Trump acting out on Twitter like an unhinged 12-year-old whose parents have banned Fortnite is no longer noteworthy. But this morning, he seems especially out in the deep end sans a pool noodle, so I thought I’d mention it. Some of his output is standard fare in this degraded era, such as this foam-flecked whine about the Mueller investigation:
While the disgusting Fake News is doing everything within their power not to report it that way, at least 3 major players are intimating that the Angry Mueller Gang of Dems is viciously telling witnesses to lie about facts & they will get relief. This is our Joseph McCarthy Era!
The “3 major players” would be Stone, Corsi and Manafort, I guess? Good Lord, how sweet it would be to see that trio shuffling off to prison in leg irons. I’ve never been a big believer is Mueller Claus, but Trump’s obvious desperation has me listening for reindeer hooves on the rooftop!
Trump also retweeted this image from one of the crackpot sycophants who god-bless his every crazed tweet:
Of course, it’s normal in our degraded age for the president to demand prosecution of his political enemies like a tinpot dictator. But Rod Rosenstein — current Republican Deputy AG of the USA appointed by the Trump admin and an alum (along with Brett Kavanaugh) of the Starr investigation is depicted in that cell. That seems to cross a new line, I dunno.
I have no idea what’s happening with the Mueller investigation, but knowledgeable folks who follow it closely seem to think something’s about to explode. And Twitler, perhaps through insights gleaned via the partisan hack he (illegally) passed over Rosenstein to set in supervision of Mueller, seems to think so too.
Open thread!
cain
“You better watch out, you better not cry, you better watch out I’m telling you why, Robert Mueller’s comin for you.
He’s knows what you’ve been up to, he knows when you’re lyin, he knows who is bad and good so you better be good for goodness sake”
“He’s making a list, checkin it twice, he knows whose been naughty and not nice, Robert Mueller’s comin for you”
Msb
The Hoarse Whisperer’s Twitter account has lots of info and predictions based on typical behavior of severe narcissist.
Anonymous At Work
Marcy Wheeler’s take on Manafort/Mueller’s recent dustup includes Mueller having caught both Manafort and Trump in the same perjury trap. Manafort/Trump coordinating lies told under oath by each, when Mueller had the goods.
Thoughts?
White & Gold Purgatorian
How many thousand new lines has this man crossed now? Consequences? None visible. I keep hoping.
The Moar You Know
@Anonymous At Work: Marcy Wheeler is an English major with no legal or trial experience whatsoever nor any relevant background experience. You could walk up to the nearest ranting homeless person and get equally valid commentary.
Luciamia
In the Treason cell, who’s the chick with green face, next to Hillary?
schrodingers_cat
@White & Gold Purgatorian: His party got an electoral drubbing just weeks ago.
Kraux Pas
@White & Gold Purgatorian:
A past associate of mine may have referred to him as an “habitual line stepper.”
mark
@Luciamia: Huma Abadin(sp?).
FlipYrWhig
@Luciamia: I think that’s Huma Abedin.
Yarrow
This is huge and related to the rest of the stuff that’s happening.
Link.
Also, Facebook isn’t having a good day. LOL.
FlipYrWhig
Also, there’s no way Trump uses, or knows, the word “intimating.”
FlipYrWhig
@FlipYrWhig: Unless…
Amir Khalid
@FlipYrWhig:
And what do the Trumpenvolk accuse Huma Abedin of doing?
Yarrow
@Anonymous At Work: From Adam yesterday:
geg6
@Anonymous At Work:
I saw her on, I think, Chris Hayes last night. I sure hope she’s right. That’s the only truly hopeful explanation for this absolutely insane situation at this point.
Kraux Pas
I’m surprised they didn’t find a spot for Nancy Pelosi.
Who’s second from the left? Is that Schumer?
geg6
@Luciamia:
That would be AOC or Huma Abedin, I think. I guess they are trying to make a very attractive young woman look like the Wicked Witch of the West, either way.
FlipYrWhig
@Amir Khalid: Concealing… something? Also rumors of Islamic… something. Who the hell knows.
FlipYrWhig
@Kraux Pas: John Podesta.
ETA: BTW I am not proud of having become a person who can instantly recognize John Podesta.
JGabriel
Betty Cracker @ Top:
I can’t say I have any special knowledge either, but, if things are going to explode in the Trump-Putin saga, I really don’t think it’s going to happen until early next year.
