The administration has been all over the map today in their attempts to explain and explain away the unfolding and evolving reporting on how Russian military intelligence, the GRU, has been offering bounties to the Taliban and Taliban affiliated officials to entice them to kill US and coalition forces in Afghanistan. The White House Press Secretary kicked things off by asserting that the US Intelligence Community (IC) had differing opinions regarding this intelligence and because there was no consensus, it was not briefed to the President. The Press Secretary also stated that the President has still not been briefed on this matter!!!!
She made her statements shortly after it was reported that the US Congress would be given a briefing on this intelligence, reading them onto what the IC knows and is reporting. The briefing was done at the White House. This reporting was clarified about an hour later: the briefing would only be for Republicans. And while we now know that the Democrats in Congress will get a briefing on this tomorrow, doing it this way is a SERIOUS PROBLEM!!!! The reason we have a Gang of 8 – the Speaker and Minority Leader in the House, the Majority and Minority Leaders in the Senate, and the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees in each chamber – is to ensure that everyone gets briefed on this stuff at the same time. This is also the reason we are supposed to have a bipartisan intelligence oversight process within both the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) where everyone gets briefed at the same time. And the reason that the Gang of 8 or the members of both parties on the intelligence committees get briefed at the same time is to prevent accusations that one side is being told something the other side isn’t. To avoid the politicization of intelligence. And to prevent one side from being told something the other side isn’t.
As I type this, Congressman Schiff, the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has just told Chris Hayes that the Republicans on his committee are boycotting the committee hearings. He indicated that despite these hearing being unclassified and on unclassified matters, the Republican members of the committee don’t believe the hearings are secure enough because they’re being done by video-teleconference or include video-teleconferencing, so they’re boycotting them. This is a problem in and of itself, but it also exacerbates the problem of the Democrats and the Republicans being briefed separately on this matter by the White House. Because there will be no way for the Democrats to be sure that what they are told tomorrow morning is the same thing that the Republicans were told this afternoon. Especially because the Republican members of Congress who were briefed this afternoon immediately took steps to frame what they were told so as to reset and reframe the reporting on this issue. Here’s the statement from Republican Congressmen McCaul and Kinzinger:
Not a terrible statement. Of concern is the fact that both the Director of National Intelligence and the White House Chief of Staff who were involved in the briefing were two of the most divisively partisan members of the Republican caucus in the House until they were tapped this spring to go to work for the administration in positions that neither are qualified for. Another Republican member of the House who was briefed, who, like Congressman Kinzinger, is a veteran, issued a far more detailed statement in a tweet thread. A statement that shows just how the intelligence is going to be framed and who is responsible for all of this:
I just left the White House where I was briefed by CoS @MarkMeadows and top intelligence officials. They discussed @nytimes' hit piece falsely accusing @realDonaldTrump of ignoring reports that Russia placed bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan.
A thread, 👇
— Senator Jim Banks (@SenatorBanks) June 29, 2020
Having served in Afghanistan during the time the alleged bounties were placed, no one is angrier about this than me.
Now it’s impossible to finish the investigation. All b/c the @nytimes will do anything to damage @realdonaldtrump, even if it means compromising nat'l security.
— Senator Jim Banks (@SenatorBanks) June 29, 2020
Americans don't buy the phony Russia-Trump-Collusion narrative.
THEY SEE President Trump's rock solid record in support of our troops, our veterans & American exceptionalism. THEY SEE the media walk back claims of a Trump-Russia scandal over & over. So tired. Change it up!
— Senator Jim Banks (@SenatorBanks) June 29, 2020
This is going to be the official line going forward. That this isn’t a failure of the President and his senior national security principals to take threats to US and coalition forces seriously or to push back on Putin for increasing the threats they face while deployed in Afghanistan. Rather, the real scandal here is that The New York Times wrote a hit piece, which has now somehow destroyed the intelligence process making it impossible to really know what is going on. Congressman Banks, (R-IN 03) might as well have just come out and stated that nothing is true, therefore anything is possible, so who knows? The administration given separate briefings to the Republicans and Democrats in Congress will make this worse because there will be no way to really know that members of both caucuses were given the exact same briefings and received the exact same information.
Sam Vinograd, who was a National Security Staff member during the Obama administration and is a national security analyst and contributor for CNN, just posted a very thorough analysis of what she thinks is going on. Specifically, the various possibilities about how the president could or could not know about this threat intelligence against US and coalition forces in Afghanistan. While I’ve taught how the National Security Staff, the National Security Council, and the Interagency process works, unlike Ms. Vinograd, I’ve never served on it and I defer to her professional experience and knowledge. But I have served as the senior civilian advisor on the special staffs of US Army Corps and Service Component Commanders*. And was prepared to deploy with them if necessary, though that never happened. I can tell you without hesitation from that professional experience that once this information made its way back to the theater commander and the US ambassador in Kabul that it would have been immediately sent back to DC as flash communication for all the senior principals – the Secretaries of Defense and State, the Directors of National Intelligence and Central Intelligence, and the National Security Advisor. It would have also been immediately communicated to the two responsible Geographic Combatant Commanders at US Central Command (CENTCOM) and US Special Operations Command (SOCOM). I would also expect that either the theater commander, one of the two Geographic Combatant Commanders, or some combination of the three of them would have immediately tried to contact the President with the threat intelligence. And this is the part of the reporting and analysis that I find the most amazing. Either each and all of these individuals failed to do what they needed to do, that they were somehow prevented from doing so by someone at the White House, or that they did, the President didn’t track on what they were telling him, and it was allowed to fall through the cracks at the presidential level.
This brings us to the other breaking news from this evening. Specifically, CNN’s incredibly disturbing, though not really surprising reporting that the President’s calls with his foreign counterparts are a hot mess. CNN reports that the President sucks up to the dictators and authoritarians like Putin and Erdogan, while kicking our allies like Trudeau, Macron, and Morrison. And just being obnoxiously abusive to Theresa May and Angela Merkel. He actually called Merkel, who has a PhD from the German Academy of Sciences with a specialty in quantum chemistry, stupid! His former senior national security principals are reported to have been alarmed (emphasis mine):
In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trumpwas so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America’s principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials — including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff — that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.
The calls caused former top Trump deputies — including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials — to conclude that the President was often “delusional,” as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.
The insidious effect of the conversations comes from Trump’s tone, his raging outbursts at allies while fawning over authoritarian strongmen, his ignorance of history and lack of preparation as much as it does from the troubling substance, according to the sources. While in office, then- Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats expressed worry to subordinates that Trump’s telephone discussions were undermining the coherent conduct of foreign relations and American objectives around the globe, one of CNN’s sources said. And in recent weeks, former chief of staff Kelly has mentioned the damaging impact of the President’s calls on US national security to several individuals in private.
Two sources compared many of the President’s conversations with foreign leaders to Trump’s recent press “briefings” on the coronavirus pandemic: free form, fact-deficient stream-of-consciousness ramblings, full of fantasy and off-the-wall pronouncements based on his intuitions, guesswork, the opinions of Fox News TV hosts and social media misinformation.
