Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

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

The words do not have to be perfect.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Second rate reporter says what?

Infrastructure week. at last.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Russiagate Open Thread: The ‘President’ Finds A Staunch Defender

Russiagate Open Thread: The ‘President’ Finds A Staunch Defender

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Unfortunately, it’s just Little Prince Rand of the Paul barony, whose sympathy springs from a mixture of pissy adolescent ‘contrarianism’ and GOP-white-guy ressentiment, with maybe a soupcon of fellow feeling for another guy who’ll never live up to his old man’s success. It was good enough that Trump apparently tweeted his thanks earlier today, but weak enough that the tweet got deleted by close of business day.

From Paul’s signed piece in Politico:

… Unfortunately, over the past two years, some have fueled a hysteria that has created such a paralysis regarding Russia that regular meetings and communications have ceased, and one can be accused of “collusion” merely for agreeing to a routine meeting with elected Russian officials who might be visiting Capitol Hill.

The hostile climate created by Russophobes has resulted in a vacuum in cultural, educational and even legislative exchanges, while elected officials from both Washington and Moscow are now on so-called ban lists. Nothing will be achieved by each country shutting the door to the other…

In just a few weeks, I will take my own trip to Russia in an attempt to discuss common ground with their leaders and help prevent further, unnecessary escalation of tensions. We will discuss trade, cultural exchanges and how to better work for peace and prosperity in the world. I look forward to consulting with Trump between his visit and mine and to working with diplomats from both countries to have a successful trip and better relationships. Millions of lives could be at stake.

Any bets on whether he’ll actually go through with his visit?

The Washington Post‘s view, as the company paper in the town whose monopoly industry is politics:

… The stars are lining up for Paul in a way they haven’t before. His non-interventionist beliefs are typically way outside the mainstream in Washington. Suddenly, they align with those of none other than the president of the United States. So why not take full advantage of this moment to elevate his worldview? And the best way to get attention is by doing what no one else is: defending Trump. All the better if that interview creates some controversy…

When you consider Paul’s penchant for controversy, savvy ability to get media attention and inclination to seize a rare moment to elevate his own views, it’s less surprising he’s Trump’s biggest defender on Russia…

Reminder of why we even bother talking about Young Prince Rand:

Reader Interactions

241Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    In just a few weeks, I will take my own trip to Russia in an attempt to discuss common ground with their leaders and help prevent further, unnecessary escalation of tensions. We will discuss trade, cultural exchanges and how to better work for peace and prosperity in the world. 

    In other words, Rand hasn’t gotten any of the Russian gravy train and he wants in.

  2. 2.

    debbie

    I can’t imagine what he thinks he will accomplish, other than further proving this country’s decline in intelligence.

  3. 3.

    bluehill

    I wondered why Putin doesn’t seem to care that the world knows that Russia tipped the election to Trump, especially with the mid-terms coming up. He just seems too smug. Maybe this is one reason.

    The nation’s top voting machine maker has admitted in a letter to a federal lawmaker that the company installed remote-access software on election-management systems it sold over a period of six years, raising questions about the security of those systems and the integrity of elections that were conducted with them.

  6. 6.

    Teddys Person

    Meanwhile his colleague continue to be profiles in courage

    Alexandra Jaffe
    @ajjaffe

    Seems to be broad agreement there’s not much GOP can do to reign in Trump.

    Collins: “We can’t tell the president what to say. All we can do is make very clear that we disagree w/the approach the president has taken”

    Grassley: “I think only the president can reign himself in”

    8:07 AM – Jul 17, 2018

  8. 8.

    hueyplong

    Sounds more like someone caught up in the Mueller probe, getting ready for his own performance review/public humiliation with Vlad.

  9. 9.

    Gin & Tonic

    another guy who’ll never live up to his old man’s success.

    You mean who’ll never live up to his old man’s KGB asset-hood.

  10. 10.

    efgoldman

    @debbie:

    I can’t imagine what he thinks he will accomplish

    I think he’s probably more worried about being primaried from the right by a Weasel Face acolyte than any Dem.beating him.

  11. 11.

    Platonailedit

    savvy ability to get media attention

    And whose fault is that, you clowns chasing media minions?

  12. 12.

    Baud

    @Teddys Person:

    All we can do is make very clear that we disagree w/the approach the president has taken”

    I’m pretty sure George Washington said the same thing about Benedict Arnold.

  14. 14.

    Platonailedit

    Wonder what made the traitorous thug to do a 180 degree? Arrest of that russian spy? May be FBI should arrest more so that twitling twit will quit.

  17. 17.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @bluehill:
    He’s an arrogant asshole strongman who thinks his failed petrol state, and by extension himself, should run the world. There’s such a thing as being overconfident.

  19. 19.

    lollipopguild

    @efgoldman: It’s “Rain”. “It’s raining assholes.” Trump and his minions, not any of the lovely and talented Balloon Juice Borg.

  20. 20.

    J R in WV

    Patriotic American people hate Trump because Trump disrespects everything America should stand for. Rand Paul, on the other hand, should be repeatedly beaten up by his disabled neighbor, whom Paul treats terribly. \

    I wonder how his ribs feel by now. They can take a long time to heal.

  22. 22.

    lollipopguild

    Reign, rein, rain. No wonder people who learn English as a second language have such a hard time.

  23. 23.

    efgoldman

    @Dev Null:

    In Speign? I am missing your point.

