Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Everybody saw this coming.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

In my day, never was longer.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

In after Baud. Damn.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

After roe, women are no longer free.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / What if we don’t want him?

What if we don’t want him?

by | 176 Comments

This post is in: ,

Breaking news overnight out of the UK:

LONDON — A British High Court ruled Friday that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States to face charges of violating the Espionage Act.

The 50-year-old Australian will remain in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he has been held since April 2019 after the Ecuadoran Embassy revoked his political asylum.

Assange’s lawyers probably will file a final appeal to the British Supreme Court, which could either reject hearing the case or take it — if the highest court sees in the appeal a point of law “of general public importance.” That process could take weeks or months.

The U.S. charges are for espionage related to the publication of files and documents in 2010. The U.S. won the extradition appeal by agreeing to certain conditions if Assange is brought to the U.S. to stand trial, including the following, according to CNN:

Assange would not be made the subject of “special administrative measures”; nor would he be held at a maximum security prison before or after trial. In addition, the US would “consent” to an application by Assange to be transferred to Australia to service his sentence (if convicted); and while in custody in the US, Assange would receive “appropriate clinical and psychological treatment.”

Assange’s lawyers claim he would be at high risk of suicide in a U.S. prison because he’d be subject to harsh treatment. I’m not sure what charges he’s being held on in the UK. Is it still for evading charges in Sweden, which have since been dropped?

I don’t know and don’t care enough to look it up, but one way or another, Assange has been locked up for years. When dragged out of the Ecuadoran embassy looking like a disheveled garden gnome, he certainly gave the impression of being unhinged.

Anyhoo, IIRC, the present U.S. charges were leveled by the Trump admin after the Obama admin had declined to pursue them on the grounds that the case could subject publishers to espionage charges. IMO, Obama made the right decision.

Do we really want to import this rat on the taxpayer dime? I’d rather see an indictment for colluding with Russia to rig the 2016 U.S. election if sufficient evidence exists for a charge.

Open thread.

 

 

Reader Interactions

176Comments

  3. 3.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: It is all about you because everything is all about you. How else will you win in 2022 and 2024?

    Welcome back.

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Important caveat:

    But in their ruling on Friday, they sided with the US authorities after a near-unprecedented package of assurances were put forward that Assange would not face those strictest measures either pre-trial or post-conviction unless he committed an act in the future that required them.

    From the Guardian.

    As to whether we get him or not, I really don’t care one way or the other.

  10. 10.

    Betty Cracker

    @OzarkHillbilly: Interesting. I assume “future” in that context means after the extradition, not after the alleged 2010 crimes. The Obama admin’s hesitancy about charging Assange for the 2010 leaks was understandable, though you can make a reasonable argument that he went far beyond the role of a publisher in egging Manning on. But Assange was a direct actor in the 2016 election meddling.

  11. 11.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Interesting that those international collection programs got shut down courtesy of Assange’s whingeing – programs which would have been useful in identifying American co-conspirators with ramped up social manipulation of the US populace. Then once the manipulation was evident, his co-conspirators magnified it.

    He did immense damage. I’d prefer him to be in the ground along with his buddy Greenwald.

  15. 15.

    Jay

    Is there a fast track path to just jailing him in Oz?

    Belmarsh to Oz with no foot on US soil?

    Welcome back Baud, good vacay?

    Your Presidential Campaign has lagged in your absence.

  16. 16.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Yeah but they keep coming back. Take me for example.

    @Betty Cracker: I took it as “As long as he behaves himself while incarcerated.” which is the deal for all prisoners. It begs the question of, what constitutes good behavior for him?

  22. 22.

    germy

    @different-church-lady: he can never leave.

    Last week I was shopping in an Aldi store.  Very early, I was the first customer.  After checkout, the automatic door letting me out wouldn’t work.  Cashier had forgotten to activate it.

    I joked “It’s like the roach motel.”   And then I realized she was too young to remember those pest commercials, and so probably thought I was babbling an insult.

  23. 23.