Much, much more at the link! Not that this is really surprising. I did posts on the President’s use of his private, unsecured cell phone back in May of 2018 and September 2019, where I discussed the potential pitfalls of how the President conducts business on the phone. What CNN is reporting confirms everyone’s suspicions and concerns and fleshes out what we knew from September of 2019 that the President’s senior staff were misclassifying the transcripts and notes of his calls with foreign leaders by up classifying them and placing them on a special server. Which was a major issue that came up during the President’s impeachment. What’s surprising here is not that he’s been doing this on official calls, Deity only knows what he does on the unofficial ones from his cell phone when he’s in the residence, but the specific details of what he’s been saying and how badly he’s been treating our allies and partners while sucking up to authoritarian adversaries like Putin and authoritarian unreliable partners like Erdogan.
I expect that the leaks will continue and that they will actually accelerate. Someone read onto this stuff is clearly pissed off and has decided that they’re going to get the word out. Which will, of course, provide the opportunity for the President, his surrogates, and his allies, like Congressman Banks, to try to reframe every report based on these and other leaks as attacks on the President that are actually preventing him from doing his job. I fully expect that Attorney General Barr will announce a DOJ investigation to find the leaker or leakers and bring them to justice. And that the President, his allies, his surrogates, and his campaign will attempt to politicize such an investigation in order to dirty up Vice President Biden and his campaign. Just as they accused the whistle blower of being VP Biden’s guy, they’ll accuse whomever they suspect in these leaks of the same thing.
Update at 11:20 PM EDT
USMC vet and AP reporter James LaPorta tweeted this warning an hour ago:
https://twitter.com/JimLaPorta/status/1277778056812417025
His reporting has now been published (emphasis mine):
Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence.
The assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019.
The administration’s earlier awareness of the Russian efforts raises additional questions about why Trump did not take any punitive action against Moscow for efforts that put the lives of Americans servicemembers at risk. Trump has sought throughout his time in office to improve relations with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, moving earlier this year to try to reinstate Russia as part of a group of world leaders it had been kicked out of.
Officials said they did not consider the intelligence assessments in 2019 to be particularly urgent, given that Russian meddling in Afghanistan is not a new occurrence. The officials with knowledge of Bolton’s apparent briefing for Trump said it contained no “actionable intelligence,” meaning the intelligence community did not have enough information to form a strategic plan or response. However, the classified assessment of Russian bounties was the sole purpose of the meeting.
Concerns about Russian bounties flared anew this year after members of the elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known to the public as SEAL Team Six, raided a Taliban outpost and recovered roughly $500 thousand in U.S. dollars. The funds bolstered the suspicions of the American intelligence community that the Russians had offered money to Taliban militants and other linked associations.
The White House contends the president was unaware of this development as well. However, the information was also included in the presidential daily briefing. And officials told the AP that O’Brien did brief Trump on the matter. O’Brien has denied such a briefing occurred.
The officials told the AP that career government officials developed potential options for the White House to respond to the Russian aggression in Afghanistan, which was first reported by The New York Times. However, the Trump administration has yet to authorize any action.
https://twitter.com/JimLaPorta/status/1277795508896006149
This isn’t going away any time soon!
Open thread!
* I served as the Cultural Advisor (temporary assigned control) to the Commanding General of III Corps from January through September 2012, the Cultural Advisor (temporary assigned control) to the Commanding General of US Army Europe from December 2013 through June 2014, and the Cultural Advisor to the Commanding General of US Army Europe from June through August of 2014 (operational control).
Baud
Tick tock, motherfucker.
natem
Everything about this guy is terrible. He has to go. November can’t come soon enough.
Cheryl Rofer
Too bad those high officials didn’t see fit to say something earlier. That they are saying it now and allowing their titles to be used suggests they smell blood in the water.
Jeffro
Open up another impeachment inquiry, House, let’s go! Two weeks tops, and trumpov will be the only president* in American history to have been impeached twice.
And then keep doing it from now until November. Let the GOP tie itself in knots trying to defend these ever-shifting lies. Keep the focus on trumpov’s sheer incompetence and Putin-loving ways.
There is literally no downside here. Let’s. Go.
Elizabelle
I am just sick of these fuckers. And for shame, with that GOP backbencher trying to turn it back onto the NY Times, calling it a hit piece. I wish he could lose his House seat this fall.
Come on blue wave.
mali muso
When this nightmare is over, we are going to need the equivalent of our own Nuremberg trials. And de-Nazification at all levels.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
The problem is, many other media outlets have confirmed it.
Patricia Kayden
So Trump knew that Putin had placed a bounty on the head of our troops and not only didn’t do anything about it but actually pushed for Russia to be re-admitted to an international organization. ?
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle: The last time I checked, the Wall Street Journal was a Rightwing rag and they confirmed this story.
dexwood
@Baud: A classic.
danielx
Got an image of Putin having a few toasts with his minions.
Jeffro
And btw, as expected, neither the Russian bounty scandal nor the presidential crazy-calls scandal are in the top 5 screamin’ headlines over at Fox.
5) Senator Kennedy blasting John Roberts re: the Louisiana abortion ruling
4) The renaming of John Wayne Airport
3) That armed couple who pointed weapons at peaceful protesters in St. Louis – THEIR side of the story!
2) AZ’s governor ordering a 30-day closure of bars, gyms, etc.
and, yup, by far the most important story of the day:
1) LA is proposing slashing the police budget
This is how wingnuts see the world, I guess?
Adam L Silverman
@Patricia Kayden: It would seem so.
HumboldtBlue
The end result will be that as we suspected five years ago Trump is wholly owned by Putin and that numerous GOP officials have been taking Russian money.
Hell, Paul Ryan fucking admitted it.
And for every fucking traitor and nasty racist ballbag we still have gangs of people like these folks using their music to keep the cops at bay.
Brachiator
The GOP deliberately burnt that bridge long ago. Republicans have consistently asserted that they are the sole legitimate and patriotic political party. And now they are acting on that belief.
This is foul, but I guess it is not surprising to learn that Trump cannot even attempt to suppress his misogyny. It’s sad. Another blot on a miserable administration.
Trump’s base will dismiss all claims that he is unfit as fake news, jealousy and attention seeking. And it is unfortunate that people will not come out in the open and talk about Trump’s manifest incompetence.
And the GOP leadership will cling to Trump to the bitter end. They can’t repudiate him. Nor can they rein him in. They’re stuck.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro:
The Bunny and Clod story! She’s got a stainless Walther PPK, so she’s licensed to kill or be killed…
Adam L Silverman
@HumboldtBlue: Were there enough links for you tonight? I can add some more if you’d like?
Butter Emails
@Patricia Kayden:
You don’t understand. It was very important that this intelligence be thoroughly vetted before the Trump Administration reacted. If there is anything the Trump administration is known for, it is the careful vetting of facts before taking considered, appropriate action.
Omnes Omnibus
I called my two senators about this today. The calls went a bit differently. When I called Tammy Baldwin’s office, I told them that I was appalled by the fact that the President had known about this and done nothing. I said that I hoped and trusted that Senate Dems would hold the President’s feet to the fire over this debacle. The staffer said she would pass my views on to the Senator. I got a definite impression that my call was welcome. When I called Ron Johnson, I was told that “The Senator does not have a written position on this matter. I asked if he knew about it and was told that the staffer was sure that he did, but that he, the staffer, did not have a written position that he could relay to me. I hung up the phone and said “Fuckers,” and then realized that I had not actually hung up yet. So I ended the call with that.