    You’d have to have been in one of last night’s threads. G&T knows what I’m talking about – it’s directed at him.

  27. 27.

    jl

    Someone needs to tell the WaPo editorial finks that “non-other than” has a different connotation when referring to the current president of the US.
    I guess the WaPol will always puff for Rand Paul because he is a crony capitalist libertarian who will vote for anything that will shove more cash down the crony capitalists the WaPol editors love so much.

    So, Trump is non-interventionist? He’s had to be talked out of trying to invade effing Venezuela several times. Trump wants to invade Venezuela. No one seems to know why, though it would look strong and tough in the eye of his base and neo-cons, since Venezueal is a favorite enemy for brainless PR purposes in those quarters.

  28. 28.

    efgoldman

    @lollipopguild:

    No wonder people who learn English as a second language have such a hard time.

    Based on available evidence, most people for whom English is a first language have a hard time, too.

  31. 31.

    Platonailedit

    Why are the dems demanding that the lowly interpreter to come and testify when the real traitors and their enablers are out there still spewing lies? Subpoena the scums like teabagger pompeo and the mustachioed thug.

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Baud: Ron Paul has longstanding ties to Russia. Dubious ties that go back to the Soviet Union.
    https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/07/27/how-the-gop-became-the-party-of-putin/
    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/russian-hacking-fake-news-clinton-emails-i-was-a-victim-of-a-smear-campaign-a7490521.html
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/ron-paul-is-putins-new-best-friend/439533/
    https://timeline.com/ron-paul-russia-hacking-e248f87f38f2

    This crap didn’t just start all of a sudden in 2015.

  34. 34.

    jl

    Sorry, should have checked the link first, the WaPo thing is from ‘The Fix’ whatever that is. One of those editorials news orgs like to print disguised as news analysis, probably.

  35. 35.

    Calouste

    @Platonailedit: OfPutin didn’t do a 180. He said it could be the Russians or someone else. The IC says it is the Russians. Big difference.

    Although with that statement OfPutin has now admitted that there was interference in the elections. Which brings up the question why DHS is not interested in safeguarding the upcoming elections.

    And of course there will be tweets before the end of the week

  36. 36.

    efgoldman

    @Platonailedit:

    Subpoena the scums like teabagger pompeo and the mustachioed thug.

    The minority, acting alone, cannot issue subpoenas, They need a majority vote in committee.

  38. 38.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Teddys Person: 51 Republican senators and about 243 Republican representatives, give or take, and they’re all living in fear of mean tweet. Never have so many given so little on behalf of so few.

  40. 40.

    NotMax

    Didn’t McConnell previously announce he was rescinding the planned August recess?

  42. 42.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: Thanks. The reactionary and conservative fascination with authoritarians does go back to Russia in the Soviet Days. There was a school of conservative intellectuals who had a perverse sort of Soviet worship. The commies were tough, the West was soft and weak. The west would lose the Cold War unless we became more like them, and then we would win, but we would still be the good guys, except strong and tough because we were like the commies. I forget the names of those scribblers. One was a French intellectual fraud, which gave the whole enterprise a very high tone. US neocons trotted him around like a prize winning hound at the dog show.

  43. 43.

    Chetan Murthy

    @lollipopguild: Every language has these tics. I remember telling a Frenchman about the ones that got me in French, and he responded with “hear wear tear [rip] tear [drip] ..” and a few others I’ve forgotten. I remember my French teacher explaining to us the difference between “fils” [son] and “fils” [wires] as in “fils electrique” [electric son] vs “fils electriques” [electric wires]

    I have a bug up my butt about reign/rein too. Also currently/presently. And a friend taught me to have a bug up my butt about momentarily/presently.

    ETA: It’s been 25yr since I spoke French daily, so I can’t rattle off examples. But I’m sure there are a ton examples in French of phoneme sequences with multiple meanings (only clear in context) and multiple different phoneme sequences that are spelt identically.

  45. 45.

    Sherparick

    @debbie: Paul wants to lock in neo-feudalism, white supremacists, Christianist, oligarchy, & Putin is an ally in the endeavor.

  49. 49.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Baby Doc foolishly thinks he can inherit Drumpf’s base in 2024

  51. 51.

    Matt McIrvin

    @jl: After the Soviet Union went down, a bunch of paranoid conservative books about the Soviet menace ended up remaindered at Buck-a-Book. I remember flipping through one of them and concluding that those guys were the last remaining believers in the superiority of Soviet Communism. They certainly were more bullish on it than anyone in the actual USSR was.

  52. 52.

    Dev Null

    @Adam L Silverman: hunh, totally new to me, and I thought (OK, OK, “in my hubris”) that I knew all that was important to know about Ron Paul.

    Does this mean that Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul’s henchman (whose name I don’t recall off the top of my head) have Russia connections too?

    I had no idea.

    Will peruse your links and be shocked.

  53. 53.

    Matt McIrvin

    @jl: It’s not so much that he’s non-interventionist, as that his interventionist ideas are so stupid that even the neocons decide to talk him out of them.

  54. 54.

    raven

    Representative Martha Roby of Alabama prevailed on Tuesday in a Republican primary election that unfolded as a test of fealty to President Trump, defeating a challenger who assailed her for withdrawing her support for Mr. Trump in the last days of the 2016 campaign.

