"Though he has almost no China background, Jared Kushner… is leading the US preparation for next week’s meeting." https://t.co/l83h6G8m6a
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) April 1, 2017
Per the NYTimes:
When President Trump welcomes President Xi Jinping of China to his palm-fringed Florida club for two days of meetings on Thursday, the studied informality of the gathering will bear the handiwork of two people: China’s ambassador to Washington and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
The Chinese ambassador, Cui Tiankai, has established a busy back channel to Mr. Kushner, according to several officials briefed on the relationship. The two men agreed on the club, Mar-a-Lago, as the site for the meeting, and the ambassador even sent Mr. Kushner drafts of a joint statement that China and the United States could issue afterward.
Mr. Kushner’s central role reflects not only the peculiar nature of this first meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi, but also of the broader relationship between the United States and China in the early days of the Trump administration. It is at once highly personal and bluntly transactional — a strategy that carries significant risks, experts said, given the economic and security issues that already divide the countries.
While Chinese officials have found Mr. Trump a bewildering figure with a penchant for inflammatory statements, they have come to at least one clear judgment: In Mr. Trump’s Washington, his son-in-law is the man to know…
China’s courtship of Mr. Kushner, which has coincided with the marginalization of the State Department in the Trump administration, reflects a Chinese comfort with dynastic links. Mr. Xi is himself a “princeling”: His father was Xi Zhongxun, a major figure in the Communist revolution who was later purged by Mao Zedong.…
“Since Kissinger, the Chinese have been infatuated with gaining and maintaining access to the White House,” said Evan S. Medeiros, a senior director for Asia in the Obama administration. “Having access to the president’s family and somebody they see as a princeling is even better.”…
If Trump can announce high-profile Chinese investments, he is willing to trade off U.S. interests. By @dandrezner https://t.co/lWxPNeZyt6
— Adam B. Kushner (@AdamBKushner) April 3, 2017
Did somebody mention Henry Kissinger? For those of you fortunate enough not to remember the Nixon White House: This is never a good omen. But according to the Washington Post:
Ahead of Thursday’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Trump administration is engaged in a relatively conventional process involving interagency teams debating the messaging, policies and priorities for the U.S.-China relationship. But separate and above that operation sits a key channel for high-level interactions between the White House and Chinese leadership, run by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The Kushner channel was established shortly after the election with the help of former secretary of state Henry Kissinger. In a series of meetings with top Chinese officials, Kushner and other Trump aides set the tone and broad agenda for the coming summit, well before the current policy process began. When Trump meets with Xi at Mar-a-Lago, the leaders could codify those early discussions, with huge implications for the United States, China and the Asia-Pacific region…
In mid-November, Kissinger met Kushner, national security adviser designate Michael Flynn and the president-elect at Trump Tower. Trump asked Kissinger to travel to Beijing and deliver a verbal message to Xi saying that everything was on the table in terms of bilateral cooperation. Kissinger met Xi in Beijing on Dec. 2, and Xi sent back a private reply conveying China’s wish to set up an early meeting of the two presidents…In the meetings, Yang laid out a list of Chinese requests. China wants the Trump administration to adopt its concept of “a new model of great power relations,” Xi’s proposal to avoid conflict and focus on cooperation. China also wants Trump to endorse Xi’s signature “One Belt, One Road” initiative, China’s massive regional infrastructure and development project. China also seeks U.S. noninterference in issues it considers core interests, including Taiwan, Tibet and its internal affairs.
In exchange, the Chinese are prepared to offer as-yet-unspecified investment proposals to help advance Trump’s domestic agenda of creating jobs. Kushner and Cui have kept in close communication and the Chinese leadership has come to rely on the Kushner channel, which was used to help arrange the coming summit…
Daniel Drezner, also at the Washington Post, responds — “The looming strategic disaster at Mar-a-Largo”:
… First of all, suddenly Tillerson’s odd decision to parrot Xi’s language on great power relationships makes sense. If this is what the Chinese want from the Trump administration, the White House appears eager to oblige. This is likely because Trump does not place a high value on words. U.S. allies in the region will be paying close attention, however.
Second of all, can someone please explain to Trump and Kushner that one of the ways that China can devalue its currency is by buying up American assets? A world where the U.S. simultaneously increases exports to China and foreign direct investment from China is next to impossible.
Third, and finally, a nascent grand strategy is becoming visible for the Trump administration, and it’s a rather disturbing one. The grand strategy is that the administration demonstrates a willingness to rent out its foreign policy to any interested investor. So long as Trump can proclaim some glossy, high-profile investments, he is willing to trade off U.S. interests in the Pacific Rim or Europe or wherever. Which means that countries such as China can have their way with Trump so long as they meet the minimum price, which is a few promised billions.
This is a dangerous and stupid game to play. Current shifts in foreign policy can have long-lasting effects; announcements of investments can be followed by non-implementation. It also guarantees that all of America’s allies in the Pacific Rim will gravitate closer to China than the United States.
I don’t mean to suggest that a new Cold War with China is a better outcome. It isn’t. I don’t want Peter Navarro running China policy either. I’m all for endorsing One Belt, One Road as a stabilizing move for Asia. But it is hard not to conclude that Trump and Kushner are spectacularly out of their depth on these issues. Worse, Trump displays no metacognition whatsoever: He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and probably never will. He and Kushner will therefore sell off core national interests and investments at cut-rate prices…
Murphy the Trickster God forgive me, but it’s probably just as well Ivanka got their young kids enrolled in elementary Mandarin language classes.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
rikyrah
Dolt45 destroyed TPP as a payoff to the Chinese. Period.
JMG
We’ll be lucky to still have Montana after these talks are over.
Major Major Major Major
Ten bucks says Trump calls him Xi like it’s his first name.
@rikyrah: my lefty friends were quite excited when this happened, because they are dumb.
satby
When I get depressed at the abject stupidity that brought us to this point I find it comforting in a crazy way to realize that the U.S.hasn’t cornered the entire market.
germy
Good Lord, what can't this young man do?
The middle east, china... and all this before breakfast.
NorthLeft12
Sorry, off topic, but some prescient comments from Dr. Martin Luther King fifty years ago;
Unfortunately, Deadbeat Donald and his band of criminals and racists are not likely to take these words to heart…even when they are from a Republican icon like Dr. King. [SNARK]
Old Broad in California
Good morning!
Iraq, then China. Glad to see that the imperial son in law is helping to keep the world safe. At least he’s out of D.C. for a while.
These people are so clueless.
schrodingers_cat
I suggest we get back to being a British colony, at least their royals have more practice and are less tacky.
MattF
The whole ‘dealing-with-princelings’ thing is very much in China’s political repertoire. And China, unlike Russia, has basically unlimited financial resources for dealing with all those fussy/greedy middlemen (and middlewomen). So I predict it will all go very smoothly.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: only if New York can go back to the Dutch.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Actually, Two Pump Chump Trump isn’t interested in knowing what he doesn’t know, which is worse.
To the grifter, knowledge is weakness, and could lead to missteps.
themann1086
Man, remember how Clinton saying nice things about Kissinger was proof that she was the War Candidate and Trump was the Peace Candidate? Glad we dodged that bullet!
hovercraft
Oh ye of little faith! Twitler is a great negotiator! Soon you won’t have to worry about enrolling and paying for the kiddies for Mandarin classes, all kids will be required to learn and speak the language of our new owners.
Don’t worry folks, this is a whole new level of winning, you’ve never seen such winning! Twitler told us that he’d be tough on China in a way that Obama never was or could be, and just look he’s scraped the TPP, and given China every indication that in exchange for a couple of positive headlines about Chinese investments, he’ll turn a blind eye to their regional aggression. WIN! Oh and he’ll deal with North Korea on his own, he doesn’t need the Chinese, he a great negotiator, what could possibly go wrong?
boatboy_srq
Don’t know which is more offensive: that the prospect of China using this opportunity to buy US support is real, or that Lord Dampnut is holding the event at his own private property and not a US site such as Camp David. Makes you wonder why Hair Furor moved into the WH in the first place.
Suzanne
@rikyrah: YES. I hate that protectionist streak in the GOP, and REALLY hate it in the Dems.
LAO
Just to keep the terminology correct — in the Trump Family Cartel, Kushner is the consigliere.
Which is defined as:
con·si·glie·re
ˌkônsēˈlye-re,kənsiɡlēˈērē/
noun
an adviser, especially to a crime boss.
schrodingers_cat
@boatboy_srq: Too purge it from black cooties or so he thinks.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
These are the same dumb people who like Twitler himself hated NAFTA and wanted it scrapped. Twitler himself has now discovered that NAFTA was actually a pretty good deal for America. Which is why now that someone finally sat him down and explained it, he’s going to tinker around the edges and voila, fixed!
Chris
A meeting of the minds between leading members of two nations, both founded in revolution, that are now reverting to dynastic governance. Can’t say it’s not appropriate.
Major Major Major Major
@boatboy_srq: I especially like how the article makes it sound like they picked the winter palace after a lengthy process of deliberation.
Patricia Kayden
@germy: And how much $$$ will he make for his family, which includes the President? It’s amazing how this is all being normalized when Republicans do it.
Suzanne
@boatboy_srq:
All of them, Katie.
NorthLeft12
@themann1086: Yeah, but when Hillary Clinton said those things it was much more significant because she was going to be the next President and that buffoon she was running against was going to disappear back into the swamp after the election. Right?
Thoroughly Pizzled
@rikyrah: It’s amazing that nobody on our side defended TPP until it was dead. Reminds me of the wholesale surrender we saw on gun control during the Bush years.
Yarrow
@germy: Why is the font on your comment different from the font on all the other comments?
Suzanne
@LAO: So what’s the princeling’s mobster name? Jarry Meatballs or something.
Chris
No one could have predicted that “running the nation like a business” would lead to this kind of crap.
Mike J
@schrodingers_cat: May’s as bad as Trump and at least partially competent. No thank you.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft: when I explain that TPP was largely a strategic maneuver designed to prevent future military actions they think about it and say why didn’t anybody mention this?‽!‽? And I say because people like you hated it sooooo much you wouldn’t even let us get to the part where we debate it.
@Thoroughly Pizzled: obama tried, before the primary killed it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
What are you talking about?
schrodingers_cat
T is using the Presidency as a grifting operation. Thanks Republicans.
Chris
@LAO:
Then what’s Bannon?
Is this a wartime-consigliere/peacetime-consigliere thing, like in the Godfather?
Major Major Major Major
@Chris: it’s consiglieres all the way down.
NorthLeft12
So holding it at Mar-a-Swampo will be on the government’s dime, right?
Deadbeat Donald does not miss a trick. He is demonstrating the ultimate grifting ability as President. He makes those right wing loonies like Palin, Brooks, etc. look like absolute pikers. Goes to show you what you can do if you have absolutely no shame or ethics or morals! The perfect Republican.
Joe Falco
Well, there goes the Republic. I thought Trump voters at least wanted Trump to actually be the President but now we have the Fresh Prince of Jersey running the damn show. And when will Kissinger finally join his boss in hell?
schrodingers_cat
@Chris: He is sidelined by Family.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah, and unfortunately, Obama was the one TPP supporter who absolutely could not admit that the agreement was about cutting China out.
Patricia Kayden
For those keeping count, a complete list of all the lies Trump has told while holding the office of President. Truly, our Liar-in-Chief.
Yarrow
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
The NRA apparently is involved with Russia. That picture of Sheriff Clarke in Moscow was for some gun event that had NRA ties. I think there’s a chance they get taken down when the Russia investigation starts naming names. Or at least take a hit.
If that happens, then I think there’s a big chance for gun control advocates. If Russia has been using the NRA to manipulate our gun control laws, that’s the kind of thing that might finally get Congress over the hump to vote for some gun control legislation.
germy
@Yarrow:
sarcasm font.
Kay
I’m ashamed there’s no public outcry to Donald Trump’s gross nepotism policy.
