"There's a good chance I may have committed some light...treason."
July 11, 2017 10:10 AM   Subscribe

More shocking developments have come to light (Matt Shuham and Allegra Kirkland, TPM) in the on-going investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged efforts with the Russian Government to undermine the integrity of United States Presidential election and the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, the so-called Better Care Reconciliation Act, the Republican effort to undermine health insurance for tens of millions people, has met with resistance from all parts of the political spectrum.

On July 8th, Jo Becker, Matt Apuzzo, and Adam Goldman of the New York Times published a piece detailing a previously undisclosed June 9th, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Kremlin linked attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya. On July 9th, the New York Times team followed up with another story revealing that Trump Jr. had been promised information from the Russian Government that would be damaging to the Clinton campaign. On July 10th, the team of Becker, Apuzzo, Goldman, and Maggie Haberman broke a third story about the secret meeting stating that Trump Jr. had been informed in email that the Russian Government was attempting to aid his father's campaign.

Shortly before Becker, Apuzzo, and Goldman were to break a fourth story regarding the contents of the emails on July 11th, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted a statement and what appears to be a copy of the email chain with Rob Goldstone (1, 2). Lindsey Graham is, as usual, disturbed by these revelations, while Tim Kaine pulls no punches in asserting that the investigation may be getting into potential "treason" (Esme Cribb, TPM).

In healthcare news, the effort to force 22 million people off their health insurance is facing resistance in the Republican caucus with seven Senators from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum not backing the legislation (538, Perry Bacon, Jr.). Direct actions in Washington DC have been poignant and also led to arrests of peaceful protesters (tweets from Jeff Stein of Vox).

(Thanks also to melissasaurus for the title, which references this wonderful Arrested Development clip.)
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal (3524 comments total) 143 users marked this as a favorite
 
Bravo!
posted by notyou at 10:13 AM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Wow, I made it to the end of a post!
posted by zug at 10:13 AM on July 11, 2017 [12 favorites]


God bless every single person who's made a politics thread for waiting until now to use the George Bluth Sr. quote.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:14 AM on July 11, 2017 [246 favorites]


As frequently as Senator Graham experiences "concerns" and "troubles" you would think he would be compelled to act, in some way, to get rid of those feelings by maybe removing the source of said troubles of concerns.
posted by Tevin at 10:14 AM on July 11, 2017 [47 favorites]


OK. I can see that Lucy is holding the football. I'm gonna run up to it and kick it. I'm ready. Here I go.
posted by prefpara at 10:14 AM on July 11, 2017 [127 favorites]


One thing that's so frustrating about this shit is that I spend dealing with impostor syndrome and trying to get things just so, while these fucking guys don't seem to have the slightest clue how bad they are at what they do. I go back and forth between gratitude that I'm not a treasonous fuckup and envy at just how oblivious they apparently get to be.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 10:14 AM on July 11, 2017 [155 favorites]


You know what's incredible? All the Trumps could have gone on being as crooked and shady as ever, if only Donald Trump hadn't made a serious bid for president. Or even if he had just shut up *at all* after being elected. Pride truly goeth before a fall.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:14 AM on July 11, 2017 [75 favorites]






The Trumps are a crime family, why are they so bad at crime??? Ridiculous.
posted by Artw at 10:16 AM on July 11, 2017 [43 favorites]


For those of you using the brownest of the brown liquors to cope Trump might fuck up bourbon for you too:

If President Trump follows through on his threat to impose tariffs on steel imports, expect to see an immediate response from the European Union — including retaliatory tariffs on, of all things, bourbon.

This may seem an oddly disproportionate choice. Everyone needs steel; bourbon, on the other hand, is just a hipster fad and a good-ole-boy mainstay, right?

In fact, a punitive tariff on bourbon and other American whiskeys would be both a symbolic and a substantive body blow — a strike at a unique American product that is enormously popular overseas. Should the tariff dominoes fall, it will be a case study in the shortsightedness of a supposedly “America first” trade policy that, in the end, hurts Americans the most.

posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:17 AM on July 11, 2017 [30 favorites]


Two links from the end of the prior thread, thanks to mandolin conspiracy, both from Robert Faturechi, ProPublica, and Danielle Ivory, The New York Times: The Deep Industry Ties of Trump’s Deregulation Teams (NYT) and Trump Has Secretive Teams to Roll Back Regulations, Led by Hires With Deep Industry Ties (ProPublica) We’ve found many appointees with potential conflicts of interest, including two who might personally profit if particular regulations are undone.

Only two who might personally profit? Yeah, that's my current level of jaded disdain for the reeking, toxic swamp goblins who march behind Trump.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:17 AM on July 11, 2017 [23 favorites]


William Henry Harrison: 32 days.
Donald John Trump: 172 days and counting.
James Garfield: 200 days.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:19 AM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


To be fair, if the Trumps haven't been showcasing an almost-literally terminal case of Imposter Syndrome, we wouldn't be here. If they thought they had legitimately earned their place, they wouldn't be constantly Hillary this and Obama that. Of course, it doesn't help that it's coming to light that they are, in fact, imposters.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:19 AM on July 11, 2017 [14 favorites]


As frequently as Senator Graham experiences "concerns" and "troubles" you would think he would be compelled to act, in some way, to get rid of those feelings by maybe removing the source of said troubles of concerns.

He's concerned in the way that someone might be concerned about high blood pressure or an enlarged prostate.
posted by Talez at 10:20 AM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


All the Trumps could have gone on being as crooked and shady as ever, if only Donald Trump hadn't made a serious bid for president.

i'm not sure they could have - i sort of think that trump's presidential run was actually a Producers-style scam to do massive fundraising, lose, and then pay off old real estate debt with all the money left in the campaign fund. but then they had to go and blow the whole thing by winning.
posted by murphy slaw at 10:22 AM on July 11, 2017 [155 favorites]


The Trumps are a crime family, why are they so bad at crime??? Ridiculous.

Senate: President Crimer, did you do a Russia treason?

President Crimer: *puts on sunglasses*
posted by middleclasstool at 10:22 AM on July 11, 2017 [68 favorites]


Daily Beast: Trump Aides Freaking Out Over Don Jr.'s Russia Email: The 'Sum Of All Fears', in which nobody in the White House will defend Don Jr, even anonymously.
The revelation of these emails immediately sent shockwaves through the White House.

“This is sum of all fears stuff. It’s what we’ve all been dreading,” said one White House official who is now exploring the possibility of retaining an attorney, a step described as purely precautionary.
...
The Daily Beast contacted multiple senior White House staffers on Tuesday to solicit defenses of Trump Jr., even anonymously. Each individual immediately referred questions to Junior’s legal and public-relations team, emphasizing that the president’s son is not a federal employee.
...
Over the past week, one senior White House official and a former top Trump campaign aide both independently and bluntly described the president’s son as an “idiot” — one who played a role in the campaign and Trump’s political rise simply because he “shares the same DNA,” the official noted.
I also love this sentence just as a matter of journalistic practice: "White House and former campaign officials who were reached by The Daily Beast spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to vent about President Trump’s first-born son."
posted by zachlipton at 10:23 AM on July 11, 2017 [91 favorites]


Don't know if this has been linked to before, but here's a refresher on all five kids, from 2015. Sometimes I forget who is doing what.
posted by Melismata at 10:24 AM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


President Trump now asking the Kremlin whether they'd be willing to accept his son for adoption.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:24 AM on July 11, 2017 [41 favorites]


The 'Sum Of All Fears'

As the past year has taught us, that movie left out a lot of fears. Class-action lawsuit anyone?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:25 AM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


...to accept his son for adoption.
[false but likely tag]
posted by Namlit at 10:25 AM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Guys....I'm so ready to start poppin' corn with y'all and let the celebration begin...but it just feels like we've been down this road too many times before. I've become too jaded to accept that this latest revelation is necessarily going to lead somewhere.

The media is treating this right now like yet-another moment we went from smoke to fire. I fear they're working with the wrong metaphor; that instead we've just upped the temp of the not-yet-boiling-water from 175 to 180(F). The takeaway DJT may be going for is that the emails prove the purported "evidence" the trumps were seeking was only to prove Hilary was the one conspiring. SHE was the one with the illegal contact and dealings; the trumps were being patriots by proving it. "And, of course Don jr wouldn't release it if it ACTUALLY showed something illegal- all this demonstrates is that the trumps were trying to get the bottom of Crooked Hilary's never-ending scams. It is absolutely disgusting that the fake media is so desperate for talking points that they twist the words of a true patriot like DJT." - cue conservative talking point.

All this will do is continue to raise the bar for the gray legal area of collusion, rather than lower it. We continue to become ever so more complacent, taking known liars at their word and giving their indenfisible actions an acceptable level of spin. Since the republicans have conceded that ignorance of criminal conduct remains a valid excuse (I know, I know, IOKIYAR), I don't see this leading anywhere. Yet. Just another drip-drip of diarrhea in a seemingly bottomless septic tank.
posted by andruwjones26 at 10:26 AM on July 11, 2017 [66 favorites]


For the folks playing along at home, I'd like to make sure everyone catches this excerpt from Don Jr.'s apparent defense
Rob Goldstone: This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump

....

Donald Trump Jr: Seems we have some time and if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer. Could we do a call first thing next week when I am back?

Further thoughts and annotations from WaPo.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 10:26 AM on July 11, 2017 [12 favorites]


> i sort of think that trump's presidential run was actually a Producers-style scam to do massive fundraising, lose, and then pay off old real estate debt with all the money left in the campaign fund. but then they had to go and blow the whole thing by winning.

This makes sense, but I just cannot get my mind around how broke they must have been in order to resort to this plan *despite* being CORRUPT AS SHIT their entire lives.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:27 AM on July 11, 2017 [12 favorites]


i think we need the advice of constitutional scholars here - does the definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors" to be impeached for include being too stupid to pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel?

if so, the whole lot is GUILTY
posted by pyramid termite at 10:29 AM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


Betsy DeVos meets with ‘men’s rights’ activists

Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning (to hate women)?
posted by zombieflanders at 10:29 AM on July 11, 2017 [111 favorites]


The Trumps are a crime family, why are they so bad at crime??? Ridiculous.

They're also a casino family bad at casinos, a hotel family bad at hotels, a "Christian" family that has trouble honoring the ten commandments...

Someone else can take and make more of these. I'm tired.
posted by deezil at 10:29 AM on July 11, 2017 [51 favorites]


Metafilter (politics threads): Someone else can take and make more of these. I'm tired.
posted by RolandOfEld at 10:31 AM on July 11, 2017 [70 favorites]


I do not, under any circumstances, believe that Junior's meeting with Russia will do anything to remove President Trump from office or weaken his standing with the Congressional GOP.

However, it would bring me no greater joy than to see President Trump's favorite boy end up as the greasy stain on the floor that makes Trump crash and break.
posted by Tevin at 10:31 AM on July 11, 2017 [11 favorites]


Metafilter (mods of politics threads): I'm tired.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:32 AM on July 11, 2017 [25 favorites]


The Trumps are a crime family, why are they so bad at crime??? Ridiculous.

Because America is set up to support, forgive, ignore, and generally celebrate criminals who call themselves businesspeople.
posted by maxsparber at 10:32 AM on July 11, 2017 [68 favorites]


I can't tell satire from "reality" scripting anymore.
posted by infini at 10:34 AM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


When is the next mass protest in DC going to take place? I need to do SOMETHING to express my outrage, beyond calling my Senator/House Rep to say thanks for doing things I agree with and speaking out against this travesty.

It's unfathomable that this is where we are now, and so fast too. The G20 stuff with the US on the outside. Japan just announced they are holding TPP talks without the US. How did five months see such a decline of leadership?
posted by gemmy at 10:34 AM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


Guys....I'm so ready to start poppin' corn with y'all and let the celebration begin...but it just feels like we've been down this road too many times before. I've become too jaded to accept that this latest revelation is necessarily going to lead somewhere.

Big revelations like this, developed separately by the press (and then by moronic participants), are never going to bring the administration down on their own. They just can't in this situation. Trump's just not a guy who's going to resign because of a damaging news story.

What they do is alter the media and political landscape, move the Overton Window. The crux to all of this is how comfortable congressional Republicans feel about blocking impeachment. When the Overton window moves to such a point that they feel like they're at risk if they defend him, then things can happen. Those things will probably be driven by the Mueller investigation, which is humming along quietly on its own track.

That's my read, anyway, based on what I know about the system in general and the way Watergate shook out in particular.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 10:34 AM on July 11, 2017 [75 favorites]


Over the past week, one senior White House official and a former top Trump campaign aide both independently and bluntly described the president’s son as an “idiot”
"Life's tough. Its even tougher if you're stupid" John Wayne — @DonaldJTrumpJr
posted by octobersurprise at 10:34 AM on July 11, 2017 [16 favorites]


Poor Jared Sexton: "I...worked on this story for a year...and...he just...he tweeted it out."

"This is the dumbest and biggest crime in the history of American politics. There's not even a close second."
posted by straight at 10:34 AM on July 11, 2017 [106 favorites]


Also: I know everyone is doing this anyway, but if you live in a place where your congressional delegation are Republicans, each of these big news events makes a great excuse to call them and tell them that this is inexcusable.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 10:36 AM on July 11, 2017 [19 favorites]


The Trumps are quintessential American nobility - all power, no nuance.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:36 AM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


"Life's tough. Its even tougher if you're stupid" John Wayne — @DonaldJTrumpJr

The punchline is the comment below that.
Man Bartlett‏ @man 14h14 hours ago
Replying to @DonaldJTrumpJr

Also, not a John Wayne quote 😂
posted by jaduncan at 10:36 AM on July 11, 2017 [41 favorites]


"One thing that's so frustrating about this shit is that I spend dealing with impostor syndrome and trying to get things just so, while these fucking guys don't seem to have the slightest clue... "

One positive thing I got from this mess is that at work and in school, and life in general, every time I feel inadequate or incompetent I can just remind myself that trump taught me :

-that if you sound confident enough people won't know what you don't know
-that in most cases people who are determined to like you don't even want to know what you don't know
-that people's standards are waaaay lower than I thought

My work ethics have not suffered, but any performance anxiety I had is practically gone.
posted by Tarumba at 10:37 AM on July 11, 2017 [82 favorites]


The sad white people who voted for Trump don't care, and Republicans know that, so the Trumpening will continue. He'll finish out his term, rebrand Trump University as the Trump Foundation, and then we'll get to watch the media go crazy as he's indicted for fraud.
posted by betweenthebars at 10:37 AM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


I'm reading this book called The Charisma Myth right now and it's scary how much people will automatically buy anything if you say it confidently, no matter what it is.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:38 AM on July 11, 2017 [33 favorites]


My previous take might have been deleted, but I'm not convinced DT jr's actions are so much stupid as they are self-destructive in a way that punishes his father, and might include additional dire actions on his part.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 10:39 AM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm reading this book called The Charisma Myth right now and it's scary how much people will automatically buy anything if you say it confidently, no matter what it is.

Great, somebody tell the DNC.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:39 AM on July 11, 2017 [33 favorites]


Donald Trump Jr. must have known that the emails were coming out, and quick, so he decided to get ahead of the tsunami. Still, this is un-freakin-believable.

Hoist him on his petard! And quick!
posted by kuatto at 10:39 AM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


{briefly takes break from shitstorm that is Brexit in the UK and ambles back into a US election thread}

Huh; he's still POTUS. Dammit. Though the betting markets predict ... conflicting things regarding his tenure.

{returns back to the country disintegrating on the other side of the Atlantic}
posted by Wordshore at 10:39 AM on July 11, 2017 [13 favorites]


I don't know how to react to this. Like, in the place in my brain where the reaction normally would be, there's just a big empty field.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:40 AM on July 11, 2017 [47 favorites]


I'm reading this book called The Charisma Myth right now and it's scary how much people will automatically buy anything if you say it confidently, no matter what it is.

People seem automatically wired to seek out the easiest way to get ahead. No one needs to think about anything if they just take people at their word, or just feel good about them.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:41 AM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


!!!BCRA RED ALERT!!!

McConnell has cancelled the first two weeks of the Senate's August recess [tweet].
posted by melissasaurus at 10:41 AM on July 11, 2017 [66 favorites]


A bunch of people are replaying to Jared Sexton's tweets with offers to send him some booze money.
posted by azpenguin at 10:41 AM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


"Life's tough. Its even tougher if you're stupid" John Wayne — @DonaldJTrumpJr

The punchline is the comment below that.


That photo further down of the Trump lads...is that a Photoshop??
posted by orrnyereg at 10:42 AM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Because America is set up to support, forgive, ignore, and generally celebrate criminals who call themselves businesspeople are white men.
posted by JohnFromGR at 10:42 AM on July 11, 2017 [47 favorites]


Also, remember: Watergate took over two years to shake out.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 10:42 AM on July 11, 2017 [13 favorites]


McConnell has cancelled the first two weeks of the Senate's August recess

@JoePWilliams31: "Sen. Blunt, a member of GOP leadership, told me 15 minutes before this announcement it would never happen."

This will go over extremely poorly.
posted by zachlipton at 10:42 AM on July 11, 2017 [24 favorites]


dances_with_sneetches: William Henry Harrison: 32 days.
Donald John Trump: 172 days and counting.
James Garfield: 200 days.


Harrison: died of pneumonia in 1841.
Garfield: assassinated in 1881; the second of four Presidents to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln.

Trump: unfit for office, but this rusty icebreaker won't be retired from duty until the GOP can break enough of the ice on which we all stand, and which blocks their path to more money for themselves and the lobbyists who support them.

The better parallel might be Bill Clinton's impeachment process: he made remarks including response to Monica Lewinsky scandal on January 26, 1998. The impeachment process of Bill Clinton was initiated by the House of Representatives on December 19, 1998. Clinton was subsequently acquitted of these charges by the Senate on February 12, 1999, and two other impeachment articles – a second perjury charge and a charge of abuse of power – failed in the House.

Over a year from that first statement and the final actions in the Senate, and it looks like the whole impeachment process was relatively quick. The difference then was that there was a Republican majority, and the support for impeachment fell largely on party lines. Will the GOP act that fast when their own (Fools) Golden Boy is the one in question? There was a pretty clear fault along party lines when they held a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the Russian intervention in the 2016 election, back in May 2017
Democrats quizzed former Obama administration officials on Russia, how former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn had been "compromised" and how the White House officials conducted themselves when confronted with the information.

Republicans wanted to know how the information got out in the first place.
And they asked about the travel ban, which was another topic that wasn't supposed to be central to that discussion.

In other words, I look forward to an impeachment process where the GOP asks about what Obama should have done and when, and whatever might be the off-topic topic of the day, while the Dems try to keep on topic, then get talked over. Will the process wrap up before the next wave of elections? Sadly, I'm hoping not, and happily, I don't think they'll get there unless there are strong ties between Trump Jr. (and everyone else) and President Trump.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:43 AM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


MRAs are just another form of alt-right human garbage, so this move by DeVos fails to surprise.

(These fuckers, under the name CAFE, have done their part fucking up the MMIW which is currently crashing and burning today)
posted by Yowser at 10:43 AM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


Talking Points Memo: Philip Bump at the Post just flagged this Trump speech from June 7th, four days after Don Goldstone’s first contact with Don Jr and two days before the meeting at Trump Tower on June 9th.

Trump promises big news about Hillary Clinton’s crimes in a speech on “probably” June 13th.”

posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:43 AM on July 11, 2017 [58 favorites]


the phlegmatic king: Also, remember: Watergate took over two years to shake out.

That's only because 1) there was no public internet at that point, and thus 2) no Twitter, which wouldn't even matter, because 3) Nixon didn't hire his own kids to run his treason plots.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:44 AM on July 11, 2017 [25 favorites]


They're going to try and take away 24 millions people's healthcare before more treason can come to light.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:45 AM on July 11, 2017 [85 favorites]


What they do is alter the media and political landscape, move the Overton Window.

So I've been wondering this - Mueller's gonna have to run a Truth and Reconciliation hearing, right? Or like a fancy explainer on every TV channel along with Netflix and Hulu? Who is the window actually moving for? Members of Congress, suckers like us who have given our lives over to the "X new comments, show" alert?



Won't a typical American be in for some terrible whiplash? I'm thinking of specific people I know who I imagine wouldn't even know what to do with the concept of Don Jr talking about getting oppo from the Russian government. If they ever hear about this sometime this week, they'll just ignore it as some weird story, and they'd certainly never thought of such a thing or the implications of what it all means. They just have no frame of reference for all this OMNIGATE stuff. How will this all shake out?
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 10:45 AM on July 11, 2017 [11 favorites]


David Kravets/Ars Technica: Twitter users blocked by Trump sue, claim @realDonaldTrump is public forum
A handful of Twitter users, backed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, sued President Donald Trump on Tuesday, claiming their constitutional rights are being violated because the president has blocked them from his @realDonaldTrump handle.

The suit claims that Trump's Twitter feed is a public forum and an official voice of the president. Excluding people from reading or replying to his tweets—especially because they tweeted critical comments—amounts to a First Amendment breach, according to the lawsuit.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:46 AM on July 11, 2017 [100 favorites]


McConnell is probably freaking out because he wants to get a bill done while Trump is still there to sign it. And Pence is hoping they don't look under too many rocks as well, because he's dirty too. They're all dirty.
posted by azpenguin at 10:47 AM on July 11, 2017 [14 favorites]


I wonder how Mueller's team is organizing their whiteboards.

Jackson Pollock painting.
posted by zarq at 10:48 AM on July 11, 2017 [41 favorites]


Trump promises big news about Hillary Clinton’s crimes in a speech on “probably” June 13th.”

There's also the June 9th reply to the infamous "Delete your account!" tweet with "Where are your 33,000 emails you deleted" about 15 minutes after the meeting was supposed to have ended.
posted by TwoWordReview at 10:49 AM on July 11, 2017 [16 favorites]


> McConnell is probably freaking out because he wants to get a bill done while Trump is still there to sign it.

It's like a movie where the hero is racing against time to re-fuse a bomb.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:49 AM on July 11, 2017 [79 favorites]


McConnell has cancelled the first two weeks of the Senate's August recess

It's because he's already convincing "moderates" to make the BRCA even worse.

Remember, the idea that there are "NeverTrumpers," or moderates in any real sense of the word, in Congress is a myth that conservatives are trying sell you so that they can pull the same BS (but with a nicer name) if Trump is gone. Substantively, there is not one lick of difference between them and all the other evil pieces of shit.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:50 AM on July 11, 2017 [45 favorites]


mueller's entire staff is sitting on top of a flipped conference table, drinking from the bottle and throwing paper airplanes made from unfinished subpeonas
posted by murphy slaw at 10:50 AM on July 11, 2017 [74 favorites]


Trump might fuck up bourbon for you too

Only if you're European though. The surplus glut should lower prices in the US, where the luxury bourbon business has lately been sagging already as the fad dies away.

Anyway, having recently been in Bourbon country in Kentucky, that's a bunch of Trump-loving people there, and not the poor whites we're told to pay attention to, but the ones with 400 acre horse farms and the like. I will be delighted to see their industry suffer. Alas I won't enjoy the lower prices, as I can not tolerate more than a few shots of bourbon before the sweetness disgusts me. The only whisky for me has no "e" in it. And no corn.
posted by spitbull at 10:50 AM on July 11, 2017 [12 favorites]


Like, in the place in my brain where the reaction normally would be, there's just a big empty field.

That was the field in which your fucks were grown. It's barren now :(

Anyway, I took a break from these threads, but of course I'm back now because WHAT. WHAT. I want to believe any of this matters, at all, but, like, I don't. Is there any reason we could or should expect anything to happen now or within the next week or so? Or is this all just more stuff to go in the ever-working mill of Mueller's investigation, which we will all, hopefully, one day see the results of?
posted by yasaman at 10:51 AM on July 11, 2017 [36 favorites]


Also in BCRA news, Sarah Kliff brings us Senate GOP health bill quietly brings back preexisting conditions
The Senate health care bill could once again allow insurance companies to offer some individuals plans that cover few benefits — and, in certain policies, exclude sick people entirely.

These changes result from a little-noticed provision that lets self-employed Americans opt out of the individual market and buy into the health plans that large employers provide, which have more lax regulatory standards.

Health policy experts at the Kaiser Family Foundation and Georgetown University have recently analyzed this provision, and concluded that these “small-business health plans” could siphon off healthy consumers.

These plans could, according to one analysis, “condition membership on the health status of small businesses” — including cases where the small business is a self-employed individual.
So healthy people get to be small businesses of one, sick people are the ones left on the individual market, premiums rise, death spiral, etc... Great system they're working on.
posted by zachlipton at 10:52 AM on July 11, 2017 [17 favorites]


[...] revelations like this, developed separately by the press (and then by moronic participants), are never going to bring the administration down on their own. [...] What they do is alter the media and political landscape, move the Overton Window.

And, I'm increasingly thinking, they exhaust and weaken and grind down his supporters. I know there's this idea that people who weren't turned off by all of his disgusting behavior (and treason) prior to this will be with him forever. But each of these revelations peels off a few more of those people, makes them less likely to vote during the midterms, less likely to pay attention to his calls to actions and attend his rallies, less likely to donate money to him, less likely to fight for him (via whatever means, including the worst case scenario). This news breaks through to some of them, and it makes them tired. It'll never be the lightning bolt that will strike him down but it's important, both to motivate us and to de-motivate his base.
posted by penduluum at 10:52 AM on July 11, 2017 [18 favorites]


David Kravets/Ars Technica: Twitter users blocked by Trump sue, claim @realDonaldTrump is public forum

Honestly....I kind of wish that it would be something like this that brings Trump down. Something small, under most radars, but unquestionably something that comes back to bite Trump in the ass in a way nearl poetic in its eloquence.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:53 AM on July 11, 2017 [23 favorites]


> I can not tolerate more than a few shots of bourbon before the sweetness disgusts me

I love bourbon, but after "more than a few shots" of any hard liquor it really doesn't matter what I'm drinking.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:54 AM on July 11, 2017 [25 favorites]


more stuff to go in the ever-working mill of Mueller's investigation

listen i know the wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine but at this point i am willing to settle for some HEARTY WHOLE-GRAIN JUSTICE if it would move things along
posted by murphy slaw at 10:56 AM on July 11, 2017 [189 favorites]


the wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine

Huh. I have never heard this as a complete phrase, nor have I ever examined the metaphor before. I learned something today. Thanks Trump Jr!
posted by Think_Long at 10:59 AM on July 11, 2017 [15 favorites]


Talking Points Memo: Philip Bump at the Post just flagged this Trump speech from June 7th, four days after Don Goldstone’s first contact with Don Jr and two days before the meeting at Trump Tower on June 9th.

Trump promises big news about Hillary Clinton’s crimes in a speech on “probably” June 13th.”


That timing (and more) was also noted by Seth Abramson in his twitter thread, which is really thoughtful about what else was going on (at Toddler Tower), which I'll quote some of here:
(1) Don Jr. was there. He first lied and said there was no meeting, then he said there was and lied about its content, then he "came clean."
...

(13) Kushner had spoken with Sergey Kislyak by phone in April. Manafort had spoken in person with Kislyak at the Mayflower Hotel that month.

(15) Manafort at this point was just *weeks* away from lying on TV about whether he met with Russians at the RNC to change the GOP platform.

(17) Soon after the June 9 meeting with a Russian agent at toddler Tower Manafort met twice with an ex-Russian solder. He did not disclose it.

(19) Despite this, Don Jr. says he never told Kushner and Manafort they would be meeting with a Russian and they never pressed him for info.

(21) This is a good time to note neither Don Jr., Kushner, nor Manafort would ever breathe a word of this meeting to anyone for over a year.

(23) Moreover, we know from Politico that Trump was "hunkered with his advisers," including Manafort and Kushner, discussing anti-HRC intel.

(25) At some point during the day, Don Jr., Manafort, and Kushner excused themselves from their dad's/boss's company to meet with a Russian.

(27) This despite the fact they were related to and/or working for Trump, in his house, discussing the same topic as their upcoming meeting.

(29) So according to Don Jr., they heard out this Russian agent (who'd set the meeting under false pretenses, grr!) for around a half hour.

(31) And we now know what the Trumps, Kushner, and Manafort spent the rest of the day doing: writing a major speech about... anti-HRC intel.

(33) So Trump instead gave on June 22 the "anti-HRC" speech that he, Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort had prepared at toddler Tower on June 9 .

(35) In America we say "blackmail." But what Trump wrote while a Russian agent with anti-HRC intel was in toddler Tower said "blackmail file."

(39) The week Goldstone was hanging out with toddler Sr. and Don Jr. in Moscow is the week Steele's dossier says Putin got kompromat on toddler.

N.B. That was actually the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, November 2013.

(45) Trump's *friendship* with the men who set up the meeting Goldstone and Agalarov makes it unthinkable Don Jr. hid the meeting from him.

(47) That means if now-President toddler was really at the June 9 meeting or on speaker-phone during it he also committed "close to treason."

(49) Social media data from Goldstone confirms the toddler Tower meeting was in the afternoon on June 9, when toddler Sr. was in the building.

I have to say it would be unreasonable to believe that Trump skipped this meeting, in his own Tower.

He should be smart enough to distance himself .... but he's not.
posted by Dashy at 11:00 AM on July 11, 2017 [43 favorites]


If ever there was a time for someone to say '"screw it" and livestream Sarah Sanders' off-camera briefing, it's right now.
posted by zachlipton at 11:00 AM on July 11, 2017 [40 favorites]


"Who's this Trump Jr. guy? Never heard of him. Hell, I wouldn't recognize him if we were in the same room." - President Trump
posted by Sangermaine at 11:02 AM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


murphy slaw: listen i know the wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine but at this point i am willing to settle for some HEARTY WHOLE-GRAIN JUSTICE if it would move things along

"(Willing to settle for) Hearty whole grain justice" is either the name of my new band, or the sign I carry at the next protest.
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:04 AM on July 11, 2017 [24 favorites]


It should be noted that the email was sent to Don Jr only because Don Sr doesn't use email and it was thought to be too sensitive to go thru Rhona, his secretary.
Of course it was for him, all things are fed to the giant ego.

>This via Susan Simpson of The View from LL2 blog<>
posted by readery at 11:04 AM on July 11, 2017 [18 favorites]


The revelation of these emails immediately sent shockwaves through the White House.

At this point the White House is an unbaffled circular water bed from the seventies surrounded by velvet black light posters of Trump, Putin and face eating leopards.
posted by srboisvert at 11:05 AM on July 11, 2017 [22 favorites]


It's like a movie where the hero is racing against time to re-fuse a bomb.

Except in this case, re-fuse means not refusing and not throwing out with the refuse.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:06 AM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm so tired of all these miserable idiots, can we bury them under a volcano yet
posted by theodolite at 11:07 AM on July 11, 2017 [13 favorites]


Re: Vamper Trump (aww, and we thought HE was the dumb one)
Eric's brother-in-law Jared Kushner officiated the wedding, telling Yunaska, "You are not just gaining a family, you are getting six million Twitter followers."

WHY ARE THEY SO GROSS? I can't. I just fucking can't with these people. I now get physically ill when I hear Cheeto on NPR, and this shit? I mean come on. Can we just not? I know nothing's going to happen because they've been setting us up for this shit for years now, people are just gleefully letting them burn the house down and no one is coming to save us, least of all Sanders and his ilk. I am just so frustrated I could scream. The Lucy/football comparison is so, so apt.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 11:07 AM on July 11, 2017 [17 favorites]


Argh. DailyKos skipped the even-numbered tweets. The whole thread is here, and the important parts are:
22) But all that is just the prelude, because we *also* now know that now-President Trump was in Trump Tower as this meeting was happening.

(23) Moreover, we know from Politico that Trump was "hunkered with his advisers," including Manafort and Kushner, discussing anti-HRC intel.

(24) So Trump was in a building he owns—with his sons and his manager—discussing the very topic (anti-HRC intel) Don Jr's meeting was about.

(25) At some point during the day, Don Jr., Manafort, and Kushner excused themselves from their dad's/boss's company to meet with a Russian.

(26) According to Don Jr., none of the three men told Trump where they were going, or who they met with, and *still* hadn't *as of today*.

(27) This despite the fact they were related to and/or working for Trump, in his house, discussing the same topic as their upcoming meeting.

(28) This is a good time to note that when news of the meeting came out, Trump's attorneys called the whole thing a *Democratic conspiracy*.

(29) So according to Don Jr., they heard out this Russian agent (who'd set the meeting under false pretenses, grr!) for around a half hour.

(30) They then went back to their dad/boss and continued discussing the same topic they'd just been discussing with an agent of the Kremlin.

(31) And we now know what the Trumps, Kushner, and Manafort spent the rest of the day doing: writing a major speech about... anti-HRC intel.

(32) Trump initially said he'd give the speech—which he announced that day (June 9)—on June 13. Then the Pulse nightclub shooting happened.

(33) So Trump instead gave—on June 22—the "anti-HRC" speech that he, Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort had prepared at Trump Tower on June 9 .

(34) During that speech he claimed "enemies" of the U.S. had a "blackmail file" on Clinton—clearly using a Russian phrasing for "kompromat."

(35) In America we say "blackmail." But what Trump wrote while a Russian agent with anti-HRC intel was in Trump Tower said "blackmail file."

(very sorry, mods)
posted by Dashy at 11:09 AM on July 11, 2017 [44 favorites]


I can not tolerate more than a few shots of bourbon before the sweetness disgusts me

Drunk or sober Walter Payton's a saint.
posted by srboisvert at 11:10 AM on July 11, 2017 [13 favorites]


Here's my favorite part that doesn't seem to be mentioned in this thread yet:

The email chain from Rob Goldstone to Jr. says "The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras and they offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin."

Emin is Emin Agalarov, who connected Jr. to Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer the Three Stooges met with. Aras is his father Aras (or Araz) Agalarov, who is mentioned in the famous dossier:

"Two knowledgeable St Petersburg sources claim Republican candidate TRUMP has paid bribes and engaged in sexual activities there but key witnesses silenced and evidence hard to obtain Both believe Azeri business associate of TRUMP, Araz AGALAROV will know the details"

"The two St Petersburg figures cited believed an Azeri business figure, Araz AGALAROV (with offices in Baku and London) had been closely involved with TRUMP in Russia and would know most of the details of what the Republican presidential candidate had got up to there."

Which means ... the doomsday clock just moved a few seconds closer to PISSTAPE O'CLOCK
posted by penduluum at 11:10 AM on July 11, 2017 [34 favorites]


The state visit to London, with the carriage ride and all the pageantry Trump demands, has been postponed to sometime next year, I guess, maybe, due to a "scheduling conflict."

Which is a really weird typo for "because nobody wants him there."
posted by zachlipton at 11:10 AM on July 11, 2017 [78 favorites]


Intel, instead of the dirty condom, they got risotto recipe...
posted by Oyéah at 11:11 AM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Surely this.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:12 AM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


The mistake isn't thinking the piss tape exists. The mistake is thinking it'll make the tiniest difference. If the piss tape comes out, it'll be called a positive development: "Well, now the Russians no longer have leverage. Brilliant strategic move by the President."
posted by Behemoth at 11:14 AM on July 11, 2017 [18 favorites]


>Surely this.

lol no

There is not "this."

"This" will never happen.

The only "this" is followed by "is our country now" because these scandals are only setting a new precedent for acceptable behavior for a President.
posted by Tevin at 11:16 AM on July 11, 2017 [26 favorites]


    Russia wasn't involved in the election at all, they're just a boogeyman!
    Okay maybe Trump & his sons and his campaign managers and future cabinet members met with Russians a few times, but so what?
    Alright it was more than a few times, and they failed to disclose a lot of those times, but who says these meetings had anything to do with collusion?
    Sure, maybe the Russians were offering to help with the campaign a bit, but it's not like anyone in Trump's camp took a meeting knowing this! They were ambushed!
    Fine, maybe they knew the Russians were offering damaging info on the opposition, but come on, you would jump at the chance in their position!
    And besides, Trump knew nothing about what goes on in his own campaign! He was a totally isolated figurehead!
    And even if he wasn't, who cares? MAGA!
    Besides, all of this is fine because the US does it too! If the US meddles in the integrity of foreign elections that means we have no right to protect ourselves from foreign influence! Better to have a compromised government than be a hypocrite, am I right people? America first!
    Clinton was an incompetent, corrupt liar - that's why I voted for Trump! But all you hypocrites need to stop criticizing Trump for being an incompetent, corrupt liar - don't you realize Clinton was just as bad?
    This is all FAKE NEWS anyway - yeah yeah, anonymous sources have been the bedrock of quality journalism for centuries, but if the reputation of a tacky real estate billionaire is on the line I'll gladly throw the fourth estate under a bus. Sure he'd sell me out for a second scoop of ice cream, but so what? What matters is he's trashing our country and that makes some people I don't like upset. Worth it!
    Oh, our intelligence agencies say it happened? Psh, come back when you have some real evidence. You've just got circumstantial evidence interpreted through a lens of suspicion and bitterness - not exactly persuasive to a skeptic like myself! By the way Seth Rich was killed by the DNC, a greentext on /pol/ told me so.
    Why didn't Obama do more about this, I wonder? All he did was seize Russian compounds, expel their ambassadors, publicly criticize them and plant cyber weapons in their infrastructure. Why didn't he cause a national panic and halt the election? American democracy is tainted thanks to your wuss-in-chief! What's that? Trump should stand up to Russia now, hold them accountable and stop them from doing it again? Dude, chill the fuck out and let this nothing burger go already.
    Even if Trump did in fact lie to our faces for six months, use us as tools to attack the integrity of the press, undermine the reputation of our nation's institutions to protect his own skin and make fools out of every last starry-eyed follower to trust his rotten word, who cares? It's not like he did anything illegal.
    Trump colluding with the Russians was actually patriotic because it saved the country from Hitlery.
posted by Sangermaine at 11:16 AM on July 11, 2017 [116 favorites]


What are the odds Trump, following his brilliant son's example, gets ahead of the New York Times by releasing the piss tape himself?
posted by spitbull at 11:16 AM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]






@adamgoldmanNYT: Update 2: I am still reporting.

7 minutes ago. This is only very slightly less annoying than the ticking.
posted by zachlipton at 11:17 AM on July 11, 2017 [12 favorites]


And I was just about to go get some work done...
posted by TwoWordReview at 11:18 AM on July 11, 2017


Fox News (yes, Fox News): Donald Trump Jr. releases 'entire email chain' regarding Russian meeting

Warning: autoplay video with talking head. But here's the meat and potatoes:

Donald Trump Jr. on Tuesday released what he said was the “entire email chain” of his conversations setting up a disputed meeting [?] with a Russian attorney, showing what appeared to be an offer to provide information that would “incriminate” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
[...] The email disclosure is likely to embolden critics of President Trump and those attempting to link his campaign to alleged collusion with Russian officials.
[...] There is nothing contained in the emails to suggest Trump Jr. was informed of the larger alleged Russian effort to meddle in the U.S. presidential election.


I don't understand either of the phrases I bolded. What's a "disputed meeting"? Hasn't everyone agreed now that it did happen? The people who were disputing it were ... well, lying. And what do you mean, "attempting to link"? Attempting?
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:19 AM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


If the piss tape exists and becomes viewable online, I think it would be hard to overstate how damaging it could be. There's "I heard about collusion" damaging, and there's "I saw the President jerking off to pissing Russian escorts with my own two face eyes" damaging. It would be like the first episode of Black Mirror, except with zero sympathy for the protagonist.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:19 AM on July 11, 2017 [12 favorites]


Forget it, Jake, it's Fox News. At least aim for smaller fish in larger barrels.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:20 AM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


I disagree. I don't think that video would be any more damaging than the "grab 'em" video was.
posted by Autumnheart at 11:21 AM on July 11, 2017 [15 favorites]


At one point in the emails, Rob Goldstone says that Emin is "on stage in Moscow" on June 6, 2016. Out of curiosity, I tracked down that this is most likely about the Fashion People Awards 2016 where he was receiving an award (Youtube) and also performing (Periscope); at least, I think that's him performing, it's a really low-res video.

Anyways, it's pretty interesting that a good chunk of the email chain was about trying to set up a call and/or meeting between Don Jr. and Emin who, let's not forget, is a pop singer. Although, according to his Wikipedia entry is also somehow involved in his father Araz's real estate business, too.
posted by mhum at 11:22 AM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Im pretty certain we've covered this in previous threads wrt the pee-tapes but I think it definitely matters what exactly is on them - Twitler pissing on some Russian prostitutes? fits squarely in the category of shooting someone on 5th avenue or, you know, colluding with a foreign power to steal an election (as in, no consequences). If it, by some chance, features those prostitutes pissing ON HIM? then perhaps it might tarnish his supporters opinions/offend their sensibilities/break the image of him as some strongman enough for some action.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:23 AM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


"I saw the President jerking off to pissing Russian escorts with my own two face eyes" damaging.

i will bet hard cash that if the tape exists and comes out, within minutes r/thedonald will be full of "tribute" videos posted to youtube
posted by murphy slaw at 11:23 AM on July 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


I don't think that video would be any more damaging than the "grab 'em" video was.

I tend to agree. And it shouldn't be. In fact, it should be less damaging. However much it might "help" our cause, I'm very uncomfortable making an issue out of the sexual practices of (theoretically) consenting adults. That's a world of difference from being recorded bragging about committing actual sexual assault.
posted by jammer at 11:23 AM on July 11, 2017 [29 favorites]


I just talked to one of my public defender freinds about Don Jr. being an idiot and how much his lawyer must hate life and his direct quote was: "Dude, this is my every day. I'll tell someone not to talk to anyone else but me and 15 minutes later they will be on the monitored jail phone confessing everything to their babymomma. Jr. is just another criminal defendant with way more money."
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:26 AM on July 11, 2017 [115 favorites]


I don't care whether he should be ashamed of and shamed by a consensual sex act (he shouldn't be); I care that he would be. I'm not proud of that fact, but that's where I am right now.
posted by penduluum at 11:26 AM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


> Forget it, Jake, it's Fox News. At least aim for smaller fish in larger barrels.

Hey, at least they're reporting it!

Ok fine, here is something by Paul Krugman:
Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate
If elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin’s man in the White House? This should be a ludicrous, outrageous question.

No, wait, that appears to be from July *last year*. How about this one:

Franklin Foer: Putin’s Puppet
If the Russian president could design a candidate to undermine American interests—and advance his own—he’d look a lot like Donald Trump.

Oh, that's also a year old now.

But hey, Fox News is catching up.
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:28 AM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


...bourbon, on the other hand, is just a hipster fad and a good-ole-boy mainstay, right?

Wrong. Next question.
posted by Splunge at 11:29 AM on July 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


within minutes r/thedonald will be full of "tribute" videos posted to youtube

That would be the Reddit Event Horizon.
posted by spitbull at 11:29 AM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


Trump's personal consensual sex acts may not be morally relevant, but they are politically relevant. Trump possibly allowing himself to be blackmailed and controlled by Putin is extremely morally relevant.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:32 AM on July 11, 2017 [34 favorites]


Top comment on r/the_donald ATM, in a thread titled "LEAKERS BTFO. Don Jr. dumps the entire email chain!":
Now the question is, how the fuck did they get it? NSA?
Might be some reading-comprehension issues over there.
posted by Coventry at 11:33 AM on July 11, 2017 [22 favorites]


It's not within my emotional capabilities to feel bad for any Republican brought low by his or her legal and/or consenting sexual practices.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:33 AM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


Trump's personal consensual sex acts may not be morally relevant, but they are politically relevant. Trump possibly allowing himself to be blackmailed and controlled by Putin is extremely morally relevant.

But GOP and Trump voters are already okay with all of those things.
posted by Artw at 11:33 AM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


What are the odds Trump, following his brilliant son's example, gets ahead of the New York Times by releasing the piss tape himself?

At the rate things are progressing, I fully expect Trump to do a live, hour-long reenactment of the piss tape, with himself and his entire family, on national television.

And what would they call that act? THE ARISTOCRATS.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:34 AM on July 11, 2017 [55 favorites]


Looking forward to finding out where R. Kelly will be heading as an ambassador.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 11:36 AM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


McConnell confirms: New health care bill Thursday, CBO score early next week and vote on motion to proceed mid next week

They're still really going to try to ram TrumpCare through, treason or no treason.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:37 AM on July 11, 2017 [12 favorites]




I made the mistake of clicking into r/the_donald and the first post I see is headlined "TFW when Don Jr shuts it down by just posting the truth like a beast. Hillary your turn."

I fundamentally don't understand anything. I am lost in a corn maze of stupidity and brutality.
posted by prefpara at 11:38 AM on July 11, 2017 [126 favorites]


who talks like that
posted by murphy slaw at 11:39 AM on July 11, 2017 [35 favorites]


Okay, Don Jr. says he released the emails to be more transparent:
"The information they suggested they had about Hillary Clinton I thought was Political Opposition Research," Trump Jr. said in the Tuesday statement. "I first wanted to just have a phone call but when they didn’t work out, they said the woman would be in New York and asked if I would meet. I decided to take the meeting...As Rob Goldstone said just today in the press, the entire meeting was 'the most insane nonsense I ever heard. And I was actually agitated by it.'"
But the emails said, in part (emphasis mine):
The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump
Emin asked that I schedule a meeting with you and The Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow for this Thursday.
Lawyers of Metafilter, is there a legal distinction I'm missing here? Because "Crown prosecutor of Russia", "part of Russia and its government’s support" and "Russian government attorney" hardly sound like run-of-the-mill political oppo research that is definitely not connected to a government. And Junior HAS A LAWYER. Surely no remotely competent lawyer would let him release this stuff with his statement as he did, right? What am I missing?
posted by triggerfinger at 11:39 AM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


They're also a casino family bad at casinos, a hotel family bad at hotels, a "Christian" family that has trouble honoring the ten commandments..

They are truly conservative in that there is no standard that they can't double.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 11:40 AM on July 11, 2017 [14 favorites]




It's sort of amazing that anybody wouldn't stop reading at "Crown Prosecutor of Russia".
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:41 AM on July 11, 2017 [15 favorites]


Surely no remotely competent lawyer would let him release this stuff with his statement as he did, right? What am I missing?

Even the best lawyer can only advise the client how to not be a complete fucking moron. The client still has to listen. Complete fucking morons rarely listen.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:42 AM on July 11, 2017 [25 favorites]


Excellent use of a Mariah Carey gif in the Jennifer Jacobs thread!
posted by orrnyereg at 11:42 AM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's sort of amazing that anybody wouldn't stop reading at "Crown Prosecutor of Russia".


A funny comment from t_d (I need to stop ending up there)
Hello Mr DONALD TRUMP JR my name is VLADIMIR RUSTINKSI of the Russian Crown. My father, mr Vladimir Putin was the late exporter of many documents related to Hillary Clinton. After his passed, he left in total the sum of $US TWO-HUNDRED FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS ($200,000,000) which I am requesting to be meeting with you in MOSCOW for exhange of these documents.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 11:43 AM on July 11, 2017 [76 favorites]


My Kirkland Signature cling wrap is a high-quality cling wrap and I applaud its transparency
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:43 AM on July 11, 2017 [94 favorites]


Are there any countries without an actual monarchy that even have a Crown Prosecutor?
posted by zachlipton at 11:45 AM on July 11, 2017


It's sort of amazing that anybody wouldn't stop reading at "Crown Prosecutor of Russia".

Yes, because Russia no longer has a Czar!!!

...or do they. #reallymakesuthink #thetruthisoutthere
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:46 AM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's still a witch hunt even if it turns up actual witches, right?
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:47 AM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


> 'then they had to go and blow the whole thing by winning'

Funnily enough, I was talking to the wife about this just last night.

'Well... Talk about bad taste!'
posted by Myeral at 11:47 AM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


(34) During that speech he claimed "enemies" of the U.S. had a "blackmail file" on Clinton—clearly using a Russian phrasing for "kompromat."


Can someone explain this? I'm a Russian speaker and I thought kompromat simply stands for compromizing materials. I don't see how it would be "blackmail file", which seems to be just a file with blackmail data?
posted by rainy at 11:47 AM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


One more detail not noted yet: ProPublica pointed out that an AP reporter spotted obvious anagram Reince Priebus going into Trump Tower on the day of the meeting with the Russian lawyer.
posted by neroli at 11:48 AM on July 11, 2017 [23 favorites]


Are there any countries without an actual monarchy that even have a Crown Prosecutor?

I think that that was a translation/usage error for "state prosecutor" because Rob Goldstone, who wrote the email, is British (where they do still have a monarchy).
posted by dhens at 11:48 AM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


Kompromat is collected in order to blackmail or undermine the target, no?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:48 AM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Sarah Huckabee Sanders reads a statement from Trump: "My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency." -- @JenniferJJacobs, Bloomberg White House Correspondent

How fucking insane is it that the White House told the press they were no longer allowed to make audio or video recordings of any comments made by the press secretary during official press briefings and the press is just willingly going along with it?
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:49 AM on July 11, 2017 [73 favorites]


Basically, the timeline reads like this:
Trump team before the meeting: Oh boy oh boy oh boy this is gonna be epic!

Russian lawyer at meeting: Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me.

Trump team at meeting: Adoptions? Sanctions? Huh? I thought we were getting the good stuff today.
It's like they were too dumb to even see the implicit quid pro quo.
posted by stopgap at 11:49 AM on July 11, 2017 [30 favorites]


Which means ... the doomsday clock just moved a few seconds closer to PISSTAPE O'CLOCK

Reminder that Fredo also set up sexual entertainment to show a visiting American a good time.
Senator Pat Geary: Freddie, that thing can't be real.
Fredo Corleone: Sure it is. That's why they call him Superman.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:50 AM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


In America business comes first. That's why our czar is bizarre.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:50 AM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


One more detail not noted yet: ProPublica pointed out that an AP reporter spotted obvious anagram Reince Priebus going into Trump Tower on the day of the meeting with the Russian lawyer.
posted by neroli at 13:48 on July 11

Hello from yesterday
posted by fluttering hellfire at 11:50 AM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


I am honestly terrified that Trump Jr's bullshit, AS IMPORTANT AS IT IS, is going to eclipse the GOP effort to ram Trumpcare down our throats.

Any insights on what their plans are going to be? Do you think they'll be able to change the scoring by manipulating the way the CBO is allowed to score the plan? How steadfast is moderate opposition? How fucked are we? *hides*
posted by orangutan at 11:51 AM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


I think that that was a translation/usage error for "state prosecutor" because Rob Goldstone, who wrote the email, is British (where they do still have a monarchy).

Yeah, it would be like an American referring to the Russian prosecutor general as the "attorney general."
posted by stopgap at 11:51 AM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


How fucked are we?

Well and truly fucked.
posted by e1c at 11:53 AM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


Sarah Huckabee Sanders reads a statement from Trump: "My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency." -- @JenniferJJacobs, Bloomberg White House Correspondent

This is definitely something a real human who is not a sociopath or robot says about their real-life son.
posted by dis_integration at 11:54 AM on July 11, 2017 [121 favorites]


I think they are just going to bring it up for a vote, and if it loses it loses, and then they move on to the debt ceiling.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 11:54 AM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Just ran through a local news thread with a lot of Trump supporters in it (and a lot of non-supporters, so it wasn't a complete dumpster fire), and the Trump supporters really don't seem to understand that when you post a document incriminating you in a crime, that doesn't make you innocent. It proves your guilt.

They honestly seem to think that hiding the information is the bad thing and that being "transparent" about doing it is exonerating. No, that's not how it works.
posted by Autumnheart at 11:55 AM on July 11, 2017 [64 favorites]




How fucked are we?

Twenty fucks, same as in town.
posted by delfin at 11:57 AM on July 11, 2017 [57 favorites]


They honestly seem to think...

You're giving them too much credit.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:57 AM on July 11, 2017 [14 favorites]


Something occurred to me about TrumpCare the other day.

One style of protest that has been popular for decades, and remains popular today, is called a "die-in." In a die-in, protesters lie down on the ground en masse and pretend to be dead, in representation of people who have died or will die as a result of the protested agenda.

If TrumpCare passes, I think die-ins might become disturbingly literal.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:58 AM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


>..is that a Photoshop??

Surely it HAS to be???
posted by Myeral at 11:58 AM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


AARGH PERP WALKS for everyone! Donny Sr. and Jr. in matching orange jumpsuits and shiny bracelets, hobbling toward the court doors! Priebus desperately trying to cover his face from the cameras. Manafort and Kushner being jostled as the U.S. Marshals barely hold back the angry mob. Stephen Miller, Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Sanders already in the stocks as small children throw rotten tomatoes at their smarmy, lying heads. Accompanied by Jamie Dimon and the Bundy family, why not.

A finally - FINALLY - humbled Pence resigns tearfully in disgrace, his wife finally deciding she's had enough of his shit and refusing to stand beside him under the Klieg lights. Bannon goes back to being passed out in a gutter somewhere. McConnell's own entrails rebel against him. Alex Jones is forced to retire due to risk of apoplexy. A sulfurous crack opens in the earth's crust and reclaims Roger Stone.

I ask you, is that really too much to hope for?
posted by darkstar at 11:58 AM on July 11, 2017 [63 favorites]


Slate: Is Donald Trump Jr. guilty of treason? Probably not, but he likely committed this other crime.

"As nothing-burgers go, this one's a Whopper."

posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:59 AM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


obvious anagram Reince Priebus

There is nothing goddamn obvious about it. It generates, like many strings of characters, numerous anagrams, none of which seem particularly apt. Is that the joke?
posted by thelonius at 12:01 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


I just heard the spin from Fox news on my drive home; the tack they're taking is that if this woman was really a government representative from Russia, Obama should've done something about it. That would be interesting multitasking seeing as how the office of the FBI tasked with counterintelligence in the New York area was hot on the case of Her Emails.
posted by Captain l'escalier at 12:01 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


You're giving them too much credit.

With both "honestly" and "think."
posted by kirkaracha at 12:01 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Listen, no matter what happens, we need to be able to connect Mike Pence to something. Because there's no way he didn't know, and he cannot get off scot-free.
posted by triggerfinger at 12:02 PM on July 11, 2017 [14 favorites]


East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:32 PM: Trump's personal consensual sex acts...

So everybody seems to be assuming "the piss tape" (if it exists) would involve something resembling consent, like this was a couple well paid college age escorts agreeing to a little piss play for extra money.

But you've got strong hints of Trump's predilection for underage girls, history of violence towards women, disgust with female bodily functions, and the strong likelihood that the "escorts" were provided by Russian intelligence and/or organized crime with the express intent to compromise Trump. So, that's not really setting a scene in which "consent" features prominently.

I guess my imagination is darker than yours.
posted by dirge at 12:02 PM on July 11, 2017 [68 favorites]


About Trumpcare:

At Tuesdays with Toomey* today, an 80 year old cancer survivor celebrated her birthday by staging a die in in the middle of a busy Philly street. She was joined by members of ADAPT. I had to leave so I'm not sure yet if there were arrests.

If that doesn't spur you on to call your senator, I don't know what will.

*the weekly protest outside Senator Toomey's offices across PA
posted by mcduff at 12:03 PM on July 11, 2017 [31 favorites]


Today is the 213th anniversary of Hamilton's dual with Burr (it's also Prime Day, but Alexa doesn't have anything to say about Don Jr., I asked).

Which leads me to ask how the hell the Presidency went from Washington's Farewell Address to "My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency."
posted by zachlipton at 12:05 PM on July 11, 2017 [17 favorites]


Lawyers of Metafilter, is there a legal distinction I'm missing here?

Enh, I'd say there's wiggle room. You have a non-governmental person saying so-and-so works for the government, and that the government is doing such-and-such. It's not a government person saying the government is doing that. It's a statement from someone (seemingly) without real authority who may or may not know what he's talking about.

Obviously, it's not helpful, and I doubt it was vetted for release, but on its own, you can probably poke some holes in it.

All of which is intended not as legal advice, but as musing on a hypothetical, academic question.
posted by Capt. Renault at 12:07 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


>> obvious anagram Reince Priebus
> There is nothing goddamn obvious about it ... is that the joke?


It's just a nickname. From back in 2013, Charlie Pierce: Obvious anagram Reince Priebus, figurehead high priest of the Silly Party, has decided to butch himself up again. Or here are Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee in 2016.
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:07 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Obvious Anagram Reince Priebus is a nickname sourced from National Treasure Charles Pierce of Esquire, signifying that while we're not sure what "Reince Priebus" anagrams into, it is clearly an anagram of SOMETHING because it bears no similarities with any other names thus concocted in the King's English, even by movie stars or musicians. It is a jumble of letters that triggers just enough of an Actual Name uncanny valley to strike one's forebrain accordingly.
posted by delfin at 12:09 PM on July 11, 2017 [144 favorites]


On Sunday msalt suggested that we call our on Senators to introduce legislation to prevent the executive from sharing any classified information about election tampering and cybersecurity with the Russian government. The last couple of days have been a great impetus for developing some talking points along these lines:
  • Executive should be statutorily prohibited from sharing classified information on election related cybersecurity
  • Members of the Trump campaign have been repeatedly caught in lies about their contacts with Russian government agents
    • Donald Trump asked the Russians to hack and release Hillary Clinton's emails
    • Donald Trump has repeatedly lied about his relationship with Vladimir Putin
    • Donald Trump has betrayed highly classified intelligence to Russian officials
    • Michael Flynn discussed sanctions with Kislyak before the inauguration
    • Donald Trump Jr. has admitted to meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer, after being told the Russian government supported his father's campaign, to obtain damaging material on Hillary Clinton
    • Jared Kushner has had numerous undisclosed meetings with Russian officials
    • Jared Kushner attempted to set up a private communication channel with the Russian government to avoid US surveillance
    • Jefferson B. Sessions III has lied about his contacts with Russian officials
    • Paul Manafort has been linked to the Putin-backed regime in Ukraine and has apparently taken millions of dollars from them
  • Given these many connections as well as others too numerous to lay out, the executive cannot be trusted to work with Russia on anything involving cybersecurity and elections.
  • Please introduce legislation to prevent the executive from working on Trump's promised joint effor with Russia to collaborate on cybersecurity and election integrity
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 12:09 PM on July 11, 2017 [41 favorites]


I ask you, is that really too much to hope for?

You forgot the next part, in which Chief Justice Roberts swears in Paul "the granny-starver" Ryan as the 46th President of the United States.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:10 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


obvious anagram Reince Priebus

There is nothing goddamn obvious about it. It generates, like many strings of characters, numerous anagrams, none of which seem particularly apt. Is that the joke?


Yes, but what do you think of these beans?
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:11 PM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


At this point, I think Trump's ultimate defense is saying, "Yeah, I did it. So what?" and hoping the answer is "not enough people to matter."

That's if shouting "Fake news!" doesn't work.

And really, "fake news" is a brilliant term for the mixture of outright lies, exaggerations, contextless irrelevancies, unrepresentative anecdotes, and other bullshit that Fox News has been putting out for years. It almost makes me wish Democrats had thought of just dismissing it all as "fake news" instead of trying getting bogged down responding and explaining, "Well, that's inaccurate, that's an exaggeration, that didn't actually happen, that myth has been disproven by this data, etc." Except as we can from Trump's useage it's a rhetorical strategy that disproves way too much.
posted by straight at 12:12 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


Provenance unknown (PBS? Dr. Dave Solot?), but if true, one hell of a picture (Trump, Cohen, Agalarov, Goldstone, Veselnistkaya)
posted by Dashy at 12:14 PM on July 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


>I can give you power, but you must give me your first born!

>Fine, he's an idiot. What could go wrong?

This deal with the devil isn't going so well, dealmaker.
posted by adept256 at 12:14 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


This administration is turning out like one of Brendan Fraser's wishes in Bedazzled.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:16 PM on July 11, 2017 [33 favorites]


When this Junior story broke yesterday a friend of mine posted about it. Someone commented on her thread last night that "I'm still waiting for something concrete. The NYT apparently received word of what was in the email from a leak in the Whitehouse. No one has a copy of the email..."

I might have danced while I posted Junior's tweets earlier today in response to request for something concrete.
posted by Twain Device at 12:16 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


Provenance unknown (PBS? Dr. Dave Solot?), but if true, one hell of a picture (Trump, Cohen, Agalarov, Goldstone, Veselnistkaya)

Crass Supper
posted by kirkaracha at 12:16 PM on July 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


I hereby move that we rechristen "Obvious Anagram Reince Priebus" as "Neural Network Training Outtake Reince Priebus."
posted by contraption at 12:17 PM on July 11, 2017 [40 favorites]


The sad white people who voted for Trump don't care, and Republicans know that, so the Trumpening will continue.

Even if Trump were impeached, the Trumpening would continue, as it would have if Clinton had won the Electoral College—the Trump campaign was a big signal rocket sent up that connected all of the white supremacists and Nazis and other deplorables together, and has shown them that the entire right half of the American political establishment wouldn't stand in their way.

Somehow a huge chunk of the American electorate were okay with a candidate who was openly planning to round up millions of people and put them in camps, and was justifying that and a religious ban based on FDR's wartime executive orders. After all the crowing that Obama using EOs to do things like reshuffle prosecution priorities for government attorneys was supposedly terrible executive overreach and incipient dictatorship.

Trump's administration could quite possibly just put a bunch of stuff in place, like "extra detention capacity", which a future actually-competent Nazi regime might pick up and use ready-made. Not to mention all the anti-human-rights shit that is conventional conservative doctrine anyways.

So unfortunately we're basically in a Hotel California situation here and cannot let our guard down, no matter what.
posted by XMLicious at 12:17 PM on July 11, 2017 [36 favorites]


Burhanistan: "Donnie J's superposition into the shit soup is now making it kind of impossible to keep straight. I wonder how Mueller's team is organizing their whiteboards."
At the FBI, to establish the relationships that sustain Omnigate's life, the investigators stretch strings from the corners of the photos, red or green or white or gold-and-orange according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of bribery, cowardice, kompromat. When the strings become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the investigators leave: the offices are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain.

From across the street, camping with their dossiers, the FBI's refugees look at the labyrinth of taut strings and photos that rise in the windows. That is the FBI still, and they are nothing.

They rebuild the Bureau elsewhere. They weave a similar pattern of strings which they would like to be more complex and at the same time more regular than the other. Then they abandon it and take themselves and their dossiers still farther away.

Thus, when traveling in the territory of Washington, you come upon the ruins of abandoned offices, without the walls which do not last, without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away: spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking an indictment.
With apologies to I.C.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:19 PM on July 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


Ok, today is moving too fast, and I can't even tell if this article is something I got to from right here in the thread, but I feel like I finally understand the Magnitsky Act and how it connects adoptions and sanctions. If you're also confused, this is a good article:

Anne Applebaum, Washington Post: This law might explain why a Russian lawyer wanted to meet with Trump
The Magnitsky Act bothered the Russian leadership — in fact, it really, really bothered them, far more than it should have. In part that may have been because it focused attention on the real source of so much Russian wealth: theft from the state. In part it may have been because the powerful officials involved, like all powerful officials in Russia, care a lot about being able to travel freely to the West in order to buy property, to go skiing, to hide their money.

It also set a precedent. Suddenly there was a way to target all of those gray bureaucrats, the men behind the scenes who give the orders to loot the state and kill citizens. The Magnitsky Act was the template for the sanctions that the Obama administration placed more broadly on Russian individuals and businesses in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Basically, very rich Russian oligarchs got their fee-fees hurt and their style crimped by these sanctions, and they set out to buy a friendlier government in the United States. They succeeded beyond their dreams - but ...
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:19 PM on July 11, 2017 [38 favorites]


But you've got strong hints of Trump's predilection for underage girls, history of violence towards women, disgust with female bodily functions, and the strong likelihood that the "escorts" were provided by Russian intelligence and/or organized crime with the express intent to compromise Trump.

There is also every reason in the world to believe that if a tape was made, the woman/women in question are now very likely dead, having been silenced by one party or another. This wasn't a jolly romp like in some cheeky '70s softcore farce, it's super effed-up shit involving powerful people.
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:19 PM on July 11, 2017 [52 favorites]


Provenance unknown (PBS? Dr. Dave Solot?), but if true, one hell of a picture (Trump, Cohen, Agalarov, Goldstone, Veselnistkaya)

Why are they meeting in a conference room from a John Carpenter movie about an evil corporation that turns innocent people into killer robots?
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:19 PM on July 11, 2017 [20 favorites]


They honestly seem to think that hiding the information is the bad thing and that being "transparent" about doing it is exonerating. No, that's not how it works.

SSSSSHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhh!
posted by Rykey at 12:20 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


The Atlantic has a mini-documentary on the ADAPT protesters and just why they're willing to throw their bodies upon the gears.

PS: You say "expensive Medicaid expansion", I say "massive jobs program" in work that cannot be done by robots…
posted by Soliloquy at 12:20 PM on July 11, 2017 [25 favorites]


Provenance unknown

Provenance would be easier to determine if you link the twitter account that shared the picture, at the very least.
posted by Roommate at 12:22 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


obvious anagram Reince Priebus
RNC PR BS E-I-E-I-EU
posted by sjswitzer at 12:24 PM on July 11, 2017 [63 favorites]


PS: You say "expensive Medicaid expansion", I say "massive jobs program" in work that cannot be done by robots…

True: but our rhetoric should not bend, however subtly, to the idea that the metric for government action should primarily be economic outcomes.

Health care is a human right.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:24 PM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


And huge headshots of Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, and...is that Cate Blanchett? Whaaaa?
posted by orrnyereg at 12:24 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


provenance (2013 Miss Universe shindig)

I'll bet that's not Veselnitskaya, though.
posted by pjenks at 12:25 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


Somehow a huge chunk of the American electorate were okay with a candidate who was openly planning to round up millions of people and put them in camps, and was justifying that and a religious ban based on FDR's wartime executive orders.

And approvingly cited Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback" as a precedent for his deportation plan.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:25 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Don Jr to appear on Hannity tonight. Can't wait to see what else he becomes 'transparent' about.
posted by rc3spencer at 12:27 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


Emin Agalarov - the "pop singer" at the eye of the storm - is an interesting guy. He appeared as the interval act at the Eurovision final in Baku, Azerbaijan (for reference, Justin Timberlake was the interval act last year in Stockholm). Agalarov's not much of a talent (don't watch the YT video if you value music), but at the time he was the son-in-law of the Azeri president. Reminder that Trump has had shady dealings in Azerbaijan.

Current chat in Eurovision circles is whether the Azeri victory in 2011 - somewhat widely believed to be connected to rooms full of burner phones, dodgy SIM cards and hacking - was a trial run for the current Pepe-wielding crowd.

As conspiracies go, it's a weird one but I'd love to see more digging into the Azeri-Russian connections.
posted by kariebookish at 12:29 PM on July 11, 2017 [11 favorites]


So Donnie takes the fall, spends three years in a country-club white-collar prison, and then gets pardoned in 2020, standing to inherit the Trump fortune now engorged with Gazprom cash and various emoluments? Smooth...
posted by acb at 12:29 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


A human being's made of more than air
With all that bulk, you're bound to see him there
Unless that human bein' next to you
Is unimpressive, undistinguished
You know who...
posted by kirkaracha at 12:30 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Speaking of Hannity, here's his latest spin: "If Donald trump himself were colluding with Vladimir Putin and the Russians, why would he need his son to act as an intermediary?"

The desperation in these people's thinking is pretty evident.
posted by zachlipton at 12:30 PM on July 11, 2017 [55 favorites]


That Seth Abramson thread has been posted a bunch of times now, and I'm getting really frustrated by it:

22) But all that is just the prelude, because we *also* now know that now-President Trump was in Trump Tower as this meeting was happening.

Do we know this? HOW do we know this? I have not seen this reported anywhere else, and it seems like a really big deal. (So big that everything else was "just a prelude" apparently.)

(23) Moreover, we know from Politico that Trump was "hunkered with his advisers," including Manafort and Kushner, discussing anti-HRC intel.

He puts "hunkered with his advisers" in quotes and mentions Politico, but a google search of politico.com for that exact phrase turns up nothing.

In fact a google search of the whole internet for that exact phrase turns up only references to this twitter thread.

What is he quoting? Again, I haven't seen this reported anywhere else.

Twitter is a crappy medium for journalism. There is no space to cite your sources or explain the limits of your knowledge. There are also no editors and no fact checkers.

But I think Abramson himself is also not very credible on this subject.

I think Abramson is making up some of those details and mixing them in with real facts, and it pisses me off, so I think we should all stop sharing that thread.
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:30 PM on July 11, 2017 [17 favorites]


"Think about all of this like a Russian intel op -- if a unicorn shows up in front of you when you need it. Ask why."

@MollyMcKew on Russian influence and Jr's email chain which she suspects may be a ruse to cover up something worse.

The Trumps are stupid, but surely not this stupid. Lucy's still holding the football.

(eta yes i hate twitter too but what to do @mollymckew?)
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth at 12:33 PM on July 11, 2017 [13 favorites]


I think Abramson is making up some of those details and mixing them in with real facts, and it pisses me off, so I think we should all stop sharing that thread.
Or any thread of his. Or Schmensch's, etc.
posted by rc3spencer at 12:33 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


The desperation in these people's thinking is pretty evident.

Calling that "thinking" is a big stretch
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:33 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


The fact that they were so scared of this that they reacted this stupidly instead of crying 'fake news!' after the Times released the emails -- retaining a smidgen of deniability and firing up the base -- tells you exactly how bad THEY think this is.
posted by chris24 at 12:33 PM on July 11, 2017 [15 favorites]


And huge headshots of Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, and...is that Cate Blanchett? Whaaaa?

They're photos by Martin Schoeller, yeah?
posted by slenderloris at 12:33 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Trumps are stupid, but surely not this stupid.

They're this stupid.
posted by theodolite at 12:34 PM on July 11, 2017 [64 favorites]


The Crown prosecutor of Russia

Are they really too dumb to see that talking about the “crown prosecutor” of a republic is as transparently false as talking about, say, the Pope of Morocco?
posted by acb at 12:35 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


They are this stupid, but that doesn't mean there's not something worse. Because they're that stupid, too.
posted by nat at 12:37 PM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


Are they really too dumb to see that talking about the “crown prosecutor” of a republic is as transparently false

Goldstone is British. He just didn't know what the position was called in Russia, and used the British name for it.
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:37 PM on July 11, 2017 [18 favorites]


Also, neither of the Donalds Trump know that the UK is a monarchy with Crown prosecutors and that Russia is a republic.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:38 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


>> Are they really too dumb to see that talking about the “crown prosecutor” of a republic is as transparently false as talking about, say, the Pope of Morocco?

> Goldstone is British. He just didn't know what the position was called in Russia, and used the British name for it.

Exactly what I was typing - thx, preview - it would be like me calling someone in Britain their Attorney General because I didn't know better.
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:38 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


#DonJrChildrensBooks is now trending on Twitter.

Highlights include:
* "The Princess and the Peabrains"
* "No Light in the Attic"
* "The Very Power-Hungry Caterpillar"
* "Oh, the Prisons You Will Go"
* "Don Jr And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Email."
posted by zarq at 12:39 PM on July 11, 2017 [56 favorites]


@Carter_PE
Holy crap. If this is what NYT has, can you imagine what @TheJusticeDept has collected?
posted by chris24 at 12:41 PM on July 11, 2017 [29 favorites]


Now, I don't like to use the word "hero", but...("Repeal and Go F🇺🇸ck Yourself" T-shirt vs. Ted Cruz)
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:41 PM on July 11, 2017 [30 favorites]


obvious anagram Reince Priebus

Huh, I always assumed the joke was that the word "penis" sticks out like a sore... thumb in his name. Maybe it only does to me. Shows where my mind's at, I guess.
posted by Rykey at 12:42 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


Ruth Marcus in the WaPo: The Donald Trump Jr. emails could hardly be more incriminating
The email chain between Donald Trump Jr. and Rob Goldstone, the publicist brokering a meeting between the Trump campaign and a Kremlin-linked lawyer, could hardly be more incriminating.

By explicitly linking the source of the information to the Russian government and by describing it as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” Goldstone made crystal clear that he was offering the campaign a chance to collude — yes, that word is appropriate here — with a foreign government to “incriminate Hillary” Clinton and help win the presidency.

By reacting as he did, eagerly accepting the offer of this foreign aid, Trump Jr. made clear that he was a willing part of this incipient conspiracy — and yes, that word is appropriate here, too. “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer,” he responded, within minutes of receiving the inquiry.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 12:42 PM on July 11, 2017 [18 favorites]


Julian Assange decides he wants to be a part of this narrative: "Contacted Trump Jr this morning on why he should publish his emails (i.e with us). Two hours later, does it himself"

Question one is why Assange has Don Jr's contact info.
posted by zachlipton at 12:43 PM on July 11, 2017 [60 favorites]


They are this stupid, but that doesn't mean there's not something worse. Because they're that stupid, too.

Surely, if we've learned anything here, is that there's always something worse.
posted by acb at 12:43 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Holy crap. If this is what NYT has, can you imagine what @TheJusticeDept has collected?

Yeah, but how much of it is going to see the light of day if Sessions decides to keep conditionally recusing himself?
posted by Autumnheart at 12:44 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


Also, neither of the Donalds Trump know that the UK is a monarchy with Crown prosecutors and that Russia is a republic.

Donald Trump the elder apparently called the (male) prime minister of Denmark the "King of Denmark" in a conference call (Denmark's actual monarch is Queen Margaret II, whose husband has the rank of prince, not king. Oopsy doopsy.)
posted by dhens at 12:47 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Trump Jr. delivers ‘smoking gun’ to Mueller
The email chain released by the president’s son shows an intent to collude with Russia, veteran prosecutors and white-collar defense attorneys say. (Darren Samuelsohn / Politico)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:47 PM on July 11, 2017 [23 favorites]


Um... does anyone else think that the phrasing of the email to DJTJr might indicate that the Russian government was willing to forge "official"[1] documents showing Hillary's "illegal" actions?

[1] I mean, technically they would actually be official documents, coming from the Russian government, but with, y'know, actual lies and innuendo in them
posted by hanov3r at 12:48 PM on July 11, 2017


Question one is why Assange has Don Jr's contact info.

Question 2 - When and how did Assange know that NY Times had the email? Timeline from NY Times says that Trump tweeted a few minutes after they contacted him for comment and he asked for more time, but Assange knew 2 hours before that?
posted by TwoWordReview at 12:48 PM on July 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


Well, here's some good news: The Rock is running for president.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:48 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


Twitter is a crappy medium for journalism. There is no space to cite your sources or explain the limits of your knowledge. There are also no editors and no fact checkers.

This has been a major frustration for me basically since President Asterisk announced his run, but getting worse the more power he has gained. On the one hand, I really hate relying on twitter for news. On the other hand, regular media leaves out very important information all the time - twitter is where I learned about the current admin's failure to staff the State Department properly. Mike Pence having his email hacked while he was governor in Indiana - twitter told me that too.

I get this sense that mainstream media (mostly NPR and WaPo for me) doesn't want to point out just how far off of norms the current administration is, because reporting on that accurately makes them sound like the abysmal excuse for a government that they are.

Maybe I am just bad at finding the right news sources.
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:49 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


This Trump Jr stuff reminds me a little bit of Mission: Impossible, just because it's so improbable and out of the blue.
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:50 PM on July 11, 2017


That photo further down of the Trump lads...is that a Photoshop??

Yes, to remove Ivanka, and some minor face en-slothening.
posted by tomierna at 12:50 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Assange is another of the white men who have a Putinesque and Trumpian approach to the world, he just prefers to think of himself as spyish. It is not shocking they all collude, or that they all view themselves as the plucky protagonist in their own thriller drama romance with a poor understanding of law, justice, or IT.
posted by Deoridhe at 12:50 PM on July 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


Nor is it shocking that whenever someone happens to get a lot of attention on the global stage, one of the others has to chime in with their own two cents. "Look at me!"
posted by Autumnheart at 12:51 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


Question 2 - When and how did Assange know that NY Times had the email? Timeline from NY Times says that Trump tweeted a few minutes after they contacted him for comment and he asked for more time, but Assange knew 2 hours before that?

Correction: He tweeted the emails as they were about to publish and Trump camp asked for more time. Didn't say when they contacted him initially. Still doesn't explain how Assange knew 2 hours earlier.
posted by TwoWordReview at 12:53 PM on July 11, 2017


Following up a comment I made in the last thread, MSNBC reported that Don Jr. released the emails after a NYT reporter called him for comment on the emails, so he knew they had them and were getting ready to release them.
posted by Room 641-A at 12:55 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Nor is it shocking that whenever someone happens to get a lot of attention on the global stage, one of the others has to chime in with their own two cents. "Look at me!"

Has Gingrich or Bill Maher said anything yet?
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:55 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


Well, here's some good news: The Rock is running for president.

In other words, we've learned nothing.
posted by zarq at 12:56 PM on July 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


Trump on Don Jr: "My son is a high quality person and I applaud his transparency" (Sarah Huckabee Sanders read the statement) (source)
posted by cell divide at 12:57 PM on July 11, 2017


Well, here's some good news: The Rock is running for president.
No.

How about people who want to be president get elected to lower office first to show they're serious and give people an opportunity to see how they deal with things when they actually have to do stuff and not just how they campaign? The presidency shouldn't be a vanity project.
posted by Green With You at 12:57 PM on July 11, 2017 [155 favorites]


Trump Jr. delivers ‘smoking gun’ to Mueller

Further down:
A source close to Manafort told POLITICO on Tuesday that the campaign manager hadn’t read all the way to the bottom of the email exchanges on his phone and that he didn’t even know who he was meeting with when he attended the 20 to 30-minute session. Kushner’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
So the best we've got now is essentially "oops, totally missed the bit in the thread about 'Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." That's not a great look.
posted by zachlipton at 12:58 PM on July 11, 2017 [23 favorites]




> I hereby move that we rechristen "Obvious Anagram Reince Priebus" as "Neural Network Training Outtake Reince Priebus."

Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Literally First of his Name, King of the RNC, the CPAC, and the Wisconsin Republican Party, the Frequently Burnt, the Obvious Anagram, the Neural Net Training Outtake,, Lord Paramount of the Cheeselands, Protector of the PR BS, Breaker of Oaths, and Babysitter of Bannon.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:58 PM on July 11, 2017 [41 favorites]


I'd say instead that Trump is ruining it further by the day for future entertainers who might wish to run for political office later in life.

How about people who want to be president get elected to lower office first to show they're serious and give people an opportunity to see how they deal with things when they actually have to do stuff and not just how they campaign? The presidency shouldn't be a vanity project.

Absolutely. The presidency is not an entry-level position. Run for mayor first.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:59 PM on July 11, 2017 [30 favorites]


On the one hand, celebrity-turned-politician isn't always a disaster. Al Franken hasn't been bad, and Arnold Schwarzenegger turned out to be a fairly okay governor as I understand it. I will let the good people of Minnesota correct me, too, but from what I understand Jesse Ventura wasn't that bad either.

On the other hand - Ronald Reagan.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:00 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


> 22) But all that is just the prelude, because we *also* now know that now-President Trump was in Trump Tower as this meeting was happening.

Do we know this? HOW do we know this? I have not seen this reported anywhere else, and it seems like a really big deal. (So big that everything else was "just a prelude" apparently.)


Associated Press, Amid fundraising worries, Trump gathers potential donors: "Presumptive GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday summoned allies and Republican Party heavyweights to kick off a general election fund-raising operation and push back against the notion that his late-starting cash collecting would be outgunned by Hillary Clinton's. {...} The Manhattan meeting at Trump Tower kicked off the Trump Victory Fund, the joint cash-raising operation with the RNC that plans to gather money both for his candidacy and for House and Senate GOP candidates."

(23) Moreover, we know from Politico that Trump was "hunkered with his advisers," including Manafort and Kushner, discussing anti-HRC intel.

He puts "hunkered down with his advisers" in quotes and mentions Politico, but a google search of politico.com for that exact phrase turns up nothing.


Politico, Trump prepares charge sheet against Clinton: "Donald Trump’s team is hunkering down to draft the charge sheet the presumptive GOP nominee will unveil against Hillary Clinton on Monday, intent on laying out a credible general election argument that leads voters to question her trustworthiness."

Seth Abramson should be read with the same skepticism as any independent investigator, but however much one may disagree with his inferences and conclusions, he's fairly reliable about his basic facts.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:01 PM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


Following up a comment I made in the last thread, MSNBC reported that Don Jr. released the emails after a NYT reporter called him for comment on the emails, so he knew they had them and were getting ready to release them.

A very damaging thing is about to damage you. Do you freeze? or do you run away, trying to buy yourself a little extra time to figure out how best to handle the very damaging thing that is about to damage you?

Trick question, the answer is "None of the above: instead, you run head-on at the very damaging thing in hopes that... it won't hurt as bad if you can tell yourself that you freely-ish participated in your own damaging?"

This is the stupidest choose-your-own-adventure ever
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:01 PM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


Al Franken hasn't been bad

True, but he was involved heavily in politics with a radio show before he ran for office. He didn't just walk off of the SNL set to file paperwork.
posted by Emmy Rae at 1:02 PM on July 11, 2017 [36 favorites]


Dylan Matthews/Vox: The latest revelation won't end Trump's presidency. Only Paul Ryan can.
The truth is that whether or not Trump is “brought down” has at best an indirect relationship to the gravity of the charges against him. His fate depends much more heavily on how Republican leaders in Congress respond to the scandals in question than it does on those scandals’ details or severity. Trump is the American president. He can only be permanently removed from office if a majority of the House votes to impeach and a two-thirds majority of the Senate votes to convict. He can’t be charged in federal courts like a normal civilian.

Trump could also be removed under the 25th Amendment by a majority of his Cabinet — but that would also entail the Republican Party abandoning him, and if he contests it, the judgment would need to be ratified by Congress.

Unless Trump voluntarily chooses to resign, the only thing that will bring him down is Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agreeing that he must be removed from office, and rallying their members to vote for impeachment and removal.
No one is sure that indictment can work any other way, from any other direction. Plus, unlike Nixon, the President and Congress belong to the same party, and Congress needs to keep the president around to sign off on their agenda.
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:02 PM on July 11, 2017 [14 favorites]


> Speaking of Hannity, here's his latest spin: "If Donald trump himself were colluding with Vladimir Putin and the Russians, why would he need his son to act as an intermediary?"

That is some weak-ass spin. Like, someone with debilitating vertigo could handle that ride levels of spin.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:03 PM on July 11, 2017 [11 favorites]


he was involved heavily in politics with a radio show before he ran for office. He didn't just walk off of the SNL set to file paperwork.

Radio talk shows aren't necessarily political leadership, but that is a fair point.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:03 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


So the best we've got now is essentially "oops, totally missed the bit in the thread about 'Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." That's not a great look.

So he takes a meeting from an email with the subject line "FW: Russia - Clinton - private and confidential" and doesn't bother asking "What's that all about?"
posted by stopgap at 1:03 PM on July 11, 2017 [19 favorites]




Do you freeze, or do you run away, trying to buy yourself a little extra time ...

You know what they say about meeting bears in the forest. You don't need to run faster than a bear, just faster than the slowest person in your party.
posted by spitbull at 1:04 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


Al Franken hasn't been bad

True, but he was involved heavily in politics with a radio show before he ran for office. He didn't just walk off of the SNL set to file paperwork.


He was doing politics independently of the radio show, eventually choosing to focus on politics when he started his run for US Senate.
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:04 PM on July 11, 2017


> Speaking of Hannity, here's his latest spin: "If Donald trump himself were colluding with Vladimir Putin and the Russians, why would he need his son to act as an intermediary?"

I love that Hannity wants us to see this as a rhetorical question when there's a straightforward factual answer. Don Sr. needed Don Jr. to act as an intermediary because Don Sr. can't figure out how to use email. Next question?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:05 PM on July 11, 2017 [60 favorites]


Ventura was better than some and worse than others--and he was mayor of Brooklyn Park before he was governor. Al Franken had several years writing and being involved in politics before running for the Senate, and if we're being strictly factual, he barely won his first election--they had to perform a recount. But he won re-election handily, and his hard work has been paying off.
posted by Autumnheart at 1:05 PM on July 11, 2017 [17 favorites]


"If Donald Trump himself were colluding with Vladimir Putin and the Russians, why would he need his son to act as an intermediary?"

Why wouldn't President Nixon have performed the burglary himself?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:05 PM on July 11, 2017 [89 favorites]


> Speaking of Hannity, here's his latest spin: "If Donald trump himself were colluding with Vladimir Putin and the Russians, why would he need his son to act as an intermediary?"

I no rite. Like what executive ever delegates anything? That's why the mafia was called organized crime, because one guy did everything himself all alone and never had any help.
posted by dis_integration at 1:06 PM on July 11, 2017 [20 favorites]


but from what I understand Jesse Ventura wasn't that bad either.

I was much younger and kind of too punk rock for policy when he was elected, but what I will always remember is that we had a state surplus, and instead of saving it for a lean year he sent everyone a check. Year or two later, we were in deficit and had massive, massive cuts to education, food stamps and all kinds of stuff. It was a cheap popularity-boosting measure that relied on everyone believing that government "steals" your money via taxes.

I'm not really a fan of celebrity politicians. Franken is good enough, but I would still prefer someone who was able to run and win on policy, not fame.
posted by Frowner at 1:07 PM on July 11, 2017 [52 favorites]


They are this stupid, but that doesn't mean there's not something worse. Because they're that stupid, too.

I'm going to beat my dead horse one more time and point out there's still no proof evil isn't just a particularly nasty mix of tactical competence and bigger picture stupidity/short sightedness. Remember, investigators post holocaust found evidence the Nazis may have originally thought they really were going to repatriate most of their victims, and it was only as they started realizing that wasn't even a logistical/practical possibility they decided to just kill everybody because as far as their way of thinking was concerned, the two methods produced functionally identical outcomes. That's what "banality of evil" refers to--reducing deeply moral decisions to abstract bureaucratic decisions and compartmentalizing the hell out of the ethics of the decisions.

Evil can be just a horribly extreme and destructive version of "not my problem" plus deliberate tunnel vision when it comes to the ethics.
posted by saulgoodman at 1:07 PM on July 11, 2017 [49 favorites]


Counterpoint: Trump Nation voting for a Samoan seems unlikely. They're racists. The Rock may have very humorously noted that people project whatever racial identity they want to see on him, but it's gonna come out that he's actually brown.
posted by spitbull at 1:07 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


@CommsDirector
Take a step back from shock for a moment.
Are a few things to keep in mind.:
1. If they think this is exculpatory, what's still out?
2. No one on the email was surprised at the fact that the Russian gov was attempting to help them. They already knew it. On June 3.
3. Manafort and Kushner are both implicated. This wasn't just Junior. And Goldstone may have sent things to Trump's Exec Assistant.
4. This chain seems to describe a preexisting channel btw the Russian government and Trump Sr. Gov --> Goldstone --> Rhona -> Trump
5. All of these people have lied about all of these things. They have lied on TV. On clearance forms. In writing. Repeatedly.
6. This is just what we have from leaks. Can you even imagine what Mueller has right now?
posted by chris24 at 1:09 PM on July 11, 2017 [102 favorites]


The crux to all of this is how comfortable congressional Republicans feel about blocking impeachment. When the Overton window moves to such a point that they feel like they're at risk if they defend him, then things can happen. Those things will probably be driven by the Mueller investigation, which is humming along quietly on its own track.

That's my read, anyway, based on what I know about the system in general and the way Watergate shook out in particular.


The scales tipped for Nixon when the tapes revealed Nixon was guilty of conspiracy to obstruct justice. One can measure the depravity of the modern Republican Party by the fact that weeks ago, Trump admitted as much, publicly, in his interview with NBC.
posted by Gelatin at 1:10 PM on July 11, 2017 [53 favorites]


The Rock is going to hands down win any election because he's the fucking Rock. America votes for the shiniest thing.

(And yes, for incredibly stupid reasons Trump counted as "shiny" last election)
posted by Artw at 1:11 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


Can you even imagine what Mueller has right now?

I hope he has what he needs, but CNN has reported that the FBI was unaware of this meeting until now.

Which given the public Facebook check-in is slightly disappointing...
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:12 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


> So the best we've got now is essentially "oops, totally missed the bit in the thread about 'Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." That's not a great look.

Not a great look? I mean look at the incredulity that met the mere suggestion that someone could possibly miss a stray "c" or (c) in the body text of her thousands of emails. So obviously, IOKIYAR.
posted by klarck at 1:13 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


The Rock is going to hands down win any election because he's the fucking Rock. America votes for the shiniest thing.

Depends on how much celebrity fatigue Trump drums up between now and whenever he leaves office.
posted by Autumnheart at 1:13 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


We may actually know now why the Republicans are nervous about moving against Trump. In the Morning Joe spat, we heard about how they were nervous about negative stories in the National Enquirer. Just think about the "shocking" Cruz-affair story the paper ran during the primaries. The Republicans are worried about Trump smearing them through his press buddies.
posted by drezdn at 1:13 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


So Donnie takes the fall, spends three years in a country-club white-collar prison, and then gets pardoned in 2020, standing to inherit the Trump fortune now engorged with Gazprom cash and various emoluments? Smooth...

If we actually get to the point (and I'm having trouble imaging it at the moment) that charges are filed and a conviction obtained against Donald Trump, I can't imagine that the authorities would have any compunction against seizing the emoluments. I don't see him skating away if we get the point of a conviction. Getting there, however....
posted by Existential Dread at 1:14 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Just to point out that Franken ran on policy not on fame and was up against a horrible Norm Coleman. There was a recount and thank god Franken won. Franken was, and is, a policy wonk. To be fair, a comedian and policy wonk but if you read any of his books you'll see he's deeply political.
posted by misterpatrick at 1:14 PM on July 11, 2017 [82 favorites]


*Will be* complete?
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:14 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


Don't worry. All we have to do is wait for a Democratic president and the Republicans will care about principles again.
posted by Talez at 1:15 PM on July 11, 2017 [27 favorites]


I know it's a little late in the thread, but this post is *holds hand up* a damn fine cup of Metafilter. Well done, EC!
posted by Brak at 1:15 PM on July 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


I do not believe America to be capable of "celebrity fatigue".
posted by Artw at 1:16 PM on July 11, 2017 [13 favorites]


Doktor Zed - I don't see that your link actually includes this text that you quote? "The Manhattan meeting at Trump Tower kicked off the Trump Victory Fund".

In fact it says "Attendees included Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, who waved to the press upon arrival at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan" (emphasis mine.)

(It is dated Jun 9, 2016, 3:03 PM ET and says the meeting was "today." The collusion at Trump Tower happened an hour after that story came out, so I'm not sure how relevant that link is either way, to be honest.)

And the Politico link says "Donald Trump’s team is hunkering down." (And doesn't say exactly when the hunkering was happening.)

It does not say Trump is hunkering with them.

So I think think there are still some issues with Abramson's "basic facts."
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:16 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


Franken is good enough

Not to mention smart enough, and doggone it, people like him.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:16 PM on July 11, 2017 [195 favorites]


don't see him skating away if we get the point of a conviction.

No Trump is going to prison. Daddy has a pardon pen.
posted by spitbull at 1:16 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


The other thing about Franken is that he clearly puts in a great deal of effort to do the work. With health care, a good chunk of the Senate demonstrably has no idea what they're talking about. Sometimes they're just lying, but half the time, they're just talking nonsense because they don't know the policy issues. Sen. Franken is the kind of Senator who knows what essential health benefits are and why they matter, the kind of Senator who throws out a reference to an Atul Gawande study on Medicaid, the kind of Senator who self-evidently puts in the time to prepare for hearings and learn the concepts he needs to do his job.

I'm not inherently opposed to someone skipping a step or two and running directly for Senate if they can do it (not President though), but it's got to be the sort of person who will dive headfirst into policy while actively avoiding using their fame. That's the exact opposite of Trump's political career.
posted by zachlipton at 1:17 PM on July 11, 2017 [101 favorites]


The Republicans are worried about Trump smearing them through his press buddies.

Hmm, not sure about that. Trump has no idea what their values are, what they stand for.
posted by Melismata at 1:18 PM on July 11, 2017


I wonder how Mueller's team is organizing their whiteboards.

I'm reminded of DeLillo's Nicholas Branch, who regarded the Warren Report as "the megaton novel James Joyce would have written if he'd moved to Iowa City and lived to be a hundred." Obviously, Ommigate is the reality TV show William Burroughs would have written if he'd moved to New Jersey and done yage and poppers with John Le Carré.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:18 PM on July 11, 2017 [12 favorites]


Al Franken, AB 1973, Harvard (cum laude), government major. But you know, college is just a status thing.
posted by spitbull at 1:19 PM on July 11, 2017 [109 favorites]


No Trump is going to prison. Daddy has a pardon pen

DJT is definitely the only President I can imagine not pardoning his own flesh and blood.

But in any case this will all go nowhere and Trump will be reelected (especially if Zuckerberg and The Rock are running)
posted by dis_integration at 1:20 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]




Arnold Schwarzenegger turned out to be a fairly okay governor as I understand it.

He was a good liar.

He ran on a platform of fiscal discipline, then did the exact opposite as governor. He spent most of his time in office trying to convince Californians that the state didn't need to raise taxes. He wound up tripling the state's debt and destroying its creditworthiness. He also eventually cut social programs in a big way, targeting the poor, especially poor women and seniors. He left office with the state government owing massive amounts to colleges as well. State colleges tripled their tuitions and decreased what they offered to students as a result.

He ran on protecting kids, then cut services to developmentally disabled children in his first month as governor. He would go on to cut health care for children living in poverty and even cut funding for investigations into child abuse and neglect.

He also vetoed a ton of laws that would have protected workers in the name of creating more jobs, including vetoing much-needed regulations on businesses -- especially over protections for the environment against pollution.

Oh, and he also pushed to privatize pensions (which turned half the state against him.)
posted by zarq at 1:22 PM on July 11, 2017 [81 favorites]


WaPo headline: Emails show Trump Jr. was told ‘Russian government lawyer’ could provide damaging information on Clinton

NYT banner: Trump Jr. on Russians’ Offer: ‘I Love It’
Email Specifies Tie to Moscow in Effort to ‘Incriminate Hillary’


CNN banner: Trump Jr. releases emails on Russia meeting

It really was Trump's Mirror all along.
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:22 PM on July 11, 2017 [20 favorites]




This is looking more and more likely

No joke, it took me a second to see that as a primary debate, instead of a particularly riveting game of Celebrity Jeopardy!
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:25 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


Fluffy side notes:
1. I didn't know 'til Colbert's 7/10 monologue that the WH didn't have any hotel accommodations booked before G20.
There are 50,000 high school prom committee chairs that are more organized than they are.

2. #DonJrChildrensBooks is now trending on Twitter.
All I could come up with was "The Secret Pardon," but in my defense I'm still kinda sick.

3. Speaking of which, re:"If Donald Trump himself were colluding ... why would he need his son to act as an intermediary?" -
Man, I can smell the desperation from here, and I've got a stuffy nose to boot.

4. Also, am I the only damn theater nerd who starts singing my own version of "Mr. Goldstone" whenever that dipstick is mentioned. ("Have a bliny, Mr. Goldstone, have a vodka, caviar or samovar ...")

[OK, I am.]
posted by NorthernLite at 1:27 PM on July 11, 2017 [16 favorites]


NorthernLite, you're not, but for me it's because I played Mr. Goldstone in my high school's production of Gypsy many decades ago.
posted by hanov3r at 1:30 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Are Trump Junior, Kushner or Manafort now going to retroactively register as Russian agents? That is apparently a serious question I am asking.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:30 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


The Rock is a Republican. He'd be against Pence in the Republican primaries, not debating Zuckerberg in the Democratic ones.

Rock(R) vs. Zuck(D) is literally the only scenario I've ever heard wherein I'd consider voting for a Republican for President. Dwayne Johnson has no business being President, but Zuckerberg would be the final nail in the coffin for anything resembling democracy in the United States.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:30 PM on July 11, 2017 [52 favorites]


4. Also, am I the only damn theater nerd who starts singing my own version of "Mr. Goldstone" yt whenever that dipstick is mentioned. ("Have a bliny, Mr. Goldstone, have a vodka, caviar or samovar ...")

Alexandra Petri was bringing it last night. The "best" one:
would you say mr goldstone plays a positive role?
no i would say that he
have a neg role, mr goldstone
posted by zachlipton at 1:30 PM on July 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


Assange is another of the white men who have a Putinesque and Trumpian approach to the world, he just prefers to think of himself as spyish.

NYRB has a nice piece about Julian in the latest issue: 'The Nihilism of Julian Assange'
posted by octobersurprise at 1:31 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


basically I'd have to hold my nose and pretend I was voting for Maui. or maybe for Boxer Santaros.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:32 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


The only "this" is followed by "is our country now" because these scandals are only setting a new precedent for acceptable behavior for a President.

Not exactly. They are setting a precedent for acceptable behavior from a Republican president. Democratic presidents will still be expected to be unfailingly scrupulous. Republicans can lie to start needless wars financed by government debt and that's swell, but if a Democrat wears a tan suit or greets a soldier while holding a coffee cup or, during the national anthem, places his hand over his heart two seconds later than the people around him, well, those are major scandals that demonstrate disrespect for the dignity of the office.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 1:33 PM on July 11, 2017 [70 favorites]


Trump Junior has retweeted this video by Nigel Farage, who is very confident that this will all blow over, as will any investigation into Farage possibly acting as an intermediary between the Trump campaign and Julian Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:33 PM on July 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


I just talked to one of my public defender freinds about Don Jr. being an idiot and how much his lawyer must hate life and his direct quote was: "Dude, this is my every day. I'll tell someone not to talk to anyone else but me and 15 minutes later they will be on the monitored jail phone confessing everything to their babymomma. Jr. is just another criminal defendant with way more money."

"I'm rich! I'm white! Who needs BRAINS?" I'm amazed that these people can remember to put on pants in the morning. I'm amazed that they remember ketchup goes on steak and not fingerpainted on the tablecloth. But hey, if you're white and your daddy has money...

And please, NO MORE inexperienced Presidents. This is not an entry-level job! FFS, even doofuses (doofi?) like Ronald Reagan and Warren Harding held previous office! "Experienced" doesn't mean "taking bribes across one's desk like Spiro Agnew!" Mr. Smith Goes To Washington was not a documentary!
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 1:33 PM on July 11, 2017 [15 favorites]


2. #DonJrChildrensBooks is now trending on Twitter.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, obvs.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:34 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Doktor Zed - I don't see that your link actually includes this text that you quote? "The Manhattan meeting at Trump Tower kicked off the Trump Victory Fund".

Ugh, that link was to an ABC story, not the AP story I quoted: https://apnews.com/784aadef318846edb331b2031af3ee8d/amid-fundraising-worries-trump-gathers-potential-donors The Four Seasons meeting mentioned in the ABC article was for their lunch.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:35 PM on July 11, 2017


I wonder if all of this -- getting Trump elected, and then throwing his presidency into chaos when the collusion is revealed -- is what Russia wanted to happen. Pretty good way to paralyze our government.
posted by gurple at 1:36 PM on July 11, 2017 [11 favorites]


Down the rabbit hole I went and found this funny, delightful, and self-deprecating class day address Al Franken gave at Harvard in 2002. The story about Daniel Bell's class is worth the read alone.

The fact that he took a class with Prof. Daniel Bell makes him more qualified for high public office then anything I've ever learned about him.
posted by spitbull at 1:36 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


He spent most of his time in office trying to convince Californians that the state didn't need to raise taxes. He wound up tripling the state's debt and destroying its creditworthiness.

Schwarzenegger's run also didn't happen in a vacuum, it was a very particular recall election. You might even say it was a total recall election. Either way, he was awful.
posted by Room 641-A at 1:37 PM on July 11, 2017 [14 favorites]


Metafilter: even doofuses (doofi?).
posted by Melismata at 1:37 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


Doofodes, surely.
posted by orrnyereg at 1:40 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


I prefer to think of myself as a Doof Warrior.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:40 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]




Surely this. . .

Not this and stop calling me Shirley.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:45 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


Non-Senior Advisor to the President Alex Jones explains that Donald Trump Junior was just doing his job, which was apparently "trying to find Russian spies", the traditional role of a US presidential candidate's first-born son.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:45 PM on July 11, 2017 [34 favorites]


The Zuckerberg thing I don't get AT ALL. Are there people who like him? What is there to like? All I know about him is he runs an sinister company that I want nothing to do with. If he wanted to make history he could have fought the fake news all over his stupid website instead of letting ridiculous lies about Hillary Clinton win the day.

There are Democrats available and experienced that inspire me and for whom I would love to cast a vote! You know who doesn't like the talented, experienced democrats already working as public servants? Republicans. They won't vote for our candidate anyway.

I think accepting folks like The Rock or Mark Zuckerberg is just playing the other side's game of attacking any of our champions that rise in the ranks. Rs may think politics is a joke but it is deadly serious to me, and I will continue to treat it that way.
posted by Emmy Rae at 1:46 PM on July 11, 2017 [43 favorites]



NYRB has a nice piece about Julian in the latest issue: 'The Nihilism of Julian Assange'
Lady Gaga: What’s your favorite food?

Assange: Let’s not pretend I’m a normal person. I am obsessed with political struggle. I’m not a normal person.
Christ, what an asshole.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:47 PM on July 11, 2017 [31 favorites]


And I'm excited to hear what noted patriots McMaster and Mattis have to say about these developments.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:50 PM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


NYRB has a nice piece about Julian in the latest issue: 'The Nihilism of Julian Assange'
I highly recommend seeing Risk, if on the fence, or fairly ignorant of Assange. The accumulated creep factor alone after spending almost 2 hours watching and listening to him and his disturbing crew will enlighten as to what a topical monster he is. I was on the fence, apparently not knowing much about him after all.
Immediate shower was needed after. Misogynist narcissistic cult leader is just the beginning of his ugliness.
posted by rc3spencer at 1:51 PM on July 11, 2017 [18 favorites]


I have released
the kompromat
that were in
my inbox

and which
you were probably
hoping
i'd forgotten

Forgive me
this is delicious
so sweet

- v putin
posted by Tevin at 1:52 PM on July 11, 2017 [109 favorites]


The presidency is not an entry-level position. Run for mayor first.

I totally agree. I want the constitution changed over it (hahahah), even. Do not run for president with literally no political experience!

I know The Rock as POTUS might seem like a shining city on the hill right now, but make that dude president and the Idiocracy Prophecy will be complete.

I generally don't approve of celebrities running for office with no experience, but seriously, can The Rock be worse than Trump? I mean, I'm not super in favor of it and posted that snarkily, but if it's Rock vs. Trump, then...

The one that really scares me is Kanye vs. Trump but hopefully Kanye has a short attention span.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:52 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


I honestly think there's a time in our future when Putin decides that his idiot has outlived his usefulness and starts dumping all the Trump family kompromat he's been collecting.

I've had the thought that this may in fact be what's going on right now.
posted by Andrhia at 1:53 PM on July 11, 2017 [11 favorites]


So is Emin Agalarov the analogue to Johnny Fontane in this farce?
posted by stopgap at 1:55 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


What, no love for four-term Congressman The Love Boat's Gopher?
posted by achrise at 1:57 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


I have nowhere else to put this anxiety so its going here but Adam Goldberg tweeted three hours ago that Update: he's still reporting and Eric Geller said 5 minutes ago that "so, uh, something just happened. Stand by for news" and its killing me.
posted by Brainy at 1:58 PM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


The Zuckerberg thing I don't get AT ALL. Are there people who like him? What is there to like? All I know about him is he runs an sinister company that I want nothing to do with

I've never been in the facebook ecosystem, either. Can you imagine? I see it being very easy for him to campaign on streamlining gov't by forcing citizens to have a facebook acct.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:59 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


And I'm excited to hear what noted patriots McMaster and Mattis have to say about these developments.

Speaking of Mattis...

This is a really remarkable interview.

When the Trump administration accidentally leaked his private number, he apparently got a lot of calls. One was from a high school paper in his home state wanting an interview, which he gave.

I have so many thoughts and feelings on the stuff he says here, in the context of this corrupt administration... And in the context of Trump having handed over the entire US military to this guy. And Congress having passed a special law just to allow him to serve. I hardly know where to start. But I will say I think historians will study that interview.

I sometimes kind of wonder to what extent Trump was forced to hand over control of the military to Mattis (and if so, I wonder forced by whom?) Like... people knew before Trump took office that he was a Russian asset, so....

But if Mattis secretly has even more power than he apparently has, I hope he will, like General Washington, hand it over peacefully to civilian elected officials when the crisis has passed.

(PLEASE NOTE - I have NO EVIDENCE for my imaginary scenario of Trump being forced to hand things over to Mattis. That imaginary scenario is just a scenario I have imagined. Which I sometimes wonder about.)

Anyway, it's a good interview.
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:59 PM on July 11, 2017 [28 favorites]


it would be like me calling someone in Britain their Attorney General because I didn't know better.

No, it would be an entirely appropriate use of the term.
posted by lovelyzoo at 2:02 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Based upon my experience following The Rock on instagram, I think he would at least try to do a good job. And be genial. Those are both things we don't have now.
posted by something something at 2:02 PM on July 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


Truly then we would know if we'd hit Rock bottom.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 2:03 PM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


I thought I was straight, but I'd hit Rock bottom.
posted by Floydd at 2:05 PM on July 11, 2017 [32 favorites]


I can't think of a better example of the lasting damage to our country than the phrase "well, he'd do a better job than Trump" with its broken-jawed scream of semantic emptiness and desperate truth.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 2:09 PM on July 11, 2017 [63 favorites]


The travel ban is paying off! An Iranian cancer researcher who had a State Department visa issued in May was detained at Logan Airport in Boston before he could make his way to Boston Children's Hospital and do nefarious cancer research. Now he, his wife and their three kids are to be sent away before they can do unimaginable harm to the homeland.
posted by adamg at 2:10 PM on July 11, 2017 [106 favorites]


I'd be on board if we could also get Vin Diesel.

I thought Diesel and Johnson had a (kayfabe-ish?) brouhaha about whether Diesel could take Johnson in a fight. Which, Vin, I love you, but The Rock would crush you like a thing that rocks crush easily.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 2:12 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


like a thing that rocks crush easily

Scissors?
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:14 PM on July 11, 2017 [50 favorites]


> I can't think of a better example of the lasting damage to our country than the phrase "well, he'd do a better job than Trump"

Right? There will someday be a different president, and they will make some mistake - possibly minor, possibly not - and how will we react? Well, at least he didn't grab someone by the pussy? Well, it's not like he was engaging in a treasonous conspiracy with the Russians?
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:14 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


So would it be Crown Prosecutors or Crowns Prosecutor?
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:15 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


triggerfinger: Lawyers of Metafilter, is there a legal distinction I'm missing here? Because "Crown prosecutor of Russia", "part of Russia and its government’s support" and "Russian government attorney" hardly sound like run-of-the-mill political oppo research that is definitely not connected to a government.

chris24, from the prior thread: Romney's chief strategist in 2012 campaign:

@stuartpstevens:
When Gore campaign was sent Bush debate brief book, they called FBI. If foreign interests offer you info on former SOS, you call the FBI.


Emphasis mine - it doesn't matter if it's someone arriving in a vehicle emblazoned with the Russian seal or someone even vaguely connected to Russia - CONTACT THE FBI.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:15 PM on July 11, 2017 [40 favorites]


> The Zuckerberg thing I don't get AT ALL. Are there people who like him? What is there to like? All I know about him is he runs an sinister company that I want nothing to do with. If he wanted to make history he could have fought the fake news all over his stupid website instead of letting ridiculous lies about Hillary Clinton win the day.

So the frame you're working with here is that a successful candidate for political office is one who's loved, or at least liked. However, being liked or loved is not necessarily the best means of winning high office. In the case of Zuckerberg, he's feared and respected by some people, because he runs a very, very influential website. And that's enough to get some meaningful support; the Meg Whitman/Carly Fiorina voters of the world, the ones who still think that Silicon Valley business leaders are smart and good, will be all over Zuckerberg's run.

But more importantly, Zuckerberg can drum up broader support for his candidacy through subtly manipulating what gets displayed on that influential website; good news about Zuck just so happens to tend to bubble up to the top, and bad news just so happens to not get displayed, and since it all involves statistical shifts in what gets displayed rather than any outright bans on anti-Zuck content — and since the newsfeed algorithm is secret — there's no way to be certain about the extent of the manipulation, or even whether it exists at all. And so enough people end up in a media bubble where it seems like everyone else supports that fresh-faced young Zuckerberg fellow, and enough of those people end up supporting Zuckerberg cause it looks like everyone supports Zuckerberg, that he gains just enough support to end up winning the Democratic Party primary.

It's a nightmare. It's also all too plausible, since given the choice between Zuckerberg and whichever left insurgent ends up being most prominent, the DNC will without a doubt prefer Zuckerberg. The institutional center of the party is, broadly speaking, pro-capitalist and liberal rather than anti-capitalist or left, and well-connected pro-capitalism liberals are exactly the demographic that's most taken in by the soft-technocratic big-business approach to governance — "we'll just nudge the masses into doing what we want! And everyone will be happy cause we know best!" — of which Zuckerberg is practically the apotheosis.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:15 PM on July 11, 2017 [39 favorites]


And be genial.

...and musical
posted by Buntix at 2:16 PM on July 11, 2017


One of two possibilities concerning the Trumps and lying.

1: They have yet to realize it is near impossible to publicly lie and not be caught in today's world of recorded data, OR

2: They are incapable of not lying.
posted by notreally at 2:16 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


3: They don't care. There have never been any consequences to lying so far.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:17 PM on July 11, 2017 [73 favorites]


So the budget situation is getting interesting. They've added $1.6 billion for a border wall. The problem is that the Republicans generally can't pass a budget on their own, because too many Republicans simply won't vote to keep the government open no matter what, which means they need Democratic votes to avoid a government shutdown. That fucking wall is going to be an impediment to getting those Democratic votes, which is why the government is at this very moment not shut down and there's no wall funding. So it's hard for me to see how they resolve that one.

Friendly reminder that we're set to hit the debt ceiling by early October, and default is a hell of a lot worse than a government shutdown.
posted by zachlipton at 2:17 PM on July 11, 2017 [20 favorites]


Some people are suggesting that President Trump be replaced by Vice President Pence, but there is substantial evidence that the Pence campaign also colluded with the Russian government, because it was the exact same campaign. Bad news for Vice President Pence!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:19 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


Mod note: Couple comments deleted; gonna ask that folks ease back a little on the noise/chitchat about side topics.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:20 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


So the frame you're working with here is that a successful candidate for political office is one who's loved, or at least liked.

Sorry, that was poorly phrased - I meant like him as a candidate. I guess right now he is just wandering diners in middle America so maybe there is some idea or issue focus yet to emerge.

The rest of your scenario is just awful to contemplate. This is why we need real news we can rely on.
posted by Emmy Rae at 2:22 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


chris24: @Carter_PE Holy crap. If this is what NYT has, can you imagine what @TheJusticeDept has collected?

TwoWordReview from the prior thread: @Craigipedia (Media Matters) : CNN's @evanperez reports (11:25am) that the FBI did not have prior knowledge of this Trump Jr. meeting until recent scoops

!!!
posted by filthy light thief at 2:22 PM on July 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


Can we start referring to Donald Junior as "Easy D"?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:25 PM on July 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


I posted this in the previous thread, and there are probably now more of these available, but here it is anyway:
PDF version of Donald Trump Jr's statement and email chain
posted by pjenks at 2:25 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


So the budget situation is getting interesting. They've added $1.6 billion for a border wall.

Did anyone besides Trump actually want a wall? I don't remember that being on any of the Rs' agenda (granny starving and tax cuts yes, but not a wall, I don't think). Are they including it because they are still kissing T's butt? I'd think by now they'd be tired of kissing his butt. Someone besides T really wants this thing and is pushing Congress to include it (not T, who has no political skills).
posted by Melismata at 2:26 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


CNN's @evanperez reports (11:25am) that the FBI did not have prior knowledge of this Trump Jr. meeting until recent scoops

So this gives probable cause to subpoena a lot of emails now. Hold on to your butts.
posted by stopgap at 2:27 PM on July 11, 2017 [20 favorites]


Can we start referring to Donald Junior as "Easy D"?

Yeah. If anything he's Lil' D.
posted by Talez at 2:29 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


The Russians are flat-out laughing at the US and (no pun intended) taking the piss.

Tweet by Ellie Hall: MEANWHILE, IN MOSCOW: Emin Agalarov posts a selfie with the caption "what's in the news ??? 😜" https://www.instagram.com/eminofficial
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:29 PM on July 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


Cure Penis Brie
posted by pmburns222 at 2:30 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


Based upon my experience following The Rock on instagram, I think he would at least try to do a good job. And be genial. Those are both things we don't have now.

I think The Rock would be a lot like Justin Trudeau. A lot of people skills and emotional intelligence, but as for experience and intellectual heft? Well... [*wavy hand*]
posted by Capt. Renault at 2:31 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


Metafilter: with its broken-jawed scream of semantic emptiness and desperate truth.
posted by hanov3r at 2:35 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]




The thing is, if the FBI didn't know about this meeting, then you have to think there's plenty of other branches on this tree they're following. His choices of lawyers for his team indicates he may be pursuing organized crime and money laundering angles. Now you take an outright confession of illegal ratfuckery and throw that into the mix? I would not be surprised if he put in a request for more resources very soon.
posted by azpenguin at 2:36 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


Did anyone besides Trump actually want a wall? I don't remember that being on any of the Rs' agenda (granny starving and tax cuts yes, but not a wall, I don't think). Are they including it because they are still kissing T's butt?

The Republicans are absolutely terrified of the potential of a revolt by Trump's base. Many of them used to think that the McCain/Ryan/Romney-style conservatives were the core of the party, but they now realize that racist, lunatic Trumpists are the dominant force of Republican politics. Pandering to Trump supporters is absolutely necessary because the party is utterly powerless without them.
posted by parallellines at 2:37 PM on July 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


I have nowhere else to put this anxiety so its going here but Adam Goldberg tweeted three hours ago that Update: he's still reporting and Eric Geller said 5 minutes ago that "so, uh, something just happened. Stand by for news" and its killing me.


BREAKING: Trump administration limits agencies' ability to buy @kaspersky cybersecurity software

https://www.politicopro.com/cybersecurity/story/2017/07/trump-administration-limits-governments-ability-to-buy-popular-russian-security-software-159448

It's paywalled, but there's been some other news this week about Kaspersky working with Russian intelligence. (Which, I mean, they are a Russian company, so....) Not sure if that's related.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 2:38 PM on July 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


Eric Gellar's story (which he has already apologized for over-hyping): The Trump administration has discouraged government agencies from using a leading Russian cybersecurity firm’s software amid fears that the firm's products could serve as a Trojan horse for the Kremlin's hackers. The General Services Administration said Tuesday that it had removed Kaspersky Lab from the approved list of vendors for two government-wide purchasing contracts that agencies use to acquire technology services.

Anyone who has knowingly been using Russian-made cybersecurity software when there are plenty of alternatives is nuts, frankly.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:39 PM on July 11, 2017 [14 favorites]


Eric Geller said 5 minutes ago that "so, uh, something just happened. Stand by for news" and its killing me.

Eric Geller is a troll. A sometimes lovable troll I suppose, but a troll nonetheless.

His story (paywalled, so link to tweet) is that the GSA has removed Kaspersky security products from its list of contracted software.

If you want to yell at him on twitter now, that's probably not the worst way you could spend your afternoon.
posted by zachlipton at 2:40 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


Hitting Rock bottom.

I think the correct term is "Spanking Rock bottom."
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:41 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


came for the post title. was not disappointed.
posted by ovenmitt at 2:43 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


From January, Ars Technica: Ruslan Stoyanov, the head of Kaspersky Lab's investigations unit, was arrested for treason in December, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Wednesday. The paper said that Sergei Mikhailov, a division head of the Russian intelligence service FSB, was also arrested in the same probe.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:43 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


Rob Goldstone's Relationship With the Trumps: A Timeline (Ashley Feinberg for Wired, July 11, 2017)
posted by filthy light thief at 2:46 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


So yesterday when the email story first broke I made a comment here about yelling "It's Russia O'Clock again!" from my study and my gf yelling from the living room, "For fuck's sake, WHAT NOW?"

This morning we got on a plane from Seattle to LA. I stopped looking at the internet on my phone right at boarding time... which was 8:04, same time the Fredo tweet hit Metafilter (and I presume only a minute or two after the actual tweet itself).

We landed in LA a little over two hours later. I pulled out my phone, took it out of airplane mode... and then when I got over my complete shock, I looked across the aisle to my gf and said, "Hey, guess what time it is?"

To her credit, she did not yell "For FUCK'S SAKE, WHAT NOW?" in an airplane. But I very nearly did.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 2:47 PM on July 11, 2017 [51 favorites]


I think the correct term is "Spanking Rock bottom."

Surely it's "smelling what Rock Bottom is cooking?" but my WWE-ese is dated.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:51 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


Mr. Rabbit is convinced that the DJTJr tweets are a test to see how the public, Congress, and the base react. He says it was strategic and that it'll tell them how far they can go and what they can get away with.

Me: "You think this is strategic? No, they are way too dumb for that kind of maneuver."
Him: "Yeah, they are dumb, but they do have smart people working for them."
Me: "Like who?"
Him: "Their counsel."
Me: "SAYS WHO?"
posted by rabbitrabbit at 2:52 PM on July 11, 2017 [13 favorites]


My main misgiving with Dwayne DeRock is his past and present relationship with WWE... I mean, he and Trump are two of a very select group who Vince McMahon pretended to let beat him up. Would he keep on Mrs. McMahon in his cabinet? Even promote her to Secretary of Kayfabe?
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:58 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


I had seen this before but since yesterday trumpies have escalated the "russophobic" accusations (is it even a word) and I feel like screaming because by their definition actual Russian citizens would be russophobic, and anyone who isn't terrified of the Russian government is completely fucking clueless.
posted by Tarumba at 3:01 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


If you were wondering what it would take to get Glenn Greenwald to stop the RUSSIA IS A NOTHINGBURGER stuff you should know that after the revelations today... you're still wondering, 'cause he's still riding the NO PUPPET train.

Did he fall on his head? Did Clinton murder his god? Is he a Russian agent?
posted by Justinian at 3:01 PM on July 11, 2017 [40 favorites]


I love the Russian people. Put Gary Kasparov in charge. There. Nice country, good ally, let them join NATO. Lovely. Putin, I'm not so sure about.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:02 PM on July 11, 2017 [28 favorites]


You two soggy rock bottom boys are just dumber than a bag of hammers.
posted by maxsparber at 3:02 PM on July 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


At the FBI, to establish the relationships that sustain Omnigate's life, the investigators stretch strings from the corners of the photos, red or green or white or gold-and-orange according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of bribery, cowardice, kompromat. When the strings become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the investigators leave: the offices are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain.

From across the street, camping with their dossiers, the FBI's refugees look at the labyrinth of taut strings and photos that rise in the windows. That is the FBI still, and they are nothing.

They rebuild the Bureau elsewhere. They weave a similar pattern of strings which they would like to be more complex and at the same time more regular than the other. Then they abandon it and take themselves and their dossiers still farther away.

