Given the new developments in what we know about Donald Trump’s interactions with Russia, some of us have been kicking around that “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia” story that the New York Times served up on October 31, 2016.
Our own Tom Levenson has a theory:
This. It was, I believe, timed to step on a scoop elsewhere describing a Trump Russia side channel. https://t.co/VpLozAe8e7
— Thomas Levenson, Zṓiarchos (@TomLevenson) November 30, 2018
James Fallows agreed.
https://twitter.com/JamesFallows/status/1068502035169861632
Hillary Clinton tried to get the story out.
The Clinton campaign tweeted this out on Oct. 31, 2016. #TrumpRussia https://t.co/xNkU7QUY0B
— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) November 30, 2018
Here’s a more recent story on that connection to Alfa Bank. Still ambiguous.
After the election, Times public editor Liz Spayd blasted the Times for that story. Editor Dean Baquet has given only short, weak responses like this one.
Here’s Southpaw:
NYT did circle back to the 10/31/16 “no clear link to Russia” story briefly in their Crossfire Hurricane article this year. I want to say why I think it didn’t put criticism to rest. https://t.co/sGho6imlIl pic.twitter.com/2JDvGJuGjE
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) November 30, 2018
The 10/31 story, however, doesn’t report any slow-walking or heed any warnings to avoid conclusions. It portrays a summer-long “widening investigation” that found nothing. It states as fact that both “FBI and intelligence officials” believed Russia wasn’t pro-Trump. pic.twitter.com/jMIQFO2pXn
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) November 30, 2018
Revisiting the 10/31 story in light of NYT’s own reporting about those summertime briefings that Russia favored Trump, a split btw CIA and FBI over Russia’s motives, and CIA winning that fight, it looks downright deceptive and artificially partisan. See for yourself. pic.twitter.com/RveVkd9a68
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) November 30, 2018
tl;dr saying the 10/31 story was the product of law enforcement sources cautioning NYT against conclusions is inapt. The story was full of conclusions—wrong ones—that seem to have served the purposes of a faction of the FBI at that point in the race.
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) November 30, 2018
Elizabelle
Thank you, Cheryl. The FTF NY Times has to come clean, and they need some housecleaning over there.
Paper of record, my ass. A roster of disaster hires cobbled in with some very good journalists, too.
(((CassandraLeo)))
At some point I think it’s worth inquiring whether the Russians have kompromat on the Vichy Times, its editors, or its owners. There isn’t enough evidence to draw any definitive conclusions one way or the other, to be clear, but the fact that we can’t immediately dismiss the possibility out of hand is disturbing.
JMG
My guess: Sources for that story were FBI guys who’d been Times sources for many years of stories about crime in NTC and environs. This gave them not only trust, but a willingness to believe them based on fear of losing said sources, This required a rather spectacular ignorance of any history of the FBI itself, but lack of general knowledge seems to be a prerequisite for elite political reporters.
Elizabelle
@(((CassandraLeo))): Yeah. Something is way wrong at that paper besides the Sulzbergers and their Clinton Derangement Syndrome. (Which even showed up when they were reporting on the mail bombs to Democrats — remember that? — that was so last month or 6 weeks ago — anyway, they had to edit that crap out of their online stories.)
Mary G
Somewhere I read that Baquet admitted that the headline was poor, but he stands by every word of the story. What a weasel. They believe they can do no wrong and lash out at anyone who raises criticism as a hysterical emo liberal who just doesn’t understand how journalism works, because they are the Paper of Record who can do no wrong. The similarity to Twitler and Republicans in general is striking.
TenguPhule
As SC would say, the FTFNYT is garbage.
A Ghost To Most
Rules to live by:
1. Stay on the road.
2. Never eat anything bigger than your head.
3. 186,000 mps. It’s the law.
4. FTFNYT.
TenguPhule
Why does this Nazi still have a job in government?
piratedan
tbh, not paying attention to what they SAY and paying particular attention to what they DO does indicate to me that there are some extremely compromised individuals at both the NYT and even CNN in regards to what stories are promoted and their placement in the eyes of the public. No other reason to explain why Dem “scandals” are given month-long breathless documentation with endless amounts of speculation while the most corrupt presidential candidate of the last 30 years is given nothing more than… oh well, here’s another scandal to be added to the pile with no more than a virtual shrug
TenguPhule
Ryan Zinke, Crook of the Interior, just called House rep Raul Grijalva (D) a drunk.
I’m so old I remember when this kind of behavior from a federal official was not only considered shocking, but suicidal.
TenguPhule
@A Ghost To Most:
More along the term of guidelines, really.
Kay
It’s so disturbing to me because my overwhelming feeling was they just didn’t believe there was any Trump/Russia connection, so they dismissed it without any real investigation or inquiry.
Like groupthink. Influential people decided early on that this was a dead end and then the rest all followed.
It’s scary because it’s purely subjective. The Clinton emails were deemed “important” and the Trump/Russia story was deemed “unimportant” not based on anything real but instead based on what they believe about those two people.
D58826
OT – 7.0 earthquake near Anchorage Alaska with tsunami warnings
Adam L Silverman
The same thing happened with the Access Hollywood tape leak to David Farenthold. The Clinton campaign, as well as the campaign surrogates, were all moving to flood the zone that Friday in
AugustOctober about the hacks and the Wikileaks disclosures and potential connections to and coordination with the Trump campaign in the context of Trump business connections to Russia. As this is being scheduled, with bookers at NBC and MSNBC scrambling to get everyone lined up for the Friday afternoon and evening shows, as well as for Meet the Press on Sunday and AM Joy on both Saturday and Sunday, as well as Alex Witt’s blocks on Saturday afternoon, someone at NBC anonymously sends the tape over to Farenthold.Farenthold and the WaPo did the right thing in terms of journalism. They quickly and efficiently vetted the veracity of the tape and then wrote up and published the reporting in combination with publishing the tape on the WaPo website and social media platforms. By the time Chris Matthews came on the air at 7 PM EDT for Hardball, all of those Clinton campaign officials, all of the campaign surrogates, and all of the outside subject matter experts booked to speak about the hacking and Wikileaks and the Trump Organization’s pursuit of business in Russia and the President’s very public attempts to cozy up to Putin were all cancelled. Instead everything had shifted to the Access Hollywood tape. And it stayed that way all through the weekend’s coverage on all three broadcast networks, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox.
