They know these non-stop show trials reflect badly on them, both the individual members & the GOP as a whole (not to mention wasting time & resources that could be of far better use elsewhere, because the GOP hasn’t cared about anything outside their own clan for at least fifty years)… but it feels so good in the moment!
Another GOP Biden ‘informant.’ Another indictment and link to Russia.https://t.co/Xyc8PvxVI6
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) February 22, 2024
… This isn’t even the first time we’ve learned that a person has been indicted after the GOP cited his claims. Nor is it the first time a person has been linked to Russian intelligence after the GOP leaned on their version of events.
The cast of characters Republicans have sought out to substantiate President Biden’s purported corruption over the years has come to include half a dozen convicted and accused criminals, as well as multiple people the U.S. government has linked to Russia, corruption and subverting American democracy.
The most recent example is Alexander Smirnov, whom the government said last week had invented the claim that Biden and his son Hunter took $5 million bribes. That allegation was promoted far and wide by Republicans, many of whom treated it as fact.
The government then said this week that Smirnov has “extensive foreign ties, including, most troublingly and by his own account, contact with foreign intelligence services, including Russian intelligence agencies, and has had such contacts recently.”
The news comes seven months after the indictment of another GOP source was unsealed. Republicans had conspiratorially suggested that a key witness who claimed to have damaging information about Hunter Biden had mysteriously gone missing. It turned out the witness was Gal Luft, who the government said had skipped bail after his indictment for alleged arms trafficking and foreign lobbying violations was handed down months earlier…
Rooting out corruption sometimes involves dealing with unsavory characters. Some of the legal actions against Trump, for instance, have leaned on the testimony of his convicted former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen.
But thus far, Republicans have very little actual evidence against the Bidens to show for their efforts. And when your most-touted claim is apparently falling apart in spectacular fashion, against the backdrop of the aforementioned, it sure risks looking like you’re desperate for anything to grab hold of — no matter where it comes from.
COMER IN MAY: This is a very crucial piece of our investigation
COMER NOW: He wasn’t an important part of our investigation https://t.co/b2ThXIlifG pic.twitter.com/itHwsFvKg3
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 22, 2024
Don’t think most people get the magnitude of the Hunter Biden/Smirnov revelations. One big ongoing Russian operation from 2015 until today. Basically confirms what was always obvious, “Hunter Biden laptop” was part of the same operation. https://t.co/m1fuUs0vR3 via @TPM
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 21, 2024
Josh Marshall, at TPM, on “A Bigger Story Than You Can Possibly Imagine”:
… Let’s review recent events. First came the news that prosecutors in special counsel David Weiss’s office had decided that the confidential FBI informant who had been one of Biden’s top accusers had been lying and that they were charging him for lying to the FBI. That next step is critical. Informants lie to prosecutors all the time. They seldom get charged. It’s one standard to decide your informant isn’t telling the truth and/or won’t hold up at trial. It’s an entirely different one to think that you can prove they knowingly lied beyond a reasonable doubt. Clearly investigators felt they had caught Alexander Smirnov dead to rights. Yesterday came news that Smirnov has admitted that he got his false stories from Russian intelligence officers. Smirnov isn’t just at the center of the DOJ investigation, he’s at the center of what we have to generously call James Comer’s House inquiry, the premise for Joe Biden’s increasingly wobbly impeachment.
And on top of that, Hunter Biden’s lawyers are now claiming, as part of their effort to force new disclosures by Weiss’s office, that it was new or newly specific accusations from Smirnov which scuttled the plea deal which blew up as it was being agreed to in a federal court room. That point about the plea deal remains an accusation and obviously an interested one from Biden’s attorneys. But given what we’ve learned over the last week from the prosecution side — the folks who were repeatedly duped and took actions on the basis of disinformation directly from Russian intelligence — it seems to me highly likely that it’s true…
For years I’ve continued saying, against what seems like the unified thinking of every reporter, editorialist and credentialed smart person, that the fabled “Hunter Biden Laptop” was obviously the product of a Russian influence operation. The story was absurd on its face. Somehow Hunter Biden decided in a drugged-up fugue that he needed to take his laptop to a computer repair shop. He then forgot about it. The legally blind owner of the repair shop decided to crack it open and look at the files (as one does, of course) and then somehow managed to get the contents to Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon.
