Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Giving up is unforgivable.

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

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

The willow is too close to the house.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Republicans do not trust women.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

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

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

You are here: Home / Politics / An Unexamined Scandal / Deplorables Open Thread: Mike Pence Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

Deplorables Open Thread: Mike Pence Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

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Whited sepulchre embraces self-propelled MRSA sore. Per Eric Levitz, at NYMag:

Progressives have long argued that Republicans use “law and order” as a racial dog whistle. A reverence for the letter of the law — and its impartial enforcement — was never actually a cornerstone of conservative politics, the left alleges. Rather, what truly matters to the right is the maintenance of “order”; which is to say, of social and racial hierarchies…

But the indifference of (many) conservative proponents of “the rule of law” to the conventional definition of the phrase has never been more naked than during the Trump era. And last night in Arizona, Mike Pence gave his movement’s contempt for equality before the law some especially indecent exposure…

To say that Joe Arpaio is a “tireless champion” of “the rule of law” is to concede the left’s darkest interpretation of what conservatives mean by that term.

Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt in 2016 for refusing to honor a court order. His office had made a regular practice of detaining its Latino constituents solely because they looked, to Arpaio’s (overwhelmingly white) deputies, like they weren’t legal U.S. residents. The judiciary said this was unconstitutional. Arpaio said (essentially) that he couldn’t care less — and then, so did the president of the United States, who directly undermined the rule of law (at least, under that term’s conventional definition) by handing Arpaio a pardon last August.

But criminally racist profiling was among the lesser offenses on Joe’s (figurative) rap sheet. During his decades-long tenure as sheriff, Arpaio presided over (what he himself called) a “concentration camp,” where low-level offenders and undocumented immigrants were subjected to daily cruel and unusual punishments. In Tent City, men and women who’d been convicted of — or, in most cases, merely charged with — crimes like drug use, shoplifting, and working with false documents were forced to live outdoors, year-round… At least 157 of all Arpaio’s prisoners died before they got out. At least a quarter of those deaths were the result of suicide — for nearly half of them, authorities provided no official cause of death whatsoever.

And the sheriff’s reign of terror extended well beyond his prison’s gates. His officers subjected Latino Arizonans — citizens and noncitizens alike — to routine harassment and abuse… When journalists or local politicians criticized these practices, Arpaio used the law as a weapon against them, raiding the homes of newspaper publishers and indicting office-holders on bogus felony charges…

But none of this – not a conviction for contempt of court, a long record of subjecting prisoners to unconstitutional cruelty, a habit of using law enforcement as a weapon for stifling dissent, or even his having framed a man for attempted murder — has disqualified Arpaio for “champion of the rule of law” status in the eyes of the Trumpist right. And why should it? After all, the sheriff was a tireless defender of order — specifically, the racial order that promised white Arizonans they were more American than their brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking neighbors. Arpaio once told The New Yorker that terrorizing the undocumented members of the latter group was one of his chief objectives, saying, “If they’re afraid to go to church, that’s good.”…


 
Mike Dense cares nothing for your weak-sister ‘human rights’ arguments — Arpaio is his base made flesh, and they celebrate the foulness!

Reader Interactions

230Comments

  1. 1.

    Marcopolo

    Apparently Rudi Guiliani just told the truth about Michael Cohen/Stormy Daniels in response to questions from Sean Hannity.

    Need more popcorn.

    Oh he also said a whole bunch of other egregious shit about the FBI, James Comey, the Mueller investigation & Rosenstein.

    The truth about Cohen & Stormy Daniels was “of course Trump reimbursed Cohen for the $130k,” said how that worked, then added that is what people like Cohen do for people like Trump.

  2. 2.

    Patricia Kayden

    Lawrence O’Donnell is hot tonight. Apparently Giuliani went wild on Hannity attacking Mueller and a Comey. He also admitted that Trump paid Comey for the Daniels NDA.

  3. 3.

    Corner Stone

    Looks like Rudy Rictus Ghouliani went completely off the rails tonight on Fox News.

  5. 5.

    Corner Stone

    Rudy must be coked out of his fucking mind. Did Pooty tell him to torpedo Trump in real time?

  6. 6.

    zhena gogolia

    @Patricia Kayden:

    also admitted that Trump paid Comey for the Daniels NDA.

    I hope you mean Cohen! Otherwise Imma just turn everything off for the foreseeable future.

