The House committees hearing testimony on the American President’s improper demands on the Ukrainian President will hear from a member of the National Security Council specializing in relations with Ukraine – Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, United States Army. His opening statement is here.
Vindman was on the now-famous phonecall in which Donald Trump tried to shake down Volodymyr Zelensky by withholding congressionally appropriated funds for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian incursion in the eastern part of his country. No more cries of “hearsay” from the Republicans, if they were honest.
But they are not honest, and desperately trying to smear Vindman, who came to the United States as a child, a refugee from antisemitic discrimination in the Soviet Union. The background is worth knowing.
Just to add a little texture and context to this "questioning of loyalty" of Lt. Col Vindman. From the perspective of a 1970s teenager who marched in the streets carrying signs in support of freedom for Soviet Jews. This was the first political cause of my protest career (1) https://t.co/7rYzpN7hrV
— Mr winner (@Mr_Winner___) October 29, 2019
The American Jewish community took on this cause in the 1970s. Elie Wiesel sounded the alarm, Jewish leaders took up the cause, and Jewish teenagers marched with signs and wore bracelets with the names of "refuseniks." (great book on this: https://t.co/qGObDWWPxr )
— Mr winner (@Mr_Winner___) October 29, 2019
In my adult life, I have met several professionals in the U.S. national security establishment who speak fluent Russian and un-accented English. They came as children, they grew up to serve America. As did Lt. Col. Vindman. They escaped oppression, they savor freedom. (4)
— Mr winner (@Mr_Winner___) October 29, 2019
My heart hurts to see the smears, but it hurts more because so many Americans don't know why these Soviet emigres live and serve among us. They should know, and value, how much America served as a beacon for persecuted Jews in the former Soviet Union. We should all know. (fin.)
— Mr winner (@Mr_Winner___) October 29, 2019
As soon as the statement was released last night, the Fox commentators were proclaiming Vindman a Ukraine-loving spy. A despicable former Republican members of Congress is continuing the cry today. This means, of course, that Ukraine managed to plant a spy at the highest levels of government, and Trump was easily duped. The arguments are nonsensical and hypocritical, but the desperation is palpable. Defenders of Trump have nothing to argue but word salad.
Vindman’s statement doesn’t contain much more than what we’ve heard already, but he was on the call. It is becoming clearer and clearer that Gordon Sondman lied in his testimony, the one Trump defender who might have gotten away with it.
Open thread
Photo: Credit…Anna Moneymaker/impea
Lee
Does no one remember Khizr Khan? This is all completely on brand for the GOP and no one should have not seen this coming a mile away.
MattF
Republican talking points about Vindman’s supposed dual loyalties have gotten to CNN via Sean Duffy, a new CNN talking head. Ex-congressman Sean Duffy on CNN.
Gin & Tonic
While I usually expect the worst from the Fox-Republican axis, I was flabbergasted when I heard of this attempted smear last night. People take enormous risks, give up everything to come to the US, then serve their new country with a patriotism and a distinction that a Laura Ingraham or Sean Duffy (heard him spinning this shit on CNN this morning) couldn’t achieve in a thousand lifetimes.
Rommie
Flipping the Table is all they have left, really. They are toast, and they know they are toast. The GOP should be in the pressuring Trump/Pence to resign phase of this scenario, but there’s a problem. That would mean President Pelosi, and likely President (one of the D candidates), and they’d rather
commit Treason in the Defense of Slaverylet Trump burn it all down before swallowing that bitter pill.The Circus is coming to town, and the House vote is the first ring for them to start their Bozo Cosplay.
Aleta
Thanks for this good post.
narya
These folks actually kind of give me chills–some of us with pedestrian desk jobs (well, me, anyway) wonder if I’d have the courage to do the right thing like that.
jonas
Funny, when a certain other LTC, Oliver North, was on Capitol Hill a generation ago testifying about how he helped the Reagan administration *commit* foreign policy corruption, conservatives called him a Great American Patriot. At least there’s a perverse consistency in how they approach these things.
mapghimagsik
All these smears roughly translate to “Tick tock, mutherfucker”
Barbara
@narya: From time to time I help people get asylum. I don’t like to say too much about it, and they have different kinds of stories. Some are just unlucky because of who they happened to be related to, but others have taken unbelievable risks out of conviction that progress was worth it. And when they come here, in some cases, the wolf is at the door almost instantly, all the time, and I am in awe of how they managed to survive. Duffy and his high profile wife would be whimpering and whining from morning until sunset if they had to face even a tenth of what these people have endured. Duffy is the same guy who whined to a town hall audience that his six figure congressional salary wasn’t enough for him to live on.
Aleta
Betty Cracker
The dual loyalty allegations against Lt. Colonel Vindman are despicable and xenophobic. They have a special anti-Semitic resonance too, especially since Trump’s rise to power inspired torch-carrying Nazis to march in the streets chanting “Jews will not replace us” and the anti-immigrant hysteria Trump foments was cited by another Nazi who murdered American Jews in a synagogue a little more than a year ago.
Cheryl Rofer
Even Liz Cheney…
gene108
Whatever happened to respecting our troops?
These are the same people outraged by a “General Betrayus” ad, but are not calling a Lt. Col. a spy and worse.
Hypocrites.
sigaba
@gene108: Troops are to be seen and not heard.
Gin & Tonic
In Soviet times this was called “agitprop.”
rp
Putting aside how absolutely despicable this line of attack is, I wonder if it will backfire because it’s so obviously coordinated. We all know there are talking points circulated in the RW ecosystem, but usually they’re a little more subtle about it. But now all of the sudden you have a bunch of different people making the same exact point within hours of the news breaking about this guy.
Amir Khalid
@jonas:
They see everything through their “party before country” tinted glasses.
hells littlest angel
@Betty Cracker: Let’s not forget the Charlottesville nazis’ other chant: “Russia is our friend.”
Aleta
There should be survivalist courses for (or TV shows about) politicians and media people in which they learn to survive working 2-3 min. wage jobs with changing hours, without a car, insecure housing, paperwork not in their 1st language, long waits for assistance and medical help, and discrimination every day.
SFAW
@Aleta:
She’s wrong. Just as there is no Peak Wingnut, there is no bottom to the perfidy, anti-Americanism, and all-around disgusting behavior and mindset of the RWMFs.
jimmiraybob
Isn’t burning it all down part of the plan? At least among a significant set of the Trump anarcho, lost-cause, christo, patriot-militia, rage-media cult? And Putin.
Karen Weisz
@Barbara: Is Duffy the Sean on Real World?
Roger Moore
@sigaba:
So much this. “The troops” are a prop and a cudgel to be used against the Democrats, but are valueless as human beings. It says everything about Republicans that they can bleat about supporting the troops while failing to buy them body armor, letting them get electrocuted in unsafe housing, and/or trying to cut funding for the VA.
low-tech cyclist
UC Berkeley Law School should kick John Yoo’s ass right out of their institution for his smears of Vindman. Nobody who casually accuses someone of espionage just because of where they were born deserves to be teaching law at Podunk U. Law School, let alone one of America’s most prestigious law schools.
(Berkeley should have never hired Yoo in the first place, but that’s water under the bridge.)
low-tech cyclist
@Aleta:
Fuck yeah. Our elites can relate to the ‘difficulties’ of getting by on $250,000 a year, but are insensitive to the challenges of managing on one-tenth of that amount.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic:
This is depressing the hell out of me.
Betty Cracker
@hells littlest angel: Seriously? Somehow I missed that, but I am not really surprised…
OzarkHillbilly
@low-tech cyclist: (Berkeley should have never hired Yoo in the first place, but that’s a fetid cesspool under the bridge.)
FTFY.
clay
So, if I follow the RWNJ “thinking” on this matter, a Ukrainian spy managed to place himself at the highest level of government — serving as a security adviser to the President — in order to…?