    Geminid

    Assange took his grudge against Secretary of State Clinton  out on the U.S . Now he’ll likely get ten years of prison time. Toxic masculine arrogance? Commentators have noted that Sweden would not have extradited Assange to the U.S. if he had simply returned to that country and stood trial for his sexual assaults. He’d have been out years ago.

  29. 29.

    germy

    New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on the Tish James announcement: "This is a very bad day for Donald Trump and the NRA, when we have Tish James, one of the finest attorney generals in the country, very focused on making sure that justice is done."— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 10, 2021

    I’m on team Hochul.

    And AG James is a powerful advocate for her constituents. My wife had a problem with a big box store a few months ago. Treated terribly by the corporation. She wrote a letter to James. Wasn’t sure what to expect. And then she received an email and phone call from the company, apologizing and refunding.

  31. 31.

    gene108

    I bent a wheel a few weeks back. First time this ever happened to me. I went into deep diving research on all the ways to solve it. I decided on a refurbished OEM wheel. I emailed local auto repair shops with detailed information about what happened and eagerly wanting to schedule some kind of appointment. I wanted to be super sure I could get this done.

    My universal reply, as of us yesterday was “call us when you get the wheel”. I expect it next Wednesday, per UPS ground shipping.

    Do these auto repair shops not understand how much I discovered when deciding on buying a refurbished wheel? I learned about aftermarket wheels, offset, back spacing, and learned new words like camber and coil overs. I learned about aftermarket wheel companies, replica OEM wheels, that OEM wheels can be expensive, and online stores that sell those wheels, like TireRack, ECS Tuning, etc. I learned there’s a whole entire large industry selling parts to mostly 20-something to 30-something men to tune their cars to make more power over the stock model they bought.

    A whole new world opened up to me, and the auto repair shops just say “call us when you get the wheel”.

    Very anti-climatic.

    Edit: I had so much knowledge to share with them. ?

  36. 36.

    Spanky

    @gene108: There’s still a chance! You can stand behind the tech while he’s working on your car, expounding on all you have learned. He’ll like that a lot, I’m sure, and no doubt you’ll get a price break.

  38. 38.

    germy

    Here’s a hero:

    I told earlier how Gen Zrs crashed Kellogg’s website by submitting bogus applications online when it sought job apps from strike breakers to replace union workers. UPDATE: one of them wrote a program which uses random data to submit bogus applications to Kellogg’s 24 hrs a day— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) December 10, 2021

    Here is the program in operation, as demonstrated by the programmer: https://t.co/hr2xgTDVZd— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) December 10, 2021

  41. 41.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: I see another loophole because I am a devious bastard lawyer:

    If Assange is/were to become incompetent, he could be sent to a forensic psychiatric unit until he returned to competency to continue criminal proceedings. This would not in any case be a “sentence,” so we wouldn’t have to transfer him to Australia. The CIA could continue to play “how many lights do you see”* with him for years.

    *Star Trek Next Generation reference.

  44. 44.

    germy

    @Betty: One of the sad things about getting older, so many young folks don’t get your joke.

    It’s like that time Fred Allen did that bit with Jack Benny:  “Why aren’t they laughing”

  47. 47.

    Ken

    I’m somewhat amused that while Assange’s lawyers delay him being sentenced to prison, he is waiting in prison.

    BTW does anyone know if Assange still has money? I’m curious who is paying his lawyers.

  52. 52.

    Ken

    @Spanky: So when can we expect your On the Road submission to get to Watergirl?

    Won’t he need to get the material declassified first, and a release from the head of the CIA?

    Wait — am I remembering one of the stories we made up, to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative?

  53. 53.

    Immanentize

    The return of Baud is the good news. So is the imminent rendering (the technical term) for Assange.

    The bad news of the moment for me is that my 91 y.o. Mom fell and broke her hip. She’s in upstate NY and half hip replacement is this afternoon. COVID protocols at the hospital mean I (and no one else) cannot visit her there. Then it is off to in-patient (impatient?) rehab. Should I just ship her to Sighthound Lodge for hurting loved ones?

  54. 54.

