Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

People are weird.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

This fight is for everything.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

“But what about the lurkers?”

In after Baud. Damn.

The lights are all blinking red.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / Andrea Mitchell’s Interview with DNI Coats

Andrea Mitchell’s Interview with DNI Coats

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Andrea Mitchell interviewed Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats this afternoon at the Aspen Institute. Some news was made.

This is very, very important information that the DNI decided to share. Specifically, he is not in the loop, at least in regard to matters pertaining to Russia, in regard to what the President is and is not doing! That’s astounding. And it reinforces Susan Glasser’s reporting in The New Yorker (emphasis mine):

Days after the Helsinki summit, Trump’s advisers have offered no information—literally zero—about any such agreements. His own government apparently remains unaware of any deals that Trump made with Putin, or any plans for a second meeting, and public briefings from the State Department and Pentagon have offered no elaboration except to make clear that they are embarrassingly uninformed days after the summit.

Unlike Putin, Trump did not brief his own diplomats on the Helsinki meeting. The American Secretary of State, national-security adviser, and Ambassador to Moscow, who attended the lunch after Trump and Putin’s private session, have been publicly silent on the substance of the meetings, leaving it to the Russians, for now, to make claims about what was actually said and done behind closed doors between the two Presidents.

The information provided to America’s top diplomats, those whose job it is to deal with Russia, was just as sparse and potentially incomplete. The Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Russia, Wess Mitchell, on Tuesday briefed the State Department group that has been pulled together to discuss Russia policy before and after the summit. There was no mention of any agreements. “There is no word on agreements,” a senior U.S. official told me. “There is no information on the U.S. side about any agreements.” So was Putin lying? Was Trump? Was it possible there was a misunderstanding, and that Trump thinks he made no commitments and Putin thinks he did? “It is terribly disturbing,” the senior official said. “The point is that we don’t know.”

A U.S. Ambassador in Europe, who has extensive experience dealing with Russia, told me that he and other State Department officials who would need to know have received no post-summit briefings, or even talking points about what happened, both of which would be standard practice after such an important encounter. “Nothing,” he told me. “We are completely in the dark. Completely.”

I’ve twice written about how, because the President is considered to be a security risk when it comes to intelligence/information by US, allied, and partnered intelligence officials, the US was going to be at a disadvantage in regard to intelligence matters. What we know from both Andrea Mitchell’s interview with DNI Coats and Susan Glasser’s reporting, is that the President is compounding this problem by not telling his own senior appointees what they need to know to actually do their jobs effectively.

Here’s the video of the interview. Since I wasn’t around to see the whole thing, I’m not sure exactly when this happened, but the parts of the interview I saw were very informative.

We are off the map and through the looking glass!

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

184Comments

  2. 2.

    TenguPhule

    That’s astounding.

    is that what we’re calling holy shit terrifying these days?

  3. 3.

    TenguPhule

    is that Trump is compounding this problem by not telling his own senior appointees what they need to know to actually do their jobs effectively.

    And this is a surprise, how? He told us exactly who he was.

  7. 7.

    Elizabelle

    @raven: Yea! Just got home and am watching online now.

    WRT Trump: through the looking glass and looking at rabbits’ asses. And really weird tea.

  13. 13.

    Mike in NC

    Um, most of us realized a couple of years ago that Trump doesn’t do traditional management. It’s all chaos, all the time. The DNI, SecDef, SoS, and all of Congress are kept in the dark, the way he likes it.

    Except when fawning over his master.

  14. 14.

    TS (the original)

    @Adam L Silverman: With or without dreads, she is close to, if not the only pundit who does the work to explain what is going on in the trump russian white house.

    trump either knows what he is doing or is so dumb the russians can lead him anywhere.

  17. 17.

    Mart

    @raven: Sometimes Rachel wears me out. Especially when gleefully extolling the problems with a wandering Republican penis for two weeks, twenty minutes a night. Expect this Russian Spyslutgate will result in her hyperventilating and having to breath into a brown paper bag.