So who leaked the Access Hollywood tape to Farenthold that Friday morning? And why did they leak it just then? When it clearly would have maximum impact in diverting the news media’s, especially the broadcast and cable news media’s, attention from what was both an act of war conducted in the cyber domain and a cyber crime by a series of linked hostile foreign state (Russia) and non-state (Wikileaks) actors on behalf of the President’s campaign. Those are the real questions about the Access Hollywood tape.
catclub
@TenguPhule: Its not just a good idea, its the law.
TenguPhule
Bowel movement: the push to change the way you poo
/Headline of the day
A Ghost To Most
@TenguPhule: I really tend to focus on rule 1. That’s the one that counts in a state that feels that guardrails “are for dudes”.
Kay
Also, the complete and utter dismissal of Clinton’s claims. I mean, WTF? She was a secretary of state. She was a NY Senator. She KNOWS Donald Trump. Why was she deemed not credible immediately? That’s nuts. Even if you put it in context- she’s in a political campaign, Trump is her opponent, she’s pretty fucking credible on this stuff! At least her allegations deserved SOME inquiry.
They just do not and did not believe Hillary Clinton as a person- they (incredibly) chose to believe Donald Trump, as a person. They all decided he was more credible. His word, they took. Clinton’s claims they dismissed out of hand, unexamined. Why?
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
If the Russians leaked a tape about Trump admitting he was a serial sex offender to distract from news he was a Russian asset they really must have had a good grounding of Republican sociology if they knew it wouldn’t stop them from still voting for him.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
He promised to entertain the decadent court of media whores more then she did.
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: We need an answer to that. Very, very curious.
Snoopy
I think this is meant to say: October 31, 2016.
Adam L Silverman
@TenguPhule: I’m not even sure it was the Russians. At NBC it could have been Matt Lauer or Andy Lack, both of whom were within the President’s orbit of influence.
A Ghost To Most
@Kay:
It’s hard to wrap rationale thought around pure power plays.
Facts don’t matter to fascists.
Gin & Tonic
I happen to know a little bit about how computers communicate with each other across networks, and that AlfaBank thing is still ambiguous even among subject matter experts.
clay
@Adam L Silverman: It’s still hard to believe that someone leaked the tape to HELP Trump. Everyone assumed he was DONE after that story broke.
And he would’ve been, but for Comey’s letter.
Kay
@A Ghost To Most:
A former sec of state and NY senator said that Donald Trump had sketchy ties to Putin and Russian political leaders.
National media dismissed the claims and chose instead to believe Donald Trump’s denials, with no real inquiry into the claims of the former sec of state and senator.
They had two competing claims. One they dismissed and one they chose to believe. In this case they chose to believe a pathological liar who lied every day of his campaign – so much so that they downplayed and minimized what was right in front of them.
Sure. That makes sense. Perfectly reasonable and unbiased.
You can’t even say they dismissed Clinton because she was in a campaign and Trump was her opponent because of course the same is true of Donald Trump, who they decided, inexplicably, to believe.
Kelly
@D58826: My sister in Anchorage lost power for an hour and has a lot of broken stuff. House and family OK. She’s a city of Anchorage librarian and her library is a mess. Building OK but lots of stuff knocked over and laying in water from broken pipes.
Betty Cracker
@clay: True. I sure thought he was toast after that. IIRC, most people did.
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: It was speculated that trump released Melania’s nude pictures in order to get in front of the story. I doubt that he’d release the grab them by the tapes though.
JPL
@Kelly: I glad she is okay.
Elizabelle
@clay: Leaked the tape to change the subject.
Kay
I keep waiting for the Wikileaks document dump on Trump.
I’ll be waiting a long time. Apparently some information doesn’t want to be free. I look forward to the release of the stolen correspondence from Trump’s opponent in 2020. I can already tell that information is yearning for freedom, before it’s even composed and sent.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
They appear to think “paper of record” means “chosen mouthpiece of the elite”.
oldster
If there was ever a time when a paper is morally permitted to burn their sources, then this is it. More than that: they are morally *obligated* to burn them, to tell us the exact names of the FBI sources who lied to them for that 10/31 story.
Luckily, in a few months we can make that “legally obligated,” by having Congress subpoena them.
The rat-fuckers behind that story are nearly as guilty as Comey himself.
When I read it, I already knew that it was rubbish, because of one fact: Paul Manafort.
I had followed Manafort’s career in the Ukraine, and I knew that his presence on Trump’s campaign meant that it was a Putin-led influence operation.
I mean: that’s who Manafort is: he is Putin’s man for subverting elections in the West. That’s what he does. You don’t hire him for any other reason.
Elizabelle
@Kay:
This made me laugh. Thank you.
Death Panel Truck
@Kay:
BECAUSE SHE’S A FUCKING DEMOCRAT!
Duh!
Emerald
@Elizabelle:
As I just wrote in a dead thread, the FTFNYT will never stop, but I think that some day we will get answers.
I predict that 20 years from now (or it might take longer, but it will happen) numerous PhDs will be earned by dissecting the media coverage in the 2016 election and concluding that it was the major cause of Orangeymandiyus’s “victory.”
I just hope I’m still alive and moderately conscious when History sets things straight.
The FTFNYT will be exposed as they were on the Iraq War, but they’ll say that’s all in the past and continue doing the same thing. Again. And they will continue to drive major media coverage.
Lee
@JMG: I think that is exactly right.