    Her criticism of Mr. Trump cost Ms. Roby, a mainstream conservative seeking a fifth term, a clear-cut victory in an initial round of voting last month. She fell short of a majority, forcing her to compete in a runoff election against Bobby Bright, a populist former Democrat who served in Congress and as mayor of Montgomery, Alabama’s capital.

  56. 56.

    Dev Null

    @Calouste: If past experience is any guide, Трамп doesn’t deal well with admission of error.

    Not even with faux admission of error.

  58. 58.

    Platonailedit

    @jl:

    That’s the belief that insean klanitty trotted out yesterday? We should all be russians.

  60. 60.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Adam L Silverman:
    I linked to that Timeline.com piece above. I wasn’t sure if it was credible or not. I take it you think it is credible?

  63. 63.

    debbie

    @efgoldman:

    I can’t imagine that a pilgrimage to The Motherland will be of much help. Not all of the unhinged are in agreement with Hannity.

  65. 65.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    Question:
    If, universe forbid, we don’t win outright control of the House but come within a few seats of doing so, will the GOP majority be compelled to go along with Democratic demands as has happened in Virginia? Or is it a different dynamic? I’m leaning towards different dynamic.

  66. 66.

    Brachiator

    Rand Paul has definitely hit the sweet spot of Trump apologists, the lie that our Dear Leader is being attacked merely for talking to Russia.

    I am only mildly surprised to see how eager a weasel like Paul is to get in line for some of that sweet Russian oligarch money.

  68. 68.

    Dev Null

    @Matt McIrvin: I vividly remember a 1968 end-paper op-ed by David Lawrence, editor of the US News & World Report, making the point that if conservatives believed their rhetoric about the superiority of capitalism, they should run with the conclusion that the Soviet Union would fall of its own dead weight.

    And he was right … just 20-odd years too early.

    Yeah, it was probably his weekly boilerplate message, but it made sense to me then … and still makes sense now. Of course it helps that the message has been blessed by the passage of time.

    Not sure that I have a point here … perhaps that American conservatives gave up on conservatism too soon.

  69. 69.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Platonailedit: Because Pompeo and Bolton weren’t in the one on one with Putin, so they have no idea what was actually said between Trump and Putin.

  73. 73.

    Dev Null

    @efgoldman: Truer words were ne’er spoke.

    Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that narcissists have no external signposts that would allow them to distinguish truth from untruth. They have only themselves.

  74. 74.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: Pat Buchanan was sort of curious. The authoritarianism excited him while the communism repulsed him.

  76. 76.

    Steeplejack

    When you consider Paul’s penchant for controversy, savvy ability to get media attention and inclination to seize a rare moment to elevate his own views [. . .].

    “—and his inevitable capitulation to vote the party line on every issue . . .” Finished that for them.

  77. 77.

    delk

    Love, reign o’er me
    Love, reign o’er me
    Rain on me, rain on me

    Currently earwormed.

  78. 78.

    Brachiator

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:

    If, universe forbid, we don’t win outright control of the House but come within a few seats of doing so, will the GOP majority be compelled to go along with Democratic demands as has happened in Virginia?

    No.

  81. 81.

    Platonailedit

    @Adam L Silverman:

    All the more reason to demand these traitors to testify for dereliction of duty than to a demand a lowly interpreter, who was actually doing his/her job.

  82. 82.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Brachiator:
    I suspect so, but why is the Virginia House of delegates different? Is it because Virginia is trending blue and has a Democratic governor?

  84. 84.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Dev Null: American conservatives see in today’s Russia everything they love: a manly leader, who tolerates no dissent, an all-white ruling class, a state-sponsored Christian religion, hatred of the coloreds and the homos, wimmenz in their proper place. It’s like heaven.

  87. 87.

    Platonailedit

    Theresa May survives. For now. With the help of Labour.

    The government has survived an attempt by pro-EU Conservative MPs to change its post-Brexit trade strategy.

    The MPs wanted the UK to join a customs union if it does not agree a free-trade deal with the EU.

    But the government, which says a customs union would stop it striking new trade deals, won by 307 to 301.

    Ahead of the vote, Tory MPs were told a defeat would lead to a vote of no confidence in the government, sources told the BBC’s John Pienaar.

    The government did, however, lose a separate vote on its Trade Bill on the regulation of medicines after Brexit.

    MPs backed an amendment by 305 votes to 301 that would keep the UK in the European medicines regulatory network.

    There were 12 Tory rebels in both the customs and medicines votes – but the government’s total was boosted by four Labour MPs in the customs vote.

  88. 88.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Adam L Silverman: Man, that dude fills the Bingo card all by himself. Von Mises Institute, Arlington House, Hillsdale College, Ron Paul for President. 10 pounds of nuts in a 5-pound can.

  89. 89.

    Dev Null

    @Adam L Silverman: And then there was the odious philosopher of the libertarian movement, Murray Rothbard. Some of his writings curled my (normally straight) hair.

    Among other issues: a Jew who denied the Holocaust. Whoa!

    You don’t see many of those!

  93. 93.

    Dev Null

    @Gin & Tonic: It’s not today that I was talking about, it’s the 1970s and 1980s. Well, maybe 1960s-1990s.

    Modern American conservatism seems to be utterly lost without an external enemy.

    Before you correct me, I do realize that modern conservatives have decided that liberals / browns / nones / whatevs are the enemy du jour.

    Trouble is, that’s a recipe for national suicide.