  19. 19.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    I feel more hopeful today. All this shit coming so fucking fast over the last week seems to have really shaken a whole lot of people. People who never before would have even let themselves think about whether the president is working for Putin are beginning to ask that kind of thing. People have woken up to the truth that they can’t lie to themselves about this any longer. The hangup is, I think, that most of the Republicans in Congress already know the truth, and have been trying to hide it, so we can’t count on any help from them. But I think the pressure is building.

  24. 24.

    Procopius

    Was it possible there was a misunderstanding, and that Trump thinks he made no commitments and Putin thinks he did?

    Absolutely possible. This was the most common form of interaction through the entire Cold War I. Classic is the case of Harry Truman. Secretary of State Dean Acheson persuaded him that the Soviets had promised to do a set of things, when the Soviets believed they had promised a slightly different set of things. As a result Truman angrily upbraided Gromyko as a bare-faced liar, giving him no chance to explain his side, and Gromyko was furious. Acheson, a hawk, was satisfied.

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I sent this to someone earlier this evening who had emailed me asking about the Helsinki stuff:

    The wheels are starting to come loose. As exemplified by McConnell having to pull that judicial nominee this afternoon, the ongoing fall out from Monday, and the President deciding to take the hole he dug on Monday, and expanded on Tuesday and Wednesday, and just keep on digging today. Not saying the wheels are coming off, but the lug nuts are coming loose. And on the Senate side, the GOP will need a scapegoat. And McConnell has led them into this mess. So…

  34. 34.

    jl

    Just occurred to me that we haven’t heard the ‘he’s just a sorry ass rich old white businessman, and it takes a while for him to learn this stuff, so give him a break’ excuse for a while.
    What happened to that, and why?

    The GOP probably has focus groups for their BS. Maybe that is not flying any more, except with the hardest of hard core bigots.

  38. 38.

    Adam L Silverman

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: There’s a reason for that: they don’t keep multiple teams of paramedics available on the cable news sets for when the guest subject matter expert gets frustrated with the talking heads and decides to take programming matters into his own hands.

  39. 39.

    TenguPhule

    @Mart:

    Sometimes Rachel wears me out. Especially when gleefully extolling the problems with a wandering Republican penis for two weeks, twenty minutes a night.

    I was not aware she’d castrated one of them and taken a trophy.

  41. 41.

    Platonailedit

    @jl:

    The traitorous thug said this just yesterday: I am inexperienced in this. And the ass kissing racist base will swallow that.

  45. 45.

    Mart

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I interact with a Trump nut a half dozen or so times a year at work. I questioned him right after the Republican Convention why is Trump surrounded by Russian friendlies and Nazi lights (named many of ’em). Why was the Republican platform changed to anti NATO and pro Russia in Crimea if the Putin fix was not in. I kept bringing it up over the years and he would respond by spouting the latest Hannity nonsense. This week he did not defend, just refused to discuss. Progress!

  47. 47.

    The Dangerman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    There’s a reason for that: they don’t keep multiple teams of paramedics available…

    Kind of like I was wondering overnight; how did Trump get through a military academy without being beaten to within an inch of his mortality? Those places typically shape you up fast if you want to survive.

  51. 51.

    Ken

    I can totally buy Trump thinking he can order the US government to follow through on his secret one-on-one deals with Putin – the man’s ignorance is limitless – but I don’t think Putin would believe that.

    So I’m left with speculating that Putin has decided he can’t use Trump to get the sanctions lifted, and is going to maximally humiliate Trump before broadcasting the kompromat pour encourager les autres.

  55. 55.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Philip Rucker @ PhilipRucker
    Inside White House, there’s anger and frustration with Dan Coats over @mitchellreports interview. “Coats has gone rogue,” a senior official told me. Trump, who nurses grudges, is unlikely to be pleased with the headlines about his DNI’s performance

    Tick, tock, motherfu… I mean, welcome, fellow member of the resist….. I mean, you’re gonna spill now, right ?

    Sheeeee-iiiiiiiittt

  56. 56.

    debbie

    Making deals is not how democracy works. Trump cannot be doing this. Doesn’t Congress at least need to be consulted?

  58. 58.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Is it possible that only three days have passed since the Stinky in Helsinki? Feels like weeks and weeks ago.

  62. 62.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Mart: other than the Alabama governor thing, which seemed to fascinate her, we watch different shows

  64. 64.

