This was covered over the holiday, but I think it bears repeating: A delegation of Republicans from the House and Senate spent the Fourth of July in Russia, handing a propaganda coup to the Putin government prior Trump’s meeting with the boss man himself later this month.
Those Republicans are:
Senator Kennedy (LA)
Senator Shelby (AL)
Senator Daines (MT)
Senator Hoeven (ND)
Senator Thune (SD)
Senator Moran (KS)
Senator Johnson (WI)
Rep Granger (TX)
The meeting was closed to the American press. If you check the lawmakers’ Twitter feeds, all posted treacly paeans to American exceptionalism yesterday, but not a single one mentioned the Russia trip while they were abroad, even though politicians are usually quick to publicize their foreign policy junkets. Daines even posted photos that indicated he was in DC for the fireworks yesterday.
I don’t know when the delegation got back — maybe Daines was shaking hands with Lavrov in Moscow and back in DC for the fireworks show that evening. But it’s weird that no one tweeted about it at the time. Only Daines has broached the topic at all on Twitter, and he did so by posting a clip from a Fox News appearance this morning, where Republicans go to set up narratives:
It was great to join @AmericaNewsroom from DC this morning. pic.twitter.com/5E7xrTp41p
— Steve Daines (@SteveDaines) July 5, 2018
Daines sounds tough on camera, but the Russian media is allegedly covering it in an altogether different light, i.e., saying that the Republicans rolled over on Crimea, affirmed Russia’s superpower status, etc. Senator Thune, that sun-kissed son of the prairie who once stirred David Brooks’ loins to absurd effect, sounded remarkably less butch than one would expect from a national security daddy, even in quotes from the American press:
Sen. John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, called for a “change in behavior” on the part of Moscow.
“The best way to demonstrate this as we head into the 2018 election is to show the American people and our congress and our administration that the Russians have no intention of messing or playing with the American election,” Thune told The Associated Press in an interview.
Pretty please. With sugar on top.
The Daines clip above includes a claim that’s increasingly peddled by Fox News and the Republican Party — that U.S.-Russian relations are at their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War. But that’s just a flat-out lie:
Ahead of the 2018 election, Trump has embarked on this remarkable run of giving Russia stuff it wants. pic.twitter.com/EQSWXaU1I9
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) July 4, 2018
Trump can’t check items off Putin’s to-do list fast enough. But the myth-making by Republican lawmakers suggests that Trump isn’t the only Gooper who’s beholden to Moscow, as we’ve suspected all along.
Trump and his party want to come out of the upcoming summit looking like they’ve accomplished something other than complete capitulation to Putin. Expect gaslighting on an epic scale.
Cheryl Rofer
It gets hard to comment on this stuff because it is so beyond the pale.
One of the more disturbing aspects is that Trump and these guys continue to cut the American press out and allow the Russian press (and government) to put the story out. You would think that this alone would get the attention of the em ess em.
rachel
Are any of these people up for re-election this year?
Ciotogist
They hacked the RNC, too. Maybe they found evidence of serious election fraud.
geg6
Fucking traitors, every last one of them.
Brachiator
WTF. Was Russian press present? Was anything reported on Russia Today and other sources?
People should post this on social media to their Trumper friends and ask what is the GOP hiding.
Lock them up.
Leto
Did anyone check these guys at customs for “magic beans” and whether Alaska was still ours?
A Ghost To Most
Traitors in service to Putin.
Barbara
What is really galling is that Russia is not a superpower, largely for reasons of its own making. Russia cannot replace China or just about any other western European country as a trading partner. There is literally no benefit to the U.S. from buttering up Putin. Zero. There are at least a dozen countries that are more important than Russia, including Canada, Brazil and Mexico in our own hemisphere.
MattF
Can we ask just what these paragons of American politics are hopeing to get from Putin? I mean, what?
Miss Bianca
I don’t get this. I REALLY don’t get this. It’s not just that it’s so brazen – it’s that we’re not, finally, hearing HOWLS about this from the press. If for no other reason than that they are being given such a double-finger salute from the Republicans. Don’t they fucking have any sense of job preservation, if not any sense of obligation to the public? How is *any* of this OK?
I feel like the entire country is now a party to domestic abuse. Some of us are fighting it, but I feel like most of the institutions in this country are just shielding their heads and hoping that if they are really, really, quiet, Daddy will stop hitting them. I am nauseated.
schrodingers_cat
What are they doing in Russia?
JPL
I saw this tweet yesterday, and what a difference a year makes and not in a good way.
https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1014547010601603073
I wish I knew how to post the side by side image.
Barbara
@MattF: There is nothing. I mean, seriously. Nothing that Russia can do for us. They won’t buy enough grain or corn to offset the coming tariff induced bloodbath for farmers in North Dakota and Kansas, they won’t buy Harleys from Johnson’s home state of Wisconsin, they won’t be placing a nice new factory (like Mercedes Benz did) in Shelby’s home state of Alabama. It’s idiocy or betrayal or both all the way down.
germy
Some members of the delegation were tweeting “enjoying the beautiful fireworks, yay america” messages on the Fourth of July.
lollipopguild
@schrodingers_cat: Collecting their paychecks and getting Putin tattoos.
schrodingers_cat
Most of the MSM is bought and paid for, and operating as a propaganda arm of the R party. Lead by Treason Times, who don’t forget was the biggest cheerleader of the ill-begotten Iraq war.
Her emailz
His purple heart
His earth tones
They have been at it for a long time.
germy
@MattF:
Help with the next election?
maya
Did the Russians put on a fireworks show on the 4th in honor of their new found and fast friends from America? A nerve gas display even?
Leto
@MattF: A head pat, cookie, and “Datta boy, comrade!”
@Barbara: Part of what it will do though is drive China to Russia for more soybeans. Our farmers lose out, Russia benefits. But her emailz, amirite!?!?! /s
Elizabelle
This is another issue to bring up in our letters/emails/contacts to Republicans who might decide to delay USSC nomination hearings until after the midterms.
Russia and other foreign nations very likely improperly contributed to GOP and third party political campaigns. If they supported any Democrats, it is likely low cents on the dollar.
It is not the Democrats who made an Independence Day journey to Moscow.
It is not morally or ethically right for a Trump-appointed and GOP-rushed through new Justice to sit in judgement of any cases that make their way up to the Supreme Court.
This whole comment is preaching to the choir, I realize, but other points to raise in contacting the offices: we should sit tight until after the elections. Gives us time for the people to weigh in. Trump lost the popular vote by millions. Millions. And people are turning out by the millions to protest this administration. Those protesters — most of them voters — are watching YOU too, Senator _____.