  98. 98.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

    Lightning/lightening, who’s/whose and lose/loose drive me absolutely batty.

    The Great Vowel Shift strikes again.

    House used to rhyme with loose, but now rhymes with louse. And then there’s something like this: whose shoes did you lose?

  99. 99.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    Well, no change from roughly an hour ago. LOL. Probably will make an early night of it and then figure out what to do when I’m wide awake at 4:00 a.m. Currently winding down with a Bull rerun and (obviously) Balloon Juice.

  100. 100.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Platonailedit: Again, asking them to testify about what went on in the one on one meeting where it was just the President, Putin, the President’s interpreter, and Putin’s interpreter would be pointless. They weren’t in the room. They have no directly observed – seen and/or heard – information of what went on in that room. The most they know is what the President told them or what they have gotten from the debrief of the interpreter by (most likely) either the CIA or the FBI’s counterintelligence folks from the National Security Division.

  101. 101.

    Dev Null

    @Gin & Tonic: Yep. Thinking of Rothbard, who by choice had no children, philosophizing about the libertarian way to raise children.

    I mean, Jesus Fsckin’ Christ, did no one realize that this guy was out of his fsckin’ mind?!?

    And yes, that’s an example of “simpler”. As one of my profs – a theoretician – said way back when, “the problem with experimentalists is that they ruin so many beautiful theories.”

    It’s so much easier to theorize when there’s no check on your theorizing.

    To recall EFG’s comment earlier in this thread, “narcissists are always right” … and so are theorists who don’t check their theories against empirical reality.

  103. 103.

    Gvg

    @Platonailedit: yes, but the lowly interpreter doing his job, is innately more credible. I’d rather hear from him, than Trump himself because I know Trump would be a waste of time.

  106. 106.

    andy

    @bluehill: and chaos is the point. Putin could give Mueller everything he has on The Leader right now and the results would be exactly the same

  109. 109.

    Platonailedit

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Again, questioning a lowly level employee will not provide the answers we or the dems are looking for. It all will be a circus show with the rethugs vilifying the poor interpreter as they did everyone who were trying to tell the truth.

  111. 111.

    Teddys Person

    Louis Gohmert sez we can all rest easy

    Louie Gohmert Says Russian Interference Caused Truman’s 1948 Win
    Election meddling has been going on for 70 years, Texas Republican says

  113. 113.

    jl

    @Platonailedit: When the GOP finds out that the interpreter is at least bilingual, she’ll be smeared as an elitist egghead and liberal Democrat card carrying member of the Deep State.

  117. 117.

    Adam L Silverman

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: It isn’t. The Democrats do not currently have a majority in the Virginia House of Delegates. They’re two seats short of a majority and one of shared leadership because neither party has a majority. As a result, the Republicans currently control the Virginia House of Delegates. By one vote/seat/delegate.

  120. 120.

    Dev Null

    @andy: I’ve wondered about this.

    What is the dividing line? Where does a release of kompromat become more advantageous to Russia than continued concealment of kompromat?

    I try to come up with a calculus by which to think about the question …

    … but my mind refuses to go there. Maybe it’s too iffy .. not sure.

  121. 121.

    SenyorDave

    Headline on Yahoo right now:

    Wrestlers file lawsuit against Ohio State, claiming a ‘cesspool of deviancy’

    Apparently this might involve deposing one Jim Jordan. Would be great to see him being the one to be questioned, instead of taking pot shots at a witness (and asking such great questions as “why didn’t you subpoena the phone call”).

  122. 122.

    sukabi

    @Platonailedit: there were supposedly 4 people in the room. Vlad, Trump and 2 interpreters. Neither Vlad or Trump will tell the truth. The only ones left are the lowly interpreters.*

    *Of course you might see if the CIA or one of the other alphabet agencies was able to “listen in”…but they don’t generally testify to congress about their spying ops.

  124. 124.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Dev Null: I really like this one from Max Planck (variously attributed in my experience to Einstein and Paul Samuelson):
    German:

    Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist.

    English:

    A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

    As a (former, lapsed) disciple of the “reductionist” movement in formal methods (for proving programs correct), who realized that it was moribund, this gives me hope.

  125. 125.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Platonailedit: If May was smart, she’d cut a deal with the remain MPs in her party and in Labour, forming a governing coalition that could then do the smart thing and call this whole disaster off. But she’s neither smart enough, nor brave enough to do so.

  132. 132.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I wonder what the Russians have on Rand. don’t believe he ran in 2016. I wonder if he is one of the Congress Critters who used Russian hacking information in his campaign. They could also have some Financial stuff on him because there have been rumors his campaign operation is basically a grifting operation.

  137. 137.

    sukabi

    @NotMax: lol. We could clear the national debt if the CIA did ppv shows on the dirt they had on drumpf & company, with follow up episodes on compromised members of Congress.

  138. 138.

    Chip Daniels

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    I’ve come to think there is no being too paranoid or too suspicious of the deniers and dismissers.

    Every wild suspicion so far has been eclipsed by fact.

    Aside from kompromat, there isn’t any innocent explanation for their behavior.

  139. 139.

    Gravenstone

    @Platonailedit: The point you seem to be ignoring is the interpreter was the only other American in the room. So would be the only person able to answer questions of what was said. Even Trump couldn’t accurately do so because he’s reality averse.

