Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

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

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

We still have time to mess this up!

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

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

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Let there be snark.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Jailbroken iPhone (Open Thread)

Jailbroken iPhone (Open Thread)

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Well:

Back before Trump under-bussed Rudy’s goons, back when Parnas and Fruman were very much on the Trump train, Parnas mused about his son to a New Yorker reporter:

He ended our nearly ninety-minute meeting on a wistful note, saying that he looked forward to returning home to Florida and spending more time with his wife and son. “He’s the real story,” Parnas said, of Aaron. “My son graduated college at sixteen. He’s graduating law school at twenty. He’s about to be a lawyer. He’s doing some fascinating things. He wants to be President one day.”

Maybe his son told Parnas that John Dean’s offspring would have a better shot at the Oval Office than G. Gordon Liddy’s kid.

Reader Interactions

142Comments

  2. 2.

    Yutsano

    @rikyrah: Let Yertle keep stalling on the parameters of the trial. Nancy is smashing the Senate by dangling the articles just out of reach until the Senate has no choice but to pretty much release everything. I’m all for it.

  3. 3.

    Eric NNY

    I just don’t see anything that will change through Parnas’ information.  Even if there’s direct communication with imPOTUS, what will that change?  They all know he ordered the hold, they’ll just go back to saying that they eventually got the money and it included lethal weapons unlike Obama’s aid so suck it libtards.

    Perhaps I lack imagination.  What could I be missing?

  4. 4.

    Kraux Pas

    @rikyrah: Yup, every day it gets worse for Trump with new crimes and details of old crimes emerging.

     

    The one solace I have is that at least he hasn’t arbitrarily started a war with a nation that hasn’t attacked us for no apparent reason…oh, wait, what was that?

     

    ETA: But seriously, can R senators turn on this guy mow before he starts World War 3?

  5. 5.

    mad citizen

    It seems so bad that Trump will have to personally attack the R Senators before they stand up to the guy.  Every day I continue to be stunned at the gravity of the situation (Vic Chesnutt reference).

  6. 6.

    MagdaInBlack

    Betty, did you follow down that twitter thread to the part about a Deutschbank whistle blower?

    I havent seen that elsewhere.

  9. 9.

    MisterForkbeard

    My suspicion is that this stuff isn’t going to be that major, and that’s why Congress is allowed to see it.

    Happy to be proven wrong, though.

  10. 10.

    Kraux Pas

    @mad citizen: You must mean a physical attack because verbally attacking R senators has not swayed one of them against him.

     

    I’ve said before that Trump could shoot McConnell on the floor of the Senate and not lose any support from R Senators. If he survives, McConnell will lead Trump’s defense.

  11. 11.

    PST

    @Eric NNY:

    What could I be missing?

    What Donald Rumsfeld called the unknown unknown. It may have nothing to do with any scandal we’ve ever heard of, let alone Ukraine. There is little I’d put past Trump or Giuliani. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.” Maybe Parnas’s phone knows.

  12. 12.

    MattF

    Bear in mind that both Trump and Giuliani are totally shameless assholes. Neither will ever back down. Nancy’s doing the right thing here, but the Big Reveal will be those Trump tax filings. Waiting for that will cause significant tightening in the market for hypertension medications— it will take a while.

  13. 13.

    Betty Cracker

    @Eric NNY: The only thing that matters is public opinion. There’s effectively zero chance that elected Republicans will do anything about Trump because they’re craven careerist who fear his base. But if the goal is to extract maximum political pain from Republicans for letting a lawless Trump off the hook, we want Trump’s guilt established as widely and by as many sources as possible. I don’t know that Parnas’s phone has info that can move public opinion, but it might. 

  14. 14.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kraux Pas: “Good morning everyone!  Stay out of reach of anything throwable, and swallow that mouthful of coffee, because, we have, you guessed it – MORE CRIMES!”

  16. 16.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    Democrats in the senate could use the trade deal she passed them as leverage but I don’t have any confidence in Schumer, so, you know, there’s the weak link. You can’t rely on people who know Donald Trump. He does something horrible to them. I personally think he threatens to reveal things about them, or they’re just weak people who get compromised by exposure to him.

  17. 17.

    15 flush mistermix

    I don’t care if they’re big or small, they are more, and they’ll probably sound like something out of Goodfellas, so bring it on.

  19. 19.

    Raven Onthill

    “Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and I discussed the decisive defensive action @realDonaldTrump employed in Baghdad to protect American lives. I emphasized that de-escalation is the United States’ principal goal.” – Tweet, Secretary of State Pompeo

    Was this assassination Putin’s idea?

  20. 20.

