Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Books are my comfort food!

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

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

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

“They not like us!” (that’s for sure!)

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

The willow is too close to the house.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

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

I really should read my own blog.

I was promised a recession.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Cool, Maybe Now We Will Do Something

Cool, Maybe Now We Will Do Something

by | 76 Comments

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But I doubt it:

The Russian military intelligence unit that sought to influence the 2016 election appears to have a new target: conservative American think tanks that have broken with President Trump and are seeking continued sanctions against Moscow, exposing oligarchs or pressing for human rights.

In a report scheduled for release on Tuesday, Microsoft Corporation said that it detected and seized websites that were created in recent weeks by hackers linked to the Russian unit formerly known as the G.R.U. The sites appeared meant to trick people into thinking they were clicking through links managed by the Hudson Institute and the International Republican Institute, but were secretly redirected to web pages created by the hackers to steal passwords and other credentials.

I mean, they’re not Trump supporters, so fuck ’em.

Reader Interactions

76Comments

  1. 1.

    Judge Crater

    The Manafort jury may be doing something. They’ve reached a verdict on all but one count.

  2. 2.

    Elizabelle

    Trump may not do anything, nor Republicans, because they are all Russia’s clients.

    But I would think we, and those in and out of government, could do something. At least with publicizing, and being on the lookout for the fake stuff.

    Resist this shit too.

  3. 3.

    Gravenstone

    With the think tanks being heretics against the God-Emperor Trump I, he will no doubt seek to egg on the attackers, maybe even seek to reward them. I hate these people.

  4. 4.

    Brachiator

    As Mr. Spock might say, “Fascinating. Conservatives would rather eat their own than protect the country that they supposedly love.”

    Trump is more concerned with denying “collusion” and stripping security clearances from critics than he is with strengthening efforts to ensure the integrity of elections. What’s that thing in the presidential oath about defending the Constitution?

  7. 7.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Judge Crater: Mostly reposting from the other thread, for those that worry this means a hung jury and a mistrial:

    From what I can tell, that’s not how it works. the jury can decide to issue the verdicts that they’ve reached consensus on. The judge *may* choose to call a mistrial on the remaining counts. From wikipedia:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hung_jury “If the jury cannot agree on all counts as to any defendant, the jury may return a verdict on those counts on which it has agreed. . . . If the jury cannot agree on a verdict on one or more counts, the court may declare a mistrial on those counts.”

  8. 8.

    xytiel

    Remember when all the righty blogs, during Obama, started to love Putin? I have tweeted this in response to Josh Marshall in the hopes that Mueller sees it and digs in. :)

  9. 9.

    hells littlest angel

    Great. More fucking “it didn’t happen and if it did we didn’t know about it and if we did we didn’t ask for it and if we asked for it show me where collusion is a crime.”

  10. 10.

    oldgold

    Juries!

    Every damn time I do post-voir dire, I am amazed and shaken.

    But, usually, somehow or another, they do muddle to the correct conclusion. I hope that happens here. Looks like it.

  11. 11.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    So is the GRU targeting this blog because of it’s vast influence over American discourse, or is just Putin still angry Baud refused to invite him to Baud’s victory beach volleyball party if Baud had one in 2016?

  12. 12.

    JPL

    ABC news is reporting that Cohen reached plea deals dealing with Bank Fraud, Tax Crimes, and Campaign Finance. Stormy weather will occur.

  13. 13.

    Corner Stone

    ABC News
    ‏Verified account @ABC
    10m10 minutes ago

    BREAKING: Former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen has entered into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, @ABC has learned. https://abcn.ws/2MNo7Tf

    Happy Friday News Dump!

  14. 14.

    The Other Chuck

    A plea deal while the jury is out? How the fuck does this happen? Tell me this at least involves him testifying…

  18. 18.

    JPL

    MSNBC is saying they are still negotiating, but I’m hoping that ABC is correct because the campaign finance deal is a BFD. There are tapes that the president was directly involved.

