL don’t care. We can’t get them to stop sending naked pictures of each other around, which is a serious crime if you’re a minor. There’s a high school texting scandal a month here. I think back to those cute little diaries with the keyed lock and I wonder when they stopped caring about it.

  47. 47.

    JPL

    It’s been reported that Trump knew about the raid in the morning. So he had all day to formulate a response and he did. With him it’s all about the ratings, and the truth be damned.

    @Kay: Just a tad extreme.

  48. 48.

    debbie

    Frontline does outstanding work. Their two docs on Putin alone make all of the funding of PBS worthwhile.

  50. 50.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Don’t leave out the part where, after the state managed to recover the cost of the coins as well as a bit of additional interest, Noe stated that he should be released because his actions had turned a profit.

    Asshole.

  55. 55.

    Barbara

    @Kay: There is a difference between a company that has an oops with your data and one that has built its business model on intentionally misusing your information after kind of sort of getting your “permission.”

  57. 57.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    I actually think Noe was the fall guy for broader corruption both in the state GOP and in the Bush ’04 campaign. I don’t have any particular sympathy for him but he got absolutely hammered and a lot of bigger players got off. I think once they got Noe they had a trophy and they ended the parts of the investigation that might have reached Bush ’04.

    That’s why I’m wary every time people tell me Mueller is “rolling up” little guys to reach big guys. Lots of times we roll up little guys and then call it done. We rarely reach big guys. Often they prosecute some lesser players and then we get into “look forwards, not back”

  58. 58.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Several attorneys are explaining why the searches and seizures of Michael Cohen’s files are A VERY BIG DEAL. This seems like an accurate summary to this NAL.

  62. 62.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    I honestly did not know that. I shouldn’t be surprised.

    From your original quote:

    It is probable that Tom Noe funneled money into Gov. Bob Taft s 2002 campaign through former state Rep. Sally Perz, according to a report released yesterday.

    Was the report released yesterday or is this an archival quote?

  67. 67.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Quinerly: No, I hadn’t, thanx. I have been a little out of the STL news loop due to anwanted boycott on my part of the STL Post Disgrace. I had to block their ads because they were messing with my computer, so now they insist I subscribe. I would but so much of their coverage is tripe and I just can’t bring myself to pay for it.

    The woman at the center of the criminal case against Greitens has kept her silence in the media, issuing to date just one statement begging for privacy. But in a highly unusual statement released by her lawyer at 8:40 p.m. tonight, the woman blasted her former lover for allowing his lawyers to mischaracterize her deposition — and called on him to “take responsibility for his actions, as well as the actions of his team, which is made up of the best lawyers other people’s money can buy.”

    Love it.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    @Barbara:

    There is an I don’t have any brief for FB- I think Zuckerberg is full of shit with his “world community” babbling, but tens of millions of school kids are using a whole set of “free” Google products in schools. God knows what they’re collecting or how they use it might use it.

    I think younger people are going to have to do some serious thinking at some point- what is this stuff worth and is it a good value if it means trading away privacy completely?

  72. 72.

    Baud

    Clearly, Facebook paid the Deep State to raid Cohen to take the media focus away from Zuckerberg’s testimony. Connect the dots, people.

  73. 73.

    MJS

    I’m hoping that when the caterwauling begins from the GOP about “attorney-client privilege” every single one of them is reminded of their complete disregard for privacy with regards to stop-and-frisk, “Papers, please” legislation, spying on American citizens, etc., etc. The standard response to any complaints should be the one they love to utter – if you don’t have anything to hide, then you don’t have anything to worry about.

  75. 75.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Schlemazel:

    I’m thinking about those “stripper/pornstar name” quizzes which are usually a combo of the street you grew up on with your first pet’s name.

  77. 77.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    It’s archival. Partly the zealousness of his prosecution was the Lucas county (Toledo) prosecutor at that time. She was really a hard ass- a Democrat but she was a hard ass across the board, R or D. She was terrifying :)

  78. 78.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: I am reminded of the scene in Syriana where the corporate lawyer meets up with a Fed prosecutor in the Fed’s limo and they negotiate who is going down:

    DL: What about Danny?
    FP: I need a bigger fish than that.
    DL: How about Fred too then?
    FP: That could work.