The last line of the post
Is exactly on point. The NYT got played by the same FBI guys that set the last minute Clinton email announcement in motion.
We will probably never know who they are but their fellow FBI members will.
trollhattan
Hillary was their Achilles and they enjoyed themselves immensely tossing darts and arrows at her, all while bemoaning the coming four years of drudgery covering President Everybody’s Mom.
Hah, joke’s on them amirite?
Martin
@oldster: I agree. Confidentiality only applies to people acting in good faith.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I would start by going over the financial records of NYT.
Elizabelle
@Emerald: Might not even be 20 years.
schrodingers_cat
@trollhattan: NYT did the same to Kerry and Gore as well. Their animosity to D Presidential candidates runs deep and goes beyond Clintons.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: It’s so damn obvious, too. They set the tone and agenda, to too great an extent.
clay
@Elizabelle: That’s pretty crazy n-dimensional chess to think that the “grab ’em by the pussy” tape would end up being a net benefit, no matter what it was supposedly distracting from.
I tend to think that it was actually released by someone who wanted to damage Trump, and it’s just an unfortunate coincidence that it drowned out the Wikileaks stuff.
Martin
@schrodingers_cat: Well, they seem particularly susceptible to being gamed by conservatives at the very least. See Judith Miller. Seems like a pretty reproducible pattern that you’d think they’d want to address internally. But no.
tobie
@oldster: Nadler’s committee should also haul IG Michael Horowitz’s ass back to the Hill to explain why his office apparently hasn’t investigated the leaks from the New York FBI field office. In June he testified:
Either Horowitz is an incredible poker player and hasn’t breathed a word about an ongoing investigation or he’s a partisan more loyal to the Republican party than to the law and the norms of institutions. I really don’t know which it is.
Martin
@Emerald: I suspect we might get those answers sooner. Surely Mueller is tripping over some of these individuals now.
rikyrah
@(((CassandraLeo))):
It would be irresponsible not to speculate
Adam L Silverman
@clay: The leak was to change the emerging narrative that the President and his campaign and his business were playing footsie with hostile state and non-state foreign actors to steal the election. Moving it back to the well tread, and often Trump promoted, story that he was a womanizer who took what he wanted from women was never going to derail his nomination or his support by Republicans. The playbook that emerged in the early 00s for Republicans caught in sex scandals was to brazen it out, which, for Republicans and only Republicans, seems to be a successful strategy.
ruemara
@Kay: personal animus and not being a hot woman.
Adam L Silverman
@JPL: He didn’t leak that tape, someone at NBC did.
rikyrah
@Kay:
It is more than that. They are Dolt45’s local paper, and, as you pointed out…
They failed to vet him for the rest of the country.
rikyrah
@D58826:
Scary
Villago Delenda Est
Baquet is an incompetent hack. He needs to ride in the same tumbrel as Haberhack.
JPL
@Kelly: ABC News is saying it was two separate quakes. There’s been a lot of aftershocks, but that’s expected.
Adam L Silverman
@clay: Coincidence takes a lot of work. And in this case it is one example, if not the first one, in a pattern dating back to 2016 of fortuitous breaking news based on a leak of information at just the right time to divert the news media’s attention from even more damaging information about the President, his business, and his campaign.
ruemara
@clay: I never assumed he was done. He was a Republican. That’s all that ever mattered and with everything they had already said was no big deal, him boasting about being a sexual predator was hardly out of the ordinary for conservatives. In fact, I thought it would cement his he-man, alpha male facade.
@Adam L Silverman: It does sound like experienced media people manipulating the media.
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: The only person harmed was Billy Bush.
debbie
I would like to lightly look at Trump’s tax returns.
NotMax
@TenguPhule
Light thumbs its nose at the metric system.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
I miss the days when they were the paper of record.
schrodingers_cat
@NotMax: In MKS system its even simpler, the velocity of light c = 3 x 10^8 m/s
Tim C.
With the Times and Comey and the crew, I still adhere to the “Weak Clinton” theory of motivation.
1) Everyone believed there was no way Trump would win; therefore, there was no need to examine Trump, he was probably beyond dirty, but who cares.
2) In order to prevent a 2018 style loss of the house and a loss of the Tenate as seen likely before election day, there must be maximum leverage to get enought Republicans out to vote. This means hate on Hillary, and ignore Trump and Republican sins and only focus on the largely imaginary sins of Clinton.
3) Then they would have a weak Clinton presidency with pickups certain in the House and Senate in 2018 and a competent-ish Republican winning the White House in 2020, just in time to have another 10 years of dominance thanks to redistricting and an even better gerrymander.
This is what The Times, Comey, and all the other sacks of crap that make up the establishment GOP wanted and were going for.
Problem is Trump won and we are all in a world of shit.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: I am confused here. I recall a different timeline if we’re talking about the release of the Access Hollywood tape and the Wikileaks dump of Podesta’s hacked emails. If we’re talking about something else then I can see my error. However, the Access Hollywood tape came out on Oct 7, 2016 and within about an hour later the Wikileaks dump showed up. So the Wikileaks dumps came after the AH tape, IIRC, and even if AH tape drove some short term coverage, ISTM the timing of the Wikileaks dumps was in order to short circuit the AH tape. Not the other way round. Maybe I read the comment wrong.
Fair Economist
@clay: It is possible the intent was not to help Trump, but to avert examination of Russian ties that might have pulled in other Republicans.
Brachiator
@JMG:
Sounds reasonable. Every newspaper and media outlet cultivates sources. But sources also have their own agendas, their own reasons for providing information, and smart reporters and editors have to consider this when doing their jobs.
The NYT has a history of being bad evaluators of background info. Sy Hersh claims that one of the reasons that the NYT missed the significance of Watergate is because Henry Kissinger would make a daily late afternoon call to provide scoop on the White House, and he assured the Times that Watergate was nothing.
