Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Bark louder, little dog.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Not all heroes wear capes.

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

Infrastructure week. at last.

The words do not have to be perfect.

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

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Friday Morning Open Thread: Take What You Want, And Pay for It, Says God

Friday Morning Open Thread: Take What You Want, And Pay for It, Says God

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Title of this post is from an old proverb; if you prefer to change the last word to ‘fate’ or ‘karma’ or ‘Newton’s law’, the meaning stays the same. Sooner or later, we all have to face the Goddess of Consequences…

And not just Trump, but also the rest of his party…

Shade (probably unintentional) from the Slightly Soiled Lady:

Reader Interactions

91Comments

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A new report that a White House official appointed by Donald Trump overruled the advice of two specialist adjudicators to award top security clearance to the president’s son-in-law has raised fresh questions about the way the White House is conducting top security matters.

    Jared Kushner was awarded top security clearance giving him access to highly sensitive national security intelligence last May after a prolonged delay in his FBI background checks. Kushner had lost his full clearance a few months before, after it emerged that he had failed to disclose adequate information.

    The NBC News report, published on Thursday night, suggests new intrigue within the White House over the clearance process. Two career White House officials specializing in assessing individuals for their security risk turned Kushner down for the sensitive “top secret” category, the report states.
    ……………………………..
    The NBC News report is likely to generate fury over the way the White House is conducted because it suggests a drastic reduction in security standards in order to benefit members of Trump’s entourage. NBC News reports that not only did Kline grant Kushner a top secret pass, he also overruled security specialists and approved clearance for other Trump appointees in at least another 30 cases – vastly more than the norm in recent presidencies.

  4. 4.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    Either Cornyn is lying or this is the dumbest GOP caucus in history.

    ¿Porqué no los dos?

    If Schlemazel and/or any family members are reading this, btw, you have my best wishes.

  8. 8.

    Keith P.

    @OzarkHillbilly: Rachel Maddow covered that last night, and it was the first time I can really remember where I didn’t find her long-winded at all. I mean, she did her normal schtick, but in this type of story, it really works, since every detail is important to the overall theme.

  13. 13.

    Waldo

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Trump White House’s plan for Venezuela regime change far from clear They don’t have a plan. They don’t even have a clue.

    I take it the Russian translator has been furloughed.

  18. 18.

    Keith P.

    Roger Stone has been arrested by the FBI (breaking on CNN). 7 counts…obstruction, lying to investigators, witness tampering.

  24. 24.

    Mai Naem mobile

    Indictment Ftiday. Finally. Lots of people are going to be dancing on Stones grave. Asshole.

  25. 25.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: re Venezuela….
    What if Pelosi declared herself the real President and took the oath of office. Would leaders of the world rush to support her as the real government leader?

    Asking for my friend Angela.

    PS. Venezuela will end in blood, probably including that of Americans.

  30. 30.

    PsiFighter37

    Awesome, AWESOME way to start the day. I hope Stone rots in prison for the rest of his life.

  34. 34.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Mueller’s indictment states that during the summer of 2016 Stone spoke to senior Trump campaign officials about Wikileaks “and information it might have had that would be damaging to the Clinton campaign. Stone was contacted by senior Trump campaign officials to inquire about future releases by” Wikileaks, which the document calls “Organization 1”.

    It states that Stone – a longtime political adviser to Trump – made “multiple false statements” about his interactions regarding Wikileaks, and “falsely denied possessing records that contained evidence of these interactions”, and “attempted to persuade a witness to provide false testimony to and withhold pertinent information from the investigations”.

    More to come.

  40. 40.

    raven

    Dude on Joe said he’d be sitting for 8 hours before his appearance which means they got him at 3am!

  41. 41.

    Jinchi

    “This is your fault,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

    This is the list of Republican Senators who voted to re-open the government:
    Lamar Alexander, Sen. Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Johnny Isakson, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney

    Ron Johnson’s name is not on it. He’s not wrong to blame McConnell, but he and the rest of the Republicans who complain quietly about the shutdown could have ended this before it even started.

  42. 42.

    Immanentize

    @raven:
    Probably not — but you only need to knock once, yell FBI! And then bust down the door. I read that they had armed agents when they came calling. “Armed Agents” generally means full combat gear. Stone is well known to own a bunch of guns.

  43. 43.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    This is what you get when you have a cabinet full of grifters and buffoons.

