From The Murdoch Post:
Who wants to tell them? The NY Post is trying to make it sound like the judge who authorized the search warrant is a deep state liberal, but since he was appointed in 2018 when Republicans ran both the state and national governments, that seems…unlikely?
Also, more troubling news for Beige-Orange Beelzebub today:
(CNN) A federal appeals court on Tuesday signed off on a House Ways and Means Committee request to obtain former President Donald Trump’s tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service.
The ruling from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals is a blow to Trump, who has argued for years in court against releasing his tax returns to any investigators. A trial-level judge he appointed while president previously rejected his arguments in the case.
The Beast can appeal this ruling, so the returns aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. But still, it would be surprising if Bedminster dining facility cleaning crews haven’t already been dispatched to whisk away shattered crockery and remove dripping ketchup from the walls during today’s lunchtime shift.
Open thread.
Tom Levenson
Lock him up.
That’s all I got.
Snarki, child of Loki
@Tom Levenson:
Lock him up in the “Jeff Epstein Suite”.
I hear that Jeff renovated it for his comfort, so TFG can just hang out there.
Almost Retired
I am in trial mode and haven’t had any time at all during the last three days to check the news or keep up with current events – nothing but work. But I thought while I have a little down time I’d check in on BJ and elsewhere and see if anything interesting is up in the world and…….WHAT!?! HOLY SHIT!?!!!!
Ken
So the Post and Fox are saying we finally have the smoking gnu* linking Trump and every Republican senator in 2018 to Epstein? And there’s a Federalist Society link as well? Excellent.
* Pratchett reference.
Hildebrand
This unfolding story just puts a smile on my face. Doesn’t matter what the day at my desk has brought thus far – I open Balloon Juice, see there is a new wrinkle in the ongoing drama, and my day is immediately brightened.
I like this timeline.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
from the link:
I remember Sentelle from the days of The Great Clenis Panic, when he was neck and neck with Royce Lamberth and… Silberman (?) as rubber stamps for nutty Larry Klayman and his fellow travelers
danielx
Puts a smile on my face and a spring in my step.
Edmund Dantes
I mean we already know it, but if the supremes (I assume DC court of appeals rejects en banc request) grant cert on this appeal, they are really hanging their ass out.
So I expect it to be granted as soon as the paperwork is filed.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Wonkette:
+1
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
oldster
Marc Elias on twitter arguing that a conviction on mishandling documents could prohibit the convict from running for office, ever again:
https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1556794749377454080
oldgold
2 things:
1. This from Palm Beach Post on the day Reinhart was appointed a
Federal Magistrate.
“News of his appointment comes two days after his Reinhart’s wife, Assistant U.S. Attorney Carolyn Bell, was appointed by Gov. Rick Scott to the Palm Beach County circuit bench.“! (emphasis supplied). Sounds like a Republican.
2. Trump has a copy of search warrant and what was taken as a consequence of the search, yet he had released it. Hmm.
MazeDancer
Has Fox started demanding that they #ReleaseTheWarrant, yet?
Guessing, no.
It has taken a minute, but the media tweeters are, at least, starting to ask for it.
danielx
I have to admit: it would be fun seeing a video of TFG throwing a toddler-level tantrum (with appropriate verbiage) and hurling plates.
geg6
@oldster:
Yes, Chuck Rosenberg said that, I think, on Rachel’s or Lawrence’s show last night. Perhaps on both.
Ken
Or a deep undercover Democrat who spent decades preparing for this day. I can see it now; the phone rings, Reinhart picks up, and Dark Brandon recites “The woods are lovely, dark and deep….”
Another Scott
@danielx:
I’m reminded of this, as told by Lisa Ryan at NYMag (from April 2019):
The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine. – maybe Plutarch.
Cheers,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@Ken: OK, I just clinked on that link and am way into, “Wait, whut?!” territory now.
NotMax
Squatting in the garbage masher and R2D2 has skittered away to parts unknown.
//
Spanky
@danielx: No, no it wouldn’t. I don’t want to see another video of him ever again, unless he’s being perp-walked with a coat over his head.
Baud
@Another Scott:
👍
Ken
@Miss Bianca: In Telefon, the Frost poem was used to trigger the hypnotized deep-undercover Russian operatives. You’re right, the reference is obscure.
oldster
@Another Scott:
Quoted by Plutarch, definitely not written by him. (The poetic form dates from several centuries prior to him, and he quotes it as something familiar to his readers.) So, author anonymous.
Ken
@Spanky: If we do get a perp walk, I hope the arresting officers remember (then-candidate) Trump’s own instructions for how to treat a suspect who’s been arrested.
Tom Levenson
Of note: Federal magistrate judges are not appointed by the president, but rather by a vote of the federal district court judges for the district in which they serve.
