Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

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

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

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

Peak wingnut was a lie.

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

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

The willow is too close to the house.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Nothing worth doing is easy.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

I was promised a recession.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Let there be snark.

White supremacy is terrorism.

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

You are here: Home / Politics / Information Warfare / Thursday Morning Open Thread: {{{{[CLASSIFIED]}}}}

Thursday Morning Open Thread: {{{{[CLASSIFIED]}}}}

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: {{{{[CLASSIFIED]}}}}

(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)

… The list of former presidents and vice presidents could include former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and former vice presidents Dick Cheney, Al Gore and Dan Quayle.

An adviser to Obama’s office, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record, told The Washington Post on Tuesday that all classified records from his time in the White House had been submitted to the National Archives upon his leaving office and that the agency continues to assume physical and legal custody of Obama’s materials.

The recent discoveries underscore the limitations of the Presidential Records Act, which governs how documents of former presidents and vice presidents are handled. Under the act, the Archives takes ownership of millions of presidential papers from the outgoing president as soon as a new president is sworn in, while items deemed personal go home with the former president. Classified materials are all considered government property, but compliance can be an issue because of the massive volume of materials.

Both Biden and Pence officials have stressed their cooperation and compliance with the Archives and the FBI in recent public statements, while Trump has continued to fume over Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed to oversee the investigation into his mishandling of classified documents. Attorney General Merrick Garland has also appointed a special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of classified materials…

Conservative / ex-Republican experienced user, for some of you to side-eye:

I can see people mixing files and then putting them in boxes or binders. I bet Biden and Pence did that.

None of this is relevant to Trump, who said “This is mine, and the DOJ can go f*** itself.”

One is a mistake. The other is lawless arrogance. /2

The GOP attempt to excuse Trump for his complete contempt for the law is appalling, but now par for the course. /3x

Are drones really *that* super-secret?

Of course, the FTFNYTimes‘ own Peter Baker is *thrilled* to have new hateclick-bait that doesn’t involve ‘just asking questions’ about ‘concerned’ conservative parents looking for an excuse to abuse their non-traditional offspring…

Meanwhile, the GOP’s theme-setters:

Lest we forget (IOKIYAR)…

Reader Interactions

161Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    CNN poll: classified documents story is having no impact on Biden approval rating, but is doing damage to Trump among Republicans

    As it should be.

  7. 7.

    RSA

    No really, drones are considered classified-at-birth, so they’re classified no matter what source they’re from. A Super Bowl commercial about drones would be classified.

    This is hyperbole; here’s a primer on how material gets classified.

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    We got about 5″ of heavy wet snow yesterday. Lots of downed (smaller) trees and broken limbs. I had to go around shaking the snow off my favorite trees and bushes. Lost power about 8:30, didn’t come back on until after 3. When my wife called the Co-op for an update, the gal said she had no idea when it might come back on, that they had had to call neighboring Co-ops to the north for help.

    By the end of the day, the 5″ had been reduced to 2-3″ due to compaction from the wight of the snow and the above freezing temps we had all day. Supposed to hit 51 on Saturday, then below freezing on Sunday thru the midweek at least. If I’m not careful I might get whiplash.

  11. 11.

    HeleninEire

    Good morning, morning crew. Moving into a new apartment today. It’s never easy, but unless I win the lottery this is my last move.

  15. 15.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Pepper spray for the school run? The weaponised SUV set to terrify America’s streets

    While its competitors offer heated seats and optional roof-racks, this souped-up SUV boasts bulletproof glass, blinding strobe lights, electrified doorhandles, and wing mirrors that can shoot pepper spray – handy for putting those pesky cyclists in their place.

    “Vengeance is yours,” trumpets the website, which details how the car can release a dense smoke screen to confuse people following you, as well as detect electromagnetic pulses from nuclear weapons. Always handy for the supermarket run.

    Picking up the kids from school? You can announce your arrival through the car’s booming intercom system. Or why not just drive straight through the gates? The vehicle’s hefty steel ram bumpers and military-grade tyres would make mincemeat of any parking barrier – and dispatch the headteacher while they’re at it.

    One thing oddly missing from the Vengeance (priced from $285,000, rising to $499,000 with all the extras) is a rear windscreen, because of course that would be unsafe. Instead, drivers are treated to a live video rear-view mirror and a front camera overlaid with “augmented reality”. Perhaps it shows an imaginary zombie army for you to mow down on your way to the mall.

    A steal at twice the price!

  17. 17.

    NorthLeft

    I guess this is the NYT’s response to all the questions regarding their lack of interest in pretty much any story that embarrasses Republicans and the Supreme Court. Uhh, repeated myself there.

  19. 19.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: And insurance actuaries everywhere, after looking at that list of “features”, are quintupling the monthly premiums.

    “Yes, it’s higher than we charge 17-year-old men with a history of accidents, but consider the mentality revealed…”

  20. 20.

    Starfish

    @Michael Bersin: Every time someone sets up one of these, doesn’t it get spammed with nonsense? Create reports on schools that don’t exist, Catholic schools, crappy conservative charters. Automatically generate them.

