This is the jail in Warsaw, Va., where Paul Manafort is being held for pre-trial detention. It opened in 1995. https://t.co/MfeqKqF1EO pic.twitter.com/JVr4ep8C3g
— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) June 16, 2018
Dude that looks like a Holiday Inn Express with an attached Denny's
— TavernWench?? (@TavernWench) June 16, 2018
Supermax Olive Garden.
— Alex Heard (@alexheard) June 16, 2018
Man. All these people *suddenly offended* by idea of pretrial incarceration because of 1 privileged white man. *Nearly half a million people are detained pre-trial on any given day bc of poverty alone. That’s 1/4 of the 2.3 million total jailed in US.* pic.twitter.com/koe81I9IVM
— Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) June 15, 2018
You would be shocked at how few prosecutors focus full time on white collar crime. You could fit all of the white collar prosecutors in Chicago in a small room. https://t.co/X7kuixRrXR
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) June 15, 2018
if Hillary won and her former campaign manager was sentenced to jail this month, the tone of the news coverage would look/sound MUCH MUCH DIFFERENT
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) June 15, 2018
Manfort's detention is an opportunity to make a point about conspiratorial thinking regarding prosecutions.
Claims by Team Trump that the prosecutions here are a political conspiracy — like Dinesh D'Souza's claims — aren't unusual. They're the norm in white collar cases.
/1
— MaybeCooperativeHat (@Popehat) June 15, 2018
/3 But they perceive the standard operation of the criminal justice system as conspiratorial. They see common developments in the case as evidence that they are being singled out for special treatment by a malicious foe within the prosecutor's office.
— MaybeCooperativeHat (@Popehat) June 15, 2018
/5 They cannot conceive that the system, in a country they love that has given them so much, treats people this way regularly. So they conclude that prosecutors have a bias against them or are being directed by powerful people with bias. How else could they be treated like this?
— MaybeCooperativeHat (@Popehat) June 15, 2018
/7 In my mind, this is similar to the psychology that leads us to JFK & 9/11 conspiracy theories. A malevolent conspiracy is easier, more comfortable, to believe than believing this can just happen. /end
— MaybeCooperativeHat (@Popehat) June 15, 2018
schrodingers_cat
No sympathy for traitors.
Schlemazel
I always thought people believed in conspiracy theories because it helped explain why they were failures. “I would be more successful if not for the evil forces aligned against people like me.”
Platonailedit
Fucking corrupt media played Rev Wright, who had no direct connection to Obama’s campaign, in a poutrage loop. They are the real public enemies and are the root cause of this thugly regime.
Mike J
The only way the criminal justice system will be reformed is if we lock up more rich white guys.
Gin & Tonic
@Schlemazel: Damn. So that’s why I’m not a billionaire yet. Should have realized this sooner.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: Just because you are paranoid does not mean people aren’t really out to get you….
Alex
My job sometimes involves assisting people who have had to come into contact with the social safety net, and it’s a very similar dynamic to what Popehat describes. People who have lived relatively comfortable lives are shocked and suspect that they are being personally targeted: “The caseworker has it in for me, they hate me because I’m white, how am I supposed to get out of this hole if I can’t ever have more than $2000 in my bank account, how can they say I missed a paperwork deadline when I was in a coma, this has to be deliberate because they never answer their phone and they claim they lost my paperwork 3 times.” They just know that poor black people get all these great benefits, so when they can’t get that themselves they are sure it’s discrimination. What they don’t realize is that they’ve been lied to about the system their whole lives– that’s the real conspiracy.
jeffreyw
All those comforting foods are really just parts of a conspiracy to make me fat.
HeleninEire
Wow. That popehat thread is enlightening.
Platonailedit
Of course, there is a ‘legal quirk’. There always is when it comes to these people.
danielx
Once again, with feeling:
I never thought the face-eating leopards would eat MY face!
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Really fucking tired of the “if ________ (Democrat) had done this”. Yeah, we know. I don’t want to hear that any more. I want some motherfuckin’ justice served. If the damed LEOs in the country had been doing their job all along Trump wouldn’t have gotten within sniffing distance of the White House, he’d be serving consecutive life sentences in Ossining.
RedDirtGirl
I’m watching the Roger Stone doc on Netflix. What a bunch of scuzzballs they all are.