So this judge was deemed by good enough to promote to the bench by a majority of 8 Trump and GWB appointed judges and 7 Clinton and Obama appointees. (Notably: there are three vacancies. I hope Biden nominates candidates forthwith.)
The odds are that he’s a crazed bomb thrower determined to facilitate a judicial coup against the once and future POTUS are…low. (Also too: his undergraduate degree is in civil engineering, not a discipline associated with wild-eyed liberalism.)
UncleEbeneezer
“News — In early June, investigators made a rare visit to Mar-a-Lago seeking more info about material taken from the White House. The 4 officials, including Jay Bratt, chief of Counterintelligence & Export Control at DOJ, met w/ two of Trump’s attorneys. Trump stopped by briefly.
Investigators asked to see where docs were stored. Trump’s attorneys took them to a basement room and they looked around before leaving. Days later, Trump’s attorneys got a letter asking them to further secure the room. Aides subsequently added a padlock, I am told.”
So this potentially happened (and was likely in the works) even before the first 1/6 hearing…
Dangerman
Epstein? Damn, that’s nice to wake up to news.
Any chance such shenanigans would void the prenup and Melania can finally say “divotce and half, motherfucker”.
gimmee coffee.
Miss Bianca
@Ken: It wasn’t that so much – I grok the Frost reference – it was the description: Russian operatives are trying to *prevent* people from assassinating US government officials?
NotMax
@Spanky
Melania’s “Don’t Care” coat?
//
Baud
CNBC Via reddit
Baud
Oh, Serena has retired. GOAT.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: I like this reboot of the “Fast and Furious” franchise.
oldster
@Tom Levenson:
” (Also too: his undergraduate degree is in civil engineering, not a discipline associated with wild-eyed liberalism.)”
Although engineers are *way* over-represented among islamic terrorists operating in western countries.
I mean: a vanishingly tiny number of Islamic engineers are terrorists. But a surprisingly large number of Islamic terrorists are engineers. There was a study about this some years ago by Diego Gambetta — first an article, then a book.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ken: Obscure? It’s the first thing that comes to my mind where hear that poem. But then, I am weird.
Ken
@Miss Bianca: It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, but IIRC there was something about detente and not wanting to damage relations. Also, they were being triggered by a rogue, not by the Russian government.
kindness
I’ve gotten the impression that right wing media (and too much of the MSM) loves this Trump victimhood because President Uncle Joe was getting far too much good press. And it was good press because it also forced Republicans to be against much of what common America wants.
Roger Moore
@Ken:
A more modern reference would be “Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Benign. Homecoming. One. Freight Car.”
Ken
@Roger Moore: Or “Man. Woman. Person. Camera. TV.”
EDIT: OMG, Trump himself set off the deep-cover Democratic operatives, all at once!
wenchacha
@Ken: Deep cut. Thanks!
NotMax
@Baud
“Don’t get them mixed up. Those in the manila folders are for the tax department. The ones in the green folders are for the banks.”
//
Bupalos
@Another Scott: Thank you for this.
I’m perfectly happy for Dems to try and run against Trump, against his stolen SC sniffing around in people’s wombs and restricting their rights, his gerrymandered state leges sniffing around our kids and classrooms, against his whole hey-remember-the-80’s white grievance whine. But we also need to run FOR the future. For the idea we can (AND ARE!!!) doing something about climate change, about expanding rather than restricting our human rights, about righting the wrongs of the past for a better future.
We’re in the middle of a Big Fucking Deal win, and I’m a little putoff that all the talk today is back in the Trump cesspool, back to wrestling with that pig. Thanks for a little something else!
Skepticat
How appropriate is it that Mar-a-Lago is being referred to as MAL? Very spot on. I don’t dare hope there may actually be consequences for TFG, but there’s a glimmer …
Baud
@Bupalos:
The House will vote on it later this week. It’ll be back in the news.
Bupalos
@kindness: YES!!!!!!!! Once again from the rooftops!!!
Betty Cracker
In other news, Andrew Yang is still a blithering idiot:
The less culty Republicans will probably land on a similar line — investigating Trump’s blatantly criminal actions only gives weight to his deep state lies! They used a similar rationale to excuse restricting ballot access, i.e., since Trump cultists believe Trump’s stolen election lies, we have to make it harder for everyone to vote.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Maybe he’s right. But it doesn’t matter. We have to do what we have to do.
If his new party had any policy positions, he would know that.
HumboldtBlue
@Baud:
Just saw that.