    Eolirin

     

    @Ken: I think it’s ultimately more important to them that there’s never a public trial about wikileaks than that Assange is ever out of prison.

  57. 57.

    Soprano2

    @Immanentize: Oh man I’m sorry, that’s tough. Best wishes for a successful surgery for your mom and a good recovery.

    I’m glad they’re going to extradite Assange to the U.S. He needs to answer for his crimes. He helped subject the whole country to 4 years of TFG because he had a grudge against Hillary. Also, he seems to have gotten away with some kind of sexual assault.

  58. 58.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Betty: One of the sad things about getting older, so many young folks don’t get your joke.

    I’ve been a fan of enough cult favorites over the years, from Firesign Theatre to Firefly, that I’m used to people my age not getting my jokes.  So it’s nothing out of the ordinary for me when the kids don’t.

  60. 60.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @PST:

    Glad I caught you! Wanted to thank you for the recommendation on the Aftershokz OpenMove headset. I took a chance when the price suddenly dropped to $60, and I love it. Even bought one for a friend who does long podcast walks every day and is constantly fuming about her succession of crappy earbuds. She loves it too. Very easy to set up, very comfortable, and she can hear the ambient noise around her.

  61. 61.

    Ken

    @Eolirin: Who do you mean by “them”? His lawyers? Unless Assange has told them “I don’t want a trial, leave me in prison without one”, they wouldn’t be representing his interests.

    Which gets back to my question, who is paying them? Whose interests are they representing?

    (Hmm, I’m sounding a tad paranoid. You don’t suppose Assange is contagious, and over the internet? (There I go again….))

  62. 62.

    Westyny

    I mostly lurk, but I’m joining the WBB(aud) chorus . . .  A day without Baud is like a day without orange juice, or something. . .

  72. 72.

    Geminid

    Federal prosecutors will have a good bit of leverage over Assange. I wonder if they can get him to spill the beans on coordination with Russia in the Clinton campaign leaks. He may have second hand knowledge of trump campaign involvement. Although anything Assange said would be suspect.

  73. 73.

    Tony Gerace

    I confess that I have not been following the Assange drama closely all these years.  He seems to me to be a guy who did some good stuff for a while, and then came unhinged.  Personally I cannot forgive him for helping to get Trump elected in 2016

  79. 79.

    Ramalama

    @germy: Nice Marcy Wheeler quote there. I follow her but don’t grok half of the stuff she writes, it’s so dense sometimes. Plus, I have my own density to contend with.

  80. 80.

    narya

    Welcome  back, Baud! Imm, here’s hoping your mom recovers quickly and well. Random Blech for OH. DAW, did you like Scalzi’s church? And cross your fingers for me today, too: heading to see an oncologist. My worry level is about 1.5 on a scale of 10 (my other doc is very careful), and I don’t actually expect to get much information today, and I’m not overwhelmingly worried that there’s something majorly wrong, but still.

    Also: shoutout to WG for wrangling the Schiff read/Juice events!

  81. 81.

    WaterGirl

    @Immanentize: I have it on good authority that Steep’s Bro’ Man would happily take her in for recovery.

    (Not intended as a factual statement.)

    So sorry to hear about your mom.  The fun never ends at your house, Imm. :-(

  83. 83.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @narya: I can’t believe Scalzi bought a church. It’s a beautiful building though. It would be lovely to come to work there.

    Best of luck to you at the oncologist’s today. It’s good to get things checked out.

  96. 96.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    @mrmoshpotato:  The Hartford Whalers were an NHL Hockey Team until moving and becoming the Carolina Hurricanes in 1997.  Is that what you were thinking?  ; )

  106. 106.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Thank you!

    You could submit pics to OTR under a different nym, so you can still enjoy your privacy and we get to see “someone’s” trip.

    But I suppose you would need to enlist someone to re-write your descriptions so your wit and levity wouldn’t shine through and give you away.

  110. 110.

    Kalakal

    @Betty: About 15 years ago prince Charles was on a rant about modern architecture and made a joke on the lines of “town planners have done more damage to English cities than the luftwaffe ever did”. A friend repeated it at his work, saying he thought it was funny and all the junior minions dutifully laughed. As he left the office he heard a whisper “what’s the luftwaffe?”.