Sounds totally legit, as they say!…
Are we really supposed to believe that these Russian operations, which kicked off in 2015 and continued into 2017, were going full force through 2018 and 2019 with Rudy Giuliani and continue right up until today somehow played no role in the unbelievable story of Hunter Biden’s laptop? Of course they did.
In talking with David Kurtz before I started writing this David noted that we can’t really say Republicans and MAGA Republicans were duped. And that’s 100% right. The evolution of U.S. politics, egged along, skid-greased by helpful Russians, created a context in U.S. politics where these folks didn’t really have to be duped. The Russians under Putin are the good guys. If they’re making sure we have the most current information where’s the harm in that?
The real issue, as I note above, is the reporters, editorialists and commentators, who vouched for and credited this whole edifice of lies and bullshit. Yes, they guffawed when James Comer came forward yet again with more revelations that never quite panned out. But they didn’t give up hope. They were always waiting for the next revelation. Comer and his Republican colleagues hadn’t provided “hard evidence” yet but there sure was a lot of smoke.
This entire thing has been based on Russian plants and intelligence operations from the start. Every bit of it. It’s been obvious. And yet, well … they’re all dupes. Somehow almost a decade after this whole thing started we’re shocked to see, wow, Weiss’s office was being led around by another cat’s paw of the Russian intelligence services. We’re shocked. But why are we shocked? Every last person among the serious people of the nation’s capital and the sprawling thing called elite received opinion has egg on their face. And it’s not even clear they fully realize it yet.
it is honestly really hilarious how almost all of the most lurid resistlib talking points end up being true https://t.co/xOWgOplcdM
— Reconstructionist (@un_a_valeable) February 21, 2024
A note on the roots of the GOP addiction, from Mr. Charles P. Pierce’s weekly subscriber post:
When the news came down this week that Alexander Smirnov, whose charges against Hunter Biden and Hunter Biden’s father formed the basis of the snipe hunt that is the House “impeachment inquiry,” had been busted by the FBI because he allegedly made his whole tale up, probably with the help of the Russian intelligence apparatus, it was a no good, very bad day for Republican politicians, and for many members of our elite political media. Some of them gobbled up the bogus information that Smirnov laundered through the likes of Rep. James Comer because they believed it. More of them gobbled it up because scandals, even fake ones, are fun to cover. Another faction gobbled it up because they feel some vestigial moral obligation to lend credibility to both sides on everything. These are the most dangerous ones.
But all of them shared one fatal intellectual flaw — they declined for whatever reason not to entertain the notion that human laundromats like Comer, and House Judiciary chairman Jim Jordan, either didn’t know what they were talking about, or didn’t care to know what they were talking about. (The third alternative, that they knew they were passing along was disinformation, and that they did so anyway, is the most sinister.) There was an almost criminal lack of professionalism in so much of the coverage and now it has come a’cropper in the most embarrassing public way possible.
So far, the congressional suckers in this farce are sticking to their story. They don’t have a lot of choice in the matter. They’ve ridden the train too far to get off now. They can wait and see if the little momentum they have peters out on its own. They can hope that Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice slow-plays the prosecution of Mr. Smirnov until everybody forgets this week’s news. They can hope that the former president* becomes president*-elect and scrambles the country’s politics forever. But they can’t come off the hunt without angering their party’s irrational base while looking ridiculous to the rest of us and, possibly, putting themselves in legal jeopardy.
What is most interesting is how closely they followed the directions into what James Carville once called “the puke funnel” during the Republican pursuit of President Bill Clinton which, like the pursuit of the current president, began even before his hand had come off the Bible. Things were so much simpler, then. The ratfcking was all primarily domestic. Instead of Russian spooks, there was an incredible passel of poolroom liars from Arkansas doing business with conservative lawyers and activists in Washington. (Several of whom are d/b/a Never Trumpers of the Bulwark variety.) Instead of Comer and Jordan, we paid the salaries of Kenneth Starr and his bed-sniffing yahoos. But the game plan was the same — raise enough smoke in the far hinterlands to get the attention of the elite political press, find enough low-rent crooks who will say anything you want them to say, find some willing congresscritters to carry the ball forward in Washington, and watch the red lights ignite on a million cameras.