I don’t get the alleged endgame here. Who is he supposed to be working for? The government of Ukraine? If so, then they ordered him to come forward to Congress, buy why? If Ukraine wanted to bust Trump on this, then they could just release their own transcript of the phone call. Why would Ukraine burn their own high-level source when they could leave him in place to do more nefarious deeds?
I know, I know… it’s not supposed to make sense, but… this really doesn’t make any sense!!!
Just Chuck
A Ukrainian spy they say? Guess the Fox producers have gotten so lazy they just turned their jobs over to RT. Really don’t think it’s gaining any traction here in the USA, just makes the GOP look even more like Russian puppets.
low-tech cyclist
@OzarkHillbilly: Can’t argue with your fix!
Ocotillo
@Gin & Tonic: Aren’t Laura Igraham’s kids from Russia? Does that mean they will grow up with dual loyalty and become double agents?
MattF
@clay: The Illuminati have their reasons, beyond the ken of ordinary mortals.
But, y’know, seriously… self-contradiction is a hallmark of classic antisemitism. Jews are bankers and revolutionary nihilists. My advice is to regard self-contradiction as a tell, and see the true picture without sentimental distortion.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ocotillo: AHA! She is ground zero in the plot to embed Russian agents in the very fabric of American TV!
Roger Moore
@clay:
This isn’t about having a coherent narrative for why Lt. Col. Vindman was doing what he was doing. It’s about providing an emotional justification for rejecting him as a dangerous other, even though he’s somebody who should be highly credible by ordinary right-wing thinking.
hells littlest angel
@Betty Cracker: Yes, seriously.
newsweek.com/leaders-charlottesvilles-alt-right-protest-all-have-ties-russian-fascist-651384
thedailybeast.com/richard-spencer-and-white-supremacists-return-to-charlottesville-chanting-you-will…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and on CNN, a former MTV…. whatever they are… has been hired to spread the same nonsense, because the Tenets of High Broderism demand that nativist demagoguery get its equal time.
Hasn’t Tapper been known to call out his own network on shit like this? I think of CNN as The USA Today on TV, so I tend to only see what they do on twitter.
Ella in New Mexico
Sean Duffy and his counterparts on CNN aside, most of this latest propaganda smear is being conducted by one nationally visible, politically powerful ( in terms of Republican base voters) “news” organization: FOX. Fox is now clearly coordinating daily in the PR attack from the Trump War Room. It is literally the official WH communications center.
Without the mainstream accessibility of FOX, any of the online RW sources would only get a small amount of traction in the base, mostly because a large chunk of them DON’T LIKE TO READ MORE THAN 5 SENTENCES much less surf the internet for long-form journalism. And Twitter still baffles a crap ton of them. No, Facebook and Fox are where the majority of Trump Cultists get their news.
It’s clear we have a huge danger in allowing a major “cable news” organization to be a wholly owned subsidiary of not just one party but of a literal Political Cult’s re-election efforts. I’m not sure what we can do as a nation but unless we fix this issue, we’re not going to be able to get an inch of sunlight between the Republican Base and Trump’s Republican Regime.
Seriously, without decimating the 1st Amendment, we need to fix this issue somehow or we’re dead. Whether by campaign finance laws that take away licenses from the likes of Fox or (any network) that literally coordinates campaign activities with one party to reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine, we have to come up with a smart and constitutional way to shut these people down.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
we all have an affinity to our homeland where we came from
so much to unpack there…. “we”… “all”…. “came from”….
rikyrah
Trump reportedly also pressured China for political help
Rachel Maddow shows that contrary to arguments by Trump defenders that Trump was only kidding when he called on China to investigate Joe Biden’s son, reports from multiple sources suggest otherwise; that Ukraine isn’t the only country Trump pressured to help his personal, domestic politics.
OzarkHillbilly
Over at Mother Jones: Trump Supporters Want John Roberts to Recuse Himself From Impeachment Trial
rikyrah
Impeachment witness says he reported Trump’s Ukraine ploy —twice
Rachel Maddow shares New York Times reporting on, and reads highlights from, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s planned opening statement to House impeachment committees Tuesday, in which he describes being alarmed by Donald Trump’s quid pro quo offer to the president of Ukraine and reporting it to a superior. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, member of the House Intelligence Committee, shares his reaction.
Rand Careaga
So Vindman was planted here, presumably following a KGB crash course in espionage tradecraft, before his fourth birthday to establish his “’legend.” You gotta say this for Soros and the Deep State, man, they plan ahead. Not like the Trumpkins, who are always ineptly improvising.
rikyrah
Trump Baghdadi blurting hurts US operations and national security
Courtney Kube, NBC News national security and military correspondent, talks with Rachel Maddow about how Donald Trump’s poor impulse control and fondness for self-aggrandizement led him not only to make false claims about the raid that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but to reveal classified and tactical details that hurt future operations and U.S. national security.
rikyrah
Army officer who heard Trump’s Ukraine call voiced his concerns to superiors
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman plans to tell House impeachment investigators that he heard Trump appeal to Ukraine’s president to investigate one of his leading political rivals, a request the aide considered so damaging to American interests that he reported it to a superior. Lawrence O’Donnell discusses with Josh Lederman, Michael McFaul, Evelyn Farkas, and Jonathan Alter.
Oct. 28, 2019
MattF
@Ella in New Mexico: I don’t know what to do about that. Fox is extremely smart and attentive to the needs of its audience. E.g., it’s not accidental that the morning show is called Fox and Friends— if you’re an old fart, abandoned by your ungrateful children, you want Friends.
trollhattan
@hells littlest angel:
Right up until Operation Barbarossa.
Patricia Kayden
@Cheryl Rofer: Liz Cheney doing the right thing is shocking, to say the least. She must sense that attacking a decorated soldier isn’t a winning argument.
trollhattan
@OzarkHillbilly:
“influential Trump supporter and radio host John Cardillo”? Doesn’t sound very American to me. Is it time to investigate “John Cardilio”?
catclub
@OzarkHillbilly: That is amazing.
But remember how Trump defines being treated fairly. Then it makes perfect sense. Stating facts is derogatory to this president.
trollhattan
@Patricia Kayden:
Liz is playing the long game–a Wyoming senate seat for the next forty years means not sullying herself wallowing in too much Trump. She was at that Sunday ballgame, though.
ET
@Aleta: Surprisingly Liz Cheney is not onboard with the Attack the Veteran Faxu News plan. Guess that even she has a line?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
That takes Lindsey down to fifty votes. Assuming those three (and Manchin and maybe Jones) would probably abstain, they could still pass it, I think, 50-47 or 45 or ??, but it’s going to enrage The Beast. Fredo has already added Romney to his twitter with list, along with Schiff, Pelosi and AOC.
waspuppet
This guy has spent more time in the US military than Sean Duffy and Donald Trump combined. But who could possibly love America and have a better grasp of geopolitics than a broke, senile game show host from Queens?
And yes, as said above, put either of those two jokers through the experience of being a refusenik and they’d be marching a hammer and sickle down Red Square by dinnertime.
rikyrah
@Ocotillo:
No. They are non-White children from Central/South America.
As a Black woman, the thought of this woman raising non-White children horrifies me.
catclub
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sean Duffy says:
So ask him how he thinks of ‘evangelical Christians’ who have an affinity for the defense of Israel. Does he suspect their loyalties?
hueyplongj
I sure as hell didn’t have Liz Cheney in the Have You No Decency Pool.
It doesn’t count unless she copies Trump, Barr and/or McConnell.
chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: See the weak Kenyan tyrant who spent all his time in office golfing and bringing sharia law to Merka!!!