  140. 140.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Gin & Tonic:
    I know it’s fantasy but the news about the voting machine company that has sold the software/hardware that the majority of US states used for elections admiting it has been compromised has freaked me out. Trying to futilely look for bright spots.

  142. 142.

    Dev Null

    @Adam L Silverman: Not arguing with you.

    I mention Rothbard because I first heard about him, oh, mebbe 5 years ago, when I was arguing political theory with one of my libertarian (then-) colleagues. For some reason – maybe because I wanted to get a basic idea of libertarian philosophy – I devoted a few hours to looking up Rothbard “principles”, and hooboy …

    … the man was nuts. Perhaps no more nuts than Ron Paul and his spawn, but Rothbard put way more stuff on the record. I think.

    When I tasked my libertarian colleague with a few of Rothbard’s more lunatic notions, my colleague more-or-less told me, well … there’s a divide in the libertarian movement. Some of us think he’s a god; the rest of us think he took reasonable starting points to their ultimate illogical conclusion.

  143. 143.

    NotMax

    Landlady freaked out because a trouble light in her vehicle was on. Stupid low tire pressure light. No tire visibly different from any other. Ran her car over to the gas station and shot some air in.

    We actually have an air compressor, but it’s easier to make the short trip than to drag it out, use it and then drag it back.

  146. 146.

    Corner Stone

    @Platonailedit: Ok, dumbass. This isn’t a reality show. You call her before a committee and just ask her what happened. That’s how you figure out how to move forward. She isn’t an actress on Law & Order. She’s the only fucking person who can tell Congress what was discussed. Bolton went to her after the meeting to ask what the hell had happened! So go fuck yourself.

  148. 148.

    sukabi

    @Platonailedit: scoring points? That shouldn’t even be a consideration. How about finding out what trump promised Putin, and what he demanded in return…The search for truth shouldn’t be about scoring points.

  151. 151.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Adam L Silverman: there is no way the US IC did not record the meeting . There is no way I would believe that. That would be professional malpractice. I also think that may be the reason so many people are saying such negative stuff about the press conference.

  153. 153.

    Kay

    @Teddys Person:

    Meanwhile his colleague continue to be profiles in courage

    If they’re not going to do any work let’s replace them. We need people with a better work ethic, really.

  156. 156.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Platonailedit: Ahem, you got something you want to direct at me too, because I gave you the same answer? The Democrats want to know what was actually said so they know just how bad that meeting was for US interests. That’s the point here. Not everything is about scoring points in public. Sometimes it’s about protecting the country in private.

  157. 157.

    Dev Null

    @Chetan Murthy: Yep! Justly famous.

    My personal fave, from Wolfgang Pauli:

    Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig; es ist nicht einmal falsch!

    or in English:

    That is not only not right; it is not even wrong!

    (I make no claims about the German; I haven’t tried to read or speak German since college. Blame Wiki!)

    I know a little about formal methods, but only enough to demonstrate my ignorance. Can you recommend light reading about the death of reductionist approaches?

  158. 158.

    Amir Khalid

    @Platonailedit:
    May was nominally a Remainer ahead of the referendum, but not an enthusiastic one. My own belief is that she is actually neutral on the topic, and always has been.

  165. 165.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Dev Null: Yep. The Libertarian movement is really multiple movements under a common label. Some of them overlap, some of them don’t. All of them make no economic, political, and/or social sense.

  166. 166.

    Teddys Person

    I’m going to leave this without comment:

    James Comey
    @Comey
    This Republican Congress has proven incapable of fulfilling the Founders’ design that “Ambition must … counteract ambition.” All who believe in this country’s values must vote for Democrats this fall. Policy differences don’t matter right now. History has its eyes on us.

    6:50 PM – Jul 17, 2018

    edit: removed borked block quote

  168. 168.

    Kay

    Republicans and political media now describe anyone who isn’t a far Right nutjob as “The Left”

    It’s ridiculous. Words mean something. Rand Paul doesn’t get to marginalize better than half the country.

    Believing the Civil Rights Act or the Clean Air Act are good laws does not make someone “The Left”.

    Rand Paul is the far Right and people on the far Right don’t get to define everyone who is NOT THEM as somehow out of the mainstream. I reject the hard Right’s definitions of ideology and I object to it being treated as settled fact. I don’t exist in relation to Rand Fucking Paul.

  171. 171.

    B.B.A.

    @Adam L Silverman: Is there still a pro-Remain majority in Parliament though? Hell, I figured most Remain-voting Brits were all “a vote’s a vote, too late to turn back now, stiff upper lip and all that rot.”

  173. 173.

    frosty

    @NotMax:

    Stupid low tire pressure light.

    I had the same problem, tires were fine (and new!). Got it to the mechanic, they fixed it and didn’t charge me.
    Mechanic: “I pressed the reset button.”
    Me: “There’s a reset button?”

    Time to open the glove compartment and RTFM.

  174. 174.

    J R in WV

    @Gin & Tonic:

    American conservatives see in today’s Russia everything they love: a manly leader, who tolerates no dissent, an all-white ruling class, a state-sponsored Christian religion, hatred of the coloreds and the homos, wimmenz in their proper place.

    …declining birth rate, declining life span, rampant alcoholism and drug use, frequent deaths from contaminated or industrial alcohol, violence, crime, theft on a scale unimagined even in their communist system…. hmmm, like Republican heaven?