It was supposed to work this time, too…
GOP now openly admitting that they blew $41M — in their own salaries alone — pursuing a no-evidence of impeachment, all for naught. https://t.co/hFfd28a5fK
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) February 23, 2024
Baud
That last tweet is basically an RNC press release. Nothing Joe Biden has done smells or looks bad.
karen marie
Shit like this pisses me off – “very little actual evidence against the Bidens.”
“Very little” means there is some. There is NO “actual evidence.”
Mai Naem mobile
Like Nancy Pelosi said with the GOP, all roads lead to pooty pooh Putin.
Mai Naem mobile
I remember reading an article about the Benghazi investigation and how it was extended way beyond any useful information being collected or analyzed and how the house staff on the investigation were so bored they were sending each other shopping tips on buying pink guns. That’s what our tax payer money was being used for.
moonbat
When Jeffries takes over the House, which I expect to happen next year, I think he should open an internal inquiry into why so many congresscritters seem to take Russian disinformation campaigns as God’s truth.
MattF
I expect that when the truth sinks in (as it will, eventually) the various guilty and very guilty and very very guilty parties will move on, and we will be treated to a large number of disappearances. As in ‘Whatever happened to what’s his name… ‘. It sure would be nice if there were consequences for treason, but I don’t expect it. I’ve linked before to Jen Rubin’s current column, here it is again.
Cacti
Given Smirnov’s Israeli citizenship, I’m more than a little suspicious of Mossad’s fingerprints being on this as well. Especially considering how much Bibi prefers to have Republicans in office.
WaterGirl
@Cacti: Hey Cacti, did you see my reply to you earlier today?
Trying to reach you by email – can you send me an email so I can reply?
watergirl at balloon-juice.com
JPL
@Cacti: Thanks for the comment, since I did not know that. I haven’t read a lot of the information about the spy.
Lapassionara
Whenever I consider the web of lies and deceit that come from the Republican side of the house, I shake my head at the gullibility of the American public. How can anybody think that the Republicans care about anything other than their own personal aggrandizement. They were once considered the “daddy party,” sober-sided and careful of the public fisc. They supposedly had their fingers on the pulse of the “moral majority.” Now, their party leader is a known womanizer, under indictment for a host of crimes, and has probably disclosed top secret information to the nation’s enemies. If this were the script of a movie, it would be considered so improbable that the writers would be fired. That it is our reality and could be even more so after November 2024 is to horrible to contemplate.
Thor Heyerdahl
That headline on the Newsmax chyron that “Dan Goldman has lost the Russian plot and his sanity” – reminded me of when I was in a diner in Fairbanks, AK last June and they had Newsmax playing. I had never heard it live before and it was surreal to hear the firehose of extreme bullshit in person.
I was a bit concerned about a possible case of food poisoning due to the owner’s apparent disconnect from reality. Fortunately, my lunch was digested normally.
(And wiki tells me that it’s Rep Goldman’s birthday tomorrow Feb 26.)
gene108
@Mai Naem mobile:
Discovering Secretary Clinton used a private email server was worth every penny to Republicans. Republicans haven’t participated in any meaningful Congressional investigations since probably Watergate. They’ve all been to find dirt on Democrats.
dmsilev
It’s really quite impressive that the Republicans can’t even come up with some plausible lies about why Joe Biden should be impeached. Guess that’s what happens after a few generations of selective ‘can win primaries in hard-red districts’ breeding. Clearly there’s a lot of genetic recessives coming to the front. Could I suggest perhaps looking into some Republidoodle crosses? They won’t shed and will probably be a step up in intelligence.
WaterGirl
@JPL: Times of Israel
piratedan
@gene108: It does kind of bring to mind just what in the fuck do they do while in office don’t it? Although perhaps it’s a small blessing that they are such a mess or there would even be more shit to undo.
Jay C
@Thor Heyerdahl:
Yeah, I saw that too: and was proud to recall that Dan Goldman is my Congressman: and VERY disinclined to take sh*t from Republicans (I’d like to see him and “Little” Jared Moskowitz heading the Committee looking into the Russian disinformation campaign).
lowtechcyclist
@MattF:
Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution defines treason rather narrowly. For one thing, while by any reasonable colloquial definition, Russia is an enemy of the U.S., there’s nothing official that defines it as one in the eyes of the U.S. government. Without that, doing Russia’s bidding ≠ adhering to an enemy of the United States, giving it aid and comfort.