Please. This is appalling. It’s a huge lowering of standards. I get that Ivanka and Jared are all lawyered-up so have moved into power in technical compliance with applicable law, but it’s gross on its face.
Banana republic here we come! Good fucking going, Republicans. YOU allowed this. Rein in this family or suffer the consequences down the road. It will require a court order because these people have no internal discipline of any kind and they will take advantage until a court orders them to stop.
LAO
@Suzanne: Well, this is what the “Nickname Generator” came up with.
I think we can do better: Jarrie the Jew. (not trying to be anti-semitic , but its a pretty common nickname for Jewish associates.)
ETA: The nickname generated came up with “Jared Blue Eyes” which isn’t horrible,
Mike J
I’m sure Trump will negotiate worker and environmental protections that meet the approval of the people who hated TPP.
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
Absolutely ridiculous.
germy
@Yarrow: What does russia care about our gun control laws?
NorthLeft12
@Chris: Ohh Chris you are rich!
Those first five words will be forever etched onto every American history book of the twenty-first century. And of course, it will be wrong.
Yarrow
@SiubhanDuinne: I don’t know why those fonts are different. I find them hard to read and tend to skip the comment.
LAO
@Chris: Bannon is a caporegime (Capo) — he heads the ALT-right crew.
rikyrah
@SiubhanDuinne:
BWA HA HA AH AH HA
schrodingers_cat
@Mike J: I wanted Liz instead of T not May.
Chris
@Major Major Major Major:
Actually no, I think I’ve figured it out; there’s only one consigliere, but the job definition is “the last person to talk to Trump before he makes a decision.” One job, constantly-changing job-holder.
Kind of like how Air Force One, technically, is not that tricked-out Boeing 747, it’s any airplane that’s carrying the commander-in-chief.
rikyrah
@GrandJury:
I do think that was rescinded..I didn’t get the reason why, but I remember reading it.
hovercraft
@satby:
Well you do know that America started off as a British colony, soo many of our dumbest still have blood ties to the UK. Our own stupidity though still drowns out theirs.
What is it with theses people, they’re always being dominated, or having things rammed down their throats, or being told to bend over and take it, it’s almost like they have some kind of ………. no it can’t be
Brachiator
Trump has been bought off by the Russians! Trump has been bought off by the Chinese! It’s all so confusing. You gotta wonder whether Trump himself enjoys sowing confusion.
This part was really interesting:
Very insightful, perhaps. And perhaps it underscores again the degree to which Trump is an outlier. He doesn’t govern like a politician. He is certainly not running the country like a business, despite the ignorant huzzahs of his supporters. The Cinnabar Shitgibbon rules like a potentate, with his harem, his court jester/spokesperson Shaky Spice, and his little princelings.
As to Trump’s deal making skills.
I don’t see where the US would give a shit about China’s infrastructure projects. But this list seems like a lot of distraction, to make Trump feel important, while China subtly sets the boundaries for negotiation and gets Trump to sign off on what is important to China, non-interference. If they toss in a few bucks to make Trump happy, they’ve won.
Ah, well. Trump’s still an idiot. Let’s see what today’s LA Times editorial has to say.
Kay
The Democrat I’m backing in 2020 will promise a strong and enforceable anti-nepotism law, a strong law that bars conflicts of interests, and a requirement that all of these people release tax returns and complete business records.
This “shadow” government Trump is installing is bullshit. They’re taking advantage of all of us, operating in the dark and with no public consent or notice.
MattF
I'm trying something here
rikyrah
@NorthLeft12:
That’s the reason he won’t go to Camp David – can’t make any money from it.
MattF
@MattF: Yup. You can change to a monospace font with a ‘code’ tag.
piratedan
@Kay: i think that they see this as a mechanism to make this the “family” business. So it’s GOP sinecures for all of the party faithful, nepotism for all of the friends and family.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Sing it sister, and join the bitter sisterhood. I was told yesterday that I was too bitter and needed a time out for pointing out the hypocrisy of many BJers regarding immigration, when nothing is on the line for them, they are all, Jeff Sessions is an evil leprechaun. But when the issue of H1-Bs comes up they are more in agreement with JS than they would like to admit.
Kay
What is Betsy DeVos’ brother up to right now? Negotiating some deal on behalf of Trump in the dark?
Who is in charge of all of these people? How are they accountable to the public?
rikyrah
say it over and over and over
.@SpeakerRyan The AHCA was a not-very-cleverly disguised attempt to grab $1 trillion in tax cuts up front, ahead of more to come: https://t.co/GaEOB3jTiX
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) April 4, 2017
Chris
@hovercraft:
I liked “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” as a child, and even enjoyed the few episodes of “Andromeda” that I saw. Was sad when I discovered that Kevin Sorbo was a raging A-hole in real life.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’d like to see Indivisible or some other group make this a national, coordinated campaign about this, faxes and phone calls. I thought about calling my MoCs but without a bill or a specific issue to refer to, I think it would just get lost in the maelstrom. I think this would be a great issue for Uncle Joe Biden and his regular guy touch to start talking about.
I mentioned yesterday that a couple of guys were doing some work on my house yesterday morning while I had NPR on. During a story about the financial disclosures of the Kushners, I heard one mutter to the other “he just turned down a billion dollar deal and they’re trying to make it sound like he’s stealing”. I had no idea what they were referring to, but others here suggested that’s how the Chinese insurance company pulling out of their bail-out of 666 Fifth Ave* is being spun on the right.
The “they’re too rich to steal” has great appeal to people who are convinced that the Clintons got rich off negotiating cheaper rates for AIDS medications in Africa.
* which rolling disaster should make everyone laugh every time Spicey talks about Jared’s “business experience” as a qualification for being de facto secretary of state
Just One More Canuck
@Suzanne: mymobname.com gave me “Jarrie the Butcher” for Kushner. Suzanne became “Fast Hand Suzzie”
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
It’s a sarcasm font. You use [code] [/code] on your selected text, obviously substituting angle brackets for square brackets.
amk
Guess renaming WH has trump house is the next step.
Chris
@Brachiator:
Yeah. It’s bad enough that we have a guy who’s put our foreign policy up for sale, but what’s even worse is that he’s so ridiculously cheap to buy. Flattering his ego is much more important than any actual payment, as foreign governments are quickly figuring out.
Yarrow
@germy: I don’t think they care about our gun control laws in particular, although Russia has a large gun rights movement. I think there are other issues involved. Here’s an excerpt from recent Daily Beast article about NRA officials meeting with top Putin deputies:
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Sessions is such a shame, because there really was bipartisan movement on criminal justice reform. It was all at the state level but that’s where 99% of the action is, so that’s where it should be.
Republicans will run away from it now that Sessions has given them their marching orders. It’s a huge loss for the country. Trump is a creature of the 1980’s. That’s where his whole frame of reference is. He’ll take us backwards 30 years.
Yarrow
@germy: It makes it hard to read and unless you know it’s for sarcasm it’s not evident any other way. Except context.
germy
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
It’s funny how these people hear only what they want to hear and then afterwards it’s your fault for not yelling louder. They are not children, NOTHING IS BLACK OR WHITE, no matter how much the media and or the opposition want to portray things that way, they are not, everything is nuanced. Perhaps your friends will take the time next time to find out why someone they like and admire and previously supported, is proposing something that will kill us all and is the worst thing evah!! Take the time to actually listen to his reasoning not just take as gospel all the bullshit from their new crush who incidentally has never supported any trade deal as far as I know.
low-tech cyclist
Gotta admit, I was hoping that the old war criminal could at least instill some professionalism to our side of the meeting, and be there to explain to Trump and Kushner when the Chinese were taking them to the cleaners, and how to get a better deal. But it sounds like his involvement here has been fairly incidental, beyond lending his name to the initial contact.
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: NYT article today about 666 Fifth Ave.
ETA: There’s a proposal to tear it down and build expensive condos. Not exactly a novel idea– any real estate ‘genius’ could have come up with that.
SiubhanDuinne
@Just One More Canuck:
I am “SD Sneakers.”
germy
@Yarrow: Maybe they want us all to shoot each other.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: You are optimistic they want to roll back the progress since the Civil War.
schrodingers_cat
@MattF: Vichy Times is not worried about her emails, anymore? How quaint.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Kay: I really hope we have a strong platform in 2020. Executive orders, laws, even amendments. Trump’s election is a catastrophe to American democracy on the same level as the Civil War and the Great Depression. Our institutions failed utterly. Only one of them (the Democratic Party) even tried to do the right thing. Strong medicine will be needed.
rikyrah
@Kay:
No.damn.good.
STOP IT!!!
Don’t ever give these muthaphuckas the benefit of the doubt. Until proven otherwise, he did this at the request of someone on Dolt45’s team. Make them prove that it’s not true.
These are the magical questions.
MattF
@schrodingers_cat: Info about mid-town Manhattan real estate is always on the NYT reading list.
Cermet
Frankly, this could be a positive. While I will never bet against small hands screwing up, if China can get along with this dumb ass, it is a win for us. As for the South China sea’s, LOL. It is off the Chinese coast, might have a lot of oil and is claimed by many people we don’t exactly care much about. Exactly why do we want a dog in that fight? Oh, wait, our oil companies (read controlled by the elite) want us to keep that region open so they can exploit all the third world countries with claims there so they get the profits and the people in those countries get screwed. Same old same old. American poor kids put their lives on the line so the elite can steal from third world people … when will you people here get real – Chinese aggression in the South China Sea …lol.
Adam L Silverman
@MattF: On top of that the Chinese prefer bilateral agreements to multilateral ones and are very, very good at negotiating them. The President’s state preference for bilats plays right into Chinese preferences.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Preach it, Kay.
Preach it.
Just One More Canuck
@SiubhanDuinne: I became “Sunny C” – I think I know where my productivity is going to go today
LAO
@germy: Session’s decision to role back any federal oversight of local/state law enforcement is disastrous. I’m dreading the fallout.
hovercraft
@NorthLeft12:
I believe @Chris: would have been wise to utilize the sarcasm font. I mean really whocouldaknown ? Nothing in Twitler’s past showed him to be a lying, cheating, conniving, immoral, bottom dweller who would steal from his own grandmother if it would make him a dime.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
WALL STREET SPEECHES!
Adam L Silverman
@GrandJury: The PRC pulled out of that about two weeks ago. They decided the publicity was making it look too obvious.
Chris
@schrodingers_cat:
Or roll us all the way back to the times before the American Revolution. You know, when the country was actually ruled from a European capital.
Yarrow
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s very hard to read. There are better ways of indicating that a comment is sarcasm if some sort of indication needs to be made.
Another Scott
In other news, there’s still the Continuing Resolution expiring midnight April 28. GovExec:
As Julia Ioffe says, Good Night. Tomorrow will be worse.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t know if this actually means anything, but I can’t imagine it makes whipping a 17% bill among a bunch of skittish critters any easier
MattF
@Another Scott: Note, in particular, that Congress is going on recess for nearly three weeks, so the whole ‘fund-the-government’ thang is going to happen at the last possible minute.
ETA: And -after- all the Congresscritters have had the opportunity to hear from their constituents in person.
Aleta
The fake news about JK is that he’s been a success in the business world. (If success means selling off your country’s decisions about foreign policy and finance in order to escape personal financial ruin, then he’s getting the hang of it).
About the Kushner Co. building at 666 5th Avenue:
(From several NYT stories)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
retired machinist Joe Cikzpak of Rustberg, OH, said reserve requirements were the reason voted for trump.
amk
murka being sold on the cheap to russians and chinese while the rwnj’s and the loony left cheer from the sidelines.
schrodingers_cat
@Another Scott: We are a few short steps of Nirvana here
*Ban anyone from coming here, unless they bring bags of money for T and company
*Get rid of the “illegals”
*Get rid of everyone on temporary visas (you know the infamous H1-Bs) and other H and O visas, F-1 and J-1s
*Get rid of immigrants
*Get rid of the foreign born
*Get rid of anchor babies
*Make any one left take a loyalty oath
Nirvana.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: As I teased in a comment the other night, this is part of penetration at all levels. Putin has spent the better part of a decade, give or take, extending Russian connections and influence to a significant number of conservative organizations in the US. From religious conservatives on the shared values of Putin’s Russia being a defender of Western (white) traditional Christian values against Muslims and LGBTQs, the NRA, etc. This occurred at the same time that they were making connections and influencing extreme right groups: the white supremacists, militia, patriot, and secessionist groups in Texas and now California. This is why Gorkov, from VEB Bank gets access, and Torshin is invited to the prayer breakfast and is his protege is running the Russian equivalent of the NRA.