Roger Moore
@oldster:
This seems like a very likely case of “cum hoc, propter hoc”. I am not 100% sure, but my impression is that Islamic terrorists in the West are primarily drawn from immigrants from relatively prosperous Arab families. Given immigration patterns, that’s likely to include a lot of engineers. It might be interesting to see why, for example, engineers are overrepresented relative to doctors, but I’m not too surprised to see they’re massively overrepresented overall.
trollhattan
“Let’s take off the gloves and roll out the big guns. Where’s Eric?”
You can smell the Coppertone flopsweat from here.
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: Christ, I hope he’s getting dragged for that ice-cold hot take. Not getting out of the boat to check, tho.
ian
@kindness:
It is a perpetual search for the latest round of victimhood. The grievance machine needs constant refueling.
Mai Naem mobile
@NotMax: the blue folders are for the IRS, the green ones are for the property tax division, the red one are for the state tax department, the pink ones are for Melania.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
Given how helpful he’s being to the Republicans, you might even call him a useful idiot.
twbrandt (formerly tom)
@Ken: the voiceover sounds an awful lot like Rod Serling
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Another Scott:
He would have been fucked, too, had it not been for the collusion of Republicans in the Senate and the House to go all-in to save him.
JoyceH
@MazeDancer: I saw a lot of elected Republicans, including Josh Hawley, demanding that the FBI release the warrant.
Well, the FBI doesn’t do that. BUT! As the subject of the search, Trump received a copy of the warrant and a list of items seized. So hey. Ask him to publish them.
oldster
@Roger Moore:
Oh, definitely — the link lies in patterns of education, not in something magically sinister about engineering.
Developing countries often want to train a lot of engineers — god knows they can’t afford English majors. And people sent off for foreign degrees are often from the aspiring middle class — not the idly wealth sheik class, but the upwardly mobile class that is often a reservoir for dissatisfaction and rebellion.
Yes, there are lots of sociological reasons that explain this curious fact that engineers are over-represented — that’s why there’s a whole book about it. And the answer is *not* that courses in material science breed radicals.
On the other hand, I wanted to point out to Tom L. that an engineering degree does not *immunize* you against radicalism, either….
HumboldtBlue
@JoyceH:
That’s the theme I’m seeing on Twitter, Trump has a copy and could release it at any time.
Benw
Have the Republicans started running out “Defund the FBI!” yet?
Trump is orange LOL!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
LOL. Junior was… ‘busy’
Grifterella doesn’t do much to any TV, does she? I don’t watch Fox, but I assume it would go viral if Madame would-be Royale deigned to do her affected whispery thing on camera
Nicole
Oh, for fuck’s sake. From the former Gov of NY: “DOJ must immediately explain the reason for its raid & it must be more than a search for inconsequential archives or it will be viewed as a political tactic and undermine any future credible investigation & legitimacy of January 6 investigations.”
Shut up, Andy. Go away.
https://twitter.com/andrewcuomo/status/1556990308424028163
Baud
@HumboldtBlue:
The search warrant is still being audited.
Baud
@Nicole:
Heh. No.
Mike S
Republicans are screaming “unprecedented” because they wanted to maintain the rule that nothing a Republican president does should be punished. Nixon, Reagan and Bush the lesser all walked away from their crimes so why shouldn’t Trump?
jonas
Hey NY Post, do you know who also had ties to Jeffrey Epstein? Oh, and to the prosecutor that let Epstein slide on charges of statutory rape? And then later became labor secretary? I’ll give you a minute to think…
Cameron
@Bupalos: Here in Florida, I think there’s an opportunity to take down Rubio coming and going: he came out with a stupid statement about the FBI search and he voted against IRA. I like Val Demings a lot, and I hope she kicks his ass. Though I’d find it even more satisfying if Dems could find somebody to send Nosfraudatu back to his coffin in two years.
HumboldtBlue
Charles Pierce from the shebeen:
This wasn’t a presidency, it was a burglary. And they got caught.
@Baud:
Lol
Benw
@Baud: Serena is definitely the GOAT. I love the Williams sisters, they’re so rad!
Cameron
@Baud: But they do have a party position! It’s “both sides are wrong, but they all mean well.” Oh…you want a policy statement? Can we get back to you on that?
Omnes Omnibus
@oldster: OTOH and anecdotally, I have found that engineers can be surprisingly vulnerable to conspiracy theories. I posit that engineers tend not to be comfortable with ambiguity (for solid professional reasons) and might be more likely to latch onto something that eliminates gray areas.
HumboldtBlue
delete
dmsilev
@Benw:
Yes. Marjorie Taylor Greene started with that last night.
rikyrah
chris evans (@notcapnamerica) tweeted at 1:16 AM on Tue, Aug 09, 2022:
It’s always “law and order”, “back the blue” and “blue lives matter” until white people start going to jail https://t.co/R4p6RrRdyS
(https://twitter.com/notcapnamerica/status/1556887082433380353?t=axzJAKKpSkjWj42jo25mvg&s=03)
jonas
Yes, this appears to be about Trump hanging on to classified documents even after he was supposed to have surrendered them back to the National Archives.