I don’t usually identify myself as a veteran when I make calls to the my reps because it shouldn’t matter, but this time I did.
Bill Arnold
Calling A. Merkel stupid is just … breathtakingly stupid. Nothing about her resume in any way suggests “stupid”. PhD/quantum chemistry, working scientist for a few years, switch from research science to post-SU-collapse politics, eventually becoming a 4 term chancellor, and the first female chancellor.
From wikipedia (bold mine), “Merkel played a crucial role in managing the financial crisis at the European and international level, and she has been referred to as “the decider”.“
This alone will spur some into action. (Gonna be getting a little more … reckless … myself.)
Benw
Man, these assholes have decided to die on Trump hill. What an inexplicable person so go all in for – he doesn’t have their backs in return!
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: From the CNN reporting:
Arclite
O/T: I just wanted to comment on the SCOTUS decision today. Sometimes being conservative means upholding precedent and not overturning things. Thanks to John Roberts for joining the liberal justices.
Miss Bianca
@Cheryl Rofer: You’d think the BUT HER EMAAAAIIIILLLZZZZ!! crowd would be *all over* the fact that not only is Donald Trump actively undermining our national security and interests every damn day, but that his advisor/enablers were standing by clutching their furrowed brows in terrible concern about it but signally failing to alert Congress, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you?
Could it possibly be that national security interests *aren’t* at the top of every great patriotic citizen journalist priorities, that those who hounded Hillary Clinton on proper server management protocol might be tools of the first order? Oh, say it AIN’T SO, JOE!
HumboldtBlue
@Adam L Silverman:
Hahaha, I was gonna go back to that tune, but instead, I’m gonna ask you to learn how to break up a paragraph!
Adam L Silverman
@Bill Arnold: If the BND ever decides to leak, they could destroy him in one data dump to a reliable journalist.
Adam L Silverman
@HumboldtBlue: I’ve only got one really long paragraph. And you’ll have to live with it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Mmmm, sausage.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Never gets old.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
If I didn’t have strong feelings of good fellowship towards you already, O2, you would have won my heart completely on the strength of this revelation alone. Good on you! I think I will have to follow your example.
Benw
@Adam L Silverman: this is really fucked up. This is abusive behavior. And the response from all sides was apparently to keep exposing the women to abuse, but shrink the number of people who know to protect the abuser.
Adam L Silverman
artem1s
so Killary did it in Benghazi with her emails?
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: Nothing like having 3/4 of a pitcher of bloody marys (maries?) before a little Red Dawn cosplay!
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Not at all.
But where is Yarrow?
HumboldtBlue
@Adam L Silverman:
As always, I’ll be over here with the chopped liver.
Adam L Silverman
@Benw: No argument from me.
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: They’re personal injury lawyers.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: He’s okay. He emailed me about two weeks ago.
jl
Does the ‘if you are explaining, then you are losing’ rule apply to this? If so, more and more serious damage to Trump and his buddies, and GOP, is piling up.
I think public opinion has, so far, taken a surprising turn to some in favor what would be considered radical ideas that would turn off the moderates, because everyone below very rich has gotten repeated ‘reality therapy’ since the Great Recession. Loss of wealth and income to middle class and lower not made up. Failure to repair housing market, and rising rents. The pandemic is huge, because now not coming for money, but lives and health, people’s entire social existence. Real time cell phone documentation of police misbehavior. Trump abandoning the dog whistle and adopting the bull horn on racism and xenophobia. I think a lot of whites have subliminal prejudice. The harm that does is often the same as conscious prejudice, but trickier to know how to counter it and fix it with people in denial about themselves. Trump is forcing people to decide whether they are going to be toxic stupid racist knowing ugly bigots or not. A critical mass are deciding that they can’t go that way, at least in terms of supporting Trump and GOP. Whether they will backslide after they vote is another matter.
Maybe too many insults and injuries for many people to blow off, but who have blown them off before. And GOP has forgotten that unless you can use physical force or brute force of money to control people, you need a carrot as well as a stick. It’s been all stick for too many people for too long, and the GOP has become too arrogant, vicious and callous to understand.
Adam L Silverman
@HumboldtBlue: Don’t make me sic TaMara on you!//
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: I’m aware. I’m pretty sure things went down like this:
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: Why does this matter?
Mike in NC
Somebody once noted that, “In your guts, you know he’s nuts”. What a shitshow.
Miss Bianca
@Elizabelle: With the accent on the “personal injury” part.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jeffro:
That is a really important story on Planet Wingnut because they believe LA is a cesspool of violent crime where it’s not safe to walk the streets. I’ve been asked about it when Kentuckians heard I was in LA. It baffles them to hear that, no, it’s not particularly more dangerous or criminal than Louisville or Lexington. They have a whole mythology about California being awful.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cheryl Rofer:
It does, yes, but it also suggests they are cowards.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: I missed the connection to haggis in the post. I’ll go read again.
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
Have the other G-7 members said anything about this?
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue: It’s pâté, damn it.
oatler.
@Baud:
Don’t jinx it! We said that during the Mueller investigation.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Trudeau made it unequivocally clear it would not be happening.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: Exactly my point.
jl
@SiubhanDuinne: Cowards who waited until Trump messed up so much that they think they can join the pile on for a quick and low risk political savaging, and disposal of Trumpsters. Fine with me, I wish them luck now, though they need to held to account later.
At least they aren’t waiting to cash in on a book.
Edit: not much credit due for the book thing, since at this rate, will anyone have money to buy one, and would it be confiscated by Trumpster elite praetorian guard of mercenaries, and prison riot guards and ICE?
Adam L Silverman
There is always a tweet!
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in NC:
AFAIK, that line goes back to the 1964 Presidential election. Barry Goldwater’s campaign slogan was “In your heart, you know he’s right.” The LBJ* team responded with “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.”
*Fuck LBJ, pace Raven.
PsiFighter37
@mali muso: I told my wife basically the exact same thing 2 days ago. Even the ‘small potatoes’ like Ben Carson buying $30k of silverware needs to be held to account. The rot of this administration and the GOP needs to be fully exposed.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Good, thanks, though since Trump is “hosting” the meeting, I’d almost bet Putin would show up anyway.
HumboldtBlue
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh no way, my comment was much more in the spirit of “fuck, now I have an hour of homework to read and I’m five beers in” than any sort of criticism.
I come here for the full service.
Morzer
@Adam L Silverman:
The Great Wall of Text will not be breached!
Benw
@Frankensteinbeck: same with NYC! Somehow 70s movies set in Manhattan and 80s movies set in Compton have ossified in the conservative brain.
The scariest people in NYC. right now are the cops.
Mary G
Murphy’s not a bullshitter – did Burr or another Republican fill him in or did somebody in intelligence leak to him?
Butter Emails
@Benw:
They also seem to be the most scared people in NYC right now.
Adam L Silverman
Oh Goody!
SiubhanDuinne
@Miss Bianca: Sorry. I replied to Cheryl before I read the rest of the comments.
Craig
Adam L Silverman
@HumboldtBlue: I’m just being a smartass.