Do not seat a Justice nominated by a severely compromised and possibly illegitimate president who is under investigation. Let the Mueller investigation play out, fully.
We can do fine with 8 justices.
Any terrible and unjust decisions out of a compromised Supreme Court — like Citizens United, which you realize has destroyed citizens’ faith in democracy and their having a say — could imperil this nation you purport to represent for years upon years.
You need to make it clear that there will be no Supreme Court nomination hearings before the midterms. Do the best thing for the country, not your career. We are in unprecedented times, and situations can change, very quickly.
Jim
I’m old enough to remember the outcry over the Dixie Chicks’ comments a few years back. But this is an appeasement tour. The Russians didn’t invite them — it was a GOP initiative. WTF?
Elizabelle
@Miss Bianca: Your domestic abuse comment is spot on.
donnah
Why? Why try to kiss Putin’s ass?
Trump hotels and other money-making schemes. For Republicans, some sort of imaginary “We made peace with Russia” goal to spite Hillary and Obama. And Putin gets to run the massive destabilization of American democracy, including disrupting elections.
Money, money, money. And the illusion of winning.
Nicole
The wealthy have limited loyalty to their nation; they have great loyalty to their class. The GOP politicians want to be oligarchs, too.
And after spending a week with a red-stater last month, I fear FOX News will do a fine job keeping them all brainwashed into accepting whatever the GOP wants them to believe because hey, at least Russians aren’t browns.
PeakVT
Traitors, one and all.
Disband the Республиканская партия.
Elizabelle
@Nicole: I do not see how we maintain a democracy with Fox News (and its ilk) in the mix. I really do not.
Brainwashing is not your usual flow of information the First Amendment was meant to promote and protect.
It’s polarizing and destabilizing. I am reading Madeleine Albright’s Fascism, and it’s not hard to see how vulnerable the Fox News crowd (and uber-wealthy funding them) has made the United States.
Yarrow
Been saying this since the election. Trump, his family, top GOP officials, stop GOP elected officials, some lower down GOP elected officials–they’re all TRAITORS. They are beholden to and owned by Russia.
In that sense, they are behaving completely rationally. They didn’t “roll over” as much as check in with the home office for their performance review.
And the public has not even started recognizing how much China owns these people.
germy
@Elizabelle: Radio Rwanda.
schrodingers_cat
Rs are afraid of the MAGA base they have cultivated and they are afraid of the Russians. Putin probably has the goods on them. They went to negotiate with their blackmailer.
Spanky
@schrodingers_cat:
Visiting their balls, is all I can figure. And had the American press been there, maybe they could have reported whether they (the balls) were in a vise or not.
jonas
@Nicole:
I think this is what it basically boils down to. Putin has remade Russia in to a white, Christian-Orthodox, authoritarian kleptocracy. Republicans see it as a template for what they want America to become.
MomSense
@Miss Bianca:
They are some of the most superficial, weak minded people in our country. They have been consistently trying to rationalize, excuse, and normalize trump/gop behavior. We can all guess as to why and the reasons probably vary but for those who aren’t sympathizers, there is a strong desire to pretend they didn’t fuck up before the election.
The USCIS denaturalization task force is some scary shit and I think we will have to scream and yell about it if there is any hope of getting press attention.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Julia Davis seems like a good follow for how events are portrayed in the official Russian press — her Twitter account is @JuliaDavisNews. If anyone knows otherwise, let me know, but she seems like a reliable source. According to Davis, the Russian state press is gloating like crazy over this propaganda coup.
Major Major Major Major
@Barbara: since when have republicans cared about what benefits the US?
Elizabelle
@germy: Yeah. Radio Milles Collines. Hutu encouraged to destroy Tutsis.
Further, they tested the waters, again and again and again. And non-Trumpers are actually the majority in this country.
Yarrow
@Miss Bianca:
The better question is how much of the press, at least at the top, is compromised by Russia. They have attacked all levels and aspects of our society. They would not leave out something as important as the press. Not reporting on it may be in their best interests as well.
Kay
This was really clarifying to me:
It won’t matter to the MAGA’s or national political media, so no one has to tell me that- but it might matter a lot to our voters.
The “chaos” theory of Russian interference bothers me because the ordinary meaning of “chaos” is they don’t care which direction the chaos spins- and they do- they do care. People hear “chaos” and they think “they just want a mess”.
No. There’s a goal here. A specific ideological goal and a specific way to get there. That’s why they backed only Republicans and not just Trump- they backed congressional Republicans. That’s why they didn’t just “interfere” in the election randomly- they interfered to gin up racial and ethnic discord.
Republicans are using “chaos” to hide behind. That makes it broad, non-specific. It’s NOT broad. It’s white nationalism.
J R in WV
If a gathering of Crows is a Murder (and it is), what is a group of Republican Senators?
A Treason of politicians!
rikyrah
TRAITORS ALL ??
PeakVT
Am I in moderation because FYWP doesn’t like Cyrillic? Testing…
…Apparently so. FYWP.
…Unmoderated! Thank you, blog gods.
rikyrah
@Kay:
It was always White Nationalism, with a side of anti-gay.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: FWIW Putin has also courted the leftier than thou. Why is your senator, Sherrod Brown approving T’s tarriffs? I used to get my dose of anti-HRC memes from my ex friend the “independent” who turned into a crazy Bernie sis. Ended up voting for Jill Stein and then making excuses for the travel ban.
MomSense
@Yarrow:
Yup. I bet they found some good dirt on those NYT servers.
SFAW
I’m so old that I can remember that non-Rethugs doing anything within a nuke’s distance of fellating Russian leaders, the way that the Rethugs are currently doing, would instantly bring howls of “Treason!!!” from Rethugs.
I’m also so old that I remember when the MSM did their fucking jobs once in a while.
I think it’s fucking fantastic that Shitgibbon is doing his best to emulate Viktor Yanukovych — or at least, Yanukovych’s role as Putin’s Puppet.
Hey, Pinche Sulzberger, you fucking traitor!!! “Putin’s Puppet” should be in your fucking rag every fucking day. IN BIG FUCKING LETTERS, MOTHERFUCKER
God, I hate all of these traitors.
jc
I sure hope that many Democratic campaign ads this fall pointedly ask if the Republicans are working for America, or for Russia? Because you know that if the Dems did anything remotely like this, the Thugs would go nuts screaming about it.