Thus, when traveling in the territory of Washington, you come upon the ruins of abandoned offices, without the walls which do not last, without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away: spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking an indictment.


holy shit itily

"Robert Mueller does not necessarily believe everything James Comey says when he describes the crimes allegedly committed by the Trump administration, but the special prosecutor does continue listening to the tall former FBI Director with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other investigator or lawyer of his"
posted by Sebmojo at 3:03 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


Trump begins to dismantle Obama’s “startup visa” program (Joe Mullin for Ars Technica, July 11, 2017).

The Obama-era rule would have granted immigration “parole” for those with $250,000 in capital, but now it's "on hold" until March 2018, and
The Department of Homeland Security intends to rescind the rule but is taking public comment during a review period.
...
Australia, Canada, Chile, Ireland, and New Zealand all have visa grants or other programs to attract entrepreneurs. In the US, there's no sure-fire way to ensure a foreign startup founder, even one who has lined up significant funding, can continue to reside in the country.
Trump's America: let's make this great country as un-attractive to anyone and everyone.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:03 PM on July 11, 2017 [13 favorites]


I meant to write "Did Clinton murder his dog?" not "god" but imma let it stand because that's A+ typoing.
posted by Justinian at 3:04 PM on July 11, 2017 [86 favorites]


Did Clinton murder his god?

This is a great typo until it starts showing up on InfoWars
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:05 PM on July 11, 2017 [32 favorites]


Let me emphasize just how fucking ridiculous the Hayes/Greenwald twitter exchange is that Justinian linked to is. Pretty sure that Putin could shoot Hillary on 5th Avenue, in broad daylight, while wearing a MAGA hat, and Greenwald would be like BUT IT WASN'T COLLUSION!!!!!

Fuck. Him.
posted by joyceanmachine at 3:09 PM on July 11, 2017 [16 favorites]


I wonder if we'll ever again have a President that hasn't been Stone Cold Stunned.
posted by Copronymus at 3:09 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


I would really like for Mr. Mueller to give a statement of some kind on the status of his investigation. It's fun to think that they are all busy and hiring people and whatnot, but I'd really like the adult in charge of investigating this clusterfuck to say something.
posted by lazaruslong at 3:09 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


This is a great typo until it starts showing up on InfoWars

I did an image search on "clinton where is your god now" (not recommended in hind-sightlessness-due-to-ripping-out-eyes).

It does indeed appear that a lot of people do believe that Clinton is intent on killing their god.
posted by Buntix at 3:10 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Jesus H. Christ, Glenn, have you SEEN this motherfucker's twitter account? Do you understand that his dayjob for the past decade+ has been saying stuff in front of cameras?
posted by Existential Dread at 3:12 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


Because I don't think that if Trump seriously wanted to [say he prefers soldiers who aren't captured], he'd do it in front of cameras.
Because I don't think that if Trump seriously wanted to [claim to have a big dick], he'd do it in front of cameras.
Because I don't think that if Trump seriously wanted to [call Ted Cruz's wife ugly and accuse his dad of murdering JFK], he'd do it in front of cameras.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:14 PM on July 11, 2017 [16 favorites]


I keep thinking about the fact that according to the Russian lawyer, Jared attended only about 10 minutes of the meeting -- just long enough to learn there was no dirt to be had that day. Then off he goes, until another day.
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:15 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm sorry to derail re: Greenwald's increasing derangement, but
Because I don't think that if Trump seriously wanted to direct/request Russians commit crimes, he'd do it in front of cameras.
He confessed to firing Comey in order to derail the Russia investigation ON CAMERA. Your justification is absurd on its face, Glenn.
posted by Existential Dread at 3:16 PM on July 11, 2017 [41 favorites]


Yeah, I am confused by the Russia-skeptic thing on this, and a little frustrated by "there is evidence that the Trump campaign was up to some shady stuff with Russian entities, but since it's not exactly as everyone surmised back in, like, January, that means there's no story and you're just a bunch of liberal hacks". I share Greenwald's general skepticism of all US politicians and understand that global elites all guard each other's interests, but that doesn't mean that I'm cool with some global elites, like, literally soliciting hacked material from other global elites in secret with a view to influencing the election. Our democracy might be kind of shit, but that doesn't mean that just anything goes.

Also, you know, I am not especially enthused by two white nationalist, intensely homophobic major governments hooking up for mutual advantage.

Again, just because there's corruption and things are generally terrible doesn't mean that literally any stepping up of corruption is cool and no worse than the status quo.
posted by Frowner at 3:19 PM on July 11, 2017 [29 favorites]


Why are we pretending Greenwald is anything other than a Russian state actor himself? He promoted Wikileaks the entire time.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:21 PM on July 11, 2017 [31 favorites]


WaPo: Hackers have been stealing credit card numbers from Trump’s hotels for months

Please tell me we can blame Giuliani for this.

Oh, Eric. "This is the EXACT reason they viciously attack our family! They can't stand that we are extremely close and will ALWAYS support each other."

So Trump has two sons that are going to stay on as executives in the family business and he's going to put the business in a trust. He names Don Jr. and antoher-guy-not-named-Trump as trustees and declares that Eric can be the one and only member of an "advisory council" that can suggest things to the trustees.

Now is that an extremely close family that always supports each other or what?
posted by zachlipton at 3:24 PM on July 11, 2017 [15 favorites]


In conclusion, Metafilter: Fuck Glenn Greenwald.
posted by spitbull at 3:24 PM on July 11, 2017 [13 favorites]


I wonder if all of this -- getting Trump elected, and then throwing his presidency into chaos when the collusion is revealed -- is what Russia wanted to happen. Pretty good way to paralyze our government.

It's at least an acceptable outcome.
posted by vibrotronica at 3:29 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


AND Putin gets a free pisstape out of it, which is one of the best entertainment values.
posted by delfin at 3:31 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's about time that Eric did something stupid too so we can continue the competition about which of them is dumbest. I wonder what he'll do?
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:32 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Well, he tweeted this. Not a bad effort.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:34 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


To keep President Trump in the clear here, you have to believe all of the following things:
  • Trump Jr, Kushner, and Manafort enthusiastically met with a Russian operative to get Russian dirt on Clinton and never mentioned this to Trump (what?) and
  • This meeting happened but the Russian didn't actually have any promised information, even though they've lied about the content of this meeting at least three times so far and
  • No other meetings where Clinton dirt was given to the Trump team occurred, even though nearly every Trump campaign principal has now been shown to have lied about their contacts with Russians and
  • The fact that Russia is the only thing Trump meaningfully diverged from the GOP platform on just happens to be a coincidence and
  • Trump's firing of Comey under admittedly false pretenses because he wanted to put the Russia thing away was done despite the fact that none of his Russian activity is problematic and
  • Everyone in Trump's sphere is acting like they're covering up something to do with Russia but this is just a coincidence and nothing bad actually happened
Every single one of those has to be true for Trump to not have committed impeachable offenses. Frankly I don't believe any of them.
posted by 0xFCAF at 3:37 PM on July 11, 2017 [173 favorites]


I don't think this has been posted yet but Pence is showing all the loyalty you would expect. His take on the release of emails (The Hill, Rebecca Savransky):
"The Vice President is working every day to advance the president's agenda, which is what the American people sent us here to do," press secretary Marc Lotter said in a statement.

"The Vice President was not aware of the meeting. He is not focused on stories about the campaign, particularly stories about the time before he joined the ticket." [emphasis mine.]

posted by vac2003 at 3:42 PM on July 11, 2017 [15 favorites]


Oh, Eric, you silly goose. We're more than happy to attack your father for repeatedly leaving his wives for his mistresses, too!
posted by Sublimity at 3:43 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


Man this past year has made me feel like some kind of savant trend-setter in re my feelings that both Assange and Greenwald should probably go jump in a lake that date back several years. I was like, "I dunno, that Assange guy seems like a mega turbo creep and Greenwald suspiciously ignores obvious malfeasance in favor of his hobby horses" and everyone poo-pooed.
posted by soren_lorensen at 3:48 PM on July 11, 2017 [28 favorites]


Oh gosh, Haley Byrd reminds us that Paul Manafort is the guy who, when asked if he had met with Russians, replied:
It’s not like these people wear badges that say, "I’m a Russian intelligence officer."
Nope, you don't see any badges; you just get an email stating that the Russian government wants to offer you damaging oppo intel to help your campaign, with the subject line "Russia - Clinton - private and confidential."
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:52 PM on July 11, 2017 [64 favorites]


In March 2017, Greenwald announced plans to build a shelter for stray pets in Brazil that would be staffed by homeless people.

Well, at least we know where he stands.
posted by valkane at 3:56 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


You could show Glenn Greenwald a video of Trump shaking hands with Putin and saying "Thank you for helping me win with those hacked emails, I'll be really happy to help you with the Crimea thing" and Greenwald would object that they may have been doing an improv sketch.

There is no distance they're not willing to move the goalposts. "Collusion" is simply whatever is currently thirty yards ahead of the ball.
posted by 0xFCAF at 3:58 PM on July 11, 2017 [17 favorites]


In March 2017, Greenwald announced plans to build a shelter for stray pets in Brazil that would be staffed by homeless people.

Well, at least we know where he stands.


Not a fan of Greenwald, but is that supposed to be damning in some way?
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:59 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


Actual Fox News push notification: "Breaking News. 'HANNITY' EXCLUSIVE: Donald Trump Jr. acknowledges he 'would have done things a little differently' regarding Russian meeting

That is, in fairness, the closest you'll ever get to a Trump admitting they fucked up.
posted by zachlipton at 4:01 PM on July 11, 2017 [22 favorites]


So Breitbart is leaking too, to CNN's Oliver Darcy. Pro-Trump media scrambles to react to bombshell emails
Raheem Kassam, editor-in-chief of Breitbart London, reacted to the story of Donald J. Trump's newly-released emails in a way that wouldn't typically be expected from someone at the far-right outfit, which is a reliable supporter of President Trump.

"So like, this is straight up collusion," he wrote in the news outlet's internal Slack, according to a transcript of the conversation obtained by CNN. "Right?"
posted by zachlipton at 4:06 PM on July 11, 2017 [81 favorites]


You know what they say about meeting bears in the forest. You don't need to run faster than a bear, just faster than the slowest person in your party.

I have some bad news for Donald Jr
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:07 PM on July 11, 2017 [53 favorites]


And so the Bannon plan comes to fruition.
Tear it down. Burn it. Front stage chaos and mayhem.
Meanwhile the men behind the curtain are dismantling everything as fast as possible.
Then it's time to drop the grifters and lo and behold I give you the dominionist theocracy of America and President Pence.
Dark Times.
posted by adamvasco at 4:30 PM on July 11, 2017 [17 favorites]


How's the saying go? The first generation makes the wealth, the second generation spends it, and the third generation gets the whole family convicted of treason, right?
posted by entropicamericana at 4:30 PM on July 11, 2017 [25 favorites]


The Obama-era rule would have granted immigration “parole” for those with $250,000 in capital, but now it's "on hold" until March 2018

Wait, what? We're now opposed to wealthy foreigners coming to the US and spending their filthy lucre building businesses here? That seems to be pretty much the most desirable form of immigration I can imagine.
posted by jackbishop at 4:41 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


Interesting how the New York Time's main page notes that the story regarding Donnie Jr is "Developing". There's more coming. Instead of relieving the pressure, each story seems to increase it by that much more.

While we wait on the next explosion, the NYT Editorial Board has written about Donald Trump Jr. and the Culture of Dishonesty:
If a culture of dishonesty takes root in an administration, how can Americans believe anything its officials say? Take, for instance, the matter of whether President Vladimir Putin of Russia personally directed Moscow’s hacking of the 2016 presidential election. In statements dating from his first days in office until the eve of his meeting with Mr. Putin in Germany last week, when he said “nobody really knows,” Mr. Trump has deflected and sought to discredit his own intelligence agencies’ finding that Moscow, at Mr. Putin’s direction, tried to disrupt the election to help him win. Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, said after the American and Russian presidents met in Hamburg that they “had a very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject” and that Mr. Trump had “pressed” Mr. Putin on the issue. Later, Mr. Trump made much the same claim on Twitter. The Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, had quite a different version of the facts, suggesting that Mr. Trump had characterized the hacking controversy as a “campaign” against Russia in which “not a single fact has been produced.” So whom should Americans believe? In a more credible administration, who would ever ask?
Another interesting piece that relates to this topic has come from The Weekly Standard's Editorial Board The Trump Administration Has Forfeited the Right to be Trusted on Russia:
The bill [codifying sanctions on Russia into law], now before the House, would force the president to seek congressional approval before easing the sanctions. The administration has been lobbying lawmakers to remove this provision. That’s understandable, inasmuch as the president’s power unilaterally to ease or lift sanctions can be a useful tool by which to encourage favorable conduct from a global miscreant. In more ordinary circumstances, the administration’s objection would have some merit.

But these are not more ordinary circumstances. These are circumstances in which the president has no capacity to set policy toward Russia. Whether the media has unfairly targeted the president and his advisers over their dealings with Russian officials is now beside the point. By a series of unforced errors—omissions of financial dealings with Russian companies, unaccountably faulty memories on meetings with Kremlin-connected operatives—the Trump team has lost all credibility on the question of Russia. Second-guessing by the media and politicians of both parties will be the inevitable accompaniment to every White House announcement about Vladimir Putin or Russia.
Although the Standard's editorial is not as hard-hitting as the NYT's, it's still astounding to see agreement between such different publications regarding the credibility of a Republican administration.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 4:44 PM on July 11, 2017 [25 favorites]


I wonder how Mueller's team is organizing their whiteboards.

Oh my lord. Last night, before the Don Jr. email tweetbomb, I stumbled onto this handy timeline of Russian contacts available in both graphic form and text form, chock full of quotes and citations, by attorney and podcaster Susan Simpson on her blog--but I refrained from posting it here as it was released on June 19 (three weeks ago in calendar time, eons in shitstormwatch time).

Now, in post-Don-Jr.-tweet light, the timeline has a nice nostalgic feel. We can hang it up in the Stupid Watergate museum, kind of like those old maps by medieval cartographers that are missing continents that remind us of "what we knew then" and "oh if only we'd known how much more was to come"...
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 4:46 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


Axios: "If the New York Times knows all this, imagine what Bob Mueller knows."
posted by Chrysostom at 4:50 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


Wait, what? We're now opposed to wealthy foreigners coming to the US and spending their filthy lucre building businesses here?

BODI - Because Obama Did It.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 4:52 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


Axios: "If the New York Times knows all this, imagine what Bob Mueller knows."

As others pointed out last time someone posted that, the FBI was unaware of this meeting until media reports. It's reasonable to believe there are things that the FBI knows that we don't know but investigative journalists may well know things the FBI doesn't know.
posted by Justinian at 4:54 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


Joe's had quite enough. Too bad the stink will still stick to him.

Joe Scarborough announces he is leaving Republican Party
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:54 PM on July 11, 2017 [19 favorites]


I totally agree. I want the constitution changed over it (hahahah), even. Do not run for president with literally no political experience!

Yet another reason to favor a parliament, if you needed one
posted by Automocar at 4:57 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


"If the New York Times knows all this, imagine what Bob Mueller knows."

This quote bothers me because it deprecates the role of good investigative journalism. After all, it was the press—not the FBI—that broke Watergate.
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:58 PM on July 11, 2017 [20 favorites]


Seriously you guys the structure of the federal government absolutely stinks and I am sick of it
posted by Automocar at 4:58 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Joe Scarborough announces he is leaving Republican Party
Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, will say on Tuesday's episode of Stephen Colbert's "Late Show" that he is leaving the GOP to become an independent, the executive producer of the show tweeted.
"independent" is the word that Republican voters use to describe themselves when they want to make you think they're considering alternatives before they go into the booth and vote straight party line R.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 4:59 PM on July 11, 2017 [82 favorites]


Hey, anyone leaving the GOP gets some bonus points these days.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:59 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


Yet another reason to favor a parliament, if you needed one

I always find it quite amazing that there's no shadow executive in the United States. Congressional parties and the executive operate only in loose association and can be adversaries at times.
posted by Talez at 5:02 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]



Oh, Eric. "This is the EXACT reason they viciously attack our family! They can't stand that we are extremely close and will ALWAYS support each other."

He may not be the dumbest Trumpkid, but I do think he's the most naive.


Most willing to throw away his mother as not counting as part of his family, more like. though I think all the rest of them are good at that too, as you would have to be to stay in favor with dadgod.
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:03 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Trump administration isn’t a farce. It’s a tragedy. Like Watergate, this is an era of low comedy and high fear. (Ezra Klein / Vox)

"This must be what it was like to live through Watergate. The disorientation, the confusion, the half-truth, the shock, the dark humor. I think of something Elizabeth Drew, the author of one of my favorite books on the era, wrote — “Watergate was a time of low comedy and high fear.” The farce of the story distracts from its horror, and so we take refuge. Twitter is never funnier than when a new Trump-Russia story breaks."

"And yet. This isn’t a scandal as we are used to thinking about it. This isn’t an embarrassment, or a gaffe. This is a security breach. It calls into question whether America’s foreign policy is being driven by the favors President Donald Trump owes Vladimir Putin for his political help or, perhaps worse, whether it’s being driven by the fear that Putin will release far more damning material if Trump crosses him."
posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:04 PM on July 11, 2017 [30 favorites]


Hey, anyone leaving the GOP gets some bonus points these days.

It's time for some game theory!
posted by Flashman at 5:04 PM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


Zachlipton: WaPo: Hackers have been stealing credit card numbers from Trump’s hotels for months

Not just names, CC numbers, expiration dates, and security codes.

Here is the news story from the Hill Hackers stole credit card info from Trump hotel guests for months
In some cases, hackers also gained access to guest names, email, phone numbers, addresses, and other information, although the company reported that Social Security numbers and passports were not accessed.
Other information? Like they were at the hotel with someone other than their wife? Or?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:05 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


Sorry to be late to the party. Catching up from last night was a 3-hour process.

Anyway, just here to say thanks for the new post, Ex. (Can I call you Ex? Feels like I know you so well at this point.)

And thanks to everyone here. You're the best community I could imagine to keep me company as the world devolves into madness, seemingly by leaps and bounds by the minute.
posted by greermahoney at 5:05 PM on July 11, 2017 [24 favorites]



In March 2017, Greenwald announced plans to build a shelter for stray pets in Brazil that would be staffed by homeless people.

Well, at least we know where he stands.

Not a fan of Greenwald, but is that supposed to be damning in some way?


wrong way around. a REAL humanitarian would build a homeless shelter for humans and staff it with kitty cats. get your priorities together, glenn

(no but I hate him too, seriously)
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:06 PM on July 11, 2017 [15 favorites]




After all, it was the press—not the FBI—that broke Watergate.

Deep Throat was the Associate Director of the FBI.
posted by Etrigan at 5:08 PM on July 11, 2017 [81 favorites]


Joe's had quite enough. Too bad the stink will still stick to him.

Ariana Huffington used to be a conservative talking head until the Bush II Administration broke her of the habit. To the point where Huffpo is the closest thing to Faux News the left has, only even they have some shreds of self awareness and respect.

Once they break free of the Brain Eater, there is potential for them.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:09 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


It's time for some game theory!
posted by Flashman


Eponywhatnow? Nice.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:10 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


After all, it was the press—not the FBI—that broke Watergate.

It was sorta both.
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:11 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


As others pointed out last time someone posted that, the FBI was unaware of this meeting until media reports.
So says CNN. And only CNN, right?
posted by rc3spencer at 5:14 PM on July 11, 2017


I know we're all distracted by today's treason bombshell, but meanwhile the Republican's "deconstruction of the administrative state" to consolidate all federal power under a shadow apparatus in Bannon's office is starting to have real consequences:

Energy CEOs say the lack of a quorum at FERC means the industry is slowing down and putting an unnecessary drag on the economy. "This is sidelining billions of dollars in private capital otherwise poised to put thousands of Americans to work expanding and improving our nation's energy delivery system." Said Bill Yardley, President, Gas Transmission and Midstream, Enbridge.

posted by T.D. Strange at 5:15 PM on July 11, 2017 [15 favorites]


From Facebook: "The 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism has been awarded to Donald Trump Jr., for his diligent, persistent, and successful efforts to uncover the Trump Campaign's collusion with Russia. Congratulations!"
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:16 PM on July 11, 2017 [42 favorites]


soren_lorenson for most welcome derail of the month. Christ, I'm trying to eat a Rueben and drink my beer in the neighborhood bar, fighting off tears of gladness at people being brave and good.
posted by Caxton1476 at 5:19 PM on July 11, 2017 [12 favorites]


The suspiciously long silence on Junior is broken.

@realDonaldTrump
My son, Donald, will be interviewed by @seanhannity tonight at 10:00 P.M. He is a great person who loves our country!

posted by Rust Moranis at 5:25 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


It would help if he specified the country.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:28 PM on July 11, 2017 [108 favorites]


Wow, Sean Hannity has gotta love a tease-in from the prez! Nothing like a little marketing collusion to get the ball rolling.
posted by valkane at 5:31 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Florida. News from Florida. News from Florida that makes me cry in a good way. I guess I've seen it all now I die relaxi.
posted by vrakatar at 5:32 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


@AP
BREAKING: Donald Trump Jr. tells Fox News that he did not tell his father about meeting with Russian lawyer.
If someone told you that the Russian government was trying to elect your dad and has dirt on his opponent available, you would obviously never mention it, up to and including the point where your now-President father is firing the FBI director because of an investigation of the non-existent connection between the campaign and Russia.

It would just never come up. Why would you even mention it?
posted by 0xFCAF at 5:32 PM on July 11, 2017 [78 favorites]


Synergy!
posted by valkane at 5:32 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Corey Robin:
My fully serious, non-ironic, non-tongue-in-check take on the Russia investigation: The investigation—really investigations, in the FBI, Congress, the media, elsewhere—should go on. For two reasons. First, we don't know the whole story, and we should. I certainly would like to get to the bottom of it. Second, it does tend to keep Trump on the ropes. I'm not at all convinced he'd be able to focus on anything if he didn't have to deal with this scandal—focus does not seem to be his strong suit (in The Art of the Deal he brags about his lack of focus)—but it does keep him obsessed with this story, which means he can't do much of anything else. And that's good.

The downside is that the same applies to liberals, particularly in the media: for all the talk of being able to walk and chew gum at the same time, they sometimes seem incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. (See that Vox piece I posted a few weeks back which showed in detail how the Russia story allowed the Republicans to move forward with Trumpcare.)

So here's my bottom line: let the investigations continue, let reporters keep covering it, but keep it in perspective; don't let it obscure everything else that is going on; and for God's sake, please don't respond to each and every blip of the news cycle with some overwrought article or tweet about how Our Democracy has never endured such terrible misfortunes as these.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 5:32 PM on July 11, 2017 [15 favorites]


I know nothing about anything has made sense for what seems like years now, but for god's sake why would he think it's a good idea to go on live TV tonight? Even a friendly network? Just shut the fuck up for a little while. Imagine being this family's lawyers.
posted by something something at 5:34 PM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


BREAKING: Donald Trump Jr. tells Fox News that he did not tell his father about meeting with Russian lawyer.

If past performance on his assurances is any guide, we'll start off tomorrow with Don Jr. tweeting out the contents of an email where he's informing his father of every detail.
posted by zachlipton at 5:35 PM on July 11, 2017 [24 favorites]




TD Strange: page not found, here is the link to that story:

Energy CEOs say investor money and jobs at risk because FERC isn't functional

If someone told you that the Russian government was trying to elect your dad and has dirt on his opponent available, you would obviously never mention it, up to and including the point where your now-President father is firing the FBI director because of an investigation of the non-existent connection between the campaign and Russia.


Yeah. There is already some pretty good evidence his dad knew.

@Yasher Ali
June 7 - 5:16 PM - Don Jr. confirms meeting w/ Russian lawyer
June 7 - 9:13 PM Trump promises press conf the next week with Clinton dirt.
(twitter link has video of DJT making this promise)
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:38 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


It would just never come up. Why would you even mention it?

I liked how Ana Navarro put it:
"Don't know about u'all, but I don't buy Trump didn't know re Jared & Jr's mtng w/Russian. He carries those kids in his pouch, kangaroo-style"
posted by Flashman at 5:41 PM on July 11, 2017 [20 favorites]


I know nothing about anything has made sense for what seems like years now, but for god's sake why would he think it's a good idea to go on live TV tonight? Even a friendly network? Just shut the fuck up for a little while. Imagine being this family's lawyers.

Yeah, with the All-Star game on Fox tonight and all.
posted by Melismata at 5:42 PM on July 11, 2017


apropos. we're doing our best to form a human chain to save America.
posted by Emily's Fist at 5:43 PM on July 11, 2017 [40 favorites]


it's shit like this that makes it so hard for the trumps to hire competent legal representation
posted by murphy slaw at 5:44 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


> If it, by some chance, features those prostitutes pissing ON HIM?

trumptwitterarchive.com has real time search of all of 45's tweets & he said this when Buzzfeed reported on the dossier
Russia just said the unverified report paid for by political opponents is "A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FABRICATION, UTTER NONSENSE."
I don't think Trump is smart enough to play two dimensional chess, but some of the statements around this issue sound like Bill Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." Remember, Bill didn't, according to the definition of sexual relations he was using from the Paula Jones case.

Trump didn't say the report was a fabrication. He says Russia says it is. He's also made statements that leads me to believe that if there was a micturition scene, he thinks any video was from an angle where he isn't visible. He didn't realize there was another camera in the room. He's also made statements that wouldn't be false if the scene happened, he watched but didn't "participate." This is all a distraction from real problems like savaging health care, but it's all I can cope with right now. Kinkshaming family-and-America-above-all hypocrites is OK by me.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 5:44 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]




Schwarzenegger's run also didn't happen in a vacuum, it was a very particular recall election.

It was a fucking stupid recall election. The recall "was a seven-month reality show starring a cast of 135 candidates that included a porn actress, performance artists, a ferret enthusiast and onetime 'Diff'rent Strokes' child star Gary Coleman, each basking in Andy Warhol's proverbial 15 minutes of fame."

Gray Davis, the governor, was reelected in November 2002 by a five-percent margin and was recalled in October 2003, without any major scandals during his second term.

The big issue was that Davis "tripled" the car tax from 0.65% to 2% of the car's value. The tax had been reduced from 2% to 0.65% in 1998 when California's economy was flush, with a provision to restore the fee in case the economy got worse.

Voters were pissed at Davis, elected Schwarzenegger, and Schwarzenegger cut the tax.

Turns out the car tax was distributed to local governments to use as they saw fit, and local governments used the money for stuff like ambulances and police. Pretty soon there were sob stories about small towns (most of which voted for the recall) not having emergency services.

The kicker is that drivers ended up spending more per year.
So, OK, you're not paying the $160 a year or so in the car tax. But your gasoline costs have soared, and the taxes you pay on that gas, which is supposed to go only to improve your roads and build rail to get those other guys out of your way and onto commuter trains -- that's going to balance the budget. And while excise taxes on gasoline stay steady at about 18 cents a gallon, most drivers (because of the increase in gasoline prices) are paying more than $160 a year more in gasoline sales taxes this year [2007] than they did in 2003, when the restoration of the car tax was blocked.
Schwarzenegger did have an awesome quote, though:
This is really embarrassing. I just forgot the name of our state governor's name. But I know that you will help me recall him.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:49 PM on July 11, 2017 [28 favorites]




Tucker Carlson. He can't backpeddle fast enough from the grave he has dug for himself.
posted by valkane at 5:54 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


You can see it in his face.
posted by valkane at 5:55 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


"You forgot the next part, in which Chief Justice Roberts swears in Paul "the granny-starver" Ryan as the 46th President of the United States."

So there's an interesting -- and until now almost entirely theoretical -- Constitutional law question about this.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 says (bold mine throughout):
In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 provides the current list of successors that goes VEEP, Speaker of the House, etc. HOWEVER, the Appointments Clause of the Constitution (II.2.2) says,
He [the President] ... shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
And the Incompatibility Clause (I.6.3) specifies that:
No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office
So arguably -- and it has been so argued from James Madison up to the present (here's some post-9/11 testimony to Congress on the problems with the current statute) -- members of Congress cannot succeed to the presidency because they are not and Constitutionally cannot be Officers of the United States, which is a legal term of art that refers to members of the executive branch appointed by the president (etc etc).

I'm not a Constitutional scholar, but this is the sort of bar-exam question that pops up in law school, and I'm absolutely certain that -- given the 228-year pedigree of the opposition and the fact that the statutes governing succession have been back and forth between the two positions based on exactly this dispute -- that any attempt to put Paul Ryan in the presidency would be an absolute catastrophe of litigation and legitimacy.

(I mean, it would be so bad that even though I would not pee on Mike Pence if he were on fire because I hate him so much, I can completely see why many members of Congress, including Democrats, would be highly incentivized to find a way to declare Pence free of the Trump/Russian taint, especially if he guaranteed he wouldn't run in 2020, because I can't see a way to resolve the Constitutional question that isn't a catastrophe for the legitimacy of the presidency and the Supreme Court, and Congress has no legitimacy now, so ...)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:56 PM on July 11, 2017 [33 favorites]


In the article, Navarro is shown tweeting that Donald Jr.'s thin skin is "a hereditary condition." Isn't it obvious that so was being dropped on his head as a child?
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:56 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


A lot to unpack in tonight's Rucker/Parker White House gossip session: ‘Category 5 hurricane’: White House under siege by Trump Jr.’s Russia revelations. Some samples:
The makeup of Trump’s inner circle is the subject of internal debate, as ever. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser; Jared Kushner, her husband and another senior adviser; and first lady Melania Trump have been privately pressing the president to shake up his team — most specifically by replacing Reince Priebus as the White House chief of staff, according to two senior White House officials and one ally close to the White House.
...
Trump continues to view the Russia controversy as an excuse used by Democrats for losing an election they thought they would win — and an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of his victory, aides said. They said that the president’s frustration is based on the media coverage of his son’s actions, as opposed to the actions themselves.
...
A handful of Republican operatives close to the White House are scrambling to Trump Jr.’s defense and have begun what could be an extensive campaign to try to discredit some of the journalists who have been reporting on the matter.

Their plan, as one member of the team described it, is to research the reporters’ previous work, in some cases going back years, and to exploit any mistakes or perceived biases. They intend to demand corrections, trumpet errors on social media and feed them to conservative outlets, such as Fox News.

But one outside adviser said a campaign against the press when it comes to Trump Jr.’s meeting could be futile: “The meeting happened. It’s tough to go to war with the facts.”
...
Other senior White House officials were hesitant to talk about Trump Jr. — even on the condition of anonymity — for fear of exposing themselves legally.
One important detail in there: "Pence found out about Trump Jr.’s meeting with the Russian attorney Friday evening in advance of the first Times story, said one person familiar with the discussions."

That implies Pence knew Don Jr. was lying all weekend as he spun story after story about the meeting.
posted by zachlipton at 5:58 PM on July 11, 2017 [40 favorites]


Imagine being this family's lawyers.

When you're known for stiffing people, I bet the good lawyers take a pass on you.
posted by emjaybee at 5:58 PM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


"It’s tough to go to war with the facts.”
I mean, have you seen the past 20-odd years of Republican strategy?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:01 PM on July 11, 2017 [36 favorites]


I'm so sorry to do this, but I dropped the best quote:
One friend of Trump Jr.’s said the presidential son saw the Hannity appearance as an opportunity to give his version of Richard Nixon’s “Checkers” speech, a 1952 address in which the then-vice presidential candidate defended himself against accusations of financial improprieties
Please tell me this is someone's idea of a sick "what's the worst thing I can say about Don Jr. that he's too stupid to realize isn't a compliment?" joke.
posted by zachlipton at 6:02 PM on July 11, 2017 [24 favorites]


Won't pay, won't listen.

It's kind of a lethal killer of lawyer boners.
posted by joyceanmachine at 6:03 PM on July 11, 2017 [14 favorites]


The recent scandal where the Trump administration tried blackmailing Scarborough into better coverage has left me with the impression that Carlson and Greenwald have been reporting in a way that would keep their scandals out of the National Enquirer.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:04 PM on July 11, 2017 [16 favorites]


It’s tough to go to war with the facts.”

perhaps not, else the shitfucker would have lost and we would not be having this thread. Or this year. the hyper-reality/kayfabe angle of all this suggests that facts are now replaceable by alt-facts. I'm worried about objective reality and the country.
posted by vrakatar at 6:05 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


micturition

Whelp, now I know what that is.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 6:06 PM on July 11, 2017


Yashar Ali:
"June 7 - 5:16 PM - Don Jr. confirms meeting w/ Russian lawyer
June 7 - 9:13 PM Trump promises press conf the next week with Clinton dirt."

John Aravosis:
"And then, Don Jr's meeting is a bust, the Russians give him nothing, and Trump delays his press conference."


Or rather, the Pulse nightclub shooting on the 12th pre-empts Trump's planned speech for the 13th, and he talks about terrorism and national security instead.

Also on the 12th, Julian Assange gives an interview with ITV in which he promised Wikileaks would publish "upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton". A week later, Wikileaks tweets an "insurance" torrent of hacked DNCfiles.

Then on June 15th, “Guccifer 2.0″ releases a DNC opposition file on Trump, stolen from the Democratic Party’s network.

From the Donald Junior timeline, one can see the Trump Tower and the Kremlin working out the kinks in coordinating their collusion. There's going to be a lot more revelations to come...
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:09 PM on July 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


And on Aug. 19th, Manafort resigns from the campaign. Probably because of what he knows and can be charged with.
posted by vrakatar at 6:17 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


To me, this makes obstruction of justice charges against Trump much more realistic. It's true, as I've said before, that there need be no underlying crime for obstruction to occur. But the defense being raised was that Trump didn't know what he was doing and that's just the way Trump talks and he had no reason to actually want to obstruct justice. This torpedos that defense; Trump knew that the Russia investigation would likely uncover all kinds of dirt like this. So he fired Comey.
posted by Justinian at 6:22 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


If the "good press" had been seriously following what was happening to the Trump campaign in the summer of '16, we'd have all known all this stuff well before the election. We should never have to deal with "well, it's obvious in retrospect", but we always do. Of course, it should also be obvious that a big reason Trump has such a hate-on for CNN (and the NYT and WaPo) is because they were good to him in the not-too-distant past.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:23 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


My Trumpxiety is at 11. I barely slept Sunday night, and had serious trouble driving to and from work on Monday. Then I got home and slept for about 14 hours straight. I'm not getting anything done and feel awful all the time. This totally sucks and I'm thinking about just blocking all the news sites on every device I have so I don't have to think about it.
posted by miyabo at 6:26 PM on July 11, 2017 [15 favorites]


National Treasure Alexandra Petri, WaPo: How Never To Do Anything Wrong OR The Trump Administration Did Not Chop Down The Cherry Tree
“Don, did you chop down the cherry tree?”
Never.
Definitely not.
This insinuation is the work of the mainstream media and it just shows you how low they will go, and I for one am SHOCKED, SHOCKED and appalled — but not at all surprised.

Just for the record if any cherry trees are found to have been chopped down, I did not then light a bonfire with the twigs and throw a small child onto the flames and shout “MAY THE LORD OF DARKNESS WELCOME THIS SACRIFICE,” and certainly no blood was drunk by any person you would find interesting. That specific sequence of things did not happen, and H. R. McMaster can vouch for it.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:26 PM on July 11, 2017 [30 favorites]


The alt-right response, judging from the comments on this Megan McCardle/Bloomberg column that I found when morbid curiosity drew me to visit Drudge, seems to be that well, 'we didn't want a normal play-by-the-rules president anyway, we wanted somebody who would get dirty, who'd do whatever it takes to win, for 'Murca'.
And the white nationalists who've anointed Putin their Haile Selassie probably aren't going to care either.
posted by Flashman at 6:27 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


> Corey Robin: [...] The downside is that the same applies to liberals, particularly in the media: for all the talk of being able to walk and chew gum at the same time, they sometimes seem incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. (See that Vox piece I posted a few weeks back which showed in detail how the Russia story allowed the Republicans to move forward with Trumpcare.

I'm not quite certain what Vox piece Robin's talking about here, and I don't have Facebook to be able to scroll back in his timeline to see his previous posts, but if it's this one, I have to say that I'm not impressed by the analysis he's linking to or his summary of its conclusions. If you click through to their source data and plot the percent of tweets that were about the AHCA vs. Russia, you get something like this. And if you average the percentages, you get an average of 26.4% of tweets about the AHCA, and only 10.6% about Russia. Neither of these shows Democrats failing to walk and chew gum at the same time. Unless he's talking about some other Vox piece, this looks like a case where Robin just dug himself in such a hole on the Trump-Russia story that he's willing to latch on to shoddy analysis for which the data doesn't even support its premise.
posted by tonycpsu at 6:28 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


I wish I could remember the comedian who was saying that there's no way we can get through the next four years without seeing Trump's dick. Either there's a sex tape or his pants split or he just whips it out at the podium, but there is no way we're gonna be spared that sight.

We'd be better off with President Camacho.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:29 PM on July 11, 2017 [19 favorites]


members of Congress cannot succeed to the presidency because they are not and Constitutionally cannot be Officers of the United States, which is a legal term of art that refers to members of the executive branch appointed by the president (etc etc).

I don't really understand this. From Wikipedia:

The Presidential Succession Act of 1792 was the first succession law passed by Congress. The act was contentious because the Federalists did not want the then Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, who had become the leader of the Democratic-Republicans, to follow the Vice President in the succession. There were also separation of powers concerns over including the Chief Justice of the United States in the line. The compromise they worked out established the President pro tempore of the Senate as next in line after the Vice President, followed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

While the Speaker of the House is not necessarily an elected Representative, the Senate President pro tempore is always a Senator. The constitution went into effect in 1789, and the Presidential Succession Act of 1792 was signed by George Washington. Should we not err on the side of trusting George Washington to interpret a minor technical point of the original constitution?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 6:29 PM on July 11, 2017


If you're wondering why all those lawyers would have turned down Trump (besides the part where he doesn't pay his bills or follow advice), just ask the Times:
Advisers said the president was frustrated not so much by his son as by the headlines. But three people close to the legal team said he had also trained his ire on Marc E. Kasowitz, his longtime lawyer, who is leading the team of private lawyers representing him. Mr. Trump, who often vents about advisers in times of trouble, has grown disillusioned by Mr. Kasowitz’s strategy, the people said.

The strain, though, exists on both sides. Mr. Kasowitz and his colleagues have complained that Mr. Kushner has been whispering in the president’s ear about the Russia investigations and stories while keeping the lawyers out of the loop, according to another person familiar with the legal team. The president’s lawyers view Mr. Kushner as an obstacle and freelancer more concerned about protecting himself than his father-in-law, the person said. While no ultimatum has been delivered, the lawyers have told colleagues that they cannot keep operating that way, raising the prospect that Mr. Kasowitz may resign.
And:
Elsewhere, Mr. Kasowitz was working separately to inform an article being prepared by Circa, a news outlet the White House considers favorable, instead of The Times. According to the person close to the legal team, Mr. Kasowitz was kept out of the discussion about Donald Trump Jr.’s initial statement and saw it only after it had been published online in the first Times article.
Kasowitz may be the only person involved in this who is stupider than Don Jr.
posted by zachlipton at 6:30 PM on July 11, 2017 [13 favorites]


Some good news from flippable

Double flip. Two Oklahoma State legislative seats flipped red to blue tonight. State senate district 44 and House 75. Congrats @OkDemocrats!

These two districts went Republican by 10 and 19 points last time they were contested. These are big pick-ups.

posted by emjaybee at 6:33 PM on July 11, 2017 [109 favorites]


Oh, Eric. "This is the EXACT reason they viciously attack our family! They can't stand that we are extremely close and will ALWAYS support each other."

OH NO ERIC I'M ROOTING FOR YOU TO SUPPORT EACH OTHER ALL THE WAY TO PRISON!
posted by TwoStride at 6:34 PM on July 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


We'd be better off with President Camacho.

I mean, I would take Terry Crews over literally anyone currently in the line of succession for the presidency.
posted by nonasuch at 6:36 PM on July 11, 2017 [26 favorites]


Whelp, now I know what [micturition] is.

You should've learned it from The Big Lebowski like 99.999% of people who know what it means did.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:38 PM on July 11, 2017 [15 favorites]


Some good news from flippable

YOU ARE STEALING MY THUNDER, EMJAYBEE

Kidding, thanks for the early update!
posted by Chrysostom at 6:38 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


You should've learned it from The Big Lebowski like 99.999% of people who know what it means did.

That Obama mattress really tied the hotel room together, Dude.
posted by Freon at 6:44 PM on July 11, 2017 [15 favorites]


You should've learned it from The Big Lebowski yt like 99.999% of people who know what it means did.

I didn't watch The Big Lebowski; I'm bereft of a lot of common knowledge. I'd work on it but I'm busy refreshing the thread. I have an ice cube strapped to my thumb to ease the pain of my constant spacebar/down motion. That detail is probably the last bit of cultural knowledge I'll ever receive before my hands fuse to the keyboard.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 6:44 PM on July 11, 2017 [16 favorites]


Daily Beast (Lachlan Markay): Donald Trump Jr.’s Russian Connection Has Ties to Former Kremlin Spies
The Russian lawyer who peddled dirt on Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump Jr. has ties to former Russian military and intelligence officials, a key congressional committee will hear in testimony next week.

William Browder, an American financier who has investigated Russian corruption for more than a decade, will brief the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing next week on the lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya’s ties to the Russian government—including to former top members of the GRU and the FSB, two of the Kremlin’s main intelligence agencies. Those ties were spelled out in documents that Browder shared with the committee and provided to The Daily Beast this week.

“Veselnitskaya may have had her own agenda in requesting a meeting with Trump,” according Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer who led the agency’s European directorate of operations. “But Russian intelligence practice is to co-opt such a person by arming them with secret intelligence information and tasking them to pass it to Trump’s people and get their reaction.”
The hilarious part is that it sounds like Sen. Grassley planned this hearing months ago so he could beat up on Fusion GPS over the Steele dossier and cast doubt on allegations of collusion, and it blew up in his face in catastrophic fashion. So that's fun.
posted by zachlipton at 6:47 PM on July 11, 2017 [40 favorites]


members of Congress cannot succeed to the presidency because they are not and Constitutionally cannot be Officers of the United States, which is a legal term of art that refers to members of the executive branch appointed by the president (etc etc).

Not a legal scholar, don't know but...

This is definitely the timeline where the US ends up without a President because of some stupid legal technicality, which the Supreme Court refuses to fix because of originalist jurisprudence, and Congress won't solve because Democrats and Republicans refuse to allow each other a momentary victory.
posted by Glibpaxman at 6:50 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


You should've learned it from The Big Lebowski ...

Not to derail much further, but I learned it from Douglas Adams and his Vogon Poetry.
Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me,
As plurdled gabbleblotchits,
On a lurgid bee [...]
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 6:52 PM on July 11, 2017 [49 favorites]


I am legit excited about those OK special election wins! Those were not expected to flip.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:56 PM on July 11, 2017 [20 favorites]


Anywhere to watch the Hannity interview online? Asking for a friend.
posted by dhens at 6:57 PM on July 11, 2017


"Should we not err on the side of trusting George Washington to interpret a minor technical point of the original constitution?"

If that were so, we wouldn't have been debating it for 228 years. And Madison was one of the authors of the Federalist Papers so his interpretation is probably more persuasive -- and certainly more legally-cited -- than whatever Washington thought. Washington, while a great man and a clear Cincinnatus, was not a scholar and did not contribute a whole lot to the jurisprudence around the Constitution. Typically if we have Constitutional questions that the Framers had thoughts on, we turn to Madison, Hamilton, Jay, Jefferson, Adams, and to far lesser degree Franklin (brilliant but dead a year into the Republic) and Washington, who was an indispensible man and a moral pillar, but not terribly well-educated and not as smart as the other Founders -- and he knew it. (And it's truly not a criticism -- he knew his limitations and he turned to brilliant men to staff his army and cabinet, and he had a genius for corralling those towering intellects, it is a very special and unique skill.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:57 PM on July 11, 2017 [29 favorites]


"44 years a Republican, 1 year an Independent, today I'm joining the Democratic Party"

I sent him a note, Illinoisian to Illinoisian, and got a very cordial response back. Seems like a hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:00 PM on July 11, 2017 [55 favorites]


OMG, he looks so fucking smug!!

is it just me, or do junior and pharmabro martin shkreli look like they were hewn from the same chunk of smugwood
posted by murphy slaw at 7:01 PM on July 11, 2017 [84 favorites]


The Christopher Wray hearing tomorrow should be a fucking riot.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:01 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Democrats and Republicans refuse to allow each other a momentary victory.

So you're anticipating some major shift in Democratic Party modus operandi?
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:14 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


NYT: Rancor at White House as Russia Story Refuses to Let the Page Turn
Ultimately, the people said, the president signed off on a statement from Donald Trump Jr. for The Times that was so incomplete that it required day after day of follow-up statements, each more revealing than the last.
Oh boy, more obstruction of justice.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:16 PM on July 11, 2017 [25 favorites]


Whoops, left out the lead-in:
As Air Force One jetted back from Europe on Saturday, a small cadre of Mr. Trump’s advisers huddled in a cabin helping to craft a statement for the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to give to The New York Times explaining why he met last summer with a lawyer connected to the Russian government. Participants on the plane and back in the United States debated about how transparent to be in the statement, according to people familiar with the discussions.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:18 PM on July 11, 2017 [23 favorites]


Whoah, wait, does this mean no stop in Britain?

Is this what will spare the queen the ordeal of a carriage ride with 45?
posted by ocschwar at 7:20 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Well I found the interview streaming and watched for about 2 minutes and it's such obvious fluffery that I can't handle it. I worry about the impact on those people who only consume FOX.
posted by dhens at 7:20 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


the NY Post piece ultimately pivots to how this is all just a big hysterical democratic overreaction to a nothingburger that is impeding Trump's agenda, but not until after thoroughly throwing junior under the bus and backing over him a few times.
posted by murphy slaw at 7:22 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


Yeah, the NY Post thing is all "it turned out to be a total wash [according to people who have NOTHING AT ALL TO HIDE NOPE NOTHING YOU READ IT HERE FIRST]".
posted by uosuaq at 7:26 PM on July 11, 2017


Seems like a hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is.

What language is this?! The aforementioned Illinoisian? Where it's good to be a hoopy frood?

I'm from Minnesota where we talk regular.
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:29 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Judging from Hannity it looks like they're going for "we just plan to get away with it" and it's probably going to work.

I look forward to wannabe right wing sycophant pundits tomorrow talking about how this is just how things are done in the business world and didn't we want government to be run like a business?
posted by Talez at 7:29 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


Wow, all of a sudden I want donnie to TWEET LIKE CRAZY-ER-EST!!!!!
posted by vrakatar at 7:34 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm sorry that Trump's trip to NotSoGreat Britain has been postponed until sometime after the next season of Doctor Who, since the a photoshop master at b3ta.com has converted an iconic century-old travel poster for the island's worst-named beach town (Skegness? One letter away from Smegness) to one of the best depictions of The Donald I've seen yet.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:35 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


The Christopher Wray hearing tomorrow should be a fucking riot.

If John McCain was still alive this would be a perfect vote to express disapproval with the Traitorous Republican party.

But in this world I'd be utterly shocked if a single Republican voted against confirmation.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:36 PM on July 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


Oi, there's nowt wrong wi Skeggy.
posted by Flashman at 7:38 PM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


Article 1, end of Section 2:
The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers;and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
Section 3:
The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.
The incompatibility clause would require Ryan to resign his House seat upon succeeding to the Presidency, as Sessions did when he became AG,
and Gerald Ford did when he became VP.
Article 2 middle of section 1:
and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
This doesn't specify Officer of the United States, just "Officer". The interpretation from the Second Congress on has been that Congress can include their own officers.

At any rate, the only way to resolve it would be for the Secretary of State to sue the new President. The Supremes could decide it for real. They appear to have original jurisdiction on the case, so they could work quickly.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:42 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


Oh boy, more obstruction of justice.

Lying to the American people isn't obstruction of justice. Only lying to the Feds or under oath.
posted by Justinian at 7:48 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


let me take a peak inside /r/the_donald

mmhmm
yep
yeah


Okay, they're not concerned.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:06 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


"This doesn't specify Officer of the United States, just "Officer"."

You have indeed correctly identified the dispute that will lead to years of litigation and that has already led to 228 years of legal debates. Here's some Yalies, Northwestern weighs in in the Stanford Law Review, here is testimony to Congress from 2004. It's an absolutely live issue and a majority of Constitutional scholars -- currently, in the theoretical case -- come down on the side that Congressmen can't be in the line of succession (regardless of when they resign). There's debate right back to the Federalist Papers about whether "Officer" means "Officer of the United States" -- that is pretty much literally the entire dispute.

There are certainly arguments that the Speaker can and should be in the line of succession, not least that Congress has so legislated. That's why it will be an ugly and lengthy legal battle that will ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court in a hotly contentious partisan climate with a disputed Supreme Court seat. It's a nightmare.

Until now it's been almost entirely theoretical, with an uptick of debate after 9/11, when a "designated survivor" scenario became possible. It's an interesting theoretical debate. It's hideously ugly if it becomes a live issue.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:08 PM on July 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


What language is this?! The aforementioned Illinoisian? Where it's good to be a hoopy frood?

Don't panic, just read this
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:10 PM on July 11, 2017 [25 favorites]


Gray Davis, the governor, was reelected in November 2002 by a five-percent margin and was recalled in October 2003, without any major scandals during his second term.

The big issue was that Davis "tripled" the car tax from 0.65% to 2% of the car's value.


I'll admit I'm not the greatest follower of local politics, then or now. But it's pretty clear in my memory that the big issue was the energy crisis and the details that were emerging about Enron. There was the dot com crash and endless budget crises too. The overall picture was of large, unforgivable fiscal blundering and incompetence.

There was a lot of anger, but Davis did not seem clued into the public feelings at all and I don't really feel it's too ridiculous that he was recalled.
posted by fleacircus at 8:11 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


CAFE: Fox News spent a whole day claiming James Comey leaked secret info. It wasn’t true, so they issued a 5 second apology. (SpongeBob remix)
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:15 PM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


It's funny/terrifying to watch everyone argue legal niceties when we all know the rule of law is utterly meaningless. Paul Ryan could simply declare himself president and the only thing stopping him would be McConnell. Literally nothing else could stop him.

Laws. Ha! It's like nobody watched the last two years!

Laws are for losers, everyone knows that.
posted by aramaic at 8:17 PM on July 11, 2017 [14 favorites]


So, I started wondering about how we got here (lol) and rewinded back to Saturday's NYT article that basically kicked off this latest episode of the Trump Shitshow to try to figure out how/where they got this info to begin with. The source for the info regarding this meeting is cited as "according to confidential government records described to The New York Times" and "according to interviews and the documents, which were outlined by people familiar with them."

The Saturday NYT article references the fact that both Kushner and Manafort have recently revised their SF-86 forms to include additional meetings with foreign nationals and specifically calls out that this specific meeting was part of both of their revisions. In Kushner's case, the confirmation is part of a statement provided by his spokesperson Jamie Gorelick. In Manafort's case, his confirmation is only provided "according to people familiar with the events" while his actual spokesman "declined to comment."

In the Sunday follow-up article, they go a bit further in their sourcing and say that "Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in confidential government documents described to The New York Times." So, at this point, I'm thinking "obviously, these 'confidential government documents' have gotta be the revised SF-86s, right? " But, then further down in the article, there's this:
Mr. Manafort, the former campaign chairman, also recently disclosed the meeting, and Donald Trump Jr.’s role in organizing it, to congressional investigators who had questions about his foreign contacts, according to people familiar with the events. Neither Mr. Manafort nor Mr. Kushner was required to disclose the content of the meeting.
Now, I'm really confused. Neither the Mueller investigation nor any FBI investigation (SF-86 related or otherwise) would be described as "congressional" since they're both under the aegis of the DoJ. Poking around a bit more, I find that Manafort offered to testify to both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees back in March but I don't see anywhere that he actually did so. However, in late May, Manafort apparently did turn over a bunch of documents to the Senate Intel Committee, apparently in response to a letter asking for a listing of "any Russian official or business executive he met with between June 16, 2015 and Jan. 20, 2017. [...] And it seeks all his email or other communications during that period with Russians, or with the Trump campaign about Russia or Russians." So, a new possibility opens up: could the NYT have gotten the info via this document dump? In fact, could it be possible that they got the email chain itself from someone in or around the Senate Intel Committee rather than Kushner or Manafort (my first guesses)? Would the documents that Manafort provided count as "confidential government documents" now that the SSCI had them? On the other hand, if the NYT did get this information somehow via the SSCI, why would they draw attention to the fact that Manafort coughed up the docs? Maybe the NYT's documentary sources are both the revised SF-86s and the Manafort SSCI documents and their sourcing on this is covered from multiple angles.

No way to tell for sure what's happening here, of course. But, as much meat as there is on this story, I'm still pretty interested in how this particular sausage got made. Hopefully they'll have time to cover this bit in the inevitable HBO mini-series and/or prestige Oscar-bait movie about this dumb period.
posted by mhum at 8:17 PM on July 11, 2017 [11 favorites]


New York Post: "Don Jr. is why Nigerian e-mail scammers keep trying their luck.”

I can't breathe
posted by Tarumba at 8:20 PM on July 11, 2017 [77 favorites]


let me take a peak inside /r/the_donald

mmhmm
yep
yeah


Okay, they're not concerned.


It's important to keep in mind that /r/The_Donald is a *heavily* moderated North Korea like media environment where, in general, only positive things can be posted and commented. It's a pretty good barometer of the crest of the crazy, but not a good barometer of wave beneath the crest, which may or may not be freaking out.

Apparently their current idea is that the meeting with Veselnitskaya was, in fact, an evil setup by the wicked Democrats, who planned long in advance to entrap DJT with it? Or something. Sounds like sublimated freaking-out to me. Desperation.
posted by dis_integration at 8:26 PM on July 11, 2017 [30 favorites]


So, I think the only way anyone would ever have standing to challenge the succession order would be once Ryan or Hatch were sworn in. At that point, if we're lucky, the Supreme Court would have original jurisdiction:
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction.
(The next-in-line Cabinet member would be the "other public Minister", though the text seems to mostly want to be about ambassadors.) Somebody (Ryan, let's say) would have been sworn in immediately upon the office becoming vacant, so there wouldn't be time for an injunction, and the law as it exists is valid until it isn't.

I think I just figured out the next season of "Veep". Somebody goes from Speaker to President, then loses the Supreme Court case and has to go home.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 8:28 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Both Bill Kristol and Josh Marshall have tweeted within the past hour that the White House was involved in writing Donald Trump Jr's false response that was issued on Saturday. That response was also, says Kristol, seen by Trump. No confirmed sources to this, but if true suggests that the White House was actively involved in a cover-up of the truth. Color me shocked.
posted by vac2003 at 9:02 PM on July 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


> It's important to keep in mind that /r/The_Donald is a *heavily* moderated North Korea like media environment where, in general, only positive things can be posted and commented. It's a pretty good barometer of the crest of the crazy, but not a good barometer of wave beneath the crest, which may or may not be freaking out.

Also it's good to keep in mind that something like 90% of the participants there are bots. Reading it is useful to see what the party line is — what the bot owners are telling the devoted MAGAheads to think — but there's nothing like an organic community there.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:04 PM on July 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


ProPublica:
“The ongoing investigations into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia involve reams of classified material. Yet Marc Kasowitz, the New York lawyer whom President Donald Trump has hired to defend him in these inquiries, told ProPublica through a spokesman that he does not have a security clearance — the prerequisite for access to government secrets. Nor does he expect to seek one.”

“Several lawyers who have represented presidents and senior government officials said they could not imagine handling a case so suffused with sensitive material without a clearance.”

“One possible explanation for Kasowitz’s decision not to pursue a clearance: He might have trouble getting one.”
posted by Chrysostom at 9:06 PM on July 11, 2017 [38 favorites]


Gray Davis was fucked by circumstance and Enron. It didn't help he was kind of a wet noodle (character is destiny and his name is Gray, after all). The guy who funded the recall? Darrell Issa, who hoped to replace Davis himself, but was dissuaded by GOP funders and activists led by former LA mayor (and owner of the DTLA restaurant The Pantry) and Arnold supporter Richard Riordan. Riordan was to have been Davis's GOP opponent in the prior election, but Davis had pulled the "support the other party's goofball (Simon?) on the sly and face off against him in the general" strategy, and it worked. That recall was pretty much the last hurrah for California's moderate GOP.
posted by notyou at 9:13 PM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


But it's pretty clear in my memory that the big issue was the energy crisis and the details that were emerging about Enron. There was the dot com crash and endless budget crises too.

All those things happened before he was reelected.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:21 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Age of Detesting Trump, David Bromwich, London Review of Books:
Nothing now would better serve the maturity and the invigoration of the Democrats than to give up any hope of sound advice or renewal from Bill or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. They were pleasant to think about, but their politics have turned out wrong, and there’s nothing they can do for us now.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:25 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


Deep Throat was the Associate Director of the FBI.

It was once too absurd and surreal that a key figure in a national scandal was a porno term and title

But now we have Donald Trump
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:25 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


All those things happened before he was reelected

They were ongoing after, too. Davis would have lost to Riordan, but he was smart/lucky enough face Simon instead. Then the auto fees, then the recall circus. Cruz Bustamante!
posted by notyou at 9:37 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


I believe it was the rolling blackouts middle of unrelenting California summer heat (even though tying the to Governor Gray Davis personally is controversial) and the significantly raised car fees that personally affected most people in California that really caused Gray Davis' downfall. For the poor, any increase in fees hurts, but since it was a percentage of the car value, even if you're rich and gaudy enough to buy a $100,000 car, an extra 1.35% of the car's value is a noticeable amount of money.

Which is relevant to our current situation, because as objectionable as the Russian collusion scandal is, it's a bit abstract. So long as we have bread and circuses, it's hard to imagine real change.
posted by fragmede at 9:39 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]




The meeting between Junior/Manafort/Kushner and the Russian agent is now officially part of Mueller's investigation.

Didn't we just have a thing about how and when the Justice Department confirms investigations, or was that specific to the FBI?
posted by rhizome at 9:50 PM on July 11, 2017




filthy light thief: "Harrison: died of pneumonia in 1841.
Garfield: assassinated in 1881; the second of four Presidents to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln.
"

Garfield was a really interesting guy who supported civil rights for blacks and fought against corruption. He could have been a really good president, and his death was a tragedy.

I also know his great-granddaughter, if you'd like to discuss more about James A. Garfield sometime.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:56 PM on July 11, 2017 [31 favorites]


Garfield was a really interesting guy
...who ended up with a really boring comic strip named after him.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:01 PM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Didn't we just have a thing about how and when the Justice Department confirms investigations, or was that specific to the FBI?

Yep, I edited out the "officially" as it was from a CNN source, and not an official statement.
posted by darkstar at 10:03 PM on July 11, 2017


“Veselnitskaya may have had her own agenda in requesting a meeting with Trump,” according Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer who led the agency’s European directorate of operations. “But Russian intelligence practice is to co-opt such a person by arming them with secret intelligence information and tasking them to pass it to Trump’s people and get their reaction.”

From the Russian perspective the first step in any recruitment is just seeing if they'll show up. Doesn't matter what for, doesn't necessarily have to make sense even. If you show up you can be recruited. That comes from a former GRU Colonel of my acquaintance. True fact.
posted by scalefree at 10:03 PM on July 11, 2017 [71 favorites]


If you show up you can be recruited.

Indeed, the fact that you show up to such a meeting is, in itself, compromising, and a basis for kompromat, as we are seeing demonstrated so vividly now.
posted by darkstar at 10:06 PM on July 11, 2017 [41 favorites]


From the Russian perspective the first step in any recruitment is just seeing if they'll show up. Doesn't matter what for, doesn't necessarily have to make sense even. If you show up you can be recruited. That comes from a former GRU Colonel of my acquaintance. True fact.

Here's the fun part though. As noted by Kara Calavera, Goldstone's email says "this is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin." And this sounds like an obvious point, but it's really worth just saying it explicitly, that everything about that line implies that this support was an ongoing, known thing. There's no context, no introductory remarks. It's simply assumed that Don Jr. obviously knows what this is all about. You and I read it and say "hey, wait, what support?," but Don Jr. reads it and goes "that sounds nice, lemme grab the campaign's braintrust for a meeting."

This meeting might have been an attempt to see if they'd show up, but the email indicates that it was "part of" an ongoing effort everyone was already aware of. We don't know what those parts were yet, but the email implies this was more than first steps.
posted by zachlipton at 10:19 PM on July 11, 2017 [63 favorites]


We don't know what those parts were yet, but the email implies this was more than first steps.

This has to be why Don, Jr. is tripping over himself with the incriminating e-mails. Because there were other contacts that are worse.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:23 PM on July 11, 2017 [23 favorites]


> The Age of Detesting Trump, David Bromwich, London Review of Books:

From the piece:
President Trump, monster and scapegoat, is too rash in his overall demeanour, too uncalibrated in his words and gestures, too ill-adapted to the routines of politics to carry credit even when he is speaking common sense.
I almost stopped reading this piece right here, and probably should have. Scapegoat? Fuuuuuuck you, pal. Donald Trump is the President of the United States of America, from the Republican Party, with both houses of our bicameral legislature controlled by that same Republican Party. "The buck stops here" is a somewhat problematic axiom in a system with many veto points and the possibility of divided government, but it certainly applies here. All of the blame he has received is for actual misdeeds, unmet expectations, or at worst unrealistic expectations, in which case he'd have the company of 43 other Presidents (giving William Henry Harrison a pass for not even making it through his first 100 days.)

And what common sense has Trump spoken that we should be giving him credit for?
The Democrats tossed his idea that better relations with Russia ‘would not be a bad thing’ into the general stew of his repulsive ideas on taxes and immigration
That's not a low bar, it's a fucking nanotube lying at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Can I get credit for saying that it wouldn't be a bad thing if someone cured cancer? JFK didn't say "it wouldn't be a bad thing if we got to the Moon" -- he said we were going to the fucking Moon. Trump couldn't even come out and say honestly that he affirmatively wanted better relations with this hostile foreign power, because it was plain for anyone (except David Bromwich, apparently) to see that "better" meant "better for Donald Trump", which really meant "better for Vladimir Putin" because Trump is a shitty negotiator, not "better" in the sense of being better for advancing American interests.

For some reason, I kept reading:
They may pin their hopes on the intelligence community and eventually the lawyers, but what will maintain the balance of the state in the meantime? The answer that seems agreed on by moderates of both parties is: the generals.
There's much more to this paragraph, but nothing actually backing up the idea that "moderates of both parties" are putting any faith in Gen. Mattis or any other general. No direct quotes, just "Americans say..." and "he is said to have been a responsible commander." Like, sure, I've read some comments to the effect of Mattis being the sharpest knife in a drawer full of spatulas, and his 98-1 confirmation vote was a huge disappointment, but the idea that any significant portion of the left is putting any faith in him is absurd. He just happens to be the only adult in the room.

But this is the paragraph where I gave up on finding anything of value in the remainder of the piece:
The compulsion to convict Trump of something definite, something dire, even if not yet a criminal offence, reached a sort of climax on 25 June when an entire back page of the Times Sunday Week in Review was transformed into an enormous zero-shaped pattern entitled ‘Trump’s Lies’, under the byline of two reporters, David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson. The dates of more than a hundred ‘lies’ were printed in boldface, the text of the lie in quotation marks and the correction in parenthesis. Most of the lies, however, were what anyone would call opportunistic half-truths, scattershot promises, changes of tack with a denial that any change had taken place and, above all, hyperbolic exaggerations.
What follows after this is some of the most pathetic and shameful Trump apologia I've seen outside of the wingnutosphere, where Trump's lies are defined down as exaggerations that "all politicians indulge" in. Really? If Obama rounded a fucking decimal the wrong way would lead the nightly newscasts, but I'm supposed to believe that Trump getting numbers wrong by two or three orders of magnitude is something less than a lie? Bromwich apparently believes that lies can't be lies if the liar doesn't give a shit if they're correct, and that proving negatives like "Trump wasn't 'tapped'" is a reasonable prerequisite before being allowed to call the unsupported assertion a lie.

I'm not going to waste any more time, except to say that of course "Putin Derangement Syndrome" and "Kathy Griffin", and "Johnny Depp" are key parts of his argument, and that real enemies, on a day when the President's son confessed to treason, are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, because of fucking course they are.

Leftier-than-thou leftists are descending into self parody at least as fast as the Trump presidency.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:24 PM on July 11, 2017 [65 favorites]


Also, re the earlier Franken discussion - he's got a new book out, and it isn't bad. If you were thinking of him as a celebrity politician, it will definitely disabuse you of that notion. Worth checking out of the library.

Also, he talks a lot of shit about Ted Cruz.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:26 PM on July 11, 2017 [31 favorites]


Leftier-than-thou leftists are descending into self parody at least as fast as the Trump presidency.

Bromwich is absolutely a "Clinton and the neoliberals are the true enemy!!!11!!1!!" leftist and people like him go on the list right between Ilyn Payne and Polliver.

Maybe Greenwald is hiring? Exposing sources to the feds is hard work.
posted by Justinian at 10:34 PM on July 11, 2017 [11 favorites]


So, I finally got the whole "obvious anagram Reince Priebus" thing. "I err, bec. supine." Or did you guys mean "Nicer pie! (Rubes.)"
posted by biogeo at 10:46 PM on July 11, 2017 [14 favorites]


Oh god, I knew I'd find the perfect one immediately after posting that.

A perfect summary of the BCRA and all other Republican "policy" this administration. Reince Priebus: "Nice ripe rubes."
posted by biogeo at 10:49 PM on July 11, 2017 [41 favorites]


Anagram or reversed, I've been waiting years for Priebus to be forced back into the ancient magic puzzle box he escaped from.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:10 PM on July 11, 2017 [11 favorites]


The Obvious Anagram mini-derail is such a delight to re-visit again once more.

I think this bit is already even posted in this thread, but I'm willing to risk a dreaded double-posting (deliberate misuse) because it's this little funny trick that makes me laugh hard (and if you haven't lately let me recommend laughing hard at something does a world of good for the soul):

If you disemvowel Reince Priebus you get RNC PR BS.
posted by carsonb at 11:20 PM on July 11, 2017 [37 favorites]


I now believe Reince Priebus is called Obvious Anagram by National Treasure Charles P. Pierce of Esquire because, were he to appear in a crossword clue, he would be an obvious anagram, rather than because he actually provides an obvious anagram.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:22 PM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


Mod note: Tail end of big old Gray Davis / Enron / Cal election derail deleted. Also (separately), weird little cryptic sarcastic interjections that then have to be teased out to determine what you are in fact trying to say is not good for these threads. Just say what you are trying to say if there is something to actually be said. And everyone, please: we have a limited number of moderators and more than one thread to deal with, plus are human with only human physical and mental tolerances. We cannot keep a continuous comment by comment watch in these threads for months and years (one whole day is not so pleasant), so *please* try to resist continued derailing, spatting, relitigating the you know what, and other problems we've outlined numerous times.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:25 PM on July 11, 2017 [49 favorites]


ELECTIONS NEWS

** Special elections results - Noted upthread, the Dems flipped two Oklahoma legislature seats, Senate 44 and House 75. These were big swings - they had gone for Trump 56-37 and 58-36, respectively. Back in May, there was also a pronounced Dem swing in House 28 back in May (although they fell just short), so they seem to have some wind at their back. Both houses remain under GOP control, but every seat counts, and there are three more specials in OK this year.

** Kobach commission:
-- The National Association of Secretaries of State meeting in Indianapolis unanimously passed a bipartisan resolution underscoring the Constitutional rights of of states to administer local, state and federal elections.

-- The Indiana SOS has been sued for saying she would cooperate with the commission's voter data request. The suit contends that this would violate IN state law.
** Odds & ends:
-- FL GOP has posted their worst fundraising quarter in at least 20 years.
-- NH has passed SB3, an effort to suppress the votes of college students. Some thought that this might be unconstitutional.
-- Morning Consult poll has Jeff Flake of AZ as the least popular senator, 37/45. He's the only senator up in 2018 who is underwater (Heller is 41/33).
posted by Chrysostom at 11:27 PM on July 11, 2017 [61 favorites]


Speaking of Al Franken, he has posted the first in apparently a series of videos through a partnership of National Geographic's Years of Living Dangerously series and the Funny or Die website... "Boiling the Frog". A very solid presentation, but as usual, do NOT read the YouTube comments; they represent a strong argument for the human race going extinct.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:27 PM on July 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


Franken is legit, I don't know anybody who would call him a celebrity politician. Do people call Fred Grandy that? Fred Thompson I can see, but he was a neck-sticker-outer. Anyway, Franken has given me a serious case of Baader-Meinhof by calling Ted Cruz "the guy who microwaves fish at the office." At least twice in the past month I've seen references to microwaving fish as a thing annoying people do.
posted by rhizome at 11:51 PM on July 11, 2017 [11 favorites]


with both houses of our bicameral legislature controlled by that same Republican Party

Or: The Origin of the Breakdown of a Conscience in the Bicameral Legislature
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:56 PM on July 11, 2017 [26 favorites]


It was once too absurd and surreal that a key figure in a national scandal was a porno term and title

But now we have Donald Trump


Trump actually appeared in a porno. [real]

He had a very small part.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:58 PM on July 11, 2017 [35 favorites]


Here's something depressing that I realized recently: if these asswipes aren't removed from office before 2020, it's very likely their names will go to space aboard the next Mars rover. We'll have sent something more shitty to another planet than the astronaut waste bags they left on the moon.
posted by casarkos at 12:07 AM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]




For those freaking out, (with good reason!) here's my twice monthly reminder that there are people available to listen. Call a crisis hotline, or text 741-741. Seriously. We listen. We empathize. We validate. And we try to help you find coping mechanisms that will help you get through this. We're here for you.
posted by greermahoney at 12:39 AM on July 12, 2017 [40 favorites]


In the Limbaugh reality distortion sphere, Don Jr. is a naturally gifted politician whose nascent career is being hamstrung by dirt-throwing Democrats:
“But you note the energy with which the media is going after Donald Trump Jr. And there’s a reason. They want to dirty him up. They want to destroy the guy before he gets started on his own political career. He has an obvious interest in politics. I don’t know if you’ve heard this guy speak.

“Folks, he is what his dad isn’t in that he is an ideological conservative – and if you’ve heard him speak, he’s got it down. He knows his stuff – and he can sell it and he can be persuasive with it – and he is the exact kind of conservative they want to destroy before he gets started, especially given that they don’t have a bench of their own. That is an added reason for all this energy in destroying Donald Trump Jr. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

posted by Gordion Knott at 1:19 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Got to hand it to Limbaugh. In that Junior is a criminal and an idiot, he really is a perfect ideological conservative.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:24 AM on July 12, 2017 [53 favorites]


In the Limbaugh reality distortion sphere, Don Jr. is a naturally gifted politician whose nascent career is being hamstrung by dirt-throwing Democrats:

Nice to see them admitting why they've been going after Chelsea since she was 12 goddamn years old.
posted by Etrigan at 1:25 AM on July 12, 2017 [57 favorites]


@MerriamWebster: Top lookups in order: collusion, treason, collude, quid pro quo, kakistocracy
posted by salix at 2:21 AM on July 12, 2017 [52 favorites]


Don Jr.'s Russia meeting wasn't collusion — just amateur hour, The Hill:
One image that a lot of experts see in these stories is a possible violation of the federal law banning foreign contributions to federal campaigns — ironically the very claim that the meeting was called to discuss with regard to Hillary Clinton. The relevant law is 36 U.S.C. 510, which bars direct or indirect contributions or other things of value from a foreign national. MSNBC justice and security analyst Matthew Miller said Trump Jr. could now go to jail because “it doesn’t have to be money … it can be, potentially, accepting information. So he’s potentially confessing in his statement to committing a crime.”

Of course, the crux is “other thing of value.” Under this approach, a court would have to include information as a thing of value like money and then declare that Trump Jr. solicited the information by agreeing to go to the meeting. If that were the case, the wide array of meetings by politicians and their aides with foreign nationals would suddenly become possible criminal violations.

It is common for foreign governments to withhold or take actions to influence elections in other countries. Information is often shared through various channels during elections from lobbyists, non-government organizations, and government officials. This includes former Clinton aide Alexandra Chalupa, who allegedly worked with Ukrainian government officials and journalists to come up with dirt on Trump and Manafort.

Consider the implications of such an unprecedented extension of the criminal code. The sharing of information — even possible criminal conduct by a leading political figure — would be treated the same as accepting cash. It would constitute a major threat to free speech, the free press and the right of association. It would also expose a broad spectrum of political speech to possible criminal prosecution.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 2:28 AM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


There are 19 occurrences of the word treason in this thread, but treason is the one crime defined explicitly in the US Constitution. It can only concern countries with which we are at war. We are not at war with Russia. So nothing anyone does in relation to Russia can be treasonous.

Even during the Cold War, this was the case with relation to the USSR, which is why the Rosenbergs, e.g., were not charged with treason.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 2:31 AM on July 12, 2017 [8 favorites]


Did Chalupa ever deny she ever met with Ukranian officials? Perhaps under oath in a congressional hearing or on a form requesting top secret security clearance?
posted by PenDevil at 2:37 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


A diversion about the possible Zuck presidential bid.

The Silicon Valley surveillance capitalism complex is an advanced nation-state-level power. It drains capital and brain power from all over the world. If you don't accept our values and invest in us, we disrupt you out of existence. With thunderous applause (and through-the-roof stock prices). It is hyper-intelligent and is not ashamed of its open ambitions: Thielian immortality (while the rest of you can die of your pre-existing conditions), Muskian space colonization (while the rest of you can die on the truly fucked earth), Kalanickian labour system, and Googlo-Facebookian monopoly on knowledge, dissemination, attention, and behavioural data. Behind all this: the throbbing Trumpian impulses of chaos.

Denmark is already sending a full-time professional diplomat as the ambassador to American tech multinationals. This is a desperate cry for help.

The surveillance capitalism complex is one step away from the perfect totalitarianism. Surveillance does not only know more about you than yourself do. It modifies behaviour and the motivation behind the behaviour, that is, what we used to call "will of the people". Everybody voluntarily pays the smartphone tax and carries a state-sanctioned telescreen. When you know you're being watched you change your behaviour. And your conditioned behaviour reinforces the power structure that conditions your behaviour.

This will make Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor look like a nursery rime. And The_Zuck is its VR-enhanced, affable face. In North America.

And when the Anglo-Saxon strand of surveillance capitalism is on the convergence track with Chinese-style technototalitarianism, while already monopolising the Internet and the very concept of an internet in the fastest growing continents, one does wonder if this has been the destined future humans deserve all along.

Somebody say something nice to me please so I don't sink deeper into my own despair.
posted by runcifex at 2:38 AM on July 12, 2017 [57 favorites]


I think the major damage of this meeting is yet to be done. It may or may not have been something criminal in and of itself, but these people have done a lot of things like that and not shown the slightest remorse when called on them. Yet we know now that they all lied, and lied, and lied again, for a year... about a meeting that didn't matter?

From which:

1. It did matter. A lot
2. For reasons which will be damning, once revealed
3. And these people lie, and lie, and lie, until actual incontrovertible truth is produced.

Which is what the subpoena was invented for.

It is impossible that these people were not dealing with Russia, and impossible - given 45's entire MO and history - that large sums of money were not involved. Treason is a pipe dream; high crimes and misdemeanours are whatever's convenient, but bribery is bribery.

If I had to collapse the waveform and pick one outcome, that's the one I'd pick. An incontrovertible paper trail or confession (which may be the same thing) that large, material benefits were promised to 45 in return for acting on behalf of the Russian oligarchy. And the adventures of the Duffer Don, Junior Poltroon, are the thread to tug at.
posted by Devonian at 2:44 AM on July 12, 2017 [11 favorites]


About presidential succession: isn't the point that they need to follow the Watergate playbook, and replace Pence first? For now, all on the right are happy with a president Pence, but if something more damning than what we know now turns up, we'll see a case against the VP tout de suite.
posted by mumimor at 3:00 AM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Consider the implications of such an unprecedented extension of the criminal code. The sharing of information — even possible criminal conduct by a leading political figure — would be treated the same as accepting cash. It would constitute a major threat to free speech, the free press and the right of association.

Yeah, no. Courts are quite capable of distinguishing between things that are real and things that would fall under some tendentious interpretation, but would make a law silly and unconstitutional.

There's a huge gulf between a hypothetical meeting at which chit-chat is exchanged, and a meeting that is the prelude to a massive interference by agents of a foreign government. Casual political conversations rarely provide a material benefit and they certainly don't impose a material cost on the other side. In contrast, the Trump Tower meeting may have been the offer and acceptance of a massive Russian interference in the election, one that certainly would have delivered a material benefit to Trump's team, and one that excited them so much that Jared, Trump Jr, and Mnuchin all turned up for it.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:08 AM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


There are 19 occurrences of the word treason in this thread, but treason is the one crime defined explicitly in the US Constitution. It can only concern countries with which we are at war.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
From 10 USC 2205:
(2) the term "enemy" means any country, government, group, or person that has been engaged in hostilities, whether or not lawfully authorized, with the United States;
posted by Etrigan at 3:13 AM on July 12, 2017 [48 favorites]


an aposite quote from a somethingawful goon: You are confused because the objective was never to lend credibility to trump or even suppress clinton's chances, the objective is to delegitimize the process, as it has been elsewhere in the world. The objective is proceeding swimmingly.

Like, let's grant this is the highest-level Putin-approved psyop to do some Manchurian Candidate nonsense. I personally believe this was more of a vague influence dragnet in the State Dept mold rather than direct influencing (partially because that's what the evidence supports so far but also because that's a certain level of irony I could see Putin playing with) but for the purposes of conversation fuck it, this conspiracy goes all the way to the top. Why was this operative either cleared or directed to have an incredibly awkward meeting with Trump Jr. with no actual information to present? why do you think this incredibly explosive information was allowed to be committed to writing?

Why would an ex spymaster and multi-decade politician decide, in a G20 meeting that notably went 90 minutes overtime, not confer with Trump for two flippin' minutes to say "hey, how do you want to play this in the media, by the way?" like every other meeting of leaders since the printing press. Why would this person, who supposedly masterminded all this shit go out and say the almost exact opposite of what happened before Trump got to a mic if a secure Trump presidency was the goal?

The imagery of Trump on a leash is no doubt compelling to the unexercised fetishists here, but a) makes even less sense than the rest of what happened in 2016 and b) doesn't and wouldn't work IRL. The object is nothing more or less than the raw spectacle of it. Loud and noisy and public. Electing a clown, eating him alive, replacing him with a towheaded rapture-ready chauvinist so blandly psychopathic even the Hoosiers were getting ready to tell him to fuck off. And all of our institutions, the two parties, the purportedly friendly congress who bridles under his executive authority, the media who has never found a moral they won't mortgage for more eyes and clicks, all of it is going along and all of it is loathed by the nation. It's foul fighting vile and you can't turn it the fuck off so the prevailing sentiment in the average person is one of general disgust and forlorn hope. Now THATS a quintessentially Russian sentiment if there ever was one.

posted by Sebmojo at 3:14 AM on July 12, 2017 [59 favorites]


(2) the term "enemy" means any country, government, group, or person that has been engaged in hostilities, whether or not lawfully authorized, with the United States;

Have we been engaged in hostilities with Russia? Is Russia an enemy?
posted by Joseph Gurl at 3:36 AM on July 12, 2017


If Russia is attacking the USA electronically then it's engaged in hostilities, no?
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:45 AM on July 12, 2017 [35 favorites]


Also, given that the authors of the constitution would have almost certainly been hanged for treason had the British caught them, they drafted the definition of treason extremely tightly, to the point where it's next to impossible to be convicted of it. Which is why the US has other laws such as the Espionage Act 1917, which are essentially the treason-in-all-but-name one can actually be convicted of in real-world conditions.
posted by acb at 3:51 AM on July 12, 2017 [13 favorites]


Joseph Gurl: treason is the one crime defined explicitly in the US Constitution. It can only concern countries with which we are at war.

Citation? "Enemy" as used in the treason clause is left undefined and I'm not sure it's ever been tested in court. Cornell's annotated constitution mentions three Supreme Court cases arising from the "aid and comfort to the enemy" part of the treason clause, all of them involving aid to declared enemies during WWII, so it seems to still be unclear whether "enemies" might include undeclared enemies.

Even during the Cold War, this was the case with relation to the USSR, which is why the Rosenbergs, e.g., were not charged with treason.

Alternately, as acb notes, it could be because it was sufficient to charge them with espionage, which does not carry the burdensome constitutional requirement of "two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or ... Confession in open court."

Etrigan: From 10 USC 2205:

(2) the term "enemy" means any country, government, group, or person that has been engaged in hostilities, whether or not lawfully authorized, with the United States;


Your link is to 50 USC 2204, but more significantly, you've missed the part at the top where it says "As used in this chapter," i.e., the definition does not necessarily apply to uses of "enemy" outside of that chapter.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 4:11 AM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


'The only honest answer is that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers [it] to be at a given moment in history; conviction results from whatever offense or offenses two-thirds of the other body considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office.'
- Gerald Ford, remarks in the House (April 15, 1970), Congressional Record, vol. 116, p. 11913.
posted by rc3spencer at 4:27 AM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]




There are 19 occurrences of the word treason in this thread, but treason is the one crime defined explicitly in the US Constitution. It can only concern countries with which we are at war. We are not at war with Russia. So nothing anyone does in relation to Russia can be treasonous.

Yeah, and I've pointed out the same before.

But it's important to recognize that people can and do talk about treason without meaning the specifically defined crime against the federal government of the US. Sometimes people just mean acts that are gross betrayals of one's own country as in the usual sense of the word. Acts can be treasonous without being convictably treasonous, or can be treasonous without being examples of the specifically defined US crime.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:42 AM on July 12, 2017 [39 favorites]


WSJ: Trump Jr. Email Shows Possible Role of Top Russian Prosecutor
Russia doesn’t have a crown prosecutor, which is Britain’s term for a top prosecuting attorney. But Russia does have an equivalent: the prosecutor general’s office, run by Yuri Chaika.
...
For Mr. Chaika, the campaign against [the Magnitsky Act and hedge fund manager Bill Browder] appeared to be personal. He publicly accused the hedge-fund manager in 2015 of working with U.S. security services to produce a documentary that aired corruption allegations against the Chaika family.
...
When a Russian opposition campaigner released the documentary on Mr. Chaika’s family, one notable person jumped to the prosecutor’s defense: Aras Agalarov, the Russian-Azerbaijani businessman who organized the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow with President Trump.
...
Ms. Veselnitskaya denies working for the Russian government and says she was advocating on behalf of a Russian client facing a U.S. money laundering case related to the Magnitsky Act.
...
Mr. Goldstone insisted that he was referring to Ms. Veselnitskaya, a private attorney, and not Mr. Chaika... “It’s a language thing—I am English—and I call ALL prosecutors crown prosecutors,” Mr. Goldstone wrote in an email to The Wall Street Journal.
It's not paywalled, for now at least.
posted by pjenks at 4:48 AM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]




I'm wondering why I'm not sort of jumping around in joy this morning about this, and I think that part of the answer is that while I'd be rapturous if say, Trump and Ryan and Pence had say, decided to reenact The Human Centipede with all the Tea Party members of the House, that would be one thing. But God is never so good. The rot goes so deep.

The GOP has the chance to hold onto the Supreme Court and gerrymandering for decades. How can they look at that and with any ease abandon Trump and his demagogical talents? Does anybody in power understand why the 100% of the populace, give or take a few Nazis, not look at Trump and ew? I sure as fuck don't. My psychiatrist has been asking me questions as to what I think motivates Trump and his supporters, and I think my shrink knows his stuff, so either he is performing some shrink ninja on me or he too is wildly fascinated by this crazy shit.

I don't know what my point is.
posted by angrycat at 4:53 AM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


But it's important to recognize that people can and do talk about treason without meaning the specifically defined crime against the federal government of the US. Sometimes people just mean acts that are gross betrayals of one's own country as in the usual sense of the word. Acts can be treasonous without being convictably treasonous, or can be treasonous without being examples of the specifically defined US crime.

It's treasony
posted by Sebmojo at 4:55 AM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


Has it never been revealed, or did I miss it: How did the NYT acquire the DTJ email thread? Does it follow that it would have to be from one of the recipients, or is that not necessarily a logical assumption? How else?
posted by taz at 4:59 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


FWIW, treason might feel good, but really the only laws needed to take the whole shebang down are 18 USC 371 and 18 USC 1001. Every time Trump lies, it's part of a conspiracy to deprive The People and Congress of their lawful oversight.
posted by mikelieman at 5:01 AM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


Question for UK mefi-ers:
Is Rob Goldstone's claim (in the WSJ, above) that he calls "all prosecutors 'crown prosecutors'" believable?
Is "crown prosecutor" possibly synonymous with government attorney? Of course, Velnitskaya was none of those things, she claims.
posted by pjenks at 5:13 AM on July 12, 2017


WIW, treason might feel good, but really the only laws needed to take the whole shebang down are 18 USC 371 and 18 USC 1001.

Hell, at this point, even the RICO statutes are becoming relevant. The Trump family seems to be nothing if not one big (dis)organized crime syndicate, what with the money laundering, the charity fraud, the self-dealing, quid-pro-quo influence peddling, obstruction, collusion, conspiracy, etc., etc.
posted by darkstar at 5:17 AM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


We need some clown prosecutors.
posted by Artw at 5:18 AM on July 12, 2017 [29 favorites]


Oh, BTW... massive iceberg breaks off of Antarctica - normally something that would alarm the shit out of people and prompt some pause for thought even from republicans, but I expect it to go relatively unremarked on even though it's quite possibly a landmark moment on our path to extinction.
posted by Artw at 5:21 AM on July 12, 2017 [38 favorites]


You know, since Trump seems to live in the 1980's, and since Sessions apparently wants to bring the DARE program back, I think it's time to bring back this famous PSA from 1987 to explain how Don Jr. wound up meeting with the Russians.
"Who taught you how to do this stuff?"
"You, all right?! I learned it by watching you!"

Parents who collude with Russia have children who collude with Russia.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:21 AM on July 12, 2017 [35 favorites]


Question for UK mefi-ers:
Is Rob Goldstone's claim (in the WSJ, above) that he calls "all prosecutors 'crown prosecutors'" believable?
Is "crown prosecutor" possibly synonymous with government attorney? Of course, Velnitskaya was none of those things, she claims.


Kinda? Crown Prosecutors are lawyers who work for the Crown. Meaning the government, and in that capacity prosecute defendants.

It's not necessarily the most senior lawyer in the government. They are the people who make the charging decisions and prosecute cases. Think Jack McCoy in Law and Order. He's the equivalent of a Crown Prosecutor. But so is the guy who signs the paperwork on your speeding fine. (We do also have an Attorney General).

But regardless, that's an odd way to refer to a lawyer who isn't a Jack McCoy type lawyer.
posted by generichuman at 5:29 AM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Thanks, generichuman!

Although, looking back at Goldstone's email, he writes:
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father this morning..."
Using the article "The" seems to make the meaning more specific, doesn't it?
posted by pjenks at 5:37 AM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Is "crown prosecutor" possibly synonymous with government attorney? Of course, Velnitskaya was none of those things, she claims.

But regardless, that's an odd way to refer to a lawyer who isn't a Jack McCoy type lawyer.


It's possible that the "crown prosecutor" who met with Aras Agalarov is not the same individual as the Russian lawyer (Veselnitskaya) sent to meet with Trump's people in NY.

In Goldstone's first email: "The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with [Emin's] Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents..."

Then in a later email: "Emin asked that I schedule a meeting with you and The Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow for this Thursday."

Then later: "Would it be possible to move tomorrow meeting to 4pm as the Russian attorney is in court until 3"

But also, according to the NYT, Veselnitskaya "started her career in the prosecutor’s office in Moscow’s suburbs before branching out."
posted by melissasaurus at 5:41 AM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


Morning Consult poll has Jeff Flake of AZ as the least popular senator, 37/45. He's the only senator up in 2018 who is underwater (Heller is 41/33).

Hooowwwwww does Pat Toomey have a 45% approval rating? How?!

Anyway, that poll is an excellent reminder of something to always keep in mind when looking at American opinion polls. Everyone thinks that everyone else's [whatever] sucks, but theirs is just fine. Congress as a body has an approval rating in the teens, but in general individual congresspeople are liked just fine by their own constituencies. You see the same thing with public school systems. Everyone else's schools are dangerous dens of drugs and sex, but their own school system is hunky-dory. Everyone else who receives foods stamps is a moocher, but me and all the people I know legitimately need the help.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:45 AM on July 12, 2017 [50 favorites]


@taz: There's a lot of speculation about the source of the emails (Bannon aiming for Kushner? the Russians mad about the G20?), but nothing definitive.
posted by notyou at 5:46 AM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


I like how the innocent explanation for this meeting is that Junior wasn't going to commit treason, he was just going to talk to a Russian attorney representing a Russian businessman to further Russian interests to drop or mollify Russian sanctions as enacted by the US in order to secure Russian assistance to help his father win the presidency.

You know. Like you do.
posted by lydhre at 5:48 AM on July 12, 2017 [53 favorites]


My fave takeaways from Jr's emails are that no one seems surprised (or that they are surprising anyone) in June 2016 that Russia is helping Trump, that the back channel to Trump is known (Rhona) by Goldstone, and that Manafort and Kushner are all over this, in Trump Tower. Plenty to follow up on there.
posted by rc3spencer at 5:48 AM on July 12, 2017 [25 favorites]


Trump-Russia investigators probe Jared Kushner-run digital operation
Investigators at the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the Justice Department are examining whether the Trump campaign’s digital operation – overseen by Jared Kushner – helped guide Russia’s sophisticated voter targeting and fake news attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Congressional and Justice Department investigators are focusing on whether Trump’s campaign pointed Russian cyber operatives to certain voting jurisdictions in key states – areas where Trump’s digital team and Republican operatives were spotting unexpected weakness in voter support for Hillary Clinton, according to several people familiar with the parallel inquiries.

Also under scrutiny is the question of whether Trump associates or campaign aides had any role in assisting the Russians in publicly releasing thousands of emails, hacked from the accounts of top Democrats, at turning points in the presidential race, mainly through the London-based transparency web site WikiLeaks, .

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told McClatchy he wants to know whether Russia’s “fake or damaging news stories” were “coordinated in any way in terms of targeting or in terms of timing or in terms of any other measure … with the (Trump) campaign.”
posted by chris24 at 5:50 AM on July 12, 2017 [21 favorites]


We need some clown prosecutors.

It's important to remember that the Rs whom we all are convinced are scheming with Trump to take over the world are in fact just simply in over their heads. MORE THAN ONE of them has ADMITTED that all they know how to do is obstruct Obama, they don't know actually how to govern. Never attribute malice...
posted by Melismata at 6:01 AM on July 12, 2017 [18 favorites]


Is Rob Goldstone's claim (in the WSJ, above) that he calls "all prosecutors 'crown prosecutors'" believable?

Hazy with titles? Yes. Goldstone comes across as the sort of Brit who learned little at school but a lot from the British tabloids and the telly.
posted by Mister Bijou at 6:03 AM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


I've seen the healthcare shit and vote suppression they want to pass and will 1000% attribute malice.
posted by Artw at 6:04 AM on July 12, 2017 [62 favorites]


Never attribute malice...

At some point depraved indifference to one's own incompetence is sufficient to establish malice.
posted by melissasaurus at 6:05 AM on July 12, 2017 [58 favorites]


he is what his dad isn’t in that he is an ideological conservative – and if you’ve heard him speak, he’s got it down. He knows his stuff

Yep, every time the guy opens his mouth I'm all "Is that you George Will, channeling the ghost of William Buckley?"

I know these things are uncorked in the wingnut echo chamber so that people can get their RDA of talking points and all, but I seriously cannot believe this is the angle they're going for. Although to be fair, the intended audience has no clue what words like "ideological" and "conservative" mean, and when they do see Don Jr. speaking, he does look like a white rich guy in a suit, so he must know his stuff, so.
posted by Rykey at 6:12 AM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


There has been some speculation that Don Jr. may end up being tried as an adult despite being only a wealthy 40 year old white male.
posted by srboisvert at 6:13 AM on July 12, 2017 [169 favorites]


I really hope when the smoke clears from this shitfire nobody forgets about the cc: Manafort, Kushner part of the email.
posted by mcstayinskool at 6:17 AM on July 12, 2017 [30 favorites]


On reflection, I think there's a strong case to be made for narrowly interpreting "enemies" in the treason clause to include only declared enemies. Treason was defined narrowly in the Constitution and with an unusually high burden of proof precisely because the British government in the 18th century had abused charges of treason as a means of silencing dissent; we should be wary of weakening those protections and returning to such abuses.

It may be tempting to include undeclared enemies like Russia as a means of getting at Trump insiders, but keep in mind that it's the Trump administration who is charged with enforcing federal laws. Who would Attorney General Jeff Sessions consider to be an enemy of the United States if he could get away with it, and who might he charge with treason under such an interpretation?
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 6:25 AM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]



Citation? "Enemy" as used in the treason clause is left undefined and I'm not sure it's ever been tested in court.


When Jane Fonda went to North Vietnam, the lack of a formal state of war was deemed clear cut enough to forestall any prosecution.
posted by ocschwar at 6:26 AM on July 12, 2017 [8 favorites]


Vile Nazi bastard Rep. Steve King: Use food stamp funds on border wall
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:32 AM on July 12, 2017 [19 favorites]


When Jane Fonda went to North Vietnam, the lack of a formal state of war was deemed clear cut enough to forestall any prosecution.
And we're WAY past declaring war ever again, since 2001.
Except of course for using the generic 'war on terrorism (or 'x').
posted by rc3spencer at 6:33 AM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Both Bill Kristol and Josh Marshall have tweeted within the past hour that the White House was involved in writing Donald Trump Jr's false response that was issued on Saturday. That response was also, says Kristol, seen by Trump. No confirmed sources to this, but if true suggests that the White House was actively involved in a cover-up of the truth. Color me shocked.

Just to be clear, the reason they tweeted that is that an NYT article posted last night just before they tweeted (and linked upthread) said so.

I now believe Reince Priebus is called Obvious Anagram by National Treasure Charles P. Pierce of Esquire because, were he to appear in a crossword clue, he would be an obvious anagram, rather than because he actually provides an obvious anagram.

Yes, absolutely. He's called Obvious Anagram because you look at his name and say, "That's obviously just an anagram of something, not an actual name." Have you ever known or heard of anyone from anywhere named either 'Reince' (even as a nickname, which it is) or "Priebus' or any words resembling those? I think 'Reince' may actually violate some phonetic laws of nature.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:34 AM on July 12, 2017 [17 favorites]


Does anybody in power understand why the 100% of the populace, give or take a few Nazis, not look at Trump and ew? I sure as fuck don't. My psychiatrist has been asking me questions as to what I think motivates Trump and his supporters, and I think my shrink knows his stuff, so either he is performing some shrink ninja on me or he too is wildly fascinated by this crazy shit.

angrycat, Rykey has the answer: to be fair, the intended audience has no clue what words like "ideological" and "conservative" mean, and when they do see Don Jr. speaking, he does look like a white rich guy in a suit, so he must know his stuff, so.

I was thinking of this because the business newsfeed I get ( in Denmark) was speculating that Trump is about to replace Janet Yellen with Gary Cohn, and my very first thought was (irony alert!) "well, you can't really have a woman in that position, can you?" I grew up with a stepfather who really saw the world that way, and I think it clouds their thought to the degree everything is hazy and scary if you don't have white men in suits at all positions, regardless of everything else. My stepfather's new wife has the same mindset, its not gendered.
posted by mumimor at 6:34 AM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


since today is the Christopher Wray appointment hearing for FBI Director, does anyone have a good backgrounder on the dude?
posted by murphy slaw at 6:38 AM on July 12, 2017


Yes, absolutely. He's called Obvious Anagram because you look at his name and say, "That's obviously just an anagram of something, not an actual name."

And because of the penis thing. It's like with Spiro Agnew: some of us can't help but see those 5 friendly letters, all thrusting out and waving around.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:39 AM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Reince Priebus = Eric rub E-penis.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 6:43 AM on July 12, 2017 [12 favorites]


Isn't it an anagram for "I, Prince Erebus"?

Erebus: a primordial deity, representing the personification of darkness..
posted by Philby at 6:45 AM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


Mod note: Okay, please please stop with the obvious anagram thing. Guy has an unusual name, and it's not worth over 30 comments in this one thread alone, repeated in virtually every new thread. stahp.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:47 AM on July 12, 2017 [65 favorites]


@realdonaldtrump: The W.H. is functioning perfectly, focused on HealthCare, Tax Cuts/Reform & many other things. I have very little time for watching T.V.

Out of everything else, I think I'm most amazed that he's bothering to lie about the amount of tv he watches.
posted by tau_ceti at 6:47 AM on July 12, 2017 [56 favorites]


Out of everything else, I think I'm most amazed that he's bothering to lie about the amount of tv he watches.

Look into addiction and how it works.
posted by Namlit at 6:50 AM on July 12, 2017 [19 favorites]




@realdonaldtrump: The W.H. is functioning perfectly, focused on HealthCare, Tax Cuts/Reform & many other things. I have very little time for watching T.V.

To be fair, when you're used to watching 16 hours of TV a day, 6 hours a day might seem like very little.
posted by Rykey at 6:51 AM on July 12, 2017 [38 favorites]


@realdonaldtrump: Is the fact that my son is a fucking idiot something you'd have to DVR cable news shows and watch them later when you're supposed to be in national security meetings to know? [fake, barely]
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:52 AM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


@realdonaldtrump: The W.H. is functioning perfectly, focused on HealthCare, Tax Cuts/Reform & many other things. I have very little time for watching T.V.

Out of everything else, I think I'm most amazed that he's bothering to lie about the amount of tv he watches.


Note that he doesn't actually say that he's not watching a lot of TV. I have very little time for working out, but I still do it.
posted by Etrigan at 6:52 AM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


Also, the lie that he doesn't have time to watch much TV is clearly a direct response to what he was watching on TV.
posted by parallellines at 6:52 AM on July 12, 2017 [44 favorites]




Trey Gowdy canceled the day's Benghazi and rescheduled his head-sharpening appointment to try talking sense for once. Heartening that he's not discrediting Mueller.

“This drip, drip, drip, is undermining the credibility of this administration,” Gowdy said on Fox News. “Someone close to the president needs to get everyone connected with that campaign in a room and say, ‘from the time you saw Dr. Zhivago until the moment you drank vodka with a guy named Boris, you list every single one of those, and we are going to turn them over to the special counsel.’” [...] Gowdy said he was also concerned about the legal implications of the meeting, but stressed that that aspect be left to special counsel Bob Mueller. “I am going to let Bob Mueller sort out all the criminality,” he said.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:02 AM on July 12, 2017 [20 favorites]


The view in Kushner's orbit is that the brutal new revelations are more P.R. problems than legal problems. And if he makes progress with his Middle East peace efforts, perceptions would be very different. - Axios AM

---

Joe Sarno: So, you the brains of this outfit, or is he?

Longbaugh: Tell ya the truth, I don't think this is a brains kind of operation.
posted by chris24 at 7:07 AM on July 12, 2017 [27 favorites]


It sounds bad when the guy in charge of the investigations subcommittee in the House Judiciary Committee, who is the same party as you, uses the words "all the criminality" when talking about somebody who has the same name as you.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:07 AM on July 12, 2017 [21 favorites]


It's also true that if Jared suddenly revealed that he's cured cancer perceptions would be very different.
posted by Copronymus at 7:10 AM on July 12, 2017 [14 favorites]


The view in Kushner's orbit is that the brutal new revelations are more P.R. problems than legal problems. And if he makes progress with his Middle East peace efforts, perceptions would be very different. - Axios AM

To quote another person who was dealing with peace efforts in that region: If.
posted by Etrigan at 7:11 AM on July 12, 2017 [12 favorites]


stephen colbert has andy serkis read trump's tweets as gollum

Seriously can't recommend this enough, the action starts at 4:00 or so. Tears of bitter hilarity are running down my cheeks.
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:13 AM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


Who knows, maybe he can persuade Netanyahu to give up the Golan Heights and the Palestinians to forget about East Jerusalem the damned horse can fly...
posted by acb at 7:13 AM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Ok, this latest Trump tweet is the one that broke me. I was laughing so loudly and hysterically that my cat came and sat on me and stuck his face in front of my mouth to see if I was in distress and needed Cat Help. Then he laid down on my chest (he weighs 20 lbs, this is serious) and purred until I calmed down.
posted by threeturtles at 7:15 AM on July 12, 2017 [81 favorites]


This is all so crazy making. I have to really be careful to not give into feeling defeated by the barrage of it all. A few political FPPs back I started emailing VP Pence with almost daily regularity. I did it for a few weeks never heard anything back. Well I started up again after I saw him brag on Facebook about a bunch of dumb stuff. Here's my email to him, which I will also send in a snail mail today:

"Please explain to me how you reconcile your morality with the lack of ethical behavior around you? I seriously do not understand how you can consider yourself a man of Christ and align with the Trump family. Their behavior is malevolent. And WHY ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH are you seeking council from Rush Limbaugh? He is everything that is wrong with modern American politics. You will have to explain your involvement with Russia interfering in our democratic election. You will have to explain your behavior and if it is as malevolent as the Trumps. We see you. God sees you. Be an honorable man of scripture do not hide behind it."

Yeah I know he will never respond. But it keeps his staff busy.

Anyone else in Texas please continue to call Cruz and Cornyn. Cruz claimed we were not interested in Russia stuff and he should hear from us that we are. And I think they really are trying to pass Cruz's healthcare cruelty amendment next week. I've had to take breaks, but I'm back in calling them all the time. Just UGH.

One thing that I've found that helps me keep doing it is to also call another rep who is doing something I support and thank them. That way I'm balancing the vitriol with gratitude, which helps me keep going.

thanks everyone for all you're doing. Thanks for these threads.
posted by dog food sugar at 7:18 AM on July 12, 2017 [38 favorites]


Kushner: "5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Go!"
* Trump Jr tweets
* Internet explodes
Kushner: "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"
posted by Talez at 7:21 AM on July 12, 2017 [13 favorites]


thanks everyone for all you're doing. Thanks for these threads.

Thank you for what you are doing also; you're being the engaged citizen that democracy depends on.
posted by jaduncan at 7:22 AM on July 12, 2017 [13 favorites]


Out of everything else, I think I'm most amazed that he's bothering to lie about the amount of tv he watches.

I choose to believe he's not trying to convince he doesn't watch too much television, but instead complaining about the lack of tv watching he is getting in.
posted by drezdn at 7:23 AM on July 12, 2017 [28 favorites]


The thing about all the Russia meetings that hasn't been exposed yet is the quid pro quo. If all they wanted to do was interfere, then they could do all their hacking and document dumping without involving the Trump campaign. So clearly they wanted something for their effort and I'm assuming it was ending the sanctions, but it seems like we really need evidence that they asked.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:23 AM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


from the time you saw Dr. Zhivago until the moment you drank vodka with a guy named Boris

I can't lie. That's pretty funny (while also, y'know, being terribly minimizing about the extent, breadth, and unprecedented nature of both the Trump campaign and transition team's contact with state actors, and their goddamn motherfucking unending duplicity about it).
posted by joyceanmachine at 7:26 AM on July 12, 2017 [8 favorites]


we really need evidence that they asked.

Thanks for coming to my meeting about dirt on Hillary. But before we get into that, I'd really like to talk about the Magnitsky Act -- I mean adoptions (hint hint). - Natalia Veselnitskaya (basically)
posted by chris24 at 7:28 AM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


The thing about all the Russia meetings that hasn't been exposed yet is the quid pro quo. If all they wanted to do was interfere, then they could do all their hacking and document dumping without involving the Trump campaign. So clearly they wanted something for their effort and I'm assuming it was ending the sanctions, but it seems like we really need evidence that they asked.

You don't pull an oil CEO with the Russian Order of Friendship in to be a terrible and disinterested Secretary of State for shits and giggles.

CEOs don't just decide to be public servants. They go where they can make fucking squillions. If I was betting on conspiracies my twenty bucks is going on the Trump family having that mysterious controlling interest in Rosneft, Tillerson still having his Exxon stock, and both walking away with said squillions after the sanctions are dealt with and the Black Sea venture goes through. For bonus tin foil hat points, a war in the middle east between KSA and Qatar would drive oil prices up making them even fucking richer.

But that's just where my imagination takes me.
posted by Talez at 7:33 AM on July 12, 2017 [62 favorites]


The thing about all the Russia meetings that hasn't been exposed yet is the quid pro quo. If all they wanted to do was interfere, then they could do all their hacking and document dumping without involving the Trump campaign. So clearly they wanted something for their effort and I'm assuming it was ending the sanctions, but it seems like we really need evidence that they asked.

This is turning into something like flipping a Mafia family. They need someone to start talking to avoid the less serious charges, and then they can steadily work up. Unfortunately for the Trumps they are up against somewhat of a all-star legal team in Muller et al, and that's setting aside the separate FBI investigation.
posted by jaduncan at 7:34 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


My assumption was that they were trying to build a Russian style oligarchy in the US, only the crucial element of ruthless leadership (a Putin equivalent plus supporting institutions) was missing and instead they got a senile narcissist who wants to golf and a bunch of amateur crooks.
posted by Tarumba at 7:37 AM on July 12, 2017 [14 favorites]


For your diversion, here's a supercut of Donald Trump saying "no collusion" in various interviews:

WATCH: For months Pres. Trump has repeatedly denied there was any collusion between his campaign & Russia. #11MSNBC
— 11th Hour (@11thHour) 12 July 2017


And here's the rest of gang:

Watch: Trump, Pence, Kellyanne, Manafort denying any Trump campaign contact with Russians
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) 11 July 2017


No, seriously, Team Trump is going to try to brazen out the Donald Jr. scandal by repeated denials because that's what worked for them in the past.
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:38 AM on July 12, 2017 [30 favorites]


It's frustrating to see this discussion devolve into rules-lawyering about when it's okay to use the word treason. As far as I know, none of us is a lawyer who's going to ever prosecute anyone in the Trump orbit, so this assumption that every invocation of the word is as a legal term of art is counterproductive and beside the point. It's troubling to see such extreme levels of credulousness from so many self-described leftists toward arguments that vindicate the Trumpists combined with constant nitpicking and hair splitting when the obvious patterns of foul play are cited.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:48 AM on July 12, 2017 [47 favorites]


> No, seriously, Team Trump is going to try to brazen out the Donald Jr. scandal

That's Donald Trump's entire life, and (one way or another) it made him President of the United States. I wouldn't change course if I were him, either.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:49 AM on July 12, 2017 [11 favorites]


No, seriously, Team Trump is going to try to brazen out the Donald Jr. scandal by repeated denials because that's what worked for them in the past.

Trump could be on tape accepting a bribe from Exxon to destroy our National Parks for drilling oil wells and Republicans still wouldn't impeach him with some bullshit tautology like "he's just a business guy, that's how things are done in business".
posted by Talez at 7:52 AM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


with some bullshit tautology like "he's just a business guy, that's how things are done in business".

And/or "we only know how to obstruct Obama, we don't know anything else."
posted by Melismata at 7:55 AM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


It's troubling to see such extreme levels of credulousness from so many self-described leftists toward arguments that vindicate the Trumpists combined with constant nitpicking and hair splitting when the obvious patterns of foul play are cited.

I mean just in this thread we're currently being credulous and nitpicky about, at least:

The definitions of the words "treason" and "enemy"
The usage of the words "obvious anagram"
The qualifications of a handful of celebrities to be President of the United States
And specifically the historical legacy and electoral circumstances of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Whether the release of the Piss Tape would be a moral hypocrisy
Glenn Greenwald, of all fucking things

So apparently we just like to keep busy.
posted by penduluum at 7:58 AM on July 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


So apparently we just like to keep busy.

can't sleep, trump will eat me
posted by murphy slaw at 7:59 AM on July 12, 2017 [60 favorites]


> So apparently we just like to keep busy.

I think in the case of Trump, it's a lot more than that. He and Russia were enemies of neoliberal sellouts Obama and Clinton, and the enemies of their enemies are their friends, or if not friends, at least figures that they will look at in the most charitable possible light for the purposes of kicking the shit out of those neoliberal sellouts long after they've lost most of their political relevance.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:01 AM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Love this, gotta share:

John Nichols at BillMoyers.com: Democrats Must Become America’s Anti-Gerrymandering Party
American democracy is not working. We have a president who lost the popular vote by almost 3 million ballots, a Congress that reflects gerrymandered district lines rather than the will of the people and a voting system that discourages rather than encourages the high turnouts that are needed to establish a genuinely representative democracy.

The Republican Party, which has benefited from this dysfunction, is in no rush to change things.
[...]
For the Democrats, there are two ways to address the crisis. First, they can carry on as they always have and hope that they get better at being an opposition party within a fundamentally flawed system. Second, they could propose to reform the system in ways that would begin to realize the promise of competitive elections and popular democracy.

Rep. Don Beyer has chosen the bolder route. Last week, the Virginia Democrat proposed the Fair Representation Act, a plan to democratize congressional elections with a bold reform that could also be used to bring real competition to state legislative contests.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:02 AM on July 12, 2017 [88 favorites]


with some bullshit tautology like "he's just a business guy, that's how things are done in business".

Also, things like nature are for librul commie snowflakes.
posted by acb at 8:05 AM on July 12, 2017


The Wray hearing so far is a total farce. Even the Democrats are acting like the vote is a foregone conclusion. Wray looking likely to have significant Democratic support. Some oversight of the replacement of the man investigating the President of the United States for, yes, treason. That's what it is in the popular usage, regardless of the statutes that would ultimately be used in a hypothetical prosecution. And we should us the accurate rhetoric, as should our elected Democrats.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:07 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Sen. Graham is going ham on the Don Jr. emails during the Wray hearing right now. Reading them out, being pretty goddamned forceful.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:07 AM on July 12, 2017 [19 favorites]


That's Donald Trump's entire life, and (one way or another) it made him President of the United States. I wouldn't change course if I were him, either.

Past Performance Is Not Indicative of Future Results.

(Fax your senator, call your rep, get involved, resist, and so on and so on.)
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:08 AM on July 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


can't sleep, trump will eat me

These threads have turned out to be my best way of following the nefarious weirdness. I don't always have time to read everything in the thread, much less everything linked, but I can always scan the most recent fifty comments and feel in touch, even if I don't always have a grip.
posted by kingless at 8:09 AM on July 12, 2017 [13 favorites]


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can bring peace to the middle east
And maybe cure some cancers in the bargain,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you can get away with treason, my son!
posted by Naberius at 8:10 AM on July 12, 2017 [13 favorites]


Osita Newanevu, Politico: Did the Clinton Campaign Really Collude With Ukraine?
It’s important to remember that what’s ultimately concerning about Russiagate is the possibility that the Trump campaign—including staffers now employed in the White House by the president—worked with a hostile government whose leaders attempted to influence and disrupt the election with cyberattacks. The Chalupa story is about officials in an embassy passing along opposition research to a Democratic operative and reporters. The two episodes are not close to being the same, but that fact obviously won’t stop Trump’s supporters from deploying the story for yet another round of Clinton whataboutism.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:11 AM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


Osita Newanevu, Politico: Did the Clinton Campaign Really Collude With Ukraine?

The Post comes to the same conclusion.
The short-hand version of this story — Russia helped Trump, but Ukraine helped Clinton! — suffers badly from a collapse of scale.

While the Politico story does detail apparent willingness among embassy staffers to help Chalupa and also more broadly documents ways in which Ukrainian officials appeared to prefer Clinton’s candidacy, what’s missing is evidence of a concerted effort driven by Kiev.

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed his intelligence agencies to hack into and release private information from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. That effort included hackers from two different intelligence agencies which spent months inside the DNC network before releasing thousands of pages of documents to the public.

What’s more, they coordinated a widespread campaign to amplifying unflattering stories about Clinton and promote Trump. Russia also repeatedly probed American election systems, prompting an unusual warning to states from the federal government.

American intelligence agencies saw signs that people allied with Trump’s campaign may have been aiding the Russians in that effort. That’s why this is all being discussed right now, of course, since Trump Jr.’s emails draw the clearest line between the Russians and the campaign we’ve yet seen. The FBI began a counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s meddling a year ago.

By contrast, Politico’s report details the work of one person who was researching Manafort with help from inside the Ukrainian Embassy and who, at some undetermined point, provided info to the Clinton campaign, though she worked for the DNC as a consultant until shortly before the party conventions. That, coupled with the Manafort ledger revelation, is the full scope of the Ukrainian plot that’s been revealed. A weak link to the Ukrainians and a weaker link to the Clinton campaign.
posted by chris24 at 8:19 AM on July 12, 2017 [24 favorites]


I don't know if it matters in terms of election law, but it seems to me that there's a pretty clear difference between getting information on an election opponent's activities conducted in concert with a foreign government, which would necessarily be known mainly (if not exclusively) by members of that government, versus a foreign government hacking into a campaign's U.S. computers and coordinating release of the ill-gotten documents with that candidate's opponent. The former wouldn't be shady at all if it were 100% domestic -- for instance, Obama's 2012 campaign digging into Romney's history at Bain – but the hacking would still be a huge scandal if we found out that the Trump campaign was actively soliciting help from U.S.-based Anonymous members or similar.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:32 AM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


Josh Marshall in TPM: The Vipers and the Derp*
First we learn that the initial response from Donald Trump Jr to the Saturday (first) Times article was crafted by the a group of the President’s advisors on Air Force One on the return from Europe. The President signed off on the final version. The President’s son is purportedly set apart from the daily affairs of the White House running the President’s business empire. Why is the President’s White House team answering press stories on his behalf? That seems like a pretty good question. More practically though, if nothing else, this appears to implicate the President in the false claims made to the Times for the first story. [...]

What I’m lead to understand is that [Jared Kushner] might think that putting Don Jr in the spotlight, at the center of the story, would in some way help him, push him into the background and thus take pressure off him. Does that make any sense? Not really. But remember, Kushner thought firing James Comey was a good idea. With Kushner, Don Jr and the rest of these guys, I have a persistent sense that they don’t quite grasp the seriousness of the situation they’re in. This is not like a media war in New York City where you can land a blow by placing a nasty story in The New York Post or bludgeon your enemies by buying your own paper. Big, sprawling criminal investigations of this sort rumble on in perfect indifference to whether or not you won the morning or killed it in ten different news cycles. [...]

Let me add some additional detail which sheds some light on this. You can see here that Kasowitz and the President’s legal team believe Kushner is trying to protect himself at the President’s expense. Yet, despite this, Kushner is preventing them from adequately defending the President by using familial proximity to influence him. [...]

This is all a hall of mirrors. It’s impossible to tell with any real reliability who is doing what to whom. What’s clear is that this is a notional ‘team’ which appears to be in some key ways as afraid of each other as they are of the prosecutors on their trail. That clearly is not a good recipe for any kind of concerted action that could limit legal exposure. At the end of the day though these folks are in trouble because, almost certainly, they have various kinds of misconduct to hide. So all the musical chairs and mutual knifing probably won’t over time prevent their wrongdoing from being revealed.
These intellectual all-stars have gotten away with so much shady bullshit over the years, that they think they're going to lessen the heat by screwing each other over in the media. Thing is, though, they're all tied together. I mean, remember Eric Trump's whiny tweet about how they are all so close and always stick together? Well dawg, that sort of statement is why it's impossible to believe that your jackass father was totally clueless about his son, campaign chairman, and son-in-law meeting with Kremlin lawyer Natlia Veselnitskaya to discuss obtaining damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

The amount of stupid would be hilarious if weren't for the wickedness and cruelty.

*Not fond of the ableism in the title.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 8:33 AM on July 12, 2017 [44 favorites]


Aras Agalarov on Russian radio today: The letter @DonaldJTrumpJr posted is "all made up. I don't know these people." (via @maxseddon)

Of course, as is pointed out in the replies: Um, not so sure about that.
posted by pjenks at 8:35 AM on July 12, 2017 [24 favorites]


Here's the law in question: 52 U.S. Code § 30121 - Contributions and donations by foreign nationals

(a) Prohibition
It shall be unlawful for—
(1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make—
(A)
a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election;
(B)
a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party;
...
(2)
a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1) from a foreign national.
(b) “Foreign national” defined
As used in this section, the term “foreign national” means—
(1)
a foreign principal, as such term is defined by section 611(b) of title 22, except that the term “foreign national” shall not include any individual who is a citizen of the United States; or
(2)
an individual who is not a citizen of the United States or a national of the United States...


The Clinton campaign members are not foreign nationals, so they can't be guilty of (a)(1).

Alexandra Chalupa is an American citizen. EVEN IF the Clinton campaign solicited something of value from her, they cannot be guilty of (a)(2).

Equally, if Trump Jr had solicited something of value from a US citizen, he would be in the clear with regard to this law. But Natalia Veselnitskaya is not a US citizen. (And nor is Rob Goldstone.)

Am I missing something?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:40 AM on July 12, 2017 [13 favorites]


> This is all a hall of mirrors.

I initially misread this as "hell of mirrors," and who can blame me?
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:42 AM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


No, seriously, Team Trump is going to try to brazen out the Donald Jr. scandal by repeated denials because that's what worked for them in the past.


And I, for one, think this is exactly what they should keep doing. On TV, on the Twitters, into microphones everywhere. In courtrooms, in prison cells, everywhere.
posted by Rykey at 8:43 AM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


Vile Nazi bastard Rep. Steve King: Use food stamp funds on border wall

I wonder if Steve King understands that food stamps have a backend effect as a farm subsidy. Eliminate SNAP and you have 45 million people cutting their grocery budgets which will have a direct effect on commodity prices. It's not like having 1/8 of the country less able to buy food will affect Iowa or anything.
posted by nathan_teske at 8:45 AM on July 12, 2017 [83 favorites]


Steve King is the kind of straight-up KKK-level racist who would gladly condemn poor whites to starvation if it does more to kill black people---I mean, "restore U.S. demographics."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:47 AM on July 12, 2017 [35 favorites]


A trio of NPR links on Wray:
- Watch Live: FBI Director Nominee Christopher Wray's nomination hearing (includes live-blogging summary)
- 5 Questions For FBI Director Nominee Christopher Wray (questions are generally answered with information from the public record, often including formal comments on these general questions, as well as summaries of responses from Wray's friends and colleagues)
1. Will you be loyal to the justice system or to the president?
2. Speaking of Russia, your law firm, King & Spalding, has represented clients in that country. Please describe your involvement.
In a dozen years of private law practice, Wray has built up a long list of clients, from major banks and corporations to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. His law firm, King & Spalding, has represented Russian oil interests. But lawyers there said Wray had no involvement with those Russian clients. Wray already has signed an ethics agreement with the Justice Department. That paperwork tallied Wray's annual takeaway from the law firm partnership at $9 million. [But why not pick someone who hasn't had even the hint of a business relationship with Russian clients? -ed.]
3. During your tenure at the Justice Department, after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, you were part of a team protecting national security. The American Civil Liberties Union says your name appears 29 times in documents it gathered through the Freedom of Information Act. What was your involvement in the detainee interrogation program and what did you do about abuses?
4. Are you prepared to resign if you see a violation of laws, rules or norms by your superiors at the Justice Department or anyone in the White House?
5. Your predecessor at the FBI, James Comey, has testified the bureau has open investigations in every state into possible threats posed by people radicalized by the Islamic State. What tools would you deploy to attack that threat?
- FBI Director Nominee Christopher Wray Could Help Steady The Bureau Amid Turmoil
Christopher Wray's friends and mentors use one word to describe him: steady.