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: Wiki says “She is a single parent of three children: a girl from Guatemala whom she adopted in 2008;[103] a boy from Russia whom she adopted at 13 months in 2009;[104] and another boy she adopted in 2011.[citation needed]”
Gravenstone
@OzarkHillbilly: in other words, it’s ‘Trump Judge, or Bust’!
khead
@Rand Careaga:
Vindman was in the same class with Evelyn Salt.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
I will correct myself. I still recoil in horror for that daughter. The non-White in a family of Whites….Lawd Lawd Lawd.
bemused
@rikyrah:
As a white woman, I’m also horrified.
Barbara
@Karen Weisz: He was on a reality show but I don’t know which one. That’s where he met his wife, apparently.
Cacti
Vindman can and should sue John Yoo and Fox News for defamation.
Gin & Tonic
@rikyrah:
Another immigrant, obviously, likely with dual loyalties as well.
RedDirtGirl
@sigaba: Troops should be slain and not heard, more like.
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: They need 60 votes. That is what I read this morning. They were never going to pass it. They just want credit for sponsoring it.
Kelly
My first glance mis-read of the title was “Terrifying Today”
Patricia Kayden
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: @bemused: I’d like to hope that raising a child of color might open Ingraham’s eyes but that would be beyond ridiculous.
BC in Illinois
@waspuppet:
My pre-school age grandson has spent as much time in the US military as Sean Duffy and Donald Trump combined.
Mandalay
@MattF:
On CNN the host just decried the comments of Sean Duffy. Except Duffy is paid by CNN specifically to make outrageous comments to provoke controversy.
Mission accomplished!
FoxNews doesn’t bother to pretend to be anything more than a shill for Trump. CNN pretends to be fair minded by employing bomb lobbers for Trump, and then hits the fainting couch in astonishment when those bomb lobbers lob bombs.
Gelfling 545
@Aleta: few, maybe more than a few, years back there was a challenge to eat for a month on only the amount covered by food stamps. A number of politicians tried it. I don’t believe any made it a full month.
Jeffro
@Kelly: Me too!
FWIW folks, it’s pretty clear that trumpov (and now Rudy911 as well) misspell something in just about every tweet, so that us smarty-pants libs will spend most of the day posting and laughing about that, instead of the substance of whatever clusterf*** is going on in the WH that day. It’s probably a Bannon strategy from way back.
NOBODY is dumb enough to spell it as ‘Ben Laden’, or get “oppodite’ past their spell-checker, or misspell one of their chief toadies as ‘Devin Nunez’. Come on.
low-tech cyclist
@Ella in New Mexico:
I don’t see that the First Amendment should be a problem. Can you buy a cable TV channel? Me either.
The justification for applying the Fairness Doctrine to broadcast TV, back in the day, was that the airwaves are a fundamentally scarce resource; at best you can only have a couple dozen broadcast TV channels in a given area, so in a very real sense, the TV stations had to represent all of us: they couldn’t be allowed to just represent the interests of their owners.
And while there may be several hundred cable TV channels available to the average viewer, that’s still tremendously scarce when it comes to speaking rather than viewing, and after all it’s speech that the First Amendment is about. There’s no reason why the Fairness Doctrine shouldn’t be reinstated, and applied to cable TV as well as broadcast.
Now someone is sure to ask, “how is this different from newspapers? There aren’t that many of them either!” But you can distribute your opinions via print. Anyone can. Get a couple reams of paper and a spare black ink cartridge for your printer, print up your thoughts, and hand out copies on street corners. Voila! You’re exercising freedom of the press.
Commercial newspapers differ in resources, complexity, and (sometimes) commercial viability, but entry-level freedom of the press is accessible to all. The same is manifestly not true of access to the opportunity to speak via television or radio.
Kattails
@jimmiraybob: The phrase in use was drowning it (government) in a bathtub. But I’m sure they’d take burning it all down as a fine option. Except, of course, the parts that help them grift, lie, and cheat the unwashed masses. Those parts they want enshrined on stone tablets.
Gin & Tonic
From what I can see, the smearing of Lt. Col Vindman isn’t going the way the Republicans seem to have expected.
Gelfling 545
To the GOP those serving in the military are like those net bags of “army men” one can buy for a kid to play with at the dollar store. If some get lost, broken, whatever no big deal. They’ll just get more.
patrick II
@clay:
To help in the Ukrainian plan to undermine elections and blame Russia.
I think you have missed the whole frame of the fable the Republicans are telling here. According to them, and “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,” a book written by Peter Schweizer (the man who wrote Clinton Cash), read and believed by Giuliani, and conveyed from Giuliani and believed by Trump, The Ukrainians were involved in the American elections by framing the Russians by making it appears the Russians illegally helped Trump while it was the Ukrainians the whole time. The Ukrainians wanted to discredit Trump, help Hillary, and aid corruption in Ukraine by making Hunter Biden rich and hide the DNC server in Ukraine, where it’s true contents would never be found.
The fact is that it is typical Russian/Republican ratfucking, But to answer your question, that’s what the Ukrainians were supposedly up to. According to Russian propaganda picked up by Schweizer in his book, read by Giuliani and fed to Donald Trump. That Giuliani and Trump actually believe this means they are insane. The rest of the republicans going along are traitors.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Lee: IOW, it’s not “beneath” them, despite what the tweet in the post says. There is nothing beneath them.
Betty Cracker
@Barbara: Graham was on Twitter a while ago trying to pass off Pelosi’s decision to hold a vote Thursday as a victory for his Dear Leader Loyalty Bill. He implied he would table it but keep an eye on House procedures to make sure they’re fair to Trump. It’s bullshit, IMO — he couldn’t even get all the Republicans to sign it, so he took this opportunity to declare victory and stop being embarrassed about not garnering more support.
Gelfling 545
@Rand Careaga: Maybe President Obama let him use his time mavhine.
J R in WV
@low-tech cyclist:
You can say that again! So I did~!!~ Quoted for Truth. Yoo should be in prison for the war crimes he facilitated, not honored by a formerly prestigious Law School… I think there’s one we could send him to in Cuba, or Florence CO, if they decide he can’t be sent to a prison full of people he directly helped be mistreated.
O. Felix Culpa
@Patricia Kayden: Which is exactly what the forced birthers want. Their goal is to take the case to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. smh.
PJ
@low-tech cyclist: The other aspect of the Fairness Doctrine is that the airwaves are a public resource of limited bandwidth, and in exchange for their licenses, broadcasters are obligated to provide programming in the public interest. You can make an argument that a cable or streaming channel takes advantage of public resources and/or conduits, but it’s a harder sell. (But maybe not harder than reinstating the Fairness Doctrine itself.)
Stopping the spread of lies through the mass media, whether it be Fox or Facebook, is going to have to rely on regulation, because those networks are definitely not going to do it themselves, but I have a feeling the institutional framework will have to be varied, and relying on a new Fairness Doctrine alone will not be sufficient to cover the sources and means of disseminating disinformation.
Mandalay
Whoa! I just read Vindman’s statement. IANAL, but Sondland is surely in very deep trouble now, and I don’t see how “I do not recalll…” (or Trump) can save his lying ass:
bemused
@OzarkHillbilly:
Inexplicable to me and spouse before our immediate family became less white. Now that our family is more color diverse, I shudder even more for Ingrahams’ children growing up with that nasty far right mother.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: If you haven’t seen this, it’s a worth a couple of minutes
a two minute reply to anyone who’s saying “Why can’t you Libs give trump one good day!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
John Cole, a guy who used to post about politics here, makes a good point
remember when twitter took to their fainting couches because Pete Davidson said Crenshaw looked like a movie villain?
PST
What in the world could be more logical than for Ukraine officials to seek advice from the NSC expert on their country when faced with demands from a private citizen purporting to speak for the President but making demands far outside the State Department’s normal policy? The first question I would ask is, “You’re a White House staffer. Is this guy for real? Should we be dealing with him?”