Miss Bianca
@Benw: According to what I’ve read here, Marjorie Greene Taylor has already gone there.
Yet another reason to point and laugh this morning.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Amir Khalid was fond of quoting a version of that in German, making a pun on the fact that Mueller (or Müller) is German for “miller”.
rikyrah
Tom Joseph (@TomJChicago) tweeted at 9:58 PM on Mon, Aug 08, 2022:
Everybody should understand that the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago wasn’t just about recovering missing documents that Trump was possessing & didn’t return to the National Archives. The raid happened because Trump was doing something with the information.
(https://twitter.com/TomJChicago/status/1556837286477799424?t=BEUrmBq51ZD1M1UUYwlnxw&s=03)
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah:
“What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed”, etc etc. Damn, Chris Evans is sharp. Going to have to steal that one for future use.
Josie
@Ken: We may be the only two people on this blog to know that. As if I haven’t given it away, I’m a big Charles Bronson fan.
Cameron
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Shows how out of touch with reality I am. I thought he was saved by those pesky teenagers and that stupid dog.
Frank Wilhoit
@JoyceH:
But he already tore it up and flushed it down the pot.
HumboldtBlue
New York Times Pitchbot? Or Starburst Lowry?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Talk about the answer to a question nobody asked. What a putz.
rikyrah
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA AHH A
Tynisa Thee Cynical Gen X Witch Walker (@Kalarigamerchic) tweeted at 9:25 AM on Tue, Aug 09, 2022:
This truly is gonna be a race to see who can sell who out the fastest for a plea deal now. Because you know there is no honor among that lot of thieves. And 45 doesn’t give AF about anyone but himself. Its gonna be merciless the amount of folks thrown under his bus.
(https://twitter.com/Kalarigamerchic/status/1557010287659720705?t=XjLgh7zKnabMV1NqVta23w&s=03)
Geminid
@Cameron: Rubio also voted against the Infrastructure bill. Val Demings was hitting him about that as soon as it passed.
West of the Rockies
@Ken:
OMG, a Telefon reference from 1977! I like the cut of your gib.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: It’s always been a race to plead. Lots of them just didn’t realize it until recently.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah:
That occurred to the mister and me yesterday while watching the festivities unfold on TV. If it was incriminating stuff, he’d have just torn it up and flushed it. If it was stuff he couldn’t monetize or use in some way, he’d say “oopsie” and return it (and apparently did for some of the original haul).
Maybe he’s using classified info to blackmail a person who might testify against him. Could be he’s selling the nuclear codes. Could be anything.
WereBear
@Omnes Omnibus: In addition they often work within a maze of schematics so pattern recognition would be ON all the time.
NutmegAgain
@Ken: when I see GNU, I think EMACS. I guess that dates me to Old!
MisterForkbeard
@HumboldtBlue: What are they even trying to say here? That Trump is winning the PR war?
HumboldtBlue
“Hunter Biden watched the raid, live on his laptop.”
@MisterForkbeard:
Yup. The mockery in the comments is delicious. That’s where I snagged the Hunter quote.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: my thinking is if trump has access to these documents, anybody with enough cash has access to these documents– the Saudis, oligarchs of all stripes and nationalities, companies with ties to the Chinese gov’t, If trump has access, Jared has access. Hell, Kimberly Guilfoyle has access
hadn’t thought of that. “You know, Mark, I have notes, notes that you made, that could go very badly for you…”
Mike E
@Nicole: WindUpBird
@MickieMo
Replying to
@andrewcuomo
Don’t be fooled by this. Andrew Cuomo is under investigation by the feds for claims of harassment. This statement is purely self-serving.
9:19 AM · Aug 9, 2022·Twitter for iPhone
stinger
@Ken: Sorry to be picky, but it was “Woman, man, person….” If the incarnadine idiot’s words are going down in history, they should be quoted precisely.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
It’s almost as if “law and order”, “back the blue”, etc. are really about perpetuating systematic racism rather than rule of law.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I haven’t followed every twitter link, but it seems to me that Lindsey Graham was surprisingly muted in his response, now this
Christie and Lindsey know more than most. I imagine they both walked away from a lot of conversations. “I don’t want to hear about that”
Not that they both won’t scamper back to trump and stand on their hind legs for num-nums if The Beast comes through
lowtechcyclist
@Roger Moore:
Even that’s being too kind. He’s clearly thrown in with them here, regurgitating their party line, rather than making any attempt to clarify things for anyone dumb enough to still care what he says, the way someone at least pretending to be an intellectually honest centrist theoretically should.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I mean, who knows? Thinking of the dumbest possible scenario, what if Trump couldn’t bear to return something that was particularly meaningful to him (a Kim Jong-Un mash note in which he was addressed as “your excellency,” perhaps), so he paid some shady character to forge a fake copy and returned that instead? And the DOJ just decided to play hardball and raid his shitty resort for the original? I feel like literally nothing is too stupid to be a possibility!