Doc Sardonic
@Cacti: I personally believe we have as big a Mossad problem as we have a Russian intelligence issue and have had since the creation of Israel.
Doc Sardonic
@lowtechcyclist: Yes, but espionage can be charged much more broadly, and carries similar penalties upon conviction.
Kristine
::reading Rubin’s column::
That photo’s a prize. Jordan looks like they just tightened the strait jacket and Comer looks like the relative waiting for the commitment papers.
Harrison Wesley
Fucking Republicans, how do they work?
Odie Hugh Manatee
The presstitutes have had a grand time writing bullshit stories with the fake information from Russia that the Republicans were providing them. Who cares if they took down Biden and his son, destroying innocent men and the story is later found to be bullshit? The presstitutes would have just blathered on about how sad it was that this happened to good innocent men while ignoring the prominent roles that they played in feeding the bullshit to the American public as if it was fact.
Freedom of the press is wasted on our billionaire corporate media and their story-writing courtiers. They frequently abuse that freedom and deliberately lie to the American public while presenting themselves as the purveyors of truth. The truth doesn’t matter to them unless it hurts Democrats or helps Republicans.
Tony Jay
Sorry, but not good enough.
The ‘Big Story’ here, and everywhere else around the world where the production of ‘News’ has become a strictly “For the profit and edification of our owners” enterprise, is that absolutely no one involved was duped, or tricked, or over credulous.
Whether it’s Joe Biden’s age, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Hillary Clinton’s E-Mails, Jeremy Corbyn’s tolerance of anti-Semitism, or any of the other thousand bullshit News Media narratives pursued, promulgated and mainstreamed by entire buildings full of professional journalists, the simple and chilling fact staring everyone in the face is that everyone involved knew full-well that it’s all entirely made up bullshit with its roots in the Global Right’s long running disinformation campaign against our democracies. They knew it, and that’s why they pushed these stories so hard, and why they’ll never, ever admit that what they’re doing is smuggling in weapons to be unleashed on our own civilian populations as part of a highly destructive information war, the end result of which is going to be the death of democratic government.
They’re not dupes. They’re operatives.
What we do about that, well, that’s outside my pay grade.
Gretchen
That laptop story was always absurd. Apple makes it impossible for anyone else to work on- non-standard fasteners, things soddered together, won’t sell parts to outsiders, invalidate warranty if anyone else touches them. All these reporters have iPhones and know this, but choose to believe that Hunter was too addled to take it to one of the many Apple stores in LA, but not too addled to carry it on a cross country trip and find a non Apple repair place that would try to fix it. It never made any sense even on the surface
Baud
@Gretchen:
What I don’t get is why would anyone, especially someone with money like Hunter, repair their laptop rather than buy a new one?
Soprano2
Didn’t Adam tell us years ago that the “Hunter Biden laptop” was a Russian op? Makes me wonder if Marshall reads this blog sometimes. I’ve always thought that story was hinky, it made no sense.
zhena gogolia
OMG, I didn’t realize that Tucker Carlson made a video showing how beautiful a Moscow supermarket was to show that sanctions are not working. I just started this, and it’s horrifying but funny.
glc
Eric Topol talks to Michelle Monje about long covid.
Personally I’m not a fan of podcasts, or even transcripts of podcasts (using Safari with Reader View the transcript comes up as a perfectly readable document). On the other hand for those who are, this seems worthwhile.
Roberto el oso
@Doc Sardonic: slight pushback … there’s no doubt that Mossad spies on us in the same way that our various intelligence agencies spy on Israel. But, unlike the KGB/FSB, Mossad has a long history of working with the US and is responsible for much intelligence/insight which we would not have gotten on our own.
Marmot
Got bigger? Or got destroyed?
Another Scott
As usual, deadlines focus the mind. TheHill.com:
Cheers,
Scott.
Chris Johnson
@Tony Jay: Yup.
Y’know, one thing is to say it. Fuck the pay grade: nobody’s paid enough to deal with this bullshit :)
They’re not dupes. They’re operatives, or at best, getting ordered about by operatives and pretending not to know it.
moonbat
@Marmot:
If we’re going to start pointing out English words that have different meanings in different contexts, we’ll be here all night.
Chris Johnson
@zhena gogolia: One of the most starkly obvious operatives. I’ve been convinced for years that Carlson is in fact a cut-out for Russian spies. He’s smart and ambitious enough to do what’s needed, he’s hungry to be given the big fake jobs like President, and he’s easy to torture just by teasing him with the reality… that he will never, ever get that.