Butter Emails
@Adam L Silverman:
Tell me that the the Trump Administration hasn’t been engaged in a Velociraptor breeding program.
jl
@Benw: I haven’t been a fan of ‘defund the police’ out of fear it would alienate too many people. But so far hasn’t seemed to. So, I’ll go with it.
Doesn’t seem much popular memory that we used to have more teachers, school nurses, counselors, social workers to deal with problems in school. They were replaced with ill-trained police with inappropriate attitudes. Maybe ‘go back to the good old days’ (in terms of social services), or ‘shift the money back’ would be better.
Adam L Silverman
@Morzer: Sends text message to TaMara…//
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s almost unbelievable how frequently that happens.
Benw
@Butter Emails: scared of what, one wonders?
A
I suspect there are quite a few actors out there who know exactly what TRE45ON says on its open cell phone, no? And there are even more who could hazard a guess and probably be in the ballpark, regardless of the issue set.
Adam L Silverman
@Craig: Semi-slang. Flash traffic is priority communications.
Adam L Silverman
@Butter Emails: They were too busy to consider if they should…
HumboldtBlue
@Adam L Silverman:
Me too and it’s my default here. No explanations needed.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: I hope it was worth it! They’re the most pathetic human beings I’ve seen in a while (and given the past four years, that’s saying something).
I don’t even want tumbrels anymore; just tanker trucks of tar and tractor-trailers full of feathers. They’re so pathetic, we’ll even let them stop their cross-country march of shame at the Continental Divide, and BLM will point weapons at them only every OTHER mile.
Adam L Silverman
@A: The Israelis, who if you go to that September 2019 link, were deploying the stingers. I expect everyone is collecting on his personal cell phone calls.
Omnes Omnibus
@Craig: They got a superhero to carry the manila envelope.
jl
@SiubhanDuinne: We’ve had two presidents with supernatural super powers in a row. Obama was a time traveling shape shifter who could see the future. Trump demonstrated this when he revealed Obama time traveled in order to mess up making a covid vaccine.
And Trump has a spooky power to unerringly foresee his own future self-owing and self-punking.
Dang, occult powers involved, you ask me. Used to say God looks after drunks fools and the United States. Maybe God got tired of the gig and handed the job over to Satan. I’ll check God’s twitter and see if there is anything about that.
Jeffro
@jl: they’ve been in their bubble so long, they can’t understand why random messages of “LAW AND ORDER!” aren’t working, why a majority of Americans actually understand that Black lives DO matter, and that we’re not coming out of lockdown (officially or no) until this thing is under control.
Reality…as evidenced by sick/dead Americans everywhere, and cellphone cameras documenting police violence everywhere…has a way of asserting itself. Or so some smart guy once said. =)
Benw
@jl: think of “defund the police” as a compromise :)
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: Oblig.
jl
@Jeffro: such clowns, next level is county fair dunk-tanks? Knocking on wood they continue to be incompetent clowns, at least in terms of preserving themselves politically.
Good chance Trump will. Since yesterday I heard news reports of polls that say public deciding that covid-19 pandemic was handled poorly and want a plan.
Today, I heard Trump is insisting on an old fashioned nominating convention with no masks and no social distancing, no precautions of any kind. The way it sounded, Trump may ask that the soap be impounded.
CaseyL
@Adam L Silverman:
Then why don’t they? Our national security is beyond compromised. POTUS and, apparently, the entire GOP are tools, willing tools, for nations that are our adversaries.
Jeffro
@Frankensteinbeck: Oh believe me, I know it’s “the” story on Planet Wingnut. On FB, my mom has been getting (and sharing/reposting) nothing but stories about police getting assaulted here, getting killed there, getting disrespected everywhere…it’s the all-purpose excuse for a certain segment of right-leaning folks to ignore whatever insanity trumpov is up to and go along with “LAW AND ORDER!” bleating.
After reading “MindFuck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America” last year (along with other reporting the past few years) I have no doubt that she’s one of those folks who has played around on Facebook too much, ‘liked’ and ‘shared’ too many authoritarian stories, taken too many personality quizzes, and is now getting a steady stream of agitprop based on her ‘Big 5’ personality traits.
Trying to get that across to her, however…whew…
HumboldtBlue
@Omnes Omnibus:
And now I’m the silly goose.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
I have said before that Merkel, not Trump, is arguably the leader of the free world. And I can imagine that both Merkel and May have dealt with various leaders who do not respect them. But Trump brings sexism up to another level. He certainly explodes the myth that he is a smart negotiator who sizes up the people he has to deal with.
He has often given away hints that he never respected Theresa May in comments that he made about BREXIT or the EU. He would talk about the “good advice” he had given her and how she wouldn’t listen. Oddly, enough, he would try to cover this with a compliment about Queen Elizabeth. But here he was clearly intimidated by the Queen’s status.
But his disregard and disrespect of Merkel is a different level of stupidity and insult. It has got to be compounded by the fact that she is more than his equal and does not need to capitulate to his whims. And it is also clear that he heaps extra abuse on any woman who does not look like a conventional “babe.”
What is still not entirely clear is his admiration for, and need to submit to, male authoritarian leaders. It is deeply perverse. And exposes the country to danger.
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: And not only that, they’re described as “shoeless but armed.”
Riverfront Times of St. Louis: Gun-Swinging Lawyers Confront Protesters in Central West End
Their house is enormous. Looks about the size of the Newport RI “summer mansions” of the robber baron class. Built by a daughter of Adolphus Busch, co-founder of Anheuser-Busch.
And the McCloskeys have loads of 15th to 17th century tapestries and furnishings. Personal injury law has been very good to them.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: Oh no, that was just my clumsy way of expressing that I agreed with you.
A
@Adam L Silverman: ironically, its stupidity may be the only thing that saves us.
joel hanes
… in which the word “Americans” is here used to mean “Fox News viewers”
Martin
LPT: Careful who you lie about. Lots of people keep receipts.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Plus Justin would have to do it over Chrystia Freeland’s dead body, which wouldn’t be a good look.
Gravenstone
@Adam L Silverman: That’s gonna be mighty inconvenient, those pesky Democrats using their positions to get information directly from those who would be in a position to know. And not waiting to have it spoon-fed to them through the Republican cover up machine that is being built.
The Moar You Know
Something worse than that has happened between Trump and Merkel. Or our governments, hell, how could you know, these days? Anyhow, I read Deutsche Welle as my daily news these days, I can’t handle US news at all. And, oddly enough, yesterday, they were interviewing the German Foreign Minister, and he said something which I found incredibly disturbing; that even if Trump goes in November, the relationship between the United States and Germany will not be anything like it used to be.
I couldn’t imagine what had prompted such a statement.
Well, the other shoe drops. Now I know.
I suspect that the election of Trump may be one of those things you can’t undo. Can’t apologize for. Just took it a step too far.
jl
@Jeffro: We’ve had to live with people like that for a long time. I read that during 1918 pandemic, there were anti-mask riots in some cities, death threats to public officials who wanted what science said were good control measures back then.
When I was one of those dang kids back in those days doing GOTV, I remember people who would start lecturing us on how FDR was a communist and a traitor, global Jewish banker conspiracies, and all sorts of crazy what not. Masons were the devil.. social security and Medicare were fine private business operations and government meddling was going to ruin them, to spite and kill old people, and… too much for me to remember…
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
Sweet. I wonder if she(/BND) has made it clear that this continues to be a possibility.