  10. 10.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    Man, the RationalWiki article on Sanders is something else. Why favorite part:

    The “Sanders Effect,” moving the party left
    The Sanders candidacy and the enthusiasm behind it forced Clinton to move somewhat leftward – or to at least speak that way – as the campaign season moved along.[88] Sanders was allowed to appoint five members to the committee charged with forming the DNC Party Platform in 2016, appointing such folks as Keith Ellison and Cornel West (a staunch Obama critic[89]).

    The platform committee agreed to adopt many of Sanders’ policies, and the Clinton camp offered several concessions: abolishing the death penalty, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, preserving and expanding Social Security, even reinstating an updated and modernized version of Glass-Steagall. [90] It did not include opposing the TPP, but it did include a caveat where any free trade deal would need to protect workers’ rights and the environment if it hoped to pass with Democratic support. He was unable to get amendments that called for a policy imposing a tax on carbon and a national moratorium on fracking, and he could not get the committee to denounce illegal Israeli settlement building, but the committee agreed on supporting a two-state solution that guarantees Israel’s security and Palestine’s independence.

    DNC convention
    Once leaked emails showed that Debbie Wasserman Schultz had been biased against Sanders in the primary, she was forced to resign as head of the DNC.[91] Finally, just before he was to make his speech at the DNC Convention, Sanders supporters and Clinton delegates agreed to strip the autonomy of 2/3rds of superdelegates, forcing them to vote with how their states vote in the primary. [92]

    “Our Revolution”
    Sanders has become increasingly popular in the left wing of the Democratic Party, especially since a wingnut won against a liberal for the second time in the past five elections. Many find him to be the American parallel to Corbyn, moving the formerly center-left party which had moved to centrism in the ’90s, ’00s, and ’10s back to the center-left.

    “Our Revolution” has also become massively popular among the left wing of the Democratic Party, as anti-establishment sentiment rises among Millennials and Zers on the left and right, in a sort of neo-Counterculture similar to that of the Baby Boomers.

    Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress are also PACs formed by former Sanders supporters attempting to elect progressives to national office. They’re working together with National Nurses United and other groups to continue grassroots activism throughout the country.

    Sanders-affiliated candidates won in down-ballot elections in 2017, partially reversing a long, steep trend of Democrats losing.[93][94]

  11. 11.

    Corner Stone

    Rudy G basically just put cement shoes on Trump. The question is, who paid him to do it?

  13. 13.

    Marcopolo

    @Corner Stone: Was actually shocked to be the first person to report it. I guess the question is whether yet another explosive “bombshell” of information confirming Trump’s venality, immorality, and criminality will actual matter. The entire T administration is a fucking shitstorm and there are still approximately 40% of the American public who think this is all just fine as long as they get to see all other folks not white and straight and ill-educated like them get shat on.

  14. 14.

    clay

    This was inevitable once Rudy got back into the public spotlight. He’s got the same problem as Trump: He loves to hear himself talk, thinks he knows everything, and has a huge sense of grievance. Of course he was going to blurt out something incriminating!

  18. 18.

    randy khan

    @Marcopolo:

    Who’d have guessed that bringing on a guy who hadn’t actually practiced law in more than 20 years would be risky?

    Of course, I don’t trust Rudy to tell the truth any more than I trust Trump.

  21. 21.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @NobodySpecial:
    You mean Conservapedia? This is RationalWiki They’re very liberal over their, actually even left-wing. I wanted to know if others could make out what this bullshit means.

    Especially the “Sanders-affiliated candidates” bit. They also glosed over his flub about Southern voters not really counting and his insane desire to continue until California.

  23. 23.

    Marcopolo

    @randy khan: Don’t worry, tomorrow (or even later tonight maybe) we will find out that Rudi was really just a coffee boy, Trump hardly knows him, and he doesn’t actually know what he is talking about.

  24. 24.

    Peale

    I wish I could be confident that were Joe to win the primary, we could notch a D on that senate seat. But if memory serves me correctly, it’s possible to say you’re going to do the most vile things to Mexicans in that state and compare them to all sorts of lowly animals and still win the governorship.

  34. 34.

    MomSense

    Just heard that in the relaunch of the Podcast Intelligence Matters, Gen. Michael Hayden said that the Jade Helm conspiracy was a Russian op. Perry mobilized the National Guard. About to go listen.

