Expecting wall to wall coverage of this. https://t.co/vdalzGcOJV
— Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) February 10, 2022
I have been told that such things are a big deal
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) February 10, 2022
It can *always* get worse…
Jesus Christ, he treated the PDB like a kiddie picture book https://t.co/4b2n0PSygT
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 10, 2022
He wanted to finish coloring them while he watched ‘his shows’!
Burning incriminating documents, shredding them, crumpling them and throwing them in the river, etc. show consciousness of guilt.
Repeatedly EATING emotionally provocative documents? There's a decent argument that guy's just not right.https://t.co/nEfg2I15D6
— OverwhelmingEvidenceOfHat (@Popehat) February 9, 2022
That’s as close to happy as anyone has ever seen him.
— ??????Steve Peters?????? (@srpeters18) February 9, 2022
Trigger warning: Bodily functions...
Hey, remember all the rallies where TFG bitched about having to ‘flush 10, 15 times’? Hot tidbit from the Former Official NYT/TFG Stenographer, via Mike Allen (of course) for Axios:
While President Trump was in office, staff in the White House residence periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet — and believed the president had flushed pieces of paper, Maggie Haberman scoops in her forthcoming book, “Confidence Man.”
Why it matters: The revelation by Haberman, whose coverage as a New York Times White House correspondent was followed obsessively by Trump, adds a vivid new dimension to his lapses in preserving government documents. Axios was provided an exclusive first look at some of her reporting….
Thinking about the breaking news that NARA has made a criminal referral to DOJ: in an era when lurking fascism wants to ban history from being taught and books are being banned and burned, it would be a delicious turn of events if Librarians and Historians helped save democracy.
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) February 9, 2022
Wouldn’t it be nice to think so…
So remember a big reason for the second impeachment was to try to disqualify trump from holding future office. This Presidential records act Issue, which the archives has asked DOJ to investigate, has a very intriguing possibility.
— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) February 10, 2022
That the department and Garland would see them selves as qualified for that kind of grand and in fact political compromise; and yet it would make all kinds of sense.
— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) February 10, 2022
dmsilev
You know, it would have been really awesome if Maggie Haberman had been able to let people know about this minor issue back when TFG was still in office. Like, maybe she could have sent it to a political reporter at a major news outlet or something.
Raoul Paste
So now it’s forensic plumbing?
Who has a security clearance at Roto-Rooter?
trollhattan
@dmsilev: Her Precious Access was/is the only thing Mags cares about. Screw, you know, the nation of which she is a citizen.
Raoul Paste
Next we will be bringing in the Watergate plumbers. I’ll stop now
Quaker in a Basement
Hey, when I accused him of flushing the Constitution, I was kidding!
Cameron
That’s probably the only fiber he got in his diet.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So that expression on Trump’s face is constipation?
p.a.
So it wasn’t just the Constitution he tried to flush down the toilet.
Baud
I guess he never learned how to use the three seashells.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I had to look that up. Sorry I did!
The NYT has a demure little item at the bottom of the front page, pointing to a demure little article on A15. “Surprise find in Trump boxes.” Not quite what they did with Hillary.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Not quite the same agenda.
hells littlest angel
So this depraved simpleton was destroying printouts? Just another unbelievably stupid thing that becomes quite believable when attributed to Trump.
Gin & Tonic
And probably minor in comparison, but Putin was addressing Macron (as I believe he does to all foreign leaders now) with the familiar form of the second-person pronoun, ты, which in a diplomatic setting is extremely disrespectful (think the French “tu” vs. “vous”)
Just a cheap thug.
The Dangerman
Recall the reports of the Final Days of Nixon, where he would get shitfaced and talk to the paintings on the wall? I’m guessing that will pale in comparison to TFG.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
Does he talk to Chinese leaders that way?
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Does Mandarin have different forms of the second-person pronoun? It’s a language I don’t know.
Anyway, I haven’t listened to any meetings/conferences where this might occur.
cain
@Baud:
Trump being a criminal is just old news. It does show how blatant the NYT is when it comes to the Clintons.
I just wish many someone repeatedly confronts them about this.
dmsilev
@The Dangerman: We used to joke that TFG’s family dynamics approximated that seen in King Lear, but perhaps Macbeth is the better comparison.
Shalimar
It’s more damning that the PDB was mostly pictures. Producing kiddie picture books was the only way to reach Trump.
emmyelle
“While President Trump was in office, staff in the White House residence periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet — and believed the president had flushed pieces of paper, Maggie Haberman scoops in her forthcoming book, “Confidence Man.”
And then Maggie Hberman goes on to say “In retrospect, it probably would have been better for the country and the world, really, if those of us in the media, including myself, did not engage in breathless non-clarifying coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails or engage in the kind of journalism designed to turn a lopsided election into a horserace…”
Oh, wait. That part didn’t happen.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
The thing to me is that it taints all coverage from NYT. We expect that the news will present an even-handed picture of what’s happening based on everything they know. But if the reporters are withholding important facts because they want to reserve them for their books, the whole edifice is suspect. We can’t trust any of NYT’s political reporting because we don’t know what they’re holding back for the book. I suppose it’s possible these details were removed from NYT’s reporting because they were seen as insufficiently newsworthy, but that says you can’t trust NYT to know its business. Or maybe the information couldn’t actually be confirmed, in which case NYT is hiring reporters who are willing to write books that don’t meet basic standards of factual journalism. It’s just impossible to see how you can trust NYT after this kind of thing.
Kay
Anyone who actually cared about “national security” would never have let this braggart, lying loudmouth anywhere near anything sensitive.
Oh, it’s all locked up tight with the Trump Family and the low quality hires! Sure it is.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
I don’t know, but I assume the translator would know if Putin was using the wrong form in Russian.
BruceFromOhio
But her emails.
West of the Rockies
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Paper trail from papered entrails.
Baud
@Shalimar:
The P stands for pop-up.
scav
@dmsilev: ???? Family dynamics of Macbeth? Just him and his wife? And, well, they both seemed far more intellectually capable than the orange one and the mrs. I’m just missing the point of comparison.
Kay
@emmyelle:
Maggie Haberman was and is certainly central to the NYTimes promotion of Donald Trump, but she covered Trump not Clinton. The lousy Clinton coverage came from the Clinton team of reporters. They’re responsible for it, not her. We could have had fawning Trump coverage somewhat balanced by decent work on the Clinton side. Instead we got the worst on both ends.
Benw
TFG handled his OWN document disposal! That means that even while he was SLEEPING his stomach was conducting official US business. Hardest working President evarr!!
West of the Rockies
@emmyelle:
Oh, you dewy-eyed mooncalf…
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Oh, it’s not the “wrong form” – it’s calculated. Maybe if I have some time I’ll try to dig up some audio and see whether the interpreter changed “ты” to “vous” on the fly. But I doubt it.
Librarian
@Roger Moore: It’s not just a NYT problem, it’s all media outlets.
trollhattan
@Kay: Didn’t he bum-rush security clearances for Princling Jared and Dreamgirl, despite and contrary to their utter lack of qualifications for security clearances?