Gin & Tonic
My son is planing on enrolling in a Master’s program in International Relations (different terms based on the school) this fall. I hope there’s still a Department of State when he finishes.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@amk: as soon as they’ve packed the courts, slashed taxes and opened up the Arctic and the Pacific coast for drilling, they’re totally gonna investigate trump. Lindsey Graham will become trump’s worst nightmare giving sound bites to Kristin Welker in the hall outside his office. John McCain will flay him with some Sunday morning gravelly intonations. Gonna be epic.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: One of the brilliant ideas of conservative economists is to get rid of FDIC and the Fed. That should work wonders.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
The fact that is was the Chinese who pulled out and not Kushner, is so telling, where was the WH Legal Council or their Ethics people? These people are so stupid and greedy, they don’t know that since they are scheduled to be there for four years, they can slow down, they’ll get all the money they want since the congress and most of the media don’t seem to have a problem with all this. Or do they know something that we don’t?
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
Ꮗℰℒℒ, ᎽᎯℛℛᎾᏇ, ℐ ⅅℐⅅℕ’Ꮖ ℐℕᏉℰℕᏆ ℐᏆ
chopper
@Major Major Major Major:
bet he also pronounces it “cksee”
Cacti
Will these meetings be before or after he discovers a cure for cancer and a unifying theory of physics?
rikyrah
This will kill the tourism industry.
Joy Reid
@JoyAnnReid
This is madness. The Trump administration wants to make visitors hand over phones, passwords for ‘extreme vetting’.
MattF
@Cacti: Don’t know… but definitely -before- his enemies among the courtiers decide that his pelt would look better nailed to the wall.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s been common knowledge for some time that he was doing this all over Europe. It just was assumed until the last election that it wouldn’t work/hadn’t worked in the U.S, if it had even been tried. The way the vast majority of Republicans has rolled over, after a half century of screaming about the need for American preeminence and preventing foreign, really has been disgusting even by the usual extremely low standards I have for them.
Major Major Major Major
@Cermet: this is, charitably, a not-very-accurate description of the situation in the South China Sea.
Chris
@rikyrah:
Jesus [deleted] Christ. They really are going all the way to full Soviet measures in terms of how they treat foreigners. Which is only appropriate, considering.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: A friend used to say we should beg UK to take us back. This was well before Brexit however.
Aleta
@germy:
https://thinkprogress.org/nra-and-russian-cousin-18f607d40240
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/07/top-trump-ally-met-with-putin-s-deputy-in-moscow.html
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It means he shouldn’t trust any food or beverages that any House aides bring him.
Major Major Major Major
OT: I had dinner last night with some folks who work at The Company. The conversation started thusly:
ME: long time no see! How’s things?
THEM: [long, deep sigh] So I heard you’ve been playing the new Zelda.
low-tech cyclist
@Major Major Major Major:
1) The time to debate it – and this is true for ALL trade agreements – is before negotiations begin. That’s when the U.S.’s goals and objectives for the agreement should be laid out so the American people can decide whether it’s a reasonable thing, and interested groups can make suggestions about things that should be included in our initial proposal.
This didn’t happen.
2) You can’t debate something if its content is being kept secret from you. All this “we can’t tell you what’s in the agreement because we’re still negotiating it” is true with respect to changes since the participants laid out their initial positions, but when you say, “OK, what was our initial ask?” and you can’t get an answer, then (a) there’s no reason that that should be secret, and (b) it’s arguing about what’s in pitch darkness.
3) The fact that a lot of corporate interests were in the loop on the TPP, and would have had their own special court for resolving differences with nations – well, anyone should have expected that to piss off people on the left. Where was the ESDS? The LSDS? (E and L for Environment and Labor.) No, just an I-for-Investor ISDS. “Oh, this sells environmental and labor interests down the river, but you should be for it because it’s in the national interest”? No, come back with a treaty that’s in the national interest that does right by workers and the environment.
4) If Obama ever tried to sell it in the terms you describe – and he was the #1 pitch man for this treaty – I sure missed it.
We never got to the part of the debate you wanted, because (a) the part we experienced was “buy this pig in a poke that’s designed to screw you over, because take one for the team” and (b) apparently you were the only person who wanted that debate anyway. I’ve noticed before that you have a very inflated sense of your own importance, and this certainly doesn’t subtract from that impression.
Major Major Major Major
@low-tech cyclist:
I shall now disregard this and all future comments by you, thanks for putting your cards on the table.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
You know, I am wondering if the Rise of J-Kush the Wonder Child is because The Donald having an implossion and in the middle of massive sulk. Trump was really out of it last Friday during that order signing. Maybe the Trump family is having Kushner play Mrs Woodrow Wilson while Donny is his pillow fort.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@satby:
At first I was laughing but then became progressively angry and sad. So many stupids!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
On an amusing note, the lawyer in my shop who is now suspended in two states and was gaslighting me in an effort to sell me the Titanic after it hit the iceberg (in that all his “valuable” unfiled cases that haven’t been filed didn’t go unfiled due to staff laziness per his claim, but instead due to a 5 figure shortfall in his advanced costs escrow) is totally making it up to his staff today.
He is buying them pizzas for lunch!
That will totally make up for him throwing them all under the bus and putting them in untenable positions. His associate has given an ultimatum on the escrow he’d be wise to heed. As far as I’m concerned, he and I are quits, since he tried to fuck me by attempting to hold back that little tidbit on the escrow arrearages, even as his clients have been demanding updates on case progress.
The Moar You Know
@Yarrow: Or you end up with the GOA in place of the NRA, and that will not be an improvement. Quite the opposite.
hovercraft
How Did Page Get Picked?
By Josh Marshall Published April 4, 2017, 11:51 AM EDT
One of the abiding mysteries of the Trump saga is just who those five initial foreign policy advisers were, the ones he announced at an editorial meeting with The Washington Post on March 21st, 2016. It was an odd group: five guys, half with sordid pasts and others no one had ever heard of. One of them actually had Model UN work listed as one of his job qualifications! They weren’t sending their best!
……………………
The new story about Page and Russian spies needs a little unpacking. Page didn’t pass government documents to these spies. He wasn’t in government. The rest of the story appears to show that the Russians didn’t think Page knew they were spies, even though they were trying to recruit him. They also thought he was a rube. But given all the rest we’ve learned in recent months, the fact that Russian intelligence had tried to recruit the guy who two years later became Trump’s chief advisor on Russia and Europe seems like a hell of a coincidence. It also makes it worth considering again just where this list came from. My interest was also peaked by new news that former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince also looks to be in the Trumpian mix.
One of the five advisors was Joseph E. Schmitz, the son of a notorious GOP Congressman who was an anti-Semite and member of the John Birch Society. The younger Schmitz served in the Bush administration but eventually got bounced in part because of charges of anti-Semitism against him. It turns out that after Schmitz got bounced from the Pentagon, he went to work as an executive at Blackwater. In other words, he got hired by Erik Prince.
Then there’s this.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Mike Flynn’s lobbying for Turkey was tied to new gas fields being developed off the coast of Israel …
Inovo hired Mr. Flynn on behalf of an Israeli company seeking to export natural gas to Turkey, the filing said, and Mr. Alptekin wanted information on the U.S.-Turkey political climate to advise the gas company about its Turkish investments.…………..
That reminded me of this, from a write-up in the Post from last March …
Almost all [of George Papadopoulos’ ] work appears to have revolved around the role of Greece, Cyprus and an Israeli natural gas discovery in the eastern Mediterranean. Yet Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said when asked about Papadopoulos: “He does ring a very faint bell but he’s not written anything very significant on East Mediterranean natural gas and pipelines that I can remember.”
Papadopoulos had written a number of articles on the subject in the English language Israeli press, apparently of little significance to Mr. Stern. But again, he’s the guy who listed Model UN on his resume. There’s a major difference here: Does Israel pivot to Turkey or Greece and Cyprus and Egypt in selling its offshore natural gas? But it’s still a notable connection and Turkey’s relationship to Israel and Russia was changing markedly over the course of 2016.
These points of course prove nothing. They are simply suggestive connections that may help figure out just why these four men were chosen. It does make me want to know a bit more about Prince’s role in the campaign early on. In any case, with the new Page information, it’s about time we find out more about just who put together this list of five people. It’s a very odd list. It always was. Even more so now.
NobodySpecial
@low-tech cyclist: Your revisionist history of their revisionist history will cause people to have a sad.
Kay
I’m gonna make more calls against TrumpCare this time. That was kind of inspiring, how it collapsed, and it’s important that Donald Trump be humiliated weekly. I read it was 17/1 calls agin last time, so that’s a goal. Beat that.
I have to call Rep Latta who is horrible so that;s a sacrifice but it’s one I’m willing to make.
I have been wrong twice about the strength of the opposition. I thought the woman’s march would be a flop and I didn’t count on the opposition to TrumpCare.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry
next week, a $12/hr minimum wage with provisions to support higher minimums in more expensive localities.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: If they’ve established connections with the NRA, I guarantee they’ve established connections with the other major groups. Allan Gottlieb of the 2nd Amendment Foundation was quoted about interacting with Torshin. The 2AF are the ones that have brought most of the successful 2nd Amendment court cases, not the NRA.
RM
We went out with my in-laws to supper last night. Things were doing fine until the subject of politics came up. Father-in-law is a huge Berniebro and kept talking manically about how the Russian stuff was going to fizzle out and Lord Dampnut is getting a second term and I ended up having to flee to the bathroom to keep from screaming at him.
The most annoying part was when the subject of who we wanted to run in 2020 came up. He likes Tulsi Gabbard (ew no) but I managed to refrain from saying anything. Then I said I liked Al Franken and he went on this huge rant about Clinton surrogates. And I’m just. Ugh.
I’m just completely flabbergasted by the 180 my in-laws did. Back in 2008 I remember them talking to my dad about how much they loved the Clintons and now they’re like reflexively anti-Hillary. They completely drank the Wilmer kool aid.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I was thinking it might be effective to ask “Is Member X part of the Freedom Caucus?”. I thought I heard somebody say on MSNBC (as usual when I turn them on for a politics fix, I was multi-tasking) that not all their members want to be public about their adherence
Cacti
O/T but has anyone heard a peep out of Tulsi Gabbard about her bestie Assad gassing 58 civilians today in Syria?
Brachiator
@Kay:
Hell, if it were only 30 years, I could (almost) live with that. But there is little method to Trump’s slash and burn madness except a furious desire to dismantle everything the Obama administration tried to accomplish, and even to demolish the larger liberal agenda of every Democratic president since FDR.
Hal
Jon Huntsman wasn’t available? Or is he too competent?
SatanicPanic
@Aleta:
Holy shit, who signed off on something this stupid? Wow, and now they want to demolish it and build condos? Right now? Here I thought Trump was the dumbest man in real estate.
Kay
“Because we will pursue her with the same dogged determination we pursued the Benghazi bullshit and the email bullshit for the next 2 years thereby ensuring Donald Trump is yet again held accountable for nothing”
Christ almighty. Must be goddamned nice to be Donald Trump. They’re STILL going after Obama and Clinton.
Susan Rice has the same effect on them that Hillary Clinton did.
Major Major Major Major
@Kay:
Gee, wonder why that could be.
Adam L Silverman
@Cacti: No, because news was reported yesterday or Sunday that she was used as the Trump transition back channel to Assad guaranteeing him that the US would not move for his removal.
amk
@Kay: Every day twitler plays these msm clowns for what they are.