    When he told us we all suddenly felt very old

  112. 112.

    WereBear

    We are planning a bit more festivity than last year, which I hope will be a personal low for sometime to come, but still, staying home continues to be the most sensible thing, especially in an upstate winter.

    When I want to cheer myself up, I image 1918 and wondering if I would have had enough books…

  114. 114.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @cope: No, not yet. Probably be a while, if ever, as we don’t have TV, or streaming, or whatever other newfangled home entertainment venue you big city folks have access to.

  122. 122.

    Ramalama

    @Kalakal: I clicked all the way down, and found this book review of the lovebird, aka, the DIY historian:

    At times, Johnson tries to appear academic, with a few citations sprinkled in. He also plays the victim card, as though he is unjustly persecuted by the thought police.

    I am weary of the latest (on-going) news of anti-vax conservatives getting killed by Covid. This news felt good to read.

  124. 124.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Immanentize:

    I can hardly recommend the spartan amenities of Sighthound Lodge, the somewhat run-down hunting cabin on the back reaches of the estate, to a recuperating matron. But she would no doubt be welcome at the main hall.

    In any case, I hope your mother has a speedy, pain-free recovery.

  129. 129.

    zhena gogolia

    @Kalakal: I have embarrassed myself making jokes about: Dragnet‘s “The names have been changed to protect the innocent”; Jimmy Carter’s Playboy interview where he admitted he had lusted in his heart; and many more. The one thing my students knew down cold, even better than I did, was the plot of the Twilight Zone episode where Burgess Meredith survives a nuclear attack. They have strange little pockets of knowledge.

  130. 130.

    zhena gogolia

    @Kalakal: My husband and I are (belatedly) watching The Crown, so just the name Prince Charles sends shivers down my spine. That scoundrel!

  131. 131.

    Kalakal

    @Ramalama: Thanks for that, I love terrible reviews. Favourite bit

    The book is more pitiful than anything else. Johnson barely knows how to write… National socialism is his unabashed reason for writing, and he will not let his illiteracy get in the way.

    Inadvertently, Johnson is an advertisement for the merits of peer review.

    Guffaw

  135. 135.

    Almost Retired

    Welcome back, Baud.  None of us know where you went, but I think we all have our own speculative projections. I think you took one of those tours of the ‘stans.  Camels were involved.

  137. 137.

    Kalakal

    @zhena gogolia: Despite having absolutely no time for the British monarchy I do have a certain sympathy for them I would hate to be them. A heck of a lot of people who become famous crack up under the pressure of constant  media attention. But while pop/film stars etc actually  choose to be famous the poor sods in the Royal family are under the microscope from the second they are born. They are the stars of the Truman show except they actually know it’s a show and can’t quit. I’d hate it

    I never gave a stuff about the Charles and Di thing but the poisonous media circus around them gave me hives. Manipulative weasels on all sides

  138. 138.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​
     

    I’m perfect just the way I am. And humble too. Have I told you lately how humble I am? Very humble.

    We have heard that you are humble, and we are glad for you!

    Regarding Assange and his many misdeeds — has everyone forgotten about Reality Winner, who lingers in prison because his outfit didn’t bother to obscure the origin of the documents she provided to them? I hope not. He is responsible for every bit of her troubles.

  139. 139.

    Tony Jay

    UK rants – Part XXXII

     

    The worst part is the wait for it to be over, as the actress said to the bishop.

    It’s getting steadily worse for the UK’s worst Prime Minister since the last one (and the one before that) now that They Who Sit In Judgement Above The World have given his Reign of Errrr the old thumbs down and released the slavering hounds of our ‘Free and Independent Press’ from their careerist bonds. Scandals are closing in from all sides, leakers are leaking, cowed minions are discovering it’s safe to stand up and rediscover vertebrate-culture, and he’s discovering that one of the major downsides of surrounding yourself with people stupid enough to work for someone like you is that, when you really need them, the people who work for you are stupid, and I’m talking fucking stupid.