  21. 21.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: In 538’s aggregate it looked like the Biden documents story abruptly knocked about a point and a half off Biden’s approval and stopped the slow rise in his ratings that had been happening for several weeks prior. It’s a small enough change that you wouldn’t expect to see it in a single poll.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ken: The electrified door handles could make some interesting encounters for anyone who parks next to that useless pile of penile enhancements.

  24. 24.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly: We were supposed to get a few inches of snow yesterday afternoon that would then change to rain as temperatures rose overnight. It was anyone’s guess whether that combination would leave any slush on the roads. As it turned out, the snow took a long time to arrive and the changeover happened soon enough that it seems to have amounted to nothing–the roads are clearer than before it all began and the sun is out. Less shoveling for me.

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    @Michael Bersin

    Read about Ted Cruz’ D.O.A. amendment?

    It appears Ted Cruz wants to change the Constitution to prevent voters from re-electing lawmakers like Ted Cruz. That’s rather odd, even by 2023 standards. Source

  30. 30.

    jonas

    TPM has been doing yeoman’s work covering the shambling dumpster fire of lies and corruption currently squatting in the NY-3 congressional seat. So during the campaign last year, Santos files a campaign report with the FEC claiming he gave his campaign a personal loan of something like $600,000. No biggie. Rich candidates routinely self-fund their campaigns like this. It did raise some eyebrows, however, because as recently as two years ago, Santos claimed to be nearly broke and making only $50k a year, which is unusual for such a skilled volleyball player and former Goldman Sachs analyst. Anyway, the other day, he files an “amended” campaign finance report in which he removed his own name as the source of the loan to his campaign. Meaning it was someone *else’s* money. Which, when we’re talking about six figures, is kinda, like, illegal.

    When asked about it yesterday, Santos got riled up and said he’s never seen any financial reports because certain unnamed “fiduciaries” take care of that stuff. Roger that, George.

  32. 32.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Oh, the Afghanistan withdrawal was far worse–the media basically decided to start murdering him then. That was basically what ended Biden’s extended “honeymoon” and started the slide to him being an unpopular President in absolute terms, even though most Americans likely hardly remember any of it at this point.

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Speaker Kevin McCarthy reiterated Tuesday that he will block Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell of California from serving on the House committee that oversees national intelligence, saying the decision was not based on political payback but because “integrity matters, and they have failed in that place”.

    BWAHAHAH AHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA… gasp…. wheeze…. If integrity was important to McCarthy, he wouldn’t be Speaker. Also, George Santos.

  34. 34.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: You know, when I lived in the Washington DC area people would constantly mock us for shutting everything down over an inch of snow, but what they didn’t realize was that in DC, with temperatures hovering right around freezing all winter, an inch of snow was often really an inch of ice. The whole region would turn into a skating rink.

    Lately, the weather up here in greater Boston feels more and more like that.

  36. 36.

    jonas

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​
     

    The electrified door handles could make some interesting encounters for anyone who parks next to that useless pile of penile enhancements.

    Or even better, you’re picking your kid up from school and forget to turn off the electrified door handles…

  37. 37.

    Matt McIrvin

    Another thing I’m watching for is whether antivaxxerism gets re-legitimized in the non-Fox mainstream media as a “both sides”, “many people are saying”, “troubling questions raised” kind of debate, over fears of Twitter Files-like vengeance being visited on those who deplatform it. It hasn’t quite happened yet but you can see signs, in things like the reaction to Offit’s paper about the bivalent booster.

  39. 39.

    narya

    Love that cartoon–sums it up perfectly for normies. On yesterday’s walk in the snow, I snapped a quick pic for my mom (I was sending a pic a day, now it’s a little less often), and later realized that it looked like a black&white photo–except there’s a street sign in green in the middle, that you have to take a minute to see. It’s pretty cool. Today’s walk (after a morning of looming administrivia) will also be in snow . . .

  40. 40.

    jonas

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​
      Most Americans don’t realize it, but we’re basically the only developed country in the world where people regularly lose power during routine weather events.

  41. 41.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Soprano2: Yeah. These days we just hunker down and let the snow do what it does. If there is a real need* to go out, I have 4WD. Otherwise, no big deal.

    *we almost had a real need yesterday. My wife was eating something (I forget what) when she spat out an open safety pin. She has no idea where it came from (thinking it wasn’t in what she was eating)

  43. 43.

    Michael Bersin

    @Mimi haha:

    Eric Schmitt (r) is more of the same.

    Josh Hawley (r) endorsed Vicky Hartzler (r) in the Missouri U.S. Senate primary. I’ve compared Vicky Hartzler to Michele Bachmann, it’s just that Vicky is dumber and meaner.

    There’s gonna be elbow throwing in front of cameras when both Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt are present.

  45. 45.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: We have that too. My thing is that we can easily manage this kind of weather; it’s not unusual for us at all. We do get ice storms (thinking about the huge one we had in 2007 still makes me break out in hives, I learned things about myself I’d rather not know. It’s amazing what going 12 days without power will do to your psyche), but there was no chance of this being one. Younger people here don’t remember that we used to get more and deeper snows more often; they seem to freak out at the thought of more than an inch of snow, seeming to believe it will lock them in their houses for days! I swear that when I was in school this city would not have cancelled school for the snow we had Tuesday night.

  46. 46.