It’s probably more institutional arrogance. Trump screams about fake news and yet has always cultivated a relationship with the Times and still calls them directly. The Times editors foolishly believe that playing along is a good deal, even though Trump saves his best bullshit for Fox News.
Elizabelle
@Tim C.: Fuckers got their tax cut though. They are not in a world of shit, or don’t perceive it so yet.
germy
@debbie:
Someone went digging in their 100+ year old archives:
Corner Stone
@Martin: Let’s hope so. And don’t call him Shirley.
NotMax
@debbbie
I miss the days of records.
;)
germy
@JPL:
“In all great causes, some innocent heads must roll.”
Corner Stone
@debbie:
I would also. By the beautiful light of a powerful Xerox or Canon multi-function device. As I lovingly, yet strongly – very strongly, scan them in and email to a new bigly Journolist email distribution list.
Corner Stone
@Tim C.: 1) Obama should have never hired Comey and had no reason to do so.
2) Obama should have fired Comey after his gaseous PR stunt where he castigated HRC for almost an hour with his opinions before he concluded there was nothing to prosecute.
debbie
@germy:
Dexter Filkins, John Burns, Steven Erlinger, Carlotta Gall, Linda Greenhouse, etc., etc., etc.
Elizabelle
@germy:
Actually, the crash and burn of Billy Bush’s career was a benefit, IMHO. Smarmy little jackass.
daddyj
Cheryl, as Snoopy points out above, you have a typo at the end of your first graf. Date s/b “October 31, 2016“
Betty Cracker
Candidates running for federal office, you say? :)
TenguPhule
@Snoopy:
Timey Wimey Ball.
germy
@Betty Cracker: Let’s wait until we hear Bernie’s response.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
True, and we just got his Doppelganger on the Supreme Court.
Cheryl Rofer
@daddyj: Thanks! Fixed!
tobie
@Betty Cracker: I’d like to see Warren tout the good governance bill to be voted on in the House come January. She could pledge to do whatever she can for the bill to be taken up in the Senate. I know as a member of the minority party she can’t do much but plugging the House bill would show she’s a team player. Trump’s made me allergic to politicians who only talk about their own initiatives.
Elizabelle
I think it’s interesting what people who have done wrong will cop to, later in life. In this case, the previous publisher “Pinch”, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., would admit to regrets over … Jayson Blair. An embarrassment, to be sure. Jayson did not get anyone killed, or remain to this day a lasting source of loss of blood and treasure and so much human potential.
Crickets on having been the stooge for Judith Miller, though. No mention whatsoever.
December 14, 2017: NY Times: A.G. Sulzberger, 37, to Take Over as New York Times Publisher (recap of Pinch’s accomplishments)
The FTF NY Times aided and abetted the stealing of the presidency by a Russian asset, Donald J. Trump, whom historians will — very soon — conclude is/was the most awful president in U.S. history. And very likely an illegitimate one.
So: the fetid and corrupted Grey Lady will have to be kicked and screaming to any kind of reckoning and admission of her lies and faults. But maybe Team Mueller, and Congressional Democrats even, can peel away some of the obfuscation.
TenguPhule
@Villago Delenda Est:
That tumbel is going to have to do some heavy lifting.
The Moar You Know
Because I care so very much: she has my thoughts and prayers. Hey, it’s good enough for people who have been shot and murdered, I’m sure her house will be fine in no time at all.
TenguPhule
@Corner Stone: Stop tempting me to break the law.
JPL
@Elizabelle: He was not liked by members of the Today crew, so for them it was a win.
Mike in NC
Just assume that the NY Times has been a big Trump booster for the past 40+ years.
Miss Bianca
@germy: pretty sure that was snark, but I still threw up in my mouth a little bit.
The Moar You Know
@Corner Stone: He put a Republican in charge of the FBI. When in my lifetime has a Republican president put a Dem in charge of anything?
Love the guy, but he made some bad fucking decisions. There’s one right there.
catclub
@TenguPhule: Put Baquet and Haberhack in a croker sack with what … a Rooster and a wildcat?
Then throw in river.
yeah, I know, not fair to the rooster and cat.
Schlemazel
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Seriously, I am convinced that the NY office of the FBI is compromised by the Russian mob.
They fed this bullshit to the Times and at the same time forced the coward Comey to go public on Clinton.
NotMax
However, regarding a reacharound….
catclub
@The Moar You Know: Only Republican daddies can run the FBI or the Defense Department.
Imagine if an actual Democrat ( say, only as partisan as Ken Starr) were given Mueller’s job.
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
Yeah, to hell with her and her brood but I’m seeing stories and photos indicating widespread damage. Evidently the quake was only 7 miles from Anchorage and for a 7.0 that’s too damn close. If we have any snow jackals I wish you well!
Schlemazel
@The Moar You Know:
I assume Revs Graham and Roberts will soon let us know that this was Gawd’s punishment for gay marriage
trollhattan
@NotMax:
Yeah, sheesh, wording!
Elizabelle
@Schlemazel:
I think that’s very much possible. And it would be in our national interest to put an end to that.
LOL — I remember that the scariest villains on Law and Order were usually the Russian mob. Also the most unrepentant.
catclub
@The Moar You Know: Another is letting the same people who wrecked the economy be in charge of cleaning up the mess. unsurprisingly, no prosecutions resulted.
Corner Stone
@trollhattan:
What’s weird is that along with a few roads/bridges I keep seeing liquor stores with damaged bottles everywhere. And grocery stores where they only show like the wine or bottled goods aisles that are busted. I’ve only been to Anchorage once but the grocery store they keep showing is way nicer than anything I found while I was there in 2015.
Emerald
@Corner Stone:
Two days later, Comey testified to Congress under questioning from Elijah Cummings. Cummings got him to admit that HRC had “acted reasonably” with her emails, that the emails in question were not correctly marked as classified.
Later it transpired that none of those three emails actually was classified anyway.
Media took no notice. Should have been a major story.
Gozer
Times as “paper of record”?
