The Hill reports that Griftenführer Steve “Two-Shirts” Bannon will stand trial on contempt of Congress charges starting July 18. The prosecution, which said it would need only one day to present its case, wanted to start the trial in April. (Why not next Tuesday? No idea.) The defense asked for an October trial date. (For obvious reasons.)
As rotten luck would have it, the judge is a Trump appointee. Here’s his rationale for settling on July:
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols said during a pretrial hearing that while he was not convinced by federal prosecutors’ efforts to accelerate the schedule, he did not believe that a trial should wait for nearly a year, as Bannon’s defense team had argued.
The judge acknowledged that his trial schedule is “still a long time in the arc of a criminal case” but said it’s necessary to address the legal and constitutional challenges that Bannon’s lawyers have vowed to raise.
Whatever, Judge Jeanine.
But seriously, folks, how long can it take to determine that executive privilege resides with the executive, who is now Joe Biden, and that even if, Odin forbid, Trump were still president, Bannon hadn’t worked in the White House since the summer of 2017 — three years and change before the incident being investigated?
What legal and constitutional challenges could the Bannon clowns possibly raise that would merit a response more complicated than “the fuck you say”? This sounds like one of the scenarios where the law is an ass. Justice delayed in this instance will almost surely be justice denied.
In Bannon’s podcast, which is probably called “Feudalism Now!,” the shuffling, cold sore-encrusted dandruff flake talks big about turning the tables on the January 6th committee and ransacking documents in the Biden White House, bragging “they picked on the wrong guy!” But his con artistry since the White House gig has been decidedly of the “Velvet Elvis” caliber, so I rather doubt the administration is quaking in its wingtips at the likes of him.
Open thread.
A Quick PSA About Amazon
Elizabelle
July!! That’s … practically next year!
Bring it on.
VOR
This is likely to be appealed all the way to SCOTUS. Bannon is counting on delay working in his favor.
Jeffro
Bannon should be keel-hauled (except it’s not fair to the fish to put all that grease into the ocean). Maybe dropped into a volcano?
In other news…Dan Crenshaw is catching flak for calling fellow GQP congresscritters “grifters” and “performance artists”. Yes, the same Dan Crenshaw who cut an ad where he jumps out of an airplane and wipes out the libs, etc etc etc.
Go long on popcorn futures, peeps!
Sure Lurkalot
Meanwhile, he and his guests on his podcasts continue to subvert democracy and promote violence.
Crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s sure seems to leave a lot of people free to promote autocracy and insurrection.
Tony Jay
Open thread?
Over here in Gross Brexitania the general pre-Christmas ambience is one of pickles under sewn eyelids and the tingle of a well-nettled foreskin rash. I won’t even attempt to catch you up on all the shit flowing downhill from Mount Actions Have Consequences. This is Toryland, where all those namby pamby restrictions on untreated sewage output were stricken from the statute book to allow everyone (below a certain wage bracket) to enjoy the visceral thrill of taking ballistic gushers of vari-textured bottycake right in the chewhole at a moment’s notice. Suffice it to say that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel’s days stuffing his elephantine bulk into Prime Ministerial cosplay are clearly numbered and each dull morn seems to bring another leak or report exposing his Government as the bunch of serially incompetent exhaust-huffers we sentient lifeforms always knew they were while driving its perpetual carrousel of shiny-faced defenders into ever more outlandish honkathons of exasperated nonsense.
I’ll give you just two examples of the bovine deposits littering the national bowling green this week.
It’s been revealed that last December, while the rest of the country was paying for Johnson’s crass ineptitude with a form of Lockdown that kept friends and families apart under threat of criminal prosecution, Downing St hosted a party (or parties) where Tory Party ravers and their as-yet-unnamed plus ones slammed down some bass-heavy bangers on the turntables (okay, it was actually Coldplay and early Josh Groban but I’m trying to evoke a mood here) and let rip amidst all the subsidised drink and drugs they could stuff into their sphincterlike pieholes.
Now, there’s a few issues here.
Firstly, that’s some illegal shit they pulled. The law at the time was perfectly clear, making a Downing St Christmas Party as criminal as any other illegal gathering. We’ve been treated to the usual parade of spokespeeps and shiny-faced Cabinet nobodies appearing on couches across the TV and radio twatosphere insisting that, a) it’s all made up and nothing of the sort actually happened, b) they personally weren’t there when whatever didn’t happen happened so they can’t possibly comment except to say what happened didn’t happen, c) anything that happened, even though it didn’t happen, happened in accordance with all of the Covid laws in effect at the time. It’s all bullshit, of course. When even the BBC’s resident dedicated Tory fluffer and increasingly impatient next-Mrs Johnson Laura ‘BJ4BJ’ Kuenssberg is reporting that it happened, it bloody well happened. One rule for them, another for everyone else, which is about the only law the Tories feel they should obey.