    Kraux Pas

    @Raven Onthill: Was this assassination Putin’s idea?

    Anything Trump does comes down to “does this benefit Trump and/or Putin politically and/or financially?”

  21. 21.

    randy khan

    @Betty Cracker:

    The only thing that matters is public opinion. There’s effectively zero chance that elected Republicans will do anything about Trump because they’re craven careerist who fear his base. But if the goal is to extract maximum political pain from Republicans for letting a lawless Trump off the hook, we want Trump’s guilt established as widely and by as many sources as possible. I don’t know that Parnas’s phone has info that can move public opinion, but it might.

    Exactly.  While the Senate ought to do its duty, if it won’t the most important thing is to make it impossible for Trump to be re-elected (and, preferably, for it to be a crushing defeat that takes tons of other Republicans with him).  If shifts in public opinion bring the Republicans around, all the better; but if not, let’s make the consequences of the decision to play see no evil really painful.

  22. 22.

    gene108

    @Eric NNY:

    New information will give impeachment, and the underlying Trump crimes, more time in the news.

    We still don’t know who is pulling Rudy’s strings, and all the people he’s coordinating with in the White House.

    There are a lot more people, who have exposure to wrong doing, with this extortion attempt on Ukraine.

  23. 23.

    PST

    @Raven Onthill:

    Was this assassination Putin’s idea?

    Or could it have been Khamenei’s? Was Soleimani perhaps getting too popular and too powerful. Could his schedule have been passed on with a wink and a nod? I don’t actually think so, but it would be irresponsible not to speculate. Either Putin or Khamenei would also benefit from a spike in oil prices.

  24. 24.

    Martin

    @Eric NNY: I wouldn’t rule out articles of impeachment against various cabinet members. This is escalating from a bad act by Trump to a conspiracy among his administration. The news that they approached Trump to reverse course, but then backed the effort makes them complicit with breaking those laws.

  25. 25.

    Martin

    @Kraux Pas: It just comes down to whether it benefits Trump. Putins job is to make sure what benefits Putin will benefit Trump.

    IOW, if you see Trump doing something that benefits Putin, you have to ask what did Trump get out of that – because he got something, we just don’t know what it is yet.

  28. 28.

    zhena gogolia

    @Raven Onthill:

    I assume so. That must have been the subject of their phone call the other day. It’s how Putin consolidated his power — gin up a war.

  29. 29.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Raven Onthill:

    Was this assassination Putin’s idea?

    Something will come out, soon, that will make this action by Trump seem even stupider.  Not in terms of results, but motivation, like when he did that air strike on a Russian base and it turned out he got Moscow’s permission and the base was empty.

    Finding out that Russia told Trump to make this strike would qualify.

  30. 30.

    Mnemosyne

    @Eric NNY:

    Remember that Trump thought that the Ukraine thing was so small potatoes that he was willing to release the summary report of it to try and contradict the whistleblower.

    I don’t think that Trump or anyone in his administration is the best judge of what will and won’t be damaging to him.

  32. 32.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Mnemosyne:

    Trump thought that the Ukraine thing was so small potatoes that he was willing to release the summary report of it

    He still seems unable to understand that he released a confession to a crime.  He harps on it and wants people to read his ‘perfect’ transcript.

  33. 33.

    Yutsano

    @PST: Khamenei is Supreme Leader. Soleimani would have been little threat to him. The IRCG is fiercely loyal to the Supreme Leader pretty much by default. Now if there were others in the IRCG, military leadership, or the civilian government that wanted him eliminated that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

  34. 34.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Raven Onthill:

    Was this assassination Putin’s idea?

    This would make zero sense, given Putin and Assad and Iran have worked arm in arm in Syria for a long time. Suleimani was how they’ve been winning, there and all over the ME. He would be a huge loss for all their interests.

    None of this is a straight forward as ANY of us here knows at this point. Now is a good time to be educating ourselves about a world that literally makes no sense to most of us who never lived in it.

    Going back and reviewing the history of the region, especially who the major players have been and how they evolved over time to become sometimes enemies, sometimes friends.

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/the-shadow-commander Here’s a great long read that gets you up to speed on Suleimani, at least until 2013. What’s been going on since then will be important in understanding what happened here.

  36. 36.

    Emerald

    @Betty Cracker: Here’s the original tweet:

    BREAKING: A Whistleblower told the FBI that Trump’s Deutsche Bank loans were backed by Russian state-owned bank, VTB Bank. VTB was proposed lender for Trump Tower Moscow and allegedly funded the Rosneft Deal. New docs show deep ties between Deutsche + VTB.

