Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

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

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Repub Venality Open Thread: Every Accusation An Admission

Repub Venality Open Thread: Every Accusation An Admission

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… In three separate letters dated May 3 and addressed to Post reporters Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller, and former Post reporter Adam Entous, the Justice Department wrote they were “hereby notified that pursuant to legal process the United States Department of Justice received toll records associated with the following telephone numbers for the period from April 15, 2017 to July 31, 2017.” The letters listed work, home or cellphone numbers covering that three-and-a-half-month period…

News organizations and First Amendment advocates have long decried the government practice of seizing journalists’ records in an effort to identify the sources of leaks, saying it unjustly chills critical newsgathering. The last such high-profile seizure of reporters’ communications records came several years ago as part of an investigation into the source of stories by a reporter who worked at BuzzFeed, Politico and the New York Times. The stories at issue there also centered around 2017 reporting on the investigation into Russian election interference.

It is rare for the Justice Department to use subpoenas to get records of reporters in leak investigations, and such moves must be approved by the attorney general. The letters do not say when Justice Department leadership approved the decision to seek the reporters’ records, but a department spokesman said it happened in 2020, during the Trump administration. William P. Barr, who served as Trump’s attorney general for nearly all of that year, before departing Dec. 23, declined to comment…

The letter does not state the purpose of the phone records seizure, but toward the end of the time period mentioned in the letters, those reporters wrote a story about classified U.S. intelligence intercepts indicating that in 2016, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) had discussed the Trump campaign with Sergey Kislyak, who was Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Justice Department officials would not say if that reporting was the reason for the search of journalists’ phone records. Sessions subsequently became President Donald Trump’s first attorney general and was at the Justice Department when the article appeared…

In early August 2017 — days after the time period covered by the search of The Post reporters’ phone records — Sessions held a news conference to announce an intensified effort to hunt and prosecute leakers in government.

“This culture of leaking must stop,” Sessions said, noting that the number of leak investigations had tripled since the end of the prior administration. That announcement seemed aimed at appeasing Trump, who had publicly complained about leaks that made him look bad, and branded Sessions “weak” on hunting leakers…

Reader Interactions

90Comments

  5. 5.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    I’m sure this will trigger a 24/7 feeding frenzy.

    Opps, I forgot – it’s okay if you’re republican

  6. 6.

    debbie

    Clearly this will not be the only instance of “obtaining” phone records by that administration.

  7. 7.

    HypersphericalCow

    The pettiness of the Trump regime is one of its most distinguishing features.

  8. 8.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @Baud: ​

    Back in the middle of the 2012 campaign the CIA intercepted an Al Qaeda attempt to blow up an airliner. Instead of celebrating a victory, Mittens charged Obama leaked this to make himself look good. Blue dogs Feinstein and Dutch Ruppersberger made similar statements in agreement. A frenzy ensured. Even here, on this site, Obama haters were saying the leaker had to be John Brennan or Eric Holder.

    So Holder recused himself and appointed two independent prosecutors who on their own volition got a warrant for the reporter’s phone records and discovered the leak was a pervert in the FBI bomb lab (they found child porn in his possession). Instead of celebrating a victory another frenzy ensure.

    Of course, this kind of ridiculous scrutiny only happens to Dems.​​

  9. 9.

    mrmoshpotato

    @debbie:

    Clearly this will not be the only instance of “obtaining” phone records by that administration. 

    Oh not by a long shot when it comes to this fascist, orange trash, manbaby.

  10. 10.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @JPL:

    Trump’s not going to run again. He’ll be lucky if he’s not dead before 2024

  13. 13.

    Mike in NC

    @HypersphericalCow: There is countless documentation on what a cruel, vindictive bully and asshole Trump is. Hurting and humiliating people was his favorite hobby next to golf.

  16. 16.

    J R in WV

    @Mike in NC:

    …what a cruel, vindictive bully and asshole Trump is. Hurting and humiliating people was his favorite hobby next to golf.