Betty Cracker
@Nicole & @jonas: Yep — I think this is exactly right. Russia under Putin appeals to homegrown wingnuts because the regime is racist, misogynistic, homophobic and violent, traits that America has historically shared but wingnuts feared were receding in America as it became more diverse.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
When McConnell was told about Russian interference, his response was, in so many words and actions, “this works for us”
If Tester is smart, and I think he is, someone on his team is making sure nobody in Montana misses this story. I’d hope the same is true for Baldwin and Heitkamp. The Fellow Travellers aren’t on their ballots, but this looks weird enough that they should be doing all they can to get local reporters to ask their direct opponents what the fuck the caucus they want to join is doing.
germy
@Yarrow:
I would bet a good investigative journalist could find some sketchy relationships between the owners of the NYT and corrupt NY real estate. Most likely involving foreign money.
But I suspect such a journalist would be committing career suicide.
Humdog
@jonas: Yup, you’ve nailed it Jonas. Rs never wanted a democracy, but oligarchy. They are willing to take kakistocracy if they get to keep all the money. Government for the wealthy crooks, the rest of us are to be servants.
SFAW
@J R in WV:
I can’t find the damn “LIKE” button. I can’t up-vote this enough.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
And anti- Islam. Putin had a reason for embracing the Orthodox Church after Bosnia.
Kay
And part of it is a kind of chicken/egg that we’ll never solve. Do they gin up racial and ethnic discord to elect Republicans or did they gin up racial and ethnic discord because they’re white nationalists and Republicans align better with that than Democrats do? Is it tactics or ideology?
I don’t know- we may never know- but does it matter? Either way we end up with far Right white nationalist policy. It’s more civil to demure and say “they only gin up racial and ethnic discord to get elected- they don’t really mean it” but at the end of the day who gives a shit? They follow thru with the policy. We don’t need to discern INTENT. The thing speaks for itself.
Tokyokie
@rachel: Kay Granger, who holds former Speaker Jim Wright’s old seat, is up for re-election, of course. Here’s her opponent.
And I suggest we begin referring to these people as the Traitor Coalition.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Crazy religious bigot wing of the R party were on the Putin train since at least 2012 if not earlier.
Miss Bianca
@schrodingers_cat: I still can’t believe she was trying to make excuses for the travel ban to *you*. That’s a special brand of clueless, right there.
Elizabelle
@germy: So you need to find journalists/investigators whose sense of mission exceeds their careerism.
David Cay Johnson.
Jane Mayer.
Maybe a consortium of journalists who were downsized, or have retired.
Something is terribly wrong at the FTF Vichy NY Times, and I suspect it’s in the publisher’s suite. Needs a house-cleaning.
Paper of record, my ass.
Yarrow
@MomSense: They’ve had the dirt on the many people at the NYT for a long time.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Courting the leftier than thou was to hurt Clinton. To pull support from Clinton. It’s the flip side of the Trump strategy. They wanted Trump and they wanted Republicans. Greens got used in that effort- which is completely consistent for Greens- they get used all the time. They don’t care. All they do is list-build and fund raise.
The Leftier than thou piece is smaller than the far Right piece because the far Right are in power.
piratedan
what gets me, is that the Press talks about how they have to kowtow to the GOP framing on damn near everything in order to maintain their precious access… and then we nod sagely saying “yeah right”… but then they turn around and do this… elected officials, meeting with foreign governments and OUR press is not allowed. The NYT, standard of all free-press journalism in the western world today (or so they would have you believe)… says what? Nothing on the optics of our “most” patriotic holiday of the year? During the time when the sporting world is focused on the World Cup? Nothing to see here?
As Adam has repeatedly stated, this penetration is on multiple levels and I’ve gotten to the point where I watch as little as possible on ANY Faux network and I certainly have a skewered eye on ANYTHING that comes from the NYT, getting to believe that they only report what they feel is safe to report.
Mike in NC
Once the Trump family’s criminal ties to the Russian mafia are revealed, these pols should all lose their security clearances and maybe even their citizenship.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay:
I agree.
Yarrow
@Tokyokie:
YES!
@J R in WV:
Also, yes!
Nice to see we’re past the days where people here said we shouldn’t use the words “traitor” and “treason” to describe Republicans and their actions because those words weren’t legally accurate. That doesn’t matter in this case. The public knows what treason is. The public knows what a traitor is. Call them what they are.
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: Not clueless, she turned into a paranoid gibbering bigot after she moved to Idaho. I kept up the relationship in the hopes that I could bring her back to sanity. She saw a conspiracy theory under every rock.
The lies and the crazy became too much for me to bear, after a while.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
The Leftier than though piece is to me the tactics part. Don’t confuse how they get there with the goal. The goal isn’t to elect Lefties. It’s to pull support from liberals and elect far Right white nationalists. As long as we blur that we’ll only serve their interests. They LIKE the myth that ideology didn’t matter- they like that it’s portrayed as “could be Left, could be Right- who knows!” We know. It’s Right.
They don’t just want “chaos” because chaos could end up Left or Right. The goal is Right. Pulling support from Clinton is not the same as supporting Trump. One is a tactic and one is a goal.
Teddys Person
@Nicole:
And like Trump loyalty, it’s one way. They want the US to protect them and enhnace their wealth without giving anything back to the country. Trump and his ilk have laid this bare for the whole world to see.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I suspect the LTTs are also easier to manipulate, and cheaper. A few tweets from an account with a Bernie-with-the-bird avatar and a fancy plane ticket for Jill Stein vs hundreds of thousands funneled to the NRA
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Agreed, the goal was for T to win. Leftier-than-thou were the pawns. How do we protect our left flank.
germy
@piratedan: They could have at least taken Maggie Haberman to Russia with them.
Tokyokie
Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted for showing less fealty toward Moscow than the Traitor Coalition. And at least he had talent.
Yarrow
@Kay: I disagree with your assessment. Putin wants power, control, money and influence. The white nationalism is also a tactic to get those things, in that sense. He may like the idea of white nationalism, but if it turned out that white nationalism wasn’t working for him to get power, control, money and influence he would drop it. It has worked very well for him so he’s continuing to use it.
germy
schrodingers_cat
@germy: Then who would go to battle on behalf of Sarah Sanders against meanies like the Red Hen owner or Michelle Williams?
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t know specifically, but I’m concerned about protecting the country. I have been saying for awhile that we need some kind of comprehensive education on how what propaganda is and how not to fall for it.
Kay
Wouldn’t it be delicious if the fake populists failed not because people were repelled by their white nationalism but because of their cover story? If they failed on the economy? Then there’s no cover at all. They fail on their own terms and their own claims.
It’s not as inspiring and no one can say “well, we were better than that and that’s why it failed” but it would just be a perfect ending to a sad chapter. Hoisted on their own (phony) petard!