He scores high on the ‘constantly trying to invoke civil war and race war’ o meter, too.
Back in the day, some of his movements would work very well as ‘delivering intelligence between Putin and ‘president’ Trump’. He was in a position to be a go-between.
Tony Jay
@Chris Johnson:
Said it before, I’ll say it again. Every single successful coup, counter-coup or revolution in history made seizing control of the newspapers and TV studios a Day One priority.
This isn’t anything new. Or surprising. Or even hard to understand. Of course the corporate elite made buying up all the outlets through which our populations are informed about important things a big priority. It’s the most obvious move in the world. Fuck, it’s exactly what I’d do, and I’ve never even thought too deeply about how to seize power over an entire country.
Bill Arnold
@Soprano2:
At least as much to the point, Hunter Biden material (emails, etc) was being talked about/offered by Russia-affiliated figures by late 2019.. IIRC by Ukrainian organized crime, which at the time was Russia-controlled. (One of Russia’s hooks into Ukraine.) It was obvious enough all of 2020 that a late-election-cycle Hunter Biden surprise was planned that the press was primed to reject such stories, including the absolutely ludicrous “laptop” story.
(Does the FBI actually have the “laptop”? Keyboard debris contains DNA.)
Mr. Bemused Senior
Whew, lucky for us.
smith
@Bill Arnold: I’ve read that if they have anything it’s a hard drive, not a whole laptop. It doesn’t matter because the chain of custody is so hideously befouled that anything on it is useless as evidence.
WaterGirl
@Marmot: That’s not proven yet, but I surely hope that Hunter Biden’s attorneys are correct about that. Maybe all this persecution of Hunter Biden could go away. I swear they are trying to break Hunter’s sobriety and they hope to break Joe Biden as a result.
Republicans now are so craven that it seems they have no humanity left.
dmsilev
@Another Scott: According to various outlets, the Freedom Caucus is throwing (another) tantrum, demanding all sorts of right-wing poison pills be added to the spending bills. Whether that ends up meaning anything in the long run, who can say. I guess we find out in a week.
MomSense
@Cacti:
I’ve been thinking the same thing.
Tony Jay
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
I said I hadn’t thought deeply.
You know any really shallow countries looking for a benevolent dictator? Asking for a friend.
SteveinPHX
@WaterGirl: I think you’re right. If they could only get him to “fall off the wagon” then a whole new line of attack would start. No mercy would be shown.
BretH
My Republican Congressman in the VA 5th district has earned my respect for sure. Denver Riggleman has no fs to give about the state of the GOP today, the internal threats facing us, and the various Hunter/Joe Biden BS being peddled:
https://twitter.com/RepRiggleman/status/1760090391146066378
Tried to stop by his wife’s whiskey distillery Thursday evening but they closed at 6 😕
sdhays
Damn it, this is why we can’t have nice things.
Gretchen
@Baud: yes. There were any number of things a wealthy person would do that and they waved the objections away with, well, he was high. High people don’t go to extra trouble to do things.
Gretchen
@WaterGirl: yes. All the attacks and the nude photos that would have humiliated him and made him relapse or even hurt himself which would destroy Biden. Just evil.
Tony Jay
@sdhays:
I jest. In truth I’m waiting for Baud to take the oath of office before I make my move, just so I can see the look of Oh No, Fuck, Really? on his face when my troops storm the Inauguration.
Timing is everything in comedy.
Doc Sardonic
@Roberto el oso: Mossad has a long history of playing both sides against the middle in the US, yes they share intelligence but mostly that which is in their interest and it has gotten worse under Bibi. That is one of the reasons I have long favored cutting off aid to the Israelis.
Sister Golden Bear
@Baud:
If the laptop were under AppleCare’s warranty, then it might make sense (e.g. if the screen failed), but you’d have to take to an Apple Store, or an Apple-certified shop. There wouldn’t be any reason to take it somewhere else.
FWIW, even it’s out of warranty, it’s still potentially worth repairing. I once had a 4- or 5-year-old MacBook, with blown speakers, screen problems and some other issues. Apple offered to repair everything for a $575 flat fee — half the cost of a replacement. Plus, it turned out they just pulled the hard drive and put into a different fully-refurbished MacBook, which run fine for a couple more years.