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @Barbara:

    I actively dislike Zuckerberg because of the “our mission” bullshit. I’m much more comfortable with people who run businesses and admit they’re about making money. This is conceited. It’s bullshit. They can believe they have some Grand Mission if they want to but I don’t have to believe it.

    The newer plutocrats get on my nerves.

  83. 83.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    President Donald Trump was, as usual, watching cable news as the story broke that his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen was raided by the FBI

    Tea Vee Pot Dome

  84. 84.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I’m figuring that Erik Prince pulls a Robert Vesco and hides from extradition somewhere.

  87. 87.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I wonder if there is a large cohort of invisible youngs who are outcasts because they don’t share everything online.

  89. 89.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Kay:

    Had Facebook kept itself to social networking, high school sweetheart stalking, drunken late night attempted hookups with the one who got away and merchant accounts, it would have been fine, and Zuck could have remained fat, dumb and happy. The moment that it opted to rent out analytics and data for political and manipulative purposes out of greed was the moment it demonstrated that sicial media needs to be regulated like a public utility.

  95. 95.

    Immanentize

    @Quinerly:
    I think “insurance policy” might refer to the routine memos FBI agents write immediately after odd or improper contacts. Not only Comey, but McCabe as well. Maybe

  97. 97.

    Cermet

    The headline where the thugs are saying they need to defend their slim majority in the senate is a red herring; the chances of the dem’s even holding the number of seats they currently have is slim but gaining? LOL. This is the thugs way of setting up a straw-man issue so they can later claim victory even if they lose the house. Ridiculous; over half of dem seats in the seat are at risk but less than one in five thug seats are at risk.

  99. 99.

    jonas

    Ah, so Trump is now admitting that Cohen *is* his attorney and there is attorney-client privilege at stake? Please, do continue Mr. President.

    IIRC, Josh Marshall was on to a key fact last year already: Michael Cohen is less Trump’s lawyer than a Trump Org fixer who always seems to be at the center of the connections between TrumpWorld and the Russian/East European “businessmen” that Trump increasingly relied on for laundered money investment capital in the early aughts after most banks and other investors cut him off. If Rosenstein and the USA for the SDNY are signing off on search warrants against this guy, some major shit is going down.

  102. 102.

    Quinerly

    @Baud: You may be on to something. I suspect my failure has been mostly due to trying to play up the Scottish angle. The bagpipes are holding me back from reaching my true potential. ?

  103. 103.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Just one more canuck: Florida has nothing Misery doesn’t except more of it. More idiots, more metro areas, more newspapers, more swamps…. I am reminded of the guy who shot his wife while running cable for his TV. He needed to drill a hole in his wall.

    Florida does have bigger cockroaches tho.

  108. 108.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Quinerly: Why does the first sentence trouble me so?

    Sources close to the president say that a political dispute with special counsel Robert Mueller has turned visceral and personal after the feds’ raid on the New York offices of Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer.

    A criminal investigation is merely a political dispute? Horse race coverage gone mad.

  110. 110.

    raven

    @Immanentize:

    In the text exchange between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page — both of whom were formerly working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team — Strzok seemingly referred to an “insurance policy” against a Trump presidency. The Wall Street Journal reports that he meant to refer to the Russia probe, not a plan to harm the candidate, citing sources familiar with his account.

    Why it matters: The text message has been hotly debated as Republicans cite it as evidence of bias within the probe.

    The message: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40…”

  111. 111.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Had Facebook kept itself to social networking, high school sweetheart stalking, drunken late night attempted hookups with the one who got away and merchant accounts, it would have been fine,

    No it wouldn’t have. There’s no way to make enough money off those. It’s not like Amazon, which knows what books and records I like so it can sell me more of them. Absent renting or selling the data Facebook has collected about what you like, there’s no other real way to get revenue from what they have built. That was evident from the beginning.