There’s no real reason to think they won’t. Trump is a moron and he hires greed-crazed cable tv hosts and assorted nutjob racists to run policy. It would be completely expected if they failed on the economy.
It’s like the war mongers in the Bush Administration, when they failed on executing wars. They were bad at their whole reason for being!
Tokyokie
@Barbara:
And similarly, they won’t be buying any Joint Strike Fighters, whose primary manufacturing site is the Lockheed plant in Granger’s district. Not that Trump wouldn’t give Putin access to the technology, but because the thing is such a piece of crap (I believe Charlie Pierce refers to it as “the Flying Swiss Army Knife), they’re savvy enough not to want the damn thing.
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: Sherrod Brown wrote a book titled “Myths of Free Trade.” Trade is one of his interests —might be his main interest. My sense of why he is supporting Trump’s call for tariffs is that he believes that tariffs judiciously applied have a place and a role.
Is he playing with fire? Could be, because getting anything done judiciously under Trump is not at all likely, needless to say.
But I still operate under the old rule with Brown: I voted for him because I don’t feel I have to watch every step he takes (unlike my other Senator, Rob Portman the rethuglican).
Willing to be corrected on this topic though.
germy
@schrodingers_cat: You’re right. She’s too valuable here.
Mike in DC
We desperately need to win the midterms. When we control Congress, our members need to GET LOUD about all this crap, as do our presidential contenders. We need to fight much harder to drive the public/media narrative here. Cede no ground to Trump or his enablers in the GOP (and the media).
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
Now I’m gonna try to get on a roll… what should we call a large group of bought-and-paid-for MSM reporters attending to a Treason of Politicians? Hmmmmm…
A Conspiracy of reporters? or… maybe a Fraud of Reporters? one of these… should I be working on reporters, some of which are working for Peace, Justice and the American Way…
SFAW
@Kay:
They cannot fail on their own terms, they can only BE FAILED.
Morley Bolero
Russia and North Korea = good, Canada and the EU = bad. Got it.
Miss Bianca
@schrodingers_cat: Why is it that the Whitest Spots on Earth are always the places where people gibber most hysterically about being overrun by brown hordes? I mean, where *are* these brown hordes, anyway?
Never mind, I know the answer, but it still makes me wish you could just *beat* rationality into people’s heads sometimes.
Tokyokie
@J R in WV: I’d say a Wimp of Reporters.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Well, and you might hate this, one way is to not make them more important than they are. 20,000 Lefty votes in key midwest states shouldn’t have killed Clinton. Should not have. She should have way more than 20k in MI as a lead. That’s on us. We have to replace those votes by bringing out more of our own. There aren’t that many of them. That’s just hard work.
I saw the national Party is spending only 2.5 million on voter reg. That’s WAY too low. It’s nothing. They should be pouring money into getting them VOTED. They should be spending 2.5 million in Milwaukee alone.
SFAW
@germy:
Fuck you, Jill.
SFAW
@J R in WV:
A Quisling of Reporters?
Miss Bianca
@germy: Yeah, Jill, how are you going to grift your way to 5% of the popular vote then? Or are you just pissed because Puti doesn’t seem to be returning your phone calls anymore?
Mike in DC
@Kay:
Well, what’s the total budget for the national party? Generally the state parties do most of the registration and GOTV.
Tokyokie
@Miss Bianca: I think it’s related to the loudest proponents of white culture thinking that Shakespeare is a fishing reel.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca:
Exactly how I feel. Seems like you channeled several of us when you wrote your comment. Thanks for putting it into words.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Sherrod wins in a 50/50 state. He’s 9 points ahead. He’s a reliable, no fuss, no prima donna bullshit Democratic vote in the Senate and he wins. He’s not the problem. If they were all as good at this as Sherrod Brown is we would not have Trump.
zhena gogolia
@Brachiator:
I found this jerk bragging about how the Americans are now coming to Russia to suck up. I can’t watch the whole thing, it’s stomach-turning.
Link thing doesn’t work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAMquSOZ7Zs
Yarrow
@J R in WV:
A Hoar of Reporters.
NotMax
@J R in WV
Rather fond of the old stand-by, a mulch of reporters. Or perhaps an ignominy.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: He may be a good senator but he is wrong about tariffs and giving aid to T on any of his policies should be no-no for any D now.
delk
@J R in WV: a Claque of Reporters?
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: No, I like your clear headed analysis and agree with your prescriptions. DNC should hire you. Stat.
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: In the case of my friend its the people who surround her. When she was in a college town. She was an O-bot. She was lonely but politically the sane the first two years in Idaho. Then her emails started reflecting the cray cray surrounding her.
Yarrow
I linked this yesterday, but it’s worth a repost.
I got an email from Uncommon Goods. They’re partnering with Democracy Works to make voting easier for people.
You can also support them by buying an “I’m a voter” necklace, keychain or paperweight. Those are kind of cool.
Nicole
@Teddys Person:
Unsurprising. I have spent a fair amount of time around rich people and the sheer amount of stuff they expect to get for free is amazing. They also, from what I hear from those who work in food service, tend to be lousy tippers.
Kay
It scares you sometimes how brazen they are. This is and will get tons of coverage in Ohio. His home state. His actual voters.
He doesn’t care. He thinks he can get away with this blatant lie. He’s so confident he made a decision to boldly lie his way out of it. That’s the Trump Effect. No more quiet resignations when they get nailed. They just power thru it with a blast of lies.
Pruitt is busily fulling his bank account- he does not care because he’s looking at the guy at the top and saying “it worked for him!” You have to march them out of there in handcuffs. That’s Donald Trump’s “leadership” and the poison spreads every day.
pamelabrown53
@Yarrow: @#70.
I semi disagree with your disagreement to Kay’s analysis! IMHO, the white nationalist route with the heavy dollop of (in Putin’s Russia) support for the Orthodox church is the only way to control people enough to control the money… I believe it’s the only workable means to maintain power and control as it’s the most fear based and anti-democratic.
Any thoughts?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: how are the “hard hat” type unions coming down in the Brown/Whoever race? I remember the Ohio Teamsters endorsed Rob Portman, cause they and that walking grey flannel suit are all about reining in Wall St and reopening the plant. They’re was a similar endorsement in PA a couple of weeks ago, the state AFL-CIO endorsed the R incumbent in a close House race, Brian Fitzpatrick. None of the stories I could find give any policy explanations, but I see one article from something called Patch dot com saying that Gabby Giffords had endorsed him too. No other stories on that, and I don’t trust an unfamiliar source these days.
hitchhiker
@Betty Cracker:
What’s remarkable is how eagerly the gun-lovers marched into the Putin’s Our Friend narrative.