    Oh, I dunno… he seemed to enjoy molesting very young girls, buying porn stars for sex, things like that. More than golf I would guess. Hurting and Humiliating may be a wash with sexual abuse, or, I guess sexual abuse is hurting and humiliating, actually.

    So that would be his favorite, pain and humiliation.

  17. 17.

    SiubhanDuinne

    As many times as I’ve seen that clip, I never cease to be amazed at the way Barr flops and flobbers and flounders around as he tries to avoid answering Sen. Harris’ question.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    The NYT is garbage.

    Overcrowded Border Jails Give Way to Packed Migrant Child Shelters

    NYT > Top Stories / by Eileen Sullivan / 1h

     

    Federal documents indicate that while the Biden administration has cleared migrant children from border detention centers, now shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services are strained.

  20. 20.

    Ken

    @mrmoshpotato: Where is fleecing his racist, fascist, trash supporters on Dump’s favorite things list?

    That’s not something he does, so much as what he is. It’s like that old saying, “Fish have no word for water”.

  21. 21.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @debbie: @Suzanne:

    True.

    I’ve been meaning to ask this question and this is for anybody to answer. I’ve been thinking of beginning of investing in Target Date Mutual Fund in a Roth IRA for retirement. I’ve mentioned this before. Given the recent Republican insanity and the predictions of autocracy and all of the instability that implies, would I be wasting my time saving money for something that maybe won’t be there in 40 years?

  22. 22.

    Steeplejack

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    He was doing it on purpose. Fucker.

    I hope to see him really flopping and floundering in some criminal proceeding when he’s under oath and his ass is on the line. ?

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    No. So long as you have the present day disposable* income available, putting it to work for you is wise. Any investment is a gamble; the best one can do is choose one where the odds tilt in your favor.

    *Disposable not in the sense it’s being thrown away, rather as funds you do not anticipate a need to tap outside of the most dire emergency.

  28. 28.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    The BBC noted the other night that although many were angry at him, Modi’s approval rating had barely changed.

  29. 29.

    Another Scott

    It looks like Brown is going to fight for the seat. Good, good.

    @NinaTurner claims the ad is a “negative attack that puts division over service.”

    Nina—while you were comparing @JoeBiden to fecal matter, I was getting wifi hotspots for families.

    While you were considering VP for Jill Stein, I was hitting the streets for @HillaryClinton. pic.twitter.com/JbMasER2xR

    — Shontel Brown for Congress (@ShontelMBrown) May 7, 2021

    (via TheRealHoarse)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  30. 30.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Ksmiami:

    Really? Many users on the r/personalfinance subreddit recommend TDF mutual funds. The one I was looking at was the Vanguard 2060 Target Date Fund. It’s actually composed of several index funds. The nice thing about it is it automatically does the rebalancing for you over time

    @NotMax:

    Oh for sure. I’m building up an emergency fund in my savings account. Would like to put it in a high-yield savings account.

    I suppose what I was getting at though, was a worry that our society will collapse in the next 40 years and/or the global economy will be destroyed as a result of climate change. What would be the point of saving if that money won’t be there, y’know?

  32. 32.

    Nobody in particular

    @Another Scott:

    I read your reply to Stephen “Downstairs.”

    I think you might be interested in this essay on the demarcation of pseudoscience and science and the issues with Popper and falsifiability. Kind of comforting and disturbing at the same time.  Goodnight, kids. This old man is going to bed. Deep sleeper so make as much noise as you like.

     

    According to Popper, no scientific theory can, strictly speaking, ever be true. The best scientists can achieve is to say that a theory is not yet false. The existence of atoms, relativity theory, natural selection, the cellular structure of life, gravity, what have you—these are all provisional theories awaiting falsification. This is a consistent picture, but it cuts against the intuitions of many practicing scientists and philosophers, not to mention many of the rest of us.

  33. 33.

    Another Scott

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m a fan of a few things:

    1. Dollar cost averaging.
    2. Don’t try to time the market.
    3. Invest for the long term and don’t look at it.
    4. S&P500 Index Funds (e.g. Vanguard)
    5. Some money in an index bond fund.
    6. Look at total fees.  You want the lowest fees possible that achieve your goals.  Paying someone to “rebalance” your portfolio every 5-10 years for some percentage is a poor bargain if you can do it yourself.