  175. 175.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Amir Khalid:

    Looked him up to find out how old he is, as he seems ancient and demented (he’s 64, FFS). Was surprised to learn that he was a summer exchange student one year in The Ukraine.

  176. 176.

    NotMax

    Dinner last night, and tonight and the rest of the week (big package) – some sausages found at Costco.

    Smoked chicken with Blue Moon wheat ale, orange and coriander. The orange is a surprise with each bite. Not a deal breaker, more of a “why?”

  177. 177.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Dev Null:

    Can you recommend light reading about the death of reductionist approaches?

    Nothing’s been written about it. But here goes. “Reductionism” in formal methods is the idea that you can “reduce” all reasoning to the lowest steps — to some set of axioms and logical rules. So all proofs consist in a gynormous number of these low-level steps. So you can check the proof step-by-step, without knowing how it was generated. It’s closely related to constructivist methods (constructivists deny the law of excluded middle).

    There’s an entire school of work applying reductionist methods in software & hardware verification. And they’ve had -some- success . But it turns out, meantime there’s another approach: you write fancy programs that can analyze your software or hardware, and find errors, or verify correctness, without generating those proofs I mentioned before. So you have to trust the program. Turns out, there’s been -massive- progress in this second approach: basically, these days people say that “satisfiability” is a solved problem, a mere matter of engineering. And these approaches (“SAT solvers”, “model-checking”, etc) have revolutionized hardware verification and much of software error-detection.

    For instance, in hardware design, a significant chunk of the manpower/money/timeline of a new hardware design is taken up in verification tasks. You can’t design hardware today without it (since the “f00f bug”, if you remember that). And all of that has been based on the methods of the second school of thought I described above.

    I was never a disciple of that second school. I left formal methods around the same time I realized that my colleagues were all fundamentalists about this reductionism stuff, though for related reasons.

    In any case, nobody who works in the reductionist school has stopped doing it. But they sure aren’t taking over hardware verification by a storm, and so I fully expect that they’ll never be much more than an interesting footnote.

    P.S. I -am- aware of the “verified C compiler” work in the reductionist school, but have what I think are good reasons for believing it’s far less of an advance than it’s billed as being.

  179. 179.

    Kay

    @maggieNYT
    Follow Follow @maggieNYT
    More
    “Baffled by his solicitous tone toward Mr. Putin, some people close to Mr. Trump have concluded that he feels vulnerable to Mr. Putin, even if it is in his own mind, rather than because of any damaging information possessed by the Russians.”

    The NYTimes political team, faithfully transcribing pyschobabble delivered by Trump’s cronies.

    Why don’t they stop trying to read his mind and instead go out and FIND what Putin has on Trump? I mean, what’s the plan here? They think Trump’s friends are going to tell them? If they talk to his friends long enough they’ll eventually offer one or two FACTS?

    Give up. Try something else. Reading his mind isn’t working. Ask someone else. LOOK somewhere else.

  180. 180.

    Adam L Silverman

    @B.B.A.: My understanding is that there’s enough from both parties if you formed a unity coalition government. But I haven’t counted it recently. I can say the remain folks are not happy about it. They don’t want it to happen. And are not looking to just grin and bear it. Or bare it. Or beyer it.

  181. 181.

    Platonailedit

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It’s a not dems only committee. The rethugs dominated committee who have successfully smeared or at least muddied the waters who offered to tell the truth about this traitorous regime. Remember the FBI guy who testified last week?

  183. 183.

    Yarrow

    @Mai Naem mobile: Rand Paul ran for both President and Senator in 2016. He dropped out of the presidential race and ran for reelection for his Senate seat and won.

    The Russians have tons on Rand Paul. It’s why he’s hightailing it to Russia. Performance review.

  185. 185.

    J R in WV

    @Teddys Person:

    Louie Gohmert Says Russian Interference Caused Truman’s 1948 Win…Election meddling has been going on for 70 years, Texas Republican says

    Gohmert was -5 years old in 1948, he wasn’t born until 1953. How would he know anything about Russian interference in 1948?

    Furthermore, in 1948, if Russians or their American minions were caught messing with an American election, there would have been a nuclear holocaust, and it would have all been in Russia, as they didn’t have deployable nuclear weapons yet.

    ETA, well maybe not actual war, but people were executed for espionage, and there were plenty of agents looking for Russian dupes back then. There was this thing called the Cold War, which apparently Gohmert either has forgotten already or never actually learned about. While in the Army…

    Dumbass.

  187. 187.

    Amir Khalid

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    There are rock stars Louis Gohmert’s age and older who are still rocking. E.g. The Rolling Stones, all in their 70s, are touring this year.

  189. 189.

    Kay

    Trump “feels” vulnerable IN HIS MIND. WTF is this? I bet he feels vulnerable in his mind. He would know what Putin has on him, in his mind.

    It’ll stay there! We’ll all just guess forever. Let’s ask Putin again. Maybe he’ll tell us. Or maybe we imagined the whole thing.

  190. 190.

    B.B.A.

    In other news, Joe Crowley has been encouraged to make a third-party run to keep his House seat in a WSJ op-ed by one Joe Lieberman.

  193. 193.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Platonailedit:

    Why are the dems demanding that the lowly interpreter to come and testify

    I’ve watched this conversation unfold, and I think you’re missing the point. Sure, there are tons of traitors and assholes to go around. And sure, the committee is controlled by GOPutin, so it ain’t gonna actually do anything. But the Dems have to at least -try-. And in this instance, questioning people not in the room won’t answer the question “What transpired in the room?”