I suspect Apple mostly broke even on the deal, but it was great to building customer loyalty.
Bill Arnold
There is reporting that the “FBI seized the laptop from Mac Isaac” in Dec 2019.
I have found zero reports that it has been forensically shown to be Hunter Biden’s actual machine, e.g. using DNA from the keyboard. (Or fan? That would get a bit warm, except for the intake.)
SFAW
@Tony Jay:
Catch him with his pants
offdown, so to speak?Ksmiami
@WaterGirl: hence why they need to be destroyed as a party
SFAW
@Marmot:
Got destroyed.
Josh’s people sometimes lapse into KoolKidSpeak (for example, “So-and-so dropped a spending bill” — does that mean the bill was dropped in the laps of an unsuspecting public? Or withdrew it?), it can get annoying.
SFAW
@WaterGirl:
No “seems” about it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@moonbat:
Now are you talking about the night that lasts up to midnight and then it’s morning or are you talking about the night that is night until it is light enough to say that it’s morning?
Or…. ;)
Villago Delenda Est
@Doc Sardonic: Just ask the Rosenbergs.
Villago Delenda Est
@Odie Hugh Manatee: My nym. Again and again.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Hoodie
House impeachment goons peddling Russian disinformation. Some of the same guys holding up aid to Ukraine. Prior instances of Russian involvement in the NRA. McCarthy joking about congress members taking Russian money. Sure, they may just be some dimwitted partisan dupes eager to find anything to smear Biden. Another possibility is that these guys are owned by the Russians and are directly doing Putin’s bidding. If it quacks, it might actually be a duck.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony Jay:
Sorry, we’re really shallow but we’re clearly looking as hard as we can for a malevolent dictator.
Gretchen
@Sister Golden Bear: but Apple makes it almost impossible for an outside vendor to repair an Apple product. They have special fastenings and make everything so it doesn’t quite fit with outside parts, and void the warranty if anyone touches it. You can’t even change your own battery. And all these reporters have iPhones and know this, but they ran with it anyway.
TriassicSands
Comer and the Republicans make me think of the Jimmy Breslin book title: “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”
Only brought up to date and rephrased to apply to the 2024 GOP it would be: “The Gang That Couldn’t Even Load The Effing Gun.”
Subtitle: “And, In Fact, Keep Pointing It At Themselves And Pulling The Trigger — Lucky It Wasn’t Loaded!”
(The “Wasn’t Loaded” part refers to the cluelessness of tens of millions of American voters. Even outrageous behavior doesn’t hurt the GOP if their voters are either too stupid to notice or actually approve.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@SFAW:
He’ll be wearing chaps without pants at his inauguration.
Easy access!
TriassicSands
Another way to put that could be to say: Lies don’t matter to them as long as (they think) it contributes to the bottom line.
The question there would be, Do they care more about the Republicans or profitability? This is America, where profitability often, usually, always, (choose one) “trumps” everything else. (In that sentence the use of the word “trump” is, I think, especially fitting.)
In organizations as large as media conglomerates, I would imagine there are differing priorities both within the organizations and among them. I’d argue that what matters most is the end result — Q: Does it assist the Republicans? A: Yes. — and not the motivations.
Geminid
@BretH: Have you followed the VA05 Republican primary fight, state Senator John McGuire vs. Bob No-Good? Cardinal News has put up several articles about it. I think McGuire has a real shot.
Redistricting moved my county (Greene) into Abigail Spanberger’s 7th CD, but for two years Bob Good was the worst Representative I ever had by far.
McGuire would probably be tougher for a Democrat to beat, but I still hope he wins because Good is just nasty; makes my skin crawl.
TriassicSands
WaterGirl, while I agree with you that Republicans are definitely “craven,” my preference is to describe them as “depraved.”
Their utter fear of Trump speaks to their cowardice, but they are much, much worse that simply cowardly. They are morally and politically corrupt and perverted.
They have boarded the same train with some of history’s great villains and tyrants. So far, they have been constrained to some extent by laws and norms, but the great concern is that should Trump be re-elected and the GOP controls the Congress, those laws and norms will be abandoned.
Citizen Alan
Oddly, that was not an obstacle to impeaching Alejancro Mayorkas.
glc
More covid stuff.
