How about a thread about things that don’t suck?
Open thread!
by Betty Cracker| 132 Comments
This post is in: Birdwatching, Open Threads
How about a thread about things that don’t suck?
Open thread!
This post is in: Dolt 45, Election 2016, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Russiagate, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?
DOJ has just sent us a very brief letter about the Mueller report, which we will share shortly.
— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) March 24, 2019
“The Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’”
— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) March 24, 2019
… In other words, the carefully-edited version of the Mueller Report that Trump’s hand-picked Acting AG has chosen to share, for now…
Context as you read: am told Special Counsel Robert Mueller was not consulted on this letter. This was the product of the Attorney General Bill Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, per DOJ official.
— Laura Jarrett (@LauraAJarrett) March 24, 2019
Since the decision — by his own admission — not to prosecute on obstruction was AG Barr’s (and NOT Mueller’s), this makes the case for a full release of the Mueller Report even more compelling (so Congress can assess Barr’s decision).
— Ronald Klain (@RonaldKlain) March 24, 2019
65: Number of words from the Mueller report Barr includes in his 4 page letter
ZERO: Number of complete sentences from the Mueller report Barr includes in his 4 page letter
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 24, 2019
Reminder, Rep. Nadler is Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and clearly he is *not* prepared to give AG Barr — or the man who appointed Barr his consigliere — a free pass. Good for him!
But Special Counsel Mueller clearly and explicitly is not exonerating the President, and we must hear from AG Barr about his decision making and see all the underlying evidence for the American people to know all the facts.
— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) March 24, 2019
Also, Rep. Adam Schiff:
The Department of Justice has suggested it cannot provide Congress with evidence as to people not indicted.
Not true. It can, and it has, when the need for transparency is strong.
The DOJ gave us more than 880k pages from the Clinton email probe. It must now do the same here. pic.twitter.com/bvIKOqnLF0
— Adam Schiff (@AdamSchiff) March 24, 2019
Fine, leave Barron out of it. https://t.co/CJvDj4kz6e
— Joshua Holland ? (@JoshuaHol) March 24, 2019
If Robert Mueller's goal was to keep people pissed off about Trump's crimes all the way to the end of 2020, he definitely succeeded.
— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) March 24, 2019
Open Thread: Buckling Down to Dissect the Barr ReportPost + Comments (83)
by Adam L Silverman| 145 Comments
This post is in: 2020 Elections, America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, Popular Culture, Post-racial America, Silverman on Security
As everyone starts their spin, the President prepares to tweet or do a press gaggle with the traveling press pool as he flies back to DC, rending of garments, gnashing of teeth, victory laps, and celebrations depending on one’s political views and perspectives, I wanted to just make one quick point. The letter that Attorney General Barr sent to Congress today is his summary of Special Counsel Mueller’s top line findings, they are not actually Special Counsel Mueller’s report, nor are they the executive summary to that report. That does not mean that Attorney General Barr is misrepresenting the Special Counsel’s findings in his letter. It does mean that the Special Counsel, his personnel, the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, and their personnel advising on this since Friday afternoon are the only people that have actually seen Special Counsel Mueller’s report.
https://twitter.com/ktbenner/status/1109908873408901123
Katie Brenner, who is The New York Times reporter assigned to the Department of Justice, makes this very clear. Attorney General Barr’s letter to Congress today was prepared without any consultation or input from Special Counsel Mueller. This is his interpretation of the Special Counsel’s report, which, again, has only been seen at this point by the Special Counsel, his personnel, the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, and the personnel from the Office of Legal Counsel that advised them on preparing his letter to Congress.
Until the Special Counsel’s report is actually provided to Congress and made public, we have no way of actually knowing if the Attorney General’s interpretation of the report, or his and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein’s determination that obstruction of justice charges could not be brought based on what the Special Counsel’s Office had reported to them, are accurate. Especially as both the Attorney General, because of the unsolicited assessment he submitted to the White House Counsel regarding the accusations of obstruction of justice and the Deputy Attorney General’s involvement in providing justification for terminating FBI Director Comey, create serious conflicts of interest for them in making that final determination regarding whether the President obstructed justice. We also won’t know, until the report is made public, if the Special Counsel concluded, per footnote 1 on p. 2 of Barr’s letter, that there was no tacit or explicit conspiracy between the President, members of his campaign, and/or his other surrogates and/or employees with the Russians to interfere in the 2016 election because he just couldn’t find any or enough substantiating evidence or because he was lied to and that evidence was destroyed and actions covered up to prevent him from finding it.