Secondly, this puts the Metropolitan Police and its Commissioner – the ever-reliable protector of Establishment lawlessness Dame Cresida Dick – in a very tight bind indeed. She’s trying to claim that, because no one involved put in a complaint at the time (no shit, Bad Sherlock) The Met cannot possibly be expected to investigate, which is such a feeble excuse that it lasted about as long as a Mars around a peckish Mick Jagger. Metropolitan Police officers guard the inside and outside of Downing St at all times, so there’s obviously no way that they didn’t know there was an illegal gathering taking place on the 18th of December, 2020 (those still warm crotchless panties hanging from your truncheon and the overwhelming aroma of poppers and Vaseline coming from the Cabinet Room were clues, Plodsters) so their legal duty was at the very, very least to report that a crime was taking place before their eyes. Everyone is trying very hard to avert their brains from the obvious here, but the longer this goes on the more likely it becomes that Dick and her minions have to explain why no one on duty that night reported what was going on, and if they did, who hushed it up. No prizes for guessing who that will turn out to be (no, silly, not Dame Dick, this is The Met we’re talking about, it’ll be the lowest ranking officer of colour).
Thirdly, the UK News drones are clearly suffering from sort of neurological Schrodinger’s fit while trying to report on this. On the one hand it’s verboten territory because there’s no way to ‘both sides’ it, but it’s also a huge scoop they’ve been handed that guarantees clicks and eyeballs, it’s career-making to hasten along the next Tory Party Leadership Election and serve the interests of the next Tory PM, but it’s also career-threateningly dangerous to poke around in the affairs of the Bunteresque Bully of Bullingdon, it’s so ridiculously easy to poke holes in the Government’s cover story that even vapid talking-heads can do it, but it’s also their ‘job’ to slather those holes in lashings of concealing white-wash. It’s a nightmare for them, and they’re certainly acting like a bunch of flea-ridden mutts snuffling a juicy bone with one crooked ear cocked for the inevitable last-second command to “Leave it!!”. After all, there are persistent rumours that various Infotainers from loyalist Media organs (basically a redundant clause there, they’re all loyalist in one way or another) were present at the Christmas Party, which is another reason why their fellow careerist hacks have been sooooooo reluctant to deep dive into that aspect of the story. They’re an incestuous bunch, always oh so considerate of the fee-fees of their peers, and it’s self-defence as well. This happened a year ago. Not one journalist got a whiff of the story until now? Really? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
Fourthly, the Government’s tone has changed. Encouraged by the unwillingness of the Media to dig out names of attendees, they’ve firmed up their denials. It smells like they’ve spent the last week taking advantage of the light-touch reporting to sit every attendee down and enforce omerta, and now feel confident that no one is going to snitch. OTOH, this relies upon people being more scared of Johnson than whoever replaces him (and authorised the breaking of the story embargo in the first place) so their certainty could easily be as transient as a Johnsonian promise. All it takes is one leaked photograph with more than six people, a donkey and a timestamp on it.
Tick Tock, Motherflobbers.
Also, a whistleblower has revealed some of the utter chaos surrounding this Government’s completely amateurish response to the collapse of Afghanistan’s post-withdrawal Government. Way back then the Foreign Secretary was Dominic Raab, who I’ve previously described as a steroid-necked peanut with a brainpan entirely made up of bone and delusional self-regard and he’s given me zero reason to revisit that assessment. Despite everyone and their gerbil knowing full well that America was pulling out of Afghanistan and when it was going to happen, Raab decided it was absolutely fine for him to schedule a Greek beach holiday for that period and then, when the fan was getting pummelled with faecal missiles, refused to cut his mousakka and mankini marathon short because can’t a hard-working peanut have a holiday???
Raab was demoted in the last reshuffle, or rather, he was promoted to Deputy-PM and given the Justice Secretary brief, which basically means making tabloid-friendly mouth-noises about Law’n’Order and working with the equally thick-as-mince Attorney-General crafting flawed legislation to give Ministers authority to disregard judicial findings in cases where the Government has acted illegally (By the Finely Boned Features of Godwin, isn’t that an Enabling Act? – Ed). He clearly thinks he’d make a smashing PM when his current boss slides off the edge of the frying pan, but that’s because he’s got the intellectual capacity of a withered monkeypaw and the situational awareness of a Stonehenge menhir, so revelations from the whistleblower should put paid to that ambition. Basically, they paint a picture of a Foreign Office where no one in charge took the Afghan situation seriously, because all they care about is domestic British politics, and then when it all went tits up no one in a position of authority had the slightest clue what to do about it other than bullshit the Media and totally fuck-up the effort to meet the promises we as a country had made to Afghans whose work with and for the UK had put targets on their backs. The US operation to get people out had flaws, but at least Biden’s people had one. Raab’s Foreign Office was a clusterfuck of typical Tory proportions.