    Amazing things can happen in 30 years with compounding.  Put a little in every pay period and only rarely look at it.  Don’t mess with it until you need it.

    Bad things can happen at any time, but America is good about eventually recovering.  Stocks are an ownership share.  In a broad enough index fund, you are (effectively) buying a piece of America and that has been an excellent investment.

    Trying to time the market is a recipe for disaster.  Dollar cost averaging helps smooth out the bumps.

    If you can, get a job that matches 401K contributions.  It help a lot (a 1:1 or more match is something you’ll rarely get on your own in the market).

    Just my $0.02.  Good luck.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  34. 34.

    Steeplejack

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    [. . .] would I be wasting my time saving money for something that maybe won’t be there in 40 years?

    Go ahead and invest. (I don’t feel competent to advise on specifics.) Even if you were staring into the abyss of Nazi Germany in 1935, (West) Germany in 1975 was pretty nice. Okay, sure, you might have gotten killed in the Holocaust or World War II, but, hey, shit happens, and in that case your investment strategy wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

    Nobody can predict 40 years into the future. Don’t get sidetracked by your science-fiction-y “what if?” tendencies.

    ETA to note that I don’t think we’re anywhere near Germany in 1935.

  35. 35.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Looking forward to hearing from all those people who decried Obama’s supposed hostility to journalists.

    Jake Motherfuckin’ Tapper, looking at you, dickweed.

  37. 37.

    Ohio Mom

    Goku:

    Certainly it’s true that it’s never too early to start saving for retirement but there are other ways to invest in your future (read the next in a Mom voice, as befitting my nym) namely, pay for some tutoring and take those nursing boards already.

    Ask your old teachers who they recommend you hire to help you study. You will hardly be the first person to be tutored for these tests. It’s easier to save money when you are making more of it. And you deserve all that comes with having a professional career.

    My other unsolicited advice is, the intro to finances book I buy for all the young people in my real life is Harold Pollack’s “The Index Card Book.” If it’s not in your library, you can buy a used copy on Amazon for a few bucks.

    It’s called “The Index Card Book” because Pollack maintains all us average people really need to know about finances can fit on an index card. Spoiler: he likes index funds.

  38. 38.

    NotMax

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    There’s such a thing as peak Eeyore, and I believe you’re reaching beyond even that. Did people cease investing when the very real threat of nuclear armageddon was paramount? Not by a long shot.

    In short: bet on the future, not against it.

    Side note: Returns may be a bit lower but want to mention there are mutual funds dedicated to progressive causes and policies which you might care to investigate.

  39. 39.

    Another Scott

    @Nobody in particular: Thanks for the pointer.

    I only read it quickly, but I’m not convinced there’s a problem with science and sorting it from pseudo-science.  Of course, science isn’t “truth” or “true”.  Science is a process for investigation of the physical world.  Progress (as in politics) is incremental.  This isn’t a failure – it’s a feature.  It’s how we gain bits and pieces of new knowledge before we figure it all out.

    But, and it’s a big but, if someone wants to make a new “scientific” claim, then those claims must fit with what we already “know”.  It must add to the whole in a consistent way that doesn’t break what we already “know”.  It must make testable predictions like the rest of “known” science.

    “God did it” isn’t science.  It’s not testable.

    Some argue that string theory isn’t science because it doesn’t make any testable predictions or isn’t falsifiable.  I don’t know enough about it to say, but I suspect that it’s more a matter of we don’t yet know how to measure its predictions…

    If someone wants to argue that SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab in Wuhan, they need pretty compelling evidence, given its similarity to SARS and MERS and bat coronaviruses…

    My $0.02.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  42. 42.

    khead

    would I be wasting my time saving money for something that maybe won’t be there in 40 years?

    No.  And don’t believe the bullshit about SS not being around when you get there either.