Do they actually believe their new hero would allow any Russian citizen within a mile of a weapon?
Litlebritdifrnt
Don’t have a link yet but the Mayor of London has given permission for the giant Trump baby blimp to be flown over London during his visit on the 13th.
dexwood
@J R in WV:
How ’bout a cackle of reporters? It’s a word for a group of hyenas, but it seems to work here, too, since it’s associated with the sound of chickens.
Elizabelle
@dexwood: Cackle of Jackals, too.
I’ve loved all the jackals’ suggestions on our corrupted journamalists.
Kay
We already know that giving rich people huge tax cuts does not actually help the economy for 99.7% of us. We know because we try it every 8 years.
So it’s LIKELY that the fake populists will fail on economics, maybe more likely than them failing because “we’re better than that”- facts not in evidence on that one. No one actually believes far Right greedmeister Kudlow actually gives a shit about “broad based” prosperity. Their economic prowess is their Big Lie. The fact that they’re racists isn’t the big lie. 60% of Americans already believe they’re racists.
germy
@Litlebritdifrnt: Here’s a beautiful photo of the thing:
Teddys Person
@Litlebritdifrnt: Here’s a link to Raw Story.
Yarrow
@pamelabrown53: We’re probably saying similar things and these issues are tied up with each other so difficult to separate. My take is that white nationalism is not the ultimate end goal for Putin as it is with, for example, the KKK. It is a tool. It’s also good for him, since he’s white, but his goal is not just to end up with a white nationalist country.
Putin wants power, control, money and influence and he saw an obvious opening with white nationalism. The Orthodox church is also a useful tool for him toward that goal. It all works hand in hand.
As I said, if at some point Putin determined that white nationalism wasn’t working for him he’d move away from it and toward whatever he decided would work for him. I don’t see that happening because white nationalism is working very, very well for him.
germy
zhena gogolia
@Yarrow:
He has no core beliefs, even KKK type beliefs. You are correct. It’s all about the Benjamins.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
I’ve got the Connecticut edition, in which they often skip things, but I’m not finding A SINGLE ARTICLE on it.
jimmiraybob
I would vote the Russia-Georgie war of 2008 as a contender for low-ebb – the conflict during which McCain and other Rs were breathlessly advocating sending American troops to fight Russian troops. Unless we’re now defining the end of the cold war as the election of trump.
Yarrow
@zhena gogolia: Yep. Money, power and control are his core beliefs. Take away the money and change the game. SWIFT would be a powerful tool.
germy
@zhena gogolia: I really think there’s no innocent explanation for this.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think the Teamsters endorsed Portman because of their pension. That’s the federal intervention issue they would care about- they got a guarantee they wouldn’t be cut out of a pension bail out, which would be federal. They may have just gone with the winner. Strickland never should have lost the governor’s race and then to put him up again for Senate?
Sherrod and Portman are running as “partners” which is smart politics for both of them. It’s a 50/50 state. Portman needs Sherrod as much as Sherrod needs Portman.
Sherrod is good at Ohio politics, which are different than national politics. Senators to me occupy this weird dual area- the races are state races but they’re powerful nationally. The House isn’t like that. The House is always about R or D, all or nothing.
randy khan
@Barbara:
This.
It is borderline insane to be pursuing a policy of making nice with Russia while being mean to everyone else. There is nothing useful that Russia can offer the U.S. on foreign policy or trade. You can make legitimate arguments about whether it makes sense to be more Asia- (or just China-) centric than Euro-centric, or whether we should look more to the Western Hemisphere, but Russia is now more or less a Third World economy (and not getting any better) and has very little influence, except over the limited number of countries that are worried about being invaded by it.
NotMax
@Litlebritdifrnt
Friday the 13th, no less. The FSM’s sense of humor is sly indeed.
Yarrow
@randy khan:
It is not insane when what you are pursuing is your own self-preservation. It’s clear Russia has compromising material on these individuals and they know it, just like they have on Trump and his family. All of these people have made the determination that protecting themselves is more important than anything else. Their actions are sane when seen in that light. They’re also traitorous. They are not upholding their oaths. They are traitors to the United States.
randy khan
@schrodingers_cat:
I have heard Brown speaking about this within the last two weeks – I was literally less than 20 feet from him – and it is wrong to say he approves of the Trump tariffs. He thinks that they are a mistake. (I’m not saying he wouldn’t approve of any tariffs, but he very clearly thinks that the Administration has no clue what it’s doing and has gone down the wrong path here.)
Kay
@germy:
The NYTimes political team is terrible. It’s not going to get better either. I read a “readers ask questions” piece with their new political team editor and he raved about their work in 2016.
They suck. It’s all this bogus “analysis”. I think it’s because they’re all writing books. It’s just another institution where people lost sight of the basic question “what is my JOB? What do I do here?”
I was convinced when I was a manager at the post office that 90% of management is reminding people what their job actually is- who do they serve? What is their basic job description? It is amazing how human beings can invent entirely new jobs while supposedly holding and performing another that is completely different. I have to remind myself periodically. “Who pays me? Who do I work for? What am I supposed to be ABOUT here?”
Elizabelle
Speaking of David Cay Johnston: he had this article in yesterday’s FTF Vichy NY Times:
How to Make Trump’s Tax Returns Public
By David Cay Johnston, July 4, 2018
Mr. Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of two books about Donald Trump.
Another Scott
I haven’t kept up with this story, and it really doesn’t interest me that much. We’ve known that the GOP is like this since the WaPo story quoting Ryan – ‘No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.’ appeared – and actually earlier (since the GOP Convention rolled over on Russia and Ukraine on the Platform) – and actually earlier.
This is who they are.
We need to keep to our game plan and not get too distracted.
124 days to go. Eyes on the prize.
Cheers,
Scott.
Manyakitty
@Ohio Mom: That’s kinda where I am with Brown, too. He has tried to explain the tariff thing before, but I don’t see how it’s possible to apply them effectively with the current situation.
jimmiraybob
@Barbara:
Oil & gas rights in the northern seas when the ice sheets are gone. Probably striking deals on who gets what. And golf resorts. Oh wait a minute. I thought you referenced the Trump, Inc. Empire.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Boy you can almost see the wink-wink, nudge-nudge from Thune while reading that quote. Don’t even need the video it’s so strongly implied.
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
@zhena gogolia:
Just seconds (really!) before I saw these comments, I had been scouring the internet loooking for any mention of the trip in the NYT. The short AP item under the Times’ masthead was the only thing that came up in my search.