If it turns out to be something like that, I’m okay with it because, damn it to hell, no one is above the law. But I think it’s far more likely that there were documents he could peddle for money or use to blackmail people.
Roger Moore
@jonas:
It’s hard to imagine the FBI getting this excited about those boxes unless there’s something more there. Either they discovered there are more, undisclosed documents, or some of those documents are extremely important, or both of the above. It’s hard to believe they’d go this far for something mundane.
HumboldtBlue
The comments and quips are just so much fun to read, and it’s only Tuesday!
Nicole
@Mike E: Andy Cuomo, self serving? Say it ain’t so!
You know, if I were under Federal investigation, I might choose to put my head down and stay quiet if one of my fellow borough natives was raided by the FBI, rather than trumpet the unfairness of it all.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
Trump will not cop a plea. Doing so would require admitting fault, and he will not do that no matter what. He’d rather have his day in court to air his grievances than admit he might have done something wrong.
JMG
Here’s a guy who was famous for not reading ANYTHING put on his desk. It would be an appropriate Trumpian comedy if he thought he was purloining useless stuff like proclamations of National Daffodil Day he could sell on his website and wound up taking supersecret stuff by accident. The lawyer who vetted the documents the first time discovered ’em, and Trump said to hide them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think it was a Washington Post reporter who said on MSNBC last night that said mash note might well be one of the documents in question. I’m sure he wants it for his museum, or whatever.
I remember a story about Schumer visiting the Oval Office and trump insisting that he read that letter, but then he put it back in a drawer, or something. Always surprised me he didn’t release it. He’s such a weird little man, on top of the violence, the brutality, the corruption… he’s just fucking weird.
Reminds me of when he used to brag about how much Putin liked him. “He sent me a gift, a beautiful gift,” but to my recollection never said what was supposed to have been.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: Not yet. She’s still gonna play the US Open.
Ksmiami
I think the PTB knows what’s in those docs and saw intelligence that prove Trump gave/sold information to our enemies. That is most likely why the judge was compelled to sign off. It isn’t just criming- it’s a grave national security issue.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
It’s a dacha in Russia. Or rather the deed to a dacha that doesn’t actually exist.
Or maybe one of those certificates for a square inch of land in Scotland that supposedly makes you a “laird”.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
IIRC, that information would be completely stale, since the actual codes get changed with the administration. Some of the other stuff in the nuclear football- the attack plans and list of secure places they might take the President- isn’t changed as quickly, but it’s stuff our enemies can probably figure out for themselves.
Steeplejack
Twitter is loading slowly for me. I wonder if it is breaking down under the weight of some new revelation. 😺
lowtechcyclist
@Roger Moore:
When Nixon ran on “law and order” back in 1968, there’s no question that it was about keeping Those People in their place, with a side helping of hippie-bashing to round things out.
Plus ça change, and all that.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: IIRC, Trump also skipped town with the letter from President Obama that was left in the Resolute Desk on 1/20/2017, following the tradition of outgoing presidents leaving a letter for successors.* He was later compelled to return that. I can imagine the response, “But it was addressed to meeeeeee — it’s miiiiiiine!”
*I’m also assuming Trump left no letter for Biden. Can you imagine? Hahahaha!
HumboldtBlue
JaySinWA
@HumboldtBlue: We’ll get the warrant from T just as soon as he gets his tax returns out in public.
Another Scott
@Roger Moore: A good friend in (engineering) grad school was from Iran. He said engineers have higher social status in Iran than physicians, lawyers, etc – the careers at the top of the pecking order in the USA. It may be common in the Arab world as well.
So, that may be part of it, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@lowtechcyclist:
The way I usually say it is that “law and order” means perpetuating the social order under color of law. One of the things I find infuriating is police trying to enforce social order by continuing to arrest people for breaking laws that are no longer on the books. They just don’t care what the actual law says. They’re trying to perpetuate the old social order, and they know just how harassing an arrest can be even if it won’t hold up. And they’re allowed to continue to get away with it because the organization as a whole supports that goal.
JaySinWA
@Benw: I’ve seen at least one take a run at defund/dismantle the FBI
Cameron
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: He’s stupid enough and cheap enough to settle for less. There’s a reason his stage name is P-Tape.
Old School
@stinger:
If we want to be precise, then it was “Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV.”
HumboldtBlue
@JaySinWA:
Yup.