  113. 113.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I wonder if there is a large cohort of invisible youngs who are outcasts because they don’t share everything online.

    Good question. I never encounter them, but I wouldn’t, would I?

    We have this moderated online forum for students at one of the public schools. So that’s a gimmee, right? Don’t post anything dumb there! Except they do.

  114. 114.

    Quinerly

    @raven: This makes sense. I was following the Cohen raid pretty closely and binge watched MSNBC last night. Saw Trump’s rant played over and over. Didn’t catch any commentary on what the hell he was talking about at that point of the rant.

  115. 115.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven:

    Republicans cite it as evidence of bias within the probe.

    In my experience FBI agents are generally biased against criminal behavior. Just something I have noticed.

    ETA @Baud: beat me to it.

  119. 119.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Quinerly: Thanks for highlighting that.

    “One of the things they said: ‘I fired Comey.’ Well, I turned out to do the right thing, because if you look at all of the things that he’s done and the lies, and you look at what’s gone on at the FBI with the insurance policy and all of the things that happened — turned out I did the right thing.”

    It looks like the usual Trumpian word salad. My best interpretation is that he (or someone he talks to) thinks that Comey’s notes may be a problem for him.

    That’s all I got.

  121. 121.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Gin & Tonic:

    FarmVille, fishville and the other games seemed to provide good revenue at a decent stream (not arguing with you – I’m just seeing it as greed).

  122. 122.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I’m gathering from it’s tweets this morning that it didn’t sleep well.

    It is as sweaty and paranoid as Ray Liotta/Henry Hill driving the Cadillac and looking for the helicopter.

  123. 123.

    Feathers

    @Kay: My take is that these kids have not grown up with any sense of personal privacy. The current expectations for parental supervision don’t leave any room for it.

    So, ironically and tragically, they get their first taste of privacy from spreading their information (and naked pictures) all over the internet, but hidden from their parents.

    If we want to bring back a respect for privacy, it will have to begin at home.

  127. 127.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Michael Cohen graduated from Western Michigan law school

    The school was recently ranked the worst law school in the country by Above the Law.

  128. 128.

    Jeffro

    Top three stories on Fox News dot com right now:

    3) College senior given grief over having her picture taken with a Trump t-shirt on and a gun tucked in her waistband
    2) Alan Dershowitz can’t believe the ACLU’s silence about the Cohen raid

    and naturally, after yesterday’s history-making news, the top story is

    1) Jerry Brown refuses to send CA national guard to the border

    Good priorities, Bubble People!!

  129. 129.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Jeffro:

    College senior given grief over having her picture taken with a Trump t-shirt on and a gun tucked in her waistband

    I thought Trump University was a gun free zone.

  131. 131.

    MomSense

    @Schlemazel:

    Everyone needs to start now. The ACLU publishes voting rules and deadlines for each state. Right now we need voter registration and we need people to check their registration status even if they think they are already registered.

  134. 134.

    rikyrah

    @MJS:

    I’m hoping that when the caterwauling begins from the GOP about “attorney-client privilege” every single one of them is reminded of their complete disregard for privacy with regards to stop-and-frisk, “Papers, please” legislation, spying on American citizens, etc., etc. The standard response to any complaints should be the one they love to utter – if you don’t have anything to hide, then you don’t have anything to worry about.

    CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP

    PULL THOSE RECEIPTS

  136. 136.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    Cohen is nothing more than a walking New York lawyer stereotype who happened upon a degree and a license – a fixer, a bully, zero finesse or actual knowledge of the nuts and bolts. Guys like that walk their principals like not trouble, not away from it.

  138. 138.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    I actively dislike Zuckerberg because of the “our mission” bullshit. I’m much more comfortable with people who run businesses and admit they’re about making money. This is conceited. It’s bullshit. They can believe they have some Grand Mission if they want to but I don’t have to believe it.

    The newer plutocrats get on my nerves.

    Get ’em, Kay.
    Get ’em.

  139. 139.