I don’t have words for how despicable they are.
Miss Bianca
@schrodingers_cat: I keep wondering how something like this happens – I mean, *I* live in a deep-red county, after all, and I’m not affected by that groupthink – or so I think, until I realize how numb I am becoming in the face of the tsunami of bullshit and double-speak that roars over our heads every damn day. From numb to dumb is…a perilously small step, I fear.
It also helps that in this case. FB is my friend. My local FB group of fiery, intelligent, liberal local wimminfolk is helping to keep me sane and focused on the real enemies. Would that your friend could have found the same! : (
MomSense
Here’s what I’ve been wondering lately. At the time McConnell was blocking Garland, I think many of us were too complacent because we assumed Clinton would win and we would either get Garland or someone more liberal. Do you jackals think McConnell knew the fix was in because of Russian assistance of was it just that SCOTUS will drive turnout for Republican voters?
randy khan
@Yarrow:
Well, when you put it that way . . .
I mean, as a matter of national interest, of course it’s insane. But you’re right that we have to remember that the current occupant has no interest in what the job is supposed to be about.
Kay
@germy:
You have to go back to basics. Everyone does. For me it’s like this- “Is my job conducting a passive aggressive whisper campaign to discredit this munii court judge?” No! It is not! BACK to the job description! I’m off track again! :)
They’re off track. It’s poor management. Managers are the people who tell you “whatever it is that you’re doing there? Not your job”. I’m my own now so I have to do both.
germy
@Another Scott:
Exactly.
V O T E
Yarrow
@Another Scott: You may know but other people do not know. It’s important that the general public understand that the Republican party is owned by Russia. It’s not just Trump. People know about Trump and Russia. They don’t understand that many elected Republican officials and party officials are also compromised. That hasn’t broken through.
You are correct that we need to focus on the mid-term elections and not get distracted. One issue that could help move people to voting Dem is if it becomes more widely known that the GOP is owned by Putin. These issues are not unrelated.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat:Committing treason? Just a guess, but a fairly safe one, I think.
Hobbes83
@Cheryl Rofer: I remember when Republicans accused Obama of conducting an “apology tour” after he was sworn in because he had to unfuck the damage that 43 did to our reputation internationally. Like the old saying goes, when the accusations of Republicans are actually confessions.
sukabi
@randy khan: speaking of being invaded…found this on Twitter, don’t know how anything about it’s legitimacy…follow the thread. Maybe Adam or Cheryl have some insight.
Platonailedit
How easily putin made the old ‘U.S’.S.R such a new reality. Total fail of the so called institutions (including the ‘free press’) and checks & balances. It has now fallen to the voters to rectify this tragedy of treasonous selling of their own country by the rethugs, fundies and the fugly.
Yarrow
@randy khan: Not just the current occupant of the White House but much of the Republican party as well. We need to tie the Republican party to Russia and Putin. It’s not just Trump. Republicans are traitors. Look where they went for the Fourth of July!
TenguPhule
@Miss Bianca:
No.
This has been another edition of SATSQ.
Miss Bianca
@randy khan: As I had occasion to remark on the Book of Faces, the ONLY thing Russia brings to the table is an out-loud-and-proud commitment to white supremacy and a (semi-) functioning model of oligarchy and theocracy that our own oligarchs and theocrats are panting to emulate. That’s it. But apparently that’s enough for Republicans.
TenguPhule
@Miss Bianca:
Welcome to Kay’s world of “these fucking institutions are all worthless.”
Another Scott
@donnah: There have been some noises that Donnie proposed recognizing Vlad’s stealing Crimea in exchange for his staying out of the way in a US attack on Iran. It would be kinda interesting to see how extremely hard-line the GOP travelers are in the “let’s go to war with Iran – it’ll be fun and easy” troop.
(sigh)
Yeah, money’s likely involved, too, but they have many, many more reasons to try to cozy up to Vlad.
Cheers,
Scott.
TenguPhule
@Mike in NC:
Why stop there?
TenguPhule
@Tokyokie:
That is a goddamn insult to Swiss Army Knives, which are fine examples of proper engineering and design.
TenguPhule
@J R in WV:
A graveyard of reporters.
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: For some people social approval from their peer group is paramount. Plus, most of her family including her T voting husband were always more on the R side.
joel hanes
@Yarrow:
A Hoar of Reporters
My, how I miss Media Whores Online
Platonailedit
@J R in WV:
Simple. The fifth columnist fourth estate.
Kay
This is what I mean. I don’t know about the substance of the claim but I know gas prices matter a lot to Republicans, because they matter to people who vote for Republicans. Trump cares about it because he issued a series of (lying) tweets about it.
It would just be so funny if what took them down was “kitchen table” stuff- the kind of stuff national media ignores because it’s not fucking LOFTY enough for their supposed role as Witnesses to History.
sukabi
@MomSense: I absolutely think McConnell knew, and was complicit in making sure that the election was fixed. Why else do you think he and Ryan threatened Obama that they’d make any announcement about election meddling by the Russians into a partisan cage match?
I also think they’ve been having great success with their own personal meddling for a very long time. Voter purges, suppression and gerrymandering are the overt barely legal ways they’ve accomplished this. Do you really think they’d stop there, when it’s been obvious for quite some time that old white men will soon be in the minority and will, if voting were allowed to proceed unencumbered, lose their power perch.
Miss Bianca
@Kay:
But isn’t *always* the “kitchen table stuff” that brings them down? Witness the end of the GWB presidency.
Kay
@TenguPhule:
What was Amy Chozick’s JOB covering Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign? Was it writing a book about the personal and sociological implications of Hillary Clinton? Is that FAIR to readers or Hillary Clinton? To be doing a different fucking job than they one you supposedly do? No. It was not. It is not. It’s poor management. People go off track for all kinds of reasons. Managers are supposed to bring them back and it doesn’t matter if the people are supposedly “the best” or whatever. They’re probably more likely to go off track because they have such a high opinion of their own genius and they;ve been stroked their whole lives.
sukabi
@Miss Bianca: his response to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands should have been the death knell of his occupancy, but the fucking media ignored it for the most part, or covered it in such a way to minimize the gross incompetence and malice directed against American citizens.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
I’ve seen other people point this out long before Matt Y did, but I’m glad that someone with his national profile is finally saying this.
Russia is supporting the Republicans and the NRA and fundamentalist churches because they’re all coming together to defend white supremacy. Period. Putin wants to be the worldwide leader for white supremacists, and so far he’s doing a stellar job of getting to that goal. ?