I always thought it was likely that Mueller would wait until Congress began its new term to release his report anyway, but now that we know Mueller just got Trump’s written answers, I’d assume his team will use the holiday season to go over it with a fine tooth comb to untangle all the lies and obstruction, and release the report sometime in early January.
Gravenstone
@Luciamia: Huma Abedin, I believe.
Amir Khalid
Who is that between Huma and Jim Comey?
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know: That’s bullshit. I don’t agree with everything the woman writes, and maybe this specific theory is wrong. But Wheeler’s background and experience are as valid and relevant as that of most working journalists and 99.9% of the TV talking heads. She’s also been interviewed as a witness in the Mueller investigation as a result of contact with a source who’s involved in the cover-up.
Frankensteinbeck
To a narcissist like Trump, all those people are criminals. They must be committing crimes, because they’re making him unhappy. If you’ve ever dealt with one, you know that this isn’t a lie to muddy the waters. It’s how they view the world. Trump is more open and simple about it, but he is a fine model of the GOP from voters to elected officials. I’m sure a large number of them really do believe everyone in that photo is the real criminal and Trump is innocent. Facts are irrelevant. I believe you saw it in the endless investigations of Hillary Clinton. They weren’t just a fishing expedition. They were backed by the solid belief there was a crime to find. They seemed baffled when they didn’t find one, and went over the same stuff over and over because it had to be there.
Kraux Pas
@Anonymous At Work:
I love this notion of a perjury trap, as though asking you about a materially important fact that someone proceeds to lie about without informing the interviewee that they already know the truth is somehow underhanded.
I wonder if Trump’s pissing and moaning about normal investigative methods will ultimately translate into a spate of court challenges from ordinary people who had the same techniques used against them. Undoubtedly, some methods are abused sometimes, but that abuse should be demonstrated in order to make an accusation stick. Trump’s associates are using the fact that few facts of the case are public information to paint a vague picture of abuse which I strongly doubt is accurate.
I actually saw a very cogent rebuttal to the whole perjury trap thing on Fucker Carlson last night. I wonder if it got through to any portion of his avid viewers.
(Not edited to add: Oops, Fucker was totally a typo, what ever shall I do???)
Kraux Pas
@Amir Khalid:
I’m about 80*% sure that’s Soros.
*This number is highly susceptible to new information.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Allegedly keeping Classified info on her laptop, which Carlos Dumbfuck was able to access. Or something similar, but I recall it being laptop-related
Hitlesswonder
@FlipYrWhig: Abedin is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Easily googleable. Both the Hill and Washington Post ran stories about links back in 2016…so it must be true.
Cheryl Rofer
@Luciamia: It’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She’s made the big time already!
Burnspbesq
@Anonymous At Work:
Now that there is a disagreement between Manafort and the Special Counsel’s office as to whether he breached his cooperation agreement, there is likely to be an evidentiary hearing in the District Court, in which many rocks will be turned over.
It’s likely that several lawyers will be subpoenaed and questioned about the supposed JDA and disclosures made by Manafort pursuant thereto.
A worldwide popcorn shortage is predicted.
SFAW
@Kraux Pas:
I’m thinking it’s probably a really big 20 percent. Looks more like Jonathan Banks than Soros.
Amir Khalid
@Kraux Pas:
Nope, not him.
rikyrah
When the limited episode event of this is made, THIS will be a pivotal episode.
We got this week:
Corsi connected to Stone connected to Wikileaks connected to emails.
We got Paulie Walnuts going to jail because he lied to the Special Counsel
We got the Paulie Walnuts announcement AFTER Bobby Three Sticks has secured WRITTEN testimony from Dolt45.
We got Paulie Walnuts going to meet with Assange
We got Stinky Boy Rapist about to get his azz thrown out of the Embassy
any one of those would have been a WOW moment…we got this shyt in 3 days.
I’m still tickled that they thought they were gonna play Bobby Three Sticks..
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAH A
Dorothy A. Winsor
Betty, I hope you’re right that Mueller will do something soon. I was thinking this morning that waiting for him to change things is starting to feel like waiting for Godot.
Yarrow
I didn’t realize there was an image with this post. People were asking about people in a cell so I went to John’s Twitter feed. I can see the image there. Are there other images? I can’t see any in this post.
Kraux Pas
@SFAW:
My unreasonably high confidence level was primarily driven by the knowledge that Soros is one of their typical bugaboos and an incredibly vague sense of what he looked like, having seen his picture once or twice in the past several months prior to today.