    It wouldn’t matter if the committee were Dem-controlled: you cannot find out what happened in that room, without asking a participant In. That. Room.

    Uh, unless you’re -certain- that the IC has the tapes, and is willing to disclose them. Which even if they did, I wouldn’t think they would disclose.

  195. 195.

    Teddys Person

    @B.B.A.: You know what I was thinking about yesterday, I’d like to have Joey L’s take – said no one ever

  198. 198.

    frosty

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s perfect. I got grief from one of my colleagues today because I buggered up a form for the umpteenth time after she’d sent instructions at least twice. So I told her, sigh, I would RTFM. She’ll love this. I may have to post it on my cubicle wall, too.

  201. 201.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Amir Khalid:

    Oh, I know. I’m looking at my own 76th in a few weeks. But Gohmert always comes across as such a silly old fart, I was most surprised to learn he’s as young as he is.

  202. 202.

    Kay

    If I wanted to look at why Trump is subservient to Putin I don’t think I’d psychoanalyze them from afar.

    I think I’d get Trump’s financial records for that sleazy family crime ring he runs and read them. Also- his tax returns.

    Thank God for the special prosecutor is all I can say. The few shreds of actual information we have come from him. If it wasn’t for Robert Mueller we’d be completely in the dark.

  207. 207.

    Kay

    @NotMax:

    I wonder why Donald Trump hides all his financial records and lies about his tax returns? I wonder if that could possibly have something to do with his incessant ass-kissing of Putin?

    I wonder if all those photographs of Republicans greeting the Russian spy – the woman who is currently in jail– are somehow connected to this?

    Or, we could just go with Trump’s traumatic childhood and his “feelings” about… things.

  209. 209.

    J R in WV

    @Gin & Tonic:

    @Goku: Were you born yesterday?

    Nearly so… young, naive and inexperienced, getting an education, but a very targeted professional program, not broad, little history, little or no poly sci, no foreign relations nor economics. So, generally, yes.

    Goku appears to be trying to learn, which we could encourage. But Goku is also working hard and going to school in a difficult professional program, so already pretty busy.

  211. 211.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Adam L Silverman: Not sure to what you refer, but the “constructivism” to which I refer is a …. heterodox school of mathematics that branched off in the 19th century. It has the (to some) interesting property that in most constructive mathematical formalisms, a proof contains within it a program that will yield the thing the proof claims exists. So if you prove that “for every x with some property P, there exists a y with some other property Q” then the proof will contain within it a program (that can be extracted via what’s called “realizability”) that, given an x with a proof that it has property P, will produce a y, and a proof that it has property Q.

    Whew. So now, uh, you’re looking at the above and saying” wtf was that good for? Why am I polluting my brain with that?” And I can’t answer your question, b/c I don’t think it actually -is- useful for anything. But y’know, it can take a few years of studying it, to figure that out. Or, in the case of the still-hard-at-it fundamentalists, to figure out that you don’t care whether it’s useful, you just think it’s beautiful. I shook my damn head.

  213. 213.

    Kay

    @Platonailedit:

    We’ll just wait for the next indictment. They seem to be coming a little faster now. Hopefully we’ll have some information on the sitting President sometime prior to the next Presidential election.

  216. 216.

    Platonailedit

    @Kay:

    This regime has shown how far a venal and corrupt prez and his party can and will go, checks and balances, be damned.

  217. 217.

    Kay

    The scariest part to me is Donald Trump and his bottom of the barrel hires are in charge of “protecting elections”

    Who will they put on that job? The racist attorney general or the dishonest Homeland Security director?

  218. 218.

    Kay

    @zhena gogolia:

    Not as good as when they got that scoop a week before the election that Trump was innocent of all current and possible future charges, but close. I wonder if it’s the famed “NY office” of the FBI again. They’re very reliable and can also predict the future.

  219. 219.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @J R in WV:
    Look. I’m fully aware the GOP is going to get worse. I’m just afraid for this November that’s all. Russian meddling isn’t going to stop and the news about the voting machines used nationwide potentially being compromised has me freaked, hence why I’m trying to find a silver lining in a narrow loss for the House, which I think would produce maximum chaos.

  221. 221.

    Platonailedit

    Three sources tell Vanity Fair that John Kelly called around to Republicans on Capitol Hill and gave them the go-ahead to speak out against Trump.

    https://t.co/WlFfrF2Ltv— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 18, 2018

    Giving permission to speak? Guess that counts as adulting.

  222. 222.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: Sometimes you have to do the right thing for your country and your constituents regardless of what it does to one’s chances at reelection.

  223. 223.

    MobileForkbeard

    @B.B.A.: Well, fuck Lieberman.

    Also, no way Crowley is stupid enough to do that. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if Lieberman is just trying to cause trouble with the left, like he always does.

  230. 230.

    J R in WV

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Wow! There’s a poll you can take to the bank!

    80% vote in favor of a photo/statement that Trump was cucked by Putin in Finland. On PORNHUB ~ !

    That’s a self-selected audience for the poll, everyone doesn’t have to click on plus or minus.

  231. 231.

    J R in WV

    @Platonailedit:

    You know, we DO get Russian trolls here, and they do lie about things with only the often repeated Englilsh grammar gaffe to help pick those trolls out of the regular butthole trolls.

