Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

How stupid are these people?

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Second rate reporter says what?

We will not go back.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

White supremacy is terrorism.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

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

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

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

You are here: Home / Begging For It

Begging For It

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I just can’t tell if these guys are this fucking stupid or this arrogant because they have never had to deal with the consequences of their actions:

The special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on Monday accused President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, of working with a Russian colleague to draft an opinion piece about his political work for Ukraine.

In court filings, a prosecutor working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team said Manafort was working on the article as recently as Nov. 30.

Had it been published, prosecutors say it would have violated a Nov. 8 court order not to discuss the case publicly.

The Russian colleague who was working with Manafort allegedly to shape public opinion about his work for a Ukrainian political party has ties to Russian intelligence agencies, according to the filing.

Manafort ultimately never published the opinion piece, after prosecutors reached out to his attorneys to alert them, they said in the filing.

Due to Manafort’s actions, prosecutors said the judge should reject his request to modify his bail conditions.

Just put the motherfucker in jail already.

Reader Interactions

98Comments

  1. 1.

    Tilda Swintons Bald Cap

    arrogant because they have never had to deal with the consequences of their actions:

    <—

  2. 2.

    TenguPhule

    I just can’t tell if these guys are this fucking stupid or this arrogant because they have never had to deal with the consequences of their actions

    Why not both?

  4. 4.

    eclare

    Unbelievably stupid….piss off the special prosecutor. Put him in jail til the trial, he may another spare passport lying around.

  5. 5.

    r€nato

    nope, nothing to see here, no Russian connection, fake news, it’s not against the law to write an article with a Russian’s help libturds!

  6. 6.

    bystander

    I’m enjoying this because (a) I enjoy thinking of Manfort in lockup and (b) I enjoy listening to Richard Painter wax righteous.

    I also enjoy hearing the flat refutation of the theory that the POTUS embodies Justice and therefore cannot violate himself. So stupid, yet so of whole cloth among trumpletons.

  7. 7.

    Roger Moore

    I just can’t tell if these guys are this fucking stupid or this arrogant because they have never had to deal with the consequences of their actions:

    I think they grossly overestimate their own intelligence and savvy because they’ve never had to deal with a genuinely formidable opponent. Manafort thought he was being clever enough to evade detection because he doesn’t grasp just how tightly an organization like the FBI can watch his every move.

  8. 8.

    Raoul

    The deeply frightening part of all this is, had Trump and his troupe not been utter morans, we may already have had a successful Russian operation. What will be done after this shitshow is cleared to prevent a future competent set of bad actors to do similar?

  9. 9.

    dmsilev

    Pissing off a judge by blowing off a court order you agreed to is certainly an …innovative legal strategy.

  11. 11.

    different-church-lady

    I just can’t tell if these guys are this fucking stupid or this arrogant

    Arrogance is a sub-set of stupidity, so the answer is “yes.”

  13. 13.

    TenguPhule

    @bystander:

    I also enjoy hearing the flat refutation of the theory that the POTUS embodies Justice and therefore cannot violate himself. So stupid, yet so of whole cloth among trumpletons.

    They’re already ginning up another one.

    “FBI agent removed from the investigation for partisan behavior is proof that the whole investigation into Trump is a setup and therefore we need a special prosecutor to investigate….Robert Mueller!”

  14. 14.

    Boatboy_srq

    I think we’re seeing the consequences of three-plus decades of wingnut welfare. Nothing else explains it quite so well: none of these idiots are Old Money, most have a college degree from someplace that required them to at least show up, and they aren’t Establishment GOP so have no favors to call in from MOTUs or VSPs. Only Bvgfvckery Takes Care Of Its Own covers the rising mountain of evidence that they have a hard time counting past twenty.

  15. 15.

    TenguPhule

    @Raoul:

    What will be done after this shitshow is cleared to prevent a future competent set of bad actors to do similar?

    Heads on pikes. Examples must be made.

  21. 21.

    TenguPhule

    And across the pond, Great Britain is having one fucked up day on Brexit.

    Only place worse off then we are these days.

  23. 23.

    Ridnik Chrome

    In light of this story I would like to revise what I said in the previous thread. I do believe that even the worst sinner is capable of redemption, but certain sinners I would like to see breaking rocks and/or scrubbing out lavatories for a decade or two prior to their redemption.