Gelfling 545
@bemused: Frankly, the thought of her raising any children is horrifying.
J R in WV
No one can “give” Drumpf a good day, he has to achieve a good day on his own. And he evidently cannot do that on his own!
This great video montage shows why and how that works!
Barbara
@PST: Who else, exactly, were they supposed to ask?
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: Well, for sure, they will now need to move the goalposts yet AGAIN. “Okay, we asked for it to be public, but now the problem is . . . . ”
Of course Pelosi and Schiff know this, and I assume that Schiff, in particular, just wanted to lay down a record of what happened before turning to proceed in public. You know, like they did with the Benghazi hearings, which were virtually all non-public events.
bemused
@Gelfling 545:
True. I’d be worried about her pets too if she had any.
PJ
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The “why can’t you let Trump have one good day?!!!” plea makes it sound like he’s a twelve year old girl who’s having a hard time in middle school, nobody likes her and everybody’s mean to her, and, ok, yes, she lies a little (well, ok, all the time) but it’s just because she wants people to like her, and, sure, she’s made a few mistakes (ok, a department store full of mistakes), and she’s been mean (but only to people who deserve it!!), but, come on, guys, she’s really trying hard, she really means well and no one appreciates it and why can’t you let her have just have one good day for herself!!!!!
hueyplong
@PJ: True, but for perspective, as always, some kids in cages would like a word.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Roger Moore: “Support the troops” means “Fuck the troops, support the defense contractors”.
I worked in defense acquisition. Can’t tell you how many hours of my life were spent in arguments with defense contractors over seemingly picayune requirements. “We believe it meets the letter of the requirement.” “But it does not do what the soldier needs it to do. People. Will. Die.” “We believe it meets the letter of the requirement.”
rikyrah
@PJ:
one of the ultimates in White Privilege.
peter
@Ella in New Mexico: Yes Fox is very clever. My arch-conservative FIL used to watch Fox News, and It dawned on me after a while how this works. They tell you what you want to hear, which gets you to stick around long enough that they can tell you what they want you to hear. The second part of the transaction is what matters, but most Fox consumers probably get only the first part.
Chip Daniels
Republicans spit on returning American veteran.
rikyrah
That’s because his lying azz is up to his eyeballs in all this mess.
Pence cagey in response to straightforward Ukraine scandal question
10/29/19 10:25 AM—UPDATED 10/29/19 10:50 AM
By Steve Benen
PJ
@hueyplong: For the crimes and and cruel and inhuman acts he has encouraged in others and committed himself, Trump deserves to have extremely bad days for the rest of an unnaturally prolonged life.
ETA: Not to mention the treason and general degradation of the US.
oatler.
“bomb lobbers lob bombs.”
Excellent! Like The Bob Loblaw Law Blog.
Also, fuck Scott Baio.
Immanentize
@Mandalay: Well, I guess they have settled on the person who will fall for all the bad acts — Sondland.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
that number again…
Jonas
@clay:
You clearly don’t watch enough Fox or listen to AM radio.
Mary G
LTC Vinland’s opening statement is more evidence that Americans who immigrate here are what make America great. It must have been excruciating for him to do the right thing by reporting up the chain of command and see nothing done. If Twitler had had his way, people like this would have been purged from government for disloyalty and replaced with a military Jim Jordan, a incurious know-nothing whose ability to kiss Twitler’s ass would be the only thing he was good at.
When the horrors of election night 2016 sunk in and everyone was on team WASF, I was optimistic that America would reject Twitler like a bacterial infection is beat back by a dose of penicillin and a mass of white blood cells.
It has been so painful to believe I was wrong over the 2+ years of one ghastly Infrastructure Week after another, but the crowd at the World Series and this military man who has undoubtedly been ordered to keep his mouth shut, but decided to obey his conscience instead make me feel hopeful again.
Cacti
@rikyrah:
It’s like a sniveling sidekick crying for the school bully or the queen bee mean girl when s/he finally gets a well deserved comeuppance.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The crazyfication factor doesn’t fail..LOL
hueyplong
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Was wondering when the rapidly aging 27% might morph into a slightly lower number.
I do not believe it is due to minds being changed in the core support group.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The attacks on Vindman are enraging Dems, independents, and half-sane Repubs…
…and it looks like, on social media at least, they’re reminding everyone that this is a GOP (ie, not just trumpov) pattern. See also John Kerry/swiftboating/Purple Heart band-aids, mocking McCain as a POW, and attacking the (Gold Star family) Khans.
Jump on it, Dems. Jump. On. It. We are the party that respects our troops and their service, NOT the trumpublicans.
Jeffro
@peter: Exactly. They troll you with outrage after outrage until something ‘hooks’ your attention…and then they get you outraged about their issues.
There’s a psychology at work there that’s also covered in that book I want to review, ‘Mindf*ck’. Get people angry and they lose their sense of rational thought…VERY easy to manipulate.
J. Squid
@Betty Cracker: Oh, yes. The dual loyalty accusation which was recently suggested was the problem with all Jews. I remember it well because it was, like, 2 fucking months ago.
Make no mistake. This is specifically and pointedly an antisemitic attack. Which they are more than happy to combine with their general cries of, “Following our rules for impeachment is illegitimate!” Because the GOP has been co-opted by nazis, nazi sympathizers and nazi collaborators.
Jeffro
@Jeffro: PS I should add that I’ve seen this at work first-hand with RWNJ dad’s 2nd wife/my stepmom. Classic garden variety quiet left-leaning Dem on most issues. But starting a few years ago, with RWNJ dad’s tv constantly on to Fox and its trolling, she sure went hard right.
As best I can reconstruct, Fox’s trolling on LGBTQ (emphasis on the ‘T’) issues got her worked up and susceptible to the rest o their BS…until now, where one of her current political views is that she thinks the economy was in the toilet until January 21, 2017, when it magically began its ascent into the stratosphere. Not kidding.
jonas
@rikyrah: The administration’s argument is basically that unless you literally say the words “quid pro quo” in the conversation, there was no quid pro quo.
Seems airtight.
catclub
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I bet this phrase is used when they would like to actually meet the requirement, but that would cost more money.
If it actually DOES meet the requirement, then the costing lives part is on the people who wrote the requirements. Which I know from a teensy bit
of experience, is hard to get right.
bluehill
@Mandalay:
Hoping the former prosecutors in House can begin to pressure these guys to roll over. Sondland seems like a good target because he’s got a lot of money to lose.
oatler.
Watching The View right now and of course Meghan McCain is saying “but Hillary Clinton said…” and “my father…”
jonas
@Jeffro:
Given the proven ability of Democrats to quickly coordinate talking points, cut ads, and project a clear, unified message across multiple media platforms to take advantage of a narrative like this while its still hot, I’m sure this will quickly gain traction.
Also, the sky in my world is bright green with pink polkadots.
rikyrah
@Jeffro:
Remember Max Cleland…..
Mai naem mobile
Sean Duffy is around 50 and therefore would have had an opportunity to serve but ofcourse he didnt . He said he was resigning from Congress because the 9th or 10th child his wife had has medical challenges. So why is he on teevee. His wife gave birth a couple of weeks ago. He needs to disappear like they want HRC to disappear. BTW the baby has Downs. Duffy’s wife is close to 50 as well(49IIRC.) I dont care if I sound judgmental but why are you having a kid ar that age when you have 8-9 other kids and you know there’s a significant chance of birth abnormalities? This is not the 1800s with an agricultural economy with high child mortality rates. God did not intend for humans to do this
catclub
@J. Squid:
If I remember correctly, Trump’s version two months ago was kind of weird. It was accusing Jews who are Democrats of not being sufficiently loyal
to the Likud version of Israel. instead they considered the interests of the USA before those of the GOP and Likud.
catclub
@jonas: also requires ‘air quotes’ hand motion. All the best gangsters include that.
jonas
@Jeffro:
Oh, yeah. I hear this all the time, too. The Great Recession began under Obama back in 08 — before he had even been elected, astonishingly enough — and stayed horrible until Trump was elected. It’s up there with how Reagan inherited a massive recession from Carter but reversed it with a bunch of brilliant tax cuts that totally paid for themselves and help defeat the Soviets in terms of ridiculous economic mythology.
rikyrah
@Mary G:
Don’t beat yourself up. How were you wrong, except for maybe that you gave those who voted for Dolt45 the benefit of the doubt?