Elsewhere, here’s some decent humanity in light of all the trash surrounding Trump and the GOP.
Two Little Leaguers hug it out.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Huh. Bob Woodward got hold of the KJU letters. I completely missed that at the time. Not clear from what I’m reading how many transcripts Woodward made. CNN publishes two transcripts here
Soprano2
This is hilarious, how the “law and order” people aren’t so “law and order” when it’s their guy who is being subjected to the law.
In other news, I had my stress test yesterday. In internet parlance “1 star, DO.NOT.RECOMMEND.” LOL I was all ready to do the treadmill, but because I have left bundle branch block they said they had to do the chemical thing instead. I didn’t like it at all! They inject you with radioactive stuff, then you wait 45 minutes, then they take pics of your heart. After that, they do the heart stress. It’s weird having someone inject stuff into your veins that makes you heart beat fast. It’s not like adrenaline, either – it’s different. My lungs felt weird until last night – like they way they hurt when you breathe in really cold air in the winter. Then I had to wait 45 more minutes, and they took images of my heart again. I hope I never have to do that again!!! I won’t really know anything until I get the echocardiogram, and that’s not until the end of September. I hope it ends up being nothing.
Old School
@Betty Cracker:
Biden said he did.
Tarragon
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m in that world. Engineers also have a tendency to argue details which leads to “I know better than you”. There’s also a lot of “I have mastered a hard subject, therefore I have mastered all hard subjects I have considered”
Both lead to conspiracy theories.
Redshift
@Betty Cracker: I’ve seen mention of fifteen boxes of documents, which fits with the idea that he had been asked to return the documents and refused or didn’t comply in the time allotted. (That’s also the answer for the idiot wingnuts who are going on about “why did Hillary get such easy treatment instead of getting raided?” — because she turned over everything that they asked for, duh.) The story about the inspection to make sure they were secure enough also fits with that.
From what I’ve read, they were shown the basement room previously, but the search was for his office safe. And we’ve heard reports that there were documents that are so secret their titles cannot be mentioned in an unclassified setting, so that may be the new thing that made it search-warrant worthy.
Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa floated the idea that the source was one of the secret service agents there, eager to prove that they’re not Trump loyalists after the text message debacle.
JoyceH
@Betty Cracker:
Actually he did. I believe it was published. It was so moderate and non-controversial, I assume a staffer actually wrote it.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: But he did leave a letter! Somebody found a piece of paper with “Im prezident-you steal” written with a Sharpie.
JoyceH
Okay, here’s my theory – we have a human source in the Kremlin. Source sent in a cellphone pic he took of a photocopy of a document from Putin’s files. Our intel knows that Trump had access to the original of the photocopy. They’re looking for the original to see if it has the same Diet Coke can stain that the photocopy shows.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m gonna believe it was Tiffany until it’s proved otherwise.
Someday, Tiff will have a Lady Olenna moment where she’ll tell Jared or Junior or maybe even the old man: Tell Ivanka. I want her to know that it was me.
Redshift
@lowtechcyclist:
That’s the only thing running on “law and order” has ever meant in this country. That’s why it’s useless to point out hypocrisy about it; they’re only violating the literal meaning of the words, not the spirit and tradition.
(Sometimes people who run on “public safety” are sincere. The “and order” is the dead giveaway – it means everyone knows their place and stays in it.)
Ken
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I wonder if there’s any little digs in the letters. Like, oh, a phrase that sounds nice in English, but is a Korean idiom for “you utter moron”.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I give the sociopathic weirdo credit: KJU sure knows how to roll a narcissist.
Cameron
@Old School: Sorta like the intro to Ben Casey, but for morons.
Ken
@JoyceH: I posted a similar theory in an earlier thread. As I understand it, they wouldn’t have to rely on the coke can stain, though — each copy of such a classified document has a unique identifying number.
Redshift
@Betty Cracker:
He told us over and over again that he thought everything connected to the presidency belonged to him, as if he’d just bought a family business (or more likely, a Family business) headquartered in the White House. Nothing will ever convince him that any of this belongs to the people.
Martin
Today is a great live example of “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
JoyceH
@Redshift:
Heck, he even thought PEOPLE belonged to him. “My generals”. Sheesh, did any other president talk about ‘my generals’?
bbleh
@Tarragon: Well you would say that wouldn’t you? All you herb-and-spice people, you just think you’re better than everyone because it just grows and nobody designed it.
Betty Cracker
@JoyceH: You are correct — just looked it up, and Biden said it was “generous,” so a staffer definitely wrote it. Huh. Wonders never cease!
JanieM
@Cameron:
Heh, haven’t thought about that for years. Reminds me of the great junior high girls’ controversy: which is better, Ben Casey or Doctor Kildare?