    And here’s Uncle Blazer’s reaction:

    Sweet Mother of Christ. If this is true, the Deutsche Bank case is 100x more explosive than even I ever imagined. The amount of compromise posed by a POTUS owning this kind of money to a Russian state-owned bank is simply mind-blowing.

  37. 37.

    Kay

    @MattF:

    I want Reid back. He was a tough individual. Now it’s like Nancy Pelosi is alone out there.

    Trump wants the trade deal so he can lie about it. They could hold that up, I would think.

  38. 38.

    Chip Daniels

    @Kraux Pas:

    I’ve said before that Trump could shoot McConnell on the floor of the Senate and not lose any support from R Senators.

    I’m not saying it would, and I’m not saying it wouldn’t.

    I’m just saying I would watch it on endless loop and pay good money for the privilege.

  40. 40.

    Bill Arnold

    @Emerald:
    This url (forensicnews.net) is sometimes timing out or giving 500s, but I just go it to work:
    Trump Deutsche Bank Loans Underwritten By Russian State-Owned Bank, Whistleblower Told FBI (December 30, 2019, Scott Stedman, Eric Levai and Bobby DeNault)
    Interesting.

    Val Broeksmit acquired the emails and files of his late father, Deutsche Bank executive William S. Broeksmit, after Broeksmit tragically took his own life in 2014.
    Val informed the FBI in late 2019 about his knowledge of VTB’s underwriting of Trump’s loans, information he attributed to a network of sources connected to the bank he cultivated over the past five-plus years.

    (E.g. I wonder if N. Pelosi knew.)
    Also,

    For Val, much has changed over the past half-decade. As the frontman and founder in the indie band Bikini Robot Army, Val never imagined spending his days combing through highly complex financial records of one of the world’s largest banks. But after his father’s passing, Val’s life took a radical turn.
    Val’s search for justice and answers, fueled by personal vengeance against the bank, motivated to him to dig through a cache of over 21,500 emails and other documents from his father’s accounts.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    Andy Campbell
    @AndyBCampbell
    1h
    While Fox News and the Trumps hoo-rah over KICKIN’ SOME ASS OVERSEAS, thousands of families just got word that their moms, dads and siblings are going back to combat zones.
    My dad deployed multiple times, and nobody in my family ever celebrated. This isn’t supporting the troops.

    Nothing against the troops, but if they haven’t figured out by now that none of these warmongering chicken hawks give a rat’s ass about them I can’t help them. They’re on their own.

  43. 43.

    Martin

    @Emerald: It’s funny the little spaces we all occupy, because I thought the VSB-Deutsche-Trump relationship was known and understood.

  44. 44.

    Barbara

    @Emerald: Maybe it’s past time for the German government to rein in Deutsche Bank.  Michael Lewis reported on how the German government was willing to drive Spain, Portugal and Ireland basically into dust by strong arming them into socializing private debts backed by German banks, and that seems to have created a culture of perceived impunity to legal risks in Deutsche Bank.

  45. 45.

    Baud

    @Kay:

     

    Someone posted a poll yesterday that said Trump’s disapproval with the troops was 50 percent, which I assume is high for a republican president.

  48. 48.

    sukabi

    @Bill Arnold: interesting in light of the story out that had drumpf berating Flynn for not letting drumpf know that Putin called.

     

    https://www.rawstory.com/2020/01/trump-exploded-at-michael-flynn-after-he-forgot-to-tell-him-putin-left-a-message-are-you-kidding-me/

     

    Trump reportedly continued to rage about the episode even after the meeting, privately telling White House staff, “What kind of bullsh*t is this? How is it possible that Putin calls me and you don’t put the call through? I don’t know what you guys are doing.” He added that Putin is  “the only man on earth who can destroy us.”

     By “us” I’m betting he means him and his family businesses, not the US.

  50. 50.

    Barbara

    @Martin: Oh come on, banks are regulated.  I am not saying it has ultimate control but to say it has no control is silly.  U.S. made BNP Paribas pay an $8 billion fine associated with extralegal actions with sanctioned countries.  France tried to intervene and was told by Obama’s DOJ to go pound sand (as it should have been).

  51. 51.

    mad citizen

    @Kraux Pas: Yes, you are correct, I was thinking trump would have to physically attack a Senator to get them off their delusional, unpatriotic thinking.  My two R Senators seem to be zombies.

  52. 52.

    Kay

    Dan Senor
    @dansenor
    · 1h
    Suleimani was a terrorist commander operating in a 3rd party county in which the US was active at the invitation of the local government. He was slaughtering Iraqis and Americans in this country where the local government hosted us

    Look who’s back. One of the lead Iraq invasion liars. Who is married to Right wing activist Campbell Brown, the “news” coordinator on Facebook, a job she was promoted to after failing miserably on CNN.