The revelation that’s getting the most newsprint, and the one that makes me think that this is as much a knife in Johnson’s back as it is a sledgehammer across Raab’s kneecaps, involves a Dog Rescue charity based in Afghanistan and the very well publicised effort during the Afghan collapse to get those photogenic puppy dogs to safety in a chartered jet. Raab and Co have sworn up and down that they had nothing to do with organising it and it was all a private rescue mission by the ex-military dogophile who took the story to the Media.
The whistleblower, however, fingered the Prime Minister’s Office (or someone with access to and authority over it and a well-publicised love of animals and good publicity, rhymes with Harry Pimmonds-Bonson) as having ordered the Foreign Office and the military to prioritise organising the canine airlift over tabloid-unfriendly brown folks. Johnson has, of course, blusteringly denied any knowledge of such an order, but that’s like saying a smell comes after a fart, it’s expected, and it makes you curl your nose up.
And in the period between me putting the laptop down to cook tea and now, I see that someone has leaked a letter to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee during an interrogation of the Head of the Foreign Office that directly contradicts Raab and Johnson’s bullshit, with his personal Private Secretary writing to Paul Farthing (the dogophile above) telling him that it had all been arranged at the highest level. For the record the FO Head, Sir Philip Barton, looks and sounds like he’s going to cut someone, making it crystal clear that when he denied everything he didn’t know about this letter.
Leaky leaky, someone’s sneaky.
Speaking of leaks, there’s now a leaked recording doing the rounds of Johnson’s former spokeswoman, Allegra Stratton, joking with Downing St staff about the ‘alleged’ Christmas Party during a December 22nd rehearsal (four days after the party) for the planned daily TV briefings they later decided not to bother with despite spending millions on them. One of Johnson’s advisors gives her a mock question about rumours about the party floating around Twitter (funny, why are we only hearing about it now then?) and they laugh their arses off about it, mulling over whether to call it a ‘wine and cheese’ event before settling on the lie that “this fictional party was a business meeting and it was not socially distanced.”
Yup. The knives are out, and someone is orchestrating this to bleed Johnson like a hooked whale. I can’t wait to see what the counter-strike will be.
hueyplong
The difference between this schedule and an earlier trial date that gets pushed out by frivolous appeals of rulings on frivolous pre-trial motions might not be worth arguing over.
I want the news to be filled with J6 pleas/trials/convictions/sentencing which, in all likelihood, will include references to Bannon as a side item.
trollhattan
In which I learn James O’Keefe’s little shop of
horrorsfelonies is under investigation.More here:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/12/07/citing-considerable-detail-in-affidavit-judge-denies-access-to-project-veritas-affidavits/
Mike in NC
Steve Bannon — AKA Trump’s Honorary Son — should be tried next week, not in the middle of freaking July.
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
From outer space without a suit would be very appropriate.
Betty Cracker
Post updated with MS Paint artwork.
Haydnseek
Nice one Betty! I’m sure Hemingway would approve if he wasn’t, like, all dead and shit.
Omnes Omnibus
Courts have other cases scheduled, lawyers have other clients, most of the heavy lift for a trial like this will take place in pre-trial motions and conferences, and so on. Hollywood has created unrealistic expectations of how protracted litigation can be.
RandomMonster
Awesome cartoon, Betty! Appreciate the flies buzzing around his meat and gin sweat.
Old School
@Betty Cracker:
Very nice!
JoyceH
@Mike in NC: Well, look. Bannon is not going to testify to the committee. Most that’s going to happen is that he’s tried, convicted and sentenced. So better the trial make headlines in July than now, July when the elections are ramping up. “When Republicans get power, this is who they hire.”
waspuppet
“They picked on the wrong guy! Lemme at ’em!”
OK, trial right now.
“EEEEK!!!!! Cover for me judge!” (Waddles away)
Obviously they’re hoping for a Republican Congress next year. And they’ll probably get it. And everybody skates. To do it all again.
lowtechcyclist
And the real problem is, anyone and everyone else the 1/6 committee subpoenas can expect the same delay.
This is such bullshit.
Betty Cracker
Tiger Beat on the Potomac headline right now:
LOL! I hope the arrogant, weepy snot-weasel is self-aware enough to be embarrassed by that.
West of the Rockies
Well, keep a good thought: maybe he’ll have a massive stroke or develop super-aggressive pancreatic cancer.
Tony Gerace
@Jeffro: Crenshaw just doesn’t like the other guys imitating his act.
WereBear
This is utterly priceless.