I always preferred Kay’s evaluation of them. She so clearly broke it down for me soon after the election:
Those who voted for Dolt45 showed THEIR lack of character through their vote for him. He told you who he was, and you voted for him anyway.
Once you start with that….no disappointment needed.
Only anger with those that WILL NEVER EVER BE FORGIVEN for putting our country in this state.
Mai naem mobile
I forgot my original comment about Vindman. The GOP is smearing him in this desperate way because they got nothing else. They have nothing else
Mary G
Vindland, his twin brother, and their grandmother were even in a Ken Burns documentary about the Statue of Liberty as children. It’s in the WaPo sorry I can’t link on this device.
catclub
@jonas: partly ignorance, partly the ‘hack-gap’ that Kevin Drum identified. Republicans were actually more miserable about the economy when a Democrat was president. When Trump was elected, GOP approval of the economy skyrocketed. Approval of the economy by Democrats fell, but not nearly as much. Also, Democrats were willing to complain about the bad economy when it was bad, and Obama was president. The hack gap, again.
Mary G
@rikyrah: ? Thank you. Kay is a treasure of this blog; you are another. ?
Chief Oshkosh
@rikyrah: So close to 27%…
rikyrah
@Mai naem mobile:
Absolutely, nothing else.
Watching LarryO from last night, it’s understandable why they’re scared.
Vindman is military. He did what military folks do.
HE reported it – up the food chain.
Which means that he put it in writing – more than once – his concerns.
Vindman did his duty. Now, the clown who received those warnings – —better decide to lawyer up…cause, he will receive the next subpoena…..
(((CassandraLeo)))
@jimmiraybob: …so, I know this isn’t really the point, and it’s kind of a minor issue in the sea of corruption and antisemitism going on here, but… there’s nothing anarchist about any of this president*’s supporters. The word “anarchism” literally derives from Greek terms meaning “without rulers”, which is in fact a succinct definition of the actual philosophy of anarchism: it strives to eliminate hierarchies, whether of private or public origin – government or business. A person who wants to trade in one set of rulers for another is not an anarchist; so-called “anarcho”-capitalism is an oxymoron resulting from a deliberate (but not particularly successful) attempt to hijack an existing philosophy by right-wingers (they were much more successful coopting “libertarian”, which was coined by the French anarchist-communist Joseph Déjacque as a descriptor for his philosophy).
T’s supporters are, seemingly without exception, quite OK with authoritarianism. It’s difficult to get much further from anarchism than that. The “burn it all down” set, meanwhile, fundamentally misunderstands what anarchism is about. Some of them may want to claim the label of anarchism for themselves, but their understanding of anarchism is half-baked and juvenile at best. If you simply bring the current social order down with nothing to replace it, there’s no guarantee that what replaces it will be better. Given the current state of the world, bringing down governments would simply result in corporations rushing to fill the void. I doubt any of today’s armchair revolutionaries would be very happy with that result.
This is a dichotomy I’ve written about before in radical circles: the builder versus destroyer dichotomy, which corresponds roughly to reformists versus revolutionaries. The latter thinks the entire system is too corrupt to be saved, which to be honest is a view I somewhat sympathise with. But that’s not an excuse for simply disengaging from trying to improve people’s lives on a day-to-day basis. If the current system is impossible to salvage, the proper solution is to make new institutions that can replace the old system, rather than to simply destroy the old one.
A good model for this is Occupy Sandy, a charity that cropped up in the wake of its eponymous storm around 2012. It was centred around ad-hoc organisation on social media, on the principle of finding a need and addressing it. Even the Fuck the Fucking New York Times acknowledged that it was doing better work than a lot of existing charities in addressing people’s needs in the wake of said storm. If you object to existing businesses and governments – an objection I entirely share – then before trying to tear down the latter, it’s important to have something else in place to fill the void before simply trying to pull them out of existence.
Occupy Sandy is a potential model for the sort of infrastructure that could be put in place to stabilise society and avoid the absolute chaos that otherwise might result from the collapse of government (what anarchist Alan Moore contrasted in V for Vendetta as “the Land of Do-As-You-Please” – i.e., anarchy – versus “the Land of Take-What-You-Want” – i.e., chaos). Worker-run co-ops are another potential example on the business side. And there are others.
Anyhow, none of T’s supporters are anarchists, no matter how much a few misguided people among them might want to claim the label for themselves. It’s possible to support existing politicians within the system and still qualify as an anarchist (I’m supporting Warren and would also be perfectly happy with Harris), but those politicians have to support policies conducive to the kind of organisation necessary to create anarchism. The chaos of the T administration* hasn’t assisted that in the slightest. If it’s necessary to organise against the government putting kids in cages, then there’s a lot less time to create Occupy Sandy-like charities and the like.
I actually have a lot more I could say about this, but I need to head off to work, so I’ll have to cut it short here. If the thread’s still active and I remember when I return home, I might add more then.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@jonas: …does this mean that if you don’t say the word “murder”, it doesn’t count as murder? Asking for a president* who wants to shoot a guy on Fifth Avenue.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
Mandalay
@gene108:
The exquisite irony being, of course, that Petraeus really did betray us. He betrayed not only his wife, but also national security, and he made himself a potential blackmail target, and continued to deny everything even though they had the goods on him.
Even the RWNJs who had been pushing him as a possible president tossed him into the sewer. He’s so tainted even Trump wouldn’t have him. And now the vile fucker wanders from some non-profit to some think tank to some partnership, shunned by polite society and all decent Americans. Fuck him.
Kay
Their sense of entitlement extends to their belief that people have a duty to love them. They are not only entitled to positions of power, wealth and access, unearned, from birth, but they also petulantly demand we like them. Because they’re owed that.
MattF
NYT has a rundown of RW smears against Vindman.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@catclub: In many cases that person was me, though sometimes I found my requirement had changed in crucial ways after it left my hands.
rikyrah
@Kay:
You have said this for awhile, Kay, and you are correct. It galls – their sense that we MUST LOVE THEM
Kay
It would just be delightful if the big spoiler plan ended up taking votes from Trump. She is a Republican though- she’s much closer to that end than my end. They know it when they see it.
Barbara
Just saw this in the Washington Post. Apparently, Vindman has a twin, who is also a ranking officer in the U.S. military, working for the NSC. Even more remarkably, his family happened to be filmed as part of Ken Burns’ documentary on New York City. washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/29/fundamentally-un-american-attacks-alexander-vindman/
I remember how I nearly cried during the penultimate scene in Moscow on the Hudson, when Robin Williams cries in despair about how hard life in the U.S. is, on the fourth of July, in a diner, and the other people in the restaurant reply to him by quoting from the Declaration of Independence.
Roger Moore
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
The way I most frequently hear “Support the Troops” uses is more of “Support the war”. It’s a way of squelching any criticism of the reasons for or conduct of the war because doing so is supposedly demoralizing to the troops.
Jojo
@MattF: Duffy is another embarrassment from my state, right up there with half-wit Trump mouthpiece Ron Johnson, who seems desperate to insert himself into this med in the dumbest way possible.