The Moar You Know
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Wow. There’s a guy who knows how to deal with a narcissist.
jonas
@Roger Moore: Agreed. This isn’t some interagency spat over classification processes. I think he secretly held on to top secret national security documents and then lied to the FBI about having turned everything over. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, that may or may not become something he’s criminally indicted for (although he easily could be), but where it gets interesting is if he was going around leaking details of those documents to unauthorized people, which wouldn’t surprise me because he’s a braggart and a moron. Remember, this is the guy who revealed the existence of one of Israel’s most top secret anti-terrorism operations to the Russian ambassador *in the Oval Office*. So yeah, wouldn’t surprise me a bit to hear that he was blabbing to some golf buddy at Mar-a-Lago about a new secret Air Force spy plane or something.
HumboldtBlue
@Martin:
That refrain has been running through my head all morning on a loop.
zhena gogolia
@Soprano2: I hope so too!
HinTN
@Omnes Omnibus: Conspiracy theories only eliminate gray areas if you’re bug fuck crazy, IMHO. OTOH, you’re not wrong about engineers being easy marks for this shit. I’ve worked with some.
zhena gogolia
@JanieM: I was Team Casey. Loved his hairy forearms.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@JoyceH: In case anybody wants yet another glimpse into how fucked up the country was in the months after the election, here is a horrifying article in the New Yorker about TFG’s relationship with “my generals”.
I’m reading it in small doses because that’s all I can take.
HinTN
@Omnes Omnibus: Conspiracy theories only eliminate gray areas if you’re bug fuck crazy, IMHO. OTOH, you’re not wrong about engineers being easy marks for this shit. I’ve worked with some.
Geminid
Maybe the prevalence of engineers among Arab terrorists is due to the imbalance between young engineering graduates in many of those countries with job opportunities in that field. That might create bitter alienation towards “the system” that could be exploited by recruiters.
Tarragon
@bbleh: I started to write a response in character, but you know what. Work from home has really shown me how much happier I am to be out of the cube farm and not dealing with that every day.
CaseyL
Whatever Trump took with him is a couple of years old. Some classified materials might still be valuable to a buyer, but what strikes me is the possibility that someone, or someones, still embedded in Defense, State, and DHS is giving him new stuff. New classified materials would be even more valuable to a buyer.
That could be what really lit the fire under Archives and Garland: seeing classified information dated after Trump left office.
JanieM
@zhena gogolia: I was definitely team Casey too. Don’t need none of those pretty boys. Plus, brain surgery!
zhena gogolia
@JanieM: He was great.
Layer8Problem
@Josie: Nyet! Only three people.
Ed.: Looks like we’re up to five or six now.
Layer8Problem
In related news, this is also good news for John McCain.
Mallard Filmore
@Betty Cracker:
How many millionaires have to wait in line an hour or more to vote?
HumboldtBlue
@Layer8Problem:
Hah!
In other new, Shaun Cassidy is trending, ladies, what have you done?
Benw
@dmsilev: @Miss Bianca: @JaySinWA: BWAHAHAHA! They are so dumb.
Cameron
@HumboldtBlue: Jesus Christ.
zhena gogolia
Cauvin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BviY4_h2MYw
HumboldtBlue
@Cameron:
Oh, it gets better.
I wonder if Omnes is available?
Chris Johnson
@oldster: He’s in way bigger trouble than that
HinTN
@HinTN: Sorry for the duplicate, I blame Dark Brandon.
trollhattan
@HumboldtBlue:
Better call Saul.
PAM Dirac
@CaseyL:
That seems as plausible as any other speculation that has been thrown out, but the very scant information that all the speculation is based on does point out how tight this operation has been. As far as I know the first the public knew about it was when the orange fart cloud started whining about it. I don’t know if the DOJ has even publicly acknowledged it yet. So let me add my own speculation that part of the “delay” in action from DOJ was not only gathering information, but assembling a team that could be trusted to pull off operations like this without a whisper of advanced warnings. I doubt everyone in DOJ/FBI fits that description, so it would take a bit of time to check to make sure you don’t have leakers. I also suspect that this operation might have been only the first operational test. I suspect drumpf and his fellow traitors are a little bit queasy about the fact that DOJ has not only shown that it can act, but it can do so without any advanced warning from sympathetic insiders.
Cameron
@HumboldtBlue: Actually, I can see how that makes perfect sense to Trump. Bigly.
HumboldtBlue
@trollhattan:
Funnily enough, there is a story about Better Call Saul in the sidebar of the Trump story.
Layer8Problem
@trollhattan: Stephen Miller said, with tears in his eyes, “Sir, you don’t need a criminal lawyer, you need a criminal lawyer.”
Old School
zhena gogolia
@Old School: That’s exactly what Katy Tur was saying on the air! MFers.