Steeplejack (phone)
Not quite dead yet. I’m lying in pre-op with an IV and various sensors attached. I’ve talked to the anesthesiologist and signed off on that. Next up is the doctor himself, and sometime after that the OR nurse will come to take me away. Should be all finished and installed back at Sighthound Hall for convalescence around 7:00 or 8:00 tonight.
Leto
@Betty Cracker: this is probably the reason he came out swinging for the gutters when he launched into his massive hissy fit and blamed the Clintons for all of his life’s ills. The dipshit lawyer (can’t r ever his name offhand but we were speaking about him in a below thread), who refused Trumpov’s calls, told Old Milwaukee Justice that he better go on the offensive otherwise the seat
he’s rightfully entitled tothat he’s been nominated for might go away.I too welcome the return of MS Paint Betty. It’s been a long time.
NotMax
OT.
Well, the fog has rolled in on
little catbig apatosaurus feet. Cannot see as far as across the street.Leto
@Steeplejack (phone): good luck, bud! Hopefully we can keep you entertained until they wheel you back.
guachi
@lowtechcyclist: Yup. It is bullshit. We have a completely broken country. There will be zero negative consequences for stonewalling the 1/6 committee. Zero. No one will be convicted. No one will do jail time. No one.
Many will have their trials put off until January 2023 when the Republicans will be in charge of the House and all the cases will be rendered meaningless as the House will abolish the committee.
Garland is completely feckless.
Basilisc
As a Trump appointee, the judge should recuse himself from a trial of a close Trump associate for not testifying in an investigation focused on actions to disrupt the counting of electoral votes in an election lost by Trump.
LOL of course not. I’m obviously not a lawyer.
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay: I thought you made up the name “Cressida Dick” as a Dickens homage, but I looked it up, and she’s…real! OMG.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack (phone): Best of luck. Hopefully you will be able to play the violin after the operation.
trollhattan
@Steeplejack (phone):
[Waves] Wishing you all success and a quick trip back to the casa.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Bonan ŝancon!
japa21
On another, more positive note, Mrs. Japa (also know as my far better half) and I have just completed 47 trips around the sun as husband and wife. I have gotten the far better part of the deal.
Nothing special planned. Just a take it easy kind of day.
Geminid
@Leto: The lawyer was White House Counsel Don McGahn. McGahn got the job on the recommendation of his uncle, who was a long time attorney for trump, and was said to be one of the few people who would tell trump, “No.”
Leto
@Leto: Don McGahn, that odious shit weasel.
@Betty Cracker: welcome to the UK, where you see a name and think: no… that can’t possibly be real… (but it is!
Edit: @Geminid: yeah, I went back to that previous thread and found your comment. Just so many horrible people to keep track of.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
It’s quite the cast of characters they have going there. Every time I hear “Priti Patel” pronounced as “pretty” I get caught short. Truly among the best of Patels. And a PM named Boris, can he at least marry a Natasha? (I realize that there’s plenty of time for that, considering his rotating partner selection spins like a Dervish.)
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: Dear god, what horrible sins must she have committed in a past life to be saddled with you for all that time?
Wait. Let me come in again.
Woot! Congratulations.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack (phone):
Look forward to your return in a few hours.
eclare
@Tony Jay: You certainly paint a picture! Still warm crotchless panties, poppers, and Vaseline…
Steeplejack (phone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Looking forward to that! ?
Okay, talked to the doctor and we inspected the area of interest. Now just waiting for Nurse Ratched so we can begin Nutsack! The Nutsackening.
Andrew
On behalf of the Dandruff Flake-Americans…….
Almost Retired
@Steeplejack (phone): Goodness, I don’t know the backstory here, but I hope whatever nutsack related procedure you’re having goes well!
Steeplejack (phone)
@Almost Retired:
Eviction of benign cyst(s) from the goonaidal region.
eclare
@japa21: Congratulations!
patroclus
The closest historic analogy is the Hollywood 10 contempt of Congress – the contempt citation was passed in November 1947 – the trial (and conviction) the following April. tThey spent a year or so in prison and (except for the rats) never testified either.
On the U.K. (for Tony Jay), the U.K. trade minister is visiting the U.S. and is pushing a new U.S.-U.K. comprehensive trade deal. She blathered on and on about how she made real progress with the last administration (which certainly won’t help her with this one). My prediction is that, unless the Brits completely cave on every conceivable issue pre-emptively, she won’t make much progress for the next 3 years. Biden isn’t likely to do a deal in this term because of what happened to TPP during the Obama administration. So, BoJo is going to have to await a new general election W in 2023(?) as well as a 2024 U.S. election before any deal is likely. Obama’s “back of the queue” comment seems likely to be realized. If ever. How’s BREXIT going?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Explains why the British press has been so indignant at Biden over the writhdraw.