Yutsano
I keep seeing all this and I wonder. What happens when Herr Drumpf is gone? He’s not a healthy man. He’s in the most trouble he’s ever been in his life. One way or another his reign will end. And then what? What does conservatism stand for at that point? Republicans have been exposed for most of the country as either sycophants or cowards. When the cult leader dies, what happens then? Because this HAS to end.
@Jojo: You still have cheese curds. Tasty tasty cheese curds. I am so looking forward to that in a couple of days.
catclub
@Roger Moore: Support the troops… bring them home! has never quite caught on.
Mary G
@Yutsano: Axios says on Twitter that Republicans are quietly worried about losing the 2020 elections – President, Senate, and House – in a landslide. That’s what they deserve. A timeout of a decade or two, or the party going under completely. OK, that’s a pipedream I have.
catclub
@Yutsano:
memory hole, plus the Democrats are worse.
Except for not blaming Obama, but Bush, for the bad economy for three plus years,
it was effectively 18months before ‘Democrats are worse’ and the House election in 2010.
catclub
@Mary G:
If the Democrats cannot fix everything in 18 months, it is right back to the GOP being the hope of the nation.
Happy to be wrong.
Ladyraxterinok
Haven’t read comments.
Has anyone noted lt colonel testifying and his twin were in a docu about statue of liberty and immigrants’ reactions?
Tweet with links to photos of twins at different ages was at democraticunderground this morn
JR
I know this isn’t a sports-focused site, but there are some Deadspin readers here.
In any event, it seems like the site is going into a VC-driven death spiral at this moment.
Crashman
@JR: Yeah this is really tragic. I love that site and just about everyone who writes there, especially David Roth. Damn VCs…
Elizabelle
@catclub:
I think you are going to be wrong. Particularly if we see some meaningful redistricting reform and voting rights legislation. The GOP has not been the hope of the nation for a long goddamned time. It’s why they have to cheat and hoover up foreign money.
And that kind of pessimism and cynicism is what makes me want to reduce my Balloon Juice habit. Lighten up
you fucker. Can you not see how hard it is for us to be living through these times? Why do you have to try to make it seem worse?Ladyraxterinok
@clay:
He and family left Ukraine when he and twin were 3 yrs old, I believe. Incredible long-term planning there!
Steve in the ATL
@JR: it’s Drew Magary and a bunch of third tier sports pundits
Steve rolling in the CHA in a convertible Mustang GT
catclub
Michael Gerson! I have not kept up.
catclub
@JR:
Venture Capital? VietCong? Oh you mean how the site refreshes to last friday?
catclub
@Elizabelle:
I just thought I was being realistic and stating facts. – Obama had 18 months to fix everything. No pessimism or cynicism.
Jeffro
@Mary G: they SHOULD be worried…trumpov still has over a year to go! A year! And they got shellacked in 2018 no matter how they try to spin it.
No wonder we have so many Dems running and others thinking about getting in. 2020 is quite likely (knock on wood, I know, I know…) to be a blowout if trumpov’s still somehow holding on.
A rational party would care about actually winning instead of kowtowing to a psycho. Even if they do the right thing for the wrong reasons, it’s still the right thing for them and the country. But…please proceed, GOP
J. Squid
@catclub:
IOW, Jews SHOULD be loyal to another country first and foremost. A distinction without a difference to be sure.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@catclub:
Yup. Remember, IIRC two months before the 2010 midterms, St Stewart giving a woman “Medal of Reasonableness” to the woman who whined at Obama because he hand’t fixed everything yet? And all the tote-baggers who applauded because Stewart was their hip TeeVee friend?
zhena gogolia
@Ladyraxterinok:
Sleeper cell!
Jeffro
@Kay: That’s awesome! Run, Gabbard, run! =)
Elizabelle
@catclub: I was harsh, but did you notice that baud was making a lot of comments along those lines before he disappeared? He seemed thoroughly demoralized, and I thought he might have left this blog as a sanity break. Or permanently. This stuff can break your heart.
Yes, Obama did have 18 months to fix everything. With Fox News and the rightwing media lying throughout. What is different is that we’ve all suffered through 1,000 plus days of Donald Trump, and the GOP does not get to reset that. We see how the Republican evangelicals went for him; welcomed him as the second coming of Christ. I suspect a lot more is going to come out about how rotten that party is, and how they have rotted the institutions that most Americans really don’t pay much attention to.
I think the GOP and their media enablers are putting themselves in the position of the French aristocrats who fought societal change for too long and got swept away, brutally. Of course, they may be heading for enacting a dictatorship too. But what they’re doing is not as under the radar, any longer.
MattF
@catclub: Gerson identifies as a WEP (White Evangelical Protestant), but only just:
The Moar You Know
@Yutsano: Another sociopath will find the GOP. And likely won’t be nearly as stupid or publicly objectionable as Trump.
I do not understand why you think this HAS to end. It does not. Trump has given the GOP everything they’ve ever asked for. Why on earth would they want this to stop?
Mandalay
@Kay:
She’s an odd mix to be sure, and I assume that she only ran as a Democrat in Hawaii because she couldn’t possibly win as a Republican.
But for all Gabbard’s many failings, I admire her complete and open lack of fealty to Israel, while most other Democratic candidates still guzzle Israel’s cock, or stay quiet and hope they don’t get asked about their position. Of course that makes her dead meat as a Republican (and perfect as an independent?).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
catclub
@Elizabelle: Thanks for the good words. Cheers.
Elizabelle
@MattF: They’re not just sheeple under a steeple, they’re crazy ass lemmings.
Most younger people see right through them, too.
Yutsano
@J. Squid: I doth beggeth thine pardon?
catclub
@MattF: Does anybody else remember Sydney Harris and “Majority of One”?
Yutsano
Frakking work computer! Moderation request on aisle 12.
catclub
@Mandalay:
I am amazed by this. How did the Democrats in Hawaii not notice? Are there any Democrats running in Mississippi as Republicans?
sdhays
@Mandalay: Since she’s essentially pledging fealty to Russia, it’s not really a step up.
p.a.
@Ladyraxterinok: Those devious Ukraine* (while still part of the Soviet Union) operatives!
*They even got hold of Obama’s time-travel machine!
MattF
@catclub: It used to happen, now and then, in the old days. Jacob Javits ran as a Republican in NY because he wouldn’t do fealty to the Dem organization in NY, and said so publicly. But ‘liberal Republican’ is an oxymoron nowadays. It wouldn’t surprise me if the same thing happened to ‘conservative Democrat’.
West of the Rockies
@rikyrah:
Well said. But I doubt any of the rat bastards want forgiveness. They’re too stupid and vile to know they should.
PJ
@The Moar You Know: If the 2020 election brings a landslide, followed by many, many trials of the guilty, and the GOP, as a brand, becomes toxic due to Trump and the Republicans in Congress, their supporters will not disappear and will coalesce somewhere else. White supremacists aren’t going away, though they may become quieter, and the wealthy, abetted by the media, will seek to co-opt and at least moderate Democratic efforts at taxation and regulation. The hard part will still be in front of us.
Miss Bianca
@JR: VC?
Not a huge sports fan, but I think Deadspin has some damn fine writers.
stinger
@(((CassandraLeo))): Apparently so. A third example of how you have to use certain words or it doesn’t count: If the [real] president doesn’t use the phrase “war on terror”, then he isn’t fighting for our freedoms.
Of course, this argument is brought to you by the folks who can IGNORE the words “a well regulated Militia”.
Ladyraxterinok
@Mary G:
Read somewhere that as a result of Nazis saying they were obeying orders—US military branches all hav major rule that they are NEVER required to obey an illegal/ unjust command
Yutsano
@Ladyraxterinok: I believe that rule pre-dates WWII. But this is definite Adam L. Silverman territory.