¿Quien? (Don’t bother answering. I have Google.)
rikyrah
Anyone going to post about the head of the CIA being ordered not to testify in front of the Senate ordered from the WH.
Betty Cracker
@Yarrow: That’s weird. Which OS? There’s only one image in this post — a regular old jpeg.
Betty Cracker
@Kraux Pas: I think that’s James Clapper, who does somewhat resemble Jonathan Banks.
TenguPhule
@Anonymous At Work:
So who’s going to bell the fat cat and throw his lard ass in prison?
Gaffa
I have to say, pursuant to Emptywheel having received a journalism degree or not…
Having been on both sides of the journalism degree thing in the U.S. (instructee and instructor), I think I can say that if there’s any badge of certification that truly means nothing beyond “I paid money for this”, it’s a journalism degree. Outside of teaching how to write in A.P. style (which is something you can learn on your own for tens of thousands less dollars cost), what you “learn” in journalism school is all the sins we see rampant in our U.S. news every night — bothsiderism, point-of-nothing valuelessness, stenography over investigation, etc.
Largely it’s a gatekeeping tool for corporate news media to disclaim “un-professional” journalists who manage to get clicks or eyeballs on them without upsetting their advertising revenue stream. And it’s one they make the upcoming next generation of “journalists” pay for.
There’s a reason that The Daily Show was doing real journalism when nobody else was — Jon Stewart never went to journalism school, so he was never taught to not research a claim.
Now, Wheeler not holding any intelligence branch service or government experience, that does certainly mean you should adjust your reading of her claims appropriately. But her not having a journalism degree just means she was smart enough to not spend money to learn how to ditto talking points.
different-church-lady
@Yarrow: All of which, of course, meant Emptywheel would provide the cut and paste content of at least one featured diary over at Daily Kos back when I bothered with them.
Dev Null
Sure the”major player” is Stone and not (ahem) coffee boy Papaderpolous? IIRC, Stone hasn’t been interviewed by the SC so doesn’t really fit. Whereas Papaderp has been whining loudly.
Not that facts have ever bothered Trump, of course.
LAO
OMG — must read of the day. Miami Herald story on Epstein. As a defense attorney, I simply don’t understand how this happened. If Acosta is name AG, I will stroke out.
Adam L Silverman
@Anonymous At Work: @The Moar You Know: I have two. One is the one The Moar You Know just described. Recognizing, however, that Dr. Wheeler has made a career for herself doing the type of analysis she does, largely in a self taught way, does not negate the fact that she may be right here. Just as her analysis has been right in the past. It is just that you have to keep in mind that her analysis is that of a non Subject Matter Expert who, because of when she started doing this, is considered a subject matter expert by a lot of the people who were blogging around the same time and have now moved into become very, very prominent journalists.
The second one is that she may be right. There are actually three possibilities of what Manafort, and especially Manafort’s attorney, as well as Corsi and Corsi’s attorney, have been doing vis a vis the Special Counsel and his investigation. The first of these is that the Special Counsel was unaware of what they were doing – staying in touch with the President and the President’s attorneys – and the Special Counsel has been caught flat footed and unaware that he is being played. The second and third are related. The second is what Wheeler is suggesting – that Mueller figured this out very, very quickly and used it to set a trap for both Manafort and the President, as well as their attorneys. All of whom fell for it. The third, which I’ve not heard articulated, is the one I’d offer from the perspective of someone with a small amount of experience working with Army counterintelligence folks, especially in helping them doing network analysis for targeting. Specifically that Mueller figured this out quickly, or even expected this to happen, and allowed it not to set a trap for Manafort, the President, and their attorneys, but as part of the counterintelligence monitoring of the network. To see what the various key nodes would do. To see who was going to talk to whom, what they were going to say, what they were going to do.
As I’ve written here several times, both on the front page and even more often in comments, it is always better to leave the network you’re monitoring intact for as long as possible. The more you can monitor a well visualized network under surveillance, the better information and understanding you’re going to have. In this case the Special Counsel already knew that Manafort is a liar, as is the President. He also already knew that Giuliani is both up to his own eyeballs in Russian and post-Soviet state oligarchs in his “security” business, as well as wrapped up in the leaking that came out of the New York Field Office. Basically he knows that Giuliani is also a bad actor with some non-attorney related involvement in the events that the Special Counsel is tasked with investigating, despite playing the President’s attorney on TV.
gwangung
@Gaffa: Correct.