OTOH how else was Jared supposed to fix the Middle East?
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
It doesn’t matter, because he isn’t speaking in Mandarin. He’s speaking in Russian and having it translated. He ought to be speaking in the kind of polite Russian he would use if he were speaking to an equal who understood exactly what he’s saying. Being rude when you think the other person won’t catch it is just another level of contempt.
Kay
This was the Clinton coverage team, and it began early- this article is from 2013.
Of course, the reliance on Clinton Cash, an anti Clinton book they pulled whole stories out of- came later but the people who relied on it were not Maggie Haberman. The die was set way before she announced. They had their narrative and they never veered. All the rest followed.
Kay
@trollhattan:
Oh, I don’t know but just on a character and personality basis would you tell any of these people anything? No one said “none of these people can keep their mouths shut, they love celebrity and the power of inside information, perhaps that’s a concern?”
I wouldn’t tell any of them shit, ever. They’re untrustworthy and they lie all the time. Do you need more than that?
Kay
@trollhattan:
There will be all these security breaches in the coming years and we’ll all have to be “golly- I wonder where that came from?”
Um, the loudmouth boaster you-all gave it to for safekeeping?
Betty Cracker
Hubby was watching CNN yesterday evening when this story broke, and they had Fap Master Jeffrey Toobin on to explain that the official document abuse/heist is not legally actionable. It’s a good thing the network decided to overlook Toobin’s unfortunate Zoom call self-service incident because that kind of penetrating legal analysis doesn’t just grow on palms. I mean TREES! Palm trees, of course.
Cameron
@Gin & Tonic: A pretty foolish move, as well as low-rent. Macron’s actually trying to make a deal with him.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
That Haberman was put on the Trump beat says volumes about how political coverage works at NYT. Her family had longstanding ties to Trump- her mother had done PR for him- which should have been disqualifying. Instead, it was seen as advantageous, since it meant she already had insider access. Insider access is great, but not when it comes at the cost of objectivity.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Betty Cracker:
Did he mention why it’s not “legally actionable”?
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: I don’t see how you can fault Tubin’ for taking a hands-on approach to his job.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Kushner was also in hock up to his eyeballs, which is normally a hard no for getting a security clearance. Drowning in debt makes you an easy target for people who can do something to help you with it. Normally, someone with as much debt as Kushner wouldn’t be worth the cost, but his level of access made him an incredible target.
Anyway
Hope no jackals are thinking of soiling their hands/laptops/Kindles with MAGAHaberman’s book …
PS FTFNYT
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Busy taking accountability off the table!
I don’t care that much. The idea that anything Donald Trump was privy to is “secure” is a joke anyway.
Bad hires never get better, only worse. You pay and pay and pay for them, long after they are fired. He never should have been hired. My grandchildren will be paying for Donald Trump. I hope political media had fun and the beach houses they’re gonna buy with those books make them happy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
a depressing CBC article on how retired (mostly, let’s hope) police and military are supporting the dickhead truckers in Ottawa
Well, it’s not at all scary that one of Canada’s leading counter-terrorism experts is referring to the duly elected and constituted government as “the opposition”
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Don’t worry. The beach houses will be flooded by the global warming Trump did nothing to stop.
germy
Served
It’s all a big joke to them
germy
germy
Kay
@Roger Moore:
I’m confused about that too. My son, who is an electrician, had to get a Homeland Security clearance to refit the electric on a nuclear plant. He had a “falsifying” misdemeanor from 6 years ago that came up. He was drinking at 19 and he told police he was 21. I love what sticklers we are for “security” on our tradespeople but Kushner it’s like “nah- he’s great!”
mrmoshpotato
Your party, Tom. Your party’s voters made this shitshow possible.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: Would they be given that latitude?
He often speaks like a street thug. He’s so disgusting.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This is a tragically underexplored issue. They’re not “keeping us safe” because they’re on Team Terrorist.
It’s just a fact. Not all of them! But enough of them.
FridayNext
Speaking on behalf of archivists everywhere, we are not librarians nor are we historians. Maybe the latter if you stretch the definition beyond “creating new knowledge through historical inquiry” and include those who save and organize the primary resources from which historians create new knowledge, and we are certainly Public Historians, and some archivists can ALSO be historians, but at the end of the day, archivists are their own thing.
Sorry, been fighting this battle for 30 years.
trollhattan
@Kay:
Three jobs ago I worked on a project that included some time on site at Lawrence Livermore Lab. Yeah, plenty of background and clearances involved in that, and most buildings were off limits. Not a big deal since we were in a portable construction shack except for meetings. OTOH I could wander the grounds and saw all matter of interesting things, many behind/beneath tarps.
Even more interesting were the fortresses inside the fortress–buildings festooned with concertina wire and such. Those, I definitely wanted to see.
mrmoshpotato
@BruceFromOhio:
Exactly. “But her emails!” “She’s unlikeable!” “I disagree with her about one small thing, so I’m not gonna vote!”
M31
everything Trump touches turns to shit, including classified documents
lowtechcyclist
Let’s say you just meant it metaphorically.
germy
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Robert E. Lee was a U.S. military officer too.
zhena gogolia
@mrmoshpotato: “She demonstrates the dead end that is Neoliberalism.” (Verbatim quote from one of my students, the day after the 2016 election.)
sdhays
@trollhattan: How come reporters didn’t keep juicy tidbits about Hillary’s emails for their post-election books?
Oh, that’s right. There weren’t actually any interesting tidbits anyone would buy a book to read about.
Villago Delenda Est
TFG: Teppichfresser.
germy
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Who shat on his oath. Lee should have been hanged for that.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Adam Silverman talked about this a lot as it was happening. The president is the ultimate authority on security clearances, so he has the power to overrule the people who want to turn someone down for a clearance. It should have been a much bigger story than it was, but it did get play in the media. It just got knocked out of the headlines by the next Trump scandal, and that by the next, scandal without end.
mrmoshpotato
Look at Popehat being all high and mighty.
Like he wouldn’t be stress eating provocative documents if he was a Soviet shitpile mobster conmanbaby installed into one of the biggest high stress jobs, a job that he never wanted in the first place and only ran for because of his massive ego and empty soul.
Kay
@trollhattan:
I helped him get it expunged, which he’s entitled to do in Ohio and the glitch inspired him to get off his ass and file for it, so it ended well.
He was calling it his “trial”. “Is my trial today?” It takes like 15 minutes :)
“Falsifying” is a bad charge for employers because it means you will lie to an authority figure, but again, THE TRUMPS. Not a concern? See, I would be worried.
dmsilev
@scav: The descent into madness, mostly. Ending up wandering around the White
HouseCastle talking to the walls and random bits of furniture, back-stabbing ostensible allies, and setting the stage for an inevitable fall.Also, all of Scotland hates his guts.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
I hope you gave her a D.