Kay
@TenguPhule:
It leads to bizarre results. Like a bigger discussion about the “civility” of objecting to Trump’s baby jailing than the baby jailing. Who made them the civility commentariat? Can they do both things? I don’t think so. They should probably just stick to reporting the facts of the baby jailing. Don’t get ambitious. Let someone else handle the commentary on the mechanics of protest. Maybe the public could do that, without their guidance, even. Maybe we could handle that part- public protest. Seems like that’s OUR job.
Teddys Person
Who paid for the GOP Traitor Caucus’s trip to Russia? Taxpayers? Some GOP PAC? If taxpayers paid, Democrats need ads clearly stating that “you” paid for these public officials’ travel expenses, and they don’t want “you” to know what happened there. What happens in Russia can’t stay in Russia.
Leto
@Yarrow: @Kay: @Mnemosyne: I believe Yarrow is correct on this, in that white-nationalism is still simply a tactic. Helping the Trumpov campaign was a tactic because they believed, like the rest of us, HRC would win. They were doing what they could to sow discord so that when she won, she’d be tied up in scandal from day 1. Putin’s goal is the same as it’s ever been: removal of the US as the dominate player in world affairs. Removal of the US’ sphere of influence in both foreign policy, economic, and military in world affairs. Followed closely by the destabilization of NATO and the EU. White-nationalism is working the best for him at this moment, though I’m sure if he felt that supporting far-left wing candidates was the more expedient means of getting to his main goal, he’d do that. I’m pretty confident he’s a “the ends justify the means” type of guy.
Platonailedit
Who would have thought the German leader is the last ‘man’ standing defending the western values?
Kay
@TenguPhule:
Comey is the poster child for this. What if he had just done his job? It wasn’t big enough for him so he took on an entirely different one. I don’t know- maybe they’re too smart to just do one well? I don’t think that’s it because he did poorly at the job he invented, where he was Defender of the Republic. One would think FBI director would be difficult enough without inventing a whole new role and then fucking it all up.
Mnemosyne
@Leto:
As someone else said above, though, I really don’t give a shit what’s in Putin’s heart or what he “really” believes.
He’s setting himself up as the international leader of white supremacy. That’s what his plan is, and he’s succeeding. Whether or not he’s a “real” white supremacist is unimportant. Authenticity is not actually at stake here.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
That would put 99% of the cable news team and 95% of the newspaper writers out of a job.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Given the history, perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky that Comey hasn’t been caught dressing in woman’s underwear.
Brachiator
@Platonailedit:
Good point. And yet Angela Merkel is being buffeted by internal and external anti-immigrant politicians.
And of course, Trump’s ambassador to Germany tried to cozy up to right wing anti-immigrant elements, and I will bet that Putin is encouraging anything that will weaken Western European alliances.
Also, there have been stories about how UK officials have told Trump that he cannot meet with anti-immigrant asswipe Nigel Farage during the upcoming presidential visit to Britain.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Love your comments, Kay.
I wish Comey could see that one! I don’t think he’s self-aware to have come to that realization by himself, although perhaps some of his friends and colleagues have mentioned it. Obliquely, perhaps.
Jay C
@Teddys Person:
A good question about who paid for the Moscow Seven’s little junket, since AFAICT (and I have been scouring the news – in vain – for any clue as to what “official” cover this trip might have had) – it’s still a question with no answer.
The media silence on this is truly astonishing – six sitting Senators and a long-term Rep (all Republicans, all the Senators on the same Committee, none, btw up for reelection this year) trot off to Russia (on the Fourth of July, no less), and engage in meetings with senior Russian officials: with NO American press allowed, ONLY Russian media for news sources, no published agenda, no published accounts of what was actually discussed, NO public info as to why they took this trip, or what they were/are looking to accomplish —
And domestic (US) media have basically ignored this story altogether
Something stinks here.
Leto
@Mnemosyne: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
This is still applicable advice and it’s still relevant in this setting. But that’s off track of the main point: while he’s setting himself up to be the head white-nationalist, that’s not the goal. Again, it’s a tactic. Destabilization of the US/West. MRGA. Whatever he needs to do to achieve that, he’s gonna do it.
Elizabelle
@sukabi: I want McConnell and Ryan to go to prison, if that can be proved.
McConnell deserves execution for treason.
Platonailedit
@Brachiator:
The final outcome was that she sent her batshit crazy ‘coalition partner’ with his tails tucked between his legs even when she knew that her govt was at stake. She is surrounded by rw govts and yet she is the one that showed true ‘balls’ in this refugees matter consistently.
So, I don’t buy your ‘ And yet Angela Merkel is being buffeted by internal and external anti-immigrant politicians’ framing.
Aleta
eta Hope it’s an omen for Republicans up for election.
Kathleen
@Ohio Mom: I called Brown’s office and voiced my objection. One of my concerns about the abrupt shift in tariff policy is the impact on business. Business plans projects and forecasts earnings based on assumptions. If they suddenly are faced with higher prices on goods they purchase their projections and assumptions are shot. This could affect consumer prices and result in job losses. I don’t see or hear anyone in media talking about this and Brown has to be aware. He’s not stupid. I’m quite alarmed about this.
Kathleen
@J R in WV: I think of them as Cirque de Soulless. Ghouls twisting their words into knots.
Teddys Person
@Jay C:
I like that moniker.
L85NJGT
The Russians would like to protect Russian steel industry investments here in the US. So would the industrial unions that are employed in traditional blast furnace plants. Unfortunately these plants have been made largely obsolete by the electric arc furnace. A compounding factor is the excess global capacity due to Chinese urbanization winding down.
Tariffs aren’t going to square that circle.
Brachiator
@Platonailedit:
I don’t see where we disagree. I did not say that she had been defeated. There had been speculation that her coalition partner might withdraw support and try to force new elections. Merkel has apparently defused this threat for now. Her opponents underestimated her, but there is no doubt that they will try to subvert her leadership again.
Kathleen
@randy khan: I saw w tweets from him supporting the tariffs but that was 2 to 3 weeks ago. No link because I can’t link from my mobile. If he’s changed position I’m glad.
Elizabelle
@Kay: WRT civility: the WaPost yesterday. America’s nonviolent civil rights movement was considered uncivil by critics at the time, by Peniel Joseph
WaPost: Peniel Joseph is the Barbara Jordan chair in ethics and political values at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He also is the founding director of the university’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy. He is the of “Dark Days and Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama.”
I saw Mr. Joseph at a DC book festival a few years ago, when his book on Stokely Carmichael was newly published. Excellent speaker. His website/bio, from U Texas Austin.