Captain C
@Mai naem mobile:
Also, if this were the 1800s and kid number 9 or 10, mom and dad would likely be in their early to mid thirties, at most. Pushing 50 was when they might see their 9th or 10th grandchild.
Yutsano
@J. Squid: Excusez moi?
Ladyraxterinok
@J. Squid:
IIRC in 19th century Germany it was frequently claimed that Jews in Germany could never be ‘real’ true patriotic Germans because they were first loyal to some international Jewish identity.
There was also some odd claim that they couldn’t even speak correct German. Never understood rationale for that.
It drove many so-called good Germans mad that Heinrich Heine, a Jew, was considered a major German author!
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: I got told I was tone policing. I got told I was telling people what they could and couldn’t say. I got told that people need a place to voice their anxieties.
This blog’s comment section is not a place to look for a positive take on the world. Some of it is despair. Some of it is cynicism. I have largely quit commenting.
clay
@Ladyraxterinok: Just like when Obama’s mother faked that birth announcement in Hawaii, just so he could run for President decades later!
Litlebritdifrnt
@Mai naem mobile: It was reported on our news the other day that a couple in Morecambe, Lancashire (next town over) are about to welcome their 22nd child. The Duggars are pikers compared to this couple.
Mandalay
So Pelosi had the perfect response to this tweet from Trump this morning:
Pelosi’s response:
Short, focused and brutal.
What’s especially bad for Trump is that the Ukraine call is easy for the public to understand, and screaming “READ THE TRANSCRIPT!” in all caps isn’t going to help him in the slightest.
Ksmiami
@Mary G: I want them smashed, burned, and the graves salted- Republicanism is a failed ancient regime for old white male privilege and needs to die
stinger
@Elizabelle: Intentionally or not, you’ve made me think “Don of the Thousand Days”, which both gives me a laugh and serves as a reminder that it may not turn out so well for him! Only Trump is both Anne and the vain, bloated, entitled, and constantly enraged Henry VIII.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus:
At least there’s some upside to this.
Zing!
Steve rolling in his 5.0
Top down so my hair can blow
Ladyraxterinok
@Mai naem mobile:
‘Be fruitful and multiply,’ it’s in the Bible!!!
See whole creepy quiverful movement. People against the movement have a blog No Longer Quivering on patheos
rikyrah
we need a new thread..please
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
If the Democrats do win in a landslide and are as ruthless about gerrymandering as the Republicans were, it could indeed put the Republicans in a world of hurt for a good long time. I’m sure the Supreme Court would suddenly discover that gerrymandering was indeed unconstitutional and something the courts could intercede about, but just getting rid of all the election rigging the Republicans have been doing would do a lot to hurt them.
Ladyraxterinok
@Mary G:
Amen and amen and amen!
Leto
@Mary G:
I’m all for this. The current party is just batshit insane. If the “Never Trumpers” want to break off and try to salvage what they can, sure. We need a healthy 2 party system but until that time, the adults need to take charge and the piss-ant white men, with their enablers, can sit the fuck down and stfu for about 3-4 generations.
Gravenstone
@Yutsano: I believe that comment ties back to an earlier statement that Trump attacked US Jews for having the temerity of not placing the interests of Likud (and by extension Netanyahu) first.
catclub
@Mandalay:
I would like to read an actual transcript. What they released is not one.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Thank you. Yes we do! We’ve been abandoned.
dmsilev
@Mandalay: It still boggles the mind that the geniuses at the White House thought releasing that memo/summary of the phone call was going to help their case.
Jeffro
God help us, Lanny Davis and Anthony Scaramucci have a joint op-ed (and I mean ‘joint’ also in the sense that they must have been high) calling for impeachment…but then no trial unless at least 20 GOP Senators agree to ‘have an open mind’ about the evidence that is presented. Otherwise, no deal, just impeach him and leave it kinda sorta hanging there until the election, which they somehow seem to think will be fair and a guaranteed loss for trumpov.
Say what?
Why the eff would we let trumpublican senators off the hook like that? Much less trumpov himself?
Gentlemen…the guy’s getting impeached because he is ALREADY VIOLATING THE LAW regarding the upcoming election. Why would we just give him the equivalent of a slap…no wait…not even a slap on the wrist?
What kind of crazy-crap crappity crap is this?
WaPo, can I haz my op-ed space now please? Just one? I will give you clicks beyond imagining. It’s going to be titled, “Hell HELL HELLLLLLLL no, we’re not going to stop short of following through on this constitutionally-designed process for removing a proven crook from the highest office in the land. HELLLLLLLLLL NO.” (I know the editors will want to tighten that up a bit but it really needs to stay ‘as is’)
Davis and Scaramucci: impeach him but then that’s it, don’t put his Republican senate enablers in a bind!
NOPE
Mandalay
@MattF:
After getting some serious blowback for that stunt, Duffy has reconsidered, and tweeted this:
So he tried to flip flop, but he’s getting eviscerated in that twitter thread. Too bad, so sad.
PPCLI
@catclub: This can’t be repeated enough: Given how bad the document they did release is, the actual record of the call is sure to be 100 times worse.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: I am good with packing the Supreme Court, and then instituting the plan that USSC terms last 18 years, and justices are replaced on a rotating basis.
Cannot ever allow a criminal senator like Mitch McConnell to steal another Supreme Court seat.
If it can ever be proven that Trump cheated and was not honestly elected, I think Gorsuch and Kavanaugh need to come off the Court, and all judges rammed through need to come up for a fresh vote.
janesays
@Karen Weisz: Yes, he was on The Real World, as was his wife Rachel Campos. I was a freshman in college when she was on and remember her being the recently graduated college Republican in the house (notable because that season was shot in San Francisco) who nonetheless became close with Pedro Zamora, the gay activist with AIDS, though she initially kept her distance from him because of her idiotic misconceptions about the contagiousness of HIV, no doubt informed by her rightwing 1980s Catholic upbringing. She also hooked up with that douchebag Puck on the show (it was a few years before she ever met her husband). God, it’s depressing that I remember actually watching that show, though I was just a recent high school grad at the time and we didn’t quite have the internet yet.
Elizabelle
@stinger: Yes. I think of Anne Boleyn. And JFK.
Ladyraxterinok
@Kay:
How can anyone make such statements when today everyone in the world can watch and read what is going on in real time. It’s like their ‘brain’ is stuck in the 70s , and they believe the rest of the world is there too.
Jeffro
@Jeffro: It’s basically, “if many of the jurors (ie, the Republicans in the Senate) won’t fulfill their oaths to support and defend the Constitution because they are brainless, spineless dictator-loving weasels…we couldn’t possibly make them vote on trumpov’s guilt or innocence and be held accountable for that vote”
Screw that. Let them say in advance that they’re going to vote to acquit no matter what. Let them actually go ahead and vote that way. But…to abort the whole process when it gets to the Senate, just because the ‘jury pool’ is ‘self-tainted’ and won’t uphold their oaths?
MattF
@Jeffro: Not the Onion!
Jeffro
@Elizabelle: Agree in full. Pack SCOTUS and any other court (if that’s possible) to balance out the unqualified whack jobs that have been appointed by an illegitimate president* installed by a hostile foreign power’s attack on our country.
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: I think a lot of people have quit commenting as much.
Do you love wallowing in despair and hearing that we’re going to lose all the time, or always in the end, no matter what, because the Republicans are so powerful? I do not. Further, I think that is idiocy, and we suffer through enough day to day under this illegitimate regime.
I am pleasantly surprised the worm has turned and that the both sides pundits have been called out. Not enough, but it is happening.
Barbara
@janesays: This is what I totally missed because I had toddlers and a full time job at the same time.
Jeffro
@MattF: Even the Onion has standards, concern for its’ readers’ blood pressure, etc.