Betty Cracker
@Steeplejack (phone): Bonne chance!
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
That’s the thing, Betty. I’m not making any of it up.
I’m toning it down.
Steeplejack (phone)
Thanks, everybody. I don’t know how much time I’ve got, so I might get
cut offinterrupted.NotMax
@Steeplejack
Digits duly crossed the surgeon doesn’t sneeze part way through the procedure.
;)
Tony Jay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
The British Press, like the US Press, liked Afghanistan as a source of easy human interest stories, a place they could go to pick up ‘war correspondent’ cred, and somewhere you could fill the screens with Boom TV images when things went wrong.
The withdrawal took all that away from them, and they were pissed.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Pix or it didn’t hap—
Belay that. Never mind.
:)
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack (phone):
LOL, what you did there! Tell them to be sure not to excise your sense of humour!
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: Believe me, she has probably wondered that herself.
geg6
Love those flies buzzing around his head. That’s exactly how I picture him.
Yutsano
@Steeplejack (phone): It must be procedure day. I’m about to head out to get some steroid injections in my back as we type!
Leto
@Tony Jay: what’s weird is that when the pullout started happening, just about everyone here on BJ stated, categorically, that the media (going with just the US side) had basically been ignoring the war for years. No coverage of it, no mention of it, just nothing. But when Biden pulled us out, the consensus here, again, was: media is going to punish Biden for war they didn’t cover! Idk, consistency isn’t a strong suit among humans.
Tony Jay
@eclare:
They always say, write what you know.
Betty
@Tony Jay: It sounds like Johnson is done, but what horror awaits the good folk of the UK? It all seems so dismal with the Labour Party not offering much hope either.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Yutsano:
Good luck!
mrmoshpotato
@japa21: Congrats, you crazy kids!
Steeplejack (phone)
Thank God for cell phones to pass the time.
Also, I have had neither food nor any drop to drink since last night. Parched.
mrmoshpotato
@Steeplejack (phone):
@Yutsano: Hope all goes well for you both!
eclare
@Steeplejack (phone): I bet, that is harsh!
Steeplejack (phone)
@Betty Cracker:
Great post title, by the way.
mrmoshpotato
Bwhahhahahahahaaha!!!!! SAD!
Tony Jay
@patroclus:
Your prediction is going to be right on the money. The Brexiteers have left the UK so weak and isolated that Johnson’s Government will sign anything put in front of them, no matter how humiliating, because they can always spin it as a world-beating success in the UK Press and get away with it.
The only thing they won’t do (yet) is agree a Trade Deal with the US that binds them to honouring the Northern Ireland Protocol and everything that means for the Good Friday Agreement. They’ll have to eventually, but for now they want to be able to grandstand and act the butch billy big-bollocks. They’ll still lie and claim that they’re on the verge of signing a wonderful UK/US deal, but that’s up there with cold fusion and the Iranian bomb as something that will always be just around the corner.
Brexit means Brexit. Unfortunately Brexit is a word in the Black Speech that translates roughly to “Cut fleshy parts off the meat while it wriggles“.
Tony Jay
@Betty:
Yup. It’s like that, and that’s the way it is.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Tony Jay: Tony I am gobsmacked that BoJo launches a massive anti drugs programme two days after it was reported that 11 toilets in Westminster had evidence of cocaine residue in them including the one outside of the PM’s office. The most gobsmacking thing about it though is that Aunty Beeb hasn’t mentioned a damn word about it. They showed BoJo dressed up as a policeman (“The PM wearing a police beanie”) and yet not a peep about Westminster supposedly being a den of cokeheads. Any clues from you?
Tony Gerace
@trollhattan: James O’Keefe
@trollhattan:James O’Keefe. Jesus, that asshole is still around? It seems like that little jerk was first in the news with his clever little antics about a thousand years ago. These people never go away.
Betty Cracker
@Steeplejack (phone): Thanks. The two (collared!) shirts thing fascinates me for some reason. I wonder if he ever wears three or even four on a super chilly day? It’s a mystery.
Betty
@Tony Jay: When I suggested on Twitter that Brexit was engineered by Putin, several indignant individuals told me that indeed, they were hard working folks who had done the right thing and asked what drugs I was using. I still feel sorry for them.
Geminid
@Betty: I think Labour is locked out of power for four more years, unless the Conservatives call an early election and lose it. No midterms for the British.