That trait could come in handy at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where employees have been reeling since President Trump fired Director James Comey two months ago.

Wray, 50, has spent years working in and around the U.S. Justice Department, making national security policy and overseeing cases against corrupt business executives. But he's operated outside the spotlight, by design.
...
This week, the FBI Agents Association agreed, offering its strong support for the nomination. In a statement, president Thomas O'Connor told NPR his organization is "confident that [Wray] understands the nature of investigative work and the centrality of Special Agents to the mission of the FBI."

That's probably because Wray has seen that work from the inside. He served as a federal prosecutor in Atlanta before he moved to Washington for top jobs inside the George W. Bush Justice Department.

Wray was a key part of a team struggling to protect national security after the Sept. 11 attacks, heading to work in the morning before dawn, and hoping that his socks matched once he got to the office.

"Those were very intense times," recalled friend and colleague Andrew Hruska. "We understood that we were handling some of the most significant issues in the country, and Chris was at the epicenter."
Not sure why the folksy "hoping his socks matched" was added in.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:48 AM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Paul Ryan when asked if he would have taken the meeting said "I'm not going to answer hypotheticals". Is that standard I don't want to answer "Hell no" because I don't want to make the president look bad, or is it "This is not actually a hypothetical question and I have done that so I can't just answer no to that question"?
posted by TwoWordReview at 8:50 AM on July 12, 2017 [8 favorites]


Paul Ryan when asked if he would have taken the meeting said "I'm not going to answer hypotheticals". Is that standard I don't want to answer "Hell no" because I don't want to make the president look bad, or is it "This is not actually a hypothetical question and I have done that so I can't just answer no to that question"?

"Omertà means family. Family means nobody gets left behind — or forgotten."
posted by Talez at 8:53 AM on July 12, 2017 [13 favorites]


Paul Ryan when asked if he would have taken the meeting said "I'm not going to answer hypotheticals". Is that standard I don't want to answer "Hell no" because I don't want to make the president look bad, or is it "This is not actually a hypothetical question and I have done that so I can't just answer no to that question"?

@daveweigel: FWIW, Ryan's super PAC made use of info stolen by hackers from the DNC
posted by zombieflanders at 8:54 AM on July 12, 2017 [52 favorites]


likely their names will go to space aboard the next Mars rover.

So we can hope for aliens to assist us eventually.
posted by spitbull at 8:55 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Good news break:
Connecticut Just Banned Civil Forfeiture Without A Criminal Conviction (Institute For Justice)

Many states have curtailed civil forfeiture, and New Mexico has abolished it except for property directly connected to the commission of a crime.

Nice work from foreign agent John Oliver!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:58 AM on July 12, 2017 [100 favorites]


Aras Agalarov on Russian radio today: The letter @DonaldJTrumpJr posted is "all made up. I don't know these people." (via @maxseddon)

Of course, as is pointed out in the replies: Um, not so sure about that.


How do these people not know about photography? Or the ability to print an email, never mind how servers store email. Never mind incidental cameral surveillance, or anything more complex. It strikes me how incredibly insulated they are -- some ordinary schmo having a garden-variety extra-marital affair would be a hundred times better at covering his own tracks.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 9:01 AM on July 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


The presidency is not an entry-level position. Run for mayor first.

I totally agree. I want the constitution changed over it (hahahah), even. Do not run for president with literally no political experience!


The irony is that the founders created the Electoral College for exactly that situation -- nixing an unqualified doofus who managed to get himself elected by popular appeal. 2016 was exactly the situation for which the EC was created, and it failed. It's time for it to go.
posted by Gelatin at 9:01 AM on July 12, 2017 [74 favorites]




Wired has a handy timeline of Goldstone's associations with the Trumps and the Agalarovs, documented with Goldstone's social media posts. The dinner photos with the enormous celebrity portraits are from his posts.
posted by gladly at 9:11 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


> Aras Agalarov on Russian radio today: The letter @DonaldJTrumpJr posted is "all made up. I don't know these people." (via @maxseddon)
Of course, as is pointed out in the replies: Um, not so sure about that.


He knows. They all know. They're just laughing at us.

I've been mulling over how these emails came to light - the NYT cited several insiders "with knowledge of" etc.

One possibility is, of course, rats fleeing the ship, or people pushing the spotlight over towards Jr. so that Kushner can get a reprieve. But that's incredibly short-term stupid thinking - isn't it obvious that when they go down, they'll all go down together? Ok, I know - "stupid" is practically mandated by Trump's razor, and "thinking" is not something this crowd does. Or maybe what's out there is so bad, so treasonous (not literally, whatever) that being out even a tiny bit in front of the heat is worth it.

But the other possibility is that it's all part of the plan - the Russian puppet masters have masterminded Trump's rise, and now they want to reveal his utter clownishness to the world, and rub our noses in it. Ha ha, democracy so great, you elect moron.

Oh well. We are definitely living in interesting times.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:12 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Wray says he "needs to get beefed up on" online terrorist recruitment and the technology they use to do it. He also dodged questions on 702 intercepts because "that was passed after I was there". Seems like the guy we want leading 21st century counter intel.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:16 AM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Wray is there for one reason and one reason only: To fire Mueller and end the Russia investigation.
posted by dirigibleman at 9:21 AM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


Mark Zuckerberg Hits the Road to Meet Regular Folks—With a Few Conditions - WSJ article, not paywalled, I think.

There are quite a few Democratic political operatives named in that piece who are a part of Zuck's team now.
posted by gladly at 9:22 AM on July 12, 2017




T.D. Strange: Seems like the guy we want leading 21st century counter intel.

Or is this an unfortunate case of the perfect being the enemy of the good? Is he good enough to manage the FBI without caving or bending to Trump or any other outside forces, and to learn on the job to understand more of the broad and numerous fronts being managed and methods being used to manage them? I imagine the FBI is broad enough that it's nigh impossible to find someone who knows something about all of it before they're the head of the agency, because people tend to specialize, even if the collaborate with others.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:22 AM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


We are definitely living in interesting times.

On that note, "Shakespeare Performed: Courtyard Theatre’s King Lear with Sheep," which captures the zeitgeist of 2017 almost too well.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:23 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


That Wired timeline is impressive. Thanks for the memories Rob Goldstone and Instagram. One thing I learned: that famous dinner picture with Trump, The Agalarovs, Rob Goldstone, etc is from the Las Vegas Miss USA pageant in 2013 (not Miss Universe in Moscow).
posted by pjenks at 9:26 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Wray is there for one reason and one reason only: To fire Mueller and end the Russia investigation.

He can't. Only the AG can, and since Sessions recused himself, only DAG Rosenstein can. Obviously Trump can fire Rosenstein until he gets to someone in DOJ who will fire Mueller, but FBI Director is not in that chain.
posted by chris24 at 9:26 AM on July 12, 2017 [40 favorites]


Wray is there for one reason and one reason only: To fire Mueller and end the Russia investigation.

He can't. Only the AG can, and since Sessions recused himself, only DAG Rosenstein can.


I would not bet the money in my pocket on anyone in the White House knowing that, and I'm not even entirely certain I have any money in my pocket.
posted by Etrigan at 9:29 AM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


gladly: "Wired has a handy timeline of Goldstone's associations with the Trumps and the Agalarovs, documented with Goldstone's social media posts."

I'll note that the article is by Ashley Feinberg, the former Gawker and Gizmodo writer who uncovered James Comey's secret Twitter account and who recently joined up with Wired. If these dunderheads have left anything more incriminating lying around on their Instachats, Facepages, or what have you, I really hope she's the one to sniff it out.
posted by mhum at 9:30 AM on July 12, 2017 [18 favorites]




Russia’s Trump
posted by robbyrobs at 9:34 AM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


The irony is that the founders created the Electoral College for exactly that situation -- nixing an unqualified doofus who managed to get himself elected by popular appeal. 2016 was exactly the situation for which the EC was created, and it failed. It's time for it to go.

It was adopted in no small part to expressly give more power to slave-holding states, which is reason enough why it should go. Quote James Madison at the federal convention of 1787:

"The people at large was in [my] opinion the fittest in itself [to appoint an executive]. It would be as likely as any that could be devised to produce an Executive Magistrate of distinguished Character. The people generally could only know & vote for some Citizen whose merits had rendered him an object of general attention & esteem. There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections."

Discussed here, the founders don't seem too worried about the wisdom of the population.
posted by Emily's Fist at 9:38 AM on July 12, 2017 [18 favorites]


But the other possibility is that it's all part of the plan - the Russian puppet masters have masterminded Trump's rise, and now they want to reveal his utter clownishness to the world, and rub our noses in it. Ha ha, democracy so great, you elect moron.

I'm sure that Putin chose Trump as his tool (and there must have been a number of other, equally qualified, equally pliable and less colourful candidates who, in the course of a few years, could have been built up for the role) precisely to add insult to injury.
posted by acb at 9:40 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Fluttering Hellfire's cake wager: One evening in the next two weeks, Russia O'clock will be Rod Rosenstein getting fired for not agreeing to fire Mueller. If he's still employed by 7/28, then I'll cake it up.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:43 AM on July 12, 2017 [16 favorites]


It was adopted in no small part to expressly give more power to slave-holding states, which is reason enough why it should go.

Federalist 68 (probably Hamilton) holds out the nobler reason for the E.C.'s existence, though. There's no reason both can't be true.
posted by gauche at 9:44 AM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


Discussed here, the founders don't seem too worried about the wisdom of the population.
Indeed, as Zinn et al, have recounted. the construction of our government was a brilliant mechanism for circumventing the wisdom of the population.
posted by rc3spencer at 9:49 AM on July 12, 2017


And here we have the guy who defeated one of the two Jewish GOP members of the House referring to a Jewish Senator's economic positions with a centuries-old anti-Semitic reference.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:49 AM on July 12, 2017 [12 favorites]


The numbering and allotment of electors was designed to protect slave states, but the decision not to bind electors to specific candidates is all about Hamilton's EC-as-firewall idea. If they just wanted to empower the South they'd have made our current state of affairs, where a vote for a particular elector is really a proxy vote for a certain candidate, explicit in the Constitution rather than giving the electors any pretense at independence.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:51 AM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


Feinstein is predictably voting yes on Wray. He may get unanimous confirmation after Trump fired Comey. Our Democrats have leaned nothing, even still.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:53 AM on July 12, 2017 [36 favorites]


WSJ article, not paywalled, I think.

Paywalled.
posted by Mister Bijou at 9:58 AM on July 12, 2017


Pat Robertson is claiming he's taping an interview with Trump today to air tomorrow. You know, just a casual interview with Pat "blame feminists and gay people for 9/11 and abortion for Katrina" Robertson.
posted by zachlipton at 10:04 AM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


Trump goes AWOL, hasn’t shown up to work all week

Day after day, Donald Trump's schedule remains empty. He hasn't made an official, stateside public appearance in more than a week.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 10:05 AM on July 12, 2017 [42 favorites]


Shoot, sorry. Here's a link to the writer's tweet with a link. (Zuckerberg WSJ article)
posted by gladly at 10:06 AM on July 12, 2017


How to Talk to Your Teen About Colluding With Russia [fake, McSweeney's]
posted by Mchelly at 10:08 AM on July 12, 2017 [12 favorites]


‘Category 5 hurricane’: White House under siege by Trump Jr.’s Russia revelations
One White House official went so far as to stop communicating with the president’s embattled son, although this official spoke sympathetically about his plight, casting Trump Jr. as someone who just wants to hunt, fish and run his family’s real estate business.

“The kid is an honest kid,” said one friend of Trump Jr. “The White House should’ve never let that story go out on the president’s son … What he’s upset about was that it was a minor meeting and the media glare — anything that’s Russia-related, gets picked up the way roaches get caught in a roach motel.”
I didn't say Junior was a cockroach, you said Junior was a cockroach.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:08 AM on July 12, 2017 [11 favorites]


Trump goes AWOL, hasn’t shown up to work all week

He's been very busy not watching TV.
posted by notyou at 10:08 AM on July 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


Trump goes AWOL...

Trump has not given a full-fledged press conference since February, and has not sat down for a one-on-one news interview with a legitimate news source since May 11. Just before Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May, he also disappeared from public for nearly a week.

Huh.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:10 AM on July 12, 2017 [32 favorites]


> Our Democrats have leaned nothing, even still.

They're all pals, and nobody wants to cause a fuss. That would be untoward.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:11 AM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


The Trump Jr meeting was going on at 4:20 on 6/9

"We'd like to discuss the, uh, noble cause of child adoptions and how they've been so unfairly affected by the Magnitsky act..."

"Oh, you guys and your crazy Russian gibberish, anyway check this out I booked our meeting for 4:20 on 6/9 LOL!"
posted by Behemoth at 10:12 AM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


But the other possibility is that it's all part of the plan - the Russian puppet masters have masterminded Trump's rise, and now they want to reveal his utter clownishness to the world, and rub our noses in it. Ha ha, democracy so great, you elect moron.

I've been thinking this for a while. Who leaked the photos of Trump yukking it up in the Oval Office with Lavrov and Kislyak? Who leaked the photo of Ivanka filling in for Trump at the G20?
posted by SpaceBass at 10:13 AM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


He's really bad at interviews and really really bad at press conferences and so maybe they've taken that away from him.

No matter what, though? He won't let them take his social media away.
posted by notyou at 10:13 AM on July 12, 2017


Black Twitter has been pointing out that calling 39-year-old Jr. a "kid" is uniquely gross given that black children are often assumed to be older/more threatening than they are, like Tamir Rice.
posted by emjaybee at 10:14 AM on July 12, 2017 [127 favorites]


Trump Jr. as someone who just wants to hunt, fish and run his family’s real estate business.

Thanks for the reminder that since elephants are on the short list of animals clearly displaying rudimentary sentience/sapience, Don Jr. essentially commits murder for fun.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:14 AM on July 12, 2017 [31 favorites]


can we use "idiot manchild?"
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:15 AM on July 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


"Grown man irrevocably warped by nepotism and a conspicuous absence of consequences"?
posted by Autumnheart at 10:21 AM on July 12, 2017 [8 favorites]


WaPo: State Department spent more than $15,000 for rooms at new Trump hotel in Vancouver
The State Department spent more than $15,000 to book 19 rooms at the new Trump hotel in Vancouver when members of President Trump’s family headlined the grand opening of the tower in late February.

The hotel bookings — which were released to The Washington Post under a Freedom of Information Act request — reflect the first evidence of State Department expenditures at a Trump-branded property since President Trump took office in January.
posted by zachlipton at 10:23 AM on July 12, 2017 [60 favorites]


Jeez, we need another Special Prosecutor just for the Emoluments violations. And a third for the charity fraud.

I mean, there is already ample evidence of those high crimes and misdemeanors, no?
posted by darkstar at 10:33 AM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


State Department spent more than $15,000 for rooms at new Trump hotel in Vancouver

I recently spent a week in Vancouver, BC and the only blemish on an otherwise lovely vacation was one morning stumbling unawares upon that fucking hotel and its gaudy-ass shit stain of a logo. It quite nearly put me off my delicious, delicious Japadog. (I somehow still managed to eat all of it.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:40 AM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo: The Big Trumpers Still Don’t Get The Trouble They’re In

Why is this the case? I think it’s acculturation. They’re born to invulnerability. And by and large their life experience supports that and rewards it.
...
[Kushner] was a driving force spurring Donald Trump to fire James Comey, which landed both of them in an investigation for obstruction of justice. He thought that was a good idea, when in fact it was an insane idea. During James Comey’s high profile testimony after his dismissal, Sen John Cornyn of Texas pressed Comey on why he thought there was a political motive behind his firing since it was so obvious that firing Comey would inflame the Russia probe rather than make it go away. Cornyn has been one of President Trump’s most reliably and lickspittleish defenders. But in this case he was right, at least in the narrow sense of the logic of his argument. But people don’t always act logically. Kushner and Trump are impulsive, aggressive and headstrong and think they’re invulnerable. It’s the kind of power play that probably makes a lot of sense on their own stomping grounds.
...
A big federal investigation like this is like a broad lava flow. It moves slowly but it is unstoppable. It burns and crushes things in its wake. And things too big or unburnable it just covers over. The little antics and PR gambits mainly do not matter. Key players in this mix don’t seem to appreciate that.

posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:40 AM on July 12, 2017 [43 favorites]


An interesting quote from the NYT piece by Peter Baker and Maggie HabermanRancor at White House as Russia Story Refuses to Let the Page Turn:
The Russia story has become the brier patch from which the president seemingly cannot escape. It dominated his trip to Europe last week and, after he leaves on Wednesday night for a couple of days in France, it may dominate that trip as well.
I would not be surprised if another big story hit after AF1 has taken off tonight--as Adam Goldman tweeted, he's "still reporting".
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 10:42 AM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


I would not be surprised if another big story hit after AF1 has taken off tonight--as Adam Goldman tweeted, he's "still reporting".
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 12:42 on July 12 [1 favorite +] [!]


oh please oh please oh please
posted by fluttering hellfire at 10:48 AM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


He won't let them take his social media away.

This remark has been haunting me all day. I'm right now in a situation where we have collectively intervened to care for a mentally ill relative. They are not at all demented, but they are self-harming, and the way the law works here, we cannot legally do anything unless it there is an immediate danger to the public or other individuals. To prove the self-harm would take months. We did it anyway, hoping that our relative will accept the fact and luckily they did. But their arguments were so like Trump's that it is triggering and I am crouched in a corner with 3 fleece blankets.

An old person can harm themself and others without being demented. They can be delusional, paranoid, addicted, psychotic and just plain stupid, but if they are not demented, the law of the land where I live is that they are free to do whatever they want. I don't know how it is in the US, but here only dementia, brain death or voluntary permission can lead to custodianship. This is good in principle, but I know many people are dealing with huge dilemmas because of it. What if your 30-yo son is schizophrenic and living on the street? What if your husband has a gambling addiction?

Anyway, to get back on track, when I read that Trump had said that, I felt with his family, realizing they are in a similar situation. Then of course I realized they are all hell-bent on making the most of it as long as he lives and that they are also dumb as fuck, and also that he is killing people and that should be a legal cause for intervention. But that's there.
posted by mumimor at 10:50 AM on July 12, 2017 [19 favorites]


Hey- so, remember that bizarre network traffic between Alfa Bank & Trump Tower? That was occurring regularly between May 4 until September 23.

I did a little googling & came up with this google doc put together by Scott J. Dworkin, Co-Founder & Senior Advisor, The Democratic Coalition on February 20, 2017:

Trump Dossier Analysis: Corroborating Evidence in the Trump/Russia Dossier

Has this been linked/discussed before? It seems to be even more compelling now that figures like Aras Agalarov are receiving attention (or even, in light of Trump's retaliation against Qatar).

On the other hand, I'm not sure how much of the dossier has been debunked or if it was determined to be counter-intelligence, etc.

Thoughts?
posted by narwhal at 10:58 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


The Big Trumpers Still Don’t Get The Trouble They’re In

They’re counting on getting pardoned. And they’re probably not wrong.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 11:02 AM on July 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


Hey- so, remember that bizarre network traffic between Alfa Bank & Trump Tower?

err . . i think that was innocuous marketing traffic between Alfa Bank and a Philadelphia server farm for Cendyn and Listrak right? Emptywheel and others have covered this.
posted by rc3spencer at 11:02 AM on July 12, 2017




A reminder of other political actions: today is a day of action to protect Net Neutrality, which you might notice thanks to the banner that currently reads "US Mefites can tell the FCC to save Net Neutrality" (links to DearFCC.org, which LobsterMitten noted in MeTa is EFF's website, but it only mails the FCC, not Congress).

If anyone wants to put up a broader post, they can and get that post linked there. 5 Calls has a script to call Ajit Pai, FCC Chairman, the man who could destroy the open internet, as labeled by a headline on The Guardian.

Related twist: AT&T says it will support a massive protest to save ‘net neutrality’ even though it sued to kill today’s net-neutrality rules (Jeff Dunn for Business Insider, July 11, 2017)
posted by filthy light thief at 11:07 AM on July 12, 2017 [20 favorites]


The White House has put out a video to attack the CBO (your friendly reminder that the CBO Director was handpicked by Tom Price). It spells "inaccurately" wrong.
posted by zachlipton at 11:09 AM on July 12, 2017 [38 favorites]


It spells "inaccurately" wrong.

But isn't spelling "inaccurately" correctly the greater wrong?
posted by Etrigan at 11:12 AM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


From Brad Sherman's statement: "Every day Democrats, Republicans, and the entire world are shocked by the latest example of America’s amateur President. Ignorance accompanied by a refusal to learn. Lack of impulse control, accompanied by a refusal to have his staff control his impulses. We’re no longer surprised by any action, no matter how far below the dignity of the office—and no matter how dangerous to the country."

This is a happy surprise. Brad has been pretty milquetoast and I've been quite annoyed (and annoying) at him. Pleased to see him pulling no punches.
posted by Sophie1 at 11:13 AM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


Thanks, rc3spencer- do you happen to have a link to the followup reporting that determined that? I hate that it takes so much work to keep the "real" evidence of conspiracy distinct from the "fake." Clearly, I missed the epilogue to that particular story..
posted by narwhal at 11:14 AM on July 12, 2017


With regards to the nonchalant moving of goalposts from meetings -> coordination -> collusion -> "treason" (seeking out assistance from a hostile foreign government to change the outcome of an election) -> Treason (as described in The Constitution), an LGM commenter makes a good point:
We should also remember that the most destructive war in American history was committed by American traitors that weren't charged as traitors at its conclusion.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:17 AM on July 12, 2017 [68 favorites]




I'm pretty sure the House Democratic leadership will try to hold off on any move against Trump personally until they get Mueller's report. Keep the powder dry until you can maybe win a Senate trial, and finally find out everything.

But under the Constitution, any Federal official can be impeached, and removed from office and/or disqualified from any future office. This was the traditional use of impeachment back in Ye Olde 17th Century England, to rid the king of "bad advisers". In the US, typically crooked Cabinet members or advisers have the decency to quit or get fired, but that doesn't seem likely here.

It might be worth somebody writing up some articles of impeachment against Jared. As a bonus, the pardon power doesn't apply in cases of impeachment. Even Trump's theoretical allies are probably getting tired of seeing his son-in-law in the White House.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 11:22 AM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


More on DeVos and the Dept of Education going full MRA:
In an interview previewing her plans, [Candice] Jackson, who heads the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights and organized Thursday’s sessions, made clear that she believes investigations under the 1972 law known as Title IX have gone deeply awry. A sexual assault survivor herself, she said she sees “a red flag that something’s not quite right” — and that the rights of accused students have too often been ignored.

Hundreds of cases are still pending, some for years, she said, because investigators were “specifically told to keep looking until you find the violation” on college campuses even after they found none — a charge her critics strongly deny.

As of Monday, the office had 496 open sexual assault cases, and the average length of a case is 703 days, according to the department. The longest pending higher education cases, against the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Arizona State University, have been open for more than five years. The office is required to complete 80 percent of its investigations within 180 days.

Investigative processes have not been “fairly balanced between the accusing victim and the accused student,” Ms. Jackson argued, and students have been branded rapists “when the facts just don’t back that up.” In most investigations, she said, there’s “not even an accusation that these accused students overrode the will of a young woman.”

“Rather, the accusations — 90 percent of them — fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk,’ ‘we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right,’” Ms. Jackson said.
[...]
Catherine E. Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s civil rights office from August 2013 through December 2016, called Ms. Jackson’s claims that investigators were told to fish for violations “patently, demonstrably untrue.” For the department to distinguish between violent and nonviolent assaults in investigations, she added, “portrays a profound misunderstanding of Title IX.”

Ms. Lhamon said investigations under her tenure turned up “jaw-dropping degrees of noncompliance” with sexual assault law.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:24 AM on July 12, 2017 [26 favorites]


Last thread suggested otherwise but some from grain-of-salt sources. Traffic analysis implying that the servers were automatically replicating SQL databases; however, the nature of the data is unknown and could theoretically just be the marketing data described in rc3spencer's link, not necessarily the hacked voter data those articles imply.
posted by CyberSlug Labs at 11:25 AM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


> It might be worth somebody writing up some articles of impeachment against Jared. As a bonus, the pardon power doesn't apply in cases of impeachment. Even Trump's theoretical allies are probably getting tired of seeing his son-in-law in the White House.

Yeah, but there's also value in having all of these bad actors staying where they are with their knives out and pointed at each other. There is very little chance this conspiracy stops at the Jared/Junior level, so it's better to have them in play, potentially stabbing one another / daddy / other Trumpists in the back and leaking about it, since that's the only window we have into things right now.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:26 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


If you show up you can be recruited. Guess the number on that old saw, "80% of success is showing up" will be going up.

Is this what will spare the queen the ordeal of a carriage ride with 45? It seems god did save the queen.
posted by tilde at 11:28 AM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


"Innaccurate" is actually a colloquialism from New York. See, innkeepers were widely known to cheat their customers when tallying up their bills for room and board, so people would commonly refer to a suspect calculation as "inn accurate" to mean it was actually not accurate. Anyway, how 'bout those steamed hams?
posted by contraption at 11:31 AM on July 12, 2017 [16 favorites]




I was trying to refresh my memory on the final conclusion about the fishy server and found this:

On Monday, Slate published an explosive story alleging that Trump Tower contained a secret server that was secretly sending secret messages to Russia’s largest bank...

But on Tuesday afternoon, The Intercept poured cold water on Slate’s report, making the case that Trump Tower was sending spam, not top secret Manchurian Candidate code messages, to Alfa Bank.

I wasn't as skeptical of The Intercept's motives back then. The fact that it was that particular organization that rushed in to provide an innocent explanation is much more interesting now.
posted by diogenes at 11:35 AM on July 12, 2017 [52 favorites]


As nice as the thought is, I still don't see Trump being impeached or really anything much coming of Uday's admission of guilt.

The problem, at core, is that even our most wildly optimistic models don't see us getting 66 firm, solid, Democrats in the Senate.

And I am very close to entirely convinced that the Congressional Republicans will not vote to remove Trump either via impeachment or the 25th Amendment literally no matter what he does.

I'm not just being gloomy here for the sake of it. I'm convinced of this because I'm convinced that the Congressional Republicans are acting in a deeply irrational manner due to a long standing, unresolved, grudge against the Democrats for being right about Nixon and being forced to oust him at due to Democratic pressure.

They will come up with all manner of rationalization and justification for what is, I think, ultimately a deeply rooted emotional decision. The Democrats won against Nixon, and the Republican movers and shakers still hate the Democrats with a burning passion for that. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was, at heart, an act of vengeance against the Democrats for having ousted Nixon.

I don't know if their deep need for revenge would have been satisfied if Clinton had been driven from office, but I do know that when he weathered everything they could throw at him and emerged more popular than ever it embittered the Republicans deeply and reaffirmed to them that no Republican must ever suffer Nixon's fate again.

I think there is a deep, subconscious, need among the Republican movers and shakers to do two things: get revenge on the world (and the Democrats especially) for being right about Nixon, and to keep themselves from suffering that loss of prestige and face they suffered with Nixon ever again.

For that reason I am convinced, no exaggeration, no hyperbole, that Donald Trump could murder someone in cold blood on national TV and the Republicans would not impeach him. They'd exhaust themselves spinning, rationalizing, and justifying, but in the end it's about emotion. They cannot, they will not, suffer again the hurt of having one of their Presidents ousted.

That is their true line in the sand, and I think that desperate need to avoid repeating the failure of Nixon is greater even than their desire to be reelected.
posted by sotonohito at 11:38 AM on July 12, 2017 [43 favorites]


Donald Trump Jr.’s Emails Sound Like the Steele Dossier
One interesting element of the Donald Trump Jr. emails now in the news is that they track with parts of the Steele memos.

In that first memo, dated June 20, Steele wrote that Trump “and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.” The Trump Jr. email chain began on June 3, 2016.
...
There has been no confirmation that Putin steadily fed information to Trump’s camp or that a Kremlin-controlled anti-Clinton dossier existed. But one of Steele’s overarching points in this memo was that Putin’s regime was funneling derogatory Clinton material to Trump. The Trump Jr. emails suggest that the Russian government was aiming to do that and that the Trump campaign was willing and eager to receive assistance from Putin. So Donald Trump Jr. has done what Steele could not: produce evidence that the Trump campaign was—or wanted to be—in cahoots with a foreign adversary to win the White House.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:38 AM on July 12, 2017 [31 favorites]


The FBI's counterintelligence team was still investigating the server issue as of early March.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:38 AM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


Associated Press: Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are questioning the Trump administration's decision to settle a money laundering case with a Russian real estate firm in light of revelations that the company was represented by the same Russian lawyer who met last year with President Donald Trump's son.

The letter sent by House Judiciary ranking member John Conyers and other Democrats asks whether lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was involved in settlement negotiations between Russian real estate firm Prevezon Holdings Ltd. and the Justice Department. Prevezon agreed last May to pay $6 million to the government to avoid a trial on charges the firm laundered proceeds from a $230 million tax fraud.

Veselnitskaya represented Dennis Katsyv, Prevezon's owner. Katsyv backed a lobbying campaign last year aimed at scuttling Magnitsky Act sanctions against Russian interests.

posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:42 AM on July 12, 2017 [12 favorites]


I think there is a deep, subconscious, need among the Republican movers and shakers to do two things: get revenge on the world (and the Democrats especially) for being right about Nixon everything, and to keep themselves from suffering that loss of prestige and face they suffered with Nixon ever again.

Recall also that by the end of his second term, George W. Bush was widely seen as bumbling and incompetent, so much so that the 27% that still believed he had done a good job had to rebrand themselves as the "Tea Party." And Bush was followed by Obama, a smooth, intelligent statesman that the Republicans hate with a bloody passion. I don't think Republicans outside the crazification factor have much illusion about history being kind to Trump, either.

In a way, Trump's obvious inferiority complex resonates perfectly with the Republican id.
posted by Gelatin at 11:43 AM on July 12, 2017 [17 favorites]


Sophie1: Congressman Sherman Introduces Article of Impeachment: Obstruction of Justice

This sounds like a big deal. Is this a big deal?
posted by rabbitrabbit at 11:45 AM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


CNN on the Prevezon settlement, from May.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:46 AM on July 12, 2017


This sounds like a big deal. Is this a big deal?

It's as much a big deal as the House voting to repeal Obamacare while Obama was still president.
posted by Talez at 11:47 AM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


This sounds like a big deal. Is this a big deal?

This is how the part that is a big deal, starts.
posted by Sophie1 at 11:49 AM on July 12, 2017 [12 favorites]


I think we've passed 20,000 leagues below Watergate depths.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:53 AM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


Are there any issues with double jeopardy in impeachment? I'm guessing no, since it's not subject to judicial review.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:54 AM on July 12, 2017


This sounds like a big deal. Is this a big deal?

It's about as big a deal as it is likely to pass.
posted by FakeFreyja at 11:54 AM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Are there any issues with double jeopardy in impeachment?

I'm confident in predicting Trump will commit more impeachable offenses from this point forward as well.
posted by Gelatin at 11:55 AM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


I anticipate every Republican and some Democrats voting against impeachment with the explanation that they want to wait for Mueller's investigation to conclude.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:56 AM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


I anticipate Ryan not permitting the motion for impeachment to even get a vote. Until we win in 2018, no motion to impeach will get a vote.
posted by sotonohito at 12:01 PM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


It's in no way a big deal, guys.

It will be a big deal when Republicans introduce articles of impeachment or Democrats control the House and introduce articles of impeachment.
posted by Justinian at 12:03 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Looks like there will be a vote:

The Hill: Under House rules, any member can force a vote on what’s known as a “privileged” resolution that argues an issue concerns the dignity and integrity of the institution.

House Republicans could easily reject the resolution, but it would put all members on record regarding Trump's impeachment.

posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:03 PM on July 12, 2017 [24 favorites]


This one won't get a vote. But if Paul Ryan thought the Senate was ready to remove both Trump and Pence, he would have the Presidency to gain by allowing it forward.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 12:04 PM on July 12, 2017


I think the important thing is that these articles at least open the door to further articles being introduced as things develop.

For all of the noise that Republicans made about wanting to impeach Obama for this/that/the other, they never actually DID anything about it because they wanted to keep him around as a badguy for fundraising purposes, and also because most of them understood deep down that they had no actual leg to stand on for impeachment. No actual articles were written up, let alone introduced.

The very fact that Sherman and Green have at least bothered to write this shit up means that we can start building a serious case, not just for impeaching Trump, but for electorally removing obstructionist Republicans who refuse to admit the obvious reality of our current situation.
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:10 PM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


CBN is previewing their Trump interview (his first with someone who doesn't work for Fox News in months) and I'm not linking directly to Pat Robertson's network, but Bradd Jaffy's summary really seems to say it all: "Trump says Putin wanted Hillary to win because Trump is big on the military and energy and Hillary wanted windmills" [excerpt behind link]

In other news, a guy is holding up a "Buy Bitcoin" sign he's scrawled on a notepad behind Janet Yellen as she testifies.
posted by zachlipton at 12:10 PM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Nice to see that Pat Robertson is almost dead.
posted by pjenks at 12:13 PM on July 12, 2017 [41 favorites]


they never actually DID anything about it because they wanted to keep him around as a badguy for fundraising purposes, and also because most of them understood deep down that they had no actual leg to stand on for impeachment

And ultimately, Obama was not impeached because swing voters didn't want him to be impeached, and the Republicans calculated that attempting to do so would cost them support. If they had calculated it would help them, they would have done so, even though they would have no chance of a two-thirds Senate conviction. Impeachment is a political matter.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:14 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


To be honest, if we're comparing the competence of the Trump family to Mafia families, real and fictional, I think they fall somewhere between Fat Tony's mafia crew on The Simpsons and the mafia bots on Futurama.
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:16 PM on July 12, 2017 [16 favorites]


The very fact that Sherman and Green have at least bothered to write this shit up means that we can start building a serious case, not just for impeaching Trump, but for electorally removing obstructionist Republicans who refuse to admit the obvious reality of our current situation.

That's every Republican -- down to dog catcher -- until proven otherwise. In the so-called "Tea Party" elections, Republicans gained a significant advantage by creating the perception among feckless Democrats -- but I repeat myself -- that they had to run away from Obama and his signature legislative achievement, the ACA (a feat that even Bill Clinton couldn't manage, given lockstep and bad-faith Republican opposition).

For every election going forward, Republicans need to be forced to choose between backing a corrupt, incompetent criminal or betraying their rabid base (and the ultra-wealthy interests that fund the rabid base's propaganda mill). Hold their feet to the fire: Party or country?

And Trump Junior's little treason email just gave the Democrats plenty of ammunition. To coin a phrase, I love it!
posted by Gelatin at 12:17 PM on July 12, 2017 [14 favorites]


Nice to see that Pat Robertson is almost dead.

That is not dead which can eternal lie.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:17 PM on July 12, 2017 [30 favorites]


Make An Old New York Real Estate Stereotype Very Happy Again
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:18 PM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'm sure Pat Robertson has fantastic health care, funded by millions in donations scammed from the pensions of the elderly over several decades
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:22 PM on July 12, 2017 [28 favorites]


Impeachment is a political matter, and politically it is an extraordinarily bad idea to force a vote on impeachment before you have an open and shut case that can win. Ask Robert Drinan and Tip O'Neill in 1973, or Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston in 1998.

Don't let the air out of the balloon. Keep inflating until it pops. If Sherman brings up his resolution, Pelosi's going to table it (make it go away without debate) or send it away to committee as fast as she can. Don't let the House vote not to impeach.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:24 PM on July 12, 2017 [48 favorites]


Gaspard Koenig/Les Echos op-ed, translated for Worldcrunch: Trump And Bastille Day, How To Spoil France's Celebration Of Freedom
Why does France want to share its annual national party with a president that American history itself is already rejecting? In the UK, ... a petition against Trump's state visit has a million signatures.
Nice picture on the article too.
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:25 PM on July 12, 2017


He Burst The Bubble (Josh Marshall / TPM)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:26 PM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


Four articles on Trump, Jr. and Russia from the New Yorker:

- Is Donald Trump, Jr., Taking the Fall for the White House? (John Cassidy) In the emerging White House narrative, Trump, Jr., is an outsider—a well-connected freelancer who wasn’t speaking or acting on behalf of his father.
Trump, Jr., didn’t have a formal title within the Trump campaign, and he isn’t a member of the Trump Administration. In the emerging White House narrative, that makes him an outsider—a well-connected freelancer who wasn’t speaking or acting on behalf of his father or the campaign when he agreed to meet with Veselnitskaya.
Even if the White House can manage to convince anybody of this, which seems unlikely, it would still face a huge problem: two other people who attended the June 9th meeting were Paul Manafort, who was then the manager of the Trump campaign, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who is now one of the President’s closest advisers in the White House.
- Are Donald Trump, Jr.,’s E-mails About Meeting with a Russian Lawyer Evidence of a Crime? (Jeffrey Toobin) Donald Trump, Jr.,’s e-mails raise questions of possible criminal behavior, starting with violations of campaign-finance laws.
“Collusion” is not a legal term in this context, nor is it a crime. Neither is listening to outlandish tales, even from foreigners. But Trump, Jr.,’s e-mails do raise questions of possible criminal behavior, starting with violations of campaign-finance laws. Federal law prohibits American campaign officials from soliciting from foreign governments “anything of value . . . in connection with” an election. In the meeting with Veselnitskaya, did Trump, Jr., or Jared Kushner, the candidate’s son-in-law, or Paul Manafort, then Trump’s campaign manager, who were also in attendance, solicit anything of value? The e-mails don’t clearly answer that question. But it is possible that they solicited information–perhaps specific information, relating to, say, e-mail accounts associated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the campaign, might conclude that such a solicitation could constitute a crime, and he might ask a grand jury to return an indictment on that theory. (The possibility of a prosecution based on an “anything-of-value” theory has been explored in greater detail by Robert Bauer, President Obama’s White House counsel, and by Rick Hasen, an election-law specialist, in several posts.)

But this narrow view of one meeting fails to provide a full picture of how prosecutors approach criminal investigations. There are thousands of e-mails between members of Trump’s campaign for investigators to examine. Do any of those messages say anything about the meeting? Are other meetings with Russians described in them? In some respects, the person most exposed by the released e-mails is not Trump, Jr., but Jared Kushner, who continues to serve as a high-ranking White House adviser. More to the point, under penalty of law, Kushner filed an application to receive a security clearance, which was supposed to list all his foreign contacts. He did not initially disclose the June meeting, and congressional Democrats have been calling for his security clearance to be revoked. Inadvertence and bad memory are valid defenses in false-statement cases, but could Kushner seriously contend that a meeting set up with an e-mail heading “Russian – Clinton – private and confidential” simply slipped his mind?

Certainly the attendees at that meeting, as well as other Trump campaign officials, will be asked by F.B.I. agents, and perhaps before a grand jury, about contacts with the Russians. Any sort of false statement in these contexts would be a federal crime. Federal law also bars the kind of hacking that was visited upon John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, and the Democratic National Committee; if any Trump officials aided and abetted the hacking, that, too, would be a crime.
- Donald Trump, Jr.,’s E-Mails Have Fundamentally Changed the Russia Story (Ryan Lizza) The revelation about Donald Trump, Jr.,’s eagerness to collude with the Russians is all the more shocking considering the outrage that he has expressed over such accusations.
In less than ninety minutes, the sentiment from people sympathetic to the President’s son had shifted from “nothingburger” to “I hope he doesn’t go to jail.”

The e-mails are incriminating. According to the correspondence, a Russian government official had contacted a former associate of Donald Trump, who had previously had business dealings in Russia, and offered anti-Clinton information. “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” Rob Goldstone, an associate of a Russian pop musician, Emin Agalarov, who was close to the Trump family, wrote. (Donald Trump once appeared in one of Agalarov’s music videos, and various reports on Tuesday noted that Emin and Trump, Jr., have texted as recently as January.)

I asked Steve Schmidt, who helped run John McCain’s 2008 Presidential campaign, what he would have done if he had received a similar e-mail. “Would have either ignored it or called the F.B.I.,” Schmidt told me. I also asked Charlie Black, who has been involved at the highest levels with numerous Republican campaigns, and who is also a former business partner of Manafort, if most campaign professionals would have called the F.B.I. “Yes,” he said, “but you should not cast Donnie as a campaign professional. He is not.”
- The Russians at the Center of the Donald Trump, Jr., E-mails (Joshua Yaffa) Natalia Veselnitskaya’s past as a lawyer suggests a proximity to the world of Russian officialdom, but far from its most powerful or well-connected members.
Katsyv denied any wrongdoing, but prosecutors alleged that this money in part came from a tax scam worth two hundred and thirty million dollars uncovered by a Russian lawyer named Sergey Magnitsky. His death in a Moscow jail ultimately led to the passage of the Magnitsky Act, in 2012, which froze the U.S. assets of Russian officials implicated in corruption or human-rights violations. It’s hard to remember now, given the acerbic state of U.S.-Russian relations, but at the time, no U.S. move in years incensed the Kremlin as much. (Putin’s revenge was cutting: he responded by banning U.S. adoptions of Russian children, the issue that, in early versions of the story, Veselnitskaya supposedly wanted to discuss with Trump, Jr.) Leonid Bershidsky, a cautious and astute Russia-watcher, argued in Bloomberg View that the Trump Tower meeting was more likely a personal stunt for Veselnitskaya, “the tenacious and ambitious lawyer who could pull every string in the Moscow region, did so to get her pet issue—the repeal of the Magnitsky Act, which was getting her major client in trouble—in front of some important Americans.”
Emphasis mine - yes, they could have been actually talking about adoption. There's a very specific reason why the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr. wanted to talk about adopting babies (Natasha Bertrand, Business Insider, July 10, 2017)
posted by filthy light thief at 12:30 PM on July 12, 2017 [40 favorites]


Trump And Bastille Day, How To Spoil France's Celebration Of Freedom

Does... does Trump understand what happened to the obscenely rich, incompetent absolute ruler who colluded with foreign powers after the storming of the Bastille?
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:34 PM on July 12, 2017 [25 favorites]


Don't let the air out of the balloon. Keep inflating until it pops. If Sherman brings up his resolution, Pelosi's going to table it (make it go away without debate) or send it away to committee as fast as she can. Don't let the House vote not to impeach.

Maybe if the House will never vote to impeach, as seems likely now, forcing an impeachment vote sometime in 2018 would be helpful to the election campaign?
posted by Glibpaxman at 12:35 PM on July 12, 2017


Ooh! I get to be pedantic!! A league, with regard to Nemo's voyages (and maritime units of measure), was distance traveled rather than depths achieved. There's even an SNL sketch that pokes fun at the misconception (transcript & poor video).

Nevertheless, I concur with your general assessment, dances_with_sneetches- we're far deeper than Watergate ever went, regardless of unit o' measure.

posted by narwhal at 12:36 PM on July 12, 2017 [29 favorites]


There's even an SNL sketch that pokes fun at the misconception (transcript & poor video).

Not just a sketch. It's one of the top 5 SNL sketches of all time, IMO. And it kills me that NBC won't allow a decent video of it to stay up online.

posted by Atom Eyes at 12:43 PM on July 12, 2017 [14 favorites]


I agree that impeachment is unlikely to pass at this point, but it sure would be sweet if Mueller is able to drop a serious, multi-felony case on his orangeness after he's been stripped of executive privilege/immunity.
posted by Anoplura at 12:45 PM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


The Democratic Party can also use a non-passage as "Republicans are totally fine with a corrupt foreign-government colluder in office! They hate America!" If they had the guts to do so.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:48 PM on July 12, 2017 [13 favorites]


I get the tactical issues with, erm, shooting the wad of impeachment too early.

But also, it's now admitted on all sides that some of the President's closest advisors and family members have repeatedly lied about at least one compromising and probably illegal meeting with an unfriendly foreign power. There's no way to know whether any or all of them are being blackmailed into using their power as high government officials to advance that country's interests against our own.

They all have to go, and my tentative position is that Democrats need to act as if this is the crisis that it actually is, with the limited power they have.

The long, slow process of determining what happened and who knew what when can and should wait for Mueller's wheels to churn. But even as Watergate unfolded, there wasn't an ongoing question of foreign coercion dictating American policy. Now there is, and it clouds every foreign policy action (and inaction) taken by this Administration.

They all have to go now.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:49 PM on July 12, 2017 [30 favorites]


The Democratic Party can also use a non-passage as "Republicans are totally fine with a corrupt foreign-government colluder in office! They hate America!" If they had the guts to do so.

They can, and should, use this line right now, and all the time, impeachment motion or no impeachment motion.
posted by Gelatin at 12:51 PM on July 12, 2017 [35 favorites]


I wonder if these Republicans who keep parroting Don Jr. by saying "seems like opposition research to me!" realize that they're making it sound as though lying about seeking aid from intelligence sources in foreign countries is a normal thing they personally would do in the course of political campaigns.
posted by XMLicious at 12:54 PM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


Individual congresspeople drafting articles of impeachment and Pelosi not letting it get to a vote is the right amount of impeachment theater for this moment. Dear god, would handing Trump a "victory" over impeachment by having a failed vote be a mistake. No milk-brained swing voters who aren't already burning with a hunger to get him and the republicans out of office ASAfuckingP will be swayed to any more democrat-favorable positions by an impeachment vote that doesn't pass or any talking points that could be extracted from that.
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:57 PM on July 12, 2017 [48 favorites]


I couldn't do it. I tried to "watch" the Sanders press briefing, so far as one can watch audio-only briefings on television, and I noped out of there when Sanders responded to a question asking why everyone seemed to have amnesia about meetings with Russians and only Russians and Sanders responded with a litany of imagined Clinton transgressions. Sanders clearly belongs in Malebolge (the eighth cricle of Hell) but I can't decide which ditch she'd end up in. Bolgia One has panderers, Bolgia Two is full of excessive flatterers, Bolgia Five grifters, Bolgia Six hypocrites, Bolgia Nine for political schismatics, and Bolgia Ten is for falsifiers. Perhaps she would alternate days?
posted by Justinian at 1:02 PM on July 12, 2017 [37 favorites]


nah everybody in this admin is going straight to Antenora, Ninth Circle, Traitors to Country
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:06 PM on July 12, 2017 [14 favorites]


If I never hear or read "nothing burger" again, I'll be very happy.
posted by cell divide at 1:07 PM on July 12, 2017 [38 favorites]


Perhaps she would alternate days?

Think her soul [assuming facts not in evidence] would be split so she'd have to endure all of them at once.
posted by Twain Device at 1:09 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm doubtful an inevitably unsuccessful vote on impeachment at this time will be helpful, and could be counterproductive, because impeachment of a president is a vastly weighty thing, and there will be a sentiment that it should wait until investigations reach conclusions. (Not a sentiment I share, because I want to kick Donald to the curb immediately, but still.)

However.

Something that is much less weighty would be a non-binding resolution calling on unelected, unqualified and unpopular Senior Advisor to the President Jared Kushner's security clearance to be revoked, because he has repeatedly lied on his applications regarding his interactions with hostile foreign powers. I would be delighted to see a vote forced on this as a privileged resolution, making Republicans go on record as either opposing such a no-brainer decision to protect national security, or (heaven forbid) doing the right thing and invoking the righteous fury of the president and his Twitter account.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:10 PM on July 12, 2017 [49 favorites]


Individual congresspeople drafting articles of impeachment and Pelosi not letting it get to a vote is the right amount of impeachment theater for this moment. Dear god, would handing Trump a "victory" over impeachment by having a failed vote be a mistake.

You may be correct, prize bull octorok, and I trust Leader Pelosi and the rest of the leadership (mostly) to make the right tactical decision about how far to let impeachment go right now.

I think we (the outraged citizenry) should be shouting it from the hills, though. Overton window don't move on its own, and it's past defenestration time.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:12 PM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


The Democratic Party can also use a non-passage as "Republicans are totally fine with a corrupt foreign-government colluder in office! They hate America!" If they had the guts to do so.

They can, and should, use this line right now, and all the time, impeachment motion or no impeachment motion.


Yes. This. Hang the albatross around the neck of every Republican from city council and school board on up to Granny Starver and Yertle the Turtle.

And while I'm wishfully thinking: how about "Anyone who flaunts the Confederate flag is flaunting a flag of treason and hates America!" Because that is what the Confederate flag is - a symbol of treason in the service of slavery (and how it chaps my hide to see people in Union states flaunting the damn thing).
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 1:14 PM on July 12, 2017 [34 favorites]




There is a house on my morning commute with a truly baffling flag display. They have a US flag, a UK flag, and a confederate flag. In Pennsylvania. I'm stumped. (Nigel Farage, is that you?)
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:19 PM on July 12, 2017 [21 favorites]


Maybe they just like flags
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:20 PM on July 12, 2017 [14 favorites]


Subtle, FoxNews.
(Onscreen news ticker reads: "MANAFORT AND PRES TRUMP SON-IN-LAW JARED KOSHER MET WITH VESELNITSKAYA...)"
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:21 PM on July 12, 2017 [20 favorites]


They're working on building a theme park.
posted by Etrigan at 1:22 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Jeet Heer wants one more chance to kick the bipartisan cooperation football.

Steve M. responds appropriately:
It seems to me that if the parties were reversed -- if Democrats had an incompetent, corrupt, ignorant, unqualified, TV-addicted president with an inner circle full of equally unfit advisers, many of whom gave aid and comfort to an enemy government that subverted our electoral system, Republicans would be hammering Democratic members of Congress relentlessly for sharing a party with the corrupt administration and loudly impugning the patriotism of any Democrats who refused to help impeach their own president.

But Heer isn't ready to propose that Democrats act that way -- heaven knows we don't want to be rash, do we? Instead, he writes this:
Trump Jr.’s highly damaging emails have handed Democrats the leverage they’ve long sought in the Russia scandal. They should take advantage of it by making a final offer to the Republicans to abandon their support for Trump, or suffer the consequences. If the GOP steps up their investigation, they might damage their short-term political prospects—assuming they can pass any major legislation, which is not a given. But they’ll be acting in their own long-term interest, by distancing themselves from an increasingly unpopular president, and they’ll finally be doing the right thing to preserve what’s left of America’s democratic norms. But if the Republicans continue to drag their feet, then they must be treated no better than Trump’s other unsavory accomplices, and suffer the electoral consequences.
We're giving you one last chance! We're going after you -- unless you stop obstructing justice quite as much, in which case we'll take a dive in the midterms the way we usually do! C'mon, guys -- we're asking you nicely!

Please. Republicans have made it abundantly clear that they place party over country. And it's long past time for Democrats to start nationalizing midterm elections, something Republicans do every cycle.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:25 PM on July 12, 2017 [42 favorites]


BUT HIS CHINA BEEF

@realDonaldTrump
"After 14 years, U.S. beef hits Chinese market. Trade deal an exciting opportunity for agriculture."
posted by Rust Moranis at 1:28 PM on July 12, 2017


It's scoop-o-clock! WSJ: Russian Officials Overheard Discussing Trump Associates Before Campaign Began:
U.S. intelligence agencies starting in the spring of 2015 detected conversations in which Russian government officials discussed associates of Donald Trump, several months before he declared his candidacy for president, according to current and former U.S. officials.

In some cases, the Russians in the overheard conversations talked about meetings held outside the U.S. involving Russian government officials and Trump business associates or advisers, these people said.

It isn’t clear which Trump associates or advisers the Russians were referring to, or whether they had any connection to his presidential aspirations.
This report is incredibly, frustratingly, near uselessly vague, but we'll see if more leaks develop.
posted by zachlipton at 1:28 PM on July 12, 2017 [25 favorites]


"After 14 years, U.S. beef hits Chinese market. Trade deal an exciting opportunity for agriculture."

Which he managed to get because he threw the domestic poultry industry under the bus.
posted by Talez at 1:34 PM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


Ah, the China beef thing, our President's favorite go-to diversion-creator*

*tweeted three days after the Comey firing
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:35 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


I didn't see this posted earlier, but Trump threatened to sue the USGA if they moved the Women's Open out of his golf course. Gross, gross, gross.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:35 PM on July 12, 2017 [19 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump
"After 14 years, U.S. beef hits Chinese market. Trade deal an exciting opportunity for agriculture."


but whos going to buy 14 year old beef
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 1:35 PM on July 12, 2017 [54 favorites]


"Agriculture", I guess?
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:37 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


AP: Trump in Paris: The curious case of his friend Jim
For all things Paris, President Donald Trump’s go-to guy is Jim.

The way Trump tells it — Jim is a friend who loves Paris and used to visit every year. Yet when Trump travels to the city Thursday for his first time as president, it’s unlikely that Jim will tag along. Jim doesn’t go to Paris anymore. Trump says that’s because the city has been infiltrated by foreign extremists.

Whether Jim exists is unclear. Trump has never given his last name. The White House has not responded to a request for comment about who Jim is or whether he will be on the trip.
posted by zachlipton at 1:38 PM on July 12, 2017 [27 favorites]


In all seriousness though, we just thew a $50b domestic broiler industry under the bus to give cattle access to a $2.5b market.

Dealmaker in fucking chief that one.
posted by Talez at 1:40 PM on July 12, 2017 [43 favorites]


Do you think Trump reads his replies on Twitter? I think the answer must be no, because otherwise how would he resist responding to them?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:41 PM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Maybe Jim owns the taxi company which employs the drivers Thomas Friedman is always talking to.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:41 PM on July 12, 2017 [32 favorites]


I've seen him respond to replies on his tweets. It was disturbing.
posted by exolstice at 1:42 PM on July 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


Jim doesn’t go to Paris anymore.

Whatever, "Jim". My wife is over there right now for her first time in Europe and having a great time, and since she's not worried about extremists I get to learn about babies.

Don't let the terrorists win, Jim. Be brave!
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 1:46 PM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Jim's last name is Barron. OBVS, PEOPLE. Jim and John Barron hang out with the illegal voter that was in line with that German golfer.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:46 PM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


Maybe Jim owns the taxi company which employs the drivers Thomas Friedman is always talking to.

Maybe he's David Brooks's dining companion who had an existential freak-out over Italian names on sandwich fixings.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:46 PM on July 12, 2017 [22 favorites]


Is Jim his factory owner fried we heard a lot about during the campaign?
posted by kirkaracha at 1:47 PM on July 12, 2017


The Hill: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called Wednesday for Jared Kushner, President Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law, to resign from his White House post in the wake of revelations about a campaign meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Murphy said Kushner misled Trump and Vice President Pence, causing them to state falsely that no associates from their campaign communicated with the Russians.


It is politically important that Republicans are forced to take a position on this issue, and it's beyond politically important that Kushner is forced out.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:49 PM on July 12, 2017 [45 favorites]


Never mind The Rock for Prez, there's a new candidate running for Senate and his name is Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid.....
posted by PenDevil at 2:07 PM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Does this mean he's given up on trying to find work as a cowboy?
posted by contraption at 2:10 PM on July 12, 2017 [8 favorites]


Never mind The Rock for Prez, there's a new candidate running for Senate and his name is Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid.....

So many policy positions & so little time before the election. I've got quite a bit of reading to do.
posted by narwhal at 2:11 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


> Poor Jared Sexton: "I...worked on this story for a year...and...he just...he tweeted it out."

> A bunch of people are replaying to Jared Sexton's tweets with offers to send him some booze money.

Deadspin suggests that we might want to hold on to our booze money. Digging into things, it looks like Sexton took steps to explain that he wasn't a NYT writer and that the credit should go to them, but between the limitations of Twitter as a medium, the viral nature of anything Trump-related, and probably some measure of self-promotion, Sexton's connection to the story came off as much larger than it actually was. (Of course Deadspin's being more dickish than necessary about it, as their style guide requires.)
posted by tonycpsu at 2:11 PM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


Oh, it's just this rotating box of slogans like "In Rock we trust," "Pimp of the nation," and "Party to the people?" Maybe there is enough time to get through all the material.
posted by narwhal at 2:13 PM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Kid Rock will be running in the Michigan Republican primary against former state Supreme Court Justice Robert Young, who was on Trump's shortlist of SCOTUS candidates.

The debates should be interesting.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:15 PM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


There's no way in hell Kid Rock can put his stage name on the ballot, right?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:18 PM on July 12, 2017


Sexton stated several times that he's an independent journalist.
posted by rhizome at 2:19 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


There's no way in hell Kid Rock can put his stage name on the ballot, right?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94


Governor Jesse Ventura did, although he'd legally changed it by then.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 2:21 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Starchild's is legally changed as well.
posted by rhizome at 2:22 PM on July 12, 2017


Meat Loaf 2020
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:22 PM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


> Sexton stated several times that he's an independent journalist.

Sure, but the problem is that the juicy but misleading tweet gets retweeted around the world a thousand times before the boring clarifying tweet gets a few half-hearted favorites.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:23 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Sorry, I can't look away.

His header photo is named: KidRock_Presidential_header.jpg

The site is hosted on Squarespace.

The headline of the "site" (one page, no internal links except in the top nav which links to itself) is: ARE YOU SCARED?

But you can buy bumper stickers, t-shirts, yard signs, & hats. From http://kidrock.warnerbrosrecords.com/senate.html. Is that.. normal? For a private company (a record label in this case) to host a candidate's merch?

And you can subscribe to his email newsletter.

(Why you'd buy any Kid Rock hat other than this one, though, doesn't make any sense to me)
posted by narwhal at 2:24 PM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


Is the name thing much different than Bob Dole or Bill Clinton? It's not their legal name but they used it on the ballot.
posted by Emmy Rae at 2:26 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Never mind The Rock for Prez, there's a new candidate running for Senate and his name is Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid.....

Filthy piece of shit made his name ripping off Black American culture with watered-down, shitty 17th-rate "hip hop," then when he lined his pockets with that, pivoted to warmed-over redneck shit-rock. And isn't he from the metro Detroit area, perhaps the archetype of American white flight and using the city as scapegoat for every evil, real or imagined? (Granted, my current hometown of Baltimore is only a notch or two down that list, too.)

So basically he's a perfect microcosm of America, in something vaguely resembling human form, then. I'm glad this is just a marketing stunt (so far), because the fucker would win in a landslide.
posted by CommonSense at 2:30 PM on July 12, 2017 [28 favorites]


I'm no fan of Kid Rock, but read his interview in Grand Royal from back before he was famous.
posted by rhizome at 2:35 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]



I agree that impeachment is unlikely to pass at this point, but it sure would be sweet if Mueller is able to drop a serious, multi-felony case on his orangeness after he's been stripped of executive privilege/immunity


Yes, but how do you get him out of Russia?

If it becomes obvious that, as soon as he is no longer President, he'll be on the fast track to a 3-figure jail term, there's a good chance that he'll seek asylum in an, ahem, friendlier climate. Even if it means doing a D.B. Cooper from Air Force One on the way back from a foreign engagement.
posted by acb at 2:36 PM on July 12, 2017


Sorry, I can't look away.

I mean, I appreciate that you're aware it's a problem and all, but—
THIS IS LITERALLY HOW WE GOT INTO THIS MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE!!
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:36 PM on July 12, 2017 [11 favorites]


Reuters (Steve Holland): Exclusive: Trump says he was unaware of son's meeting with Russian lawyer
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he was unaware of his son Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting last year with a Russian lawyer at the heart of a White House controversy, telling Reuters he only learned of it a couple of days ago.

Asked if he knew that his son was meeting with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June last year, Trump said in a White House interview: “No, that I didn’t know until a couple of days ago when I heard about this.”
What's the over-under on how long it will take to disprove this? A day?

He also said he asked Putin twice if Russia meddled in the election and he said no both times, even after he asked him "a second time in a totally different way," so case closed there.
posted by zachlipton at 2:40 PM on July 12, 2017 [44 favorites]


What's the over-under on how long it will take to disprove this? A day?

Trump started tweeting about "Hillary's emails" that freaking afternoon!
posted by PenDevil at 2:45 PM on July 12, 2017 [33 favorites]


even after he asked him "a second time in a totally different way,"

Mr. Putin, didn't you not meddle in the election?
posted by theodolite at 2:46 PM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


And isn't he from the metro Detroit area, perhaps the archetype of American white flight and using the city as scapegoat for every evil, real or imagined?

dude's not even from Detroit. he's from Romeo, 40 miles north. so, yes, the very picture of Michigan white flight, with the added bonus of claiming a hardship he never actually experienced.

derail, I know, but I cannot overemphasize how derided Kid Rock is among nearly everyone I know who is actually from Detroit.
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 2:49 PM on July 12, 2017 [13 favorites]


Normally I would encourage political activism by rappers from Detroit, but the White House is already occupied by an insane clown posse.
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:55 PM on July 12, 2017 [46 favorites]


zachlipton: "He also said he asked Putin twice if Russia meddled in the election and he said no both times, even after he asked him "a second time in a totally different way," so case closed there."

At some point, are reporters ever going to stop being polite and start being real? Why isn't the very, very obvious follow-up question(s): "Why would you ever believe Putin? What if he's lying to you? Heck, why should we even believe you? How do I know that you're not lying to me right now?" Jesus.
posted by mhum at 2:56 PM on July 12, 2017 [46 favorites]


If we have to have one white rapper with ties to Detroit running a celebrity campaign, of course it's Kid Rock and not Eminem. Kid Rock is Papa Doc, Clarence' parents had a real good marriage and went to Cranbrook, only, even more privileged than that.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:06 PM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


He also said he asked Putin twice if Russia meddled in the election and he said no both times, even after he asked him "a second time in a totally different way," so case closed there.

I thought zachlipton must be making a Zoolander joke that was going over my head, but it's real.
posted by peeedro at 3:07 PM on July 12, 2017 [35 favorites]


according to this book of Russian folklore I downloaded you have to ask three times before Putin is compelled to tell the truth, so way to drop the fuckin ball Donny
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:11 PM on July 12, 2017 [89 favorites]


I didn't see this posted earlier, but Trump threatened to sue the USGA if they moved the Women's Open out of his golf course. Gross, gross, gross.

Please do. Does he not realize that a lawsuit with discovery and depositions under oath is every politician's worst nightmare? Is the 1990s too far back to register in his historical awareness?

In fact, since Peter Thiel demonstrated that funding third parties' lawsuits for political reasons is acceptable, why doesn't someone start a PAC named "SUE TRUMP'S ASS" to fund each and every lawsuit from the thousands of people and businesses that he and his minions have intimidated by threat of lawsuit over the years? Every hard-working small business person shafted out of payment, every woman groped, every staffer who suffered a hostile workplace environment at any Trump property or business...
posted by msalt at 3:15 PM on July 12, 2017 [43 favorites]


@sarahkendzior: I tweeted this on July 26, 2016. Found it odd that Kremlin spokesman referred inquiries about hacks to Donald Trump Jr. Now we know why:
On Monday, fallout from the hack also reverberated at the Kremlin, where a spokesman declined to comment on the hack except to refer reporters to comments by Trump's son, Don Jr., calling the allegations part of a pattern of "lie after lie."

"Mr. Trump Jr. has already strongly responded" to the Clinton campaign's claims, the Russian spokesman said, according to the news agency Tass.
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:18 PM on July 12, 2017 [18 favorites]


Romeo, Romeo, where art thou Theordore Nugent.

Screw that, draft Alice Cooper.
posted by clavdivs at 3:20 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


dude's not even from Detroit. he's from Romeo, 40 miles north.

IMO Michigan's seeing the result of brain drain/ youth flight that began a couple decades ago, thanks to the recession/ dying auto industry/ lack of bipartisan cooperation to bring in new industries. (See how quickly the Rs killed some of Granholm's initiatives.) Too many smart progressives gone, leaving us with just the tRumpy types, many of whom ARE still doing well (better than me) financially. But bigots gotta bigot, no matter their circumstances.
posted by NorthernLite at 3:20 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Well, I'll give him this. Having learned about his wealthy upbringing (to say nothing of his current wealth as a celebrity), Ritchie (bka Kid Rock)'s politics certainly are in his self-interest. Which is more than you can say about an awful lot of Republican voters.

He is, if nothing else, consistent.
posted by CommonSense at 3:24 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Is the 1990s too far back to register in his historical awareness?

His historical awareness stopped sometime in the 1970s. Citing MacArthur and Patton as his favorite generals, thinking inner cities are Thunderdome, etc.

Except for Russia. It's surprising to me that someone who spent decades with the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire in the Cold War is so buddy-buddy with Russia now.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:27 PM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'm sure Pat Robertson has fantastic health care, funded by millions in donations scammed from the pensions of the elderly over several decades
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:22 PM on July 12 [−] Favorite added! [!]

It is seriously a good thing that the blood of virgins does not actually bring about immortality otherwise we would be saddled with a bunch of gross old men forever.


He also said he asked Putin twice if Russia meddled in the election and he said no both times, even after he asked him "a second time in a totally different way," so case closed there


I'm tickled at the idea of DJT acting out the part of Detective Columbo in order to trick Putin into confessing.


I always think Kid Rock looks like he smells bad-- like Axe body spray on top of stale sweat and urine with a top note of unwashed tobacco mouth.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:28 PM on July 12, 2017 [21 favorites]


Oh and I forgot the windmills thing. God love him, DJT is just insistent that coal/oil/gas are what REAL MEN want and windmills are for sissy girls. I do not get the connection but he loathes windmills and he loathes Hillary Clinton so I guess they go hand-in-hand.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:31 PM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


can't trust windmills. they might be giants.
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:33 PM on July 12, 2017 [39 favorites]


I do not get the connection but he loathes windmills

Possibly he thinks they are dragons?
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:34 PM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


Watching the Downfall of a Presidency in Real Time (Frank Rich / NYMag)
The good news for those who want to see justice done is that this scandal not only resembles Watergate but also The Godfather — albeit a Godfather where every Corleone is a Fredo and not a single lawyer is as crafty as Tom Hagen, despite the fact that Little Donald’s private attorney has a history of defending clients from mob families. The level of stupidity of the conspirators is staggering: Not the least of the week’s news is that Kushner thought he could get away with omitting this Trump Tower meeting on the government questionnaire he filed to get his security clearance. (The $2.5 million that Charles Kushner donated to Harvard to gain his son admission was not money well spent.) My other favorite detail of the week (so far) is that Rob Goldstone, the former British tabloid writer and Miss Universe entrepreneur who served as the Trump campaign’s Russian middleman, posted on Facebook that he was “preparing for meeting” at Trump Tower on the day it took place.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 3:36 PM on July 12, 2017 [11 favorites]


CNN Trump threatens anger if health care fails

Watch out! Grandpa is going to spit his dentures out! Better take the remote control away from him.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:36 PM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


can't trust windmills. they might be giants.

Kompromat man, kompromat man
Does what Putin says he can
Will we all die? It's certainly plausible
Kompromat man
posted by Rust Moranis at 3:39 PM on July 12, 2017 [53 favorites]


He hates windmills because he picked a spot for his golf course in Scotland near where they already approved an offshore wind farm, he didn't like the view, and he started a vendetta against various Scottish politicians. As usual, it comes back to his wallet.
posted by zachlipton at 3:39 PM on July 12, 2017 [36 favorites]


Oops. I misremembered Don Quixote's imaginary giants as dragons. ¡Ay, caramba!
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:40 PM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


God love him, DJT is just insistent that coal/oil/gas are what REAL MEN want and windmills are for sissy girls.

I do find, as an audiophile, that my vinyl sounds warmer, with a more resonant mid-range, when my array of amps is being powered by electricity derived from high-sulfur coal. There's a noticeable difference when the utility starts drawing from the local wind farm.
posted by Flashman at 3:42 PM on July 12, 2017 [73 favorites]


He always brings up the "millions of birds die" argument against windmills as though anyone would ever believe he gives two shits for any birds. And how many birds will die/have died because of global warming and the destruction of their habitats?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:45 PM on July 12, 2017 [12 favorites]



He hates windmills because he picked a spot for his golf course in Scotland near where they already approved an offshore wind farm, he didn't like the view, and he started a vendetta against various Scottish politicians.


And he got dragged into the “conservative” political tribe (as opposed to becoming a Democrat, which at one point was plausible) to minimise cognitive dissonance, given how self-professed conservatives from Rupert Murdoch to Tony Abbott, from Nigel Farage to the Koch brothers, hate wind turbines. Everything else—the white-nationalist rhetoric, the attacks on women's rights, “blue lives matter”—all followed from the presence of a wind farm in Scotland.
posted by acb at 3:47 PM on July 12, 2017 [14 favorites]


When birds die due to climate change, it's God's will and probably they deserved it. When windmills kill them it's all liberals fault. Remember, nothing is ever ever your fault when you're a Republican.
posted by soren_lorensen at 3:48 PM on July 12, 2017 [29 favorites]


The birds and bees are dying are God's punishment for sex education in schools. I mean, can it be any clearer?
posted by acb at 3:51 PM on July 12, 2017 [18 favorites]


He always brings up the "millions of birds die" argument against windmills as though anyone would ever believe he gives two shits for any birds. And how many birds will die/have died because of global warming and the destruction of their habitats?

WAAAAY more birds are killed by domestic cats than windmills. And design and location changes have reduced the incidental take of birds by rather a lot.
posted by suelac at 3:51 PM on July 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


There are already anecdotal stories about various arseholes in Australia hunting (urban, domestic) cats and claiming concern for birds as their motivation. It's probably only a matter of time until the *chan deplorables adopt this as part of the alt-right cause.
posted by acb at 3:53 PM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


the white-nationalist rhetoric, the attacks on women's rights, “blue lives matter”—all followed from the presence of a wind farm in Scotland.

This...is not at all accurate. He's been racist and misogynist forever.
posted by melissasaurus at 3:56 PM on July 12, 2017 [23 favorites]


Habitat loss due to real estate development, like hotels and golf courses, has really affected bird population sizes. Birds are pretty good at reproducing to replace individuals who die (almost all birds die of predation), assuming that there are sufficient breeding habitats for reproduction.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:56 PM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


I forgot about his passion for goddamned steam catapults over digital as another example of his stuck-in-the-'70s mindset.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:58 PM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


Birds are very smart and can learn things. Like not to fly into windmills.
posted by tel3path at 4:06 PM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


(Onscreen news ticker reads: "MANAFORT AND PRES TRUMP SON-IN-LAW JARED KOSHER MET WITH VESELNITSKAYA...)"

Damn you, Anti-Semito-Correct!
posted by The Tensor at 4:07 PM on July 12, 2017 [16 favorites]


I'm glad this is just a marketing stunt (so far), because the fucker would win in a landslide.

Yeah let's not assume anything in politics is just a marketing stunt anymore
posted by Apocryphon at 4:12 PM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


Axios: Trump lawyers want wall between Kushner, president
President Trump's outside legal team wants to wall off Jared Kushner from discussing the Russia investigation with his father-in-law, according to sources with direct knowledge of the discussions.

Members of Trump's legal team — which is led by longtime Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz, and includes conservative legal firebrand Jay Sekulow — are trying to cloak their startling demand with the two-word message to Kushner: Nothing personal.

The team contends that it isn't out to get Kushner, but just wants to protect the president because his son-in-law is so wrapped up in the investigation. He had three meetings with Russians that special counsel Bob Mueller is sure to investigate.

Members of Trump's legal team are frustrated that Kushner has been discussing the investigation with the president, according to the sources.

The mechanics of the wall are unclear, but it apparently would constitute an agreement by Kushner not to discuss anything about the Russia probes with the president.
posted by murphy slaw at 4:16 PM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


Benjamin Wittes: Wray Does Well; the Senate Judiciary Committee Does Not
So if I were a senator, I would vote to confirm him. But I would do so with a big caveat—which is that I see no reason for the next President to respect Wray's statutory ten-year term in office.

If I were a presidential candidate running against Trump—in either party—I would make very clear that I reserved the right to remove Wray from office as part of the initial transition. Indeed, I might promise to do so. And if I were a senator, I would be carving that space out now. As Susan Hennessey and I wrote yesterday on our Foreign Policy feed, "To give Wray his ten years would send a message to all future presidents that there is no cost for removing the FBI director and replacing him or her with your own person.
...
If Wray acquitted himself well today, the same cannot be said for the body before which he appeared: the Senate Judiciary Committee. Neither Democrats nor Republicans, in the main, approached the situation with the gravity it deserved; nor did they push the nominee aggressively about how and why he thinks he can be effective under current circumstances and given what happened to Comey. Some senators, like Orrin Hatch and Amy Klobuchar, treated Wray as though he were any other nominee—focusing their questions on their individual legislative or local concerns. It was as though a perfectly normal president under perfectly normal circumstances had picked a nominee whose appointment raised no extraordinary questions. The committee today had an opportunity to put down a marker about acceptable behavior in an FBI director—and acceptable presidential behavior towards the FBI. On the latter point, at least, many senators passed up the chance.
Brian Beutler: Democrats should vote en masse against Trump’s FBI director nominee:
Again, it’s not Wray’s fault, necessarily, but it’s critical that Comey’s successor be someone that the next president doesn’t feel the need to fire. Wray may serve with distinction through Trump’s presidency and into his successor’s presidency. But the likelihood that anyone Trump selected will end up becoming compromised is so high that Democrats shouldn’t preemptively complicate efforts to remove him in the future by offering their support to him now.
Meanwhile, Jared and Ivanka continue their tradition of skipping town when the going gets tough. Rather than stick around to fight for their health care bill, the budget, tax cuts, debt ceiling, defend the administration on charges of collusion, etc..., they're jetting off to Sun Valley.

Axios: Trump lawyers want wall between Kushner, president. I swear, if one of you does a "and I bet he's gonna say Mexico has to pay for that wall too" joke, well, uh, I guess I got it covered already? I don't know.

Daily Beast: Jeff Sessions’ Secret Speech to the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Biggest Christian-Right Group You’ve Never Heard Of. A good profile of the Alliance Defending Freedom and why it's disturbing to have the Attorney General sneaking off to give a secret speech to their "religious freedom summit."

Trump to Pat Robertson: It was a great G20. We had 20 countries. Here, he's pulled off the unique accomplishment of trying to sound smart by showing off he knows what G20 means, while failing to realize the EU isn't a country.
posted by zachlipton at 4:19 PM on July 12, 2017 [66 favorites]


It's also all too plausible, since given the choice between Zuckerberg and whichever left insurgent ends up being most prominent, the DNC will without a doubt prefer Zuckerberg. The institutional center of the party is, broadly speaking, pro-capitalist and liberal rather than anti-capitalist or left, and well-connected pro-capitalism liberals are exactly the demographic that's most taken in by the soft-technocratic big-business approach to governance — "we'll just nudge the masses into doing what we want! And everyone will be happy cause we know best!" — of which Zuckerberg is practically the apotheosis.

That's an elegantly tragicomedic scenario, to have the celebrity blowhard candidate win the Democratic nomination because the DNC party elite revolts against the people; the reverse of how Trump won the Republican nomination because the party base rebelled against the RNC.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:20 PM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


The mechanics of the wall are unclear, but it apparently would constitute an agreement by Kushner not to discuss anything about the Russia probes with the president.

Wasn't Trump trying to call up Mike freaking Flynn to chat about "things" as recently as a few weeks ago? Good luck with your plan, gents!
posted by Barack Spinoza at 4:21 PM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Do we call it a Chinese, Russian, or Mexican wall?
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:23 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


if there's one thing we know about donald trump, it is that telling him that he isn't supposed to do something instantly makes doing that thing his top priority
posted by murphy slaw at 4:25 PM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


It's time to start referring to Trump & co. as "the lame duck Trump administration." This is essential to resisting Republican attempts to cram though laws as the ship goes down, and will be doubly important in blocking any additional Supreme Court picks Trump might have the opportunity to submit.

It has the additional advantage of being true, and better yet it will drive Trump crazy.
posted by msalt at 4:32 PM on July 12, 2017 [34 favorites]


they're jetting off to Sun Valley.

Good god, is it just me or does old Ivanks look like something from the Uncanny Valley in that Variety pic.

Anyway, that pile of dog poop in a suit Newt Gingrich was defending the collusion/treason as biz as usual. If some mentally calcified trumpie said that to me I'd reply, "YOU'RE RIGHT! I totes recall when Eisenhower asked Stalin for help getting elected."
posted by NorthernLite at 4:34 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


And it's time for another Daily Beast gripe session with your hosts Swin and Markay: Team Trump Hunts for ‘Traitors’ While the President ‘Growls’ at the TV. Everyone is all paranoid and speculating about the "traitors" who leaked to the Times, but let's check in on the President himself:
The president’s suggestion that he is not current absorbing all that much TV these days contradicts what several White House sources have noted about Trump’s regular television consumption habits: Mainly, that ever since taking office, the 45th president of the United States spends way too much time watching cable news—Fox News, naturally, being a favored, and friendly, network—and obsessing over coverage and media personalities.

Officials reached by The Daily Beast spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to discuss the president’s TV hate-watching habits, or internal West Wing strife.

As other news outlets have noted as well, President Trump has a tendency to also yell at his TV screens in the White House, and scowl and angrily comment as he watches news segments he finds disagreeable.

This is especially true with Trump-Russia stories. When asked if the president was still hissing at the TV this week over the televised Trump Jr. coverage, one White House official confirmed that the president was still taking out his Russia-related frustrations on an inanimate object while bitterly watching the news.

“Yes,” the aide replied. “Very much…Growling.”
posted by zachlipton at 4:35 PM on July 12, 2017 [28 favorites]


Yeah, based on the fact that we have heard Jared speak in public literally once or twice, ever, HE's the one who can't stop running his mouth.

I do love seeing these fucking rats begin to frantically distance themselves from each other, though. Bannon must be laughing his booze-reeking ass off.
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:35 PM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Watching the Downfall of a Presidency in Real Time

Why has no one edited the Downfall parody video clip to put Trump's face over Hitler's? Yeah, it'd be a lot of work but but Trump's anger is reportedly a perfect match.
posted by msalt at 4:40 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Officials reached by The Daily Beast spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to discuss the president’s TV hate-watching habits, or internal West Wing strife.

No kidding.
posted by zarq at 4:44 PM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


Republican provocateur Roger Stone fueled the speculation on Wednesday when he claimed to know who the leaker was, and “their initials are J.K.”

he's right, it was Rowling, she wizarded it right out from under their noses

what is great though is this is the worst possible way to smear Kushner because referring to people by their initials in this white house is like when parents spell out D-O-C-T-O-R in front of their toddlers. it will take Trump YEARS to figure out who those letters might stand for.
posted by queenofbithynia at 4:47 PM on July 12, 2017 [19 favorites]


Maybe Trump can cite Nixon getting help from Ho Chi Minh to get elected.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 4:49 PM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


is like when parents spell out D-O-C-T-O-R in front of their toddlers. it will take Trump YEARS to figure out who those letters might stand for.

Yeah, on a related note, Hunter Walker just dropped this quote:
These are questions that are also being asked inside the West Wing. A clearly exasperated White House staffer told Yahoo News they believe the continued attacks on the Clintons are an effort to satisfy Trump, who has infamously remained fixated on his election victory. The staffer suggested this focus on the Clintons is leading to statements that don’t address the issues at hand and therefore prevent the discussion from moving on.

The staffer’s take: “The Clinton stuff is purely done to appease Trump. It’s the equivalent of giving a sick, screaming baby whiskey instead of taking them to the doctor and actually solving the problem.”
Imagine if we had a President whose own staff didn't constantly infantilize, and I use that word literally, him.
posted by zachlipton at 5:01 PM on July 12, 2017 [50 favorites]


In this analogy, taking the infant to the doctor = impeachment, yes?
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:12 PM on July 12, 2017 [11 favorites]


CNN has video from 2013 where Donnie shitstain hangs out with the Agalarovs. Here's what Donnie has to say about having his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow:

""I have great respect for Russia. And to have the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, in the most important location, the most beautiful building, in your convention center, with such amazing partners, I mean it's going to be fantastic for detente, or whatever you want to say," Trump continues. "I think it's a great thing for both countries, and honestly they really wanted it in Russia -- badly. ... Politically they wanted it."

Perhaps that was the bait. Get the idiot over to Moscow and show him a good time. Make him think he's doing us a favor.
posted by vrakatar at 5:13 PM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


“Very much…Growling.”
Next meme... Trump as Angry Doge.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:17 PM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Trump as Angry Doge.

I believe you mean ANGERY.
posted by dhens at 5:27 PM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


What happens if the Obamacare Repeal Kill the Poor and Sick for Tax Cuts bill crashes and burns? Does the entire agenda collapse? They can't do the tax cuts they want to do without the Medicaid cuts.

I suppose they can just do W Parts 2 and massively cut taxes for 10 years. Then whine about the deficit which they themselves created.
posted by Justinian at 5:32 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Trump loves a military parade — it’s one reason he’s heading to Paris
President Trump was not expected to attend France’s Bastille Day, which this year will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into World War I.

But then he learned there would be a military parade.

French President Emmanuel Macron told Trump in a June 27 phone call about the event, which this year will feature U.S. and French troops marching through the historic streets near the Arc de Triomphe, fighter jets cutting through the skies above, and flags, horses and military equipment on display — the sort of spectacle that Trump wanted to stage at his own inauguration in January.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:36 PM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


>For your diversion, here's a supercut of Donald Trump saying "no collusion" in various interviews:

>>WATCH: For months Pres. Trump has repeatedly denied there was any collusion between his campaign & Russia. #11MSNBC


Keep in mind that, thanks to the second side of Trump's Mirror, we know that whenever Trump says, "I am absolutely, positively NOT doing X" it actually means that he absolutely, positively IS doing X.

The more times and more emphatically he repeats his denials, the more certain it becomes that he was actually doing X, in spades.

(Why else is he even thinking about it? Why is he worried about it? Why is it on his mind? Because he's worried about being found out--that's why.)
posted by flug at 5:36 PM on July 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


Trump as Angry Doge.

Would that he were. Then we could send him to Venice and he'd be their problem.
posted by jackbishop at 5:38 PM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


> From the Daily Beast:
Other senior Trump administration officials have gossiped that Manafort himself could be behind the leak. Some officials jokingly suggested the president himself was the culprit, only to concede that “these days, who knows?” one aide said.

“Could [Corey] Lewandowski have done this?” was yet another zany theory hurled around internally on Tuesday, hypothesizing perhaps someone forwarded the emails to the ousted campaign manager.
The ratfuckers chase their own tails before turning and biting the rat next to them in a frenzy of ratfuckery.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:44 PM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


I'm still waiting for the Carter Page / Jeff Sessions bomb to drop. So far we just have Sessions conveniently forgetting things under oath and Page occasionally running his mouth on TV. I really want to know what that relationship is about. They're the slowest drips (see what I did there).
posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:51 PM on July 12, 2017 [11 favorites]


We seem to have glided right over the period-comma-apostrophe bullshit from the New Yorker (as seen here.)

The main problem seems to be this: "another of our conventions: when something like “Jr.” occurs in the middle of a phrase, clause, or sentence, it is set off by its preceding comma and a following comma." Which means they end up with this: "Donald Trump, Jr.,'s Love For Russian Dirt."
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:57 PM on July 12, 2017 [14 favorites]


Absolutely. The presidency is not an entry-level position. Run for mayor first.
posted by Autumnheart at 2:59 PM on July 11
[29 favorites +] [!]


This guy just announced that he's running for mayor of New Orleans.
(YouTube link)
posted by artychoke at 6:01 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


fantastic for detente

Fantastic...for...detente

for detente you guys
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:01 PM on July 12, 2017 [16 favorites]


Fantastic...for...detente

Even back when Trump knew actual words, he was still stuck in the 80s.
posted by zachlipton at 6:05 PM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


I just want to correct something I saw upthread. The China-Beef deal was actually reached under Obama, it is just that American imports just started arriving . Second, Chinese poultry needs to meet Dept. of Agriculture standards. And finally, US poultry producers love China because they buy all our chicken feet (which used to be ground up into fertilizer). Turns out American chickens have bigger, meatier feet than Chinese ones do.
Obama deal
Chicken feet
posted by obliquity of the ecliptic at 6:05 PM on July 12, 2017 [37 favorites]


In other, non-treason news: brace for impact...

TPM: Short Tempers And Mass Confusion: O’care Repeal Is Going Awesome
An updated version of Senate Republicans’ health care bill will be released Thursday morning, but as of Wednesday afternoon few lawmakers had any idea what that bill would include, or even if one or two versions will be unveiled.

The good news: The tweaks ... seem to have accomplished little more than pissing off both camps.
posted by RedOrGreen at 6:06 PM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


Metafilter: bigger, meatier feet
posted by uosuaq at 6:07 PM on July 12, 2017 [19 favorites]


That New Orleans mayor candidate (Charles O Anderson) has a Wix site with infinitely more content than Kid Rock. He might be announcing his run in a somewhat silly way, but he has a history of working on his dearest issue & he makes it clear that as mayor, he would use that position to further his goals of reducing the murder rate in N.O.

The difference between him & K.R. couldn't be more stark. I wish him the best. Please, no milkshake duck.

Edited to add a link to his site
posted by narwhal at 6:27 PM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


I am over stunt candidates. This shit grates and is embarrassing.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:30 PM on July 12, 2017 [16 favorites]


Guys I think we've missed a whole line of reasoning as to why Junior decided to shit his evidence all over Twitter.

What if his confidant and adviser that told him to "be transparent" is a time traveler from the future sent to save us from some future Trump catastrophe?
posted by Talez at 6:34 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


What if his confidant and adviser that told him to "be transparent" is a time traveler from the future sent to save us from some future Trump catastrophe?

That time machine landed nine months late.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:37 PM on July 12, 2017 [16 favorites]


I do love seeing these fucking rats begin to frantically distance themselves from each other, though. Bannon must be laughing his booze-reeking ass off.

Unfortunately for them, at this point they're all tied together.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:38 PM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


In which MSNBC's Katy Tur and Politico's Jake Sherman cope with the madness of the Trump administration by entertaining each other, and sometimes cracking each other up, by surreptitiously embedding Phish lyrics into their reporting.
posted by vverse23 at 6:40 PM on July 12, 2017 [12 favorites]


That time machine landed nine months late.

No no no there's multiple travelers. They've been releasing stuff to the media but the American people still elected him. Now they're trying again.
posted by Talez at 6:42 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Keep in mind that, thanks to the second side of Trump's Mirror, we know that whenever Trump says, "I am absolutely, positively NOT doing X" it actually means that he absolutely, positively IS doing X.

I'm all on board the Trump's Shaving Kit wagon and always have been, don't get me wrong, but... are we sure that Trump knows the definition of "collusion", as opposed to merely its Bad Sounding-ness?
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:46 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


WaPo: DHS’s Kelly tells Hispanic caucus DACA might not survive court challenge
Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in a closed-door meeting Wednesday that an initiative that grants work permits to more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants may not survive a looming legal challenge.

Kelly declined to take questions after the meeting, but his spokesman said the secretary told the members that the Obama-era program, which shields immigrants brought to the United States as children, is at risk.
...
“Jeff Sessions is going to say, ‘Deport them,’ ” a visibly shaken Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) said in English and Spanish, noting that the attorney general had been a fierce opponent of illegal immigration as a senator from Alabama. “If you’re going to count on Jeff Sessions to save DACA, then DACA is ended.”
There's been considerable speculation that they're trying to figure out a backdoor way to end DACA without the political fallout of actually doing it by using a lawsuit by red states to force the issue and declare that they'll stop issuing renewals. I'd upgrade that speculation to red alert status now.

Also on immigration: Politico—Trump crafting plan to slash legal immigration. In which Miller and Bannon are working on a bill that would cut the number of legal immigrants in half. I guess the whole "big beautiful door" in the wall thing, shockingly, turned out to be a lie too.
posted by zachlipton at 6:47 PM on July 12, 2017 [23 favorites]


zombieflanders: "And here we have the guy who defeated one of the two Jewish GOP members of the House referring to a Jewish Senator's economic positions with a centuries-old anti-Semitic reference."

In Dave Brat's defense, he is an extremely stupid person. The odds that he is aware of the origin of the phrase are slim.

I'd even say there is some chance he's not aware of Shakespeare.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:48 PM on July 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


@fluttering hellfire- I hear you. & I agree, for the most part. But the fact of the matter is, folks need votes to get elected. A dry, traditional run for office by a qualified candidate may work for us, but there are more than just you's & me's out there. Our latest election taught us (or me, at least) that in some cases, that's not enough.

If a stunt candidate gets more people to the polls (and, obviously, if that stunt candidate is an actual, worthwhile candidate) so be it. I don't understand most marketing or advertising, so I'm the last person folks should consult when asking "is this a reasonable strategy." As such, I can't possibly say whether hating on a rap announcement is just "get off my lawn" or a failure to understand how much the game of politics is evolving..
posted by narwhal at 6:49 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


That time machine landed nine months late.

No no no there's multiple travelers. They've been releasing stuff to the media but the American people still elected him. Now they're trying again.
Somewhere up the timeline is this decade's wikihistory page.
posted by tilde at 6:51 PM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


I wouldn't get too excited about articles of impeachment, guys. Not when Bob Goodlatte, who is among the worst of the worst, is head of the House Judiciary Committee.
posted by dogheart at 6:52 PM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]



In which MSNBC's Katy Tur and Politico's Jake Sherman cope with the madness of the Trump administration by entertaining each other, and sometimes cracking each other up, by surreptitiously embedding Phish lyrics into their reporting.


I haven't seen Phish since like 2003 but I love this.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:52 PM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


Nixon took 20 months, according to NPR. I need to go through my Doonesbury books and measure that in panels, or something. Even with Twitter and Jr self immolating in pixel form, it's not moving fast enough, nor will it. The party in power is just going to crush things through as fast as they can, assuming the actual post-Trumpening will bog things down again and prevent the kill the poors bills from being rammed through after the Administration is officially removed.
posted by tilde at 6:54 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


pjenks: "Nice to see that Pat Robertson is almost dead."

You know who played Pat Robertson on the SNL skit of the '88 Republican primary debate? Al Franken!
posted by Chrysostom at 6:59 PM on July 12, 2017 [12 favorites]


In which MSNBC's Katy Tur and Politico's Jake Sherman cope with the madness of the Trump administration by entertaining each other, and sometimes cracking each other up, by surreptitiously embedding Phish lyrics into their reporting.

Finally, something besides ice cream justifies Phish's existence. This is adorable and reminds me of Chris Packham of Springwatch.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:00 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Financial Times: Did Yuri Chaika, Russia’s top prosecutor, want to help Donald Trump.
posted by adamvasco at 7:01 PM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Natasha Bertrand, Business Insider: House Democrats want to know why a major Russian money-laundering case was abruptly settled

Why is Jeff Sessions still in office, let alone allowed to make any kind of decisions involving Russa?

Also, this story has a huge thread over on /r/politics, where people noted: Remember when Paul Ryan said off the record: "There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump."

So, I guess Rohrbacker had already been shilling for Putin on the Magnitsky Act on his own- see Putin's Favorite Congressman, Politico, 11/2016. And apparently he's also tight with the "crown lawyer," Natalia Veselnitskaya. When she was seated front row at a 2014 congressional hearing, scoping Russian Ambassador, Michael McFaul's laptop with her phone in hand, McFaul said she was invited by Rohrbacker.

He may be acting totally outside of Trump's world, but still interesting to see more backstory on this Magnitsky stuff.
posted by p3t3 at 7:03 PM on July 12, 2017 [33 favorites]


I know narwhal, we had a mayoral candidate run for publicity for his ice cream shop which was ha ha funny, but we also had a hotly contested dem primary and I think any detraction from things that affect actual constituents lives is not a luxury we have right now. Had Clinton won the presidency and Kander won the senate, Beatle Bob could have run for mayor and I would have trusted my fellow St. Losers. I just don't think we can afford the idgaf vote lulz anymore. I have a sinking feeling that since Trump won the election, the idgaf vote is now the momentum. I want someone smart and experienced and qualified to lead. I have no apologies for this, and no apologies for looking down on low information voters.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:04 PM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Remember when Paul Ryan said off the record: "There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump."


That wasn't Ryan but he was there, that was some CA repub I forget who. Great point tho, not trying to kibosh. Ryan tried to shush him down I think, and the tapes might only exsist thanks to Evan Macmuffin.
posted by vrakatar at 7:09 PM on July 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


Among the many annoying things about this whole Russia thing is that I've been finding myself rooting for has-been warmongering neo-conservatives like max boot and bill kristol to talk some sense into the GOP.
posted by empath at 7:10 PM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Remember when Paul Ryan said off the record: "There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump."

iirc, that was Kevin McCarthy. I was sitting 15 feet away from that guy at an event as he just lied his ass off in our faces, telling us about how this is all a nothingburger and firing Comey was just swell, and then the report came out a short time later that he spent the previous year cracking "jokes" about Trump being on Putin's payroll. What a joke.
posted by zachlipton at 7:12 PM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


Senator Grassley says he wants Manafort to testify in front of the judiciary committee, with subpoena if necessary. Mostly regarding the Foreign Agent Registration Act, but anything could come up as a topic.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 7:12 PM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


vrakatar- you're right, it was Kevin McCarthy, not Ryan. Thanks!
posted by p3t3 at 7:12 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Healthcare roundup:

* Murkowski calls caucus meeting "icky," says no progress on her sticking points. [Alaska Dispatch News]

* Politico - Murkowski savaged the Medicaid cuts in the caucus meeting, and Hoeven backed her up. Heller says he hasn't changed his mind. Portman says he still opposes the bill over Medicaid cuts. Toomey says Medicaid cuts are a must.

* NBC - Medicaid cuts still likely in the revised bill.

* NYMag - Coherent bill still nowhere in sight.

* Huffpost gets this quote from a GOP aide: “I hate to break this one to you guys, but I don’t think they have any idea yet how they’re going to do this.”
posted by Chrysostom at 7:25 PM on July 12, 2017 [34 favorites]


Rohrabacher! I was sad to leave my East Bay congressional district this past spring, but I'm glad to have landed in Rohrabacher's so I can have someplace to direct my post election fear and frustration.

We're coming for ya, Dana.
posted by notyou at 7:34 PM on July 12, 2017 [17 favorites]


For Dana Rohrabacher news and notes: crazydana.com.

(Sorry about sharing that site's the tone deaf use of "crazy" here.)
posted by notyou at 7:42 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


So if any of you in senate districts that don't have a 2018 seat up, or are in safe blue, consider tossing some change to McCaskill. She is doing tireless outreach to red districts and it's nascent in spilling over to house races and state leg races. This needs to keep going. I WANT Missouri to be considered purple by 2020 and ensure that Roy fucking Blunt doesn't see anything but a golf course and a shitty book deal in 2022.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:47 PM on July 12, 2017 [18 favorites]


dis_integration: But in any case this will all go nowhere and Trump will be reelected

Today is the first day I've ventured back into the #45 threads in some time, and I had to run to the bathroom to dry-heave over the toilet after reading that.

(As was suggested in... a MetaTalk thread I can't find right now, I'm making a comment to gently remind folks that the bulk of The Blue is turning into a ghost town as the #45 threads function as MeFite event horizons. I know these discussions are addictive, fast-moving, and information-rich, and I know our various media outlets have turned into firehoses, but there's more to MetaFilter than this, and we could all use a brain break.)
posted by tzikeh at 7:49 PM on July 12, 2017 [34 favorites]


One thing this past election made clear: if you want to run an online business -- like Twitter, or Facebook, or any "platform" -- where there is an expectation from users that they are seeing trusted content from fellow humans, or they are seeing factual data...there has to be some culpability for the business if their platform is being exploited by botnets or disinformation groups or whatever and millions lied to. This, of course, should also hold true for shit like Fox "News".

And that's on top of being liable for threats, doxxing or the like, when people use the platform as a tool for doing so.

These things effect all of us. They can actively hurt, in real ways, real live humans. The idea that you can spawn a business which makes you billions by making millions of people's lives worse without consequence is reprehensible.
posted by maxwelton at 7:50 PM on July 12, 2017 [17 favorites]


Trump and Russia, Clinton and Ukraine: How do they compare?, Politifact:
According to Politico, the pro-Western administration that replaced Yanukovych preferred Clinton over Trump and was eager to help the consultant.

For Hannity, this was a direct parallel to the Trump affair, and he asked people to consider, "which was worse."

"Now that you have evidence from both sides, you have to decide for yourself," he told his viewers.

Are the two episodes basically the same?

No one has all the facts, but we can compare the details that we do have. The cases have similarities and differences.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:58 PM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


ELECTIONS NEWS

** Kobach commission:
-- Another day, another legal action. Complaint to the Election Assistance Commission Inspector General that EAC Commissioner McCormick is illegally also serving on the Kobach commission.
-- Dahlia Lithwick: The chaos being sown by the commission is exactly as designed.
-- Speaking of Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State website has a bunch of inaccurate data for voters (shocking!).
** NJ gov -- Monmouth poll finds Dem Phil Murphy still with a huge lead over GOP Kim Guadagno, 53-26.

** 2018 Senate:
-- 538: AZ is a good Dem opportunity, they need to get a candidate pronto.

-- Looks like recent loser of the VA GOP governor nomination and crypto-white supremacist Corey Gardner is going to get into the Senate race against Tim Kaine. [Richmond Times-Dispatch]

** Healthcare -- Morning Consult poll finds 67% of Republicans want Congress to continue with repeal & replace effort, vs 21% to move on. Across all voters, it's 40/47.
** Odds & ends:
-- Including last night's OK flips, in the 26 special state/federal special elections this year, the Dem has outperformed Hillary's result in 19 of them.
-- Fun fact of the day: Lancaster County, PA has never been represented by a Democrat in Congress ever.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:04 PM on July 12, 2017 [33 favorites]


Against Bluexit, Branko Marcetic:
In December 2016, journalist Kevin Baker wrote a piece for the New Republic complaining about the “lazily deployed” stereotype of the “condescending coastal liberal who lives in his own bubble,” and about the “right-wing project to label anyone in the opposition as somehow deracinated, unnatural, unconnected to ‘the homeland.’”

Then, in March, Baker wrote a column titled “It’s Time for a Bluexit,” arguing that progressive America, or “blue states,” ought to simply break off from the conservative-voting parts of the country and go it alone. It was, in his words, “virtual secession.” Can’t get more “unconnected to ‘the homeland’” than that.

Baker’s column is obviously not serious, but it appears to have struck a nerve with some liberals. Last week, he was back on the Bluexit train as MSNBC anchor Joy Reid invited him onto her show to elaborate on his column, while the hashtag “#Bluexit” trended, mostly in support of his basic point.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:11 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Kellyanne Conway just had the oddest appearance on Hannity in which she holds up pieces of paper to illustrate "Collusion? ["Collusion" but crossed out]" and "Illusion Delusion." It's utter batshit WTFery.

I like this take from @russiannavyblog: Teachers go on food stamps, but fucking @KellyannePolls buys a $7.7m house because she can do this.
posted by zachlipton at 8:15 PM on July 12, 2017 [32 favorites]


-- Looks like recent loser of the VA GOP governor nomination and crypto-white supremacist Corey Gardner is going to get into the Senate race against Tim Kaine. [Richmond Times-Dispatch]

Apparently thinking that Stewart's campaign was the right way to do it, the White House and RNC are digging into the Virginia gubernatorial race, trying to make the republican candidate Ed Gillespie embrace the Trump. From the WaPo, Gillespie’s primary scare has White House, others urging ‘Trump world’ hires. Gillespie is not quite a never-Trumper, he just pretends the Trump and his unpopular policies don't exist. To fix that, republican insiders have pushed for him to bring Corey Lewandowski into his campaign and the White House has offered to have Trump's family available to campaign in Va.
posted by peeedro at 8:21 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Kellyanne Conway just had the oddest appearance on Hannity in which she holds up pieces of paper to illustrate "Collusion? ["Collusion" but crossed out]" and "Illusion Delusion." It's utter batshit WTFery

Ah yes, the "treason schmeason" defence.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 8:22 PM on July 12, 2017 [43 favorites]


Trump supporter: Republican health plan 'terrifies me' by Eric Barlow.

In which he laments that his 5 year old son may well die if Obamacare goes away. I'm sure that would make him very sad as he heads to the voting booth to vote for Republicans against in a year and a half.
posted by Justinian at 8:24 PM on July 12, 2017 [27 favorites]




Wait, what? A goddamn umbrella sharing startup?
posted by medusa at 8:46 PM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


From the WaPo, Gillespie’s primary scare has White House, others urging ‘Trump world’ hires. Gillespie is not quite a never-Trumper, he just pretends the Trump and his unpopular policies don't exist. To fix that, republican insiders have pushed for him to bring Corey Lewandowski into his campaign and the White House has offered to have Trump's family available to campaign in Va.

Please Br'er Trump, don't throw me into the brier patch. Democratic primary votes nearly doubled Republican in VA. Clinton won VA. Trump underperformed Crazy fucking Ken Kookinelli. Please, go full Trumpist against motivated Northern Virginia.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:50 PM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


tbh, the Napoleon painting is the only thing I like about Bannon. It's exuberantly nuts.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:51 PM on July 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Wait, what? A goddamn umbrella sharing startup?

and what, pay for my own umbrella? not this millennial.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 8:53 PM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


Healthcare -- Morning Consult poll finds 67% of Republicans want Congress to continue with repeal & replace effort, vs 21% to move on.

They don't know what the hell they want other than sticking it to Obama. The AHCA and BCRA are both unpopular among different strains of Republicans for diametrically opposed reasons but the base all still want to push repeal and replace through without any common ground on what that would look like. They've been papering over the schism in the GOP since the Tea Party and the only thing holding it together is the moderates caving on everything, but there won't be much of a party if the moderates cave on healthcare and get voted out. But that's what they get for trying to please two parties masquerading as one.

I'm honestly surprised that the Murkowskis of the party haven't decided to get off Mr. McConnell's Wild Ride and snipe Manchin and Heitkamp from the Dems to pool resources as a small third party, they'd all end up as important dealmakers in Congress and get to keep on playing the middle on everything.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:54 PM on July 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


The Republicans' problem with their long campaign against Obamacare is a perfect example of a dog chasing a car and having no idea what to do when it catches it.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:05 PM on July 12, 2017 [18 favorites]


Wait, what? A goddamn umbrella sharing startup?

Um, this is probably the best thing that 2017's come up with so far, really.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:08 PM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


From the article about the Republican afraid of losing his son if Obamacare is repealed:
I am a Republican, and I voted for President Trump. I voted for leaders who, I thought, would make a serious, bipartisan effort to fix the problems with Obamacare.
No. You. DIDN'T. The Republican plank has NEVER been "fix Obamacare." It has ALWAYS been "get rid of the plan this person of color managed to taint 'Murica with, consequences be damned." And how do I know the Republicans hate it because Obama is black? Easy. Obamacare IS the Republican plan! Everyone knows it's Romney's design and implementation from his time as governor.

I mean, I feel sorry for this guy and his son. No one deserves to experience the fear and stress of dealing with serious, life threatening healthcare issues for themselves or their children. But for fuck's sake, stop voting based on what you think/hope/pray people are saying and take them at their fucking word. When a candidate says he's getting rid of the "disastrous" Obamacare that keeps your son alive, believe him and vote for someone else! Goddammit.
posted by xyzzy at 9:09 PM on July 12, 2017 [105 favorites]


When a candidate says he's getting rid of the "disastrous" Obamacare that keeps your son alive, believe him and vote for someone else!

pony request: "impotent rage" flag
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:14 PM on July 12, 2017 [18 favorites]


I read the news today, oh boy...

On the upside, yesterday's report about (not really) teleporting a photon gives me at least a sliver of hope that someday someone will be able to beam me the fuck out of this timeline.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:17 PM on July 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


medusa: Wait, what? A goddamn umbrella sharing startup?

The headlines leaves out the best part - the umbrella sharing company is one of 15 umbrella sharing startups in China. Not a joke.
posted by bluecore at 9:20 PM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


I look forward to Kellyanne going full Ross Perot and bringing out some charts.

I feel sorry for the ghost of Napoleon, who was after all incredibly intelligent, that he has to spend eternity watching drunken shitgibbons like Bannon cosplay as him.
posted by emjaybee at 9:22 PM on July 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


On the upside, there are many good Photoshops of Kellyanne's signs on the Twitters.
posted by emjaybee at 9:26 PM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]




House Democrats unveil Obamacare fixes:
Chief among the proposals is creating an annual $15 billion reinsurance fund to help stabilize markets. Reinsurance would cover high claims for insurers.

While Obamacare included several programs to share risk among insurers to cover the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions, some of those programs have expired.

The proposal also calls for fully funding the cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers, which reimburse insurers for lowering copays and deductibles of low-income Obamacare customers.

The Trump administration has not decided whether to commit to making the cost-sharing payments in 2018, which in some cases has led insurers to raise premiums in some areas. Insurers are required under Obamacare to lower copays and deductibles for poor Obamacare customers and the government would in turn reimburse them.

Other ideas include considering expanding the availability of catastrophic health insurance plans that include essential health benefits and coverage for primary care for younger people. A major problem with Obamacare is the law's enrollment population has been too sick, with not enough young and healthy people to offset high medical claims.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:27 PM on July 12, 2017 [13 favorites]


Vox has a better explainer of the House Dems' Obamacare fixes.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:29 PM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


> No one has all the facts, but we can compare the details that we do have. The cases have similarities and differences.

PolitiFact may as well have closed with "in conclusion, Russia and Ukraine are lands of contrasts." The only things missing from their ridiculous list of similarities is "both Ukraine and Russia are sovereign states on the planet Earth", and "both Trump and Clinton have spent time in Washington, DC." Meanwhile, the list of differences includes things like "one country is an ally, one isn't", and "one was the result of a criminal cyber attack, one wasn't."

I eagerly await PolitiFact's next bombshell: "Garfield and Lasagna, Clinton and Pantsuits: How Do They Compare?"
posted by tonycpsu at 9:30 PM on July 12, 2017 [12 favorites]


So we can blame Obama and his lax immigration policy for Jr's troubles?
posted by notyou at 9:31 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


I read the news today, oh boy...

Nothing makes sense anymore and if we are all alive in 5 years someone will Kickstarter a but did this really happen in 2017 card/drinking game and make a bazillion dollars.
posted by hapaxes.legomenon at 9:40 PM on July 12, 2017 [30 favorites]


the Vox link addresses exactly the point I was looking for:
One other way the Democrats could strengthen the law would be to make the individual mandate penalty more severe, charging people a higher price to remain uninsured. But the group didn’t go that way, knowing such a proposal would be unpopular
Until you make the mandate penalties much more severe you aren't serious. Oh, I support the fixes they propose. They will help a lot. But they're avoiding a necessary and important proposal because it wouldn't be popular. Which is politically cowardly.
posted by Justinian at 9:41 PM on July 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


I feel sorry for the ghost of Napoleon, who was after all incredibly intelligent, that he has to spend eternity watching drunken shitgibbons like Bannon cosplay as him.

The really nice thing about eternity is that Steve Bannon is just a brief, whiskey scented blip from your perspective.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:47 PM on July 12, 2017 [12 favorites]


Congressional Democrats, politically cowardly? Are you sure there's not some other explanation? I mean it's just so out of character.
posted by contraption at 9:51 PM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


Hell, put in the mandate penalty increase and negotiate it out if you have to. Then you can say you compromised!
posted by Justinian at 9:52 PM on July 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


You guys are so basic--it's 69th dimensional chess. To avoid having to negotiate and compromise, they led with the watered-down compromise position! A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacy!
posted by Joseph Gurl at 10:04 PM on July 12, 2017 [8 favorites]


democratic congressmen always drive off the lot after paying a hefty chunk over the sticker price, don't they
posted by murphy slaw at 10:08 PM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


Corey Robin:
There's been a lot of discussion in the last few days of the use of the word treason. I've weighed in on its inappropriateness from a legal/constitutional view. That has raised the counter-claim that the word has more than a legal or constitutional meaning. But treason and its cognates—disloyalty, betrayal, subversion—are even more dangerous from a political and moral point of view. I've been shocked, frankly, at the ease with which people who should know better have been throwing these terms around. It's as if they have no knowledge of American history, and how easily these terms get mobilized for the most insidious political ends. This is one area where the Framers of the Constitution actually understood what the fuck they were talking about. To insist on the definition they adopted in the Constitution is not to engage in fussy originalism or anachronism; it's not being pedantic or legalistic. It's to be aware of the history of these terms and how dangerous they can be, and to have a little humility about your ability to transcend the lessons of the past. It really doesn't matter if these terms are being used by the right or the left. They're toxic. I tried to explore some of the dangers in this more theoretical piece I did for Jacobin year ago. Bottom line: we're all Hobbesians now. We just don't know it. And that's a problem.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 10:10 PM on July 12, 2017 [13 favorites]


And how do I know the Republicans hate it because Obama is black? Easy. Obamacare IS the Republican plan!

No. No, it isn't. It really, really isn't.

(But yes, Obama being black had a lot to do with them opposing it so viciously.)
posted by mightygodking at 10:21 PM on July 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


That insane Conway interview has gotten significant meme traction, naturally.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 10:38 PM on July 12, 2017 [25 favorites]


I'm not going to disagree on the specifics of the points you raise, mightygodking, but Obama himself frequently cited the Heritage plan as a starting point for Obamacare, knowing that Republicans would never go for single-payer. He even tweaked Romney, calling it "Romneycare" on multiple occasions.
posted by xyzzy at 10:43 PM on July 12, 2017 [8 favorites]


Plot twist: the super secret new Senate health care plan will be just giving everyone in the country membership in an umbrella sharing program. It will improve the CBO score!
posted by medusa at 10:55 PM on July 12, 2017 [11 favorites]


Then, in March, Baker wrote a column titled “It’s Time for a Bluexit,” arguing that progressive America, or “blue states,” ought to simply break off from the conservative-voting parts of the country and go it alone.

Uh-huh.

Pretty sure the last time that the fuckers that disenfranchise black people made noises about splitting from the Union, the liberals won the war.
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:00 PM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


Why not rebrand the individual mandate as a "freeloader penalty" meant to enforce personal responsibility for health care costs?
posted by mikelieman at 11:14 PM on July 12, 2017 [19 favorites]




"At 9:20 EST, POTUS came back to the press cabin and talked off-record for roughly 70 minutes."

Just once I’d love to read that followed by "and we all said 'hell no' because our job is to hold politicians accountable and so we don’t do off the record chats with people who repeatedly tell lies."
posted by zachlipton at 1:09 AM on July 13, 2017 [63 favorites]


zachlipton: Kellyanne Conway just had the oddest appearance on Hannity in which she holds up pieces of paper to illustrate "Collusion? ["Collusion" but crossed out]" and "Illusion Delusion." It's utter batshit WTFery.

The first word was "Conclusion?" And when she read the words, she said "Conclusion? Collusion, no. We don't have that yet."

YET.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:07 AM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


So basically Conway was doing a short, dumb Subterranean Homesick Blues?
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:15 AM on July 13, 2017 [27 favorites]


Wait, what? A goddamn umbrella sharing startup?

Err, no. Actually, there are fifteen umbrella sharing startups in China. Yup, you heard that right.

Fifteen.
Umbrella sharing startups.
In China.

I take this to be further proof that we are one of the weirder timelines of the simulation.
posted by sour cream at 3:13 AM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


FWIW if y'all wanna pay me and download my app I'll share my political rage with you. Free for the first month, only seven easy payments of $9.99 a month after!
posted by saysthis at 3:28 AM on July 13, 2017


Which is politically cowardly.

Hey - Buddy - there's a line, ok? We got 2018's to fuck up.

Once more into the teach - being opposite of GOP doesn't work in the red zones, and being Independent doesn't either. So what can we deduce? Anyone? Anyone? Seriously, halp awready
posted by petebest at 4:50 AM on July 13, 2017


The new cover of TIME is out.

Red Handed
posted by chris24 at 4:56 AM on July 13, 2017 [50 favorites]


The new cover of TIME is out.

Omg, that is a thing of beauty. The email in the background, the highlighting of key sections. I might need a copy of that.
posted by Twain Device at 4:59 AM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


Everyone but Donald Sr getting a real cover/coverstory on TIME magazine, that's simply genius.

Like the concept of him being too useless to kick out until like 30-40 other people have been forced to resign.
posted by tilde at 5:02 AM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


And lookie here, Sessions and Pence being dodgy yesterday on Russia.

@HeerJeet
1. Attorney General refuses to be fully forthcoming about Russian contacts despite court order. [Justice Department Defies Court Deadline To Release Sessions' Contacts With Russians]

2. Vice President's office refuses -- 3 times -- to answer direct questions about Russian contacts: [Mike Pence’s Press Secretary Won’t Say If His Boss Met With Russians]

3. It's really striking how reluctant figures like Sessions & Pence are to answer even simple factual questions on the Russia story.
posted by chris24 at 5:02 AM on July 13, 2017 [65 favorites]


The email in the background, the highlighting of key sections.

I just noticed that the "I love it" is highlighted almost perfectly in a Hitler mustache position.
posted by chris24 at 5:07 AM on July 13, 2017 [35 favorites]


Yesterday, there was a lot of storm activity in the Boston area, which caused everyone's phone to go off at once. So naturally everyone starts trying to figure out how to turn the audio alerts off, and we discover that you actually can't turn off "presidential" alerts. I really, really hope that no one tells him about this.
posted by Melismata at 5:16 AM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


The Presidential Alerts are what we are going to get if they take away his Twitter.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 5:20 AM on July 13, 2017 [16 favorites]


Somewhere up the timeline is this decade's wikihistory page.

Rorty has already written it, almost 20 years ago.

posted by rc3spencer at 5:51 AM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


I've made the questionable decision to apply for US citizenship. I had my interview yesterday, and one of my questions on the civics test was "If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?". Thanks to Eyebrows McGee in this thread, I almost had an Apu "just say slavery" moment and thought to myself "well, there's an interesting -- and until now almost entirely theoretical -- Constitutional law question about this".
posted by ocha-no-mizu at 5:56 AM on July 13, 2017 [111 favorites]


BBC Moscow Correspondent, Steve Rosenberg, does a daily roundup of Russian newspapers every morning. Today, among other stories:
Russia could pull out of talks next week if the US won't return to a discussion about giving back the Russian diplomatic compounds in MD and NY.
This is on top of recent reports that the Russians will soon impose retaliatory measures for the sanctions Obama imposed in December 2016.

...Since the Trump admin hasn't been able to follow through after all those phone calls.
posted by pjenks at 6:00 AM on July 13, 2017 [11 favorites]


@senjohnmccain: Must-read @washingtonpost: "This is what makes #Russia a hostile power"

Deeply concerning!
posted by Artw at 6:05 AM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


Oh boy, more obstruction of justice.

Lying to the American people isn't obstruction of justice. Only lying to the Feds or under oath.


I feel you -- Jr. is not himself obstructing justice by lying to the world -- but what we were talking about is White House staffers knowingly orchestrating and composing a false cover story for him (not even an administration employee) in order to prevent discovery of either crimes or at minimum facts material to an active Justice Department criminal investigation of unlawful activity. All at the direction and with the approval of the President. That's arguably part of a conspiracy to obstruct justice.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:05 AM on July 13, 2017 [17 favorites]


While collusion may not be treason, it's almost definitely illegal.

@AdavNoti
The foreign solicitation ban sure is having its 15 minutes! It's being made to sound a lot more complicated than it is, though. 1/

(a) It's illegal to ask a foreigner for a contribution. 52 USC 30121(a)(2). 2/

(b) Giving *anything* of value -- incl. intangible goods/services -- to a campaign below value is a contribution. 11 CFR 100.52(d)(1). 3/

(c) So asking a foreigner to give intangible goods or services to a campaign below value is illegal. 52 USC 30121; 11 CFR 100.52(d)(1). 4/

And that's it. Not complicated. But since egalitarian twitter is oddly concerned with creds, I'll add that I argued Bluman v. FEC. 5/5
posted by chris24 at 6:14 AM on July 13, 2017 [44 favorites]




The foreign solicitation ban sure is having its 15 minutes!

I was listening to a podcast yesterday with a lawyer from the Obama administration, and he was very much focused on the foreign solicitation ban.
posted by diogenes at 6:21 AM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


While the bait of Rosneft billions might be a point of Trump's collusion with Russia to interfere with US elections, I think it's just as likely he was about a year out from actually forfeiting property to DeutscheBank in this last, formerly-failed, up-to-1B, loan.

Sort of, "why not - collude with Russia or go actually broke. 50/50."
posted by petebest at 6:33 AM on July 13, 2017 [11 favorites]


(a) It's illegal to ask a foreigner for a contribution. 52 USC 30121(a)(2). 2/

(b) Giving *anything* of value -- incl. intangible goods/services -- to a campaign below value is a contribution. 11 CFR 100.52(d)(1). 3/

(c) So asking a foreigner to give intangible goods or services to a campaign below value is illegal. 52 USC 30121; 11 CFR 100.52(d)(1). 4/


Speaking of which: anybody know the status of what ought to have been a scandal surrounding Team Trump soliciting members of foreign governments to contribute to their campaign via emails repeatedly spammed to them? Because if you're looking for violations of this statute you'd be hard pressed to come up with a more egregious example.
posted by scalefree at 6:35 AM on July 13, 2017 [16 favorites]


umbrella sharing startup

The surge pricing is a killer though.
posted by spitbull at 6:35 AM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


Speaking of which: anybody know the status of what ought to have been a scandal surrounding Team Trump soliciting members of foreign governments
Looks like it never happened, cuz shenanigans?

posted by rc3spencer at 6:40 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


A Watergate response checklist that looks eerily familiar. (h/t /r/poltiicalhumor)

Also, lol @ "What about Chappaquiddick?" coming up four times.
posted by Talez at 6:45 AM on July 13, 2017 [30 favorites]


Examples of ongoing FEC shenanigans.
re: not investigating Trump campaign foreign solicitations
posted by rc3spencer at 6:48 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


A Watergate response checklist that looks eerily familiar. (h/t /r/poltiicalhumor)

Ha, just substitute Benghazi for Chappaquiddick and Comey for Dean, and that whole list sounds a lot like some of my friends' fb feeds.
posted by Mchelly at 6:48 AM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


Ha, just substitute Benghazi for Chappaquiddick and Comey for Dean, and that whole list sounds a lot like some of my friends' fb feeds.

Hell, since every Trumpette is posting the bullshit story about Kennedy supposedly soliciting Andropov's help to beat Reagan, even the 'Teddy Kennedy did bad things' fixation is the same.
posted by chris24 at 7:01 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


The FEC is not a real agency, its designed to be broken and nonfunctional, and it's been broken and nonfunctional for its entire existence.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:02 AM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]




I'm glad that Trump's guilt has become so clear, but I'm not enjoying this phase where he and his cronies continue to run our government despite the obviousness of the guilt.
posted by diogenes at 7:06 AM on July 13, 2017 [68 favorites]


But treason and its cognates—disloyalty, betrayal, subversion—are even more dangerous from a political and moral point of view. I've been shocked, frankly, at the ease with which people who should know better have been throwing these terms around. It's as if they have no knowledge of American history, and how easily these terms get mobilized for the most insidious political ends.
He's not wrong to say that the present evidence for an actual legal case of "treason" is very thin to non-existent. And he's not wrong to point out how accusations of treason inflame passions and divide people even further. And it's true that malicious accusations of treason have been used for insidious political ends. But in the face of a Presidential administration which does appear to have betrayed and subverted the American political process to a degree likely unparalleled in history, the anguish over the danger of the word "treason" seems just a little pedantic.