Dorothy Winsor
I feel like Trumpism is coming at us from all sides: children at the border, the Russia investigation, Scott Pruitt, attacking the EU and Canada, withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council, buddying up with Kim and Putin, purging voters, and on and on. I only hope we flip the House so we can maybe put the brakes on some of this, but it’s overwhelming sometimes.
Major Major Major Major
Conspiracy theories are more comforting than reality because comprehending the outrageous complexity that gives rise to reality takes effort and some skill.
ETA: Also yes some of them help you feel persecuted, which everybody loves, but I’m speaking to them more generally (since the thread mentioned JFK), or like the moon landing
Major Major Major Major
@Dorothy Winsor: Trumplike/Bannonite movements are also increasingly popular in Europe, and Toronto has another Ford.
James Powell
What Eric Boehlert tweets is true, but it is also common knowledge. Has been common knowledge since Trump’s campaign began.
We have to give up on the idea that the press/media are going to do anything helpful. They love this guy.
MomSense
@RedDirtGirl:
Have you watched Icarus?
zhena gogolia
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
Yes, I’m tired of it too. It’s demoralizing.
bluehill
@Dorothy Winsor: Midterms will be a big test to see if enough politically apathetic people have woken up. If the polls are accurate, people just have to vote.
germy
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major:
Sometimes I feel like we’re witnessing the end of liberal democracy, and that we’ll be entering a new, dark, era that will precede the end of modern civilization. And all I can selfishly think is, “This isn’t fair. Why couldn’t this have happened after I was long dead?”
It’s like the one scene from The Day After Tomorrow, where the one female character laments that everything she’s ever done, the years she’s spent in school, were for nothing as she faces the end of the world.
Then I remember that there are people fighting every day and we’re making real progress. I always have to remind myself of this. The GOP and the global far right must be destroyed.
eclare
@MomSense: I have, wow. It’s been a while, but the ending. The Roger Stone doc is on my list, but today is all World Cup.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: also, it’s usually “Imagine if Obama had done _______” and “___________ ” is some thing that you can’t even remotely imagine Obama doing.
efgoldman
@Schlemazel:
And because conspiracy theories are constructed such that they can’t be disproven.
Platonailedit
@germy: Reminds me of this.
Truth from a man dubbed as the TV’s lowest life form.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: That movie is ridiculous. I love it, but not because it’s good.
This is certainly a major challenge to late-20th-century liberal democracy, and utopian projects like transeuropeanism and free trade. We shall see what happens, if we don’t all die first.
@Platonailedit: I always think it’s funny when the thought experiment for a “liberal Donald Trump” becomes Jerry Springer, a man with actual political views and experience.
James Powell
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
One of the facts no one wants to deal with is that American law enforcement is filled with RW assholes. We learned, for example, that the FBI NY Office and retired agents had some kind of flaming hatred for Hillary Clinton. But do we know why? I mean, what the fuck did she ever do to them? What the fuck did she ever do to law enforcement? What did any Democrat ever do to them that they were so eager to put a man they must know is corrupt in the White House?
@zhena gogolia:
I don’t find demoralizing at all. Maybe tiresome. For whatever reasons, the members of the press/media do not acknowledge that they are covering Trump in a way the promotes and protects him. They do not agree that they cover Democrats differently. We get occasional remarks to this effect, but the editors and program directors don’t see it and they certainly aren’t going to do anything to change it. The press/media have had a very pronounced RW point of view since Reagan.
Major Major Major Major
@James Powell: I mostly think it’s lazy and boring, but I could see how a person would find it demoralizing.
germy
The media they consume? See Murdoch, Rupert.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major:
I just thought particular scene was very compelling and relatable which is why I still remember it years later.
Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
Ford was more or less a “given”,
Wynne, the “liberal” Premier, stripped the social safety net because “deficits”, horribly privatised Ontario Hydro, ( to the point that some rural customers saw 47% -227% rate increases), amalgamized the GTA with out transferring tax and revinue power, saddling Municipalities with additional services but no money to pay for them.
Before that, was Dipper, Bob Rae, another failed neoliberal Politician overseeing failed neoliberal policies.
The Ford’s have always had the Munincipalities, ( White Flight, Urban Resentment, the Yoke of the Elites, etc).
In this election they got 40% of the vote, 68% went Green, Liberal, NDP, in a turn out of 58% of registered voters. They took the Rural areas, ( Property Rights), got the Munincipal votes, ( barely) but the Downtown cores went NDP or Liberal.