    Barbara

    @Kay: It would help to know how Facebook is using data and what the normal ramifications of such uses can be. It is one thing to offer companies a service of targeting ads at specific kinds of demographics, and quite another to give data to others and let them use it — essentially adopting an honor system, which apparently is what Facebook has done. Even targeted ads can be problematic, e.g., apparently some social media companies thought it would be a good idea to limit job postings to people based on age. However, the “selling of data” should always be subject to significantly more restrictions. The other thing is that Facebook adopts a public position that all members are real people. Clearly, making this representation and carrying through on it aren’t the same thing. People are their own worst enemies when it comes to data privacy, and I don’t know exactly how to raise their consciousness level on this point.

  140. 140.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @manyakitty:

    I suspect that hopeful euphemisms vary from region to region.

    This morning, my local news was pulling no punches with a new superfood being developed and called cockroach milk.

  146. 146.

    rikyrah

    Ok,

    I do have a question. I was reading accounts, and I think VF wrote that the paparazzi, who had been staking out a WWE star, missed the FBI raid. My thought was ‘ how do you miss the FBI rolling past you?’

    Did the tv lie to us all these years? I thought when the FBI did one of those raids, they come 10 deep, and everybody has on those blue jackets with the yellow FBI on them. Am I wrong?

  148. 148.

    Barbara

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Absent renting or selling the data Facebook has collected about what you like, there’s no other real way to get revenue from what they have built. That was evident from the beginning.

    This is the essential truth. Collecting data as a byproduct to a commercial transaction allows a company to refine marketing strategies to try to sell you more. Every clothing store with an on-line presence does this, in addition to Amazon, whether it’s Walmart or Bloomingdales. Facebook isn’t selling anything itself. So it is dependent on ad revenue, and it really doesn’t bother me unduly that it targets certain types of things at me — shoes, for instance — based on whatever it has managed to find out about me. But really, the big money comes from selling you and me — that’s a distinction that seems lost on a lot of people, including Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook doesn’t have a security issue, the way Target and Home Depot have had in the past. It has a privacy issue in the way it uses your data. Almost any way of solving that makes Facebook less profitable.

  153. 153.

    Immanentize

    @rikyrah: They don’t do that theater stuff to white collar targets unless absolutely necessary. And I bet in this case, the FBI thought the lower profile, the better. Go in quiet, get out without cameras.

  154. 154.

    Barbara

    @rikyrah: Unless they are in SWAT mode, FBI agents dress in suits and when they are executing a search warrant they try to be very low key, for the element of surprise (nobody called up from reception to warn the unit) and to keep everyone calm. Executing a search warrant at a hotel or professional office is a totally different exercise from executing a search warrant at the house of a suspected drug dealer.

  156. 156.

    rikyrah

    UH HUH
    UH HUH

    Don’t believe this bullshyt for one nanosecond.

    EPA Chief Of Staff Takes Fall For Raises, Claims Pruitt Unaware Despite Emails
    By Nicole Lafond | April 10, 2018 7:49 am

    Environmental Protection Agency Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson is taking the fall for the controversial, hefty raises given to two of Scott Pruitt’s closest aides who joined the EPA after working with Administrator Pruitt in Oklahoma.

    The Atlantic was first to report on Monday, citing EPA internal emails, that Pruitt was aware of the new salaries for aides Sarah Greenwalt and Millan Hupp. CNN obtained those emails, which reportedly indicate at least twice that “the administrator” had signed off on the salary increases.

    In one email between Greenwalt and the EPA’s human resources department, Greenwalt asks what her salary increase will be, according to CNN. When HR responds to the email saying there wouldn’t be one, Greenwalt says that “the administrator” told her she would have a raise. An EPA spokesperson told CNN that there’s no way to prove what Greenwalt said was true, and claimed that people commonly claiming that “the administrator said this or that,” the EPA spokeswoman told CNN.

  157. 157.

    MattF

    @Barbara: One thing I noticed in FB’s latest apologia is that they will start deleting user data that’s more than three months old. That sounds like a big deal to me.