    Getting the band back together to propagandize the public. Now with Facebook!

  53. 53.

    sukabi

    @Baud: what makes the poll really interesting is the disapproval rating falls squarely toward the strongly disapprove while the approval % is firmly in the somewhat approve realm.

  56. 56.

    Kraux Pas

    @Baud: Interesting how he left out that the  local government does not approve of our actions.

    Especially strange considering this Iranian general was purportedly slaughtering Iraqis.

    I heard there was a second prominent person killed by the US attack also.

  57. 57.

    Martin

    @Barbara: Multinationals are a different animal. What was being described here was almost certainly going through the US subsidiary, which means they’re under US, not German regulations. Multinationals play that shell game all the time.

  58. 58.

    Kay

    During the Obama years, Campbell Brown once ran an “expose” on how it was Obama’s fault her neighborhood didn’t have the flu vaccine. Some poor public servant from the CDC had the misfortune to be tapped to appear on this ridiculous show, and she very seriously and earnestly explained to Brown that the federal government isn’t actually responsible for immunization sites in 50 states and every neighborhood. It was a civics lesson. “It starts at the federal level, then to the STATE health authority and then COUNTY and then your fancy neighborhood”. Actually. Campbell.

    Cracked that mystery in 5 minutes, she did. Now it would be a decade’s long conspiracy theory.

  59. 59.

    dm

    @Eric NNY: Rachel Maddow occasionally talks about how the House lawyer told the judge in the McGahn-subpoena case that the House may consider more articles of impeachment if McGahn’s testimony warrants it.

    Parnas’ phone might also work to that effect.  As might the Deutsche Bank news, or anything else that might pop up while McConnell fails to produce impeachment rules that satisfy Pelosi.

  61. 61.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kraux Pas:

    I heard there was a second prominent person killed by the US attack also.

    The leader of a militia group so popular and effective in fighting ISIS that the Iraqi government kinda-sorta accepted them as an official part of the military.  My best guess is that the Iraqi government will order the US out of their country, which would be the best victory Iran could hope for.

  62. 62.

    Kraux Pas

    @Kay: Explains the time this lady showed up at my pharmacy complaining “Obama didn’t make enough flu shots.”

    Once I got my eyebrows off the ceiling I replied “Ma’am, Obama didnt make any flu shots.”

  64. 64.

    WaterGirl

    @Ella in New Mexico:  I found your comment in spam just now.  I see no reason why that would have happened, based on the content of what you wrote.

    The new site doesn’t throw comments in Spam for no reason, so I am perplexed on this one.

  65. 65.

    Barbara

    @Martin: Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  It’s not all going through a U.S. subsidiary.  BNP Paribas tried that argument as well and lost.

  66. 66.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Martin:

    @Emerald:

    Isn’t that a version of the story that Lawrence O’Donnell broke a few months back (Trump in hock to Russian oligarchs, as proved by some documents he was told about but hadn’t seen) but then had to retract?

  68. 68.

    karen marie

    @Betty Cracker:  The deafening silence of the media on Trump’s toxicity just blows my mind.  After ACA was passed, they were all “ACA is unpopular so Obama should stay off the campaign trail,” yet here we are with the most unpopular president we’ve ever had – consistently unpopular – and not a word from any “political analyst” that Republicans running for reelection might want to avoid having him campaign for them.  How can they be more afraid of Trump than they are of voters?

     

    I mean …

    What the everloving fuck?

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @Kraux Pas:

    On April 2, 2006, Brown married Daniel Samuel Senor, the former chief spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.[8][42] They had met in Iraq in March 2004, when Senor was spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad and Brown was one of the journalists covering his daily news conferences. After Senor returned to Washington in 2004, Brown called him. “I was wildly, wildly curious about his experience in Iraq,” she later said. According to the New York Times, “their first date was a group dinner, with Tom Brokaw and another journalist.”

    Cozy little club, isn’t it?

  70. 70.

    Peale

    @Ella in New Mexico: Yeah. If it turned out that the Russians asked Trump to do it. its probably because the Iranians asked him to have Trump do it. If he was a powerful figure in Iran and that doesn’t mean he didn’t have other powerful people in Iran who would benefit without him.

  72. 72.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @karen marie:

    and not a word from any “political analyst” that Republicans running for reelection might want to avoid having him campaign for them.

    I have read that a number of times, don’t recall the particulars tho.

  74. 74.

    Kraux Pas

    @Frankensteinbeck: The leader of a militia group so popular and effective in fighting ISIS that the Iraqi government kinda-sorta accepted them as an official part of the military.

