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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Russiagate Open Thread: Another Day, Another ‘Snow’ Storm…

Russiagate Open Thread: Another Day, Another ‘Snow’ Storm…

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dc braces for blizzard of evidence - walt handelsman

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Reader Interactions

64Comments

  1. 1.

    SFAW

    #TreasonTrump should be a hashtag, if it isn’t already. [No, I have no idea how Twitter works. So sue me.] It’ll be a trifecta with #MoscowMitch (or #TraitorTurtle), and #LeningradLindsey.

  3. 3.

    SFAW

    @zhena gogolia:

    Every U.S. citizen needs to watch it.

    And Cillizza, too

    ETA: By the way, has anyone EVER seen the Traitor-in-Chief’s “long form” birth certificate? I certainly haven’t. Considering that his mother came here to have her “anchor baby,” maybe Sheriff Joe can send a team to Hawaii NYC to investigate.

  4. 4.

    laura

    The second Oval Office meeting with Lavrov. American press barred from covering it. The follow-on from yesterday’s meeting between Putin and Zelensky.

    Half of us have our hair on fire over this and half seem to think this is great. Cillizza opines both sides.

    American Democracy literally hangs by a slender thread.

  5. 5.

    PST

    My dog got me up, as usual, for a walk at the crepuscule of dawn. I should start taking pictures. The play of dawn light on clouds behind the tall buildings and many cranes is dramatic.

  6. 6.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    #TrumpTreason or #TraitorTrump

    It’s really sad how ‘standards’ have fallen since the days of Benedict Arnold, also, too.

  7. 7.

    donnah

    Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress seem to be the two elements. They aren’t going for bribery. I hope these are the most provable and carry the most weight.

    I’m glad Swalwell dropped out of the Presidential race. He’s done well on this and other committees.

  8. 8.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    @SFAW: Trump put up a “birth certificate” during his pre-presidential obsession with Obama’s BC.

     

    It said that Trump was born in JAMAICA.

     

    Explains why he’s such a jerk chicken.

  10. 10.

    SFAW

    @Snarki, child of Loki:

     

    At least Arnold gave something up (i.e., his leg) in service of his country. The only sacrifice(s) that the Traitor-in-Chief has made is/are a few rounds of golf and (maybe) a couple of scoops of ice cream.

  12. 12.

    SFAW

    @Snarki, child of Loki:

    I never saw it. I think you might be making it all up, to cover for the Traitor-in-Chief. As you always do. [I’d also call you a “commie,” but in some quarters, that’s no longer a bad thing.]

    But in case the alleged BC appears, maybe Assrocket, or one of his morons minions can check the kerning on the purported “birth certificate.”

  14. 14.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    You might be right about the ice cream, but I thought I recalled one weekend where he had to stay home in the White House because he thought Congress was being mean to him. Of course, it would not surprise me if I were wrong about that.

  17. 17.

    sdhays

    @SFAW: He’s claimed before that his father is German. Maybe it was an instance of him not lying/getting confused by his brainworms.

    We need to get to the bottom of this.

  18. 18.

    JR

    Obstruction of Congress, really? The “moderate” democrats need to learn a thing or two about messaging. Maybe they can talk to the guys who got kicked out in 2010 about bucking/holding up party agenda.

  21. 21.

    Anne Laurie

    @zhena gogolia: Why are they pulling their punches?

    Because if they wait for Trump to stop committing new crimes before charging him, we’ll be waiting a looooong time.

    Better to impeach on the strongest couple of charges, right now, and lance the nasty GOP boil on our suffering nation’s butt.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:  

    I am extremely lucky. I have stitches in my head — and probably a concussion — and a compression fracture in my lower back without any neurological damage but which is requiring loverly pain meds. Thanks for all good wishes. I’ll be around here and the shebeen will reopen soon

  24. 24.

    germy

    I think for Christmas, he’s gonna give him Afghanistan

    Wasn’t Russia ruined by their adventures in that destroyer of empires?  Maybe if #45 tries to give it to them, they’ll regift it to China?

  25. 25.

    germy

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I am extremely lucky. I have stitches in my head — and probably a concussion — and a compression fracture in my lower back without any neurological damage but which is requiring loverly pain meds. Thanks for all good wishes. I’ll be around here and the shebeen will reopen soon— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) December 10, 2019

  27. 27.