Dorothy A. Winsor
One of the most discouraging things about the Trump era is the absence of consequences.
trollhattan
@Tony Gerace:
How he has avoided hard prison time to date is either dumb luck or the luck of the dumb. It just can’t last (says guy who thought Trump would be in prison by now).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Tony Jay: If figured that much, but the British press had those tone of “it was going so well until you stupid American screwed up”, and having read about Churchill in WW2, I have a sense there was something the British government screwed up when that tone is taken lol.
trollhattan
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yup, will add it’s an echo of the Bush II admin, who skated away with more crimes and criminal malfeasance than we’d ever seen. Heck, they even become Law professors at Cal Berkeley.
eclare
@Betty Cracker: Great art! Seems like I did see a photo of him years ago with two collared shirts and a collared jacket.
Tony Jay
@Litlebritdifrnt:
1) That’s exactly why they did it. Dead cats are tossed around like, well, dead cats, with the most tabloid-friendly ‘plans’ trumpeted the loudest to distract from the latest fuck-up. Westminster is a drug-fuelled playground for entitled party hounds? Don’t blame us! We’re hard-line Drug Warriors, see?
2) The BBC is completely dominated by Tory loyalists placed there over the last decade, and they’ve always got the threat of ending the licence fee to bully everyone else with. It’s now officially the Tory Party Propaganda Network with everything censored to accommodate the fee fees of the Government. If they find it at all embarrassing it simply doesn’t get coverage.
Betty
@trollhattan: The Reagan folks got away with Iran Contra as well.
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor: And that poor woman in TX was sentenced to years in prison for mistakenly believing she was eligible to vote.
If I think about it too much, my head will explode.
Ruckus
@Leto:
Did they actually cover Afghanistan or did they just mention it in passing? Did they actually go there or did they just repeat the DoD talking points?
Because it seems to me that they could mention Afghanistan regularly without ever actually knowing/saying squat, as it it was the daily afterthought.
guachi
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yup. Anyone who says “We are a nation of laws, not men” deserves to be spat on and heckled.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Litlebritdifrnt: Wow, Boris being a coke head would sure fit a lot of his behavior.
Tony Jay
@Betty:
No one wants to admit that they were a gullible idiot who jumped into bed with stone-cold racists in order to preserve the tax-exempt profits of billionaire money launderers.
Especially when it’s so obviously true.
senyordave
@Betty:
The Reagan folks got away with Iran Contra as well.
Iran Contra should have been huge, 90% of the population couldn’t even describe it in the most simplistic terms.
eclare
@guachi: In retrospect, the Pledge of Allegiance we recited every day in school makes me wretch. “Liberty and justice for all” my ass.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Tony Jay: You are of course exactly right. I just wish the Beeb had some journalists with a spine, but alas no.
Sure Lurkalot
Mark Meadows’ attorney has penned a letter declining his client’s appearance before the committee (which was to occur tomorrow) as if it was an invitation to tea. The subpoenas mean nothing, maybe less than nothing.
rikyrah
THAT drawing is on point
Old School
@Ruckus:
Neither.
hueyplong
@mrmoshpotato: So many little delights in that tweet, including “Important news,” “from a position of integrity,” and the use of the word “diverse” in a message about a GOP primary.
Kudos to Dowd’s ghost writer for an entertaining 140 characters.
senyordave
@guachi: Garland is completely feckless
Repeat one hundred times a day. I assume he got AG as compensation for his missed SCOTUS hearing, but it seems like he’s sleepwalking through the last 10 months.
Danielx
@Betty Cracker:
Pulitzer material.
Tony Jay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Oh yeah. The majority of the British Media is well out there on the Right. They knew Afghanistan was fucked, but blaming the people who fucked it would go against the comforting narrative of it being the ‘Good War’ that Western superiority had won fair and square. Better by far to blame the doddery old peacenik leftist who threw away all those hard won gains with his incompetence, then didn’t even have the decency to give them good Boom TV footage on the way out. Selfish bastard!
trollhattan
@Betty: @senyordave:
True. Seemingly all it took was Reagan to play/finally reveal himself as dumb [“I, uh, can’t recall” X27] and it sort of dribbled away.
Ollie North, we hardly knew ya, but here’s a permanent job on the wingnut welfare circuit.
Leto
@Ruckus: I’m mainly more talking about the rhetoric here. There was plenty of coverage before the fall. There were plenty of reporters still there. A quick search of WaPo using a custom filter of 1 Jun 20 to 1 Aug 21 shows 232 news articles. Does that mean anyone on BJ was paying attention to that because they personally didn’t see it? Or more importantly, did they care? I’m going to say no and no.
But the consensus here was/is: the media hasn’t covered Afghanistan, but they’re going to punish him for leaving a place they didn’t cover
Edit: @Old School: see above.
Tony Jay
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Heh. Pop any kind of left winger in front of them and they’re as spiny as hell. Little porcupines with venom on their barbs. It’s only when they’re questioning the ‘Right’ kind of person that they turn into invertebrate candyfloss.
And it doesn’t help that a large proportion of their senior political editor ranks are filled with out and out Tories who have been card-carrying loyalists since their student days.