    Michael Bersin

    @Starfish:

    Read the entire series. There was a tremendous amount of trolling, but, alas, there was a lot of “sincere” right wingnut snitching on their local schools and school districts. The hilarious part was the clueless right wingnuts reporting their kids’ private school or private university.

  50. 50.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @NotMax:

    It appears Ted Cruz wants to change the Constitution to prevent voters from re-electing lawmakers like Ted Cruz. That’s rather odd, even by 2023 standards. Source

    Cry for help?

  55. 55.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Matt McIrvin: I live in the DC area and it often comes down as heavy wet snow, and then freezes overnight and that makes it slippery. There’s also a topography factor in DC that is not all that present in the Midwest. I grew up in Grand Rapids, MI and  there’s a little topography there but not the steep hills that exist in much of the Maryland suburbs of DC. It doesn’t have to be a long hill, just steep, for cars not to be able to stop at the bottom if it’s icy.

    The real problem, though, is that the automobile infrastructure in this area is stretched to the limit on a bright sunny spring day, so add any complication to the mix and you’re looking at serious gridlock. The other thing is the Federal workforce now all can telework so when the Government shuts down it just means everyone is working from home but they’re still working so the cost of shutting down, from a productivity perspective, is nil. That said, last time we had a snow storm late afternoon it was only about an inch and people got stranded in their cars for hours – like almost the entire night. It’s a little ridiculous.

    As for GR, yeah, the weather there seems more and more like a DC rather than Michigan winter. 4 of the last 6 Christmases there have been green rather than white. This last Christmas was white thanks to the blizzard that rolled through right at Christmas but by the time I left on NY Day all the snow had melted except where the plows had piled it up. And then they went most of January with highs above freezing and little new snow. Definitely not what I remember growing up there or even through most of my adult life.

  58. 58.

    kindness

    I used to read the NY Times every day when I lived back east.  I read the NY Daily News too.  Better sports & they had comics.  I haven’t been a NY Times fan since the Clinton presidency.  They outed themselves as Republican Pravda.  The NY Times is still Republican Pravda but with more gusto since they now have Murdoch as competition.

    For all the Times vaulted columnists, I have to wonder how they look in the mirror and keep working there.  Any one of them could pick a different outlet and go there tomorrow.  Is their paycheck really that good that it overcomes what they know their paper is doing to this country?  Or is it their damned egos?  Either way, I don’t hold Krugman et al in as high of esteem as I once did because of where they sell their wares.

  59. 59.

    WaterGirl

    @jonas: Surely Santos had to SIGN THE FUCKING FORMS, right?  Right above or below where it says he has read them and he is confident that everything is true and correct.  Right?

  60. 60.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Matt McIrvin:

    You know, when I lived in the Washington DC area people would constantly mock us for shutting everything down over an inch of snow, but what they didn’t realize was that in DC, with temperatures hovering right around freezing all winter, an inch of snow was often really an inch of ice. The whole region would turn into a skating rink.

    I’ve lived in the DC area for most of my life, and I mock those drivers too, because I’ve rarely found the winters here difficult.  Snowmageddon, sure, but not your normal 4-inch snowfall.

    And I also mock the people who run out and get milk, bread, and TP when a winter storm is supposedly coming.  The roads will get plowed, and they’ll be able to go back to the store in a day.  Craziness.

  61. 61.

    Betty Cracker

    The fucking Washington Post announced it’s adding two National Review hacks to its opinion page (Geraghty and Ponnuru). I guess Abernathy, McArdle, Thiessen, Hewitt, Will, etc., weren’t pulling in enough hate clicks. As a sop to “liberals” they threw in Ruy Teixeira and a couple of others — uh, thanks. [insert eyeroll thingie]

    This after they laid off a ton of actual journalists and fired Radley Balko, who actually did interesting reporting in a “nonpartisan” way. What a crock of shit.

  62. 62.

    Elizabelle

    LA Times:  Adam Schiff is in the race:

    Rep. Adam B. Schiff, a decades-long fixture in San Fernando Valley politics who rose to national prominence as a top Democratic foe to then-President Trump, is joining a contest for U.S. Senate that is quickly shaping up to be highly competitive, he announced Thursday.

    A mild-mannered former prosecutor, Schiff built a profile as a moderate Democrat focused on foreign policy and national security. The Trump era, however, thrust him into the spotlight, as he led the first impeachment of the then-president and served on the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack that culminated in referring Trump to the Justice Department for criminal investigation.

    “The Senate is where many of these fights over the future of our democracy take place,” Schiff said in an interview prior to his campaign launch. “Some of Donald Trump’s biggest enablers are in the Senate. And I think that is where I can most effectively champion our democratic institutions.”

  64. 64.

    Elizabelle

    @Betty Cracker:  I hate their new editor, Clickbait Sally Buzbee.  Hate her.

    Jeff Bezos is fucking that paper up.  She is his hire.

    She is not fit to park her ass anywhere near Marty Baron’s office.

  68. 68.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker: Geraghty is a “Critics of Trump, whom I of course do not support, go too far….” type, right? not as full on Anti-anti-trump as Rich Lowry or that Baseball chucklehead?

    If you had told me in 2017 that one of the NRO honchos would go pro-trump and one go anti-, I would never have bet on Jonah Goldberg being the one who went against him.