Roger Moore
@germy:
I don’t think there’s a big problem with buying a book from someone that just summarizes the stuff they reported day by day. It’s just that those books don’t sell nearly as well as ones that promise something new.
JMG
@trollhattan: Fifty years ago when I lived for one year in the Bay Area, my then-girlfriend was a PR person for the Livermore Lab. She said, “it’s great. All I do is try to make sure there’s no news. Unless some jerk there wins a Nobel Prize. Then I have real work to do.”
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
I’m sorry. Are we talking about Donald “Orange Muffin” Trump or Kushner?
Villago Delenda Est
@JMG: Oh, the humanity!
Roger Moore
@germy:
The third option is that this stuff was rightly rejected for failing journalistic standards, and NYT reporters are including it in their books anyway. Not much better.
trollhattan
That’s gold! :-)
Betty Cracker
@germy: I wonder if they make a lot of money off those books through organic sales. Maybe! It just doesn’t seem like there would be a huge market in the sense that Dan Brown or Stephen King or someone like that generates sales. Maybe it’s all about movie rights or maybe affiliated outlets do bulk purchases / contracts so local staff can excerpt it or something.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I’m not that mean.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I was talking about Kushner, but yes, the same thing applies to Trump.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Didn’t the Hillary reporter at NYT try to spin her work off as a show? Whatever happened to tath?
Soprano2
@Raoul Paste: I shuddered when I heard this. It’s not a joke what problems trying to flush pieces of paper down a toilet causes in the plumbing and sewer system. At least now we know why he was so obsessed with how many times you have to flush the toilet!
mrmoshpotato
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I guess it explains Dump’s resting butthole face.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
Most books don’t get anything like Dan Brown or Stephen King sales, but people keep writing them anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the money is from selling excerpts to news outlets.
Martin
Woke up this morning to a fire 4 miles away and my son telling us he tested positive for Covid, so 2022 just took a turn toward the unpleasant. Fire is unlikely to blow this way, but we’re monitoring it. My son lives alone and being new to the area doesn’t have a support network, so I’m preparing to drive up and don my nurse gear.
Baud
@Martin: Good luck to your son. Hope it’s a really mild case.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
I was joking with you, but did not supply a snark tag.
The Trump Administration has been a never ending irony of lazy criminality.
And Young Jared was always the Special Counsellor in Charge of Unspecified Bullshit and General Faux Competence.
Gin & Tonic
@Roger Moore: But if the target language, like, say, English, doesn’t have separate forms of the second-person pronoun, the interpreter takes “ты” and says “you” and the interlocutor probably doesn’t even know.
Geminid
This year’s primary season begins March 3rd in Texas, and early voting begins on Monday. Election officials won’t be sending any Valentine cards to the state’s legislature, though. They are too busy trying to implement the new election laws passed last September. This morning’s Politico article, “Texas officials bemoan ‘lack of foresight’ as they struggle with GOP’s new voting law,” reports on their many problems.
jonas
This is my impression as well, which raises the question: who actually joins/stays at his Scottish golf resort? Russian mobsters?
Soprano2
Yep, and it started before Bill became president. The D.C. and New York press mostly hated the Clintons, seeing them as bumpkins from Arkansas who had no business being in the White House, even though Hillary came from a relatively prominent Chicago family. I learned a lot from reading “The Hunting of the President” because Gene Lyons, one of the authors, was an expert on Arkansas politics. He knew a lot about what happened before Bill even ran for president.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Chozick — I think she sold the rights to a streaming series or something? I find the whole thing too depressing to look into now, but I do remember hearing about it. In my recollection, the series was going to focus on an intrepid and neurotic Girl Reporter rather than a candidate. Seems fitting since Chozick’s coverage of Clinton always had the tinge of a puerile adolescent quest for approval from a love/hate fetish object than actual political reporting.
RaflW
The ‘scoop to book’ industry is so god damned awful. How long did Mags sit on that info? She’s really just a total POS.
Oh, and @trollhattan I feel fairly certain she’d use some of her book income to flee the country if this place she views as a quaintly crumbling democracy for which she has no role got too rough.
Martin
I just want to note that I had a few job responsibility areas where preservation of documents was covered under the law. I’m almost positive no forensics would have been needed to arrest and convict me if I was caught flushing paper down the toilet.
My only ask of this world is that everyone face the same consequences for the same offenses. I am so done with people like Matt Gaetz paying to have sex with a minor and continuing to be able to serve in Congress. Any other person in this country would at a minimum be put on unpaid leave if not arrested immediately.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Who were her parents? I thought they were regular middle class folks (wealthier than Bill’s upbringing, but not anyone notable).
scav
@dmsilev: Yessss, but in fairness to MacBeth, he started as a very competent level and descended — certainly to foolhardiness and mad determination / recklessness — but not quite to the dancing YMCA disassociation antics ….. Basically, I mean there’s no way in hell the Rotted Orange could have managed the Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow speech even at his most mentally fit. That is despair but an absolute and piercing recognition of reality Macbeth has going. Lady Macbeth indeed went more dolally, but even she had a level of recognition that they had done wrong that Team Orange is utterly without.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I was curious so I googled.
Looks like no episodes have aired.
Martin
@Baud: We’re hoping so. Unfortunately he’s not boosted due to his needle phobia, but he is vaccinated.
He’s got a pulse ox and a digital thermometer. He’s to give us those readings every hour, and FaceTime us every 3 hours. We’ve already sent him a huge instacart order of groceries.
It’s a 6 hour drive up there, but I don’t want to leave in case this fire takes a turn to the north. Thankfully they seem to be doing a good job staying on top of it.
Spanky
Did I miss a “privy council” joke? Because if I didn’t, then I’m disappointed in you people.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
we’d have to bring Sigmund Freud back to life and clone him to adequately explore the collective Media’s love-hate- attraction-repulsion obsession with both Clintons. Clone him bunch of times, like the infinite number of monkey and typewriters banging out the collected works of Shakespeare. My half-baked-even-in-my-own-head theory is that Hillary (and Al Gore before her) had to pay the price for their inability to hate Bill as much as they thought they should have.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay: I’d argue they’re all on Team Terrorist. Every single one of these whiny ass titty baby plague rat truckers.
Martin
@Geminid: Lack of foresight my ass. They’re changing the rules up against the deadlines so that the courts have no time to intervene. When you make Purcell the end-all rule, you incentivize everyone to implement rule changes at the last minute. You make it impossible to accuse the legislators of acting in bad faith (which they are doing almost universally).
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: ?♂️
And how strong was the urge to smack the kid?
Soprano2
@Baud: Maybe not that prominent; her father managed a small textile business, and they lived in Park Ridge. She has said they were Republicans. My real point is that she was not from Arkansas, but the Chicago area, but they painted her with the same “hillbilly bumpkin” brush.
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
A really good translator will do their best to convey the insult in a way that makes sense with the language they’re using. At the very least, they will talk to their principal after the meeting to say that the other guy was being rude throughout. That’s the biggest point; you need a translator for each party so they can be sure the person translating for them is really working for them.