At some point, if you’re actually DOING journalistic work, you’re a journalist. There’s nothing in the journalism degree program that you can’t learn on the job (and much in the job that you can’t learn from a degree program).
Why, yes, I do hold a journalism degree…
different-church-lady
This is the worst game of Where’s Waldo ever.
Dev Null
@Gaffa: it is odd that a PhD in English lit with (IIRC) a Seven Sisters degree writes so opaquely, but deconstruction. I rarely understand where she’s going in her posts, but she’s usually entertaining.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: I was just about to email that to you.
scott (the other one)
Since he’s often lamented not having his own Roy Cohn, I don’t understand his complaint.
tarragon
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing
different-church-lady
@Adam L Silverman: But in the end it’s more akin to the pre-game panel predicting the score. It’s just hype to fill air time.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@rikyrah: A sign of the times. I read this
and thought “cool! We’re impeaching Kavanaugh already?” Then I finished the sentence
and thought, “Oh, different Republican rapist.”
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: I actually, having read the first three parts, do not understand how the defense pulled this off. I’m fucking shocked.
Dev Null
@Adam L Silverman: EW made the interesting point at the time of Manafort’s plea deal that Gates’ plea deal required G not to divulge his discussions with 3rd parties, whereas M’s plea contained no such restriction. IANAL, but I have seen attys say that this is unusual.
Which gets to a point I made to you a couple of months ago: EW is a very close reader, a trait which is perhaps unsurprising given her lit background. And she has a very good memory.
Kay
I thought this was really good- true- that cruelty creates a bond in the people perpetuating it:
We always look at it from the “out group” looking in, the push, but they’re attracted to Trump telling them they’re the “in group”. That’s the pull.
Ugh. He’s just SUCH a malevolent force to have operating unchecked. Pure poison.
Anonymous At Work
@Adam L Silverman: I see no contradiction between the second and third scenarios. Wheeler’s analysis of the Manafort plea agreement is persuasive for Scenario #2: Mueller only has to show “not good faith” by Manafort to throw him in prison for a long time, the plea agreement contains admission to key facts for all state level charges and independently forfeits $43 million in assets that a pardon couldn’t recover.
But I can see Scenario #3 being Mueller’s primary goal because Manafort flipped after a very large expense in legal fees at federal trial in Virginia with state level charges in several locations still pending. “I can’t afford more trials” would be suspicious because Manafort could never have afford the trials he knew were coming to begin with.
That said, the reason you won’t see Scenario #3 openly discussed is that it presupposes that Manafort is an active enemy agent, that Trump is either asset or agent, and Mueller is probing the “How”s of Russia’s criminal interference in our elections. That’s a lot of admissions for the media to make when they can’t even use the “L word” (lie).
PS: I am an attorney who works in academia, and going “They are only a PhD [versus MD]” is questionable since developed expertise counts for a lot more in terms of quality output and analysis than does earned degree.
Yarrow
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It seems like nothing is happening because:
@Adam L Silverman:
That doesn’t mean things nothing is happening. When moves are made many things will likely happen at once.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: Chrome on Windows. It’s happened before and other people said they also had it happen then. I can’t remember whose post it was. I could see images in your posts yesterday.
eemom
@Adam L Silverman:
She got her start as a Jane Hamsher protege who stenographed — oops, I mean live blogged — the Scooter Libby trial, which took place before most of her current groupies were out of kindergarten. She is a hard worker and a fact wonk, but still a poseur as to legal and other expertise, imo.
cain
@different-church-lady:
Wait till you see the Oliver Stone movie version.
Adam L Silverman
@different-church-lady: Yes it is. Even those of us with significant experience in the overlapping areas of this are just trying to make sense of the open source reporting. If we’re honest about it, which I hope I’m being in what I’m writing here, all we’re actually doing is trying to make this understandable for people without this experience.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: Exceedingly wealthy client, with an exceedingly extensive network of influential contacts, all of whom were trying to make sure that Epstein’s stink stayed off of them.
Yarrow
@LAO: Haven’t read the article yet but isn’t Epstein back in court in early December for something? Thought I read that somewhere.