  158. 158.

    rikyrah

    Defending Trump, Sanders Claims ‘Large Number’ Of Reported Voter Fraud Incidents
    By Matt Shuham | April 9, 2018 3:57 pm

    White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday defended President Donald Trump’s baseless claim that “millions and millions of people” voted illegally by saying that “a large number of incidences” of voter fraud were “reported.”

    She also seemed to admit, months after the fact, that the White House’s “voter fraud” panel was really an attempt to find evidence for Trump’s baseless claim.

    Sanders’ assertion about the “large number” of reports of fraud came during a White House press briefing Monday after a reporter brought up the President’s frequent claim — made most recently in West Virginia last week — that millions of people have voted illegally in the past.

    Trump has never offered credible evidence to support these kinds of claims because there isn’t any. Large scale voter fraud is a myth.

  163. 163.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Quinerly:

    Translation – a foreign policy trip cuts into his available time to livetweet Fox News, plus there is a risk that he won’t have enough bars on his phone to tweet.

  164. 164.

    rikyrah

    Scandals engulf multiple RNC finance chairs
    04/10/18 08:40 AM
    By Steve Benen
    A year ago this week, the Republican National Committee issued a press release that, at the time, seemed entirely forgettable. It read in part:

    Today Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and RNC Finance Chairman Steve Wynn announced additional members of the RNC’s Finance leadership team:

    “I am delighted to announce the addition of these longtime friends of the Party and supporters of this administration to our Finance leadership team,” said Chairwoman McDaniel. “Elliott Broidy, Michael Cohen, and Louis DeJoy will serve as National Deputy Finance Chairmen….”

    In hindsight, however, that’s quite a collection of individuals.

    Steve Wynn, for example, was forced to resign from his RNC post earlier this year following sexual misconduct allegations. (The RNC refused to return his money.)

    Elliott Broidy, meanwhile, has become quite a controversial figure in his own right. As Rachel noted on the show two weeks ago, Broidy is at the center of multiple, ongoing controversies, including allegations that he pitched himself, shortly before Trump’s inauguration last year, as someone who could help Russian companies get off the U.S. sanctions list for a fee.

    And then there’s Michael Cohen, whose office and hotel room were raided by the FBI yesterday, and who’s at the center of multiple Trump-related scandals. By some accounts, Cohen is under investigation for, among other things, possible bank fraud.

  165. 165.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Quinerly: I saw the headline and passed on reading it. I never found strippers all that interesting and reading about them is even less so.

  167. 167.

    rikyrah

    In new tantrum, Trump calls raid on lawyer’s office an ‘attack on our country’
    04/10/18 08:00 AM
    By Steve Benen

    The details are still coming into focus, but we know that the FBI raided the office and hotel room of Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, yesterday. As NBC News reported, we also know that the search warrants “were sought and executed by FBI agents and federal prosecutors in New York in coordination with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team after an initial referral from Mueller’s office.”
    As for why federal law enforcement launched this raid, that gets a little tricky. It appears that officials are looking for information about the $130,000 in hush money Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election, though as Rachel noted on last night’s show, Cohen has been at the center of all kinds of controversies, and the Washington Post and New York Times reported separately that the president’s attorney is also under investigation for possible bank fraud.

    One that’s perfectly clear, however, is that Trump isn’t taking the news especially well.

    Trump wasted no time addressing the raids when reporters entered the Cabinet Room where he was meeting with senior military leaders, starting his remarks by calling Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt” and a “disgrace.”

    It’s “an attack on our country in a true sense, an attack on what we all stand for,” Trump said of the raids, which were first reported by The New York Times.

    To fully appreciate the scope of the presidential tantrum, it’s worth checking out the transcript. Trump characterized the FBI raid as a break-in; he used the words “disgrace” or “disgraceful” nine times; and he lashed out at the special counsel’s office, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, federal investigators, Hillary Clinton, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

  169. 169.

    Kay

    @Feathers:

    Kay: My take is that these kids have not grown up with any sense of personal privacy. The current expectations for parental supervision don’t leave any room for it.