  19. 19.

    sukabi

    @MisterForkbeard: article I read this morning said the judge sent them back to see if they could reach a consensus on that one count, and if not he’d consider issuing a partial verdict.

  21. 21.

    LAO

    It’s only Tuesday, right? At the end of August? You know, when nothing newsworthy is supposed to happen.

  22. 22.

    TenguPhule

    @The Other Chuck: Cohen is Trump’s lawyer who is in trouble for his Taxi cab money laundering services. He’s pleading early because there was news the NY AG was preparing to charge him.

  24. 24.

    Fester Addams

    @Corner Stone:

    BREAKING: Former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen has entered into a plea agreement

    For a while now I’m finding it sort of annoying when Cohen is referred to as anything other than Trump’s former bag man.

  25. 25.

    TenguPhule

    @Mnemosyne:

    Is it too early to make Baba Yaga jokes about the bot website attacks?

    We’re all starring in John Wick 3, apparently.

  26. 26.

    p.a.

    GRU is after DougJ for his $ raising activities. They’re not concerned with Cole: Rosie and Steve are sleepers. Their first attempt to sideline loyal Lily has failed. Thurston not deemed competent by attack or defense teams.

    Can you prove it’s not true?

  27. 27.

    Immanentize

    @LAO: the Manafort trial is the first time in my career that I was happy to see a judge give a jury a dynamite charge.

    We live in weird-O times.

  28. 28.

    Corner Stone

    Somebody better put a lockdown on the nearest KFC and Mickey D’s. Because somebody is going to need a buffet table’s worth of “comfort food” after this afternoon.

  29. 29.

    Leto

    @JPL: Paging Kay: The Mueller investigation is showing how badly we’ve failed to prosecute white-collar crime: It shouldn’t take a special counsel to catch these guys.

    All of which is to say that while the first-order political upshot of the Cohen and Manafort cases is that Trump seems to associate with an awful lot of criminals, the more disturbing implication is that there are a lot of white-collar criminals out there who aren’t being prosecuted because their lives don’t happen to intersect with a special counsel investigation.

    Indeed, Trump himself in his pre-political life seems to have repeatedly benefited from a broad disinclination on the part of the federal government to devote serious efforts to cracking down on white-collar crime. And while a certain laxness about the crimes of the rich has long been a characteristic of the American criminal justice system, it’s gotten substantially worse in recent decades, as misguided Supreme Court decisions have made prosecutions harder even as law enforcement resources have been diverted by terrorism and anti-immigrant hysteria and political will to challenge plutocracy has waned.

    Ten years ago, it seemed remarkable that America had gotten so soft on corporate crime that nobody was prosecuted for the banking malfeasance that crashed the world economy in 2008. Today we have a White House awash in scandal and criminal associations. We can only hope that if Trump’s rule comes to an end, we won’t get complacent about the dirt that Mueller has only begun to scratch.

  32. 32.

    hitchhiker

    My one jury experience was a big federal tax fraud case. Nine defendants, 107 total counts against them, bunches of lawyers. Took almost 4 weeks of trial, plus another 2 for deliberations.

    We convicted six of them, but got hung on the last three because there were a couple of anti-tax types who just would NOT budge … so that’s how it came out for us, but I know the feds took those 3 back to court and got a conviction the 2nd time.

    What happens when the judge says, “Keep working,” is you all go back into the conference room and take your usual seats. Then there are leaders on both sides of whatever the issue is stepping up to make their cases for the 10th time. Everybody knows what everybody’s position is. You haul out your notes and dig into the boxes of evidence they’ve left with you … but if you have a few holdouts, it gets pointless pretty quickly.

    In our case, the leader of the holdouts would definitely have joined this tax scam himself if it had been offered to him. You could tell he thought it was a pretty great idea.

  35. 35.

    Mnemosyne

    @Leto:

    Yes, Vox writer, the decisions by the Republican-appointed Supreme Court judges that made it easier to get away with white-collar crime were simply “misguided” and not proof of additional corruption at the top. ?