(None of that should be taken as a more general dismissal of Robin, just that I'm baffled if there's a larger point there than "treason is not a word to be used lightly." For which: noted.)
posted by octobersurprise at 7:09 AM on July 13, 2017 [19 favorites]


I've made the questionable decision to apply for US citizenship.

For what it's worth, I'm glad you're joining us.
posted by biogeo at 7:09 AM on July 13, 2017 [30 favorites]


continue to run our government

Is there much evidence that they're running anything, apart from 'in circles'? They've told various agencies to go out and do various shitty things, but in terms of actually leading?

45's main agenda appears to be tweeting, golfing and vanishing.
posted by Devonian at 7:14 AM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


So naturally everyone starts trying to figure out how to turn the audio alerts off, and we discover that you actually can't turn off "presidential" alerts.

Wait what? There are presidential alerts? That you can't turn off? Since when??
posted by rabbitrabbit at 7:18 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]




45's main agenda appears to be tweeting, golfing and vanishing.

And allowing agencies to detain people at airports and deport people who have lived here all their lives.
posted by Melismata at 7:20 AM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


Wait what? There are presidential alerts? That you can't turn off? Since when??

Mandated to be active by 2010, functional by 2012.

Wireless Emergency Alerts
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 7:21 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


I've made the questionable decision to apply for US citizenship.

I'm still holding off. I'm in solid, solid, D territory so me voting won't make a lick of difference and I'd lose consular assistance from Australia if they start playing funny business with more classes of foreigners (i.e. liberal agitators).
posted by Talez at 7:23 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


Oh OK. I know about emergency alerts of course. I thought presidential alerts were a different thing.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 7:23 AM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


And allowing agencies to detain people at airports and deport people who have lived here all their lives.

And dismantling environmental, economic and consumer regulations - yes. But that's breaking things, not running them.
posted by Devonian at 7:24 AM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


Trump Administration Eager to Start Crackdown on Legal Immigration
If anyone's considering becoming a citizen, your time is running out. Just a heads up.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:25 AM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


I thought presidential alerts were a different thing.

Oh, give it time. *shudder*
posted by Rykey at 7:27 AM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


Emergency alerts are unblockable alerts in the events of an emergency; i.e., if that rock formation under the Atlantic collapsed and sent a killer mega-tsunami to wipe out the East Coast or something, everyone would get texted about it.

Presidential Alerts, introduced in 2017, are a new thing, allowing the nation's supreme alpha-male to address his subjects and mark their inboxes with his testosterone-rich urine, as is his prerogative. They're mostly about the ugliness of female public figures, failing mainstream media sources and covfefe.
posted by acb at 7:27 AM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


Looks like the new 'healthcare' bill is out - Washngton Examiner


A new draft of the bill Republicans are advancing to repeal and replace portions of Obamacare leaves in place taxes on high-income earners and allows customers to purchase less expensive plans that cover fewer medical services, according to a Senate leadership outline obtained by the Washington Examiner.

posted by Devonian at 7:28 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


Wait what? There are presidential alerts? That you can't turn off? Since when??

You didn't get the one advertising Ivanka's Fall Collection?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:29 AM on July 13, 2017 [16 favorites]


I understand when people, especially legally competent people, cringe when regular folk use the word "treason". I watched a 2 hour documentary on the French Revolution and ensuing terror last night, and saw that word used there, with all the attendant collapse of civil order and betrayal of trust that that entailed, and I winced. When that treason word is used, the King is probably about to lose his head, and all hell will break lose. Under the present circumstances, there is no way in hell any competent lawyer or agency will attempt to pin the crime of "treason" on anyone in this administration.

But, but, but, we are still missing a lot of the story. From what we regular folk can see, based on the information in the public domain, it looks like a cabal of amoral thieves saw fit to grab power through any and all means necessary, including collusion with a hostile foreign power, that they did so for the goal (most of them) of self-enrichment. They were aided and abetted by those who had no qualms about abusing religious sentiment in pursuit of self-serving political goals. And the entire kleptocratic ensemble continues to destroy the institutions of society, fomenting hatred, tearing down the carefully negotiated structures (regulations) that were put in place for reasons of shared interest (health, safety) to enrich themselves.

I understand the lawyers. I will continue to call it treason though.
posted by stonepharisee at 7:29 AM on July 13, 2017 [57 favorites]


leaves in place taxes on high-income earners

So it's DOA, is what you're telling us.
posted by Etrigan at 7:30 AM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Please Br'er Trump, don't throw me into the brier patch. Democratic primary votes nearly doubled Republican in VA. Clinton won VA. Trump underperformed Crazy fucking Ken Kookinelli. Please, go full Trumpist against motivated Northern Virginia.

Normally, I'd agree, but I worry about the off-year election problems that Dems have seen in other special elections. If there's a Republican running VA during the 2020 post-census redistricting, I think we could say goodbye to a blue VA for a while.
posted by gladly at 7:34 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


if it doesn't have the tax cuts, then they just changed the bill from a trojan horse into a huge, rotting wooden horse with nothing inside as a gift to people who already have a perfectly functional huge wooden horse, thank you very much.
posted by murphy slaw at 7:39 AM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:40 AM on July 13, 2017 [48 favorites]


So who actually likes it without the tax cuts? Instead of a gift to the wealthy it's now completely pointless? The final game plan really is to "repeal and replace"with something exactly identical to the ACA but without Obama cooties on it, I guess.
posted by jackbishop at 7:44 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


SenMikeLee:

Just FYI - The Cruz-Lee Amendment has not been added to BCRA. Something based on it has, but I have not seen it or agreed to it.

I am withholding judgment and look forward to reading it.

posted by Chrysostom at 7:46 AM on July 13, 2017


The new version of the plan still guts Medicaid.
posted by zarq at 7:48 AM on July 13, 2017 [11 favorites]


if it doesn't have the tax cuts, then they just changed the bill from a trojan horse into a huge, rotting wooden horse with nothing inside as a gift to people who already have a perfectly functional huge wooden horse, thank you very much.

It likely still cuts the excise tax on tanning salons, the tax on medical device manufacturers, the annual fee on insurance providers, and the provision raising the medical expense deduction floor to 10% of AGI; it likely also includes expansion of HSAs (a tax-avoidance tool mostly used by households with >$100K AGI).

Even if they keep the net investment income tax and the provision on high insurance CEO pay, there are undoubtedly still a lot of tax cuts in the bill.
posted by melissasaurus at 7:48 AM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


Essential viewing: Trump's newly appointed Director of the Indian Health Service is evicerated by the atomic fury of Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT)

The outrage on display in that video is incredibly cathartic. I just want someone to express outrage about something, I now realize. Not concern. Not worry. Not raised eyebrows. Pure outrage.

I need the vicarious relief.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 7:54 AM on July 13, 2017 [58 favorites]


> with something exactly identical to the ACA

This is exactly what the GOP wants people to think. My expectation is that regardless of what taxes are left in place for political reasons, the exchanges will still be massively underfunded, and that poor people will get fucked very hard. Let's wait and see what the wonks say before we go giving them undeserved credit.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:55 AM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


I want a Damned. Answer. (YT link)

Senator Tester from SD just won the my new hero award today. That was awesome.
posted by petebest at 7:57 AM on July 13, 2017 [33 favorites]


If there's a Republican running VA during the 2020 post-census redistricting, I think we could say goodbye to a blue VA for a while.

Virginia is only blue in statewide elections. Because of gerrymandering 7 of 11 congressional districts are represented by republicans, at the state level republicans hold a majority in both the Senate and the House of Delegates. But democrats have won all the presidential and senate elections since 2008, and three of the last four governor's races. Unless Trump is somehow redrawing the map of political identity in the state to favor republicans (not likely), a republican governor in 2020 isn't going to change ongoing economic and demographic trends that are making Virginia more reliably blue.
posted by peeedro at 7:59 AM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


HSAs (a tax-avoidance tool mostly used by households with >$100K AGI)

We have a folder full of receipts from HSA qualifying expenses. Anytime we want to put our paws on some pre-tax dollars, we submit some expenses to the HSA for reimbursement. Fund roll over from year to year and there is no sunset on when you can submit an expense so it's just a tax sheltered slush fund for us.

I mean, I like that it's there and that we can use it in this way but it's not exactly being used to meet it's intended need.
posted by VTX at 8:00 AM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


Essential viewing: Trump's newly appointed Director of the Indian Health Service is evicerated by the atomic fury of Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT)

tfw some pissant little bureaucrat won't answer you, a sitting senator, because you have zero power compared to the giant asshole up top that is ready to shit all over said bureaucrat.
posted by Talez at 8:01 AM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


Normally, I'd agree, but I worry about the off-year election problems that Dems have seen in other special elections.

Kaine won't be running in a special, and the Democratic turnout in all of these specials has been above average, as well as swinging 10+ points in their favor. The problem has been that that has still not been enough to win deeply red gerrymandered districts in Georgia and South Carolina, or in a deep red State Trump won by 40+ in Montana. The trend is still good, and VA Gov in 2017 and Kaine in 2018 will not really be comprable. Let's hope I won't be proven wrong, but a state wide election in VA should not be a competitive race in the Trump era, and if it is, Democrats are more fucked than we even thought after 11/9.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:01 AM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


the atomic fury of Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT)

Tester represents a quite red state, only narrowly won his last election and is up again in '18. His strategy for years had been to distance himself from the Democratic party and anything appearing liberal. Recently, however, he's been making a lot of good choices. If he can keep up the image of "angry crewcut guy holding the big government weasels accountable" then he just might both be able to keep his seat here in '18 and also be a part of strong congressional resistance, which would be a real feat.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:01 AM on July 13, 2017 [41 favorites]


Essential viewing: Trump's newly appointed Director of the Indian Health Service is evicerated by the atomic fury of Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT)

I really enjoyed watching this but it does make me wonder if that senator had been a woman, how quickly she'd be silenced for not being polite.
posted by mcduff at 8:03 AM on July 13, 2017 [53 favorites]


The pretzels that guy is willing to twist himself into, with a shamed and terrfied look on his face, to avoid saying that yes, they are most concerned about personnel and yet their budget cuts funds for hiring and retaining said personnel are just astounding. Goddamn.
posted by lydhre at 8:04 AM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


If he can keep up the image of "angry crewcut guy holding the big government weasels accountable" then he just might both be able to win re-election here in '18 and also be a part of strong congressional resistance, which would be something of a feat.

It helps that he has a string quartet following him around all day.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:05 AM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


T.D. Strange: "Kaine won't be running in a special, and the Democratic turnout in all of these specials has been above average, as well as swinging 10+ points in their favor. The problem has been that that has still not been enough to win deeply red gerrymandered districts in Georgia and South Carolina, or in a deep red State Trump won by 40+ in Montana. The trend is still good, and VA Gov in 2017 and Kaine in 2018 will not really be comprable. Let's hope I won't be proven wrong, but a state wide election in VA should not be a competitive race in the Trump era, and if it is, Democrats are more fucked than we even thought after 11/9."

Yeah, specials have actually been going well? I'm as disappointed as anyone that we couldn't flip GA-06 and MT-AL, but those were reaches. And Dems have flipped four state leg seats so far.

In VA, I predict Dem wins in gov/LG/AG and a pickup of five seats in the House of Delegates this fall; Kaine wins next year. Put me down for a cake as appropriate.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:06 AM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


You know, every damn day is starting to remind me of that scene in A Handmaid's Tale that somebody referenced in another mega thread. Where a horrific terroristic event results in martial law and people just watch their TVs, not sure what to do.

We haven't had blood spilled, but we've had this tremendous upending of norms, things ridiculous are asserted as fact, and the entity steering the ship of state is mad.

I feel like history books in the future are going to have to explain why there wasn't more immediate action taken against these evil motherfuckers, and while there will be good reasons like the procedure for impeachment and the nature of the GOP at this point in time, there will also be some sort of explanation that boils down to, 'people were going to their jobs, getting paid, feeding their kids, watching quality TV, it just didn't seem like things could be that bad given those things'
posted by angrycat at 8:06 AM on July 13, 2017 [70 favorites]


Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who is responsible for gathering the votes for the bill, said there is no other plan that can get 50 votes. "If you vote "No" on this bill, it essentially is a vote for Obamacare because that's what we're going to be left with," Cornyn said on Fox this morning. "If Senator Paul can show me 49 other votes for his bill, then I would be all for it. But, unfortunately, the practicality is we have to pass a bill."

He's telling Republicans that this is their last chance and if they don't vote yes, they'll be blamed for the bill's defeat.
posted by zarq at 8:08 AM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


Here's a good thread about the proposed HSA expansion and how it's just another huge tax cut for the wealthy.
posted by melissasaurus at 8:10 AM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


Mandated to be active by 2010, functional by 2012.

Wireless Emergency Alerts


Yeah thanks for the flood alert two nights ago that woke me up. Eight floors up.
posted by srboisvert at 8:10 AM on July 13, 2017


I really enjoyed watching this but

Not today! No buts!

*rewatches*
posted by petebest at 8:10 AM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


I just want someone to express outrage about something, I now realize. Not concern. Not worry. Not raised eyebrows. Pure outrage.

This is how I feel about Trump/Russia every day.
posted by diogenes at 8:11 AM on July 13, 2017 [17 favorites]


HSAs used to be a good tool for contractors/freelancers. HSA plus low-premium, deductible only plan was a no-brainer. This was of course a few years ago, back when deductible-only plans existed and a $5,000 deductible was considered high.
posted by FakeFreyja at 8:15 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


> The pretzels that guy is willing to twist himself into, with a shamed and terrfied look on his face, to avoid saying that yes, they are most concerned about personnel and yet their budget cuts funds for hiring and retaining said personnel are just astounding.

In my short time working for the federal government, I've become acquainted with several GS14's and SES whose entire career was built on their superpower for never being the one to break bad news.
posted by klarck at 8:25 AM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


remind me of that scene in A Handmaid's Tale that somebody referenced in another mega thread. Where a horrific terroristic event results in martial law and people just watch their TVs, not sure what to do.
Fundamentalist theocracies gonna theocratize! In God We Trust, right?
posted by rc3spencer at 8:25 AM on July 13, 2017


@HeerJeet
1. Attorney General refuses to be fully forthcoming about Russian contacts despite court order. [Justice Department Defies Court Deadline To Release Sessions' Contacts With Russians]


If Sessions's revised version of his SF86 questionnaire is anything like Kushner's - the NYT reports that "Mr. Kushner supplemented the list of foreign contacts three times, adding more than 100 names, people close to him said." - there's no wonder he doesn't want it getting out.

That obstructionism shouldn't be a surprise at all. The post-bellum crypto-Confederate South's hypocritical disregard for the law is a foundational part of its character, and Jeff Sessions is a sterling product of what Langston Hughes called the "lazy, laughing South / With blood on its mouth". He's trying remake the Justice Department in that image.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:26 AM on July 13, 2017 [32 favorites]


Has Sessions been fired for perjury yet?
posted by Yowser at 8:27 AM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


Paige Winfield Cunningham, Washington Post:
Here's what McConnell has told several hesitant senators (including Portman and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.): The bill’s deepest Medicaid cuts are far into the future, and they’ll never go into effect anyway.

“He’s trying to sell the pragmatists like Portman, like Capito on ‘the CPI-U will never happen,’” a GOP lobbyist and former Hill staffer told me.

Under the current version of the Senate health-care bill, federal Medicaid spending would drop by 26 percent starting in 2026, pegged to the Urban Consumer Price Index. That's still eight-and-a-half years away -- long past senators' next election. And cutting Medicaid is so unpopular, with so much resistance from the health-care industry, that it's likely Congress would find a way to avoid the cuts when the time comes. After all, that's what Congress did for years by enacting the so-called "Doc Fix" to a Medicare doctors' payment formula.

But that's a big "if" in the minds of medical providers, who fear having any Medicaid cuts written into law.
The doctors told me they didn't get any solid promises from the rank-and-file yesterday to oppose the GOP bill.
(Emphasis in original).

So McConnell is basically telling Republican senators "Yes, we want to propose cutting Medicaid, and yes, we know that would kill or bankrupt millions of Americans, and yes, this would ruin the health-care industry, but don't worry! It wouldn't happen until one or two senate terms from now. By then the Democrats will probably be in charge and they'll have to clean up this mess, and we'll get to smear them as 'fiscally irresponsible' for doing what we knew would have to be done all along."

That's depressing. Let's lighten the mood with a joke.

Q: What do you get when a viper fucks a tortoise?
A: Senator Mitch McConnell.
posted by biogeo at 8:29 AM on July 13, 2017 [86 favorites]


The bill’s deepest Medicaid cuts are far into the future, and they’ll never go into effect anyway.

As Mathew Yglesias said on Twitter:

Call me crazy but “don’t worry, the bill’s major provisions won’t actually be implemented” seems like an unsound basis for legislating.
posted by diogenes at 8:31 AM on July 13, 2017 [93 favorites]


Historical question: has the strategy of "enacting" (and getting credit for, and planning on the legislative extortion with) *future* cuts been a recent phenomenon, or is this something Congress has always done?
posted by Dashy at 8:35 AM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


> Call me crazy but “don’t worry, the bill’s major provisions won’t actually be implemented” seems like an unsound basis for legislating.

But think of those sweet, sweet tax cuts.
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:36 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


Historical question: has the strategy of "enacting" (and getting credit for, and planning on the legislative extortion with) *future* cuts been a recent phenomenon, or is this something Congress has always done?

It's a nakedly transparent plan to make it cut the budget so they can push it through reconciliation instead of Democrats getting to do their bad Dikembe Mutombo impression.
posted by Talez at 8:38 AM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


games like this have been played by congress one way or another since reagan's election
posted by pyramid termite at 8:39 AM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]




I am amused by the conceit that if we liberals don't use the word "treason," it won't be used against us from the right in the future. Anyone who can say that doesn't know American history nearly as well as they pretend to. The word was widely used in 2003-4 against protesters against the disastrous Iraq war, just for instance.

Trump is a traitor to my values, which I consider to be patriotic.
posted by spitbull at 8:48 AM on July 13, 2017 [79 favorites]


Why is Trump over there? Given his aversion to travelling, this seems odd. I can't imagine any personal desire on his, or Macron's, part to be there. Is there some n-dimensional arrangement going on between adults from various quarters to position DJT at a specific time and place?
posted by stonepharisee at 8:50 AM on July 13, 2017


I feel like history books in the future are going to have to explain why there wasn't more immediate action taken against these evil motherfuckers, and while there will be good reasons like the procedure for impeachment and the nature of the GOP at this point in time, there will also be some sort of explanation that boils down to, 'people were going to their jobs, getting paid, feeding their kids, watching quality TV, it just didn't seem like things could be that bad given those things'

I think the cause has to be something more than this, though. The thing is—you don't even have to use anything beyond mainstream WWII-era concepts of right and wrong to explain what was so insanely dangerous about the stuff Trump was saying he would do during the campaign and what he's been doing since then.

One thing I keep coming back to is that in the 1930s when the Nazis and many other fascist regimes came to ascendancy, "World Peace" was still something people campaigned for and was at least taken somewhat seriously as a feasible and social goal. Some people referred to the first World War as "The War To End All Wars."

Now, in 2017, "World Peace" is a punch line or at best something cute which an adorably innocent child might wish for. If anyone in politics or public life articulated it as a goal, even in the context of something like the Syrian conflict, they would be dismissed as staggeringly naïve person putting forward a "non-starter" of a goal.

Yet, Trump and all of his stated objectives taking control of the United States of America and its deadliest of nuclear arsenals turned out to be eminently feasible and regarded as acceptable by a huge chunk of the population of the country.

I feel as though there must be something intrinsic to society and its collective attitudes that has changed or degraded or hasn't been successfully passed on, despite incredible progress in so many spheres, for Trump to be workable, nay actually successful, but World Peace to be completely excluded from public consciousness in the 21st century.
posted by XMLicious at 8:52 AM on July 13, 2017 [22 favorites]


Why say "Traitor" when you can say "Person in possible breach of the Espionage Act as amended"?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:53 AM on July 13, 2017 [15 favorites]


It's closer to Russia, just in case.
posted by yhbc at 8:53 AM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


Ok, so it looks like the details of the Senate revised healthcare bill are dribbling out, and the summary is "fewer tax cuts, more bare-bones insurance plans, same cuts to Medicaid but don't worry, they'll never be allowed to happen". Which is lipstick-on-a-pig levels of improvement.

But I guess I'd like to know - what is the function of a "bare bones insurance plan"? When your insurance plan doesn't cover say the cost of an ambulance ride or the cost of cancer treatments, what is the point of paying for it? Genuinely curious why anyone would go for it, even if they couldn't afford anything better.
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:54 AM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


For example, despicable Ann Coulter titled her 2003 best-selling book attacking anti-Iraq-war protests among other things, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism .

So anyone who reaches for the smelling salts when liberals say "treason" about Trump and Russia can kiss my ass.
posted by spitbull at 8:54 AM on July 13, 2017 [102 favorites]


The bill’s deepest Medicaid cuts are far into the future, and they’ll never go into effect anyway.

...

Call me crazy but “don’t worry, the bill’s major provisions won’t actually be implemented” seems like an unsound basis for legislating.


Right?! I wish to God the people who could vote McConnell out would listen to this and care about what it means: your Senator is so intent on pushing his self-serving agenda he'll intentionally put forth legislation he thinks he knows won't happen.
posted by Rykey at 8:55 AM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


Macron made a point of being nice to Trump at G20.
posted by scalefree at 8:55 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


Turns out Macron is not so good when not being directly compared with a nazi.

Makes me a little worried for how the next Macron/Nazi election will go TBH.
posted by Artw at 8:57 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm really curious as to what the menu is at Le Jules Verne tonight.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:57 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


I feel as though there must be something intrinsic to society and its collective attitudes that has changed or degraded or hasn't been successfully passed on, despite incredible progress in so many spheres, for Trump to be workable, nay actually successful, but World Peace to be completely excluded from public consciousness in the 21st century.
So do Pankaj Mishra and Rousseau. Populist rageouts are pretty regular affairs since the Enlightenment's elitist takeover.
posted by rc3spencer at 8:58 AM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Right?! I wish to God the people who could vote McConnell out would listen to this and care about what it means: your Senator is so intent on pushing his self-serving agenda he'll intentionally put forth legislation he thinks he knows won't happen.

"So if it'll never happen, there should be no problem with cutting out that part of the bill altogether, right? We'll save money on printing that way."
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:59 AM on July 13, 2017 [20 favorites]


I'm really curious as to what the menu is at Le Jules Verne tonight.

Pain de viande.
posted by Artw at 8:59 AM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


the manbaby gets to see a military parade for bastille day.

This. A thousand times this. To a praise addict like a malignant narcissist a military parade must be like a shot of pure heroin straight into a main vein.
posted by scalefree at 9:00 AM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Redorgreen But I guess I'd like to know - what is the function of a "bare bones insurance plan"? When your insurance plan doesn't cover say the cost of an ambulance ride or the cost of cancer treatments, what is the point of paying for it? Genuinely curious why anyone would go for it, even if they couldn't afford anything better.

I wonder the same thing and I think the answer comes down to health insurance companies can spend a ton of money on marketing and lawyers to make the plans seem appealing.

I've purchased my own health insurance for over 15 years now. It's not a straight forward process -- it got better with the ACA because of the exchange, but it is very hard to tell what is covered and what is not.

I suspect many people will look at a plan and think "I can afford that and it's insurance so that's good!"
posted by mcduff at 9:01 AM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


Why is Trump over there? Given his aversion to travelling, this seems odd.

It does, doesn't it? If there's one thing constant in Trump's character, though, it's his bottomless need for approval and adulation. Perhaps his narcissistic supply is running so low, he's willing to swap the domestic variety for a gallic one.

For Macron's part, his invitation makes him look gracious and diplomatic at the very least. And he has an opportunity to reaffirm Franco-American ties that supersede Trump. Or maybe he's playing le bon flic to Merkel's schlechter bulle.
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:01 AM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


I;'m kidding, that;s for losers, it'll be bifteck au sauce tomate.
posted by Artw at 9:01 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


The CBO has scored the president's budget.

It lowers the deficit except for one minor issue...
The President’s budget includes a set of principles to guide deficit-neutral reform of the tax system. Because that proposal lacks the specific details that CBO and JCT would need to estimate any effects on the budget and the economy (which could be significant), this analysis includes the Administration’s estimate of no effect as a placeholder; many combinations of policy changes could have such an effect.
The fact that this wasn't in 48 point type as the front page is beyond my reckoning.

The CBO is scoring Trump's budget on the assumption a (multi?) trillion dollar tax cut will cost us nothing.
posted by Talez at 9:02 AM on July 13, 2017 [58 favorites]


there will also be some sort of explanation that boils down to, 'people were going to their jobs, getting paid, feeding their kids, watching quality TV, it just didn't seem like things could be that bad given those things'

To be fair, a lot of those folks aren't feeling that things are "okay," they're just trying to manage their responsibilities and obligations to others and survive, on a practical level, with whatever practical tools they have at the level of their ordinary lives. A lot of their problems may be systemic, but ordinary people don't have a lot of systemic level political power on a daily, practical basis. We have to deal not just with the rules and policies coming down from the elected government, but de facto private law and policy, like insurance provider and banking terms and policies. Not everybody has the economic slack to put crusading over the big issues ahead of little things that are more immediate and important like feeding and clothing their kids and getting back surgery or not accidentally ending up homeless. I don't get the impression most people feel everything's fine, they're just busy and out of fucks to give and strained almost to the personal breaking point already in a lot of cases.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:03 AM on July 13, 2017 [45 favorites]


I mean, there's a practical power advantage to economically disenfranchising and emiserating people. It leaves them less time to organize and think and strains their ability to keep and maintain reliable social support in their daily lives, which creates a relative practical power gap opportunistic authoritarians can exploit to strengthen their hold.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:07 AM on July 13, 2017 [31 favorites]


And just to report that having tried various searches for a single conservative or pro-Bush commentator taking Coulter or anyone else to task for the word "treason" over concerns for its legal and constitutional specificity in 2003 or 2004, I can report that Google has yielded nothing so far.

This is why we lose. We worry about setting precedents the right has smashed to bits many times already. They don't play by any rules they don't like.
posted by spitbull at 9:09 AM on July 13, 2017 [45 favorites]


the manbaby gets to see a military parade for bastille day.

Donnie's got a real Tor Johnson vibe going on this morning in France.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:11 AM on July 13, 2017 [11 favorites]


Macron made a point of being nice to Trump at G20.
posted by scalefree at 8:55 AM on July 13 [3 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]


That's hilarious! Not least that short glimpse of Putin's face.

Regardless, Macron, like some other heads of state, has realized that Trump is easy to manipulate. And since the US is still the largest economy and the largest military force on the globe it is relevant to try to manipulate Trump. Merkel is in Paris as well, it's not like Macron is selling out, to the contrary, it seems the French/German agenda is to build an independent European defence economy.
posted by mumimor at 9:17 AM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


Donnie's got a real Tor Johnson vibe going on this morning in France.

Time for go to bed, Donnie.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:17 AM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


If you, like me, have a morbid fascination with Trump's bizarre and varied handshakes, enjoy this one with French first lady Brigitte Macron.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 9:18 AM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


He looks like he's trying to rip off her arm in order to eat it
posted by angrycat at 9:19 AM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]




If you, like me, have a morbid fascination with Trump's bizarre and varied handshakes, enjoy this one with French first lady Brigitte Macron.

It looks like she's being assaulted
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:20 AM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


Like no joke if I saw that going down on the street, I would seriously consider calling the police
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:21 AM on July 13, 2017 [16 favorites]


> This is why we lose. We worry about setting precedents the right has smashed to bits many times already. They don't play by any rules they don't like.

Eh, I'm fine just ceding the point on "treason" and using "collusion" or "collaboration" or whatever word the critics want to use. The wingnuts and brocialists prefer to make this about that single word instead of the larger discussion about how dangerous Trump is, and how dangerous his collaboration with a hostile foreign power is to our democracy. The wingnuts (at least some of them) simply see it as the ends justifying the means in getting their guy elected, while the brocialists are probably looking at it more from an accelerationist point of view where Trump's danger is a feature, not a bug. I'm not interested in fighting over which word we use to describe it -- I just want it to be stopped.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:21 AM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


Team Trump Hunts for ‘Traitors’ While the President ‘Growls’ at the TV -- ASAWIN SUEBSAENG and LACHLAN MARKAY, The Daily Beast

The title use of "traitors" is a direct quote from a White House source. So the Trump posse is clear on the metaphorical power of the word.
posted by spitbull at 9:24 AM on July 13, 2017 [22 favorites]


I am happy for the hot takes to move into "is this actually treason?" territory. If you can see treason from your Overton window, that's a good thing.
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:25 AM on July 13, 2017 [72 favorites]


Tonycpsu I get your point but I'm making a broader than semantic argument. Substitute the practice of "filibuster" for the word "traitor," if you like. We (on the left, of course) have entered mutually assured destruction territory with the Republican Party. Ceding points of order out of concern for retaliation is failing to recognIze a street fight is not a boxing match.
posted by spitbull at 9:28 AM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


Can I put in request that every US citizen reading this thread contact their senators about the BCRA today? I know a lot of you already call but if you haven't called (or faxed or emailed) today, could you please take two minutes to do it? You know all the reasons why the BCRA would be devastating. Consider how it will feel if it passes and you didn't do what you could to stop it.

I know I have huge regrets that I didn't canvas for Clinton last year. (I live in PA. What was I thinking?!) I don't want to have regrets about this too.

CALL
-- (202) 224-3121 This is the senate switchboard. They will connect you with your senators.

FAX
-- faxzero.com is free and has your senators' fax numbers

EMAIL
-- email your senators' healthcare staffers
posted by mcduff at 9:28 AM on July 13, 2017 [24 favorites]


If you can see treason from your Overton window, that's a good thing.

Yeah, if this weren't the most incompetent fascist dictatorship of all time, the treason argument we'd all be desperately making here is that the Resistance isn't treason. Or, more likely, we'd all be too afraid to post anything like that online. These are some dumb, trifling motherfuckers.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:29 AM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


My coworker won the lottery and got through to a Toomey staffer in his DC office, but I only got voicemail.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:30 AM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


tonycpsu
I just got straight through to Toomey's Philly office: (215) 241-1090
The staffer was actually nice.
posted by mcduff at 9:32 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


I like to look up my Senator's regional office phone numbers and call those to emphasize that I am a constituent.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:32 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


> Tonycpsu I get your point but I'm making a broader than semantic argument. Substitute the practice of "filibuster" for the word "traitor," if you like. We (on the left, of course) have entered mutually assured destruction territory with the Republican Party. Ceding points of order out of concern for retaliation is failing to recognIze a street fight is not a boxing match.

Except Democrats embracing unanimous obstructionism with the filibuster, withholding unanimous consent, whatever creates an actual tactical win for them, whereas getting into the weeds of whether something counts as treason just wastes time. I'm more interested in what's behind this rules-lawyering about the word than I am in the word itself.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:34 AM on July 13, 2017


> I like to look up my Senator's regional office phone numbers and call those to emphasize that I am a constituent.

Yeah, that hasn't worked well for me with Toomey. His regional offices weren't even going to voicemail for me before, but I'll try again later.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:36 AM on July 13, 2017


> Trump's Oval Office Prayer Circle Photo A Gift From God to Twitter.

I think that of all the bad actors in this crappy play, these evangelical types holding Trump up as the answer to their prayers make me the angriest. I mean, Trump and the collection of venal, racist grifters he's surrounded himself with are just doing what it is they do. But the idea that these supposed men and women of God could look at Trump, knowing what they do about his actions and (stated, not inferred) beliefs, and see - or pretend to see - a man of faith and piety, makes me want to fury puke and I'm not even religious. To me it seems obvious that they regard him as a weapon they can use to further their interests.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:37 AM on July 13, 2017 [47 favorites]


Andy Slavitt has a tweet thread about the details of the Trumpcare amendment. He calls it "unworkably bad" and one of his takeaways is that this is not the final bill, "McConnell is signaling amendments can take things out or be added if Senators can get 50 votes." Slavitt also thinks that additional amendments wouldn't be scored by the CBO in time, but that won't stop the vote.
posted by gladly at 9:38 AM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


Trump/Macron press conference to begin at some point. I guess the Élysée Palace isn't a no-go zone?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:39 AM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was called traitor multiple times during the Bush II years for pointing out that there were no WMDs in Iraq. I will never, ever forgive the Republican party for that. Now, a Republican president has conspired with a foreign government to subvert American democracy, and I'm supposed to show some restraint.
posted by vibrotronica at 9:39 AM on July 13, 2017 [157 favorites]


Not everybody has the economic slack to put crusading over the big issues ahead of little things that are more immediate and important like feeding and clothing their kids and getting back surgery or not accidentally ending up homeless. I don't get the impression most people feel everything's fine, they're just busy and out of fucks to give and strained almost to the personal breaking point already in a lot of cases.

But "crusading" isn't the effort which was missing in many cases, simply voting was and simply opposing Nazi shit expressed openly in front of them. Count me as guilty on the latter. Per the numbers at the top of the relevant Wikipedia pages, percentage-wise the turnout in the 2016 election was the lowest since 2000.

I had someone try to tell me the other day—in the course of a conversation about Trump's explicit plan to round up millions of people and put them in camps, mass population resettlement—that they didn't like being "too confrontational" on political issues and that their personal alternative to that and to voting is to "set a good example" instead, whatever the fuck that means, which they somehow seriously believed is a substitute for taking the minimal direct action to avert a future Holocaust-like event.

Yeah, everyone has lots of shit going on and voter suppression is rampant, but we really should not go easy on people who are declining to make the minimal effort to participate in democracy when explicitly Nazi shit has been marshaled and is on the field. Especially not cis-het-able-white people.

Everyone needs to know if the people around them can be counted on when the Nazis come again, many having been AWOL when the Nazis came on 11-9, even if their butts get singed a little bit when a fire is lit under them. We've been luckier than most in human history have been in that the Nazis who were installed into power this time turned out to be stultifyingly incompetent, but we aren't going to get such good fortune twice: if we don't turn back the tide, the next decision point will be when you see the cattle cars rolling by or whatever the modern equivalent of that is.
posted by XMLicious at 9:41 AM on July 13, 2017 [14 favorites]


Trump is having a hard time even pretending to listen to Macron's opening statement at their joint appearance right now.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 9:45 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


He's fidgeting and mouthing comments to unidentified members of the audience, smirking and looking pretty vacant, all while Macron is speaking.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 9:47 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


I wish we wouldn't always use fascism, in its Italian and German variants, as if they were the threat. History rhymes, it doesn't repeat. The problem is this bunch of fuckers. We need new words.
posted by stonepharisee at 9:47 AM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


The New Republic magazine cover that goes with the article I posted earlier about Trump's Russian mob ties is pretty good.
posted by chris24 at 9:47 AM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


Macron is claiming that both France and the USA are committed to fighting terrorism on he Internet

(AHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA)
posted by Yowser at 9:48 AM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


Seeing T on TV for the first time in ages. Holy shit, he's lost weight, and there's something weird about his face. Did he have a stroke? Seriously. Maybe the dementia is really setting in. Creepy.
posted by Melismata at 9:50 AM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


There's this weird combo of poutfaced sneering, nodding out, and total fidgety disinterest. So presidential.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:50 AM on July 13, 2017


> Now, a Republican president has conspired with a foreign government to subvert American democracy, and I'm supposed to show some restraint.

Yeah, um, in case this is directed at me, let me just clarify that I have no problem calling DJT Jr.'s actions treasonous (I did exactly that upthread), and believe that there is a near zero percent chance that his father did not know about those actions.

You go ahead and use whatever words you like, and tell people who don't like it to piss off. My only point is that I don't think that a liberal victory in the War of Being Able to Use the Word Treason to Describe the Trump Campaign's Connections to Russia would amount to much, and find it far more worthwhile to understand why leftists are so eager to carry Trump's water while disguising it as an argument about the power of a single word.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:50 AM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


Oh god this is so embarrassing to listen to
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:53 AM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


Everyone needs to know if the people around them can be counted on when the Nazis come again
And that almost 3 million more votes than the Nazis won't make a difference anyway. Our voter suppressed gerrymandered electoral college system also needs to be removed.
posted by rc3spencer at 9:53 AM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


AP: The Latest: Trump overheard complimenting Macron’s wife [real]
President Donald Trump was captured complimenting the French president’s wife’s appearance in video posted by the French government’s Facebook account.

The footage shows Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron (eh-mahn-yoo-EHL’ mah-KROHN’) and their wives chatting after their tour of the museums at Les Invalides (lehz ahn-vah-leed).

Trump at one point turns to Brigitte Macron and tells her: “You’re in such good shape.”

He repeats the observation to the French president before turning back to the French first lady, and remarking: “Beautiful.”
I'm trying to find the video but am not seeing it yet.
posted by zachlipton at 9:54 AM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


Good thing Les Tic Tacs were not handy.
posted by spitbull at 9:55 AM on July 13, 2017 [35 favorites]


I wish we wouldn't always use fascism, in its Italian and German variants, as if they were the threat. History rhymes, it doesn't repeat. The problem is this bunch of fuckers. We need new words.

I really do not agree, at all. It needs to be made clear to people that if you lend a hand to a plan to round millions of people up and put them in camps, and transform our society into one where doors are being busted down by the millions to hunt down people and haul them off, you are lending a hand to accomplish the same thing the Nazis sought.

We should not fuck around with figuring out how to convey subtle political science differences, any more than we should bother with "well, actually" about the definition of "democracy" when trying to express that handing unlimited funding of political operations to a bunch of billionaires—public campaigns for judicial appointments and cabinet nominees now included too—is a threat to democracy.
posted by XMLicious at 9:57 AM on July 13, 2017 [32 favorites]


fluttering hellfire (love the username): There's this weird combo of poutfaced sneering, nodding out, and total fidgety disinterest. So presidential.

You misspelled "Predisential". See, that explains a lot about this timeline - it's the Trump Predisency.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:58 AM on July 13, 2017


This is some rambling bullshit.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:58 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]




I mean, sorry to seem to joke about a joke about sexual assault. Except I'm not joking. Dude is a walking, talking threat to women everywhere he goes.
posted by spitbull at 9:59 AM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


Trump: France is America's oldest ally.
"A lot of people don't know that."


It's real, you guys. This is really happening.
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:00 AM on July 13, 2017 [56 favorites]


WAAAAY more birds are killed by domestic cats than windmills. And design and location changes have reduced the incidental take of birds by rather a lot.

Plus domestic cats throw so much shade (if they are like my cat) that they probably interfere with the solar. BRING BACK THE STEAM!
posted by srboisvert at 10:01 AM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


he knows nothing of loyalty
smells like new money, dresses like fake royalty
desperate to rise above his station
everything he does betrays the ideals of our nation
posted by entropicamericana at 10:02 AM on July 13, 2017 [46 favorites]


How long before Conservatives call Trump a cheese-eating surrender monkey apologist? Will they start shooting up fry vans while trying to expose FreedomFryGate's pedophile ring?
posted by Yowser at 10:03 AM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Trump is asked by a French reporter if he'll reconsider on the Paris Accords: "Something could happen with respect to the Paris Accords. We'll see what happens...If it happens, that would be wonderful, and if it doesn't, that would be ok too."

Thanks, that's helpful.
posted by zachlipton at 10:04 AM on July 13, 2017 [29 favorites]


Some talking points for your Senators about this latest PoS bill from McConnell. Here is the Senate Phone Directory, FaxZero's Directory, and the healthcare staffer list. (Thanks to mcduff for assembling some of this information!)

Feel free to pick and choose which points make the most sense for your legislators and/or include them all in a letter/fax/email.

General points:
  • Completely opposed to the bill
  • Bill developed in complete secrecy, with no public or committee hearings
  • Bill is still intended to gut Medicaid which will result in millions losing insurance
  • McConnell is intentionally writing bad legislation, with the dubious promise that the Medicaid cuts won't be implemented
  • Bill will eviscerate protections for pre-existing conditions, reinstate lifetime coverage caps, resulting in millions losing insurance, medical bankruptcies, and death from preventable illness
  • Health Savings Account expansion helps only the very wealthy by giving them tax breaks not available to lower-income households
  • Will jack up insurance prices on our nation's elders, women, and people with disabilities
Optional points for Democratic Senators
  • [Share your Medicaid/Medicare/ACA success stories]
  • Demand that Democrats treat this travesty of a bill as the scandal that it is
  • Expect that every Democrat will use all possible means to stop this bill
  • Expect denial of unanimous consent to grind Senate to a halt
  • Thank them for resisting this legislation!
Optional points for "Moderate" Republicans
  • [Share story about her BCRA will negatively impact you, your friends/family, and your community]
  • Cruz amendment isn't a solution, as it lets insurers sell useless plans, leading to death from preventable illness on wide scale
  • Note how advancing this bill at any stage of the process will affect your vote
  • Note how you will campaign against them (e.g., op-eds, telling friends and family about their cruelty)
  • Note how you will blame them personally and publicly for every American who dies due to this legislation
Let's stop this horrible fuckin' bill and save our lives. Let's make McConnell and co. wish they had never messed with us.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 10:05 AM on July 13, 2017 [65 favorites]


Isn't the translation of "A lot of people don't know that" effectively "I did not know that, nor will retain it for further use"?
posted by MysticMCJ at 10:05 AM on July 13, 2017 [27 favorites]


"Something could happen with respect to the Paris Accords. We'll see what happens...If it happens, that would be wonderful, and if it doesn't, that would be ok too."

what a nice little word salad travel pack he served up. how thoughtful.
posted by palomar at 10:05 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


Isn't the translation of "A lot of people don't know that" effectively "I did not know that, nor will retain it for further use"?

Every time Trump uses a counting word, you have to invert it. Or, as Mike Pesca put it, "When Donald Trump says “nobody,” he really means “almost everybody.”"
posted by Etrigan at 10:08 AM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


I mean, there's a practical power advantage to economically disenfranchising and emiserating people. It leaves them less time to organize and think and strains their ability to keep and maintain reliable social support in their daily lives, which creates a relative practical power gap opportunistic authoritarians can exploit to strengthen their hold.

Doesn't this describe most of American history?
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:09 AM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


I think that of all the bad actors in this crappy play, these evangelical types holding Trump up as the answer to their prayers make me the angriest. I mean, Trump and the collection of venal, racist grifters he's surrounded himself with are just doing what it is they do. But the idea that these supposed men and women of God could look at Trump, knowing what they do about his actions and (stated, not inferred) beliefs, and see - or pretend to see - a man of faith and piety, makes me want to fury puke and I'm not even religious. To me it seems obvious that they regard him as a weapon they can use to further their interests.

Speaking as a devout Christian, I can report that it doesn't feel any better from this side of the stained glass. I've had anguished, confused, incoherent conversations with pretty much every non-Trumpist Christian I know about what the hell is happening* to our religion in this country.

*it's idolatrous nationalism
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:10 AM on July 13, 2017 [54 favorites]


OK, so maybe waaaaay off topic, but I'm in Seoul, on my way to either Tokyo (where I been) Taipei (where I ain't been) or Bangkok (where I been), they're all about $100 from here, and I'm just thinking...governance and taxes do in fact work. I've watched multiple countries over multiple years improve. Oh and I live in Beijing, and this year the air pollution is basically Philly levels. It gets better when a central authority handles things. I don't claim perfect or non-corrupt or even acceptable, but better I've seen.

So...so...i read about the politics, and I think I'm sadder than most Americans. I keep having to explain that we invented things that Northeast Asia takes for granted, but that army thing wasn't my call, sorry, and, uhh, yeah, that whole fading white privilege in Asia, it's not the military or Asia getting rich doing it so much as it is they read the news. I mean OK, let the privilege go, I'm cool with that, but now I get side-eye in societies that function, and they're looking at us and going "dude...your people are a liability."

How am I supposed to hang like this? Can we please just get to where every other developed country is already? I know how that sounds, "Why can't I have a $10 taxi between boroughs in nyc when I can have it in cities the same size (Seoul! Really!)?" but, why? Why can't Things Just Work in the US, this huge rich massive pile of money and competencies that we are?

The answer is pretty much one political party. It's time to make that an argument.
posted by saysthis at 10:12 AM on July 13, 2017 [24 favorites]


Remember how I said they'd find a way to blame Obama for letting him collude? That's happening now.

Trump is now blaming AG Lynch for letting Veselnitskaya in the country (she was given special permission after her visa was denied because she was representing a client in court in Manhattan). Nobody exactly knows how she was in the US, or whether she was in legal status, when she met with the Trump gang, since her parole had expired.

Trump was also just asked by a French reporter about his "friend Jim." Trump now thinks France is "going to be just fine" and he'll come back, but Macron "better do a good job please, or you're going to make me look bad."
posted by zachlipton at 10:14 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


Actually, just by inviting you to France, Macron made himself look worse. I only hope the French people see it the same way.
posted by Yowser at 10:15 AM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


Doesn't this describe most of American history?

Yep, and the impoverished, disenfranchised, enmiserated, and scorned resist like hell. Think enslaved abolitionists, organized labor, child laborers, the Suffragettes, the Civil Rights movement of the 20th century, the Movement for Black Lives in the present day, the Stonewall Riots and the LGBTQ+ liberation movement.

People died for these rights to be recognized; people will continue to die and suffer; and, we will never give up.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 10:16 AM on July 13, 2017 [28 favorites]


Susan Collins is a No on MTP again. I think it's down to one more No. I really hope Shelley Moore Capito stands by what she said two days ago about letting the bill die with her.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 10:17 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


Trump is now blaming

WHY DO THEY KEEP PUTTING HIM ON TV STOP FEEDING THE TROLLS
posted by Melismata at 10:17 AM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Macron: Next question from an American journalist
Trump: [calls on non-American journalist]
posted by pjenks at 10:17 AM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


Health care update:

Collins and Paul both say they won't vote for a motion to proceed (with qualifiers that they could change their mind if the bill changes). Portman is reportedly also a no, but I'm hoping for more/better sources on that.

So this isn't going great for McConnell. He'll commence the bribery process now (the bill already has a special Polar Payoff for Alaska). Call your Senators.
posted by zachlipton at 10:19 AM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


But the idea that these supposed men and women of God could look at Trump, knowing what they do about his actions and (stated, not inferred) beliefs, and see - or pretend to see - a man of faith and piety, makes me want to fury puke and I'm not even religious. To me it seems obvious that they regard him as a weapon they can use to further their interests.

I can't remember if I read this on Metafilter or on Slacktivist, but someone pointed out that Donald Trump is the closest thing to the actual Antichrist we have. The Antichrist's function is not to make people into atheists, it's to get "good" Christians to follow him as a false prophet. And Cheeto sure does fill that bill - he's about as un-Christian (in the true sense of the word) as one can get, and, as far as I know, is not really a believer at all, but he's very happy to mouth the words and play the game, and so many of the evangelical Christian set is falling all over him.

I'm talking specifically about white Christians - who now believe that past immoral acts don't count in politician's careers.

I'm not Christian, but I really do think that this is on point.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 10:22 AM on July 13, 2017 [53 favorites]


(ZachL, we're going with Polar Payoff instead of Baked Alaska?)
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:23 AM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


It does bug me how 14-year-old black kids are tried (and/or shot) as adults, but 39-year-old Trump Jr. is treated as just a naive kid, give him another chance. It's like... a soft bigotry of low expectations
posted by kurumi at 10:24 AM on July 13, 2017 [96 favorites]


Is there any reason to make all these detailed talking points? I simply say "I do not want you to repeal ACA; all the proposed alternatives are terrible and will result in suffering and death for your constituents, and they will hold you responsible."

Because at this point, I just want them to not repeal ACA.

Of course, being in Texas, what I say is pretty moot.
posted by emjaybee at 10:26 AM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


Vox's Sarah Kliff weighs in on BCRA III: The Return of Preexisting Conditions:
Even with these new changes, the general structure of the bill stays the same from its original draft, which was itself largely similar to the bill that passed the House in the spring.

Healthier and higher-income Americans would benefit from the changes in the new Republican plan, while low-income and sick Americans would be disadvantaged. It would create a two-track system for health coverage on the individual market. One would offer cheaper, de-regulated health plans, which healthy people would likely flock to. The other would include comprehensive plans governed by Obamacare’s regulations, which would cost more and mostly be used by less-healthy people and those with pre-existing conditions — a system experts expect would function like a poorly-funded high risk pool.

Deductibles would almost certainly rise under the Republican plan, as would overall costs for low- and middle-income Americans. Individual market participants would have more options to purchase catastrophic coverage, an option likely to appeal to those with few health care costs.

Experts expect the changes will do little to change the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates that 22 million Americans would lose coverage under the proposal.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:29 AM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


what are the odds we think that Collins and one other R senator will get the chance to vote no only on the condition/surety that the bill would be passing anyhow, splitting the baby and allowing them to show up for their reelections without sacrificing the bill?
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 10:29 AM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


That was interesting. Macron was doing his best to sound like Trump's New Best Friend, constantly emphasizing their friendship and alignment on fighting terrorism, and dodging when pressed about a pro-immigration comment he made earlier in Lausanne. He was happy to punch Trump for votes before the recent elections, so it looks like he's betting on Trump being too dumb/narcissistic to remember any of that and just flattering the shit out of him.
posted by theodolite at 10:29 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


Why not rebrand the individual mandate as a "freeloader penalty" meant to enforce personal responsibility for health care costs?

I like it. It also cleverly subverts right-wing myths of Those People freeloading on hardworking taxpayers, and plays into the American myth of rugged individualism. Democrats should start referring to the individual mandate as the "freeloader penalty" and nothing other forthwith.
posted by Gelatin at 10:31 AM on July 13, 2017 [19 favorites]


The answer is pretty much one political party.

.... speaking as a resident of one such country, dude, wtf. in a system like mine, a man like trump would have even less checks and balances, by the time he gets to that position. thanks for the compliment on our transportation system i guess.
posted by cendawanita at 10:34 AM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


It's hard for me to imagine Paul not flipping if another N materializes. Why wouldn't he, given the climate? It's not like he'll have a chance to vote for something more to his liking if this goes down.
posted by contraption at 10:36 AM on July 13, 2017


I've been absent from these threads for a while, but felt an urge to drop in when I caught this story. Ya know, considering previous conversation about bee attacks.

http://www.abc15.com/news/state/man-dies-after-bee-attack-in-congress

Bee careful what you wish for.
posted by Enturbulated at 10:36 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


The answer is pretty much one political party.

.... speaking as a resident of one such country, dude, wtf.


I don't think saysthis is trying to say that there should only be one political party, but rather that the Republicans are the only political party to blame for the state that the US is in.
posted by dhens at 10:36 AM on July 13, 2017 [20 favorites]


Is there any reason to make all these detailed talking points? I simply say "I do not want you to repeal ACA; all the proposed alternatives are terrible and will result in suffering and death for your constituents, and they will hold you responsible."

I think it's helpful (I mean obvs, lol) because it helps Democratic Legislators highlight the issues most important to their constituents and it shows Republican Legislators that their constituents are paying attention to the details of the bill. Longer sets of talking points are particularly useful for letters, emails, and faxes, whereas for phone calls, keeping it a bit shorter makes sense.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 10:37 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


god i really hope so. i can't help but notice his comments previously, is probably why i took it the way i did. apologies if that's the case.
posted by cendawanita at 10:38 AM on July 13, 2017


Nope, I'm on my horse, time to rant, so here goes - 200 million+ people in Asia live at US-ish and above per capita GDP in societies that have varying respect for the institutions and rights we call fundamental to Western democracy, and they live in societies where healthcare, education, and immigration are handled. This is not meant to be a derail, it's meant to be an angry statement about one thing - individual taxes in Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Brunei, Taiwan etc are at or lower than US levels, and nobody in these places even has to blink when these issues are raised in their countries. Add it all up, yep, 2/3 the US population. And immigration, hell, WE are the illegals, and we make MORE than the locals, and than we would at home. I can, in this case, sympathize with a nativist argument.

Why is this not common knowledge in the US? It's common knowledge in these parts!

Yeah, I'm pointing at Republicans, but also everyone who hesitates for a minute to say "but special reasons for MY society". No. Government works if it's accountable and funded. End of story.

Where is this obvious truth in US political arguments?
posted by saysthis at 10:40 AM on July 13, 2017 [16 favorites]


saysthis I think the concern was that your comment "The answer is pretty much one political party." -- while meaning that you put all the blame on the Republicans -- could have been read as "We need a one-party system" (ie, "The answer is pretty much [only having] one political party."
posted by dhens at 10:42 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


The big issue with the latest health care plan in a nutshell (well, the biggest issue is the massive cut to Medicaid, not to mention the massive premium increases for many people, but the big new issue):

The idea is to allow two types of health insurance plans. Compliant plans on the marketplace would be eligible for subsides. These would have to follow all the Obamacare rules, such as guaranteed issue (everyone can buy at the same price, healthy or sick) and the EHBs (every plan has to cover a list of essential benefits, like pregnancy and mental health). But insurance companies who have one of those plans can then sell whatever they heck they want separately.

So the fear is that you end up with two risk pools: healthy people buy the cheap non-compliant plans and sick people buy the exchange plans. And the market can't function that way. There's an extra $70 billion "stabilization fund" to try to deal with that. Why $70B? Nobody knows. It's just a number they pulled out of their asses. Shouldn't they, I don't know, hold a hearing with some experts or something and ask them how much would be needed? No time, got to vote next week, who cares if any of this works. Nobody knows what happens when that fund runs out either.

Nobody has a clue how you set rates under such conditions, which is why insurance companies have actually come out firmly against this bit, rather than their usual equivocation. It's a massive structural change to the system, and they just made up a number and are winging it on an emergency basis.

As usual, the Vox summary of the bill is good.

What I'm reading now is that they're talking about just skipping the CBO entirely and getting a score from HHS, which is the most pathetic joke ever, and it's completely unclear to me how that fits with the reconciliation procedures, which require a CBO score to ensure the bill can actually be passed under reconciliation.

Also, just to update on Portman, he's not so much a no as we were led to believe.
posted by zachlipton at 10:43 AM on July 13, 2017 [25 favorites]


Casting one vote for avoiding a derail over the merits of one-party rule.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 10:44 AM on July 13, 2017 [22 favorites]


> What I'm reading now is that they're talking about just skipping the CBO entirely and getting a score from HHS,

"If passed, The Better Care and Reconciliation Act, I can state unequivocally, will be the most deficit-reducing legislation ever signed by any President." -- Tom Price, in the next few days, probably
posted by tonycpsu at 10:46 AM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


saysthis I think the concern was that your comment "The answer is pretty much one political party." -- while meaning that you put all the blame on the Republicans -- could have been read as "We need a one-party system" (ie, "The answer is pretty much [only having] one political party."
posted by dhens at 2:42 AM on July 14 [1 favorite +] [!]


Another derail avoidance vote by me, 'cause these people got a million parties and NOBODY credible says tear down the edifice.

The point is we have a party that says that, and there are all these living examples in Asia of what happens when you say, "No, let's not tear down government, but tweak it." And it's really, really, really nice.
posted by saysthis at 10:49 AM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


But insurance companies who have one of those plans can then sell whatever they heck they want separately.

And per Larry Levitt (Kaiser) on twitter, the noncompliant plans don't count as "continuous coverage" so if you want to switch to a compliant plan, you still have a six-month lockout period.
posted by melissasaurus at 10:51 AM on July 13, 2017 [25 favorites]


Donnie's got a real Tor Johnson vibe going on this morning in France.

Button up your goddamn suit jacket when you're standing up.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:55 AM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


Yeah if we're going to derail, I'd rather it be on this comment:

Plus domestic cats throw so much shade (if they are like my cat) that they probably interfere with the solar.

Because I've never met a cat that wasn't STRONGLY Pro-Solar.
posted by radwolf76 at 10:55 AM on July 13, 2017 [28 favorites]


Did I meme right?
posted by zachlipton at 10:56 AM on July 13, 2017 [22 favorites]


Ugh, just got through on the first try to Toomey's Philly office, too. The guy I spoke to was perfectly nice, and actually took down my zip code, which are all bad, bad signs considering how the office usually reacts to high volume.

mcduff posted the number above, but here it is again: (215) 241-1090
posted by joyceanmachine at 10:59 AM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


I feel like history books in the future are going to have to explain why there wasn't more immediate action taken against these evil motherfuckers

I understand the feeling, but I'll also point out for what it's worth that the day after Trump's inauguration, there were massive protests in DC and elsewhere whose crowds in DC alone dwarfed those for the inauguration itself. Which both demonstrated that Trump is an unpopular and possibly illegitimate president and helped set the tone of his administration's flailing with Spicer's obvious lies to the White House press corps, which seems to be doing actual reporting lately.

Reporting from the White house indicates that Trump is obsessed with validating his victory, so clearly the protests hit him where it hurt and led to an obsession and undisciplined reactions that undermine his own ability to enact his agenda.

I like to think that that initial act of defiance did help set the tone of these grim years, and assert that despite the general awfulness of Republican officials -- which we must not let them live down in my lifetime -- loyal Americans were keeping the faith.
posted by Gelatin at 11:00 AM on July 13, 2017 [25 favorites]


> you still have a six-month lockout period

Or, as hospitals will be calling it, the "uncompensated care period."
posted by tonycpsu at 11:00 AM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


By the way, for anybody who wants a good article to forward to middle class folks, here are a number of stories from parents who are fucking terrified.

It's particularly effective for that population segment, I think, because so many of the stories are about how the bill affects employer coverage. For example:
Right now, our insurance comes through my husband’s employer. If this bill passes, I’m extremely concerned that his company could choose to follow a state who seeks waivers for all or some essential health benefits. What if prescriptions don’t need to be covered? We are so thankful our son will be eligible for a very expensive drug that can treat his condition, but what if our insurance won’t cover it because he’s not showing symptoms at the time? Or just won’t ever cover it?

The thought of not being able to provide our son with medication that could potentially add decades onto his life makes me sick. Obviously, I would give up anything to get it for him, but what happens when the money runs out? At $200,000 per year, that won’t take long.

There's also this utter kick in the teeth:
Please imagine every cancer cliché you can: the impossible pain, hair falling out in clumps, vomiting, exhaustion, bleeding sores from mouth to anus. Now imagine all of those things are happening to your 3-year-old. In fact, imagine that you have to do this to your child, torturing her with chemo and radiation, so that she has a chance to live. Do you want to know what the third or fourth question EVERYONE asked when they found out about our daughter? After, “How is she doing? How are you?” it was always, “How good is your insurance?”
posted by joyceanmachine at 11:09 AM on July 13, 2017 [73 favorites]


> ... the noncompliant plans don't count as "continuous coverage" so if you want to switch to a compliant plan, you still have a six-month lockout period.

Wait, so the "bare-bones insurance plans" don't actually qualify as insurance plans?

I'm sorry, this is just bullshit, and it would be funny except that actual real people will die because of this fuckery.
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:11 AM on July 13, 2017 [22 favorites]


The bill’s deepest Medicaid cuts are far into the future, and they’ll never go into effect anyway.

As Mathew Yglesias said on Twitter:

Call me crazy but “don’t worry, the bill’s major provisions won’t actually be implemented” seems like an unsound basis for legislating.


The fact that anyone can float this idea in Congress after sequestration and not be laughed out of the room is insane. The whole point of that was to create a setup that was unappealing to both parties such that they'd straighten out their shit and pass a better budget. Now McConnell is gonna try to tell congresscritters that they shouldn't worry because THIS will be fixed before it bites? HAH. You couldn't get your teabaggers to knock their shit off long enough to save the beloved military expenditures. You think you're gonna get em to do it for health care for the poors?
posted by phearlez at 11:13 AM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


If a thing counts as insurance only some of the time I think it's fair to say it isn't insurance.
posted by Artw at 11:13 AM on July 13, 2017 [25 favorites]


Trump at one point turns to Brigitte Macron and tells her: “You’re in such good shape.”

Video.

This is disgusting.
posted by zachlipton at 11:13 AM on July 13, 2017 [44 favorites]


I guess this might count as a derail then, but I'd love it if it didn't, because how in the hell did the US as a mass forget that 500 million of the world, and that's low, live better than the US average, the richest country in the world? Where in the hell did that point go in our national dialogue?

Nvm our immigration policy etc, stats don't back that up as a reason to hold us back, immigration helps the crap out of our economy. Life sucks for Americans for reasons of our own doing...doesn't it? Why aren't we comparing? This is my last post on this, but seriously, am I wrong? 'Cause based on all I know, it's exceptionalism. We're "special", instead of incidentally stupid rich, hooray for us but so what. So why are we so loopy? Why, seriously, is no one talking about how Japan has free university? Why is no one taking about how Korea will treat you no matter what? Where did that get lost? They can, at our tax levels, why can't we? Oh and if racism is such an impediment, why aren't we addressing it like an economic liability?
posted by saysthis at 11:13 AM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


This bare-bones insurance malarkey has been a plague from day one of the ACA. That's where the "if you like your insurance you can keep your insurance" quote that Republicans have been hammering Democrats with for years came from, too. Obama just crazily assumed that no one with that kind of bullshit non-insurance insurance would like it and want to keep it. But because of that assumption, and the desire to replace that garbage with non-garbage, they got labeled as liars for a decade.

The whole thing is disgusting and people do not understand how any of this works and that is what has allowed this all to happen.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:15 AM on July 13, 2017 [43 favorites]


I was thinking of going with "Repealing ACA is terrible, and doing so will remove me from taxpayer status decades sooner than if it was around and kept me both alive and able to work. You want people around to pay taxes, right?"
posted by tilde at 11:20 AM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


Here's what McConnell has told several hesitant senators (including Portman and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.): The bill’s deepest Medicaid cuts are far into the future, and they’ll never go into effect anyway.

Can they really be so naive as to believe Democrats won't campaign against them for slashing Medicaid to pay for a tax cut for the rich anyway? It's what the Republicans would do.

(Can the Democrats really be so naive as to not campaign against every single Republican on exactly those grounds whether this bill comes up for a vote or not?)
posted by Gelatin at 11:23 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


By the way, for anybody who wants a good article to forward to middle class folks, here are a number of stories from parents who are fucking terrified.

Every time I see an article like this I feel like screaming at all Americans: Fucking CUBA does this better!!!! How can even Republicans want to do worse than Cuba? I know everyone here agrees with me, and probably more than 50% of all Americans agree so I don't scream, but when you read about tiny little kids in danger it is so depressing. Granny starving is depressing too, but you know what I mean.
posted by mumimor at 11:24 AM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


How can even Republicans want to do worse than Cuba?

This is what I'm saying. If nationalism ever had a place, y'know? We got all this money, and...what?
posted by saysthis at 11:27 AM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


and...what is racism. The reason we're okay with doing worse than Cuba is that we assume that those people will get the worse-than-Cuba care. Way too many Americans believe that it's better for everyone to get fucked than for people who don't "deserve" it to get something for nothing.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:31 AM on July 13, 2017 [34 favorites]


For example, despicable Ann Coulter titled her 2003 best-selling book attacking anti-Iraq-war protests among other things, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism .

So anyone who reaches for the smelling salts when liberals say "treason" about Trump and Russia can kiss my ass.


I move this phrase be adopted by acclimation.
posted by Gelatin at 11:31 AM on July 13, 2017 [22 favorites]


My guess, and this is pure guesswork on my part, is that having HHS score the bill over CBO (which is basically a nuclear option around the filibuster rules anyway) isn't really about time; it's about the coverage numbers. CBO has said that they won't score plans that don't provide the essential health benefits as "insurance." If you want the CBO to call you insured, you have to have a plan that covers all the essential services.

There's a good chance we'll go backwards in the CBO score with the new Senate bill, because people buying cheap non-compliant plans (we'll call them Cruz Plans, because they, and the guy they are named for, are crap) won't be counted as insured. So if the CBO scores the bill, the headline we'll get is "even more people to be uninsured under new Senate plan." And while we can argue all day about whether that's really true or not, it's going to look terrible. So why not just ignore the refs and announce that an envelope with a band-aid and two aspirins legally counts as insurance? That's exactly what they're going to do.
posted by zachlipton at 11:32 AM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


Sarah Jaffe, The Guardian: Home care workers have our lives in their hands. They're paid only $10 an hour (via)
Because of the general forward trajectory, Kugler says, the Obama years had meant that the movement for care workers had gained more public traction with bigger issues, such as immigrants’ rights (many home care workers are immigrants like Barrett), racial justice, and the value of women’s work. Home care workers had joined the Fight for $15, initiated in part by the Service Employees International Union, which represents tens of thousands of home care workers around the country.

Workers who liked their care jobs, like Barrett, could begin to think about their work as a career.

And then came Trump. [...]

The latest version of the bill to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office predicts that 22 million people would lose their health insurance by 2026 if the bill were passed as is. Premiums would spike for elderly people like Barrett’s clients, as Medicaid spending would be slashed by $772bn over 10 years. Changes to Medicaid could include a “per capita cap”, or a limit to how much the federal government pays states per enrollee in the program.

“It is basically saying, ‘Your state can only get so sick. You can only have so much of a disability and then you are just going to have to pay,’” Kugler says. These cuts, Kalipeni notes, will fall squarely on the shoulders of women – the women of color and immigrant women who do the paid home care work, the women who still do most of the unpaid care work that will pick up the slack when the budgets for paid care are cut.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:35 AM on July 13, 2017 [37 favorites]


>>Call me crazy but “don’t worry, the bill’s major provisions won’t actually be implemented” seems like an unsound basis for legislating.

The fact that anyone can float this idea in Congress after sequestration and not be laughed out of the room is insane.


It's legislative extortion. In 5 years, the GOP will, rather obviously, say: Give us what we want, or we're going to let this huge budget cut that we already twisted your arm into by telling you it wasn't real, actually go into effect.

That was what sequestration was; that is what these "future cuts to Medicaid" are. Agreeing to that now is negotiating against yourself in advance.
posted by Dashy at 11:35 AM on July 13, 2017 [31 favorites]


As far as "traitors." Well, I've spent my entire life as an ~urban liberal elite~ (y'all, I put my bra on just like everyone else, one boob at a time). I've become so inured to the rhetoric of me not being a real American, being a traitor just by my very existence, it being impossible for me to ever be a patriot, impossible for me to understand America or Americans because I am fundamentally not one, that shit just rolls right off me now. That is some weak, old sauce at this point. I've been hearing it literally since Reagan. So, I'm going to take my seat right here on the "spare me the concern trolling over terminology" bench. If they get to spend 40 damn years calling me every name under the sun just because of where I was born, I can enjoy stretching out and utilizing a couple choice nouns and adjectives of my own.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:42 AM on July 13, 2017 [64 favorites]




Trump at one point turns to Brigitte Macron and tells her: “You’re in such good shape.”

Video.

This is disgusting.


She literally tries to hide behind Melania.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 11:47 AM on July 13, 2017 [14 favorites]


y'all, I put my bra on just like everyone else, one boob at a time

Total derail, I know... I love this expression, but I don't even know HOW you'd put on your bra one boob at a time.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 11:47 AM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


Look forward to finding out Jared's Reddit username.

He's not very bright. There's a high probability of it just being /u/Jared_Kushner.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:48 AM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


That vote I asked for happened, at least in committee.

The Hill: House panel rejects push to revoke Kushner's security clearance

Hopefully the Dems can force this onto the floor as a privileged motion.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:51 AM on July 13, 2017 [44 favorites]


Every second Republicans have to spend explaining that they're not technically traitors because the legal definition of treason in America is tightly limited because [reasons x, y, z] is a victory. Every second Republicans spend whining about being called traitors is a victory. Every time a Republican defends themselves against allegations of treason, the takeaway for most ordinary people will be "huh, sounds like the Republican party has a treason problem."

Call them traitors. Even if it's not technically accurate. In a sane, controlled, level-headed way, make casual reference to elected Republicans committing treason. And just say "uh-huh" when Republicans present get apoplectic about it.

Arguments about not letting the genie out of the bottle or whatever are non-starters; it's less that the genie is already out of the bottle, and more that the genie was never in the bottle in the first place. Don't pretend that political discourse isn't what it actually is. Nicely, politely denying reality — pretending that the world is what it isn't — is not how you make the world what you want it to be.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:51 AM on July 13, 2017 [87 favorites]


I finally got down to reading the article from New Republic chris24 linked earlier.
I strongly recommend it, but I also want to put out a thought I had: it's surprising how little Trump got out of all this. Obviously he probably got much more out of dealing with the Russian mafia than what we can see from public records. But somehow it seems true that he only got a few millions out of each multimillion deal. If he was as rich as he claims, there is no way he would be on The Apprentice or selling Trump steaks.

Something else: She literally tries to hide behind Melania.
Yeah, and Melania actually seems to be doing good here. I'm not on team Free Melania, but I think her story will be an interesting sideline on that HBO series we are all hoping to see when this is over and democracy is reinstalled.
posted by mumimor at 11:53 AM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


Can you imagine the moralistic firestorm that would have erupted if Obama had commented on the figure of the wife of the Prime Minister of France?
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:59 AM on July 13, 2017 [19 favorites]


The Hill: House panel rejects push to revoke Kushner's security clearance

Too wordy. Let me tighten that up for them: Republicans grant security clearance to a nepotism case compromised by the Russians.

Much better.
posted by Gelatin at 12:01 PM on July 13, 2017 [44 favorites]


> Much better.

When they write you back to tell you twelve words is actually more wordy than nine words, just tell them that you have the best words.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:04 PM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


"Your words are just wordier. These are the least wordy words."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:06 PM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


Can you imagine the moralistic firestorm that would have erupted if Obama had commented on the figure of the wife of the Prime Minister of France?

WhereAreTheWhiteWomenAt.gif
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:08 PM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


Lindsey Graham just shared this press-release-esqu Politico article: Graham introduces repeal back-up plan
A new health care proposal from GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham that would direct much of Obamacare's federal funding directly to the states could offer a starting point for Congress if the Senate GOP effort fails next week, according to a summary of the bill obtained by POLITICO.

The bill from Graham is intended to appeal to Republicans as a replacement plan for Obamacare, while he hopes to sell the effort to Democrats as a repair plan. It would keep all of Obamacare's taxes except for the Medical device tax but block grants about $110 billion in federal health care funding to the states. It is not intended to compete with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's plan, a Republican aide said, but likely will be offered as an amendment to the bill next week to test its support.
...
The bill would end Obamacare's individual and employer mandates for insurance but retain its protections for people with pre-existing conditions. 
No mention of how those "protections for people with pre-existing conditions" would be paid for of a bunch of healthy people drop that insurance because the mandate is removed.
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:15 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


Isn't Macron's wife several years Macron's senior? And Trump's now come up with a reason he can understand why Macron wouldn't have left her long ago. Just to add to the creepiness.
posted by notyou at 12:15 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]




A group including Rev. William Barber II was outside of Mitch McConnell's office this morning:

It is time to stop calling God by other names when you really want to call God, "Capitalism".
posted by indubitable at 12:16 PM on July 13, 2017 [47 favorites]


Trump: None dare call it reason.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:18 PM on July 13, 2017 [15 favorites]


In the margin of the single-page disclosure released on Thursday, Sessions cites two statutory justifications for not disclosing information about his meetings with Russians. Both of them claim disclosure “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
posted by diogenes at 12:21 PM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


> Ordered by court to disclose his Russia contacts, Sessions releases blank sheet of paper.

Look at that photo. Sessions always looks like he farted in a crowded room and is hoping nobody will realize it was him.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:23 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


While you're making your calls today, maybe throw in some calls to NPR. The SAG-AFTRA contract extension expires tomorrow and NPR is being extremely shitty in its negotiating position. You can also sign a petition supporting the union.
posted by melissasaurus at 12:23 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


This bare-bones insurance malarkey has been a plague from day one of the ACA. That's where the "if you like your insurance you can keep your insurance" quote that Republicans have been hammering Democrats with for years came from, too. Obama just crazily assumed that no one with that kind of bullshit non-insurance insurance would like it and want to keep it. But because of that assumption, and the desire to replace that garbage with non-garbage, they got labeled as liars for a decade.


I have actual employer provided insurance and I fucking hate it. IT IS COMPLETE AND UTTER SHIT compared to the previous insurances I had while I living in the UK and Canada.

Anybody who likes their insurance in the USA is either really rich so the deductibles are pin pricks or they are deluded.

I suppose the only reason people don't really understand this is because it hard to compare and appreciate until you have experienced the alternatives. In Canada and England I never worried about medical problems except when I had them. In the USA I worry about medical problems before I even have them. Practically every day.

There is the psychological concept of mortality salience - the idea that behavior is subconsciously driven by an awareness of death. In the USA there should be a concept of "medical insurance salience" where peoples behavior is driven by an unconscious awareness of insufficient and shitty insurance and its concomitant predatory medical industry.
posted by srboisvert at 12:23 PM on July 13, 2017 [67 favorites]


> Both of them claim disclosure “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

He should try being told who he can marry or what he can do with his body some time.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:24 PM on July 13, 2017 [81 favorites]


I have actual employer provided insurance and I fucking hate it. IT IS COMPLETE AND UTTER SHIT compared to the previous insurances I had while I living in the UK and Canada.

Seconded.
posted by Artw at 12:26 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


Fuck You, We've Got Ours: A Continuing Series
This exemption could have the effect of ensuring that members of Congress have coverage for a wider array of benefits than other Americans who purchase their own coverage.

A Senate Republican aide confirmed that the exemption existed but was unable to comment as to the specific effect it would have. The aide said it was included to ensure that the bill hewed to the chamber’s strict reconciliation rules that limit the policies this health bill can include.

The exemption is similar to the one that existed in the House health bill. After Vox reported on its existence, the House voted to close the loophole — and the Senate aide expected their chamber to follow the same path.
They just had to try to sneak it through, though. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take, right?
posted by tonycpsu at 12:26 PM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


Isn't Macron's wife several years Macron's senior?

Almost exactly the gap as that between Donald and Melania, yes.
posted by Etrigan at 12:30 PM on July 13, 2017 [17 favorites]


> I have actual employer provided insurance and I fucking hate it. IT IS COMPLETE AND UTTER SHIT compared to the previous insurances I had while I living in the UK and Canada.

I have friends up here in Canada who are more conservative than I am, and sometimes they gripe about the health care system here (which of course is by no means perfect) and start complaining about wait times and other right-wing talking points, but when I ask them if they would willingly trade the Canadian system for the American system they're always like omg are you kidding no way.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:30 PM on July 13, 2017 [14 favorites]


I like David Corn's reframing of Donald Trump Jr.’s emails.

The Real Scandal Now Is How Team Trump Helped Putin Conceal His Attack on America

The Trump camp actually protected Russian intelligence while it was waging information warfare against the United States—and Trump’s most intimate advisers knew they were doing so.

There's obviously more (and worse) to this scandal, but this is pretty bad, and it's right there in black and white in documents provided by Junior himself.
posted by diogenes at 12:32 PM on July 13, 2017 [54 favorites]


just by inviting you to France, Macron made himself look worse

Really depends how the visit goes. I could see it being very harmful for Trump.
posted by Coventry at 12:33 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Published with the Vatican's blessing: "Triumphalist, arrogant and vindictive ethnicism is actually the opposite of Christianity." From Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa, in La Civiltà Cattolica: "Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism in the USA: A surprising ecumenism."
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:35 PM on July 13, 2017 [27 favorites]


The Card Cheat - see also complaints about the NHS.
posted by Artw at 12:36 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Article vetted by the Vatican offers scathing critique of Steve Bannon, who is Catholic, the Trump White House and ‘evangelical fundamentalism’ in the US
posted by adamvasco at 12:39 PM on July 13, 2017 [23 favorites]


Trump: reasonable with a capitol T.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:43 PM on July 13, 2017 [16 favorites]


I actually do kind of like my employer-provided insurance. I paid $0 out of pocket for having a baby, from conception to birth. But I work at a university and the insurer is an outgrowth of the medical center. And, most importantly, nothing changed for the worse after the ACA. I did like my insurance, and I could keep it! And I didn't have to pay for check-ups or contraception any more! Huzzah!)
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:45 PM on July 13, 2017 [11 favorites]


CNBC says Trump's wall is going to be a high-quality wall and he applauds its transparency:

One of the things with the wall is you need transparency. You have to be able to see through it. In other words, if you can't see through that wall — so it could be a steel wall with openings, but you have to have openings because you have to see what's on the other side of the wall.

And I'll give you an example. As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don't see them -- they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It's over. As cray as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall. But we have some incredible designs.


zomg fkn wallhax
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:49 PM on July 13, 2017 [36 favorites]


My employer insurance is ok. The logic is puzzling sometimes, though: yes, checkups are free (GP, eyes, gyno, gastro, etc.). But as soon as one small thing is wrong, they charge up the nose for it. So, why bother going if nothing is wrong?
posted by Melismata at 12:52 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


One of the things with the wall is you need transparency. You have to be able to see through it. In other words, if you can't see through that wall — so it could be a steel wall with openings, but you have to have openings because you have to see what's on the other side of the wall.
That's called a "fence," you incredible fuckwit.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:52 PM on July 13, 2017 [58 favorites]


Please tell me "cray" is a typo, and that Donald J. Trump is not trying to use it to sound hip to what the kids are doing.

(Are the kids even saying "cray" anymore?)
posted by tonycpsu at 12:52 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


Did...did Trump really use the word "cray"
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:53 PM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


In this sense, every process (be it of peace, dialogue, etc.) collapses before the needs of the end, the final battle against the enemy. And the community of believers (faith) becomes a community of combatants (fight). Such a unidirectional reading of the biblical texts can anesthetize consciences or actively support the most atrocious and dramatic portrayals of a world that is living beyond the frontiers of its own “promised land.”

This is a really good analysis, and has the advantage of sharply bringing out the commonalities between this worldview and ISIS. I'm pleased that it's co-authored by a Jesuit and a Presbyterian too.
posted by Aravis76 at 12:53 PM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


Note that it does not appear the President really said "cray." That appears to be the White House's typo. He really did talk about people getting hit on the head with bags of drugs being thrown over the wall, which I think kind of undermines his whole point about the wall stopping drugs, but what do I know? None of this makes the slightest bit of sense.

This whole "we'll talk off the record and then agree to make parts of it on the record later" scheme is basically quote approval, and the entire press corps sucks for getting suckered into it yet again, but I digress.
posted by zachlipton at 12:53 PM on July 13, 2017 [23 favorites]


This whole thing is literally just the Pink Floyd album, isn't it? THE. WHOLE. THING.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:55 PM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


Did...did Trump really use the word "cray"

If there's one thing I know about Donald Trump, it's that he can't even
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:55 PM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


Exceptional_Hubris: "what are the odds we think that Collins and one other R senator will get the chance to vote no only on the condition/surety that the bill would be passing anyhow, splitting the baby and allowing them to show up for their reelections without sacrificing the bill?"

I'd say very likely 100%. If this passes, it's almost certainly with 50 votes, so the fewest people get tarred with it. Presumably, Heller, Murkowski, and Collins fight it out for the Nos.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:56 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


How about they make the wall out of the budget for the wall in $100 bills, and then they make it transparent by donating it to The Trump Foundation
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:56 PM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


The whole thing is good analysis and good theology.
The Christian roots of a people are never to be understood in an ethnic way. The notions of roots and identity do not have the same content for a Catholic as for a neo-Pagan. Triumphalist, arrogant and vindictive ethnicism is actually the opposite of Christianity. The pope on May 9 in an interview with the French daily La Croix, said: “Yes Europe has Christian roots. Christianity has the duty of watering them, but in a spirit of service as in the washing of feet. The duty of Christianity for Europe is that of service.” And again: “The contribution of Christianity to a culture is that of Christ washing the feet, or the service and the gift of life. There is no room for colonialism.”

Which feeling underlies the persuasive temptation for a spurious alliance between politics and religious fundamentalism? It is fear of the breakup of a constructed order and the fear of chaos. Indeed, it functions that way thanks to the chaos perceived. The political strategy for success becomes that of raising the tones of the conflictual, exaggerating disorder, agitating the souls of the people by painting worrying scenarios beyond any realism.

Religion at this point becomes a guarantor of order and a political part would incarnate its needs. The appeal to the apocalypse justifies the power desired by a god or colluded in with a god. And fundamentalism thereby shows itself not to be the product of a religious experience but a poor and abusive perversion of it.
Yes. This.

I mean, when the Roman Catholic Church says you're being too Constantinian...
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:58 PM on July 13, 2017 [52 favorites]


when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don't see them -- they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It's over.

Ah, yes, well, about how those drugs are getting across borders... "In mid-November, Colombian Police seized 130 kilograms of cocaine and a drone used by narcotraffickers in the Bahía Solano sector of Chocó, allegedly used to send cocaine shipments to Panama. This information is of interest as it is the first instance in which drones have been identified as a viable trafficking method in the country...The drones being utilized can transport up to 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of cocaine and travel up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) in a single trip."
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:58 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


One of the things with the wall is you need transparency. You have to be able to see through it.

No problem.
posted by mikepop at 12:59 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Chris Hayes on twitter:
So here is what we are currently being asked to believe. A Putin-aligned Russian oligarch and his son cultivate a personal/professional relationship w/ Trump and his family over several years. When Trump becomes the nominee, said oligarch uses trusted intermediary to tell Trump Jr there's a Russain gov effort to elect Trump and that as part of that effort they have damaging info on Hillary to share. They set up a meeting to collaborate on this project. Trump's son, his campaign chair and son in law attend a meeting w/ a person called a "Russian government lawyer" to obtain the dirt. Everyone shows up at the meeting and...the lawyer just talked about adoption and the Magnitsky act! After all that, it's a dud.

And then, and here's the crucial part, NO ONE DOES ANYTHING ELSE. The oligarch and son don't make further contact. Trump & Co don't use the active line of communication thru Goldstone to say "hey what the hell was that about?" Everyone just drops it! Both Trump's campaign and the Putin-allioed oligarch never take another single step to further a collaboration they'd both agreed to! And then, oh by the way, teh Russian government *is actually* engaged in a brazen, sophisticated effort to get Trump elected and as that becomes public just 5 weeks later, no one at Trump Tower gets curious. No one reaches back out. No one calls Emin. No one emails Goldstone about this topic ever again. No one brings it up ever again. No one ever tells Trump "Aras and Emin said the Russian government wants to try to get you elected, but then we had this weird meeting." No one ever raises it when they see DNC hacks & Wikileaks. Everyone just forgets about that crazy time, when dad's Russian contacts reached out to join forces with the Russian government to defeat Hillary. That's it, That's the end of the story.

I don't have the words to express how implausible that version of events is, but it's what the WH is currently telling us happened.
posted by parallellines at 1:00 PM on July 13, 2017 [123 favorites]


Turns out the 400 lb. hacker is all muscle and he hurls 60 lb. bags of drugs over walls.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 1:02 PM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


wait what if you're driving by the wall and sixty pounds of primo bud lands on the hood of your car that might be okay
posted by angrycat at 1:03 PM on July 13, 2017 [36 favorites]


wait what if you're driving by the wall and sixty pounds of primo bud lands on the hood of your car that might be okay

It's a better healthcare plan than the Senate could come up with, that's for sure.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:06 PM on July 13, 2017 [84 favorites]


Malala Yousafzai Visits Displaced Women (NPR, July 13, 2017) Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai visited some women in camps for displaced people in Iraq to advocate for girls' education.
JANE ARRAF (NPR): So these girls, more than a dozen of them, were sitting on the concrete floor along with Malala and her father. And the girls were telling her about their experience. And it was almost as if these girls, when they had to flee ISIS and eventually made their way to safety, that wasn't the first thing in their minds three years later; it was that they had been discouraged from going to school. But they persisted. There was one 19-year-old who told Malala, her parents wouldn't let her go, but she took her brother's books, and she studied and studied. And she managed to eventually go to school. And then when she was a young teenager, they told her it was time for her to get married, and she basically ran away. Let's listen to a bit of her.

HADIA: Told them no, I will not. I'm not.

(LAUGHTER)

HADIA: Yeah, I am not. I have my dream. I have my hope I will finish, and I will be - go to American university and be a writer.
Now this is heartbreaking because of the current xenophobic administration. Young women abroad still look to America as the land of freedom and possibility, so our reputation has not completely been destroyed, but I hope Hadia doesn't plan on traveling here before 2019.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:06 PM on July 13, 2017 [35 favorites]


oh my god THIS IS WHAT HE THINKS TRANSPARENCY MEANS
posted by yhbc at 1:06 PM on July 13, 2017 [23 favorites]


Okay maybe this would make a good practical joke.

Make a T-shirt with

Trump is
_reasonable

with the T extending down two lines. Then photograph yourself with Republicans who don't get it.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:06 PM on July 13, 2017 [22 favorites]




I actually do kind of like my employer-provided insurance. I paid $0 out of pocket for having a baby, from conception to birth.

Imagine you didn't have to feel grateful for that, or worry the privilege could be revoked. And that it carried through forever. (And, heck: You or your partner could take a year off to raise that baby because that seems to let parents do a better job of maximizing their lifetime productivity - as well as just being more human.)

Sorry to take your happy comment on a tangent. (And it is wonderful.) I say this just to make the point that they're bums, the people who say that's not possible. It's absolutely, perfectly possible.
posted by ~ at 1:10 PM on July 13, 2017 [25 favorites]


Summing it up @chrislhayes:

Bungalow BILL‏ @BungalowBILLcom Replying to @chrislhayes:
Remember when Republicans only wanted proof of collusion?

Halloween Jack‏ @scry_monsters:
Now they want proof collusion is a bad thing or illegal.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 1:10 PM on July 13, 2017 [54 favorites]


When they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don't see them -- they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff

Never thought I'd tell the POTUS that the Rev. Horton Heat has a suggestion for him, but hey, it is 2017.
posted by mcdoublewide at 1:12 PM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


And I'll give you an example. As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don't see them -- they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It's over. As cray as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall. But we have some incredible designs.

Reminder: Don't forget your [real] tags
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:12 PM on July 13, 2017 [27 favorites]


Artw: I'm really curious as to what the menu is at Le Jules Verne tonight.

Pain de viande.


Pain et circques, surely.
posted by hanov3r at 1:14 PM on July 13, 2017 [15 favorites]


This transcript is insane. For example:
And I think what’s happening is, as usual, the Democrats have played their card too hard on the Russia thing, because people aren’t believing it. It’s a witch hunt and they understand that. When they say "treason" -- you know what treason is? That’s Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for giving the atomic bomb, okay? But what about all the congressmen, where I see the woman sitting there surrounded by -- in Congress.
I think what he's talking about in that last part is the latest right wing conspiracy theory, which is that Veselnitskaya was a Democratic plant because she was pictured in the front row of a Congressional hearing on Russia weirdly creeping on Amb. McFaul's laptop.

There's also the point where he says "I’d say the only thing more difficult than peace between Israel and the Palestinians is healthcare."

Anyway, it sounds like they omitted this bit from the transcript. With regard to the Russia meeting:
He addd, "In fact maybe it was mentioned at some point," but then when asked if he had been told that it was about Hillary Clinton and dirt against her he said no.
All those denials. *poof* Undone by the President himself. Again.
posted by zachlipton at 1:14 PM on July 13, 2017 [39 favorites]


I dunno I can't get bent out of shape over whatshisname's use of outdated slang. he's an old man, and a stupid one, and using old slang is something that stupid old men do.

and like for reals, dude has said "covfefe." next to that cray is nothing.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:15 PM on July 13, 2017




Malala Yousafzai Visits Displaced Women (NPR, July 13, 2017)

If she's back in American news, does that mean she stopped talking about socialism, or is NPR more willing to cut out any mention of it?

JANE ARRAF (NPR): But they persisted.

*vomits forever*
posted by indubitable at 1:17 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


And I think what’s happening is, as usual, the Democrats have played their card too hard on the Russia thing, because people aren’t believing it. It’s a witch hunt and they understand that. When they say "treason" -- you know what treason is? That’s Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for giving the atomic bomb, okay?

"You know what treason is? [Jewish names], okay?"
posted by Rust Moranis at 1:19 PM on July 13, 2017 [56 favorites]


Another good thing to remember as they try to throw Veselnitskaya on the Obama WH and the Dems, is this:

'The U.S. State Department wouldn’t confirm or deny whether Veselnitskaya applied again for a visa in 2016, let alone if a visa was granted. A spokesperson told The Daily Beast they could not comment due to privacy considerations. Veselnitskaya also did not respond to requests for comment.'

Tillerson must not be so big on transparency
posted by rc3spencer at 1:19 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


As someone on Twitter said - at least we can talk about Mexican drug trebuchets now.

+1 on Chris Hayes' splenetic outrage quoted by parallellines above. We don't have to guess at what happened between 45 and the Russians, because we have decades of experience with what happens with 45, what happens with Russians, and what happens when they get jiggy with it together. We've had many surprises about many things, but they have been consistently that 45 has behaved worse, been less competent and surrounded himself with direr examples of humanity than we could even.

Which means that while we don't know exactly what went on, we do know one thing: it's worse than we think.
posted by Devonian at 1:24 PM on July 13, 2017 [14 favorites]


This is how Senate Republicans could push their health bill through without a CBO score
The CBO estimate of the original version of the health care bill estimated that 22 million fewer Americans would have health insurance as a result. That number didn't help sell the bill to the public. So it's pretty clear why Republicans might want a friendlier analysis of the impact: They want a better outcome.

And here's the thing: They can probably do that.

There is no Senate rule that requires the budget committee to use CBO estimates to calculate the cost or impact of potential legislation. It's just been done that way for decades. [...]
Yet another reminder of how much the functioning of our government relies on unwritten norms, and how nonchalant the GOP is about upending them when they want something.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:25 PM on July 13, 2017 [38 favorites]


I can't wait to see what excuses useful idiots on the left are going to come up with not to use the word treason after we get proof of Kushners data team directing Russian fake news operations. Because that's what's coming. At that point we have the Presidents son in law and secretary of everything directing targeting of a cyber attack against America. Tell me how that's not giving aid to the enemy.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:28 PM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


It's OK, I'm sure they'll be fine with it when a future Democratic-controlled Senate does the same thing
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:29 PM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


you know after growing up hearing all sorts of vileness about communist fronts, fellow travellers, russian agents simply because people chose to wear their hair long, play rock music, vote democratic, integrate schools, have better health care, give women equal rights, give minorities equal rights, etc etc etc, i am now witnessing the leaders of this movement disregard every "christian" notion they supported to elect a man whose campaign staff was actually working with the russians

you don't get to tell me i'm a traitor because i was against the vietnam war and then turn around and collude with russian interference with our elections

you don't get to tell me i'm a traitor for wanting equality in our society and then defend confederate flags and war heroes

they have treason in their hearts whether they have committed treason according to the law or not
posted by pyramid termite at 1:29 PM on July 13, 2017 [77 favorites]


At that point we have the Presidents son in law and secretary of everything directing targeting of a cyber attack against America.

ahem
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:30 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


Which means that while we don't know exactly what went on, we do know one thing: it's worse than we think.

2017's Razor.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:33 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Among pts WH omitted, per pool: Trump said of Jr mtg "In fact maybe it was mentioned at some point" but he wasn't told it was abt HRC & dirt

It's very important to highlight these omissions, like this one, and Session refusing to release key parts of his disclosure, and Trump Jr. leaving off the most damaging page of those emails in the first release.

Not only to emphasize the deceitfulness, but because these omissions are a giant invisible arrow pointing to the information they know is most damaging.
posted by msalt at 1:34 PM on July 13, 2017 [43 favorites]


Fun fact: the Rosenbergs were convicted under the Espionage Act, not of treason. The prosector, of course, was Trump's mentor and buddy Roy Cohn.
posted by zachlipton at 1:35 PM on July 13, 2017 [42 favorites]


Presidents son in law and secretary of everything

I believe his correct title is Grand Vizier.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:36 PM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


And I'll give you an example. As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don't see them -- they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It's over. As cray as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall.

I'm not a security expert, and I've not read up on the wall plan (such as it is, ha), but aren't the problems roughly the same whether the wall is transparent or not? In both cases, law enforcement on our side of the wall has to stop hypothetical drug smugglers coming from the other side of the wall. Which means they will have to be there to see it (i.e., long stretches of the border will need to be physically staffed). When a drug smuggler is spotted, our officer either has to 1) get on the Mexican side pronto to arrest the throwers or 2) coordinate with Mexico to stop or catch them.

If it's not feasible to staff long stretches of the wall, it won't matter if it's transparent, because nobody will be there to see the smuggling. If it is feasible, it won't matter if it's transparent, because agents could just stand there as the drugs/smugglers come across the non-transparent wall.

If cameras could be used instead of agents, it won't matter if the wall is transparent or not.

If agents can't get over the wall in time to catch the smugglers, it won't matter if it's transparent or not.

If we can coordinate with Mexico to stop/catch the smugglers, it won't matter if the wall is transparent or not. In fact, we wouldn't even need a wall in the first place.

And at any rate, if your idea of a reasonable concern is that people will be hit on the head with big bags of drugs thrown over the wall, you're completely unqualified to be part of the conversation, because you have no fucking clue what the nature of the problem is—let alone its solution.

Seriously, Trump must conceive of reality as some version of a Roadrunner cartoon. Sad!
posted by Rykey at 1:41 PM on July 13, 2017 [35 favorites]


In that reality, Trump is the one selling the Coyote all that Acme shit that doesn't work.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:43 PM on July 13, 2017 [26 favorites]


Jonathan Capehart, WaPo: Look past the smoke from the Trump White House funeral pyre, and you’ll see financial Armageddon
There is so much smoke from the funeral pyre that is President Trump’s White House, its ties to Russia and the fool’s errand that is the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare that you’d be forgiven for not seeing the cliff over which the United States is about to plunge. Yep, I’m resuming my role as town crier about the debt ceiling because all this mind-boggling stuff we’re talking about now (Donald Trump Jr.’s emails?!) will pale in comparison to the financial Armageddon that awaits us if our fiscal car pulls a “Thelma and Louise.”
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:45 PM on July 13, 2017 [24 favorites]


I am amazed how many Republicans don't realize/don't care how close they are to going down in history as wiling participants to a t̶r̶e̶a̶s̶o̶n̶o̶u̶s̶ traitorous coup when the president they support is revealed as having participated in a conspiracy with Russia to hack the election and who is - even under the spotlight - still trying to repay that by changing US/Russia policy in their favor.
posted by chris24 at 1:45 PM on July 13, 2017 [20 favorites]


Libby Watson, Fusion: Massive Knob Calls for Civility
So, to clarify: It is civil to spend your days trying to ensure that children born with expensive diseases reach their lifetime limits of how much health insurance companies will pay for their care before they speak their first words, and that poor people with cancer be forced to die in debt as well as in agony. But it is not civil to call Paul Ryan a piece of shit for those actions.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:47 PM on July 13, 2017 [70 favorites]


ProPublica: Trump Lawyer Marc Kasowitz Threatens Stranger in Emails: ‘Watch Your Back , Bitch’
Marc Kasowitz, President Trump’s personal attorney on the Russia case, threatened a stranger in a string of profanity-laden emails Wednesday night.

The man, a retired public relations professional in the western United States who asked not to be identified, read ProPublica’s story this week on Kasowitz and sent the lawyer an email with the subject line: “Resign Now.’’

Kasowitz replied with series of angry messages sent between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern time. One read: “I’m on you now. You are fucking with me now Let’s see who you are Watch your back , bitch.”

In another email, Kasowitz wrote: “Call me. Don’t be afraid, you piece of shit. Stand up. If you don’t call, you’re just afraid.” And later: “I already know where you live, I’m on you. You might as well call me. You will see me. I promise. Bro.”
I can see why Trump likes this guy. I can also see why there might be something to the whole "Kasowitz can't get a security clearance" story if this is how he acts.
posted by zachlipton at 1:47 PM on July 13, 2017 [102 favorites]


He only hires the best people.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:49 PM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


“I already know where you live, I’m on you. You might as well call me. You will see me. I promise. Bro.”

It's not "I'm Marc Kasowitz, and I'll fight for YOU!," but it'll do.
posted by Rust Moranis at 1:51 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Yep, and the impoverished, disenfranchised, enmiserated, and scorned resist like hell.

That's the popular perception, but there's a good argument to be made that it's always been the liberal middle class leading and mobilizing most popular reform and revolutionary movements. Our progressive era Women's movement came out of the newly emerging middle class of the day primarily. Even less progressive but iconic revolutionary protests like the Boston Tea Party were strategically organized not by the poorer colonists who executed it, but by the wealthier and middle class. Marx, Lenin, George Washington, Ghandi, etc., all came from middle class backgrounds.

The support of wealthier liberals has always been a key factor in successful populist movements, is my understanding of the consensus of the people who study the history of those kinds of movements. The poorest are not more likely to revolt in any coherent, strategic way, though they can and will riot and turn on each other under enough economic pressure. The middle ages provide a good model and a massive counterexample to the idea widespread disenfranchisement leads to immediate populist uprisings. It took Enlightenment era liberalism to overcome feudalism and the crabs in a bucket and mob rule effects of widespread poverty that grossly unbalanced system exploited. Those ideas came from the relatively privileged not the worst off.
posted by saulgoodman at 1:52 PM on July 13, 2017 [17 favorites]


Republican provocateur Roger Stone fueled the speculation on Wednesday when he claimed to know who the leaker was, and “their initials are J.K.”

So Roger Stone is Team Bannon. That's interesting. I'm so torn about this infighting, because I don't know who to root for.

I guess the best outcome is for a continued stalemate amidst brutal fighting. Since Bannon is smarter, Kushner is protected by Trump's beloved daughter, and Trump seems to actually like infighting among his lieutenants as a Stalinesque method of maintaining power, I remain optimistic that will happen.
posted by msalt at 1:53 PM on July 13, 2017


Cocaine Incorporated:
Michael Braun, the former chief of operations for the D.E.A., told me a story about the construction of a high-tech fence along a stretch of border in Arizona. “They erect this fence,” he said, “only to go out there a few days later and discover that these guys have a catapult, and they’re flinging hundred-pound bales of marijuana over to the other side.” He paused and looked at me for a second. “A catapult,” he repeated. “We’ve got the best fence money can buy, and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology.”
Feds Find Weed-Slinging Catapult Hanging From Mexican Border Wall

'Marijuana cannon' used to fire drugs over US border seized in Mexico

Van With Cannon Used to Shoot Drugs Across US-Mexico Border
posted by kirkaracha at 1:53 PM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


So Roger Stone is Team Bannon. That's interesting. I'm so torn about this infighting, because I don't know who to root for.

Stone's always claimed Team Bannon and has for at least 3 months been regularly appearing on Infowars to accuse Kushner as King Leaker. You don't want to root for any of these fuckers and I'm not convinced that anything Stone says is honest or reflective of any actual infighting dynamic: taking Stone at his word has never, ever been a good call.
posted by Rust Moranis at 1:57 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


six string weed cannon, american made, fires for eternity. No one injured.
No one tell T about Colorado. Or DC I guess.
posted by rc3spencer at 1:58 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


Roger Stone has taken a lot of credit for things he didn't actually do. I actually seriously wonder if he's ever DONE anything in his life, other than bloviating.
posted by Yowser at 2:00 PM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


So Kasowitz went to Internet Tough Guy Law School?
posted by azpenguin at 2:00 PM on July 13, 2017 [16 favorites]


> As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don't see them -- they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It's over. As cray as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall.

I'm having so much trouble wrapping my brain around this. It's really [real], and Trump is concerned about people being hit on the head by sacks full of drugs being flung over a two thousand mile long border? And that's why the border wall should be transparent?

Maybe someone could get Trump to look into head injuries in the NFL, since he seems to have so much concern for blunt force head trauma.

And also at all the people banging their heads on their desks.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:01 PM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


> I'm so torn about this infighting, because I don't know who to root for.

Team Sinkhole.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:01 PM on July 13, 2017 [15 favorites]


I was assuming someone said the process of bidding and construction should be transparent and he misunderstood and ran with it.
posted by Green With You at 2:02 PM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


6 things that could topple Donald Trump's border wall
1. The geography is pretty unfriendly
2. The price tag will be rather huge
3. Actually building it is really difficult
4. Trying to get hold of the land could be a nightmare
5. It needs regular patrols to make it work
6. US and Mexican border towns rely on each other
posted by kirkaracha at 2:03 PM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


@prdickinson
Based on experience (I'm a litigation atty), I often get into the details of things. It's what I do. I see ~50 Qs in Junior's one email. 1/
- First, it is just one email. At least portions - if not all - of other email are included in the string. But strings can be edited. 2/
- The original of all the emails in the string must be reviewed to determine if they have been edited. There is no way to tell now. 3/
- We also don't know if anyone was bcc'd on any email in the string. Only way to tell is to review the original "Sent" version from each. 4/
- We also don't know from which account this was printed. Junior redacted the header that would tell us that. Printed from a bcc person? 5/
- We also don't know original subject line. Subject lines can be edited in FWD and Reply emails. Original of each in string will answer. 6/
- Based on what Junior published, Kushner and Manafort were only added on the last email, BUT were told meeting was RE-scheduled. 7/
- It's obvious Kushner and Manafort knew about a meeting scheduled earlier. How did they know? Assumption is earlier emails on subj. 8/
[my bold]
- It is also easy to assume that some type of confirming emails from Kushner/Manafort exist. Junior would want confirmation. Where is it? 9/
- Also in confirming emails it is easy to assume that there might be some comment on the subject. Or Qs about the subject. Not just "ok." 10/
- Also in each email from Kushner/Manafot, who did they cc &/or bcc? Also what do their e-calendars look like? Were meeting requests sent? 11/
- This one email opens up a Pandora's box of e-record requests and hours of very detailed questions about very specific issues & concerns. 12/
- And really, the answers are all in the records themselves. No one really can feign ignorance or memory lapses. The answers are there. 13/
- Without full disclosure and possible electronic forensic document review, turning over one email is just the start. Where will it end? 14/14
- Addendum: Junior's published string also omits the typical From/To/CC/Subj/Date line in each email in the string. Discussed elsewhere 👇
posted by chris24 at 2:04 PM on July 13, 2017 [41 favorites]


Trump is concerned about people being hit on the head by sacks full of drugs being flung over a two thousand mile long border?

Further, it's a problem with a well established solution.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 2:05 PM on July 13, 2017 [25 favorites]


Thanks to all who list talking points for calls and ways to fax and call. I use all of them. Excommunicated Cardinal I used all your points today calling my two Texas idiot senators.

Here's my daily letter to VP Mike Pence hope he likes it. Maybe someday he will write me back:

"I saw the picture of you praying with President Trump in the Oval Office. May I suggest some spiritual leaders that are currently in Washington DC that you should consider talking with if you wish to develop spiritually? I believed with all my heart that you could greatly benefit from their guidance. I have. Rev. Traci Blackmon is concerned the people of KY will suffer if this healthcare bill passes. She warns of calling on the false god of Capitalism and to stop cloaking your greed in religious language. In fact, the Rev. William J. Barber II was also on Capital Hill today discussing this exact issues that concerns so many of faithful. Are you concerned for faithful? Please bring your friends in the Oval Office with you and try and talk with Rev. Blackmon and Rev. Barber. Your spiritual health depends on it."

Anyone who wants to watch what Rev. Barber is doing I highly recommend. His Repairers of the Breach is a continual source of renewal to keep fighting the good fight. He and others were arrested protesting on Capital Hill today. Indubitable linked to Rev. Blackmon's talk to the protesters about and if you missed it it's good you should check it out.
posted by dog food sugar at 2:09 PM on July 13, 2017 [23 favorites]


Trump isn't very good at abstract thought so to him a wall means a wall which keeps out bad (i.e. brown) people and things and lets in good (i.e., white) people and things. Don't overthink his thought processes.

Being all-powerful means you don't have to be "realistic".

America is the best which means we can do anything which means we can do this.

So y'all stupid liberals who are nitpicking about "thousands of miles" and "transparent" and "doors" are just missing the whole point, and also demonstrating how much you hate America.
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:10 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


guys its no laughing matter, i heard about this girl who died after injecting four whole marajuanas in her system
posted by entropicamericana at 2:10 PM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


The Defense Of Donald Trump Jr Reeks Of White Male Privilege
Don Jr. might be, by all accounts, an idiot. But then he’s also a 39-year-old, grown-ass man idiot. This enormous benefit of the doubt is conferred upon him thanks to the tremendous privilege of being rich, white, and male.

In direct contrast to conservatives’ interpretation of Jr.’s behavior is the vilification of Hillary Clinton, particularly with regards to her private email server. It doesn’t matter that other Secretaries of State shared her system, or that an FBI review found her clear of wrongdoing; according to adversaries, Clinton’s use of a private server wasn’t just careless, it was sinister and calculated. It was part of her master plan to hide things from the American people. They hold her up against a longstanding cultural stereotype of women, especially exceptional women, as cunning and manipulative. Women carry not only their own faults but the faults that have been projected on women for centuries.

...

Don Jr.’s whiteness is inherently linked to the presumed pretense of naive youth; he was infantilized into innocence. Meanwhile a 12-year-old boy like Tamir Rice, actually innocent of any wrongdoing, was painted as a thug and a threat, a man not a kid. Black children become men the moment a white person claims to be scared of them.

After 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri, The New York Times described a series of shoplifting incidents and dabbling in drugs and alcohol. “Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, was no angel,” The Times wrote, as if behavior that’s common of nearly all teenagers in America—even celebrated as charmingly rebellious among wealthy white teenagers—opened the possibility that perhaps his death was justified.

But the conservative response to Don Jr.’s potentially criminal behavior and subsequent idiocy is one of aw-shucks-good ol’ boy-“what did those Duke brothers get into this time” resignation. It’s the same reaction that so often emerges when rapists look like Brock Turner. They’re just young guys who made a mistake, they’re not criminals. Maybe when men in power see a man from a similar position of privilege about to fall, they see themselves, or their sons. The miserable truth is we live in a patriarchy, and a white patriarchy in which the dominant institutions: the government, the courts, the press—emerged from foundations drawn by white men.
posted by chris24 at 2:14 PM on July 13, 2017 [92 favorites]


So, Sebastian Gorka just said on CNN that the White House is considering returning the NY and MD compounds to Russia in order to "give collaboration a chance."

Better hurry up guys, Putin is losing patience.
posted by pjenks at 2:14 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Hmm, on the one hand, concern over weed cannons seem ridiculous. On the other hand, no one who consumes cannabis should consume cannabis from Mexico (I'm sure there are exceptions). Aside from all the other usual concerns about drugs and Mexico, it's just shitty product. People should know better than to buy it and if we have to save those folks from themselves by taking out all the weed cannons, so be it.

On the third hand, if my goal was really to keep shitty weed out of the hands of U.S. cannabis users, there are far more effective ways to do it. Namely, Federal legalization.
posted by VTX at 2:15 PM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


Hey let's knock off the mocking of drug use ok.
posted by Melismata at 2:15 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


The Wall only exists because Trump believes there are ways to skim money off the construction (as opposed to the new FBI building he cancelled, which would have required skilled contractors). Just assume 10% of the budgeted dollars going into his pocket (20% of sections that are never completed due to "complications").
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:17 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


So, Sebastian Gorka just said on CNN that the White House is considering returning the NY and MD compounds to Russia in order to "give collaboration a chance."

"All Gorka's saayyyyiiiing...."
posted by Rust Moranis at 2:18 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


"give collaboration a chance."

Great choice of words Seb.
posted by chris24 at 2:19 PM on July 13, 2017 [27 favorites]


6 things that could topple Donald Trump's border wall

next up: 5 reasons why enver hoxha's mushroom bunkers will never work
posted by indubitable at 2:21 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


So Roger Stone is Team Bannon. That's interesting. I'm so torn about this infighting, because I don't know who to root for.

It's a pity they can't both lose.
-- Kissinger
posted by ocschwar at 2:27 PM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


Jonathan Capehart, WaPo

Mr. Capehart needs to ease off of that metaphor pedal....
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:30 PM on July 13, 2017


Total derail, I know... I love this expression, but I don't even know HOW you'd put on your bra one boob at a time.

Perhaps it's one of those that buckles at the front?
posted by acb at 2:32 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


> next up: 5 reasons why enver hoxha's mushroom bunkers will never work

REVISIONIST!!!!1!!1!
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:33 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


Did...did Trump really use the word "cray"

Perhaps he was just voicing his opinion that America should invest in some state-of-the-art multi-megaflop liquid-cooled supercomputers to go with its state-of-the-art steam catapults.
posted by acb at 2:33 PM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


"You know what treason is? [Jewish names], okay?"

If mentioning the Rosenbergs as traitors to America is an anti-Semitic dogwhistle, then wouldn't, say, denouncing Goldman Sachs as the “vampire squid” of predatory capitalism be also?
posted by acb at 2:38 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


I deffo consider "vampire squid" shit to be a dogwhistle.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:40 PM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


If mentioning the Rosenbergs as traitors to America is an anti-Semitic dogwhistle, then wouldn't, say, denouncing Goldman Sachs as the “vampire squid” of predatory capitalism be also?

I mean...it's not great
posted by schadenfrau at 2:41 PM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


tonycpsu's Vox article about ramming the BCRA through the Senate without a CBO:
Yes, they could ram it through that way. But if they do, I believe there's a law that says they won't be able to then use reconciliation to pass both this AND the tax cuts they want to do next. I'm having a hard time finding the source for that, though.
posted by mfu at 2:43 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


If mentioning the Rosenbergs as traitors to America is an anti-Semitic dogwhistle, then wouldn't, say, denouncing Goldman Sachs as the “vampire squid” of predatory capitalism be also?

A couple years ago I'd have maybe agreed with you, but the Hitlerton Window has moved a lot since then.
posted by Rust Moranis at 2:44 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


I was just reading the Meatballs FPP and pondering how apt the "it just doesn't matter" chant is for these times, albeit in a painful way.

Puasy grabbing? It just doesn't matter.

Ignorance and malice? It just doesn't matter.

Collusion and light treason? It just doesn't matter.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:45 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]




America, it has often been said, has a deep problem with political rifts, spats, hate, and so on.

But America doesn't. The Republican Party and, more broadly, American Conservatism, has a deep problem with political rifts, spats, hate and so on.

Not only am I totally uninterested in pulling the Republican's chestnuts out of the fire or expending any resources whatsoever to save them from a problem of their own making, I don't think its possible for the American left to actually do anything to fix the problem. And yet, because of their problem, our shared nation is in trouble so despite how deeply distasteful the task is, and how much I doubt there's actually anything effective we can do, I don't see much option but for us to try something.

So the question is: what **CAN** we on the left do to try and "heal the rift" and all that other stuff people talk about? Obviously I don't think the answer is to surrender, or be nice and speak softly to Republicans in hopes that they'll stop abusing us.

I feel that even asking this is deeply unjust and unfair. The problem in American politics is that the American right has been actively recruiting racist, eliminationist, homophobic, misogynist, violent, theocratic people and then working hard to radicalize them because that's the only way they can get their deeply unpopular economic policies enacted. The idea of spending any of my energy, time, money, or effort to fix a problem entirely of their creation repulses me to my core.

But clearly the ship of state is sinking, and even if the problem is that they were drilling holes in the hull it is unfortunately up to us to bail.

So what can we actually do? What action can the left take that would actually be effective in snuffing out the flames of civil war that the Republicans have been fanning? What causes can I contribute to? What actions can I take?

How can a leftist take effective action that will help end the grip that FOX, hate radio, 4chan, and so on have on close to half of the populous?

In an ideal world this project would be undertaken by American conservatives who have recognized the danger of the path they've lead us down, but I just don't see that happening. So yet again it's up to the let to clean up their messes, no matter how unjust and unfair that is.

What can we do? How do we even start the project of getting conservatives to back down from their hate fueled rhetoric and beliefs?

I'm asking because anything I can think to try is basically doomed to fail or make things worse. Hell, even the prospect of a bunch of lefties trying to take away their FOX/4chan/whatever probably has a bunch of right wingers indulging in fantasies of using their guns to "protect their freedom".

I don't want to toss up my hands and declare that the project is impossible, but I will confess that I have not the slightest idea of even how to start. Anyone have a good idea here? Or an idea at all?
posted by sotonohito at 2:46 PM on July 13, 2017 [20 favorites]


I can't remember if I read this on Metafilter or on Slacktivist, but someone pointed out that Donald Trump is the closest thing to the actual Antichrist we have.

There's a decent chance that was me.
Not that there is one actual literal Antichrist, but if there were Trump would be so obviously it that it's ridiculous. Who else but the Antichrist could convince the majority of evangelicals to trade in all their values for a chance at lower taxes and Justice Gorsuch?

One of the big problems (of many, many problems) with fundamentalist eschatology is they keep depicting the Antichrist as someone who is going to fool all those secular liberals in Europe, rather than a someone who will offer conservative Christians all the political power they want as long as they turn a blind eye when he stomps on the poor, turns away the refugee, and cuts deals to enrich himself beyond belief. If there is an Antichrist, he was always going to come at just the right time to complete the corruption of the church.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:47 PM on July 13, 2017 [70 favorites]


The preferred clinical nomenclature is "potted up on weed" yt . ...

Counterpoint, Relax Your Mind, by Jay Ungar & Molly Mason
posted by mikelieman at 2:47 PM on July 13, 2017


Dave Pell vents his spleen righteously: Putin Didn’t Do It
Putin didn’t convince us to turn the Internet’s promise of a networked future into a nonstop rage-fest in which we all sling mud (and worse) at each other from our paranoid, self-righteous silos of homogeneity.

217 members of the House voted for a historically hateful health care bill that would cut my taxes while ripping coverage out of the hands of 24 million Americans. Guess who wasn’t one of those 217 people? Putin.

Putin didn't spend the last couple decades furthering his own political fortunes by humoring mouth-breathing imbeciles who want to teach evolution as a theory and who deny climate change and think science is part of the liberal elite’s plot to pull one over them.

[…]

You can blame Putin for a lot. But Putin knew one thing that more than 60 million Americans couldn’t manage to see with their own red, white and blue eyes; that Trump would be a terrible president.

That’s the one time we should have paid attention to him.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:49 PM on July 13, 2017 [57 favorites]


at least we can talk about Mexican drug trebuchets now.

For when you need to launch 90 kilograms of drugs 300 meters.
posted by drezdn at 2:50 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


On CNN, alongside saying we should "give collaboration a chance", Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka is asked the whether rewarding Russia (by returning their diplomatic compounds) despite the intelligence community's assessment that they meddled in the election is weak, and his initial response is to mention the Mother Of All Bombs.

The last I heard Gorka had failed to get a security clearance. Does he have one now? If not, does it matter, given the President's obvious trust in him? I'm not kidding, I genuinely want to know if this Nazi has legal access to national secrets.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:51 PM on July 13, 2017 [17 favorites]


I’m a tremendous fracker
Yes you are, Mr. President, yes you definitely are
posted by XMLicious at 2:55 PM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


I recall an NPR journalist saying that if the President knowingly chooses to provide classified information to someone without security clearance, it is automatically declassified. Is that true?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:57 PM on July 13, 2017


But Putin knew one thing that more than 60 million Americans couldn’t manage to see with their own red, white and blue eyes; that Trump would be a terrible president.
Did Putin ever make a public statement to that effect? I think not. He may have known Trump would be a terrible president for America, but Trump being president would be better for his country than Hillary Clinton.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:57 PM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


So y'all stupid liberals who are nitpicking about "thousands of miles" and "transparent" and "doors" are just missing the whole point, and also demonstrating how much you hate America.

Y'know, Trump probably could build a small section of the wall—just enough to stretch as far as one could see in either direction—and claim Mission Accomplished. As for the rest of the wall, well, that's still under construction. "It'll be done, very, very soon, that I can tell you," is all Trump would have to say. Then he'd have his photo opp of the finished part (rally at the wall!) and get credit for having gotten it "done," and anybody who points out that the other 99.99% of the wall still wasn't there would be scorned as fake news, or so stupid they think a wall that big gets built overnight, or whatever FOX comes up with in Trump's defense (when all else fails, blaming the Democrats works pretty well).

They'd only have to keep this up as long as the American public was paying it any attention, which given our political memory and sense of history, is about four minutes these days.
posted by Rykey at 3:07 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


Talking Points Memo reports that double-counting money isn't just for the Executive Branch any more:

To address concerns that Cruz’s amendment would lower prices for the young and healthy by making them skyrocket for the people who need a comprehensive insurance plan or have a pre-existing condition, the amendment purports to allocate billions in additional funding that states could use “to assist such health insurance issuers in covering high risk individuals.”

But as Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told reporters on Thursday, there is no additional money. Instead, the amendment takes money already appropriated in the bill for other needs and says it can be used for these payments to insurers under the Cruz Amendment.

“It seems to me you’re using that money over and over again,” she said. “It’s supposed to relieve the cost of high premiums. It’s supposed to solve the problem with deductibles being unaffordable. It’s supposed to be available for high-risk or reinsurance pool. It’s supposed to be available under the Cruz Amendment to help prevent a huge increase in rates for people with pre-existing conditions.”

Matthew Fiedler, a fellow at Brookings Institute’s Center for Health Policy, confirmed this double-dipping to TPM.

“The overall bill adds $70 billion to the stability fund,” he said. “But the Cruz amendment then redirects that same money to make payments to insurers designed to mitigate the problems that the Cruz amendment would create in the ACA-compliant market.”

“That funding will, of course, not be available to serve the stability fund’s other purposes,” he added.


Republicans again making up for cutting STEM education by making bold new discoveries in mathematics.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:15 PM on July 13, 2017 [37 favorites]


One hopes the Senate parliamentarian might find a bill ineligible for reconciliation under the Byrd Rule if it is mathematically impossible.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:17 PM on July 13, 2017 [17 favorites]


> One hopes the Senate parliamentarian might find a bill ineligible for reconciliation under the Byrd Rule if it is mathematically impossible.

If that happens, the Parliamentarian will be looking for a new job within the hour. I guarantee it.

(Likewise with this bullshit about using HHS scoring rather than CBO scoring. If Democrats had even proposed it, we'd never hear the end of it about circumventing the rules and not following the norms. With Republicans, it's just fresh, bold new thinking, shaking things up in Washington.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 3:23 PM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


So what can we actually do? What action can the left take that would actually be effective in snuffing out the flames of civil war that the Republicans have been fanning? What causes can I contribute to? What actions can I take?
Sotonohito, you are not alone.
Personally, I donate to several orgs. The ACLU, SPLC. The courts seem to be a consistent place for most of the heinousness going on to be stalled. Also the PCRF, they also help children hurting in Syria.
Probably the most important thing is to take care of yourself, and survive this without harm. Enjoy and support your friends and family. Enjoy nature, get out in the green. Be social, politically or not. My wife and I went to Haiti and built houses, dispensed medicine to the sick. It was only a week, but it has made me feel a tiny bit less helpless. I'm joining a jiu-jitsu class soon. Both of these things were (pre-2017) very uncharacteristic of me. Habitat for Humanity always needs volunteers. Sorry, I don't have much. Just thought you deserved some answers. I do have faith this will all change in time, the how is obscured to me. But old white fearmongers gotta die off sometime. New people grow up with new ideas every day.
Good luck!
posted by rc3spencer at 3:27 PM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


Whoa. Just days after giving an interview to the Wall Street Journal about setting up a team to seek out Hillary Clinton's missing emails from Russian hackers, Peter W. Smith committed suicide in a Rochester, MN hotel room. (Chicago Tribune)
posted by pjenks at 3:28 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


This is morbid and contains discussion of suicide, which I'm super hesitant to bring into the thread, but it's directly relevant to something we discussed at some length recently. Peter Smith, the GOP operative who sought Clinton emails from possible Russian hackers, his death a few days after talking to the WSJ was a suicide according to some meticulous reporting by the Chicago Tribune.
In a room at a Rochester hotel used almost exclusively by Mayo Clinic patients and relatives, Peter W. Smith, 81, left a carefully prepared file of documents, which includes a statement police called a suicide note in which he said he was in ill health and a life insurance policy was expiring.
I'm deeply curious about the "carefully prepared file of documents" and whether anything relevant to the President is in there.
posted by zachlipton at 3:29 PM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


What the MSM is overlooking: the "W." stands for "Vince Foster."
posted by Joseph Gurl at 3:31 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]




From the CTrib article about Peter W. Smith: Flynn briefly was President Trump's national security adviser and resigned after it was determined he had failed to disclose contacts with Russia.