    Does anyone else wonder why Manafort picked Pence? Trump didn’t want him but Javanka convinced him. Is Pence a sympathizer with Putin or do they have kompromat on Pence? I get a secret freaky vibe and not in a good way.

  35. 35.

    clay

    @Adam L Silverman: It’s weirdly appropriate that Tom Arnold has been summoned to try to bring down Trump, seeing as how Roseanne is supporting him. It’s like… maybe the universe is balanced after all!

    (“Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.”)

    EDIT: Arnold has aged well. He looks much better now than in the 90s, and the beard suits him.

  36. 36.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Adam L Silverman: ** rolls eyes. **

    How about leaving that up to lawyers? Ms. Allred has demanded Apprentice tapes in her latest lawsuit by a former contestant.

  41. 41.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @schrodingers_cat:
    Oh. What strikes me about RationalWiki is how weirdly contrarian it is anymore when it comes to Democrats and Trump/Russia. I suspect that has more to with the fact that it has many users.

    It will acknowledge that Putin is an evil dictator and has meddled in the election; that when more people vote they vote for Dems. And then they quote Bernie, saying that the “media” is focusing too much on Russia and Trump’s private affairs, without any real comment afterwards. Or will call Adam Schiff the most “pro-surveillance state” member of Congress/Democrat”.

  42. 42.

    zhena gogolia

    @NotMax:

    We tried, we really tried, to watch Maisie. Although Ann Sothern was charming, and there were two Shirley Temple co-stars (Robert Young of Stowaway and Ian Hunter of The Little Princess), it was soooo boring. Ann was not able to save it.

  44. 44.

    Amir Khalid

    The Trump Admiistration must share Arpaio’s misguided belief that the presidential pardon which kept Arpaio out of jail also voided his conviction. (Which of course is not how a pardon works) It’s one of the two prerequisites for calling Arpaio a champion of the rule of law; the other is ignoring Arpaio’s long history of abusing his office as sheriff to indulge his bigotry and advance his political career.

  45. 45.

    lamh36

    @Marcopolo:

    @yashar
    40m40 minutes ago
    More
    15. Hannity is trying to play cleanup here after Giuliani said this. Trying to get Giuliani to explain it differently and Giuliani says that Cohen paid the $130k and that Trump “reimbursed him over several (sounded like months but can’t be sure).”

    @yashar
    21m21 minutes ago
    More
    16. Laura Ingraham is playing the clip right now from Air Force One where Trump says he had no idea about the payment contradicting what Giuliani just said on Hannity.

    @yashar
    19m19 minutes ago
    More
    17. Laura Ingraham just now: They have to clarify this..this is a problem (the contradiction).

  47. 47.

    GregB

    Sweet Jesus.

    We are in a dystopia run by shitheels, grifters and B grade reality show hacks.

  48. 48.

    lamh36

    @mj_lee
    Follow Follow @mj_lee
    More
    Just asked @MichaelAvenatti to react to Rudy comments about Trump paying back Cohen on Stormy $:

    “I am stunned and speechless. If this is accurate, the American people have been lied to and deceived for months. And justice must be served.”

    9:03 PM – 2 May 2018

  49. 49.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MomSense: Pence, and his extremist coreligionists, are tied up with the Defender of Western Values and Traditional Christianity BS that the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church has labeled Putin with. The connection is the Christian conservative to Russian Orthodox Church outreach. This is why the National Prayer Breakfast in DC has dozens of senior Russian officials and oligarchs in attendance every year. Again: penetration at all levels.

  53. 53.

    NotMax

    @zhena gogolia

    They’re all B-grade, no denying that. The initial one (with R. Young) was originally written for Jean Harlow. As the franchise developed, things became more tailored to Sothern’s less overt style of blonde brashness. All ten of them being shown in a row; might try dropping in on a later entry.

  56. 56.

    lamh36

    @chris:

    @kylegriffin1
    Following Following @kylegriffin1
    More
    Avenatti tells @TheLastWord he hopes Giuliani is not suggesting the Cohen reimbursement took place over several months to avoid $10K+ payments to avoid reporting those payments: “That’s a serious, serious problem. It’s a violation of federal law. It’s a criminal act to do that.”

  57. 57.

    lamh36

    @metroadlib
    Follow Follow @metroadlib
    More
    my understanding is that rudolph giuliani is representing the president of the united states free of charge.

    worst lesson in getting what you pay for that i’ve ever seen.