It has always sidled up to and made excuses for the worst:
https://www.nytimes.com/1937/05/30/archives/where-hitler-dreams-and-plans-at-the-berghof-on-a-bavarian-peak-he.html
May 30, 1937
https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/20/archives/herr-hitler-at-home-in-the-clouds-high-up-on-his-favorite-mountain.html
Aug 20, 1939
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buried_by_the_Times
https://www.vox.com/2015/2/11/8016017/ny-times-hitler
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
Unfortunately, I don’t think 2) was politically practical. Once the Hillary email witch hunt was on and Comey was involved, it was too late. Firing him, or anyone else prominently involved in the investigation, would have looked like an attempt to protect her and hence increased the perception that there was substance to the accusations.
TenguPhule
@Emerald:
Should is always stuck doing the heavy lifting.
gratuitous
I will assert, without any evidence to support the assertion, that the Times did these stories the way they did because they thought Clinton would beat Trump. When that happened, their reportage on Trump would disappear and the Clinton coverage would serve as fodder for endless “scandal” stories of dubious validity which would be carried forward by the Republican-controlled Congress. It would mean four uninterrupted years of Clinton scandals, reliving the glory days of the 1990s and the Great Clenis Hunt.
When the unexpected happened, and Trump won the White House, the Times just wanted to jam their hands in their pockets, whistle nonchalantly, and wander away looking skyward. Please stop looking at the Times’ history. They’re embarrassed, too. Bringing it up again is just mean.
TenguPhule
@Gozer:
I hate this modern remake of the classics.
Betty Cracker
@tobie: Warren first introduced the bill in August. She’s tweeting about it today because Rep. Jayapal just introduced it in the House (in part to highlight Trump’s corruption, no doubt). I don’t think she’s trying to step on the House good governance bill, which won’t be introduced for a couple of months. I brought it up is because it’s interesting that she specified that candidates running for federal office should have to release their tax returns. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect she was playing 11-D chess with an eye on potential 2020 opponents for the Democratic nomination.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker: It would disqualify Bernie Sanders.
Betty Cracker
@TenguPhule: Nothing gets past you, does it? :)
Gozer
@TenguPhule: Obviously this show needs to be cancelled in the same way as it was in the ’40s.
TenguPhule
Trump snubbed Putin at G-20 to cozy up to Mohammed bin Salman.
Is this the part in the terrible romantic comedy where upset girlfriend tries to rebound with the hot young sadistic dictator over their traditional sugar daddy?
Roger Moore
@catclub:
If you’re going to throw them in the river, why not include an anvil instead of some poor defenseless animals.
Emerald
@gratuitous: Without question, if HRC had won it would have been four years of constant “scandal” and investigations, all just as fabricated as the ones from the previous 30 years and all eagerly promoted by the FTFNYT in their ongoing character assassination.
It would have damaged the country, but not as much as Dolt45 has done.
But they will not stop smearing Hillary. They will never stop.
Kay
Good lord. We can’t get voter protection laws back fast enough. We need an emergency injunction.
debbie
@TenguPhule:
“I won’t be ignored!”
Immanentize
I just realized after reading this post and some comments that the NYT’s statement/trope that:
“the Russians did not act to elect Trump but to sow general disruption and undermine the integrity of the election”
Is almost exactly like:
“The Civil War was not fought over slavery, but about State’s rights and economic disputes.”
Both wrong and based on also true substitutes for the primary reason
Therefore, I suspect Sessions had a hand in this line …
Ladyraxterinok
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for this. Didn’t realize the suspicious timing.
debbie
@Kay:
Too much to think the Supreme Court will apologize?
tobie
@Betty Cracker: Thanks for the information about Rep. Jayapal introducing the legislation in the House. I didn’t read the linked article in the tweet, which was lazy on my part, only the top line “My bill to #EndCorruptionNow” and first line of the article, “My plan…” I got the gist from your and Germy’s post that the bill’s requirement that candidates release tax returns might be significant for some other potential Presidential contenders.
By the way was the House’s good governance package (H.R. 1) announced today or just posted on Balloon Juice today?
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
Interestingly, the Times management only owns 50% of the stock. The Sultzberger family, that is, owns half the company. There is a silent partner who owns half, Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire owns half, and in theory has no role in managing the day to day operations.
ETA typo had>has
Perhaps if he made a call to a managing editor they would take the call? maybe?
TenguPhule
@tobie:
Yes it was. Look down a few posts on the main page.
PJ
@The Moar You Know: @Corner Stone: Unfortunately, one of Obama’s worst instincts/beliefs was that he needed to “reach out” to Republicans, who had stated that their major policy goal (and really, only policy goal) was to remove him from the Presidency, and the end result was that he would start out negotiating already halfway to what he thought the Republicans wanted and they would never give an inch; “comity” demanded that Democrats advance Republican policies.
(Related to this is the fact that he was elected in part because people wanted a change from Bush and Republican policies which had led to endless war and the impending recession, but he listened too much to “serious people” like Larry Summers who thought that the way to save the country was by saving the wealth of the wealthiest citizens first and propping up the banks that had caused the problem. A lot of the people I called to GOTV in 2010 were super-pissed about this. I think Obama and the Democrats would have done better at the polls down the line if they had pushed harder for a progressive agenda in the first two years, even if they didn’t get all they wanted, so that they could make a better case for what they stood for.)
Gin & Tonic
@Gozer: Yeah, and Walter Duranty, with a fucking Pulitzer. Ptui.
TenguPhule
@debbie:
Apologize? We’ll be lucky if five of them don’t throw a kegger on the court’s front steps.
Ladyraxterinok
@Kay: @Kay: Maybe if she had spoken through a man? Been a man? NOT been a Clinton?