“Seventy per cent of Canadians say they will start looking for ways to avoid buying U.S.-made goods in a threat to ratchet up a trade dispute between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump, an Ipsos Poll showed on Friday.
The poll also found a majority of Americans and Canadians are united in support of Trudeau and opposition to Trump in their countries’ standoff over the renegotiation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
…Canadian respondents also signalled approval of the united front their politicians have shown, with 88 per cent saying they welcomed the support of politicians from other parties for the Liberal government’s decision to push back on tariffs.
The Ipsos Poll of 1,001 Canadians and 1,005 Americans – including 368 Democrats, 305 Republicans and 202 Independents – was conducted June 13-14. It has a credibility interval of 3.4 percentage points.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-vast-majority-of-canadians-say-they-will-avoid-us-goods-new-poll/
Platonailedit
For chris hayes types.
Kay
southpaw
All still employed there, I assume. Just working away on the next campaign.
zhena gogolia
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Try On the Beach if you really want to get depressed.
raven
@zhena gogolia: Love window shade and telegraph key!
JPL
Sorry if this has already been posted
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/prepared-for-war-as-mueller-moves-to-finalize-obstruction-report-trumps-allies-ready-for-political-battle/2018/06/16/ec3a4cfe-650c-11e8-a69c-b944de66d9e7_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e366108d7196
rikyrah
Excellent thread by Popehat
Major Major Major Major
@Jay:
Don’t forget bike lanes!
I wasn’t saying that Canada is going Trumpy, just pointing to him as an example. Obviously they had Rob before.
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: It has good moments, but it’s not a good movie.
JPL
@rikyrah: The Washington Post article that I linked to above your comment, might make you happy. I realize that the repubs will do everything in their power to bury the report, but I’m not sure that they can.
waysel
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: This.
efgoldman
@JPL:
There will be no impeachment by the current house, and no conviction by any feasible senate
Doesn’t mean that the pressure on Weasel Face won’t become unbearable.
SiubhanDuinne
@Major Major Major Major:
Fixed. He’s Premier of the province, not Mayor of the city as his brother was.
Unless “Toronto” was synecdoche.
Gelfling 545
@Mike J: Truth.
Fair Economist
@jeffreyw:
There is some truth to that. Processed foods are designed to leave you unsatisfied so you eat as much as possible (so you’ll buy more). The food industry spends billions a year on this. They even make it a part of their advertising – “Once you pop, you can’t stop!”
M4
@SiubhanDuinne: it was but in retrospect that was a poor editorial decision.
JPL
@efgoldman: True. Trump supporters are so rabid, it might even help republicans get out the vote.
Cuomo has to get moving and allow Underwood to file state charges.
sukabi
@Platonailedit: not a quirk, by design. How else are rich folks gonna evade taxes and launder money?
Fair Economist
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
Unfortunately, repeating it is needed for the mf justice. The right-wing Wurlitzer runs overtime claiming Republican misdeeds are “normal” or “youthful hijinks” or whatever and we have to keep reminding people they are not and that they are evil, illegal, and twisted.
Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
Us “Good Goverance” keep pushing for electoral systems more representative to the vote than First Past the Post.
23.2% of registered voters shouldn’t manage to elect the government.
germy
Abolish it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/03/13/of-course-democrats-should-want-to-abolish-ice/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bf5e9dc5aa74
SiubhanDuinne
@M4:
You’re always such a careful writer, which is why I wondered. No worries.
efgoldman
@Fair Economist:
Sugar and fat taste good.
Kay
Well, since no one thinks that the NYTimes can stop worrying and continue running cover for him. We know. We know he’s not going to be “frog marched”.
I really can’t bear lectures from these people. If they actually have some inside knowlege or expertise no one has seen any evidence of it, so maybe they could stop scolding us and just do some news reporting on the sitting President and his administration. They can link to the Mueller report when it comes out and we’ll read it. It’ll be the first real information we;ve gotten since Trump was elected, unless you count the information in the Mueller indictments and the OIG report yesterday.
Good job linking, though. Thanks for that.
smintheus
These people wanted to lock up Hillary Clinton although she hadn’t even been indicted for a crime. And they’re whining that a man under indictment is being locked up for committing yet more crimes?
germy
efgoldman
@smintheus: They (and their media noise machine) have been unmoored from reality for so long they coldn’t find it with an electron microscope
waysel
@efgoldman: Happy to see you made it back.
sukabi
@Platonailedit: f that. Just put the defenders of the policy IN THOSE CAMPS with the same “amenities” they are providing for those children AND NOTHING ELSE. No contact with their family, friends. Have personel guarding them that don’t/won’t speak English so the chance of communication is inhibited.