Miss Bianca
@The Moar You Know: Germany to US: “It’s the Misogyny, Stupid!”
joel hanes
@Arclite:
Thanks to John Roberts for joining the liberal justices.
Roberts once again telegraphed to the right-wingers how to construct a case in which he could decide the other way, if it came before him in a non-election year.
He is neither an ally nor a principled jurist, unless you think that “making sure that black and brown people cannot achieve representation” is a principle.
Fuck him. I will never forgive him for Citizens United, Shelby County, or Rucho.
Jeffro
Yeah…it’s almost like the very simple slogan “The president* has. no. plan. for American recovery” has escaped the minds of the punditariat.
I’m shocked no one is riling up and organizing America’s K-12 school parent population. They (we!) are truly fucked for the entire coming school year if SOMEONE in this administration doesn’t start sending the right messages, sending relief funding downstream to states and school divisions, like, yesterday. It’s a constituency that has had it with “remote” “learning” and whew does it ever cut across party lines.
I’m serious. You want to talk about landslide: remind the parents of America’s school-age kids that this thing could have been well under control by now, and that Europe, New Zealand, etc are well on their way back to normal – including having their kids back in school all day every day. Hell, we could pull a 180 tomorrow , nationwide, and be looking good by the end of September. But instead, September is when it will likely start to all come crashing down, in terms of parent frustrations. At which point it will no doubt be turned into a partisan issue by the trumpublicans, etc etc.
jl
@The Moar You Know: Back in the days of W, friends who lived in Europe at the time said everyone, including sanitation workers and ditch diggers asked them why Americans elected such an obviously stupid ignorant doofus. Most of them are back here now, for better or worse, so fewer contacts. Haven’t heard what they ask Americans now.
Adam L Silverman
Off to walk the dogs. Back in 45 or so.
cain
And it will be death.. but when this is all over – will Democrats pursue justice ? I hope that they don’t fall for the false argument that the country is divided and we need to come together as a country… again. You can only use that ruse a few times.
This time – a lot of crooks go to jail. I don’t care if it looks like a witch hunt, but the justice dept needs to start investigating where all the Russian money is going to and start filing lawsuits and start taking people into custody.
Martin
@Frankensteinbeck: California’s violent crime rate is basically identical to the national rate. LA’s is somewhat higher, which puts it around the level of Tennessee’s state rate, and slightly higher than Louisville’s. So LA is more dangerous, but not significantly so. It’s better than Houston, for instance.
Kentucky as a state has a slightly lower rate than NYC, which is nearly half of Louisville’s.
HumboldtBlue
I have no idea who Clay Cane is but he’s reaching people.
Benw
@Adam L Silverman: have a good walk, dump the sweaty tshirt right into the wash!
joel hanes
@SiubhanDuinne:
It’s always projection.
Every accusation is a confession.
Bill Arnold
@Elizabelle:
If these are really photos, then they need to explain the stuffed pheasant(?) on top of a pile of bread rolls.
Whatever. D.J.Trump, his immediate family his immediate enablers and cabinet, and politicians of the GOP, are all several orders of magnitude more awful. Focus.
jl
@Jeffro: Several European countries have been sending their kids back to school for over a month, with no spikes or second waves. But they had a plan and got the prevalence of infection down low enough to do that without too much risk and some room for inevitable trouble shooting and adjustments. Australia did the work and planning and devoted resources, and flexible quick adjustments needed to keep their schools mostly open through the initial attack and their successful ‘crush the curve’ effort.
And some European countries were in as bad a shape as the US in through April. But they could turn it around in time. We could to, IF we had a plan and could work the plan.
So, point being, if US is still messed up after school is supposed to start, boil that down to a campaign ad, and get it to parents, it will be devastating.
Craig
@Adam L Silverman: thanks.
cain
@Frankensteinbeck:
They watched Boyz in the Hood twice, and saw the LA Riots.. that’s all the evidence they need.
Marcopolo
So Rachel Maddow had Amb. Rice on to talk about the Russian bounty issue & she was superb. The point she made, which I think Adam alludes to in his post, is that even if the President doesn’t read his PDB, that briefing goes to a number of other principals: the Secretaries of State & Defense, the DNI, the NSA, the VP, the CIA Chief. At least one of them must read these briefings. So this was a known issue. Which leads to the issue of did any of them bring this to the attention of the President, since their job responsibilities include keeping the President aware of this information. Particularly, where the hell is Sec. Defense Esper on this? He is supposed to be responsible for the security of the troops. Did he do anything in reaction to learning this intel? Rice, who was one of Obama’s NSAs then went on to outline what she would have done in this situation, which included briefing the President, convening a meeting of the intelligence & defense principals to create a list of countermeasures, and then presenting those options for retaliation to POTUS. She also said that if she saw the President ignoring those recommendations and continuing to reward Putin with access & policy gifts (like the invite to the G7 & pulling troops out of Germany) that she would feel compelled to call the President to the carpet and ask him WTF are you doing?
It was a great back and forth. If a clip of it becomes available, watch it. The last part was Maddow asking Rice if she could confirm she was being vetted for VP. Of which she said of course said she could not comment. I honestly think Biden’s team is vetting her but probably for Sec State. After all, why not try to get ahead in the vetting process by using it for other top level positions. If a person is good enough to be vetted for VP, they are good enough to be Sec. State (Rice); Sec. Treasury (Warren); AG (Harris), or Sec. Defense (Duckworth)?
Just my 2 cents.
Butter Emails
@Benw:
Police Officers have come to believe that they are at higher risk of death from the general public than they actually are. 147 officers died in line of duty (which includes stuff like heart attacks) in 2019. 48 died as the result of gunfire. It’s a dangerous job, but not the most dangerous and they are hardly under siege by the general public.
Just to put that in perspective, there were 1,004 fatal police shootings in the US the same year so police shot and killed about 20 times as many members of the public (criminals and otherwise) as the public shot and killed police officers. Or, just to further put that number in context, the US has been running around 10,000 murders total in a given year, meaning that police by themselves managed to wrack up kills equal to 10% of the total generated by our entire nation of 300 million.
jl
@cain: Some of them should get a free trip to The Hague, but will Europe make an exception to the travel ban for Americans? I have some ideas, but sense emerging obstacles.
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: God knows I’m always up for some stupid shit augmented with intoxicants, but damn I have not and would not conceive of picking up a firearm while consuming alcohol.
Mike in NC
@Brachiator: To Fat Bastard, any woman he can’t grope qualifies as a ‘nasty woman’.
Omnes Omnibus
Woohoo! Let’s empty the Senate. Who needs it, right?
Jeffro
That is a GREAT point and please let it be true – I need to see signs that Biden & Co are going to hit the ground running flat-out!
Calouste
@The Moar You Know: No one is going to trust the US further than the next elections. At least not for a few decades or some serious reform of the political system, whichever comes later.
Jeffro
@Omnes Omnibus: Come one – that’s one non-senator, two from safe states, and one who would need a special election (assuming she’s not already on the ticket as VP, and that the MA legislature doesn’t pass some legislation that minimizes the time a D doesn’t occupy her seat)
Patricia Kayden
Peale
@jl: it’s possible that they put the ban in place to prevent officials from the US from running into their cathedrals and demanding sanctuary.