HumboldtBlue
@Cameron:
The dude is already working for Trump on another matter.
zhena gogolia
@Old School:
Check it out.
Old School
@zhena gogolia: It’s tough out there for a Pitchbot to try to stay ahead of the actual discourse.
zhena gogolia
@Old School: Yep.
stinger
@Old School: I sit corrected, and THANK YOU for the Sarah Cooper version!
Subsole
@Roger Moore:
“Person. Man. Camera. Television.”
zhena gogolia
@stinger: Hey, what ever happened to her?
HumboldtBlue
@zhena gogolia:
Her actual work schedule prevented her from devoting so much time to the videos, so she stopped.
Subsole
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The fact he didn’t like any sort of animal whatsoever was a giant, flashing, crimson warning sign.
He is exceedingly, cripplingly needy. I genuinely cannot believe anyone looks at him and honestly thinks to themself, “Yes. This is the kind of strong, virile masculinity I aspire to.”
zhena gogolia
@HumboldtBlue: What is she working on? She had one special, but I haven’t heard anything since.
Subsole
@Betty Cracker: He was either going to do something unsanitary to it, or sell it.
stinger
@zhena gogolia: Good question, and I enjoyed learning the answer:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/sarah-cooper-on-trump-fatigue-and-waking-up-to-politics-again
HumboldtBlue
@zhena gogolia:
Nettoyeur
@Soprano2: Law and order politicians who disdain defendant rights are quick to assert the same rights when they are in the dock.
cain
@Geminid: I read an article – due to how the culture works (and it kinda works like that in India) if you don’t have a job, you don’t get married… and because that’s a problem they got nothing and so I think the fact there is no movement in their lives and probably coupled with sexual frustration – well – men gotta terror
topclimber
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sen. Tim Scott of (R-SC) joins Lindsey in a tepid reaction, while Glenn Youngkin keeps the outrage to a similar minimum.
Not only are the rats abandoning ship but we are running out of rats. (See Rat Replacement Theory).
Dan B
@Bupalos:
@Baud: Invest in Champagne and sparkling wine* futures stat!
At least I’m stocking up for Friday.
*Add noisemakers. Thanks.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
“Andrew Yang is still a blithering idiot.”
One sometimes wonders how some people get in any position other than say, garbage truck window cleaner, and once again we see that Andrew Yang applies for the job.
Feathers
@cain: First really alt right Nazi guy I knew was a friend of a friend who was temping in an office where I worked. He just unloaded on me one late night working. He had been a journalism major, but couldn’t get a journalism job, but look at all the people who just were able to walk right in, wink, wink. I was so fascinated I just sort of listened. This was Boston in the mid 90s, so really rare. The thing that was crazy was I had grown up in the DC area with many Washington Post folks being friends of my parents and parents of my friends. I went to an elite college and had friends who went on to journalism. One won a Pulitzer. This guy was from the Panhandle and had scraped by at a second tier Florida State College. Not to say that a good journalist couldn’t come out of this school, but this guy really thought that having the degree would set him up for success in the field. He had zero fire, zero curiosity. Reminded me of a journalism major from Northeastern I met at a party who I had to explain what a primary election was.
Anyways, I had started there as a temp, so I went to the person in charge of temps and learned that there was no danger of him lasting beyond the week. Come to think of it, he was part of the HK film fan crowd, so probably a match for the online anime dudes a month later. Now I wish I remembered his name.
Burnspbesq
Technically, no. He can petition the Supremes for a writ of certiorari, which they have nearly complete discretion to grant or deny. If six of them have a lick of sense, they will treat this case as the toxic waste it is.
NotMax
@JanieM
Truly, ’tis a paradox.
:)
Another Scott
@NotMax: Oooh. D_C_L will be after you for that!
Cheers,
Scott.
Pappenheimer
@HinTN: and dentists, for some reason
Dan B
@Pappenheimer: One of my dentists read that Dentists had the highest rate of murdering their wives and promptly took Fridays off. Wise man.
sab
@Dan B: Yikes. Years ago my accounting firm ( years before I worked there) had a dentist client who shot up a dinner party at his house (killing his wife and some friends) after his partner caught him embezzling. His daughter and her best friend survived by jumping out a window. Las Vegas is an interesting place.
Not to besmirch the profession but they do like to shoot elderly lions.
sab
@Dan B: Veterinarians have a high suicide rate because they can’t always help and their clients ( the people) don’t care.
brantl
@Benw: MTG has.
Brian Dodge
@PAM Dirac:
@PAM Dirac: I’ve long suspected that the reason for Garland’s slow progress was the necessity to root out DoJ MAGAT***pers so they couldn’t sabotage cases.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: IMHO the idiocy is an act. He is a stealth Republican like Gabbard.