“He’s guilty, Guilty, GUILTY…but you know…unless the ‘jury pool’ – the ones that swore an oath to the Constitution – can find it in their hearts to publicly declare they’ll be open-minded, we should just let it go. We’d rather see him lose bigly at the ballot box.”
F THAT
Dorothy A. Winsor
The Ds are out with their impeachment procedures. Here’s a fact sheet. Among other things, it allows staff counsels to do the questioning.
janesays
@Elizabelle:
The first thing will be extremely difficult to accomplish (because it would require elimination of the filibuster, and I’m neither convinced that Schumer is willing to do that, nor am I convinced they have the votes in the caucus to replace him as Majority Leader), and the second thing is all but impossible to accomplish (because it would require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which may never happen again in our lifetimes given the national polarization). I’d love to see both of those things happen, but I’m not holding my breath.
Dorothy A. Winsor
And here’s the 8 page resolution.
Elizabelle
@janesays: We have to try.
Barbara
@janesays: It would be easier to add members or require rotating panels, making it like a “super appellate” but not quite a Supreme Court. Right now, in the federal court system, judges can take senior status after age 65 but no later than age 70. They keep working just as they always did, but a new judge is also appointed. Or you could just increase the number of justices, which has not always been 9. There is no reason that 9 people should hold such power. Fifteen would work just as well.
dww44
@Jeffro: From somewhere living in Trumplandia and whose elected representatives are wholly in the Trump tank, I honestly thing they’ve lost the ability to think for themselves and/or so committed to their partisan view that they are now constitutionally unable to not support Trump. David Perdue was front and center with Trump at the Nats game 2 nights ago.
I subscribe to the view that we have to wipe them out in 2020. Only problem here is that the GOP is spending $150 million tax dollars on new voting machines with no paper trail (only a paper record) and the AJC just announced that the new SofS has announced a purge of 360, 000 voters to take place sometime soon. So, for those of us in a red state, suppression is very much front and center.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@janesays:
all of which assumes winning the Senate majority, which is a heavy lift, and under the best-case scenarios that majority includes Sinema, Manchin, Kelly, Carper, Coons, Hickenlooper, Bennet, Jones, and Angus King, who might (I don’t really know) might be a question mark. Hell, Feinstein?
ETA: all of which is to say: Can we focus on wining the fucking White House and Senate before we start creating new purity tests and counting chickens unto the seventh generation?
Citizen Alan
@catclub:
Yes, actually. William Waller is the son of Democratic Governor Bill Waller (the man who among other things shut down the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission), and just a few months ago, he forced Tate Reeves (current Lt. Gov. and Trump toady) into a run-off in the GOP Gubernatorial primary in which he lost but performed respectably, IMO. Had he become governor, I imagine Waller would have conducted himself as any Blue Dog Dem Governor, and he’d probably be to the left of the actual Dem nominee, Jim Hood, on some issues.
Elizabelle
New thread up. TaMara’s got a Snow Day/Open thread post.
@Barbara: Those are good suggestions, too. The current situation is what is untenable. And it is ridiculous to have a cretin who lost the popular vote by 3 million choosing 2 new Supreme Court justices, and dog hopes not one further.
When said USSC justices may sit in judgement of questions surrounding his impeachment. I think Gorsuch and Kavanaugh should both be forced to recuse. They are beholden to Trump and utter partisans.
And I still await the morning we wake up and find out more about former Supreme Kennedy and his Deutsche Banking son. Would be lovely to see them in criminal peril/perp walk/jail.
PJ
@Elizabelle:
From your lips to the FSM’s many tentacles
oatler.
@janesays: Chuck Klosterman wrote a scholarly thesis he called The Puck Factor in his “Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs” collection.
The Moar You Know
@Mandalay: His voters, including the mass of college-educated ones, are not the “read the details” type.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: I too often tire of the “Woe is me” vibe.
Mr. Mack
Nicolle Wallace just called Ingraham and Yoo “chicken-shit.” On live TV. Made my day.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL:
You have hair?
Steve in the ATL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I do! Though it’s mostly gray now. Damn kids. You can ask the many jackals who weren’t “rearranging their sock drawers” when I was in town.
catclub
@Jeffro: I think you may have misunderstood what their intent was. I will tell my interpretation.
If there are NOT 20 GOP senators who will approach the evidence with an open mind, the trial in the Senate will be a show trial with a foregone conclusion – Trump IS INNOCENT OF ALL CHARGES. That may not be the best result for quashing his re-election hopes.
But if you have gone into that trial and KNOW that not even 20 GOP senators will give the evidence a fair hearing, it will be viewed differently.
Maybe that show trial that ends in Trump IS INNOCENT OF ALL CHARGES. will still be bad for Trump, but i can see how this might put some GOP senators in a box.
On the third hand, they have come up with a ploy to put GOP senators in a box – either refuse to say you will give the evidence a fair hearing,
or risk a primary for saying you WILL give it a fair hearing.
Unfortunately, I would expect the senators will dodge this ploy. And it will not have any impact.
Fourthly, is this already assuming how all Democrats will vote? Before any evidence has been presented? That seems a bit … presumptuous.
Perhaps the idea is too cunning by half.
...now I try to be amused
@catclub:
Use a slogan Kerry could have used in 2004:
“Support the troops… elect them a better commander-in-chief.”
sgrAstar
@low-tech cyclist: Berkeley should certainly kick Yoo the fuck out. I’m a pretty big donor and I’m trying to raise the roof about his truly despicable behavior. He also advised the trump administration on how to roll back PBO’s National Monument designations for Bear’s Ears and GrandStaircase/Escalante. Rotting in hell is too good for that tool.
?
Uncle Cosmo
@Elizabelle:
So am I. The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 looks like a good start. Only 4 of the current Justices will be older than 70 years 6 months as of 20 January 2021 (Thomas, RBG, Breyer, Alito) but that ought to suffice.
Which would require amending the Constitution. Good luck with that.
Elizabelle
@Uncle Cosmo: Well, we will start with the packing …
Uncle Cosmo
@Uncle Cosmo: It saddens me to see how many great (or at least interesting) ideas on how the government ought to be reformed or reformulated get tossed out here without any serious exploration of how hard it would be politically to put those ideas into place.
It seems that among all the clever, entertaining and (not infrequently) informative Jackals, no one here can speak with authority out of a truly broad understanding of the American system of government and its possibilities and limitations. At best we have a very few talented semi-pros with experience limited to their localities and/or specific areas of expertise (e.g., Adam, Cheryl, David) in the midst of a horde of political naifs and neophytes.
(In some ways it reminds me of an NFL team fan site I also frequent, swarmed by casual fans posting “Sign this guy!” or “Cut that clown!” or “Run this play!” or “Fire that coach!”, as if they knew better than anyone else what the team should do. At the end of the day most of us will credit that team officials know a lot more than we do, are [more or less] competent & want to do what’s best for the team & its followers. I wish I had as much faith in our overall confidence in our party leaders, outside of [maybe] Speaker Pelosi, may the hammer stay in her hands…)
jimmiraybob
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Yes, they may want to burn it all down but they all still want whatever’s left to be ruled by Dear leader. I hereby retract “anarcho” from the coalition and am inserting Galtist.
J. Squid
@Yutsano:
Pardon? Nah. I’m just bloviating my opinion of how the two things are the same thing. Because it sure seems like the same thing to me.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@jimmiraybob: Galtist is 100% appropriate and I hereby co-sign this amendment. (Ayn Rand sure wrote a lot of pernicious crap, didn’t she?)
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
Vet
@jonas: Good knowledge. They cried hero until some believed. Then Ollie shows up at the NRA then gets outed from them. It’s like Hillery using her impeached husband as a character reference in her campaign.