Martin
@Roger Moore: He has the power to overrule them, but it’s not like there still isn’t a process to do so. I had similar ultimate authority on some things, but I still needed to do the paperwork, notify the proper people, document the decision and so on.
You can’t just take classified materials and then when you no longer have the authority to declassify them declare that you did declassify them back when you did have the authority and provide no evidence to that fact. I mean, I have no doubt the current makeup of USSC would rule in his favor, but that wouldn’t work for any other human being.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: my cousin in Chicago who follows such things told me a poll of the CPD
showedsuggested (because how accurate are polls anymore?) they were split pretty evenly between trump and Biden, and I was surprised it wasn’t more like 80/20I think trump actually lost ground with the military vote, especially compared to most Repubillcans? won it over all but not by as much, and did notably worse with officers.
mrmoshpotato
@sdhays: Risotto recipe!
John Podesta’s risotto tips and tricks and more for only 19.95!
Anyway
@germy:
They don’t care about regular readers anymore. Just get
Just One More Canuck
@germy: The “editors” are wetting their beaks on the various book deals?
Jeffro
Hey whaddya know: new Virginia AG Miyares brought along a lil’ psycho with him as a deputy AG!
These Jan 6 ‘patriots’, they’re everywhere!
Top Deputy to Miyares resigns after Facebook posts praising Jan 6 rioters surface
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think there are still a number of right wingers who still think about the long term and, therefore, worry that the smash-and-grab attitude of more Trumpian conservatives, even if successful in the short term, will harm the right’s position over the long haul.
Chief Justice Roberts compared to the other GOP 5 is probably the best example of this split.
Baud
@Jeffro: At least he had to resign. There’s still hope for VA!
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I think we’re talking about two different things. Trump had the authority to overrule the people who turned down his nepotism hires for security clearances, and he used that power. There was a fair bit of discussion at the time. As far as I know, everything there was legal, and the procedures for overruling the refusal of clearance were done properly.
Trump’s absconding with classified information is a whole different kettle of fish. That is pretty clearly illegal, and they ought to throw the book at him and anyone who helped him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Served:
I generally like Confessore, but this kind of snotty petulance just makes them all look worse. If there’s a case to be made as to why, as a long-time political reporter, he thinks there’s nothing objectionable about what Haberman (and Woodward and all the rest) did, make the fucking case.
Jeffro
@Baud: she had to resign…a Black female deputy AG
Here’s what she said in response to the Post’s inquiries
Here’s what she was saying before it was time to take one for the
KochYoungkin team:Geminid
@Martin: I think the Harris County elections administrator is being politic here. Her job is to administer six elections this year, and picking a fight with the legislature is a job for her state’s citizens, politicians, and journalists. You certainly had no trouble identifying the problem.
Spanky
@Roger Moore:
This is exactly right. “But the President has the authority to declassify” argument is bullshit in most cases with Trump, because there’s a process to follow, and Trump never did. He is constitutionally (small “c”) incapable of following a process.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev:
Oh, Scotland gloriously hates the Kremlin’s, fat, orange, fascist shitstain.
Ben Cisco, MSCIS Padawan
@Betty Cracker:
Worst rapper name EVER!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Huh. Confessore deleted that tweet, which makes him look even worse. Snotty, then cowardly.
Baud
@Jeffro:
I’m glad to see crazy has embraced diversity.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I just never got an explanation for why they chose not to enforce looting laws during the BLM protests, or why they chose not to enforce state and local laws during the school board threats
They have all kinds of criminal laws. They really have plenty. I’m baffled why they no longer use any. I think they’re put out that they were criticized so they simply decided they weren’t going to do the job until we started the post 9/11 police worship regime again. Apparently we need massive new police funding increases to make up for the (rhetorical) cuts they took under “defund the police”? This is kind of a racket. Why don’t they have a better clearance rate? Are we allowed to ask?
You go park your camper across a bridge that carries tens of millions in trade every day. You’d be in handcuffs so fast your head would spin. It’s fucking ridiculous. They’re negotiating with them? Are they going to give them the bridge?
Villago Delenda Est
@Geminid: Or, they’re just vote-suppressing fascist shits. Take your pick.
Villago Delenda Est
@Geminid: Oops. Wrong comment responded to.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
so old I remember almost a year back when Nancy Mace was the face of the new post-trump Republican Party, taking the place of Elise Stefanik, who for an hour and a half or so was the face of the non-trump future of the Republican Party
a pilgrimage of self-debasement. Clone a few more Freuds
Villago Delenda Est
@Jeffro: She’s a bed wench. No doubt about it.
Geminid
@Villago Delenda Est: Vote suppressing fascists, or arrogant amateurs? Why not both?
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Military officers take the oath of office seriously. TFG actively and brazenly flouted it.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The looting made the BLM protestors look bad- whether it was them or not- so mysteriously we got vigorous enforcement of “parade and assemble” laws but no enforcement of people breaking windows and robbing stores. They liked that it made the BLM protestors look bad, so they kettled and pushed the protestors and ignored the looters. We have theft crimes. They don’t need a BLM specific criminal law. Just use the regular one.
Villago Delenda Est
@Geminid: If only I could post the jpg of that cute little girl asking that question.
James E Powell
@Served:
That’s why I despise every one of them. Even the ones we think of as good. They are all in the game and, apart from their own careers, the thing they protect the most is the game.
Martin
@Geminid: Unfortunately as we just saw with the Alabama ruling, USSC seems unable to identify the problem, and they’re going to be the last word on this unless we can get some legislation passed (and even that may not work).
Mike in NC
It goes without saying that thousands of Trump documents were flushed down toilets, incinerated, or loaned to the Kremlin for study.
Roger Moore
@Spanky:
In fairness, the president is normally extremely busy. He’s supposed to be surrounded by competent functionaries who handle the details of the process for him once he’s made his wishes clear. Again, as far as I can tell this was done properly in the case of [ETA: Trump] handing out security clearances to people who shouldn’t have gotten them. His functionaries handled the details correctly, so the people he wanted to give clearances got them.
But he is, as you say, not free to declare “I declassified that” after the fact if he gets caught mishandling classified material. More importantly, he doesn’t have the right to take official documents with him even if he declassified them properly. The official documents are supposed to go to the National Archives. If he declassifies them through proper process, the most he can do is keep copies.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: my. god.
Do they ALL have serious mental health issues? I mean, I know the answer is ‘yes’ but still…just…wow.
trollhattan
Raise your had if you believe this.
Quiltingfool
@Roger Moore: No kidding about debt. I’m watching The Americans (takes me awhile to get around to watching programs) and boy, howdy, those KGB spies would have been turning old Jared in a heartbeat – and being thrilled at how easy it was.
The only problem would have been the amount of money – the Soviets liked to do business on the cheap, not so much the Saudis.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
USSC can identify the problem all right; they are choosing not to act on it.
Baud
@trollhattan:
Sounds more like quid pro quo.
mrmoshpotato
@Jeffro:
Bringing up things that I wrote is character assassination!