    I’m guessing Ezra Klein wrote that, but I didn’t look yet.

  37. 37.

    raven

    Michael Cohen, who worked for more than a decade as Donald Trump’s loyal personal attorney, will plead guilty in a deal reached with federal prosecutors, multiple outlets reported on Tuesday.

  39. 39.

    Corner Stone

    @JPL:

    He has a rally in WV tonight.

    In that case, have the KFC and Filet O Fish delivered to Charleston, WV. And deliver ALL THE POPCORN TO US.

  41. 41.

    cmorenc

    Good to see that CNN’s Chris Cillizza actually does sometimes have a firm grasp of the obvious – such as his piece today titled: “This is an absolutely critical moment for Donald Trump’s presidency“. Without Cillizza’s help, we would never have figured out for ourselves that: 1) the pending Manafort verdict, 2) the pending Cohen charges/plea, and 3) the revelation that White House Counsel Don McGahn gave nearly 30 hours of testimony to Mueller’s team – are critical events in Trump’s presidency. Would we, folis? Ya gotta be a clairvoyant wise man to prognosticate such sage wisdom as Cillizza does, I tell ya.

  42. 42.

    catclub

    @Leto:

    Indeed, Trump himself in his pre-political life seems to have repeatedly benefited from a broad disinclination on the part of the federal government to devote serious efforts to cracking down on white-collar crime.

    I think there was a book called something like “Chickenshit” on he reluctance to go after white collar criminals by the DOJ – mostly related to the 2008 financial crisis, but others as well. 1) the cases are hard to make
    2) the defendants can afford real lawyers
    3) the guys prosecuting want jobs in the private sector

  43. 43.

    jl

    @Brachiator: ‘ Conservatives would rather eat their own than protect the country that they supposedly love. ‘

    I agree. Not sure ‘rather’ is quite the right word, though. Any GOP who emits even the mildest disagreement with Trump at all has a very good chance of losing the primary, since the Trumpster base dominates the GOP primary voters. And their rabid base gets ever wilder and more aggressive. Any departure from Trump orthodoxy doesn’t get you labeled as a RINO, but a communist, deep state pedophile traitor, a tool of the global Jewish banker conspiracy, if we go the insane QAnon route, which is growing in influence. Some liberals have become so gutless and scared that they don’t even want to point out this insanity. I am with Josh Marshall in thinking that at some point, it becomes fantasy tot think that if you ignore the rot it will go away. Need to call out the GOP for the degenerate toxic extremist movement it has become.

    The GOP is stuck between a rock and a hard place, and it is very dangerous for the country. Only a big electoral refutation of their toxic degeneration can fix it. So, we need to give any money, time and effort we can for 2018 and 2020 elections.

  44. 44.

    cmorenc

    Good to see that CNN’s Chris Cillizza actually does sometimes have a firm grasp of the obvious – such as his piece today titled: “This is an absolutely critical moment for Donald Trump’s presidency“. Without Cillizza’s help, we would never have figured out for ourselves that: 1) the pending Manafort verdict, 2) the pending Cohen charges/plea, and 3) the revelation that White House Counsel Don McGahn gave nearly 30 hours of testimony to Mueller’s team – are critical events in Trump’s presidency. Would we, folks? Ya gotta be a clairvoyant wise man to prognosticate such sage wisdom as Cillizza does, I tell ya.

  47. 47.

    JPL

    @Roger Moore: Trump leaves the White House at 4 which is the time that Cohen enters his plea. If the Manafort jury returns with a number of guilty verdicts, I would keep trump out of the cockpit. I fear for the traveling press corp.

  48. 48.

    jl

    @cmorenc: Great. I’ll look for his new column that has cutting edge insights and tells us which Democrat will be the best bet for 2020 because he or she is telegenic and with smooth PR campaign skills, and can raise humungous amounts of PAC and SuperPac money, and is all the buzz with big name establishment campaign consultants.