TaMara (HFG)
I see Adam is not going to let me live the down “I don’t give a fuck about Adam” comment.
And still, I say, I’m not sure in what world Adam would need me to ride in to save him.
But I’m ready if needed. ? LOL
Calouste
@Mike in NC: Which is why I think all the talk about Pence being replaced with Niki Haley is nonsense. The only woman the shitgibbon would have on the ticket who’d meet the constitutional age requirement is Ivanka.
Martin
@Marcopolo: Will remind again, Harris turned down the AG consideration under Obama. If Biden wants her in the admin, it’ll have to be as VP.
Peale
@Jeffro: mass holes are mass holes though. No guarantee that they wouldn’t send scot brown back.
mrmoshpotato
@Butter Emails: You. Are. Hilarious! :)
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeffro: Come on, it’s not as if the Senate is the only storehouse of talent for the Democratic Party. Getting and holding the Senate matters. There is talent to be had elsewhere. I suspect the VP nominee will come from the Senate. Let it end there.
Martin
@Patricia Kayden: That’s clever. She knows that’s not the case but she’s creating a scenario that both sews discord with the President and makes them want to respond to it, clarifying the situation.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m sure you meant to write “gehackte Leber,” being in Wisconsin and all.
Benw
@Butter Emails: yep, my (unlabeled sarcastic) thought was that the police don’t need to be afraid, unless their funding for snacks is about to be cut. It’s not that unsafe a job and they get paid a ton. Thanks for the numbers, gives great context
Martin
@The Moar You Know: You don’t know Missouri.
NotMax
@Calouste
Liz Cheney?
//
TaMara (HFG)
@Adam L Silverman:
I believe that tweet may relate to this.
Marcopolo
@Omnes Omnibus: With Jeffro on his response to this. The only problematic one would be Warren & I’ve read any number of words written about how the MA state leg, which has D supermajorities, could quickly pass something that makes filling an empty Senate seat quick & easy.
Also, I’m not prescient enough to think all of those women will wind up in Biden’s cabinet but what a repudiation of Trumpism to have 4-5 amazing & diverse women occupying the top 5 positions in the US gov’t just below POTUS.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: No. The French were the earliest Europeans to settle in Wisconsin. They spelled it Ouisconsin, no joke.
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer: I think the “high officials” stuff is old news that has been known a very long time. E.g. Wikipedia:
Cheers,
Scott.
patrick Il
@The Moar You Know: They can’t trust us because it is not Trump alone. We are no longer trustworthy.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Just listened to an interview with the husband who insisted he was in terror of losing his life, his home, his property in seconds. ?
Karen with a tie.
Jeffro
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m good with the VP being from the Senate but I’m not seeing the down side if additional ‘safe state’ Dem senators are pulled to help run key departments. I know there are other talent pools (like in the House, for instance).
Certainly House and Senate Dems have seen their GOP um “colleagues” in action and understand the nature of the threat/the need to act quickly, so however it shakes out, I’m just glad for the insight MP noted, that this vetting can serve other good purposes for the Biden Administration as well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Marcopolo: Well, then you join him in being wrong.
Jeffro
@TaMara (HFG): NYT just reported that trumpov was briefed in writing about the bounties in February.
Receipts, the IC haz them…
Marcopolo
@Martin: Well, that was 6 years ago & before she was a Senator. You’re probably right but anything is possible.
mrmoshpotato
No puppet! No puppet! My daddy Vladdy says you’re the puppet!
JFC
I’m off to the Furchester Hotel before bed.
No more Furchester Hotel on Netflix. :(
A Year In Space it is.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro: Two from safe states? Duckworth replaced a Republican.
Jeffro
@Marcopolo:
@Omnes Omnibus:
well, at least we’re pretty good company! MP, you ok? You need a tissue or anything? ;)
Elizabelle
@debbie: Do you recall where that interview was?
What asshats.
Gin & Tonic
@Jeffro: It’s almost as if somebody is timing the leaks for maximum effect.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: Yup, she doesn’t want to be a non-political entity which happens after you’re a Cabinet member.
Bill Arnold
FWIW somebody started a wikipedia page on this today:
Russian bounty program
Busy edit history already. Bunch of Philip Cross edits, for those who know of that nym.[1]
[1] Background : wikispooks.com/wiki/Philip_Cross
Brachiator
@Mike in NC:
Not quite. Any woman who openly opposed him, criticizes him or defies him is “nasty.” Especially women of color.
FlyingToaster
@Peale: Scotty don’t live heah no moah. Thank goodness; two years of Senator Centerfold was plenty.
More likely if Senator Professor Warren accepts an appointment elsewhere, young Joe3 (who I like but suspect he’s not gonna win the grudge match with Markey) will likely win the seat in the special.
I can’t speak to the other states, but as a Masshole myself, I don’t think we’re likely to make the mistake of appointing another state AG to run for US Senate. (Especially not AG “Satanic Panic” Coakley.)
Jeffro
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Isn’t she from Illinois? Isn’t that a pretty reliable Dem state? Wasn’t the Republican kind of a fluke?
(checks notes…okay, Ballotopedia…)
Yes, in fact for this seat, it’s been mostly D all the way for decades. For the Paul Simon/Dick Durbin seat, even more so.
stacib
@Martin: the opportunity this time has to be far more enticing – especially if Biden lets her go unchecked and just do her job. I would love to see her go after Barr, Jared, and all of the trump* grifters.
Jeffro
@Gin & Tonic: And in the correct order, and allowing for the maladministration to hang itself with its lies and lame excuses in between…
(ie, for maximum effect, as you say =)
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Did they settle Madifils as well?
James E Powell
@Cheryl Rofer:
They are all evil for refusing to come forward sooner. There was an impeachment inquiry and trial. These things they’ve witnessed were related. The sad part is we will never know their names and they will never be held accountable for their covering up for Trump.
James E Powell
Question: Did any Democratic president every split intelligence briefings like this?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Marcopolo: I seem to recall that Rice was said to be neck-and-neck with John Kerry as Obama’s second-term SoS
She’s very impressive
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro: Why take any chances with a possible Senate majority?
Jeffro
@Martin: Pretty sure Biden & Co have already seen the same polling that all of us laymen have…that Harris adds a bit, Warren adds a bit more to Biden’s turnout.
He is up by huge margins everywhere and has all kinds of leverage and ‘wait time’ here.
Harris can certainly decline AG if she likes, but there are plenty of other great VP choices AND cabinet selections to be had here.
I’m starting to warm to Duckworth a bit. She can lay the wood to these Republicans like almost no one else in national politics. But we’ll see how it shakes out.
Martin
@stacib: Maybe. But she ran for President, credibly. She doesn’t need to play a supporting role. VP is a step up, AG not really.
stacib
@Marcopolo: In addition to those, I would love to see Yang at Education and Pete as CoS. Biden could even consider Steyer at Environmental.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: No, it’s not really on the water route from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi, is it?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@stacib: Unless Senator Harris has decided that she wants to retire from politics, she won’t take it.
dopey-o
@Miss Bianca: “personal injury lawyers” in st louis.
my father used to refer to those people as “ambulance chasers.” i do not think he respected them.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
Mais bien sûr! Sinon, comment l’épeler?