Ahhhhh. Remember those halcyon days when people resigned over failing to disclose Russian contacts?
posted by hanov3r at 3:34 PM on July 13, 2017 [23 favorites]


NOBODY ELSE IS INVOLVED IN MY INCREDIBLY LUXURIOUS DEATH, BELIEVE ME. SINCERELY, OLD MAN
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:38 PM on July 13, 2017 [28 favorites]


"In the note recovered by police, Smith apologized to authorities and said that "NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER" was involved in his death."

FFS needs [real] tag.
posted by Slothrup at 3:38 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Why is his suicide or the method he used relevant? Couldn't they just say he left a file? That article is super intrusive on his privacy and possibly triggering for anyone who's dealt with this type of thing.
posted by Tarumba at 3:39 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


said he was in ill health and a life insurance policy was expiring.

doesn't suicide void most life insurance policies?
posted by murphy slaw at 3:40 PM on July 13, 2017 [22 favorites]


This really happened: Erik Wemple—Mr. ‘America first’ spurns American media for Chinese reporter. Trump was supposed to call on two American reporters for his press conference with Macron, but he choose a Chinese reporter for the second question, who asked essentially "do you like Xi Jinping?"

America First, indeed.
posted by zachlipton at 3:42 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Oof. The Seth Rich conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this.
posted by Roommate at 3:44 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


So what can we actually do? What action can the left take that would actually be effective in snuffing out the flames of civil war that the Republicans have been fanning? What causes can I contribute to? What actions can I take?

Short answer -- ask your representatives to support the Fair Representation Act introduced by Rep Don Beyer. Educate your friends on why they should ask their representatives to do the same. Repeat for the next decade or so at least.

Here's my reasoning about why this will help. Apologies for the wall of text -- I don't have time at the moment to make it short. I think our problems are...

1) Gridlock like we have had lately (Congress hasn't actually passed a budget in years, just "continuing resolutions".) can lead to frustration with the whole concept of democracy and of government. There are all kinds of surveys out there showing people really are turning against the idea of democracy. Some of the data is shown here. Just look at the graphs if you don't want to read the words. I read this article in 2015 when it came out.

2) Polarization (again arising in part from our two party system) potentially resulting in, if not civil war, at least civil strife. You can see this in part in the attack on Congressman Scalise and Congresswoman Giffords, or those Bundy guys taking over that office in Oregon, with guns. This has also been getting worse at least since the Oklahoma city bombing.

3) The Constitutional over representation of small states (which is in our Constitution to get buy in from states that would eventually become the Confederacy) is causing the will of the people to be represented less and less well. As more people flood into bigger cities, they have less and less voice each, in our government. Already a Wyoming voter has 3.5 times as much influence over the electoral college as a California voter. (This could be fixed with the National Popular Vote Compact.) The ratio in the Senate is, of course, much worse. And thanks to gerrymandering and geographic clustering, the House is less representative than it should be too. This over representation is only getting worse as Wyoming empties out and LA gets bigger, but Wyoming keeps its three members of congress and electoral votes (because that is the constitutional minimum), and California can't get more in proportion, because the total is fixed.

So you have to understand when I talk about multi-member districts and ranked choice voting, I am really saying "Smash the two party system! Save democracy!"

Multi-member districts would solve the two party-system related problems by allowing states to implement proportional representation, if they wanted to. In a proportional representation system you can bypass Duverger's law and actually get third party candidates elected (in the House, at least.) I imagine a bunch of California's seats would go to "Berniecrats" who would caucus with Democrats most of the time.)

Beyer's proposal also includes ranked choice voting. That too would make it possible for people to vote for 3rd party candidates without shooting themselves in the foot in situations where two decent candidates split the vote and lose to one bad one.

As polarized as we are right now, the number of people willing to identify themselves with one party or the other is actually unusually low. People hate both parties even as they vote for them.

Multimember districts also make gerrymandering difficult if not impossible, and help solve the "clustering" or "self-gerrymandering" problem as well.

They reduce the influence of extremists by making candidates run in districts which include both rural and urban areas, and both rural and urban constituents. They make a LOT more districts into swing districts, so you don't have to feel like voting is pointless because you live in such a "safe" district for one party or the other.

I think these things (multimember districts and ranked choice voting) really are the cure for our democracy. And we don't even need a constitutional amendment to do it. So let's make it happen.

Democrats should be the party of MORE DEMOCRACY.

posted by OnceUponATime at 3:45 PM on July 13, 2017 [44 favorites]


Why is his suicide or the method he used relevant?

I'd presume its because the circumstances seem sketchy as hell and he had just given a press interview regarding the illegal actions of somebody widely known for bumping off people he sees as threats. Suicide seems plausible, sure, but I can understand why they'd want to fill in the details as much as possible.
posted by contraption at 3:46 PM on July 13, 2017 [11 favorites]


One bit of good news, from BuzzFeed: House Rejects Effort To Roll Back Rights For Transgender Members Of The US Military
The US House of Representatives on Thursday narrowly rejected an attempt to undermine rules allowing transgender people to serve in the US military. The measure, defeated in a 214 to 209 vote, would have denied transgender service members certain medical care required for gender transition, such as prescription drugs and surgeries.

The vote on the amendment, which appeared to have significant Republican support, came after a heated afternoon debate.
24 Republicans joined the Democrats to vote to stop this, and if one of them happens to represent you, a call to say thanks would be swell.
posted by zachlipton at 3:50 PM on July 13, 2017 [52 favorites]


Yep. Call to thank them and then vote them out of office as collaborators. Perhaps don't mention the second part.
posted by Justinian at 3:52 PM on July 13, 2017 [23 favorites]


Well hole-ee shit, Katko voted no. I'm writing a thank you letter now. Thanks for the heads up, zachlipton.
posted by xyzzy at 3:59 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


Peter Smith's precise means of death seems pretty damn newsworthy to me. at The Tribune claims suicide was confirmed by the Medical Examiner's report.
posted by spitbull at 4:00 PM on July 13, 2017


said he was in ill health and a life insurance policy was expiring.

doesn't suicide void most life insurance policies?


Possibly he meant an annuity was about to stop paying out? Some life insurance policies include annuities that begin paying out at retirement or whatever and maybe this one sunsetted after a certain number of years?
posted by notyou at 4:00 PM on July 13, 2017


Josh Marshall, in his latest pledge drive post, just alluded to a congressional sex tape story that is breaking?? Does anyone know more about what he might be referring to?
posted by Aubergine at 4:06 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


If I join Prime does the begging stop
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:09 PM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


"Congressional Sex Tape" is 2017 making damn sure we forget 2016.
posted by notyou at 4:09 PM on July 13, 2017


I believe he's talking about Ex-Congress Staffers Charged With Distributing Delegate’s Explicit Photos , a story I was hoping we all just wouldn't notice here.
posted by zachlipton at 4:09 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


It's this.
The Department of Justice on Thursday announced charges against two former House staffers related to their circulation of “private, nude images and videos” of a House member and the member’s spouse.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia announced that a grand jury indicted Juan R. McCullum on two counts of cyberstalking and Dorene Browne-Louis on two counts of obstruction of justice.
posted by xyzzy at 4:10 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


If I join Prime does the begging stop

The full screen begging stops, the Editorial begging posts remain because Josh Marshall hasn't filtered those out yet I guess
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:11 PM on July 13, 2017


doesn't suicide void most life insurance policies?

It's been a while since I had any reason to be up to speed on this, but life insurance policies as I understand it generally have a suicide exclusion cover the first few years of the policy, not the life of it; the idea is to prevent opportunistic "take out policy, kill yourself" schemes, and the overall risk of any given cohort for suicide is otherwise factored into the actuarial math on the policy just like any other potential cause of death is. No life insurance company is losing money on a long-time policy holder dying, regardless of the cause.
posted by cortex at 4:11 PM on July 13, 2017 [32 favorites]


Oof. The Seth Rich conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this.

If /r/conspiracy is any guide, there will be a lot of in-fighting. Much of the conspiracy rank-and-file will want to talk about it. The mods want the sub to remain focused on things like Seth and pizzagate which only target Democrats. The mods will win because a majority of users there are ok with being an extension of the_donald, but there will be some who will accuse the mods of being part of the conspiracy & coverup themselves. All this has already happened over any posts about Trump + Russia.
posted by honestcoyote at 4:12 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


Go ahead, sit back in your chair, close your eyes, and pass your local Congressperson's face in front of that phrase -- "Congressional Sex Tape."

Mine's Dana Rohrabacher.
posted by notyou at 4:12 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


If I join Prime does the begging stop

No.
posted by Melismata at 4:12 PM on July 13, 2017


Pfft, that's barely a national scandal even by pre-2016 standards. No collusion. Sad!
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:14 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Josh Marshall, in his latest pledge drive post, just alluded to a congressional sex tape story that is breaking?? Does anyone know more about what he might be referring to?

"Angela and Strawberry Go To Washington"?
posted by indubitable at 4:16 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


In 2017, a married couple having explicit pictures of each other on their phones should just be viewed as evidence that they have a healthy love life. The focus here should be on the assholes who stole the photos and I hope it stays that way. God this fucking year.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:16 PM on July 13, 2017 [63 favorites]


Ten Problems with Anti-Russian Obsession:
By obsessing on Russia-gate, Democrats and liberals are playing into the hands of neoconservatives and the Military Industrial Complex, which are pushing for another war in the Middle East and an expensive New Cold War with Russia. The immediate flashpoint is Syria where the Syrian government and allies are making slow but steady progress defeating tens of thousands of foreign-funded extremists.

In response, the U.S. and its allies have escalated their intervention and aggression trying to prolong the conflict and/or grab territory to block a Syrian government victory. The expanding U.S. military role in Syria also is threatening to bring about a direct clash between United States, which is operating inside Syria in violation of international law, and Russia, which has come to the aid of the internationally recognized government.

The Democratic and liberal hysteria around Russia has confused huge numbers of people who now have been led to believe that Russia is America’s “enemy” and must be confronted militarily around the world. Leading liberals are allying themselves with the CIA and war hawks, while also alienating peace voters, another important voting bloc.

Looking back over the eight months since the election, the obsession with Russia-gate may have started from shock over Trump’s election and then morphed into a resistance to his presidency (including the unlikely hope that the “scandal” would lead to his impeachment), but the hysteria has contributed to significant mistakes by those who have embraced it.

The mainstream news media jettisoned any pretense of objectivity as it joined the “hate-Russia” and “get-Trump” movement. Many Democrats and liberals also opportunistically and uncritically accepted and promoted the anti-Russia demonization, including McCarthyistic attacks on Americans who balked at the political/media stampede and questioned the accusations as either lacking in evidence or exaggerated.

Meanwhile, Trump finds himself getting pressured by Democrats and liberals to adopt even more warlike stances – to prove that he’s not Putin’s puppet – including a slide toward a new war in the Middle East and a step onto the slippery slope that could lead to nuclear annihilation.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:22 PM on July 13, 2017


Meanwhile, Trump finds himself getting pressured by Democrats and liberals to adopt even more warlike stances

Man, am I ever sick of getting blamed for forcing the most narcissistic, unmanageable, utterly fucking random President of the United States to do shit that I don't want him to do.
posted by Etrigan at 4:25 PM on July 13, 2017 [117 favorites]


"hysteria," lol

crazy liberals, freakin' out like, like women, forcing Trump to go to war with Russia and screwing up all the progress Assad is making in Syria

this article is crap
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:28 PM on July 13, 2017 [64 favorites]


Worst GoT recap ever.
posted by rc3spencer at 4:28 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


Man, the commenters over at consortiumnews.com sure have a lot to say about Israel.
posted by theodolite at 4:29 PM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


Joseph Gurl, are you trying to kill me? That link is so... gaaaah.

You don't actually believe that link do you?
posted by Justinian at 4:32 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Ten Problems with Anti-Russian Obsession

That's a shit article.
posted by diogenes at 4:32 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


That Consortium News link makes me want to punch puppies. The very first point suggests that a common /r/the_donald talking point is true; that CrowdStrike is allied with the Clintons and decided to abandon over their reputation as security professionals to falsely accuse Russia of interfering with the election in order to help Hillary and hurt Donald. I mean, I get that this rag was founded by the dude who uncovered Iran-Contra, but the article starts out on bad footing and just gets worse. By the time we get to the part where the DNC and Podesta leaks are hailed as great for Democracy I've closed the tab.
posted by xyzzy at 4:34 PM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


Joseph Gurl: What do you actually want? The President's son is getting emails that cite "Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump," he replies "I love it," and sets up a meeting with senior campaign staff. Every day, we find out they lied about something else with this meeting. The National Security Advisor lied about his payments from foreign government sources. Somebody hacked DNC and Clinton campaign emails and released them, clearly with an aim to help Trump get elected, and he's shown zero interest in addressing that. I could go on.

So what do you, personally, want us to do with all that? Just ignore it? Pretend it's not happening? This isn't about hating Russia or wanting World War III; it's about the fact that this is happening in front of our eyes and everybody in power in our government is determined not to care.
posted by zachlipton at 4:34 PM on July 13, 2017 [62 favorites]


As I understand it nobody thinks we are "at war" with Russia, or hate the Russian people, we just don't want an authoritarian strongman to fuck with our elections when 63 million of us voted against the guy that seeks to emulate him. Why is that so hard to understand???????
posted by gucci mane at 4:35 PM on July 13, 2017 [45 favorites]


The Democratic and liberal hysteria

The only question here is if this piece was written by a leftist to troll liberals or by a liberal to troll leftists. Because no one with a brain cell could take it seriously.
posted by octobersurprise at 4:36 PM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


Another part of this is that we literally just lived through and witnessed, first hand, a targeted psychological warfare operation against our country and we know about it.
posted by gucci mane at 4:38 PM on July 13, 2017 [32 favorites]


I've been seeing this line from some of my more ultra-lefty acquaintances. It goes as far as to say Trump should be applauded for the cease-fire in Syria, and anyone who believes he is not less war-like than HRC would have been is and I quote "an asshole murderer".

I seem to recall there was some evidence right after the election that similar stories were found to be Russian plants, but can't find a reference now.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 4:41 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


"You know what treason is? [Jewish names], okay?"

Benedict Arnold has always been synonymous with Treason.

Politico Senate Republicans one vote away from Obamacare repeal failure

Rand Paul and Susan Collins are out. So one No vote and the bill is dead. Alaska? W. Virginia? Step up and kill the bill.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:44 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


I wonder if, in the future, we can steer clear of linking to sites where a disproportionate number of commenters are promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories under the guise of anti-Zionism?
posted by maxsparber at 4:44 PM on July 13, 2017 [52 favorites]


2) Polarization (again arising in part from our two party system) potentially resulting in, if not civil war, at least civil strife. You can see this in part in the attack on Congressman Scalise and Congresswoman Giffords, or those Bundy guys taking over that office in Oregon, with guns. This has also been getting worse at least since the Oklahoma city bombing.

Something I'd like to put on the table here is the idea that there are more fundamental causes than the voting system to the "polarization" occurring in America. Specifically, I'd like to introduce the hypothesis that what we're seeing is more about the divergence in material interests present within American society, rather than on the forced choice between two political parties. Specifically specifically, it's possible that the interests of the little big men, people like relatively well-off but not rich small businessowners, relatively well-off but not rich tradesmen, relatively well-off but not rich middle management types, has diverged from the interests of both the working class people under them and the executive class people above them.

These are the classes that have historically been the chief base for fascism; they are flexing their muscles now, and as a result what we're seeing is the Republican party shifting from being an economically liberal party that just happens to also support nationalism, white supremacy and patriarchy toward being an overtly fascist organization.

Changing the voting system around would not do much to submerge this tendency; witness how European countries with better-designed electoral systems have also seen massive fascism outbreaks.

3)The Constitutional over representation of small states (which is in our Constitution to get buy in from states that would eventually become the Confederacy) is causing the will of the people to be represented less and less well. As more people flood into bigger cities, they have less and less voice each, in our government.


To this I'd like to add that the number of voters per district everywhere is very high; on average there is one house of representatives member per 700,000 voters. A congressperson is almost literally one in a million. In more robust democracies, this number is much lower; for example, each Canadian MP represents about 70,000 people. It's about ten times more likely for a random Canadian to know a member of parliament, or to know someone who knows a member of parliament, or to at least know someone who works for a member of parliament, than it is for a random U.S. citizen to have real social connections with their representatives. This makes it easy for us to think of the political class as being a group separate from us that rules over us, rather than being people who are like us who are accountable to us.

[...] Multi-member districts would solve the two party-system related problems by allowing states to implement proportional representation, if they wanted to. In a proportional representation system you can bypass Duverger's law and actually get third party candidates elected (in the House, at least.) I imagine a bunch of California's seats would go to "Berniecrats" who would caucus with Democrats most of the time.)

Multi-member districts elected by proportional representation are a great idea, especially if they come along with a massive expansion in the number of representatives. The thing I'd like to add here, though, is that your idea of the political spectrum modulo the influence of the mathematically-forced sorting into two parties present in our system is much narrower than you'd actually see if we had representative democracy. I know a lot of people who campaigned for Sanders; nearly all of them are well to Sanders's left, and saw him as a somewhat unpalatable compromise candidate.

Under a more democratic proportional representation scheme, I don't think we'd see a Sandersite party rise in California; I think we'd see several actually radical socialist/anarchist formations develop.

[...] Beyer's proposal also includes ranked choice voting. That too would make it possible for people to vote for 3rd party candidates without shooting themselves in the foot in situations where two decent candidates split the vote and lose to one bad one.

Ranked choice is a bad idea; although it solves the problem of non-viable third parties acting as spoilers, it starts suffering from problems similar to first past the post's problems once an actually viable third party arises. This is why places with ranked choice (for example, Australia) tend toward two parties or coalitions of parties, just like places with FPTP voting.

Five years ago I would have bored you to death walking through how IRV/RCV reduces to FPTP; today I'll just throw out a link to a semi-relevant xkcd and instead bore you to death with the (basically Marxist) line that the conflicts we're seeing here aren't for the most part about the voting system used to select representatives, but are instead about a more broadly political struggle over control of material resources and power, in which the fight for dominance in the regime of electoral politics is just one part.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:45 PM on July 13, 2017 [32 favorites]


Alaska? W. Virginia? Step up and kill the bill.

I think Heller is the most likely third no vote. Of course I don't think there will be a "third no vote". There will either be 2 no votes or 4-5+ no votes.
posted by Justinian at 4:46 PM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


nobody thinks we are "at war" with Russia

Russia has been called an "enemy" in this very thread, an attitude also suggested by the frequent references to "treason."

Oh, and the Senate Dems just added new sanctions against Russia.

I do think the Podesta leaks were good. Transparency is good, and a lot of stuff many voters want to know came out. I'm pro-leaks in most cases.

I don't at all think Trump is less hawkish than HRC, though. Both parties are led by hawks with little regard for human life.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:46 PM on July 13, 2017


The whole Trump Jr thing wasn't about Russian collusion, it was about ethics in adoption journalism.
posted by misterpatrick at 4:47 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Russia has been called an "enemy" in this very thread

Is attempting to corrupt our elections and undermine the legitimacy of the Presidency not enough to think that, just maybe, they might not entirely have our best interests in mind? I'm pretty comfy putting Putin, his band of hackers, and their puppets in the Oval Office in the "enemies" basket at this point.
posted by informavore at 4:50 PM on July 13, 2017 [36 favorites]


Yeah, a little googling suggests that Rick Sterling is a big fan of Assad, Russia, and "false flag" conspiracies.
posted by octobersurprise at 4:50 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


In more robust democracies, this number is much lower; for example, each Canadian MP represents about 70,000 people.

It's no coincidence that Canada also has 1/10 as many citizens. In India, the largest democracy, there is one rep for something like every 1.8million people. I'm all for increasing the size of the House but, one, that just kicks the can down the road as our population continues to increase and self-sort and, two, greatly increasing the size of the House comes with its own problems.

Large empires/nations are unwieldy. They always have been and they likely always will be. I don't know that there' is a great solution though there has to be a better one than what we have.
posted by Justinian at 4:51 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


I seem to recall there was some evidence right after the election that similar stories were found to be Russian plants, but can't find a reference now.

This probably isn't super helpful in a discussion that is, in part, about not randomly throwing around accusations that demonize everyone who sees things differently.
posted by zachlipton at 4:52 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


> nobody thinks we are "at war" with Russia.

This is where I observe that the deep backstory of Neuromancer is uncannily like right now, despite how Gibson didn't foresee the fall of the Soviet Union; recall that Case's boss, Armitage, had many years prior to the events of the novel gotten his brain fried as a cyber-soldier in "Operation Screaming Fist," part of a major cyber-conflict between the U.S. and Russia that never quite turned into a full-scale shooting war.

So, like, it's not that we're at war with Russia, but not like we're not not at war with Russia, either; instead we're in a weird grimy futuristic kinda-war that mostly takes place on computer networks and in the media.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:52 PM on July 13, 2017 [49 favorites]


Is attempting to corrupt our elections and undermine the legitimacy of the Presidency not enough to think that, just maybe, they might not entirely have our best interests in mind?

Then the US must not have the best interests of dozens of countries in mind, as we've done those things consistently for decades, at least.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:55 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


It's some kind of... not-hot war.
posted by Artw at 4:56 PM on July 13, 2017 [34 favorites]



Corey Robin:
Folks are asking me if "loyalty" is a better word than treason. No, it's not. I'm running out the door to the dentist, but quickly. Loyalty is ultimately about a state of mind. Barack Obama tried to reach a rapprochement with Putin and Russia. Was that disloyalty? Conservatives thought so, till they decided the idea of a rapprochement was a good thing. Loyalty and disloyalty are never about actions; they're about the imputation of motives, states of mind, to actions that may or may not be illicit. During the McCarthy years, this nation tore itself apart over this attempt at divination: what did person x really think when she advocated desegregating the blood supply of the Red Cross? (That was a goal of the Communist Party, which was thought to be a puppet of the Soviet Union, so if you advocated it, you were advancing the goals of the Soviet Union.) Or read a history of the French Revolution, and how the desire to establish fidelity to the republic fed a murderous and anxious rage: to expose what lay inside people's hearts, regardless of what they did, against a backdrop of a very dangerous international situation, where there were in fact enemies. The advantage of the word treason is that it focuses on specific acts. Words like loyalty are about imputing states of mind when you can't establish for sure that the action in question is illegal or illicit. Don't go there. Speaking of going, I'm off to the dentist.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:57 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


pointing out that the US military/intelligence apparat has done a fucked up thing does not make that thing not fucked up
posted by murphy slaw at 4:57 PM on July 13, 2017 [31 favorites]


I very much doubt Russia considers itself bound by being "not at war".
posted by Artw at 4:59 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


are we circling back to some Greenwaldian idea that Russia is less-not-unbad than the United States, so their fucking with our elections to help plant a demented, compromised moron in the Oval Office is the chastening we deserve
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:59 PM on July 13, 2017 [50 favorites]


Oh, yay, now we've devolved into whataboutism. Can we not?
posted by xyzzy at 5:01 PM on July 13, 2017 [21 favorites]


Fuck me, now Robin is trying to equate Obama's attempt to "reach a rapprochement with Russia" with Trump's attempts to collaborate with Russia to influence the election?
posted by tonycpsu at 5:01 PM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


pointing out that the US military/intelligence apparat has done a fucked up thing does not make that thing not fucked up

Not "has done" but "consistently does," but right! Of course--and I didn't use it to remotely suggest that it's not a fucked up thing. Rather, it's a response to the hyperventilating demonization of Russia. If Russia's a demon for doing this, then we're demons too.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 5:01 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


> Oh, yay, now we've devolved into whataboutism. Can we not?

well what about all the times you've devolved into whataboutism, huh?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:01 PM on July 13, 2017 [62 favorites]


I don't think we are at war with Russia, I think they are conducting a cyberwar against us. There is a difference. Other than sanctions for previous bad acts, I see no aggression towards Russia coming from the United States.

I think Heller is the most likely third no vote. Of course I don't think there will be a "third no vote". There will either be 2 no votes or 4-5+ no votes.


I would be surprised to see Lisa Murkowski turn her back on the people who elected her. I think she has a deeper connection to the native people of Alaska that voted her in (and depend on Medicaid) then do a lot of Senators. Like, for example, I don't believe Rand Paul has any connection at all to his voters.

But I would agree that that 3rd No will break the damn and several others will vote no as well.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:02 PM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


I do think the Podesta leaks were good. Transparency is good, and a lot of stuff many voters want to know came out. I'm pro-leaks in most cases.

The emails weren't leaked, they were stolen. This wasn't a whistleblower who said "the campaign Clinton has done this wrong thing and people need to know about it," this was no different than someone in a ski mask breaking into one campaign's HQ, grabbing thousands of files, and posting them for everyone to read.

If you think transparency is good, then try to get a coalition together to push for laws that require campaigns to be more transparent. Personally, I think that being involved in a Presidential campaign shouldn't mean you can't ever have a private conversation, but the technology is totally there to make senior campaign staffers livestream their every moment 24/7 if you think that would be best, so feel free to propose that if you think it's best, just as long as it applies equally to all candidates. I support and defend whistleblowing, not outright theft.

Then the US must not have the best interests of dozens of countries in mind, as we've done those things consistently for decades, at least.

Ah, it's whataboutism time. You can be opposed to the CIA's bad actions without supporting Russia's.
posted by zachlipton at 5:03 PM on July 13, 2017 [91 favorites]


> Ah, it's whataboutism time. You can be opposed to the CIA's bad actions without supporting Russia's.

what's the old slogan? "Neither Washington nor Moscow," something like that?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:04 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


The anti-Russia thing is not based on any desire for new war mongering or actually engaging in a shooting war with Russia. It's primarily in Democratic self-interest to get to the bottom of the extent of Russia interference, and in the Republican party's complicity, because if we don't they will do it again in 2018 and 2020 and in every election afterwards.

If Republicans are allowed to steal this election by aligning with Russia intelligence, they will do it again in every single election going forward. Republicans have no love for Democracy. Or for America. Only for power and maintaining their hold on power. They will allow Putin to dictate the results of every election where he picks Republican until some sort of consequences prevents it.

Seems like something worth pursuing.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:04 PM on July 13, 2017 [61 favorites]


You can be opposed to the CIA's bad actions without supporting Russia's.

Correct. You've accurately described my position.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 5:05 PM on July 13, 2017


Funny how since we don't actually declare war any more just so we can lob bombs and send thousands of "trainers" into every hot zone, I guess "treason" is an anachronism.
posted by spitbull at 5:06 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


Rather, it's a response to the hyperventilating demonization of Russia. If Russia's a demon for doing this, then we're demons too.

What demonization of Russia? Did I miss the the part where someone accused Russia or Russians of treason?
posted by shponglespore at 5:06 PM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


Oh hey, look at Joshua Svaty, the pro-life Democrat we have running in Kansas!
Imagine if Democrats, sick and tired of losing white votes in Mississippi, decided to nominate a segregationist for governor. Imagine if they found that LGBTQ rights turn off voters in Tennessee, so they ran one of those anti-same-sex-marriage Christian bakers. Imagine if they found that plenty of Oklahoma voters didn’t believe in climate change, so they ran a denialist. After all, why get hung up on one item in the long list of good things we all support when the important thing is getting back into power? Everyone has to take one for the team sometimes, right?

Don’t worry. These scenarios aren’t about to happen. Only women are expected to let history roll backwards over them. Only women’s rights to contraception and abortion are perpetually debatable, postponable, side-trackable, while those who insist on upholding the party platform—and the Constitution—are dismissed as rigid ideologues with a “litmus test.”
 Hey, Democratic Candidates: Pro-Choice Women Are Your Base (The Nation)

And just for good measure, this from Cosmopolitan, a magazine for and by women, that, coincidentally, is doing some of the best reporting we have today. Abortions Rights Aren't Optional for Democrats

I am a diehard, lifelong Democrat. Before tonight, I never actually imagined abandoning the party for any reason. But if they turn their back on women to try to appeal to the anti-choicers, I am fucking done.
posted by triggerfinger at 5:08 PM on July 13, 2017 [88 favorites]


NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER!
posted by asteria at 5:10 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


Hey, what about this! Suppose a Russian asset became President of the US and continued to receive instructions from Russia. Then we technically couldn't be at war with Russia because we'd be under Russian rule! And the President couldn't technically commit treason because he's being perfectly loyal to Russia!

[time to take a break before I make a head-shaped hole in my desk again]
posted by mmoncur at 5:11 PM on July 13, 2017 [21 favorites]


If I was Mr. Putin and all I spend my day doing is thinking how to jam up American democracy I'd be tossing Republicans' dirty laundry e-mails out there for the 2020 season.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 5:13 PM on July 13, 2017


I have to ask because I really don't recall, what was of such vital importance in the Podesta emails that they had to be made public illegally? What was it about those "leaks" that was so good?

The risotto recipe, surely?
posted by jackbishop at 5:16 PM on July 13, 2017 [15 favorites]


National Treasure Alexandra Petri, WaPo: A 39-year-old man is mysteriously still a ‘kid’
Some boys never get to be boys. This is the price of men like Donald Trump Jr., who never have to be adults. All this prolonged boyhood must be squeezed out of somewhere. For all these adults to get to be children forever, some children are not permitted to be children — or allowed time to grow up. Tamir Rice never got to. Neither did Trayvon Martin. Or Tyre King. There is a whole long, sad litany of names of people who never got to make rookie mistakes, who were suddenly saddled with adulthood at 12 or 13 or 14, while men of 35 and 40 got told not to worry because they were boys and, well, they would be boys. This unnatural boyhood demands its human sacrifices. It is important to have enough privilege to spread around so that some men can remain carefree children forever, well into middle age, making their innocent, rookie mistakes.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:17 PM on July 13, 2017 [92 favorites]


I'm just sick of being scolded for not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I can, for example, support equal lgbtq+ rights in the United States while being extraordinarily disappointed that the US doesn't push harder against allies and trade partners that criminalize members of that minority. I mean, am I supposed to just throw my hands up in the air and go, "oh well, fuck all those Americans struggling for equal rights and opportunities because we sell weapons to a country that executes queer people."
posted by xyzzy at 5:18 PM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


I only vote for candidates who share 100% of my policy positions on important issues. Saves me from having to leave the house on election day.
posted by 0xFCAF at 5:19 PM on July 13, 2017 [20 favorites]


Correct. You've accurately described my position.

Well, at least someone was able to.
posted by asteria at 5:20 PM on July 13, 2017 [26 favorites]


This is where I observe that the deep backstory of Neuromancer is uncannily like right now, despite how Gibson didn't foresee the fall of the Soviet Union; recall that Case's boss, Armitage, had many years prior to the events of the novel gotten his brain fried as a cyber-soldier in "Operation Screaming Fist," part of a major cyber-conflict between the U.S. and Russia that never quite turned into a full-scale shooting war.

Didn't Armitage (before he was Armitage) get shot down over Russia?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:22 PM on July 13, 2017


Peter nails it. It is maddening how a 39 year old asshole who kills elephants for sport and colludes with Russians gets to be a fucking good boy who got a little over his head.

Indeed, in honor of Trayvon, I think we need to start calling the Trump children "thugs."
posted by spitbull at 5:22 PM on July 13, 2017 [51 favorites]


One useful thing I found on "consortiumnews" is a re-phrasing of the pee-tape allegation: "[Russia] secretly videotaped Trump having prostitutes urinate on him".

Do you think if we can get everyone to propagate this version that Trump will step forward to correct the record? Doesn't seem like the sort of thing he'd allow to stand.
posted by pjenks at 5:23 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


Michael Isikoff is reporting that Trump's lawyers knew of the Russia emails almost a month ago. Trump, of course, claims he learned of them in the last few days.
posted by Justinian at 5:23 PM on July 13, 2017 [37 favorites]


I'm thinking we should ignore that consortiumnews link going forward and chalk it up to "read the room."
posted by Justinian at 5:24 PM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


Ranked choice is a bad idea; although it solves the problem of non-viable third parties acting as spoilers, it starts suffering from problems similar to first past the post's problems once an actually viable third party arises

Not, I think, when it is combined with proportional representation..?
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:25 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


Isikoff:
sources told Yahoo News that [the president's lawers were] informed about the emails in the third week of June

That would certainly explain the sudden appearance of the "But collusion isn't even so bad" narrative.
posted by pjenks at 5:26 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


Mod note: We are not rehashing the primaries.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 5:26 PM on July 13, 2017 [26 favorites]


Oops, borked my link, sorry. That's what I get for having 50 tabs open at once. Here is the link to the Joshua Svaty story.
posted by triggerfinger at 5:26 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oops, borked my link, sorry.
posted by triggerfinger


Eponybeentheredonethat
posted by spitbull at 5:29 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


she's just saying it in a way that white people might listen.

she's also saying it in the context of the day's front page news, on the opinion pages of one of the top five newspapers in the country. audience and context matters. as someone who supports BLM, i'm pleased that this idea is getting out through a big megaphone.
posted by murphy slaw at 5:32 PM on July 13, 2017 [42 favorites]


>>Ranked choice is a bad idea; although it solves the problem of non-viable third parties acting as spoilers, it starts suffering from problems similar to first past the post's problems once an actually viable third party arises.

> Not, I think, when it is combined with proportional representation..?
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:25 PM on July 13 [1 favorite +] [!]


Yes, but to my eye that's more due to the virtues of PR than to the virtue of RCV. Is the idea in play using ranked choice preferences to determine which parties reach the threshold required to elect one representative? I can't quite follow the logic given on the page for the bill.

Well and also I'd like to repeat the other stuff about politics being bigger than electoral politics.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:34 PM on July 13, 2017


Trump, of course, claims he learned of them in the last few days.

He claimed that yesterday. A few hours later, he continued his tradition of diarrhea of the mouth by admitting "in fact maybe it was mentioned at some point."

My favorite part of all of this is that the only reason we know Trump changed his story is that he showed up this morning and asked Maggie Haberman why she was asking the same question he answered last night, and he was apparently surprised to learn he had been speaking off the record before. Then the White House agreed to release some portions of it. It looks like the pool pretty much insisted that they had to release the "maybe it was mentioned" quote if they were releasing other excerpts.

They were seriously not going to use the "maybe it was mentioned" line unless they had permission? What's the point of this farce?
posted by zachlipton at 5:36 PM on July 13, 2017 [23 favorites]


Reporters don't publish off the record conversations. They just don't. Or they aren't working reporters anymore.
posted by Justinian at 5:42 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


On the record/ off the record is going to be my new euphemism for dementia, methinks.
posted by rc3spencer at 5:42 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


Reporters don't publish off the record conversations. They just don't. Or they aren't working reporters anymore.

on the other hand, working reporters shouldn't be going off the record with a chief executive who is a proven pathological liar
posted by murphy slaw at 5:44 PM on July 13, 2017 [48 favorites]


One can do warlike things without being "at war". Did Russia (I'll get to that word in a moment) formally declare war against South Ossetia or Ukraine and Crimea when it decided to do sketchy special operations and psychological warfare operations against them? From what I remember South Ossetia was a "peace operation" and there was a massive information warfare aspect to it as well. This doesn't even take into account the use of proxy actors and proxy nations against others. We're basically looking at something that's like a Metal Gear Solid 4 scenario, where there is permeable, but concrete modern warfare by amorphous groups, with intense psychological warfare actions taking place at the same time in order to further muddy real-life actions.

And as far as I know in the context of our discussions in these threads when people say "the Russians" or "Russia" they're talking about the government of that country as the entity in which is pulling the strings of certain actions.
posted by gucci mane at 5:45 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


I think The Intercept serves as a cautionary example of what happens when you start treating sources as disposable.
posted by Yowser at 5:45 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


Patti Davis, Reagan's daughter, goes after Trump. Some highlights:
One man, whose arrogance and ego lead him trippingly into chaos of his own making, can turn a shining city on the hill into a shadowy, taudry replica of itself. Where once we had currency in the world, we are now left holding fool’s gold.

...

The almost Shakespearean irony of Donald Trump as president is that his worst fear — that of being ridiculed and disregarded — is precisely what he has created by his own actions. If he was quiet for five minutes he might hear the echo of Putin’s laughter carried on the wind across countries and oceans. But Trump’s ego is a loud, boisterous thing and will never allow him to hear anything that might cause him to reflect.

I hate to end on a chilling note, but I’m going to. Our democracy, and the dignity of America, is wounded and bleeding out. It doesn’t mean that it can’t be restored and healed, but not by this administration. And it will only get worse if those intent on making excuses continue saying that Trump and his extended family are new at this governing thing, and are just bumbling a bit. They know exactly what they’re doing. And so does the rest of the world.
posted by chris24 at 5:46 PM on July 13, 2017 [69 favorites]


How so, Yowser? I don't love Greenwald, but the only reports I've seen that suggest The Intercept is culpable in Winner's arrest focus on the "yellow dots," but that was debunked. Did I miss something?
posted by Joseph Gurl at 5:48 PM on July 13, 2017


working reporters shouldn't be going off the record with a chief executive who is a proven pathological liar

Off the record is a privilege. Just like anonymous sourcing. It's not a right, it's a deliberate choice by the reporter to extend to the source/subject.

If we had actual journalists instead of corporate access ratings whores, off the record would not be a thing with this administration.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:49 PM on July 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


the only reports I've seen that suggest The Intercept is culpable in Winner's arrest focus on the "yellow dots," but that was debunked. Did I miss something?

They forwarded her documents to another government source who burned her.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:50 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


Is that how she got caught?
posted by Joseph Gurl at 5:53 PM on July 13, 2017


If we had actual journalists instead of corporate access ratings whores, off the record would not be a thing with this administration.

Honestly, I think most of them are actual journalists who are trying their darnedest, but they're following a set of norms that aren't equipped to deal with this level of pathological behavior. The White House considers themselves at war with the press, and White House beat reporters have largely said "well, what are you gonna do?"
posted by zachlipton at 5:53 PM on July 13, 2017 [18 favorites]


The press has been doing a pretty damn good job for the last 6 months. Perfect? No. But damn well. Too bad they didn't start, you know, before we elected a psychotic narcissistic manbaby. But hey, better late than never I suppose?
posted by Justinian at 5:55 PM on July 13, 2017 [24 favorites]


> The press has been doing a pretty damn good job for the last 6 months. Perfect? No. But damn well. Too bad they didn't start, you know, before we elected a psychotic narcissistic manbaby. But hey, better late than never I suppose?

Just about all television news has been utter trash, though. like Last Week Tonight does serious journalism, but they're somewhat hampered by how they're technically producing a comedy show.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:01 PM on July 13, 2017 [16 favorites]


Can someone give me an ELI5 about this on/off the record issue? I can't follow it.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:01 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Listen, about the off-the-record stuff, I know most people have the idea that the Press should be forcing the issue but look at what happened. DJT spoke to the press for what? 90 minutes? off-the-record and was eventually persuaded to get some of that stuff on the record. If the press had been adament from the start and told him "On the record, or we aren't going to listen," would he have said anything at all?

Sometimes I think that Maggie Haberman has it right in how to treat him. You just act friendly and non-combative and wait for him to open up. He wants people to like him and given a friendly audience there is no telling what he might say.

Foreign Policy DOJ Settled Massive Russian Fraud Case Involving Lawyer Who Met With Trump Jr.
The civil forfeiture case was filed in 2013 by Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York — who was fired by Trump in March. The case alleged that 11 companies were involved in a tax fraud in Russia and then laundered a portion of the $230 million they got into Manhattan real estate.

The forfeiture case was heralded at the time as “a significant step towards uncovering and unwinding a complex money laundering scheme arising from a notorious foreign fraud,” Bharara said. “As alleged, a Russian criminal enterprise sought to launder some of its billions in ill-gotten rubles through the purchase of pricey Manhattan real estate.”

But Instead of proceeding with the trial as scheduled, the Trump Justice Department settled the case two days before it was due to begin. By then, Bharara had already been axed by the president. Bharara’s assistant did not immediately respond to request for comment.[...]

In May, the Justice Department settled the case for $6 million instead of $230 million and did not demand any admission of wrongdoing. According to the lawmakers’ letter to Sessions, Veslnitskaya was surprised by how generous the settlement was, telling one Russian news outlet the penalty appeared like “an apology from the government.”
Huh. What a GIANT FREAKIN coincidence. Bhara is fired and the lawsuit is settled and Ms. Veslnitkya (who really gets around) is made happy with a tiny fine that is less than a 10th of the assets seized.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:05 PM on July 13, 2017 [82 favorites]


Don't feed the troll.
posted by Behemoth at 6:05 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Can someone give me an ELI5 about this on/off the record issue? I can't follow it.

The discussion was off the record, then the WH wanted to put PART of it on the record, ie., only the parts they wanted published. Hedging their bets against him saying stupid things, they can just say that part is still off the record.
posted by waitingtoderail at 6:06 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


the idea in play using ranked choice preferences to determine which parties reach the threshold required to elect one representative?

Sort of. Since this particular proposal is for three to five member districts, the threshold is 20%, 25%, or 33%, depending. Anyone who gets that much of the vote on the first ballot is elected.

So any party that commands 20% of the electorate in a large 5 member district could get a candidate elected.

But if there are not five candidates who each get 20% (and you'd kind of expect that there would be some who get more than that, which would mean some of the top five candidates would get less than 20%) then it goes to a second ballot for the seats that haven't been filled yet. That's where second ranked choices count. So a candidate who had less than 20% of the first round ballots could still get in on the second round.
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:07 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]




Since this particular proposal is for three to five member districts

But I don't know what these proposals will look like years from now when they might actually have a chance of passing. So I recommend not dwelling on the details too much. Once we get a consensus for that "single member districts" law being repealed, many things are possible.
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:18 PM on July 13, 2017


@Brent Kendall New Trump nominee for NC federal judgeship represented the state in its defense of GOP-backed tighter voting rules.

@Ari Berman
Trump judicial nominee in NC defended law 4th Circuit said targeted black voters "with almost surgical precision"

Along with Gorsuch, DJT's nominees for the bench will be his most lasting damage to this country. We can retax the rich, tear down the wall, retrain ICE and Border Patrol, improve the safety net and insurance coverage, improve our international standing, but we will be stuck with these horrible judges and their terrible rulings for decades.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:20 PM on July 13, 2017 [60 favorites]


They are for real going with 'it was a Democrat Deep State false flag set up operation.

It was such a successful operation that the Trump administration still hasn't figure it out and continues to reward Russia. Well played Deep State, well played.
posted by diogenes at 6:22 PM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


People need to get serious about impeaching all these nazi judges appointed by the crook.
posted by phliar at 6:23 PM on July 13, 2017 [23 favorites]


DOJ Settled Massive Russian Fraud Case Involving Lawyer Who Met With Trump Jr.

Racist Keebler Elf Jeff Sessions, aka Wrongfully Recused Amnesia Sufferer Jeff Sessions, has added Money Laundering Fairy to his already impressive array of titles.
posted by Behemoth at 6:23 PM on July 13, 2017 [17 favorites]


but we will be stuck with these horrible judges and their terrible rulings for decades.

We need to start pushing the fruit of the poisonous tree angle even before he gets impeached for treasonous collusion. Every lifetime appointee appointed by a traitor should be impeached along with him.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:24 PM on July 13, 2017 [54 favorites]


Last Week Tonight does serious journalism, but they're somewhat hampered by how they're technically producing a comedy show.

Haven't comedy shows been doing the best real news for years at this point? I don't think the humor gets in the way. The question (and presumably the answer is along the lines of "corporate ownership" or "desperate scramble for viewership") is why the "real" news shows can't report simple objective facts like "the current president is an embarrassing, incompetent, narcissistic sociopath who's pretty clearly owned by Putin".
posted by uosuaq at 6:25 PM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


Center for Public Integrity Steve Bannon misreports $2 million debt in financial disclosure
White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon failed to properly disclose more than $2 million in mortgage debt on his required financial disclosure form — an error that was compounded when top White House ethics officers certified that Bannon's incomplete disclosure form was complete and complied with federal rules.

Instead of disclosing the creditors for the four home loans he reported, Bannon simply wrote "HOME LOAN" on each line of the form. Bannon’s form was the only one of more than 400 forms filed by Trump Administration appointees — and reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity and Reveal — that did not specifically list the creditors.
Same old story with these guys. He filled out the form with omissions and had to go back and revise after being called out on it. Really I'm amazed he has security clearance with his drinking problem-- apparently that is a big red flag.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:27 PM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


Well played Deep State, well played.

Louise Mensch and Rick Sterling told me it was the Marshall of the SCOTUS.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:29 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


Slate finally gives Ben Sasse the profile he deserves: The Wasted Mind of Ben Sasse: "The Nebraska senator has urgent, persuasive ideas for saving American politics. Why won’t he act on them?"

He's hip and sassy on twitter and talks like a real person, so you think there's a mind working in there, but then he's another McConnell-bot when push comes to shove:
Many politicians are hypocrites, of course. But most of them are also phonies and bullshitters. Ben Sasse isn’t. He stands out by educating himself earnestly and speaking honestly about complicated matters of history and policy. (He’s got to be the only serving Senate Republican to have written a book that approvingly cites 1960s leftist cultural critic Paul Goodman.) Unfortunately, he is also beginning to stand out by doing nothing of substance as the things he says he believes in are thrown in a garbage can by his own party. Evidence that Donald Trump was at best indifferent to and at worst complicit in Russia’s sabotage of the last presidential election is growing. Mitch McConnell is turning into the home stretch of an attempt to force through a wildly unpopular health care bill that still hasn’t had a public hearing. Democratic traditions are under attack, and Sasse is not returning fire. Does any of his thoughtfulness and honesty really matter if, come voting time, he’s just another partisan hack?
If anything, this profile gives Sen. Sasse way too much credit for millennial bashing and clearing terribly low bars like noting being an incredibly overt racist, but that's kind of the point. You want to give him credit, but you just can't. Maybe he's just a really good actor, but he really does give the appearance that there's something to him, until you look at how he actually votes, at which point he might as well just be Ted Cruz.
posted by zachlipton at 6:32 PM on July 13, 2017 [27 favorites]


I am way, way behind, but:

"Essential viewing: Trump's newly appointed Director of the Indian Health Service is evicerated by the atomic fury of Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT)"

Please note that the Director of the IHS is a Rear Admiral wearing dozens of service ribbons on his chest while testifying. The kind of extremely courageous soldier who blanches at a direct question and can't give a clear operational report! Yay!

"There's this weird combo of poutfaced sneering, nodding out, and total fidgety disinterest. So presidential."

Remember when Al Gore rolled his eyes and the right wing mediasphere had a collective stroke?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:33 PM on July 13, 2017 [32 favorites]


I know someone who had Sasse as a college professor and they are regularly agape at the shit that now comes out of his mouth.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:40 PM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


If we have learned nothing else, Eyebrows McGee it is that Democrats need to stop taking criticism from the Right seriously. Enough with the shame, god knows the Right has broken every moral and ethical rule out there while smashing every norm.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:41 PM on July 13, 2017 [24 favorites]


The thing about Ben Sasse is that his being smart and thoughtful makes it all worse, not better. He knows exactly what he is doing, and he does it anyway. That's a further indictment, not a mitigating factor.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:45 PM on July 13, 2017 [34 favorites]


Wow the Sasse takedown. *long presses for the url*. Holy cow it's Slate!

Meanwhile, and only because I just thought of it, I'm seeing a shortage of Matt Taibbi links hereabouts lately. Outrage is his beat, after all, and there's plenty to go around.
posted by notyou at 6:50 PM on July 13, 2017


I prefer my outrage bait to contain at least trace amounts of factual content.
posted by tonycpsu at 6:54 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


Taibbi, along with Alex Pareene, announced a new podcast called TARFU today. One free show a week, another one for subscribers. The first ep, with Jesse Ventura, is up now.
posted by zachlipton at 6:54 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hah. Yeah, I guess we had soured on Taibbi a while back. My theory is that Taibbi can't out outrage the Outrager in Chief, so he's lost his beat.
posted by notyou at 6:59 PM on July 13, 2017


Taibbi's been great lately!
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:01 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


Can someone give me an ELI5 about this on/off the record issue? I can't follow it.

The discussion was off the record, then the WH wanted to put PART of it on the record, ie., only the parts they wanted published. Hedging their bets against him saying stupid things, they can just say that part is still off the record.
And the reason he didn't want to "re answer" what Maggie H asked him was because he knows he can't be trusted to give the same answer twice.

Time to start shaming the Democrats. "Every racist appointee for life he puts in place is also on you. Get this administration OUT."
posted by tilde at 7:04 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'm not a Maddow fan, but credit where it's due: when discussing Marc Kasowitz's email shenanigans, she noted that Trump apparently found his legal defense team "in the 'before' section of an anger management course commercial."
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:05 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Can someone give me an ELI5 about this on/off the record issue? I can't follow it.

It also means Trump team effectively gets quote review on him.
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:06 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


"Taibbi, along with Alex Pareene, announced a new podcast called TARFU today."

Isn't it time you found out about it?

It is everything, and it's nothing. It's all-encompassing, and it's all-non-encompassing. It is ... and it isn't!

Say 'Hebbo!'
posted by komara at 7:08 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


The press has been doing a pretty damn good job for the last 6 months. Perfect? No. But damn well. Too bad they didn't start, you know, before we elected a psychotic narcissistic manbaby. But hey, better late than never I suppose?

I would say that this is only true in the narrow sense that some reporters chasing scandals are reporting on really important acts of wrong doing.

But the press is as bad as it was before the election. This is the same behavior that they applied to Hillary Clinton, preferring scandal over policy or substance and trying to push the implications of Clinton foundation funding or combing through hacked e-mails to find something that sounded bad.

I don't think they've done that well in even contextualizing how truly bad this is--reverting to the quotes-from-both-sides trope way too often, as if Trump supporters saying "nothing to see" might have a point. And they haven't shown any improved ability whatsoever to deal with lies about policy.

If Trump is brought low by these scandals the media will feel validated and believe that they served America well. They have not gotten their act together though and we'll be set up for another disaster (as in when they start treating Pence as an opportuntiy to heal the nation.)
posted by mark k at 7:08 PM on July 13, 2017 [36 favorites]


Did I miss the part where John McCain came out against the revised Senate bill? WaPo lists him as a No, along with Collins and Paul, which would mean game over.

But I don't believe McCain actually has the spine to kill a bill, even a bill that would devastate Arizona (a Medicaid expansion state) - surely he's just polishing up his maverick credentials and perfecting his "very concerned" expression before he inevitably votes Yes?
posted by RedOrGreen at 7:09 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


Essential viewing: Trump's newly appointed Director of the Indian Health Service is evicerated by the atomic fury of Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT)

Less spectacular to watch, but just as cringey are Senator Murkowski's questioning segments, also on YT. Poor guy can not have gone home imagining that hearing went well.

The guys supposed to be championing IHS should be asking for MORE money. Instead they're cutting their own budget without even ASKING for what they need. The senators are all thinking "at least make us tell you no, for fucks sake, don't you even give a shit?"

Murkowski needs them to tell her what cutting medicaid is going to do to the IHS, SO SHE CAN FUCKING FIGHT THE CUTS! She has a reason and is trying to help them! They refuse to tell her, and in fact stonewall or evade every question. It's got to be intentional. I was waiting for Tester to give him a cell phone and say, "Who does know? Call right now. I'll wait. Increase or decrease? Call." That's what I'd expect as a military member if I tried that shit with a commanding officer, I don't know what a fucking Rear Admiral is thinking. Unbelievable.
posted by ctmf at 7:14 PM on July 13, 2017 [20 favorites]


I mean if McCain is a real no, great, but I want Capito to hold up to her promise that this bill would die with her. If she's a yes, I want WV constituents to go absolutely incandescent on her.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:16 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


McCain has said he's a no. We'll see if he sticks with it. I wouldn't want that mess to be my legacy if I were him, but I probably shouldn't project normal sentiments onto any sitting Republican congressperson.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:16 PM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


I mean if McCain is a real no

You like cake? Well do ya? Punk?

*waggles spatula*
posted by petebest at 7:19 PM on July 13, 2017 [17 favorites]


Jeff Stein on Twitter:
If you oppose the GOP health bill, this was a very scary day.

Only 2 GOP Senators are clear nos. And McConnell still has room, time 2 work.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:21 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


okay at the risk of coming off lovey-dovey or whatever, I'm going to have to admit that I'm very much fond of how, by chance, it's ended up that the site practice for when people are wrong about a strong prediction is for that person to have to make something delicious for themselves and then eat it.

It's like our default punishment or whatever is to sentence people to performing satisfying acts of self-care. Best. Tribunal. Ever.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 7:26 PM on July 13, 2017 [56 favorites]


McCain didn't say he was a no. He said the same bullshit he always says about how this isn't how things should be done and it isn't what his constituents expect.

You know, like how he said anyone who thought killing the judicial filibuster was a good was an idiot, and then voted to kill it.
posted by Justinian at 7:28 PM on July 13, 2017 [18 favorites]


Tonight's Michael Isikoff story has this interesting paragraph:
The discovery of the emails prompted Kushner to amend his security clearance form to reflect the meeting, which he had failed to report when he originally sought clearance for his White House job. That revision — his second — to the so-called SF-86, was done on June 21. Kushner made the change even though there were questions among his lawyers whether the meeting had to be reported, given that there was no clear evidence that Veselntiskya was a government official. The change to the security form prompted the FBI to question Kushner on June 23, the second time he was interviewed by agents about his security clearance, the sources said.
I had assumed (along with others) that Kushner's filing of an updated SF-86 was what prompted the NYTimes reporting (somehow), but this says it was actually the reverse: Evidence of nefarious meeting is discovered, leading Kushner to update the record with the FBI.

Kushner's original update to the SF-86 --- in which he updated his meetings with foreign nationals from zero to more than 100, was on May 11th --- according to Isikoff. The first New York Times story actually hinted at this sequence of events, through a quote by his lawyer,
In a statement on Saturday, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said: “He has since submitted this information, including that during the campaign and transition, he had over 100 calls or meetings with representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which were during transition. Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included, out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person, which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law Donald Trump Jr.”

But I didn't get the impression that these submissions were done because new evidence had turned up. I wonder how these emails did turn up...

That anodyne "with a Russian person" quote from Jamie Gorelick is amusing now, in light of the contents of the emails.
posted by pjenks at 7:37 PM on July 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'll be honest here - I'm impressed that Trump actually has some idea who the Rosenbergs were.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:42 PM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


was there ever a 1970s tv miniseries about them?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 7:44 PM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


he knows the rosenbergs because he was pals with roy cohn, who probably never shut up about them
posted by murphy slaw at 7:48 PM on July 13, 2017 [61 favorites]


Yep. Watch this clip of fictional Roy Cohn (Pachino in Angels in America) talking about traitors and it could easily be Trump in there.
posted by zachlipton at 7:51 PM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


Artw: "It's some kind of... not-hot war."

ObSF: Frederik Pohl, The Cool War.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:58 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


Luke Warm War, and not Skywalker-type Luke or Cage-type Luke.

Meanwhile, "The Only Way"...
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:04 PM on July 13, 2017


So just thinking back on all the absurdity of a very long day today, how can it be that the President of the United States treating Brigitte Macron like she's a beauty pageant contestant is way down the list of today's madness?
posted by zachlipton at 8:11 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Profiles In Courage, Volume XXIII:
Maine Second-District Congressman Bruce Poliquin visited Nason Park Manor, a senior living community in Bangor, on Tuesday to hold a press conference on issues important to older Mainers. When seniors asked questions about his vote for the Republican health care repeal bill, however, he refused to answer and quickly left the facility.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:17 PM on July 13, 2017 [47 favorites]


"He has since submitted this information, including that during the campaign and transition, he had over 100 calls or meetings with representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which were during transition."

Yup, leaving 100 contacts with foreign nationals off your security clearance app -- that's not flagrantly criminal or appallingly arrogant in the least, merely an oversight that could happen to any of us. Either Kushner is a massive perjurer or he has even worse cognitive impairment issues than his boss.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:29 PM on July 13, 2017 [19 favorites]


It's like our default punishment or whatever is to sentence people to performing satisfying acts of self-care. Best. Tribunal. Ever.

I'm personally not keen on it. We're already drowning in wannabe pundits and this cutesy "here's my hot take and if it's wrong so help me I'll gorge on my favorite comfort food" just adds to the noise. This is Metafilter so at the very least people should be pledging to cut off their right hand. We've forgotten the old ways. From this point on if you are getting your forecast on and the penalty for being wrong is not eating a live bug (or maybe some cold chicken nuggets with watery ketchup), then your analysis is just bullshit self-gratification.
posted by um at 8:32 PM on July 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


Don't be fooled by Mitch McConnell's latest repeal scam. As they discovered, cutting benefits while simultaneously cutting taxes for the rich was too much to swallow for even a political hack like Susan Collins. So McConnell's latest trick is to eliminate the simultaneity.

The new repeal amendment has all the same benefit cuts for the poor as before, but the tax cuts are missing. That improves appearances dramatically. But that is just temporary. They will put the benefit cuts in the bank and a few months from now when they turn to tax reform, they will point out the huge spending savings they have achieved and use it it justify major tax cuts for the the rich. And Susan Collins will sleep soundly.
posted by JackFlash at 8:33 PM on July 13, 2017 [17 favorites]


Heller still not talking, but NV gov Sandoval says new bill still sucks:
posted by Chrysostom at 8:38 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


no, cake is better
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:40 PM on July 13, 2017 [18 favorites]


ELECTIONS NEWS

** 2018 Senate:
-- In a move that is truly impressive for its gall, Don Blankenship - freshly out of prison for causing the death of 29 miners - is exploring running against Joe Manchin. I take some comfort in the fact that when last checked Blankenship was polling at a -45 favorable.

-- Interesting fundraising numbers in TX, where possible Dem nominee Beto O'Rourke outraised Ted Cruz, $2.1M to #1.6M. Now, obviously, Texas is a steep hill to climb, but a) the state has been trending bluer, b) state-wide races avoid the awful gerrymandering that TX has in place, and c) Cruz is...well, people don't like him. FWIW, Cruz won 56-41 in 2012.
** Odds & ends:
-- Clark County, NV (Las Vegas) is going to voting centers, so a voter can go multiple places, rather than just their home precinct site. This is anticipated to increase turnout.

-- The DCCC has sent a letter to the NRCC (the GOP counterpart) asking for a united front against any outside interference/hacking.

-- Interesting Yglesias piece advocating the Dems go whole hog on class warfare.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:41 PM on July 13, 2017 [33 favorites]


Wait wait wait. Just catching up, here, but no one's called out the 'taudry' in the Patti Davis quote up there?

It's like I don't even know you anymore.
posted by rp at 8:46 PM on July 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Instead of delicious cake I think MeFiers should be forced to eat a plate of cold beans. It's the true Metafilter way.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:49 PM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]




Wait wait wait. Just catching up, here, but no one's called out the 'taudry' in the Patti Davis quote up there?

I thought about it but I figured I wouldn't waste everybody's time with it. So, this is awkward.
posted by scalefree at 8:52 PM on July 13, 2017 [14 favorites]


In other news, the McClatchy article linked upthread was mentioned on All Things Considered this afternoon. They didn't paint it in a particularly attractive light. It concluded with a sort of "uh, well, we don't really have anything yet, but..."
Really made them look like wishfully-thinking cranks.
posted by rp at 8:57 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Nevada vote centers:

"Voters will be able to travel to any of the 160 or so vote centers across the county on Election Day to cast their ballot — akin to the system already in place during early voting — instead of being required to travel to a specific assigned precinct near their home to vote."

Whoa, mind officially blown, I vote in this sort of early-voting system -- where I can vote at any early-voting location in the county -- but it's never occurred to me that it could be a possibility on election day itself but OF COURSE WHY NOT!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:58 PM on July 13, 2017 [24 favorites]


I think those sorts of non-location specific voting centers are common in other countries. At least, if I'm remembering the eye-rolling by non-US Mefites correctly.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:03 PM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


Cake is a lot tastier than beans

A lot of people don't know that
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:34 PM on July 13, 2017 [40 favorites]


Not everyone knows cake is made from flour, which is ground from a grain. A grain is like a bean but different. Similar but different. I have a friend who no longer eats beans. Jim won't eat beans. He used to eat beans.
posted by perhapses at 9:43 PM on July 13, 2017 [31 favorites]


I'm already in favor of just declaring this Cold War 2. Or maybe Cold War 2.0 to go with the computer-heavy themes here. We need to avoid the distractions and atrocities of bullshit proxy wars in third party countries like last time (well, shit. There's already Syria) and we don't need the gross inflation of the military. But as far as our attitude going forward on this?

They're coming for us. Hell, they already came for us and got us, and it's gonna take a lot of time and effort just to fix the damage. Wishful thinking is not going to change this dynamic for the better. We should in no way pretend the Russian government is our friend, or that we're ever going to get these guys to change their ways. Not 'til the Russians themselves have another serious regime change. As long as Putin is in charge, they're a hostile power somewhere (thankfully) short of a shooting war and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:55 PM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


Corey Robin:
There is a delicious historical irony, which I don't think we've appreciated, to the fact that the two heaviest millstones weighing down the Republican Party today are healthcare and the Russia connection. Travel back in time with me to the late 1940s/early 1950s. What are the two major issues on which the Republican Party stakes it claim against Harry Truman and the Democrats? First, that the Democrats have presided over 20 years of treason, selling out the country to the Russians. Second, that Truman wants to foist socialized medicine on the country. In 1952, the GOP rides into the Oval Office, for the first time in decades, on the back of those claims. Fast-forward to the late 1970s, and what horse is the GOP about to ride into the White House? The Team B report, in which rogue elements in the security bureaucracy construct a story of how the Democrats have sold out the country to the Russians, and that story gets leaked to the media, and becomes a defining element of the 1980 campaign. And here we are, in the long hot summer of 2017, and what is it that the Republicans coming undone over? Their desire to kill what they think of as socialized medicine—and their inability (at least thus far) to pull the trigger. And the slow drip-drip from the security bureaucracy, alleging that they've sold the country out to the Russians. Chickens come home to roost doesn't even begin to capture the half of it.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 10:04 PM on July 13, 2017 [24 favorites]


I think assuming Corey Rubin is racist is unfair.

Anyway, I get the frustration there. We endured a similar shift in 2001, when after 9/11 we had to give up all the gains made in the late Clinton years and symbolized by the Seattle WTO riots/protests. That was the most important historic-political moment of our lifetimes and it presaged more of the same to come until OBL undid all that and forced us into another either or.

Trump and Russia have done the same, this time as farce. Bracket all that other stuff we hope for and assume we agree on the basics. Focus on the enemy of the moment and do so such that we are better able to take on the one at large.
posted by notyou at 10:43 PM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


Trump conflict of interest concerns over links with law firm run by Philippine government official. The Guardian is reporting that Donald and Ivanka Trump’s companies pay a firm managed by a foreign government official to secure their trademarks in the Philippines and thus opening themselves up to accusations of paying foreign government officials to advance their private interests.
Donald and Ivanka Trump’s companies employ a law firm managed by a Philippine government official, the Guardian has found, the latest in a string of potential conflicts of interests stemming from the first family’s global business empire.

By hiring a firm run by a high-ranking member of the Philippine government, Trump opens himself to accusations of wittingly or unwittingly paying a foreign official to secure the interests of his private business.

Elpidio C Jamora Jr is one of four named partners at the Manila-based law office that acts as a representative to register trademarks for both the Trump Organization and Ivanka Trump’s personal brand.

The lawyer also serves as the chairman of the country’s largest state-owned and run construction company, the Philippine National Construction Corporation (PNCC), according to the body’s website and Jamora’s resumé.
posted by vac2003 at 10:51 PM on July 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


For a Presidential Family* with the motto America First, it's remarkable how little of their business is actually based in, or even related to, America.

* - they're a package deal, apparently Ivanka was elected now.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:54 PM on July 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


Given that the Trump coat of arms was actually stolen from another family, and then they deleted the word "Integrity" to replace it with the family name, I'd say everything about it screams "Trump".
posted by darkstar at 11:31 PM on July 13, 2017 [47 favorites]


The Whitehouse has exposed emails [pdf] received about the Kolbach Pence "voter fraud" commission. At least one person sent goatse.
posted by Uncle at 11:55 PM on July 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


These are hilarious, but their failure to redact any personal information in the emails is pretty crappy and arguably vindictive. I mean, government agencies do that with FOIA requests of public comments sometimes, but they could have blacked out people's full addresses in there.
posted by zachlipton at 12:11 AM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Though the commission pretty much outright said they were going to post everything, contact info and all.

I do really enjoy the guy who write in to ask "is this where we file complaints about the guy who lost the election bust [sic] still became president?"
posted by zachlipton at 12:20 AM on July 14, 2017 [25 favorites]


Russia's interference also cannot be ignored because there are 196 countries in the world and they are all affected by the US foreign policy. If there are no repercussions, each of them will have to guard their interests and protect their citizens by interfering in all future US elections. It's well known that money plays an important role in US political campaigns, and the combined world economy is much bigger than the US economy, future US elections will be more or less directly bought by largest blocks of foreign governments who would agree to combine their resources to direct the US foreign policy in a specific way (whether by ad buys or funding hacking campaigns). I'm not quite sure the conservatives would like that -- the wealthiest combined block would be the western Europe with Japan and Australia, that is, the liberal democracies. Hillary and Obama would have lost the elections in this scenario as they are not far enough to the left!
posted by rainy at 12:35 AM on July 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


Some election law news:

Watchdog groups file complaint with FEC accusing Donald Trump Jr. of breaking campaign finance law (PBS, contains link to a copy of the complaint, also available here from the Campaign Legal Center, one of the watchdog groups)

In addition to the FEC complaint, there's a DOJ complaint:
Trump, Jr., Kushner, Manafort Violated Foreign Solicitation Ban, Watchdogs Allege in Complaints (Campaign Legal Center press release, with links to texts of both complaints)
Today CLC, Common Cause, and Democracy 21 filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) supplementing a complaint filed by Common Cause on Monday. The expanded complaint alleges that Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort illegally solicited a contribution from a foreign national, and that Kushner, Manafort and Rob Goldstone illegally assisted Donald Trump Jr. in soliciting an illegal political contribution from a foreign national on behalf of the Trump 2016 presidential campaign.
------

North Carolina gerrymandering: Hearing on Redistricting Schedule, Election Set for July 27 (AP)
A federal court has called a hearing for this month as its judges determine when new North Carolina legislative districts should be redrawn by the General Assembly and whether a special election under altered boundaries is warranted.
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 1:59 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]




Sessions has released (what he claims was) his secret Crusader speech in which he invokes MLK, and I just can't even
posted by salix at 3:21 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


As long as Putin is in charge, they're a hostile power somewhere (thankfully) short of a shooting war and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.

Russia prefers “frozen conflicts” to open shooting wars. They have those in eastern Ukraine, Transnistria (an unrecognised breakaway region of Moldova), and possibly soon in the Baltics and/or Finland. They just need to weaken the sovereign government's grip (preferably with militias of “volunteeers” spending their annual leave from the Russian Army assisting local rebels, actual or paid-for) enough to let the local mafias infect the wound enough for it to start sapping the vitality of the host state.

If this were to happen in the US, it'd probably involve something like Texas/California secessionists and/or sovereign-citizen militia types taking over a region somewhere, sufficiently outgunning the local police/National Guard to make reimposing law and order politically impossible, and then the whole thing being taken over by the Hell's Angels or MS-13 (or rather a faction thereof, run by a group of people recruited and trained by Russia).
posted by acb at 3:52 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Given that the Trump coat of arms was actually stolen from another family, and then they deleted the word "Integrity" to replace it with the family name, I'd say everything about it screams "Trump".

I wonder how knowing that was; was he chuckling to himself and thinking “ain't I a stinker?” as he came up with the idea of replacing “Integrity” with “Trump”, or was he just oblivious?
posted by acb at 3:54 AM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


and possibly soon in the Baltics and/or Finland.

What on earth do you imagine Finland is? "rebel factions" WTF? It's not some recently jumped up "state" with shaky governance, infrastructure, and systems. It's a Nordic country closely integrated with its Scandinavian neighbours.

Here is some recent news about Finland (fercryingoutloud:

Finland in top 10 of best countries to be an immigrant

Oh noes, we slid to Number 2

Norway has overtaken Finland at the top of the latest ranking of different societies' use of digital technologies, according to a Finnish study. Denmark placed third, followed by Sweden, the Netherlands and the United States.

Let's not forget the education brand (where they teach geography and history)

The countries in the order of their education ranking are: Finland, Malta, South Korea, Mexico, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Canada, Norway, Japan, Switzerland, Spain, Ireland, France, New Zealand, Sweden, the Netherlands, Latvia, Italy, the United Kingdom, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Portugal, Luxembourg, Austria, Iceland, Israel, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, the United States, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia, Croatia, Chile, Bulgaria, Australia, Romania, Turkey.


And finally, everything else:

According to a new research, released this week by the Social Progress Imperative, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden “excel at meeting basic human needs, at providing a foundation for wellbeing with basic education and environmental protection, and at creating opportunities for all citizens to make personal choices and reach their potential.”

Just the right foundation in which to enter and foment a rebellion, I'm sure, not to mention the fact that it's summer and everyone's on vacation.

Oh Finland to sign two new defence agreements with Western Europe

They just need to weaken the sovereign government's grip (preferably with militias of “volunteeers” spending their annual leave from the Russian Army assisting local rebels, actual or paid-for) enough to let the local mafias infect the wound enough for it to start sapping the vitality of the host state.

I mean, seriously?? These scenarios need a reality and a sanity check.
posted by infini at 4:05 AM on July 14, 2017 [49 favorites]


NBC reporting someone else with connections to Russian intelligence was at the June 9 meeting at Trump Tower... wow. Just breaking.
posted by spitbull at 4:07 AM on July 14, 2017 [28 favorites]


No links yet but apparently a "lobbyist" who once "worked for Russian intelligence," (apparently Soviet-era KGB) they're not naming the person but they know who it was, and apparently he denies current connections to Russian intelligence. Big, because Trump Jr. appears to have intentionally not mentioned this.
posted by spitbull at 4:13 AM on July 14, 2017 [23 favorites]


Much_transparency_many_winnings_doge.gif

I love the smell of bombshells in the morning.
posted by spitbull at 4:18 AM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Link to NBC segment on this, embedded video on Twitter.
posted by Devonian at 4:18 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Scoop goes to Hallie Jackson. Boom.
posted by spitbull at 4:24 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


And here come the mocking "Golly, gee, no, I don't remember meeting with ANY other Russians" clips from DonToo's Hannity interview. [real]

Junior should be formally registering as a foreign agent by lunchtime [fake, as of this timestamp].
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:26 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


Lobbyist is probably Rinat Akhmetshin, as reported by Daily Beast.
posted by rc3spencer at 4:28 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Ah, nothing I enjoy more on a pleasant Friday morning than a spot of hyperventilating demonizing hysteria. Tastes like Cap'n Crunch.
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:28 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


I just wanted to share a chuckle from the first sentence of an article at TPM ("Already A White House Liability, Kushner Became Radioactive This Week.") by Allegra Kirkland, who is doing terrific reporting and can write well to boot:

Storm clouds have been gathering above the lightly-tousled head of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and trusted White House adviser, since April.
posted by spitbull at 4:50 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


While it's not in the same league as the Laying Hands On The Orb ceremony, this video [link to single tweet] of Macron and Trump being treated to a Daft Punk medley by a French army band as part of the Bastille Day celebrations, complete with gloved generals clapping along, is making my head spin somewhat.
posted by o seasons o castles at 4:55 AM on July 14, 2017 [27 favorites]


Foreign Policy: DOJ Settled Massive Russian Fraud Case Involving Lawyer Who Met With Trump Jr.

This can be an act of obstruction of justice, or conspiracy, though can't it? Asking for a Mueller...
posted by msalt at 4:56 AM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Wow, that Daft Punk medley really has The Rat King trying to go to his I'm sitting on a golden toilet' happy place.
posted by rc3spencer at 5:02 AM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


Macron and Trump being treated to a Daft Punk medley by a French army band as part of the Bastille Day celebrations, complete with gloved generals clapping along

We are now in the Monty Python timeline.
posted by spitbull at 5:03 AM on July 14, 2017 [65 favorites]


While it's not in the same league as the Laying Hands On The Orb ceremony, this video [link to single tweet] of Macron and Trump being treated to a Daft Punk medley by a French army band as part of the Bastille Day celebrations, complete with gloved generals clapping along, is making my head spin somewhat.

Jesus, dude can't even fake-smile for five seconds to play along? Although that might be even more creepy and uncomfortable, actually. GIMO*

*god I miss Obama
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:03 AM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


And they're now admitting it. And sure, let's take a Russian spy at his word. After the email says the government is working to elect you.

@HallieJackson:
NEWS: just spoke w/Donald Trump Jr.'s lawyer. Confirms he's spoken w/person described in our report - who denied working for Russian gov't.
posted by chris24 at 5:12 AM on July 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


Correcting myself, apparently the original reporting on this is by NBC national security reporter Ken Dilanian (Twitter) and not (or not just) the estimable Hallie Jackson.

A reminder that Trump's primary defense to date has been to demonize and intimidate both the media in general and individual reporters and news orgs in particular. It does matter who gets credit.
posted by spitbull at 5:14 AM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


Maggie Haberman has been carrying water for this trash the entire year although it's most noticeable with her weird Jared and Ivanka apologetics.

She has joined David Brooks in my pantheon of people who are so meretricious just their name makes me go up in flames.
posted by winna at 5:14 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Macron beside himself with delight at the prospect of Trump's hair escaping, by the looks of it.

Loved it. Best marching band ever. Lots of French grumbling in the comments about the lack of military dignity. they even do a twitter spat elegantly, these French: 'So it bothers you to acknowledge a different opinion? That's twitter.' 'So it bothers you to acknowledge a super team doing a super job? Criticism is easy, art is difficult, that's France.'
posted by glasseyes at 5:15 AM on July 14, 2017 [22 favorites]


@NatashaBertrand:
Bill Browder, who spearheaded the Magnitsky Act, now confirming it was Akhmetshin. [@Billbrowder: Huge development in the Veselnitskaya/Trump Jr story. Russian GRU officer Rinat Akhmetshin was also present. http://nbcnews.to/2tQgOj5]

@davidfrum:
“It’s important to get in front of the news, put it all out there."

“We invited a literal Russian spy.”

“OK, let’s do the coverup option"
posted by chris24 at 5:24 AM on July 14, 2017 [70 favorites]


Here is a write up of the NBC story.

By line is "by KEN DILANIAN, NATASHA LEBEDEVA and HALLIE JACKSON."
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:25 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Gonna be hard to dismiss Akhmetshin as a nothingburger when this is how Chuck Grassley described him when they were trying to downplay the Steele dossier.
It is particularly disturbing that Mr. Akhmetshin and Fusion GPS were working together on this pro-Russia lobbying effort in 2016 in light of Mr. Akhmetshin’s history and reputation. Mr. Akhmetshin is a Russian immigrant to the U.S. who has admitted having been a “Soviet counterintelligence officer.”[14] In fact, it has been reported that he worked for the GRU and allegedly specializes in “active measures campaigns,” i.e., subversive political influence operations often involving disinformation and propaganda.[15] According to press accounts, Mr. Akhmetshin “is known in foreign policy circles as a key pro-Russian operator,”[16] and Radio Free Europe described him as a “Russian ‘gun-for-hire’ [who] lurks in the shadows of Washington’s lobbying world.”[17] He was even accused in a lawsuit of organizing a scheme to hack the computers of one his client’s adversaries.
posted by chris24 at 5:34 AM on July 14, 2017 [56 favorites]


A letter to John Kelly from the Senate Judiciary Committee, on their concerns over Akhmetshin's activities in 2016 and his failure to register as a foreign agent.

Plenty of meat. They don't like him. For example:

Mr. Akhmetshin is a Russian immigrant to the U.S. who has admitted having been a
“Soviet counterintelligence officer.”/ In fact, it has been reported that he worked for the GRU
and allegedly specializes in “active measures campaigns,” i.e., subversive political influence
operations often involving disinformation and propaganda


No reason at all not to have him in a secret meeting discussing the campaign!

(ETA - not the same letter as chris24's piece quotes, but clearly cut from the same cloth...)
posted by Devonian at 5:35 AM on July 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


Still loving Sessions being pulled into this, and the Preet Bharara firing even more pertinent.
posted by rc3spencer at 5:35 AM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


Sixth person present, breaking. (Natasha Bertrand on Twitter)
posted by spitbull at 5:40 AM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


S'okay, my friends on Facebook say he was just another Democratic plant.
posted by yhbc at 5:40 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Sixth person, breaking.

From what I've seen on Twitter, a translator, though who knows. It seems like Daily Caller is trying to imply Akhmetshin was there as a translator
posted by chris24 at 5:41 AM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


What on earth do you imagine Finland is? "rebel factions" WTF? It's not some recently jumped up "state" with shaky governance, infrastructure, and systems.

Much of the same can be said for Estonia, Lithuania and such.

As for “rebel factions”, the Russians have shown an interest in fomenting those, or manufacturing them where they don't exist. A big chunk of their “soft power” apparatus (RT, Sputnik News, &c.) is geared at finding any potential rebel or secessionist sentiment, even as minor as one guy drunkenkly complaining about garbage collections, and amplifying it into a wholly imaginary movement. Most of the time these movements remain imaginary, but as we've seen on the internet, disgruntled cranks can lump together when they recognise others with similar grievances to those. After that, all that's needed is some drops of cash, some organisational advice, and the snowball's rolling.

Finland also has a quite powerful far-right party, the “True Finns”; are they not in touch with Russia and the various federations of European-Christian-ethno-nationalists or whatever they call themselves that Moscow provides with cash and tutelage?

Russia won't invade Finland tomorrow, but they have contingency plans. They have detailed plans on how it would be absorbed into Russia (divided between the Karelia and Murmansk oblasts) if conquered. They have plans for fomenting dissent, dossiers full of various kinds of potentially useful idiots, and undoubtedly war plans for suppressing resistance in the event it got to a shooting war. If they get the opportunity to reclaim what some Russian nationalists consider to be lost territory, they won't be unprepared.
posted by acb at 5:41 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


While it's not in the same league as the Laying Hands On The Orb ceremony, this video [link to single tweet] of Macron and Trump being treated to a Daft Punk medley by a French army band as part of the Bastille Day celebrations, complete with gloved generals clapping along, is making my head spin somewhat.

Army brat here: the bands are very often the wildest part of any regiment (I'm not comfortable using English terms here, please correct me if I'm wrong). On one side, it's a great job for a musician, regardless of world view, so people who aren't cliche military people apply. On the other, the leadership has a clear understanding that the band needs to be up to date and inspiring for the fighting men and the populace. Most bands in Europe have a contemporary repetoire. I wonder if they asked Macron about his taste in music beforehand. I seem to recall we have seen similar performances during the Obama administration? Just because Trump is a moron, the US defence forces don't have to be.
posted by mumimor at 5:42 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Golly, I wonder if junior brought his father along?
posted by Dashy at 5:42 AM on July 14, 2017


A Russian spy what the hell

Who's writing this shit
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:43 AM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


Better catch up before the next bombshell: WaPo, The Daily 202

The main portion is about the Trump kids (Don Jr., Kushner, Ivanka), and there's another section devoted to the healthcare bill, but there's a summary of other tidbits in the middle:
-A federal appeals court overturned the corruption conviction of Sheldon Silver, the once powerful New York Assembly speaker who was charged with obtaining nearly $4 million in illicit payments.

-Jimmy Carter was taken to the hospital after collapsing from dehydration in Winnipeg, where the 92-year-old former president was helping build a Habitat for Humanity home.

-The man who breached White House grounds in March and roamed free for 17 minutes pleaded guilty.

-Five lawmakers who head anti-human trafficking groups pressed Jeff Sessions to launch a criminal investigation of Backpage.com.

-Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) is listed in fair condition after undergoing another surgery related to the shooting at practice for the congressional baseball game:
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 5:44 AM on July 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but even I know that if you've basically been caught red handed you better come clean clean if you have any hope of getting out of the situation. If you're already caught, a bunch of names are out there, trying to pretend you've been transparent when you're hiding details is always gonna backfire. I know the Trumps are venal thugs, but don't they even have halfway decent representation? Did no one tell Junior that he was fucked and the jig was up? It's almost like a set-up.
posted by OmieWise at 5:44 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


If the Russians supplied the translator it's probably a good idea to assume it's just another spy.
posted by PenDevil at 5:46 AM on July 14, 2017 [31 favorites]


-Jimmy Carter was taken to the hospital after collapsing from dehydration in Winnipeg, where the 92-year-old former president was helping build a Habitat for Humanity home

Apparently he is ok. I'd love to hear his views on Trump. It's like he and Trump are different species.
posted by spitbull at 5:47 AM on July 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


If the Russians supplied the translator it's probably a good idea to assume it's just another spy.

My dad was a US diplomat. In the late 60s he said that when they would throw diplomatic dinner parties they would often be requested by the embassy "political officer" (CIA) to invite people from the Russian embassy. If the person came alone, they were KGB. If the person came with someone else, the other person was KGB. I'm sure it was more complicated than that, but at that point even the cocktail parties were part of the cold war.
posted by OmieWise at 5:51 AM on July 14, 2017 [43 favorites]


acb, I live here. As a WoC. Allowed to vote in municipal elections, in advance of receiviing citizenship (available in some 4 years time). Don't mansplain Finland to me, while I type this from Helsinki.
posted by infini at 5:52 AM on July 14, 2017 [48 favorites]


Sixth person present, breaking. (Natasha Bertrand on Twitter)

клоун автомобиль
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:52 AM on July 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


Macron and Trump being treated to a Daft Punk medley by a French army band as part of the Bastille Day celebrations, complete with gloved generals clapping along, is making my head spin somewhat.

Daft Punk is playing at my house.
posted by octobersurprise at 5:53 AM on July 14, 2017 [22 favorites]


Man it's amazing how many democratic deep state operatives were aware Trump would win the election and were actively working to undermine his future presidency by sending Russian spies to meet with his son, his son -in-law, his campaign manager and his future attorney general. I can't think of a single simpler explanation about what was going on.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:59 AM on July 14, 2017 [94 favorites]


trying to pretend you've been transparent when you're hiding details is always gonna backfire.

It's especially problematic when you and your father both repeatedly pat you on the back for your "transparency" on TV and immediately become endless loops of hilarincredulous self-pwn.

"Sorry, we meant 'transparent' in the sense of being so freaking terrible at this skulduggery that the entire planet can see right through us."
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:01 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


I mean, at this point we might as well be asking where Jeff Sessions was on the day of the KGB-lite meeting.
posted by lydhre at 6:02 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Finland also has a quite powerful far-right party, the “True Finns”; are they not in touch with Russia and the various federations of European-Christian-ethno-nationalists or whatever they call themselves that Moscow provides with cash and tutelage?

controls the windmilling eyeballs in my skull long enough to craft this comment

The Financial Times, June 16, 2017
by: Richard Milne, Nordic Correspondent

Finland’s political circus should give any populist party thinking about governing pause for thought. This week the True Finns tore themselves apart in an attempt to stay in government.

The split in the party — the second-biggest force in Finland’s parliament — highlights the perils for populist groups seeking to move from protest to power.


Yes, the government collapsed last month but I remember joining in with the twitterati that we hadn't noticed tee hee since the buses were still arriving on time.

Finland Provides a Reminder That Populists Can't Govern
Finnish nationalists crashed out of government after just two years -- like other European populist parties before them.


Now that article above is written by a Russian for Bloomberg, gosh I wonder what that means to a conspiracy theorist paranoid hatemonger?

PM Juha Sipila seeks to break up government after junior partner the True Finns picks anti-immigration hardliner

Good old Onion made them cry

The move ended months of speculation that Soini might be ousted by the anti-immigration movement he had fostered, one that had grown restless under the constraints of government. Having promised to cut immigration and bolster the welfare state, the Finns’ social media outlets are now mobbed by former supporters castigating the party for introducing budget and wage cuts and failing to prevent thirty thousand asylum seekers reaching Finland in 2015.

Accordingly, the party’s fortunes have diminished in the polls — down from 17.7 percent at the last elections to 8-10 percent.

But the Finns remain an interesting example of a right-wing populist party — one that is both nationalist and conservative — which grew to a point of social relevance and entered the government. Much like the American “alt-right,” it utilized online organizing and social media to build its base. But its origins are quite specific to Finland.


read the Jacobin article for some edumacation why the theorizing is offtrack

But it was not clear why the message of the name in English underlines reform while the name in domestic languages underlines the future.

::Rodin's The Thinker emoji::
posted by infini at 6:03 AM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


even as minor as one guy drunkenkly complaining about garbage collections, and amplifying it into a wholly imaginary movement. Most of the time these movements remain imaginary, but as we've seen on the internet, disgruntled cranks can lump together when they recognise others with similar grievances to those. After that, all that's needed is some drops of cash, some organisational advice, and the snowball's rolling.

It's July, it's National Roll the Damn Snowball Up the Hill Contest season. May the best spie win, yoo!

::mwahmwah to my favourite team::
posted by infini at 6:07 AM on July 14, 2017


клоун автомобиль

That's a Lada clowns.
posted by spitbull at 6:08 AM on July 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


Beyond the fact that Grassley's letter confirms Akhmetshin was a Russian spy and bad guy, the fact that he was IDed as one possible source for the Steele dossier, and now is shown as being intimately involved kinda gives more credence to the dossier. #peetape
posted by chris24 at 6:13 AM on July 14, 2017 [20 favorites]


Mod note: The Finland stuff is getting a bit much for this thread. I suggest we drop it for now. If anyone wants to do an FPP on Finnish politics, go for it of course. Thanks guys.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 6:15 AM on July 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


IDed as one possible source for the Steele dossier

Ok so this meeting could actually have had a carrot AND a stick for the Trump campaign, and that's why Kushner and Manafort had to be there. Subtle persuasion, we have useful information for you and and we have a pee tape. Work with us and use the useful information, and darling we will talk about sanctions later, or things could get very rough for you.
posted by spitbull at 6:17 AM on July 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


This Finland stuff would make a great Russia conspiracy show in Norway.
Get your dystopian popcorn out for 'Occupied'.
posted by rc3spencer at 6:18 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


OK, so I know it's kind of silly to bring up, but Trump's original travel ban was supposed to be a temporary ban so "we could figure out what's going on", right?

And, correct me if I'm wrong, we've gone **LONG** past the original travel ban's expiry date, right?

Shouldn't that mean the whole thing is moot, or did Trump at some point change the travel ban to be of indefinite duration, or is he taking the position that somehow we must get his 90 day travel ban in place for 90 days (even though it is now over 90 days since its original issuance) just because, or what?

Obviously the question of whether they should have "figured out what's going on" by now is preposterous, Trump can't figure out how to take a shit on his own these days.

But from a legal standpoint doesn't it matter that the ban was a temporary one and the appeals have run out the clock on the ban?
posted by sotonohito at 6:21 AM on July 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


Sorry just have to pause and take in the breathtaking spectacle of how apparently easily a goddamn family of world-class professional grifters appear to have been played like rubes by much more professional Russian con artists.
posted by spitbull at 6:22 AM on July 14, 2017 [63 favorites]


you know, if The Hulk worked at the WH, this would have been all over a long time ago. I mean, think about it. I can't think of another WH where every single day there would be enough to be enraged at for The Hulk to Hulkify.

It'd just be Bruce Banner, trying to explain climate change for the thousandth time to Trump, moist sincerity in Banner's eyes, then Trump would say something like, "Trees get food from the sun. A lot of people don't know this." And then Banner would just Hulk out. Soon, everybody's tossed on the WH lawn, the WH goes up in flames.

Banner will feel sad about it afterwards but really I think this presidency calls from some Hulkification throw-down. I think the cathartic benefits might save the human race.

Oh well.
posted by angrycat at 6:22 AM on July 14, 2017 [26 favorites]


Ok so this meeting could actually have had a carrot AND a stick for the Trump campaign, and that's why Kushner and Manafort had to be there. Subtle persuasion, we have useful information for you and and we have a pee tape. Work with us and use the useful information, and darling we will talk about sanctions later, or things could get very rough for you.

And of course, for every single minute since Junior answered that email and they all went to the meeting right up until that info became public, the email conv and meeting themselves (and every other contact between the campaign/admin and Russians) constituted additional kompromat.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:25 AM on July 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


I just need to clarify something regarding the pee tape. If it ever actually surfaces, does *anyone* think it will have the slightest impact on his presidency?

Because it won't. Feel like it's important to get that out there in case anyone is holding on to the delusion that that will save us.
posted by dry white toast at 6:25 AM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


And to add this makes me suspect Manafort is a double agent. Given the company he keeps there is no fucking way he takes that meeting not knowing what he's up against. Unless he's not so up against it as all that. He knows how the Russians operate.

Watch Manafort. He's the cipher.
posted by spitbull at 6:25 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


I just need to clarify something regarding the pee tape. If it ever actually surfaces, does *anyone* think it will have the slightest impact on his presidency?

As someone said upthread, it depends who is the pisser and who is the pissee. If Trump is the pissee, I think it matters.
posted by OmieWise at 6:28 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


This is to no-one in particular but please God can we not with any more Piss Theory?
posted by Tevin at 6:29 AM on July 14, 2017 [32 favorites]


I agree spitbull. All these other clowns have their sheer, well-documented idiocy as a defense, but Manafort is a pro and he knew from minute one exactly what has happening here. I wouldn't be surprised if he was sent to the Trump campaign by his Russian handlers to be the thin edge of the wedge in the first place.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:29 AM on July 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


If it ever actually surfaces, does *anyone* think it will have the slightest impact on his presidency?

If Pence ever takes the reins, his competency at pushing through the Tea Party agenda will make us remember Trump fondly.

The pee tape would have valuable long-term (like five years) reputational damage to the Republicans, though. Not to mention the lulz.
posted by Coventry at 6:31 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Also, keep in mind that we need to separate our own fantasy of a pee tape bringing ignominy and shame and humiliation to an arrogant fascist, and how the Trump campaign might have viewed the risk of releasing (ha!) it (or other Kompromat it might imply, Russians don't show all their cards up front) in June 2016.

One thing we have learned is that it is hard to hold pee tapes in for a whole year.
posted by spitbull at 6:31 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


And of course, for every single minute since Junior answered that email and they all went to the meeting right up until that info became public, the email conv and meeting themselves (and every other contact between the campaign/admin and Russians) constituted additional kompromat.
And constituted hiding Russian attacks on our election from our intelligence services. The bare fact that this is only becoming known now is proof of assisting the Russians in whatever their attempts were.
If I'm approached to possibly benefit from a bank being robbed in the near future, and I never say anything as my community wonders how that bank got robbed for over a year, well, I'm complicit.
posted by rc3spencer at 6:31 AM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Ha! For the 4th time. He is so fucked.

@dandrezner
Poor Jared Kushner is gonna have to amend his SF-86 again.
posted by chris24 at 6:31 AM on July 14, 2017 [48 favorites]


Sorry just have to pause and take in the breathtaking spectacle of how apparently easily a goddamn family of world-class professional grifters appear to have been played like rubes by much more professional Russian con artists.

The Trumps and the campaign were playing an entirely different game from the Russians.

Trump got into the campaign to raise his Q-score. We know this. He kept going because it kept feeding his ego. Others adhered to the campaign because there was money to be made. Donnie Jr. and Eric talked openly about how the campaign was a great way to expand TrumpCo's visibility so they could slap their names on more hotels and condos.

And Russia let them go along with that, because their game was chaos.
posted by Etrigan at 6:32 AM on July 14, 2017 [52 favorites]


I just need to clarify something regarding the pee tape. If it ever actually surfaces, does *anyone* think it will have the slightest impact on his presidency?

Because it won't. Feel like it's important to get that out there in case anyone is holding on to the delusion that that will save us.


I do. It's not about the content of the tape. It's about the fact that the Russians, presumably, hold a tape that Trump doesn't want released. That's the kind of leverage over a SITTING US PRESIDENT that can't be ignored.

I mean, we can all throw up our hands and quit right now, but if the Steele dossier keeps getting validated (and drip, drip, drip slowly but surely ALLLLL those names are popping up) there will be a reckoning, eventually. Trump can whine about the pee tape being private business, his supporters can claim it's no big deal, everybody pees!, the Republicans can make concerned noises about it being inappropriate, sure, but all those things together with the Mueller investigation can help in bringing this obscenity of a presidency to an end.
posted by lydhre at 6:32 AM on July 14, 2017 [19 favorites]


Well, when you put it like this...

@NoahCRothman
Don Jr. was told to meet with a Russian lawyer and her Soviet CI officer minder as part of the Russian "government's support for Mr. Trump."
posted by chris24 at 6:35 AM on July 14, 2017 [32 favorites]


Well, there's another morning of work wasted for the Republican they had on CNN this morning to try and explain why this meeting was totes not a big deal and anyone in their shoes would have attended it without a second thought, etc..
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:38 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Jeffrey Lord is Sisyphus.
posted by spitbull at 6:40 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


[pee tape drops]
The Cheeto: "it's out now, okay? This is great— Tremendous news. The best. They don't have any, any— Our friends—the Russians—don't have any leverage on me! Believe me!"
Congressional Republicans: "Well, he has a point! Carry on!"
posted by entropicamericana at 6:41 AM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Spoiler: the "pee tape" is code for decades of Russian money laundering through Trump properties.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:41 AM on July 14, 2017 [56 favorites]


Storm clouds have been gathering above the lightly-tousled head of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and trusted White House adviser, since April.

that's what he gets for failing to follow protocol and wear the Slimebag Slick-back that the Trump boys all wear.
posted by emjaybee at 6:41 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Spoiler: the "pee tape" is code for decades of Russian money laundering through Trump properties.

Porque no los dos?
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:43 AM on July 14, 2017 [15 favorites]


How did it take the media so long to look into the sixth person present? The emails pretty clearly state that Goldstone would be giving info for two Russians to get through building security.
posted by stopgap at 6:43 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


I agree that Trump was in the race mainly to stroke his ego and his brand, and it's become apparent what Russia was after.

But what has been the most unbelievable for me is how much the GOP congress has bent over backwards to allow these 2 bit criminals to run the country in the face of damning fact after fact. They have access to even more classified intel and their own closed hearings, and yet they're still backing the Russian puppet regime. They're practically ready to burn the country to the ground just to pass a few more tax cuts on the way. So sick.
posted by p3t3 at 6:43 AM on July 14, 2017 [59 favorites]


Yeah, lydhre beat me to it. It's not that the pee tape would disgust Republicans/Americans to the point where they'd turn on Trump. Strong Evangelical support for Trump already illustrates that any stress on the personal morality of a particular candidate or elected official is and always has been a farce. It's the foreign leverage over a sitting POTUS situation that matters.
posted by xyzzy at 6:45 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


All of this is reminding me of the innumerable 'slam dunks' about trump and co. during the election, when we were all reminded that the modern republican party is just a convenient throw cover over a white supremacist ideology based solely on racism and greed, and that so long as those two things are being serviced, the morality can be worked out post-hoc.
posted by codacorolla at 6:46 AM on July 14, 2017 [41 favorites]


They're practically ready to burn the country to the ground just to pass a few more tax cuts on the way.

This is perhaps the most believable element of the whole debacle.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:49 AM on July 14, 2017 [22 favorites]


They're practically ready to burn the country to the ground just to pass a few more tax cuts on the way.

That is all they care about. Christianity, patriotism, the entire future of the world, reality itself, all are tossed the minute they get in the way of rich asshole's tax cuts.

If there was some way that not being racist would increase billionaire's tax cuts, I believe they would even toss white supremacy overboard. And they love that shit. But not if it prevented a tax cut. Lucky for them, racism and economic injustice are deeply intertwined so they never have to make that choice.
posted by emjaybee at 6:49 AM on July 14, 2017 [15 favorites]


the morality can be worked out post-hoc
Yes, precisely. And the faster the Democratic party figures out that Republican voters don't care about hypocrisy or morality and focus their efforts on energizing their base with smart, progressive policy while converting the convertable over to our side, the better off we'll be in future elections.
posted by xyzzy at 6:51 AM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


I just need to clarify something regarding the pee tape. If it ever actually surfaces, does *anyone* think it will have the slightest impact on his presidency?

I do but not in a 'surely this' single thing that would bring him down. An impact? Yep. If the tape actually shows what it's described to show it will come off as creepy weird and pretty messed upped. Many people are used to and like his vindictive nature. This tape takes that sort of vindictiveness way into the land of creepy, strange and weird. It would be something that even a good portion of his base will not have experience with and it deals with bodily functions that and although perfectly normal North American culture finds gross and disgusting. Seeing anybody, let alone President in that sort of situation is gonna be unsettling for many people. Mostly because, in general, as a culture this type of stuff is not seen and kept private.

It is also hard to defend socially, unlike the pussy tape which because (sadly) it showed actions and words that are commonly experienced and seen in everyday life and general culture. We even have cliche phrase for it 'boys will be boys'. There is no cliche phrase for what's supposedly on that tape.

This take would undermine him in many ways and move him into the realm of creepy messed up person for many more people. People can be a-ok with mean and asshole but not so much when you add creepy and weird to the mix.
posted by Jalliah at 6:54 AM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


They're practically ready to burn the country to the ground just to pass a few more tax cuts on the way. So sick.

What I think this actually shows is that the GOP (voters and officials) think the US has already been burned to the ground because women, people of color, and non-cis non-heteronormative people are being treated as full human beings in some cases. The common thread here is not tax cuts, it's White nationalism. Tax cuts have always been in the service of that ideal, not the other way around.
posted by OmieWise at 6:55 AM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


The common thread here is not tax cuts, it's White nationalism. Tax cuts have always been in the service of that ideal, not the other way around.

No. The congressional Republican Party is the party of business and tax cuts. The promise of the restoration of the white nationalist patriarchy is just a way to mobilize white men en masse in the rank and file. So long as the poorest white guy has more social status than the richest black guy, Mexican, or woman.
posted by Talez at 6:59 AM on July 14, 2017 [20 favorites]


"Hi. I'm Bob McRepublican. I got into politics because for as long as I can remember I wanted to be the middleman in a scheme to funnel money from good, hard-working people like you up to billionaires who already have more money than they can spend but won't be satisfied until they suck the country dry. Now, I'll never *be* one of those billionaires, but if I'm pliant enough they'll give me enough kickbacks and, should I ever be voted out of office, cushy jobs to make me a millionaire. Guns, abortion, racism. So remember, on Nov. 6th, vote Bob McRepublican."
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:00 AM on July 14, 2017 [85 favorites]


I think they're strongly intertwined. The idea that "taxation is theft" is directly enmeshed with the idea that no one who doesn't "deserve" it should get your money. And coincidentally the people who don't deserve your money tend to be overwhelmingly black, brown, and/or female.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:01 AM on July 14, 2017 [30 favorites]


You know who else worked for GRU?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:01 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Racism and tax cuts have always been in a race, but I think post-Tea Party it's fair to say racism is the primary motivating factor of Republican voters and pols.
posted by Artw at 7:06 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]




Did they find a company willing to pay him squillions after he gets ridden out of Nevada on a rail?
posted by Talez at 7:09 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


You know who else worked for GRU?

Man, I wish I had the time and the skill set to photoshop Minions into the background of various Trump photos.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 7:10 AM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


Did they find a company willing to pay him squillions after he gets ridden out of Nevada on a rail?

I'm sure Steve Wynn can find him a nice corner office somewhere. Wynn has already been seen meeting with Heller to turn the screws on him.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:12 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Did they find a company willing to pay him squillions after he gets ridden out of Nevada on a rail?

Iron Law of Republicans: there are no moderates.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:12 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


About the sixth meeting attendee possibly being a "translator," an MSNBC guest just pointed out that all five of the other people speak English fluently (or semi-fluently in the case of DonToo).
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:13 AM on July 14, 2017 [33 favorites]


If you're in favor of wealth supremacy (e.g., prosperity gospel; favoring "flat" i.e. regressive taxation; repealing estate taxes etc) in a country that, due to a long and ongoing history of white supremacy, has an extremely distorted distribution of wealth by race, then you are supporting white supremacy. Sure, a lot of people don't connect those dots - whether due to (willful) ignorance or feigned ignorance. But that doesn't make it any less true.

Favoring tax policies that strengthen and exacerbate the current distribution of wealth IS supporting white supremacy. I don't need Republicans to acknowledge this fact for it to be a true fact. Opposing the estate tax is supporting white supremacy. It just is. Policies don't exist in a vacuum; this isn't some simulation we're running for an econ paper. The US' legacy of white supremacy cannot be detached from current policy proposals.
posted by melissasaurus at 7:15 AM on July 14, 2017 [55 favorites]


I'm sure Steve Wynn can find him a nice corner office somewhere. Wynn has already been seen meeting with Heller to turn the screws on him.

It better have good security because that motherfucker might see pitchforks and torches once people's relatives start dying from care being taken away.
posted by Talez at 7:16 AM on July 14, 2017


So Russia's still working to help Trump get out of this by muddying the waters on Veselnitskaya.

@MollyMcKew
Veselnitskaya photo sent to me by pro-Kremlin reporter before it circulated on Twitter fwiw [How A False Conspiracy Theory About The Russian Lawyer Who Met With Don Jr. Spread To Trump]

@MollyMcKew
So. They really wanted someone to pick up this dumb McFaul/Veselnitskaya non-story
posted by chris24 at 7:16 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


About the sixth meeting attendee possibly being a "translator," an MSNBC guest just pointed out that all five of the other people speak English fluently (or semi-fluently in the case of DonToo).

Please be Reince Priebus
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:21 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]




Any chance that the sixth person was Trump? I only ask because it seems too stupid to be possible.
posted by sporkwort at 7:30 AM on July 14, 2017 [25 favorites]


Pure coincidence I'm sure.

@SevaUT
Hm, this might be important: in 2012 Akhmetshin was involved in a hacking & web-smear campaign against a mining Co.
http://oldarchives.courthousenews.com/2015/11/16/mining-company-says-law-firm-hacked-it.htm
posted by chris24 at 7:32 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'd like to add that the number of voters per district everywhere is very high; on average there is one house of representatives member per 700,000 voters. A congressperson is almost literally one in a million. In more robust democracies, this number is much lower; for example, each Canadian MP represents about 70,000 people. It's about ten times more likely for a random Canadian to know a member of parliament, or to know someone who knows a member of parliament, or to at least know someone who works for a member of parliament, than it is for a random U.S. citizen to have real social connections with their representatives.

I've mentioned in previous threads that there's no inalterable reason why this fact is so. The Apportionment Act of 1911 capped the number of Representatives at its current number, and it's more than a century old. The next time we have a Democratic government, they can, should, and must update this law to provide more Representatives in the House -- using, say, the population of the smallest state with a single Representative as a baseline (and, hey, maybe it'd be a good idea if they included a clause in which the number automatically adjusted at every Census, instead of capping the number again and calling it a day).

As a nice side benefit, not only would increasing the number of Representatives make the House more democratic (in both the small-d and capital-D sense), but I believe it'd also change the Electoral College in the Democrats' favor.
posted by Gelatin at 7:32 AM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


chris24: Patti Davis, Reagan's daughter, goes after Trump. Some highlights:
... I hate to end on a chilling note, but I’m going to. Our democracy, and the dignity of America, is wounded and bleeding out....
Oh, dial it back. Your dad didn't do much to bolster the "dignity" of America when he pressured the FCC to end the Fairness Doctrine, which gave birth to the Right Wing Media Outlets that lead us to this very situation, and the GOP icon led the worst policies on mental illness in generations, which are still felt today.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:35 AM on July 14, 2017 [37 favorites]


This neo-McCarthyism has gotten out of hand. Haven't we've all been there, folks? You're just hanging with some buds, and your one bud invites their bud, and then that bud invites their buds, and then pretty soon you're hanging out with a foreign Soviet counter-intelligence officer?
posted by tonycpsu at 7:38 AM on July 14, 2017 [20 favorites]


Any chance that the sixth person was Trump? I only ask because it seems too stupid to be possible.

It would also be a perfect, predictable instance of Trumpsplaining:

Day 1: "I was never told about the meeting."

Day 2: "It may have been mentioned in passing."

Day 3: "I was at the meeting. Big deal."
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:38 AM on July 14, 2017 [38 favorites]


Yeah, I'm making the argument that thinking that the GOP is the pro-business anti-tax party is a misread. What I think is being laid bare here is that those "policy" positions are actually in the service of White nationalism, which is why the GOP subscribes to them. It's otherwise very hard to reconcile the pro-Russia stuff, which becomes completely understandable through the lens of White nationalism.
posted by OmieWise at 7:38 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


It's otherwise very hard to reconcile the pro-Russia stuff, which becomes completely understandable through the lens of White nationalism.

No, it's easy to reconcile the pro-Russia stuff. Trump ran out of banks in the rest of the world that would lend him money, since he kept refusing to pay them back. Russians saw an opportunity (lift sanctions!), and took it.
posted by Melismata at 7:41 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Not for Trump, for the GOP at large. I agree that we know why Trump likes Russia.
posted by OmieWise at 7:42 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


And to add this makes me suspect Manafort is a double agent. Given the company he keeps there is no fucking way he takes that meeting not knowing what he's up against.

Manafort worked on Trump's campaign FOR FREE. It would take me a while to find the link, but there was a story about how badly he wanted to serve on the campaign, and how he kept ingratiating himself with Trump and repeatedly asking for a job until he got hired -- again, FOR FREE. His previous work for Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs was NOT for free.

Manafort has supposedly known Jeff Sessions for 40 years, so presumably Sessions vouched for him.

I keep thinking Trump and company are way too incompetent to have masterminded a successful conspiracy to commit election fraud with Russia. (I believe that is the actual crime Junior might find himself charged with.)

When I ask myself who could possibly have been savvy enough to actually pull this off, I always, always come back to Manafort and Sessions. Manafort representing the Russian interests, and Sessions representing the American "separatists" Russia like to support (what is left of the Confederacy, the nativist rural voters who hate the federal government.) It just makes too much sense, especially from Putin's point of view. Then all they needed was a candidate. Sessions himself had some political liabilities from his long career in government, but...

Trump was easy to control thanks to a combination of bribes, kompromat, and genuine affinity for Russia... and he was an easy sell to conservative voters because he was a TV star with a (false) reputation as a successful businessman and a "straight shooter." The perfect choice, really, except that he is such an idiot. But that would not have seemed too important if want they wanted was a puppet.

This is just my theory, and I can't prove it, but I can't resist it either. It's the only explanation that really makes sense to me.
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:42 AM on July 14, 2017 [96 favorites]


Trump was easy to control thanks to a combination of bribes, kompromat, and genuine affinity for Russia

Also him being such an idiot is a feature rather than a bug. Remember, the idea here is to sow chaos and also maybe somewhere along the way stumble ass-backwards into easing sanctions, not to create a coherent, meaningful, competent government.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:46 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


When I ask myself who could possibly have been savvy enough to actually pull this off, I always, always come back to Manafort and Sessions. Manafort representing the Russian interests, and Sessions representing the American "separatists" Russia like to support (what is left of the Confederacy, the nativist rural voters who hate the federal government.) It just makes too much sense, especially from Putin's point of view. Then all they needed was a candidate. Sessions himself had some political liabilities from his long career in government, but...

In this case, Trump might've been the last part of the conspiracy. They needed a candidate, and they already had this anti-Obama celebrity asshole they'd been using to clean their money.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:47 AM on July 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


Yeah, I'm making the argument that thinking that the GOP is the pro-business anti-tax party is a misread. What I think is being laid bare here is that those "policy" positions are actually in the service of White nationalism, which is why the GOP subscribes to them.

The white nationalism is (and has always been) cover for the wealthy to get more money.

Slavery was cheap labor. All that crap about how the white man was meant to rule over the sons of Ham, or how the African was genetically inferior, or whatever else -- that was made up to justify using cheap labor, and to convince the poor whites why they should participate in the system, because at least it kept someone else even farther down.

Manifest Destiny was to take land from the Natives.

Every racist part of American history has economics at its spawning.
posted by Etrigan at 7:49 AM on July 14, 2017 [41 favorites]


I find that in general this period in American history is easier to understand if I think in terms of "What is left of the Confederacy," actually.

Like that culture and political faction never really went away, though the geography has changed a bit (and you see Confederate flags in Montana these days...) It is still shaping our politics. Russia might get that better than a lot of Americans do...

Virginia is the only Confederate state* Trump didn't win, and that was only because of the DC suburbs.

(*New Mexico might sort of count as "blue" confederate territory too, but it wasn't a state in 1861 and I'm not very clear on how much it really was part of the Confederacy culturally.)
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:50 AM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Every racist part of American history has economics at its spawning.

That's the economic critique of racism. I'm familiar with it, but I actually don't think it has full explanatory power. I think racism (all the -isms and -phobias) stand alone as horrible parts of human psychology.
posted by OmieWise at 7:53 AM on July 14, 2017 [21 favorites]


Regarding economics vs racism/nationalism: I guess in other more homogenous countries, the same sort of pro one-percent, anti-tax conservative stances would be seen as more classist than nationalist or racist. But in US it happens to be that our class system was also totally racist.
posted by p3t3 at 7:54 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


I have a dumb question. I've filled out a lot of paperwork in my time - visa applications, residency applications, citizenship forms - and in each case, it was pretty clear to me that if the reviewers found an error, even an inadvertent one, the application could be summarily denied.

But then:
> @dandrezner: Poor Jared Kushner is gonna have to amend his SF-86 again.

Here's a form that's filled out under penalty of perjury - for access to the top-most of top secrets, and Jared can just get repeated backsies on it with no consequences? I thought the rule of law applied to everyone, and certainly the Republicans repeatedly reminded me of that during the Clinton impeachment. Were they - gasp - lying? Are the rules only for little people?
posted by RedOrGreen at 7:54 AM on July 14, 2017 [78 favorites]


Every racist part of American history has economics at its spawning.

Yep, racism is economics. There's no evaluating it as something separate from its intention and effect, which is to create a permanent underclass of disadvantaged, subservient people.
posted by chris24 at 7:55 AM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


You forgot about the most important law of them all: IOKIYAR
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:56 AM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Also him being such an idiot is a feature rather than a bug. Remember, the idea here is to sow chaos and also maybe somewhere along the way stumble ass-backwards into easing sanctions, not to create a coherent, meaningful, competent government.

And the Trump camp's motivations, while not the same, are similar: every day they manage to stay in power while the rest of us flail about Russia, health care, Muslim ban, US rep in the world, etc. is one more day of unchecked looting and compound interest for them. The longer it takes for every bit of sewage to be dragged into the sunlight -- and even people this stupid have to know now that it will -- the better for their wallets.

Whereas on our side, along with the not-insignificant issues of principle, I say again that every day that Trump/GOP are hobbled by this Russia shit is one more day the foul Republican legislative agenda is mostly stalled and weakened. The "hysterical obsession with Russia" serves the public good and is not trivial.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:57 AM on July 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


Here's a form that's filled out under penalty of perjury - for access to the top-most of top secrets, and Jared can just get repeated backsies on it with no consequences? I thought the rule of law applied to everyone, and certainly the Republicans repeatedly reminded me of that during the Clinton impeachment. Were they - gasp - lying? Are the rules only for little people?

It's really insane. His first SF-86 had no foreign contacts. His second was amended to include over 100 contacts, but not Veselnitskaya. His 3rd one was amended to include her, but did not include Akhmetshin who we know know was there. When you're on your fourth try, what more is needed to prove he's intentionally trying to hide something?
posted by chris24 at 7:58 AM on July 14, 2017 [113 favorites]


The Crooked Media guys are aghast on a weekly basis that Kushner is able to just fudge his SF-86 repeatedly with no consequences, because those guys were all shitting bricks over maybe accidentally making a mistake on their forms.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:58 AM on July 14, 2017 [32 favorites]


There's still a sixth person in the meeting, right? So Jared will get at least one more opportunity to amend the form.
posted by notyou at 8:00 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


In this case, Trump might've been the last part of the conspiracy.

Not to get too conspiritorial, but lately I've been wondering again about something I wondered about at the time: who paid for the Birthers? Orly Taitz, not a tremendously rich woman, spent several years flying around the country, lecturing, filing lawsuits, and generally making a nuisance of herself on someone's dime. At the time I suspected the Koch's or the Mercers, but I liked to joke that the Moldovan-born Taitz was actually a Russian agent. Now I've never seen any evidence that Taitz has any connections to Russia, but it's a joke that seems a lot less funny these days.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:01 AM on July 14, 2017 [17 favorites]




The question (and presumably the answer is along the lines of "corporate ownership" or "desperate scramble for viewership") is why the "real" news shows can't report simple objective facts like "the current president is an embarrassing, incompetent, narcissistic sociopath who's pretty clearly owned by Putin".

If memory serves me correctly, The Daily Show basically reported real, objective facts like "Republican congressperson just said something the exact opposite of what he/she said when a Republican was president," and didn't even much bother to state outright that the politicians involved were maybe not arguing in good faith, but letting the viewer draw that conclusion.

There's a good reason why Colbert excoriated journalists as stenographers during his famous White House Correspondent's Dinner speech.
posted by Gelatin at 8:05 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


There's an obvious emotional charge/addictive quality to hatreds that makes them so useful, I think. Racism (and sexism) electrifies some dark and hard-to-reason-with part of people's psyche, and oppressive capitalism uses that to entrench and defend itself.

I think they could theoretically both exist independently, but seldom (never?) do, because they feed off of each other.

Anyway, I think this is a derail. The current Republican Party is a hollow shell, driven by both racism/sexism and anti-tax cultism in ways that are hard to disentangle, and it's become a danger to our national security and sovereignty by dedicating itself to protecting the interests of a hostile foreign power.

What the fuck we do to get from here back to a functioning government is the question. Even if Ds eventually got control of all branches, what do we do about the Rs? Are they capable of being something better?
posted by emjaybee at 8:05 AM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


@blakehounshell
"a member of [Kushner's] staff prematurely hit the 'send' button for the [clearance] form before it was completed" [Sources: Trump lawyers knew of Russia emails three weeks ago]

@chrislhayes Retweeted Blake Hounshell
This is just shy of saying that a dog *literally* ate their homework.

@KevinMKruse Replying to @chrislhayes
It takes 28 separate sign-and-click moments to submit that form.
So this is just shy of saying a murder victim fell on a knife 28 times.
posted by chris24 at 8:06 AM on July 14, 2017 [137 favorites]


Every racist part of American history has economics at its spawning.

That's the economic critique of racism. I'm familiar with it, but I actually don't think it has full explanatory power. I think racism (all the -isms and -phobias) stand alone as horrible parts of human psychology.


Oh, sure, the vast majority of racism is people being shitty for non-Homo economicus reasons. But the large-scale racist policies that lead to and provide cover for the personalized "Well, I just don't think Those People should get special privileges" kind of racism -- those policies come from people with money wanting more money, and using tribalism and nationalism and suchlike to justify them to the masses.
posted by Etrigan at 8:10 AM on July 14, 2017


That premature button click story is Kushner's explanation? Need a [real/fake] tag because dang.
posted by notyou at 8:12 AM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


Virginia is the only Confederate state* Trump didn't win, and that was only because of the DC suburbs.

Northern Virginia repreSENT! I've been urging NoVexit for years.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:12 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yeah, you simply can't do anything accidentally using e-QIP. It's not fucking SurveyMonkey. Kushner knows this, and his lawyer knows this, and millions of people who've used it to obtain a clearance know this. Of course it takes more than ten seconds to explain, and Americans have just sort of accepted over time that rules are for the little people, so I don't expect this obvious lie will hurt him in any way.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:13 AM on July 14, 2017 [21 favorites]


About Manafort being the cause/source of the leaks about this meeting, not Kushner. The tweetstorm tweets have screenshots with relevant info attached.

@yottapoint
1) Let me challenge some conventional wisdom: It was likely Manafort’s filing, not Kushner's, that led to key June mtg becoming public
2) Let's talk about why I don’t think Kushner’s disclosure is why Cong (then public) became aware of this mtg https://twitter.com/yashar/status/885263263533068288
3) 1st, look at the date when SSCI found out abt Trump Jr./Kushner/Manafort mtg w/ Veselnitskaya – April https://twitter.com/yashar/status/885262285488492548
4) 2nd, per @isikoff, Kushner’s 2nd SF-86 filing was on May 11– and that did NOT include a mention of this meeting https://www.yahoo.com/news/sources-trump-lawyers-knew-russia-emails-back-june-000320831.html
5) 3rd, also per @isikoff, it was only in Kushner’s 3rd SF-86 filing on June 21 when he disclosed this meeting
6) 4th, look at original NYT article – note the wording of these passages about Kushner & Manafort https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/08/us/politics/trump-russia-kushner-manafort.html
7) So, Kushner didn’t file in April; Manafort filed w SSCI; SSCI learnt in April - ergo Manafort'd disc, not Kushner's, led to discovery
8) 5th, that would mean Kushner, who missed this mtg in May filing, probably updated in June after learning from Manafort’s filing
9) So, I hate to break the CW about Kushner knifing Trump Jr. – I don’t think he did that at all; looks like Manafort got this started
10) 6th, here’s more evidence indicating Jared Kushner was likely not too forthcoming abt this mtg of his own accord [Kushner pushed for more aggressive defense of Trump Jr. meeting]
11) Does this sound like a guy who voluntarily disclosed this mtg to hurt Trump Sr.? Not even remotely...
12) So, I think @chrislhayes was wrong here: Kushner hid this mtg until he no longer could (due to Manafort) [@chrislhayes .@DonaldJTrumpJr hate to be the one to tell you this, but I think the knife sticking out of your back has your brother-in-law's prints]
posted by chris24 at 8:15 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


...and then he prematurely hit the "send" button.
He prematurely hit the "send" button twenty-eight times.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:15 AM on July 14, 2017 [40 favorites]


Looks like Maverick has remained true to form. (WaPo whip count is back to two opposed.)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:16 AM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


I've come to believe that Trump, any member of his family and/or close associates will !!!literally!!! melt like the Wicked Witch of the West getting splashed with water if they're ever successfully held to account for any of their actions.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:17 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Private Email of Top U.S. Russia Intelligence Official Hacked

“The U.S. State Department officer’s email has been hacked,” the email announced, and included at least two years’ worth of personal emails from the private gmail account of a State Department official working in the secretive intelligence arm of the State Department focusing on Russia.