Hob
@The Moar You Know:
I realize that was probably a rhetorical question, but just FYI, the actual answer (unless you were born very recently) is “fairly often.” You can see details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_political_appointments_across_party_lines …a lot of them are for things like ambassadorships, but even if you take those out, it looks like it wasn’t so much that Obama made cross-party appointments more than usual as that Trump has barely done it at all.
Betty Cracker
@tobie: House Dems released details on what HR 1 will contain today, but it won’t be introduced until the new Congress is seated in January. From overviews I’ve read, it sounds like a great bill, but we’ll have to see the details about the release of presidential tax returns. In the AP’s description of the bill, it specifies that presidents have to release their tax returns. I’d prefer that requirement for presidential candidates too!
Tim C.
@Elizabelle: Oh, I’m not saying they aren’t sociopathic greed-headed morons. And not to mention all the rural dimwits who have gone past a moral event-horizon by voting for the GOP. I’m just saying what I think what passes for the thoughts of Comey and the Fucking NYT was.
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore:
Obviously, impossible to accurately game out. However, my contention is that firing Comey for cause before the election could not have possibly been more harmful than leaving him in office. Without hindsighting 20/20’ing it, if you’re Obama and feel somewhat confident that HRC will win then you take the political heat, if any, and clear the decks for her. Leaving Comey in office to be a thorn in HRC’s side, along with his inability to control the NYC FBI office would have done unimaginable damage to her nascent presidency. HRC could not have fired Comey after inauguration because *that* would have been a shitstorm 100 times larger than Obama firing Comey. It would have been like Zeus using the Squatty Potty on the US.
Kay
@debbie:
It’s John Robert’s legacy as far as I’m concerned. A rolling disaster with him still on the bench.
I don’t know- I’d die of shame every day. He could not have been more wrong. I still can’t get over the arrogance of it. John Roberts ignored the lived experience of AA’s on voting rights and substituted his own. They’re the experts and boy did they earn that. They paid for that experience. He ignored them.
That’s the real measure of privilege. Who gets believed and who doesn’t.
satby
@TenguPhule:
And wouldn’t that be a beautiful outcome!
TenguPhule
blech.
Ladyraxterinok
@schrodingers_cat: Will never forget/forgive M Dowd’s weird/snide column about how Gore had the NERVE to ask a WOMAN for (fashion) advice! Ask a woman? He LISTENS to a woman!?!?
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Kay, you seem to have confused arrogance for corruption. John Roberts knew exactly what he was doing. It was simply his nature to be a Scorpion.
Corner Stone
@Kay:
Something he’s been dying to do/rollback since his time in the Reagan WH. Absolutely nothing surprising about his conclusion.
tobie
@Betty Cracker: Yes, that would be nice. I’m just glad that the first Democratic House bill will address our woeful election infrastructure and registration system. There will be more good things after that.
TenguPhule
FUCK ITS FRIDAY.
Trump is determined to Kent State those migrants.
J R in WV
@Gozer:
Followed by pages of pro Hitler publishing by the NY Times. Quite interesting historical material, they also published acres of great material on the US German Bund and their meetings in Madison Square Garden and parades down the Avenues of NYC, with scarlet banners and swastikas.
The NY Times also supported genocidal actions by Josep Stalin in Ukraine, when all the harvested food was shipped out of the state, leaving the residents to starve that winter.
The Moscow bureau chief was Walter Duranty, who reported that there was no famine, let alone that it was a deliberate action of the president of the Politbureau. He was there for 14 years, won a Pulitzer prize, no wonder we don’t understand Russian politics. Perhaps Duranty was forced by Russian hardliners to report as he did… he could have fled to his British homeland, or even to NYC, but nope. Just kept on reporting as required by Stalin – they were probably good friends, right?
Elizabelle
@Kay: John Roberts is Roger B. Taney for the jet age. He just has better hair.
Calling balls and strikes. Right.
He took the damn baseball diamond away.
TenguPhule
Alexandra Petri, ladies and gentle germs.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: Don’t worry Gen Theranos has everything under control.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Child snatcher Kelly still gets good press.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
jl
@TenguPhule: Friendly? Exuberant is more accurate. They high fived and grinned at each other like two HS alpha bullies who had just kicked a little old lady’s lap dog across the street. And the miserable and bathetic face of Trump himself appears in the background in mid high five as he slouches through the door vainly failing to look like the big man.
Krugman has an interesting tweet on how Russian media is suddenly and ostentatiously slagging, criticizing and ridiculing Trump. Maybe it’s just payback for their flunky being insolent in cancelling his job review meeting with Uncle Vlad. Or maybe Putin has moved to the latter stage of the ‘use ’em and lose ’em’ process. They would know a lot about whether Trump is finished, either politically or legally.
It would be dangerous to have Trump still president while for all practical purposes disabled politically due to being undeniably guilty of many very bad acts. But OTOH, would be fun to watch the national GOP further discredit and damage itself by feeling forced to prop up the miserable skunk, for fear of retribution in the 2020 primaries. After that they could turn on him, but would be so late, would just make it worse for them electorally.
Corner Stone
@schrodingers_cat: Do you mean “Gen No Smoking Gun” ?
TenguPhule
@TenguPhule: DHS asks Pentagon to extend the military’s Mexico border deployment through at least January
germy
This photo is shameful:
TenguPhule
@jl: I know, I saw the video. Blech.
joel hanes
@PJ:
I think Obama and the Democrats would have done better at the polls down the line
Mr. Obama, peace be upon him, has always talked and acted as if his greatest goal was increase the common good of the nation as a whole by seeking to heal the divisions among us. That was the entire gist of the 2004 nominating speech which brought his gifts to the attention of the voters, and it remains an honorable aspiration. Unfortunately, putting the interests of the nation ahead of the interests of your party requires the other party to cooperate, and the Republicans have become the opposite of honorable in intent and in action.
ruemara
@Kay: IDK. That’s a very common experience of being black.
trollhattan
@germy:
His face looks as though he just noticed Ivanka is wearing the flannel jammies.
schrodingers_cat
@Ladyraxterinok: Has she written a column criticizing the current President’s fashion sense or the lack there of? I stopped reading NYT more than 2 years ago, so I have no idea.
jl
@TenguPhule: It will be an iconic historical document in the future, should we have a future history.
debbie
@trollhattan:
Or that Trudeau once again yelled out, “New NAFTA.”