    9:22 PM – 2 May 2018

  58. 58.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Patricia Kayden:
    I don’t blame you. I just hate-read it. Oh and the Democratic Party is a “centrist” party and it’s an open question as to which party is more conservative (in the dictionary sense!): the GOP or the Dems.

  66. 66.

    Anne Laurie

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Isn’t the Russian Orthodox Church highly anti-Semitic too? Or was that in the past?

    They can’t “defend the True Faith” without an implacable, age-old enemy to defend against. Picking the right enemy is 80% of getting a good religious war off & running.

  68. 68.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    I will enthusiastically endorse I Married A Witch. It’s light and charming and the two leads (Veronica Lake and Fredric March) play it just right.

  70. 70.

    Corner Stone

    @chris: Avenatti keeps looking around to make sure he’s not part of an Inception event. This is crazeballs to the amazeballs times 10 power.

  71. 71.

    Patricia Kayden

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: I watch “Majority Report with Sam Seder”. They’re pretty good except when the hosts start in with their Bernie is the best thing ever nonsense. I’m completely blind because I see nothing appealing about Sanders running in 2020 after what he did in 2016 to the Democratic Party.

  74. 74.

    Corner Stone

    @Adam L Silverman: I hope Caputo gets broken all the way to the poor house but has to bypass the poor house and ends up under a bridge without a rod, sparrow or blanket.

  75. 75.

    Aleta

    Wanted to be president, so he had a movie made, got James Woods to swagger around and play his pretend self. Wanted to be governor, then president again; and look at him now. Sliding down the road to ruin, one sick weasel in a death mask who’ll be embalmed in ridicule some day soon.

  76. 76.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: They do. They looked much better in game 2. Tonight they looked like they were finally running on all cylinders. Including Vasilesky.

  77. 77.

    Anne Laurie

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Geh?

    Dude, you were raised by rationalists. Don’t even try to grok the system; just be sure to pay attention & follow the signals the rest of us give you.

  78. 78.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Corner Stone: Amazing how there’s no bluster left after you’ve been shown just a few of the Special Counsel’s cards.

  80. 80.

    Marcopolo

    @Corner Stone: She actually did a little double-take/gasp when she heard Guiliani call Comey, who Guiliani first hired as a US Atty, a perverted man. Guiliani, in this interview is def closing in on Clint Eastwood empty chair territory, but that seems to be the place that a lot of old Repukes wind up.

  81. 81.

    Patricia Kayden

    Who keeps telling Trump and his sycophants that Trump cannot be subpoenaed? Not true. Presidents have been subpoenaed in the recent past.

  82. 82.

    Adam L Silverman

    This is not going to end well.

  83. 83.

    Suzanne

    The teachers are all still on strike and our Republican state legislature is a giant fucking waste of sperm and eggs.

  86. 86.

    Amir Khalid

    @lamh36:
    Per Wikipedia’s summary of his legal career, Giuliani has never done criminal defence law, which makes him just perfect for a client in serious danger of being prosecuted.

  88. 88.

    Corner Stone

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The White House is exploring plans to host summits on race between Trump and athletes and actors

    Ok. I first read that as a foot race between Trump and athletes. I threw up, passed out, came to and read the link. Then I reversed my reactions and am back now.

  89. 89.

    Marcopolo

    @Adam L Silverman: Fuck collusion, let’s call it for what it really is: conspiracy. Can we all please start using the actual legal term that can be charged as a crime?

  90. 90.

    efgoldman

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I see nothing appealing about Sanders running in 2020 after what he did in 2016 to the Democratic Party.

    I’ve said many times, state parties should forbid him ballot access.

  91. 91.

    Adam L Silverman

  92. 92.

    clay

    @Adam L Silverman: The House ain’t net fishing. The House is loudly proclaiming that there’s nothing to be caught; meanwhile the salmon are leaping upstream right past them.

  98. 98.

    zhena gogolia

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    this was your first comment:

    Heh? I was reading the other threads?

    I did not understand what you were responding to. Then later “Heh?” turned into “Geh?”

  104. 104.

    jl

    For the them the rule of law is that the strong do what they want to do, and the weak suffer what they must suffer.
    The idea has a long distinguish history. Trumspters go with it even if first expressed by a loser egghead historian.

  105. 105.

    Marcopolo

    Give Nicole Wallace credit. She just pointed out that the reason you don’t want Trump to talk to Mueller was just encapsulated by Rudi’s talking to Hannity. Trump & Guiliani are of a piece: No self-control or self-awareness or sense of self-preservation when talking.