Kay
@Brachiator:
I think he looks backward at the 1980’s as a time where people like him were on top. A lot of older Republicans do. Reagan validated how fabulous they were. I always loathed Reagan. The smile coupled with the mean, glittery eyes remind me of scary religious people of my youth. Mike Huckabee has the same effect on me. I avoided men like those two – I was scared of them as a kid and I feel that was a good gut impulse.
Kay
@Major Major Major Major:
The sneer gets me. Like we all know Susan Rice is a huge liar. I know no such thing. The truth is Benghazi was 99% bullshit. That “smoking gun statement” she made to Jake Tapper was boilerplate diplomat and he blew it all out of proportion. Read the words. She said nothing of any import. TWO FUCKING YEARS they chased nothing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m not even kidding about this, and especially since we’re talking about Trump: Dallas and Dynasty and all those other prime time soaps about rich people. Someone mentioned Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous the other day. People seeing how rich he pretends to be is what gets trump out of bed in the morning.
The Moar You Know
@germy: They’ve made a staggering amount of money selling guns to our ammosexuals, and that spigot of cash got shut off when Obama imposed the sanctions – no Russian company’s guns are allowed into the US at the moment.
ETA: Plus, in CA, our state laws specifically prohibit anything built on a AK chassis: so no AK sales here, no Saiga, no related products. They’d like to see that law overturned or superseded by federal law.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
does that mean what I think it does? that folks making up to $125K WOULD QUALIFY?
hovercraft
@low-tech cyclist:
First of all, the broad “goals” of the TPP, were stated by the President. See here, https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2014/November/Remarks-by-the-President-Before-TPP-Meeting, and here http://www.vox.com/2014/11/14/7166849/tpp-trans-pacific-partnership. The broad goals were outlined to the public. Anyone who truly expected our government as well as the governments of 11 other countries to hold complicated detailed negotiations in public is not only naive, but stupid, we can barely get anything negotiated in congress, without behind closed door meetings and last minute crap being jammed in to get votes.Transparency is a wonderful thing, but there’s a reason it was so easy to demagogue the ACA, it’s complicated stuff and context is everything, but most of us don’t have the time, inclination or knowledge base to get the need for the compromises necessary to get shit done. The TPP was always going to have shit we liked and shit we didn’t, the difference between us and the republicans is supposed to be that we ubderstand the concept of compromise, you don’t get everything you want, but getting most is better than getting none.
As to your comment about @Major Major Major Major: , I think that we all have an inflated view of our opinions, or we wouldn’t take the time to write them down and post them. You are free to have any opinion you like, but we are also free to call bullshit, that’s my opinion of your comment.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
Good morning, rikyrah, you slept in today!
Aleta
@rikyrah: Fortune mag suggested four possibilities to explain why the deal (supposedly, unless Anbang is lying) has fallen through.
One is that Anbang was only a potential investor, and
Or,
Or, the deal failed because of decisions by people in the Chinese government–either due to Chinese insurance regulations or due to new investment rules from China’s central bank and their government regulators. (Also, Anbang is tied to high govt officials–might be related.)
Fortune thought the first reason the most likely–it never was a solid deal.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: compare and contrast with hardcore neocon and Romney fan(attic) Jennifer Rubin
trumpolitics has made some strange bedfellows for me.
Chris
@Kay:
The ridiculous thing is that Rice was crucified back in 2012 for the crime of reading the intel the CIA put in front of her.
Shana
@Yarrow: You’re a week early.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yeah, she’s running
ETA: Is he declaring his allegiance to the Freedom Caucus, or is this a variant on “Bless their hearts….”
Debbie1
@boatboy_srq: If Donald held meetings w/ heads of state at appropriate venues, how could he possibly elevate the stature of his own holdings, raise prices, and charge taxpayers at the same time. In other words, how would he profit? After all, that’s he whole point of being president, isn’t it?
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well, that’s not right. They should be made to stand in the light and be proud of their group.
rikyrah
@Cacti:
She.is.in.HAWAII.
There is absolutely NO REASON to not PRIMARY HER.
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
Also, I suspect Russia doesn’t care about our gun control laws so much as it cares about courting an extremely powerful actor in U.S. politics which, like pretty much every other conservative actor, is happy to put itself up for sale.
hovercraft
@RM:
So is he offering her up as a sacrificial lamb since he thinks she’ll lose in 2020? Or is he suggesting that she run in both 2020 and 2024? And is he aware that she’s been one of the more positive and receptive democrats towards Twitler? I can see these assholes are already gearing up to get behind a candidate that the majority of the party will never accept, maybe that’s why he thinks Twitler will be re-elected, they’ll still be sulking and won’t vote for our “sellout” candidate.
hovercraft
@Hal:
He has Obama cooties.
Aleta
@SatanicPanic:
Ha, maybe it was on the strength of his famous advice: follow-me-and-get-rich-through-bankruptcy.
pseudonymous in nc
The Chinese are approaching this through a two-part strategy.
Part one is “get through it to the other side, with China and the world mostly unscathed.” If you plan on being a true global superpower in the 21st century, you want to inherit a planet that doesn’t look like the aftermath of a high-school house party that got posted on Facebook.
Part two is “buy them off.” It’s worked with corrupt family regimes in Africa, in exchange for access to natural resources and low-skill workforces. It’s the reason why Favored Daughter’s shoe contracts are going to Ethiopian factories now, and not Chinese ones: the Chinese shoe industry is mature enough that there’s the capacity to make expensive, high-quality, high-margin shoes, and cheap “designer” fall-apart footwear production has moved to other parts of SE Asia, and now to the Horn of Africa.
Xi might be a princeling, but even princelings have to serve their time to move up the ranks: decades as a regional and provincial party chief, groomed for leadership by being sent on various foreign missions, such as the Iowa delegation in the mid-80s that met Terry Branstad. Professional authoritarians know their shit; amateurs, not so much.
Mike J
@rikyrah: I follow congress edits on twitter. They post whenever a wikipedia article is edited by an ip address in congress.
Last week there was an edit removing a MoC’s name from a list of the Freedom Caucus because he’s never made a public statement about it, even though he votes with them all the time and there’s probably footage of him leaving one of their meetings.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I can see disagreeing with her but the implication that she’s a LIAR bothers me. It’s weird. She seems to set them off in the same way Clinton did- as if everything she does is malicious and crafted to deceive.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@hovercraft: a couple of weeks ago, he was said to be up for Our Man in Moscow. I wonder if Papa Hunstman told him that was not the right place to be for the time-being.
Villago Delenda Est
@hovercraft: Every last bit of what they say about gays/lesbians/trans/liberals/agnostics/atheists/actual New Testament following Christians is purest projection of their own warped Mammon worshiping death cult.
Chris
@pseudonymous in nc:
That’s… a great way to put the distinction, actually.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: More projection. They’re like the largest IMAX on the planet.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft:
Absolutely agree, and there are plenty of folks out there capable of violently disagreeing with me who don’t hurl petty personal insults.
hovercraft
@Kay:
There were three people in the Obama era they hated above all others apart from Obama himself, Michelle, Valerie Jarrett, and Susan Rice. Not the two Davids who helped him get elected, not any of his Press Secretaries who spoke daily on his behalf, but these three women. I wonder why?
FlipYrWhig
@RM:
There is no logic behind that statement. None. She’s sketchy and not even politically liberal. It’s transparently, overtly, BERNIE LIKE SO I LIKE. It’s disgraceful what that disheveled one-note homunculus has done to the self-proclaimed “left.”
Debbie1
@RM: Fascinating. I met many people like that in the last election, the type who clung to Hillary in the 2008 primaries. That’s why she trounced Send. Obama in Ky. & W.Va. in the 2008 primaries. People like that ultimately support the candidate they perceive as being more conservative.
J R in WV
@Yarrow:
That’s a font selected to indicate sarcasm. Standard HTML formatting, custom use of the code command.
So [code] to start the new font and [/code] to end the font, but with less-than and greater-than brackets instead of square brackets.
LAO
Kushner’s secret meeting with American Muslims. He is a great advocate for his father-in-law.
FlipYrWhig
@Debbie1: To me it sounds like the kind of people who can be easily led to hate just about anyone, and they moved from hating Obama to hating Clinton. Which is why I think it’s all kinds of mistaken to expect that they’ll be all in for Bernie Sanders the next time there’s an election. Why would they settle on Sanders rather than hating him too?
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: And Huma Abedin.
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: IIRC, the NRA has never bought a 2nd Amendment case to trial.
Which if truly the case, makes them the all-time winner in the grifter sweepstakes.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@hovercraft: Gorsuch (which wants to autocorrect to Grouch) refused to meet with Kamala Harris, Tammy Duckworth, and Catherine Cortez Mastro.’
Yet more coincidence, I’m sure.
SatanicPanic
@Aleta: I am amazed at that story. They’re talking about redeveloping it! so they paid $1.7 for the land. smh
joel hanes
@GrandJury:
It’s the sort of thing I would expect to see happen in a banana republic.
The US has been a banana republic since the coup of 2000, in which shenanigans orchestrated by a provincial governor allowed his party to put his brother in the White House.
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
What was the phrase that was the title of the PBS documentary about Jack Johnson?
Oh, yes. Unforgivable Blackness.
And gender, absolutely. But that they are black women was just too much.
rikyrah
@J R in WV:
Nope. this was the first real Open Thread of today.
Aleta
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
Well of course her, she is a Muslim and her father is Muslim Brotherhood. All patriots hate terrorists.
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
Hmmmmmm
What do they all have in common?
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: They actually tried to sandbag and undermine the Heller suit. They are absolutely panicked that they’ll lose in court. The reason Heller went forward is because an Israeli-American attorney, Alan Gura, was willing to do the legal work and Gottlieb at the 2AF was willing to provide institutional support. The NRA actively tried to scuttle the suit, including filing amicus briefs against what Gura was doing. The best accounting of this I’ve read is in Adam Winkler’s Gun Fight.
https://www.amazon.com/Gunfight-Battle-Over-Right-America/dp/0393345831/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1491325243&sr=1-1&keywords=Adam+Winkler
An excellent read, I highly recommend it.
D58826
@germy: AND HE EVEN MAKES THE BREAKFAST!!!!!!!!!!:-)
Major Major Major Major
@J R in WV: it’s hideous on safari. Absolutely hideous. We should just use trailing slashes. To wit:
I think that code formatted font looks great! Let’s adopt it as a standard!
//
Immanentize
@Just One More Canuck: I think — blending The Godfather and Deliverance — Jarred’s mob name should be: Pretty Mouth Kush.
Millard Filmore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
If you are a billion dollars in debt, are you still a Billionaire?
hovercraft
By Steve Benen
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) continues to be a powerful force in his party’s fundraising efforts, transferring another $7 million to the National Republican Congressional Committee. The Hill reported that the Wisconsin congressman delivered $16.4 million for the first quarter of 2017 to the NRCC.
* It’s primary day in California’s 34th congressional district, in the special election to fill the vacancy left by Xavier Becerra, who left Congress in January to become state attorney general. The general election in this district, which is heavily Democratic, is on June 6.
* The Washington Examiner reported yesterday on a leaked poll from the Congressional Leadership Fund, allied with the House Republican leadership, showing Jon Ossoff (D) ahead in Georgia’s upcoming congressional special election. The same poll, however, said the Congressional Leadership Fund’s series of attack ads have slowed the candidate’s momentum. The first round of balloting is two weeks from today.
* Speaking of Georgia, Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R) became the first top-tier Republican to announce a gubernatorial campaign for 2018. Incumbent Gov. Nathan Deal (R) cannot seek a third term.
* In Virginia’s very competitive Democratic gubernatorial primary, the Virginia Education Association has thrown its support behind Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D).
* On a related note, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) this morning announced his support for former Rep. Tom Perriello (D), Northam’s rival. The statewide Democratic primary is June 13.