    So what you’re saying is that Trump clearly thought this through and it will majorly serve our interests in the middle east.

  75. 75.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Gawd, Campbell Brown! She was horrible. Probably on Twitter right now fomenting conspiracy theories, free of the moderating influence of CDC officials!

  77. 77.

    germy

    We're asking the Supreme Court to review a decision that the individual mandate of the #ACA is unconstitutional.

    The uncertainty around this could harm the health of millions & we aren't going to allow the President & his Republican allies to dismantle the #ACA piece by piece. pic.twitter.com/3wioWThlrI

    — NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) January 3, 2020

  78. 78.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    She runs Facebook’s misinformation operation, so essentially a Trump campaign staffer. Dan Senor probably calls it “ops”, fake soldier that he is.

  79. 79.

    Hoodie

    @Frankensteinbeck: It’s possible that Iraq will be leaned on by the Iranians to detain American military or diplomats in Iraq that could be nominally accused of being involved in the assassination.   Soleimani’s visit seemed like it was almost carried out in the manner of a diplomatic visit, i.e., he arrived openly at a civilian airport and was greeted by Iraqi quasi-officials at his arrival.   It seems to me that he was used to arriving in this manner, which tells me the Iraqis weren’t told anything about this mission because someone would probably have tipped him off given the sectarian divisions in the Iraqi government.  If he didn’t want people to know he was in Iraq, he would not have come in this way.

  81. 81.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @karen marie: Several pundits speaking of GOPers staying away from trump or that they should stay away from trump. I said “a number” and as best I can recall it’s like 4, might be 5, might be 3, and I don’t recall who they were or what publications they were writing for. The observation seemed so obvious I didn’t take much note of it.

    ETA: To me it’s kind of like retiring GOP members of Congress. I just read about a TN GOPer retiring and didn’t even look to see what kind of district he was in, just another day ending in “Y”. Of course they are retiring, it sucks being in the minority. Of course some GOPs are avoiding trump, his shtick don’t fly everywhere.

  84. 84.

    Kent

    Endless and relentless investigations is the correct playbook here.  The GOP knows this and won the 2016 election as a result of the endless Benghazi investigation which shook out Hillary’s emails and then the rest was history.  You never know what is going to shake out.  Arguably the House Benghazi investigation was the single most important factor in Trump’s 2016 win.  Without that no emails and no Comey.

  85. 85.

    Lapassionara

    Isn’t Trump supposed to be having a rally at an Hispanic Church in Miami soon? Maybe even today?

    expect more flag hugging.

  87. 87.

    Gin & Tonic

    Since this is an open thread, shout-out to Zeiss Sports Optics. About three years ago I bought a pretty expensive pair of compact binoculars. Over the Christmas holidays I noticed they weren’t focusing on one side (don’t know if the grandkids playing with them caused this.) I called their Customer Service a week ago, on Friday. They said “send them in.” I said I didn’t have a sales receipt handy, they said “doesn’t matter.” I mailed them to their service center in Kentucky on Saturday. Priority Mail said they were received Tuesday. I got an e-mail from them yesterday saying “we have completed the inspection and determined that a replacement will be issued.” FedEx delivered a brand-new replacement pair today. No charge. W00t!

  88. 88.

    Another Scott

    @Peale:

    Meh.

    Reuters (from 2017):

    President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate elected in 2013 in a landslide on promises to open up Iranian society and reduce its international isolation, is widely seen as the favorite to win a second term next week.

    But the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and the Basij, a volunteer militia under the Guards’ command, are taking steps to promote the candidacy of his main rival, hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi.

    Media outlets affiliated with the Guards have been criticizing Rouhani’s performance in power. Experts who study the force say they are also likely to use their street muscle to help get Raisi supporters to the polls.

    “The IRGC will be running buses and mini-buses to make people vote. They will be mobilizing voters not only in the rural areas but also the shantytowns around the big cities,” said Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who has done extensive research on the Guards.

    “They want their supporters voting.”

    The Islamic Republic’s security hawks are worried that Rouhani with a fresh mandate would chip away at prerogatives that have given the Guards huge economic and political power.

    Whether or not Rouhani wins a second term, the bigger prize is controlling who will succeed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose power far exceeds that of the elected president.

    Khamenei, in power since 1989, is now 77. Some analysts say Raisi’s presidential bid is a test run for a man who could be groomed to take over as Khamenei’s successor.

    […]

    Beginning in the early 1990s, Raisi attended religious classes taught by Khamenei for a period of 14 years, according to an official biography posted online. Last year, Khamenei appointed Raisi as head of a multi-billion dollar religious foundation, Astan Qods Razavi.