  49. 49.

    Spanky

    And, keeping the eyes on the prize …

    Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh told Sen. Susan Collins on Tuesday that Roe v. Wade was “settled law,” the Maine Republican told reporters after their meeting.

    Collins, a supporter of abortion rights, said she raised the issue with Kavanaugh, who is meeting with senators ahead of his confirmation hearings next month.

    “We talked about whether he considered Roe to be settled law,” Collins said, referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy.

    Collins said Kavanaugh told her that he agreed with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who said during his 2005 confirmation hearing that Roe was “settled as a precedent of the court.” Collins and Kavanaugh, who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, met for more than two hours Tuesday morning.

    “He said that he agreed with what Justice Roberts said at his nomination hearing, in which he said it was settled law,” Collins said. “We had a very good, thorough discussion.”

    The senator has not said whether she will support Kavanaugh, but she has also declined to offer strong criticism of President Trump’s nominee.

  51. 51.

    joel hanes

    @LAO:

    Later accounts say that Cohen is not co-operating, he’s pleading guilty to avoid trial.

    So he’s falling on his sword to protect Trump and his Russian patrons, and (I presume) hoping for a Presidential pardon.

  53. 53.

    catclub

    @LAO: I did not mention it in my ‘chickenshit’ book comment, but my observation of those is that the most likely person to go to jail is the one whistle blower. Still following that pattern here, kinda. Convicting Manafort will be a big deal.

  58. 58.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @cmorenc:

    Ya gotta be a clairvoyant wise man to prognosticate such sage wisdom as Cillizza does, I tell ya.

    The most cogent critique of Chris Phucking Cillizza came from, I think, a BJ comment some ago:

    Chris Cillizza, whose daily work consists of bottling his own wet farts and publishing them on CNN as “political analysis,”

    Or Charlie Pierce’s take down:

    “When the Smithsonian opens its American Museum of Feckless Journalism, the Cillizza exhibit is going to be right there in the lobby, across from the statues of Maureen Dowd and David Brooks.”

    High tumbrel numbers for all of em.

  62. 62.

    LAO

    @waratah: An Allen charge is a jury instruction given to deadlocked jurors to encourage them to reach a verdict. It is fairly coercive. The following is a n example:

    ALLEN CHARGE
    A term used, usually in the federal court context, to describe the instructions given to a jury when, after deliberation, it is unable to decide on a verdict. An example of a modified Allen Charge follows:

    Members of the Jury:

    I’m going to ask that you continue your deliberations in an effort to reach agreement upon a verdict and dispose of this case; and I have a few additional comments I would like for you to consider as you do so.

    This is an important case. The trial has been expensive in time, effort, money and emotional strain to both the defense and the prosecution. If you should fail to agree upon a verdict, the case will be left open and may have to be tried again. Obviously, another trial would only serve to increase the cost to both sides, and there is no reason to believe that the case can be tried again by either side any better or more exhaustively than it has been tried before you.

    Any future jury must be selected in the same manner and from the same source as you were chosen, and there is no reason to believe that the case could ever be submitted to twelve men and women more conscientious, more impartial, or more competent to decide it, or that more or clearer evidence could be produced.

    If a substantial majority of your number are in favor of a conviction, those of you who disagree should reconsider whether your doubt is a reasonable one since it appears to make no effective impression upon the minds of the others. On the other hand, if a majority or even a lesser number of you are in favor of an acquittal, the rest of you should ask yourselves again, and most thoughtfully, whether you should accept the weight and sufficiency of evidence which fails to convince your fellow jurors beyond a reasonable doubt.

    Remember at all times that no juror is expected to give up an honest belief he or she may have as to the weight or effect of the evidence; but, after full deliberation and consideration of the evidence in the case, it is your duty to agree upon a verdict if you can do so.

    You must also remember that if the evidence in the case fails to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt the Defendant should have your unanimous verdict of Not Guilty.