* And in New Hampshire, former Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand’s (D) gubernatorial bid in 2016 came up short, but he’s decided to try again, announcing plans to run against incumbent Gov. Chris Sununu (R) next year. (In New Hampshire, gubernatorial terms are two years, not four.)
ruemara
@Brachiator: Dude. Trump is a whore, apologies to whores. He’s been owned by both because he’s a terrible business person but his name has dollar value. Which is why he’s always a permanent whore. This isn’t hard.
@Kay: Misogyny and racism is in the bones of this country, Kay. That’s all.
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman: At what point does our IC decide basically “Fuck it” and start trying to be more proactive? Because at some point, someone is going to eventually realize that the slow and steady approach is still going to end with a burning carcass where the Republic once was,
TenguPhule
@Gin & Tonic: I hope there’s still a fragment of the Republic left to salvage by the time he finishes.
TenguPhule
@hovercraft:
Notice the wires running out from the building attached to a big red button.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
THIS. IS.
SPARTAMAR GA LARGO.D58826
@hovercraft: Nunces has pretty much blown up the House investigation into the Russian connection. Now that they have a link back to Obama thru Rice I wonder how long it will be before Sen. Burr blows up the Senate investigation. Sen. Croyn of Tx is already demanding that Rice be investigated. And surely there must be some more questions she can be asked about Benghazi!!!!!! IT provides the perfect diversion
Millard Filmore
@Cermet:
Some of what China claims is pretty far down the coast of Viet Nam. In the long run it doesn’t matter muck. With rising ocean levels, in 100 years the seas will take it all back.
hovercraft
Rick Joyner: The Left Is Having ‘Panic Attacks’ Because Their ‘Unbelievable Corruption Is Being Uncovered’ By Trump
Right-wing pastor Rick Joyner is not happy with the editorial series that the Los Angeles Times is running about “Our Dishonest President,” slamming it in a Facebook video he posted yesterday as evidence that those on left are having “panic attacks” because they know that President Trump is going to expose their rampant corruption.
Joyner claimed that the L.A. Times is having a shocking “meltdown” and suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” asserting that the first editorial in the series “didn’t make any sense” because progressives have been gripped by “outrageous hysteria.”
Joyner then linked the L.A. Times series to a false story about Hillary Clinton supposedly going on a profanity-laced tirade against Trump during the presidential campaign and warning that if he were elected, “[we’re] all going to hang,” an exchange which Joyner also falsely asserted was documented by Wikileaks.
“Now, why would she say something like that?” Joyner asked, despite the fact that Clinton never actually said it. “Why would she do something like that? I think because of what is being found right now. Unbelievable corruption is being uncovered and I believe is soon going to come to light and they’re running scared, so they’re not making any sense; they’re terrified, they’re having panic attacks, the left, because they know what’s about to be uncovered.”
rikyrah
@Brachiator:
And educated Black women at that.
Uh huh
Uh huh
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
I do love that they’re doing it in a series. Makes it more potent.
TenguPhule
@Cermet:
Hello Trumpster Troll. FOAD.
There is nothing funny about China’s illegal actions in the South China Sea nor the threat to international shipping.
Corner Stone
@D58826:
The media is acting like a peeping tom caught looking in a window with their dick in their hand. Like they are guilty of calling Trump’s baseless tweet a lie for the last month.
It’s a solid guarantee they will grill the fuck out of Susan Rice and/or Obama staffer connections into oblivion. This is going to be epic fail on epic levels of failure.
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: I gotta check out that book.
I’d heard that they’d never actually gone to court from some of the more extreme gun owners I know, didn’t believe them, and did the research and that seems to be correct. Your reasoning is solid; if they ever did and lost, their donor base of 100% suckers would cut their cash flow off that day.
Ruviana
@Shana: LOL!
MattF
@hovercraft: They’re going back to that old reliable workhorse– Clinton Derangement Syndrome. Bennnnnghaaaaaaziiiiiiii.
ruemara
@RM: I am so fucking over Berniebots that I would have full on melted down at any father-in-law spouting that shit at me. They’re still caping for that old reprobate. Meanwhile, I as an immigrant black woman feel hunted in a country I cannot escape because your goddamn racism & misogyny managed to curtail every fucking opportunity I could’ve had and I didn’t have the luck and the family to step over it. Fuck them with a mac truck.
Another Scott
@MattF: Me too! (but doesn’t expect it will work…)
(It would be surprising if we could use the hn tags, but who knows…)
[ And of course, we can’t. ]
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: Cermet isn’t a Trumpster, just a moron.
rikyrah
How Journalists Are Still Getting Punked By Trump
by Nancy LeTourneau April 4, 2017 8:00 AM
It has officially been a month since Trump tweeted what everyone knows was nonsense.
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
Yet we are still getting stories attempting to “investigate” whether there was any truth to his claim. The latest one explores the idea that the same Ezra Cohen-Watnick who called Rep. Devin Nunes to a clandestine meeting at the White House has now suggested that Obama’s national security advisor, Susan Rice, requested the “unmasking” of people associated with Donald Trump whose communications with foreign targets had been collected incidentally.
Kevin Drum noted how far down the rabbit hole we’ve traveled from the original claims in Trump’s tweet.
Even though we’re now in territory that has zero resemblance to Trump’s claims, the president and his supporters take these stories as validation that he has been right all along.
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
I’m sorry. Who is Rick Joyner, and why should anyone give a shit?
rikyrah
Matt Taibbi’s Skepticism of the Russian Hacking Coverage Is all Wrong
by Martin Longman April 4, 2017 10:48 AM
I have news for Matt Taibbi. When Russian mobsters crash your daughter’s wedding party and spike the punch with LSD-25, it’s not McCarthyism to be pissed off that Cousin Jethro is up on the roof with Sergei in their underwear jabbering about the Dixie Chicks and InfoWars. And it won’t do to pretend none of it matters if we can’t prove that the father of the groom was in on the whole thing.
…………………………………………………
One clue here is Taibbi’s sarcastic reference to the obvious benefits of an armed proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. But snideness isn’t an argument. You don’t have to agree with the bipartisan consensus view of the American Establishment that Ukraine would be better off in the E.U. than having itself carved up by a man like Vladimir Putin. You can agree with Donald Trump that Russia hasn’t gone into Ukraine and that Crimeans are happier being part of Russia. You don’t even have to want to give Ukraine “lethal defensive weapons.” After all, Obama refused to do just that.
What you can’t do is say with any credibility that Trump having the GOP change the party platform to weaken its position on Ukraine isn’t any evidence of some kind of quid pro quo.
But, look, when E. Howard Hunt graduated from fucking up democracy in Guatemala and invasions of Cuba to orchestrating half-ass break-ins of the Democrats’ party headquarters, people didn’t think it was Hunt taking it down a notch. People didn’t say it was politics as usual. What they said (for quite a while) is that “we haven’t seen any real evidence of” Nixon’s involvement and that all those pesky Washington Post reporters have proved is that Nixon Derangement Syndrome has arrived.
Or, the useful idiots said that. The folks with an olfactory sense for smoke and trouble knew that decorated CIA officers don’t run domestic operations using Cuban exiles against the national headquarters of a major party in an election year without there being something truly goddamned sinister underlying it.
But, hey if the break-in is only digital who cares if it is vastly more successful in pilfering information? Who cares if the theft is carried out by an actual foreign government. Right?
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh
Did Russia Attempt to Influence Sanders’ Supporters?
by Nancy LeTourneau April 4, 2017 11:50 AM
During the House Intelligence Committee hearing with FBI Director Comey and NSA Director Rogers, Republican legislators went to great lengths to distract from the central question Comey said was at the heart of the investigation: that it was directed at Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 election and the question of whether or not members of the Trump campaign cooperated with them.
Along with Republicans, there are some liberals who are skeptical about how this investigation is unfolding. One of them is Matt Taibbi, as Martin just noted. In response to some of the inquiries that came up during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, he provides a distraction from that central question.
Under questioning by Sen. Mark Warner, Retired Gen. Keith Alexander — former director of the National Security Agency — said, “Senator, I think what they were trying to do was drive a wedge within the Democratic Party between the Clinton group and the Sanders group. And then in our nation between Republicans and Democrats.” Taibbi responded with this:
Did you catch the distraction? The questions on the table are not whether Russia’s attempts to influence the election were successful. They are: what did the Russians do to influence the election? And was the Trump campaign involved?
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major: One and the same thing now.
Adam L Silverman
@TenguPhule: CI investigations are slow moving. Some of this has to do with what they’re looking at. Some of it has to do with how they do their work. I know that’s not encouraging, but, for instance, it takes a lot of time to do forensic accounting on a large number of folks.
Another Scott
@Cermet: The South China Sea is important to the US because of the shipping lanes, among other things…
Cheers,
Scott.
Chyron HR
@Another Scott:
“Shipping lanes… lol… as if such a thing existed. …lol”
rikyrah
April Ryan, Maxine Waters and Now Susan Rice: Black Women Are Natural Enemies of Trump Administration
Jason Johnson
Today 9:55am
Nature shows us many examples of “natural enemies” in the wild. Mongooses will take on poisonous snakes without a thought, sea lions will mob up and attack killer whales, and a pack of hyenas will take on a lion three times their size. When you know who your enemy is; when you know you’re just prey pretending to be a predator, you attack without hesitation.
Which explains why Trump-era Republicans are lashing out at any black woman they can find, whether it’s White House reporter April Ryan, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California or, now, former national security adviser Susan Rice. Trump-era Republicans hate and fear black women, and they’re convinced that their downfall will be at the hands of a black woman’s pen, policy or protest.
On Monday the Republican echo chamber went nuts after a Bloomberg news story reported that Rice, President Barack Obama’s former national security adviser, had “repeatedly” asked to “unmask” the names of Trump campaign and transition officials who were caught on tape talking to Russian spies under investigation. Rice, as part of the investigation into Russian hacking and meddling in U.S. affairs, had every right to ask who was on the other end of a phone call between a foreign agent and an American who might one day be part of the White House. However, Republicans have concluded that this is somehow validation of their Fox & Friends-induced belief that Obama was spying on Donald Trump.
Since everyone has already told the administration that the wiretapping story was a lie (even Fox News suspended the guy who said it), let’s focus instead on Rice. Why, out of the dozens of former White House officials involved in the Russia investigation, are Republicans focusing on her absolutely legal requests? For the same reason that White House press secretary Sean Spicer got snippy with Ryan, and Bill O’Reilly came after Waters. Republicans smell their natural enemy.
This is not some essentialist “black queen as savior of our men” polemic masquerading as commentary. It’s a stone-cold fact that while many Americans are waking up to the havoc wreaked by less than 100 days of a Trump administration, African-American women, a full 94 percent of them, saw Trump for what he was last fall. That group includes African-American Republican women like Condoleezza Rice.
While, at various points in the last 40 years, Republicans have been able to lure black men, white men, Hispanics and white women into the fold with various policy promises, black women haven’t been buying it. They are kryptonite to the Republican Party, especially under Trump. African-American female politicians, journalists and activists are the greatest consistent threat to the hegemony of Trump, and his supporters are triggered whenever a black woman speaks her mind with authority.
hovercraft
Someone was asking yesterday if KAC aka Spokescobra had been disappeared, not completely, she’s still out there.
Kellyanne Conway Promotes White Nationalist Rape Denier On Official Twitter Account
Kellyanne “Microwaves” Conway just flat out promoted the far-right white nationalist, rape denying, pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich through her twitter feed.
We know how much he covets Fox and Friends crack journalism and all, but is Trump so starved for supporters that he’s having his advisors prop up people like this?
Patricia Kayden
@GrandJury: Blatant, in-your-face grifting. And we’re just drifting along as if this is business as usual and normal politics. Sigh.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: There’s a lot of heartburn among the 2nd Amendment absolutist community. A lot of those folks prefer the 2AF or GOA. The questions that a lot of people would like answered, but which won’t be (at least as long as LaPierre is involved), is 1) just how many of the 4 million life members are actually still alive and 2) exactly where the NRA’s funding is coming from and in what percentages? The NRA claims that the vast, vast majority of its funding comes from memberships, of which they have 4 million. And that’s that.