  108. 108.

    NotMax

    Not a recommendation, just a notation that Thursday afternoon on TCM is a Great Gildersleeve marathon, featuring Hal Peary milking the character of Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, a bloviating blowhard politician with an inflated sense of self, originally introduced on the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show.

  110. 110.

    efgoldman

    @Aleta:

    Did Giuliani call for prosecuting Comey

    Nice that he knows as much law as his lord and liege.

  111. 111.

    Marcopolo

    So this was Guiliani’s first “public” appearance defending Trump since officially being “hired” by Trump, right?

    Icing on the shitcake, if you ask me :)

    And moar of this please.

  112. 112.

    trollhattan

    So my friend defending the serial killer petitioned the court today to not allow the ah-tor-o-ties to photograph his junk. I need to remind her how lucky she is her client isn’t named Anthony Wiener.

    My life…so dull.

  113. 113.

    Cheryl Rofer

    The reviews of Rudy’s performance are coming in.

  114. 114.

    Aleta

    @Aleta: As far as I can see, Giuliani didn’t say that (call for Comey to be prosecuted). But Fox apparently promised in a news alert that he would.

  115. 115.

    burnspbesq

    Lest we forget, a lot of the outrageous shit Arpaio did wouldn’t have been possible without the active cooperation of the Maricopa County Attorney’s office. Andrew Thomas and Bill Montgomery have a lot to answer for.

  116. 116.

    Ruckus

    @clay:
    All the while the salmon are also laying eggs in their pockets and slapping them upside the head as they wiggle by.

  118. 118.

    Mart

    I could only take about tens seconds of Rudy and the man who built a TV shrine in front of that poor brain dead woman’s hospital. Turns out Rudy hiring Comey was the worst mistake of his life. Fucking around on his wife and placing the command center in the World Trade Towers, not so much,

  119. 119.

    Marcopolo

    @Aleta: Yeah, it would seem Guiliani got so caught up admitting all of Trump’s lies/crimes that they never got around to prosecuting Comey.

  120. 120.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Aleta: He did. He called for him to be prosecuted for leaking unclassified portions of one of his memos. He also called from Secretary Clinton to be imprisoned.

  121. 121.

    Mnemosyne

    I don’t trust Tom Nichols on anything but hating Trump, but he does that so well:

    Watching @TheRickWilson debate this Trump guy named Jones, and it struck me: the TV Trumpers all remind me of Irwin Mainway defending Bag O Glass.

  122. 122.

    Cheryl Rofer

  123. 123.

    Feebog

    @Adam L Silverman:
    It doesn’t matter what we call it in this humble little blog. What matters is what Mueller charges and you an be sure he will get it right.

  124. 124.

    lgerard

    It looks like Rudy will be headed for that metaphorical farm upstate very shortly

  125. 125.

    J R in WV

    I wonder who first came up with the idea to talk about collusion and protest that there never was any of something that doesn’t really exist!

    When what investigators were exploring all the time was conspiracy against the USA!

  130. 130.

    Marcopolo

    Btw, for anyone interested in the criminal & civil travails of my Gov, Eric Greitens (MO), there are now three on-going investigations into his actions: 1) sexual assault/invasion of privacy; 2) improper acquisition & use of a charity email list to do campaign fund raising; and 3) illegal sidestepping of government information/sunshine regulations due to his staff using a messaging app called Confide that deletes messages after they have been sent.

    Really hoping he is forced out of office, though the closer it happens to the mid-terms the better.

  133. 133.

    Corner Stone

    @lgerard:

    It looks like Rudy will be headed for that metaphorical farm upstate very shortly

    Where he can run and run and play and chase rabbits and frolic as much as he wants!

  136. 136.

    efgoldman

    @Marcopolo:

    Really hoping he is forced out of office

    The balls on that klown, holding on. Can /will the state actually prosecute him, or will they wait for the leg to get the balls to impeach?

  138. 138.

    Vhh

    @Cheryl Rofer: There was a lawyer here some weeks ago who described a case during which the police showed a surveillance video of the crime scene. His client said “hey, that”s me”, rendering his defense both nute and moot. That’s what Rudy just dud for Trump.

  141. 141.

    Adam L Silverman

    @burnspbesq:

    BSA violations? I don’t think so, although I will defer to anyone who knows that stuff. But if Trump really did smurf the reimbursement to Cohen, it’s both hilarious and telling.