    The Dangerman

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    It wasn’t a military academy…

    Well, no, not like West Point or similar; fine, a prep school. Same thing applies. Typically, those places beat the asshole out of you one way or another.

  65. 65.

    Miss Bianca

    @SiubhanDuinne: IKR? Does anybody else feel like they’ve been on a merry-go-round that just keeps going faster…and faster…and faster…and no way of getting off?

    Or maybe a Tilt-a-Whirl is a better analogy.

  67. 67.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @debbie: nside the White House, Trump’s advisers were in an uproar over Coats’s interview in Aspen, Colo. They said the optics were especially damaging, noting that at moments Coats appeared to be laughing at the president, playing to his audience of the intellectual elite in a manner that was sure to infuriate Trump.

    oh yeah, laughing at the Beast. He’s done.

  68. 68.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @The Dangerman:

    Typically, those places beat the asshole out of you one way or another.

    Have you ever been to any kind of military or military-themed school?

  69. 69.

    The Dangerman

    @Ken:

    …and there are places for rich kids to cosplay military.

    OK, but I thought Papa Fred wanted to teach his son some discipline; I don’t think it was a Summer Camp.

  73. 73.

    Cheryl Rofer

    The good side of Trump’s not telling his people what he agreed is that it won’t happen. He’s got to put the bureaucracy in motion to make anything happen. If he doesn’t tell them, nothing happens.

  74. 74.

    Miss Bianca

    @Adam L Silverman: Oh, Adam, please, please, please…I am practically hyperventilating at the thought of McConnell taking a fall. Hoist by his own fucking petard, i’ faith. Please, let it be so!

  76. 76.

    The Dangerman

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Have you ever been to any kind of military or military-themed school?

    Inside? No. We have multiple in my area; my only experience is seeing the students in town. Now, to be clear, these aren’t schools as much as places for kids to go to “grow up” (at risk youth or whatever you want to call them). Polite and well mannered as can be.

  78. 78.

    Miss Bianca

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: LOL!

    completely o/t: Come out to my neck of the woods in Colorado sometime and shoot the Milky Way from an *incredibly* dark sky! ‘T would be awesome!

  79. 79.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    People who never before would have even let themselves think about whether the president is working for Putin are beginning to ask that kind of thing. People have woken up to the truth that they can’t lie to themselves about this any longer.

    …and a lot of them have immediately come to the conclusion that DAMN STRAIGHT, Trump is working for Putin and that’s a great thing!

  81. 81.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @The Dangerman: The only military course I went to that wasn’t asshole dominated was Airborne School – probably because I was an officer and above the shit. And even then, it surfaced.

  82. 82.

    Platonailedit

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    On one hand, evade paying millions of tax dollars to the govt. On the other hand, rip off the same tax dollars from the govt. A twofer grift which he has got pat down. And his rubes totally love him for it.

  83. 83.

    Mike in NC

    @Ken: No doubt there are private “military” schools where the rich kids each have a personal servant.

  84. 84.

    eemom

    I’m sure someone mentioned this already, but the “House” republicans today voted down a Democratic measure to subpoena trump’s interpreter — the ONLY person other than Putin who knows what the fuck the moron said/agreed to.

    Please, please, spare me any further Lucy/football idiocy to the effect that maybe now the republicans are FINALLY gonna do something.

  85. 85.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    New York Daily News
    ‏Verified account @NYDailyNews
    14h14 hours ago

    Mark Zuckerberg says Holocaust deniers deserve “a voice”

  86. 86.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Platonailedit:

    [ETA: I should have made a more explicit connection to Procopius’s comment at #24, to which Platonailedit was replying. Apologies for any confusion.]

    I’ll put in a good word for Acheson. His memoirs make for great reading, and his integrity was indisputable (well, okay, Sen McCarthy and his toadies disputed it).

    He apparently had a good sense of humor, and was willing to tell a joke on himself. Not a man to be trifled with, though. I think he would have appreciated that photo of President Obama staring down Pres. Putin.

  88. 88.