The problem is they’ve beens saying that for so long, at least 30 years, that a good portion have to have passed away by now. How many? I have no idea. But, also, once you join for life, that’s it for that specific, individual funding stream. And they’re always running specials – discounting the costs. So your, and everyone else’s, guess is as good as mine. A lot of gun owners are very suspicious of whether the NRA is really interested in the 2nd Amendment and gun owners and their rights or if its interested in the NRA and maintaining power and lavish lifestyles for people like LaPierre.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
And you have yet to respond to the little problem which I kindly pointed out that the H1-Bs resulted in AMERICAN WORKERS BEING FORCED TO TRAIN THEIR OWN REPLACEMENTS FROM INDIA or be denied their severance pay.
“They’re coming to take our jobs” is unfortunately LITERALLY TRUE when it comes to H1-Bs due to severe abuse and exploitation by the companies who use it.
The Indian workers themselves may not be to blame, but they are politically toxic no matter what spectrum of the political aisle you’re on. Its not right or fair, but its true.
Jeffro
@TenguPhule:
Looks like yesterday’s efforts got two nice Trumpov-Russia connected stories onto everyone’s front pages: the Erik Prince story and the Carter Page one. Drip, drip, drip. And as @Adam L Silverman: noted, these things do take time. We’re getting there.
Why, just look at this from J-Rubs today in the Washington Post! I know she’s been against Trumpov for quite a while now, but even she’s ramping up:
Wow!
Jeffro
Wait…what happened to my beautiful comment? I can haz mod help please?
Major Major Major Major
@rikyrah: I saw Taibbi’s headline today and skimmed the article. He’s moved in my categorization from a person I agree with who does righteous rants, to a person I sometimes agree with who can be grating, to a person I agree with about the banks but that’s all and is annoying, and this is making me wonder if I need to revisit his financial crisis writings to re-evaluate. Don’t know which of us has changed.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: rofl.
You know that some AMT gutting/repeal is going to be in the tax bill they try to float. Donnie hates the AMT (it cost him $30+M in the year that was leaked). It’s all about Donnie so his minions are working hard to make it happen, I’m sure (though nobody has talked about it yet AFAIK).
On the NPR show “1A” this morning they were talking about how horrible our tax system is. It seems to me that it’s so “horrible” because companies and the rich demand their special provisions. The people of Rustberg, OH don’t have to worry about Oil Depletion Allowances and all that stuff, so I don’t think they’re screaming for that kind of “reform”. But they’re not being listened to by the GOP, of course…
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft:
hovercraft
@Brachiator:
No one sentient people should give a shit about, but given the current White House is just like your crazy uncle who will assault you with bizarre right wing rants on the book of faces and fwd. fwd. fwd. crazy shit to you, I like to be prepared.
Remember this swamp nonsense used to exist in it’s own echo chamber, but now Twitler has made it part of the MSM, sadly we need to pay attention to it.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: It went into the trash. I dug it out and freed it.
Major Major Major Major
@rikyrah: did you see that Gorsuch isn’t even meeting with WOC senators, except the one dem on the committee?
rikyrah
Capitalism vs. Coal: How Barack Obama Made it Possible for the Market to Fight Climate Change
Spandan Chakrabarti
April 4, 2017
Last week, Donald Trump sought to undo pretty much all of President Obama’s actions to fight climate change, ceremoniously signing executive orders to make it easier for polluters, particularly coal plants, to pollute without mercy. After a humiliating loss in his 17-day saga to try to repeal Obamacare, Trump and his band of sadist conservatives had at least one Obama accomplishment that could be rolled back.
Not so fast.
Almost immediately following Trump’s petulant announcement, American and global industry giants rebuffed the White House and stressed their own plans – as private companies – to meet or exceed renewable and clean energy commitments they had made under President Obama.
Walmart, no friend to liberal treehuggers, said in a statement that their commitment to get half of its power from renewable sources was embedded in their business model, and that the march away from carbon-polluting energy is good for business. Anheuser-Busch, world’s largest beer company committed to get 100% of its energy from renewable means, and major tech firms flat out applauded Obama’s Clean Power Plan for making “renewable energy supplies more robust and address the serious threat of climate change while also supporting American competitiveness, innovation, and job growth.”
These companies are not responding to political pressure, they are responding to their bottom line. Part of the reason for this new reality of their bottom line is certainly the investments the United States made in clean energy under President Obama (the largest in the nation’s history), but half the story – perhaps the better half – happened outside our borders.
Perhaps the most significant victories for President Obama on the world stage came when he persuaded the Chinese and the Indians to become partners in, rather than adversaries to, investing in clean energy. President Obama was so successful that China not only came on board on bilateral cooperation but committed to the Paris Climate Agreement. With Obama’s relentless diplomacy, China saw the economic benefits of investing in a clean energy future.
And China is not stepping back. The same China that took years of persuasion by Obama to commit to climate change doubled down in response to Trump’s abdication of American leadership on this issue by… creating more economic incentives to produce and use renewable power. China is also poised to set up the world’s largest cap-and-trade program.
SiubhanDuinne
@hovercraft:
That was me. Thanks for the update. Ugh.
rikyrah
@Major Major Major Major:
Yep. Yep.
Just a COINCIDENCE that they are all non-White women.
uh huh
Uh huh
Brachiator
@ruemara:
I failed at attempted irony. Trump is not hard to figure out. The only people he fools are his supporters.
I heard a host on a talk radio station say that Trump, being a successful businessman, is supposed to be a liar. It didn’t connect to the host that if he lies to his opponents, he will lie to anyone.
Patricia Kayden
@hovercraft: So Pat Robertson is working with a racist to take back this country from the evil gay folk? How not very surprising of him.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Ewww
SFBayAreaGal
@hovercraft: The great and famous actor Kevin Sorbo. LOL
His two famous roles in two television series: as Hercules in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and as Captain Dylan Hunt in Andromeda. Everyone around him in those two series out acted him.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for liberating it! Too many tags?
Another Scott
@SiubhanDuinne: Dyna drwg!
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
bemused
@satby:
I’m guessing a good number of these people are rightwing voters or don’t vote at all.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Also, the comments to Wilson’s tweet are pretty funny themselves…
TenguPhule
@Another Scott:
And the Inheritance Tax and Capital Gains Tax.
And its going to be an epic flustercluck. Especially with the debt ceiling in play.
Bush only got his tax cuts through by larding over all parties.
This is not lard, its nitroglycerine.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
This, so much this. They know we will never buy their bullshit, so they attack. Bring it on, we can take it, we are strong and will continue to push back on all your bullshit. We’ve survived much worse than this, and we’re still standing.
P.S. As far as I can tell Maxine, and Michelle are having a grand old time living their lives and doing their thing, they aint sweating it, and Rice has shown in the past she can take anything they throw at her.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: He is a very strange person who, it now appears and as I mentioned in my post yesterday, has a significant contact within the White House.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: With WP? Who knows?
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: That they are.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: So do you just want to deport them or kill them all or perhaps send them to a nice camp? Why stop at H1-B, throw in GC holders and naturalized citizens of Indian origin too.
BTW don’t let facts get in your way but not everyone who is here on an H1-B is
a. Indian
b. Programmer or in tech.
But facts don’t matter when you are dealing with toxic people, am I right.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Looks on twitter is building up to righteous rant on the MSM, Republicans and Susan Rice.
Go Cole Go
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: Sadly for Taibbi and the Berniebots who did their damndest to put Trump in office, it also happens to be true. The Russians pushed Sanders into the process, funded him and the trolls posting here – amongst other places – and it worked.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
Taibi is in the same category as Bill Maher, ostensibly on our side but more prone to be harmful rather than helpful to the cause.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Credit where it’s due, good for this guy from CNBC
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh my!
So they didn’t entirely scrap, “Lets Move”?
Chris
@SFBayAreaGal:
Worse than that as far as he was concerned is that when he did HTLJ, Lucy Lawless out-shone him enough to get her own spin-off, which went on to be much more popular than his show ever was. He’s been bitter about her “lesbian knock-off” ever since. Yet another straight, white, male conservative who couldn’t accept that the free market decided an unperson’s product was better than his own, and instead of accepting the Invisible Hand’s judgment, dealt with it by wailing about how white men just can’t catch a break ever since.
(I never managed to get into XWP the way I did HTLJ, but there’s no question that its star was and is worth way more than Kevin Sorbo).
Timurid
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t think that his reasoning is that “Indian tech workers” are inferior or evil, but that they are the most politically vulnerable and may have to be tossed out of the lifeboat for the sake of everyone else. That line of thinking is even more disturbing than the alternative and, obvious moral reservations aside, it’s a great way to set up an epic circular firing squad as progressives fight each other over who is ‘expendable’ and who can be ‘salvaged.’
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
Fair point. I’m just particularly tired of all Trump’s bullshit today. I’ve been having conversations with a rational neighbor about Trump’s supporters and their desire to vehemently defend Trump no matter what. And I’m in Southern California, so I can easily run into opinions about the LA Time’s editorials.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: I have no idea what “Let’s Move” is.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Well, that truly is good news. At least some CEOs/Executives are rational enough to understand that making a profit by destroying the environment isn’t a good long term strategy.
FlipYrWhig
@rikyrah: I like how for Matt Taibbi it’s just INCONCEIVABLE that the kind of Bernie Sanders followers who couldn’t get over the primary might be dupes. Unwitting, witting, it doesn’t really matter, they believe all kinds of absurd things, and they do it wholeheartedly.
J R in WV
@MattF:
But you don't have to be so sarcastic about it, do you?!?!?!?!?!
Maybe you do, I dunno…
Chris
@hovercraft:
It occurred to me a while ago that, if you were anything other than a straight white Christian male earning at least a million dollars a year, “which party is winning the black vote?” is as close as you can get to a flawless determinator of who you should be voting for. (And even if you’re a straight white Christian male, if, you know, you’re not 100% a dick).
I suppose amending that to “black female vote” would probably make it even more accurate, though that’s usually the same.
schrodingers_cat
@Timurid: I get his reasoning that Indian tech workers are politically expendable. I disagree with it.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: Did you ever read the essay, long before this campaign, where he follows Bernie Sanders around and they both shake their heads over how everyone in Congress is corrupt and wasting time, except for Bernie Sanders? They’re both a couple of preening jackasses.
sherparick
@NorthLeft12: Hell, Racism, Extreme Materialism, and Militarism was the platform on which He Who Should Not Be Named won the election. The Chinese apparently see an easy set of marks in this crew. And they appreciate how there old friend Henry Kissinger is bringing them their new friends Donald Trump and Jared Kushner. https://books.google.com/books?id=Sb4ppU0gpdcC&pg=PT139&lpg=PT139&dq=Henry+Kissinger+Chinese+lobbying&source=bl&ots=XEVx0pJcwo&sig=SXMX3cHtWwBYAcIHhku450c4qUU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwirtryBs4vTAhUDQSYKHfnYCiMQ6AEIRTAH#v=onepage&q=Henry%20Kissinger%20Chinese%20lobbying&f=false
What can go wrong!
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@The Moar You Know: The “leftier than you” types are all Russian ass lickers. They are really scared that their saint is going to get caught up in this fiasco. Deep down they know the saint is partially responsible for the current situation. The Jill Stein, the epitome of the “leftier than you” types, can be seen in photographs sitting next to Mike Flynn at a Russian influence pedaling event.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman:
It was an Obama admin proposal to subsidize black families moving from their lower SES urban hellholes to more upper class white areas. Better schools, better food choices, better transportation options. Basically a way to infiltrate and destroy white solidarity and everything their hard earned tax dollars were paying for.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
“Let’s Move!” was Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity/fitness initiative.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
Lets Move! a Michelle Obama initiative.
Yes I know the focus was on reducing childhood obesity, but she also said the rest of us had to eat healthy and get more exercise.