    A delegation of senior Revolutionary Guards commanders went to visit Raisi in the city of Mashad when he was appointed head of the foundation last year, according to Fars News.

    Among the group were the head of the Guards, the head of the Basij, and Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force, the branch of the Guards responsible for operations outside of Iran’s borders, including in Iraq and Syria.

    Maintaining domestic security is one of the key reasons why the Guards want to have a candidate of their choosing for the presidency and the supreme leader.

    The disputed 2009 presidential elections, which put Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into office for a second term, led to the most widespread unrest in the history of the Islamic Republic. Millions of protestors took to the streets in Tehran and several other large cities.

    The Guards oversaw the crackdown on protesters primarily through the Basij. Dozens of demonstrators were killed and hundreds were arrested, according to human rights organizations.

    But there is another reason why the Guards want an ally in Iran’s top positions: the group has vast economic holdings, from construction to oil and mines, worth billions of dollars.

    […]

    I can’t find the link, but I read recently that many think that Soleimani was being groomed to be Supreme Leader to succeed Ali Khamenei (even though Soleimani wasn’t a cleric).

    Given the power of the Guards, and the support of the Supreme Leader, it’s nonsensical to think that they had him killed by the US.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  89. 89.

    raven

    I generally like the “flight status” graphic on the Southwest TV app but, when you circle for over an hour because of rain, it sucks! On the other hand I just awoke from a 2 hr nap so all is well!

  90. 90.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Ewww, right, I think I heard about that and then expunged it from my memory because it’s so disturbing.

  91. 91.

    germy

    @Keith P.:

    Wasn’t she dating Rush Limbaugh at some point?

    I think they were feuding at one point.  She challenged him to a debate, and they were trashing each other in the media.

  92. 92.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Another Scott:

    I can’t find the link, but I read recently that many think that Soleimani was being groomed to be Supreme Leader to succeed Ali Khamenei (even though Soleimani wasn’t a cleric).

    I just finished reading some Iran “expert” who said the Supreme Leader has to be a cleric. (I can’t for the life of me remember who and I just read it) Larison said,

    Most Americans probably don’t realize how well-respected and popular Soleimani was inside Iran. Mohammed Ali Shabani explains:

    By 2014, when he successfully halted Islamic State’s attempt to overrun Iraq, Suleimani was feted as a hero among Iraqis, alongside the local commanders including al-Muhandis. The same response was evident in Iran, where he quickly became a household name and was rumoured as a potential future president – a trend that was strengthened by the Trump administration’s unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.

    So the US has not merely killed an Iranian military commander but also a highly popular figure, viewed as a guardian of Iran even among secular-minded Iranians.

    Make what you will of this.

  94. 94.

    Tehanu

    That finish about the Dean v. Liddy offspring is why I keep reading Balloon Juice in general and Betty in particular.  Thanks.

    Also, am I the only person to feel that Parnas’ words about his son sound sincere?

  98. 98.

    Eric U.

    @Kay: now someone needs to crack the mystery of why CVS was bugging me to get the flu shot at every opportunity, and when I finally signed up, it turns out they hadn’t had any shots for a month.

  100. 100.

    joel hanes

    @Emerald:

    Please to be remembering that

    1.  Anthony Kennedy’s son is a bigwig at Deutsche Bank
    2.  Kennedy colluded with the Trumpies to put one of Kennedy’s former clerks, one Brett Rapist Kavanaugh, on the Supreme Court
  101. 101.

    joel hanes

    @Kay:

    I travelled today.

    Airports were full of short-haired guys carrying camo backpacks with “US”, big camo duffel bags, and a covered frame backpack.

    Also, two mil-geared security guards with prominently displayed assault rifles at the entrance to the tticketing/baggage area

  107. 107.

    Raven Onthill

    My initial notes on the assassination of Qassem Suleimani:

    1. The assassination of Qassem Suleimani is a de facto declaration of war on Iran.
    2. Trump does not understand Iran well enough to know who to target, so who told him to target Qassem Suleimani?
    3. The Senate now faces a choice: impeach Donald Trump or abdicate its constitutional authority to declare war to the Presidency.
    4. The House now may impeach Donald Trump for declaring war without the consent of the Senate.
    5. “Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and I discussed the decisive defensive action @realDonaldTrump employed in Baghdad to protect American lives. I emphasized that de-escalation is the United States’ principal goal.” – Secretary of State Pompeo, tweet.
    6. People are talking about preventing war with Iran. It’s too late. There is going to be a response, probably not a conventional military response, but something brutal. At best, we can prevent escalation.
    7. It is not clear to me that any peace with Iran can be remade. It may be Trump has entangled us in war for years to come.