    Case in point? The latest ‘clarification’ to ooze shamelessly from the mouth of a loyal knobhead dropped out of Paul Scully, the Business Minister, who is such a complete non-entity that I have nothing insulting to say about him other than he’s a Tory Minister appointed by Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (ouch, that burns – Ed). Pushed in front of the morning cameras looking like an Albanian mob snitch who has just realised that Keyser Soze owns people in Witness Protection, Scully’s explanation for why he refused to call the December 18th Christmas Party a ‘Party’ was, and I am not making this up, that ‘Party’ suggests “balloons and poppers and these kind of things”.

    Now, I won’t deny that this reply pleases me in all the right ways. Firstly, even the BBC’s pompadoured android Charlie Stayt was rendered briefly speechless, which is a 110% improvement on his usual output, secondly even I’m aware that “balloons and poppers” can be taken as slang shorthand for nitrous oxide and amyl nitrate, so that’s just a lovely bit of background colour you’ve thrown on the Tory party scene there, Paul, and thirdly, the term he prefers, “gathering”, is the one I often like using, because I think I’m correct in saying that “illegal gathering” is what everyone involved in this drug-fuelled orgy of tinsel-wrapped teabagging should be charged with attending when and if the Police pull their heads out of their arses and sniff the prevailing winds.

    The reason Scully was dragged out of his all-night Stavros Flatley lookalike marathon to embarrass himself on TV was because Johnson’s Director of Communications, Jack Doyle, couldn’t make it, and the reason this former Daily Mail hack couldn’t make it was because he’s been outed as having given an opening speech at the December 18th party/gathering, which is just glorious, because for the last week Doyle’s job as Director of Communications has been to orchestrate, script and manage the entire “There was no Party and no rules were broken” campaign, the shreds of which are currently blowing over the garden fence into Number 11 Downing St and clogging the filters on Rishi Sunak’s Japanese style Koi Carp Pool of Contemplation.

    Oh, fucking savour why dontcha?

    Obviously, there are no grounds whatsoever for assuming that Johnson’s Director of Communications might possibly have told his boss that he’d been at the Party at any point during the week Johnson himself was telling the world that there had been no Party. Despite being in a job that involves spending most of his day in Johnson’s presence and talking about what to say to the Press and TV Media about the issues of the day, Doyle is obviously just a low-ranking functionary, a glorified tea-boy, with his rank and title a misleading holdover from the bad old days of Labour Government. The fact that the December 18th ‘gathering’ was apparently a Communications Team event likewise does not in any way support the stubborn rumours that certain friendly journalists, mainly those still working at the rags from which Doyle has likely recruited his team of proven Wormtongues, were also in the building and enjoying the “balloons and poppers” festivities with their temporarily seconded chums and have since been doing their damnedest to bury their involvement.

    I hope that’s clear. Any problems, the Government has a multi-billion pound contract with U R My Mate Inc to provide rose-coloured ocular PPE for just these circumstances. They may take six months to arrive and turn out to be mouldy potatoes, but it’s the profit that counts.

    And anyway, the Tory Chief Whip, Mark Spencer, a man who permanently wears the look of someone who has shat in your mini-éclair and is just waiting for you to take a bite, has also done the rounds at his local Nottinghamshire radio station to inform us that the Party was, in fact, only ‘a meeting’, that nobody was drinking alcohol, that it’s entirely plausible that our brave and hard-working Prime Minister would never have known there was anyone having ‘a meeting’ in his house because it’s apparently a sprawling Gormenghastian pile of “hundreds and hundreds” of rooms, a bit like an evil T.A.R.D.I.S. or Ireland’s largest lingerie section, where people can wander for weeks on end without finding the exits, a toilet, or even a single, solitary culpable member of Government. And, not content with that pile of fermented bovine excrement, Marco No-No pressed on to claim that the video which clearly shows Allegra Stratton (resigned) and various members of Johnson’s team (not resigned) discussing what lies to tell about the December 18th Party in fact clearly shows the exact opposite and proves, if you squint hard and put your head right up there next to the clingfilmed hamster, that Stratton and Co were, in fact, discussing how there was no Party and so no case to answer. And this from the man with the unenviable job of convincing Tory backbench MPs to swallow the Kool Aid and defend the Roly-Poly Rotter.