Smokescreen? Confusion?
posted by stonepharisee at 8:17 AM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


AP: Russian-American lobbyist says he was in Trump son's meeting

Oh goody. Akhmetshin confirms his attendance:
Akhmetshin said Trump Jr. asked the attorney for evidence of illicit money flowing to the Democratic National Committee, but Veselnitskaya said she didn’t have that information. She said the Trump campaign would need to research it more, and after that Trump Jr. lost interest, according to Akhmetshin.

“They couldn’t wait for the meeting to end,” Akhmetshin said.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:18 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Wondering out loud:

Would the GOP's behavior be better explained if it was Russia, not China, that got into the OPM?

Every GOP bigwig who's done anything at all against Trump either 1. probably is clean or 2. has had his dirty laundry aired before and is unlikely to have any more waiting.
posted by ocschwar at 8:19 AM on July 14, 2017


He prematurely hit the "send" button twenty-eight times.
Great, now I've got Cell Block Tango stuck in my head.
posted by amarynth at 8:19 AM on July 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


On a rational basis, I'm a pee tape skeptic, because come on.

On an intuitive basis, I'm a pee tape truther, because have you seen the other shit that's happened?
posted by 0xFCAF at 8:20 AM on July 14, 2017 [23 favorites]


have you seen the other shit that's happened?

I see what you did there.
posted by Melismata at 8:22 AM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Michael Isikoff: "He [Kushner] initially filed his SF-86 on Jan. 18, leaving out any mention of meetings with foreign government officials during the transition and the campaign. His lawyers have said this was inadvertent and that a member of his staff had prematurely hit the “send” button for the firm before it was completed."

Kushner: "The dog ate my homework."

From Susan Hennessey: Here are the instructions for e-filing an SF-86. You have to enter your password and click OK twenty-eight times to complete the application.

Must be a very smart dog.
posted by JackFlash at 8:23 AM on July 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


For anyone interested in a magisterial treatment of why we can't separate capitalism and racism, see David Roediger's 1991 classic,
The Wages of Whitness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class.
posted by spitbull at 8:23 AM on July 14, 2017 [20 favorites]


God help me, I did it:

Trump needs a better class of minion if he really wants to be a super-villain.

[Twitter self-link with image]
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 8:27 AM on July 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


His lawyers have said this was inadvertent and that a member of his staff had prematurely hit the “send” button for the firm before it was completed.

I mean, sure, let's ignore how hard this would be to do, but if you did incorrectly fill out an important government form, surely you would immediately issue a correction?

You don't get to "forget" to declare your income on your 1040 and then just issue a correction without penalty three years later when the IRS finally notices. That's why form 1040X exists.
posted by 0xFCAF at 8:28 AM on July 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


> Every racist part of American history has economics at its spawning.

So on the one hand this isn't the response you're expecting, but on the other hand you're talking about sort of my main political commitment — the development of socialist theory/practice in opposition to interpretations of historical materialism that position economics as purely determinative.

TIME FOR SOME GAME DIALECTICAL THEORY

Yes, the continual assaults on of people of color in the United States has economic effects and economic roots — rich folks wanted labor for cheaper than they could get it through the wage system, and so designated PoC as available for hyperexploitation above and beyond the regular exploitation that other workers were/are subject to. But treating economics as purely determinative elides much of the actual historical processes at play.

Modern capitalism works through establishing the pretense of formal equality; on paper, the boss and worker are equals, entering into free contracts with each other. In practice, of course, this formal equality is a dead letter, because the capital-owners have control over the means of making a living, and so can let anyone who won't negotiate with them on their terms die. But before this system of exploitation through the pretense of formal equality could be established, first the underlying material inequality needed to be heightened; some folks needed to get way richer than other folks, and to then systematically deny those other folks access to the stuff they needed to survive. This process is what Marx referred to as "primitive accumulation" — whereas exploitation under the market/wage system operates through the pretense of formal equality ("gosh you're free to sign the contract or not"), primitive accumulation involves no such pretense ("We're here, we've got guns, we've got a flag, we're taking all your stuff, and we'll shoot you if you say otherwise.")

One of Rosa Luxemburg's insights was that there was nothing "primitive" about primitive accumulation; although it was used to establish capitalism, it's still ongoing in the present day. Capitalism works through wage exploitation under conditions of formal equality, but it also operates through hyperexploitation that depends upon denying even formal equality to most people: people of color, women, and so forth. This hyperexploitation operates on the terms of "primitive" accumulation — the underlying logic is not "sign the contract or not, it's a free country," but is instead "do what we say or we'll kill you."

The thing is, the effects of a broad societal marking of certain people as available for hyperexploitation has effects above and beyond its economic basis as a tool for capitalist hyperexploitation: people, both capital-owners and normal people, become committed to maintaining hierarchies wherein certain people are excluded from the semi-charmed circle of formal equality even when those hierarchies are impediments to capitalist exploitation. It's a dialectical process: capitalists observed that certain people were available for hyperexploitation, so they hyperexploited them, while also propagandizing ordinary people into becoming more certain that those hyperexploited people deserved hyperexploitation, which in turn made them more thoroughly available for hyperexploitation, rinse, lather, repeat.

Because we are all good dialectical materialists here, we acknowledge the material/economic bases of white supremacy, patriarchy, and so forth. But because we are all good dialectical materialists here, we also acknowledge the materiality of social beliefs separate from the processes of economic exploitation; these beliefs, that provide the field for hyperexploitation and which are reinforced by the propaganda of hyperexploiters, are nevertheless real, and nevertheless have effects beyond (and sometimes against) their utility as a lever for hyperexploitation.

So it's less that "every racist part of American history has economics at its spawning" and more that "racism, being a useful tool for economic exploitation, is heightened by and partially determines the structure of that economic exploitation."

[For more on this, google "Rosa Luxemburg" "primitive accumulation," and also see David Harvey writing on Luxemburg, primitive accumulation, and hyperexploitation — if I were a fully responsible person I'd dig up the references myself, but unfortunately I don't have as much time to spend on metafilter this morning as I'd prefer. ]
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:32 AM on July 14, 2017 [88 favorites]


Washington Post -- Ivanka Inc.: The first daughter talks about improving the lives of working women. Her father urges companies to “buy American.” But her fashion line’s practices collide with those principles – and are out of step with industry trends.

By Matea Gold, Drew Harwell, Maher Sattar and Simon Denyer

Damning stuff.
posted by spitbull at 8:35 AM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Akhmetshin made his bones running negative publicity campaigns against Russian opponents while with the FSB, and was involved in a legal dispute last year involving Russian business interests in a Dutch court for money laundering that was derailed by...

... Wait for it...

...A cyber espionage campaign. No joke.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:36 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


The Donald Trump Jr. Email Scandal Goes Well Beyond Russia
Trump’s numerous ties to Azerbaijan would, in more typical times, have sparked their own rounds of consternation, possibly even investigations. And yet they’ve barely caused a ripple in the morass of Russia-related controversy that has engulfed Trump’s team. But the kleptocratic model Baku has brought to bear—the sheen and the shell companies, the nepotism and hostility toward basic democratic norms—serves as an archetype to which all budding autocrats aspire. As Sarah Chayers recently wrote, “The Trump administration, its personnel and early practices, resembles nothing so much as a kleptocratic network of the type seen in many developing countries and post-Soviet states.”

Emin Agalarov, who has remained conspicuously quiet since the revelations, has finally achieved his fame. Unfortunately, it’s come as a player in an unfurling saga of kleptocracies realized and aspirational, tying the White House that much closer, both materially and spiritually, to a pair of regimes in Moscow and Baku whose autocratic refinements continue to threaten American democracy.

posted by T.D. Strange at 8:42 AM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]




When even Krauthammer is calling Trump and Republicans out... And this was from last night, before the latest revelations. He really rips into them. A sample:

WaPo: Bungled collusion is still collusion
The evidence is now shown. This is not hearsay, not fake news, not unsourced leaks. This is an email chain released by Donald Trump Jr. himself. A British go-between writes that there’s a Russian government effort to help Trump Sr. win the election, and as part of that effort he proposes a meeting with a “Russian government attorney” possessing damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Moreover, the Kremlin is willing to share troves of incriminating documents from the Crown Prosecutor. (Error: Britain has a Crown Prosecutor. Russia has a Prosecutor General.)

Donald Jr. emails back. “I love it.” Fatal words.

Once you’ve said “I’m in,” it makes no difference that the meeting was a bust, that the intermediary brought no such goods. What matters is what Donald Jr. thought going into the meeting, as well as Jared Kushner and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, who were forwarded the correspondence, invited to the meeting, and attended.

“It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame,” Donald Jr. told Sean Hannity. A shame? On the contrary, a stroke of luck. Had the lawyer real stuff to deliver, Donald Jr. and the others would be in far deeper legal trouble. It turned out to be incompetent collusion, amateur collusion, comically failed collusion. That does not erase the fact that three top Trump campaign officials were ready to play.

It may turn out that they did later collaborate more fruitfully. We don’t know. But even if nothing else is found, the evidence is damning.
posted by chris24 at 8:46 AM on July 14, 2017 [57 favorites]


Also gonna re-pitch something I've recommended before, the brilliant and recently deceased Patrick Wolfe, in the Journal of Genocide Research 8(4) in 2006: "Settler Colonialism and the Elimnation of the Native."

The European colonial mind did not separate racism from exploitation. It viewed nonwhite people as resources and commodities. However it divided them into categories that had a fundamentally economic logic premised on that initial dehumanization, with Africans (and later other groups, such as Chinese) as exchangeable labor (like animals, requiring their multiplication and physical control via the one drop rule and segregation and disenfranchisement) and Indians (including many we would now call Latinos) as obstacles (like trees) to occupying usable land, hence in need of elimination through both outright genocide, cultural genocide, cooptation, blood quantum rules for recognition, and ahistorical ennoblement as savages belonging to the past.

This paper changed my understanding of American history more than anything I've ever read. We (those of us who identify as Americans) are not, in our origins, a "capitalist" society, but a settler-colonial and slave society. Global capitalism is the latest iteration of colonialism, not its supercession.

A challenging read, it is so worth the effort.
posted by spitbull at 8:46 AM on July 14, 2017 [83 favorites]


Josh Marshall is in flabbergasted mode:

Okay, Enough Big-Think. WTF Is Going on Here?

I know I speak for the whole staff... when I say that for all that we are collectively steeped in this story, we are very much having a hard time keeping up with all the different threads that have emerged out of the original Times Don Jr stories over the last week.

For now, I will simply say that if it looks to you like the wheels are coming off all this really rapidly, yes, it looks that way to me too.


So don't feel bad if you're overwhelmed right now.
posted by diogenes at 8:49 AM on July 14, 2017 [27 favorites]


thanks for that, spitbull. I'll be reading that piece soon. If I'm responsible, I'll get my real work out of the way first... but more likely I'll give in to temptation and spend half the morning reading it while neglecting work altogether.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:50 AM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


This information about Akhmetshin being a counterintelligence officer seems to come from an "acknowledgement" to Politico in November. But the AP reports today that he just claims to have been drafted as a young man:
In reports this week, Akhmetshin has been identified as a former Russian counterintelligence officer. He denied ever serving in such a capacity.

“That is not correct,” Akhmetshin said. He said he served in the Soviet Army from 1986 to 1988 after he was drafted but was not trained in spy tradecraft.

This claim actually matches the spirit of the "acknowledgement" quote in November:
Akhmetshin acknowledged having been a Soviet counterintelligence officer, but said he was drafted into the job.

“Just because I was born in Russia doesn't mean I am an agent of [the] Kremlin,” Akhmetshin told POLITICO.
posted by pjenks at 8:50 AM on July 14, 2017


Now I've never seen any evidence that Taitz has any connections to Russia, but it's a joke that seems a lot less funny these days.

For a bit more Anton Wilson level paranoia, you may also wish to consider the immense role Али́са Зино́вьевна Розенба́ум had in shaping the current U.S. American right.... ;D


For anyone interested in a magisterial treatment of why we can't separate capitalism and racism, see David Roediger's 1991 classic,
The Wages of Whitness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class.


Also somewhat relatedly: Hubert Harrison and Theodore Allen
posted by Buntix at 8:53 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


If Akhmetshin is just a simple Russian businessman, I don't think Junior and Kushner leave out his name despite already being neck deep in shit over that meeting.
posted by diogenes at 8:54 AM on July 14, 2017 [20 favorites]


I'm not so familiar with the dia-malectical stuff, but for me it's fairly simple.

1. All people are selfish.
2. It's easier to justify selfishness if you feel you're entitled to what you want.
3. Being entitled to something other people aren't means you're different from (i.e., better than) them.
4. Finding differences is easy.

This situation plays out in a zillion ways in the human experience, including with race and economics. Not sure what I'm adding to the discussion with this model, but it explains a lot for me, from my own thoughts and feelings to world politics.
posted by Rykey at 8:56 AM on July 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


You guys would be discussing the history of nautical transport on the deck of the Titanic. I say that lovingly :)
posted by diogenes at 9:00 AM on July 14, 2017 [56 favorites]


I mean I've got to quibble pretty hard with your point 1. Although "all people are selfish" is one of the tenets of capitalism, treating it as actually true requires overlooking most of actual human psychology. Most of the things we do are in one way or another other-directed; most folks, aside from a few deeply damaged sociopaths, don't take naturally to purely selfish behavior.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:05 AM on July 14, 2017 [20 favorites]


Here's my reminder that, while the Russia stuff is important and fascinating and terrifying, we have to keep up pressure about the BCRA.

Call your senators:
Numbers for every office of every senator

Email your senators & their healthcare staffers:
Email addresses for all healthcare staffers

Fax your senators:
You can do it for free here

Don't know what to say?
Here are scripts

Bonus points:
Call your governor. Ask them to speak out about how the BCRA will damage their state.
posted by mcduff at 9:05 AM on July 14, 2017 [47 favorites]


Don, Jr.'s Lawyer: I'm just a caveman, your world frightens and confuses me. I do know one thing — in the 13 months from June 9th, 2016, when he first participated in that meeting and promptly forgot about it, until July 17th, 2017, when he issued the seventh supplemental explanation disclosing four additional Russian intelligence agents who took part in the meeting, my client was legally insane. And, for that reason, I ask that you find him not guilty.

[FAKE]
posted by stopgap at 9:13 AM on July 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


rich folks wanted labor for cheaper than they could get it through the wage system, and so designated PoC as available for hyperexploitation

True, but I think it's worth running through this chicken/egg argument from the other direction too. There's a degree to which we can and should read hyperexploitation as the motivation for a corrupt wage system as much as the other way around.

For a wealthy capitalist to be thinking in these terms in the first place, they cannot approach capitalism in the classical sense, with money as a persuasive tool used to negotiate cooperation in a business venture. They're presuming an a priori status based economy, where certain classes of people are intrinsically empowered to command, and others obligated to obey, with the possession and distribution of capital and money serving as reification and demonstration of that underlying class system. Wages aren't so much compensation as they are a status signifier, unilaterally granted by high status individuals. That certain classes are more or less exploited is the justification for their economic status, as much as the cause or effect.

That is, there are fundamentally different world views here, both in some sense true. In one, exploitation is a sort of market failure, facilitated by non-economic irrationalities like racism, the rot at the core of an otherwise rational economy. In the other, the capitalist economy is an epiphenomena, a superficial mask stretched over the grinning skull of primitive accumulation.
posted by dirge at 9:16 AM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Every racist part of American history has economics at its spawning.
...in 1860 American slaves, as a financial asset, were worth approximately three and a half billion dollars — that's just as property. Three and a half billion dollars was the net worth, roughly, of slaves in 1860. In today's dollars that would be approximately seventy-five billion dollars. In 1860 slaves as an asset were worth more than all of America's manufacturing, all of the railroads, all of the productive capacity of the United States put together. Slaves were the single largest, by far, financial asset of property in the entire American economy. The only thing worth more than the slaves in the American economy of the 1850s was the land itself, and no one can really put a dollar value on all of the land of North America. If you're looking to begin to understand why the South will begin to defend this system, and defend this society, and worry about it shrinking, and worry about a political culture from the North that is really beginning to criticize them, think three and a half billion dollars and the largest financial asset in American society, and what you might even try to compare that to today.
Yale History Professor Professor David Blight
posted by kirkaracha at 9:17 AM on July 14, 2017 [45 favorites]


OnceUponATime: New Mexico might sort of count as "blue" confederate territory too, but it wasn't a state in 1861 and I'm not very clear on how much it really was part of the Confederacy culturally

TIL New Mexico Territory was invaded by the Confederates, but the preceding Mexican-American War "intensified the debate over slavery in the United States, contributing to bitter debates that culminated in the American Civil War."

And to indicate how divided the state still is, or was into the Jim Crow era, there are six surviving schools built during segregation, primarily in southern and eastern parts of the state, some which have recently been added to the National Register of Historic Places. More reading: African-American Experience in Southern New Mexico. New Mexico is a land of contrasts and all that.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:18 AM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


If I was in the House or Senate, I'd be having a really hard time treating my Republican colleagues with civility. It might be time for Democrats to throw aside the phony decorum. It's clear now that Republicans are aiding and abetting a Russian compromised administration. What purpose does it serve to show them respect right now?
posted by diogenes at 9:23 AM on July 14, 2017 [12 favorites]




To piggyback on mcduff's wonderful reminder to keep fighting the BCRA by contacting Senators, another way to make a difference if yours are Democrats is to ask them to put pressure on vulnerable Republicans by reminding them how you're going to:
  • campaign against them
  • donate to their opponents
  • loudly, publicly blame particular Republicans by name for each and every ounce of suffering and death their depraved bill deals out
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 9:24 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


[real]

@ddale8
Christian Broadcasting journalist David Brody is co-authoring a book called The Faith of Donald J. Trump: A Spiritual Biography.

- The book is being published by a HarperCollins imprint. It'll look at Trump's "rarely discussed, but deeply important, religious beliefs."
posted by chris24 at 9:25 AM on July 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


...think three and a half billion dollars and the largest financial asset in American society, and what you might even try to compare that to today.

Not sure of the exact timeline, but I'm guessing that at least in part the end of (legally sanctioned) slavery was because the labour coerced from them could more profitably be replaced by fossil fuels.
posted by Buntix at 9:27 AM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Sixth person present, breaking.

Come on people, give the Trump clan a break. Clearly, only one Russian entered the meeting, concealing a series of five progressively smaller Russians within its brightly painted shell.
posted by Behemoth at 9:28 AM on July 14, 2017 [143 favorites]


Come on people, give the Trump clan a break. Clearly, only one Russian entered the meeting, concealing a series of five progressively smaller Russians within its brightly painted shell.

I will be disappointed if I don't see a political cartoon reflecting this idea.
posted by chris24 at 9:30 AM on July 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


OnceUponATime: Manafort worked on Trump's campaign FOR FREE. It would take me a while to find the link, but there was a story about how badly he wanted to serve on the campaign, and how he kept ingratiating himself with Trump and repeatedly asking for a job until he got hired -- again, FOR FREE.

To Charm Trump, Paul Manafort Sold Himself as an Affordable Outsider (Glenn Thrush for the New York Times, April 8, 2017)
Paul Manafort is the rarest of professional pitchmen: one who knows how to sell to a salesman.

That was evident by the effort he made last year to gain a foothold in President Trump’s campaign, a successful pitch documented by letters and memos that were made available by a former Trump associate.
...
The letters and memos provide a telling glimpse into how Mr. Trump invited an enigmatic international fixer, who is currently under investigation by United States intelligence services, a Senate committee and investigators in Ukraine, to the apex of his campaign with a minimum of vetting. The answer? Through family and friends, handshakes and hyperbole.
...
In five single-spaced pages of punchy talking points, Mr. Manafort showed how as a onetime lobbyist he had adeptly won over rich and powerful business and political leaders, many of them oligarchs or dictators, in Russia, Ukraine, the Philippines and Pakistan.

He began by telling the candidate he lived on an upper floor of Trump Tower. This was no trivial point: It signaled his wealth and a willingness to work 15-hour days in a building that housed both his lavish apartment and Mr. Trump’s bare-bones campaign. It also meant Mr. Manafort had already put his money — in the form of an apartment purchase — into Mr. Trump’s brand, which meant a lot to the candidate, a transactional developer and politician, aides said.

Mr. Manafort’s friendship with Mr. Barrack, the private equity investor, helped, too. Mr. Barrack, who did not respond to a request for comment, is one of the few people whom Mr. Trump trusts.
...
Plus he had a powerful closer’s move: He would work for free.

“I am not looking for a paid job,” Mr. Manafort wrote.

Mr. Barrack drove home the point in his cover letter, writing, “He would do this in an unpaid capacity.” And over the next few months, according to several associates, Mr. Trump would repeatedly boast about the value he was getting from Mr. Manafort.
Always be skeptical when a wealthy person offers to work long hours for free. They didn't get wealthy by being a volunteer.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:32 AM on July 14, 2017 [48 favorites]


> ...in 1860 American slaves, as a financial asset, were worth approximately three and a half billion dollars — that's just as property. Three and a half billion dollars was the net worth, roughly, of slaves in 1860. In today's dollars that would be approximately seventy-five billion dollars.

So here's where I suddenly swerve back to talking about science fiction. Alexander Bogdanov, everyone's favorite early Bolshevik, wrote a science fiction novel set for the most part in a socialist society on Mars. In Bogdanov's novel, the Martian revolutionaries had dealt with the problem of divesting capitalists of their privately held resources, and of the people they had designated as resources, by simply buying them off: granting them disproportionate access to the wealth of the newly socialized economy and a total freedom from any requirement to work. The only catch was that their children would not inherit this disproportionate privilege. So Bogdanov's solution to the American economic dependence on slaves denominated as being worth 75 billion dollars would be to, more or less, give the plantation owners 75 billion dollars and then tell them "hey, you played the exploitation game and won, good job, go have fun."

This is something like the deal that the rising bourgeoisie in Europe struck with the aristocratic classes that they in large part supplanted: they let aristocrats have cushy lives and all the trappings of wealth in exchange for taking all real decision-making power away from them.

Lenin denounced Bogdanov as an idealist and kicked him out of the party; this was probably the correct decision. Although it's aesthetically pleasing to think of the bourgeoisie falling for the same trick that the aristocratic classes had fallen for, they're simply smarter than that, and more devoted to the project of maintaining real power rather than simple luxury.

I bring this up because the South's dogged defense of slavery (and subsequent dogged defense of the de facto slavery of the sharecropping system) was about something more than 75 billion dollars tied up in the "productive resource" of the people they held as slaves: it was about the real social relationships involved in slavery. The distinction is that money is fungible in ways that social relationships aren't; if the slavers (or the capitalists) were simply concerned with maximizing profits, they absolutely would take a deal that gives them luxury in exchange for ceding power. But because they're concerned with maintaining a specific set of relations rather than with money itself, understanding these relationships (which, certainly, can be denominated in terms of money) as if they were themselves money points us toward tactics that wouldn't really work.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:36 AM on July 14, 2017 [27 favorites]


WaPo: This NBC News scoop is another big blow to the Trump camp’s Russia spin
This news once again underscores that we are seeing a pattern of what we might call obfuscation by omission. This new detail should lead us to look anew at two key facts: First, that the president reportedly signed off on the initial statement from Trump Jr. that covered up the real reason for the meeting. And second, that top White House advisers are now reportedly reluctant to defend this meeting, because they could be opening themselves up to legal vulnerability. Here’s the pattern so far:
* After the news broke that Trump Jr. had met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Trump Jr. put out a statement that only said the meeting was primarily about “a program about the adoption of Russian children.” Sources told the Times that the president signed off on that statement. Given that he did so on Air Force One, as the Trump team debated how to handle the developing story, it’s likely that he had been briefed on the contents of the full email chain at that point. Yet he reportedly assented to that false statement anyway.

* Additionally, CNN reports that sources are now leaking that Trump’s lawyer claims he was not part of the process of signing off on that statement. The Trump camp claims the president didn’t actually sign off on it. But there is no reason to doubt the Times’s reporting — it’s hard to imagine the president wouldn’t have been involved in those discussions. And as CNN notes, if that happened and Trump’s lawyer was not part of it, the president “may have opened himself up to new legal issues not covered by attorney-client privilege.” Remember, Trump may have participated in crafting a statement covering up the real reason for the meeting.

* That initial effort at obfuscation was then demolished when it was disclosed that according to sources who had seen the email chain, the meeting was really about sharing material about Clinton that came from the Russian government. That compelled Trump Jr. to issue another statement conceding that such information had been offered to him. But that statement carefully noted that Trump Jr. did not know the “name” of the lawyer, in effect suggesting he had no idea what the source of the information was.

* That effort at obfuscation, too, was blown up when the emails themselves came to light. Trump Jr. issued them only under duress, as the Times was preparing to publish them. It is after all of this happened that the president hailed Trump Jr.’s transparency.

* Yet that claim of transparency, too, has now been blown apart, now that NBC News has reported on the previously undisclosed presence of a former Soviet counter-intelligence officer who is suspected by U.S. officials of current ties to Russian intelligence.
posted by chris24 at 9:37 AM on July 14, 2017 [29 favorites]


Interview with Jonah Godlberg of National Review on Morning Edition.

"There is no de-wonking to be done here [...] I think the best defense they've got is the stupidity defense. [...] I think that's the fall back position for a lot of people [calling Don Trump Jr an idiot]. [...] [Quoting IowaHawk blogger] 'If you got an invitation to attend an orgy, and you then show up, and all it is is a book club and they're not doing anything interesting, you don't get to go home to your wife and say you did nothing wrong.'"
posted by tilde at 9:38 AM on July 14, 2017 [39 favorites]


> Yet that claim of transparency, too, has now been blown apart, now that NBC News has reported on the previously undisclosed presence of a former Soviet counter-intelligence officer...

And just yesterday Kellyanne and company were hailing DJT Jr.'s transparency.

How do they not just die of shame?
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:45 AM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


And just yesterday Kellyanne and company were hailing DJT Jr.'s transparency.

How do they not just die of shame?


She's way too busy for shame. New York Mag: Kellyanne Conway Moves the Russian Collusion Goalposts to Undisclosed Location --
Kellyanne Conway on Fox News: "The goalposts have been moved. We were promised hard evidence of systemic, sustained furtive collusion."
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:49 AM on July 14, 2017 [20 favorites]


How do they not just die of shame?

They have none. And honestly, that is one of the things that people have a hard time adjusting to and that inhibits the fight against them. We're so used to people having shame, of being able to use that to force resignations, apologies, behavior changes. But there is no bottom with them, no level they won't go below, no embarrassment they won't endure. Trump & Co. just doesn't have that gene and our system isn't really designed/able to deal with it.
posted by chris24 at 9:50 AM on July 14, 2017 [79 favorites]


I think the odds of BCRA passing are something like 80-20 now. Heller appears to be a profile in cowardice as he's going to vote for something he, but a few short weeks ago, said he would never under any circumstances vote for.
posted by Justinian at 9:51 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


"We were promised hard evidence of systemic, sustained furtive collusion."

I have to say, this sounds less like moving the goalposts and more like either clairvoyance or a triple-dog dare.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:51 AM on July 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


I have to say, this sounds less like moving the goalposts and more like either clairvoyance or a triple-dog dare.

As I read somewhere on Twitter, they're not moving the goalposts, they're moving the entire stadium.
posted by chris24 at 9:52 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


> I think the odds of BCRA passing are something like 80-20 now.

The fact that only Susan Collins and Rand Paul are hard No's, even at this late hour, leaving exactly 50 votes to spare - that is beyond ominous. I'm getting the strong feeling that this bill will pass 50+1 to 50.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:55 AM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


That is, there are fundamentally different world views here, both in some sense true. In one, exploitation is a sort of market failure, facilitated by non-economic irrationalities like racism, the rot at the core of an otherwise rational economy. In the other, the capitalist economy is an epiphenomena, a superficial mask stretched over the grinning skull of primitive accumulation.

Already mentioned more than once on MetaFilter (site:metafilter.com 'the half has never been told'), The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist makes the connection in its subtitle. The paperback edition has an afterword that discusses reaction to the book, including the infamous Economist review.

Make no mistake, the book is grim reading. Maybe I'll try The Slave's Cause by Manisha Sinha as a way to cheer myself up.
posted by kingless at 9:59 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


Might be time to redirect our phone calls to our Democratic Senators to make it clear that we expect unanimous and unyielding obstruction.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:01 AM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


Indisivible is calling a day of action against the BCRA on the 18th but I don't see any way to find local events short of searching through your own networks on Facebook or whatever, nor can I find anything major organized in FL (yelling at Rubio's empty offices might not accomplish much, but I would like to stand in solidarity with those of you in potentially-impactful states).
posted by penduluum at 10:03 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


"Stupid is as stupid does" - Don Trump Jr.
posted by nubs at 10:04 AM on July 14, 2017


Serious question: If the health bill passes, millions of people will lose insurance and be unable to pay for health care. Does this mean that people who charge $9 for an aspirin might actually find a way to charge a bit less?
posted by Melismata at 10:06 AM on July 14, 2017


I don't understand how the Senate is just chugging along like it's business as usual. We're going to let Trump sign off on new laws right now?
posted by diogenes at 10:07 AM on July 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


Lenin denounced Bogdanov as an idealist and kicked him out of the party; this was probably the correct decision.

As I understand it, Bogdanov's "idealism" was not about his description of Mars but both because of his sort of weird ideas about building a synthetic proletarian culture and because of his opposition to some of Lenin's rather aggressive tactics. More, he was arrested and detained for weeks on suspicion of being associated with a communist but not Leninist workers' project.

Bogdanov was trying to deal, in his writings on Mars, with a real problem that was really destructive to the USSR - what do you do with the former rich and powerful? Do you expel them, where they can foment counter-revolution and organize your enemies against you? Do you expropriate them but leave them individually resentful to work against you from within? Do you kill them? "Buy them off and short-circuit their futurity" isn't a perfect solution, but isn't that what some of the South American governments tried when they bought and nationalized land? The big estates were not slave estates, it's true, but they were pretty exploitative and violent places.

I would be astonished if Bogdanov weren't thinking, in fact, of how the former slaveholders in the US had destroyed Reconstruction through collaborating with other racist American social forces. It's easy to see someone thinking "how could the former slaveowners have been permanently and effectively neutralized after the war, instead of left to work against Reconstruction"?

Like, "buy off slaveowners" is not, IMO, a moral or exemplary solution, but we can see from both the experience of the USSR and the experience of various soft-socialist projects in South America that there is a hard question about what you do with the former oligarchy, and as we can see from the state of both those regions, there is no good answer.

Bogdanov gets a really bad rap now, but it is not because of his weird cultural ideas - IMO he gets a bad rap for a lot of the things that actually make him interesting.
posted by Frowner at 10:10 AM on July 14, 2017 [20 favorites]


If the health bill passes, millions of people will lose insurance and be unable to pay for health care. Does this mean that people who charge $9 for an aspirin might actually find a way to charge a bit less?

No, but I'll bet CareCredit is licking its fucking chops right now.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 10:11 AM on July 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


I don't understand how the Senate is just chugging along like it's business as usual. We're going to let Trump sign off on new laws right now?

If Clinton was elected and a tenth of what is known came out about her, Republicans would've shut down the country already.
posted by chris24 at 10:12 AM on July 14, 2017 [40 favorites]


Serious question: If the health bill passes, millions of people will lose insurance and be unable to pay for health care. Does this mean that people who charge $9 for an aspirin might actually find a way to charge a bit less?

Nobody charges $9 for aspirin. Hospitals sometimes hire people to clean the bathrooms and answer the phone when you call and include those costs in your bill without itemizing them separately.
posted by straight at 10:13 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


I don't understand how the Senate is just chugging along like it's business as usual. We're going to let Trump sign off on new laws right now?

This was always the plan. Republicans back Trump regardless of how treasonous he was, and Trump signs the Republican legislative wishlist they never thought they would get, ending the safety net and what little is left of the welfare state, return to tough on (black) crime and the drug war, ending all regulations and any pretense of government oversight on business, tax cuts as far as the eye can see, and voter suppression and a stolen Supreme Court to lock everything in for forever.

They're not about to turn on Trump when he's just about to start delivering what Republicans paid for.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:14 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


Kellyanne Conway on Fox News: "The goalposts have been moved. We were promised hard evidence of systemic, sustained furtive collusion."

Be patient, Kellyanne. Troy wasn't excavated in a day.
posted by puddledork at 10:15 AM on July 14, 2017


They're not about to turn on Trump when he's just about to start delivering what Republicans paid for.

Absolutely. I understand the Republican plan. What I don't understand is why Democrats aren't doing and saying more to acknowledge the madness of the situation in the Executive Branch right now, and the inappropriateness of Republicans working with them. I can understand why they didn't want to "got to the mats" even last week. But now, with what we've learned over the past few days? I don't get it.
posted by diogenes at 10:18 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


straight, then how come our health costs are rising by double digits every year? To pay the cleaning person more?
posted by Melismata at 10:19 AM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Serious question: If the health bill passes, millions of people will lose insurance and be unable to pay for health care. Does this mean that people who charge $9 for an aspirin might actually find a way to charge a bit less?

I would think that this would get worse. The chargemaster stuff where official pricing is out of line with costs is partly the result of the fucked-upedness of our system which is designed for lots of people to fall through the cracks and land on some emergency last resort way of getting health care, which often is the hospital or the ambulance company; so the hospital has all sorts of expenses that can't be matched up to expenses related to any specific paying customer, but instead which are a consequence of a cost load shunted onto it by the rest of society.

The Republican bill is designed to redistribute even more wealth from the places those costs land to the wealthiest people in society, so there will probably be $18 aspirins instead.
posted by XMLicious at 10:19 AM on July 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


The awkwardness of this handshake might kill me.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 10:20 AM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


If Clinton was elected and a tenth of what is known came out about her, Republicans would've shut down the country already.

ftfy
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:20 AM on July 14, 2017 [49 favorites]


I honestly feel lightheaded.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 10:21 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


What I don't understand is why Democrats aren't doing and saying more to acknowledge the madness of the situation in the Executive Branch right now, and the inappropriateness of Republicans working with them.

Rumors of Democrats with a spine remain apocryphal.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:21 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Serious question: If the health bill passes, millions of people will lose insurance and be unable to pay for health care. Does this mean that people who charge $9 for an aspirin might actually find a way to charge a bit less?

No.

The apocryphal $9 aspirin is the base "chargemaster" price for things in a hospital. It's the unnegotiated price that, darkly, nobody pays in full except the uninsured. A big part of the agreements that insurance companies make with hospitals and doctors[1] is discounts off those prices.

When you get a statement from an insurance company listing services rendered[2] you usually see a column with what the provider wants to charge - $9 for the aspirin[3] - and then a column next to it for a fraction of that, which is what the provider has agreed to charge customers of that insurance company. Say, perhaps, $2. Then you get the column with what the insurance company will really pay, depending on your deductible thus far that year and the nature of your coverage blah blah blah.

So a big part of the value of your insurance isn't just that they pay for shit, it's that they handle getting these better prices for you. There are things in the ACA that endeavor to cope with some of this, including requirements about making the chargemaster available to people.

But absent those requirements, we have this initial huge rate which serves as a cushion for hospitals. When someone comes in and can't pay - and they may have been legally required to help them based on the law Reagan signed - they now have this huge bill they can use as a starting negotiation point. It also lets them set up payment plans without worrying as much about interest because they have effectively put this tremendously high interest rate on it up front.

[1] And the ever-shifting negotiation over these things are why you find that the urgent care or your doctor no longer takes your insurance; someone refused to deal and for the moment they're not accepting that insurance at all precisely because they won't pay as high a rate as the provider wants for the service and the insurance company thinks the provider will eventually knuckle in order to get access to those customers. It's like when your cable provider suddenly doesn't have ESPN anymore because of carriage disputes, except with death and bankruptcy.
[2] Priced that way because we are fee-for-service in most operations. Which can create some really ugly incentives for providers to do a bunch of tests because they get paid for all of them. And part of why so many doctor conglomerates are creating these all-under-one-roof places where when they order your x-ray it's done in the neighboring office they run... and which makes them money with each ordered procedure.
[3] In fairness, these prices are such because they reflect that you're not just going down to the cart and getting yourself an aspirin. Someone procures that, the dispensary plops it in the paper cup, there's various care and caution taken in the management of all the hospital's drugs, etc.
posted by phearlez at 10:21 AM on July 14, 2017 [26 favorites]


The AP has significantly updated their story from earlier today:
During the meeting, Akhmetshin said Veselnitskaya brought with her a plastic folder with printed-out documents that detailed what she believed was the flow of illicit funds to the Democratic National Committee. Veselnitskaya presented the contents of the documents to the Trump associates and suggested that making the information public could help the Trump campaign, he said.

“This could be a good issue to expose how the DNC is accepting bad money,” Akhmetshin recalled her saying.

Trump Jr. asked the attorney if she had all the evidence to back up her claims, including whether she could demonstrate the flow of the money. But Veselnitskaya said the Trump campaign would need to research it more. After that, Trump Jr. lost interest, according to Akhmetshin.
Two thoughts:
  1. If these documents are the DNC donor records released by Guccifer 2.0 one week later...
  2. How did the AP get to this version from the previous one? (see FelliniBlank's link and quote above)
    Akhmetshin said Trump Jr. asked the attorney for evidence of illicit money flowing to the Democratic National Committee, but Veselnitskaya said she didn’t have that information. She said the Trump campaign would need to research it more, and after that Trump Jr. lost interest, according to Akhmetshin.
posted by pjenks at 10:22 AM on July 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


Nobody charges $9 for aspirin. Hospitals sometimes hire people to clean the bathrooms and answer the phone when you call and include those costs in your bill without itemizing them separately.

From an accounting standpoint: There is a weird truth here. For many entitles, they develop a "rate" for each item that the invoice, and that rate is based on a complicated calculation which varies by the kind of item. The rate reflects not the cost of the item alone, but a tiny percentage of all the costs that support bringing you that item. So an aspirin might "cost": the price of the aspirin, a tiny percentage of the cost of the nurse's salary, a tiny percentage of the depreciation on the medicine cabinet system (which is probably capitalized and depreciates because it's so expensive), a tiny percentage of the annual cost for plastic water cups, a tiny percentage of the cost of garbage disposal, etc etc etc.

So the hospital is not saying "an aspirin costs 1 penny and we mark it up to $9", they're saying "the combined cost to get this aspirin, bring it to you in your hospital bed and help you swallow it is $9". Their calculation may be good or it may not - that's for auditors to determine, and it probably varies by hospital. But it isn't just an arbitrary mark-up.
posted by Frowner at 10:22 AM on July 14, 2017 [15 favorites]


For a bit more Anton Wilson level paranoia, you may also wish to consider the immense role Али́са Зино́вьевна Розенба́ум had in shaping the current U.S. American right....

Russia is to ideas sort of what Australia is to wildlife; it's a place where they evolve into hardcore weaponised variants. Russia, directly or indirectly, gave us transhumanism, Dugin's “Eurasian” nationalism, Marxism-Leninism and its offshoots and Objectivism.
posted by acb at 10:22 AM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


What I don't understand is why Democrats aren't doing and saying more to acknowledge the madness of the situation in the Executive Branch right now...

For example, one of my senators (Sen. Markey) just retweeted a picture of himself standing next to a guy in a polar bear costume. I mean it's nice that he's getting some good publicity for his stance on the Arctic, but I'd prefer that he was talking about the treasonous and illegitimate president about to sign a law that hurts millions of Americans.
posted by diogenes at 10:23 AM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


Thank you XMLicious, that is helpful!
posted by Melismata at 10:23 AM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


How do they not just die of shame?

It's worth revisiting what wrote Jon Rogers on this topic back in 2007, "The exploit is shame.":
Our representatives -- and to a great degree we as a culture -- are completely buffaloed by shamelessness. You reveal a man's corrupt, or lying, or incompetent, and what does he do? He resigns. He attempts to escape attention, often to aid in his escape of legal pursuit. Public shame has up to now been the silver bullet of American political life. But people who are willing to just do the wrong thing and wait you out, to be publicly guilty ... dammmnnnn.

We are faced with utterly shameless men. Cheney and the rest are looking our representatives right in the eye and saying "You don't have the balls to take down a government. You don't have the sheer testicular fortitude to call us lying sonuvabitches when we lie, to stop us from kicking the rule of law and the Constitution in the ass. You just don't. What's beyond that abyss -- what that would do to our government and our identity as a nation -- terrifies you too much. So get the fuck out of our way."
Team Trump is so utterly without shame that they're rampaging through the newsrooms, congressional hearings, and corridors of power like, to use Rogers's analogy, video game characters who have discovered the ultimate cheat code. We're not going to be able to beat them by appealing to their sense of decency or honor, because it simply does not exist.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:23 AM on July 14, 2017 [63 favorites]


David Corn/Mother Jones (Ashley Dejean contributed reporting for this article.) : The Real Scandal Now Is How Team Trump Helped Putin Conceal His Attack on America
The Trump Jr. emails demonstrate that through this entire affair, Trump’s top advisers possessed direct inside information indicating Putin’s crew was willing to act clandestinely to boost Trump’s chances. Whenever they discounted the idea that Russia was plotting against Clinton to help Trump—or stood by when Trump did so—they were lying. More important, they were knowingly creating a smokescreen behind which the Putin operation could proceed.

Within criminal law—and it’s unclear if there are criminal implications to the Trump camp’s interactions with Russia—a person who helps a criminal conceal a crime, or who aids an escape or who even fails to report a crime, is known as an accessory after the fact. Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort helped keep Russia’s operation a secret. They did not report what they knew about its efforts to intervene in the 2016 campaign. They did not tell the public that they had evidence that the Russian government was trying to undermine the election. They blew no whistle. They were silent partners in Putin’s enterprise. They were co-conspirators.
So, framing.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:24 AM on July 14, 2017 [34 favorites]




> But Veselnitskaya said the Trump campaign would need to research it more. After that, Trump Jr. lost interest, according to Akhmetshin.

Research? That would involve doing work. Bo-ring!

This is the most believable anecdote I've read in any of the reporting on this meeting. "I thought you were going to hand me the biggest October surprise ever on a silver platter, but it turned out the platter had one of those meat dome things on top of it, and I would have had to lift it."
posted by tonycpsu at 10:27 AM on July 14, 2017 [51 favorites]


Public shame has up to now been the silver bullet of American political life.

In a semi-serious way, I blame Game of Thrones and other over the top dramas like House of Cards and Scandal.

Because now it just doesn't seem like a big deal if you do anything smaller than sleep with your sister, throw a kid out a window, or behead a nice guy with less than due process. Taking a meeting with somebody who knows Putin seems almost like small potatoes. (In the tv show Scandal the characters stole a presidential election by changing voting machine software in one county in Ohio. Interesting plot idea. But then there was also a massive murder spree to keep it exciting. And the president smothered a Supreme Court justice. In comparison, lying and profiteering seem so tame. And our culture is so forgiving of white collar - white people crimes.)
posted by puddledork at 10:30 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


HuffPost, by Oath!: Judge Tosses Jury’s Conviction Of Woman Who Laughed At Jeff Sessions, Orders New Trial
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:30 AM on July 14, 2017 [59 favorites]


Somebody official should try to get that plastic folder and documents.
posted by notyou at 10:32 AM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Rob Ford and his brother Doug also benefited from the way they gleefully ignored long-standing political norms and their complete and utter lack of shame. Trump probably looked at those two idiots and shouted at his TV, "That's it? That's all you have to do???"
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:36 AM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


In a semi-serious way, I blame Game of Thrones and other over the top dramas like House of Cards and Scandal.

Or the original House of Cards (British), or Watergate, or hey why not WWF, or Shakespeare?
posted by rc3spencer at 10:41 AM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


I'm feeling very confused and disoriented today. To strain a cliched analogy, we've moved from smoke to fire, and everybody is still acting like we're in the smoke stage.
posted by diogenes at 10:43 AM on July 14, 2017 [37 favorites]


Can the Cruz Amendment be included in a bill passed through reconciliation without being scored by the CBO? Or are they only using the HHS bullshit for the initial motion to proceed and then the CBO score will be used in the final bill?
posted by Justinian at 10:44 AM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


I blame I, Claudius.
posted by orrnyereg at 10:44 AM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


To strain a cliched analogy, we've moved from smoke to fire, and everybody is still acting like we're in the smoke stage.

Egg agrees.

@Evan_McMullin
All the ingredients are there: Kremlin offer of assistance, request for sanctions relief, Russian intel associates. This is fire, not smoke.
posted by chris24 at 10:49 AM on July 14, 2017 [54 favorites]


Egg agrees.

Why the hell don't my representatives agree!
posted by diogenes at 10:51 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Why the hell don't my representatives agree!

Tax cuts?
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 10:52 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Here's a letter to send to Democratic Senators, with which to pressure some of the more vulnerable Republicans. Feel free to use it.
Senator,

Please convey my deepest digust and loathing to your Republican colleagues who are even considering voting for Mitch McConnell's homicidal BCRA. Make it known how eager people all over the country are to donate to their Democratic opponents, campaign against them, and hold them accountable for each and death and ounce of suffereing their votes in support will cause.

Tell Dean Heller to imagine his face and name forever associated with every woman who hemorhages to death in child birth.

Tell Robert Portman that his name and image wil be inexorably linked with each completed suicide in Ohio that could have been prevented with access to mental healthcare.

Tell Shelly Moore Capito her face and name will be synonymous with everyone in her very rural state who can no longer obtain healthcare because rural hospitals will close.

Tell Lisa Murkowski that her name, brand, and image as a "moderate" will not save her in Alaska when insurances premiums spike so high that Alaskans will die bankrupt and suffering because they could not obtain medical care.

Make sure each of these cowards knows that We the People will bind their names, their faces, and their reputations to each premature child born who reaches their lifetime coverage limit within the first years with with unbreakable chains of shame, disgust, and loathing. When these children die, we will name them as personally responsible.

This legislative terrorism must never pass. To vote for it is to show complete and total depraved indifference to human life. To vote for this bill brands one as guilty of the inevitable mass homicide of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Remind them that people of all political persuasions across the country know their names and faces. We will be watching, and we will come for them.

With Grave Sincerity,
[your name]
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 10:52 AM on July 14, 2017 [33 favorites]


Neal Gabler/Billmoyers.com: Trump Bet Americans Would Like His Un-Presidential Antics. He May Be Right.
None of [the criticisms of Trump are] new. In fact, they are pretty hoary. But they actually seem a lot less persuasive now that Donald Trump is in the White House. There has never been a president whose values are so antithetical to traditional American ones — never one less self-reliant, loyal, tough, disciplined, religious or virtuous — so the argument doesn’t hold much water to me.

I want to suggest something else entirely that helps explain the love for Republicans and Trump in the supposedly old-fashioned precincts of the South, Midwest and West. I want to suggest that beneath or beside these so-called “traditional” frontier values — which we ourselves promote so self-aggrandizingly — there’s another set of values, no less American, and probably much more so. According to some historians, they, too, were forged on the frontier as a form of survival.

They have nothing to do with the Protestant ethic — quite the contrary. They are not values of virtue but of success, promoting deception and the fast con, easy cash, hustling and the love of money. If the first set of values might be called “Algeresque,” after Horatio Alger, the popular 19th-century American author who wrote stories about poor ragamuffins rising to great wealth through hard work, this second set might be called “Barnumesque,” after P. T. Barnum, the 19th-century promoter, hoaxster and circus impresario, who played on his countrymen’s gullibility.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:52 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Today's coverage of Mark Zuckerberg's building 2020 presidential campaign

That's it. That's the last of it, I'm done. The days following the election of Donald Trump are going to be followed by a small-but-significant increase in Republican seats in 2018, then a Trump vs Zuckerberg 2020 election?

No I'm done. I am trying my best to go elsewhere. I don't have the professional qualifications necessary for moving to another nation, but I need to find a way out. I need to find the best way to legally emigrate. This is beyond absurd.
posted by FakeFreyja at 10:53 AM on July 14, 2017 [21 favorites]


You need the CBO score for its effect on the deficit. The effect on how many people won't have insurance is important so that Senators can decide what to do, but it's not needed for reconciliation.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 10:53 AM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Why the hell don't my representatives agree!

Tax cuts?


It's not that. They are supposedly liberal firebrands (Senator Warren and Rep. Kennedy).
posted by diogenes at 10:54 AM on July 14, 2017


frowner: hah, yeah, thank you for calling me on my sloppiness w/r/t why Bogdanov got kicked out. I do think that his scheme for buying off the bourgeoisie is from a sideways perspective of a piece with his weird cultural stuff; he had a little bit of the technocrat's tendency to mistake the way a given social process is measured with the process itself. My skepticism with his "buy the bourgeoise off" idea is from a Weberian perspective rather than a Marxian one; the bourgeoisie, unlike the aristocratic classes1, had kind of trained themselves so well at deferred gratification that any promise of pleasure rather than power would be rejected by them out of hand.

That said, it's a useful thing to keep on the table; sure, establish a Committee For Buying Off the Bourgeoisie... but make it clear to the propertied classes that if they decide not to negotiate with that committee, they'd find themselves dealing with the Military Revolutionary Committee instead.

which I suppose is the position Bogdanov ultimately outlined in Red Star... I think I just have little faith in the buying-off plan actually working at all, even though I think it's worth trying.



1: yes I know this distinction isn't a hard one; lots of the early bourgeoisie were aristocrats who quickly figured out the new rules for holding power and used the resources they had as aristocrats to play the bourgeois game.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:55 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


> The thing about Ben Sasse is that his being smart and thoughtful makes it all worse, not better. He knows exactly what he is doing, and he does it anyway. That's a further indictment, not a mitigating factor.

Ben Sasse's Hypocrisy: It's Not a Mystery, It's a Market Niche
Gosh, I can't imagine why anyone would want to display such flagrant, obvious hypocrisy.

No, wait -- of course I can understand. Being a Republican who exhibits what liberal journalists regard as virtuous behavior is a surefire ticket to national fame, and it doesn't matter at all whether your voting record jibes with your pieties. Look at John McCain, who continues to be regarded as a principled "maverick" even though he signs off on virtually every agenda item of his party's leadership in Congress, as well as whatever GOP presidents want. Or look at Paul Ryan, who's praised as a serious-minded wonk even after it's repeatedly demonstrated that the numbers in his bills don't add up, and who's been allowed to palm himself off as a charity-minded Christian despite his flint-hearted Randianism.

Sasse knows he can go national with this act.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:55 AM on July 14, 2017 [26 favorites]


I'm struggling to understand what people are waiting for before declaring "collusion". Trump campaign operatives willingly met with Russian government officials to receive illegally obtained documents. That's their version of the events, which has been revised multiple times as their lies about it have been uncovered.

Even if you take them at their word, they're guilty. And there's no reason to expect that the fifth revision of their story is the true telling of events - it's only going to get worse.

We've gone from "I was never at the pool" to "I went to the pool but didn't swim" to "Here's me shitting in the pool, oops" to "Actually I planned to shit in the pool all along" and everyone is just standing here like "Will we ever figure out who shat in the pool?". He fucking told you already!
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:56 AM on July 14, 2017 [80 favorites]


In short, if sentencing exploiters to cake will get them to give up exploitation, well, let them eat cake.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:00 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


About the sixth meeting attendee possibly being a "translator," an MSNBC guest just pointed out that all five of the other people speak English fluently (or semi-fluently in the case of DonToo).

I spent a while trying to run this down last night because it didn't make complete sense. The right wing conspiracy theory involves spreading that photo of Veselnitskaya sitting at a Congressional hearing behind Amb. McFaul. Why would somebody who doesn't speak English, as Chuck Ross reported last night when he said it was a translator, attend a Congressional hearing? That doesn't sound like a fun use of time.

That said, she's used a translator for the TV interviews of her that I could find. It's possible she showed up at the hearing just to be seen on camera, and it's certainly possible she speaks some English but is more comfortable with a translator, but it stood out as odd to me, and as later reporting has suggested, it seems like there was rather more to it than just translation.
posted by zachlipton at 11:01 AM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


I just called Senator Warren's office to express my smoke > fire frustration. It felt good to at least get if off my chest.

(Don't worry. I also voiced my support for her opposition to the healthcare bill.)
posted by diogenes at 11:01 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


and to bring it back to the topic of the thread: the trumps are big bourgeoisie, but stupid ones, more interested in the trappings of wealth than in exercising power — frankly, they're too dumb to effectively wield power, or even just to understand it. We may, if things go well, find ourselves in a situation where buying off Trump might make sense — straight up give him enough money to disentangle himself from Russia and the Russian mob, plus another big dollop to support his kids' lifestyles, then offer him a plane to take him into exile.

If we have a chance to strike that deal, we should, even if it means the dumbest, vilest motherfucker on the planet goes unpunished for his crimes.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:06 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


What would that accomplish if Pence can just let the GOP carry on with their agenda without The Cloud of the Russia investigation?
posted by Slackermagee at 11:10 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


> If we have a chance to strike that deal, we should, even if it means the dumbest, vilest motherfucker on the planet goes unpunished for his crimes.

We won't, and we shouldn't. It's not just a question of merely going unpunished -- such actions would have the effect of rewarding him for his crimes. If he were some all-powerful comic book villain then maybe you don your Cold-Hearted Pragmatic Trolley Problem Solving Hat for a minute and do what it takes to dispatch him, but as far as I'm aware, he can be cheaply and securely held inside a 6' x 8' cell for the rest of his days.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:11 AM on July 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


If Clinton was elected and a tenth of what is known came out about her, Republicans would've shut down the country already.

In all seriousness, spine jokes aside, can someone tell us why the Democrats aren't going crazy right now? I assume it's because they think more info has yet to come out? But even then, why are they so timid?
posted by cell divide at 11:12 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


What would that accomplish if Pence can just let the GOP carry on with their agenda without The Cloud of the Russia investigation?

I think they want Trump in power while they do the worst bullshit so they can try to blame him as a sekrit librul or not a real GOPer or something when it all comes crashing down.
posted by Justinian at 11:14 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Democrats don't do crazy. And it they did it wouldn't work.

And if they did, no one would cover it. We don't have the equivalent of liberal FOX News and a nationwide network of local hate radio intimidators to stir up and threaten violence. That's why the Tea Party rebranding of the same Republican Party that was always there worked. It's why every little Obama pseudo-misstep became the end of the Republic. It's why Clinton Rules were a thing for 30 years. When the right collectively loses it's mind, they're doing it in lockstep on a premade national and local propaganda platform, backed by the implicit threat that "our people are armed and ready to use them over this". When Democrats try to do the same thing, it's not at all credible, and the national media knows it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:17 AM on July 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


when it all comes crashing down

I am reminded, again, that the Republicans in DC are not governing like there are elections coming up in 2018.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:17 AM on July 14, 2017 [26 favorites]


And if they did, no one would cover it.

If Elizabeth Warren went to the Senate floor and called the Trump administration treasonous and illegitimate, and said that she refused to work with Republicans who are aiding and abetting that administration, I'm pretty sure it would get some coverage.
posted by diogenes at 11:20 AM on July 14, 2017 [22 favorites]


See that's the deal: I'm aware of the moral hazard arguments in rewarding monsters. The reason why the Bogdanov scheme is so fascinating is that it presents us with a difficult choice: given the chance to make something better if and only if we give up our desire to deliver stern justice to malefactors, would we take it?

My answer is a complicated yes. It's an emergency measure, it sucks, it generates moral hazard, it flies directly in the face of everything we want to be true.. but it may, regardless, be the best way to proceed.

If in early 2018 Trump, beleaguered, demented, besieged, is holed up in the oval office refusing to consider resignation and threatening retribution against anyone who dares question him, offer him cash to leave. Tell him he's the bestest dealmaker ever who's figured out how to play the game better than anyone before him, toss him enough money and gold toilets to make him think he's won, and then get him the hell out of the country and let him spend the rest of his miserable little life golfing in Russia.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:22 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


> If Elizabeth Warren went to the Senate floor and called the Trump administration treasonous and illegitimate, and said that she refused to work with Republicans who are aiding and abetting that administration, I'm pretty sure it would get some coverage.

Yes, it would get concern trolling about the decline in civility and decorum in the Senate, with a MTBTWS (Mean Time Before The Word "Shrill") of about 45 seconds.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:23 AM on July 14, 2017 [33 favorites]


I am reminded, again, that the Republicans in DC are not governing like there are elections coming up in 2018

Why would they? The populace has a short memory, they only need to (publicly) get on the ball maybe six months before.
posted by rhizome at 11:24 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


If in early 2018 Trump, beleaguered, demented, besieged, is holed up in the oval office refusing to consider resignation and threatening retribution against anyone who dares question him, offer him cash to leave. Tell him he's the bestest dealmaker ever who's figured out how to play the game better than anyone before he, toss him enough money and gold toilets to make him think he's won, and then get him the hell out of the country and let him spend the rest of his miserable little life golfing in Russia.

And then make sure the check doesn't clear after he lands.

Whoops. Sorry, Trump, our staff hit *send* on the wire transfer before submitting the complete information. You know how it is.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:26 AM on July 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


anyway, trump is already living through the worst punishment imaginable: every minute, of every day, for his entire life, he's got to be around Donald Trump.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:26 AM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


> Tell him he's the bestest dealmaker ever who's figured out how to play the game better than anyone before he, toss him enough money and gold toilets to make him think he's won, and then get him the hell out of the country and let him spend the rest of his miserable little life golfing in Russia.

Everyone has their idea of a "last straw", after which the country would no longer be saving, and you've found mine. The point at which we elected a notorious grifter and let him loot the Treasury and walk away with a golden parachute is the point at which the American experiment, or at least the portion of it that I care to play my tiny part in, is over.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:27 AM on July 14, 2017 [33 favorites]


If Clinton was elected and a tenth of what is known came out about her, Republicans would've shut down the country already.

In all seriousness, spine jokes aside, can someone tell us why the Democrats aren't going crazy right now? I assume it's because they think more info has yet to come out? But even then, why are they so timid?


Well, Adam Schiff was on NPR this morning and when he was asked if there could be more emails or more scandals to break he said basically, every time the Trump team says "This is the only meeting/email/whatever." They uncover more meetings/emails/bullshit.

Soo...not losing his shit and screaming treason, but possibly waiting until they've got an airtight case before they try for it.
posted by teleri025 at 11:28 AM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


My guess is that Democrats are on the semi-long play: Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself. I think they figure both the Administration and Congressional Republicans can ultimately shoot themselves in the foot just fine without any help from Democrats.
posted by Brak at 11:29 AM on July 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


I am not in favor of any future treatment of Trump that does not explicitly involve taking things away from him. Hopefully, particularly money.

Why give him anything? ANYTHING? No, fuck that.

Give him MONEY? Really?? You'd better make damned sure that there are absolutely NO poor Americans first, and that there will never again be another medical bankruptcy in the USA. Otherwise, giving Trump money is literally ROBBING AND KILLING AMERICANS. Fuck that.
posted by yesster at 11:30 AM on July 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


I'm feeling very confused and disoriented today. To strain a cliched analogy, we've moved from smoke to fire, and everybody is still acting like we're in the smoke stage.

Re: Trump/Russia collusion, or BCRA, or both?
posted by zakur at 11:30 AM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


> My guess is that Democrats are on the semi-long play: Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself. I think they figure both the Administration and Congressional Republicans can ultimately shoot themselves in the foot just fine without any help from Democrats.

"Don't worry, Trump will never win the election, and he'll probably drag the rest of the GOP down with him. Whoops, well, don't worry, they'll never pass a health care bill with all this Russia shit going down. Whoops, well, don't worry..."
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:34 AM on July 14, 2017 [31 favorites]


River Clegg, New Yorker: I’m Kid Rock, and I Approve This Message
We fade in on a modest suburban home. Sombre, atmospheric piano music plays. Inside the kitchen, a husband and wife sit at the table. He opens an envelope and reads its contents, shaking his head slowly and passing the paper to his wife. It’s a medical bill. She puts her face in her hands, sobbing. He thinks about going over to comfort her but then doesn’t. That would be lame.

Two more victims of Obamacare.

But wait! Where’d that muscular electric-guitar riff come from? And why is a long-haired man in a fedora and a fur coat suddenly standing in their breakfast nook? Wait—it can’t be…


KID ROCK: Hey, bitches! Are you tired of getting dicked around by the Washington establishment? Sick of laws getting passed by professional politicians and not pioneers of late-nineties rap-metal? Then vote for me, Kid Rock, for Senate!

WIFE: Sounds good!

HUSBAND: If you ask me, Washington could use a little shaking up.

KID ROCK: Many of my lyrics are about having sex with prostitutes.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:34 AM on July 14, 2017 [21 favorites]


Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself

The problem is that in the meantime, they're rolling back environmental protections, deporting people en masse, and repealing the ACA. I'm not sure how much good it will do to kick out the Trump regime in 2018 or 2019 if we have suffered irreparable damage by that point...
posted by suelac at 11:36 AM on July 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


We've gone from "I was never at the pool" to "I went to the pool but didn't swim" to "Here's me shitting in the pool, oops" to "Actually I planned to shit in the pool all along" and everyone is just standing here like "Will we ever figure out who shat in the pool?". He fucking told you already!

"it's really a baby ruth"

"really - i have a unique disease that causes me to defecate baby ruth bars"

"look, why else would i have all these wrappers in my bathing suit?"

"well, no, i don't take off the wrappers, they are voided seperately ..."

"i bought them at the candy store - can't a guy buy a candy bar anymore?"

"what baby ruth? i have proof from a doctor i'm diabetic ..."
posted by pyramid termite at 11:36 AM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


The problem is that in the meantime, they're rolling back environmental protections, deporting people en masse, and repealing the ACA. I'm not sure how much good it will do to kick out the Trump regime in 2018 or 2019 if we have suffered irreparable damage by that point...

Well there's no way to kick him out before that. It's not like we have any Republicans left in Congress with a sense of shame or it would have happened far before this.
posted by Talez at 11:38 AM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


John McCain takes a bite, makes a disgusted face, shakes his head

"This is definitely not a Baby Ruth"

He takes another bite
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:38 AM on July 14, 2017 [109 favorites]


More people in the room where it happened. CNN:
It is still not clear how many people attended the meeting. So far acknowledged in attendance: Trump Jr., Kushner, Manafort, Veselnitskaya, Akhmetshin and publicist Rob Goldstone, who helped set up the meeting. The source familiar with the circumstances said there were other people in the room as well, but could not provide the names.
posted by stopgap at 11:39 AM on July 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


Oh I don't disagree: it's still the Democrats' particular brand of feckless. "Maybe if we wait long enough, Republicans will dismantle themselves without any of us getting our hands dirty." But it's the best explanation I've got.
posted by Brak at 11:39 AM on July 14, 2017


As I said in some invisible corner of the internet this morning, before this is all over we're going to find out there was also an acoustic set from Third Eye Blind.
posted by rhizome at 11:41 AM on July 14, 2017 [26 favorites]


At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the cast of THE AMERICANS was at the meeting wearing hammer and sickle pins.
posted by Justinian at 11:42 AM on July 14, 2017 [19 favorites]


The source familiar with the circumstances said there were other people in the room as well, but could not provide the names.

maybe good ol' Cellophane Donny Joon can tell us who else was there, since he's such a high quality kid who's all about that transparency

my cake bet: the covfefe orb was also in the room
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:42 AM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Ok but how many of y'all have been saying Dems need to stop talking about Trump and instead push a positive policy agenda?
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:44 AM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


I'm also losing my mind over the lack of fucking outrage on a national scale.

However, I am reminded that the only thing - THE ONLY THING - that Republicans do incredibly well is form an impenetrable phalanx when it comes to attacking Democrats. Every one of them, lock step, shields up and lances out, just march as one organism and trample everything in their political path: see Obama, Barack c. 2009 onwards.

The scandal as it stands is ALL about Trump: self-inflicted, self-reinforced, and gaining speed. The Republicans can't counter it because there are no Democrats involved (not for a lack of trying, mind, since they're trying to spin the secret democratic operatives narrative). I almost want the Dems to get the hell out of the way, for now, and focus on screaming about healthcare, the environment, DeVos, the Muslim ban, ie. all the other fires that we need to worry about.
posted by lydhre at 11:45 AM on July 14, 2017 [15 favorites]


Nick Kristof says CNN reporting (live on TV?) 8 people in the room. So: Junior, Manafort, Kushner, Goldstone, Veselnitskaya, Akhmetshin, the Russian translator, and the Mystery Date.
posted by stopgap at 11:45 AM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


Well there's no way to kick him out before that

Probably not, but I'm flabbergasted that none of them are even trying to restrain him. He's shafting all our international relations, and their response is, "shrugs, what can you do?" -- which is BULLSHIT. Congress can pass laws that limit the President's authority, but they choose not to.
posted by suelac at 11:45 AM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Musings from a former Buzzfeed reporter who was contacted by Guccifer 2.0 with DNC documents on June 15, 2016 (The Intercept)
This timing is interesting for two reasons. The extreme proximity of promised Hillary-related documents and the arrival of Hillary-documents just days later suggests Guccifer 2.0 could have been part of the plan Goldstone alluded to over email. But secondly, although the documents were surely “official” in that they originated from within the Democratic Party, no one ever found anything in them that could be considered “information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia.”
Yes, but there are some good reasons that Veselnitskaya would mention DNC donations from Russia:
  • She's Russian, sitting in front of him... that's what she might have access to.
  • Redirection: "Look! Hillary's colluding with Russia! (Not you!)"
  • "Got tickets? Need tickets?"
posted by pjenks at 11:45 AM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


How has nobody posted the never-ending Trump-Macron handshake yet? This is just weird as hell.

I do think my favorite part of this is how much Sen. Grassley's effort to attack the Steele Dossier blew up in his face by providing extremely damaging material for Trump. Another example just surfaced, his letter to DHS in April, which mirrors his letter to the Justice Department from a week prior, accusing Akhmetshin of acting as an unregistered Russian agent.

Meanwhile, Terry McAuliffe introduced Pence at the National Governor's Association and brought his A+ trolling game: MCAULIFFE introduces PENCE: "He showed true backbone himself in Indiana when he expanded Medicaid for his citizens"

More people in the room where it happened. CNN:

Remember when Don Jr said he wanted to be "totally transparent?" Turned out he still wanted to be opaque enough to drop 60 pound sacks of drugs on our heads.
posted by zachlipton at 11:47 AM on July 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


Trump was in the room too. He had to have been, because Trump's Mirror.

Remember, Goldstone offered to send the info directly to Trump in the email. Of course Trump was there.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:48 AM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


This room keeps getting bigger and bigger. Are we sure this meeting took place at Trump Tower and not the Barclays Center?
posted by tonycpsu at 11:49 AM on July 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


Shit... was I there? Were you?
posted by tonycpsu at 11:50 AM on July 14, 2017 [35 favorites]


This "number of people in the room" thing is turning into that Spanish Inquisition skit from Monty Python.
posted by uosuaq at 11:50 AM on July 14, 2017 [77 favorites]


But lets be honest, everyone expected this.
posted by Brainy at 11:51 AM on July 14, 2017 [58 favorites]


> Dahlia Lithwick: The chaos being sown by the commission is exactly as designed.

Meanwhile, Dahlia Lithwick may have been understating how bad for American democracy Kobach's project is.
("It no longer makes sense to look at this administration through a binary lens of evil geniuses versus hapless imbeciles. Generally competent people can behave stupidly when the end game is fomenting mistrust in the basic facts and institutions that surround democracy. Destabilizing and undermining the idea that voting in America matters, especially against the backdrop of an election in which foreign interference might actually have had an influence on the outcome, is all to the good.")

Chris Lu @ChrisLu44: "Trump WH just released public comments submitted to voter fraud commission without redacting email addresses, home addresses & phone numbers / Kobach commission website warns that personal contact info could be disclosed. In this era of trolling, no one should be exposed that way". {emphasis added, because WTF?!}

Kobach may have been so stupid as to accidentally reveal his hardline immigration plans when he was being considered to head the DHS, but this is positively malevolent. Effectively doxxing anyone who submits an opinion when the administration is soliciting public comment is more than a chilling effect - it's freezing out any disagreement from the debate.
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:51 AM on July 14, 2017 [54 favorites]


> Probably not, but I'm flabbergasted that none of them are even trying to restrain him. He's shafting all our international relations, and their response is, "shrugs, what can you do?" -- which is BULLSHIT. Congress can pass laws that limit the President's authority, but they choose not to.

It is possible that the bulk of the elected democrats are as dazzled and distracted by media narratives as trump and kushner are; that they've come to understand their jobs as managing their personal brands, and the party brand, and have, much like the trumps, lost sight of the real actions and real events of the world: the way that their work involves effects other than just media effects.

We may be fucked.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:52 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Suggested title for next post: No one wants to be in the room where it happened.
posted by emelenjr at 11:53 AM on July 14, 2017 [22 favorites]


This "number of people in the room" thing is turning into that Spanish Inquisition skit from Monty Python.

Perhaps it's more like a Marx Brothers movie?
posted by ZeusHumms at 11:53 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


How has nobody posted the never-ending Trump-Macron handshake yet? This is just weird as hell.

@CNNPolitics: CNN's Chris Cillizza: A second-by-second analysis of the Trump-Macron handshake

@onesarahjones: rarely does a subject so suit an author's abilities
posted by zombieflanders at 11:54 AM on July 14, 2017 [19 favorites]


Perhaps Duck Soup from the Marx Brothers?

Donald Trump is Rufus T. Firefly without the wit and charisma.

(The too-many-people-in-one-room scene is from A Night at the Opera.)
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:55 AM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


the never-ending Trump-Macron handshake

On a day-to-day, minute-to-minute basis I go through anger, grief, hopelessness, mania for action in resistance. But the weirdest feeling, one that comes up about every other time I see a video clip of him doing something, is the feeling that I know this asshole. I know assholes exactly like this asshole, and they're all assholes, and everybody agrees they're assholes, and one of those fucking assholes is the president.
posted by penduluum at 11:57 AM on July 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


> Shit... was I there? Were you?
posted by tonycpsu at 11:50 AM on July 14
[+] [!]


Ugh okay I should have come clean about this earlier. I... was there. Didn't say much, and I couldn't really hear much cause the room was so crowded and people just would. not. stop. with all their side conversations.

It wasn't a total bust tho; after the meeting Thomas Pynchon and I stayed behind, and we ended up going out for a couple of drinks after.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:57 AM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


"I just need the campaign boss and my brother-in-law and the Russian lawyer there. And her translator. And this Russian intelligence officer! And that's all I need!"
posted by stopgap at 11:58 AM on July 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


Ooh, fun:
AdamGoldmanNYT:Had a good chat with Rinat. He also sent me photo from his time in the Soviet military. Publishing his comments soon.
posted by pjenks at 11:59 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Trump to hire new lawyer: Ty Cobb. No word on whether John Rocker or Marge Schott are on retainer.
posted by dirigibleman at 12:05 PM on July 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


Perhaps Duck Soup from the Marx Brothers?

Night at the Opera
posted by christopherious at 12:06 PM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Philip Bump comes through as usual with A brief review of Donald Trump Jr.’s explanations of his meeting with a Russian lawyer, summarizing the official story day-by-day and how it changed, also relating it to how one might explain the plot of Ocean’s 11's with the same candidness as Don Jr.
posted by zachlipton at 12:07 PM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


In Trump Country, Russia scandal doesn't resonate

Highlights:
- There’s very little that would change her mind about Trump. “I don’t know what he would have to do … I guess maybe kill someone. Just in cold blood,” Pearson said.
- “I saw (Trump) as a person I could relate to. In business, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or Democrat. You’ve got to make it,” Jackson said.
- “Whatever he does salesman-wise or crooked-wise is nothing compared to what the politicians have done,” Mitchell said. “I don’t know anybody that would change their mind.”
- “They are born and raised Republican here. They are taught from the time they can talk that’s the way they’re going to vote. They bring their children to the polls … and they better vote Republican.”
- “We’ve lost everything, pretty much,” Debbie Mitchell said. “We can’t afford health care, period. We didn’t qualify for Obamacare, we didn’t qualify for (Medicaid), and we can’t afford to buy health insurance. We’re the ones that fall through the cracks.”
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:08 PM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


Trump to hire new lawyer: Ty Cobb. No word on whether John Rocker or Marge Schott are on retainer.

Ugh, that's some incurious journalism to only mention Kasowitz in passing. But y'know...The Hill.
posted by rhizome at 12:08 PM on July 14, 2017


Mr. Burns: I've decided to bring in a few ringers, professional baseballers. We'll give them token jobs at the plant and have them play on our softball team. Honus Wagner, Cap Anson, Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown...

Smithers: Uh, sir?

Mr. Burns: What is it, Smithers?

Smithers: I'm afraid all of those players have retired and, uh... passed on. In fact, your right-fielder has been dead for a hundred and thirty years.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:13 PM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


Transcript of the off the record remarks by the president while on his way to Paris.

THE PRESIDENT: So I was asked to go by the President, who I get along with very well, despite a lot of fake news. You know, I actually have a very good relationship with all of the people at the G20. And he called me, he said, would you come, it’s Bastille Day -- 100 years since World War I. And I said, that’s big deal, 100 years since World War I. SO we’re going to go, I think we’re going to have a great time, and we’re going to do something good. And he’s doing a good job. He’s doing a good job as President.


Emphasis mine. Jesus he's ignorant.
posted by zabuni at 12:15 PM on July 14, 2017 [37 favorites]


If Clinton was elected and a tenth of what is known came out about her, Republicans would've shut down the country already.

If a tenth of this mess had come out about a hypothetical President Clinton, Democrats would've shut down the country, and rightly so.
posted by biogeo at 12:15 PM on July 14, 2017 [26 favorites]


Akhmetshin said Trump Jr. asked the attorney for evidence of illicit money flowing to the Democratic National Committee, but Veselnitskaya said she didn’t have that information. She said the Trump campaign would need to research it more, and after that Trump Jr. lost interest, according to Akhmetshin.

Too lazy to properly engage in spycraft
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:17 PM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


It...is Bastille Day today. And it's 100 years since WWI. (I know those things aren't contemporary with each other.)
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:17 PM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]




There’s very little that would change her mind about Trump. “I don’t know what he would have to do … I guess maybe kill someone. Just in cold blood,” Pearson said.

"I expect I'd still support him if he were displaying his kills in ritualistic poses, but I might waver if he starts making a womansuit in his basement."
posted by Rust Moranis at 12:20 PM on July 14, 2017 [31 favorites]


“We’ve lost everything, pretty much,” Debbie Mitchell said. “We can’t afford health care, period. We didn’t qualify for Obamacare, we didn’t qualify for (Medicaid), and we can’t afford to buy health insurance. We’re the ones that fall through the cracks.”

One guess as to whether Debbie's state of Tennessee has accepted federal money to expand Medicaid eligibility.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:20 PM on July 14, 2017 [46 favorites]


And it's 100 years since WWI.

No. It's 100 years since the US joined WWI. France had been invaded, and was fighting, and dying, since 1914. There's a big difference.
posted by Nice Guy Mike at 12:21 PM on July 14, 2017 [32 favorites]


-Jimmy Carter was taken to the hospital after collapsing from dehydration in Winnipeg, where the 92-year-old former president was helping build a Habitat for Humanity home.

And because Jimmy Carter is a badass, he was back at the jobsite today. As John Dingell says, "Never underestimate old."

President Carter, retired at age 92 is more dedicated to trying to make the world a better place every single day than President Trump is while he has the flipping job.
posted by zachlipton at 12:22 PM on July 14, 2017 [99 favorites]


(I know those things aren't contemporary with each other.)
It's just those two dates have nothing to do with each other, so why mention them in close proximity? I imagine someone mentioned Bastille day, then mentioned it had been 100 years since the US entered World War 1, and this jumble is what came out of his mouth.
posted by zabuni at 12:23 PM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


I hope the battle-hardened ghost of Joseph Joffre haunts and scares the piss out of President Trump while he sleeps in France tonight.
posted by Tevin at 12:24 PM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


My skepticism with his "buy the bourgeoise off" idea is from a Weberian perspective rather than a Marxian one...

Whereas my skepticism is empirical, derived from revealed preferences. The Koch brothers, to choose one example, spend far more on political projects than could possibly be justified on the grounds of return on investment by way of tax breaks and deregulation. They've clearly demonstrated that they value billions of dollars less than they value the perverse relations of production promised by far-right Republican policy.

There's no amount of money that would persuade them to abandon goals that they're willing to spend arbitrarily large amounts of money to achieve.

the trumps are big bourgeoisie, but stupid ones, more interested in the trappings of wealth than in exercising power

True. Might work on the Trumps. Maybe we could buy off enough of the dumb ones to cripple the rest? Could be our ban against titles of nobility is a bit of a disadvantage here, because I'm pretty sure a lot of them would rather have that than money.
posted by dirge at 12:25 PM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


President Carter, retired at age 92 is more dedicated to trying to make the world a better place every single day than President Trump is while he has the flipping job.

And is a better model of Christian behavior than those hypocrite preachers who sucked up to Trump the other day (or had him on their TV show).
posted by Gelatin at 12:25 PM on July 14, 2017 [49 favorites]


The Card Cheat: “I saw (Trump) as a person I could relate to. In business, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or Democrat. You’ve got to make it,” Jackson said.

Does Jackson know that Trump is really a failed businessman who became too big to truly bankrupt, thanks to funds from his father? Banks didn't want him to remove his name from his bankrupt buildings, because there was some stench, er, air of wealth and success to the Trump brand. And any way, it's really the banks fault for loaning his companies money again and again. Until they didn't, and he had to turn to foreign interests.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:30 PM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


That Rinat interview was brief!

Anyway, this from Jr's lawyer:
Alan S. Futerfas, Donald Trump Jr.’s attorney, said, “We do acknowledge there was one person — and perhaps a second — whose identity we did not know.” They might have been Mr. Akhmetshin and a translator, he said, but no one now recalls the individuals’ names and there is no log or document showing who attended.

“The frustrating part of this exercise is that it concerns events that occurred 13 months ago that were considered insignificant at the time and essentially forgotten,” Mr. Futerfas said.
Haha. THAT's the frustrating thing?
posted by notyou at 12:31 PM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


President Carter, retired at age 92 is more dedicated to trying to make the world a better place every single day than President Trump is while he has the flipping job.

Totally random, but I have a personalised thank you note from President Carter and I value it more and more. I respect him so much.

posted by greermahoney at 12:35 PM on July 14, 2017 [45 favorites]


Michael Isikoff: White House shakes up legal team as probe gathers steam. Ty Cobb ("who is distantly related to the Hall of Fame baseball player of the same name") is in, as noted upthread (as actual WH staff, but reporting directly to Trump and not White House counsel, which is weird), but the big news is that Jamie Gorelick is out. Kushner's lawyer bailing on him is not a good sign for him.

And coming soon to a newspaper near you—@adamgoldmanNYT: Will identify the last person at the meeting shortly
posted by zachlipton at 12:36 PM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


“The frustrating part of this exercise is that it concerns events that occurred 13 months ago that were considered insignificant at the time and essentially forgotten,” Mr. Futerfas said.

Huh. It's almost like running for and being President of the United States requires a lot of fucking detail work.
posted by Etrigan at 12:36 PM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


The Daily Beast has some more information on the "translator" Donald Jr. "forgot" to mention attending his chat with the Russian lawyer about "adoptions" -
A New York law firm paid Akhmetshin $140,000, including expenses, to organize a public-relations campaign targeting IMR. Shortly after he began that work, IMR suffered a sophisticated and systematic breach of its computers, and gigabytes of data allegedly stolen in the breach wound up the hands of journalists and human-rights groups critical of the mining company. IMR accused Akhmetshin of paying Russian hackers to carry out the attack.

IMR went so far as to hire a private investigator to follow Akhmetshin on a trip to London. That private eye, Akis Phanartzis, wrote in a sworn declaration to the court that he eavesdropped on Akhmetshin in a London coffee shop and heard Akhmetshin boast that “he organized the hacking of IMR’s computer systems” on behalf of Melinchenko’s fertilizer producer Eurochem. “Mr. Akhmetshin [noted] that he was hired because there were certain things that the law firm could not do,” Phanartzis said.
posted by Slap*Happy at 12:36 PM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


It's almost as if soliciting damaging information from a foreign country to use against your father's political opponent might be something still relevant 13 months later. Who could have known? WHO COULD HAVE KNOWN.
posted by lydhre at 12:39 PM on July 14, 2017 [23 favorites]


From the Isikoff story zachlipton posted just now: "[Ty Cobb] is known to take a different approach to Washington scandal management than the combative Kasowitz. His preferred modus operandi, he has told associates, is to get out in front of negative stories and publicly release as much information as possible under the theory that it’s likely to come out anyway and concealing it will only exacerbate future political problems." There may be a lot more coming...
posted by AwkwardPause at 12:47 PM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


notyou: "Alan S. Futerfas, Donald Trump Jr.’s attorney said [...] no one now recalls the individuals’ names and there is no log or document showing who attended"

Uhh... my dude... the email chain that Don Jr. posted literally has Goldstone saying that they were gonna submit names for security. If "security" here means Secret Service vetting, then how likely would it be that there's no record of the request at all? Is there any detail too small that these jackholes won't trip over?
posted by mhum at 12:50 PM on July 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


"Security" might just mean the front desk of Trump Tower, so they can print out temporary access badges. That's pretty common in big buildings. But the building should still have the names then.
posted by stopgap at 12:53 PM on July 14, 2017 [15 favorites]



If "security" here means Secret Service vetting
On June 9 2016, months before the convention. why would it be Secret Service?
posted by rc3spencer at 12:54 PM on July 14, 2017


CNN says the eighth person in the room was a representative of the Agaralovs.
posted by stopgap at 12:56 PM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Trump has had some level of Secret Service protection since around Nov of 2015.
posted by cmfletcher at 12:56 PM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


"Security" might just mean the front desk of Trump Tower, so they can print out temporary access badges. That's pretty common in big buildings. But the building should still have the names then.

Even in our piddly-assed bank building, you needed to either have a badge to be waved through, or SIGN IN AND OUT at the security desk, where you would wait for your escort.

I cannot believe security at Trump Tower would be less than the outsourced National Security Guard Company we used.
posted by mikelieman at 12:58 PM on July 14, 2017


cmfletcher: Trump has had some level of Secret Service protection since around Nov of 2015.

Donald Trump, Ben Carson getting Secret Service protection (By Jim Acosta and Jeremy Diamond, CNN, November 5, 2015)
Republican front-runners Donald Trump and Ben Carson will receive Secret Service details after the candidates' requests for protection were approved, the Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday.

DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson approved the candidates' requests, which were submitted earlier this month, department spokeswoman Marsha Catron confirmed to CNN.
Because his own chief bruiser wasn't tough enough? Or was it just another case of Trump getting a government handout?
posted by filthy light thief at 12:58 PM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Eight?!

I thought we were on seven!
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:59 PM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Perhaps it's more like a Marx Brothers movie?

Reverse clown car. They keep getting in.
posted by spitbull at 1:02 PM on July 14, 2017 [15 favorites]


This show is adding too many new characters all at once
posted by theodolite at 1:02 PM on July 14, 2017 [34 favorites]


Donald Trump, Ben Carson getting Secret Service protection
What? No Vermin Supreme? Why did I even bother to vote? It was a fix as far back as 2015. Jeez.
posted by rc3spencer at 1:03 PM on July 14, 2017


I thought we were on seven!


It's a clown car of collusion!

posted by Slap*Happy at 1:03 PM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


David Anderson at Balloon Juice highlights a strong statement (and a choice infographic) from the American Academy of Actuaries on the Cruz amendment.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:03 PM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm surprised it isn't Kislyak, since no one ever remembers meeting him.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:05 PM on July 14, 2017 [35 favorites]


Is there any detail too small that these jackholes won't trip over?

When fascism comes to America, it will be covered in bronzer and stepping on its own dick.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:09 PM on July 14, 2017 [42 favorites]


When fascism comes to America, it will be covered in bronzer and stepping on its own dick.

Hitler started out so pathetic the Three Stooges and Richmal Crompton could make fun of him.

Then he got powerful.

And then he got pathetic again in the bunker.
posted by ocschwar at 1:11 PM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


Trump WH just released public comments submitted to voter fraud commission without redacting email addresses, home addresses & phone numbers

Fascism rears its ugly head.

This. Is. Not. Normal.
posted by Dashy at 1:20 PM on July 14, 2017 [45 favorites]


I also forgot to mention the re-definition we just had, was it only last week, of doxxing.

And Melania's campaign against cyberterrorism, how's that going again?
posted by Dashy at 1:22 PM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


I'm surprised it isn't Kislyak, since no one ever remembers meeting him.

I'm half convinced he's the Shadow King from Legion, he's got the ability to manipulate memories and he's got the look down.
posted by jason_steakums at 1:23 PM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Christ, that off-the-record transcript. Really, the biggest tragedy here is that William S. Burroughs didn't live long enough to see a sitting president pay homage to his cut-up technique.
posted by Rykey at 1:24 PM on July 14, 2017 [21 favorites]


Tell me how that's not giving aid to the enemy.

The poor are the enemy.
posted by srboisvert at 1:34 PM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Even Fox News* is like WTF?

@LeanneNaramore
Shep Smith: "The deception, Chris, is mind-boggling...why are we getting told all these lies?"

Chris Wallace: "I don't know what to say" [VIDEO]

* admittedly, Shep and Chris are two of the relatively sane Foxers and not necessarily reflective of the entire network.
posted by chris24 at 1:34 PM on July 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


An untruthful statement from the Trump administration would certainly be an unusual phenomenon that would leave me at a loss for words, too.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:40 PM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Nevada’s Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, endorsed emergency measures late last week designed to increase the flow of marijuana to the state’s 47 licensed retail outlets, some of which have had lines out the door since legal pot was made available at dispensaries on July 1.
Are we at maximum 2017 WTF levels yet?
posted by un petit cadeau at 1:40 PM on July 14, 2017 [31 favorites]


WaPo column written by a former CIA intelligence officer:
But everything we know about the meeting — from whom it involved to how it was set up to how it unfolded — is in line with what intelligence analysts would expect an overture in a Russian influence operation to look like. It bears all the hallmarks of a professionally planned, carefully orchestrated intelligence soft pitch designed to gauge receptivity, while leaving room for plausible deniability in case the approach is rejected. And the Trump campaign’s willingness to take the meeting — and, more important, its failure to report the episode to U.S. authorities — may have been exactly the green light Russia was looking for to launch a more aggressive phase of intervention in the U.S. election campaign.

...

Had this Russian overture been rejected or promptly reported by the Trump campaign to U.S. authorities, Russian intelligence would have been forced to recalculate the risk vs. gain of continuing its aggressive operation to influence U.S. domestic politics. Russian meddling might have been compromised in its early stages and stopped in its tracks by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies before it reached fruition by the late fall.

So the suggestion that this was a nothing meeting without consequence is, in all likelihood, badly mistaken.
posted by parallellines at 1:43 PM on July 14, 2017 [104 favorites]


People needing more drugs in 2017 is entirely understandable.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:43 PM on July 14, 2017 [47 favorites]


at first I was like "dammit, this better not drive up prices in california," but really we're so much bigger than nevada that I'll doubt i'll have much of an effect.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:46 PM on July 14, 2017


The takeaway from the story linked by The Card Cheat is not the obliviousness of Trump voters but that those voters want good healthcare from the government. That attitude was unthinkable before Obamacare.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:54 PM on July 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


I'm speechless at this. Politico: ‘Mr. President, You Know What It’s Like To Be a Black Man’: "Why boxing promoter Don King will always be in Donald Trump’s corner." A sample:
POLITICO: What do you guys [King and the President] talk about?

KING: I tell him that the establishment will tell their lies. They will try to keep him down. ... I tell him, ‘Now Mr. Trump, they’re treating you like a black man.’... I say, ‘Mr. President, you know what it’s like to be a black man. ... No matter what you say or do, you are guilty as hell.’

POLITICO: Anything more specific?

KING: Don’t worry about appeasing the establishment. Don’t acquiesce to an alleged power. ... Be with the people, not the establishment. ... The guy that’s sitting next to you ... that’s who you got to beware. Judas was sitting right next to Jesus. ... You know, Trump’s a genius. I don’t have to be telling him what to do and how to do it, but I tell him things to stimulate his mind, how to think about things. ... We talk as friends, we sit down and talk about the problem of the day or the current events. ... I can be like a Tillerson without the portfolio because I’ve been around the world.

POLITICO: What has Trump asked your advice about?

KING: I been to Mar-a-Lago [a few times]. We sat down for one hour [earlier this year]. He wanted to get my estimation of what’s going on. He said, ‘What you think about me firing Flynn?’ I said, ‘With all due respect, Mr. President, Flynn fired himself.’ ... Trump’s loyal to a fault. He’ll speak on your behalf because, out on the street, you can stick with a guy and say he did the wrong thing, but he’s basically a good guy. ... That’s not crooked, that’s not obstructing justice ... That’s friendship.

POLITICO: Anything else you guys talk about?

KING: Before he got elected ... I told Trump that they got Kennedy in a limousine in Texas. They got Malcolm X in a ballroom in New York. They got Robert Kennedy in a kitchen in L.A. They got Martin Luther King on a hotel balcony in Memphis. ... I told him all these things, I laid it out. Because when you’re a revolutionary like Trump, you got to think about the Kennedy solution. ... I worry about that ... and I told him that.
There's even more batshit madness inside the link.

He also says he hasn't talked to Trump about a pardon for Mike Tyson yet, but "that may be considered because Trump is going to be here for eight years."
posted by zachlipton at 2:01 PM on July 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


That attitude was unthinkable before Obamacare.

Which is exactly why the Republicans did so much to try to block it, and why they want to get rid of it as fast as they can. They know that people, even though who claim otherwise, generally like what government has to offer.
posted by cell divide at 2:01 PM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


Talking Points Memo connects some dots that hint (but don't quite say) that Kushner may have lied to the FBI about his meetings, including the absurd "hit send accidentally" story.

When people say "it's not the crime but the coverup" they don't mean that the original crime is not the true bad thing -- they just mean that it's a hell of a lot easier to prove something like lying to the FBI (a felony) or failing to pay taxes on ill-gotten gains, than it is to document what happened in a hidden crime committted before anyone was scrutinizing the perps.
"Kushner initially omitted all of his foreign contacts on the SF-86 he submitted on Jan. 18, and later had to file three separate supplemental disclosures. The first was on May 11, when Yahoo reported he listed over 100 meetings with officials from over 20 countries, including the Russian ambassador to the U.S. and the CEO of a Russian state-owned bank. The FBI, which approves security clearances, interviewed Kushner about the matter in mid-May, according to Yahoo.

The White House adviser was interviewed by the FBI a second time on June 23, two days after updating his application to include the Veselnitskaya meeting. Apparently, he has since added more names to his form.

Kushner’s lawyers have insisted he accidentally left his meetings with foreign government officials off his initial application, telling Yahoo a member of his staff prematurely hit the “send” button on the form before it was completed."
posted by msalt at 2:02 PM on July 14, 2017 [15 favorites]


Here are the headlines of the four stories that Apple News is pushing this afternoon:

The five biggest hurdles Senate Republicans are facing to pass their revi...
Russian Lawyer Brought Ex-Soviet Counter Intelligence Officer to T...
Analysis: No matter how bad it gets for him, here's why Trump isn't getting...
FBI Probe of Bernie Sanders' wife closely tracks Hillary's secret c...

HMMM I WONDER WHICH ONE IS FOX NEWS
posted by joyceanmachine at 2:03 PM on July 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


cmfletcher: Trump has had some level of Secret Service protection since around Nov of 2015.

Does that mean there's a Secret Service agent who can simply tell us whether Donald Trump joined that meeting or not?!?!?!!
posted by msalt at 2:04 PM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


You'll know we're really living in the worst of all timelines if the only person who faces charges in all these FBI investigations is Jane Sanders.
posted by Justinian at 2:08 PM on July 14, 2017 [15 favorites]


Sorry for the Quora link but it looks like Secret Service agents can be compelled to testify. This came up during the Clinton Administration when Republicans wanted testimony from the agents protecting Clinton. There was an uproar and the Republicans / special prosecutor backed down, but there's no law against it.
posted by honestcoyote at 2:16 PM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Ryan Lizza: How Trump Broke the Office of Government Ethics. In which OGE is a case study for how Trump destroys norms through shamelessness and a demonstration of how much of what we take for granted is based on norms rather than actual law.
With the Trump Administration, it has been different. “I don’t have that in this Administration. And I guess what is being exposed is the emperor has no clothes,” Shaub told me. “To have O.G.E. criticize you would have been a career-ender in the olden days—now it’s just lost in the noise.”

The depressing lesson Shaub learned is that in the Trump era, with a politically polarized electorate and media, the shaming effect of the government’s top ethics watchdog going public no longer had the same impact. Shaub used Twitter, a press conference, and an extremely transparent FOIA policy to shame the White House on several major issues, but he rarely convinced Trump and his top White House aides to do more than the bare minimum. And as the Administration has done on so many other occasions, it vehemently denied that it was doing anything wrong.

It didn’t break the ethics laws—it broke the ethical norms.
posted by zachlipton at 2:22 PM on July 14, 2017 [44 favorites]


Hitler started out so pathetic the Three Stooges and Richmal Crompton could make fun of him.

The Stooges' You Nazty Spy! was the first US film to satirize Hitler in 1940. But it was as much as anti-war film as an anti-Hitler film. Reflecting the nation's anti-interventionist mood at the time, Moe is made dictator of the nation of Moronika as part of a plot by wealthy industrialists to increase sales at their munitions plant. The film is also the origin of using a magic eight ball as a fortune telling device.

And then he got pathetic again in the bunker.

Speaking of bunkers, Trump owns as many as five bomb shelters. From this article in the Palm Beach Post, Little-known feature of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago: Bomb shelters
In fact, Mar-a-Lago is home to three bomb shelters...

The bomb shelters are no secret: Cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, who built Mar-a-Lago in 1927, had the bomb shelters installed during the Korean War. They were mentioned in nearly every Palm Beach Post report on the sale of Mar-a-Lago to Trump in the mid-1980s. And Trump has occasionally spoken of them since.

In a 2007 Esquire profile, then-businessman Trump told writer Tom Junod that three of his properties are equipped with bunkers — Mar-a-Lago, Trump International Golf Club in suburban West Palm Beach and Trump’s estate in Westchester, New York.
Some day this may all end in a Trümpenbunker in West Palm Beach.
posted by peeedro at 2:34 PM on July 14, 2017 [20 favorites]


peeedro: Some day this may all end in a Trümpenbunker in West Palm Beach.

I first read this as "TrümpenBURGER"

Not a nothing burger. A TRUMPENBURGER.
posted by slipthought at 2:41 PM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


The important thing to keep in mind is that the Trump Tower meeting was about explicit quid pro quo. When Jr. says that the subject of the meeting was "Russian adoptions", that's not just a diversion, it really was about adoptions -- and the Magnitski Act.

Magnitski was a Russian lawyer who exposed money laundering and corruption among Putin and his top lieutenants. Putin had Magnitski jailed and murdered while in custody.

Obama passed the Magnitski Act in 2012 which allowed him to deny visas and freeze the assets of Russians complicit in Magnitski's death. This terrified and infuriated the Putin regime because it cut them off from all the money and real estate assets they had illegally moved out of Russia.

The Magnitski Act was an obsession of Putin. In retaliation, Putin cut off a program of adopting Russian children to Americans. So when Jr. says the meeting was about adoptions, it was really about the Magnitski Act.

The Russians agents were "lobbyists" for Putin, working to repeal the Magnitski Act. So when they were discussing "Russian adoptions" in exchange for information on Clinton, this was a quid pro quo, selling favors to a foreign government in exchange for domestic political capital.
posted by JackFlash at 2:43 PM on July 14, 2017 [95 favorites]


Eric Garland: Wow, it looks like there were more people at the Russia hacker meeting than there were at Trump's inauguration.
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:48 PM on July 14, 2017 [93 favorites]


Eric Garland: Wow, it looks like there were more people at the Russia hacker meeting than there were at Trump's inauguration.

That's a pretty good zinger for a guy who rose to notability writing long high-concept speculative fiction on the premise "What if Maddox grew out of his original website and became a weird paranoiac?"
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 2:54 PM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Not a nothing burger. A TRUMPENBURGER.

This might be the burger you are looking for:
The burger, which is available now, is called the “Did I Just Hit Reply All.”
...
According to the restaurant’s Facebook page, the Trump Jr.-based burger includes “extra Russian dressing, optional shot of vodka and extra napkins to clean up from throwing dad under the bus.”
posted by peeedro at 2:57 PM on July 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


Bill Moyers has a timeline that's well worth looking over. I learned one very interesting detail --

Jared Kushner took over all data operations for the Trump campaign (and brought in the Mercer's firm Cambridge Analytica) in June 2016, shortly after the meeting with Veselnitskaya but more importantly with Akhmetshin, the intelligence agent who has been documented to brag about leading hacker attacks on people for money.
posted by msalt at 3:17 PM on July 14, 2017 [42 favorites]


Yeah, Will Bunch had an interesting, if speculative, column on what's up with the data operation: The key to the Trump-Russia scandal? Follow the data
If there was a Deep Throat in the Trump-Russia scandal, this is what he’d be telling today’s Woodwards and Bernsteins:

Follow the data.

With all the drama over this week’s bombshell disclosures of Donald Trump Jr.’s emails and a previously unknown Trump Tower meeting between top campaign officials and a woman who’d been pitched to them as “a Russian government lawyer,” there was another investigative report that arguably could have equal or greater significance in the ongoing probes of wrongdoing in the 2016 campaign. It said probers are now taking a much closer look at possible cooperation between Russia — which had an operation to churn out “fake news” about Hillary Clinton during the fall campaign — and the Trump campaign’s data operation.
The report in question is McClatchy's Trump-Russia investigators probe Jared Kushner-run digital operation. This is an encouraging line of investigation because there's a lot more tangible things we can look at. It's not about finding out what happened in a single secret meeting; it's about looking at the campaign's messaging operation and asking whether it was at all coordinated with the bot army.

And connecting the data story and the meeting story is that Jared Kushner is right in the center of both.
posted by zachlipton at 3:26 PM on July 14, 2017 [27 favorites]


Looks like someone else accidentally hit the "Send" button before they were done.

GOP Insider Brief's argument is a bit of a stretch, but I'm sure Corey Robin and Matt Taibbi will be along shortly to implore liberals to give it a fair hearing.
posted by tonycpsu at 3:33 PM on July 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


No one who went to these Russian meetings can remember going there.

I would swear I've never been to one of the meetings.

Ergo: I must have been there.

Maybe the star-bellied sneetches were wearing Red stars.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:38 PM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Mod note: Folks, please reload the thread - I deleted a bunch of stuff following (and including) the Robins article. Joseph Gurl, if you're not trolling, try harder to look like you're not trolling.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 3:56 PM on July 14, 2017 [38 favorites]


Here's a statement from Senator Ron Wyden from a couple of days ago about the TP ticket's collusion with Russia:
Based on the emails that Donald Trump, Jr., released, the highest levels of the Trump campaign walked, eyes open, into a meeting designed to advance the Russian government’s support for Donald Trump. These emails show there is no longer a question of whether this campaign sought to collude with a hostile foreign power to subvert America’s democracy. The question is how far the coordination goes. It is now up to elected officials of both parties to stand up and do their duty: protect and defend the constitution.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 4:17 PM on July 14, 2017 [57 favorites]


HuffPo reporting the translator's name, along with an explicit statement that Natalia Veselnitskaya doesn't speak English.
posted by hanov3r at 4:22 PM on July 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


I have no idea who this guy is or even if he is credible
Other senior members of the Trump campaign may have participated in the meeting via conference call.
posted by adamvasco at 4:25 PM on July 14, 2017


That guy is Jack Posobiec, a pro-Trump troll, pizzagater, once planted a "Rape Melania" sign at a protest to try to discredit protestors, and Shakespeare in the Park disruptor, among his other accomplishments. He is not credible.
posted by zachlipton at 4:28 PM on July 14, 2017 [53 favorites]


adamvasco: Jack Posobiec is a trumpist conspiracy theorist. If he told me the sky was blue I'd punch him in the face and then check the window.
posted by Justinian at 4:29 PM on July 14, 2017 [25 favorites]


...and then throw him out of it.
posted by notyou at 4:30 PM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


Best part of that Medium post is that it's from Jack Posobiec, and he praises himself in the third person in the last paragraph (and then quotes two of his own tweets). He's using himself as a source. Just choice, choice stuff.
posted by penduluum at 4:31 PM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


I won't ever trust Posobiec but I really, really wouldn't be surprised if Trump conferenced in after his big baby freakout about wiretapping.
posted by jason_steakums at 4:38 PM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Manafort was at the meeting in person. Why would he be using his phone?
posted by perhapses at 4:40 PM on July 14, 2017


National Treasure Alexandra Petri, WaPo: What else was on fire this week?
Happy Bastille Day, everyone!

So much has happened this week, and all of it was bad. If you were not paying attention, here is most of it.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is showing his deep contempt for the revised Senate health-care bill by sending out Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to defend it. Cruz has tacked on a fun new amendment that gives people more freedom than ever before, the very sort of freedom the Founders themselves had: namely, the ability to die quietly without access to modern medicine. Alarmingly, given that the whole trend of this bill is to make it easier for people to die alone without fanfare, everyone in the Senate seems as if they are trying to keep this unsustainable thing on life support.

The sketchy Donald Trump Jr. meeting with a Russian lawyer (who gave him NO INFORMATION whatsoever, of course, so what is the big deal?) is getting bigger and bigger all the time. Now it turns out that eight people were there, including a lobbyist and veteran of the Soviet military. Every time they count, they discover more and more people. It is time the question was asked: Did they notice a horrid, sulfurous smell at any point? Is one of them a Goatman? Also, why cap it at just eight? Was I there? I have no memory of such a meeting, which is usually the first symptom of being present.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:41 PM on July 14, 2017 [36 favorites]


Cruz has tacked on a fun new amendment that gives people more freedom than ever before, the very sort of freedom the Founders themselves had: namely, the ability to die quietly without access to modern medicine. Alarmingly, given that the whole trend of this bill is to make it easier for people to die alone without fanfare,

Not just die, but die with a mountain of debt.
posted by puddledork at 5:10 PM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Chris Hayes is on fire rn on MSNBC interviewing a GOP congressperson about the Russia collusion. Adjusted for his generally mild mannered nature, that is.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:18 PM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


die with a mountain of debt

Yeah, the CareCredit link that OverlappingElvis posted is appalling. Trump's America is a place where financing huge medical bills is considered a business opportunity instead of a failure of society.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:21 PM on July 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


It sounds like they will eventually run out of "high powered D.C. attorneys". Impressive.
posted by lydhre at 5:42 PM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


In fairness, these prices are such because they reflect that you're not just going down to the cart and getting yourself an aspirin. Someone procures that, the dispensary plops it in the paper cup, there's various care and caution taken in the management of all the hospital's drugs, etc.

Included in that cost are also all the employees required to call your insurance company, negotiate with your insurance company, send you statements regarding what your insurance company will pay and what you owe, negotiate with you and set up payment plans, keep sending you notices of payments due, and eventually sell off your debt to a collections agency. Not to mention all the people the insurance agencies employ to fight NOT to pay.

This for-profit system is the LEAST EFFICIENT POSSIBLE. That's why an aspirin costs $9. Not only does it have to cover all the hospital employees and make up for the uninsured who don't pay AND is a starting negotiation point for insurance rates, but ALSO when the medical provider has to hire a ton of people to deal with all the various insurance plans, plus government benefits, including, say all the possible Medicare part D part-private plans, it's INSANE. The more complicated the system gets as we try to jury-rig it with legislation here and there, the more expensive it becomes to provide services. If only the rest of the world had figured out some other way of doing it!
posted by threeturtles at 5:58 PM on July 14, 2017 [52 favorites]


Metafilter: So much has happened this week, and all of it was bad.
Metafilter: If you were not paying attention, here is most of it.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:05 PM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Shepherd Smith of Fox News has had enough of all the lies. Lie after lie after lie. [WaPo, Aaron Blake, video and transcript available]
posted by xyzzy at 6:07 PM on July 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


I have aspirin for $8 if anyone's interested...just hit me up.
posted by uosuaq at 6:13 PM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


8 people in the room. So: Junior, Manafort, Kushner, Goldstone, Veselnitskaya, Akhmetshin, the Russian translator, and the Mystery Date.

The Mystery Date was Jeff Gannon.

Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
posted by petebest at 6:16 PM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Do we have any idea why NBC held back on identifying Rinat Akhmetshin in their initial reporting? I mean, it didn't seem like it was that closely-guarded considering the AP named him pretty shortly after NBC's report went live and then the guy himself showed up a few hours later to publicly confirm that, yeah, he was there.
posted by mhum at 6:34 PM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Deep Throat was the Associate Director of the FBI.

It was once too absurd and surreal that a key figure in a national scandal was a porno term and title


So by releasing this info, has DJT Jr. Deep Throated himself?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:34 PM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Shepherd Smith of Fox News has had enough of all the lies. Lie after lie after lie. [WaPo, Aaron Blake, video and transcript available]

Oh, did he disgustedly resign on-air from the garbage position he holds as a key propagandizer in a collaborationist neo-fascist-mouthpiece organization?

spoiler: he didn't
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:48 PM on July 14, 2017 [55 favorites]


Mystery Date for you yung uns.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:08 PM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


"So the hospital is not saying "an aspirin costs 1 penny and we mark it up to $9", they're saying "the combined cost to get this aspirin, bring it to you in your hospital bed and help you swallow it is $9". Their calculation may be good or it may not - that's for auditors to determine, and it probably varies by hospital. But it isn't just an arbitrary mark-up."

Yes, HOWEVER, when I get a bill from my hospital saying, "Your C-section cost $37,000 on our chargemaster, but out of the goodness of our hearts and the contracting skills of your lawyers we will only charge your insurance $21,000" and then my insurance company says "And your bit is $500," like that's pretty clear that the aspirin doesn't cost $9 even with all the delivery costs. At $21k the hospital's still making a profit (childbirth is a major profit center), and my insurer is making a profit (paying $21k vs my premiums), so whatever childbirth costs, it's considerably less than $21k -- and way, way, way less than the $37k they're charging uninsured women and bankrupting them with.

Also a dose of Tylenol was listed at $16 on the chargemaster. I think I paid $7. I do not begrudge my excellent nurses one little bit -- but that $16 is clearly a lie.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:19 PM on July 14, 2017 [34 favorites]


"When you open the door, will your mystery date be a dream, or a dunce?"

If you squint, that could be Jr. and, ricochet biscuit, no Jr is not nearly that flexible especially with his "dad" gut.
posted by porpoise at 7:20 PM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


I will be disappointed if I don't see a political cartoon reflecting this idea.

It had to be done.

(Yes, I do spend my Friday nights hanging out in the Metafilter dumbwaiter waiting for someone to say "cartoon.")
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 7:25 PM on July 14, 2017 [108 favorites]


The New House Committee on Un-American Activities. First question: Are you now or have you ever been involved in any Trump business or organization or have you been affiliated with anyone involved in a Trump business or organization?
posted by perhapses at 7:58 PM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


5. The Trump campaign colluded with the hackers
-Very serious violation if true; but no evidence and extremely unlikely because as per #1 they wouldn't have needed to.

Even after we learned today that Trump's campaign team met with a Russian who has organized hackings into organizations in the past? Even when Trump's team announced when DNC emails would be released?
posted by xammerboy at 8:01 PM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


On the ethics of Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting, a Brookings Institute podcast.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:04 PM on July 14, 2017


Yes, Alex Gendler's brief summary leaves out many critical details.
posted by perhapses at 8:05 PM on July 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


but out of the goodness of our hearts and the contracting skills of your lawyers we will only charge your insurance $21,000

YES! I just had this exact same experience (First time i've every actually had to USE the insurance I've paid for as a civilian). Much smaller scale, but the "bill" confused me.

THIS IS NOT A BILL:
Charge: $327
Authorized Charge: 210
Insurance Paid: 210
Your Cost: $0

Which drives the accountant in me nuts. Where did the other 117 dollars go? The hospital just got shafted out of a third of their money? Multiply me times thousands of people a day and the hospital goes bankrupt, right?

I guess another way to look at it is that maybe my insurance company used their "big customer" status to get a good deal, which forces the hospital to charge other customers more to make up for it. I mean, maybe the real cost IS more like 250, but when I pay 210 they have to raise the uninsured price to 327? If true, I'm not sure that's a good system either.
posted by ctmf at 8:25 PM on July 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


It's not just a bad system, it's the worst possible system, which I guess is a kind of "greatness," though not the kind I'd like to see us aiming for...
posted by saulgoodman at 8:57 PM on July 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


I mean, at this point we might as well be asking where Jeff Sessions was on the day of the KGB-lite meeting. (lydhre at 6:02 AM)

I'm this close to having to check back in my own calendar, at this rate. Big meeting... not very memorable, apparently?
posted by ctmf at 8:57 PM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


I figure it's the same thing as "3 for $12, or $5 each" at the grocery store. Insurance companies can force hospitals to give them lower prices, or they'll take the hospital out of their network and people on that insurance plan will be less likely to go there. You and me have zero bargaining power.
posted by AFABulous at 8:58 PM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


The price of ANYTHING is what people will pay for it. iPhones don't cost $600 to make. The problem is that you don't really need an iPhone but you don't have a choice about an appendectomy.
posted by AFABulous at 9:00 PM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Do we have any idea why NBC held back on identifying Rinat Akhmetshin in their initial reporting? I mean, it didn't seem like it was that closely-guarded considering the AP named him pretty shortly after NBC's report went live and then the guy himself showed up a few hours later to publicly confirm that, yeah, he was there.

It's a trap--give the subjects of the investigation (Kushner and Trump Jr.) the chance to back themselves into a corner by telling more stories. Consider how much Jr.'s story changed within one week--the more lies they tell, the easier it is to prove that they intended to deceive.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 9:01 PM on July 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Yes, the "authorized charge" is the amount the insurance company and the provider have agreed on for payment for that service. So the provider charged it, the insurer paid it, and your cost was $0 plus a bit of baffled annoyance.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:06 PM on July 14, 2017


And yes, even from a free-market fundamentalist perspective, the medical industry can never, ever be a transparent market because you don't know the price of anything before receiving the service(s) and sometimes you're not even conscious during it....
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:08 PM on July 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


So by releasing this info, has DJT Jr. Deep Throated himself?

And there's another Trump video I never ever want to see.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:11 PM on July 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


Damn, this letter from AHIP (the health insurer's trade association) and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Cruz amendment "is simply unworkable in any form."
posted by Chrysostom at 9:18 PM on July 14, 2017 [20 favorites]


I've said here before (3 times but it's worth repeating again, please don't delete me) that my father worked for 30 years as an Insurance Underwriter, mostly in Property or Liability Insurance. One of the few Capitalism-unfriendly things I ever heard him say was how Private Medical Insurance fails in the same model of all the other forms of Private Profit-Centered Insurance. "It just plain doesn't work." Years later, I got an Accounting job at a Life Insurance Company and discovered that opinion was/is pretty darn common among people in other Insurance fields. Medical is the black sheep of Insurance; all the insurance companies without a Medical subsidiary and even some that do have a Medical subsidiary would not mind if the business went away.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:19 PM on July 14, 2017 [26 favorites]


To spell it out for our right-wing-pundit friends, and our left-wing-everyone-does-it-pundit friends: It's more than clear everyone involved with Trump at that stage knew about this. I will lay good money on everyone's name being on the cc: or bcc: line.

Consider these points:
  1. There is no way anyone in this group has enough discipline to not send texts, email or other it-leaves-a-mark messages to each other planning and more importantly gloating about all of this stuff, and why shouldn't they, as:
  2. Greed recognizes greed. I think the Trumpers recognized the Republicans once they looked them in the eye. As an organizing body, elected officials, and an electorate, R's are Trump, with a very thin gloss of civility on the ugly. Trump and company saw that they would have cart blanche...
  3. Especially if/as their Russian handlers told them they need not worry, because any R who potentially might make noise would get an envelope of photos, or bank statements, or whatever it is that they're hiding:
  4. And they're all hiding something, Koch money and Roger Stone and the right-wing circus has seen to that. Just like they don't actually know or care about actually governing any longer, they no longer consider "law stuff" to apply to them. There has not been a penalty leaven against a serious right-wing crime in...30 years? 50 years?
My own feeling is the D's are not making more hay because nearly everyone, D or R, in DC has been delivered a note from the Russians telling them exactly what's going to the press if they rock the boat too much.

The sad thing is even if the ratio is 10:1, R crooks vs. D crooks, that's way more than enough to get the press to say "welp, there's no difference". (Expect a lot of sympathetic R noise on their "soft" Fox, NPR.)
posted by maxwelton at 9:21 PM on July 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


I remember reading something a few years back by someone who had worked at a hospital as part of the panel setting the chargemaster prices. My takeaway from the story was that the process for setting the prices is even more insane than what people here are suggesting; that basically, no one actually knows what anything really costs, and so the chargemaster prices reflect a combination of estimates, bluffs, political calculations, negotiations between departments, and so on. I also have a vague memory that the only thing which provides some semblance of stable ground truth to the process is Medicare's pricing.

If I can find the article I'll post a link. There's probably a 75% chance I originally saw it on the Blue during the development of Obamacare.
posted by biogeo at 9:29 PM on July 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


ELECTIONS NEWS

** Healthcare:
-- Kaiser Health poll has Trumpcare at 61% unfavorable, 44% at VERY unfavorable.

-- Vox poll has 14% of *Trump voters* fearing that Trumpcare will make them worse off.
** Kobach commission -- Suit filed by Common Cause to block voter data collection by the commission as a violation of the Privacy Act.

** 2020 Senate:
-- Fabrizio Lee (R) poll shows McCaskill losing in MO to AG Josh Hawley. Hawley is probably the leading candidate for the GOP nod at this point, but he's been waffling in part because he thinks otherwise he'll get a nomination to the SCOTUS. [eyes emoji]

-- DKElections has a nice spreadsheet up for fundraising totals, if you are into such minutiae.
** Odds & ends:
-- FEC (read: GOP commissioners) rejects proposed rule-making addressing foreign interference in elections, at least for the time being.

-- TX redistricting trial should wrap tomorrow, ruling in the next few weeks. Then, no doubt, on to the SCOTUS.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:34 PM on July 14, 2017 [36 favorites]


Op-Ed Why did Don Jr.'s emails surface? Because Robert Mueller is already changing Washington's lying ways (LATimes)
And here is where Mueller’s investigation has rewritten the rule book for senior White House officials. To receive a security clearance, Kushner had to complete a form — the SF-86 — detailing, under penalty of perjury, every contact he had with foreign government officials in the last seven years. (I dealt with SF-86s as a deputy assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice.)

Prosecutions for lying on an SF-86 are rare, but they happen, and Kushner already has one strike against him: He first signed and submitted his SF-86 without listing more than 100 applicable contacts with foreign leaders or officials. His lawyer said the questionnaire was submitted prematurely; it took two tries to fully supplement it. The Trump Jr. emails reportedly surfaced when Kushner was going through his records as part of that process.

In a pre-Mueller world, Kushner might have approached the matter casually and, if anyone asked, pleaded ignorance and a busy schedule. That approach, however, is no longer feasible. In the midst of a wide-ranging criminal investigation, with multiple targets, the threat of a perjury prosecution is the sort of offense zealous and sophisticated federal prosecutors — and there is no doubt that Mueller’s team fits that description — could bring to bear.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:37 PM on July 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


I remember reading something a few years back by someone who had worked at a hospital as part of the panel setting the chargemaster prices. My takeaway from the story was that the process for setting the prices is even more insane than what people here are suggesting; that basically, no one actually knows what anything really costs, and so the chargemaster prices reflect a combination of estimates, bluffs, political calculations, negotiations between departments, and so on. I also have a vague memory that the only thing which provides some semblance of stable ground truth to the process is Medicare's pricing.

Anecdotally, all of my economics professors said the same when this came up in my degree program: 'the base prices are a negotiating position, not rooted in any factual calculation.' The idea was that various insurance companies could talk them down from that, but it was high enough that they'd still make whatever target profit they were hoping for. (Plus, not every insurance company could talk them down the same amount - bargaining power was strongly associated with pool size and whatnot.)

So... yeah, what I was taught basically tracks with this idea. (IIRC, this came up in dedicated industrial organization and public policy courses.)
posted by mordax at 9:49 PM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


When I worked for Major Healthcare Insurer, Medicare costs were generally the baseline you tried to negotiate down to, and the dance we did was in trying to tell potential clients we could get their employee premiums to X level with access to X hospitals and X number of in-network providers, when we had to negotiate constantly with hospitals and providers. Our side alone took a team of lawyers and accountants just to send out a standard proposal to the Podunk ISD or whatever. And every document was thick with footnotes, exceptions, exclusions and citations.

All of that dancing and negotiating, purportedly to save money, of course costs a shit-ton of money. Me and my team had to be paid, the lawyers, the accounts, the hospital's and doctor's lawyers and accountants, and the patient wasn't even at the table, except as represented by their employer.

I was so relieved to get out of that industry. Burn it down, give the people working in it jobs in setting up the new universal system (which is bound to need people to run it) and get care for everyone. We are way overdue.
posted by emjaybee at 9:57 PM on July 14, 2017 [69 favorites]


This is so stupid and idiotic. The Justice Department is now bothering the Supreme Court to, among other things, declare that grandparents aren't "close family" for the purpose of the travel ban (i.e. undo what the Hawaii judge did). Whether the Supreme Court, which contains a large number of grandparents, will be amused at having to rule on this again so soon remains to be seen.
posted by zachlipton at 9:59 PM on July 14, 2017 [34 favorites]


We are way overdue.

We really are, especially considering how the whole stupid employer-tethered system got started.
posted by mordax at 10:18 PM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


That AHIP / BlueCross letter is the first public thing we've heard from the insurers themselves, since this debacle began, innit?
posted by notyou at 10:38 PM on July 14, 2017


And there's no reason to expect that the fifth revision of their story is the true telling of events - it's only going to get worse.

In fact, every day it is more and more obvious that they will never, ever willingly be straight. They will tell us whatever they think we will believe, don't mind outright lying, and when caught, will only tell us another thing they think we will believe. At this point, it's outright disrespectful. They are literally saying they feel no need or desire to be honest, to our faces. I would fire an employee with that attitude, regardless of actual provable misdeeds*, immediately. I would go no-contact with a friend who treated me this way.

Guess what - they are my employees, but too many of my fellow employers are inexplicably not bothered by this. So frustrating.

*and it turns out there are a ridiculous number of actual misdeeds as well
posted by ctmf at 10:41 PM on July 14, 2017 [29 favorites]


It seems like they're not bothered by this because they mostly did not vote for Trump because he was the best choice. It doesn't sound like their support of him is falsifiable - there's nothing he can do that will make them turn against him. So it's not based on any kind of principle or logic.

The only thing you can do in this case is try and convince them they're suckers. That's pretty tricky, because people who are suckered don't want to acknowledge they're suckers, that's how making suckers works. The only thing I can think of that might work is to explain how the con works, because it moves the conversation abruptly from 'you are a sucker' to 'what is the difference between this actual con and the totally legitimate thing you believe'.
posted by Merus at 11:18 PM on July 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


That AHIP / BlueCross letter is the first public thing we've heard from the insurers themselves, since this debacle began, innit?