  69. 69.

    Redshift

    Prof. Timothy Snyder, pulling together the threads from the Russian subversion of McGonigal and the NY FBI office 😡:

    In April 2016, I broke the story of Trump and Putin, using Russian open sources. Afterwards, I heard vague intimations that something was awry in the FBI in New York, specifically counter-intelligence and cyber. We now have a suggestion as to why. 0/20
    — Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) January 25, 2023

  70. 70.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    meanwhile, Republicans have their finger on the pulse of the people

    Aaron Rupar @atrupar 1h
    Rep. Michael Waltz says there may be congressional hearings about DirecTV dropping Newsmax

    there are dozens of us outraged about this! DOZENS!

  71. 71.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:  Yes he will!

    More from the LA Times:
    California Rep. Adam Schiff enters marquee Senate race

    Though the race for Feinstein’s seat has begun in earnest, the 89-year-old has not disclosed whether she intends to seek reelection next year. Given some questions about her capacity to continue in that role, many observers expect she will not run for another six-year term.

    “I have just tremendous respect for her and — more than respect — admiration and affection,” Schiff said, adding that he would not have jumped into the race without informing her first. He said they spoke the day before his announcement.

    “I think she will make her own decision about an announcement when she feels ready to do so,” he said. “She’s earned that right, and I certainly respect her to do that whenever she determines the time is right.”

    Feinstein had previously told The Times she would disclose her plans “probably by spring.”

    With Republicans having trouble mustering competitive candidates to run for statewide office, the fiercest battle is expected to be among the Democratic contenders, who broadly align on ideology.

    ….   Schiff’s lawyerly demeanor is now best associated with the impeachment and Jan. 6 hearings.

    “We saw in 2022 that democracy itself was a big issue for a lot of voters,” Nalder said. “He certainly was a very visible defender of democracy in those hearings, for those who paid attention.”

    Schiff shared that assessment, telling The Times that his role “at the center of these fights to preserve democracy” will differentiate himself from his competitors. Those fights, he said, were “interlinked” with voters’ concerns about the economy.

    “The fact that the economy hasn’t been working for millions of Americans who have seen their quality of life decline … led people to be receptive to a demagogue who comes with promises that he alone can fix it,” he said, citing climate change as another main campaign focus.

    …  For Schiff, 62, the statewide bid will mark the first time in 20 years he has faced a competitive race.

    Born in Massachusetts and raised in Arizona and the Bay Area, Schiff moved to Los Angeles after law school to clerk for a federal judge. As a deputy in the U.S. attorney’s office, he successfully prosecuted Richard Miller, the first FBI agent to be indicted for espionage.

    He then attempted to make the jump to elected office. Though a 1994 state Assembly run was unsuccessful, he unseated a GOP state senator two years later.

    Though now a Democratic stronghold, the intersection of the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys — encompassing Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena — was friendlier territory for Republicans when Schiff ran for Congress in 2000. He squared off against GOP Rep. James Rogan, who had bested Schiff six years earlier for an Assembly seat and, while in Congress, emerged as a central figure in the Republican impeachment of President Clinton.

    Schiff emerged victorious in the hotly fought campaign, which shattered spending records for House races. Since then, he has routinely won reelection by 30- to 50-point margins.

    …  A top ally of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), Schiff reportedly considered following in her footsteps in a House Democratic leadership role. He ultimately decided to focus on a bid for the Senate instead.

    His congressional workload may lighten considerably this term. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) removed him this week from the Intelligence Committee, alleging that Schiff lied about whether he knew the whistleblower whose complaint led to Trump’s first impeachment. (A Washington Post fact-check disputed McCarthy’s accusation.)

    … “There will certainly be a form of cosmic justice when I become Kevin McCarthy’s home state senator,” Schiff said.

  72. 72.

    Roger Moore

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Trump and Company made a point of targeting those two, and I assume the base has bought into all his crazy conspiracy theories.  If you actually accept that Schiff was part of an orchestrated scheme to make up information about Trump/Russia and Swalwell was sleeping with a Chinese agent, it makes sense to remove them from the intelligence committee.  Of course both those things are vile calumnies, but that has never stopped the Republican base from demanding blood.

  74. 74.

    Redshift

    Hmm, though Marcy Wheeler says Snyder has the timeline wrong and McGonigal wasn’t there when the appalling 2016 Russia investigation failure happened.

  77. 77.

    Redshift

    @Betty Cracker:

    The fucking Washington Post announced it’s adding two National Review hacks to its opinion page (Geraghty and Ponnuru). I guess Abernathy, McArdle, Thiessen, Hewitt, Will, etc., weren’t pulling in enough hate clicks. As a sop to “liberals” they threw in Ruy Teixeira and a couple of others — uh, thanks. [insert eyeroll thingie]

    I hadn’t realized that Ruy Teixeira is now a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. That may explain why he keeps writing that Democrats need to appeal to white people and Trump voters if they want to win, though which way the cause and effect runs, I couldn’t guess. Grrr…

    So yeah, the Post announced seven new columnists, three of whom work for explicitly ideological conservative outfits, and the other four have no mention of politics (or if they’ll even be writing about it) in their bios.