This is a complicated and problematic decision for both of them. Before he took office, Barr wrote a memo preemptively attacking the obstruction component of Mueller's investigation. Rosenstein was part of the conduct (firing Comey) that the investigation would have examined.
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) March 24, 2019
Reading between the lines in the next paragraph, particularly "in our judgment," it appears the obstruction case was a close call, and Mueller did not give them even the thinnest reed of his own conclusions to hold onto. Barr and Rosenstein are out on a limb on their own on this. pic.twitter.com/w3KbXJdxbn
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) March 24, 2019
Attorney General Barr’s Letter is below.
Until or unless Special Counsel Mueller’s report is made public, we do not actually know much more than we knew two hours ago.
Open thread.
by TaMara| 23 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
For obvious reasons, this just about did me in:
Here’s a quick pic of mine. THEY DO NOT LIVE IN THE HOUSE, LOL. But they have started laying eggs again, so you know spring is really here.
It is so difficult to get photos of them. They HATE when I aim a camera or phone at them. But here are few more.
I will tell you that a single duck is a recipe for trouble. They need to be in at least pairs. And for those wondering, a spoiled duck could very well live 8-10 years. I hope Kylie and Snowflake have as many as possible.
Open thread.
Open Thread: I’m Not Crying, You’re CryingPost + Comments (23)
This post is in: Open Threads, Sports, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome
"Yoopers" embrace endless winters along Lake Superior.
The proof is in the pictures. https://t.co/7tireeY5lN
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 23, 2019
The first of our daffodils have opened, near the south-facing front window that leaks heat. They’re not looking very prosperous — I suspect because it was a cold winter without the usual snow cover to protect them. But they’re showing defiantly yellow against the brown-grey winter detritus, and here north of Boston that means we can generally assume that Spring is due, give or take one last ‘surprise’ snowstorm.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have the courage to share (nor, I suspect, the Washington Post to publish) this entertaining but also terrifying photo-essay on the proud winter sportspersons of Michigan’s Upper Pennisula:
Yoopers, a name for residents of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, don’t just endure winter, they embrace it, creating plenty of outdoor fun during their months of never-ending cold and snow.
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is one of the coldest and snowiest regions in the United States. Snow can fall from October until May, producing 150- to 300-plus inches of snow a year. Much of the snow falls as lake-effect snow, which occurs quite frequently, particularly in areas near the southern shore of Lake Superior. It’s not uncommon for snow to fall during five or six months of the year.
So what’s their secret to surviving and embracing their long, cold winters? Yoopers have learned to dress for the weather and accept their frigid, frozen fate with a good attitude. Cold and snow is just a part of life in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, much like heat and humidity is part of life in Florida.
And it’s possible a few of them may go just a little crazy during those long winter months, if the photos above and some that follow don’t make that obvious.
Devon Hains, a photographer who shoots surfers in the frigid water of Lake Superior during winter, took some amazing shots during the peak of the polar vortex last January when temperatures plummeted below zero in Michigan.
I asked Hains how the surfers keep warm in such cold temperatures? “They use a 9 mm thick wetsuit and keep a five gallon jug of hot water in their car nearby so if they ever experience an influx of cold water into their suit, most often in a boot, they can pour hot water into their suit and head back out,” he responded…
I managed to live in Michigan for fifteen years without ever visiting the UP. In my defense, my first freshman roommate was a proud Yooper, and it took her as long to drive home to Iron Mountain (on the far western side) as it did for me to drive back to the Bronx, partially because the NYC-bound roads were in rather better condition.
Sunday Morning Open Thread: Could Be WorsePost + Comments (192)
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Science & Technology, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, World's Best Healthcare (If You Can Afford It)
The wildest thing about the Theranos doc is that people are like HOW could this YOUNG GRIFTER have FLIMFLAMMED so many PEOPLE and, I mean, the grifter is blond and doe-eyed the people bankrolling her were horned-up old white dudes terrified of death, this isn't difficult
— andi zeisler (@andizeisler) March 20, 2019
Guys responding to this tweet with "Eh, she's not really hot," congratulations on missing the point right on schedule.