    Fkity fkity fk fk fk.

  108. 108.

    WaterGirl

    @joel hanes: That is sad.  Some of those people may lose their lives or their limbs because we have a petty, childish, spiteful, vindictive, drug-addled, dumb fuck for a president.

  109. 109.

    JoeyJoeJoe

    @OzarkHillbilly: the Tennessee district contains Dollywood, voted 77-20 republican in the last presidential election, and last elected a Democrat to the House in 1878, so chances of Democrats taking the seat aren’t great

  111. 111.

    Bill Arnold

    Live updates: Trump says Iranian military leader was killed by drone strike ‘to stop a war,’ warns Iran not to retaliate (Louisa Loveluck, Adam Taylor, Jan. 3, 2020)
    DJT has just stated that it is now the position of the executive branch of the US government that this was a preemptive political assassination to prevent war. I will safely assume that they are lying though, until believable evidence is presented. (Sadly for them, because they are lying liars, the standard of evidence is rather high.)
    The bit in question in the video at the link of DTJ reading a teleprompter is at 2:18: roughly, “We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.”
    The script sounds like it might have been written or edited by Stephen Miller. Ghoulish enough that Trump delivered it straight without serious mistakes.

  113. 113.

    Betty Cracker

    @Raven Onthill: Trump, Pompeo and one of the joint chiefs say they had intel that Suleimani was planning an attack on US interests. I’ll believe that if/when people who were not hired or appointed by a pathological liar review the intelligence data and confirm it.

    It’s understandable that people are freaking out about the possibility of a full-blown war. I’m worried about it too; we have a nephew in Afghanistan, and this isn’t going to make him any safer.

    But is there any reason to think Iran is going to escalate? They might, but it would not be in their interests. So, basically, I’m hoping the Iranian leader is smarter and less impulsive than Trump. We’ll see!

  115. 115.

    Barbara

    @JoeyJoeJoe: There seem to be two dominant strands among Republicans retiring, those from swing districts who are afraid of losing and those from non-swing districts who don’t like being in the minority.  In both cases, it is a signal of pessimism on Republicans being in a position to retake the majority, but only in the case of the former is it (possibly) as sign of not being willing to stand with Trump.

  116. 116.

    James E Powell

    Trump is covering-up his financial obligations to Russia and the Supreme Court is helping him cover up by preventing disclosure of this tax returns.

    People need to start saying this all over and all the time.

  117. 117.

    joel hanes

    @Betty Cracker:

    Trump, Pompeo and one of the joint chiefs say

     

    Well, I’m definitely trusting their statement.   Trump and Pompeo wouldn’t lie to us about something important, would they?

    /s

  118. 118.

    Bill Arnold

    @Tehanu:

    Also, am I the only person to feel that Parnas’ words about his son sound sincere?

    I’d be proud of a son like that too (assuming he wasn’t stealth evil).

  119. 119.

    WaterGirl

    @Raven Onthill: I don’t know about any of the others, but I would have been with you on #2 for sure until I saw the tweet Betty posted just above your comment.

    Trump may well know how Soleimani is, or his name at least, because it appears he had previously mocked Trump on Twitter.

    So I’ll bet Trump knew the name, but still did not understand the implications of what he did.  Just like a 4-year-old boy playing with a guy doesn’t really understand that he may be about to kill the brother that he adores.

    I can wholeheartedly agree with fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

  121. 121.

    Hoodie

    @Betty Cracker: The claim about preventing war is laughable on its face.  If the Iranians had plans to start a war, that would not have been contingent on the health of one general.  Moreover, we have plenty of information that the Iranians are very careful to engage in mischief without risking a provocation that would put them in a position to be blamed for a war.  More likely, this preventing war nonsense is just a stupid ex post facto excuse for an impulsive action by a president in political trouble and, in that sense, is of a piece with the Ukrainian shakedown, i.e., another dumbass move by a guy who has made a series of similar dumbass moves, such as announcing removal of US troops from Syria on a whim. If you wanted to prevent attacks on US assets in Iraq, you would attack the forces actually carrying out the attacks to degrade their ability  to conduct the attacks, not kill some Iranian general who probably is not necessary for executing the operational details. Trump has shown that he simply does not understand and/or care about the powers and responsibilities of being president, which is why he needs to be removed from office before he gets a bunch of people killed. I hate to have to rely on Iran acting to prevent a disaster.

  122. 122.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Bill Arnold: Looks like that will be the administration’s Orwellian line.