    Gin & Tonic

    @The Dangerman: A long, long time ago, in a galaxy bar far, far, away, I, um, relieved some Citadel cadets of some of their excess cash. There may have been games of skill involved. They were not as skillful as they thought.

  89. 89.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yum! That one’s a bit obscure to me – and I thought I was knowledgeable about The Boss’s catalog!

    But my favorite carnival themed-song would, of course, be this one – and maybe this one is a fine analogy as well: Wall of Death

  91. 91.

    Jeffro

    @Mike in NC:

    most of us realized a couple of years ago that Trump doesn’t do traditional management. It’s all chaos, all the time.

    BRING ALL MATTERS TO ME, FOR MY JUDGEMENT!

    ALL MATTERS THAT ARE COMPLICATED TO YOU MORTALS, YOU EDJACATED, YOU “WONKS”, ARE SIMPLE TO MY STABLE GENIUS MIND!!

    OF COURSE I CAN KEEP UP! OF COURSE I CAN HANDLE COMPLEXITY!! NOW BRING ME MY BRIEFING BOOK WITH THE NICE PICTUREZ!!!

  92. 92.

    Miss Bianca

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Dear Mark Zuckerberg – are you OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?

    Holocaust deniers don’t deserve a ‘voice’ – they *deserve* to have their heads handed to them on a pike. But that option wouldn’t be nearly as good for your bottom line, I suppose.

  97. 97.

    Jeffro

    @Miss Bianca: It really is the ultimate expression of the “both sides” mentality, isn’t it? “Some say Holocaust; others say sure there were a lot of deaths in camps specifically set up to cause, um, death, but not like part of a plan or anything. Film at 11”

  100. 100.

    Fair Economist

    There were no deals at the Stinky in Helsinki other than Trump saying “Yes boss, I’ll do as told”. Trump is the subordinate so he is taking orders not making deals. Besides that, Trump couldn’t remember any details anyway because his mind is shot. So the point is that now Putin can say Trump agreed to anything he wants and Trump will just have to agree.

  104. 104.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: I love that stuff. One of my native Iraqi interpreters and translators in Iraq brought me a bunch back from his village when he came back from leave. He went home before his wife went into labor. We, on the team, got a bunch of stuff for the new baby, including a ton of stuff my brother and sister in law had left over from my twin nephews, before he went and sent it home with him. He came back with small gifts for everyone. Really wonderful guy.

  108. 108.

    Gelfling 545

    @Omnes Omnibus: When I was young one of the boys from school whose parentsq were better off than most got sent to a military prep school. The working class boys who behaved the same way got sent to juvenile detention.

  109. 109.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @debbie: self-awareness is not trump’s strongest trait, and being laughed at– by the Davos Jr crowd in Aspen no less!– is his greatest fear

  110. 110.

    Ken

    @debbie: My impression is that people working at the White House don’t do or say anything that gets the amoral man-child angry. If someone does they all turn on that person so they don’t get wished into the cornfield too.

    (Though in the story, they couldn’t go anywhere else. I have no idea what keeps people working at the White House.)

  112. 112.

    Yarrow

    @Miss Bianca: I’ve been saying for the last year and half or so that McConnell was part of this. He will pay. He knows it to a certain extent to. His face when he faced the cameras for his first words about the Putin summit said it all.

  113. 113.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Mart: Well, it is a story which involves Russians, sex, older men and a pretty redhead. The movie script writes itself.

  118. 118.

    Ken

    @B.B.A.:

    A man in his position can’t afford to be made to look ridiculous!

    If only we could identify the person that keeps making him look ridiculous…

  122. 122.

    Yarrow

    @Teddys Person: I think I caught a few minutes of some interview with him on my local NPR station. No idea which program it was. The interviewer was questioning him about lying up at the press secretary podium. He didn’t take that all that well.

    I don’t think this past week is going to help his book sales. His book is going to be sunk by breaking news, plus he’s yet another liar in the Trump administration. Who fucking cares what he has to say? Let Mueller interview him and sort him out.

  123. 123.

    Hill Dweller

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Earlier in the day, when DHS Secretary Nielsen said Trump liked hearing diverse opinions, the entire audience laughed out loud. They were laughing at Trump before the Coats interview.