— andi zeisler (@andizeisler) March 20, 2019
I haven’t paid much attention to the Theranos scandal, because marketing a literal version of the classic Magical Money Box con to Silicon valley ‘edgelords’ hardly seemed innovative. Of course they knew it was almost certainly fraudulent, but like the medieval barons buying papal indulgences, just getting the offer was a mark of social status (to these marks.). And they figured they could always leverage it regardless, by selling the deed to a more gullible investor, or one looking to them for a favor.
(Besides, most ‘educated’ Americans know as much about medicine / medical technology as a feudal lord knew about actual Catholic theology. Throw your money in the offertory basket at Easter and Christmas, and be proud you can afford to pay for a private pew!)
Getting Henry Fekkin’ Kissinger hooked into her grift, though — that’s genuine craftsmanship. Like having the Papal nucio put his personal seal on those prettily-illuminated parchments…
Henry Kissinger was on the board. For some reason we find ourselves asking how Elizabeth Holmes conned Henry Kissinger and not how Henry Kissinger conned three generations of american political administrations
— mcc (@mcclure111) March 20, 2019
When he referred to Theranos' long board meetings as, "a human rights violation hahaha," I literally gasped.
— Sarah Hudson (@sbhudson108) March 20, 2019
A review, from Matt Zoller Seitz at RogerEbert.com:
Theranos sounds like a creature of myth, and in the end, that’s what the company was. Appealing to the common fear of having blood drawn invasively in large amounts, Holmes spun an enticing pitch about building a compact, portable analysis machine named after Thomas Edison and able to perform 200 different kinds of tests quickly, using a pinprick’s worth of blood. Holmes styled herself as a Mozart-caliber wunderkind. She started her company when she was barely old enough to drink. Within a matter of years, it employed 800 people and was valued at $10 billion.
Unfortunately, Holmes’ machine couldn’t do what she promised. She wasn’t a scientist, and her own experts had warned her that it was physically impossible to build the device she’d envisioned. …
Despite the copious use of drone shots, a hypnotic, science fiction-sounding score, and some of the best explanatory computer graphics you’ll ever see, “The Inventor” is ultimately more of an information delivery system than a fully satisfying work of cinema. The presence of one of documentary film’s great innovators, Errol Morris, in the fabric of the movie itself—as a corporate gun-for-hire, Morris did a promotional video for the company—can’t help but invite fantasies of what might’ve been. (The mind reels imagining an autobiographical movie about Morris, one of the great interrogators of war criminals and corrupt officials, coming to terms with his own paycheck-driven obliviousness to the incredible story sitting in front of his lens.) The movie never quite manages to crack the porcelain surface of Holmes’ facade, despite the fleeting glimpses of insecurity and fear that sometimes flash through her eerily unblinking blue eyes. And at roughly two hours, it starts to grow repetitious. There are only so many ways to say, “In the end, there was no substance, and she fooled us all.”
“The Inventor” also shies away from exploring the explosive gender politics at play. Whether this is due to lack of interest, a belief that a male filmmaker shouldn’t be fixating on them, or a feeling that Holmes deserves the same treatment as a male scam artist is impossible to guess. But the viewer still may come away wondering if a great storytelling opportunity was missed. Holmes was an object of fascination and inspiration for many women in tech. As such, her downfall is deeply depressing, not just because she was a dishonest person—maybe even a compulsive fabulist—but also because of the implication that some of the older, extremely powerful men who championed her might’ve been smitten as much by her youth and conventional good looks as by her sales pitch. Their ranks included Henry Kissinger, former president Bill Clinton, former vice president Joe Biden, former defense secretaries James Mattis and William Perry, senator Sam Nunn, Fox News Channel founder Rupert Murdoch, and former Secretary of State George Shultz, whose grandson Tyler Shultz worked for Theranos and eventually turned whistleblower. When things started imploding, Holmes hired attorney David Boies to intimidate people who threatened to expose her…
"The best liars are the ones who are convinced they are doing it for a good cause," says Theranos documentarian @alexgibneyfilm. "Sometimes, they may even come to believe that they aren’t lying at all." https://t.co/LXurTioBpZ
— New York Magazine (@NYMag) March 21, 2019
Looking forward to the Palantir doc in a few years.
— Terry Stephenson (@tdstephenson) March 20, 2019
Late-Night Movies Open Thread: Scammers All the Way Down (The Theranos Grift)Post + Comments (61)
This post is in: Open Threads
— carmelo sgroi (@sgroi_carmelo) March 21, 2019