Martin
@Jeffro: Biden would be dumb to not choose a POC at this moment. Catastrophically dumb. That could be Rice or Demmings or Harris, but this is a moment, and he shouldn’t overlook that.
Jeffro
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I dunno…because it’s not really taking much of a chance?
Easy for me to say, I’m not the one ‘pulling the trigger’ here. But still. Biden has a huge lead, perceptions of incumbent trumpov and the reality of the coronavirus are not likely to change, and a big blue wave comparable to 2018 is coming.
I understand the concerns but stressing about “pulling” D senators for VP and cabinet posts, provided that they are from pretty safe states, is not one of them. If Doug Jones somehow manages to hold on, yeah, I don’t want him in Biden’s cabinet. But Duckworth, Harris, Warren…these are all pretty easy seats to replace or temporarily work around.
Marcopolo
@Jeffro: Tissue, me? No. I love to see folks display smug self- confidence. It’s the secret sauce that keeps this place humming!
Of course, we do still have to win the damned election first. About 24 hours remain to make End of 2nd Q campaign contributions.
Here’s an ActBlue page which lists most of the competitive Senate races if folks want to throw some coin at flipping it.
Includes holds for Doug Jones (AL) & Gary Peters (MI). Does not include AZ, CO, ME, or KY.
Ken
Or maybe she expects Trump to get angry at the accusation and immediately blurt out “They did too brief me!”
Jeffro
@Martin: That’s actually not a good take. Biden is already doing quite well nationally (obviously) and that’s without a running mate. He is doing just fine with Black voters (older Black voters especially) – that is, after all, how he won Super Tuesday and then the nomination. Everyone in the Democratic party already knows where Biden stands in this “moment”.
Where he could use a boost is with younger voters, and given that he has decided he will select a female running mate, that would be Warren. Not because of her age, but because she is further left than Biden and so are younger voters.
Either way, this will be a wash for him at worst no matter who he picks (barring a Lieberman-style unforced error). That’s just the nature of most VP picks. But while Harris is a very good pick, Warren is a slightly better one.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeffro: I also think we need to start thinking of Congress as important again. It should not be a farm team for the Cabinet or a simple rubber stamp/road block for a president (depending on party control). It’s supposed to be a co-equal branch.
Captain C
I think it comes down to severe daddy issues.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: Or Duckworth, she’s Asian.
HumboldtBlue
@stacib:
Kamala as VP and the party leader heading into ’24.
I was easily convinced.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro: Was Teddy Kennedy’s seat a “safe seat”? He held the seat for over 45 years.
stacib
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I’m not a Harris fan, but she more than represented herself well during her questioning in the various hearings. As a former prosecutor, I would hope it would give her great joy to expose and punish this entire administration. I also think it could help the country tremendously on the world stage to see how active we are in rooting out every bit of this administration.
opiejeanne
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t know if you’ve already heard, but the latest news about the Russian bounty is that Trump was briefed on this over a year ago, March of 2019.
Bolton told Trump over a year ago. I can’t even chew on this, it’s so vile.
cain
That’s going to be true for all the countries. We have shown ourselves to be untrustable – we elected a man who is a complete idiot and has made a mess of everything.
You can imagine how dumbfounded they must be – watching us politicize even the most basic health defense for COVID. No.. there is a sickness and even changing parties is not going to fix it.
stacib
@Martin: will Biden choosing a black women give you any concerns on people not voting because they wouldn’t want to see her in succession as president?
Omnes Omnibus
@Marcopolo: Smug self-confidence? No. I do arrogance and condescension. Do try to get it right.
Marcopolo
So you’re saying if a trans Al Gore suddenly reappeared on the scene tanned, rested, and ready, it would be a mistake for Biden to pick him–though Gore is only 72 and has lots of experience plus the whole climate change cachet thing?
Hoping for a story like this from the Onion.
Omnes Omnibus
How did that work out in 2009?
Jeffro
@?BillinGlendaleCA: True. That’s also one election (from a while back)…look at the historical trends, and then also the past three elections since 2016. The trend is for Ds in both cases.
I understand and respect the concern…I’m just not as stressed about it as you might be. We’ll certainly see how it all shakes out, and soon.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Captain C: there’s I agree about daddy issues, and there’s dictator envy, and also a financial connection to Turkey
I don’t know how much he makes off these “licensing” deals. It might be helpful to see his books and tax returns.
Marcopolo
@Omnes Omnibus:
I did get it right. Congratulations!
Jeffro
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s…both?
I actually do want Congress to serve as a farm team for the WH (I want it required by law/Constitution, actually).
For the Cabinet, yeah, other folks can be called to serve. But for this Cabinet more than perhaps any other I can remember (and I’m not all that young anymore!), I want people who both a) know what they’re doing/how the government works, or is supposed to work, and b) truly know what they’re up against with this GOP.
They can be capable House members, Senators from safe or safe-ish states, I don’t really care. I’m just not quite as concerned as some about Senators coming to serve if they are from historically/recently D states.
NotMax
@Martin
Don’t leave out of consideration Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of NM.
Just sayin’.
opiejeanne
@Bill Arnold: It’s funny that Keyvan thinks it’s hideous. It was built in 1904 by one of the Busch heirs and has been carefully restored by the current owners. This is the sort of thing you go to Europe to see, Italian Renaissance design.
The owners are hideous, the house is not.
Adam L Silverman
@CaseyL: They aren’t leaking, or leaking more or going beyond confirming leaks from the US and other places, in case the President is reelected.
Adam L Silverman
And there it is:
Another Scott
@Brachiator: OTOH, he was/is afraid of Michelle Obama.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@stacib: Biden should do what Obama did and put experts at the top of the science agencies. We need an Art Rosenfeld at the head of EPA, with their mandate formally expanded to climate change by Congress. Same for Energy.
Would prefer engineers over scientists, since the science in these categories are not the problem, but the solutions to the known problems are what needs to happen.
NotMax
@Bill Arnold
The stuffed spotted owl was at the dry cleaners.
//
West of the Rockies
Not sure if this has been touched on yet, but did the bounties extend to coalition forces: Canadians, Brits, etc? Were they notified of this? Seems like there are a lot more skeletons yet to wash up as it were.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: there were moments late in the ’16 campaign when I suspected that MRO was trying to bait trump into coming after her. And I’m surprised it didn’t work.
scav
@patrick Il: Well christ, would you trust a random ‘Mercan to have your back? If nothing else, look at all the maskless. The odds aren’t stellar. And then there’s their behavior as they run toward a good deal at a Walmart sale.
There are Americans of trust. But not random ones,
Martin
Yes. And yes, we notified them of this. And they’ve confirmed that now.
Adam L Silverman
I just updated the post with James LaPorta’s new reporting.
dopey-o
@opiejeanne: could you please provide a link for bolton’s claim? it is vile, yes. but also important.
Martin
I get the sense the WH thinks this is a nothing story.
It’s not feeling like a nothing story.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
There. Is. Always. A. Tweet.
it’s almost supernatural
Jeffro
@Omnes Omnibus: when Obama picked…Biden…who was replaced by a Dem senator in DE?