TenguPhule
White officer indicted for murder in killing of black man in Dallas
Book em, Danno.
TenguPhule
Fuck. She’s not in my district, but on behalf of the State of Hawaii, I’m sorry we’re doing this to you all.
Please make her lose the primary. Please.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: Fake Hindu is a Modi stooge.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: The same, the one with the immigrant mother, doncha know
Ladyraxterinok
@Gozer: A very good production–PBS America and the Holocausr in its series The American Experience.
Emphasizes State Dept blocking European Jews from getting to US, esp the Consulate in Lisbon.
The massive blatant anti-semitism in the US in the 30s stunned college students watching it in the 90s–help wanted ads in NYC ‘Only Christians need apply,’ Jews barred from hospitals, country clubs, resorts, etc
Gin & Tonic
@J R in WV: Walter Duranty had certain, um, peccadilloes? predilections? They were overlooked – and perhaps indulged – by the authorities and he lived a life of comfort in Moscow, without having to leave the city or to work very hard while he was in it.
jl
@PJ: Summers was following CW business leader and mainstream macroeconomist opinion that the 2007-2009 Great Recession would be a traditional post-WWII recession with a quick and full jobs market bounceback. Why they thought this was unclear at the time, given the steadily increasing problem of the jobless recovery, and a problem which actually started before the 2001 recession. Stiglitz, Baker, DeLong and Krugman were right, but even they had to admit that due to the decades long Great Moderation, there were no good estimates of what the fiscal multiplier would be, other than it should be greater than 1, and good to go big on fiscal support as an economic insurance policy.
So, I am not sure there was enough consensus on best policy to get a progressive fiscal response through. Aid to homeowners with underwater mortgages, a new HOLC from the Depression Era would have been a good close substitute, but Geithner’s belief that saving the incumbent banks necessarily had to be the same thing as saving the financial industry prevented that. Strangely, McCain’s good econ adviser Zandi, HRC and Obama campaigns seriously considered HOLC, but political pressure stopped it. I blame Giethner, and maybe pressure from big banks that would go under. So much money had to be tied up in order to save the big banks and their buddies on Wall Street, not a lot left over for anything else. The fact that in accounting terms, the money was eventually paid back is irrelevant. The real cost was the opportunity cost of those funds in supporting the ‘lesser people’ which would have done a lot more to reduce the size and long term effects of the Great Recession. Even the few really good and honest (but never seen, never acknowledged by GOP) conservative and libertarian macroeconomists recognize that now.
Chyron HR
@TenguPhule:
Gabbard 2020: “YOU SHALL HAVE NO GOD BEFORE BERNIE BUT ALSO ME TOO!”
NotMax
@Ladyraxterinok
Father Coughlin on the newfangled radio, the KKK, the Bund, the Silver Shirts. It was open, ugly, and prevalent.
catclub
@Hob: My point still stands, No Democrats appointed to head FBI or Defense or the federal reserve, by Republicans, since Volcker in 1981. But plenty of Republicans appointed to those positions by Democrats. And frequently own goals doing it.
Obama was the worst in this regard.
TenguPhule
@Chyron HR: Well played.
Kay
@ruemara:
It’s funny, though. Roberts demanded current proof that the covered jurisdictions would discriminate against black voters:
Thanks to Roberts, we’ll have it. We’ll have example after example of these states continuing to discriminate against minority voters and it will be dated 2011, 2012, 2013 and so on. We’ll have piles of “current conditions”. North Carolina bragged about it on their legislature. It’s in the legislative record. Currently. In 2016. The Voting Rights Act was WHY they weren’t discriminating.
catclub
@TenguPhule: only question is how well the ‘I feared for my life’ defense, by a cop will work.
Magic eight ball says: It usually works.
debbie
Chris Johnson
@germy: That photo is AWESOME.
Seeing that, I am sure I was wrong about Trump fleeing to Russia. That is the face of a man who is NOT getting to run the fuck away and taunt his enemies from safety. That fucker’s going to come home and answer for what Putin ‘made him do’. I no longer think Putin is going to give him refuge, even for the purpose of throwing America into chaos. Looks like having Trumpy-Boo around is too horrible a prospect.
I think Donald Trump had very different feelings boarding the plane, than he did after actually encountering the people he so depends on.
That sulky face says they are NOT going to help him, one bit. I wonder who else is looking super pissed off around about now. Are there any shots of Bolton in Putin’s vicinity, and if so, does Bolton look as thrilled and overjoyed as usual, or is he also unhappy?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@catclub: Volcker was appointed by Carter, probably a factor in his loss in 1980.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@catclub:
The problem with that though is she went into a stanger’s apartment in an unofficial capacity, while acting as an officer of the law, and shot an unarmed man dead. And later made up some bullshit story after the fact about he she mistook his apartment for hers which was refuted by neighbors.
tobie
@jl: I didn’t realize that TARP limited the size of the stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). My impression was that to win over some Republican votes, the Obama administration agreed to a stimulus of less that $1 trillion dollars. Larry Summers may have argued for this as well.They threw in tax breaks to woo the GOP and then Susan Collins came up with the idea that all direct aid to states had to be thrown out because “state aid” was not in her view “stimulative”. (Has she been right on anything in her career?) Even in its watered down form, the package stemmed the loss of jobs (roughly 800,000 a month on inauguration day) almost immediately.
Doug R
@TenguPhule: Maybe 186,000 MPs where you are, but around here light travels at 186,282 MPs.
Mike in NC
@germy: Trump’s face looks like the way it would get back when Junior farted at the dinner table.