Adam L Silverman
@Dev Null: This question is better directed at LAO or one of our other regular reading/commenting attorneys. My take, however, was Gates was being released out on bail whereas Manafort, when he reached his deal, was in, and was going to continue to be, in solitary.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: One of the biggest Trump fans I know — I’m fortunate not to know many — is an otherwise intelligent but probably undiagnosed autism-spectrum guy who is, for all intents and purposes, a loser. I know him from high school. He doesn’t relate well to people, he’s in and out of jobs, he’s apparently a straight “incel,” all of that. And so he hates his life and feels worthless and channels all of that into a succession of nuttier and nuttier nonsense. Like when Bill Clinton was president he’d send me NewsMax stories about Mena airport, and Alex Jones, and whatever memes he finds, and he thinks Pizza Gate was real, and I’m sure he believes QAnon is real. This has a lot to do with why I think “economic anxiety” is such a bad explanation for Trump. This guy is economically anxious insofar as he’s a loser, but his Trumpiness isn’t an effect of his economic anxiety: he was the same weird dude when he was making cold calls on Wall Street. What he gets out of it is the vicarious thrill of revenge against sinister enemies. And I feel like it’s quite common.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: Gen. (ret) James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence.
oldgold
@eemom:
Plus, if you go back and look at the opinions Wheeler offered during Scooter’s trial, her take was less than above reproach.
Wheeler is a tree person, who is not very familiar with the forest.
Adam L Silverman
@Anonymous At Work:
She has very little actual developed expertise. Or, perhaps stated more correctly, she has very little actual formally developed expertise.
ETA: Let’s put it another way – would you read my book, and trust it, on English literature? My blog posts or articles? No you wouldn’t. Even as a well educated, well read, highly credentialed and experienced individual, my writing a book on English literature and being taken seriously is no different than Wheeler and her body of work on national security, intelligence, and the law. Yes, she’s highly educated, and she’s highly credentialed, but he shouldn’t be taken seriously on the issues she writes and speaks on as she has no actual practical, lived experience with the subject matter.
Betty Cracker
@Yarrow: Weird. I run Chrome on Windows a good bit of the time I spend here, and I’ve never experienced that issue. Maybe reach out to Alain?
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: It’s so intermittent. It happened a week or so ago and then hasn’t happened until now. Maybe something on my end but others did say they had the same problem the other time so who knows.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I think we miss the pull because we’re always looking at how they’re pushing others OUT- we don’t see that it’s binding them together. We don’t see why it’s attractive. Trump isn’t just saying “those other people are bad”. He’s saying “you’re the best and you can be in this group with me”
I missed it, anyway. Maybe everyone else saw it. I’ve witnessed that- the solidarity people get when they’re shitting on someone else. I recognize it. That’s why it rings true to me “the cruelty is the point”. I didn’t know what that meant.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: @Dev Null: So, I took a quick peek at a couple of federal cooperation agreements I had lying around the office, as people do. And — surprisingly (not really) neither of them included the “gag” language found in the Gates Cooperation Agreement. The Gates Cooperation agreement is unusual, not the Manafort agreement. And, not to get to inside baseball — but ordinarily a cooperator is loath to admit or broadcast that he/she is cooperating with federal government, so it’s not really an issue.
Buckeye
I don’t have a problem with Marcy not having a journalist background. The legal analyst without being a lawyer is annoying, but she isn’t the only one doing it.
What bothers me is that I get a vibe from Marcy and her supporters that Thou Shall Not Question Marcy Because She Is Not Of the Establishment.
I also don’t find most of her analysis to be particularly outstanding, it’s not bad, but it’s really only unique because of the super wonkiness. I think her document analysis background helps her on finding those nuggets of info that can be overloked, but I think she also gets lost in the weeds a lot.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Weirdly, I think people don’t associate it with Trump supporters because it’s usually gendered as “mean girls” behavior. It’s just as common among men and boys, but it doesn’t get called out when they do it because people associate it with “mean girls.”
When boys physically and psychologically bully someone, no one calls it “mean boys” behavior. It’s just considered normal for boys and men to band together and abuse an outsider. It’s only considered odd when women/girls do it, which is why is has that special gendered name.
oldgold
Here is a thread by Renato Mariotti concerning the error Manafort’s lawyers may have made in relying on the JDA after Manafort entered his plea and agreed to cooperate with Mueller. In short, they may have engaged in communications that were no longer protected the the attorney-client privilege.
Mariotti JDA Thread:
https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status
Anonymous At Work
@LAO: Intentionally added to Gates, check. Reversion to standard or conspicuous omission on Manafort? That’s the issue. Hard to tell.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: The article goes into this. His victims are suing him.