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: Sounds about right.
SiubhanDuinne
@Corner Stone:
LOL!
Timurid
@schrodingers_cat:
As do I. Once we agree that such a thing is necessary, nobody will want to sacrifice their families, friends or tribe, and they will cut as many throats and stab as many backs as are required to make sure it happens to someone else. It would be an especially effective way of splitting the coalition along racial and other identity group lines. If we can’t protect everybody, we’ll end up protecting nobody.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh, come the fuck on. Thank you for deciding that I’m a racist because I know people who got screwed by the H1-B process.
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
I still love Taibbi’s whole summary of the teabagger phenomenon back in the day. It was and remains one of the better articles written about it. Pity he’s turned into a Bro.
Gin & Tonic
@Chris:
“Turned into”?
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
No, we aren’t all like that at all. I hated it that when we hired contractor software developers, most of them were H1B visa guys, locked to their current employer for however long.
Most of our guys finally got their Green Cards, some of them moved on after that, to the DC beltway or elsewhere, but several stayed because we treated them like regular guys. Some guys I hired 12 or 15 years ago are still working for the agency I retired from.
I think anyone with a solid job offer in a field where it’s hard to hire staff should just get a green card, personally. Perhaps the first work permit should have a shorter life span than a permanent one, but otherwise, just issue them.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris: He was always a bro. Look at his stuff about post-Soviet Russia. It’s all about manipulating women through sex and money. He does that “urban anthropology” thing pretty well, but he’s a piece of work otherwise.
hovercraft
@rikyrah: @Patricia Kayden:
That’s the problem with a lot of Twitler and Ryans efforts to undo the Obama presidency. Obama wasn’t an ideologue, he believed in actually studying and getting buy in from various interests, of course not everyone loved every aspect, but the bottom line was better for everyone in the long run. Undoing it all just for spite may be satisfying to his enemies, but much like they found with Obamacare, the end results do actually help people, and just blowing it up with nothing better to replace it doesn’t sell well. They love to mock Obama because he was just a “community organizer”, (never mind his other accomplishments), but it turns out that the skills learned there come in real helpful when you are trying to form policy with many competing interests.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: You are not a racist. There are problems with H1-B as there are with any other long term visa, like the J visa for example but one almost never hears of it in the media. You don’t have to be on a visa at all for your employer to treat you like shit.
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve been to their museum. That wasn’t cheap.
But I doubt the majority of their cash flow ever came from individuals. Think that’s mostly come from manufacturers. But that’s just me being paranoid.
dogwood
@Chris:
Taibbi didn’t become a Bro; he was born a Bro.
ETA: I see others beat me to it.
Corner Stone
@Chris: Dude’s a major bro. Always has been. Treats people like shit and women (already at second class status in his world) even worse.
Clever writer sometimes, but solid bro asshole all the time.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
I’m not sure which is more of a disappointment, that this failed or that the FEMA Camps never materialized, even if had only been the JADE HELM portion, I would have been happy.
mai naem mobile
@Adam L Silverman: it’s Michelle Obama’s ‘hate whitey’ tape. Do try and keep up with the racism of the Obamas, Adam.
ruemara
I think some of you are discovering a number of progressive big names are problematic. But they always were. Just not on issues that touched your life that much.
rikyrah
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
Keep on telling the truth.
hovercraft
In the no shit Sherlock department.
It went off the rails almost immediately’: How Trump’s messy transition led to a chaotic presidency
Trump ignored transition planners during the campaign, then did things his way after he won. The administration is still playing catch up.
By Dan Balz •
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Shoot your strawmen on your own time please.
I’m pointing out the obvious. The Democratic party has a duty to American citizens first and foremost.
H1-Bs are going to have to wait their turn and in the meantime ask their consulates for help.
And yes, they are politically toxic because they have been used to take American jobs from American workers. That does matter, no matter how sympathetic you feel.
The whole immigration system needs to be overhauled, but first we have to evict the coup currently known as the Empire from the Republic.
schrodingers_cat
@J R in WV: There are strict quotas for employer sponsored GCs per year and per country, its a long and arduous process. I know of many Indian people whose intent to immigrate has been approved but they have to wait for years till a GC becomes available (like the neurologists in Houston who were targeted for removal because of a mistake on their travel document). This is a problem for India, China, Philippines and Mexico, because the applicants from these countries usually exceed the quota every year.
H1-B can be granted for 3 years and then extended for another 3.
The current H1-B lottery system is insane.
Citizen Alan
@SFBayAreaGal:
IIRC, his work on Andromeda was particularly egregious. Because that had the germ of a good show in it, but Sorbo passionately insisted that every single episode be about him and that everyone who threatened to become a breakout star get written off the show.
Corner Stone
@TenguPhule:
Shooting strawmen is really a waste of time. Even with a shotgun at close range it is still not all that satisfactory a result. I’d rather burn them, personally.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Okay. That’s actually a smart public policy.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: Tracking. Now that makes sense. In the context of Cernovitch’s tweets I was confused.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: I think that’s where a lot comes from. Either directly or funneled through the Shooting Sports Foundation, which is the formal industry lobby.
joel hanes
@Corner Stone:
Experiments show that strawmen do best when given a testimonial dinner and a token of esteem from your fraternal organization.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
@hovercraft has a wicked subtle sense of humor.
TenguPhule
@Timurid:
No, they want to be let into the lifeboat with everyone else. I’m pointing out that this is not a good idea no matter how desperate and sympathetic they might be. Like it or not, the Democratic Party is actually supposed to be working for Americans, not foreign citizens.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule:
So are international students taking seats up at American universities from American citizens. You want a fortress America as much as T and Sessions, admit it. Is the DACA student who just graduated from Harvard taking up a seat that should have gone to a deserving citizen instead?
Who decides who is deserving? You?
Thoroughly Pizzled
Taibbi has taken to going after Twitter randos and smugly asking them to prove that Trump is a Russian agent, then using that as proof that we’re all deranged conspiracy theorists. This from “giant vampire squid” man. What a waste.
Corner Stone
@joel hanes:
“Thank you all for the kind words, that means a lot to me. And as for this beautiful watch…well, I just have to say…wait, where are these flames coming from?! Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to have a candle light dinner in celebration?? I’m a fucking strawman for God’s saaa…..AAAAARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!”
PHOOMPH!!
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
Sounds like he learned his lesson from HTLJ! Unfortunately, the lesson was “cut the legs out from under any potential Xenas before they have a chance to undermine you” rather than “don’t be a dick.”
The Moar You Know
@schrodingers_cat: And if you want to find an issue that turns liberal parents into foaming at the mouth xenophobic bigots, that’s the one. And I don’t blame them.
Californians pay the taxes that keep UC open and running. But more and more California kids are getting shut out of those schools in favor of students from other nations (mostly Asia and mostly Chinese of those Asian nations) because those students can and will pay more money.
Were I a politician, would I, could I, support/defend those kids from China coming in to the UC system? Of course not. I’d probably be shot in my driveway.
Is it the fault of the Chinese? Hell no, it’s UC’s fault for chasing profit. But that’s not how it plays politically.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: This is a great example of how labor populism bleeds into nationalism and protectionism and vice-versa. A talented right-wing demagogue could easily unite them, along with the white nationalists, into a strong if necessarily temporary coalition.
ETA: Also what @The Moar You Know: said. You want to turn a liberal into a segregationist, put them in a nice neighborhood and give them a school-age child.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: Case in point. A guy I went to grad school with was great at programming and got attached to a startup company with grand promises of striking it rich with a new product based on his 3D electron device modeling code. As I recall the story, he didn’t get paid for something like 6 months while they were waiting to get the product out the door. “Just hang on a little longer!”
I don’t think he ever did end up getting paid… :-/
He was as white-bread American as they come.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
@The Moar You Know:
They pay cash AND out of state tuition.
SFBayAreaGal
@Chris: I watched Hercules for the actors that was in the series. Xena I liked. Karl Urban played Julius Caesar in Xena.
schrodingers_cat
Basically, when people rail against the H1-B they are railing against one of the few long term visas that enables people with no family ties to live and work here while their green card is being processed. There needs to be an overhaul of employment based immigration but targeting a specific country and a specific profession is not the way to go about it.
Corner Stone
@Chris: The lesson was that Lucy has a great rack. And they can not be denied. YIYIYIYIHHHAAAAA!!!
Cacti
@schrodingers_cat:
Sadly, xenophobic nativism isn’t confined to the right.
D58826
@Adam L Silverman: This WH seems to attract strange people like iron filings to a magnet
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Are you being intentionally obtuse?
American workers, experienced and good at their jobs, were forced to train their H1-B replacements who were cheaper and brought in through an exploit in our visa system.
No domestic party in any country in the world could or would be able to defend that kind of thing to their own citizens. Get off your high horse and realize there is a difference between COMPETING for an open job and unfairly taking someone else’s job while rubbing salt into the wound.
Corner Stone
@SFBayAreaGal: Karl Urban has long aspired to be an action hero. IMO, he is the Poor Man’s The People’s Eyebrow.
germy
rikyrah
@The Moar You Know:
Let’s keep it real. They got mad once the UC system stopped using ‘diverse goals’., which is why so many of the classes are majority Asian (American Asian, not overseas Asian).
Chris
@SFBayAreaGal:
In both shows. One of those nice moments when you go back to a kids’ TV show and go, “hey, it’s Eomer/Dr. McCoy! Wait, he was in this?”
Zoe from Firefly had a few episodes, too. Among others.
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
In other words, it’s increasingly the Chinese and not the Californians who are paying to keep that school open.
TenguPhule
@Cacti: Sadly, common sense isn’t common any more.
H1-Bs have taken American jobs from Americans. Those people who lost their jobs are voters.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule:
You are asserting that every single person on an H1-B visa is unfairly taking someone else’s job/ or has unfairly taken someone’s job. You know this, how?
Chris
@Corner Stone:
I’d be fine watching him as an action hero. Enjoyed what I have seen him in.
Cacti
@TenguPhule:
I understand.
For a certain type of “progressive”, immigrants are fine as long as they know their place.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major:
This is crap. I have had multi-hour arguments with asshole RWNJ’s about funding our local schools. Never once did I look around and ask why free or low cost breakfast/lunches were part of our budget. Or ESL teachers, or after school programs or etc.
All the arguments come from people who would ejaculate spontaneously if you told them that public education was being ended.
Not liberals.
Aleta
OR’s racist attacks on Rep Maxine Waters, our FL Michelle O, and other WOC and all Muslims didn’t ring any of your ‘values’ bells huh.
Just the same, watch OR and Fox try to save themselves by pretending the advertisers’ actions are because of things he said on air. (What about free speech!) And blame others for their revenue loss.
Cacti
@schrodingers_cat:
“Common sense”.
The preferred right wing substitute for actual knowledge.
The same kind that says it snowed today, so global warming can’t be real.
Corner Stone
@Chris: I, too, like Karl Urban overall. Just saying that his schtick reminds me of a less buff The Rock. I thought his part in Bourne Supremacy was top notch.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: I’m not randomly pulling this out of my ass.
It’s a long-standing phenomenon.
I guess I should have added #notallliberals.
mai naem mobile
@schrodingers_cat: I can tell you from anecdotal stuff,I think international students do take up uni spots that should go to deserving American students. I went to UCSD withe my sister,bil,niece, and nephew for their admittwd students day.I don’t want this to sound racist but all five of us on our own noticed the sea of Southeast Asian students there. There were some south Asians, some white folks, some Hispanics and a few blacks but the Southeast Asians overwhelmed all the other groups. It’s possible they were first generation Americans but they appeared to be international students. I don’t mind some foreign students but it’s the US taxpayersoto keep up with these facilities and it’s not like these students are staying. A lot of them come and go.back.to their countries. Meanwhile, deserving American students have to settle for lesser schools? Why? There are more qualified students for the schools than take them. It’s not like they’re going to get a ‘B’student instead of the ‘A’ international student. You’ll get an ‘A’ American student. BTW, this was UCSD not Berkeley or LA with large local Southeast Asian communities. To me and i am no expert, they seemed to be mostly chinese.