  43. 43.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): What if you start saving money next week and get run over by a bus the week after? You’ll feel pretty dumb then, having foregone that extra margarita.

    You’re getting good advice here. Shut up and listen.

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    @khead

    the bullshit about SS not being around

    Amen. Can remember folks beating their breasts and tearing their hair out about the exact same thing … in the 1970s.

  45. 45.

    Bill Arnold

    @hells littlest angel:
    Full transcript of that speech:
    Transcript: Hillary Clinton speech accuses Donald Trump of “steady stream of bigotry” (Jeff Stein Aug 25, 2016, 3:37pm EDT)
    Bold mine, because it rhymes.

    No one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here. The names may have changed… Racists now call themselves “racialists.” White supremacists now call themselves “white nationalists.” The paranoid fringe now calls itself “alt-right.” But the hate burns just as bright.

  47. 47.

    Origuy

    @Another Scott: What you describe is pretty much what I’ve done. I started with a 401(k) shortly after graduating in 1978 and getting a job that matched my contributions. 4%*2 didn’t amount to much at first but after awhile it started being significant. I lost a lot of money in 2000 and 2008 but it bounced back. I always thought I should pay more attention to it, but I kept it in a variety of mutual funds, S/M Cap, Large Cap, and a few different Foreign funds. I started checking it daily when it went over seven digits in November last year. It tracks the S&P pretty closely. I expect I’ll be able to retire in a year or so.

  49. 49.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Another Scott:

    I agree with pretty much all of your advice and have read about DCA, but I don’t think the expense ratio of the Vanguard Target Date Retirement Mutual Funds are that bad. It’s not that much more than than the basic index funds. It’s 0.15% vs 0.04%

    0.15%/yr on $10,000 for example is only $15/yr. I just want something I can put money into and not have to worry about much

  51. 51.

    Ohio Mom

    Goku:

    After a little bit of googling, I think I found the NYT article from the 1980s about Arafat’s P.L.O. (The P.L.O. in Exile, August 1985) that was a real AHA moment regarding the stock market for me.

    Where did those revolutionaries park their extra funds? The American and European stock markets! I was struck by the idea that even a group that wanted to completely reshape their corner of the world understood the permanence of the stock market.

    That convinced me that the day the stock market is no longer, things would be so chaotic that the financial services sector’s lack of functioning would be the least of my worries.

    This isn’t to say that I don’t remember Monday, October 1987 vividly. The Friday before, my brother, the executor of our mother’s estate, had gotten together all the paperwork necessary to sell her stocks. He decided to take the rest of the day off and sell them on Monday.

    And what happened that Monday? The biggest one day drop of the DOW in history! Bigger than the crash that kicked off the Great Depression.

    Slowly, over the next six months or so, things did crawl back up. But that’s the stock market for you.

  52. 52.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Will the press finally figure out that they’ll be among the first put up against the wall and shot if these people have their way?

    Ha! No way. They’re always the last to figure out the obvious.

  53. 53.

    Ohio Mom

    Goku:

    Be conservative with your money for now. As you learn more, you can always take a different tack.

    You have a lot of years ahead of you, and right now the stakes aren’t very high for you — it’s not going to be a big sum of money. So pick something not too complicated and get on with other things.

  55. 55.

    James E Powell

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    Will the press finally figure out that they’ll be among the first put up against the wall and shot if these people have their way?

    No. They all believe they are above & beyond anything.

  59. 59.

    Another Scott

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It’s vitally important that you understand the impact of fees on your total returns.  What seem to be tiny fees can have a huge impact on what is in your account 30-40 years later because of the way compounding works.

    Think of it this way: An S&P500 index fund only has to be programmed once.  After that, nobody needs to touch it, so it can have very low fees.  A 20XX fund means that some human is going to have to mess with it, and they’re going to take money out of your account – off the top – to pay for that work for you.  That money they take out will no longer be available for compounding – it’s lost forever.  You’re hoping that they’ll do smart things and adjust your investment so that it will earn more or be safer than it would be if it were left in an S&P500 index fund.  Maybe they’ll be able to do that, and maybe they’ll make smarter choices than you would.  But remember that nobody beats the market consistently.  It just doesn’t happen.