The insurers have put out a couple of fairly vague statements before, just stuff saying that they welcome the chance to work with Congress and share their concerns, etc..., but this is the first time they've been so directly clear in saying basically "knock it off with this Cruz Amendment crap because it's completely unworkable for us." Their approach, I've been told by someone in a position to know, has largely been to stay pretty low-key and try to influence the bill through quiet lobbying rather than make big public targets of themselves and screw up their tax cuts. It speaks to the awfulness of the Cruz plan, and the cover they got from the actuaries today, that they actually came out swinging on this.

The sense I have is that some insurance companies are more reliant on exchange plans, but I don't think most of the big players really don't care about the exchanges when it comes to their bottom line. A lot of insurance companies were losing money on exchange plans, or just starting to run them profitably, and outside of some places that do Medicaid managed care, they don't care about Medicaid cuts. Parts of the bill will be good for their profitability anyway. The big profits are in employer plans, and their main focus is in ensuring Congress doesn't screw that up for them.
posted by zachlipton at 11:25 PM on July 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Can someone explain to me where this "close family" thing even came from (w/r/t the travel ban)? Didn't the Supreme Court just say they needed to have a "bone fide relationship" with someone here? Where did close family even come from, and why was there no pushback? I have a bone fide relationship with a ton of people who aren't my family at all.
posted by Weeping_angel at 11:38 PM on July 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Medical is the black sheep of Insurance; all the insurance companies without a Medical subsidiary and even some that do have a Medical subsidiary would not mind if the business went away.

I spent a great deal of my career in insurance, finance, taxes, and banking.

The root cause of the issue of providing health-care are health-insurance companies who fuck up how we pay for it, for profit. Yes, we need the radical change of single payer/universal medicare.
posted by mikelieman at 5:01 AM on July 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


Can someone explain to me where this "close family" thing even came from (w/r/t the travel ban)? Didn't the Supreme Court just say they needed to have a "bone fide relationship" with someone here? Where did close family even come from, and why was there no pushback? I have a bone fide relationship with a ton of people who aren't my family at all.

Arrogance. They *added* the "Close Family Relationship != Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, etc." JUST TO BE DICKS.

There's a sub-reddit called /r/maliciouscompliance . That's what this is. I can't image the USSC is going to be happy about this, and I do imagine that the USSC's response will be not complimentary.
posted by mikelieman at 5:27 AM on July 15, 2017 [13 favorites]


I was so relieved to get out of that industry. Burn it down

This. I'm scheduled for hip surgery Wednesday, after 3 years of pain. After 3 doctors and 2 rounds of PT, I finally got the right diagnosis: torn labrum and hip dysplasia. I'm having "hip preservation" surgery to delay/avoid total hip replacement (a more expensive and risky surgery) at age 48.

Now, with less than a week to go until surgery, my insurance company is dithering on whether to authorize coverage. "You can have the surgery, but we might not pay for it."

This is after my husband has rearranged his schedule to care for me, I've pre-paid the hospital for $3500 of my co-insurance, have arranged for 5 weeks off work including coverage for my staff of 18, have bought $300 of home healthcare supplies, and arranged for paid care for my dogs so they don't knock me down when I'm on crutches. Oh, and that $3500 I pre-paid represents the remainder of this year's maximum out of pocket of $6000. All for my hip, and all only since January 1. This doesn't include the $500/month I pay in premiums.

My surgeon scheduled the surgery a month ago. According to what the nurse "case managers" at Anthem BCBS told me, their machinations to avoid payment include such long approval timelines that one month is not enough time for them to decide whether they will pay.

Eat a bowl of dicks, for-profit health insurance industry. I hope I live long enough to see you die the death you so richly deserve.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 6:00 AM on July 15, 2017 [138 favorites]


posted by ImproviseOrDie at 6:00 AM on July 15 [1 favorite +] [!]

eponyrageinducing then what the F do we get medical insurance for?! (rhetorical)

Improvise, I hope the surgery goes well. Though my situation isn't quite so dire, I can relate to the frustration and uncertainty caused by insurers (to the point of seriously considering going back to my country of birth, something I thought would never come up...).
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 6:30 AM on July 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


OnceUponATime: When I ask myself who could possibly have been savvy enough to actually pull this off, I always, always come back to Manafort and Sessions.

Good points. Apparently Manafort’s friendship with Roger Stone goes back just as far as with Sessions, and Stone was the one who brought Manafort to the Trump team.

Seeing more of the picture on the Bill Moyers timeline, and in light of the timing of the Guccifer disinfo smokescreen beginning just a week after the June 9 meeting, I think Stone is involved in the collusion as well.

As a quick Guccifer recap (I’d sorta forgotten myself): The DNC hack was in April, 2016 around the same time Stone brought Manafort to Team Trump, and US intel had more or less confirmed Russian origin in May. Then the June 9 Meeting. Then “Guccifer 2.0 shows up out of nowhere and tries to both take ownership of the hack, and claim they’re totally not Russian:

Business Insider:
Guccifer 2.0 has denied having any links to Russia. But digital fingerprints were left on the hacks that led the US intelligence community — as well as several private cybersecurity firms — to conclude that the cyberattacks were largely, if not entirely, carried out by two Russian intelligence groups.

Piecing together Guccifer's comments and cyber trails, experts soon began to agree that the self-proclaimed hacker was either a poser or the product of a Russian disinformation campaign. ThreatConnect, a cyber-security firm based in Arlington, Virginia, concluded that Guccifer 2.0 had been using the Russian-based Virtual Private Network service, Elite VPN, to secure their communications.
This seems to be the real meat of the collusion moving into the summer if Mueller can turn up enough evidence. I kept thinking Trump’s denial of the hacks’ Russian origin was just blanket denial, but now it looks more like he’s trying to stick to their playbook of an alternate reality of events that they cooked up with Guccifer as a “non-Russian” cover to start releasing all the hack data. Look how Roger Stone keeps insisting that Guccifer is (1) both the origin of the hacks, and (2) not Russian:

Aug 21 Maryland radio interview w/ Stone:
"The DNC leaks that nailed Deborah Wasserman Schultz in the heist against Bernie Sanders was not leaked by the Russians, it was leaked by Cruccifer [sic] 2, I should say hacked and leaked first by Cruccifer 2, well known hacker who is not in the employment of the Russians and then Wikileaks. So that whole claim is a canard.”
The blatant realtime workshopping of his phrasing to better fit their story is telling. But like the Manafort/Sessions mastermind theory, this is all just theorizing for now…
posted by p3t3 at 6:35 AM on July 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


Noah Rothman, Commentary: Trying to Defend the Indefensible - "Divided not just on how to defend Trump but whether to even bother."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:35 AM on July 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


When one of my friends was about to have hip surgery the insurance company started playing the we might not cover it game at close to the last minute. The surgery had been planned for close to a year and there was no real question that the insurance was on the hook for the cost. I'm guessing that this is a tactic that insurance companies use to delay having to pay for expensive surgeries, especially for elderly patients. There's no downside to forcing people to delay their surgeries and who knows maybe they'll die before you have to pony up.
posted by rdr at 6:37 AM on July 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


Yes, HOWEVER, when I get a bill from my hospital saying, "Your C-section cost $37,000 on our chargemaster, but out of the goodness of our hearts and the contracting skills of your lawyers we will only charge your insurance $21,000" and then my insurance company says "And your bit is $500," like that's pretty clear that the aspirin doesn't cost $9 even with all the delivery costs. At $21k the hospital's still making a profit (childbirth is a major profit center), and my insurer is making a profit (paying $21k vs my premiums), so whatever childbirth costs, it's considerably less than $21k -- and way, way, way less than the $37k they're charging uninsured women and bankrupting them with.

So I had to look up the costs of childbirth here in Denmark. A vaginal delivery (with pain relief but probably not with epidural), is about 2.600 dollars, and a caesarean is 5.400 dollars. As a citizen, you never really think about it, and they only calculate the costs for budgetary purposes.
When you come home, a special nurse will visit the next day and then as often as she deems necessary until the child is about a year, then the GP takes over for yearly visits for the next few years, but this is paid for by the municipality, not the hospital system, so there may be different levels of service depending on where you live. The nurse is mandated by law, and when the kids enter school, she follows them again till 9th grade.

Some Danish women are now choosing private clinics for more care - here it costs about 3.000 - 3.500 dollars for a vaginal delivery and about 6.000 for a c-section - if you can find someone who will do it, which seems to very difficult. Some regions will cover a natural birth in a private clinic as part of the public single payer insurance, others won't, and then you have to pay out of pocket. There are supplementary insurances, but they don't cover childbirth. They will not cover any type of elective surgery. (Danish healthcare is managed by 5 independent "regions" with pop about 1 mill +/- 200.000, and they have different procedures when those procedures aren't mandated by law). I guess this is where conservatives scream CHOICE!!!, but actually you can get procedures done in another region if you prefer: last year I went through a cancer-scare and chose to have the whole proces done in a smaller region for better care during the diagnostic phase. If there had been cancer, I would have "moved back" to my own region where the best surgeons are. The regions sometimes reimburse each other, but I'm pretty sure they didn't bother in my case (I had to procure the patient journal for my GP myself, a sign they didn't bother to communicate across regions).

For comparison with the US system: although some doctors and executives get paid a lot more in the US than in Denmark, the general level of wages and other costs like building construction and maintenance are much lower in the US (this depending on state and regional differences, but all are lower than in Denmark). Right now there is a big scandal here because two of the regions bought an American data management systems(why???), and that system don't function with Danish care management principles, which has taught me that here, it is commonplace to have several parallel procedures running which is what this American system cannot handle.
Medicine is a huge issue here as well, though, which is why I find the example of childbirth so good: there is rarely need for special new drugs when a normal child is born.
posted by mumimor at 6:43 AM on July 15, 2017 [27 favorites]


Eat a bowl of dicks, for-profit health insurance industry. I hope I live long enough to see you die the death you so richly deserve.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 6:00 AM on Ju


Surgeon here. I really want to type a lengthy response to this, but I'm on my phone and I don't have time at the moment. Suffice it to say, I agree whole-heartedly. I think I'll probably make less money in a single payer system but (1) it's way more fair and (2) I will get to spend my day taking care of patients instead of dealing with those fuckers.
posted by robstercraw at 7:08 AM on July 15, 2017 [132 favorites]


According to what the nurse "case managers" at Anthem BCBS told me, their machinations to avoid payment include such long approval timelines that one month is not enough time for them to decide whether they will pay.

When one of my friends was about to have hip surgery the insurance company started playing the we might not cover it game at close to the last minute.

I'm not questioning your experience or second guessing, I'll just say that I harassed my insurance company enough that a manager called me after business hours to apologize. My surgery was scheduled in a week and a half and their normal pre-auth time is two weeks, but they got it done in 72 hours. (It may have helped that I'd dropped the word "lawyer" and mentioned specific HHS regulations a few times so they knew what I was talking about.)
posted by AFABulous at 7:24 AM on July 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


The NYTimes has a follow-up this morning to the disclosure of Manafort's $17 million earnings from Ukraine (on 27Jun):
Huge Manafort Payment Reflects Murky Ukraine Politics
It features this hilarious fact:
In 2012, for example, the party reported annual expenses of about $11.1 million, based on the exchange rate at the time, excluding overhead. For the same year, Mr. Manafort reported income of $12.1 million from the party, the Justice Department filing shows.
Sounds legit.
posted by pjenks at 7:33 AM on July 15, 2017 [45 favorites]


I love you guys, but the sooner we can stop talking about health insurance, the happier I will be.

(This is tempered somewhat by the seemingly inexhaustible incandescant rage I have towards the administration and the never-ending entropic dissolution of sense, reason, kindness, and light that they cause.)
posted by petebest at 7:35 AM on July 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm not questioning your experience or second guessing, I'll just say that I harassed my insurance company enough that a manager called me after business hours to apologize. My surgery was scheduled in a week and a half and their normal pre-auth time is two weeks, but they got it done in 72 hours. (It may have helped that I'd dropped the word "lawyer" and mentioned specific HHS regulations a few times so they knew what I was talking about.)

What are the specific HHS regulations, please? I'll take all the ammo I can get. The only reason I have a prayer of even possibly, maybe, sort of kind of might have this surgery as scheduled Wednesday is because I pushed on the phone to make a nurse do "something I'm not supposed to do hahaha"--IM another nurse on shift to see if she'd "take a peek" at my case file.

"I love you guys, but the sooner we can stop talking about health insurance, the happier I will be."

I don't think you're going to be very happy. I will never stop talking about health insurance as long as I have to know some secret fucking code language, or threaten to sue or actually sue, to get the medical care I need. And this is BEFORE Trumpcare.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 7:47 AM on July 15, 2017 [36 favorites]


Said it before and I'll say it again, it's very weird and disconcerting to be frequently agreeing with Jennifer Rubin. But if nothing else, Trump has been a filter between relatively sane, comparatively decent Rs and the racist, fascist nutjobs of the majority.

The GOP’s moral rot is the problem, not Donald Trump Jr.
Let me suggest the real problem is not the Trump family, but the GOP. To paraphrase Brooks, “It takes generations to hammer ethical considerations out of a [party’s] mind and to replace them entirely with the ruthless logic of winning and losing.” Again, to borrow from Brooks, beyond partisanship the GOP evidences “no attachment to any external moral truth or ethical code.”

Let’s dispense with the “Democrats are just as bad” defense. First, I don’t much care; we collectively face a party in charge of virtually the entire federal government and the vast majority of statehouses and governorships. It’s that party’s inner moral rot that must concern us for now. Second, it’s simply not true, and saying so reveals the origin of the problem — a “woe is me” sense of victimhood that grossly exaggerates the opposition’s ills and in turn justifies its own egregious political judgments and rhetoric. If the GOP had not become unhinged about the Clintons, would it have rationalized Trump as the lesser of two evils? Only in the crazed bubble of right-wing hysteria does an ethically challenged, moderate Democrat become a threat to Western civilization and Trump the salvation of America.

Indeed, for decades now, demonization — of gays, immigrants, Democrats, the media, feminists, etc. — has been the animating spirit behind much of the right. It has distorted its assessment of reality, giving us anti-immigrant hysteria, promulgating disrespect for the law (how many “respectable” conservatives suggested disregarding the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage?), elevating Fox News hosts’ blatantly false propaganda as the counterweight to liberal media bias and preventing serious policy debate. For seven years, the party vilified Obamacare without an accurate assessment of its faults and feasible alternative plans. “Obama bad” or “Clinton bad” became the only credo — leaving the party, as Brooks said of the Trump clan, with “no attachment to any external moral truth or ethical code” — and no coherent policies for governing.

We have always had in our political culture narcissists, ideologues and flimflammers, but it took the 21st-century GOP to put one in the White House. It took elected leaders such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and the Republican National Committee (not to mention its donors and activists) to wave off Trump’s racists attacks on a federal judge, blatant lies about everything from 9/11 to his own involvement in birtherism, replete evidence of disloyalty to America (i.e. Trump’s “Russia first” policies), misogyny, Islamophobia, ongoing potential violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause (along with a mass of conflicts of interests), firing of an FBI director, and now, evidence that the campaign was willing to enlist a foreign power to defeat Clinton in the presidential election.

Out of its collective sense of victimhood came the GOP’s disdain for not just intellectuals but also intellectualism, science, Economics 101, history and constitutional fidelity. If the Trump children became slaves to money and to their father’s unbridled ego, then the GOP became slaves to its own demons and false narratives. A party that has to deny climate change and insist illegal immigrants are creating a crime wave — because that is what “conservatives” must believe, since liberals do not — is a party that will deny Trump’s complicity in gross misconduct. It’s a party as unfit to govern as Trump is unfit to occupy the White House. It’s not by accident that Trump chose to inhabit the party that has defined itself in opposition to reality and to any “external moral truth or ethical code.”
posted by chris24 at 8:01 AM on July 15, 2017 [110 favorites]


Quebec to offer abortion pill for free by early fall
By Andrea Bellemare, CBC

The abortion pill will be available to Quebec residents for free by early fall, Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette announced on Thursday.

"The government of Quebec has always been in favour of the right of women to choose, particularly in regards to abortion," said Barrette.

...

"We would have gone forward with this decision even if the price was on average a higher cost than the regular surgical procedure. We would have gone forward because we believe, again, that women in this province do have a choice and this is a choice," said Barrette.

Quebec's Health Ministry recently negotiated a bulk price for the drug with the manufacturer on behalf of all provinces but would not reveal the price when asked by CBC News, citing confidentiality.

Other provinces across Canada were waiting for Quebec to finish negotiations before determining if and when they'd be able to offer the pill free of charge.


This is just a regular small story coming out of a universal system. Decisions based on care rather than cost and negotiations are done on behalf of everybody. And this isn't meant as rah rah Canada, boo USA. I just thought it illustrative of the starkly different discussion that emerges from a such a system.
posted by phoque at 8:07 AM on July 15, 2017 [50 favorites]


I have a laparoscopy scheduled in three weeks to hopefully help my awful endometriosis.

Me: are you going to cover it?
Insurance: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And this is employer sponsored insurance, the best I could select because I am my own fucking employer. I come from socialist Europe and this whole fucking thing is criminal insanity.
posted by lydhre at 8:08 AM on July 15, 2017 [57 favorites]


demonization — of gays, immigrants, Democrats, the media, feminists, etc. — has been the animating spirit behind much of the right.

OK, but why?

the GOP became slaves to its own demons and false narratives.

That's some rich phrasing there.
posted by carsonb at 8:21 AM on July 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Scapegoating has always been an effective tool for manipulating relatively powerless people's righteous anger and turning it in on itself to sow social division. Power will opportunistically stoke and encourage any existing prejudices. History demonstrates that again and again.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:29 AM on July 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


posted by chris24 at 8:01 AM

I'm literally sitting here mouth agape while reading that from Rubin.

This is a divided country because there's a helluva lot people disagree on -- gun control, criminal justice, income redistribution, government regulation of markets, gay rights, legal abortion, recreational drugs, state schools overriding parents' total control of their children's indoctrination wrt science/philosophy, etc. etc.

The battle lines are there. How can we not have another war?
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:35 AM on July 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm somewhat obsessed with Sylvester Pennoyer, who was governor of Oregon for two terms and mayor of Portland for one in the late nineteenth century. He was an anti-Chinese demagogue, and rose to political power on a platform that was mostly anti-Chinese and pro-white-worker. It's fascinating to me that he could have had so much power emanating from this platform, especially as this was during the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act and there were all sorts of laws prohibiting Chinese from say, working on public work projects in Portland. I guess what I mean to say, that being anti-Chinese wasn't some radical position of the time--as shown by the federal Exclusion Act. Maybe I've answered my own question here: the Exclusion Act shows just how pervasive the bias was.

Pennoyer was able to ride that anti-Chinese sentiment into higher office, where he did all sorts of embarrassing bullshit. He was able to hold political office until just about the time of his death. The Oregonian was hating on him every day, but people were still voting for him.

Growing up in Oregon from 1970 on, I learned vaguely that the Chinese had been mistreated out west, but it wasn't until like a week ago I knew that they'd been herded from their homes and put on boats that went out to sea. It wasn't until I told my mom all this stuff that she told me that my great-grandmother had hated the Chinese, for reasons mysterious to my mother and never internalized by her. But that anti-Chinese stuff with my great-grandmother, it had to be 1950-60, long after the Exclusion Act had been rescinded. So even though the anti-Chinese sentiment seems bonkers, it was that entrenched.

Of course Pennoyer was a Democrat, because this was the late 1880s. He was a complete opportunist. He was involved in a bunch of enterprises and was a wealthy man.

With the over one-hundred year lens, it's understandable that a creep like Pennoyer would take advantage of ugly political winds and use them to amass power. He was Trump-like in that he had a feud with the courts, and lawyers here probably know about Pennoyer v. Neff. He used an inaugural speech to call for the impeachment of the federal judge who ruled against him in that case, prior to its reaching the Supreme Court.

What is not clear to this person looking back on it is why were people so freaked out by the Chinese. Other than the ugly thing that the Chinese who immigrated at that time retained many of their cultural practices, and there was not the assimilation that you had with say, the Irish. The Chinese were the Other to a lot of Oregonians, and that was enough to cause riots and do shit like (maybe) burn down a big chunk of Portland in the 80's-90's sometime.

I fear that when people look back at this time, they'll wonder why, for example, our Congressional representatives are close to passing a bill that is despised by a large majority of the country, they'll shake their head and mutter something about the fear of the Other. I don't know if the Other is this sort of conceptual ball of Obama and Muslims and Mexicans, or what. But it feels like some particular drug, maybe in addiction to cocaine and gin, is driving this anti healthcare shit, and it seems like fear of the Other is the only thing that makes sense.
posted by angrycat at 8:35 AM on July 15, 2017 [27 favorites]


I love you guys, but the sooner we can stop talking about health insurance, the happier I will be

Until the particular strain of rabies that has infected the GOP with the urge to inflict punitive reversals of the ACA upon an unwilling populace is allowed to die out - and it's been replicating itself since 2008 quite successfully - you can expect to hear about healthcare over and over again.

I'd settle for not hearing about medical bankruptcies and deaths. But it seems clear that this congress is rabidly determined to bring those back, if not in this legislative act and session, in the next, or the next after that. They want their tax cuts and their retribution of Obama, that badly. None of us, nay democracy, can stop those few rabid zombies.

Rabies is incurable.
posted by Dashy at 8:52 AM on July 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


"The government of Quebec has always been in favour of the right of women to choose, particularly in regards to abortion," said Barrette.

I love that the framing of this is that women in Quebec are free and that freedom includes abortion rather than it simply being that women are free to have abortions. I could almost imagine Simone de Beauvoir telling Jean-Paul Sartre.

I am also thankful that Canada has Quebec to pull them to the left.
posted by srboisvert at 8:56 AM on July 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


Surgeon here. I really want to type a lengthy response to this, but I'm on my phone and I don't have time at the moment. Suffice it to say, I agree whole-heartedly. I think I'll probably make less money in a single payer system but (1) it's way more fair and (2) I will get to spend my day taking care of patients instead of dealing with those fuckers.

I would love to see a longer response if you get time.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 8:58 AM on July 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


What are the specific HHS regulations, please?

My surgery was transgender related and the regulation pertains to non-discrimination based on gender identity and other classes (race, religion, etc). If you feel like this is discrimination related, tell them you're talking to the ACLU and mention HHS 1557. Otherwise I can't help you. :(

posted by AFABulous at 9:00 AM on July 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Mod note: A few deleted. "Split the US into territories by political party" is a suggestion, joke or not, that we've drearily covered a bunch of times; short version, there are downsides. Let's skip having the same fight again.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:05 AM on July 15, 2017 [17 favorites]


The health insurance discussion is far from a derail, really. It's at the heart of who we are as a country.

I'd like to see an American Citizen try to seek political asylum in a sane country, claiming medical persecution, for having a medical condition that our system refuses to treat, due to lack of money. "They're forcing me to die because I can't afford the treatment."

Or, how about this: let's "privatize" the entire US healthcare industry, and contract out the entire operation to someone who's got this figured out. Like maybe France, or Korea.
posted by yesster at 9:11 AM on July 15, 2017 [16 favorites]


What is not clear to this person looking back on it is why were people so freaked out by the Chinese. Other than the ugly thing that the Chinese who immigrated at that time retained many of their cultural practices, and there was not the assimilation that you had with say, the Irish.

From the Wikipedia article on antiziganism:
In the United States during Congressional debate in 1866 over the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which would subsequently grant citizenship to all persons born within U.S. territory, an objection raised was that a consequence of enacting the amendment would be to grant citizenship to Gypsies and other undesirable groups.

Pennsylvania Senator Edgar Cowan stated,
...I am as liberal as anybody toward the rights of all people, but I am unwilling, on the part of my State, to give up the right that she claims, and that she may exercise, and exercise before very long, of expelling a certain number of people who invade her borders; who owe her no allegiance; who pretend to owe none; who recognize no authority in her government; who have a distinct, independent government of their own—an imperium in imperio; who pay no taxes; who never perform military service; who do nothing, in fact, which becomes a citizen, and perform none of the duties which devolve upon him, but, on the other hand, have no homes, pretend to own no land, live nowhere, settle as trespassers where ever they go, and whose sole merit is a universal swindle; who delight in it, who boast of it, and whose adroitness and cunning is of such a transcendent character that no skill can serve to correct or punish it; I mean the Gypsies. They wander in gangs in my State... These people live in the country and are born in the country. They infest society.
In response Senator John Conness of California observed,
I have lived in the United States now many a year, and really I have heard more about Gypsies within the last two or three months than I have heard before in my life. It cannot be because they have increased so much of late. It cannot be because they have been felt to be particularly oppressive in this or that locality. It must be that the Gypsy element is to be added to our political agitation, so that hereafter the negro alone shall not claim our entire attention.
The citation goes to a contemporary volume of the Congressional Globe, which I gather was like the Congressional Record of today, and IIRC there's similar derogatory discussion of Chinese-Americans in the context of the 14th Amendment in the surrounding pages. (N.B. the quotes above are of course old-timey language; many Romani regard the term "Gypsy" to be a slur.)
posted by XMLicious at 9:16 AM on July 15, 2017 [16 favorites]


I have been following the news closely for a long time. What is interesting to me right now is I can no longer tell if things are getting better for the Trump administration or those opposed to it. The future is always uncertain, but I have usuall been able to tell if things were getting better, worse or remaining flat for previous administrations and in previous political periods. Right now the uncertainty and tension is just ramping up day by day.

On the one hand I feel every scandal this administration surivives, even for another day or another news cycle, further strengthens their grip on power. Each day they are allowed gives them time to further gut the DOJ, install new judges, eliminate more oversight, strong arm individual politicians and normalize their behavior. And each scandal they survive and each lie they are allowed to tell increases the appearance of invincibiliy. They have learned that resignations and recusals are less effective than outright refusal to acknowledge reality, let alone law. It's a vicious, decaying orbit ending in complete corruption.

On the other hand, outside of the GOP and core Trump supporters, there is a strong, stubborn resistance. It hasn't brought responsibility to bear yet, but this resistance did not exist in a similar way in the U.S. during the darkest years of W's administration. The press and public were completely cowed for years following 9/11. While today's propaganda keeps the administration supporters up to date on the current goal post positions, the resistance seems engaged in a collective effort to connect the dots and disseminate information. The number of dots connected by common citizens regarding the collusion is pretty remarkable, as is the number of damaging leaks. The press also seems resolute in a way they never were during W. The administration is constantly responding to the leak of the day and they seem completely out of their depth. The number of indictable offenses ticks up reliably each day, as do the people who appear to be cooperating with investigations. But does it matter if what I said above is true? Yes, no, both, maybe, up, down, left, right, B, A. I can't tell.

At its core, the resistance is searching for resolution through the existing institutions and channels, the same institutions and channels that are being dismantled day by day. I'm not suggesting a resolution should be sought elsewhere but it feels like a risky wager. A lot of faith was put in Comey and now Mueller. What happens when Mueller is inevitably fired or worse just dies in a weird car crash? Or what happens when Mueller gets a grand jury to indict someone who is immediately pardoned or worse yet completely ignores the indictment with no repercussions? What happens after interference in the 2018 elections?

It all feels like a horrifying race by each side to prove the strength or weakness of the remaining institutions. The administration seems both incredibly weak and completely untouchable, and I can't tell which one is true. Maybe both. But what I do know is the scales will eventually tip one way or the other, even if that takes longer than any of us can envision. When it does begin to tip, I think that is when Act 3 of this horrible tragedy will finally begin.
posted by milarepa at 9:17 AM on July 15, 2017 [42 favorites]



Surgeon here. I really want to type a lengthy response to this, but I'm on my phone and I don't have time at the moment. Suffice it to say, I agree whole-heartedly. I think I'll probably make less money in a single payer system but (1) it's way more fair and (2) I will get to spend my day taking care of patients instead of dealing with those fuckers.

I would love to see a longer response if you get time


IANAD, but I have close personal and professional relationships with dozens, along with many other non-MD healthcare providers. I know this is anecdata, but whenever the subject of "single payer" comes up, this has unequivocally been their response: "I'll make less money, and I think it's the only solution."

(This is probably says something about the people who choose to get into healthcare, and the ones I choose to hang around with, but still.)
posted by Kibbutz at 9:23 AM on July 15, 2017 [16 favorites]


It took elected leaders such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and the Republican National Committee (not to mention its donors and activists) to wave off Trump’s [list of bullshit moves]..."

Chapter the Nth on why Jennifer Rubin is bad: bullshit savior stories. Politics is a matter of perspective, but floating trial balloons and standing around to write your name on them when they pop (stay with me here) is not the same as not floating them in the first place. The President is the leader of their party, she doesn't get to say, "Whew! I'm glad we still have the good ones to keep things sane." Because that is...not what is occurring, despite the minutes she puts into her op-ed work.

tl;dr: She's a party operative working the fence. "Hey, remember there are some good ones." No, I won't. You want to do some good, start splitting off. Use your power to do good, not just not-do-bad.
posted by rhizome at 9:26 AM on July 15, 2017 [17 favorites]


What is interesting to me right now is I can no longer tell if things are getting better for the Trump administration or those opposed to it.
The nature of this administration obscures any normal gauge of success.
They never thought they would have this responsibiity (governing), just be able to reap the monetary gains from having campaigned like the bullies they are.
They are the proverbial mob that takes over the indebted restaurant. As long as it seems profitable, they will maintain it, trying to wring more lucre out of the situation.
After that you just hire someone to light a match and walk away.
Adding to the confusion is the vanity of the mob boss, which has to be catered to in any public discussion he's aware of, but is ultimately ephemeral, if loud and distracting.
posted by rc3spencer at 9:29 AM on July 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


It all feels like a horrifying race by each side to prove the strength or weakness of the remaining institutions.

Yeah, I'm not enjoying this process of waiting to see if our institutions will survive or crumble. A lot of smart people seem to think they will survive. But what choice do they have? As soon as you say "our system is going to fall apart if the current trajectory continues," you're forced to proceed to some pretty heavy conclusions and the actions that would flow from those conclusions.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's human nature to assume things won't fall apart until they actually do.

Damn, this went in a gloomy direction.

In conclusion, it kinda sucks when the question is "will our institutions survive?" and the answer is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by diogenes at 9:34 AM on July 15, 2017 [23 favorites]


It's a vast misstatement to call Quebec leftist. They are home to some of our most vile and widespread xenophobic sentiment, as one counterexample.
posted by Yowser at 9:37 AM on July 15, 2017 [11 favorites]


Interesting editorial from Rand Paul that I did not see upthread.

I can have an honest debate with socialists about whether one can have a right that confers an obligation on another individual, but I really can't even admit any intellectual honesty to those in Congress who now argue that the federal government has a responsibility to confer profit to a profitable industry.

The current Senate GOP healthcare bill creates a giant insurance bailout superfund of nearly $200 billion.

Big Insurance whines that they lose money in the individual market, while carefully leaving out the fact that they make enormous profits in group insurance markets that comprise about 90 percent of the private insurance marketplace.

As a believer in free markets and capitalism, I favor no federal government intervention in the insurance marketplace. But if Senate Republicans now accept a prominent role for government in the insurance marketplace, maybe Big Insurance should just be told, "Hey, the ‘insurance stabilization fund' is going to be financed by your $15 billion in profits." Government could simply forbid them from selling group insurance unless they agree to subsidize the individual market.

Now, I don't favor such a mandate. But if I were forced to choose between asking the taxpayer to fork over $200 billion to subsidize Big Insurance or mandating that insurance companies subsidize those with pre-existing conditions, I'd choose taking the money out of their profit, without question.

posted by rednikki at 9:37 AM on July 15, 2017 [47 favorites]


It all feels like a horrifying race by each side to prove the strength or weakness of the remaining institutions.

I think that's exactly what it is.

And I've been thinking about the weaknesses all of this is showing in democracy as a system. If it can't protect us from this what good is it?

But then I think... okay, it's a race to stop the fascists before they can undermine the institutions we can use to stop them. On the other hand... Democracy is what has given us this window of time in which we can act.

The institutions of democracy have some inertia. While it lasts we can use that momentum. The question is which will run out first, that momentum or the energies of the people trying to stop it.

And we can add our own energy to keep it going longer.
posted by OnceUponATime at 9:40 AM on July 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


IANAD, but I have close personal and professional relationships with dozens, along with many other non-MD healthcare providers. I know this is anecdata, but whenever the subject of "single payer" comes up, this has unequivocally been their response: "I'll make less money, and I think it's the only solution."

Another data point. In the past ten years there have been two American doctors that have come to my rural area and worked their last few years before retiring. Both said they chose to come here to finish their career because although they made less money it was easier all round and they were tired of the moral and ethical stress the US system put them through. They loved our system so much and said it was such a relief to work in.
posted by Jalliah at 9:46 AM on July 15, 2017 [16 favorites]


> I can have an honest debate with socialists about whether one can have a right that confers an obligation on another individual, but I really can't even admit any intellectual honesty to those in Congress who now argue that the federal government has a responsibility to confer profit to a profitable industry.

This is how Rand Paul is a libertarian; he's fond of making arguments that appear to appeal to first principles but instead ignore reality altogether. (I don't think he believes a word he's saying; he's a Senator, well-accustomed with how legislatures work, not some 19 year old redditor who's just discovered classical liberalism).

Yes, there's no "intellectual honesty" to the position, but that's because the position's not about intellectual coherence, it's about responding to extant conditions. Under extant conditions for-profit insurers own like one and two/thirds of the two major parties, and nothing can get done without either providing them with a profitable means of providing insurance to all Americans, or else doing away with them altogether by nationalizing the industry.

Obviously, I'm in favor of nationalizing the industry. But that doesn't mean I'm not also in favor of the ACA. Socialists, and even liberals, differ from libertarians in that we're capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time; libertarians get tripped up when they try this difficult task because they're too distracted with dressing up nonsense as "first principles."
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:46 AM on July 15, 2017 [23 favorites]


It all feels like a horrifying race by each side to prove the strength or weakness of the remaining institutions.

The donor class (donors and politicians both) is screwing over the little guy any way they can. "Each side" is merely engaging in a Biggie-Tupac battle to distract the little people from this.
posted by rhizome at 9:47 AM on July 15, 2017


The donor class (donors and politicians both) is screwing over the little guy any way they can. "Each side" is merely engaging in a Biggie-Tupac battle to distract the little people from this.

That is always true, more or less, but I think however satisfying the simplification is, it does an injustice to the complexity of reality. Even inside the donor class, there are competing powers and conflicting goals. To simply hand wave the entirety of the current social and international conflict away like that is not particularly helpful or insightful, despite its kernel of truth.
posted by milarepa at 10:04 AM on July 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


Chapter the Nth on why Jennifer Rubin is bad: bullshit savior stories. Politics is a matter of perspective, but floating trial balloons and standing around to write your name on them when they pop (stay with me here) is not the same as not floating them in the first place. The President is the leader of their party, she doesn't get to say, "Whew! I'm glad we still have the good ones to keep things sane." Because that is...not what is occurring, despite the minutes she puts into her op-ed work.

tl;dr: She's a party operative working the fence. "Hey, remember there are some good ones." No, I won't. You want to do some good, start splitting off. Use your power to do good, not just not-do-bad.


Pretty sure that's not what she's saying. The sentence you quoted is preceded by this one: "We have always had in our political culture narcissists, ideologues and flimflammers, but it took the 21st-century GOP to put one in the White House." It's denigrating Paul Ryan etal, not valorizing them.

link to the op-ed in case anyone doesn't want to scroll up
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 10:30 AM on July 15, 2017 [17 favorites]


Even inside the donor class, there are competing powers and conflicting goals

The fact that generalizations break down upon examination does not preclude the historical trend of handing out tax-breaks to rich people and breadcrumbs (or less) to everybody else. It's literally anathema in the US to suggest raising taxes to do something about poor people having to buy new tires all the time because the roads suck (to give one example of cascading effects), and this isn't even getting into healthcare. The fact that the profit motive continues to drive healthcare policy in this country is a crime against its citizens. It's not about "gosh, people are trying" competing powers, it's about being visibly committed and having some principles, "principles" being what you are willing to die for.

Who is the billionaire using their money and reputation as a rich person to stop police from systematically murdering black people with impunity? Asset forfeiture? Nope, all policy change in these areas happens through the efforts of pro-bono lawyers and other volunteers.

Oh but let's shed a tear for the invisible Cadillac who means well.
posted by rhizome at 10:31 AM on July 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


It's denigrating Paul Ryan etal, not valorizing them.

When ascribing the power to "wave away" all of those troublesome policy suggestions once it was apparent that people didn't want them? That's pointing the arrow of causality in the wrong direction. This was the nut of my terrible balloon metaphor: people said "your idea sucks" and some frat boy takes credit for taking the temperature of the people and finding support wanting. That's just the party seeing what they can get away with.

I don't see any denigration of Paul Ryan at all, quite the opposite: she's trying to save the party that is doing all of the things she says (implies, really) are bad. Pence et al still exist, after all, and I'm not even getting into her use of David Brooks as a foundation here.
posted by rhizome at 10:46 AM on July 15, 2017


Substitute "ignore" for "wave off" and it's easier to understand Rubin's meaning. She's totally trashing every aspect of the current Republican party.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:56 AM on July 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


In a way, all of these threads boil down to what milarepa said above. Should we still have hope that we'll have a functioning country at some point? Well, we can't really tell yet. Maybe because we're too reluctant to admit we are all doomed, or maybe because it's just too chaotic. Which way you lean depends on how pessimistic/optimistic you are that day.

When the needle swings too much to "doomed" is when I close this thread and go watch Steven Universe or do something else that makes life bearable.

Right now, the insurance companies calling out Cruz give me some slight hope. I keep calling him and Cornyn every day, and yesterday both of them had full voicemail boxes, so I know I'm not the only one.
posted by emjaybee at 11:06 AM on July 15, 2017 [22 favorites]


Substitute "ignore" for "wave off" and it's easier to understand Rubin's meaning

Thanks for simplifying it for us rubes.

So if poor people were like "fuck no, I don't want health insurance" it would be fine to take it away, and further to Rubin's point, for the party to embrace that?

Look at it this way: what is she standing up for? A party that for all their vaunted fortitude can't do anything about their wack-ass leader. If only he wasn't so troublesome they could really have the best Republican Party! Grrr!

And yeah, on preview: the insurance companies really turned the screws in a tangible way, but I think we'll see the
Republican pundits singing their praises for acting on basic (capitalist, natch) math just about as quickly as the NRA commented on concealed-carry-licensed Philando Castile's murder. Which is to say "it'll be a while."
posted by rhizome at 11:15 AM on July 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Quebec to offer abortion pill for free by early fall

Bring on the French Canadian drug trebuchets.
posted by acb at 11:25 AM on July 15, 2017 [50 favorites]


Thanks for simplifying it for us rubes.

I was trying to clarify an ambiguous phrase. Apologies if it came off as condescending.


Look at it this way: what is she standing up for? A party that for all their vaunted fortitude can't do anything about their wack-ass leader. If only he wasn't so troublesome they could really have the best Republican Party! Grrr!

I'm not sure why you think she's defending the party that she says has “no attachment to any external moral truth or ethical code," but whatever. I disagree with most of her positions but she's in stopped-clock mode at the moment.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:38 AM on July 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


Also gonna re-pitch something I've recommended before, the brilliant and recently deceased Patrick Wolfe, in the Journal of Genocide Research 8(4) in 2006: "Settler Colonialism and the Elimnation of the Native."

A book along the same lines is The American West and the Nazi East: A Comparative and Interpretive Perspective. Good stuff.

One useful lens for understanding the world wars is European colonialism turning on itself after there was nothing external left to lay claim to.
posted by Coventry at 11:39 AM on July 15, 2017 [14 favorites]


Oh but let's shed a tear for the invisible Cadillac who means well.

That's not close to a fair characterization of what I said. I'm sorry if the world I experience doesn't perfectly align with your simplification. There's no need to be a dick about it though.
posted by milarepa at 11:43 AM on July 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Bring on the French Canadian drug trebuchets.

Drones might be more appropriate.
posted by Surely This at 12:05 PM on July 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Drones might be more appropriate.

Railguns.

With bumper stickers saying "Not your grandfather's steam-powered drug launching cannon!"
posted by Buntix at 12:07 PM on July 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


I love you guys, but the sooner we can stop talking about health insurance, the happier I will be

Yeah, I know it's incredbly important because the Yertles are trying to murder many for profit. Agreed that should be shut down, packed with wax - with McConnell inside it - and launched into the sun. It's just not as fun a topic as the other heinous nation-destroying antics of Duhr Trumpenfuhrer.

As you were.

posted by petebest at 12:15 PM on July 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Good news for border residents: No one is throwing 60-pound bags of drugs over a 50-foot wall
Let’s set aside how the majority of drugs that are smuggled into the United States across the southern border come through existing checkpoints and not in areas where the border is unprotected. Could a drug smuggler who chose to tackle the wall actually throw a bag of drugs that high?
The Washington Post, which also compiled all of Trump's statements about the wall to track its ever-increasing height.

Trump admits his border wall could be defeated by medieval siege technology
posted by kirkaracha at 12:19 PM on July 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


I'm certain that Rubin is criticizing Ryan and the GOP for brushing aside ("wave off") each of Trump's awful actions and remarks. She's saying they provided him cover: it's the rotten GOP that has led to and elevated Trump.
posted by orange ball at 12:26 PM on July 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


I'm certain that Rubin is criticizing Ryan and the GOP for brushing aside ("wave off") each of Trump's awful actions and remarks. She's saying they provided him cover: it's the rotten GOP that has led to and elevated Trump.

That's exactly what she's doing; rhizome is misreading her column. The entire thing is decrying the moral and ethical bankruptcy of the GOP and its responsibility for Trump, which she traces back to when the party lost its fucking marbles over Clinton.
posted by FelliniBlank at 12:31 PM on July 15, 2017 [20 favorites]


Simple bumper sticker for 2018 (or for right now):

G. O. P.

Groupies of Putin
posted by yesster at 12:41 PM on July 15, 2017 [14 favorites]


Daily Beast: Trump Campaign Paid Don Jr.’s Lawyer $50,000 Two Weeks Before Email Scandal
posted by PenDevil at 12:47 PM on July 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


@SethAbramson tweetdump lays out the accessory to espionage charges that Trump Jr et. al. are open to.
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:52 PM on July 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


Well, I'm not the biggest fan by far but . . if anyone has been vindicated by the last two weeks in twitterdom. Its Seth A.
posted by rc3spencer at 1:20 PM on July 15, 2017 [2 favorites]




Heywood Mogroot III: The battle lines are there. How can we not have another war?

Because it's one thing to hate on people who you can identify as different than you, even people in your own family, but takes a lot of hate, and planning, to wage a full-on war.

There are plenty of "battle lines" drawn between disagreeing factions in communities and countries around the world. But going from "angry at another group" to "wanting to kill enough of another group so they say 'we give up, you win, you get to make the rules now' " is a lot more than simple "battle lines."
posted by filthy light thief at 1:58 PM on July 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


For more context of what finally triggers a civil war, you can look at any of the long (but not that long) list of civil wars on Wikipedia.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:00 PM on July 15, 2017


Aisha Sultan tweeting yesterday: My British-born husband takes his oath of citizenship today. In the packet for new Americans, the welcome letter from POTUS is from Obama. Pic included.

As someone who meets a lot of new citizens through my job, it's readily apparent that the New Citizen packets are pre-assembled and warehoused in great quantities. I spent a good portion of 2016 telling passport applicants that the DS-11 application they received as part of their packet was probably already expired and to make sure to print out a new one from the State Dept website.

Nevertheless, I am very happy for the Citizens who don't have to be welcomed to their country by President Pussy Grabber.
posted by carsonb at 2:03 PM on July 15, 2017 [17 favorites]


which she traces back to when the party lost its fucking marbles over Clinton.

Which led to the creation and launch of Fox News (Oct '96) to weaponize and perpetuate the crazy.
posted by chris24 at 2:04 PM on July 15, 2017 [7 favorites]






There are plenty of "battle lines" drawn between disagreeing factions in communities and countries around the world. But going from "angry at another group" to "wanting to kill enough of another group so they say 'we give up, you win, you get to make the rules now' " is a lot more than simple "battle lines."

If the USA were to devolve into sectarian violence I don't think the trigger would be one group simply being angry at another group, it would be one group rightfully feeling that the entire political system has become illegitimate in close to the same way that Apartheid was illegitimate. The way to head it off would be for the Republicans to voluntarily give up a stranglehold on power by allowing electoral reform, just as the white minority in SA eventually voluntarily (sorta) gave up power.

But a political system in which a minority government maintains a stranglehold on power through archaic, racist, and anti-democratic electoral systems is destined for either reform or violence.
posted by Justinian at 2:13 PM on July 15, 2017 [29 favorites]


I've declared before that Feudalism is the ultimate form of Capitalism, and that's a very minority-controlled government that lasted a long time without much reform or violence. Which made the rise of Trump particularly disturbing, and the prospect of his replacement by "a better billionaire" even worse.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:28 PM on July 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


and that's a very minority-controlled government that lasted a long time without much reform or violence.

There are, thankfully, some rather important differences between the 21st century and say the 14th century. What is the most modern country that has maintained a feudalist system? Czarist Russia?
posted by Justinian at 2:50 PM on July 15, 2017


Saudi Arabia is pretty damn close to a feudalist state. They have to import most of their serfs though.
posted by cmfletcher at 3:19 PM on July 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


What is the most modern country that has maintained a feudalist system?

Crowd; U. S. A.!! U.S.A.!!
posted by stonepharisee at 3:19 PM on July 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


What is the most modern country that has maintained a feudalist system? Czarist Russia?

Depends on how you define country, but the island of Sark was considered a feudal state until 2008. It was an almost sui generis case, though, and mostly inconsequential except to the ~600 people living there.

It was not a complete feudal system, but Iceland had a form of serfdom (vistarband) until 1894. Serfdom existed in most of what became Yugoslavia until the Agrarian Reform of 1919.

I've declared before that Feudalism is the ultimate form of Capitalism, and that's a very minority-controlled government that lasted a long time without much reform or violence.

I can kinda sorta buy 'not much reform', but 'not much violence' is not well supported by history. The feudal states of medieval Europe were regularly wracked by civil wars, violent struggles over succession, and peasant rebellions.
posted by jedicus at 3:21 PM on July 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


Scotland still struggled with feudal land tenure into the 1920s, I believe.
posted by rc3spencer at 3:22 PM on July 15, 2017


@SethAbramson tweetdump lays out the accessory to espionage charges that Trump Jr et. al. are open to.

Think you meant this. (It's good.)
posted by Coventry at 3:34 PM on July 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


angrycat: "I'm somewhat obsessed with Sylvester Pennoyer, who was governor of Oregon for two terms and mayor of Portland for one in the late nineteenth century. He was an anti-Chinese demagogue,...Of course Pennoyer was a Democrat, because this was the late 1880s.

Actually he quit the Democratic party for the Populist Party early in his second term. Per wikipedia he blocked a big gun salute for Democrat Grover Cleveland's inaurguration saying "No permission will be given to use state cannon for firing a salute over the inauguration of a Wall Street plutocrat as president of the United States.”

While Oregon's history toward the Chinese is ugly, the center of anti-Chinese sentiment was California. Pennoyer wasn't elected until several years after the federal Chinese Exclusion Act was passed.
With the post-Civil War economy in decline by the 1870s, anti-Chinese animosity became politicized by [San Francisco] labor leader Denis Kearney [namesake of Kearney Street] and his Workingman's Party as well as by California Governor John Bigler, both of whom blamed Chinese "coolies" for depressed wage levels. Another significant anti-Chinese group organized in California during this same era was the Supreme Order of Caucasians, with some 60 chapters statewide.
posted by msalt at 3:37 PM on July 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Former Department of Energy intelligence director Rolf Mowatt-Larssen in the Washington Post: Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting sure sounds like a Russian intelligence operation
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:44 PM on July 15, 2017 [24 favorites]


Feudalism is the ultimate form of Capitalism,

As a Georgist I must stick my head above the parapet and say I think this is a mistake because Land isn't Capital.

I guess I should expand on that but it's late and I'm tired so I'm just gonna say Feudalism is pretty much what's wrong with everything today, in its "subtler" present-day forms.

I'm out, could the other Georgist please take the night shift kthxbai
posted by tel3path at 3:55 PM on July 15, 2017 [11 favorites]


Land isn't Capital.

It used to be, before it was expanded to other ownable stuff, which now includes Intellectual Property and other Data. "Knowledge is power." One of the best book titles I ever saw (and one that contributed to my thinking on the subject) was Douglas Copeland's "Microserfs". Still, Trump and his followers show that the most Powerful Knowledge is not necessarily truth-based.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:06 PM on July 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


>could the other Georgist

yo whattup.

I actually came in here to comment that feudalism happens when the land (and its wealth) gets captured by the oligarchs, forcing the hoi polloi to steadily increase their bid for land wealth as it is a quite limited (in supply vs. demand terms) resource.

Henry George in his first book tried to work from first principles and thus defined the factors of wealth production into Land, Labor, and Capital.

This is useful to a large extent but the resource rent-seekers who funded Neoclassical Economics wanted to elide the differentiation between Land and Capital since the rent-seekers wanted to hide behind the skirts of "honest" capitalists, those not engaging in strict zero-sum / milkshake-drinking games.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:16 PM on July 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


It was not a complete feudal system, but Iceland had a form of serfdom (vistarband) until 1894. Serfdom existed in most of what became Yugoslavia until the Agrarian Reform of 1919.

Also, many countries in Latin America. In many countries, agrarian labourers legally belonged to the land, and could not leave to try their luck elsewhere without permission from the landowners. This continued in some places until well into the 20th century (and was quite profitable for US agribusiness such as the United Fruit Company, hence the US-backed “anti-Communist” operations in the region).
posted by acb at 4:23 PM on July 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


The WaPo has an article about Trump's legal team that includes this tidbit:
Another question is who will pay the legal fees for the president and administration officials involved in the Russia inquiries. Some in Trump’s orbit are pushing the Republican National Committee to bear the costs, said three people with knowledge of the situation, including one who euphemistically described the debate as a “robust discussion.”

Although the RNC does have a legal defense fund, it well predates the Russia investigations and is intended to be used for legal challenges facing the Republican Party, such as a potential election recount.
They also have news that the Trump campaign is already paying Donald Jr's legal bills, transferring funds to his attorney nearly two weeks before the Russia meeting email surfaced:
President Trump’s campaign committee made a payment to the law firm of an attorney representing Donald Trump Jr. last month, nearly two weeks before it was announced that the same attorney would be representing the president's son in Russia-related probes, according to a new campaign finance report filed Saturday.

The committee reported in the filing to the Federal Election Commission that it paid $50,000 to the law firm of attorney Alan Futerfas on June 27. That payment was made 13 days before it was publicly revealed that Futerfas would represent Trump's eldest son in the Russia investigations.
And, because grifter's gonna grift, Trump's legal troubles have opened a new avenue for campaign funds to go into his own pockets:
The filing also revealed that the campaign committee paid the Trump Corporation — a company being run by Trump Jr. and his brother, Eric — more than $89,000 on June 30 for “legal consulting.” While the campaign committee has reimbursed Trump entities for services such as rent, air travel and hotel expenses in the past, it has not reported payments for legal fees, according to Federal Election Commission data.
posted by peeedro at 5:20 PM on July 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


This is an interesting wrinkle for McConnell's rush to get a health care vote this week. Sen McCain had a successful procedure to remove a blood clot and is going to be recovering at home in Arizona for the week. I wish the Senator well, note that he had health insurance to pay for it, and note that McConnell is now at least one vote down on the motion to proceed, at least for a week.

Call your Senators.
posted by zachlipton at 5:24 PM on July 15, 2017 [53 favorites]


From Thursday: Bannon misreports $2m debt on financial disclosure form (Center for Public Integrity)

I'm just so fucking shocked by this. No, shocked. Really.
posted by Sophie1 at 5:29 PM on July 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Is there any chance that McCain is faking a blood clot because he doesn't have the guts just to vote no?

Please call your senators. If you need a script, you can just say that everyone who cares about the health of Americans opposes this bill. The American Medical Association opposes it. Groups that represent hospitals oppose it. The American Academy of Actuaries says that it's actuarially unsound. Insurance companies joined together in an unprecedented show of unity to oppose it. The AARP opposes it. Groups that represent people with disabilities oppose it. Many Republican governors oppose it. The overwhelming majority of American voters oppose it. So why is Senator Whaterface planning to vote for it? Who is Senator Whasterface representing by voting for a bill that everyone realizes is terrible?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:32 PM on July 15, 2017 [24 favorites]


Australia's Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, is asked how she would react if Trump called her beautiful, as he did Brigitte Macron: "I'd be taken aback I think. It's a rather interesting comment to make. I wonder if I could say the same of him"

Meanwhile, Reebok has a helpful guide for when it is appropriate to say "you're in such good shape...beautiful".
posted by zachlipton at 5:40 PM on July 15, 2017 [26 favorites]


Sen McCain had a successful procedure to remove a blood clot and is going to be recovering at home in Arizona for the week.

So here's my reminder: contact your senators. Flood their voicemail/email/faxes this weekend. Have them start the week overwhelmed with our opposition to the BCRA.

-- Numbers for every office of every senator

-- Email addresses of all senate healthcare staffers

-- Free faxing to senators

-- Scripts and talking points (thanks Excommunicated Cardinal!) to help you decide what to say

Mods: I've posted most of this info earlier in this thread. If too repetitive, please feel free to delete and I apologize.
posted by mcduff at 5:46 PM on July 15, 2017 [19 favorites]


Sen McCain had a successful procedure to remove a blood clot and is going to be recovering at home in Arizona for the week.

It was a accumulation of concern that had to be removed before it blocked anything.
posted by srboisvert at 5:48 PM on July 15, 2017 [74 favorites]


I would recommend calling if you at all can, but Resistbot is also a very easy way to fax your senators.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:49 PM on July 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


If you use resistbot enough, you can unlock the option to send snail mail and phone calls.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 5:54 PM on July 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


I've declared before that Feudalism is the ultimate form of Capitalism, and that's a very minority-controlled government that lasted a long time without much reform or violence. Which made the rise of Trump particularly disturbing, and the prospect of his replacement by "a better billionaire" even worse.

Welcome to Illinois 2018, one of the overall financially poorest states in the union (beaten only by New Jersey), where voters will get to chose from a surfeit of billionaires.
posted by srboisvert at 5:55 PM on July 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


SakuraK: Great job sending your first faxes!

You can also call your governor and ask him/her to speak out and to lobby their colleagues in other states. Here's where you can get contact info for your governor.
posted by mcduff at 6:08 PM on July 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Pence is now saying we're giving too many people healthcare.

OK. So this is the narrative they're going with.
posted by Talez at 6:55 PM on July 15, 2017 [25 favorites]


“I know Gov. (John) Kasich isn’t with us, but I suspect that he’s very troubled to know that in Ohio alone, nearly 60,000 disabled citizens are stuck on waiting lists, leaving them without the care they need for months or even years,” Pence asserted at the National Governors Association gathering Friday in Providence, Rhode Island.
Someone needs to educate him with a clue-by-four.
posted by Talez at 6:56 PM on July 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


I know Gov. (John) Kasich isn’t with us, but I suspect that he’s very troubled to know that in Ohio alone, nearly 60,000 disabled citizens are stuck on waiting lists, leaving them without the care they need for months or even years,
The solution to that is definitely to massively cut Medicaid funds. That will really help get those people off waiting lists for Medicaid waivers.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:05 PM on July 15, 2017 [50 favorites]


I have the sense John Kasich isn't going to feel particularly threatened by Mike Pence's sad and incoherent attempt at a jab.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:08 PM on July 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


Did I tweet Sen. McCain to compliment him on his govt. healthcare and tell him the rest of us deserve the same? Yep. Done being nice.
posted by emjaybee at 7:11 PM on July 15, 2017 [35 favorites]


I wish Senator McCain the best of health and urge him to take all the time he needs resting in Arizona to recover. Perhaps a month?
posted by Justinian at 7:19 PM on July 15, 2017 [17 favorites]




So... what happens to the August break?!? Surely our poor overworked Senators can't be expected to work in the sweltering cesspool of DC all summer long?!?
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:30 PM on July 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Am I the only one thinking that there are two possibilities behind McCain staying out of DC this week?

-- McCain is somehow trying to avoid the political fallout from the BCRA

-- It's a GOP trick to cause the resistance to relax, McCain will suddenly and heroically be able to return for a vote this week and the bill will pass (Didn't Chaffetz do something similiar for the House vote?)
posted by mcduff at 7:34 PM on July 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


I don't think there's any chance that the resistance is going to relax, though. This is just a delay. What I'm seeing is not "yay, we won!" It's "ok, we've got a couple of extra days. Keep calling. Please contact your friends and ask them to call their senators."
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:44 PM on July 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


Yes, keep your eye on this ball. Senator Concernpants, may just be concerned enough to fly in and vote to kill the rest of us. Do. Not. Trust. Anything that republicans say.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:47 PM on July 15, 2017 [32 favorites]


So they won't get to any debt-ceiling increases (or can-kicking, or global-financial-higgledy-piggledy) until September which would be about 20 working days before we start defaulting on things. I believe our first customer is a military pension fund who are said to be against not getting their fucking money and somewhat heavily armed.

Hope there aren't any of these distractions by then!
posted by petebest at 8:04 PM on July 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Healthcare roundup:

** WP: NV gov still doesn't support BCRA. This would really put Heller on the spot.

** WP: Kasich spokesman says Pence's BS about waiting lists is, well, BS.

** NYT: Governors From Both Parties Denounce Senate Obamacare Repeal Bill
posted by Chrysostom at 9:04 PM on July 15, 2017 [28 favorites]


Putin/Trump photoshop. Seems an appropriate metaphor.
posted by JackFlash at 9:18 PM on July 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


So they won't get to any debt-ceiling increases

I prophylactically got out of the market 11/7, expecting a Clinton win would involve the typical GOP shutdown BS.

That they are doing it to *themfuckingselves* right now is quite, quite, unexpected.

I simply lack the vocabulary to express my understanding, or lack thereof, of these . . . people.

I get it that all of them live in great fear of getting primaried out by the right-wing machine that controls their half of the electorate, but man, what a shitty place for them to be, and to drag the rest of the country if not planet if not the entire future of humanity with them.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:19 PM on July 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


For your late night amusement: Ann Coulter was bumped from her Economy Plus seat on a flight so she tweeted her anger @Delta and inexplicably included a snapshot of the woman who had also booked an Economy Plus seat which Coulter claimed was hers. Twitter is letting her have with both barrels.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 10:00 PM on July 15, 2017 [19 favorites]


You can also call your governor and ask him/her to speak out and to lobby their colleagues in other states. Here's where you can get contact info for your governor.

I live in NJ so I'm going to call the local sports radio station and pretend to be an angry Jets fan.
posted by mintcake! at 10:03 PM on July 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


The best part of that Coulter story is knowing that she has to fly Economy Plus, like the plebes.
posted by Miko at 10:10 PM on July 15, 2017 [32 favorites]


For your late night amusement: Ann Coulter was bumped from her Economy Plus seat on a flight so she tweeted her anger @Delta and inexplicably included a snapshot of the woman who had also booked an Economy Plus seat which Coulter claimed was hers. Twitter is letting her have with both barrels

If I'm parsing it correctly, they didn't bump Anne, they just"bumped" the extra seat she had booked for "space". So it's a real bunch of aggrieved privilege going on.
posted by nubs at 10:26 PM on July 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


If they *do* manage to pass the BCRA or something similar. it really is mind-boggling. The public hates it, basically all governors hate it, every single faction of the healthcare industry hates it. The number of people who actually like this bill would fit in a moderately sized room.

This is truly the all-time most, “Let’s just do it and be legends, man” moment.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:30 PM on July 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


they didn't bump Anne, they just"bumped" the extra seat she had booked for "space". So it's a real bunch of aggrieved privilege going on

No, that doesn't seem like it. There's no confirmation of facts yet, but it seems like she may not have checked into the flight early enough to confirm her seat assignment, so it was given to someone else - which can happen. In that case, you're lucky if you actually get on the plane at all. She doesn't seem to have realized that. That's the only scenario in which I can understand her having a "ticket" with a supposed seat assignment, but it couldn't have been her actual boarding pass. I think maybe she tried to grab her original seat anyway, and failed.
posted by Miko at 10:32 PM on July 15, 2017


And wait, Coulter says ".@Delta didn’t give my extra room seat to an air marshall [sic] or tall person". How the fuck does Ann Coulter know this woman isn't an air marshal? Sexist much? There are female air marshals.
posted by Miko at 10:38 PM on July 15, 2017 [14 favorites]


She bought an extra seat

No. There was no extra seat. An "extra legroom seat" is just a single seat with a couple more inches in front of it. She did not buy two seats and lose one - she was moved.

If she could afford to buy two seats, she wouldn't be in Economy Plus.
posted by Miko at 10:41 PM on July 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


I feel pretty confident that Coulter could afford Business or First Class. Unfortunately.
posted by asteria at 10:50 PM on July 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


I understand that she was frustrated to not get the seat she selected, but how does she make the mental leap from "the airline gave away my seat" to "therefore I'll take a picture of the incredibly not amused passengers who didn't cause this situation yet have to deal with my horribleness and tweet it out to 1.6 million people?"
posted by zachlipton at 10:57 PM on July 15, 2017 [18 favorites]


I feel pretty confident that Coulter could afford Business or First Class. Unfortunately.

Perhaps sometimes, or if someone else is paying. It's weird though. It's not like she waited until the last minute and there was no choice - she "pre-booked" enough in advance to research her seat selection, and those rows (which often go first) were at that time still available. And I read somewhere she uses apps like Seat Guru to figure out which are the roomiest. So if it's unusual for her to fly first or business, why put so much effort into your economy booking? I kind of think she might have cash-flow problems. No one who doesn't have to fly coach flies coach on purpose.
posted by Miko at 11:01 PM on July 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


Perhaps sometimes, or if someone else is paying.

She's got multiple national bestsellers and is constantly on TV. If she can't turn that into a few million she's dumber than she is craven. She doesn't have charter jet money, but surely business class money.
posted by dis_integration at 11:10 PM on July 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Now that poor lady is going to get death threats from Coulter's minions.
posted by dirigibleman at 11:18 PM on July 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


I think she thinks the seat selection you do online 24 hours before the flight is a legal contract or something.

Coulter seems like the kind of lovely person who gets "randomly" selected for all kinds of annoying inconveniences whenever her name is recognized. You'd think she'd be used to it by now.
posted by ctmf at 11:19 PM on July 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


She must never fly Delta. With all of her speaking engagements and book tours, probably some of which entail contractual stipulations that she fly first class, she would have sufficient frequent flyer status to get bumped up consistently if she focused on one or two airlines.
posted by carmicha at 11:39 PM on July 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Poll finds Trump standing weakened since springtime (WaPo)
President Trump’s standing with the American people has deteriorated since the spring, buffeted by perceptions of a decline in U.S. leadership abroad, a stalled presidential agenda at home and an unpopular Republican health-care bill, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Approaching six months in office, Trump’s overall approval rating has dropped to 36 percent from 42 percent in April. His disapproval rating has risen five points to 58 percent. Overall, 48 percent say they “disapprove strongly” of Trump’s performance in office, a level never reached by former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and reached only in the second term of George W. Bush in Post-ABC polling.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 11:57 PM on July 15, 2017 [37 favorites]


My favorite story concerning Ann Coulter:
After dinner, dessert, and a couple of rounds of Patrón, we took a cab to the Comedy Cellar, in Greenwich Village. The booker, Estee Adoram, greeted [Leslie] Jones with a hug and implored her to perform, but she preferred to socialize. She walked past the comedian Judah Friedlander—he grabbed her arm and said, “Keep kicking ass”—and took a seat next to Larry Wilmore. At one point, the reactionary pundit Ann Coulter stopped by their table. Wilmore was courteous, but Jones leaned across the table and stage-whispered, “What the fuck is this frightening bitch doing here?” Coulter’s face froze in a rictus, and she soon backed away from the table.
-The New Yorker, January 4th, 2016
posted by blueberry at 12:29 AM on July 16, 2017 [93 favorites]


They also have news that the Trump campaign is already paying Donald Jr's legal bills, transferring funds to his attorney nearly two weeks before the Russia meeting email surfaced

That's a pretty clear admission that Junior was appearing at the meeting on behalf of the campaign.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:09 AM on July 16, 2017 [41 favorites]


All airplane scandals that don't involve getting viciously dragged off the airplane and left needing medical attention are now boring. Someone else took your upgrade? Yawn!
posted by BeginAgain at 2:14 AM on July 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


If we're going to fantasize about Democratic celebrities to run in 2020, let me just say Leslie Jones for President. (I am a bad feminist, because while I literally wouldn't call my worst enemy a bitch, I will not defend Ann Coulter from that word. I don't use it personally, but I'm not going to fault Jones for saying it.)
posted by Ruki at 2:21 AM on July 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


They also have news that the Trump campaign is already paying Donald Jr's legal bills

Further indication that the Trumps do not actually have that much money. And/or that they have no restraint when it comes to other people's money, of course. That reimbursement may end up being a particularly expensive bit of grift.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:24 AM on July 16, 2017 [22 favorites]


‘Fix it for me’: Trump told Theresa May he won’t visit UK until he’s sure he’ll get a warm welcome (Raw Story) [real]
U.S. President Donald Trump petulantly informed U.K. Prime Minister Teresa May that he won’t be making any official state visits to her country unless she can guarantee that people will be nice to him, according to reports.

“I haven’t had great coverage out there lately, Theresa,” Trump told May in a private conversation that was transcribed by aides and reported by senior diplomats to British newspaper The Sun.

May replied stiffly, “Well, you know what the British press are like.”

“I still want to come, but I’m in no rush,” Trump reportedly said to May. “So, if you can fix it for me, it would make things a lot easier.”
posted by Room 641-A at 5:10 AM on July 16, 2017 [48 favorites]


I found articles about the Brookings institute work on the upper middle class compelling (especially as a member of that class). (The Hoarding of the American Dream in The Atlantic) It made me realize I am benefiting from tax benefits I don't even need (mortgage tax deduction, etc) and I was already of the opinion that sunsetting the social security tax at $127K is insane and ridiculous. If people that benefit from these policies can clearly say, "no, we don't want them. Help the poor and vulnerable instead, and strengthen programs we all benefit from like ACA and social security" I think that would be a positive shift.

It's not just tax benefits. States are giving out incentives like candy for renewables which are taken mostly by the rich. For instance, I got solar here in MA. MA bought down my loan to 2%, is buying my SRECs for an insane above-market rate to support the SREC market, and is forcing the electric company to let me use them as my battery storage mechanism for basically free (I can pay my fixed costs with retail priced excess generation). If it weren't for the fact that installing renewable energy is such a ridiculously huge net gain for the planet I would have abstained because it's such a disgusting transfer of wealth.

At least in MA's case they reduce the loans principal (20%-30% discount) if you're under a certain income based on your household size but the lion's share is still going to go to the (upper middle class) rich.
posted by Talez at 5:14 AM on July 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


I personally don't share this opinion, but am starting to come around to the idea that democrats need to get in front of Trump's unpopularity in some way and clearly be the party of something positive.

If social security actually worked and was funded it would be a relief to many, many people.


I have a wish list. I'm drunk, and here it is.

1. End dark money contributions to campaigns, hard caps on contributions, government funding pools for local/state/non-congress races. Fines for not voting, somewhere in the $300 range so people can not vote and it can mean something without being a crushing debt. Naturally, non-locale-bounded voting places too. Paper voting and hand count pls.

2. NHS-style healthcare system. Tax me MORE. Take all the healthcare anxiety off my mind.

3. Universal basic income. $1,000 a month. Period. No questions asked. Tax me if you must.

4. Free university everywhere. I would love to go back to college and learn some stuff. Oh and let's forgive student debt while we're at it. Are there 401k's reliant on people paying that back? DIE. Bailout that shit.

5. Re-fund Social Security. Please. I'm paying in, let me know I'm gonna get my payout. Otherwise I have to buy real-estate and be part of the rent-seeking class or hoard currency or something. I mean WTF do you want. I have limited options, and I really, really want better ones.

Seriously. I spend about 150% of the national poverty level a year, and I make...hundreds and hundreds of percent more. From home, running my own business. Tax me already. Take this stupid capitalism anxiety away already. End it. We're better than this. I'm better than this. I live in a country where people say, "America's great you guys have the best social insurance" and I have to explain. WHY.
posted by saysthis at 5:15 AM on July 16, 2017 [44 favorites]


If people that benefit from these policies can clearly say, "no, we don't want them. Help the poor and vulnerable instead, and strengthen programs we all benefit from like ACA and social security" I think that would be a positive shift.
This has always been right near the crux of the American problem for me.
Our ideology of 'freedom', favors implicitly the 'rights' and actions of a supposed Individual: it's self-centered. Selfish. It's an end point conceptually.
But once enough people start acting as above, (^top), we can realize as Rorty did, the ideology of 'fraternity' comes first. Taking care of each other would be much more successful as a foundation than an idealized competitive arena of winners and losers.
Many nations around the globe understand this, we're way behind.
posted by rc3spencer at 5:39 AM on July 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


If social security actually worked and was funded it would be a relief to many, many people.

Social Security does work and it is fully funded until 2034. It's the most popular government program ever created in the US. It should be expanded to work even better. But do not fall into the Republican's language of accepting there is a crisis, or SS is broken. It's not. There isn't. It needs minor tweaks sometime in the next 17 years to keep working, and it needs to be expanded, not "saved" or "rescued" or "reformed", because those are Republican code for benefit cuts. Expanded.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:42 AM on July 16, 2017 [105 favorites]


We've been kicking around "What should the Democrats' positive messaging be?" on my Indivisble Facebook group.

We've got support for "Healthcare is a right for all," "We need more democracy" and "A better deal" (echoing the "New Deal.")

I think those are all winners and can all be important positive campaign themes.
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:54 AM on July 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


I like:
"We all do better when we all do better" (Paul Wellstone)
for a democratic slogan & have been using it as a simple way to express my beliefs
posted by hilaryjade at 6:11 AM on July 16, 2017 [25 favorites]


What the fuck is this frightening bitch doing here?”

While props to Jones for being awesome as always, I think this may be a universal response to Ann Coulter. Like, you can see this exact sentence written in the eyes of the woman whose photo Coulter took. It's like how we scream and swat at horrible poisonous insects. Our lizard brain takes over.
posted by angrycat at 6:18 AM on July 16, 2017 [31 favorites]


Today's Doonesbury is familiar to many of us. Sunday, July 16 Doonesbury
posted by obliquity of the ecliptic at 6:21 AM on July 16, 2017 [18 favorites]


The Democrats: A Better Deal.

Good, I like it. It's short and memorable but contains a lot of information.

I've also been musing for a couple of months about this issue because I kept seeing the message that the Democrats don't stand for anything. (And what exactly does the Republican Party stand for? "Freedom to live and die by your own bootstraps"?) In my head it is very clear that Democrats believe that Government can work for you. I guess that's not clear enough for a slogan.

One twitter conversation that stood out to me recently was someone saying, "Our government is not designed to provide healthcare." I responded that we the voters can decide what our government can do. If we all want government provided healthcare then we can have government provided healthcare we just have to convince enough voters it's possible. We are working against the Republican message for the last 40 years that government always screws everything up and makes it worse. Obamacare unfortunately and unfairly proved the Republican point because the GOP worked hard to screw it up.

So our job now is to point out the successes and stress how much better life can be. There is nothing stopping us from having a better, happier country except ourselves.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:39 AM on July 16, 2017 [17 favorites]


The downside of "A Better Deal" is that Trump has totally ruined the word "deal" now, to the point where the phrase suggests "we're a better version of him" (ugh) instead of "let's extend/revisit the New Deal."
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:56 AM on July 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


I'm trying to see an upside to DJT's proposed visit to the U.K. Clearly Trump would like to go and publicize his Scottish golf course. But what does Theresa May get out of it? It will be expensive and very unpopular. Does she need him to come in order to make trade deals? With any other President it would make her look powerful to have the "Leader of the Free World" come visit but this is Trump we are talking about. He is more likely to taint her by association. Plus I would think he would be an unpleasant person to actually socialize with.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:57 AM on July 16, 2017


I think the Trump era has shown us the slogan doesn't actually have to mean anything, so long as it's catchy


Democrats: Shake it, but don't break it
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:58 AM on July 16, 2017 [16 favorites]


Actually A Better Deal works great, because Trump's "deals" are always shitty and always benefit him at everyone else's expense.

Gonna use the Wellstone thing too, thanks for that.
posted by emjaybee at 7:00 AM on July 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Since there's such a hunger for something to be proud of again as Americans, if The Dems could tap into the idea we should take pride in making our government the best in the world, with programs and policies that actually work better as systems than what we have now, instead of giving up on the possibility we ever even could do better. They need to call the Republican attitude for what it is: opportunistic defeatism/cynicism and a wholesale abandonment of the idea of advancing the general welfare and perfecting the union. The Republicans vision for governance is a cop out that refuses to even try to take governing and perfecting our politics and society seriously. If we aim the appetite for renewed national pride in the direction of better governance (not smaller, nor more efficient but better outcomes and more honesty and compassion for the weak) then we might get somewhere, but personally, I'm worried the party centric campaign funding system would never really allow that to happen and work out.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:00 AM on July 16, 2017 [32 favorites]


If she can't turn that into a few million she's dumber than she is craven.

Or, like a lot of rich people, she's just cheap.
posted by spitbull at 7:05 AM on July 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm trying to see an upside to DJT's proposed visit to the U.K. Clearly Trump would like to go and publicize his Scottish golf course. But what does Theresa May get out of it?

May's hands are tied; the Queen extended an invite for a state visit to Trump in January.
posted by nubs at 7:12 AM on July 16, 2017


So when someone in the Trump family inevitably betrays the others to save him/herself and starts confessing to absolutely everything and naming names, can we call that "The Art of the Squeal"?
posted by Servo5678 at 7:17 AM on July 16, 2017 [29 favorites]


The Government extended the Trump invite which caused unprecedented briefing against them by the Palace.
posted by fullerine at 7:20 AM on July 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


May's hands are tied; the Queen extended an invite for a state visit to Trump in January.
It seems like she has a way out, because of Trump's demand that she make the press be nice to him. She can basically say "LOL. Have you met the British press?" Which, actually, is kind of what she did say. She can just tell him that there's no way she can guarantee him sympathetic press coverage, and if that's a requirement, then he's better off not coming. Problem solved.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:26 AM on July 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


It's not the press he should be worried about it's the fact any time he steps foot outside will look like a Tour de France stage for angry people.
posted by fullerine at 7:30 AM on July 16, 2017 [22 favorites]


So when someone in the Trump family inevitably betrays the others to save him/herself and starts confessing to absolutely everything and naming names, can we call that "The Art of the Squeal"?

100 bucks on Ivanka
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:33 AM on July 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


"Trump and GOP want tax breaks for the wealthy. They claim it will stimulate the economy and create jobs. Well folks, I've got a better deal for you...."

They could frame every damn thing that way. Us political junkies would get sick of it to the point where we start making tongue-in-cheek mockery of it. Meanwhile everyone else hear's "Democrats=better deal". You only really have to hear one thing that you, as an average voter with an average amount of information, really like to form an opinion of the dems as giving ME a better deal.

I like it a lot.
posted by VTX at 7:39 AM on July 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


May's hands are tied; the Queen extended an invite for a state visit to Trump in January.

Is that really how it works? I thought state functions are set up by the PM, and the Queen just comes along and runs through her script.

For non-state functions, she can invite anyone she wants for tea at Sandringham House.
posted by ocschwar at 7:50 AM on July 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


In light of the fact that Trump Jr's lawyer Alan Futerfas was first paid on June 27th (mentioned above by peeedro), it's interesting to remember what happened that week:
  • Friday, June 23 (10:38am)
    @BenjaminWittes: In honor both of the President's "WITCH HUNT" tweet and of the expected magnitude of the detonation... TICK TICK...
  • Friday, June 23 (2-5pm)
    Sean Hannity (on his radio show): I never understood it anyway. What was the collusion? That maybe somebody in the Trump campaign talked to somebody in Russia because Russia supposedly had the information that Hillary Clinton had destroyed on her server when she committed a felony and tried to cover up her crimes? And that they might say as a Trump campaign representative, "wow you have that? Tell the American people the truth. Let them see it themselves, release it." Is that a crime, to say "release it"? To show the truth? To show damaging information?
  • Sunday, June 25 (7:00am)
    @realdonaldtrump: Hillary Clinton colluded with the Democratic Party in order to beat Crazy Bernie Sanders. Is she allowed to so collude? Unfair to Bernie!
  • Sunday, June 25 (9:30am)
    Brit Hume, Fox News Sunday: “Can anybody identify the crime? Collusion, while it would be obviously alarming and highly inappropriate for the Trump campaign, of which there is no evidence, by the way, of colluding with the Russians,” said Hume. “It's not a crime.”
  • Monday, June 26 (7:30-8:05am)
    @realdonaldtrump: ... The real story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling. With 4 months looking at Russia ... under a magnifying glass, they have zero "tapes" of T people colluding. There is no collusion & no obstruction. I should be given apology!
  • Thursday, June 29 (5:30pm)
    WSJ (Wittes' "boom"): GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails From Hackers, Implied a Connection to Flynn
Josh Marshall noted at the time:
I don’t think this is just Hannity’s nonsense: I think these are essentially trial balloons from Trumpland. Just how formal and deliberate a policy this is, I don’t know. Is this just what the Trump people are saying among themselves and among their pals? Or is it a more concerted effort to prepare the ground? I suspect it’s a combination of the two.
posted by pjenks at 8:00 AM on July 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


Daniel Henninger in WSJ, about Trump's speech in Poland: Trump Teaches Western Civ – It was a speech about values and traditions that neither Hillary Clinton nor any Democrat would give anymore (not paywalled, I think). In which the conclusion is that Progressives and the Left want to reinstate the centralized government of King George's time, and Trump and his "base" are fighting against it and for individual freedoms.
posted by StrawberryPie at 8:01 AM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


The WSJ gonna WSJ...
posted by acb at 8:04 AM on July 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


(not paywalled, I think)

Paywalled.
posted by Mister Bijou at 8:10 AM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Is that really how it works? I thought state functions are set up by the PM, and the Queen just comes along and runs through her script.

The Queen, as head of state, issues any invitation under the advice of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Queen is the one who officially issues it. For the Queen to take back an invitation would be a grave embarrassment, one the Foreign Office wouldn't dare inflict on her. Which just makes May's excuse all the more fucking stupid. Using the Queen as a scapegoat should have your political head on a pike outside the Tower of London.
posted by Talez at 8:13 AM on July 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


If anyone needs a short soundbite to explain why the healthcare bill is a bad idea, Susan Collins, a Republican senator from Maine, does a good job here. Sorry about the twitter link. I'm trying to find that snippet in some other form. Longer version here, and the quoted bit is towards the beginning.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:15 AM on July 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Incidentally, it seems weird that a monarch does things under the advice of whoever is relevant. Like when we get a new Governor-General they are chosen by the PM and the choice is communicated to the Queen who then appoints the GG. So we tell the Queen, in effect, this is who we want representing you rather than the other way around.
posted by Talez at 8:15 AM on July 16, 2017


The ABC/WaPo poll got under his skin for some reason. Was it mentioned on Fox & Friends? Also, FYI guys: sub-40% approval is not bad at this time. It's almost halfway to 80%!

@realDonaldTrump
The ABC/Washington Post Poll, even though almost 40% is not bad at this time, was just about the most inaccurate poll around election time!

posted by Rust Moranis at 8:19 AM on July 16, 2017 [9 favorites]


Americans are preemptively weighing in the pardon of Diaper Don?
posted by Talez at 8:21 AM on July 16, 2017


Which just makes May's excuse all the more fucking stupid. Using the Queen as a scapegoat should have your political head on a pike outside the Tower of London
Exactly, this is what they did. The briefing from the palace was effectively May has pissed off the queen personally which is quite impressive. Certainly naughtier than running through fields of wheat.
posted by fullerine at 8:26 AM on July 16, 2017 [15 favorites]


Exactly, this is what they did. The briefing from the palace was effectively May has pissed off the queen personally which is quite impressive. Certainly naughtier than running through fields of wheat.

You would think inviting a boorish oaf to high tea in Sandringham would be enough to piss off Her Maj.
posted by Talez at 8:30 AM on July 16, 2017 [3 favorites]



The Queen, as head of state, issues any invitation under the advice of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Queen is the one who officially issues it. For the Queen to take back an invitation would be a grave embarrassment, one the Foreign Office wouldn't dare inflict on her.


As oppose to making her ride in a coach with a man who publicly discussed his interest in cuckolding her son and her grandon?

. Let her have a "cold" for the rest of her reign and tell Trump to go fuck himself.
posted by ocschwar at 8:30 AM on July 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


I still like the idea of Her Majesty taking His Travesty on a warhellride through the Scottish Highlands in her Land Rover.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:37 AM on July 16, 2017 [35 favorites]


Let her have a "cold" for the rest of her reign and tell Trump to go fuck himself.

Trump's state visit to UK not mentioned in Queen's speech (in June)
posted by Mister Bijou at 8:37 AM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


I personally don't share this opinion, but am starting to come around to the idea that democrats need to get in front of Trump's unpopularity in some way and clearly be the party of something positive.

Democrats: The party of competence

Ads could highlight how well Jerry Brown is running California, Kamala's amazing subcommittee questions, etc. And on the other hand, they could point out what's happening in Kansas and other states with full Republican control.

Make the case that the GOP wants power, while the Dems want to solve problems.
posted by cman at 8:38 AM on July 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


NYTimes editorial:
Russia isn't delivering for Donald Trump
Um. I'm pretty sure they already delivered. They're waiting on him now.
posted by pjenks at 8:46 AM on July 16, 2017 [35 favorites]


So uh there's this House Bill, HB 2796, can someone tell me how worried to be about this?
Summary: Civil Rights Uniformity Act of 2017
This bill prohibits the word "sex" or "gender" from being interpreted to mean "gender identity," and requires "man" or "woman" to be interpreted to refer exclusively to a person's genetic sex, for purposes determining the meaning of federal civil rights laws or related federal administrative agency regulations or guidance. No federal civil rights law shall be interpreted to treat gender identity or transgender status as a protected class, unless it expressly designates "gender identity" or "transgender status" as a protected class.
It has five co-sponsors and was referred to the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice last week. Two of the co-sponsors (Steve King and Trent Franks) are on that same committee.

Just for anyone who doesn't know, Obama's DOJ was fighting transphobic policies by saying that trans people were already protected under the existing civil rights laws. They said that transphobic discrimination was by definition discrimination based on sex and gender. That's not settled law; that's the executive branch interpreting the law, and i don't know if it's been tested yet in court. This new bill is targeting that tactic specifically in order to make it harder to prosecute discrimination.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 9:04 AM on July 16, 2017 [31 favorites]


So uh there's this House Bill, HB 2796, can someone tell me how worried to be about this?

Trans Twitter is terrified and I lost sleep over it last night. I'm going to do some more research to see what legal minds have to say.
posted by AFABulous at 9:09 AM on July 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


AFABulous: could you post back here when you learn more about HB 2796?
posted by mcduff at 9:16 AM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Threads on HB 2796, albeit not lawyers. Samantha Riedel, TransEthics. I've tweeted at @ZackFord and @DominicHolden (who write a lot on LGBT issues) to see if there is a pending story.
posted by AFABulous at 9:17 AM on July 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Regarding HB2796, it seems unlikely that Mitch the MegaShit can get 60 votes to invoke cloture on a Senate bill. Unless he's willing to abolish the legislative filibuster, I don't think there are 8 Democratic Senators who would defect. These motherless fucks are sick and deranged.

Still, definitely a good idea to call your House Reps to kill this one as soon as possible.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 9:18 AM on July 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


TPM: Jay Sekulow, a member of President Donald Trump’s legal team, on Sunday aired a new defense for Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised him damaging information on Hillary Clinton: The Secret Service should not have “allowed these people in” to meet with Trump’s eldest son.

Seems legit.
posted by stonepharisee at 9:20 AM on July 16, 2017 [34 favorites]




Thank you AFABulous. I just added calling my rep about HB 2796 to my list for tomorrow. I've also tweeted it out (for as much as that's worth).
posted by mcduff at 9:30 AM on July 16, 2017


I responded that we the voters can decide what our government can do.

We are the government.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
And while I'm thinking of Schoolhouse Rock, No More Kings might be a good slogan.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:32 AM on July 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Penzeys Spices brings some delicious trolling:
Right from today's headlines—a tasty Tsardust Nothing Burger recipe with American Cheese Disguise. They said that stories of this administration colluding with Russian spies to corrupt the presidential election were a "Nothing Burger." Based on this recipe, it seems quite the Substantial Burger. With its 6 ounces of lamb (beef/ground chicken work, too), sour cream dollop, and American Cheese Disguise, this is a burger we will one day be telling our grandkids about. At least it's tasty. Those working to undermine America and our American values want us to act like these are normal times. They aren't. Please find your peaceful way to not be normal.
Get the recipe here.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:32 AM on July 16, 2017 [32 favorites]


Last words on Ann Coulter --

1) she got a new seat in the same friggin' row! same legroom, everything. What a baby.

Forbes: Ann Coulter Angered by Request To Change Seats -- But New Seat Was In Same Row, Delta Says

2) She's got multiple national bestsellers and is constantly on TV. If she can't turn that into a few million she's dumber than she is craven

Writing is a way to get lots of publicity but often surprisingly little money. (Ask me how I know.) Best seller lists are easily manipulated. Coulter is not on the NYT 2016 Nonfiction Best Sellers list even for one week, in a presidential election year.
And as arselicker to the corrupt right, she probably faces an extreme example of the problem many journalists in Washington do -- hanging around moneyed people all the time who go to fabulous restaurants, pay high rents and mortgages, send kids to private schools, but not getting any of the K-Street money that fuels all that.
posted by msalt at 9:38 AM on July 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


There is a real dearth of coverage on HB 2796 out there. I found this article: GOP Bill Banning Existing Federal Civil Rights Laws From Protecting Transgender People Advances to Subcommittee. I also tweeted at a bunch of legal orgs and media outlets asking when they are going to comment/cover it.
posted by AFABulous at 9:40 AM on July 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


So uh there's this House Bill, HB 2796, can someone tell me how worried to be about this?

In all seriousness, about as worried as you are about an asteroid impact, at least insofar as its actual policy impact goes. It would be bad if it happened, but the probability of it is very low. As ExcommunicatedCardinal noted, it would need 60 votes in the Senate and that's not gonna happen.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:02 AM on July 16, 2017


Here's a letter for writing your House representatives to oppose HB2796:
Representative,

This morning, I learned of an extremely disturbing bill: HB2796. This bill, advance by radical extremists in the House, is a blatant attempt to discriminate against transgender people. [As a trans/gender-non-conforming person, I feel this legislation is directly targeted towards me.] This sickening bill would prohibit federal sex and gender discrimination statutes from applying to both gender identity and transgender status.

There is no point to this legislation other than to roll back the very limited protections transgender people have gained in the last few years and make participation in public life that much more dangerous for transgender people. Transgender people are frequently targeted with brutal violence and experience extremely high levels of instability, mental health crises, unemployment, and suicidal ideation. Your despicable Republican colleagues are advancing this
legislation for the express purpose of making our lives more difficult and more dangerous.

Please do everything you can to stop this bill--if it passes some of your constituents will suffer terribly.

Sincerely,
[your name]
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 10:03 AM on July 16, 2017 [22 favorites]


There is a real dearth of coverage on HB 2796 out there.

For what it's worth, PredictGov gives it a 1% chance of passing at this point. It only has a single sponsor (who in 3 terms has only sponsored a single bill that has become law, and even that one was considered neither substantive nor significant) and it has no companion bill in the Senate. The bill is still vile, and it should be vigorously opposed, but you may be able to take some heart from the fact that it's starting from a pretty weak position.

(Apologies for the lack of direct links for PredictGov and The Lawmakers. Neither of them provide deep links to specific bills or legislators.)
posted by jedicus at 10:04 AM on July 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


I agree that it will probably not pass. On the other hand, it further legitimizes the idea in many people's minds that we don't deserve equal rights. The Texas legislature is still introducing anti-trans bills. Proposed legislation emboldens bigots whether it passes or not. The idea that we are not people worthy of basic human rights is what causes people to kill us.

You can't discount the amount of minority stress and panic this causes. People kill themselves precisely because we are so hated and disposable, regardless of whether there is an actual specific legal consequence for that person. It's just gutting and demoralizing.
posted by AFABulous at 10:11 AM on July 16, 2017 [21 favorites]


I tried linking CNN video of Bill Browder interview, but failed. Google it, for a worthy viewing.

Very interesting interview.
posted by kiwi-epitome at 10:20 AM on July 16, 2017


This one, kiwi-epitome?

There's an older one, too.
posted by pjenks at 10:29 AM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]




...kicking around "What should the Democrats' positive messaging be?"... "A Better Deal"

I like it, but the problem isn't a lack of positive message. There is and always has been one. The problem is getting everybody to repeat it.

How do you get everybody, even your opponents, to repeat your message? Trolling!

The message is, "You're welcome, you caviling ingrates."

Take credit for everything, even dubious claims, and force your opponents, who are currently trying to tear all that stuff down, to argue about it on your turf.

- Enjoying your weekend? You're welcome. 40 hour work week brought to you by FDR, Democrat.
- Is that glass of water refreshing? You're welcome. Clean water brought to you by Democrats.
- Relaxing in retirement? You're welcome. Social security brought to you by Democrats.
- Democracy is good, right? You're welcome. Voting rights brought to you by Democrats.
- Internet is useful? You're welcome. The internet, brought to you by Al Gore. Everybody knows that, right?
- Good thing you went to that doctor's appointment? You're welcome. Obamacare brought to you by Obama, obviously.
- Stuff like the moon landing makes America great? You're welcome. Apollo 11 brought to you by JFK, Democrat.

Add your own. Everybody can play.

And when they say, "but Al Gore didn't really invent the internet," you say, "whatever, let's talking about the real issues, net neutrality and broadband." And while you're arguing about that, your other six points are hanging out there unchallenged.
posted by dirge at 10:38 AM on July 16, 2017 [98 favorites]


BBC Moscow correspondent, Steve Rosenberg, continues to raise the alarm (not really resonating in the US press yet) that Putin is losing patience with Trump. Two tweets on the content of Russia State TV today:
If the US won't return seized Russian diplomatic compounds, Moscow will expel "3 dozen US diplomats"; conditions will worsen for the remaining US diplomats.

If US doesn't return the Russian compounds, "retaliation will be so harsh, [the US] will really feel it."
BBC producer from Moscow, Will Vernon, joins in with more State TV commentary:
Russian state TV suggests that there have been a string of suspicious deaths of Americans investigating Hillary & Bill Clinton and hacking.
posted by pjenks at 10:52 AM on July 16, 2017 [14 favorites]


And when they say, "but Al Gore didn't really invent the internet," you say, "whatever, let's talking about the real issues, net neutrality and broadband."

Fuck that, double down. Just like a Republican would. Al Gore did invent the internet, because he was a Democrat. And Republicans want your Comcast bill to go up $1000/mo. Vote Democrat for free government gigabyte internet to every house! Brought to you by Al Gore!
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:57 AM on July 16, 2017 [22 favorites]


Remember we can take credit for Labor Day. Really, all four-day weekends.

For what it's worth, PredictGov gives it a 1% chance of passing at this point. It only has a single sponsor

Thank you. I remember you talking about sponsors before, but the five co-sponsors confused me. I assumed that meant it had a better chance in committee.

It's not like the current legal state is okay on any level - the only federal protections for trans people came from Obama's DOJ laying down policy and pressing suits. Trump's DOJ has rolled back the policy and dropped the suits, AFAIK. So it's a free-for-all. Like AFABulous said it's making everyone twitchy.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 11:00 AM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Sekulow on the Sunday shows today tried to blame the Secret Service for not preventing the Russian meeting with Trump Jr. But Jr. wasn't under protection in 2016. So either Sekulow is throwing shit at the wall, or he just revealed Trump himself attended the meeting.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:04 AM on July 16, 2017 [71 favorites]


It's right in the name. The Democratic Party.

Like BLM, it's something that should go without saying, but apparently needs to be specified. We're for democracy. Which should not be remarkable, but fucking look around. Is Trump/Ryan/McConnel it?

Trump lost the popular vote, but is the president. Democracy?
Trump care was developed in secret and is being railed through even though most senators and a huge fraction of American citizens hate it. Is that Democracy?
The white house is hostile to the press, and automatically lies about every single thing down to what the president had for breakfast. Is that Democracy?

The Democratic Party. Emphasize the second word. That's what we stand for.
posted by ctmf at 11:07 AM on July 16, 2017 [14 favorites]


It's fine to write a postcard or snail mail letter about HB2796, but I think it's a good idea to do something, just to show legislators that people care and are paying attention. This one won't pass, but we might be able to head off more serious threats that could come along in the future.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:08 AM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


I remember you talking about sponsors before, but the five co-sponsors confused me.

I did?

In any case, thank you for pointing out the co-sponsors. I had missed that. The co-sponsors also appear to be pretty ineffectual (and not particularly senior), though a couple are not quite as ineffectual as the primary sponsor.
posted by jedicus at 11:08 AM on July 16, 2017


but I think it's a good idea to do something, just to show legislators that people care and are paying attention.

I 100% agree.
posted by jedicus at 11:10 AM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


> I like it, but the problem isn't a lack of positive message. There is and always has been one. The problem is getting everybody to repeat it.

How do you get everybody, even your opponents, to repeat your message? Trolling!


So a phrase that's going around the non-profit space to refer to use of social media to publicly birddog companies, elected officials, etc., is "gnoming," used to make clear that although it's reasonable for people doing this sort of action to refer to themselves as mythical creatures, probably it's best to select a different mythical creature in order to make clear to the people performing the action that they're not disrupting for disruption's sake, like trolls are.

I think it's a dorky term but shrug, it might be useful.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:11 AM on July 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


> The Democratic Party. Emphasize the second word. That's what we stand for.

So not to be a debbie downer or anything (okay, sort of to be a debbie downer) it's important to keep in mind that what everyone's discussing here in terms of messaging is an aspirational goal for the Democratic Party, since really the Democratic Party base is more invested in more democracy than the institution's leadership. Left to their own devices, they will continue understanding their constituency as being the donor class, rather than as being the Dem. Party electoral base or the electorate as a whole. One reason why Manchin et al might hesitate to sign off on this branding is that they're not actually that invested in "more democracy" as a concept, except in times when the base has by whatever means forced them toward that line.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:15 AM on July 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


It may be a little long, considering, but couldn't the Democratic slogan be "A Real Deal, Not a Con Job".
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:17 AM on July 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


The Secret Service should not have “allowed these people in” to meet with Trump’s eldest son.

Oh, should they not have? Since you brought it up, Jay, lets get them in a hearing to find out what all the Secret Service knows about this topic, under oath. That would be helpful, now that you mention it. Thanks for suggesting that.
posted by ctmf at 11:22 AM on July 16, 2017 [61 favorites]


an aspirational goal for the Democratic Party

I like "Democracy for the people" as a slogan, but maybe it's too abstract? It's certainly relevant now in the fight against voter disenfranchisement.
posted by puddledork at 11:28 AM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


The co-sponsors also appear to be pretty ineffectual (and not particularly senior), though a couple are not quite as ineffectual as the primary sponsor

I have to think that there's is a rite of passage where juniors are forced to put their name on bills that nobody else wants to be associated with.
posted by rhizome at 11:29 AM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


And when they say, "but Al Gore didn't really invent the internet," you say

Right, just all the laws and regulations that created it as we know it today. Did you think it was just hardware and software that created the internet?
posted by VTX at 11:29 AM on July 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


the Democratic Party base is more invested in more democracy than the institution's leadership

True, but if you can get them to do pandering lip service to the base's priorities for long enough, eventually they'll hear those priorities coming out of their own mouths enough to start believing it themselves. Worked on the Republicans, with a much less believable message.
posted by dirge at 11:32 AM on July 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


The co-sponsors also appear to be pretty ineffectual (and not particularly senior), though a couple are not quite as ineffectual as the primary sponsor

I have to think that there's is a rite of passage where juniors are forced to put their name on bills that nobody else wants to be associated with.


Don't mix your cause and effect. These ineffectual doofuses put their names on go-nowhere bills so they can list them on their things-they-did bragging to their constituents. They are ineffectual because they pursue this sort of do-nothing never-pass signaling legislation rather than getting involved in processes to actually accomplish things. And they only have their names on this junk because they tend to be the extremist doofuses who got into office by virtue of being in gerrymandered districts and appealing to nutters. So they don't put their names on bills that are compromises that people might actually vote for and which have wider appeal.

tl;dr: teabaggers gonna teabag (and nothing else)
posted by phearlez at 11:33 AM on July 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Did you think it was just hardware and software that created the internet?

Obviously not. My actual point has little to do with whether or not Al Gore invented the internet. My point is that any time spent arguing that point is time well spent.
posted by dirge at 11:34 AM on July 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Yes and the more ways you have to do that, the more likely it is you'll be able to find a way that works well for you in particular. I'd use it as a rhetorical question and then move to talking about net neutrality broadband infrastructure.

I'm sorry, I didn't make it clear, that question wasn't directed at you but at the hypothetical audience in your question. My apologies.
posted by VTX at 11:46 AM on July 16, 2017


I wish Senator McCain the best of health and urge him to take all the time he needs resting in Arizona to recover. Perhaps a month?

I suspect that McCain will be out a little longer than one week. He didn't have eye surgery. He had brain surgery. From the description, he had a 5 cm (2-inch) clot on the surface of his brain which was causing pain behind his eye.

It sounds like they performed a minimally invasive craniotomy. This is a relatively new technique called supra-orbital eyebrow approach in which they make an incision just above the eyebrow, retract the skin, drill a hole in the skull about 2 cm (3/4 inch) in diameter and then use a keyhole endoscope to access the clot. They close the hole with a titanium plate. One advantage of this technique is minimal cosmetic damage because the incision is hidden by the margin of the eyebrow.

He should be out of the hospital in less than a week but I doubt that he will be immediately flying around the country on an airplane. But hey, Trump could send Air Force 1 to drag his ass into Congress.
posted by JackFlash at 11:52 AM on July 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


Charlie Warzel, Infowarzel: This Isn't About Don Jr.—It's About Destroying The Press.
By the end of his tenure as president, Trump may not build a wall and he may not be able to deliver on a number of campaign promises. But he will have used the highest office in the land — and the media megaphone that comes with it — to spout anti-MSM rhetoric at every point. And he will have encouraged (through the briefing room, retweets, and winks and nods) the growth of an alternative media apparatus that will indoctrinate thousands upon thousands to the idea that the mainstream media outlets like the New York Times and CNN aren't just frequently wrong, but are deliberately trying to mislead the public. And in doing so, I think you can make a convincing argument that Trump's lasting legacy will be eroding the public's trust in the press for at least a generation.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:52 AM on July 16, 2017 [35 favorites]


My apologies

No worries. Glad you brought it up, actually, because it helps clarify what I was trying to say.

Same thing goes for, say, some environmental laws, where somebody might say, "but didn't Nixon sign that?" And now your off on "sure, but with a veto-proof majority forcing his hand," and arguing about whether Democrats deserve all the credit, or just most of it.
posted by dirge at 11:58 AM on July 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


But hey, Trump could send Air Force 1 to drag his ass into Congress.

I actually don't know: Is there no provision for telework by conference call, votes by a stand-in "by direction" or "per telecon"? I do that at work, eh, I wouldn't say "all the time", but it's not unusual to have someone sign off on something for me by my explicit direction. It's considered "me" signing.

As long as McCain is, you know, conscious and of sound mind and can meaningfully make a choice (not just someone guessing what he would want), does he need to physically be on the floor?
posted by ctmf at 12:00 PM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Regarding the Russian threats of retribution, I thought at the time that Obama confiscated the properties and Putin did nothing that the Russians had been told to stop fucking around following the intelligence reports about the interference. Now, I wonder whether there was an understanding between Putin and 45 that the compounds would be returned as part of a quid pro quo deal. As it's about now that its becoming clear 45 cannot/will not/whatever deliver on pro-Russian moves, and Putin absolutely cannot be seen as being a patsy, I can see this playing exceptionally badly for all concerned. That's even without any of the possible impact on the investigations or the rolling clusterfuck of Don Jr's specific meetings.

It's the sort of massive embarrassment that could be sorted out through very careful behind the scenes negotiation by experienced and clear-headed diplomatic staff and top level State officials. Which just adds to the joy, really.
posted by Devonian at 12:05 PM on July 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


Russian threats of retribution

Yeah, that stuff definitely reads to me as Putin saying, "We had a deal. I don't care about your problems, and don't want to hear your excuses. Hold up your end, or we cut you loose." It's happening in public because Kushner's attempts to set up a covert channel failed, or because private threats have already been made, with unsatisfactory results.
posted by dirge at 12:11 PM on July 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


I actually don't know: Is there no provision for telework by conference call, votes by a stand-in "by direction" or "per telecon"?
It doesn't look like it. There used to be a provision for proxy votes in committees (so not in this case), but the Republicans did away with it. Now, you've got to be there.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:15 PM on July 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Classic blunder, Vlad.

1. Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
2. Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
3. Never count on Trump to deliver his end of the deal.
posted by ctmf at 12:16 PM on July 16, 2017 [81 favorites]


The requirement that they be there is actually fine by me. I don't want these fuckers to be able to take away healthcare from millions of people while in their damn pajamas.
posted by lydhre at 12:17 PM on July 16, 2017 [14 favorites]


Oh, it makes sense to me too. I mean, if you weren't there to hear the debate, can you say you made a meaningful choice? I'd say no (even though we know the debate is pro forma performance art anyway and nobody listens).
posted by ctmf at 12:19 PM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


or because private threats have already been made, with unsatisfactory results.

Such a juicy line of speculation.
Trump had experience with the NYC mafia and so he knows the 'score' the routine. The question that occurred though is if, now that he's head of the largest standing army the world has ever known, does Putin really have any traction?
I'll cop to never believing that Trump would get this far (I figured he would have retired from the stage, forcefully or not by now), yet he has. Which begs the question, 'does anyone have the power, no but really, the real pedal to the metal power to kick his ass back the way he came? Because I'm starting to wonder.
Or, having him flip around while the real work/graft takes place is more expedient. C.f. the entire G.Bush Jr. presidency...
posted by From Bklyn at 12:29 PM on July 16, 2017


I think you can make a convincing argument that Trump's lasting legacy will be eroding the public's trust in the press for at least a generation.

I think you can make a MORE convincing argument that Trump's presidency was the result of a decades-long campaign to erode the public's trust in the press. Fox News is 20+ years old but Sinclair Broadcasting is older and the National Enquirer is older than that and the New York Post even older.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:30 PM on July 16, 2017 [38 favorites]


Same thing goes for, say, some environmental laws, where somebody might say, "but didn't Nixon sign that?"

And you say, "Sure, but it was the Democrats who passed the rules that actually enforce the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act." Without the administrative state, the CAA and CWA are just words, because there's no structure to enforce them.
posted by suelac at 12:32 PM on July 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


The requirement that they be there is actually fine by me. I don't want these fuckers to be able to take away healthcare from millions of people while in their damn pajamas.
On the one hand, I totally hear you. On the other hand, this came up because Tammy Duckworth missed an important vote that happened shortly after she gave birth to her daughter, and the current system means that senators can't, for instance, take maternity leave. And that seems vaguely problematic to me.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:35 PM on July 16, 2017 [15 favorites]


The question that occurred though is if, now that he's head of the largest standing army the world has ever known, does Putin really have any traction?

Who is the "he" in that sentence? It certainly isn't Trump.
posted by Sys Rq at 12:42 PM on July 16, 2017


Regarding HB2796:

Repeating AFABulous, "You can't discount the amount of minority stress and panic this causes. People kill themselves precisely because we are so hated and disposable, regardless of whether there is an actual specific legal consequence for that person. It's just gutting and demoralizing."

Also remember it's still important to kill these things quickly. The longer a thing like this is in the mix, the longer it's in the public consciousness and it's part of public "debate," the more harm it does. Even if it couldn't possibly come to pass.

Like that whole Trump candidacy thing last year. :(
posted by scaryblackdeath at 12:46 PM on July 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'm curious what about the Russian real estate is SUCH a big deal to Putin. At this point, it can't be about saving face or "the principle" or the value of the real estate. Something about that location, specifically, is apparently strategically important. Is that where every electronic communication in and out of DC was collected and decrypted? Every dirty secret from the USSR to now is stored in plaintext in the vault?

Why can't he buy another spot and start over?
posted by ctmf at 12:52 PM on July 16, 2017 [9 favorites]


I don't have an issue with relaxing the in-person requirement if it comes along with expanding the total number of House seats. Having an in-person collection of 4350 reps would be impossible but I'd take the trade in exchange for no longer having this insane imbalance between more populous and less populous states.

If it didn't require a constitutional amendment i'd say go ahead and 10x the number of Senators too.
posted by phearlez at 12:55 PM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure what is accomplished by increasing the number of Senators given each state gets the same number?
posted by Justinian at 1:01 PM on July 16, 2017


I think Sekulow knew exactly what he was doing. He baited the Secret Service into releasing a statement implying that Trump Sr. wasn't at the meeting because they didn't protect it. He had to say something monumentally stupid on TV, but got back a real defense in turn. It's a hell of a play.

All of this, of course, ignores the absurdity of declaring that it's the Secret Service's job to make sure you don't meet with Russian intelligence. What does he think? They were supposed to be reading Don Jr's emails to be on the lookout for collusion?
posted by zachlipton at 1:02 PM on July 16, 2017 [16 favorites]


All of this, of course, ignores the absurdity of declaring that it's the Secret Service's job to make sure you don't meet with Russian intelligence.

Well, that's the thing. If we're going to expect that, then maybe we'd better audit whether they have been or not, and what information they have or should have enabling that goal. And I think that's the LAST thing Sekulow wants right now.
posted by ctmf at 1:08 PM on July 16, 2017


Gorka gave an interview where he let slip that Israel was involved in the Syria ceasefire talks. Another official tried to clean up the mess by saying Israel was "not a party to it, but were consulted," but this still, really, really seems like the kind of thing Gorka was not supposed to say out loud.
posted by zachlipton at 1:18 PM on July 16, 2017 [18 favorites]


Gorka gave an interview where he let slip that Israel was involved in the Syria ceasefire talks.

Ha! Netanyahu publicly rejected the cease fire, which I guess was supposed to be him saving face for the ultra right in his coalition. Eat that meatloaf Bibi! Eat it!
posted by PenDevil at 1:25 PM on July 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


I'm curious what about the Russian real estate is SUCH a big deal to Putin. At this point, it can't be about saving face or "the principle" or the value of the real estate.


The Washington Post had some information about the compounds in their huge story a few weeks ago about the Obama administration's actions in the wake of the election interference:
The FBI had long lobbied to close two Russian compounds in the United States — one in Maryland and another in New York — on the grounds that both were used for espionage and placed an enormous surveillance burden on the bureau.

...

At one point in the White House deliberations, intelligence analysts used aerial images of the facilities to show how they had been modified to enhance their espionage capabilities. Slides displayed in the Situation Room showed new chimneys and other features, all presumed to allow for the installation of more-sophisticated eavesdropping equipment aimed at U.S. naval facilities and the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland.

[NSA Director Susan] Rice pointed to the FBI’s McCabe and said: “You guys have been begging to do this for years. Now is your chance.”

The administration gave Russia 24 hours to evacuate the sites, and FBI agents watched as fleets of trucks loaded with cargo passed through the compounds’ gates.

When FBI agents entered the sites, they found them stripped of antennas, electronics, computers, file cabinets and other gear, officials said, their hasty removal leaving visible markings on floors, tables and walls.
But articles that came out in the immediate aftermath did not have any information to back up the Obama administration's claims that they "were used for Russian intelligence activities". For example the NYTimes wrote:
Julie Patterson, 44, who has lived on a horse farm near the compound for 12 years, said the Russians largely kept to themselves but were cordial neighbors, inviting locals to an annual Labor Day party.

She said that she believed that the property was largely used as a weekend retreat and that she often saw children, families and buses heading to the estate. She said people often held parties there and hosted a sailing club.

In 1992, a Centreville resident told a reporter for The Associated Press that the Russians did not cook crabs the local way, by throwing live crabs into a pot of boiling water.

“They stab them with a screwdriver, break the back shell off, clean them and then boil the body,” she said.
So I guess the answer is either "signals intelligence" or "boiled crabs", or both.
posted by pjenks at 1:41 PM on July 16, 2017 [17 favorites]


Because Trump promised he would get it back for Putin

Yes, but it seems more than that. There's a reason Obama went right for that compound when he wanted to REALLY put the tip of the knife where it hurts, and there's a reason Putin needs that back. WE will probably never know what about it makes it such a pain point, but Obama, Putin, and Trump do.
posted by ctmf at 1:42 PM on July 16, 2017 [17 favorites]


> She said that she believed that the property was largely used as a weekend retreat and that she often saw children, families and buses heading to the estate. She said people often held parties there and hosted a sailing club.

That's it boys, case closed, they boiled crabs.
posted by empath at 1:45 PM on July 16, 2017 [12 favorites]


Speaking as a native Marylander, the compounds should not be returned as punishment for cooking crabs wrong. I bet they didn't even use Old Bay.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:53 PM on July 16, 2017 [29 favorites]


That NYT article about the Russian compounds really points out why Trump is so angry about the paper now. They used to be so much nicer.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:53 PM on July 16, 2017


I feel like with the continued unraveling and exposure of Trump and Co's crimes and treasonous behavior, I should be gaining strength and fortitude and a second (third? fourth? eighth?) wind to leap back into the fray. Instead I am feeling even more brittle and depressed and exhausted and cynical. It feels like nothing matters, these assholes will never be held to account, and the evil motherfuckers in the Republican Party will continue to gut the country for their profit. I'm feeling just so, so.....done. This is all so goddamn horrifying.
posted by lazaruslong at 1:56 PM on July 16, 2017 [24 favorites]


but Obama, Putin, and Trump do.

I think you're about 2/3 right.
posted by schadenfrau at 2:02 PM on July 16, 2017 [34 favorites]


Wow this is the most honest statement I've heard about the Republican plans on health care. HHS Secretary (uuuggh) Tom Price:
"[All insurers] have to do is dust off how they did business before Obamacare."
posted by pjenks at 2:10 PM on July 16, 2017 [17 favorites]


"[All insurers] have to do is dust off how they did business before Obamacare."

Welcome back to the zombie corpse of rescission! Think of how many people could be dropped smack in the middle of their treatments when the law goes into effect! For a bonus kick in the teeth, I can't wait for the first test case when they go after losses incurred during Obamacare's reign.
posted by Talez at 2:21 PM on July 16, 2017 [17 favorites]


Oh come on. A large Russian compound in Maryland?

It was a listening post. I will eat my entire library of sigint history books without sauce if it is shown it were not.

It's not a small library, and I'm not that hungry.
posted by Devonian at 2:22 PM on July 16, 2017 [45 favorites]


I honestly don't have the emotional energy to get worked up at all about the Russia stuff. Let's say there's video of a smiling Trump handing over a wheelbarrow full of gold bars to Putin, and Putin himself hacked into voting machines. So... maybe Trump gets impeached and goes to prison? Now we're stuck with Pence, still stuck with a GOP congress, and policy doesn't change one iota. Oh, Pence was there with a second wheelbarrow? Now we're stuck with Ryan, and policy still doesn't change.

We already know Trump is a colluding con man, we already know the GOP hasn't shown any spine when it comes to him, so how much evidence is going to take, and what will it really change for the rest of us?
posted by AFABulous at 2:24 PM on July 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Doing nothing will guarantee the boot stays firmly planted on our throats for decades at least.
posted by saulgoodman at 2:26 PM on July 16, 2017 [47 favorites]


As Starbuck said, we have to fight them until we can't.
posted by angrycat at 2:31 PM on July 16, 2017 [34 favorites]


And with the accelerating pace of global warming, we don't have decades before the only remaining outcome will be endless global resource conflict and war among those with enough assets on hand to wage it.
posted by saulgoodman at 2:32 PM on July 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


I didn't mean do nothing. I meant, changing the person at the top isn't going to accomplish anything. We still have to work from the bottom.
posted by AFABulous at 2:35 PM on July 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


I should be gaining strength and fortitude and a second (third? fourth? eighth?) wind to leap back into the fray. Instead I am feeling even more brittle and depressed and exhausted and cynical.

I had hesitated to share this because I don't want people to sit back and relax... Nothing is a done deal, and just because Nixon went down doesn't mean Trump will.

But if you are feeling that discouraged you should read this...

Frank Rich for MY Magazine Just Wait:
Nixon, Trump, and how a Presidency Ends
Unlike Nixon, who had to contend with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, Trump has the shield of a Republican Congress led by craven enablers terrified of crossing their Dear Leader’s fiercely loyal base. That distinction alone is enough to make anti-Trumpers abandon all hope.

I’m here to say don’t do so just yet. There’s a handy antidote to despair: a thorough wallow in Watergate, the actual story as it unfolded, not the expedited highlight reel that most Americans know from a textbook précis or cultural artifacts like the film version of All the President’s Men. If you look through a sharp Nixonian lens at Trump’s trajectory in office to date, short as it has been, you will discover more of an overlap than you might expect. You will learn that Democratic control of Congress in 1973 was not a crucial factor in Nixon’s downfall and that Republican control of Congress in 2017 may not be a life preserver for Trump. You will find reason to hope that the 45th president’s path through scandal may wind up at the same destination as the 37th’s — a premature exit from the White House in disgrace — on a comparable timeline.
The case he makes is really strong (And it's a well written piece that makes compelling reading.)

I want to emphasize again that I think we have a lot of political work to do, that I take this piece more to be a sign that Trump could go down in spite of the fact that Republicans are still ignoring everything. That does not mean he will. But he could. Nixon did. And at this point in his presidency he was still defying gravity too,like Wile E Coyote running in midair, not realizing the ground had dropped out from under him.
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:38 PM on July 16, 2017 [35 favorites]


Now we're stuck with Pence, still stuck with a GOP congress, and policy doesn't change one iota. Oh, Pence was there with a second wheelbarrow? Now we're stuck with Ryan, and policy still doesn't change.

This doesn't make anything better really but Eyebrows McGee mentioned above that it's disputed whether a member of Congress can succeed to the Presidency.
posted by XMLicious at 2:41 PM on July 16, 2017


I meant, changing the person at the top isn't going to accomplish anything.

But I got cramps from rolling my eyes when I pointed out the Republicans taking over Congress and someone countered "yes, but as long as we have Obama/Hillary as President..." I still believe that Trump's incompetence and scandalousness is making him less effective than any of the other Evil Republicans who could have been elected in '16, AND he's damaging the Republican Brand in ways nobody else could. So, while removing Trump from office should be an important step, it's not the 'endgame' and it could certainly happen too soon to do the most good.

My advice is to take a step back, take a deep breath, keep up the pressure on specific issues that genuinely make a difference to you (few of which involve Putin's influence) and emphasize a United Opposition of fans of Clinton, Obama, Sanders, Warren and the Next Generation of Liberals/Leftists/Democrats who can fight out the details of the differences among us after the GOP has lost its stranglehold on government.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:52 PM on July 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


So... maybe Trump gets impeached and goes to prison? Now we're stuck with Pence, still stuck with a GOP congress, and policy doesn't change one iota. Oh, Pence was there with a second wheelbarrow? Now we're stuck with Ryan, and policy still doesn't change.

We have litigated and relitigated and re-relitigated the "Is impeachment the solution?" and "Pence is no better!" and "What about President Ryan?!" ad supernauseam at this point in these threads. If you don't want to discuss collusion, impeachment, or related fallout (phrasing!) here, then great! There's plenty of other threads. But IMO there's no need to clutter up these particular threads with expressions of your personal distaste for these topics.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 2:53 PM on July 16, 2017 [23 favorites]


It took me a while to play catch up but I actually just had endometriosis resection 6 weeks ago for stage 2 endometriosis.

OR/Hospital:
$36,658 - Amount Billed
$17,515 - Discounted Rate
$15,764 - Amount Paid by Insurance
$1,751 - Amount You Owe

Where did that nearly $20 THOUSAND go to be "discounted"?

That does NOT include $800 paid upfront the morning of surgery.

That does NOT include the $3,600 I paid directly to my surgeon because he is FORCED to be out of network.

Apparently insurance companies won't approve resection for endometriosis. Resection actually removes the damaged tissue. Whereas cauterizations and other surgeries leave it behind leading to more and more surgeries and overall more cost.
Statement from my surgeon.

Because insurers and politicians couldn't give a shit about women's health care. So insurers can get away with DENYING more effective surgery. Not to mention when I called my insurance about pre approval for the OR/Hospital the (female) agent said that if I was having "ablation" (which I was not, it's not at all the same thing) I also needed "8 months of prior failed treatments such as hormones." Why can't a woman know her body and choose ablation for horrible periods first? Why can't they cover a surgery that actually treats things and leads to better health?
posted by Crystalinne at 2:55 PM on July 16, 2017 [60 favorites]


What's the point of discussing collusion, if there's not a thing going to be done about it?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 2:57 PM on July 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Because at the end of it all, and if nothing is done by the legislature or judiciary, we can say 'very well then' and decide what to do next.

In the end, it's up to us. Knowing exactly what we're dealing with is a good thing. because it's an awful responsibility.
posted by Devonian at 3:05 PM on July 16, 2017 [12 favorites]


My actual point has little to do with whether or not Al Gore invented the internet.

Right, but if you're going to fight them on this ground, you can still win, because it's true. Al Gore never claimed he invented the Internet, and two of the computer scientists who arguably did help "invent" the Internet, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, credit him with being instrumental to its creation, writing:
Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.
It is in fact literally true to say that the Democrats, and Al Gore in particular, deserve credit for the Internet. Everyone prepared to follow dirge's strategy should be armed with this knowledge.

The mockery of Al Gore for taking credit for the Internet was a deliberate smear from the Right to preemptively discredit the idea that government in general, and Democratic ideas in particular, are capable of producing obvious, tangible goods that the private sector cannot. The fact that this smear was picked up by intellectually lazy "satirists" like South Park helped cement it in the public consciousness so firmly that twenty years later, even Democrats arguing against "Al Gore didn't really invent the Internet" retreat to "But they gave us the regulations it needs!" instead of "He never said he did. But he did help create it, and the scientists who built it agree. That's what Democrats bring you. The lie that he did say that? That's what Republicans bring you."
posted by biogeo at 3:07 PM on July 16, 2017 [161 favorites]


I can hardly wait for the Tim Powers novel that will explain that the Trump/Putin deal actually involves captured djinni or the Fisher King or something sensible like that.
posted by The otter lady at 3:09 PM on July 16, 2017 [24 favorites]


The other cool thing about the Al Gore/Internet thing is that once you've brought it up, it's just about impossible to get people to stop talking about it. Thanks for the excellent background info, blogeo.
posted by dirge at 3:28 PM on July 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Thanks for the tactics inspiration, dirge!
posted by biogeo at 3:32 PM on July 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


And another bit to add to your talking points: Al Gore was a member of the Internet Society's* first Internal Hall of Fame. Read the description of his contribution here.