  125. 125.

    hueyplong

    Not sure I’m ready for NSI Director Sean Hannity, the only person Trump can be sure will not make him the subject of scornful laughter.

    One thing is for sure: Trump’s most hated thing is to be laughed at (think Obama saying that whether or not to fire Gary Busey would be the kind of thing that would keep him up at night).

  128. 128.

    Yarrow

    @Miss Bianca: Yes. Traitors will pay. He knows it, too. December, 2016 he knew it. Monday or Tuesday this week (whichever day they asked all the Congressmembers to comment on the summit) he knew it. He knows he’s in trouble.

  129. 129.

    chris

    I got nothin.

    Amid the controversy over President Trump’s recent summit with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the neo-Confederate League of the South announced this week that it will soon be introducing a Russian language section to its website.“To our Russian friends,” a missive on the League’s website, is signed by Michael Hill, the group’s president.

    Link.

  139. 139.

    Wapiti

    @Ken:

    So I’m left with speculating that Putin has decided he can’t use Trump to get the sanctions lifted, and is going to maximally humiliate Trump before broadcasting the kompromat pour encourager les autres.

    Agreed. My prediction as of today: Putin is going to let his spy-woman get convicted, so he can request/require Donald to pardon her. Then boast about it publicly.

  141. 141.

    Amir Khalid

    It has struck me that this Donald J. Trump person might not be the most attentive-to-detail POTUS ever.

  142. 142.

    different-church-lady

    Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi, weighing in on her brother’s controversial comments about Holocaust deniers, forcefully denounced such people and “their hateful, disgusting rhetoric.” But she said banning them from social media “will not make them go away,”

    It will make them go away from your social media platform.

    It’s a little like saying, “Hey, if I don’t sell guns to psychotic people, they’ll just get them somewhere else.”

    What the fuck is it with this family where they just can’t grock personal responsibility?

  143. 143.

    Steeplejack

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    I have found myself starting to perk up a bit since the Helsinki fiasco. It dawned on me that Trump’s “shit Midas” effect might be so cosmically awful that it is starting to affect not just innocent victims but the evildoers themselves: Republicans in Congress, Cabinet members and executive-branch minions, even Putin and Trump himself.

    At some level still to become clear, Putin appears to have perhaps overplayed his Helsinki hand, and he might be in a “dog that caught the car” situation—now what do you do?

    I can’t imagine that a second summit in Washington right before the election would be good for Putin or Trump, but they seem determined to do it. Please proceed, gentlemen.

  145. 145.

    Amir Khalid

    @different-church-lady:
    I agree. It’s a respectable argument that no one has a right to silence anybody, even Holocaust deniers. But no one owes them a voice or a platform, either. If Facebook kicks them out, they can still express themselves by other means, and their right of free speech is not violated.

    By the way, Heinlein spelled it grok.

  147. 147.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I’m not a violent person, I oppose violence in almost all cases. But boy, do I want to punch Jeremy Peters in the face. Over and over again.

  148. 148.

    different-church-lady

    @Amir Khalid: Well no wonder I could never find the definition on-line. A friend of mine used to say it, and I was never quite certain I was using it right, but my attempts to find a definition always came up empty.

  150. 150.

    Yarrow

    @Steeplejack:

    At some level still to become clear, Putin appears to have perhaps overplayed his Helsinki hand, and he might be in a “dog that caught the car” situation—now what do you do?

    Putin overplayed his hand when Trump won. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

  153. 153.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Amir Khalid:

    It’s a respectable argument that no one has a right to silence anybody, even Holocaust deniers.

    I humbly disagree. No private individual should be required to promote views that they hold to be abhorrent. If private religious beliefs are to be held to be inviolable, why not private moral beliefs?

    Nobody has a right to a megaphone that belongs to someone else.

  154. 154.

    Amir Khalid

    @Amir Khalid:
    Or to put it more clearly:
    Zuckerberg has an obligation, as we all do, to respect the free-speech rights even of those who say vile and hateful things. He has no obligation to invite them to his rooftop and hand them a bullhorn — which, by letting them stay on Facebook, is what he’s doing. Indeed, common decency says his obligation is to not abet hate speech.

  155. 155.