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Maybe that’s it. My half-baked theory has been that their moms were supportive but vaguely disappointed in them, and they took it out on Hillary.
Cameron
@mrmoshpotato: Is character suicide a real thing?
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: I’m raising my hand to ask if I can roll my eyes instead.
Kay
@trollhattan:
I think Donald Trump is terrified of only one thing and that is prison. If NYC law enforcement had done their job and prosecuted him instead of protecting his corrupt ass for 50 years we wouldn’t be in this mess.
mrmoshpotato
@Cameron: What do you think after 4 years of Dump’s bastard Administration and all of the people who willingly decided to wear it like an albatross for the rest of time?
Or would a simple “Yes.” have sufficed? ?
Jeffro
@mrmoshpotato: if it’s just ‘character assassination’ by those dastardly libs…why won’t her beloved boss go to bat for her?
HMMMMMMMMMM?
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Naah. They all want their books to be featured on Balloon Juice Book Club and have as much fun as Adam Schiff.
Word gets around in the Village.
/s
Villago Delenda Est
@mrmoshpotato: Typical wingnut response. Vile Nazi fuck Gingrich once denied that he said something he said two days before, and it was on videotape.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I changed my views on the United States and womens role in it based on what I heard from Ohio voters about Hillary Clinton. It was saturated with sexism. I now think we’re somewhat backward among the developed countries and lurching still more backward fast.
Have you read the about the facilities the religious Right plan for pregnant low income women when the state forces them to carry them to term? It is literally the Handmaids Tale. The plan is to put them on these fucking “campuses” run by religious nuts until they deliver. Imagine the great medical care they’re going to get in the Fundie Indoctrination Camp. Repent, sinner. They then turn over the baby and they let them go. This is like in the New Yorker now! Mainstream on the Right.
JMG
@Betty Cracker: Hillary has been the DC political reporting elite’s arch-enemy since the Lewinsky brouhaha. It was the doubtless mistaken belief of the top press of the time that if she hadn’t stood by her cheatin’ man, Bill would’ve had to resign and they’d all get to be legends like Woodward and Bernstein. They regarded her as having beaten them in the grand game they think politics is. In truth, of course, most voters didn’t care about Bill Clinton’s sex life except for the LOLs. Their hatred was passed down generation unto generation of elite useless reporters. The working assumption of these folks is that a Clinton is up to something no good every minute of the day, and if they can’t find any proof, that just shows how good the Clintons are at evil.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: Lebensborn for the 21st Century.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Bill Clinton seemed to have gained enemies as soon as he decided to enter politics. Some of them seemed to be honestly earned. Bill was at times a smarmy little shit.
And the Beltway looks down on anyone not from the East Coast. They looked down on Nixon because he was a California cat.
Scout211
TFG said he didn’t do it, and if he did do it, he was told that he could . . . by . . . someone.
Source.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think it all started in the ’92 campaign, “I could’ve stayed home and baked cookies” and “I’m not some little Tammy Wynette standin’ by my man” drove the right, and a lot of the not-right, insane. I remember Judy Tenuta- a briefly famous stand-up comic and a liberal, for anyone who unlike me makes room in their brains for only useful memories– making “Lady MacBeth in a headband!” a part of her act.
scav
OT Yeah (in a minor key). Cressida Dick is standing down — although of course it’s the female of the species that’s booted first.
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Just casually discussed as part of our “debate”. The privately funded and run religious camps for the low income pregnant women. It was part of a Supreme Court discussion! Barrett wanted to know about what a pregnant gal could do if the state forced her to carry to term. Why, she could leave the child in a fire station! See? Not so bad!
LURCHING backward on women. Speeding past the 1950’s and headed for the 1850’s. Apparently religious Right people want to “fill their minivans” with 6 children and luckily we have a whole underclass of women who can help them with that! The stars align! Win/win. They just need to borrow your body for a year – whats the harm? The people who won’t get a fucking 15 second jab in the arm to help someone else are volunteering women for a year of servitude.
Steeplejack (phone)
@germy:
Bob Woodward has never been a New York Times reporter.
The Moar You Know
@trollhattan: Adam and I have both said this before, and I guess I’ll keep saying it until you guys get it: the president is THE classifying authority, under law. He can decide what is and is not classified, and give a security clearance of any level to anyone he wants. THAT’S HOW IT WORKS.
Captain C
@Gin & Tonic:
Maybe he’s telling on himself here? I wouldn’t put it past him to have some really nasty perversions.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m mostly interested in this because a) he says the climate thing is real and b) I wonder what Jethro thinks “like Europe” means? Like in the newsreels he saw down to the Bugtussle Bijou on Saturday afternoons when his grand-pappy gave him a dime to go see the Flash Gordon serial, when you had to put coins in a meter in a shared bathroom to get hot water and you saw the occasional horse-drawn wagon in a smaller capital?
Roger Moore
@JMG:
I think there’s definitely some Captain Ahab in the political media. They were so sure they had Clinton, but he escaped. They weren’t going to let that happen again, so when the chance came to make sure Hillary failed they weren’t going to pass it up. They finally bagged them a Clinton!
mrmoshpotato
Snowboarding dinosaur anyone?
MomSense
Lock him up?
please
MomSense
@mrmoshpotato:
I saw that this morning – sooo cute.
Stuck o saurus
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
WTF does this mean?
Manchin seems to want to hold the Democrats to some standard of financial accountability that the GOP has never followed.
The other stuff is just empty posturing.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
I’ve been making the same point. Trump, or his functionaries, eventually followed the proper procedures to make sure all his flunkies who couldn’t get clearances through the normal procedure got one anyway. Those clearances were just as valid as the ones received through the normal process.
The Dangerman
@Ben Cisco, MSCIS Padawan: … and we need a rule that any discussion of Groovin with Toobin can NOT be in a thread about sticky fingers.
Steeplejack (phone)
Goddamn. That’s OAN Weekly Briefing host Christina Bobb.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: I agree. I think this is a national effort with the aim of “teaching the citizens a lesson”.
My father, who lives in what can only be termed a pretty damn wealthy white neighborhood, called in a burglary in progress a few weeks back. No cops arrived until 45 minutes after the fact. That’s not an accident.
The police are not overworked or understaffed here.
The goal is obvious; crime rises, Dems lose nationally, cops rule the nation as Jesus intended. They got a taste of it during Trump. They want it all now.
Martin
I would like Congress to have hearings on this trend of reporters holding back on presumed law-breaking to sell books. There’s a point that failure to report starts to turn one into an accessory. It’s why mandatory reporter laws are a thing. I don’t want to criminalize journalists, but if journalists uncover evidence of a crime, there needs to be a set of incentives to either report this to law enforcement or at least report it publicly in a timely manner. We saw this with Jeffrey Epstein as well, where reporting was buried time and time again.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The only words of Manchin I’m interested in hearing are his yea votes on bills.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
The funny thing is, they just lurved Reagan. All that tinsel on tinsel Hollywood glamour.