  24. 24.

    debbie

    Stupid wins over arrogant by a mile. From the article I linked to in the last thread:

    Manafort wanted to be allowed to travel among a few states in return for agreeing to forfeit $11.6 million in property if he missed a court appearance.

  25. 25.

    bluefish

    Looks like it’s that portion of the spaghetti western where the camera zooms in on the sweaty sweaty face of Eli Wallach and the desperate hissing begins. These guys don’t get this town at all. Watching them self-destruct is almost worth the price of admission. Almost. So damn dumb.

  26. 26.

    Raoul

    @TenguPhule:

    FBI is Trumpland
    “Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election.” November 3, 2016

    But, yeah, two people in the FBI. Since pulled off the Mueller project, if I recall correctly. GOP will spin this shit every which way then can. Bastards.

  27. 27.

    Yarrow

    I just can’t tell if these guys are this fucking stupid or this arrogant because they have never had to deal with the consequences of their actions:

    When you’re a star they let you do it.

  29. 29.

    Shrillhouse

    This is like getting pulled over, and asking the cop: “What seems to be the problem, pig?”

  30. 30.

    TenguPhule

    @Raoul: Everything is projection with them. Everything.

    The RNC emails must involve a child sex slave ring. Only reason for Russia not to release them.

    And it would explain why there’s so few outed Republicans for sexual harassment in DC.

  32. 32.

    Raoul

    @debbie: I was reading Vanity Fair about the real estate problems in Trump Tower NYC and they mentioned that Manafort is under water in his condo that he nominally owns there. So what his attempted pledged real estate is ‘worth’ as bail is dubious. Of course. “Back to the slammer,” as Painter said colorfully today.

  37. 37.

    Wapiti

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): My only knowledge of ramps was from a Gomer Pyle book, where he and the sarge go to Gomer’s home town for the ramp festival. “New and improved with fresh ramps” might mean “new and and improved with something seriously archaic”. Unless the context was about Nabors or Gomer.

  39. 39.

    TenguPhule

    @Eric S.:

    You’ll be dipping them in tar first, no?

    No, its a bastard to clean off the wood mounts.

    Tar is for the ones we set on fire.

  40. 40.

    PJ

    @Raoul: I posted this in the thread down-below, but he is having work done on his property in Brooklyn at night in an attempt to get around a stop-work order: pardonmeforasking.blogspot.com/2017/12/for-paul-manafort-stop-work-order-on.html. I wonder if thinks he can finish renovations and raise its value so that he can use it in negotiations (for the bail amount?) or somehow sell it, but I would imagine no transfer of the property could be made without FBI approval.

  42. 42.

    TenguPhule

    Why aren’t you paying the estate tax? Maybe because you bought 311,000 bottles of whisky.

    For those who can’t get past Wapo’s paygate.

    The most popular liquor in Iowa, according to the Des Moines Register, is Black Velvet Canadian whisky. (Note: The Post spells the name of the drink as “whiskey” unless it’s Canadian or Scotch.)

    Local grocery giant Hy-Vee doesn’t list prices for the drink on its website, so we called a Des Moines-area Walmart. There, a 1.75-liter bottle costs $17.67. So we can do the math.

    For an Iowan to save enough to qualify for the estate tax simply by cutting out her favorite liquor, she would simply need to buy 310,697 fewer bottles of it. If she usually goes through a bottle a day — an unhealthy habit, to be sure — she simply needs to stop doing so for 851 years to save the $5.5 million or so.

    Or, if she is perhaps instead the generous type, she should cut down on giving out free shots to other people. How many shots? 310,697 bottles of Black Velvet generate about 12.3 million shots — enough to provide about four shots for every resident of the state.

    Sorry, Iowans, you’ll have to buy four shots of whisky (or whiskey) out of your own pocket. This lady over here is trying to build an estate.

    Some people have questioned what, exactly, Grassley means by spending money on “women.” I saw one person on social media mention “escorts,” which I’m a bit confused by. If you wanted to, though, you could save for your estate by deciding against buying 2,501 used Ford Escorts near Des Moines — not to mention what you’d save on parking.

    Let’s instead assume that Grassley meant that you should cut down on taking women on dates. (At no point in time did I describe my courtship of my wife as “spending money on women,” but who am I to judge?) We found a list of 25 date ideas in Des Moines, including a night at a restaurant called Django, which appears not to be a theme restaurant related to the Quentin Tarantino movie.