    Shalimar

    I’m glad Trump always caves to petty dictators.  If he actually followed through with any of his threats against North Korea, it would leave millions dead.

  31. 31.

    Gin & Tonic

    @laura:

    The follow-on from yesterday’s meeting between Putin and Zelensky.

    Not just a follow-on, a Trumpian humiliation for Zelenskyy. Russia briefs the US President on the status of talks to resolve a conflict which for the last five fucking years it has said it is not a party to, while the leader of the country which has lost 13,000 lives in defense of its territorial integrity gets no say.

    A fucking travesty.

  33. 33.

    Betty Cracker

    @zhena gogolia: I’ve got a theory on that, which may appear in a post later as an aside. I think Pelosi wants to wrap the inquiry up and send it to the senate sooner rather than later in part because the Trump/GOP impeachment defense is to project the crimes they’re guilty of onto Biden. Will it work? One hopes not, but this country elected Donald Fucking Trump, so who knows? Maybe Pelosi figures it’s better to see if that attack lands now rather than after the party chooses a nominee.

  35. 35.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    The Ds are on the TV now issuing their articles of impeachment. Only two: obstruction of justice and abuse of power.

    I’m surprised bribery isn’t in there since it’s specifically mentioned in the Constitution, but Pelosi, Schiff, and Nadler are better at this than I am.

  36. 36.

    OzarkHillbilly

    ‘We were lied to’: bankruptcy leaves truckers stranded as holidays near

    Andrea Smith has a daughter who turns eight on 20 December, five days before Christmas. Now the trucker’s birthday and Christmas plans have been thrown into disarray by the largest trucking firm bankruptcy in history.

    “I’m not sure what’s going to happen or if I’ll get to be home if I’m able to find another job quickly. I’m crushed,” said Smith, a truck operator for Celadon, hours after the giant trucking firm declared it was going out of business.

    Smith is one of about 4,000 truck drivers across the US who were notified on Monday that their employer was ceasing operations after filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The filing makes it the largest bankruptcy in trucking history. The logistics carrier, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, reported annual revenues more than $1bn as recently as 2015. But a federal fraud investigation, huge debts and the “enormous challenges” in the industry, according to the chief executive, Paul Svindland, have forced the trucking company off the road. Many of the truck drivers were left stranded in the midst of making deliveries, as they await receiving bus tickets from the company to return home, now jobless and left without benefits two weeks before Christmas. Their fuel cards were shut off, and many were reported left without any directions on where or how to turn in their rigs.
    …………………………………………
    Celadon has its own issues. The bankruptcy comes just days after Celadon’s former chief financial officer Bobby Lee Peavler and former chief operating officer Eric Meek were arrested and indicted on nine federal charges each involving a $60m fraud scheme, including conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud and conspiracy to make false statements to the company’s accountants and falsify records. The company also has debts of $293m.

    But Celadon’s collapse also comes at a difficult moment for the industry. Thousands of truckers have lost their job in 2019 as the freight market stalled and “spot” prices for shipping – those bought on the open market rather than as part of a contract – fell. A slowdown in a variety of markets, including housing and autos, and the impact of the US’s ongoing trade wars have also contributed to the drop.

    About 795 companies shutdown in the first three quarters of 2019, according to transportation industry data firm Broughton Capital, three times the total number of trucker failures for the same period in 2018.

    I wonder how many trump loving truckers can do the math.

  40. 40.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty Cracker: I think she’s just following the KISS Principle: Keep It Simple Stupid. Considering how short the attention span of the American electorate, I suspect she’s right to.

  41. 41.

    Betty Cracker

    @germy: Honest to dog, that would not surprise me. Pirro is a braying loon who sounds like the world’s most obnoxious barfly, but she’s braying Trump’s praises, which is qualification enough.

    Trump had a hissy fit on Twitter this morning about Wray, whose remarks reflected the content of the actual IG report, not the Fox News happy talk. So yeah, even though he’s straight out of central casting, Trump wants to replace him.

  45. 45.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: my understanding (meager though it is) is that these are just the first of the articles, with more possible later this week or later this year. That would follow the Nixon precedent of ratcheting up pressures over a period of time.