    The least appalling interpretation of that is that they still cling to the internalized “liberal bias” mindset, where half conservative hacks and half journalists is considered “balanced” because journalists who aren’t conservatives count as liberals. No matter how many conservatives you hire, they’re never going to stop screeching that you’re biased against conservatives, especially if it keeps working.

  78. 78.

    Roger Moore

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:

    Another important point is how frequent these kinds of things are.  If you want to reopen in a hurry after a snowfall, you need a substantial fleet of snow plows, salt trucks, and whatnot.  It only makes sense to maintain that kind of thing if you get substantial snow regularly.  If you only get enough snow to shut things down once a year or once every few years, it might make more sense to accept the occasional snow day than try to pay for a bunch of equipment that spends 99.9% of its time in the garage.

  80. 80.

    VOR

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I’m sure it’s simpler than that. I have three possible answers.

    1. Ted expects to be President by the time this law takes effect.
    2. Ted thinks the law won’t apply to him – the leopards won’t eat his face.
    3. He knows it is a non-starter and is just posturing.
  84. 84.

    Baud

    I get that Dems, even liberal Dems, are a diverse bunch, but there are still millions of us and we’re in the aggregate not unwealthy.  Yet we still don’t have much of in the way of our own media outlets that tailored to our collective interests and personality.  It’s a strange thing IMHO.

  87. 87.

    dmsilev

    @Elizabelle: That primary is going to be …heavily fought. And, since California went to that asinine “jungle primary” system, odds are that the top two vote-getters will be Democrats and they’ll just fight it out again in the general.

    Nowhere near ready to make up my mind who to vote for. Ask me in about a year.

  89. 89.

    Soprano2

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s amazing to me how the party that for decades has promoted a hands-off philosophy to business (“let the free market decide”) can reverse that as soon as the free market decides it doesn’t like what they are selling. I can’t wait for them to point to the part of the law that requires DirecTV to carry a specific channel on their service.

  90. 90.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Immanentize:

     Ruy Teixeira is no liberal. He has become an anti-Democrat old grumpy contrarian. He is 71 years old.

    So great of the WaPo to bring in some people with fresh viewpoints.  Nothing fresher than centrist contrarians criticizing those to their left.  Other than perhaps a dead fish that’s been sitting out in the sun for a few days.

  91. 91.

    WaterGirl

    @jonas: All I have are expletives.  These people may as well be literally burning the Constitution and every rulebook in sight, that’s what they are figuratively doing to it.

  92. 92.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kathleen:

    Thoughts and prayers fuck ’em to CNN for having its anti Biden talking points derailed as a result of its own poll. 

    Fixed. :)

  94. 94.

    Ken

    @VOR: 3. He knows it is a non-starter and is just posturing.

    I’ll vote for this. Though it puts him one up on a lot of the House Republicans, who seem to genuinely believe their insane bills have a chance of passage.

  95. 95.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Soprano2: talking about trump’s various social media bans in terms of the first amendment makes me crazy. The ACLU went right up to the line on that argument

    ACLU @ACLU
    This is the right call. Like it or not, President Trump is one of the country’s leading political figures and the public has a strong interest in hearing his speech. 

    The New York Times @nytimes 17h
    Breaking News: Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram access will be reinstated in the coming weeks, ending a two-year ban, Meta said.

    I’m in the camp that thinks giving trump a bigger microphone might just backfire on him, but arguing that his speech is being somehow withheld from The People…. “truth social” is what, the third or fourth attempt to build a RW rival to twitter? The government hasn’t decided that not enough people are interested to make them popular. It’s not like Fox is going to turn down his on-air call ins. I’m surprised he hasn’t started a podcast: Point a microphone at him and let him ramble for an hour twice a week, he and his marks would eat it up.

  96. 96.

    jonas

    @WaterGirl: And then McCarthy declares that Schiff and Swalwell can’t serve on the HSCI because he places such a high priority on “integrity.” The shamelessness and hypocrisy are simply breathtaking. And completely unsurprising. It’s the Republican brand: flat-out lie about everything and then dare someone to do anything about it.

  97. 97.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Roger Moore: For Swalwell, they definitely have. Literally everything he ever says is met with jokes about sleeping with spies, which not only didn’t happen but the FBI says he did exactly the right thing in dealing with her.

    For Schiff, they just say he lied and leave it at that. It’s hard to actually point out any lies, and Republicans lie all the time. So it’s obvious BS and even Republicans know this didn’t happen, but they don’t care because “dems lie” and because it punishes a prominent democrat.

  99. 99.

    Mike in NC

    Somebody should look into which former presidents and vice presidents are actively trying to sell classified documents to our international adversaries for personal profit. That would narrow down the list quite a bit, wouldn’t it?

  100. 100.

    Roger Moore

    @Soprano2:

    I can’t wait for them to point to the part of the law that requires DirecTV to carry a specific channel on their service.

    They don’t need to.  Congress’s job is to write the law, not enforce it.  That means they can investigate if they think the law ought to be changed, even if there’s no hint that it was violated.  I agree that’s not what’s really happening here- this is political grandstanding with no realistic hope the law would be changed- but it’s flat wrong to imply Congress can or should only investigate if it looks like the law may have been broken.

  101. 101.