Baud
@Steeplejack (phone):
I wonder if that’s why DirecTV cut them off.
Captain C
@FridayNext:
As a librarian, I think a good metaphor is librarians are to musicians as archivists are to classical musicians. I’ve also heard it said that librarians think of archivists kind of like how the general public thinks of librarians (and that archivists think thusly of catalogers).
trnc
@West of the Rockies:
“BUT HIS ENTRAILS!!!”
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
Reagan was affable and knew how to do PR.
Even the cynical press enjoys flattery and ass kissing.
Also, the LA Times always had some Reagan hate.
Captain C
@germy: The FTFNYT has been running on reputation since at least Clinton got elected for the first time, but their coverage of Nazis in the ’20s makes me wonder if the rot goes back that far if not further.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Manchin demonstrating his fuckhaidedness for all to see.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Scout211: He declared that Pelosi committed a crime when she tore up her copy of his State of the Union. That suggests he knew official documents should be preserved, though in his stupid head, he extended that to mean every copy.
The Moar You Know
@Steeplejack (phone): OT (sort of): OAN is headquartered here in San Diego. I drove over to their building a few weeks back. Those people have got overkill security; the whole parking lot is 8′ fenced with barbwire on top, crashproof gate, cameras everywhere. It looks like a prison more than anything else.
Captain C
@Brachiator:
Yes.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: I’m only interested in Manchin delivering a Captain Needa apology
Martin
@The Moar You Know: I thought this was a very interesting video.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Obviously not a very good citizen.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
With that dirty commie universal healthcare! Oh the soshellisums!
The Moar You Know
@Martin: it is, so far. Thank you for this.
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
He is full of shit if that’s of any help answering your question.
mrmoshpotato
@Steeplejack (phone): I believe you misspelled her last name.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Only thing I’ve got, and it requires being charitable to Manchin {patooey} is that it is an offhanded reference to Vlad having a lever on Europe’s gas supply (whether it transits Ukraine is a different, if related topic) and they have to kowtow to him because of that.
But he could have said that, with words and such.
Kay
Why is taking them so long to figure out Spotify is a huge corporation that purchased Joe Rogan?
When do they get this, do you think? He was paid a lot! When they went on the show – and all the defenders also appear on the show so a tad self serving- they thought it was like in Joe’s basement and their precious appearance was going into the free speech public archives?
Gravenstone
Well, the old saw is “they got Capone on taxes”. So maybe the new one is “they disqualified Trump for eating
pastepaper”.Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Vlad respects Vlad. And that’s it. He is an aristocrat’s aristocrat. Everyone else is beneath him, in his hierarchy of leaders (and humans) he is the very top of the pile, by a long, long ways. If you doubt me, just ask him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: a Young Turk alumnus? AKA the left side of the horseshoe? Shocking they’d be defenders of Rogan and confused about what “CENSORSHIP!” means.
“He didn’t use any racial slurs in the episode”
JMG
@Brachiator: Manchin’s worst trait is that he always defines his position in the vaguest and most contradictory terms without ever ever proposing a concrete solution. “Get our financial situation in order.” Sounds good, Joe. So how do we do it? He’s never gonna say, because the only two deflationary tools of fiscal policy are tax increases and spending cuts and he doesn’t want any association with either one, because they involve the goring of very specific oxen.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Gaps in the Jan 6 WH call logs. You’re shocked. I know.
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
Your wife is a teacher so you know how school security is treated. They never seem to lack criminal laws to charge juveniles with threats at or near a school. You’ve seen this. County prosecutors practically troll social media looking for anything that looks like a threat from a student.
All of a sudden they ran out of laws when Right wingers were screeching threats for hours at school board meetings. WTF? We don’t have “disorderly” anymore? It’s their go-to.
I saw then arresting some Right wing clerk on Twitter yesterday. She’s resisting! Kicking at the cop is resisting. They don’t use that anymore either? Criminals the nation over will be interested to hear that the most popular charge enhancement has fallen out of favor.
jonas
…says a guy whose state just suffered a multi-day blackout (ask Cole about that) after a winter storm. Yeah. “Like Europe.” I wish.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Their passionate ass kissing of Joe Rogan just might be more credible if all of the people kissing his ass didn’t also appear on the show.
I get it! It’s a lot of exposure. But stop blowing smoke up my ass. If that show was designed to appeal to the much-maligned “wine moms” none of these people would give a shit.
How stupid are they that they thought “Spotify” had some committment to the content of their blather. Krystal Ball seems to think Spotify is about sticking it to “overlords”. What? They all get paid, either outright or in kind. They need more than that?
Baud
@Kay:
Who are the overlords that Spotify is sticking it to?
Ruckus
@M31:
Seems like everything within an unspecifiable distance from SFB IS/turns to shit, just by being within that distance. The reason it’s unspecifiable is that he often goes from bad to holy shit faster than is measurable. I’m sure there are others that can fuck up anything within 100 (or sometimes thousands of) miles of themselves if they try, but he does that just by existing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
Obama, Hillary and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Oh god, Kyle Kulinski lol
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Hello, asteroid? When can you get here?
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I actually miss Spotify. I wish Rogan would do something so monumentally stupid so that they would have not choice but to kick him off and I can use them again.
Kay
@Baud:
The tech overlords. They don’t understand the basic nature of this transaction they entered into. They’re getting it though- extremely slowly– but it seems to be dawning on them.
Not to be a stickler but supposedly Rogan pulled the episodes, so who was censoring criticism of Saudi Arabia? Did he not pull them? Is that more bullshit and instead the company who purchased him did? So he consented to censoring?
Baud
@Kay: I’m confused. Isn’t Spotify one of the tech overlords?
Rogan is part of the club. They can’t criticize him directly.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@trollhattan: Farah quote only confirms she was one of Axis Maggie’s gossip sources.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
The Moar You Know
@Kay: The problem in our little town now is that two of the board members are those selfsame psycho right wingers. The cops only show up when the opposition to the lunatics does.
Otherwise, right wing your heart out. Death threats, whatever.
Kay
I’ve gone from really disliking Joe Manchin to feeling sorry for the people who still believe him. They’re probably good people! It’s good to trust and/or hope. But he’s a bad person so they should stop believing him.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
What the fuck does “end up like Europe” even mean?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@The Moar You Know:
Maybe you all should show up at the next council meeting and demand answers on why this is the case
germy
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Eurovision.
H-Bob
With reporters hoarding facts for personal books, why don’t their employers go after them? They obtained the facts during their employment as part of their employment, so those facts are the intellectual property of the employer. If a tech person develops an app during worktime using the company’s IT system, the app belongs to the company, not the tech person. Actually, the companies contend they would even own an app that the tech person develops at home, not during work time and on that person’s personal computer.
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
It rattled me because I’ve become so accustomed to heightened security around schools. Just…nothing.