    Your “$15/$10000” fee could cost you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost earnings when you’re looking to retire.

    That’s not to say that it’s necessarily a bad choice for you – maybe it would be great.  Peace of mind is worth a lot.  Not having to make choices when you’re stressed with living is worth a lot.  But there is no free lunch – if someone is touching your money, they will get paid by you to do it.

    The Motley Fool (fool.com) used to be a good site for explaining stuff like this, but I haven’t looked at it in years.  Vanguard also has lots of useful information, but can be overwhelming because it is so huge with so many choices.

    You need to do what makes sense for you and your comfort level.  Don’t listen to us – we don’t know you and your circumstances.  Either do your own research or get help from someone that you can trust.

    HTH a little.  Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  60. 60.

    jonas

    Dollars to donuts, this ends with revelations that Barr’s DOJ tried to spy on the Biden campaign somehow. It just has to.

  63. 63.

    Citizen Alan

    @NotMax: My own fears about SS have nothing to do with its financial stability and everything to do with the fact that the GQP is a nihilistic death cult that wants to destroy it because the thought of old people dying of starvation gives them all a collective hard-on.  A SCOTUS opinion announcing that “the Social Security Act is unconstitutional” is now on the continuum of things that I’d have considered impossible five years ago but now can easily envision.

  64. 64.

    RaflW

    Reporters and editors should take this as notice that if they sleepwalk into a second Trump term rather than going after what we can all see was a deeply corrupt, immoral and incompetent Admin that still needs deep dive investigative reporting… if they ‘both sides’ us into big GOP mid-term gains… And if Dems don’t fucking work to win in ’22 and ’24…

    Well, what happened to those three reporters will just be the the tiniest warning shot of an unbridled, full-out investigative state that will ruthlessly abuse every power at their disposal. And we can’t rely on bumbling fools to save us a second time (while costing countless lives this past time, alas).

  65. 65.

    Kay

    @opiejeanne:

    Arizona can’t turn over the social security numbers of every registered voter in the state to some corrupt Trump “audit team”. At some point these cowards actually have to do their jobs and protect the citizens of that state from these lunatics. So far they’ve utterly failed, but there are probably limits to how far they’ll throw their own citizens under the bus to appease the Trump people.

    They have a duty to protect personal information. They can’t collect it as a condition of registering to vote and then hand it out to any random person who calls themselves an auditor.

  66. 66.

    RaflW

    @Another Scott: “Amazing things can happen in 30 years with compounding.”

    I put a few grand in IRAs for a couple years, decades ago. In 1997, I ‘rebalanced’ and parked the dough in two mutual funds. I literally have not changed funds in 24 years.

    I chose one high risk* and one low risk fund (splitting heavily towards the low-risk one). The former is nominally up 3,193% since I invested (no that’s not a typo). Each dollar invested in 1997 yields a balance of $3,193 now.

    The low risk one is up 488%. Still waaaay above inflation.

    Truly, amazing (even shocking) things happen over decades of benign neglect.

    *I do not recommend high risk/high yield investing. One has to have the stomach for sometimes wild volatility. But if the invested funds really are ‘discretionary’ rather than necessary, certainly even the 488% return from mild-risk investing has, for me, been worth it.

  67. 67.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): As long as you have income that’s needed for immediate needs, making your money to work for you is always smart. Worse case, with a 401k you can always pull money out — albeit paying a penalty to do so.

    That said, if you don’t have an emergency fund already, which can be tapped for cash quickly if needed, you should start with that first. IIRC, ideally you should have six months worth of income. But Googling will turn up lots of advice about this.

    Traditionally this has been cash, but you might consider splitting it between cash and some conservative (i.e. low risk) bonds.

    As far as means of investing, given that you’re young, you can’t go wrong with an S&P index fund, since you’ll have plenty of years to return from any market down turns.