    Geminid

    @MisterForkbeard: McCarthy has the power to keep Schiff and Swalwell off Intelligence because it’s a select committee. He also wants to keep Representative Omar off of Foreign Relations. He needs a majority to do that, and it’s unclear whether he has the votes.

  102. 102.

    Barbara

    Congratulations to Luckovich for putting the complete story into a single picture.  Just great work.

  103. 103.

    Betty Cracker

    @Immanentize: Hence the scare quotes. Teixeira has also not had an original thought in at least a decade and a half, if ever. He’s an awful pick, IMO.

  104. 104.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: I think the left consumes media differently and it makes the whole idea of liberal news channels non-viable.

    The liberals who even consume a lot of mainstream news media at all usually lean centrist or “independent” and put great stock in their sources being non-biased. So conservative voices in there are actually a selling point to them as long as they don’t seem crazy. If I had a dime for every liberal who told me they regularly read someone like David Brooks or Conor Friedersdorf because they don’t want to stay in an airtight liberal thought bubble, well, it’d be a lot of dimes anyway. When I was a kid I read George Will for the same reason, but life’s too short.

    We lot have political blogs as a stand-in for news media.

    And then the far left hate the Democratic Party anyway and read crap like Jacobin and Russia Today that is as anti-Democratic as Fox News.

    I think liberals just really do not like the feeling of being propagandized to even about things they already agree with. We’re naturally suspicious of it. We want our own ideas to be examined critically, and it means we don’t get that auto-propaganda loop.

    What Democrats do have is… comedy shows! In general, the political stuff that caters to us in mainstream media does so in the guise of entertainment. I think we think it’s OK for a joke show to be biased toward us, so we have these odd things like John Oliver’s show that present as comedy but are doing actual journalism. Of course Oliver bashes Democrats from the left too, all the time, but he seems to have a realistic view of how the parties compare.

  105. 105.

    Bill Arnold

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Oh, the Afghanistan withdrawal was far worse–the media basically decided to start murdering him then.

    It was a competent withdrawal implementing a complete surrender negotiated by the previous POTUS and his diplomatic team, and that surrender was publicly bragged about by DJT in the spring of 2021. The previous POTUS negotiated that the Taliban wouldn’t stir up trouble in the leadup to the 2020 election; that was the deal.
    The US press was simply evil on it. Biden ended a 20 year occupation, at a minimum of like 40 billion per year, sometimes over 100 billion per year, plus many lives (mostly Afghani) lost in combat. The new government of Afghanistan is very bad, yes.

  107. 107.

    Bill Arnold

    @mrmoshpotato:
    Gun nuts, an overlapping demographic, would slobber over this weapon vs that vehicle.
    Denel NTW-20

    The NTW-20 is a South African anti-materiel rifle, developed by Denel Mechem in the 1990s. It is intended for deployment against targets including parked aircraft, telecommunication masts, power lines, missile sites, radar installations, refineries, satellite dishes, gun emplacements, bunkers, and personnel, using a range of specialised projectiles.[1] As with other weapons of this type, it can also be used for counter sniping and ordnance disposal (shooting explosive ordnance from a safe distance).

  108. 108.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: This shit drives me mad too.  This has nothing to do with “free speech”, it’s about TOS and any platform’s right to keep hate speech and disinformation off its’ site.  ACLU uses a “free speech” framing that will now be referenced by every bad-faith actor imaginable.  I generally love the ACLU but when they pull this shit it pisses me off to no end.

  110. 110.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Tom Nichols: If I wanted stuff in the Senate, I didn’t go to a place to read it, I called up and a courier delivered it.

    OK, fine. People at your exalted level of documents can read documents in unsecured areas. Which I’m already having a problem with. There needs to be some kind of protection against viewing by people without clearance and need-to-know, like random staff members.

    And in any case, where does that document go at the end of the day? How does it not go into a safe? Even if you’re a bigwig Senator, how do you or the courier not have the responsibility for making sure it’s put to bed in an GSA-approved storage container?

  111. 111.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: I think a lot of it has to do with market fragmentation and silos. Rachel Maddow is popular enough to get dump trucks full of money from NBC and whoever the hell owns them today, as I understand it’s a podcast, book and movie production deal. The O’Bros’ podcasts are apparently very popular– I’m a listener but more out of habit at this point, and I really don’t understand the podcast business model. But Maddow at her peak was getting I believe around 5M viewers, and the number I keep seeing/hearing for the O’Bros is “a million downloads” (again, I don’t understand how that works or what that means).

    also, as with the political talk-radio model, there seems to be something in the liberal/progressive make-up that’s resistant to political media. I’m a podcast junkie and watch/listen to entirely too much MSNBC, but look how many people here say “I don’t do podcasts” or “I don’t watch cable news”

  114. 114.

    Baud

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Yeah, I’m not big on podcasts, but that’s more talk than news, no?.  I used to do cable news.  But I stopped because I felt they weren’t speaking to me anymore, even the liberal shows.  I’m not saying we have the numbers to compete with CNN or the NYT, but I feel there’s a liberal news desert that I can’t explain.  Maybe in the end our side is still too fragmented to support it.

  116. 116.