    Good luck with that, fuckwit.

    But the other side of the Rommelesque pincer-movement chewing up Johnson’s remaining time with his hand in the till comes from the long-simmering issue of who, exactly, paid for the exceptionally naff redecoration of the Prime Ministerial accommodations last year, and whether or not the World’s Biggest Bullshitter lied about it. Very briefly, it boils down to a Tory Party donor paying the bill, then not paying the bill, then someone else entirely (who Johnson claims was him, but certainly not using his money) paying the bill, all while Johnson claims he had no idea that he hadn’t paid for the work and that, in fact, the man he spoke to about how the work got paid for had actually paid it for him. The things that people get up to around l’Roi Globular without keeping him in the loop. Honestly, how is an honest man supposed to keep track of where his penis is when all of these underlings insist on sucking it in relay style?

    Right now, the nation’s Tory whisperers are on tippy-toe tenterhooks over whether Johnson’s Standards Adviser (He’s got a fu#%&ng what, now? – Ed), the Baroquely named Lord Geidt (rhymes with… well.. what do you think?) is going to resign because Johnson flat out lied to him about what he knew and when he knew it back when Geidt cleared him of all wrongdoing. It’s a bit like waiting to see if Lucius Malfoy gets up the courage to welly Voldemort in the space where his knackers should be, in that the breaking point of tension isn’t whether Geidt thinks he lied (of course he thinks he lied, it’s Johnson) but whether Geidt thinks he, personally, will be safe and rewarded for basically putting an Establishment stamp on the notion that Flobalob might not be the honest man of integrity and rectitude Conservatives traditionally elevate to be their leader (snark shields at 30%  and falling, Captain! – Ed).

    If he does that, even the BBC’s highly paid lavisher of slobbery pleasure on the Johnsonian pecker (Kuenssberg, Laura – Agent of T.O.R.Y.) has said he has to resign. Granted, she’ll likely throw herself onto the bonfire of his vanity screaming “Take me with you, my husky hero!”, but once Johnson’s fitness for office has been questioned by someone who actually matters, well, that’s all folks.

     

    This took me a couple of hours to note down while doing other stuff at work, so it’s probably out of date now. Trying to report on Tory malfeasance is like trying to video The Flash having a wank, you’ve got to be Quicksilver to do it and then it just gets weird.

    As for Assange, go on, have him. We took Flobalob off you guys, didn’t we

     

    ETA – Hi Baud!

    ETA2 – Hi Steeplejack’s balls!

  140. 140.

    PST

    @Steeplejack (phone): Glad you like the OpenMoves. I thought of you the other day when I saw an ad for a new AfterShokz model that includes a little boom mic that is said to be highly directional. I don’t need that myself, but someone who was talking a lot on the phone in a noisy environment might like it. I’m happy with the built-in mics and no one I talk to is complaining.

  142. 142.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @cope: Yep. Maybe someday we will get fiber optic installed in the pipes that got layed in front of my property back in 2010.

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…. gasp… wheeze…. Sometimes I just crack me up.

  144. 144.

    Betty Cracker

    @J R in WV: Reality Winner has thankfully been released from prison, but while Assange is responsible for Chelsea Manning’s stint in the hoosgow, we can’t really blame him for Winner, who was immediately scooped up when the Intercept bungled the release of the leaked documents.

    PS: Winner did a 60 Minutes interview a while back. I hope she does more as 60 Minutes let a lot of important questions go unanswered.

  146. 146.

    PST

    @mrmoshpotato:

    I read that as “whales” and thought you were talking about some weird sports team.

    We should pause a moment to pay our respects to the Chicago Whales, who were the original team in Wrigley Field. (Oops. I see you were already on top of that one.)

  148. 148.