    But who really knows.

  46. 46.

    p.a.

    Trump admin corruption  reminds me of Stalin’s “one death is a tragedy.  One million deaths is a statistic” comment.

    p.s. Is that comment documented, or apochryphal?

  48. 48.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @p.a.: I am reading Bloodlands right now. Pretty sure that quote comes up in it, tho I can’t say for sure as I’m reading a lot of different stuff right now.

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud:   When I was picking up concrete last week I had a couple guys load it up for me. One of them said, “I like your stickers. I like your hat too.” The other smiled and nodded in agreement.

    It doesn’t happen often but it does happen more often than I would expect. Nice to know I am not alone out here.

  52. 52.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Gin & Tonic: Speaking as one who thinks the holidays are just another pothole in the road of life I can only say, “Yep, a real page turner.” Seriously, a very good book.

  53. 53.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Finally got to read about that Houston PD Chief. What can I say. Why don’t you stop beating around the bush Chief, and tell us how you really feel.

  54. 54.

    Gin & Tonic

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yes, of course it is. Timothy Snyder is not just an excellent historian (with a reading knowledge of eight languages), but an excellent writer as well. It’s just a really tough subject.

  55. 55.

    Miss Bianca

    @Gin & Tonic: I listened to that book on audio. Man, it was a hard read. I kept thinking that his descriptions of the starvation in Ukraine sounded like a horror movie.

  57. 57.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Miss Bianca: Snyder had access to a lot of archives after the demise of the Soviet Union, but the pioneering work on the famine (Holodomor) was done by Robert Conquest in Harvest of Sorrow. Although, admittedly, Snyder’s focus was the period after that.

  58. 58.

    Gin & Tonic

    @OzarkHillbilly: Understandable. If you don’t have some connection to that time and place, it’s hard to get through. I struggled with and stalled out in a book on the Great Leap Forward for pretty much that reason – deprivation and starvation and death, on and on, page after page, in a country I have no ancestral links to (well, not in the last 800 years, anyway.)

  59. 59.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Gin & Tonic: An old friend’s family came over from Lithuania post WWII. They lived it. I only got to hear a couple stories 2nd hand after her mother’s death. Her father ended up being conscripted into the Wehrmacht as a doctor and followed the campaigns back and forth across the eastern front, leaving his wife behind to survive as best she could (and almost didn’t, another worthy story). After the war, they were not exactly welcome in Stalin’s USSR and managed to escape, ending up here, becoming a small town doctor and raising 4 kids.

  60. 60.

    jonas

    @OzarkHillbilly: I wonder how many trump loving truckers can do the math.

    Like the midwestern farmers who are trying to figure out how to liquidate their bankrupt farms this holiday season, they can do the numbers. And they don’t care. “Yeah, he destroyed my life with his stupid economic policies. On the other hand, libs and minorities are being pwned daily, so it’s really been worth it.”

  61. 61.

    J R in WV

    @Gin & Tonic:

     

    Yeah, as a youth, I read the Rise and Fall by Shirer, more detail about the Holocaust than I care to remember, Leon Uris’ novels about the Warsaw Uprising and the creation wars of Israel…

    Then I gave it up, although I have read some great autobiographical work on WW II in the S Pacific. Shame so much Human history is so splattered with horror. Doesn’t speak well of our species.

    But then, there are lots of kind people and acts not well documented, because kindness isn’t as remarkable as all those towering pyramids of skulls created by several different cultures.

  63. 63.

    Gin & Tonic

    @J R in WV: Sometimes heading down one of these rabbit holes revealed by a thread here yields a gold nugget. To wit, economist and Sovietologist Peter Wiles, writing in The New York Review of Books in an exchange with Robert Conquest about an obscure point of 1930’s Soviet demography: “Pedantry is a duty, nay a pleasure, at all times.”

  64. 64.

    Tehanu

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Russia briefs the US President on the status of talks to resolve a conflict which for the last five fucking years it has said it is not a party to, while the leader of the country which has lost 13,000 lives in defense of its territorial integrity gets no say.

    A fucking travesty.

    Damn right. I’m so sick of that fat bastard Dump and his smirking KGB handler.

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