    At Django, figure you would spend about $66 on two entrees, an appetizer and a couple of drinks, plus tax and tip. To instead have enough money in the bank to qualify for the estate tax, you’d simply need to go to Django 83,182 fewer times. If you usually go every weekend evening, just stop going for the next 800 years. Put that money in the bank, and then you, too, can pay the estate tax, assuming it doesn’t change between now and the year 2817.

    Let’s say that instead of saving for your estate, you want to see a movie. Let’s say that, in particular, you want to see “Justice League,” the 24th of 38 movies about comic books released in 2017.

    If you live in Des Moines, you can see an evening showing at the AMC Classic Southridge 12 for $10.48. To have $5.5 million by the time you die, you’ll just need to avoid repeat viewings. About 523,855 repeat viewings, to be exact.

    “Justice League” is just shy of two hours long, meaning you’ll have to forgo watching the film in theaters for 115 straight years. Or, if you are the generous type, just change your plans to buy out a 300-seat theater for the next 140 days, 10 hours and 8 minutes continuously. Sure, it would be fun to treat 299 other people to a comic-book movie with a 41 percent Rotten Tomatoes score for every minute between now and 9:03 p.m. April 23, but this is your future we’re talking about.

  44. 44.

    jl

    Weird stuff reeking of desperation, reminiscent of crazy stuff out of WH. I think another possibility is that Manafort has reason to believe that his plea bargain won’t hold (because he held stuff back?) and expects to be charged and go to trial sooner or later. So a little public opinion engineering in the press would be useful?

    Or, he needed the cast that bad…

  46. 46.

    TenguPhule

    A study published Monday in Nature Human Behaviour suggests a more effective way to reach vaccine-hesitant parents may be to focus on two potentially powerful moral values that underlie people’s attitudes and judgments: individual liberty and purity.

    Oh fuck this. Bring on the Asteroids already.

  49. 49.

    moops

    The OpEd was likely to sway enough public opinion to allow cover for when Trump pardons him.

    Just a hunch.

  51. 51.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):

    Several years ago (ISTR), there was a John Cole thread about ramps. IIRC, it turned into a VERY lively and highly-opinionated discussion, although I don’t remember any actual fisticuffs. I imagine the rotating tag stemmed from that occasion.

  52. 52.

    MJS

    My theory is that Manafort is doing this to signal to his handlers and Trump that he’s still on their side.

  53. 53.

    jl

    @SiubhanDuinne: Cole was very excited about seeing a local produce stand selling ramps. He had pics, and for ramps, he bothered to take a very nice ones, too. A lot of us did not know what ramps were.

    There should be a rotating header about West Virginia roadkill cuisine. I remember a few Cole posts that inspired conversation about that topic as well.

  55. 55.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @jl:

    Cole was very excited about seeing a local produce stand selling ramps. He had pics, and for ramps, he bothered to take a very nice ones, too. A lot of us did not know what ramps were.

    That sounds right, thanks.

  56. 56.

    Raoul

    My more generalized theory is that Manafort is a sleazball, with a lot of expensive plates spinning but wobbling and slowing down. And so he’ll do whatever sleazeball things he needs to in the present moment to spin any plate just a bit faster, damn the consequences tomorrow.
    His hiring by Trump back in the day always looked desperate and stupid. And here we are.

  57. 57.

    moops

    He’s also likely preparing for the life on Wingnut Welfare. Writing gigs, doing interviews about being the target of a witchhunt, yada yada.

  60. 60.

    Lolly

    A few weeks ago people were ticked off at Manafort getting such an accommodating bail agreement. Wonder if Mueller was pretty certain that Manafort would be just the type to hang himself if given enough rope?

  61. 61.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Raoul:

    My more generalized theory is that Manafort is a sleazball

    I’d say that’s a “theory” only in the sense that evolution or general relativity are theories. He is a blood-soaked amoral mercenary.

  63. 63.

    Boatboy_srq

    @TenguPhule: I’m actually surprised that ownership of women didn’t come up in the article, or the idea (given how the estate tax is figured for couples) that it’s really difficult to plan your death to coincide with your spouse’s so your inheritors would obtain the maximum benefit. Wilde called losing both parents careless, most people nowadays would describe it as suspicious, but to the GOTea it’s apparently just prudent estate planning.