SFBayAreaGal
@The Moar You Know: My belief for this and a lot of other funding problems in this state goes back to the passing of Proposition 13.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: SLATE? You fucking Slate pitched me?
Aleta
Sacramento Bee:
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Again with the strawmen.
H1-Bs are being abused to take American jobs. The exact number is unclear. The media has reported some of the more infuriating ones including Disney. Trying to defend H1-Bs is NOT GOING TO END WELL.
schrodingers_cat
@mai naem mobile: Running everything like a business, especially education and healthcare has obvious downsides.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I couldn’t link to Slate. You could read to the second paragraph and follow the link to the Times article if you want, or are they a shitty source too?
TenguPhule
@Cacti: I understand for a certain type of purity pony, you’ll commit political suicide because its Wilmer or Bust instead of see the obvious in front of you.
The Moar You Know
@Chris: Sadly, no. The way UC works is that tuition income is only a small portion of the UC budget. Which is by design – when UC was founded, taxpayers paid for the whole thing. No tuition.
SFBayAreaGal
@Corner Stone: I loved him in The Two Towers and Return of the King. He is a great Dr. McCoy in the nwe Star Trek series.
Aleta
@Aleta:
NY Magazine
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: Let’s. You’re correct about everything save where the Asian population of the UC system comes from. They aren’t California residents. Or American citizens.
germy
@Major Major Major Major:
Slate and Salon are forbidden here, as is the sarcasm font. Those are some of the rules I understand, although there are others.
Cacti
@TenguPhule:
Do you have to tamp down your reflexive feelings of sympathy when a deplorable targets random Indian-Americans for violence?
Cacti
@mai naem mobile:
When you have to lead with:
The problem is you.
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know:
Man, I must have imagined my dinner yesterday with a bunch of Asian-American Berkeley grads!
@germy: Salon I get, and I understand an aversion to Slate for historical reasons, but they’ve actually improved quite a lot over the last couple years.
And that font is just hideous. Trailing slashes, people!
The gist of what I was saying though is that people of all persuasions are susceptible to IGMFY and NIMBYism, especially once they have some money. And neighborhood choice/schools, in places like NYC and SF, are an example of where this flares up.
germy
@Major Major Major Major:
Which is why it’s perfect for sarcasm.
I agree. I have a theory about NIMBYism: it’s because so much of what’s been built is nasty and brutal.
There was a time, during the early 20th century Progressive Era, when new construction was a cause for neighborhood celebration. Beaux Arts structures, parks with bandstands for community concerts. Nowadays it’s just ugly crap slapped together for quick profit.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule:
Your mind is made up, besides name calling, and assertions without any hard data to back them up and now threats, you have nothing. I am done discussing this topic with you.
Goku
@Cacti: This is the same guy who fantasizes about political violence in comments
cranker
@mai naem mobile:
No. International students pay full tution. (In fact more than they need to, since the dirty secret of undergrad ed is that it funds post-grad ed.)
There are far more qualified ‘A’ students who are American born and of South-Asian descent, that don’t get admitted to these colleges. To get what you would like to see, you will need quotas to restrict American born South Asian students. See stats from any nationally normed test results – SAP, AP subject tests and you will see why.
You are pining for a world gone by, where it used to be that “American” (white) students could live an easy life, get a good grade, and easily get into the best colleges. That world is gone. The schools are bloody competitive. You seem to think that eliminating a set of people because of race or place of birth will improve your chances of winning.
Fine, do so. But then expect that the rest of the world will react accordingly. A world in which all the high paying jobs and industries will be in one country, and the rest of the world will work for pittances, and be just the market and dumping ground for the US is not going to happen. It has been tried before, and it was called the British empire.
Similary with H1Bs. The times where you could do simple coding and programing jobs and earn a high salary are gone. That kind of jobs have become commoditized.
What you are seeing is because (1) The market wages for those kind of jobs have come down due to technological progress (2) The workers who are doing these dying jobs will get replaced with lower paid workers (3) Easier to get lower paid workers by H1B
In short, you just want Americans to be the top global 10%, and the rest of the world to be the bottom 90%. I am not against or for it – just noting where your line of thinking ends.
I despair, because people don’t see the big picture. Your income is not some isolated pie.
Your income is someone else’s expense. Your expense is someone else’s income. You don’t suffer when your expenses fall, and your wages fall. You suffer when your expenses don’t fall and your wages fall.
The answer to this country’s woes is more immigration for professionals. Doctors, engineers, professors, lawyers, nurses, so on.. so that the construction worker and store clerks and janitors see their standard of life improve. Because education, medical care and services get cheaper for them.
What is needed is an adjustment of wages down for the professionals.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: They’re your words! Your words! Slate is only quoting you! You used them first and now Slate is just quoting you!
rikyrah
@The Moar You Know:
I’m not saying that they don’t have a lot of foreigners. But, a lot of them are first generation Asians.
J R in WV
@Mike J:
Getting updates about Wiki updates from congressional IPs sounds too good to be true. Not doubting you!!! just in awe of whoever set that up.
Link, please???
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
While I violently agree with you on most terrifying issues of our day, I still maintain that you should stop picking at your toenails in public/11!!!!!!
So there! ;-)
rikyrah
@The Moar You Know:
This is also why private schools (like the Ivy League), are determined to keep their ‘ diversity’ goals. They aren’t about to turn into the UC System, upsetting the generations of legacies.
The Tiger Parents of Silicon Valley
White and Asian students in California schools self-segregate. That’s a pity—and a problem.
By Samuel Liu
The New White Flight
In Silicon Valley, two high schools with outstanding academic reputations are losing white students as Asian students move in. Why?
By SUEIN HWANG
Updated Nov. 19, 2005 11:59 p.m. ET
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
I was good with slashes, or even just going over the top. The code for the code was done by some guys at LGM, I suspect. The only other blog I follow, really.
It looks OK on firefox, and chrome. Does safari run on non-Apple hardware?
ETA: But so many people can’t detect sarcasm at all, and launched all out nuclear flame wars at someone who under the sarcasm agreed with them completely… what to do? What to do…..
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
The nearest Walmart to our tiny place in AZ has a roof over the entire parking lot. Multipurpose roof, cars get to park in the shade in the Sonoran desert, Walmart gets free electricity all day long, every day.
Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, I drove along the north side of that facility last year, for 3 miles there was a bank of solar arrays at least 100 meters wide! For miles! Trump can’t stop economic pressure, and solar and wind energy is now less expensive than any other source.
mai naem mobile
@Cacti: excuse me Cacti but I meant what I said there. I don’t know how to phrase ‘there was an overwhelming number of Southeast Asians as compared to other groups’ without it sounding racist. It’s not meant in a racist way. It was an observation. I am Indian American as is my sister, bil and their kids. All five of us noticed it. Hey, it’s perfectly possible that more SE Asians show up to accepted student days and white and South Asian kids don’t. I dunno. I also happen to live in a college town where I have friends who comment that when you’re driving near the campus,there’s a very large number of South Asian students(definitely way beyond your average South Asian Arizona population.)I don’t take that as being racist because it’s fucking true.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
You guys don’t get it. He’s doesn’t have anything against the H1B visa workers, he hates the business decisions being made to replace American workers with jobs working hard and succeeding at their work with new guys they can pay less.
His whole point is the the bosses making these decisions are exploiting their immigrant workers in order to replace their American workers, and will discard the H1B workers ASAP as well. It’s the sick management thought process he’s against. Not the workers.
TenguPhule
@J R in WV: Finally someone gets it right!
I should not be the reasonable and nuanced person on this blog.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Pot, Kettle, Strawman.
FFS, I am not your farking enemy. Stop trying to make me one.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
“The current H1-B lottery system is insane.”
I agree totally, and the fact that H1B employees are bound to their employer like serfs to the land is horrible. Some of those body shop “consulting” firms treat their employees little better than Tsarist landlords!
Steeplejack
@Yarrow:
Some commenters use the <code> font to indicate sarcasm, usually because their game is so weak.
J R in WV
@TenguPhule:
Little fear of that, Tengu…
;-)
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: Oh. Ouch.
TenguPhule
@J R in WV: Its disturbing and disorienting as all heck.
schrodingers_cat
@J R in WV: I knew someone who was here on an H1-B in the mid aughts, family friend’s son. He worked for 2 years for Wipro and then started his own software company in India and is doing quite well for himself. His H1-B experience helped him launch his business. Not exactly an indentured servant.
I have a friend who has a medical degree from India, an MD from John Hopkins with a pediatric hematology oncology fellowship (they choose 6 fellows/year). She works on J visa right now in an urban DC hospital and H1-B would be a step up for her. Her husband is a post doc in Tennessee, he is on an H1-B he works as a neurology post doc. Which programming jobs are these two stealing? Wouldn’t you want them to be able to work and live here? They have a US citizen daughter. Both have been here since the mid aughts.
Steeplejack
@Yarrow:
The other way used here is to put two slashes at the end of a sarcastic comment.
This seems nice. //
ETA: What some may not realize is that on the mobile version of this site anything using the <code> font comes out in a different (and Incredibly ugly) color and background. One of Tommy or Alain’s lesser “improvements.” (Ditto Cole’s comments appearing in a different color.)
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: Yes and exchange for your two points there was the Disney H1-Bs and the other tech H1-Bs which WERE NOT USED AS INTENDED (perhaps this will sink in if its in all caps) and literally stole jobs from Americans.
The companies who abuse the system are a problem. They also make defending the H1-B system political poison precisely because they can be brought up as examples whenever someone tries to stick their neck out for the people being brought in by the system. That’s the reality.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
I got your email — we’re good. Since we have opposite sore spots on the topic, I’ll just emphasize our point of agreement, which is that Jeff Sessions is a racist asshole who’s just going to make the whole situation worse.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack:
***GASPS***
Miss Bianca
@Chris: you and me both – Adam Baldwin, too, tho’ with thebtype of characters he plays, you could almost look at it as Art-imitates-Life typecasting,
sharl
@Adam L Silverman: About three years ago TBogg posted an excellent thing on his family history with the NRA. In the massive comment response there were clearly (IMO) NRA operatives trying to fight the PR battle on behalf of those gun grifters, and – again, IMO – losing. I was in that scrum, and (eventually) found some of my comments with the links. This January 2013 Mother Jones article concluded that the NRA had 3 million members, which is a lot, but not 4 million.
Miss Bianca
@SFBayAreaGal: Karl Urban also played Cupid on “Xena”, which has to be up there for the weirdest double-casting ever…
sharl
Here’s something from December 2015, also from Mother Jones, on who actually runs the NRA. An excerpt:
FWIW here’s a link to one of my comments with some links (hope it works; it’s under my old nom-du-TBogg meepmeep09). I’m sure there are newer articles out there that cover the same ground but (hopefully) with updated facts-and-figures. But somehow I doubt that the basic arguments have changed much; NRA grifting success isn’t based on facts-and-figures.
SFBayAreaGal
@Miss Bianca: I completely forgot about his other roles in Xena.
RM
@hovercraft: God, I don’t KNOW. He probably likes her because she was a Bernie surrogate or something. But, I mean, I don’t think he really gets how awful Lord Dampnut is either. He’s all ‘MIKE PENCE IS WORSE’ and while he is in a lot of ways, just because Mike Pence is even worse doesn’t make Lord Dampnut not objectively terrible.
RM
@Debbie1: Yeah, I guess I can see that. My in-laws are big ex-hippies (they met when my father-in-law was draft dodging in Canada) but, like, they’ve done well enough for themselves by now. He’s a life-long Democrat and it bugs the hell out of me that he stans so hard for the dude that was basically using the Democratic party.
Aleta
@RM:
He used them and is still using them: attacking their organization and attacking their supporters and base while promoting himself and raising money in the process. And as far as I can tell he has little shared experience with midwesterner laborers or small business owners, for example.