    Sometimes when you’re giving people a hard time, it’s easy to just decide that that poster is a Russian troll being paid to spread disunity, and that kind of attacks.

  232. 232.

    Chris Johnson

    @J R in WV:

    Gohmert was -5 years old in 1948, he wasn’t born until 1953. How would he know anything about Russian interference in 1948?

    He’s a dumb fuck, and they or one of their representatives told him that, RECENTLY, and he believed them.

    Why wouldn’t they be trying to settle down and steady their colluders by telling ’em “no big deal, this isn’t even a new thing: it’s been happening since 1948, you’ll be fiiiine”?

  233. 233.

    Dev Null

    @Adam L Silverman: uh, not intending to ask questions that might impinge on class information, but that’s interesting. Wasn’t the meeting room a SCIF? (thinking a ceremonial room upgraded to SCIF levels)

  234. 234.

    Dev Null

    @Chetan Murthy: Hunh, thanks! I know enough of the words for this to kinda-sorta make sense, but I’ll have to read background to be sure that I’m not going with a simple-but-wrong understanding.

    Thanks for taking the time to explain (or explaign, as G&T suggests).

    “Verified C compiler” is new to me. I assume you’re not talking about Thompson’s “trusted C compiler”, eh? A career change ago I was vaguely aware of work on a new C compiler by a formal methods group at Yale, but I’ll be damned if I can remember anything more than that (of course, it’s possible I’m damned anyway.) And it’s possible I’m mis-remembering “C compiler”, because how that fit into the rest of their research is here-and-now … unclear to me.

    I know the word “constructivism”, but that’s about the extent of my knowledge in this area. I’ll have to start with wiki, I guess. :-)

    Thanks again … I will take this as nighttime reading.

  236. 236.

    Dev Null

    @NotMax: Firing on all cylinders!

    And I just happened to browse through comments on that JC post about his plantings …

  237. 237.

    Dev Null

    @J R in WV:

    You know, we DO get Russian trolls here, and they do lie about things with only the often repeated Englilsh grammar gaffe to help pick those trolls out of the regular butthole trolls.

    What are you, anti-semantic?!?

    (I don’t think the /snark tag is necessary, but I’m going half-snark-tag even so.)

    Microscopically more seriously, what with auto-correct and repeated typos and the like, your heuristic isn’t nearly as reliable as one might hope.

  238. 238.

    Dev Null

    @Adam L Silverman: I am a naif about political theory, but (as The Spousal Unit says about me) “often wrong, never in doubt.”

    Well, sometimes in doubt.

    There are libertarians like Julian Sanchez and Radley Balko and my former colleague who to my eyes appear to be eminently sane, once one allows for the fact that none of us is without eccentricities; then there are the glibertarians at Reason and idiots like Jane Galt at the WaPost … and then there are the con artists like Rand Paul.

    … difficult to get one’s head wrapped around a small set of unifying principles that one could call “libertarian”, especially as they tend to disown each other over each heresy.

    And there are so many heresies.

    That said, your summary “none of them makes sense” works for me.

  239. 239.

    The Other Chuck

    @Chetan Murthy: Constructivist logic leads (somehow, I’m no scientist) to the Curry-Howard Isomorphism, which is a formal way of saying that programs and proofs are equivalent (just that ad-hoc programs, which are the vast majority, don’t prove anything interesting). This got expanded into Curry-Howard-Lambek, which says programs, proofs, and types are equivalent, and this little gem has been the driver for modern type systems ever since, with concrete results appearing in languages like Haskell and Idris. Believe me, there’s plenty of real-world application for those.

  240. 240.

    The Other Chuck

    @Dev Null: the “verified C compiler” is one that has had all the program transformations proven (usually with a theorem prover like Coq) such that the generated assembly code will always behave exactly according to the C specification. This is mildly interesting by itself, but the real payoff comes from verifying optimizations — optimizer bugs that break semantics are still fairly common these days.

    Thompson’s “trusted compiler” is something different that comes from one of his papers, namely “Reflections on Trusting Trust”. The idea is, how do you trust that your C compiler is generating the output you think it should and not inserting backdoors? Sure, you can compile your compiler from source, but then how do you trust that compiler? As a proof of concept, he actually tweaked a compiler to insert backdoors, even when compiling its own source that didn’t contain the backdoor. His POC was a simple kludge, but real world attacks could be a lot more subtle (imagine one that reorders instructions in a predictable order to allow timing attacks). There’s projects underway to design a minimal “trusted compiler” that would be resistant to such attacks, but on the whole it’s a people problem, not so much a technical one.

  241. 241.

    Dev Null

    @The Other Chuck: @The Other Chuck:

    Curry-Howard Isomorphism

    Hunh, interesting … more keywords to look up… although the last time I looked up math in wiki, it was way more detailed than I needed (which is to say, it was way over my head.)

    Thompson’s “trusted compiler” is something different

    I know it as his Turing Award lecture, assuming I’m remembering correctly. I figured that’s not what CM meant, but it was the only point of contact I had.

    As for “constructivist math” (CM’s term), wondering if it’s somehow related to the group of mathematicians which set out to regenerate the field without using proof-by-contradiction….

    Probably not, but again, it’s the only (possible) point of contact I could come up with.

    Thanks for the expleigner … much obliged! Much background reading ahead …

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