  64. 64.

    Matt McIrvin

    @TenguPhule: Devin Nunes (who, of course, is a target of the investigation) is trying to get the DOJ found in contempt of Congress for not revealing information to his bogus committee, and presumably get Mueller and Jeff Sessions thrown in jail by the Sergeant-at-Arms. Nice constitutional crisis brewing there.

  65. 65.

    TheMightyTrowel

    Ot: kudos to the lady at the qantas club in Adelaide airport who made a disgusted face and immediately changed the channel when the murdoch run news channel started showing a live stream of a speech by milo who is currently grifting down under.

  66. 66.

    Boatboy_srq

    @moops: Notice how they never did anything wrong illegal unpatriotic serious worthy of prosecution that Dems don’t do more and worse every day.

  67. 67.

    Roger Moore

    @sylvania:

    It will be published on wikileaks anyways and then republished by everyone else. Same old story.

    And if it is, then the judge will throw him in prison for contempt. Violating a court order is not a good way of making friends and influencing people, at least not the judges whose orders you’re violating.

  69. 69.

    gene108

    @TenguPhule:

    Another way is to stop vaccinating and have small pox make a come back. When a third of your town is dead, you may reconsider the value of vaccines.

  71. 71.

    Adam L Silverman

    Konstantin Kilimnick is Manafort’s Russian Intel Service handler. No one is former GRU just as no one is former KGB or FSB or SRV (or in the old days NKVD).

    It is also important to keep in mind that because Flynn is cooperating, while Mueller would like Manafort and Dearborn to cooperate, he no longer needs them to cooperate. So Manafort has less and less leverage every day while Mueller has more and more leverage.

  72. 72.

    Barry

    “…after prosecutors reached out to his attorneys to alert them, they said in the filing.”

    Why? Let them do it, p*ss off the judge, and get themselves into more trouble.

  73. 73.

    PhoenixRising

    @debbie:

    Manafort wanted to be allowed to travel among a few states in return for agreeing to forfeit $11.6 million in property if he missed a court appearance.

    Yeah, um, about that? What if either
    a) Paul’s friend Natasha says she has a dacha set up for him on the Crimea when he flees, or
    b) He’s more confident in the security at Club Fed than on house arrest?

    I think he’d rather have us pay for screening his cocktails for polonium, if he’s not as stupid as he might be. Alternately he believes his handlers that they have a nice place he can stay the rest of his life.

  76. 76.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Roger Moore: What Manafort lost sight of, if he ever had any awareness of it, was that the US intel community has watched him for decades. As long as he largely kept his bad behavior overseas and as long as it wasn’t considered to be screwing up US policy and strategy somewhere, they just watched, recorded, and catalogued. And so did our allies and partners. Same thing with Stone. Same thing with the President. Same thing with Michael Cohen, etc, etc, etc. But now there is a reason for this to all be reviewed for both counterintelligence and criminal action.

  77. 77.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman:

    But now there is a reason for this to all be reviewed for both counterintelligence and criminal action.

    I thought that time was last year. Before the election.

  78. 78.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Adam L Silverman: Ukraine also has a *lot* of intelligence on Manafort and no interest in keeping it to themselves. Those files didn’t disappear when Yanukovych ran away.

  79. 79.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: That isn’t going anywhere. This was dreamed up by the Rage Furby and the other alt-righters who think they’re going to get wealth and power as a result of this administration. Mueller removed this guy ASAP and reassigned to a dead end position to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. The GOP House L listers, including Nunes, the Fox Newsniks, Rush, Dim Jim, the Shondas for the Goyim at Breitbart, and the Mandrill Mentality can scream and howl all they want. It isn’t going to get Mueller to stop. And it isn’t going to get him to go away.

  80. 80.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman:

    while Mueller would like Manafort and Dearborn to cooperate, he no longer needs them to cooperate.

    Is Mueller ruthless enough to let Putin do some dirty work in order to get the points across to the survivors that cooperation really is in their best long term interests?

  81. 81.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It isn’t going to get Mueller to stop. And it isn’t going to get him to go away.

    But is it going to damage the investigation’s legitimacy in the eyes of a lot of very stupid people with the attention span of mayflies?