    NotMax

    @J R in WV

    Saw your query in a defunct thread about being WoW-curious.

    They used to have a free trial period, which was for a somewhat stripped down version of the original game only. Since the change this week which made everything else included without additional purchase, I *think* that has gone bye-bye. So it will cost the usual $15 per month fee to get everything in one package to try out. If you don’t care for it, can just stop the subscription from renewing the next month.

    Three things:

    1) The initial download will be a lengthy one.
    2) Before you sign up, give a heads-up here, please. There are some ‘only way to get them’ perqs given as a bonus to already existing players through the Add-a-Friend program for WoW, which have no affect on your subscription but which someone here might want to take advantage of.
    3) When you sign up and begin creating characters, you also have to choose what is called a realm (in computer terms, think of it as – roughly speaking – a separate server where all the characters who were assigned there live). There still exist some in-game advantages to being in the same realm as other players you know, so might consider asking beforehand what realms the WoW players here use.

  156. 156.

    B.B.A.

    @Viva BrisVegas: The problem is, if Zuck orders Holocaust deniers thrown off Facebook, and a large swath of Palestinian nationalists (among whom denialism is unfortunately common) get caught up in the crackdown, it looks an awful lot like a Jew banning opposition to the Israeli regime. Which I, as a Jew, find even more abhorrent.

  157. 157.

    L85NJGT

    @Steeplejack:

    He’ll pivot to his useful idiots on the left to ramp up the anti-Democratic Party & anti-status quo rhetoric.The goal was never Trump – it was to create an internal splitcrisis in the US. His goal is expansion of the Russian Empire. He perceives a distracted and divided US giving him the strategic maneuvering room he needs.

  158. 158.

    Amir Khalid

    @B.B.A.:
    I say this as someone sympathetic to their cause: Palestinian nationalists have the same obligation as everyone else to respect the truth about the Holocaust. Those who deny it have given in to anti-Jewish bigotry, and if it gets them kicked out of a social-media platform they do not get my sympathy.

  159. 159.

    Another lurker

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: You are correct that rich boy Z is too young to see those tattoos .
    I, on the other hand, am old and I had a Polish woman as my next door neighbor. She never said much, English being recently learned, after WWII. I must have been 10 or 11 when I really noticed her tattoo. I was a curious kid, so I asked Mrs. M what the numbers on her wrist meant? She looked at me and shook her head sadly. She looked away.
    It was kinda of chilling at first, as I read up on Poland during The War, the brief encounter with an old woman who lost everything grew sadder for me, as time went on. It is now turning into a real dread of history repeating itself.

  160. 160.

    Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ

    @Steeplejack: I think that, no matter what, Putin wins. The minute he created doubts in our mind about the integrity of our elections and the minute he had any control over the president of the United States, Putin won. So his coming here in the fall throws us into more chaos and distraction and all of that is just bonus for him. WARNING:
    Gratuitous Game of Thrones reference–As Littlefingerr said “chaos is a ladder” and Putin will climb it wherever it takes him because no matter what, the ladder helps him move up and forces us to slide backwards.

  161. 161.

    Doug R

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: You should spend some time in British Columbia in clear weather. There is a free campsite run by BC Hydro-it has drinking water but ironically no electric power- just outside Lillooet, mere miles from the darkest skies. If you’re from California, you should be able to handle the summer weather.

  163. 163.

    Doug R

    @Yarrow:

    Putin overplayed his hand when Trump won. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

    Well, then they shouldn’t have made trump win all those precincts by the exact same margins then.

  165. 165.

    Chetan Murthy

    @different-church-lady: What happened to Randi? Her brother got rich, and she sure doesn’t wanna get cut off. What happened to Zuck? He got rich, and it is WELL DOCUMENTED that rich people are significantly less empathetic and more sociopathic than us normals. One could speculate that it comes from having an army of obsequious servitors who basically cannot say “no” to you, but whatevs, that’s how they -are-.

    Zuck is Jewish. I have a very close Jewish friend whom I can ask about these things, and he told me once (when I was shivering after the Nov 2016 Apocalypse, and wondering about planning for expatriation) that all Jewish children are taught about the lesson that you might have to flee, b/c it’s happened so many times in the history of the Jewish people. No, Zuck KNEW. Hell, at some point he probably even fucking CARED. But then he got rich. End of story.