They’d usher you out of a high school basketball game for this behavior, but for some reason it was okay to block masked students from entering a school? I’d hire private security. The police are AWOL. Until we adopt the Blue Line Flag as the nation’s flag they will not be working. Okey doke.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You might remember how rose twitter and their fellow travelers treated Rogan’s endorsement of Bernie as the Ark of the Covenant, which would make their campaign invincible. They’ll still stick to their delusions.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Again- there is no reason to listen to a word this person says. He is not trustworthy. He does not keep his word. You may as well negotiate with a chair or table. The thing is based on words and his don’t mean anything.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I’m starting to believe that in blue city after blue city the only solution is to have the county or nearer by municipalities take over policing in a community temporarily so that individual departments can be disbanded. After disbanding, they can be reformed and everyone has to reapply for their job. If they have ANY complaints on their record, suspicious shootings, etc, they don’t get their job back. Also, recruiting for officers has to start at high schools in the communities that are being served, not folks from outside. That won’t be possible, unless the departments are rebuilt and the biggest offenders purged.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Manchin won’t go the way of decadent Europe. Which is why he lives on a yacht and drives….. [checks notes] a French owned, Italian designed Maserati.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
I do indeed…..
sab
@mrmoshpotato: A major purpose of the but her e-mails scandal was to make it extremely difficult for the Clintons to hire competent people. Why endanger your own security clearance by getting anywhere near them. They did this to the Clintons all through the nineties, and they started up again when she ran for office.
Kay
I love how punchy and combative Pete Souza got with Trump. It just feels gut level.
Brachiator
OT, over in the UK. from BBC News
The Met Police Force is supposed to be investigating Boris “Party All the Time” Johnson. Bodies are dropping all around him, but he is still there, causing chaos, like a mini-Trump.
Some British pundit even recently said, “Johnson’s former chief-of-staff was supposed to be the adult in the room.”
Sound familiar?
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
Well effectively aren’t they trying to steal everything? And if so wouldn’t they want to make sure that they couldn’t be stopped or even found out? Of course they seemed to forget that they work in the public sphere so it is rather obvious that they are the shit they are trying to hide so it won’t be so obvious?
mrmoshpotato
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Universal healthcare! The! Whore! errrr Horror!
mrmoshpotato
@germy: What the actual fuck?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Destroying them by eating them, and yes, way too believable with Trump.
Roger Moore
@Gravenstone:
I hate the attitude that “process crimes” are somehow lesser offenses that don’t deserve serious punishment. Those process crimes are most frequently crimes because they’re used to cover up other offenses. Capone didn’t cheat on his taxes just because he didn’t like income tax. He cheated on his taxes because he didn’t want to admit to the government all his illegal sources of income. If he hadn’t cheated on his taxes, he could have been nailed for all kinds of stuff. Similarly, Trump’s destruction of documents isn’t just bad because he destroyed records of what our government was doing. It’s bad because some of those records would have shown him breaking the law.
mrmoshpotato
@H-Bob:
I can’t see the Hillary-hating, pile of shit New York Times deciding that actual journalism and informing the public matters now.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@M31: yes, up till now we were assuming that was a metaphor. Not, everything Trump touches passes threw his digestive tract.
Ksmiami
@Kay: Make him a non person… ignore him
Roger Moore
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
It’s interesting to think of how we could go about reforming individual police departments, but I think it’s a losing cause until we reform the laws the police are supposed to be enforcing. You can’t have a good police department if the laws they are enforcing are unjust. They will inevitably be corrupted, no matter how great they start out.
mrmoshpotato
@sab:
I get the rest of what you’re saying, but what do you mean here?
What incompetence are you talking about?
Steeplejack
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Forget it. It’s just authentic hillbilly senator gibberish.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
‘Supposed’ being the operative word.
I think the last straw was Dick’s car crash interview today where, amidst the shameless self-promotion, she claimed that she wouldn’t expect any of the many, many Met officers who were around while these illegal parties were in full swing to do anything about them, because once they get stationed at Downing St they stop being Police officers and become the blue uniformed equivalent of the guys in the bearskin hats outside Buckingham Palace. Just guards for the VIPs within.
I wasn’t alone in hearing that and translating it into “As long as I’m Commissioner there won’t be any difficult questions asked of officers who keep their mouths shut, mainly because the answers would likely implicate senior officers who were informed of the illegal parties but chose not to act on the information they received, likely on my direct orders.”
Combine that with the statement from the Attorney General that the law doesn’t apply to Johnson because he won an Election and got Brexit through Parliament, and it’s not surprising that Mayor Khan pushed right back.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay: Oh yes. Pete Souza isn’t having any of this crap, and it’s great.
Mallard Filmore
@Kay:
’cause it was honkeys breaking the law
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@trollhattan: How can one top “demanding a national security document be formatted as a child’s picture book, having a pretty lady read it out loud to you and then eating that book”?
bjacques
@Tony Jay: and I have the theme from Line Of Duty running through my head and am thinking they didn’t catch “H” after all…
Scout211
@H-Bob:
Maybe they think if a reporter on their payroll is elevated to celebrity/rock star/social media influencer status, it will reflect positively on their bottom line. Like now, with her tweets leaking out all kinds of juicy tidbits that are scandalous never-before-revealed facts about TFG. The tweets bring all kinds of media attention to her and to the NYT (they think). They care more about clicks and subscriptions that bring them revenue than ethics, which brings them no monetary value (they think).
Just my 2 cents.
Baud
@H-Bob:
@Scout211:
Maybe they also have a financial stake in her book.
oatler
I remember Eddie Barzoon sweatily shredding documents in “The Devil’s Advocate”. He gets beaten to a bloody pulp by demons, whereas Donald…
Roger Moore
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I don’t know, but I’m confident Trump can manage worse than that. Maybe we’ll find out he got his doctors to lie for him and he actually failed that test for dementia.
James E Powell
How long will it take the FTFNYT & WaPo to “both sides” the egregious violations of statues & all propriety by Trump? Maybe it’s already happened and I just missed it.
There is no way they will treat this with the hysteria of EMAILS!
Gin & Tonic
@Villago Delenda Est:
Explain Flynn.
Steeplejack
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
And test all the applicants for steroid use and ⚡8️⃣8️⃣⚡ tattoos.
Roger Moore
@Scout211:
My assumption is that there’s a well understood deal. Political reporters keep quiet on stuff that’s considered too gossipy and/or will embarrass people the publisher doesn’t want embarrassed, but they’re free to include it in their book when it’s too late to make a difference. I still haven’t forgiven FTFNYT for quashing reporting on warrantless surveillance leading up to the 2004 election.
Tony Jay
@bjacques:
You know, my sister-in-law forced the first three series of that on me at Christmas and told me I must watch it or else.
But real-life, it just keeps on being way weirder than fiction…
Uncle Cosmo
What TFG thought he heard when he was taking the Oaf of Orifice:
James E Powell
@Brachiator:
But they adored Reagan. They all worked hard to cover up his corruption, cluelessness, and declining mental acuity.
A minor thing, but representative, was their repeating the bullshit that he didn’t die his hair.