    Avenatti brought this up on O’Donnell’s show.

  142. 142.

    Cheryl Rofer

  143. 143.

    Corner Stone

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    He says they discussed his revelation of the reimbursements long in advance. Does not expect to be fired.

    Ok, so the translation of this is roughly, “If he fires me I am going to torch his stupid ass. And then make sure all my cronies in the NY FBI also torch his ass. Good luck getting me away from the spotlight, fat boy.”

  147. 147.

    Corner Stone

    This is more of their effort to make sure there is no truth. We have nothing to refer to as truth.

  148. 148.

    Marcopolo

    @efgoldman: The sexual harassment/privacy invasion & inappropriate charity email list use cases are being prosecuted by the St Louis City Circuit Attorney’s office. The Confide message app investigation is currently being done by the state Lege.

    There are a fair number of R legislators who want a special session this summer to do the impeachment process—but not a majority. Still a lot of R’s defending him, or saying let the investigations run their course through the legal system, or just trying to ignore what is goin on. The path forward is def not clear.

  150. 150.

    jl

    @Corner Stone: I saw a clip of that. So Rudy G is nonchalantly telling, on national TV, about how Trump structured the payments in to small bundles (and coincidentally, I think small enough to avoid any bank scrutiny) and funneled them through a third party to make them look like something they weren’t (money laundering) .Then says “See, no campaign finance violations”

    The Aristocrats!

    Maybe Mr G. is still so steamed about not getting a bigshot WH job, he’d went into this Trumpster gig to get revenge. Possible? Revenge served cold. When I think about political figures as awful as Trump, I admit that later model Rudy comes to mind, so he could do it.

  151. 151.

    jonas

    @lamh36: IIRC, it’s what sent Denny Hastert up the river. Apart from the fact that the payments were to a man he had sexually abused as a minor.

  152. 152.

    jl

    @lamh36: ” worst lesson in getting what you pay for that i’ve ever seen. ”

    Or best lesson about the worst consequences.

  153. 153.

    Aleta

    I sure would enjoy a deck of most wanted playing cards for the Yakety Yak administration.

  156. 156.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jonas: Correct. The actual sexual assaults and rapes (some of the victims were below the age of consent) couldn’t be prosecuted because the statute of limitations had run out. So they got him on the financial crime issues as the payments were ongoing.

  158. 158.

    marcopolo

    And to think, during the Obama years the big news of the day today would have been the Boy Scouts announcing they are dropping the word Boy from their name because…well…there appear to be a lot of girl boy scouts. The horror.

    /s from a former boy boy scout

  159. 159.

    jl

    What Rudy is doing is actually a stroke of genius. He’s proving to the whole country that there is no need for Mueller’s team to interview Trump, they will go ahead and spill the beans, like a damn crime procedural show, in public.

    Edit: And that Avenatti guy, who thinks he’s so smart with his predictions, didn’t predict they would start confessing everything in public before the week was out. Yeesh.

  162. 162.

    marcopolo

    @jl: Shoot, I’d forgotten that even though Trump has been president for over a year that the sissification of the Boy Scouts is definitely Obama’s fault. I’ve obviously been too wrapt up in watching the Guiliani self-immolation maneuver.

  164. 164.

    jl

    @marcopolo: Good point, it would have been Obama’s fault if it had happened then, and it is Obama’s vault that it happened now, unless it happened before Obama was born, in which case, it would be Obama’s fault.

    Can easily happen with demonic muslin shape shifters who’ve commandeered a Deep State time machine.

  166. 166.

    Raoul

    Borrowed (ok, stolen) from Twitter

    Emmet Flood has discovered he wants to spend more time with his shreds of dignity

  170. 170.

    marcopolo

    @Steve in the SFO: Did I hear you were going to be in StL this coming Monday to depose Gov Greitens or some such thing? Did any StL BJers make any plans or are we all still losers?

  172. 172.

    jl

    I’m going to make sure I catch any and all future Rudy interviews. Probably be entertaining.

