This is the sweetest dog ever. Reminds me, I need to get the adoption info for you all.
Do you wanna see me crawl across the floor?
A senior National Security Council official proposed withdrawing some U.S. military forces from Eastern Europe as an overture to Vladimir Putin during the early days of the Trump administration, according to a former administration official in the room with him.
[….]p>According to the ex-colleague, Harrington considered it a gesture to the Kremlin that would enable the nascent Trump administration to see if its desire for a friendly relationship with Russia would be reciprocated. It was included in a strategy paper that, conspicuously to the former official, made no mention of Russia as either a competitor or adversary.
Do you wanna see me crawl across the floor?Post + Comments (88)
Thanks for all the fish
Aquarium rewards dolphins w/a fish if they bring a piece of litter or dead gull (to help keep pool clean)
One dolphin starts (1) tearing pieces of litter into smaller pieces & trading each piece in for a reward & (2) stockpiling fish to lure & kill gullshttps://t.co/RiCw3yyuXy
— Julia Galef (@juliagalef) January 9, 2018
Open thread as we wait for the cosmic bypass to be built
Interesting (Long) Read: “Fusion GPS Founder Hauled From the Shadows for the Russia Election Investigation”
If there really is a Deep State, suckering the Trumpers into talking about Fusion so that this would end up being in the release was a pretty smart play.
Alternate version: Trumpers harping on Fusion never understood what was going on in all this in the first place. https://t.co/l3t6wb51oe— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) January 9, 2018
Back on January 2nd, from Glenn R. Simpson & Peter Fritsch, “The Republicans’ Fake Investigations”:
… In the year since the publication of the so-called Steele dossier — the collection of intelligence reports we commissioned about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia — the president has repeatedly attacked us on Twitter. His allies in Congress have dug through our bank records and sought to tarnish our firm to punish us for highlighting his links to Russia. Conservative news outlets and even our former employer, The Wall Street Journal, have spun a succession of mendacious conspiracy theories about our motives and backers.
We are happy to correct the record. In fact, we already have.
Three congressional committees have heard over 21 hours of testimony from our firm, Fusion GPS. In those sessions, we toppled the far right’s conspiracy theories and explained how The Washington Free Beacon and the Clinton campaign — the Republican and Democratic funders of our Trump research — separately came to hire us in the first place.
We walked investigators through our yearlong effort to decipher Mr. Trump’s complex business past, of which the Steele dossier is but one chapter. And we handed over our relevant bank records — while drawing the line at a fishing expedition for the records of companies we work for that have nothing to do with the Trump case.
Republicans have refused to release full transcripts of our firm’s testimony, even as they selectively leak details to media outlets on the far right. It’s time to share what our company told investigators…
The NYTimes still has sources to protect, because this appeared online last night:
From the start, he was a central casting misfire — the dark artist slicing through the capital by electric scooter, a cloak-and-dagger digger better known to former colleagues for scratching his bare belly in plain office view.
In a past career, Glenn R. Simpson had been a reporter’s reporter, tenacious through two decades in journalism, often driving the Washington story of the day — congressional corruption, fund-raising shenanigans, sundry misbehavior — but never becoming it himself. “It’s not news when things go right,” he told a group of students in 1991, describing his craft. “When things go right, it’s boring.”
Mr. Simpson’s life has not been boring for some time now. It has, perhaps inevitably, become news.
As investigators circle President Trump’s administration over ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Simpson, a 53-year-old Wall Street Journal veteran-turned-master of high-dollar research, has arrived at the biggest story of either of his careers, lurching to the center of the Russia-tinged scandal that clouds the presidency…
Bannon Out at Breitbart
Exclusive clip of Steve Bannon packed up to leave the Breitbart embassy. pic.twitter.com/QyPfFlO40z
— Adam Smith (@asmith83) January 9, 2018
HuffPost right now pic.twitter.com/YriJVzMokH
— Jillian Stampher (@JillianStampher) January 9, 2018
Details as they emerge, but I imagine that since their advertisers are nonexistent these days and the only thing propping that shithole up is wingnut welfare from the Mercers and others, Bannon just had to go.
This Is Precisely What Needs To Happen
Building on what Adam and Betty have posted this today, let me state without equivocation that this is exactly what needs to happen. Senate Dems need to just fucking YOLO and release documents like Feinstein did. House Democrats on the Nunes cover-up committee need to do the same. And we don’t need to make any deals to get DACA through- 83% of the country want it done. Republicans run the House and Senate. They have their guy in the White House. If the government shuts down, it is on them.
What Democrats ALSO need to do, and this is very, very, important, because our media is a fucking colossal waste of space, is every single time they are questioned about a government shutdown, they need to stop and state loudly and clearly- “The Democrats do not have control of the House, Senate, or White House. If there is a government shutdown, for whatever reason, that is the fault of the Republicans.”
The other day, I was watch Rep. Joaquin Castro being interviewed by Kasie Hunt (who I believe was at one point Ron Fournier’s protege), and she asked the following question:
Hunt: “Is there any circumstance in which democrats could accept a wall on the Mexican border to pay for that wall in exchange for help these kids or do you think the government should shut down over that.”
Rep. Castro then went on to offer a “reasonable” answer. BZZZZZTTTT. Wrong. This should have been his response:
“I don’t support shutting down the government, nor do any Democrats, but we are not in charge of the House, Senate, or White House. If the government shuts down, this is because the Republicans chose to shut it down.”
And you say that over and over and over again, and even challenge the reporter to state that this is in fact correct. Because it is! The Republicans are terrified of being blamed for the inevitable shutdown when their caucus shits the bed, so they are already setting the stage to blame Democrats. If you need evidence, here is a clip of Sen. Tom Cotton doing just that:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Are we going to have a government shutdown at the end of January?
COTTON: I don’t expect to have one. I certainly don’t want to have one, but if the Democrats want to shut down the government because they can’t get amnesty for illegal immigrants, then they’re going to have to defend those actions to the American people. They didn’t do that last month, and I suspect they didn’t do it because they know that amnesty for illegal immigrants without any real reform is not popular, and that it would be unhelpful to their cause.
You will not be surprised to learn that Stephanopoulos did not challenge him on this assertion. The time for niceties is long gone. It’s time for some scorched earth, and it’s time to stop letting the media and Republicans get away with this.
Breaking: Senator Feinstein Has Released The Transcript of Glenn Simpson’s Testimony To The Senate Judiciary Committee
Senator Feinstein has released the transcript of Glenn Simpson’s, of Fusion GPS, testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. You can find all 312 pages at this link. Or access it below in case Senator Grassley throws a tantrum and it get’s removed from Senator Feinstein’s outward facing Senate page. I haven’t had a chance to read through this and won’t get to it till at least tomorrow, if not later in the week, but enjoy!
Open thread!