    Catherine Rampell on CNN

  44. 44.

    Cermet

    stone getting indicted is really a great way to start off the morning! Now that is such wonderful news that even I can’t add anything that would detract from it.

  46. 46.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    Schlemazel, you and your family are in my thoughts.

    Also, Happy Friday to the rest of the jackaltariat.

  48. 48.

    JWR

    @Immanentize:

    Stone is well known to own a bunch of guns.

    Yep. Just saw a brief CNN video showing a boatload of heavily armed agents approaching his front door, though the video didn’t show whether or not they busted in.

  50. 50.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “attempted to persuade a witness to provide false testimony to and withhold pertinent information from the investigations”.

    I’d love to know who the witness is.

  56. 56.

    Lapassionara

    @Kay: Probably that low intelligence guy who is one of Ari’s guests from time to time. Or maybe Corsi.

  57. 57.

    debbie

    Between Stone’s arrest and hearing an interview where Ben Carson sounded positively humane, Friday is starting out great!

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @Jinchi:

    Ron Johnson’s name is not on it. He’s not wrong to blame McConnell, but he and the rest of the Republicans who complain quietly about the shutdown could have ended this before it even started.

    They’re not mad that McConnell won’t open the government. They’re mad that McConnell made them vote on something.

    They don’t want to do anything– they’re now literally afraid to vote. On anything. The plan was no one would blame them because no one would even know they were there.

  62. 62.

    SRW1

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “Organization1”. No wonder our boy in London is getting so nervous and went to court against his landlord. I don’t think this is any more about how he cares for his cat.

  63. 63.

    Alien Radio

    @Kay: isn’t it that journalist that stone was trying to persuade to take the fall as the cut out for the hacked files? I forget the name, but this is the guy that stone wanted to claim had supplied assagne with the files. and If my suspicions are correct, the actual cut out is Nigel Farage.

  66. 66.

    debbie

    Schlemazel, thinking of you on this cold morning and knowing how happy you would be to hear of Roger Stone’s, er, predicament.

  67. 67.

    Kay

    @Jinchi:

    That to me is part of what’s so extraordinary about what Pelosi has done here- she’s become THE congressional leader. She took it on. She’s just really under-rated as a leader, in general. I mean, NOW she looks like a genius but that wasn’t guaranteed! If it had gone bad w/Trump she would have taken all the blame, just because there IS no one else.

  69. 69.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    She has always been extraordinary. Why else would the GOP so revile her? They have done everything they could to diminish her and defeat her, and yet, here she is.

  70. 70.

    JPL

    This might be good news for the federal workers, because ending the shut down would change the subject.

  71. 71.

    CliosFanboy

    FWIW, traffic in DC seems noticeably lighter…

    We are so fortunate that my wife’s job comes under the larger DOD umbrella (and I am not a govie or contractor)

  72. 72.

    trnc

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Kushner had lost his full clearance a few months before, after it emerged that he had failed to disclose adequate information.

    He didn’t “fail.” He deliberately filed one false report after another.

  74. 74.

    Tony Jay

    @Alien Radio:

    isn’t it that journalist that stone was trying to persuade to take the fall as the cut out for the hacked files? I forget the name, but this is the guy that stone wanted to claim had supplied assagne with the files. and If my suspicions are correct, the actual cut out is Nigel Farage.

    If this turns out to be true….

    “Hey, Nigel. Fancy another all-expenses paid trip to The States? Nigel? Nigel?!? Has anybody seen Nigel?”

  75. 75.

    Immanentize

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    I like how Mueller is taking pieces off the board. It may feel slow, but for every Roger Stone there are probably ten witnesses that have given truthful testimony even against their interests. We will learn later, but I guess the witness tampering goes to Stone’s aid who fought his subpoena — and ultimately lost.

  76. 76.

    Alien Radio

    @Tony Jay: I think He was angling for a media gig on the Trump TV network. Further proving that all these motherfuckers were completely screwed by Trump actually winning, but yeah, lets see if Nigel’s keen on taking a trip to the US now.

  78. 78.

    TS (the original)

    @debbie: She is also winning with the media. The past attacks and attempts to bring her down have all but disappeared. She has held the democrats together during this time, they have allowed her to take 99% of the action & her behaviour and words have been so close to perfect.

  81. 81.