    “Look, Trump didn’t shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue, He may have. It was late and he was so high on the stuff that makes him sniff, he didn’t know what he was doing…
    “It’s not a pee tape, it’s a pee audio. You know that Commie stuff is unreliable, they just got the sound…
    “Trump didn’t meet Putin and lie about, he forgot about it for awhile. Head problems, which should be obvious, but look, Reagan was a great president… And like Reagan, he doesn’t even try. The liberal GW Bush tried to do it right, and look what a mess…

  173. 173.

    marcopolo

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I turned 11 in ’73 so that would have been the year I joined the BS. Luckily, I was a member of a manly troop–our scoutmaster was a guy in his late 60’s or older who sold real estate and smoked 10″ stinky cigars. Though we were the one of the first troops in the St Louis area to integrate and definitely the first to openly accept gay scouts.

    I have no recollection of wearing or even seeing these “red berets” though I do remember we started a lot of fires and cut down a lot of trees at BS summer camp every year when we were sending the noobs out for left handed sky hooks and smoke sifters.

  177. 177.

    jonas

    @Mnemosyne: IIRC, the suspiciously-close-to-130k payments were from the Trump Campaign to several Trump Org businesses. The question then becomes, how did 130k end up in Cohen’s LLC? Cohen claims he put up the money himself and Trump had nothing to do with it, and now Trump’s admitting he reimbursed him for it. Reimbursed from where? This will be interesting.

  179. 179.

    marcopolo

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Never did that–it was at Philmont in AZ, right? Furthest our troop ever went out of town was BS SC, maybe 80 miles south of StL. That was where our Order of the Arrow stuff took place as well.

  181. 181.

    Mandalay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I’m completely blind because I see nothing appealing about Sanders running in 2020 after what he did in 2016 to the Democratic Party.

    Well it’s very early days, but it looks like New Hampshire might agree with you:

    Voters in a state that helped launch Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 bid for the presidency may not be “feeling the Bern” as much two years later, now that it’s rumored the senator could run again in 2020.

    Sanders trails Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren as well as former Vice President Joe Biden in a survey of New Hampshire voters’ preferred 2020 candidate, according to new polling from Suffolk University released on Wednesday.

  184. 184.

    Steve in the SFO

    @marcopolo: I will be there on Monday! Quinerly fled town when she heard, but I’d love to meet up with other juicers.

    ETA: everyone wear red berets so I’ll know who you are!

  185. 185.

    jl

    And also looks like Rudy thought Trump was not explicit enough when he confessed to Lester Holt, also on national TV, that the Comey firing was corrupt. Rudy covers all the bases and is well prepared.

  186. 186.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mandalay:

    Sanders trails Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren as well as former Vice President Joe Biden in a survey of New Hampshire voters’ preferred 2020 candidate, according to new polling from Suffolk University released on Wednesday.

    Is this the retirement home primary?

  192. 192.

    marcopolo

    @Steve in the SFO: Well, I am time constrained in the following particular way: I can come out at earlyish dinnertime and play with having to be home by 8. Or I can come out after 7:15 and then stay out till whenever. But I have a task I have to be home to do in the 7-8ish timeframe.

    Other than that I am just a fat middle-aged white dude who probably spends too much time following current events for good physical/mental health. Not a lawyer :). I am definitely not big on the photo documentation part of the equation so I will flee if pictures are to be taken.

    Edit: Just realized I should mention I have never met Quinerly, Ozarkhillbilly, or LaPassionata (the other StL BJers I can think of off the top of my head). We seem to be a reclusive bunch.

  195. 195.

    marcopolo

    Past my bedtime. Been waiting on a file download but the dl speed is apparently fuckupidly slow for some reason and I am not staying up another hour.

    Have a good night/morning everyone.

  200. 200.

    NotMax

    One thing I can say in favor of my Boy Scout troop is that we never, never wore those dorky shorts.

  201. 201.

    Amir Khalid

    @jl:
    I think everyone here looks forward to seeing Rudy talk his client right into the hoosegow.

  202. 202.

    jl

    Looking on the bright side for Trump, maybe Rudy’s telling the truth and the shady payments weren’t specifically for the NDA payment.
    Maybe Trump is just has the regular habit of making shady payments to shady fixers who do miscellaneous stuff Trump doesn’t care to know about.

    Kind of like a rich man’s handyman. You can’t keep track of every 20 you slip them for fixing something up around the place.

    I think Rudy cleared everything up tonight.
    Or maybe I’ve never seen so many out-of-it odious old coots on TV who talk like they are slipping into dementia.

  206. 206.

    Amir Khalid

    @jonas:

    Reimbursed from where?

    He’s not going to say, of course, but I think Mueller already knows.