Kalakal
@Tony Jay: The Beeb is schizoid.
At the top they are the Tories poodles lower down they can still do what they’re supposed to be doing
https://t.co/vWBxhO6FQz
Ruckus
@Old School:
So that’s 58 minutes of saying the word Afghanistan once in a while.
That’s 58 minutes more than most people thought about it… till someone finally realized that it was a waste of time, money, lives, etc, on all sides. Which of course could/should have been seen before we went there in the first place. I wonder if part of the decision to go was that it won’t cost the money gang much of anything and if coverage is limited it won’t of course show that the people in charge don’t think about human life, or money that doesn’t come from their pockets.
Omnes Omnibus
@guachi: @senyordave: That’s horse shit, but do carry on.
CaseyL
GOP outright treason goes back at least as far as Vietnam, when the GOP undercut the peace talks. No one went to jai for that, either.
And I’m sure there’s a reason the TPTB keep postponing the date for releasing all records relating to the assassination of JFK, even though everyone (?) involved is dead by now. What can they possibly still be protecting? Institutions, governmental and otherwise.
IOW, our government has been a corrupt, self-serving enterprise for quite a long time, and in the bipartisan spirit; though the GOP has cornered the market on active treason in recent times.
I think that’s true of government in general. Corrupt and treasonous government officials generally get away with it. I don’t know if it’s the Old Boy Network or what, but it seems to be the case, and seems to have always been the case.
Tony Jay
@Kalakal:
That was brutal. Word has definitely filtered down from above. Johnson is a sinking ship that has to be scuttled in order to save the Tory Party itself.
prostratedragon
“Britain at Play,” Charlie Mole.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UwovlBRCmdU
Tony Gerace
@Litlebritdifrnt: Now I have a mental image of Boris Johnson with his head in a toilet. No wonder these guys want to separate from the EU.
PAM Dirac
@patroclus:
I am just re-reading The Ecstasy of Owen Muir. Since there is no longer a blacklist, a newer edition is available listing the author as Ring Lardner, Jr., one of the Hollywood 10. This original edition used a pen-name. This edition also has a forward by the author talking about being in prison and doing the research for the book. The most interesting thing was he said he saw the chair of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (J. Parnell Thomas) in the prison. Thomas was a prisoner because he had been convicted of diverting government funds for personal use. I guess at least some elected officials have gone to jail.
Ben Cisco
BCrack done drew this man looking like an overfed PigPen….BWAHAAHAAHAAA!
Kalakal
@Tony Jay: Too right it has.
It’s leak city now, every time Johnson rears up on his hind legs and spouts some self-serving drivel within 10 minutes the media has a “some new information” showing it to be a pack of lies. Not just “sources close to” but video. The leadership election is going to be as vicious as hell.
I am so looking forward to see these wastes of skin tear each other to shreds
Eunicecycle
@Tony Jay: OMG. I’m sorry you have to live through this but I have tears rolling down my face from laughter. You really do have a way with words.
PAM Dirac
@patroclus:
And the appeals took over a year so they actually went to jail in 1950, a little over 2 years after the vote for contempt. The current legal action looks to be on a similar time line.
Ksmiami
@guachi: agreed. I think it’s going to be up to us to fight. I just wish someone in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party would start referring to Republicans as enemies of democracy
satby
@Steeplejack (phone): ALL THE BEST Steep!
Tony Jay
@Kalakal:
They’re in it to win it and are all just stupid enough to burn the whole house down taking out their rivals.
Never mind the Tory hopefuls, it’s going to be a cringefest of Armando Iannucciesque proportions watching the UK News Media bending over backwards, forwards and sideways to try and make it all look… normal.
@Eunicecycle:
Well now, there’s no point in being gloomy, is there? We might as well get a laugh out of it while the lights go out.
satby
@japa21: Happy Anniversary! Quite a run!
GoBlueInOak
@guachi: Guy is nearly 70. Maybe we should stop filling the upper echelons of our government with people eligible for Social Security and maybe fill it with more young mid-career guns who are actually hungry.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tony Jay: “When you’re chewin’ on life’s gristle…”
rikyrah
@japa21:
Happy Anniversary :) :)
Tony Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
As the Vicar said to the Actress…
It’s a pity how a few of the Pythons aged into utter gobshites, but when they were at their peak (chef’s kiss).
Ksmiami
@GoBlueInOak: I agree. Too many elderly ppl populate key Democratic positions. Enough. They aren’t equipped for the fight ahead.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ksmiami: Do you have a name for the new country you plan to build on the smoking post-apocalyptic wreck of the current one? Just seeing how far ahead you are planning.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: They are seeing how many people fall for this nonsense.
Laydeebe
@Sure Lurkalot: THANK YOU!