    OzarkHillbilly

    America’s most expensive home sells for $238m to hedge fund boss

    The hedge fund founder Ken Griffin’s new home offers a prestigious address on New York’s Billionaire’s Row, dreamy Central Park views and 34 times the square footage of a typical Manhattan apartment.
    ………………………….
    “New York is known for extraordinary deals, but this deal is extraordinary in every measure,” said the real estate investment expert Daniel Levy, chief executive at New York’s CityRealty. He said the previous record for the highest-priced home sale in New York City was the $100m spent by Michael Dell, founder of Dell Technologies, in a new high rise on west 57th Street. “This blows everything else away.”

    “Wow, I hope he got a lot of bathrooms for that price,” said Philip Mangano, who served as the US homelessness czar under George W Bush and now heads the American Roundtable to Abolish Homelessness. (Details of the interior layout are in fact scant.)

    Mangano said the new record was emblematic of the disparity between the rich and the poor in America, which has been growing for decades. When times boom, he said, the good prosperity doesn’t trickle down to the poor; it merely drives the price of housing up further and creates more homelessness. The latest homeless count for New York City found 78,676 people.

    “There is a lot of housing being built for those who are making a lot of money,” said Mangano. “There is very little housing being constructed for those who earn less than 30% of the US median income.”

    Griffin’s purchase of the approximately 24,000-sq-ft unit in a newly constructed, super high rise at 220 Central Park South comes days after he spent $122m on a London mansion near Buckingham Palace, Bloomberg reported.

    Griffin, who founded the Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel, is said to have made a string of super-high-priced real estate purchases in the last few years, including spending hundreds of millions of dollars on properties in Chicago, Miami Beach and Palm Beach Florida.

    2 Ways Hedge Funds Avoid Paying Taxes

  82. 82.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    She has always been extraordinary.

    Well, because she’s winning :)

    If it had been a big disaster and people were like “Trump has convinced us! Build the wall!” she’d be considered..less extraordinary. It’s funny how holes get filled- someone needed to step into the empty space where “Congress” should be and she did.

  84. 84.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Wikileaks, which the document calls “Organization 1”.

    I’m confused. I thought “Organization 1” was the RNC – or was it the Trump campaign? Or the Trump Organization? There are to many corrupt unnamed organizations to keep track of, in this investigation.

  87. 87.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Kay: Yeah, what I don’t understand is why she faced any leadership challenge at all when Chuck Schumer just pretty much takes up space as the Senate minority leader. I know the leadership in the Senate didn’t change but has anyone asked whether Chuck might want to pull out any trick in the books to stop the judicial appointments and other shenanigans? Mitch used every trick in the book and Schumer should be paying him back in kind. Yet he doesn’t seem willing to go to the mattresses over anything. I can’t think of a single piece of major legislation with his name on it.

    The smartest, and only useful, thing he’s done as the Dem leader of the Senate is just go along with whatever Pelosi wants to do now that she’s speaker again. He was nowhere to be seen on the Kavanaugh hearings. Seems like we could find someone more useful to be our top dog in the Senate. I mean, he’s in a rock solid blue State and could be taking risks to push the Overton window back towards the left but he is completely risk averse.

  88. 88.

    Tony Jay

    @Alien Radio:

    I think He was angling for a media gig on the Trump TV network.

    Or something bigger. The Leave campaign gravy-train was pulling into Brexit Station and good old bluff, straight-talking Nige couldn’t get off it quickly enough. Too much competition at the top now that the Tories were officially taking over the gig. But America, hell yeah, time to cash some of those checks, matie! I think I recall a half-arsed attempt to get Nigel made UK Ambassador to the United Republican Party of America, but all he got was a few speaking-gigs and the slowly dawning realisation that he was without friends, without funding, and without anything fresh he could offer in trade once the Eye of Badass-Law turned its gaze upon him.

    Couldn’t happen to a nicer frog-faced bile-peddlar.

  89. 89.

    FlipYrWhig

    @What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: I saw an interview with Gillibrand between the election and the start of the new term wherein she backed Schumer for minority leader 100%. The Senate is full of ambitious people. If the D senators want him to lead them, they probably have their reasons.

  90. 90.

    Chris Johnson

    @What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: It’s possible Schumer is a traitor, a bought man. If he simply refuses to fight the Republicans that’s a very effective way to disable the Democrats. Some of his behavior seems to contradict that horrible judgement, but then he keeps on not fighting and being so passive. We do need better, even if he’s not a traitor actually working for the Republicans/Russia.

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