  207. 207.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman: *Now* I have — and thanks for the Thursday Morning Open Thread!

    (I have a really nasty cold & my brain is functioning at about 38% efficiency.)

  208. 208.

    NotMax

    @Anne Laurie

    If it’s the same cold which laid me low in April, figure on 10 days. Wracking coughs so constant that chest became bruised.

  209. 209.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    ” I know I took the second picture, cause my dad’s in it. He’s behind the kid with the red jacket and beret. ”

    So, you admit your dad is a Mormon from Simi Valley. Dude, you gotta do better than Trump would on your stories.

  211. 211.

    jl

    @NotMax: I think there’s was a news story that Cohen quit complaining sometime in 2017 that lines up with Rudy’s tale.

  218. 218.

    lgerard

    What happened to those two Florida lawyers trump hired a few weeks ago, did they fall into a sinkhole?

  219. 219.

    NotMax

    Aroma of the onion rye loaf just removed from the super duper bread machine making the mouth water in a most unbecoming fashion.

  220. 220.

    Ruckus

    @lgerard:
    They sure as hell didn’t have any sense to find so who knows.

    I like the background behind dense in the picture from NBC.
    “Tax Cuts to put America First.”
    First major superpower to shoot self in genitalia?
    First major superpower to declare bankruptcy?

    Imagine how dense one has to be for other conservatives to call him that.

  221. 221.

    GideonAB

    There must be some strategy behind this move
    by Giuliani. After all, Republicans such as
    Dean Heller are cold and calculating. Giuliani
    must be the same

  222. 222.

    Gerald

    @Marcopolo: Rudy G Spanky’s new HOE!
    Backhoe that is!
    He is digging a deeper hole …and he’s got Spanky’s back!
    Thus the name back Hoe!

  223. 223.

    Procopius

    @MomSense:

    Trump didn’t want him but Javanka convinced him.

    Well, Jarvanka are orthodox (more specifically “modern” orthodox so she doesn’t have to cover her hair), so I assume they are committed Likudniks which means Zionists. Pence belongs to one of those weird branches of Dominionism that believes bringing all the Jews back to Israel will force God to bring on Armegeddon, which will lead to the establishment of the Kingdom of Christ. I imagine Jarvanka don’t believe in that Armageddon shit, but see Pence as being malleable by Netanyahu and willing to subordinate American interests to Likud’s interests (which they believe are Israel’s interests). I’m just speculating, of course.

  224. 224.

    Origuy

    I remember the Boy Scout red berets, but I don’t remember if I had one. I did have a broad-brimmed Smokey the Bear style hat.

  225. 225.

    Joyce Harmon

    I was struck by Giuliani’s conviction that if Mueller dared to investigate Ivanka, the public would Rise Up in outrage. Does he really believe that Ivanka is some sort of People’s Princess beloved of the masses?

  226. 226.

    J R in WV

    I was a cub scout, but when I finished all the merit badges they still wouldn’t let me advance to Boy Scout. I was about done anyway, it was a Baptist troop, and I was NOT a Southern Baptist in any way.

    I was invited to a Sunday service, went to be polite, was appalled at the age of 11 or 12, never went back, ever. Well except for once in Boot Camp, was very similar, actively repulsive. Sorry if that offends anyone! But it wasn’t Christian at all. Even back in 1961.

  227. 227.

    Chris Johnson

    I think the Guiliani strategy here is ‘let’s just escalate. Say whatever, flat-out defy all courts and laws, and go full fascist because we have the people and it’s time to just be a monarchy or empire or something. The King is the law, and the faster that’s established the better’.

    I’m not sure he’s right. The trouble with that plan is, if it doesn’t completely work he’s fucked and so is his gilded God-King.

    As for 2020 primaries, NO more people who were already too old in 2016. We need a millennial. Somebody agree to put avocado on the White House and we’ll try to bait them :)

  228. 228.

    Peale

    @Chris Johnson: I think they need to get back the attorney client priv that they threw away by denying that Cohen was working for them. They want those documents that muller seized disallowed.

  229. 229.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @efgoldman: You get what you pay for…or don’t pay for as the case may be. Free help is free, but it’s not the best.

  230. 230.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Pence is just the example of how Fundamentalism is linked to all the Hard Right and at the core of it’s thinking no matter how any individual conservative claims to an atheist or a libertarian. It’s simple and attempt to take the idea that being white is magically special and make it the law of the land.

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