    Immanentize

    @James E Powell: I will write it if you will produce it! It could be a great series in part because the storyline of the US using psychiatric hospitals as a type of Gulag for a Russian agent run by the former head of the Soviet KGB, well — It just sizzles, no?

  153. 153.

    Kalakal

    In line with Tony’s comments on Tory incompetence Brexit remains the gift that keeps on taking. In “bad news for Biden” the UK is threatening to bring the US economy to its knees via a tariff war

    The Trump-era tariffs of 25% on steel exports (and 10% on aluminium exports) were imposed when the UK was part of the European Union.
    The EU and the US have now concluded an agreement that will see them lifted from 1 January. But the tariffs on UK producers remain.

    Proclaiming the benefits of Brexit and going it alone

    When asked why further talks with the US weren’t happening before 1 January, Ms Trevelyan said the US chose to have a discussion with the EU first because it was a larger trading partner.

    BBC News – UK warns US of retaliation over steel tariffs
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59597310

  157. 157.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @PST:

    I, too, saw the boom model but didn’t think I would need it. And it turns out I don’t. I am perfectly satisfied with the microphone on the OpenMove. I think I’ve even talked to my friend on one of her walks and couldn’t tell. Heretofore those calls were static-plagued with occasional audio gaps.

  159. 159.

    patroclus

    So to have a party in the U.K. means that you have to have “balloons and poppers.” (i.e., nitrous oxide and amyl nitrate)???  Otherwise, it’s just a “gathering”?  There’s an arguably insulting trope about the Brits that I’ve sometimes heard (in the U.S.) about everyone single one of them being gay – this revelation doesn’t do much to disprove that.

  160. 160.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Tony Gerace: This.  I have an ACLU friend who is all FreeAssange! and always wants to get into the legal details with me and I had to tell him flat out

    “I don’t give a fuck. That asshole spent all of 2016 using his platform to bash Hillary and make excuses for Trump.  Then we find out he was directly texting Roger fucking Stone and Trump Jr. to coordinate the drop of hacked documents (provided by GRU/Guccifer) to most effectively hurt Hillary right when the Grab-Her-By-The-P…story broke and should have dominated the news.  Then once Trump was in office Assange’s passion for hacking and releasing for the sake of public transparency suddenly stopped.  All that fucking corruption of the Trump administration had to be dug up by Farenholdt/WaPo and other investigative journalists.  Probably the most corrupt administration in history and yet Assange couldn’t use his skills to uncover a single thing!  The dude is/always was a narcissistic piece of shit who had a grudge against Hillary, Obama and Dems and acted accordingly.  He is one of the biggest reasons we got Trump and are now in this fucking mess.  In the eternal words of the late EFGoldman ‘Fuck ’em’.”

    I can care about civil liberties and govt transparency without spending my time defending that piece of shit.

  161. 161.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @patroclus:

    Sometimes a balloon is just a balloon. And a popper can also be a “party popper”—a toy that explodes with a bang when you pull on it.

  167. 167.

    Gravenstone

    @gene108: I did that once when I was a kid. Bought a cast aside wheel for $5 from the gas station down the block, along with a cheap used tire. Tire mounted, balanced and installed for <$20. Life was much simpler then.

  168. 168.

    Gravenstone

    @Betty: A few of us were having this discussion yesterday at lunch. One of us harkened back to the classic “Grey Poupon” commercial, and we realized that many others present would be too young to recognize the context.

  169. 169.

    Searcher

    This may be a dead thread, but does anyone have any guesses why the Trump admin brought charges?  Still angry about the Bush-era leaks?  Wanted to lock him down so he wouldn’t roll on them for Russia?  Just general “because I’m a scorpion”?

  170. 170.

    Tony Jay

    @patroclus:

    Surely the question should be, under what repetitive circumstances did Americans come to think that all the Brits they met were gay?

    Certainly gives “Oversexed, overpaid and over here” a new slant.

  175. 175.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: how come I have to come over here to BJ to find out that Scalzi bought a church? Oh, because Twitter absolutely sucks now and it’s too hard to read anything over there. Else I probably would have seen the news from Ursula Vernon, Charlie Stross, or Scalzi himself.

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