Protection via prior infection (JN 1). Starts high (80%) and drops rapidly over a year (avg. 1.8%).
Vaccine effectiveness (updated vaccine).
Gin & Tonic
Feeling mortality this evening upon hearing that my sophomore-year college roommate died suddenly yesterday. We were actually friends before college, then ended up at the same place without knowing it, and spent a year together in a 2-person suite. We remained close even a little past graduation, then, as such things happen, life drifted us apart. We settled on opposite coasts, and contact was very sporadic at best. But there are/were a lot of good memories, and this is a gut punch. Sorry to be maudlin.
Citizen Alan
@Lapassionara:
Is it really gullibility when you’re talking about people who actively seek out liars who promise to tell them lies that comfort them and prop up their bigotrie?
Old School
@Gin & Tonic: My condolences.
Lyrebird
@Gin & Tonic: Whoa, G&T, that’s awful, and I offer you and your friend’s family heartfelt condolences.
ColoradoGuy
There’s no daylight between the GOP and the FSB/KGB. I think we can take as a given that the GOP is an arm of Russian intelligence.
Think of Grover Norquist’s promise to “drown the Federal Government in a bathtub”. Which nation would most benefit from a leaderless USA on the verge of civil war?
Eyeroller
@Gretchen: I have opened and repaired a Mac laptop (one well past warranty). Anybody can buy the screwdrivers required though they aren’t something you can usually get at Lowes. Just very small pentalobe screws. It absolutely does void the warranty, of course, but without paying for Apple Care that’s only 90 days.
azlib
@Gretchen: There are non-Apple repair shops. I have used one here in Scottsdale. I do agree Apple makes it harder to do thitd party repairs, but it is not impossible.
Bill Arnold
@ColoradoGuy:
Nitpicking: that would be the GRU and SVR. (The FSB does not operate in the USA (though it would deal with Americans in Russia and some neighboring countries), and the KGB no longer exists.)
Shalimar
@Marmot: If I recall correctly, Hunter Biden’s attorneys thought they had a deal that would wrap up all the investigations. DoJ attorneys said at the last minute that the Burisma investigation would continue, and that is why the deal fell apart. So that does fit with Smirnov providing last minute fake info that gave them new leads.
StringOnAStick
@Gin & Tonic: My sympathies, that’s a hard thing to experience.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
That’s hard. Sincere condolences.
AlaskaReader
@Bill Arnold: Wait, …what?
The US State Department disagrees with that statement:
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1572
Also:
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1962
And who can forget the Ghost Story spies comms which were run into and out of the FSB’s Center.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-spies-operation-ghost-stories-fbi-declassified/
The FSB has no limit on where it runs operations and operatives, they operate all over the world, including here in the USA.
Subsole
Said it before. Will say it again.
If America remains a democracy, it will do so despite these worthless media pukes. Not because of them.
I hope that’s the only thing anyone remembers about them. And I hope this nation never lets them forget it.
BretH
@Geminid: Curiously I have seen zilch about that race. I just assumed Good would continue to fester in the 5th next term without a Republican challenger ( since I can’t see a Democrat ever winning here)
@GnT that’s sad for sure. I’m probably a little younger and friends and acquaintances are having health problems that make me count every day here as a blessing.
Chris T.
@SFAW:
If you think that’s bad, try “tabled”: as a verb, it means “put out (on the table) for discussion” and also “removed (from the table), no more discussion”!
Chris T.
@Gretchen:
I’ve replaced the battery in my (long out of support) MacBookPro.
Had to saw it out of the case: dissolve glue partly with an alcohol mix and then use dental floss. It came out well enough though, and the replacement fixed the issue.
I need to do it again now because the replacement battery has now swelled up as much as the original, though.
Chris Johnson
@ColoradoGuy: Let me reiterate that ‘civil war’ is and has always (post-Clinton) been made up in Russia and is a meme being pushed by Russians as hard as possible, both to justify Russian violence under the mask of citizens, and to establish in American minds the idea that we’re a doomed catastrophe waiting to explode and die.
America’s set up with THREE parts of government warring with each other, on purpose. America is founded on the assumption of this ongoing war of ideas.
It’s called fucking democracy.
Deal with it. Failure to become North Korea does not constitute ‘doom and civil war’. We’re not SUPPOSED to all think alike, we’re supposed to just barely get along, same with our governmental systems.