Ha Nguyen
@Gin & Tonic:
If Mandarin is anything like Vietnamese, there are lots of greetings based on your standing compared to the person you’re greeting. Some are very respectful, others are not.
So, yeah, Putin can insult the Chinese leader in oh so many ways.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: not anymore. We had a somewhat notorious incident here last year where a majority hispanic high school played a majority white high school and the white parents just happened to bring a lot of tortillas to throw at the hispanic kids. No one was arrested, no one was escorted out, and when denounced for the racist act, the tortilla-chucking high school demanded an apology for being called out on their racist bullshit.
No apology was ever made by anyone, to my knowledge.
You are correct: until that blue line flag is the nation’s new flag, the cops aren’t going to do jack shit about anything.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
Dame Cressida and the Metropolitan Police have no credibility at all. The Met is in charge of security at No. 10 Downing Street, so they would have been minding the velvet rope for all of those parties. Plus CCTV and everyone has to swipe in and out. How will we ever get to the bottom of this? ?
Gin & Tonic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I dunno, maybe good roads and free healthcare? That would be awful.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
“What’s the downside for humoring him with a few parties?”
Almost Retired
Let’s do the Maggie Haberman book for the next Balloon-Juice book club. We’ll invite her on. And after a couple of softball questions from the deceptively-supportive moderator, we’ll open it up unreservedly for “unmoderated questions” from jackals – many of whom will have been drinking steadily for several hours in preparation. Maybe we start by inviting a couple of long-banished trolls to return for special guest appearances, and then we get more aggressive from there?
zhena gogolia
@Almost Retired: Great idea. But she would never stoop to it.
Steeplejack
@Roger Moore:
And when the cops are backed up by far too many judges with their thumbs on the scale and district attorneys with no fear of punishment for prosecutorial misconduct.
The Moar You Know
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Camden, NJ was forced into this by their out of control PD and hired VERY few of their previous officers back. And I think this is the only solution that will work.
And where blue cities and states will run into a real meatgrinder with following that procedure is, yes, it involves union busting. Union busting is really the core of how it’s got to be done to be effective. And there’s a lot of folks, and I’m one of them, who would have a real hard time signing on to that even though it’s increasingly looking like the Blue Line crowd is not going to leave us any choice.
mrmoshpotato
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
We’ll find out, if these fascist shitstains ever get back into the Oval Office, these fascist shitstains known as Republicans generations ago.
Scamp Dog
@Gin & Tonic: Yes, but it’s infrequently used. It shows up in a few stylized uses: “May I have your name?” and such, but it’s not something I heard more than a couple of times in the year I studied in Taiwan.
James E Powell
@Roger Moore:
My memory might be warped, but I’m pretty sure the Village hated Hillary before the hated Bill. I’m thinking back to the days when the Village consensus was that Hillary was a man-hating lesbian whose affair with Vince Foster led to his suicide.
mrmoshpotato
@Roger Moore:
You mean we’ll have that confirmed from a competent, trustworthy source.
No disrespect to sufferers of dementia who aren’t Soviet shitpile mobster conmanbabies who suck dictator assholes.
Again, thank you to the 81 million+ who kicked this fascist shitstain out of our government and our house.
Roger Moore
@Steeplejack:
Exactly. You can’t have a great police department if the entire edifice of the law is devoted to preserving White supremacy.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well, someone was pointing out that emergency visit to Walter Reed 2019 was passed off as a routine colonoscopy. This document eating story sure puts a different…flavor,.. if you will, on that visit.
Ken
…is at definite risk for that, if Dante was right about the punishment for graft. Assuming that he doesn’t get assigned somewhere deeper in hell, which would include the circles for theft, material fraud, betrayal of country, and betrayal of family.
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
This stuff is crazy. Sue Gray started the investigation, and then passed along responsibility to the Met Force, who appear to claim that the see, hear and speak no evil.
Good to see Mayor Khan do a little push back.
This stuff is right up there with Trump’s antics. And the media coverage is just as worthless as anything over here.
germy
Jonathan Martin, one of Maggie’s NYT friends makes a funny:
A good reply:
debbie
Last night, Jimmy Kimmel said TFG took that map where he Sharpied in an alternate hurricane path to prove he hadn’t misspoken. Bet he was thinking he could convert it into an NFT.
Roger Moore
@mrmoshpotato:
That’s the difference between suspecting and knowing. Many of us suspect Trump failed his dementia test and got the doctors to lie for him; it already seems likely they were lying about things like his height and weight. But we won’t know for sure without some evidence beyond our suspicions.
Steeplejack
@germy:
Also, doubled2520: “Ice-T never covered up a crime to sell a book.”
ETA: Picture is of Ice-T chillin’ on a private jet.
mrmoshpotato
@Almost Retired: LMAO! We’d have to buy her shitpile tome then.
debbie
@germy:
Just saw this one:
? ? ? ? ?
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
Couldn’t agree more. Its banana republic level bullshit that they’re just daring anyone to call them on.
Khan did. We’ll see what the aftermath brings.
debbie
Also
mrmoshpotato
@debbie: Where are the other 36 tweets, Doug?!
LOL! And throw Mags into the Sun.
debbie
sab
@mrmoshpotato:There wasn’t any incompetence. It didn’t happen, but the Republicans and the NYT wanted it to happen.
ETA There has always been a pattern of harassing everyone around the Clintons, so anyone going to work for them should know that is part of the package. It says a lot about Hillary that she can still get good people.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic: His colleagues can’t any more than I can, but they noted that he’d changed. Went off the rails. He should be court-martialed and stripped of rank, pension, and all benefits.
Villago Delenda Est
@Steeplejack: Dame Cressida should spend the rest of her life in The Tower.
barbequebob
“all the news that’s fit to print, and not being saved for a reporter’s future book”
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: Right? His conference with Murkowski where he talked about voting rights was just… yeah. I can’t imagine anyone believes anything he says now. Especially since if he wanted these things he could have just ASKED for them during the BBB negotiations and evidently never did.
He’s already tried this with voting rights, too. The dems gave him 3-4 months to get Republicans on board with anything, and the republicans literally all voted against it. He delayed action for months and got nothing.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: I guess “ignorance of the law is no excuse” is just for the little people?
Cermet
Taking high level secret documents from a secure facility is a major federal crime that the orange far … I mean tRump. is in a lot of trouble if true. This he can be hit hard for – well see if Biden’s Justice Department is either serious about their job or we can except them to welcome tRump back into the White House come 2025 – because if this isn’t used, really they have no interest and this whole thing is a joke.
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@Kay:
May those same beach houses soon be underwater.
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@zhena gogolia:
@Gin & Tonic:
Некультурный?
evodevo
@Kay: The Magdalene Laundries all over again…
Miss Bianca
@Almost Retired: Who knew how evil you actually were under that mild-mannered exterior, she said, marveling! >:>
That sounds disturbingly like fun, even stone cold sober.
Geminid
Stacey Abrams atlanta.capitalbnews.org