    Its not just an intelligence or criminal battle being fought here, its a battle of popular perception for American voters.

  82. 82.

    Gin & Tonic

    @TenguPhule: Those people made up their minds long before this, and will not believe anything Mueller comes back with, no matter how iron-clad it is.

  83. 83.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): This is what happens when you let 6,000 (yep, that’s the number that was reported) lobbyists from different companies and firms representing different interests write and then rewrite your legislation on the fly and you can’t be bothered to take the time to read it and proof it. I guarantee that this won’t be the only thing like this found in there as the experts and the journalists comb through it. There’s going to be stuff that is illegal because there are existing laws that weren’t repealed that prevent it. Basically what McConnell did is what the GOP led Florida legislature does with its budget. They waste 5 weeks and 4 days of their 6 week annual session screwing around, and as we now know figuratively and literally, and then on the last day cram everything into an omnibus budget, which is the only thing they are required by law to do every year. They then adjourn. Everyone else spends the next three to six months trying to figure out what these numbskulls rammed through and figuring out what is legal, isn’t legal, is and isn’t constitutional and what may or may not have to be revised, scrapped, fixed, etc.

  84. 84.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: Yep. Apparently Northern Ireland figured out away to stay in both the UK and the EU. Now London and Scotland are sniffing around the solution.

  85. 85.

    Silent no more

    Pardon my naivete on this, but I assumed that Manafort (while a venal fool) is anticipating a pardon and simply trying to keep himself “in play” until he can go back to his previous career. What am I not understanding?

  87. 87.

    Roger Moore

    @Barry:

    Why? Let them do it, p*ss off the judge, and get themselves into more trouble.

    I can think of several reasons. One might be to send Manafort a message that he can’t get away with the shit he thinks he can. Signs point to him not cooperating, and hitting him with this might be a way to rattle him. Another is that they genuinely don’t want him trying to get his story out there, so they’d prefer to stop him than to let him do it and then get him punished for breaking the order. This makes sense because it appears they may be able to get almost as much by revealing he was trying to break the order as they’d get by letting him break it and then showing that he had.

    Most important though, is that they have an ethical obligation to stop him if they know he’s going to try breaking the order. For all the shit lawyers get about being evil, most of them take their ethical obligations very seriously. Among the ones who do in almost every case are judges. If the judge were to find out that Mueller’s team knew Manafort was trying to violate the order and they deliberately let him so they could nail him afterward, he is not going to congratulate them for their clever tactics. He might punish Manafort for violating the order, but he would also likely sanction Mueller’s team quite severely, possibly in a way that would hurt their case.

  91. 91.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: Those people already believe one or both of the following:
    1) This is a witch hunt cooked up by the deep state/permanent government to protect the Clintons and Obamas and destroy Trump’s presidency.
    2) Mueller is actually going to be indicting both Clintons, both Obamas, Harry Reid, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, James Comey, the folks that own Comet Pizza, John Podesta, and all of the on air talent from MSNBC and CNN.

  93. 93.

    Caphilldcne

    @Judge Crater: I know people who regularly cycle in and out of the dc jail. They often have a lot of alcohol and other drug problems and a lot of issues cause their poor. I wouldn’t actually say they were deplorable.

  94. 94.

    the Conster

    @germy:

    Greenwald’s a loon, and the only thing missing from those comments are brain droppings from the lizard people.

  96. 96.

    Bill Arnold

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Rage Furby

    Back when Furbies were a thing and the black hebrew israelites were already preaching their amplified “whites are devils” thing in NYC (Times Square), I had ambitions of miking a Furby, connecting it to a similar amplifier, and having it argue with them. Alas, never done. That would have gotten me 15 minutes of fame, easy.

    The street missionaries take their etymology quite literally. They yell at white people, “Hu-man is a combination of hue and man. You have no hue, no color, so you’re not human! That’s why you can’t absorb the sun and you need vitamins!”

  97. 97.

    Haroldo

    @TheMightyTrowel: That drivel was on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) as well. As my daughter succinctly put it, ‘Fuck the ABC for giving him a forum.’ Gotta agree with the girl.

  98. 98.

    opiejeanne

    @Adam L Silverman: Chuck C.. Johnson, (not Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs).
    I always have to google Rage Furby because I can’t remember who that is. I keep confusing him with Jim Hoft.

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