LAO
@Anonymous At Work: Personally, in my professional opinion, a reversion to standard and not a conspicuous omission.
Betty Cracker
@Buckeye: Agreed — she does get lost in the weeds. Maybe that’s a function of the wonkiness; it seems to be a common failing of that tribe.
@Mnemosyne: You’re right. “Lord of the Flies” could have been called “Mean Boys!” But it’s considered a profound statement on the human condition when the protagonists are male and a hilarious cat fight when they’re female. ?
Gaffa
@Dev Null: Having also bridged the terrifying gap between academic journalism and academic English literary theory, I’m also up to my eyeballs in papers that prove that writing for comprehension is not a major consideration for English PhDs. :)
Overall I like Wheeler because she’s what journalism used to be — a passionate follower of a particular field with the ability to write at length about it. Just don’t forget Adam’s point that she’s not actually trained in intelligence or law, and adjust your input of her take accordingly.
eemom
@Adam L Silverman:
@Buckeye:
Yes and yes. wrt the latter, there’s a whiff of the Greenwald about her.
Anyway, hasn’t her stuff been published in the NYT? Can’t get more Of the Establishment than that.
MCA1
@Adam L Silverman: You sounded like Tom Nichols (who gets derided a lot around these parts but the basic kernel behind his last book, The Death of Expertise, is right on the money) just there. I wholeheartedly agree with your caution about Wheeler. I’ll listen to Mariotti and others with relevant crimlaw experience on legal things before her, and I’ll trust you and Malcolm Nance a thousand times more when it’s intelligence or national security related.
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
Well, that was a horrifying read. ? There’s a hint in the article that Epstein was given a light sentence in exchange for testifying against a couple of Bear Stearns executives after the financial collapse. Ugh.
Adam L Silverman
@MCA1: Nichols is a smart guy, especially within his areas of expertise, but like all of us he has his own blind spots. We all do. The key is to always be on the lookout for them so you can account for and maneuver around them, not get trapped by them
ETA: I was always taught, and when teaching have always taught it myself, that they key was not objectivity, but rather intersubjectivity. Realizing that one has biases, recognizing them, and then being able to not get trapped by them in one’s research design, methodology, and analysis.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: I’m going to gender-stereotype (and probably get myself in trouble) based on my experience parenting children of different sexes through late-20th and early-21st century middle school, but the difference between mean-boy and mean-girl behavior is (Lord of the Flies aside) that boys get over it quicker. Maybe that’s because they are more likely to have had competitive sports in their background, but a boy can go from being butt of jokes to part of the crowd far sooner than a girl, who may never make it into the in-crowd before graduating high school. Guys can beat each other up one day and eat lunch together the next.
Donning asbestos shorts now.
Gin & Tonic
@MCA1:
Well, you got one right, at least.
Kay
Senate seats are nice but the local races are really, really important and the Mississippi organizers should be proud. That’s how you build something that lasts.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic:
Had Indian food for lunch?
Kay
I love Margaret Atwood because I happened to be reading her Twitter the night of a Canadian election – I don’t know how I ended up there- and she was completely freaking out, convinced conservatives were going to steal it. Like a normal, non-celebrity.
She’s one of us. Paranoid and jittery as hell :)
JPL
@LAO: Technically he is already confirmed so it would be easy to do.
Trump will think his going light on Epstein as a strength.
FlipYrWhig
@Gin & Tonic:
GEORGE: He gave me a wedgie.
JERRY: He got fired the next day.
ELAINE: Why do they call it a wedgie?
GEORGE: Because the underwear is pulled up from the back and … it wedges in..
JERRY: They also have an atomic wedgie. Now the goal there is to actually get the waistband on top of the head. Very rare.
ELAINE: Boys are sick.
JERRY: Well what do girls do ?
ELAINE: We just tease some one ’til they develop an eating disorder.
Dev Null
@Yarrow: Similar experience here. My desktop upstairs, with one set of ad blockers, shows the pic. Ditto my mobile phone. But my laptop? The one with almost the same set of ad blockers?!?
hahahaha.
OTOH, I can read Slate with only a few problems on my laptop. I can’t read Slate at all on my desktop.
And yeah, I’d checked all my settings. Repeatedly.
Go figger …
patroclus
I absolutely love that this thread has degenerated into a debate about whether emptywheel is (or is not) a qualified journalist! THIS is what makes BJ a must-read blog!