    Soprano2

    Geez, I just got a copy of the police report about my stepson’s death. There were things in there about it that we definitely were not told by the police. It’s long, and I haven’t read it all yet, but the claim was that my stepson was acting in a strange, altered way, that several people observed him acting strangely and with dried blood on his face, and that he had bruising on his face and ribs when he was found, that he was covered with dirt and it was obvious that his body had been dragged about 20 feet. I’m not sure I want to show this to my husband, I probably will but geez…….it’s not what I expected.

  117. 117.

    Geminid

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: A lot of people get their news from the evening network news shows. Or the hourly radio news. I listen to the latter and I think that’s actually.a good way to keep informed. You don’t neccessarily become deeply informed, but I have friends who rely on podcasts, documentaries and select news sites who are not as broadly informed as they would be if they followed “old media” like network news.

  127. 127.

    Barbara

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: When I consider these issues, I think of my own professional life.  I do not handle classified information, but almost everything I touch incorporates or constitutes sensitive and confidential information, with confidentiality sometimes protected by law.  I am drowning in such information.  I have minimized the amount of paper I handle, but even electronic information is supposed to be stored or handled in a certain way, and the temptation to cut corners can be overwhelming in situations where you are not or cannot be in the office or when your systems fail to make the “usual” processes possible.

    Which is to say, perfection is simply not feasible.  What you want is (a) compliance at a very high level for routine handling and (b) no intentional misuse, but especially no external disclosures to those not within the circle.

    I should not leave a file at home when I know it contains confidential information, but I don’t panic when it happens because I know that there is virtually no likelihood that anyone else has access to it.

    I feel this way for Pence, Trump and Biden.  That’s why the Luckovich cartoon is so accurate.  Inadvertent mishandling is way different from intentionally flouting NARA standards.

  128. 128.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Baud: Depends on the podcast.  Podcasts like the Medias Touch, Legal AF, Daily Beans, Jack Podcast etc., are all essentially news/analysis programs focussed on Jan 6/MAL and the latest legal developments (especially political ones) in the US.  And they sometimes break stories (or at least are the first to report/signal boost them, even before mainstream news programs do).  I’m sure there are plenty of podcasts who do the same for environmental issues, National Security, Abortion etc.

  129. 129.

    Soprano2

    @Roger Moore: Eh, it kind of depends. Here they mostly put snow plows and hoppers on the dump trucks they already have; we don’t have much equipment that’s dedicated only to snow removal. But still your point is valid for places that only get that much snow once every few years, because the expense of buying the plow blades, salt and chemicals is not incidental, plus training drivers to plow is an expense too.

  130. 130.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Baud: You are probably right, especially considering most Normies or casual Dem/Progressives have little appetite for consuming news the way we do.

  131. 131.

    Soprano2

    @lowtechcyclist: It’s so crazy. I’m sure many of us could look online and find five or six young, fresh voices that they could hire, but instead they go with old geezers (and I say that as someone who is turning 62 next month). Why aren’t they finding new voices rather than going back to old ones?

  132. 132.

    Baud

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Thanks. But those sound very specialized.  I think we need a general news source that covers a wide range of topics in a way that respects the liberal viewpoint, unlike the NYT for example.

    As always, I’d also like a pony.

  133. 133.

    Soprano2

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I agree, that “every social media site is actually a public square covered by the First Amendment” argument is super-dumb. You have a right to speak, but you don’t have a right to force people to listen to your speech or to publish your speech.

  134. 134.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Geminid:

    A lot of people get their news from the evening network news shows. Or the hourly radio news. I listen to the latter and I think that’s actually.a good way to keep informed.

    Yup. The old school network newscasts get I believe twice the viewers of the cable celebs, including Fox. MSNBC doesn’t even really do non-political news anymore. I always say Normies get their news while waiting for the weather and sports while they’re getting the kids out the door, or driving to work or making dinner.

    @UncleEbeneezer: There is that. Even the O’Bros got very Bernie/Warren/Squad curious. It was kind of amusing to listen over the years as their own focus groups and polling and then election results would pull them back to the pragmatism of that guy with the funny name they owe their careers to.

  135. 135.

    Soprano2

    @Roger Moore: That’s really not what I meant, that they think a law was broken. They’re always acting like every media organization has an obligation to carry whatever right-wingers want to listen to regardless of whether it makes money or not, so I figure they’ll try to claim that there is a law that requires DirecTv to carry a news channel even though it loses them money. They honestly believe that the only reason more people don’t support what they want to do is because their speech is being suppressed.

  138. 138.

    Soprano2

    @WaterGirl: Yeah, it’s good to have more information, and this makes it easier to understand why the cause of death was “undiagnosed neuropsychiatric brain disease” – they didn’t find any substance in his body that could explain the behavior that several people observed, so they decided he had some kind of psychotic break I guess. It has the autopsy report too, I haven’t looked at that yet. All the names of people they talked to are redacted, but I can figure out who the roommates are. It looks like they probably talked to several homeless people, too.

  139. 139.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Miss Bianca: I was just reacting to his own words, “my first few months on the job in the Senate”. That’s how I read them. Apparently I was wrong.

    But the point still stands. Having experience with classified documents, it’s really hard for me to understand how documents end up in a home or an unsecured office after you’re done reading them. But it’s obvious there’s a certain amount of sloppiness at that level. When dealing with large volumes of materials, somebody is not checking that all the classified stuff got locked up. It seems to be not uncommon that classified pages get into the unclassified papers.