    In a background briefing today, a senior State Department official said about the strike on Soleimani:

    “This was an act of de-escalation.”

    “We are ready to talk with the Iranians.”

    “They are scurrying for cover.”

    “The ball is in Iran’s court.”

    Discuss.

    — Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) January 3, 2020

    What’s ironic here is that a big justification for new nuclear weapons has been that Russia has a doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate,” using a small nuke to warn the US off. But now we have a senior US official saying that escalating to killing Suleimani is actually a de-escalation.
    It’s always projection.

    ETA: Most Russia experts say Russia has no such doctrine.

  123. 123.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Bill Arnold:

    We took action last night to stop a war.

    Ah, good, they’re already improvising.  So, the way this one falls apart in terms of Trump getting any credit for it will be that he’ll change his story a dozen times and nobody will be able to push a narrative.  I knew something would happen swiftly.  Everything Trump touches turns to shit.

  125. 125.

    Kraux Pas

    @Eric U.: now someone needs to crack the mystery of why CVS was bugging me to get the flu shot at every opportunity, and when I finally signed up, it turns out they hadn’t had any shots for a month.

    Those emails were probably corporate. They had no clue probably your local store was out

  126. 126.

    Mnemosyne

    @Tehanu:

    Even criminals can love their children and want them to have better lives than they did. That’s the big reason why prisoners who victimized children are at such huge risk behind bars: even murderers and hit men have children that they love.

  127. 127.

    Hoodie

    @Cheryl Rofer: That’s kind of consistent with Trump’s past behavior and his NPD.  He does something monumentally stupid that ends up in disaster and then acts like he really was executing some super clever strategy that us normal humans are too dumb to understand.  He did than when he abruptly announced withdrawal of troops from Syria to give a green light to the Turks.  He got away with that because the troops didn’t actually leave, but now we have to hope the Iranians don’t come up with some nasty way to pay us back for this.  I’m not optimistic.

  129. 129.

    Bill Arnold

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    What’s ironic here is that a big justification for new nuclear weapons has been that Russia has a doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate,”

    I’d forgotten about that. Interesting spot.

  130. 130.

    Mo MacArbie

    They say they have evidence; let’s see it. So what if it’s classified. Trump has no qualms about burning Israeli assets with the Russians. He can burn more with us.

  131. 131.

    SixStringFanatic

    What’s up with the pet calendars?  I have checked the online store every day for weeks now and still haven’t seen the 2020 calendar.

    Has anyone else gotten one yet?  Am I clicking the wrong link?

  132. 132.

    John Revolta

    As much as I’d like to believe that this goon Parnas is going to turn over a bunch of dirt that’ll cook Trump’s goose and maybe Rudy’s in the bargain, I still find it hard to believe that they would’ve thrown him under the bus in the first place if he knew so much. Can they be that stupid? Or is there something else going on?

  133. 133.

    Bill Arnold

    @Mo MacArbie:

    Trump has no qualms about burning Israeli assets with the Russians. He can burn more with us.

    Has any evidence surfaced that Israeli intelligence ((dis?)info) was used to target Suleimani? There’s this, which is not causaly-inconsistent with that theory.
    Israel had advance notice of U.S. plan to kill Iranian general Suleimani, report says (Noga Tarnopolsky, Jan. 3, 2020)

    JERUSALEM — Israel had advance notice of the U.S. plan to kill Iranian military leader Gen. Qassem Suleimani, Israeli military and diplomatic analysts reported Friday night while refraining from providing further details due to heavy military censorship.
    “Our assessment is that the United States informed Israel about this operation in Iraq, apparently a few days ago,” Barak Ravid, a journalist and commentator with deep sources in the Israeli security establishment, said on Channel 13.

    And more.

  134. 134.

    WaterGirl

    @SixStringFanatic: The pet calendar isn’t available yet, but it will be coming soon.

    John will surely make an announcement when it’s ready.

    In the meantime, updated the information on the Pet Calendar – the title now says:

    Pet Calendars Soon

    Once calendars are available, it will say something like ” Calendars for Sale”.

    edited.

  135. 135.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    Suggest changing the little box from reading “Pet Photos Closed” to “Pet Calendar 2020,” with it leading to a temporary page with information on the status of the calendar.

  137. 137.

    Jinchi

    @John Revolta: I still find it hard to believe that they would’ve thrown him under the bus in the first place if he knew so much.

    He threw Cohen under the bus. And Rudy Giuliani seems to think it’s important to remind Trump that he knows where all the bodies are buried.

  141. 141.

    Zinsky

    Maybe Lev has Trump’s Moscow piss party video on his iPhone!  I’m guessing he was the videographer!

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