Start with this fucker.
M4
@Kay: the obstruction part is just one component right? There’s still collusion and all the white collar shit. But mueller wants obstruction out there this year.
NotMax
Not the least bothered by how ‘nice’ the pl;ace appears to be. Lock up be lock up. The incarceration is what is intended to be punitive; a gilded cage is still a cage.
@zhena gogolia
And also enough renditions of the tune for Waltzing Matilda to last two lifetimes.
;)
NotMax
@efgoldman
As every chef and restaurateur I used to know when hobnobbed in those circles was fond of repeating, “Fat is flavor.”
germy
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
It’s been years since I saw the movie (even longer since reading the novel), but that is a memorable scene.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Truer pixels were never posted.
Doug R
@germy: Concern troll is very concerned.
Did you bother to actually listen to what former prosecutor Kamala Harris said?
Brachiator
@Platonailedit:
The legal quirk is there because rich people write the laws.
Death Panel Truck
Shouldn’t this treasonous motherfucker be held in the Tombs instead of a suburban jail?
Doug R
@efgoldman:
That is probably where our obesity crisis started-lowering fat meant that WAAAY too much sugar and salt were thrown in to make food palatable.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
MAGAie Haberman and her ilk are as much in on the grift as any common Pruitt or Jarvanka.
No Drought No More
Which only goes to prove appearances are indeed deceiving. Keep in mind that just like Manafort, cockroaches have also checked into that jail, too, and will never check out again, either.
JenJen
Wow!! Thanks, Anne!! -JenJen aka TavernWench
MomSense
@eclare:
It took me a couple tries to get through Roger Stone. That man reaches through the screen and creeps me out like nobody else.
Brachiator
@Jay:
This is an argument for increasing voter turnout, not a change of the electoral system.
The recent San Francisco mayor’s election used a ranked choice system. The eventual winner, London Breed was the top vote getter, but almost lost because two rival candidates created a coalition and urged their supporters to always select one of the coalition members as their second choice vote.
ETA. The attempt by the Maine governor to decertify an election that used ranked choice is bullshit because his interference is happening after the fact.
germy
@Doug R: Yes, she said “ICE should exist.” Do you agree?
efgoldman
@germy:
I didn’t see the quotation, but there has to be some context here.
burnspbesq
@Death Panel Truck:
Is he being tried in New York County Supreme Court?
Doug R
@germy:
What do you think we should do with foreign nationals that commit serious crimes?
germy
@Doug R: What did we do before the Bush admin created ICE? Did they just run loose in the streets?
burnspbesq
We could always reconstitute ICE after disbanding it and firing all of the shitheels who currently work there.
Move it out of Homeland Security, put it back into a single agency with CBP, and put it back in Treasury.
The problem with ICE isn’t jurisdictional, it’s cultural.
efgoldman
@Doug R:
Reopen Alcatraz?//tinkletoes
@RedDirtGirl: Netflix has Joeseph Cambell and the Power of Myth in six episodes. Watch that and it might make you feel better.
M4
@Brachiator:
This also actually did happen recently in Oakland, where a likely loser of an actual runoff beat the first-choice (by a big margin) vote-getter due to second-choice votes. Oakland voters were not amused, as I recall.
I also think in general it’s bad to have a voting system where the average person voting can’t tell you how their votes will be counted.
B.B.A.
Honestly, I’m for granting instant citizenship to any Mexican or Salvadoran who sets foot on American soil, to own the wingnuts. Abolish ICE, abolish CBP, release all the immigrants from the concentration camps, tear down all the walls, make Spanish the national language, etc.
James Powell
@SiubhanDuinne:
Maggie Haberman and the rest of the press/media absolutely love Trump. Every day they must thank whatever deity they believe in that they are doing the kind of boring policy stories that competent administrations produce. Spare us from stories about health care, climate change, and the wages of the great unwashed!