    I’d also check out “robo-adviser” funds, which are similar to target-date funds, with the same low fees, but are more flexible and customized. (They use something called ETFs, which are equivalent to mutual funds, where there’s lot of diversity of stocks.)

    They’ll have you do the usual questionnaire about how long until you need your money and what level of risk you’re OK with. They’ll then set-up a balanced portfolio (stocks, bonds, possibly some other things). The nice thing is that — unlike target-date mutual funds — robo-adviser funds are rebalanced (i.e. they sell/buy assets as needed to keep the selected diversification.

    Betterment or Wealthsimple are goods way to get started, since they don’t have a minimum. Since you come across as a bit anxious, I’d consider one that allows you access to human advisers as well. (Wealthsimple does, not about Betterment.) ‘Course there’s nothing that prevents you using more than one company, and any financial advice you can get can be reused yourself for the other funds. And splitting funds between companies provides an extra layer of diversification, as well as chance to see which performs better over time.

  68. 68.

    RaflW

    @RaflW: Sorry, I’m a bleary eyed idiot. Each dollar invested in the high risk account is worth $32.00. I am looking at a comfortable retirement, not an insane one. I shouldn’t post financial calculations this late at night!

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @opiejeanne:

    They’ll probably LOVE if the county claims privilege or confidentiality and doesn’t turn over the routers. Then they can claim that’s where the top secret fraud plan was lodged.

    It really doesn’t matter. It’s like voter fraud. The problem is imaginary so it can never be solved.

    We’ve watched this in action. They put in voter ID laws all over the country and the screams of “fraud” increased ten fold. Each additional “ballot security measure” produces more claims of fraud. They can’t solve a problem that doesn’t exist so it remains forever unknowable.

  71. 71.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Sister Golden Bear: For the Olds, I’d also take a look at Charles Schwab Intelligent Portfolio. Besides the usual good things to have (e.g. tax-loss harvesting), Schwab has feature (confusingly labelled as a product), Schwab Intelligent Income that lets you set up regular withdrawals from your investment. Schwab does the financial modeling to figure out how to take the most out your retirement savings without running out of money. (Apparently a lot of seniors are overly cautious.) It’ll also alert you if you start taking out too.

  72. 72.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @quote>:

    Yes. That’s always irritated me. MVP should know better. But her ever-so-polite filleting of Barr is sufficiently enjoyable that I’m willing to overlook it just this once.

  73. 73.

    Mary G

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    See chart

    DJIA in 1900   120

    DJIA today (record high) 34,777.76

    It’s highly likely that there will be a really big drop in your lifetime. There usually is. It’s always gone back up and higher.

    If there is the kind of social disruption you envision, the state of your investments will be the least of your problems. It’s your call, but since you asked for advice, mine is:

    DO IT.

  74. 74.

    Steeplejack

    @opiejeanne:

    Maybe I’m missing something, and I’d be happy if someone could explain it to me, but I’m unclear on what trove of data the “routers” would contain? I think they’re more like traffic-management devices. Wouldn’t all the data be on “servers” somewhere?

  75. 75.

    Mary G

    @RaflW: Upon my enrollment in kindergarten in 1960, my dad bought 41 shares of the “Television Fund,” a mutual fund investing in RCA and all the other American companies making TVs for $300. He thought they would make a lot of money because all his rich parishioners were lusting for color TVs.

    The fund turned into a general technology fund and has been passed from mediocre mutual fund company to even more mediocre mutual fund every year or two. I have sold half of it at least twice and two thirds of it at one point for various financial emergencies. Today it’s with Deutsche and worth $38,821.20.

  76. 76.

    Kay

    The Arizona Senate will hold off on a plan to contact voters as part of a Republican-commissioned election recount that raised concerns from the Justice Department about voter intimidation, state Senate President Karen Fann said Friday.
    The head of the department’s civil rights division, Pamela S. Karlan, wrote to Fann (R) on Wednesday suggesting that the recount of nearly 2.1 million ballots in the state’s largest county by a private contractor may not comply with federal law, leaving ballots at “risk of damage or loss.” She also raised questions about the contractor’s stated plans to “identify voter registrations that did not make sense” and interview voters via phone and “physical canvassing.”