Elizabelle
@debbie: LOL. TBogg for the win. Rusty Catheter.
Baud
I’m glad people are consistently recognizing what garbage the NYT is.
NotMax
@Mike in NC
Upset that staff put the kibosh on his visiting and laying a wreath at Mengele’s house while in Buenos Aires.
catclub
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I know all that. And I still think the “I’m a cop and I feared for my life”
defense has a good chance of working. White cop, black victim, it was dark ( or she can lie that it was dark).
Any news on the bench trial of the three cops who backed up the shooter’s lies in the Laquan McDonald murder?
It was a surprise that they even went to trial. The usual Blue Wall ignores those particular perjuries.
catclub
@Elizabelle: seconded.
trollhattan
@debbie:
“Rusty Catheter, Ohio” FTW!
ruemara
@Kay: Not uncommon. Sadly.
A Ghost To Most
@Doug R: I like to keep it under 186,000. That way the cops don’t bother me.
Corner Stone
@Doug R: You have to adjust for altitude and air quality.
captnkurt
I think by now they qualify for an upgrade to FTGDMFNYMFT
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Wikileaks telegraphed the release. As did Roger Stone and other Trump surrogates.
eemom
@joel hanes:
Ah, there you are. I’ve been wanting to thank you for that Philip Larkin poem last night.
He was a brilliant writer. I am generally not much for poetry but I really enjoyed his two novels.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman:
That seems rather 19th century, haven’t they heard of the intertubes? //
jl
@tobie: I meant there was political limitation. Economically, we could have done both. Plenty of people would pay the US to borrow their money back then. Sadly, from what I have read, Summers fancied himself a political expert as well as economic, and he let his views on the politics color his view of the pure economics, which was moderately biased at that time towards the completely wrong CW to start with. DeLong has tried to defend his buddy and research partner Summers from that charge, but not very successfully I think.
The fiscal stimulus was very successful, in the terms you report. But the onset of the Great Recession was worse and more rapid than the Great Depression, which is why economists were terrified. So, judging the stimulus by its immediate effect on job loss ignores the potential effect of more stimulus on gaining the previously lost jobs back. It’s like something in your side yard blows up and you put enough water on it to keep it from burning down the neighbors house, so you congratulate yourself. But them someone points out that if you had put more water on the fire, you could have saved your house as well.
The specific institutions (like Wells Fargo, those crooks, really? And BofA, and Citibank goofs) were very expendable, and a lot of cash needed to be tied up for a long time to save them. That money would have been better spent reorganizing their bankrupt carcasses, keeping the financial system itself intact, and helping the millions of people who lost wealth in residential real estate keep more purchasing power through the recession.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: And yes, I kicked October for August. I’ve gone back and corrected it. Sorry for the confusion.
eemom
@Baud:
What I finding striking is the consistency, and also the depth, of its garbagehood. We focus on the most glaring examples, but equally putrid are the mundane, everyday headlines with their misleading slant on what’s being reported, and the burial of key facts way down in the paragraphs that almost nobody reads.
Citizen Alan
@The Moar You Know:
Actually, Dubya appointed Norm Minetta to be Sec of Transportation, and he was one of the few members of the Bush Administration to display any real competence on 9/11.
matt
At this point we have to consider the NYT to have been compromised by foreign intelligence and should essentially quarantine it and any information that comes out of it. I don’t really see any way that the NYT deserves its place in our media ecosystem given that state of affairs.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Well played.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl:
That’s actually pretty pervasive among Economists.
(Present company excluded, of course?.)
jl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Like this blog, economists are usually wrong but never in doubt.
Elizabelle
@debbie: Back to that TBogg tweet. It is genius.
Braiding Ivanka’s hair tonight. Pretty much.
tobie
@jl: Okay, now I get your point. The political will wasn’t there to do a real new deal, even though economically this would have been do-able and was necessary. I don’t know enough to say whether it would have been better to reorganize the financial system entirely or to save the banks with massive regulation. The stress tests and Dodd-Frank likely were not enough. What kills me is that we couldn’t pass a cramdown bill on home mortgages because Republicans and some Democrats screamed that would introduce moral hazard into the system. There’s no moral hazard for Wall Street. As Barney Frank famously said, “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Elizabelle:
I hate Ohio. It sucks to live here
Elizabelle
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I would give some thought to moving. Whole country out there, Goku. Why must you stay in Ohio?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@matt:
How would this be accomplished given the First Amendment?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Elizabelle:
Don’t currently have the financial means to do so. I also don’t have my degree or license yet.
Miss Bianca
@TenguPhule:
“the threat on our southern border”. Jesus wept.
TenguPhule
@Miss Bianca: I know some people thought this was going away after the Midterms as just another Trump stunt.
But its not going away. Its getting worse.
jl
@tobie: Sorry if I wasn’t clear. When I see (I think very deserving) (fakey) Nobel Prize, and libertarian-leaning, and very careful, economist like Vernon Smith writing a book on the Great Recession, and he is saying, look at the evidence, dammit, why didn’t we do a Great Depression style HOLC, instead of dumping all that money into saving crooked and incompetent banks, I figure something went very wrong. Smith agrees with Stiglitz? Weird.
Even with evidence today, GOP would rave and froth that anyting like HOLC is commie handout for losers, and they’re still ready to cram as much money as possible down rich corporations’ gullets.
Rethinking Housing Bubbles: The Role of Household and Bank Balance Sheets in Modeling Economic Cycles
Cambridge U Press May 12, 2014
by Steven D. Gjerstad and Vernon L. Smith
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Yeah, the hair-braiding is what cracked me up.
NeenerNeener
@germy: My first thought was “He who smelt it, dealt it”.
Hob
@catclub: I wasn’t responding to you, but to someone else who had said something different (that Republicans never appoint Democrats to literally anything). So it’s no surprise that I didn’t address your point.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: I think its a wig of Barbie hair. Like father like daughter. WH basement is full of bald Barbies.