Doug R
@tinkletoes: As a fan of Heinlein and Asimov and Campbell, I’ve been moderately curious. Wasn’t sure how dry it’d be.
efgoldman
@B.B.A.:
Forgot your
sarcasm tags//Chet Murthy
@Brachiator:
I don’t see what’s wrong with this “coalition”? Are you saying that *inherently* and *always* single-vote FPTP expresses the will of the voters? B/c that’s a pretty amazing statement, and there’s a lot of evidence that that’s false. If all elections were between *two* candidates, yeah, single-vote FPTP would reflect the will of the voters. But even then there’s gerrymandering (which argues for multi-seat constituencies, and then you’re back to >2 candidates). A lot of decent thought and work has gone into figuring out voting systems that allow voters to express their will, and there’s good reason to think that Ranked-Choice and transferable-vote systems are better than single-vote systems.
Full disclosure: I voted for Kim, then Breed, then Leno. For perhaps-interesting-but-irrelevant reasons.
Doug R
@efgoldman: I’m thinking reopening Alcatrez would probably be a worse civil rights violation than Gitmo.
@burnspbesq:
There’s your solution.
efgoldman
@Doug R:
If I had a neon arrow pointing to all the sarcasm indicators, I’d use it
B.B.A.
@efgoldman: Not being sarcastic. An open border worked fine for us in the past. We should bring it back. Make America foreign again!
Chet Murthy
@M4:
Shouldn’t that be “Some Oakland voters …” ? I mean, all those Oakland voters who voted for what turned out to be a sure-fire loser, and who put that eventual winner second …. they were clearly happier, weren’t they? Or were they deceived? Too confused to figure out how to vote?
You’re stating pretty strongly that things like Ranked-Choice are too complex for voters to understand. And yet, it seems like it worked pretty well in SF. B/c yeah, Breed’s got a point that we need more affordable housing. But she’s also far too in bed with developers, and (from what I read before the vote) Kim has a strong history of not letting developers get rich off the public. Breed hasn’t won that argument, is what I’m saying, and that she won the election but by a razor-thin margin reflects that. Maybe that it took going to the second-choice votes, to resolve the race, tells us something about the ambiguous state of mind of SF voters.
efgoldman
@B.B.A.:
Then you’re living in an unrealistic fantasy world. It’s pretty much impossible to dissolve a large entrenched bureaucracy. See ACA, efforts to wind down
efgoldman
@Chet Murthy: Gregor? Is that you?
M4
@Chet Murthy:
I didn’t say that. I said that how the votes are actually counted is complicated. I have seen interviews where even the people running the campaigns couldn’t explain it. And I don’t think that is good.
ETA as for your note “Kim has a strong history of not letting developers get rich off the public,” this is true insofar as developers do not make money when nobody is allowed to build housing in your district, yes.
eclare
@MomSense: That is saying something considering who else is on our screens these days. Have you (or anyone) watched Michelle Wolf’s new show? Recommend?
Doug R
@eclare: Half hour episodes on Netflix. How could you lose?
eclare
@Doug R: True (grabs remote)
Nicole
The other reason white collar crime isn’t pursued as often or as thoroughly is that it’s expensive. Rich people can afford good lawyers, and good lawyers slow things down. A state AG office doesn’t have an unlimited budget. It’s more cost-effective to go after the poor, who can’t afford to defend themselves. Ugh.
TriassicSands
Now, if we could just get all of the white-collar criminals in the Trump administration into a small cell (or large, who cares, as long as it has bars). OK, a small cell for so many criminals would constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.”
dopey-o
He ran for president because he – like the derplorans and MAGATs – hates America. The America that gives everyone – black, white, brown, yellow – a fair shot is what they hate. The America that doesn’t hold down the blacks feels like a boot on their own white necks.
BTW, many people say that if you think life is a zero-sum game, you aren’t a Christian. I’m just sayin’….
MomSense
@eclare:
Her show is on my list but I haven’t had a chance yet. I binged Queer Eye yesterday and today and it was wonderful.
eclare
@Doug R: So far it’s really funny…I’ve seen her before, but wasn’t too impressed. WHCD changed my opinion, and this is good!
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat:
God damn right.
B.B.A.
@efgoldman: The SS and Gestapo were large entrenched bureaucracies. Our own squads of genocidal fascists should go to the same fate their predecessors did.
RedDirtGirl
@MomSense: not yet. Guessing you recommend it?
Wapiti
@B.B.A.: Makes me think of the end of “The Lives of Others”, where the former Stasi agent has been reduced to filling kiosks for freebie newspapers.
Ksmiami
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: yes not just defeated- completely destroyed