    Which is appalling. But not totally surprising.

    I haven’t heard anything about the classification level of the stuff found in Biden’s and Pence’s papers. If it’s CONFIDENTIAL, the lowest level, I could somewhat understand the sloppiness. Even in the fairly careful environments I worked in, CONFIDENTIAL documents were not closely tracked and it was more or less on the honor system that you protected them.

    But when you get up to the TS/SCI level, those were very tightly controlled, and every page was tracked as well as every minute the document was outside of the safe and who was looking at it.

  140. 140.

    Barbara

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I think it’s pretty simple to understand that members of Congress are only in Washington D.C. a fraction of the time that they are actually working.  Information below the level of top secret or SCI gets couriered all the time, I would imagine, or at least to specific vetted locations.  I am just not surprised at this.

  141. 141.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    I haven’t heard anything about the classification level of the stuff found in Biden’s and Pence’s papers. If it’s CONFIDENTIAL, the lowest level, I could somewhat understand the sloppiness

    IIRC one document among the Biden papers has been ID’d as having a higher level of classification (Top Secret?). I’ve seen speculation that a lot of what they [ETA: Pence and Biden] had was “The Vice President’s daily schedule”, which is classified for obvious reasons up until the given day actually starts, and then is technically classified public information. Ex POTUS and Veeps request them as part of writing their inevitable books

  142. 142.

    Roger Moore

    @Bill Arnold: ​
     

    Denel NTW-20

    It looks like the perfect gun for the person who wants to attack the power grid. Though since it’s a 20mm, it has to be registered as a destructive device rather than an ordinary firearm, so ATF will know about it. In that sense, it’s better to get one of the many .50 BMG rifles, since they are treated as rifles and won’t require notifying the feds.

  143. 143.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t mind Progressive podcasters being highly critical of Dems and pushing them as far as possible so long as at the end of the day I know they are still loyal Dems.  The O’bros can be hard on Dems, but they put their money, time and effort into organizing to elect Dems and never in a million years would suggest people vote third party or not vote.  I also appreciate that they are willing to be honest with their listeners about the realities of politics and necessity of compromise.  Even during all the bickering about BBB they consistently said “Push for $6T, but be aware that we probably won’t get that, if anything” and regularly reminded everyone that Manchin/Sinema held ALL THE LEVERAGE.  Dems couldn’t force them to do anything and kicking them out of the party would only have ruined everything.

  144. 144.

    Roger Moore

    @UncleEbeneezer: ​
     

    Roughly half of the Liberal/Progressive audience wants programming that consistently shits on Dems.

    I don’t think it’s that many. It’s just that the people who feel that way are very vocal and very online, so it seems like there are a lot of them. They also get a lot of boosting by the media and the right, who love the “liberals in disarray” framing. This leads to an important more general point: don’t confuse how much you hear a particular POV with how popular it is.

  146. 146.

    Roger Moore

    @Barbara: ​
     
    An important point is that the Trump thing may well have started with inadvertent taking of documents. I can easily imagine Trump just shoving everything in the White House Residence into boxes, classified and unclassified. The real wrongdoing comes from his repeated refusal to return documents when he was notified he had them and his lawyers’ false declaration they had performed a diligent search that found everything.

  147. 147.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Roger Moore:

    also, his weird fetish for the KJU letters (even making allowances for his intellectual and psychological weakness(es), I can’t believe the buffoon thinks those make him look good!) and the Macron file  (he’s an old gossip and probably really jealous of Macron) suggest intent.

  152. 152.

    Paul in KY

    @Bill Arnold: I bet the 20mm version really kicks hard. I would not want to fire that version! I’d be terrible aiming it, as I would be flinching as I pulled the trigger

     

    Plus the ammo is probably $80 per round.

  153. 153.

    Soprano2

    @UncleEbeneezer: I also like hearing from the O’Bros because they’ve done so much of this stuff personally. They worked in the WH, they’ve been in campaigns, they’ve been involved with negotiating with people in Congress at least a little bit, so they’re talking from some experience. It’s kind of bracing sometimes to hear how they talk about this stuff. I also like the podcast where one of them does focus groups of voters in swing states, it’s pretty revealing of how other people think. It can be maddening, but people in politics have to know about this stuff in order to get elected.

  155. 155.

    Paul in KY

    @Barbara: I had a big COMSEC vault and also a 2 drawer safe in my office when I was with USAF. I hated dealing with classified anything.

  156. 156.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Soprano2: their experience is what makes their tendency over the last few years to get romantic about political fads and shiny objects so frustrating, pfeiffer being the exception

    they can also, even now, be childishly snarky about Biden

     

    I wish the transcripts of the wilderness were available. They would be enlightening in some of the conversations here,

  160. 160.

    Mo MacArbie

    @Hilbertsubspace: Funny you should say that. Pull your old books out, if you still have them, and check out the timeline. The first instance of someone strapping a machine gun on was…2023

    They didn’t envision the prices though. Add a zero to everything.

  161. 161.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Soprano2: Very. told my wife we were 20 minutes from emergency surgery.

    Lost power again this AM.No big deal but welcome to the Ozarks.

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