    Steeply progressive confiscatory taxation would be a moral boon to the rich. It would redeem their benighted souls.

  166. 166.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Chetan Murthy: to the extent that the Facebook movie can be believed, he wasn’t overflowing with empathy and people skills even before they started the company

  170. 170.

    Platonailedit

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    I am with you. Other western democracies have banned/restricted hate speech and they have not collapsed and the US is the one now lost to the so called free speech.

  171. 171.

    Jay

    @Doug R:

    Probably not the mosquito’s or forest fires.

    $50 get’s you a Forest Service Campsite pass, which gives you access to 598 different campsites across the Province for a year. Otherwise FSC’s cost $15 a night for the curated sites, free for the backwoods ones.

  172. 172.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I can believe it — just from the enormous amount of obvious don’t-give-a-shit about PII (personally identifying information) they spray around like a firehose. But that is still different from “don’t give a shit about Holocaust denial”. I mean, if I founded a company and my company were giving a platform to people who spewed racist vitriol about people of South Asian descent, I’d have serious problems with that. That he doesn’t see this as a matter of self-interest, tells me a lot about how he views himself: above and beyond mere normals like you, me, and all the Jewish people we know in real life.

    It’s disgusting.

    P.S. I realize that he should also feel this way about those spewing racist rhetoric against black people, misogynist rhetoric, etc. But the *absolute* *minimum* you could expect from him, would be that he would ban racist and eliminationist rhetoric directed at people of his own ethnicity. It’s what boggles the mind about Stephen “Goebbels” Miller, too.

  173. 173.

    cwmoss

    @Cheryl Rofer: I ain’t a diplomat or a Nat Sec pro, but it occurs to me that in behaving this way, Ttump is essentially acting on his own behalf, personally, rather than on behalf of the nation. WTF???

  174. 174.

    Dan B

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Friends saw The Death of Stalin and loved it, political junkies and masters of mass communication. It was fascinating to witness the pretzels bend and contort in hopes of surviving.

  177. 177.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Dan B: Uh, are you referring to Louis Seize (16th)? !4th died in his bed, of old age, didn’t he? He was the Sun-King, right? And 15th too (though Damiens did try to assassinate him — wow, the description of his punishment in the introduction to Foucault’s _Discipline and Punish_ is ….. worth the trip, if you can stomach it). Louis 16th was guillotined (which, I guess, is what you mean by “two pieces”).

  179. 179.

    Dan B

    This seems clear as day to me. We’ve got a malign president who loves to play world manipulation games and he’s found a playmate. Now he’s invited his playmate to his house. They’ve got cherry bombs to put in rabbit holes and can light cats taila on fire, then they’ve got a servant who’s got some dynamite and you know about my neighbor who got me in trouble and wouldn’t it be fun to blow ip his garage!?

    I get it but it’s all hypothetical and a bit in the weeds until the Ruskies are parachuting into Wichita. How do we get this across to middle America? How do we even get across to black and brown people who are focused on Jeff Sessions? We’ve got women and gays who know creeps when thy see them but how do we awaken people who have a tangential comprehension of the threat?

  181. 181.

    J R in WV

    @NotMax:

    Thanks for the tips. I had a pair of minor surgeries this afternoon, no big deal, but going to be annoying for the next 2-3 weeks. Since I will need to be less active,and should be still until the sutures aren’t holding things together, learning a game seemed like an option.

    But I don’t operate Windows computers, we’ve been various strains of Linux since we retired, and my internet connection is a sat link, with lots of latency and variable band-width. So there’s that.

    I have wanted to get a windows box to use for photo editing, so the standard references would apply, and thinking that learning new trix with editing on one platform would help editing on another Linux platform.

    Maybe I’ll just continue to keep informed enough to make wise and productive contributions to various campaigns… and volunteer some.

  183. 183.

    Dan B

    @Chetan Murthy: Are you still a billionaire if there are two pieces of you? How to divvy up the francs?

    The 16th. Does it get divided 10/6, 12/4 based on weight. Apologies for the guillotine humor.

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