    You may be as leisurely in your deliberations as the occasion may require and should take all the time which you may feel is necessary.

    I will ask now that you retire once again and continue your deliberations with these additional comments in mind to be applied, of course, in conjunction with all of the other instructions I have previously given to you.

  63. 63.

    joel hanes

    @JPL:

    Do they need him to cooperate?

    Mueller? I have no idea; the Mueller team does not leak. (c.f. Starr’s team, which was a partisan collander)

  64. 64.

    jl

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: My favorite Cilizza hot take was that Michelle Obama is a front runner for president in 2020 because she has a big following and could raise huge amounts of cash. Never mind that Michelle Obama has made it clear by word and deed that she would rather jump into a bottomless pit than go back to the WH as president. When Barack Obama joked that the Secrete Service had to guard the WH grounds to keep Michelle from escaping, he was half serious.

    That kind of trip would not even rate Tiger Beat.

  65. 65.

    trollhattan

    @Roger Moore:
    What would be some hallmarks of “more unhinged than usual?” I’m unable to envision Trump supporters being more awful than they already are. Will there be witches?

  67. 67.

    Corner Stone

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    High tumbrel numbers for all of em.

    IMO, this is just like people getting the order of DEFCON seriousness backwards. DEFCON 5 means consider peeing yourself and confess you picked the wrong week to stop smoking. DEFCON 1 means you might as well light up a bowl on the table of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, grab whoever is nearby and start a naked Death Orgy Cult.
    For tumbrels I think a lower number is better, like being served at a good deli, or playing golf. IMO, high tumbrel numbers mean all these fuckers are hanging around waiting for their turn, and before we can get the sweet release of dull steel headed their way they will manage to crank out a few more disingenuous hit pieces/both sides/This is Bad For Dems.

  68. 68.

    jonas

    @LAO: IANAL, but it seems to me with this plea, prosecutors probably have enough to make the case that the president engaged in a criminal conspiracy to break campaign finance law by ordering Cohen to make those payoffs (clearly intended to cover up something that could damage him politically), and then reimbursing him w/o reporting the payments or their source. That’s why Cohen was lying/spinning so hard early on about having made the payoff out of his own pocket. He knew Trump was exposed to a major legal jeopardy otherwise.

  69. 69.

    trollhattan

    @Spanky:
    And as of last week we now know that to snap Susan Collins’ spine precisely in half, twist first. I’d say spaghetti if capellini did not exist.

  70. 70.

    Roger Moore

    @trollhattan:

    What would be some hallmarks of “more unhinged than usual?”

    Actual violence against the media covering the event would be the most obvious. Actually firing somebody important live from the stage rather than just suggesting they should quit would be another. But unhinged is inherently hard to predict in detail; I just expect Trump to do something even crazier than usual.

  72. 72.

    Leto

    @catclub: The article does talk about that book. Seems like it would be an interesting read.

    @Doug R: It’s not just the NY office, it’s the DoJ as a whole. It’s the fact that they’re able to come to an agreement, pay a small fine, and then move along. It’s being able to have judgments where no fault is admitted on the part of the guilty. Trumpov has used that numerous times (small fine, no fault admitted, off to next grift). Maybe some of our legal eagles can explain the benefit of that.

  73. 73.

    Roger Moore

    @trollhattan:
    What spine? Collins is an invertebrate, just like the vast majority of the Republican caucus. She’s only noteworthy in that the media actually pretends to believe she has a spine.

  76. 76.

    The Moar You Know

    The senator has not said whether she will support Kavanaugh, but she has also declined to offer strong criticism of President Trump’s nominee.

    @Spanky: How much of this Lucy and the Football shit is the media willing to indulge in? OF COURSE SHE WILL SUPPORT HIM. SHE SUPPORTS EVERYTHING GOP AND ALWAYS HAS.

    How she and that dope McCain managed to get any kind of reputation for being “moderates” is something I will simply never understand. Never. They never were and never have been.

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