    That’s interesting. I give mine some agency and space and I know some other parents disapproved but that was SO important to me at that age – that space- that I couldn’t deny it to them for what I think are (sometimes) remote risks.

    I so vividly recall learning how to ride a bike and literally thinking “I am no longer dependent on…these people to get around!” Freedom! I did feel some societal disapproval though. I just refuse to do it. If they’re playing in a sand box I refuse to “help” them. They know how to play! We had “the 4th grade rule”. We don’t help with homework after 4th grade. They’re good readers by then and they can read their own boring directions- I’m not doing it. People would be like “I was up late doing the kid’s science project, ha, ha” and I would think “oh, God, WHY?” This is their work, right?

  172. 172.

    rikyrah

    BREAKING: There is a Democrat running in 97 of 99 TN House districts and 15 of 17 Senate districts!

    Democrats are stepping up to the plate to run everywhere.

    — TN Democratic Party (@tndp) April 6, 2018

  175. 175.

    Kay

    @Feathers:

    But mine were sort of free-rangy and they aren’t particularly “private” is my point. My oldest is but that’s because he was born a sober and prudent 50 year old :)

    My youngest will tell anyone anything. I shudder to think if that kid is ever interviewed. It’s all coming out. I know all about “Emma” and she sits next to him in english. If I ever meet her it will be awkward. I’ll be like “did you ever make up with your dad?”

  176. 176.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @MattF:

    He does lots of stuff besides watching Fox News and golfing. He tweets, calls random acquaintances to whine about being persecuted, belches out desires for war crimes and evisceration of the post Cold War status quo at such meeetings he bothers attending, and signs whatever domestic policy changes as Paul Ryan and Turtle request.

  177. 177.

    Wapiti

    @MattF: One wonders if FB security is so lax that “partners” can just hoover up all of the data of users every three months.

  180. 180.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    My youngest is the opposite. People tell him everything. Sometimes he will tell me just a bit of what he knows and it’s jaw dropping.

  181. 181.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Amir Khalid:

    Correct. He’s mentally, physically and emotionally lazy – I’m talking to the point of sloth. He’s never participated in childrearing, doesn’t put himself out for anybody and has no actual friends.

    By way of contrast, I’ve maintained close ties with everyone I’ve befriended from every stage of life. I know their partners, their children, their hobbies, hopes and dreams. Trump doesn’t do that, not at all.

  182. 182.

    different-church-lady

    @raven: Ah, fascinating. What Trump is saying is that it’s unfair the didn’t go after him before the election.

  183. 183.

    different-church-lady

    @Gin & Tonic: At least Amazon is interested in selling you actual things. Facebook is only interested in having you waste your entire life on FB, because they’ve figured out a way to commodetize your idle thoughts.

  185. 185.

    WRRistow

    OT, but this is open thread:
    I’m reading BJ in Chrome on my phone, an elderly Android (4.4.2). Yesterday I clicked on one of the Act Blue donation links. It sent me to the donation site, but almost immediately reported “Chrome has to close”. When I restarted Chrome, it reopened in the donation site, and closed again. I had to take the battery out of the phone to get control of Chrome back.

  186. 186.

    glory b

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I heard them referred to as Palmetto Bugs.

    When I was in Alabama, there was a joke about the big lies about Florida. One was, “I don’t remember it ever being this hot before,” another was, “Those aren’t giant roaches, they’re Palmetto Bugs.”

    They also live in Alabama, fly, aren’t afraid of the light, aren’t afraid of YOU, can be seen walking down the sidewalk and make a horrible crunch if you step on them.

  187. 187.

    J R in WV

    @Kay:

    I know what you mean Kay, about having personal data stolen.

    And yesterday the lady in front of me at the major grocery store wrote a check for her food, saying to the checkout guy, “I’m done with credit cards what with all the data lost to thieves!” after which the grocery store equipment scanned her banking information into their system.

    Which would you rather have stolen, your credit card number or your bank account ID??? Paying with cash is the only way not to surrender information. At least with credit cards there’s protection that requires the bank to make good illegal removals of your monies.

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