WaterGirl
@Yarrow: That happened to me recently, also.
Do you have an extra blank line between: “Trump also retweeted this image from one of the crackpot sycophants who god-bless his every crazed tweet:” and “Of Course…” If so, click in that space and see if the image shows up. That’s what happened to me.
@Betty Cracker: It’s been happening on and off to multiple people in the past couple of weeks.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Mike Espy may not have won, but he had coattails. That’s more important than I think people realize. Same thing happened with Beto in Texas — he lost, but a LOT of Democratic downballot candidates and judges won.
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
I think there are some guys who comment on this very website who would disagree with you about that, so I’ll let them speak for themselves.
IIRC, when Richard Mayhew used to blog about being a soccer ref, he said that the big gender difference he saw was that the men tended to act impulsively when they were first angry and women would lie in wait and plan the right time to strike back. Whatever happened to that guy, anyway? ??
WaterGirl
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Funny, I went through the exact same thought process, only my final thought was “Oh, the other Republican rapist.”
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Witness protection. He disclosed too much about soccer refereeing and we had to change his identity, move him out of state, set him up with a whole new job. We made sure he got the platinum level concierge treatment.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman:The whole point of “developed expertise” is that it most often does not involve formal training. That’s kind of the point.
I have no opinion on Empty Wheel, but I do believe there are people that can see patterns more easily than others and are better at connecting dots than others. Some people have an intuition that also serves them well.
I’ll leave it to others to determine whether Empty Wheel fits those descriptions, but I wouldn’t for a second dismiss someone on something like this because they don’t have the right formal training.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow: It’s not just you, and it’s nothing you did.
Dev Null
@Adam L Silverman: Perhaps I am confused, but it seems to me that you’re comparing apples and oranges here.
No, we wouldn’t read your deep-dive essays on English lit.
By the same token, we wouldn’t read EW’s deep-dive essays on counter-intel ops.
Fair enough.
But EW isn’t doing deep-dive essays on counter-intel ops…, that’s not what I’d call her essays, anyway… they seem to me to be critical analyses of “texts” generated by the SC probe and targets etc.
Critical analyses are precisely what (I am told) lit crit students are trained to do. It’s a skill that can be deployed in multiple disciplines. Analysis of historical texts. Biblical studies. Even legal texts.
I think.
In like manner we might read and appreciate your review of a book in an area in which you have no deep knowledge.
Of course no-one has to read EW, and even if you choose to read her, Gaffa’s caution (rephrase of your point) is good to keep in mind:
Steeplejack
@oldgold:
Bad link. Here’s one to the top of that Mariotti JDA thread.
Dev Null
@eemom: Yeah, and TNR and (I think, but might be misremembering) The Atlantic. For some reason I did an author search at Lawfareblog a while back and noticed that she was identified as a contributing author. Didn’t see an article associated with her name, though. Digby and Booman and LG&M have been quoting her a lot recently.
Dev Null
@Buckeye:
There’s some odd vibe there, for sure. bmaz (whose pithy tweet was front-paged here recently) gets up on his high horse when anyone questions him or EW, or says anything out of line with prevailing sentiment. (Speaking from personal experience, and although I deserve to be taken to the shed for a strapping more often than not, this wasn’t one of those times. (No, really!))
Yep.
There’s some of that, but it goes with hunting for the lost nuggets, seems to me. The bigger problem, for me, anyway, is that she often presents those nuggets without providing context. I’m not interested in keeping all the breadcrumbs – paper trails – in my head all the time… I need reminders. A narrative, maybe.
Dev Null
@LAO: Thanks! Good to get my facts straight.
Also, FWIW, pretty sure the mistake was mine, not EW’s. I don’t remember her stating either way.
oldgold
@Steeplejack:
Thank you.
J R in WV
Betty:
A couple of photos you have posted today don’t come up for me!
When I click through repeatedly on the links eventually I get a message that “The photo “https://b2a3m9g8.stackpathcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/rosenstein.jpg” cannot be displayed because it contains errors.”
Just FYI, I have no idea what’s going on with them…
rekoob
@Betty Cracker: @Yarrow: Same here. No photo, weird spacing and no bolding of comment numbers. Viewing via Opera 57.0.3098.76 on Mac Mojave.
rekoob
@WaterGirl: @Yarrow: @Betty Cracker: Same here. Blog loads very slowly, no picture. Viewing via Opera 57.0.3098.76 with ad-blocker on running Mac OS Mojave.