What am I missing here?
Jeffro
@Marcopolo: is this snark or agreement or something else? I meant if Biden picked someone almost wholly unappealing to all but the most ‘Third Way’ Dems. Like say a Manchin or a Carper.
Even then, Biden would win, but he’d lose a % or two from his already big lead.
Marcopolo
@Jeffro: Well, I did close by saying I was hoping for a story like this from the Onion. I thought that pretty clearly identified it as ridiculous snark.
Adam L Silverman
@Patricia Kayden: Wouldn’t surprise me. He had a 1/2 dozen official calls with Putin from March through June, so…
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: I did a post about it at the time.
Marcopolo
Not that this is necessarily a very lively thread anymore, but the latest russian bounty reporting is pushing the date of first knowledge of this back to late winter/early spring 2019. If that is correct, how the hell does Trump inviting, then disinviting the Taliban to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11 in 2019 play into the reporting?
This whole affair is so like Benghazi but for real & with more deaths of Americans. We actually do need a congressional investigation stat.
Anne Laurie
Internet racists: Only on her mother’s side! She’s a mongrel! No race cred for her!…
I still think Harris is the VP choice for this particular moment, but Duckworth is more than qualified. And having to rage-hate a veteran who literally gave up her limbs for her country would cause severe cognitive dissonance among the most reliable Republican not-Trump-cultists voters.
Jeffro
@Marcopolo: Ah, so ‘agreement’, then. I thought you were saying it was on a par with The Onion in terms of being stupid or over the top. Thanks for clarifying!
Sally
I have known about the bounties for about a year. Someone has $80k bounty on his head. Can’t wear any identifying rank, badges or gear, making this job far more dangerous. But less susceptible to a sniper. $80k.
PS, and I’m not the president of anything.
cain
You mean the same young voters that Bernie were sure were going to come out and vote him and make him prez?
I think not. Let’s not depend on a demographic that is mostly unreliable. They do love to march and protest though – we all did. But you still need to be an adult and come out and vote.
The young people are going to vote regardless of who is on the ticket – and Harris is in fact a younger woman than Warren and would likely relate better to younger people.
Don’t get me wrong I love warren, and she was my choice for President, but she is not my choice for VP. GIve her a cabinet position and give her a platform to tear republicans apart.
randal m sexton
@Adam L Silverman: Nice post, but I think you should explore the space. Really more cowbell err links.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@stacib: A Cabinet Secretary is a dead end job for a politician.
Adam L Silverman
@James E Powell: No.
NotMax
@Anne Laurie
Didn’t give them a moment’s pause about trashing James Cleland.
Anne Laurie
I thought I’d seen reports that she had officially taken herself out of contention?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
because of course
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She wasn’t confirmable because the GOP made her the scapegoat for delivering the David Petraeus, Director of Central Intelligence, approved talking points on Benghazi the Sunday after it happened on Meet the Press. Talking Points that were intended to cover Petraues’s and the CIA’s tuchases because their was a CIA post at the diplomatic facility.
Adam L Silverman
@stacib: Yang gets nothing. He’s a kook.
Adam L Silverman
@opiejeanne: I did an update fifteen minutes ago when I got back from walking the dogs.
AnotherBruce
@Elizabelle: That seems right, they’ve personally injured their professional careers.
Sebastian
Deleted. Adam posted the AP update
Anne Laurie
IIRC, it did, they were, and the respective nationals are not happy. Boris and his bhoyos are taking considerable stick for being both a Trump lapdog and a Putin tool, just from what I see while looking for coronavirus updates. Not seeing as much about the Canadians, except it’s being presented as one more reason for keeping the border shut against Americans!
debbie
@Elizabelle:
It was on the local Fox news tonight.
Another Scott
Good, good.
[eta:] via Jester Actual.
Cheers,
Scott.
Xenos
@Omnes Omnibus: see also the funny spellings for the Illinwa and Irokwa peoples.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro: I you want folk that understand how the departments work, I’d suggest hiring folk that previously worked in the department not folk from another branch of government.
Adam L Silverman
@Anne Laurie: You have an email.
James E Powell
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I’m always surprised they want the job. Why did Kerry want Sec’y of State, for example.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Max Cleland, NotMax.
NotMax
@BillinGlendaleCA
Thank you. No idea whatsoever what was (not) thinking.
– NotJames
.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Anne Laurie:
Have they thought about building a wall, a big beautiful wall?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: Probably not, IG is like business cards for photographers and models.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@James E Powell: Kerry had long wanted to be Sec. State.
sanjeevs
Trump was briefed on Feb 27 per the CNN report.
On Feb 28 Trump tweeted this
twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1155580140392501248?lang=en
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeffro: How many days did Obama have 60 votes in the Senate? And I’ve already accepted that the VP pick will probably come from the Senate. It’s plundering the Senate’s stars for Cabinet positions that concerns me. We’re clearly not doing to agree, so let’s not take up any more space with the discussion.
James E Powell
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I read that somewhere at the time. I just can’t imagine why.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
Given some of the senators who were the 60*, “have” might not be the best word. It’s more like, for how many days did Obama have only 40 definite votes against anything he proposed.
Jay
@jl:
we don’t ask Americans we encounter in the wild. We r-u-n-n-o-f-t away from the Covid spewing disease monkees.
kindness
Trump does more work for Putin than he realizes. I can’t believe the Republican party is going along with it. Trump isn’t their only lifeboat yet they act like he is.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
I’m not seeing that Warren would be popular with younger voters, especially since they didn’t turn out for her during the primaries.
Also, and I note that I have no idea how significant this is, but I notice on social media former Sanders supporters and maybe paid tricksters doing everything they can to convince younger voters to stay home. The common themes they use is that Biden is a hopeless corporate Democrat and that Warren specifically somehow betrayed Bernie and is thus unworthy of the support of true progressives.
I DO like how Black Lives Matter activists are also registering voters, especially younger voters.
Cacti
Gina Haspel (CIA) and John Ratcliffe (DNI) have both issued statements…
Condemning the leak of the information, and thereby confirming its accuracy.
Morzer
@Martin: There’s an argument for Catherine Cortez Masto or Michelle Lujan Grisham too.
prostratedragon
@Patricia Kayden: That thought did cross my mind, especially with indications that the intel might be older than first revealed –waiting until telling him would do less damage than not. I’m glad the Speaker spoke it.
Of course the other thing I’ve been wondering is what this latest flurry of phone calls that’s been reported was about. It wasn’t this. Could it have been only about the Germany withdrawal, or is there something else going to pop soon, and could the bounty leak be in part to prepare the ground to deal with that?
Captain C
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: All of the above, yes. With the Dictator Envy I think some of it is the powers at their disposal, and some of it is that deep down he knows he’s too weak, he can scream at people who can’t escape but he can’t even fire people on his show face-to-face.
It would not surprise me to learn that the math used in his tax returns is such a bizarre and convoluted jury-rigging of (a tiny bit of) reality and multiple mutually contradictory fantasies that it could power a starship that could easily overtake the Bistromath without breaking a sweat.
opiejeanne
@dopey-o: Adam already did, and I heard it this evening on The Last Word, Lawrence O’Donnell’s show. The story was being updated while the show was running, and it came up about halfway through.