Includes link to his article in The Guardian, from August 2016: ‘White Lives Matter’, now a hate group, is part of a long arc of white supremacy
Mandalay
@Jay C:
Hmmm…nothing at all in the NYT, and a glowing headline from the WaPo:
You’re right – something stinks here.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Haberman and Chozick barfed up books immediately after the election. Probably all the truly awful Beltway reporters did. I wonder if there’s a correlation between the hackery of the coverage and the speed of the subsequent book launch. Probably!
Mandalay
If I was billionaire I’d pay for this billboard from MadDogPAC to be put up all over the country until November. Simple, brilliant and brutal.
The message is that Republicans (not just Trump) are joined at the hip with Putin. Pound that message until November.
Mnemosyne
@Leto:
Well, I don’t want to get into a huge argument over it because we’re all a little cranky right now and I don’t think we’re actually that far apart.
My point is more that I’m tired of people saying that X or Y person isn’t “really” a white supremacist because they’re only saying and doing white supremacist things to get elected/get power/etc. It’s excuse-making and is usually used to try and excuse that person’s bad actions: George Wallace wasn’t REALLY a white supremacist, he just used segregationists to gain power! To me, that’s making excuses for Wallace and claiming he had a moral center that he didn’t actually have.
My point is that it doesn’t really matter why, because if someone is using white supremacy to gain power, that is a bad thing in and of itself. It’s something that shows that they are a bad, immoral person regardless of how they “really” feel inside.
How Putin really feels in his heart about non-white or non-straight people is less important than the fact that he sees white supremacy as a useful tool to amass more power, so he’s using it. We shouldn’t steer away from calling him out for trying to make himself the king of the white supremacists just because we don’t know for sure how he “really” feels deep down in his heart.
schrodingers_cat
@randy khan: This is from his senate site
L85NJGT
For the record, that lineup of idiots is energy, grain and steel.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Always judge a man by his actions, for talk is cheap.
Dan B
@delk: a Bleat of Reporters?
Miss Bianca
@Dan B: I like that one!
Leto
@Mnemosyne: Agreed with all of this, and you’re correct, we’re not really far apart.
This was mainly what I was trying to get to. I don’t care about his heart, but I do care that he’s using these methods. We should definitively call him out over use/support of racial tactics/parties, but being head white leader isn’t his goal. That’s mainly what I disagree about, what his actual goal in all of this is: chaos in the form of breaking down US/Western alliances, and replacing them with either Russian rule (within Russia’s sphere of influence) and/or governments that are Russian friendly.
But I agree, we’re like 99.9999% in agreement about everything.
Dan B
@Kay: My guess is an economic collapse will be met with a ‘Tighten our belt / Can’t afford Entitlements’ blitz. Hundreds of right wing “Think Tanks” funded with millions from the 1% will roll out their focus group tested talking points. Their intensely media trained spokespeople will flood the airwaves with dozens of versions of ‘tighten our belts’. Social media bots will echo.
It’s the full flowering of the Powell Doctrine.
What will the Dem’s vast and well coordinated media apparatus deliver? Tsk tsks, mean GOP, from Schumer? It’s your money, from Pelosi?
We complain about propaganda but don’t have the infrastucture necessary to play at the same level. We refuse to adequately invest in the institutions necessary to wrest the megaphone from the right. End result is fuzzy 100 points of light when we need a some powerful spotlights to cut through the dark fog that’s descended upon the free world.
schrodingers_cat
@randy khan: This is from June 27th
OldDave
It’s probably too late to mention this – but all but one of the seven Senators on the Moscow ‘Job Review’ trip were last elected in 2016, and the other – Daines of Montana – was elected in 2014. None of them are up for reelection this cycle … and you can bet that factored heavily into their decision that it was “safe” to go.
J R in WV
@TenguPhule:
I would be delighted if Comey cross-dressed as a hobby, if it calmed him down enough to stick to his job and follow well established procedure when it looks like the correct thing to do anyway.
But no. We couldn’t have that…
Dan B
@Elizabelle: Thanks for your post. I was somewhat involved in the Civil Rights and the Anti War movements as a teenager and then Chicago Gay Liberation. In 1970 our small group tried to persuade the four gay bars in the city to allow dancing. Our polite delegation was pushed down the stairs. A few days later our attorney led us through best practices for avoiding the mafia contract on us. Our attorney was the attorney for the Blackstone Rangers. Their connections informed her of the contract. But for that ‘intersectional’ connection our polite group would have been wiped out. We managed to pull off a media campaign against the bars and a sea of ACLU attorneys prevented our arrest by the Vice Squad.
Anytime I hear that we have to be civil or we become like them I seethe. The guardians of ‘nice’ don’t realize that many minority groups are ubder siege. The war has never stopped. We won’t survive if we wave the white flag.
Taobhan
My first thought at seeing these Republican senators snuggling up with the Russians was: modern-day American quislings! They were obviously trying to hide their true mission in meeting with their Russian overlords but I knew they were up to no-good when they closed any meetings to outsiders who could report what was discussed. The good citizens of their respective states need to turn all of them out of office if any try to run for re-election. Otherwise we can just count those states as American satellite territories for the new Russian Empire.
Dan B
@Miss Bianca: Thanks! I imagine the heat is hot in their fluffy coats. I’m glad to assust with shearing.
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
Brown has always made me nervous. Don’t have a specific reason, nothing I can put my finger on, just not sure I trust him.
Ruckus
@Miss Bianca:
You do know that when rationality has been beat out of them probably the only way to get it back in, is with the same method.
Raven Onthill
I think it likely that these Senators have both been offered very good deals and threatened. There has been a new Novichok poisoning in the UK. This might be a signal.
Aleta
White Republicans and libertarians who believe in their status are feeling so threatened that they choose Russia and hacking the Constitution for blood money.
The illogic of Deshowitz’s twitter etc* reveals how fake the civility issue is. It’s their try at disrupting the protests against ICE and the strength of Democratic women of color.
Most liberal media articles laughing about Dershowitz’s article don’t mention that he’s trying to align Maxine Waters with McCarthyism. (His “shunning” claim is self-hyped advertising.)
His defensiveness shows how threatened he is; same for politicians and big white male hetero/cis media.
*and his article attacking Maxine Waters
Elizabelle
@Dan B: Wow. That is a story. Thank dog for the lawyer with an ear to the ground. So that you are here with us today, alive to do some more opening doors.
Elizabelle
@OldDave: 6 of the 7 Senators were re-elected in 2016? Bat signal!
Tehanu
@MattF: More money for their election funds. Russia may not be anything like an equal trading partner for the US, but Vladi has plenty of moola to pump into Republican campaigns.