    Just outrageous. The voters who are targeted should not voluntarily speak to any of these people. They’re under no obligation to undergo an interrogation from Donald Trump’s sleazy contractor.

    I have some questions for the contractor. I think I’ll go to his house and “physically canvass” him.

    So completely out of control. Isn’t kowtowing to these people working out great for Arizona? How’s it going? Now they plan to go to people’s homes and bother them?

  77. 77.

    Kay

    interview voters via phone and “physical canvassing.”

    Voters can and should challenge this. No one has to interact with these people in any fashion. I think they’re unhinged, dangerous nuts and I don’t want them on my property.

  78. 78.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:
    I trust (hope) that the Justice Department is preparing an effective response to all of this bullshit, but right now it feels like the nutters are running amok with no impediments. And I worry that this is emboldening them and making them crazier.​

  79. 79.

    Ken

    @Steeplejack: This will probably be traced back to some tweet TFG made in November, when — not knowing a router from a server, or for that matter from a roto-rooter — he said the evidence was on the routers.

  80. 80.

    Steeplejack

    @Ken:

    Yeah, that makes sense. I forget how incompetent they might be—throwing around plausible-sounding buzzwords and bullshit. Like that guy seriously describing how they were examining the ballots’ paper for traces of bamboo, in case they came from Jhina!

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @Steeplejack:

    Well, even if the GOP state reps have turned their state over to Trump’s contractors, because they’re cowardly weaklings, no one in the United States has to undergo an “interview” on their voter registration conducted by random, low quality Trump hires. Tell them to beat it and if they don’t, they’re trespassing.
    The vast majority of us didn’t join this cult. We’re not subject to cult directives.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    @Steeplejack:

    What I love about this is how at each escalation these people keep telling themselves that THIS NEXT THING they allow them to do will be enough, will satisfy them, and they’ll stop.

    You’ll recall way back when, when this started. They just needed time to get over it. We all had to coddle them for a certain period and then, then, they would accept that they lost and move on.

    They’re now pawing thru 2.1 million ballots looking for the “watermark” that Donald Trump told them the “valid” ballots would have. Not getting better. Getting worse.

  83. 83.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:

    I’m not talking about that. I agree with you, of course. I’m talking about a scenario where, barring any significant pushback, they claim that the audit “proves” that the Arizona election was stolen and the craziness metastasizes from there.

  84. 84.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:

    Not getting better. Getting worse.

    True. And it worries me that it might build to another January 6 type event.

  85. 85.

    Chris T.

    @Nobody in particular:

    According to Popper, no scientific theory can, strictly speaking, ever be true.

    Gravity is just a theory!

    (Oh wait, I forgot to make it blinking red all caps or whatever the kook sign is)

  86. 86.

    Nobody in particular

    @Chris T.:

    Science, like everything else, is just a progress report. I got schooled on this back in 1988. That’s all the debate is really about. Are you familiar with Maxwell’s Demon?

    Now, even the laws of entropy are no longer written on the Stone Tablets of Science. We don’t really understand the universe we inhabit. And we will never have “ALL” the information.  The good news is — if we can make it another millenium, we may be able to turn information into energy on a macroscopic scale. Republican Bullshit could power our starships. Right now, only nanodevices. Information is information “true” or not, I suspect. Repub bullshit may be worth something after all.

  87. 87.

    Nobody in particular

    @Steeplejack:

    Chain of Custody has been broken. That is a dead horse. In fact, it has now violated Federal Election Laws. You just can’t turn back time without a Delorean.

  90. 90.

    fancycwabs

    Well, since the Trump administration was having zero luck stopping leaks from inside the White House to the Washington Post, the only logical next step was to get phone records from the Washington Post in order to figure out who in the White House was leaking.

    Because while WaPo reporters and the most ham-handed government sources know how to use encrypted information, it’s likely Jeff Sessions has no idea how that works.

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