And the longer we fuck around and serve these people wine and cheese while Garland waits for their lawyers to return his calls, the more destruction they cause.
Maybe the next time a brother risks getting shot by a cop for driving with expired tags, I’ll suggest he just try to overthrow the goddamed government of the fucking United States of America instead.
Shit, that made me chuckle. Even if the brother was innocent, the case wouldn’t even go to trial.
hueyplong
I don’t have a 2021 BJ calendar, but with regard to the 2022 one I ordered, will it note which days feature trolls?
Omnes Omnibus
@hueyplong: Trollidays?
H.E.Wolf
@West of the Rockies:
Remember when right-wing churchgoers were engaging in the vile practice of “imprecatory prayer” against President Obama? Let’s not do that ourselves.
Annie
Why not try Bannon next Tuesday?
Is that a serious question? IANAL so I don’t know all the details, but I am a paralegal who’s worked in criminal appeals and civil trial work, so I do know the general outlines. There are statutes about how long you can hold somebody in custody before you bring them to trial. If a prosecution does not meet that deadline, under certain circumstances charges can be dismissed, including murder charges, unless the defendant waives time — and mostly they don’t. Why should they?
Also, those prosecutors probably have trials next week that were scheduled six months ago. Are they supposed to ask a court to continue them so they can prosecute somebody who was charged more recently?
Trials are set months in advance. Next April, for somebody charged when Bannon was, would not have been out of line.
Kristine
I follow folks like Teri Kanefield on Twitter who spend a lot of time explaining how putting together a case that could stand up in court is different than hashing out details on Twitter. She gets frustrated sometimes.
Anyway, this is a good thread in that vein. The bottom line is that even residence in Hotel Hoosegow likely wouldn’t prevent TFG from running in 2024, and that his followers would consider it a major plus. And that there are no saviors. It’s up to us as individuals to vote, organize, support good candidates.
That said, we really need some sort of Voting Rights Act passed as well.
eclare
@Kristine: Very well put, thank you. Hopefully money raised here for boots on the ground will help.
Omnes Omnibus
@Annie: Like I said above, Hollywood has skewed people’s expectations of legal process.
Chris Johnson
@Omnes Omnibus: ‘Trumpistan’?
Always frustrates me to see these guys running their angles. I understand more than most that they could honestly believe this crap, but… get the fuck off Twitter, guys. Come on. You are intentionally huffing the exhaust pipe and expecting to be treated seriously. Stop mainlining fascist propaganda. Smarten the hell up. What you see is this country NOT automatically and immediately sinking into lawlessness and civil war…
frosty
@Betty Cracker: The flies are the perfect final touch!
Geminid
@Kristine: I am all for trying people from the trump administration, and Insurrection organizers, where charges are legally justified. But some people are acting like Democratic electoral hopes are hanging on convictions of these people, and that is just not so. Most voters don’t care so much about these matters. Generally, elections turn on other factors, especially the state of the economy in the months leading up to them.
I understand how seeing malefactors go to jail will be immensely satisfying for some people, at least until they find something else to be frustrated about. But I think these folks mislead themselves when they project their own feelings on to the general voting population.
Omnes Omnibus
@Geminid: Co-sign.
Betty Cracker
@Annie: It’s a good thing you have paralegal skills because you’ll never make it as a comedy writer. ;-)
dstraws
The problem Bannon faces is that now the issue is in the court system where the rules aren’t as conducive to media manipulation. If he would ‘ve stayed in the political arena he could have applied pressure to the system through his political allies, now that avenue is more muted.
oatler
@Tony Jay:
But, NEW WAR ON DRUGS IN UK! Thank you Boris Thatcher
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/07/tories-modern-drug-strategy-evidence-policy
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
Before he’s done, Bannon will likely try to approach Paxton’s record for bullshit pre-trial motions.
Skepticat
@Betty Cracker: I grew up (long ago) in a preppy (that’s how long ago) New England town, and it was a “thing” to wear two polo shirts with a sweater tied around our shoulders. Somehow, I don’t think that’s where this slob gained his sartorial sense. I’ve seldom seen it over the many years since, and after having seen him, I doubt I’ll ever do it again.
Ksmiami
@Omnes Omnibus: we’ll whatever it is will be better than the Gilead hell that’s approaching if we just let Republicans take over…
Chief Oshkosh
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, I don’t know. Effectively the system is letting the Walking Bilge Bag off the hook (July of next year? C’mon, man!). And we see what McCarthy is doing now. Related? I don’t know. And it may well be that no other person in the DOJ position could move things along in a different direction, but so far, the system sure looks pretty toothless.
Chief Oshkosh
@Annie:
Trials get moved up and back all the time for various reasons. Witness availability is one reason that comes to mind.