*The Internet Society was started by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn to "promote the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world."
posted by mcduff at 3:50 PM on July 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


The Washington Post reports that US intelligence has established that the UAE hacked Qatari government websites and inserted fake quotes attributed to the Emir, leading to the current diplomatic crisis. Trump, of course, ignored his State Department and aggressively condemned Qatar, home to the largest US military base in the region.

For his part, Trump agreed in the Christian Broadcasting Network interview that he and Tillerson “had a little bit of a difference, only in terms of tone” over the gulf conflict.
 Qatar, Trump said, “is now a little bit on the outs, but I think they’re being brought back in.”

Asked about the U.S. military base in Qatar, Trump said he was not concerned.
“We’ll be all right,” he said. “Look, if we ever have to leave” the base, “we would have 10 countries willing to build us another one, believe me. And they’ll pay for it.”


Oh, Donald. Never change.

just resign immediately
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:53 PM on July 16, 2017 [45 favorites]


Adam Gabbatt, Guardian: Thousands of Juggalos will descend on Washington DC in September, in an attempt to change the FBI’s designation of fans of the band Insane Clown Posse as a “gang”.

You know it's 2017 when your reaction to this story is: "As philosophical underdogs and believers in radical inclusivity, Juggalos are natural enemies of the regime. Embattled as it is by Trump and the GOP, the FBI should be making alliances instead of fighting them. G-Men and followers of the Dark Carnival must drink together of the ritual Faygo Chalice of Friendship and join forces against evil."

(You also know it's 2017 when you listen to a podcast interview of a creator of independent comics, in which the interviewer keeps trying to steer the conversation into getting the artist's real feelings about unintentionally awakening an ancient death god in the form of a smug Nazi frog that now rules America under a dark banner of chaos.)
posted by Rust Moranis at 3:57 PM on July 16, 2017 [32 favorites]


You know it's 2017 when your reaction to this story is: "As philosophical underdogs and believers in radical inclusivity, Juggalos are natural enemies of the regime.."
Surely coming later on in the 2017 parade of horrors: alt-Juggalos
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:05 PM on July 16, 2017 [18 favorites]


@Delta:
@AnnCoulter We're sorry you did not receive the preferred seat you paid for and will refund your $30. (cont.)

@AnnCoulter Additionally, your insults about our other customers and employees are unacceptable and unnecessary.
posted by zachlipton at 4:08 PM on July 16, 2017 [110 favorites]


coming later on in the 2017 parade of horrors: alt-Juggalos

Look, this is only about ethics in insane clown journalism.
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:09 PM on July 16, 2017 [25 favorites]


parade of deplorables surely
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:14 PM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Democratic Party. Emphasize the second word. That's what we stand for.

That might actually wo... oh, you're counting "the" as the first word.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:22 PM on July 16, 2017 [26 favorites]


I've been thinking a lot lately of the movie "The Big Short". So much of the drama of the movie is centred around the fact that some guys have investigated and found proof positive that the whole mortgage industry is rotten, yet the boom continues. Even when they confront financial institutions and regulators, no one wants to be on the hook for starting trouble. Like the coyote off the cliff, everything keeps going with no support. But when the unsustainable finally collapses, everything goes fast. (I remember the weekend Lehman Brothers went down. There were hourly updates and it seemed the world economy was hanging by a thread.)

I have no idea why I've had this on my mind. No parallels in today's news or anything.
posted by obliquity of the ecliptic at 4:31 PM on July 16, 2017 [25 favorites]


I have no idea why I've had this on my mind. No parallels in today's news or anything.

I for one have no idea at all what in the hews today is reminiscent of the financial collapse in 2008, and it would be helpful if you'd say.
posted by thelonius at 4:36 PM on July 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Oh sorry - I meant current news, not that there was something specific today.

I feel like we are the guys in the movie, telling everyone "look! look! Can't you see the whole thing is rotten?" and most people are shrugging their shoulders.

I take comfort in the movie reminding us that such situations cannot last forever.

I hope this make more sense.
posted by obliquity of the ecliptic at 4:48 PM on July 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Well, but the deal with The Big Short is that the broken system does, in context, last forever, only patching things up here and there once in a while. The further downstream a participant was from the policy- (and market-) makers, the more they suffered. The parallel I can see here is none of these people going to jail, just like Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, et al.
posted by rhizome at 5:05 PM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Delta should just ban Ann Coulter for life.

I keep reading "You're welcome" and hearing it sung from Moana.

I've got that quote often attributed to Atwood in my head. "Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them." The administration has no shame, how would they deal with full scale laughing and heckling? What could that even look like?
posted by tilde at 5:10 PM on July 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


WE will probably never know what about it makes it such a pain point, but Obama, Putin, and Trump do.

Agreed that Obama and Putin do, but doubtful Trump knows anything. Imagine all the seekrit black budget SAP/skunkworx espionage etc where there's a power vacuum because even though there's conflict or disagreement, everyone is agreed they are not reading in these jackholes.

Dangerous stuff, kemosabe. The sooner a competent group, even competent evil, the better. This is just riding in the bed of a pickup with a shitfaced, phone-reading idiot doing 90 at the wheel.
posted by petebest at 5:54 PM on July 16, 2017 [9 favorites]


I bet nobody gave him the UFO briefing.
posted by Artw at 5:56 PM on July 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


I wanna know why Bill Clinton didn't let Podesta in on the UFO briefing.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 5:59 PM on July 16, 2017 [9 favorites]


Well obviously Bill is one of Them.
posted by um at 6:29 PM on July 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Regarding the emotional exhaustion I've read in the thread(s) lately, but especially today: please try to remember that none of any of it will happen all at once. Mentally and emotionally, we tend to think about the Big Picture a little too much, looking at all the fighting and working that has to be done, and feeling all of the horror every day; but we only live moment-to-moment, and things will only happen one day's worth per day, so try not to look at the whole horror too much.

This isn't earth-shattering wisdom, I know, but I keep reminding myself of a simple analogy, when I find it all getting to be too much: I think about how I handle the burden of good oral hygiene. If I'm lucky, I'll get 80-85 years kicking around here, which means brushing my teeth somewhere around 60,000 times to take care of them through my life. That's an enormous amount of work! Can you imagine having to brush your teeth SIXTY THOUSAND TIMES?? I could never do that, I would give up and go for implants or no teeth by repetition 400 or so.

Except of course, it's not like that, I actually only need to brush twice per day, which is a very manageable amount of work. The catch is, I have to do it twice daily, every day, and the every day part is its own challenge and work, sure, but it's a lot easier and less burdensome than 60,000 all at once, and is a very different sort of challenge.

Consistency in effort over time is not easy, but it is way easier than all at once, and I guess my point is, my friends, try as much as possible not to feel it all at once. It will happen one day per day whether we imagine it that way or not, and for survival I'm practicing the skill of knowing more than I really react to, and reacting with actions more often than feelings.

("A human being is the only animal who can know a thing and not believe it" is usually said critically, but it might be good advice for some of this.)
posted by LooseFilter at 6:30 PM on July 16, 2017 [36 favorites]


Apparently McCain's surgery may be more serious than initially stated.

McConnell is stating they won't vote till he's back, which could be a week or two.

Of course, I keep wondering if Mitchy is trying to head fake us.

Because paranoia is just good sense anymore.
posted by emjaybee at 6:44 PM on July 16, 2017 [12 favorites]


Ugh, I have to witness the ongoing autocratizing garbagefire AND brush my teeth? I didn't sign up for this bullshit.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:53 PM on July 16, 2017 [34 favorites]


Apparently McCain's surgery may be more serious than initially stated.

Gosh, it was only a blood clot in his skull that ran over two inches. No big deal, really. Dude's totally milking this for some time off just 'cause he can, eh?

Everything in that initial statement sounded like they were trying hard to minimize the hell out of a serious problem. Like I thought blood clots were the kind of thing that could kill you, let alone one that long. And while I wish all sorts of ills upon McCain, ill health isn't one of them... but as far as I'm concerned, he can take all the time off he wants.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:57 PM on July 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


For me it helps to compare it to weight lifting. I usually do five sets of five reps. The first four sets get done every time. It's the fifth set that's the test and usually only the last rep that's a problem. But I've been doing it for long enough now that usually by about the 2nd or 3rd rep of that set I'll know that if I just keep doing what I'm doing, keep my form correct and stay focused on what I'm doing, it will be hard but I'll get that 5th rep up.

Sure enough, that 5th rep comes along and I lower the bar down get to the bottom then start to push it back up. It doesn't want to move back up and I'm tired as hell but, I keep my form correct and stay focused and it slowly starts to move. I can still screw it up (and have) so I can't get excited, I just stay focused and keep pushing.

There is still plenty of room for us to screw this up but if we stay focused, keep our form correct, and keep pushing, the weight IS starting to move.

Getting something to happen after the conclusion of the Mueller investigation will be that last rep I think. We'll rack the weight when Trump is out of office.

Then we take a little rest, hydrate and recharge before we move on to the next exercise.
posted by VTX at 6:59 PM on July 16, 2017 [17 favorites]


> Gosh, it was only a blood clot in his skull that ran over two inches. No big deal, really. Dude's totally milking this for some time off just 'cause he can, eh?

Obviously Senator McCain's health needs to be our primary concern, but I do hope he shopped around for the best possible deal on his brain surgery.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:00 PM on July 16, 2017 [31 favorites]


Maybe this is too morbid, but does anyone know (just as a thought experiment) how Arizona replaces senators that die or step down before the end of their term? Some states have the governor appoint, right? And others have special elections? Or is it always the governors? And what do we know about the current AZ governor?
posted by AwkwardPause at 7:04 PM on July 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


the dude married into money, he doesn't need to shop for any deals. he laughs at your petty money problems.
posted by indubitable at 7:06 PM on July 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


According to the National Council of State Legislatures, in AZ the Governor chooses a replacement, AND the replacement must be of the same party as the vacating Senator.
posted by notyou at 7:10 PM on July 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Then by all means he should take as long to recover as he feels like.
posted by Artw at 7:20 PM on July 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


Any chance McCain's blood clot was the cause of his incoherent questioning of Comey (checks google) six weeks ago? That is was it actually a stroke? I know the two can be related, but not sure how that actually works.

No one actually believed the late baseball game excuse did they?
posted by ArgentCorvid at 7:37 PM on July 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


Let's all wish John McCain a long, relaxed, restful recovery from his surgery, which is no doubt covered by his excellent health insurance. Please, Senator - take your time.
posted by RedOrGreen at 7:38 PM on July 16, 2017 [4 favorites]




Jonathan Chait, New York: How ‘Neoliberalism’ Became the Left’s Favorite Insult of Liberals
Neoliberalism is held to be the source of all the ills suffered by the Democratic Party and progressive politics over four decades, up to and (especially) including the rise of Donald Trump. The “neoliberal” accusation is a synecdoche for the American left’s renewed offensive against the center-left and a touchstone in the struggle to define progressivism after Barack Obama.

The ubiquitous epithet is intended to separate its target — liberals — from the values they claim to espouse. By relabeling self-identified liberals as “neoliberals,” their critics on the left accuse them of betraying the historic liberal cause. [...]

Any remotely close look at the historical record, as opposed to a romanticized memory of uncompromised populists of yore, yields the same conclusion as the numbers. The idea that the Democratic Party used to stand for undiluted economic populism in its New Deal heyday is characteristic of the nostalgia to which the party faithful are prone — no present-day politician can ever live up to the imagined greatness of the statesmen of past. [...]

The socialist left has an argument to make against liberalism. It reveals a certain lack of confidence in that argument when it tries to win it with an epithet.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:54 PM on July 16, 2017 [16 favorites]


Any chance McCain's blood clot was the cause of his incoherent questioning of Comey (checks google) six weeks ago? That is was it actually a stroke? I know the two can be related, but not sure how that actually works.
Yeah, the NY Times article mentioned that it could have been. They said that typically, doctors will only find a blood clot like that if there's a problem that causes them to go looking for it, and that could have been the problem. Blood clots can be caused by a stroke, or the blood clot could have caused him to be confused.

It also said that it's very likely that the surgery will correct the problem and McCain will make a full recovery, but they noted that he has had melanoma in the past, and melanoma can metastasize to the brain and produce bleeding. That's the one scary possibility here.
And while I wish all sorts of ills upon McCain, ill health isn't one of them... but as far as I'm concerned, he can take all the time off he wants.
Look, I hear you. But he's taking time off from probably voting for a bill that would deny medical treatment to a lot of people who have some of the same pre-existing conditions that he has. That's not lost on me, as someone whose family history puts her at heightened risk for melanoma.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:00 PM on July 16, 2017 [28 favorites]


He's going to Chaffetz the shit out of that vote. Remember the scooting sociopath.
posted by Yowser at 8:12 PM on July 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


I fervently hope that Senator McCain recovers to fight, from his almost unique position, for the same level of care to be provided to each of his constituents.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:22 PM on July 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Mod note: OH MY GOD, if I have to watch you argue about Chait as a proxy for relitigating the primaries/playing No True Leftist, I will put my fist through my screen.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 8:45 PM on July 16, 2017 [89 favorites]


What's the point of discussing collusion, if there's not a thing going to be done about it?

I still maintain that the Democratic party should be in court right now petitioning to overturn the 2016 election on the grounds that the GOP illegally colluded with a foreign government to influence the outcome of the election through fraud. If nothing else, it would provide an opportunity to depose witnesses and for discovery. At best, it could lead to redoing the election or reversing its outcome. Why the Democrats aren't doing this is a mystery to me.
posted by Mental Wimp at 9:35 PM on July 16, 2017 [23 favorites]


maybe mccain got a deal from the secretary of housing and urban development, i hear that guy is good with brains
posted by bonje at 9:36 PM on July 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Let's all wish John McCain a long, relaxed, restful recovery from his surgery, which is no doubt covered by his excellent health insurance. Please, Senator - take your time.

Personally I'm hoping a takes-no-bullshit nurse gives him a piece of her mind about the healthcare bill while she's got him by the catheter. He can get his R&R after that to think long and hard about it.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:38 PM on July 16, 2017 [26 favorites]


SCP-8912

Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: metafilter.com is to be monitored for "no true Scotsman" arguments regarding the 2016 United States Presidential election. It is imperative that any such discussions be expunged and all participants administered class C amnesics before the entity known as "Eyebrows McGee" becomes aware of them.

If this cannot be prevented, MTF-54 ("We're on a Mission from Glod") will plant stories in local media and administer amnesics to any witnesses if an SCP-8912 manifestation occurs.

Description: SCP-8912 is the manifestation of a human arm, with the hand formed into a fist, from the display of a device being used to access the website metafilter.com. The arm is apparently that of a human female of Caucasian descent; a notable feature is a simplified representation of this image tattooed to the underside of the forearm.

SCP-8912 manifestations are quite rare, as the deity wielding the fist, "Eyebrows McGee" (one of the pantheon of deities metafilter users pay tribute to) is known for their patience and empathy.

On those occasions SCP-8912 has appeared, the operator of the device in question triggered the manifestation by leaving a comment (or string of comments) which attempts to sidetrack a discussion (for a list, see Events 8912-1 through 8912-778, inclusive) into an argument about the Democratic Party's "failures" during the 2016 election. (These arguments are a form of reality bending, but have never resulted in a EK-class reality restructuring event.)

Normally the fist does not actually injure anyone when it appears, but invariably has an effect on the device user similar to that the visit to the Mother Superior had on "Jake" and "Elwood" in the Hollywood movie The Blues Brothers.

This is an easy one to avoid, and frankly, anyone who gets the fist, deserves it. -- Bright
posted by maxwelton at 9:39 PM on July 16, 2017 [56 favorites]


Whoa, I actually have something in common with John McCain! So I have this brain issue (arachnoid cyst) that occasionally requires surgery when it gets out of control and leads to subdural hematoma. The last time I had this was about 5 years ago, and they did a little craniotomy right above the jaw. From what I understand, it's one of the most routine procedures that you can have, and it tends to have good outcomes. The technique has also improved immeasurably since I was a kid and they would have to shave your head or scalp you and bore big burr holes for access. That being said, the recovery from even that minimally invasive version was difficult and painful. I initially planned to be back at work a week after the surgery, and it ended up being closer to six weeks before I could go back to work full time, and I was otherwise healthy and in my mid-twenties. Also the titanium fixtures, at least for me, were painful for six months to a year, and still ache on the regular. I can't imagine what it will be like at his age.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 10:13 PM on July 16, 2017 [34 favorites]


We Are Living in the Coen Brothers’ Darkest Comedy
OSBOURNE COX: The Russians?
HAL: Uh-huh.
COX: The Russians?
HAL: Uh-huh. Russian embassy, yeah.
COX: Are you sure?
HAL: Hey, the guy was not hard to follow. As you know.
COX: Why the fuck would they go to the Russians?! Why the fuck?
Imagine a group of dunderheaded Americans who think they would benefit from a covert alliance with the Russian government. They make overtures to that country’s ambassador, blithely ignorant that they’ll be monitored by U.S. intelligence. A series of cascading mistakes ultimately brings disaster crashing down on their heads.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:23 PM on July 16, 2017 [29 favorites]


[OH MY GOD, if I have to watch you argue about Chait as a proxy for relitigating the primaries/playing No True Leftist, I will put my fist through my screen.]

IMHO, anyone modding this thread deserves a bonus. Hazard pay, even.
Consider this a timely reminder to donate to metafilter if you can.
posted by greermahoney at 11:36 PM on July 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


I'm usually hours or days behind on these threads but I don't think this has been posted, and I believe it's a useful organizing schemata for those trying to work through where they stand on how bad the criminal acts and/or collusion actually were: Seven Theories of the Case: What Do We Really Know about L’Affaire Russe and What Could it All Mean? It's from May originally, unsure if updated, but I looked and didn't see it here. To summarize from the subheds:
* Theory of the Case #1: It’s All a Giant Set of Coincidences and Disconnected Events
* Theory of the Case #2: Trump Attracted Russophiles
* Theory of the Case #3: The Russian Operation Wasn’t Really About Trump at All
-- Note, this means that Russia thought HRC would win and was basically trying to undermine her in advance, which I believe to be largely true
* Theory of the Case #4: Russian Intelligence Actively Penetrated the Trump Campaign—But Trump Didn’t Know
* Theory of the Case #5: Russian Intelligence Actively Penetrated the Trump Campaign—And Trump Knew or Should Have Known
* Theory of the Case #6: Kompromat
* Theory of the Case #7: The President of the United States is a Russian Agent

I would compare it in helpfulness to this from Foreign Policy Research Institute a few months back, pre-Comey: Is Trump Russia’s Manchurian Candidate? No. Here’s Why This one deals more with the overall implications than any discussion of criminal acts. This closely tracks with my thinking in that the administration is acting as a 'useful idiot' simply out of Russophilia (that handsome, charming Putin! what a leader!) and natural inclinations (authoritarianism, mutual hatred of what Europe is and stands for, general laziness about the minutia of running the American foreign policy project that is similar to the laziness and disdain for running the American government-as-a-service project), with the strong caveat that despite the lack of a clear narrative quid-pro-quo through-line and high-level French kissing, many laws and at least ethical lines may have been broken.

Bottom line is that through either analysis (and again, these focus on different areas of the scandale), one doesn't need to accept the most harmful, bizarre, and far-reaching interpretation of the available facts to believe that something very serious has occurred. One of the basic tenets of counterintelligence is that playing footsie with the other side has to always, without fail, be disclosed in toto, even if there are embarrassing aspects or personal motivations otherwise, because the footsie itself creates an opportunity for leverage.
posted by dhartung at 12:33 AM on July 17, 2017 [28 favorites]


We Are Living in the Coen Brothers’ Darkest Comedy

If we survive to get a Coen Bros movie out of this, then Frances McDormand as Sally Yates plz.
posted by EatTheWeek at 1:04 AM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Let's check in on the old Trump property tracker from NBC, shall we?

11 billion years 177 days in office, with 54 of those days spent at least in part at a Trump property, 40 days at a Trump golf property. That's nearly 1/3rd of all days in office spent at one of his businesses.
posted by zachlipton at 1:25 AM on July 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


Why the Democrats aren't [petitioning to overturn the 2016 election on the grounds that the GOP illegally colluded with a foreign government to influence the outcome of the election through fraud] is a mystery to me.

Well, I don't know of any existing legal mechanism for doing so. What law gives what court the power to overturn the election?
posted by thelonius at 3:48 AM on July 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Collusion is all but proven, but there is further smoke. The next really big deal is vote tampering - and if that happened, and the Trumpkins were complicit, I'm not certain how we proceeded from there.
posted by Slap*Happy at 3:50 AM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


If certifying elections isn't just some empty ritual we perform for appearances sake, the results never should have been certified in the first place and we'd have mechanisms for overturning them. I think it's probably the fact that we don't that Putin would love us to notice, but we can't ignore it if our process is broken in reality just to save appearances.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:01 AM on July 17, 2017 [8 favorites]




I don't think anyone knows how we would proceed from there. But fortunately, I think that the measures Obama took (warning Putin off through official diplomatic channels, offering DHS help to states to beef up their security) were suffient to prevent that. We DID have a recount in Wisconsin, as well as partial recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and nothing untoward was found. Obama has been criticized by both sides for not taking more action to prevent this (in spite of McConnell's threats) but by all accounts he was really worried about tampering and prioritized action to prevent that. And it would appear he was successful. It is hard to get credit for things that didn't happen.

Think too, from Putin's POV, how much greater a risk that would have been. That would cross a line in a way that an influence campaign does not, and might have drawn an actual military response, not just sanctions and diplomats expelled. And if he were going to take that risk for what reason would you bring in that (useful) idiot, Trump?
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:08 AM on July 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Seven Theories of the Case:

I didn't see "Trump launders billions in Russia mob money, is on last financial leg, decides, screw it lets full-out treason this shit."

Why isn't that one on there. That's as much, if not more plausible than anything else. And the claest to the truth so far. AFAIK. FWIW. YMMV. LOLZOMG.
posted by petebest at 5:10 AM on July 17, 2017 [34 favorites]


A recount is not an audit. I would be very curious to see if Akhmetshin was involved in any state or local level campaigns in the recent past, and how the various candidates performed vs. their polls.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:35 AM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


To clarify somewhat, I think the desired audit is of changes to the voter registration databases and not actual votes cast, yes?
posted by Slackermagee at 6:05 AM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


To clarify somewhat, I think the desired audit is of changes to the voter registration databases and not actual votes cast, yes?

I have a little contest with a colleague where we find out whose parser can digest the FOIA'd NYS Voter file fastest.

I've wondered on more than one occasion about diffing two different elections, and seeing who has been created/updated/deleted between them.
posted by mikelieman at 6:35 AM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Good Morning, MeFites.... Here is your daily meditation for Day 179.

Russia rejects any US conditions for return of seized compounds
Russia has described any possible conditions set by Washington to return two of the country's diplomatic compounds in the US that were closed down late last year as "unacceptable."

"We have repeatedly said that we think any conditions are unacceptable. We think that the diplomatic property must be returned without any conditions and talks," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN Monday.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 7:00 AM on July 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


From a day or two back, but I have to agree: Said it before and I'll say it again, it's very weird and disconcerting to be frequently agreeing with Jennifer Rubin.

No kidding. And the Rubin op-ed associated with that comment is worth bringing up again in case anyone missed it over the weekend -- the first time I've cited her approvingly. These are strange times, especially in that the moral rot of the Republican Party has been going on since at least Nixon -- the party only pretended they had put the rot behind them with his resignation and, well, the rest of Washington let them pretend.

I'd really like to see the phrase "moral rot" be deployed by all Democrats and their surrogates in the media. It's catchy, and it's accurate.
posted by Gelatin at 7:03 AM on July 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


I'm no political genius, but this strikes me as counterproductive if they're actually trying to get Flake to Yes on their garbage health bill:

White House squeezes Jeff Flake
The Arizona senator's potential GOP primary foes have been in talks with the president and top administration officials. (Politico)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:04 AM on July 17, 2017


Not even white female non-Americans are safe anymore
According to the Star Tribune, three sources said Ms Damond was in her pyjamas when a police car responding to a 911 call pulled into the alley behind her family home in the city’s Fulton neighbourhood.

Ms Damond, 40, approached the driver’s side door in her pyjamas and spoke to the driver.

The officer in the passenger seat then shot Damond through the driver’s side door, according to the publication.
Gotta fear for your life when a woman in PJs comes to talk to you about what's going on. Fucking coward cops.
posted by Talez at 7:04 AM on July 17, 2017 [54 favorites]


You should care about the Trump-Russia scandal. It's not a distraction. It's about holding the president accountable to the public and not his bottom line. (Vox)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:07 AM on July 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


I'm no political genius, but this strikes me as counterproductive if they're actually trying to get Flake to Yes on their garbage health bill:

To quote Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat in All the President's Men:

"Forget the myths the media's created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."

This should be a pinned tweet/post about Trump & Co.
posted by chris24 at 7:09 AM on July 17, 2017 [28 favorites]


I'm no political genius, but this strikes me as counterproductive if they're actually trying to get Flake to Yes on their garbage health bill:

Flake won in 2012 by 3 points, when Romney took Arizona by 9. That was the closest Senate election in Arizona since Barry Goldwater. As of last year, Flake had a -5 approval rating among Republicans. If Trump and the GOP legitimately push a contender, Flake is flucked, and he knows it.
posted by Etrigan at 7:16 AM on July 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Some thoughts about the fatigue on the left:

I'm listening right now to The Beastie Boys' To the Five Boroughs and it strikes me that the album, which came out in 2004, hits the following points:

Stolen election
Military misadventures
Hopes for impeachment
Rightward drift of the country

And aside from point #2, which I think we all anticipate with dread, it's like the same ideas that the left is consumed with right now. And speaking as an Old, it's not too hard to lose sight of the eight years of Obama and see Trump as a continuation of a process that began with I guess Reagan. It seems like I've been outraged by my country for so long.

And part of the fatigue is the eight years of Obama and I think the excellence of HRC (when contrasted with Trump). I mean, I really do not understand how a person can look at Obama and HRC and think naaaaaaaah. I really do not get it, to the fact that I feel dangerously susceptible to arguments that people who are going naaaaah are just not reachable. It's like when you're arguing with somebody who's thrown logic out of the window and you realize 'why am I wasting my fucking time.'

So when people are really exercised about the DNC slogans, I'm just bemused. Because do we really think that matters? We had Obama. We had HRC. In fact most people voted for HRC. But we have Trump. If Jesus Fucking Christ came back and was like spitting out the illest one-liners, we would have the same tribal affiliations, and the gerrymandered system would still be stacked against the will of the people.

To me, this fatigue that is setting in is sort of part of the grieving process the more people think through the impeachment process.

Anyway, I still think that we're in a bubble of sorts, and when that pops things will go bad astonishingly quickly, and all of this outrage that festered during the eight years of W is going to result in some amazing, in the old-fashioned sense, results. I'm hoping that somehow, even if it's improbable, that the correction will be a non-destructive one.
posted by angrycat at 7:17 AM on July 17, 2017 [19 favorites]


Well now that a pretty white woman has been involved, maybe we can do something about police violence?
posted by emjaybee at 7:18 AM on July 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


White House squeezes Jeff Flake
The Arizona senator's potential GOP primary foes have been in talks with the president and top administration officials. (Politico)


Yeah this seems pretty unwise a move when it comes to Flake. Putting in him a position where he's just as afraid of losing to a primary opponent for voting against the bill as he is to losing to a Democrat if he votes for the bill makes it easier, not harder, for him to vote his conscience on the bill and not just what is politically expedient (because damned if he does, damned if he doesn't). But this WH is possibly the least politcally competent administration in dealing with Congress that I could ever have imagined. Their only method of persuasion seems to be: threaten a primary opponent and yell a lot.
posted by dis_integration at 7:19 AM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


authorities have said the officers who responded to the 911 call did not have their body cameras turned on.

Bullshit. This is why police body cams must stream full-time to a network share that's escrowed by civilian authorities. They are fucking useless if the cops control access.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:24 AM on July 17, 2017 [76 favorites]


This is why police body cams must stream full-time to a network share that's escrowed by civilian authorities. They are fucking useless if the cops control access.

If your body cam isn't working, you're not a cop. Period. You're a dude who shot some woman in an alley, and you don't get a police union lawyer, and you don't get to wear your uniform when you go on trial, etc. etc. Maybe you'll get off, maybe not -- have some faith in our justice system that you work for. Want to argue that they break? Get as good on your preventive maintenance as much as you do with your gun, then.
posted by Etrigan at 7:29 AM on July 17, 2017 [117 favorites]


That's what I was thinking, dis_integration. But I also appreciate Etrigan's point, above. I guess it may turn into a litmus test for Flake's character.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:30 AM on July 17, 2017


Amy Wang, WaPo: Break-in reported at office of GOP senator considered swing vote in health-care bill
There was a break-in over the weekend at the Las Vegas office of Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), a Republican senator who could be a critical swing vote on the GOP health-care bill.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Department confirmed a break-in occurred Saturday morning at Heller’s office in southwest Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

A “threatening note” was also left at the office after the break-in, according to 8 News Now, based on an anonymous source. Las Vegas police would not confirm any information about a note to local media outlets.

Megan Taylor, a spokeswoman for Heller, confirmed the break-in but said she could not comment because of an ongoing investigation.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:34 AM on July 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


@realdonaldtrump: "Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That's politics!" 7/17/17 10:07am


Did he just blanket open the door for any/all Dem candidates in 2018/2020 to work with Mi-6 to release the pee tapes, after all "that's politics!"?
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 7:37 AM on July 17, 2017 [20 favorites]


Well now that a pretty white woman has been involved, maybe we can do something about police violence?

No, we won't. I live here and I know. White people have been shot by the cops before. This will be one more tissue of lies and excuses, although everyone will say "now that a white woman was shot, it will get traction". It won't get traction, because if it got traction the police would not be able to murder with impunity.

It's very important that we understand that, underneath all else, this is about the power of the police to murder. The police will always kill the weakest first and most often, because they're trigger-happy cowards (and, I bet, because there are under-cover white supremacists in their ranks and they kill because they want to kill) but ultimately, the issue is their right to kill whoever they want whenever they see fit. That's the right that will never be impinged upon.

It's very much a "first they came for the..." situation. They'll come for the people of color first, and then the poor whites, and then anyone else, because they want to be able to kill with impunity. There's "blue lives" and then there's the rest of us - variously weaker and stronger, but we're all still basically cattle to them.

I live here. What this tells me is "never call the police. Never, ever call the police, or you could be murdered in front of your family". In the past, it was always "only call the police in an emergency, if there's already extreme risk to other people". Now I know I can never, ever call the cops - not once, no matter what's going on.

Given that I had a pretty scary home invasion a few years ago, I don't know what to do. What's my choice? Deal with scary random people or call the cops and cower on the floor with my hands over my head, hoping that the cops don't murder me?
posted by Frowner at 7:39 AM on July 17, 2017 [84 favorites]


To be fair to all involved, the Russians came to DJT's crew.

In the sense that 'we have the sort of stuff you said you wanted earlier' might be seen as an approach, because the family and the Russians have been cronies for decades. This wasn't an out-of-the-blue Oslo Report scenario: there is simply no way that people weren't in close consultation with each other every step of the way.

How much of this comes out - who knows. But there'll be a lot of it.
posted by Devonian at 7:39 AM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


There was a break-in over the weekend at the Las Vegas office of Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), a Republican senator who could be a critical swing vote on the GOP health-care bill.

If Trump's razor is any indication, this could get interesting.
posted by Rykey at 7:41 AM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


This also leads me to believe that the police actually don't want to respond to crimes - they want to terrorize the rest of us into not calling them and just putting up with crime against us, while they do easy jobs and drive around eating donuts.

And I bet that if we started putting together our own neighborhood patrols, they'd crack down pretty hard too. (This was something I used to oppose; now I'm not sure.)

They want us to suffer crime and violence while they draw fat salaries and murder people.
posted by Frowner at 7:42 AM on July 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


@realdonaldtrump: "Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That's politics!" 7/17/17 10:07am

If that's politics then the whole system needs to be burned to the ground.

You convince the citizenry to give you responsibility and you are beholden to them.

Using foreign governments to sway the citizenry means you are beholden to the foreign government instead of the citizenry.

At that point why even fucking bother? Just let the rest of the world rule the United States and be done with it.
posted by Talez at 7:47 AM on July 17, 2017 [22 favorites]


CREW TO GET MAR-A-LAGO VISITOR RECORDS
Washington, D.C.—As part of ongoing litigation brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the National Security Archive (NSA) and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will turn over visitor logs for President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. CREW will publicly release the visitor logs upon receiving them by September 8th.

“The public deserves to know who is coming to meet with the president and his staff,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said. “We are glad that as a result of this case, this information will become public for meetings at his his personal residences—but it needs to be public for meetings at the White House as well.”
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:55 AM on July 17, 2017 [45 favorites]


Ruth Marcus, WaPo: Behind the Trump team’s bluster, a dark legal strategy
So watching a Sekulow performance, it is tempting simply to ask: Why is this man shouting?

The better question is: What is this man shouting? Because if you turn down the volume and pay attention to what Sekulow is saying, you can deduce the disturbing outlines of where the president’s legal team may be heading. As Sekulow made the rounds Sunday, he signaled the expansion of the Trump team’s assault on former FBI director James B. Comey and, in turn, on the legitimacy of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. This is worrisome, because it lays the foundation for firing Mueller and/or issuing pardons and declaring, “Case closed.”
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:01 AM on July 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


There was a break-in over the weekend at the Las Vegas office of Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.)

have we firmly established g. gordon liddy's whereabouts this weekend
posted by murphy slaw at 8:01 AM on July 17, 2017 [24 favorites]


@realdonaldtrump: "Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That's politics!" 7/17/17 10:07am

Except that, as confirmed by Donny Jr. himself, a primary subject of the meeting was "Russian adoptions" which means the Magnitski Act and sanctions on Putin and his oligarch buddies. All along Trump has said they never discussed sanctions with the Russians, but in his defense Jr. has explicitly said they were talking about sanctions. Idiot Fredo thought that "Russian adoptions" could be used as a defense, but instead it really incriminates him because it makes clear the quid pro quo intent of the Russian collusion.
posted by JackFlash at 8:05 AM on July 17, 2017 [34 favorites]


You convince the citizenry to give you responsibility and you are beholden to them.

But it seems to me this is the problem right now; not only are the politicians convinced that they aren't beholden to the citizens, the law, or any kind of ethical set of guidelines except "winning"; the citizens have also been convinced - by the media, by the politicians, by the notion that this is a "sport" - that politicians aren't beholden to anything except "winning".

And "winning" is only defined as winning elections and votes for bills. It should mean answering the question of "what is in the best interests of all of us on issue X, doing our best to consider all potential implications?" and then moving on and applying that question to the next issue, and the next, and then revisiting how things are working out, and on and on. I guess I'm too idealistic for this age of talking heads, soundbites and messaging in 140 characters.
posted by nubs at 8:10 AM on July 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


Regarding the "seven theories of the case"... It seems to me that we now have a LOT of evidence for "Theory of the Case #5: Russian Intelligence Actively Penetrated the Trump Campaign—And Trump Knew or Should Have Known"

--- The Trump Jr. meeting with Veselnitskaya et al.
--- The grounds for the FISA warrant on Page
--- Peter Smith saying to hackers "I’m talking to Michael Flynn about this—if you find anything, can you let me know?"
--- US Intelligence intercepted Russian officials bragging about their close relationship to Flynn and Manafort
--- The money we now know Flynn and Manfort both received from interests tied to Putin
--- Members of the campaign repeating falsehoods that originated from Russian propaganda (eg Manafort on the Incirlik "attack" -- Trump on "Sidney Blumenthal's" Benghazi e-mail)
--- Roger Stone in contact with WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0
--- At least 18 calls and e-mails with Russians during the campaign, plus multiple meetings with Kislyak by various members of the campaign, all unreported.

As evidence that there is at least "soft kompromat" to go with that intelligence penetration ("inhibitions on Trump’s part associated with the possibility that a kompromat file may exist" - likely related to money laundering IMO) we have...

--- The refusal of candidate Trump to criticize Putin for any reason
--- All of the efforts the White House has made to remove sanctions, return compounds, share top secret intelligence, accept Russia's terms on Syria, and set up a back channel that could not be monitored by US Intelligence agencies.
--- Flynn still had a job after Yates said he could be blackmailed by Russia

(Links for all of those stories are here).

Now consider how all of those things we know line up with what intelligence experts describe as Russia's standard operating procedure for recruiting assets, witting or unwitting...

Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting sure sounds like a Russian intelligence operation
But everything we know about the meeting — from whom it involved to how it was set up to how it unfolded — is in line with what intelligence analysts would expect an overture in a Russian influence operation to look like. It bears all the hallmarks of a professionally planned, carefully orchestrated intelligence soft pitch designed to gauge receptivity, while leaving room for plausible deniability in case the approach is rejected. And the Trump campaign’s willingness to take the meeting — and, more important, its failure to report the episode to U.S. authorities — may have been exactly the green light Russia was looking for to launch a more aggressive phase of intervention in the U.S. election.
An ex-CIA officer: the Trump Jr. meeting shows how the Russians exploit intelligence target
If you're an intelligence agency or officer, you never walk up to somebody that you want to recruit or influence and tell them directly that you want to recruit or influence them. You act upon them indirectly, whether they’re witting or unwitting or complicit — and all of those things are slightly different. But in any case, you always have a cover story — always. And you always act in a way that can be masked.
...
It also seems certain that Trump is uncontrollable and would not ever consider himself a spy, but many spies don't consider themselves spies and often don't even know that they're spies. And intelligence services couldn’t care less about that.

What matters to them is exploiting people, and that is what is happening here.
I think it's pretty clear by this point that the Trump campaign almost certainly had been penetrated by Russian intelligence, that Trump knew or should have known Russia was helping him, and that if he did know that any of his Russian friends were connected to Russian intelligence, he was afraid to to do anything about it because of the possibility of kompromat. He might have been afraid to even ask himself that question for the same reason.

But there remains a strong possibility that, because his moral compass is just completely broken, he did not realize there was anything wrong with anything he was doing.

As former CIA director John Brennan said to the House Intelligence Committee: "Frequently, people who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late.”
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:15 AM on July 17, 2017 [69 favorites]


But it seems to me this is the problem right now; not only are the politicians convinced that they aren't beholden to the citizens, the law, or any kind of ethical set of guidelines except "winning"; the citizens have also been convinced - by the media, by the politicians, by the notion that this is a "sport" - that politicians aren't beholden to anything except "winning".

Pretty much. Congress sucks, except for my guy. Even though their guy is probably the one voting to defund healthcare for billionaire tax cuts.
posted by Talez at 8:15 AM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


That latest tweet seems like an invitation for the press to ask elected officials to take a position on if they would take that meeting or if Trump is speaking for them.
posted by peeedro at 8:16 AM on July 17, 2017 [35 favorites]


politicians convinced that they aren't beholden to the citizens, the law, or any kind of ethical set of guidelines except "winning"

Well, all 240 Republican seats in the House and 8 in the Senate are up for election in 2018, so if we can just craft FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING FUCKS into a more palatable slogan, we're golden.
posted by Rykey at 8:21 AM on July 17, 2017 [19 favorites]


Sorry, I know that comment of mine above was already long, but I just want to add something, from that Vox link about Brennan's testimony: "His overall point was something damning in a different way: Trump aides were in regular contact with Russia and never stopped to ask themselves whom they were actually working with or why Russians would be taking so strong and direct an interest in an American presidential election.

“I know what the Russians try to do. They try to suborn individuals and try to get individuals, including US individuals, to act on their behalf, wittingly or unwittingly,” he told the panel. “I had unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting US persons involved in the campaign or not to work on their behalf.”
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:26 AM on July 17, 2017 [28 favorites]


Excellent summary OnceUponATime.
posted by diogenes at 8:31 AM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


To quote Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat in All the President's Men:

"Forget the myths the media's created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."


I went to see All the President's Men on Friday; it was playing at the lovely old Paramount Theater here in Oakland, a movie house that is a relic of a simpler, more elegant age. Anyway, that line got the biggest laugh of the night. And Hal Holbrook's name in the credits got the biggest cheer.

But near the end of the movie, Deep Throat (Holbrook) tells Woodward (Redford) that the reporters' lives are in danger, and I came away from the movie worrying that that's the next step. Putin has been able to kill journalists and other people he considers threats in both Russia and the UK (and likely elsewhere as well); at what point does that become something we see here?
posted by suelac at 8:35 AM on July 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


Op-ed by Joe Scarborough (with all the caveats about his ass's stupid promotion of the Douche Canoe in primaries and bad ideas regarding governance/the role of government) in the Washington Post:

Trump is killing the Republican Party
After their well-deserved drubbing, Republicans swore that if voters ever entrusted them with running Washington again, they would prove themselves worthy. Trump’s party was given a second chance this year, but it has spent almost every day since then making the majority of Americans regret it.

The GOP president questioned America’s constitutional system of checks and balances. Republican leaders said nothing. He echoed Stalin and Mao by calling the free press “the enemy of the people.” Republican leaders were silent. And as the commander in chief insulted allies while embracing autocratic thugs, Republicans who spent a decade supporting wars of choice remained quiet. Meanwhile, their budget-busting proposals demonstrate a fiscal recklessness very much in line with the Bush years.

Last week’s Russia revelations show just how shamelessly Republican lawmakers will stand by a longtime Democrat who switched parties after the promotion of a racist theory about Barack Obama gave him standing in Lincoln’s once-proud party. Neither Lincoln, William Buckley nor Ronald Reagan would recognize this movement.

It is a dying party that I can no longer defend.
While it's nice to see Scarborough realize this appalling group as a problem, he has the causes flipped: The Douche Canoe isn't killing the Republican Party--he is but a symptom of the party's attitudes, tactics, and goals. I mean, he does not recognize that much of Reagan's policy was extremely racist (Neshoba County fair speech, anyone?). His reasoning and understanding of history are flawed, but I'm glad to see cracks in the Republican party.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 8:35 AM on July 17, 2017 [37 favorites]


Paul Krugman brings to our attention the real Road to Serfdom. Republicans in Idaho have enacted a new non-compete law that puts the burden on employees to prove that they are not harming their former employer when the go to work for someone else. That's right. Your employer can sue you if you won't work for them.

Whenever Republicans pontificate about free markets and competition, there is really only one suitable response -- bullshit.

Republicans hate free markets and they hate competition and they love monopolies and they craft the laws accordingly. Income inequality is no accident.
posted by JackFlash at 8:37 AM on July 17, 2017 [108 favorites]


Re: police body cams - police are willing to pretend it's about accountability if that gets them purchased, but they are a police tool. Police control the video upload process and can easily decide what to discard. You'll only see cam video if they think it supports their own case.
posted by idiopath at 8:40 AM on July 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


I completely agree that if a bodycam isn't working and a cop shoots someone it should be automatically first-degree murder. Because let's all be real: that is exactly what it is.
posted by winna at 8:42 AM on July 17, 2017 [24 favorites]


Can we please stop the police/bodycam derail?
posted by Candleman at 8:49 AM on July 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


Some thoughts about the fatigue on the left:

I'm listening right now to The Beastie Boys' To the Five Boroughs and it strikes me that the album, which came out in 2004[...]


I had the same thing happen the other day, American Idiot by Green Day came on the radio (also 2004) and the opening lyrics...

Don't wanna be an American idiot
Don't want a nation under the new media
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind-fuck America

ಠ_ಠ

And I just started yelling in my car, "WE DID THIS ALREADY! WE ALREADY FUCKING DID THIS! WE'RE SERIOUSLY DOING THIS AGAIN?!?!? ARGHGHGGHG!" I feel that way whenever I engage with any media from the early 2000s. One time was enough, thank you very fucking much. At least people who lived through Watergate got a bit of a breather before the USA careened to the next fucking shit show.

And it'll be the same shit, 8 years of fucking nonsense, brutality, and erosion of civil liberties while the GOP becomes more and more unpopular and they're finally drubbed out in favor of the Democrats who will spend half their time cleaning up the mess left behind by the shit twister that is the Republican party. Jesus christ. I remember how unpopular the GOP was towards the end of the Bush years, and how they slunk away with their tails between their legs, and I feel like I've been killing this same zombie my whole life screaming "WHY WONT YOU STAY DEAD?!?!"
posted by supercrayon at 8:55 AM on July 17, 2017 [35 favorites]


In which the New Yorker talks about my town and Trump.


full disclosure - I know some of the people interviewed.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:56 AM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


You know that it's 100% certain that the Russians taped the episode with DT Jr.
Going into a meeting with the son of the potential president, his brother-in-law, and his campaign manager with a chance to compromise them? That's an espionage wet dream.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:58 AM on July 17, 2017 [25 favorites]


The Republican Party dying would be good news, and may even be true, but it sure as hell isnt dying fast enough and it's trying to drag us all down to hell with it.
posted by Artw at 9:00 AM on July 17, 2017 [16 favorites]


It already died. Now we're fighting the zombie Republican Party. It's dumb, incapable, mumbles a lot of nonsense, and feeds on death and despair. But it's almost impossible to kill.
posted by Glibpaxman at 9:07 AM on July 17, 2017 [36 favorites]


I remember how unpopular the GOP was towards the end of the Bush years, and how they slunk away with their tails between their legs, and I feel like I've been killing this same zombie my whole life screaming "WHY WONT YOU STAY DEAD?!?!"

They didn't though. They doubled down on the exact same things, changed names, and came back more popular than at any time in history to win total control of 31 states government and then the federal government over the next 8 years of essentially unbroken Democratic electoral decimation. It took the second worst economic depression in US history to get us Obama, and even that wasn't enough to discredit Republican ideas to the American public. Stop pretending they're dead or dying. They're not. They're winning, and cheating to make sure they never have to play a fair game again. We never won shit. We'll never win. Only temporarily improve things, hopefully. The fight never ends, because as soon as one battle is "won", the next one starts, and Republicans will always be there fighting to undo everything we thought was "won" and settled.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:08 AM on July 17, 2017 [19 favorites]


Mississippi has always had a high percentage of blacks (now 37%). The Republican party (and the Democratic party before that) has held back progressive politics there for over a century.

This is the new model for voter suppression, Republican domination.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:11 AM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


They're winning, and cheating to make sure they never have to play a fair game again. We never won shit. We'll never win. Only temporarily improve things, hopefully. The fight never ends, because as soon as one battle is "won", the next one starts, and Republicans will always be there fighting to undo everything we thought was "won" and settled.

This. Anyone who says "The Republican Party is dying!" must be sourcing their information from Netcraft because I have no fucking idea what they're talking about.
posted by Talez at 9:15 AM on July 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


What would kill the Republican party is every left leaning voter showing up. Showing up at county Democratic party meetings to drive the party machinery more towards progessivism, showing up at primaries, showing up at GOTV, and finally, showing up at the election itself at every level, every time.

Republicans are great at, if nothing else, showing up hell or high water to pull that lever.
posted by Talez at 9:19 AM on July 17, 2017 [42 favorites]


You convince the citizenry to give you responsibility and you are beholden to them.

But it seems to me this is the problem right now; not only are the politicians convinced that they aren't beholden to the citizens, the law, or any kind of ethical set of guidelines except "winning"; the citizens have also been convinced - by the media, by the politicians, by the notion that this is a "sport" - that politicians aren't beholden to anything except "winning".


As I've pointed out before, the Republican reliance on cheating indicates that they know darn well they aren't likely to convince the citizenry to support their actual agenda. It follows that Republicans are only beholden to those who helped them cheat -- in this case, among others, The Russians.

@realdonaldtrump: "Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That's politics!" 7/17/17 10:07am

This tweet is fascinating not only because it's objectively untrue, as usual -- If memory serves me correctly, the Gore campaign was leaked a George W. Bush debate prep document and promptly turned it over to the FBI -- but also because Trump is asserting that every other politician is as corrupt as he is. I wonder how his erstwhile Republican allies feel about this opinion?
posted by Gelatin at 9:20 AM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


you know how in a JRPG when you beat up the final boss and he loses all his HP he "dies" and then comes back as some giant horrible Cronenbergian dragon-squid-zombie monster

that is the sense in which the Republican party is dying
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:21 AM on July 17, 2017 [77 favorites]


Fox News Host: I’d Take ‘Opposition Research’ From The ‘Devil’ Himself (Nicole Lafond, TPM)
“As someone who has ran for office five times, if the devil called me and said he wanted to set up a meeting to give me opposition research on my opponent I’d be on the first trolley to hell to get it,” Jeanine Pirro said on her show Sunday. “And any politician who tells you otherwise is a bald-faced liar.”
Didn't the devil offer some guy the opportunity to like rule all the kingdoms of the world if that guy would perform an act of worship?? What was the guy's name again...?

The strain of "Christanity" embraced by the Republican party and the adherents thereof have done more to thoroughly damn that religion in my eyes anything else.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 9:28 AM on July 17, 2017 [88 favorites]


that is the sense in which the Republican party is dying

If Dungeons and Dragons taught us anything, it's that a demilich can be reduced to a few crumbling bones in a jar and be at the peak of its evil power:

"The magics preserving the [GOP's] body against the ravages of time weaken, usually causing the body to gradually deteriorate until only a skull or even a single skeletal hand remains; this advanced form of [GOP] is known as a [Trump-era GOP]. Despite its ruined body, a [Trump-era GOP] is far from powerless; it is very resistant to most weapons and magic, and if disturbed, the skull [Jeff Sessions?] will levitate and suck the souls from nearby living creatures."
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:28 AM on July 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


I have a friend who's thinking of running for office. What are the ethical & legal guidelines for using foreign intelligence agencies to obtain opposition research?
posted by scalefree at 9:30 AM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Mississippi has always had a high percentage of blacks (now 37%). The Republican party (and the Democratic party before that) has held back progressive politics there for over a century.

After seeing the movie "Selma" recently, I rewatched some of the great series "Eyes on the Prize" because I wanted to know the true history of the march over the Pettus bridge and what happened afterwards. After an exhausting hour's worth of dramatic tension and violence and video clips and descriptions of what happened on Bloody Sunday, it ended with a very terse, brief afterword: oh, and by the way, the black people got to vote, and they voted out the bad guys.

And I almost shouted at the screen: HOW?? HOW did they do that? Give me more information!! Did the racists just start following the rules all of a sudden? HOW did it happen? Or did it? No matter how violent history may be, we still need to learn from it.
posted by Melismata at 9:30 AM on July 17, 2017 [12 favorites]


Op-ed by Joe Scarborough (with all the caveats about his ass's stupid promotion of the Douche Canoe in primaries and bad ideas regarding governance/the role of government) in the Washington Post:

Trump is killing the Republican Party


Uh-huh. Then one would think the Republican Party would do something about it; they certainly could if they chose. Writing op-eds in the WaPo to wash one's hands of responsibility doesn't seem to work, though.
posted by Gelatin at 9:30 AM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]




The strain of "Christanity" embraced by the Republican party and the adherents thereof have done more to thoroughly damn that religion in my eyes anything else.

"If the Father of Lies told me something, I'd take him at his word and buy a round trip ticket to visit him at the Hotel California! He said I can check out any time I like!" I can't even. Don't the brothers Grimm have a stack of stories about this?
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:43 AM on July 17, 2017 [19 favorites]


White House unveils ‘Made in America’ week, though many Trump products are made overseas
For Trump, highlighting U.S.-made products is inconsistent with his practices as a businessman. For years, the Trump Organization has outsourced much of its product manufacturing, relying on a global network of factories in a dozen countries — including Bangladesh, China and Mexico — to make its clothing, home decor pieces and other items.

Similarly, the clothing line of Ivanka Trump, the president's older daughter and a senior White House adviser, relies exclusively on foreign factories employing low-wage workers in countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and China, according to a recent Washington Post investigation.
How many Trump products were made overseas? Here’s the complete list.

Made in America: A buyer’s guide for Donald Trump
posted by kirkaracha at 9:45 AM on July 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


The passing of George Romero, grand poobah of the zombie movie genre, provides us with inspiration to reflect on how to properly battle Republicans.

Organization and speed are not their strong suits, but they typically don't need them. They make up for it with numbers, unswerving focus on their prey, and savagery when they have the weaker disadvantaged. They are impervious to reasoned appeals, emotional arguments or pleas for mercy. They respond to their own perceived needs and little else.

Their greatest danger lies in that they simply will not stop. Fend off one, three, twenty waves and hundreds more will shamble forwards, hungrily grasping for tax cuts and religious affirmation.

When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk in Oklahoma.
posted by delfin at 9:46 AM on July 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


Republicans, in 2017: Everybody colludes (with Russia). You'd be a fool not to collude (with Russia). There's nothing wrong, certainly nothing illegal, with colluding (with Russia).

Collusion shmullsion!

By the way, we didn't collude.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:25 AM on July 17, 2017 [12 favorites]


White House unveils ‘Made in America’ week, though many Trump products are made overseas

Also this: DHS Provides Additional Foreign Worker Visas on ‘Made in America’ Week
One of the first orders of business of the White House’s “Made in America” week is providing companies the opportunity to hire foreign workers under the H-2B visa program.

The Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that it will add 15,000 seasonal visas to fill H-2B non-agricultural jobs. The annual cap, set by Congress, is 66,000. In its statement, the department said that after consulting with Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta, Secretary John Kelly “determined there are not enough qualified and willing U.S. workers available to perform temporary nonagricultural labor to satisfy the needs of some American businesses in FY 2017.”
...
Donald Trump is familiar with the visas as the head of a business empire. A CNN analysis published in April found that Trump businesses received 1,024 H-2B visas since 2000. “Those visas have gone to Mar-A-Lago, Jupiter Gold Club, Lamington Farm and the Trump National Golf Club for jobs like cooks, waiters and waitresses and housekeepers,” the report adds.
posted by peeedro at 10:28 AM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


The latest from Josh Marshall over at TPM: A Chronicle of Predation, Appetites and Power
My point here is not that these people are ‘not really conservatives’ and thus maybe something else. It’s that they’re not really anything. I certainly think the far right politics comes naturally to the President in many ways. My guess is that the same is true for his son Don Jr. But fundamentally politics itself and everything most of us think of as policy is alien to all of these people. Except as an opportunity. Politics, for them, is about winning, power and self-enrichment. Of course, the first two of these – winning and power – play some role for the great majority of politicians. And self-enrichment, albeit often in technically legal permutations, is a preoccupation with many politicians. With the Trumps, I believe that is really all there is. Power and appetite. That’s it.

If you look through Trumps business history, you see a similar pattern. He goes luxe or bargain basement, clean or crooked. It’s whatever counts as a win in the context. Having researched the Trumps a lot they started to look more and more to me like a mob family in the sense that whether things were legal or right just didn’t seem to be a metric they operated in. Lots of people break laws. That doesn’t make them unique. But this is a bit different. Looking over Trump’s history, breaking laws or not or cheating people or not just never seems to have been part of the equation. [...]

To put this all as clearly as I can, it’s not that somehow Don Jr was so profoundly clueless that he didn’t know this was a problem. He knew enough to lie about it for at least a year. It’s not that he doesn’t know it’s wrong or against the law. It is that in this family having that be a brake or obstacle to action is simply alien. Dad’s good, Hillary’s bad. What’s the problem? Of course he loves it. It’s fits the family’s entire pattern.

The additional factor to the Trump’s is the coterie of lackies and toadies who trail around them. There are numerous people in the Trump universe who were either apolitical or relatively committed Democrats before 2016 and now they’re the most committed Trumpers. Other people who probably had not entirely embraced a total amorality are nonetheless dragged alone. We can call them Dignity Wraiths. But another way to look at it is that there is a contagious amorality that emanates from the Trumps.

Needless to say, people who know no limits on their actions, not even cynical limits on actions that may simply be too dangerous to risk (what keeps many, though by no means all super powerful people in check) are very, very dangerous people and all the more so when they take control of a state with such vast powers.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 10:38 AM on July 17, 2017 [41 favorites]


WaPo: Vice chair of Trump’s voter fraud commission wants to change federal law to add new requirements for voting, email shows:
The day after Donald Trump was elected president, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, now the vice-chair of Donald Trump's commission on voter fraud, told Trump's transition team of a proposal to change federal law to allow stricter requirements on voter registration.

Kobach's team was "putting together information on legislation drafts for submission to Congress early in the administration," Kobach wrote to transition team member Gene Hamilton in an email. "I have some already started regarding amendments to the NVRA [National Voter Registration Act] to make clear that proof of citizenship requirements are permitted (based on my ongoing litigation with the ACLU over this)."
They just want to keep setting that bar higher. First it's ID, now it's ID that proves citizenship

Dan Diamond has an epic pair of articles in Politico on hospitals: How hospitals got richer off Obamacare: "After fending off challenges to their tax-exempt status, the biggest hospitals boosted revenue while cutting charity care. " and How the Cleveland Clinic grows healthier while its neighbors stay sick : "The Clinic is a global success story, but its host community remains mired in poverty."

From the "Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated" department, Politico brings us How the White House and Republicans underestimated Obamacare repeal, in which Republicans who have voted to repeal Obamacare 60+ times get cold feet when they're actually holding a loaded gun, and the White House and Congress are blaming each other for the incompetence.

But, of course, we don't have our shit together either. AP: With 2018 looming, Democrats divided on their core message:
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley hesitated when asked about his party’s core message to voters.

“That message is being worked on,” the New York congressman said in an interview this past week. “We’re doing everything we can to simplify it, but at the same time provide the meat behind it as well. So that’s coming together now.”
...
Just 37 percent of adults believe the Democratic Party “stands for something,” according to a Washington Post-ABC poll released on Monday. Another 52 percent said the party “just stands against Trump.”
The Democratic leadership has a novel idea for using some of the extra time while Sen. McCain is out. What if we, and this is a wild and crazy idea here, found some experts who know things about health care, put them in a room, and asked them to tell us stuff about the BCRA? I don't know you guys, if this whole concept of finding out what laws will do before they're passed catches on, just think of the possibilities. Democrats want hearings on healthcare bill during delay.

NYT: Outgoing Ethics Chief: U.S. Is ‘Close to a Laughingstock’ (emphasis added):
“It’s hard for the United States to pursue international anticorruption and ethics initiatives when we’re not even keeping our own side of the street clean. It affects our credibility,” Mr. Shaub said in a two-hour interview this past weekend — a weekend Mr. Trump let the world know he was spending at a family-owned golf club that was being paid to host the U.S. Women’s Open tournament. “I think we are pretty close to a laughingstock at this point.”

Mr. Shaub called for nearly a dozen legal changes to strengthen the federal ethics system: changes that, in many cases, he had not considered necessary before Mr. Trump’s election. Every other president since the 1970s, Republican or Democrat, worked closely with the ethics office, he said.

A White House official dismissed the criticism, saying on Sunday that Mr. Shaub was simply promoting himself and had failed to do his job properly.

“Mr. Schaub’s penchant for raising concerns on matters well outside his scope with the media before ever raising them with the White House — which happens to be his actual day job — is rather telling,” Lindsay E. Walters, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that misspelled Mr. Shaub’s name. “The truth is, Mr. Schaub is not interested in advising the executive branch on ethics. He’s interested in grandstanding and lobbying for more expansive powers in the office he holds.”
Later today, the President will be touring a "Made in America" firetruck, a boat, a forklift, looks like some kind of excavator. Seems like we might just get a sequel of the big truck incident. Isn't "everybody come look at the big shiny firetruck" an activity that usually stops sometime in elementary school?
posted by zachlipton at 10:47 AM on July 17, 2017 [45 favorites]


“That message is being worked on,” the New York congressman said in an interview this past week. “We’re doing everything we can to simplify it, but at the same time provide the meat behind it as well. So that’s coming together now.”

How about "We're trying to have a fucking society here"?
posted by Etrigan at 10:51 AM on July 17, 2017 [34 favorites]


a statement that misspelled Mr. Shaub’s name

How is it that all these people are so fucking terrible at everything?
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:54 AM on July 17, 2017 [17 favorites]


A White House official dismissed the criticism, saying on Sunday that Mr. Shaub was simply promoting himself and had failed to do his job properly.

They're doing it on purpose now, aren't they.
posted by Etrigan at 10:57 AM on July 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


ID that proves citizenship

That's a seriously high bar. It's basically asking for the I-9 documents, minus work visas and green cards. What fuckery.
posted by jedicus at 10:58 AM on July 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


It's a ludicrously high, prohibitively expensive bar. Passports are kind of expensive! Not many people know about passport cards! I only recently got ID that proves my citizenship because lol *gestures at current sociopolitical landscape* it seemed like a good idea, and I paid like $200 for the privilege.
posted by yasaman at 11:06 AM on July 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


What are their chances of unilaterally achieving that?
posted by Artw at 11:10 AM on July 17, 2017


That's a seriously high bar. It's basically asking for the I-9 documents, minus work visas and green cards. What fuckery.

I assume these states want to start with putting citizenship status on DLs because right now there's only one item that proves ID and citizenship and that's a passport. The only documents a natural born American has to prove citizenship are birth certificate or social security card, both of which are easy to forge and impossible to authenticate quickly without some serious voting infrastructure improvements.
posted by Talez at 11:10 AM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


This whole "citizenship proving id" requirement discussion seems to be seriously missing the point that they could also make it much harder or slower to get passports and effectively limit the electorate to folks who already possess them (a non-representative slice of the population at large, clearly).

I'd maaaaybe give them a fleck of benefit of the doubt if they simultaneously promised free and fast passports to all US citizens before the requirement went into effect.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:11 AM on July 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


Later today, the President will be touring a "Made in America" firetruck, a boat, a forklift, looks like some kind of excavator. Seems like we might just get a sequel of the big truck incident.

Can't they just Google all of those things, and park him in front of YouTube like every parent who can't afford daycare does?
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:13 AM on July 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


>> ... a statement that misspelled Mr. Shaub’s name
> How is it that all these people are so fucking terrible at everything?


I'm not sure if this was meant as a reply or not:

> They're doing it on purpose now, aren't they.

But yeah, I think so.

I've been doing a lot of looking back in my mind lately to the Clinton / Bush II years, and the Republicans thundering about integrity and personal responsibility and liberal treason and "the soft bigotry of low expectations" and the moral decline of the country due to the poor example set from the top. And look at the party now. Boy, I sure was naive, wasn't I, to think that they were at least somewhat serious.

And since I'm commenting - I followed a random link to this old Atlantic article from 2016:
The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans
Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency. I’m one of them.
There's a MeFi thread about it which I don't remember, probably because I was busy actually litigating the primaries at that point. Still perfectly relevant though.
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:14 AM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


I seem to recall a recent case wherein the birth certificate of a random President of the United States wasn't enough to prove citizenship in some orange-fluff covered minds.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:15 AM on July 17, 2017 [48 favorites]


I assume these states want to start with putting citizenship status on DLs because right now there's only one item that proves ID and citizenship and that's a passport.

Some military IDs indirectly do, because you have to be a citizen to be an officer, but very few people know that, in my experience.
posted by Etrigan at 11:16 AM on July 17, 2017


“That message is being worked on,” the New York congressman said in an interview this past week. “We’re doing everything we can to simplify it, but at the same time provide the meat behind it as well. So that’s coming together now.”

I don't know why this is so hard. Equal opportunity. Human rights. Progressive taxation. Social safety net. Freedom from violence. Evidence-based policy. Healthcare and education for all. What's the problem?
posted by Dr. Send at 11:21 AM on July 17, 2017 [12 favorites]


Fitting that on a bumper sticker? :)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 11:26 AM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


democrats are still paralyzed by the perception that the electorate is far more conservative than it actually is and they have this quixotic desire to appeal to every voter, which ends with them appealing to no one
posted by murphy slaw at 11:27 AM on July 17, 2017 [25 favorites]


>> Equal opportunity. Human rights. Progressive taxation. Social safety net. Freedom from violence. Evidence-based policy. Healthcare and education for all. What's the problem?

> Fitting that on a bumper sticker? :)


A better deal ... for you.
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:28 AM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


I don't know why this is so hard.

I've said it before, but the affirmative Democratic platform is obvious: Freedom of speech, Freedom of worship, Freedom from want, Freedom from fear.

(And while they apparently need to address the wholly unwarranted concern trolling skepticism as to "what Democrats stand for" -- come on, people, Democrats are nothing if not resplendent with position papers and policy outlines, and the data in ours actually hold water, to boot! -- Democrats need to start sowing deserved cynicism and doubt that Republicans actually stand for the things they supposedly stand for. Small government and local control, my foot. And while they're at it, Democrats should also challenge the media's entirely unjustified presumption that the Republicans are "strong on defense.")
posted by Gelatin at 11:28 AM on July 17, 2017 [26 favorites]


I assume these states want to start with putting citizenship status on DLs because right now there's only one item that proves ID and citizenship and that's a passport.

In some states, they rotate the ID orientation of under 21s ... Maybe they'll have different color cards and crap for anyone here on a visa or without proven citizenship.
posted by tilde at 11:28 AM on July 17, 2017


The only documents a natural born American has to prove citizenship are birth certificate or social security card, both of which are easy to forge and impossible to authenticate quickly without some serious voting infrastructure improvements.

Nothing against Talez or anything else they stated, this is strictly FYI: A US Social Security Card is not proof of US Citizenship.
Natural born citizens have a
- Birth Certificate or
- Delayed Birth Record or
- Consular Report of Birth Abroad

Naturalized citizens have
- Naturalization Certificate (N-550) or
- Citizenship Certificate (N-600)

A US Passport Book or Passport Card is proof of Citizenship. If you have a canceled (with the holes punched in it) or expired US Passport Book, those are also proofs of Citizenship. (Passport Cards are not canceled if submitted for renewal, they are destroyed.) Passport Books and Cards that are damaged or reported lost or stolen are not proofs of Citizenship.
posted by carsonb at 11:30 AM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


>> ... a statement that misspelled Mr. Shaub’s name
> How is it that all these people are so fucking terrible at everything?

I'm not sure if this was meant as a reply or not:

> They're doing it on purpose now, aren't they.


I was more referring to the Trump's Mirror aspect of saying he was a publicity hound who was bad at his job, but yeah, they're definitely also intentionally torpedoing the very idea that government can be good and employ people who give a fuck.
posted by Etrigan at 11:31 AM on July 17, 2017


Maybe they'll have different color cards and crap for anyone here on a visa or without proven citizenship.

*shrugs*

What could go wrong?
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:31 AM on July 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Maybe they'll have different color cards and crap for anyone here on a visa or without proven citizenship.

REAL ID could cover this, right? You at least have to provide "documentation of legal status", and then they give you a star on your drivers license.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 11:34 AM on July 17, 2017


Changes to the National Voter Registration Act should not be able to pass under reconciliation and would need Democratic votes. Presumably they would only get a couple Manchins and Donnellys to sign on to that.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:34 AM on July 17, 2017


Faint of Butt: How is it that all these people are so fucking terrible at everything?

It's like asking "have these people no shame?"

No, they have no shame, and no, they don't care about appearing competent, because the pussy-grabbing, bill-stiffing, bankruptcy-ridden GOP candidate won, and neither the Senate nor House majorities care to hold anyone accountable. Why bother, if no one in charge cares? Take the money and run.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:34 AM on July 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


Maybe we can stop giving credence to the idea that proving citizenship to prevent voter fraud is even necessary.

It is nothing but an attempt to disenfranchise otherwise eligible voters across the country. It is nothing but another artificial barrier that the Republicans need to stay in power.
posted by lydhre at 11:35 AM on July 17, 2017 [29 favorites]


Pre-emptively, regarding Democratic Party messaging, Please Do Not Relitigate The Primaries.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 11:35 AM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


>> Equal opportunity. Human rights. Progressive taxation. Social safety net. Freedom from violence. Evidence-based policy. Healthcare and education for all. What's the problem?

Establish democratically elected workers' councils. Seize control of productive capital in the name of and under the guidance of the councils. Establish condition of dual power where action cannot be taken without the mutual consent of the workers as represented by their councils and the bourgeois government. Transfer all power to the councils. Establish full economic democracy. Enforce a 100% inheritance tax. Broadly redistribute the wealth produced by labor across the population through a generous universal basic income. Propagandize across national borders. Establish full economic democracy internationally. Build retrofuturistic space stations. Place rainbow flags all over them. Place trans flags all over them. Abolish money. Spread full gay luxury communism across the cosmos. What's the problem?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:36 AM on July 17, 2017 [32 favorites]


What's the problem?

Who scrubs the toilets?
posted by Talez at 11:38 AM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


everybody.

or robots. but if robots the robots need representation on the councils.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:40 AM on July 17, 2017 [16 favorites]


Gelatin Well that's the problem.

We're dealing with an "everybody knows" situation and those are difficult to change.

Everybody knows, even if they think its BS, that the Republicans stand for low taxes, local control (STATE'S RIGHTS!), a strong military, and family values.

We can question any and all of those, we can point out that they're all BS. But in a very real sense that doesn't matter all that much. The fact is that in the public subconscious what the Republican party stands for is well known and any American over the age of 15 or so can recite the litany.

And, while Democrats may have policy proposals coming out of their ears that doesn't translate into a similar everybody knows elevator pitch. The fact is that, regrettably, the Democrats do not have an elevator pitch that "everybody knows" about them.

Which makes it relatively easy for Republicans to use attack ads presenting the Democrats as sort of anti-Republicans. "WE stand for low taxes, that means the Democrats stand for high taxes! WE stand for local control, that means the Democrats stand for a beancounter in Washington telling you how to do everything! WE stand for a strong military, that means the limp wristed lilly livered cowards in the Democrat party hate the military and want a weak military! WE stand for family values, that means the Democrat party hates your family!"

I'd argue that part of the lack of an everybody knows for the Democrats is that the Democratic Party tries too hard to be all things to all people. At the upper echelons they're so committed to the big tent that the tent basically doesn't exist.

Which is why the Democrats have dense policy papers that try to stake out middle of the road non-positions and no everybody knows elevator pitch. Because to have an elevator pitch that everybody knows would require the Democratic Party to actually stand for something.

And really, sadly, they don't.

To stand for something would require ousting some people and taking a stand. And they won't do that.
posted by sotonohito at 11:40 AM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


This whole "citizenship proving id" requirement discussion seems to be seriously missing the point that they could also make it much harder or slower to get passports and effectively limit the electorate to folks who already possess them (a non-representative slice of the population very large, clearly).

It's already happening a little bit! Though I don't think you can really fault the current administration for anything I'm reporting here. But they will definitely have plenty of opportunity to gum the works up soon enough. HRC was a huge influence on the current process of obtaining a US Passport, and it's really only as easy as it is now because of her time as SoS.

If you're required to appear in person to apply for a US Passport, it may be difficult to find a place to do that in a reasonable amount of time. USPS used to provide DS-11 execution services at all their branches, but due to budget cuts in personnel have stopped accepting applications at many locations. Appointment only centers are booking a month or more out in my city, and walk-in facilities have lines around the block day-in and day-out (there's like 4 in a 25mi radius).

Once you get your application in, the Department of State says on their website today it'll take 6 to 8 weeks to process it and get you a new passport. If you pay an extra $60, the turnaround is 2 to 3 weeks. That routine service estimate is longer than I've ever seen it in my 8 years of accepting passport applications. Mostly that's because they've been expecting a heavy year.

But the opportunity to really gum up the works is starting now. The current batch of forms expire in 2019, which means the Dept. of State has already started planning the process of updating them. Near the end of last year they conducted a (really cool!) online survey process to poll people visiting travel.state.gov, USPS.com, and USA.gov about the passport application and renewal processes, and how to improve them. They just put out the final report on their results, which was some fascinating reading. One of the big fixes they're aiming for is to make the language used on the forms clearer, so the plan is to sift through the very specific and carefully-worded instructions (all of which may not apply to a given applicant) and somehow make them more readable.
posted by carsonb at 11:44 AM on July 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


To stand for something would require ousting some people and taking a stand. And they won't do that.

Well, *they* is actually *us*, and enough of us together can do whatever the fuck we want.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:46 AM on July 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Being Anti-Trump seems like a good enough message. It's a lot more clear than anything else the Democrats have come up with recently.
posted by cell divide at 11:47 AM on July 17, 2017


Being Anti-Trump seems like a good enough message.

It's not. We tried that already.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:48 AM on July 17, 2017 [12 favorites]


How is it that all these people are so fucking terrible at everything?

Soetimes it really does seem like half the things I want to say here are just quoting Adam Cadre:
That, as you probably know, is John McCain standing in front of a picture of Walter Reed Middle School, located in North Hollywood, California. Walter Reed Middle School. Not Walter Reed Army Medical Center, located in Washington DC, which was at the center of a scandal involving neglect of wounded veterans last year. Someone got told to find a picture of Walter Reed, and this is what that person came up with. And none of McCain's people looked at it and said, "Wait, are you kidding me? Is that what you think Mid-Atlantic, east coast architecture looks like? Is that even the right biome? Did you not notice that it says WALTER REED JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL along the top? Are you really that incredibly fucking stupid?" Instead, it got the green light and made it on stage with McCain for the biggest speech of his career....

I guess that even after the last eight years, I still had the sense that the Republicans were cynically exploiting the uneducated masses their policies had brought about — that they were well-educated, cultured plutocrats pretending to be just as stupid as the voters they attract. But after this? No. They may still be plutocrats, but the evidence seems clear: they actually are as stupid as the voters they attract.
posted by jackbishop at 11:49 AM on July 17, 2017 [21 favorites]


We tried that before everything he touched turned to shit without the Butter Emails distraction there to take up the NYT's front page each week.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:49 AM on July 17, 2017


Being Anti-Pussy grabber seems like a good enough message.

It's not. We tried that already.


Fuck, Never-Trumper elected fucking Republicans tried that, and here we are sweating 51-50 votes in the Senate.
posted by carsonb at 11:52 AM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Former White House Counsel (to Obama) Bob Bauer on the political defense, and ethics, of Donald Trump.

I'm finding a lot of worthwhile reading at Lawfare these days, I have to say. They may be hawkish, but they're not stupid: facts and the law mean something.
posted by suelac at 11:53 AM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


"Judge" Pirro is projecting a whole bunch because when someone handed the Gore campaign the Bush debate book, they went straight to the FBI, no Russia or borderline treason even necessary.
posted by PenDevil at 11:53 AM on July 17, 2017 [20 favorites]


Fair point, Slackermagee. It's conducive to a punchy message too: Trump's face, in one of its stupider contortions, captioned with "Republicans Won't Stop Him. We Will."
posted by Rykey at 11:54 AM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Being Anti-Trump is the lowest possible bar to clear for any self-identifying Democrat. It should not get Dems cookies or medals because it is a goddamned obligation. Like, if you can't go that far you're not even a Blue Dog; you're a cowering lickspittle and should mow my lawn and pay me $5 an hour for the privilege.

People in this country are pissed off. At each other, at their bosses, at whom they're told to be pissed off by, in general. Trump's campaign was ludicrous most of the time but it did have its sales pitch: I'm going to fix America. I will bring back jobs and Jesus and pride and Big American Flags and money and white dominance and, er, um, GREATNESS. I will do this for you. You're pissed and I hear you.

Of course, Trump was fundamentally unable and/or unwilling to deliver on most of that. But that image of Trump'll Fix It was powerful amongst the gullible. Dems who can counter with a compelling sales pitch of their own -- especially if any of theirs is remotely feasible -- will benefit from that.
posted by delfin at 12:09 PM on July 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


I would think that requiring proof of citizenship (passports) to vote would be a huge mistake for Republicans. Don't people who travel and have an interest in foreign countries vote more Democratic? So most people who already have passports lean liberal, right? I mean... yeah, all those conservatives could go and get passports and maybe the middle class ones would. But how many of those poor, uninformed, white, xenophobic Republican voters are actually going to do that?

I dunno. Seems poorly thought out, cruel, and stupid. Oh, right. These people.
posted by Glibpaxman at 12:13 PM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Don't people who travel and have an interest in foreign countries vote more Democratic?

I don't know that you're gonna get much of a pronounced lean there. At least a third of all travel is business travel, and a lot of businesspeople skew right. And a lot of people who skew left can't afford a whole lot of international travel. It does look like more passport-holders are coastal, which might matter. interesting question though.
posted by Miko at 12:20 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


People that travel already have passports. It would have no effect on whatever percentage of travelers vote. It would have a massive effect on people who vote but cannot get a passport due to cost or difficulty, and that's the point.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:27 PM on July 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


> Equal opportunity. Human rights. Progressive taxation. Social safety net. Freedom from violence. Evidence-based policy. Healthcare and education for all. What's the problem?

More seriously, what you're describing is the left half of the liberal consensus as established in the latter half of the 20th century; the Democratic Party supported market allocation + that stuff you outlined, the Republican Party supported market allocation + white supremacy + patriarchy, and both sides were at least nominally opposed to both socialism (out of fear and loathing of the Eastern Bloc) and also fascism (out of desire to look better than the Eastern Bloc).

That political situation feels normal cause it's the political situation we grew up in. But that political frame is expired. The people on the center-left/left who you're trying to appeal to no longer fear or loathe socialism, and recognize that "equality of opportunity" is a dead letter without a large-scale, ongoing redistribution of wealth; equality of opportunity is today an idea that appeals to middle managers and well-meaning executives who think they earned their positions of relative comfort, but to basically no one else. Meanwhile, the people on the right that you're trying to appeal to no longer keep up the pretense of supporting liberal ideas of formal equality instead of overt fascism; these people see "social safety net" and think "commie," they see "progressive taxation" and think "commie," they see "human rights" and think "[insert any ethnic slur here]-lover," they see "freedom from violence" and think "cuck."

At first glance it looks like the terms you've laid out here are a consensus that everyone can agree on; in actuality, almost no one agrees to any of those terms. My utterly utopian full gay space communism fantasy may in fact have more widespread appeal than your seemingly levelheaded list of moderate social liberal positions.

It's a weird world we're in. Underestimating the weirdness is a way to lose elections.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:29 PM on July 17, 2017 [26 favorites]


The Made In America Showcase stream is up. I spy a giant cowboy hat and a dead astronaut.
posted by theodolite at 12:36 PM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


No one has ever said "boy, they made it fast, cheap and convenient to get this US passport" in history.

Meanwhile we're taking the people for whom a driver's license or state ID is an imposition or hardship and considering making them deal with passport hassles? Good luck. Only a Kobach type would consider it.
posted by delfin at 12:38 PM on July 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


*Any* increase in red tape required to vote allows for regional variation in facilitating that. Red tape requires resources. So then you decide where you would like to make things easier and where harder. It is a straightforward attempt to rig the register being done in broad daylight. I can't believe anyone here would give them any benefit of the doubt here.
posted by stonepharisee at 12:39 PM on July 17, 2017 [28 favorites]


You Can't Tip a Buick, isn't trying to come up with a "consensus that everyone can agree on" a big part of the problem here? I think you have to risk being called a commie, a cuck, and an ethnic-slur-lover if you want to stand for something.
posted by Dr. Send at 12:43 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


I can't believe anyone here would give them any benefit of the doubt here.

I don't think anyone here is Slate-pitching "Maybe Passport Requirements to Vote Aren't All Bad", but even entertaining the idea and discussing the specifics is too much credit. The only response to any impediment to voting at all has to be, "automatic universal registration". It's not hard. Every one is registered at birth. Or age 18. Or whatever. Period. Everyone. That's the only acceptable position.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:44 PM on July 17, 2017 [28 favorites]


The only response to any impediment to voting at all has to be, "automatic universal registration". It's not hard. Every one is registered at birth. Or age 18.

Combined voter registration / selective service card, for every citizen. Once you're 27, the selective service part drops off.
posted by tilde at 12:46 PM on July 17, 2017 [16 favorites]


Establish condition of dual power where action cannot be taken without the mutual consent of the workers as represented by their councils and the bourgeois government. Transfer all power to the councils. Establish full economic democracy. Enforce a 100% inheritance tax. Broadly redistribute the wealth produced by labor across the population through a generous universal basic income. Propagandize across national borders. Establish full economic democracy internationally. Build retrofuturistic space stations. Place rainbow flags all over them. Place trans flags all over them. Abolish money. Spread full gay luxury communism across the cosmos ...

Ha. Ha. Tipped by a tweet, I was just this afternoon thinking of how the following passage from Asif Siddiqi's The Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Russian Imagination, 1857-1957 reminded me of metafilter:
"[The Anarchist-Biocosmists] (also known as the Biocosmist-Immortalists) coalesced in 1921 after the state's crackdown on anarchists following the funeral of famous Russian anarchist Petr Kropotkin. When the authorities arrested an anarchist group named the Universalists, a new collective, the Anarchist-Biocosmists, replaced them; adherents pledged their support to the Bolsheviks, but also announced their goal of initiating a social revolution "in interplanetary space." The group, which had factions in both Moscow and Petrograd, briefly published a journal, Bessmertie (Immortality), under the banner of "Immortalism and Interplanetarianism." In their manifesto, issued in 1921, they announced several goals, including victory over space ("not air navigation ... but cosmic navigation"). They declared the two basic human rights to be the right to exist forever and the right to unimpeded movement in interplanetary space. Inspired by Fedorov's ideas, they wanted to abolish death, colonize the universe, and then resurrect those who had already died."
posted by octobersurprise at 12:47 PM on July 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


Oh, we're talking about passports? Time to drag out my soapbox and encourage trans people to get theirs immediately before good ol' boy Rex changes the trans-friendly state department policy (thanks Hillary!) and it becomes difficult to impossible. Here are detailed instructions and here's a program that helps defray costs.
posted by AFABulous at 12:47 PM on July 17, 2017 [27 favorites]


saysthis: Tax me already. Take this stupid capitalism anxiety away already. End it. We're better than this.

Seattle may test this possibility, if the new income tax on people who earn $250,000 per year or more survives lawsuits (NPR, July 17, 2017)
tax the people who make more than $250,000 a year to raise $140 million a year for things like affordable housing, services for the homeless and transit, so people can get to work from the places where they can afford to live.
After weeks of discussion and hours of debate, the city council vote was unanimous - 9 to 0. Back in June, the Seattle City Council proposed that individual Seattle residents would pay a 2 percent tax on annual income above $250,000.
The council estimates that tax would raise about $125 million annually and says fewer than five percent of the city’s households would pay.

There were about 11,000 individuals in Seattle with earned annual incomes of at least $250,000 in 2015, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:47 PM on July 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


YCTAB: My utterly utopian full gay space communism fantasy may in fact have more widespread appeal than your seemingly levelheaded list of moderate social liberal positions.

Can you put that into a concise list like the one you're rebutting? Please?
posted by rabbitrabbit at 12:49 PM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


> You Can't Tip a Buick, isn't trying to come up with a "consensus that everyone can agree on" a big part of the problem here? I think you have to risk being called a commie, a cuck, and an ethnic-slur-lover if you want to stand for something.

Absolutely — I think that's the side I'm arguing? The additional nuance that I'm trying, and maybe failing, to gesture toward is that seemingly moderate formulations like "equality of opportunity" trigger the "commie commie commie" reaction from the fascist right, but without actually appealing to very many people today. This is despite how, within living memory, those formulations appealed to a majority of the American electorate.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:50 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


"They declared the two basic human rights to be the right to exist forever and the right to unimpeded movement in interplanetary space. Inspired by Fedorov's ideas, they wanted to abolish death, colonize the universe, and then resurrect those who had already died."

like i always say, if you aren't going to get any of what you want, why compromise?
posted by murphy slaw at 12:51 PM on July 17, 2017 [12 favorites]


And here I thought "utterly utopian full gay space communism fantasy" was a concise list.
posted by aspersioncast at 12:53 PM on July 17, 2017 [17 favorites]


oh wait i think you might be referring to this if so nvm
posted by rabbitrabbit at 12:53 PM on July 17, 2017


wrt: proof of citizenship/passport - it is completely inconceivable that proof of citizenship won't be selectively enforced.

You look like you're going to vote R? That's ok, we'll take your word that you're an American citizen.
posted by porpoise at 12:53 PM on July 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


> Can you put that into a concise list like the one you're rebutting? Please?

Living wage for all. Medicare for all. Robust social safety net. Phased rollout of universal basic income schemes. Guaranteed employment for all who want it through WPA-scale development program. Nationalize large banks. In short, some commie shit.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:53 PM on July 17, 2017 [42 favorites]


maybe it needs bullets or commas or something
posted by aspersioncast at 12:54 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Living wage for all. Medicare for all. Robust social safety net. Phased rollout of universal basic income schemes. Guaranteed employment for all who want it through WPA-scale development program. Nationalize large banks. In short, some commie shit.

Or like . . . Australia, basically?
posted by aspersioncast at 12:56 PM on July 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


Well, I guess we agree on the policies, if not the words. If it's a slogan you want, sales isn't my forte. But I will point out that the quote I was responding to was a Democractic party representative unable to articulate any message, regardless of the words.
posted by Dr. Send at 12:57 PM on July 17, 2017


ctmf: Since you brought it up, Jay, lets get them in a hearing to find out what all the Secret Service knows about this topic [Donald Jr.'s expanding meeting with the Russians], under oath. That would be helpful, now that you mention it. Thanks for suggesting that.

Per NPR: The Secret Service has responded that it wasn't protecting Donald Trump Jr. at that time, which they provided as a preamble to their chat with Republican congressman Will Hurd of Texas, who is on the House intelligence committee, which is looking into all this. It's here that Hurd said "I want to get everybody together that was involved in the campaign and say, hey, here's every single contact that we've had with the Russians, just to get it out there because it becomes a distraction."

To which I reply 1) weren't Kushner and others supposed to submit this information, oh, months ago, as part of getting clearances, and 2) it's not that this is a distraction, but an indication that the President was given aid by a foreign government, and he may well still be compromised. But don't worry, Hurd is sure that "Mueller is going to get to the bottom of who met - who, when and why.... I trust that his criminal investigation will do that."

So everyone agrees that this a criminal investigation, right? Or was that a slip of sorts?
posted by filthy light thief at 1:05 PM on July 17, 2017 [16 favorites]


And in a look at the political unrest elsewhere: Millions Of Venezuelans Reject Plans To Retool The Constitution (NPR, July 17, 2017)
Venezuela's opposition staged a vote yesterday. And one of the questions was, should President Nicolas Maduro convene an assembly to rewrite the country's constitution? In this informal vote, 98 percent of those who showed up said no. Maduro's party has also done badly in real elections lately amid protests over shortages of food and jobs.
...
REEVES: One of the questions asked in the referendum yesterday concerned the army. There were three questions in all. And one of them was, would you support the idea of the army defending the constitution? - in other words, the existing constitution. Now we both know - everyone knows that the army in Venezuela is very powerful. And it's long been thought that which way the army goes is decisive in all of this. So far, it's supported the government. But would it be willing to break with the government at some point as the crisis there over food, medicine and a completely collapsed economy continues to spiral out of control? And this is an attempt to pressure the army to do that.

INSKEEP: This is basically a call for military action, if necessary.
Venezuelans Who Fled To Florida Participate In Opposition's Symbolic Vote (NPR, July 17, 2017)
More than 100,000 Venezuelans live in Florida. It's a population that's grown rapidly in recent years, as many fled repression and economic hardship of the Maduro regime.

On the University of Miami campus in Coral Gables, the line to vote stretched several blocks yesterday. There were extended families with children and grandparents, many people wearing Venezuelan hats and soccer jerseys, even carrying Venezuelan flags. Kela Paz said she came for a simple reason.

KELA PAZ: We need to rescue our country. We need to have it back. And we want to be back there.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:15 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


So everyone agrees that this a criminal investigation, right? Or was that a slip of sorts?

Right before that he said "is going to be responsible for figuring out whether some violation of the law took place" so he might've meant something like "investigation into whether or not a crime was committed" instead of an investigation into an acknowledged crime.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:17 PM on July 17, 2017


Venezuela's opposition staged a vote yesterday.

This. You want to know what the Democratic Party (or anyone else) should do? Stage votes. Bring people out to cast their (obviously non-binding) "ballots" about how they don't want the stupid goddamn BCRA or AHCA letting people die in the streets. Make a Saturday afternoon of it. Sell hot dogs. Hand out balloons. Publicize the numbers. Remind them, over and over again, that they are losing, and we will fucking work at making them lose when it counts.
posted by Etrigan at 1:18 PM on July 17, 2017 [33 favorites]


porpoise: wrt: proof of citizenship/passport - it is completely inconceivable that proof of citizenship won't be selectively enforced.

You look like you're going to vote R? That's ok, we'll take your word that you're an American citizen.


Dang, I'm questioning even how to respond to this because the way I see it happening is way more sinister and damning. Almost everyone has the passing-on-of-important life documents with their parents. It happens a zillion different ways, but the end result is that all of a sudden you're in charge of your birth certificate, probably your social security card, and whatever other official documents are required for your legal existence.

Part of the officialness of those documents is the authority bestowed upon them by your parent(s). My mom said this is my birth certificate. She oughta know, right? But what mom got was the Hospital Birth Record (that's the one with your baby footprint on it, probably), which is not your Birth Certificate. Or, when given the option, mom chose the cheaper Birth Abstract when ordering your Birth Certificate from the County Recorder/Registrar, which is not your actual Birth Certificate. You know, the long-form one.

And the law, via dumb bureaucrat, looks at your Birth Certificate (per mom) and calls it something else and says it's not really valid. That invalidates you, your birth record, and your parent(s). Augh, having to explain how much more demeaning and horrible it can (already!) be gives me the same feeling I get watching The Handmaid's Tale. It's so vile, and plausible.
posted by carsonb at 1:21 PM on July 17, 2017 [10 favorites]



This. You want to know what the Democratic Party (or anyone else) should do? Stage votes. Bring people out to cast their (obviously non-binding) "ballots" about how they don't want the stupid goddamn BCRA or AHCA letting people die in the streets. Make a Saturday afternoon of it. Sell hot dogs. Hand out balloons.


: all the movie theaters that went digital in the last 8 years or so have fat fiber going into the projection rooms.

Want a nationwide video teleconference? It can be done.
posted by ocschwar at 1:24 PM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


Fathom Events Presents: COME TELL THE REPUBLICANS TO STUFF THE BCRA/AHCA
posted by hanov3r at 1:29 PM on July 17, 2017 [17 favorites]


Metafilter: My utterly utopian full gay space communism fantasy.
posted by jferg at 1:33 PM on July 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


Crikey I forgot the most important part of that rant: Educate yourself.

It's like an earthquake, you are better off prepared. Go dig out your file of important life docs and look them over. Find out what your proof of citizenship really is, and if you need to acquire or replace it do it now, ASAP. Get your shit in order. Putting off correcting that extra L in your name on your Birth Certificate that you never used and your mom told you was a mistake on the day she birthed you while she was a wreck? Fix it right now while the bureaucracy is still functioning.

It's not going to happen because This is America. It's not going to happen because 99.999% of the time the ground is stable and doesn't move and shake and swallow houses.

Don't be scared, the point of spelling it out like this is not to scare you. Be prepared.
posted by carsonb at 1:39 PM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


man along those lines i desperately want there to be horseshit paperwork literacy squads
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 1:44 PM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


That's, like, my current job description.
posted by carsonb at 1:46 PM on July 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


Your local library remains a fantastic resource in many different ways and for all your horseshit paperwork literacy needs.

Thanks, paying taxes!
posted by carsonb at 1:48 PM on July 17, 2017 [25 favorites]


This. You want to know what the Democratic Party (or anyone else) should do? Stage votes. Bring people out to cast their (obviously non-binding) "ballots" about how they don't want the stupid goddamn BCRA or AHCA letting people die in the streets. Make a Saturday afternoon of it. Sell hot dogs. Hand out balloons. Publicize the numbers. Remind them, over and over again, that they are losing, and we will fucking work at making them lose when it counts.

I dunno, sounds like a lot of work
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:49 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


> Your local library remains a fantastic resource in many different ways and for all your horseshit paperwork literacy needs.

> Thanks, paying taxes!

As a person who grew up in the town mentioned in this video that was going around facebook a few weeks ago... yeah. Fund your libraries, folks.
posted by Vibrissa at 1:53 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


One of my proudest moments as a Pittsburgher was when we voted to raise our real estate taxes to better fund our magnificent library system.
posted by soren_lorensen at 2:01 PM on July 17, 2017 [33 favorites]


@Max_Fisher:
NRA releases another video edging right up to the line of endorsing violence against journalists, this time Iraq war veteran @AlexHortonTX. Video repeatedly names the journalist, presents him as acting outside the law & a dangerous threat to gun-owners, and uses violent symbolism. What is the point of all that, particularly the repeated use of violent imagery and vigilante metaphors, except to wink-wink-nudge-nudge? As some are pointing out, the Obama era was great for gun sales and NRA fundraising. W Obama out, there’s an imperative to find a new enemy. Message is clear: “they” have already chosen extra-legal violence, so that leaves “us” with no choice.
The silence from all those supposedly reasonable gun-owners is deafening.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:02 PM on July 17, 2017 [71 favorites]


speaking of birth certificates, the process to get your gender changed in most states is difficult to impossible. I haven't bothered in Wisconsin because it requires surgery (which I've had, unless they mean a different type of surgery, which is not specified in the statute) and a 3 hour drive to Madison to pick up a physical piece of paper? or something? I can't get a clear answer from anyone. To this point, I haven't bothered since my passport can be used for any situation that requires a birth certificate (e.g. I-9 form when you start employment). But I can foresee complications and consequences when there's a mismatch between the BC sex and the sex listed on all your other ID. Maybe you end up in an insurance database somewhere as having a pre-existing condition, maybe your ability to vote is now suspect, maybe you're flagged by the TSA, maybe you're denied access to public accommodations.

I wish I could get a clean birth certificate, as if my transition never happened, but there are legal breadcrumbs all over the place.
posted by AFABulous at 2:06 PM on July 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


A bit late here, but I'd like to note that I think the Governor of Texas hiring a militia to provide security for one of his events is a deeply disturbing and dangerous development.

I think we can't understate just how dangerous it is for the Texas government to legitimize and embolden the militia movement. I don't think it is irrational to think that this is deliberate and Abbott is, to one degree or another, encouraging right wing violence, or at the very least the threat of right wing violence.

That he did this in one of the deepest blue parts of Texas, and one of the majority minority parts of Texas shows where his threat of violence is focused. He's telling non-white Texans to STFU, keep their heads down, stay home, and act meek and submissive if they know what's good for them.

We've got a Governor who is undermining the actual government for his own personal electoral benefit. It's the act of a would be dictator, not the act of a democratically elected government official.
posted by sotonohito at 2:07 PM on July 17, 2017 [45 favorites]


I don't see how they could legislate a requirement for passports in order to vote. Would this not be considered a poll tax?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:08 PM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


It's also worth noting that Roger Stone was out riling up the pro-Bundy crowd over the weekend with similar rhetoric, according to domestic terror expert JJ MacNab:
He started his speech with "I'm here for one reason. I stand in solidarity with every member of the Bundy family." The crowd went wild. The Bundy supporters started chanting, "Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Donald Trump." Stone admitted that he hadn't followed the Bundy case but that Judge Andrew Napolitano had forwarded him a bunch of articles. Stone then completely misrepresented the Constitution's clear stance on federal land. He ranted about the criminal prosecution of "Mr. Pistilli" and said that Lavoy Finicum had been "murdered in cold blood." He said that federal agencies are still doing bad things and that "we must stand up" for our neighbors. He preached violent revolution without seeming to understand that, now that his buddy Trump is in charge, he probably shouldn't do that...He then backed off of the violent rhetoric and said he's known Trump for 40 years and that he is the answer. He called for Trump to pardon every Bundy supporter and family member. He called retired Senator Harry Reid "human excrement" and said the fed judge was unethical bec she's married to a NV (non-fed) prosecutor.

This speech is important for a variety of reasons: 1) Stone divulged the militants' plan to have 300-500 men w guns go to the fed courthouse, 2) He's reinforced the rumor that the Trump admin supports the Bundy family. If they did, charges would have been dropped, and 3) this movement grew as fast and violent as it did because it placed high hopes on the Tea Party to accomplish the movement's goals. When the Tea Party focused on relatively mainstream issues rather than the fire and brimstone campaign promises, the movement got very mad. For the last year, the anti-gov movement has been practically ignored. White supremacy kooks made for better and more shocking headlines. The two groups are not the same. To stay in the limelight, some anti-gov have gotten into bed w/ the Alt-Right, but it's not a big overlap. The anti-gov movement has been scrambling to find it's place in a Trump-centric world. Some have turned into pro-gov extremists, but most are going to be *very* disappointed when he fails to deliver what they want. If Trump is impeached, we could see some violence against liberals and liberal institutions from the pro-gov extremist faction. If he continues in office, we could see violence against government employees & institutions from those in the movement who feel betrayed.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:10 PM on July 17, 2017 [17 favorites]


Would this not be considered a poll tax?

And so what if it is? Have you seen any sign that these fuckers give a damn about things like that? It's up to the courts to protect us, and they're working to change that, too, starting with the theft of a Supreme Court seat.
posted by jammer at 2:11 PM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


The silence from all those supposedly reasonable gun-owners is deafening.

We reasonable gun owners already refused to join the NRA, ever, and consistently support gun training and operation restrictions. As has been discussed many times here and elsewhere, the NRA does not represent gun owners. They work for gun manufacturers. They have suckered a lot of folks into joining up (and created sneaky ways to push the ambivalent into membership) but that's not who they really represent.
posted by phearlez at 2:12 PM on July 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


I don't see how they could legislate a requirement for passports in order to vote. Would this not be considered a poll tax?

Not even that, in NYS it's **Illegal** to ask a voter for id.

Source: NYS, Albany County Elections Inspector, myself.
posted by mikelieman at 2:13 PM on July 17, 2017 [20 favorites]


I don't see how they could legislate a requirement for passports in order to vote. Would this not be considered a poll tax?

I'm having trouble imagining authority for the Federal government to legislate this, but state governments could do it.
posted by Glibpaxman at 2:14 PM on July 17, 2017


I work for a nonprofit which provides emergency housing services for families. We have an emergency shelter and the first step in getting families services they need is getting birth certificates. This can take weeks. What county were you born in? Often people aren't sure. What are the requirements to get an authorized copy?
The deck is stacked against the poor.>
posted by readery at 2:15 PM on July 17, 2017 [19 favorites]


Sounds like we will likely get the CBO score on the Cruz amendment before any possible vote occurs. That's good news. I still think the rule that Republican "Moderates" Always Cave will probably hold true and some bullshit will pass but the delay does make that less likely.
posted by Justinian at 2:19 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Jesus H. Christ, that NRA video is insane
posted by TheProfessor at 2:26 PM on July 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


WaPo: Foreign-born recruits, promised citizenship by the Pentagon, flee the country to avoid deportation
Frustrated by delayed promises from the U.S. military for citizenship, and in fear of the Islamic State if he were deported back to Iraq, Ranj Rafeeq has given up the American Dream for a Canadian one.

Rafeeq was eager as a teenager to translate for U.S. troops stationed in his home town of Kirkuk in 2005. He immigrated to Portland, Ore., to study seven years later, hoping to don an Army uniform after earning his graduate degree in civil engineering.

He signed an enlistment contract in January 2016, with a training date set in September. “I loved American soldiers. It was my dream to be a part of them,” Rafeeq, now 29, told The Washington Post.
...
Rafeeq’s student visa was set to expire on Aug. 1. He faced a decision: wait for the Pentagon’s bureaucracy to untangle itself as the Trump administration seeks to expand deportation powers, or flee.

He chose to flee. On June 11, Rafeeq went to Vancouver to apply for asylum in Canada. His biggest fear with deportation is the chance that Islamic State militants would prize his capture if they uncovered his attempt to enlist.

“I can’t go back to Kirkuk,” he said. “They would kill me.”
What the fuck is wrong with this country? I mean, "hey, you with the special language and cultural skills we desperately need: come join the military and we'll get you citizenship ASAP." "Yes, my dream for some reason is actually to go back to Iraq with a rife and an American flag on my shoulder, thanks for asking. Sign me up." "Actually no, go fuck off and literally die."
posted by zachlipton at 2:27 PM on July 17, 2017 [80 favorites]


The first priority for the Democratic Party and other Liberal/Left organizations to throw money at should be in helping potential voters to get bulletproof registration. A lot of people who currently think "it's too much trouble" would be more likely to actually vote if we make it easier for them. Yes, bus in voters, but make sure every person on that bus has ID showing that this is their polling place.

Of course, anything to delay the Voter Suppression Commission from actually accomplishing anything before the 2018 elections should also be top priority; if everything (or almost everything) else is done right, Kobash and Co. will never be able to get anything through Congress with enough Ds in place.

And we need a demonstration during "Buy America Week" in which foreign-made Trump-branded products are burned. Tragic that nobody has gone with that idea.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:32 PM on July 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


Not even that, in NYS it's **Illegal** to ask a voter for id.

They ask for ID the first time you vote in the state. Unless they checked it at registration?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:38 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Sounds like we will likely get the CBO score on the Cruz amendment before any possible vote occurs. That's good news. I still think the rule that Republican "Moderates" Always Cave will probably hold true and some bullshit will pass but the delay does make that less likely.

Maybe, but this CBO score scares me a bit. It will still be horrifically awful, but if they score it with the Cruz Amendment, Republicans will have a new line of attack, which is essentially "the CBO says that a 60-year-old man can have great insurance that he loves, but it doesn't have maternity coverage he doesn't need, and they'll say he's uninsured. Therefore the CBO is bogus." And they'll use that to discredit the whole operation, even though the Medicaid cuts and everything have nothing to do with that.

Ideally, the CBO will do scores with and without the Cruz Amendment so we can compare, but I'm worried the whole thing will be used to discredit the CBO. If HHS puts out their own numbers, this easily gets turned into a "well, even the experts don't know, math and science are meaningless and stupid, time to go vote" situation.
posted by zachlipton at 2:39 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Oh, we're talking about passports? Time to drag out my soapbox and encourage trans people to get theirs immediately before good ol' boy Rex changes the trans-friendly state department policy (thanks Hillary!) and it becomes difficult to impossible. Here are detailed instructions and here's a program that helps defray costs.

Missed this the first time around. Good soapboxing and thanks.
Here's the requirements directly from the Department of State. They're sort of buried in the site (so many details are).

You have to apply in person and submit a DS-11 application for new US Passport. In addition,
  • ID that resembles your current appearance
  • Passport photo that resembles your current appearance
  • A medical certification that indicates you are in the process of or have had appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition (details further down the page, but there's also a .docx template)
  • Proof of legal name change (if applicable)
If you're in transition you get a 2-year validity passport and are eligible to submit a DS-5504 (Change/Correction) for a 10year book at no additional cost if you complete transition during that validity.
posted by carsonb at 2:43 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Maybe, but this CBO score scares me a bit. It will still be horrifically awful, but if they score it with the Cruz Amendment, Republicans will have a new line of attack, which is essentially "the CBO says that a 60-year-old man can have great insurance that he loves, but it doesn't have maternity coverage he doesn't need, and they'll say he's uninsured. Therefore the CBO is bogus." And they'll use that to discredit the whole operation, even though the Medicaid cuts and everything have nothing to do with that.

I'm not even sure why they would do that given they already sent the Medicaid cuts to eight and a half years down the line to bludgeon the number down while still making it fall under reconciliation rules.
posted by Talez at 2:44 PM on July 17, 2017


They can *try* that messaging but that dog won't hunt. The amount of groups coming out against this keeps growing and it includes the insurers themselves. Plus AARP, where you're eligible for membership at age 50, so it covers a lot more than Medicare recipients. If you're still looking at 15-20 million (or more) losing insurance, there's no messaging that's going to make it look like you're voting for anything resembling a good bill. I'm not saying they won't pass it, because it's still possible. But good luck trying to polish that turd to present to voters next year.
posted by azpenguin at 2:44 PM on July 17, 2017


Jesus H. Christ, that NRA video is insane

These motherfuckers are going to keep pushing until one of their members takes the hint and shoots a journalist in the head. I have zero doubt that this will happen, it's just a matter of time. And then they're going to innocently throw their hands up and say, what? We're obviously not responsible for what any particular deranged individual does with their guns, guns don't kill people, and so on ad nauseum. And all the edgier right-wing websites will hold that particular wingnut up as a cause célèbre and paragon of Second Amendment rights.

What's the end game though? Is it just about intimidation toward journalism they don't like? Or is there more to it? This is a mindset so far from where I'm at that I'm really struggling to understand what their long game looks like.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 2:47 PM on July 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


They've pretty much moved from "we are going to ignore mass shootings" to "we are actively trying to instigate one", haven't they?
posted by Artw at 2:50 PM on July 17, 2017 [43 favorites]


They ask for ID the first time you vote in the state. Unless they checked it at registration?

I was never asked for ID when voting in NY. I registered to vote when getting my NYS license, so maybe that counts as asking for ID. But after that, you just show up and say your name and they mark it off.
posted by dis_integration at 2:54 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Two from New Yorker:

How Trump Is Transforming Rural America In Colorado, the President’s tone has started rubbing off on residents. (Peter Hessler) ~ a long piece that rambles through personal anecdotes of proud deplorables in poor, rural Colorado, and a poor grasp of math:
“Donald Trump lost those two counties by two hundred and seventy-three thousand votes, and he won the rest of the state by a hundred and forty thousand votes,” Steve House, the former chair of the state Republican Party, told me. “That means that most of Colorado, in my mind, is a conservative state.”
Land doesn't vote, Steve. People do. The people of Colorado voted for Hillary, not Trump.

And on the topic of illogical, emotional arguments winning in this day and age:

The Strange Defense of Martin Shkreli (Sheelah Kolhatkar)
This outcome appears to be at the heart of Brafman’s spirited defense of his client, and during cross-examination, he has asked every investor whether they made money or not; many of them have acknowledged that they did. Legally speaking, the argument is absurd; fraud is never justified just because nobody lost money in the end. But whatever the law, if just one juror decides to fixate on the fact that no one was hurt financially, Shkreli could go free. If that unlikely scenario were to occur, it would be a major embarrassment for the government, which is already under intense criticism for its inability, or unwillingness, to prosecute high-level financial crime, let alone the easier-pickings type that the Shkreli case represents. (For more on this, see Jesse Eisinger’s new book, “The Chickenshit Club.” [Amazon link])

Shkreli behaved bizarrely during the early days of the trial, at one point bursting into the overflow courtroom where reporters were watching the proceedings on closed-circuit TV. He insulted the prosecutors, calling them “the junior varsity,” and complained that he was being blamed for all the ills of capitalism. In the evenings, he’s been live-broadcasting himself on Facebook. It appeared as if he was intentionally trying to sabotage his trial, and since then, the judge has forbidden him from talking to the press in the environs of the courthouse. Now the thirty-four-year-old Shkreli can be seen sitting quietly at the defense table, as pale and thin as a boy, as his former investors testify against him.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:57 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Part of the officialness of those documents is the authority bestowed upon them by your parent(s). My mom said this is my birth certificate. She oughta know, right? But what mom got was the Hospital Birth Record (that's the one with your baby footprint on it, probably), which is not your Birth Certificate. Or, when given the option, mom chose the cheaper Birth Abstract when ordering your Birth Certificate from the County Recorder/Registrar, which is not your actual Birth Certificate. You know, the long-form one.

When my wife and I met with our American immigration lawyer back in the gentler times of 2012 she laughed at us foolish Canadians when we insisted that the cards we handed over were our birth certificates. It turns out I managed just fine for 40+ years in 2 different countries without even knowing that long form birth certificates were a thing that even existed in Canada. It also turns that almost every single Canadian makes this exact same mistake dealing with US immigration.

Then I had the terror of needing to get one from the Quebec government (In the past official stuff from Quebec was a nightmare given I left the province in 1971 but fortunately not this time).
posted by srboisvert at 3:03 PM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


But good luck trying to polish that turd to present to voters next year.

Unfortunately, the one thing that the modern GOP shares with the Trumpists is their amazing facility at the delicate arts of turd-polishing.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:06 PM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]




The State Department is now following the Hawaii ruling: Grandmas, grandpas from travel ban states now welcome -U.S. cable (Arshad Mohammed and Yeganeh Torbati, Reuters).
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Grandparents of U.S. citizens from six Muslim-majority countries are now eligible to receive U.S. visas, according to a State Department memo seen by Reuters that reflects the latest court ruling on U.S. President Donald Trump's travel ban.

The memo, or cable, from U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was sent to all U.S. diplomatic posts overseas on Friday after a U.S. district judge in Hawaii issued a ruling late on Thursday limiting the scope of the administration's temporary ban on refugees and travelers from the six countries.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:10 PM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


The thing that gets me is the polls that are showing that less than 50% of Republicans even believe that Don Jr met with the Russians. Not colluded, not lied about it, not did anything shady or illegal, simply a question of whether or not the meeting happened.

Donald Trump and Don Trump Jr both say the meeting occurred. There is no question the meeting occurred. Nobody denies it. And yet only a minority of Republican voters even admit that it happened! How do you deal with people like that?
posted by Justinian at 3:11 PM on July 17, 2017 [61 favorites]


Let's note that the Overton Window has shifted so much in the last six months that a ban which prompted immediate, spontaneous mass demonstrations at airports across the nation when first implemented has now largely gone into effect, with a few carveouts for specific groups with ties to the US, and there is virtually no national attention being paid to it.

This is not normal.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:13 PM on July 17, 2017 [67 favorites]


This is not normal.

No, it's not. But it's also too much. There's too much going on, too many issues to protest. I cannot simultaneously protest the Obamacare repeal, the travel ban, the roll-back of environmental protections, voter suppression, and conflicts of interest in the White House. Or, well, I can try, but an inchoate scream is of limited political use.
posted by suelac at 3:20 PM on July 17, 2017 [47 favorites]


In a timely fashion today's NYT's The Daily Podcast deals with the Kris Kobach commission. Michael Barbarro interviews several politicians who are for and against this increase in ID requirements.

I can't say I learned anything new but it was a good refresher course and tied alll the different strands together. In NC when the Republicans gained control of the House & the Senate & the Governorship they commissioned a report on how people voted. That report became a blueprint on how to disenfranchise the Black community. Black people overall are less likely to have a driver's license so the election board required DL be produced every time you vote. Black people are less likely to have transportation and the community churches would organize vans for "Souls to the Polls" after church service so the Election board cancelled Sunday voting. Black people voted early because they were less likely to have transportation and/or were working so the Election Board severely curtailed early voting, cutting down on days and the hours open, especially in heavy Democratic districts.

The original report and a dumbass GOP report bragging that African American voting was down convinced the court to strike down the law introducing all these restrictions.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:21 PM on July 17, 2017 [22 favorites]


If you're still looking at 15-20 million (or more) losing insurance, there's no messaging that's going to make it look like you're voting for anything resembling a good bill.

Only a few minutes ago on the PBS evening news, I heard the pro-Republican pundit try to make the claim that most of the lost coverage is from people (healthy young poor men?) saving their dollars now that there is no mandate.

Can we get a good factual counter to this? The pro-Democrat pundit was outraged enough to not be super articulate.
posted by puddledork at 3:23 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


I had a hunch something lie this was coming. Sen. Johnson is now pissed at McConnell because McConnell has supposedly been running around telling moderates that the Medicaid cuts won't ever really happen. This is what happens when you try to please everyone. You've got 52 Senators to work with, and if you start telling half of them they should vote for the bill because it will slash Medicaid and the other half not to worry because they won't really slash Medicaid, eventually people will start comparing notes. Nice job breaking it, hero.
posted by zachlipton at 3:27 PM on July 17, 2017 [52 favorites]


The 24th amendment to the Constitution:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.


I believe that the way states get around the requirement to produce a D.L. is that they must also allow an I.D. that is free. Otherwise, in order to vote you have to pay a fee. I don't see how they could ever force voters to provide a very expensive passport.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:28 PM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Here's the bullshit Sen. Toomey is tweeting about the BCRA:
"W/ #BetterCare, fed Medicaid $s grow each year. Fed govt will give PA $200B+ over next 10 years."
This sort of blatant lying turns me into a seething ball of inchoate rage.
posted by mcduff at 3:37 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


This sort of blatant lying turns me into a seething ball of inchoate rage.

He's technically not lying but he's entirely intellectually dishonest. The BRCA is a nuclear time bomb with Medicaid cuts. He just stopped the chart right when they bite the hardest.
posted by Talez at 3:44 PM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


I mean it's bullshit on the face of it because to get the bill through reconciliation it has to cut *something*. But they back loaded the cuts so it's basically someone else's problem.
posted by Talez at 3:47 PM on July 17, 2017


Trump's word salad from today's Made in America showcase is up:

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Mike. And you know, Mike, it is true that, as I walked through the halls, we saw so many great companies, but the gentleman who was in charge of Omaha Beef -- they do beef -- he hugged me, he wanted to kiss me so badly. (Laughter.) Because he said, our business is a whole different business now because you got China approved; the other administrations couldnt even come close. And I told him, you know how long it took? One sentence. I said, President Xi, wed love to sell beef back in China again. He said, you can do that. That was the end of that. Right? (Applause.) Sonny. The great Sonny Perdue. (Applause.)
posted by salix at 3:50 PM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Mod note: Couple of comments deleted. I get where you're coming from, but copying a lengthy anonymous pro-Trump piece about how bad the imaginary left and Europeans are, and stipulating it's wrong but asking people to engage with it anyway, isn't a great way to kick off a useful discussion -- its more prone to kick off a bunch of anger about how it's wrong, which then has nowhere to go.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 3:51 PM on July 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


He said, you can do that.

...Because that deal's already been struck, before you were president.
posted by Rykey at 3:57 PM on July 17, 2017 [20 favorites]


Apparently, there is this reenactment of Bastille Day at the Eastern State Penitentiary wherein cries of let them eat cake are followed by trebuchets or whatever of Tastycakes. Which I like as part of the reenactment, because it's more like 'let them eat shitty foam cubes of corn syrup.'

Anyways, as per my acupuncturist, there was a group of 2-300 'peasants' congregated around the ESP, and at one point somebody got through to a Toomey office voicemail and the crowd of hundreds left a message of sort of a riled-up peasant mob.

I like to think of the staffer who got that message. It's like, Fuck you Toomey, click, Toomey, you motherfucker, where are you, click, Senator I don't want to die, click, and then hundreds of voices roaring SENATOR! PAT! TOOMEY! WE ARE COMING FOR YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN!*

*imaginary messages made up in my head
posted by angrycat at 4:00 PM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


Andrew Prokop/Vox: Mitch McConnell is breaking the Senate
Will the majority leader’s desire to win lead him to wreck the institution he says he loves?
I imagine so. The article fleshes out his backstory, and highlights how what he's done with his healthcare bill so far sets a dangerous precedent for future Congresses to follow in passing sweeping changes in secret.
posted by ZeusHumms at 4:11 PM on July 17, 2017 [17 favorites]


No one knew that Omaha Beef produces beef.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:14 PM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Mitch McConnell is breaking the Senate America
posted by Brainy at 4:17 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Sonny. The great Sonny Perdue.

To be honest I thought he might've been telling us nobody knew Frank Perdue did chicken, but I looked up Sonny Perdue, who's now the Secretary of Agriculture. In 2008, then-Georgia governor Perdue signed a Confederate History Month proclamation that said, "Among those who served the Confederacy were many African-Americans, both free and slave, who saw action in the Confederate armed forces in many combat roles."

So, not so great.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:19 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Speaking of blatant lying, Sean Spicer had quite the day.

When he was asked why Trump products were not made in America, he answered that it was not appropriate to talk about Trump products during Made in America Week.

He also said that Don Jr.'s meeting was about adoptions-- even though Junior has already clarified he went to get oppo on Clinton. While not a lie it is funny enough to be repeated, Spicer referred to the Magnitsky sanctions as the "Majinsky" sanctions.

DJT himself claimed today that the mining industry as added 45,000 jobs since he has been President. Knowledgeable people are a little bit baffled by this as there are only 50,000 mining jobs in total. Some guess that he also included any job gains in the gas and oil industry. Of course, he could just be completely bullshitting-- after all his base will swallow anything.

For some odd reason, DJY does not like being fact-checked. Imagine!
TPM Trump Complains About Getting Fact-Checked, Lies Minutes Later
“We’ve signed more bills — and I’m talking about through the legislature — than any President ever,” Trump said at an event the White House called the “Made in America product showcase.” “For a while Harry Truman had us, and now I think we have everybody, Mike. I better say ‘think,’ otherwise they’ll give me a Pinocchio, and I don’t like Pinocchios.”
He then went on to give the line about 45,000 new mining jobs. Click on the link for a picture of Trump in a 10 gallon hat.

VOX; A judge just told Trump to disclose who visits Mar-a-Lago But White House visitor logs remain out of the public eye, for now.


In more worrying news,
WSJ GOP Seeks to Close Federal Election Agency
House Republicans are seeking to defund the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the sole federal agency that exclusively works to ensure the voting process is secure, as part of proposed federal budget cuts.

The defunding move comes as the EAC is working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to examine an attack late last year on the agency’s computer systems by a Russian-speaking hacker.

House Republicans say the EAC no longer is necessary and that the Federal Election Commission could bear its responsibilities. They also say the agency’s work duplicates efforts at the Department of Homeland Security and FBI and that it improperly interferes in the right of states to conduct their elections.
Yeah that's not suspicious AT ALL.

Andrew Prokop/Vox: Mitch McConnell is breaking the Senate


This is well worth a read although when I read it this morning it was riddled with typos and misspellings, so much so that I actually emailed the writer which is something I never do.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:19 PM on July 17, 2017 [31 favorites]


Mitch McConnell is breaking the Senate + America + my balls.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:20 PM on July 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


I think that the Trump administration is gaining a victory with everyone calling the Russian meeting the meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also there. Of course Kushner is a baby-faced 36, three years short of Trump Jr. level of maturity and accountability. (Manafort is 68.)
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 4:20 PM on July 17, 2017


In Chris Christie News:

Time Chris Christie: Getting Russian Opposition Research Is 'Probably Against the Law'

Daily Mail EXCLUSIVE: Trump the foul-mouthed germophobe fired Chris Christie because New Jersey governor arranged for Obama to call his phone NOT The Donald's on election night
Donald Trump fell out with Chris Christie, a new book reveals, by screaming at him: 'You know my number, just give it to the President, I don't want your f***ing phone'.

Trump became furious on election night when the New Jersey governor offered to use his own mobile phone to take a congratulatory call from Barack Obama.

As a germophobe he was also horrified at the idea of having Christie's phone next to his face.

According to a new book Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort was forced out under circumstances that were just as bruising.
The book is Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green. Due to be released tomorrow.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:27 PM on July 17, 2017 [16 favorites]


Bloomberg's Joshua Green has a book on the Trump campaign called Devil's Bargain coming out, and excerpts are dropping. Nobody seems willing to vouch for these stories besides Green, which isn't the greatest sign, but well...

He claims (warning: excerpt published by the Daily Mail, yes, really, sigh) that Trump blew up at Manafort after an article was published stating that aides were appearing on TV to get messages through to Trump:
Trump shouted at Manafort: 'How can anybody allow an article that says your campaign is all f***ed up?

'You think you've gotta go on TV to talk to me? You treat me like a baby!

'Am I like a baby to you? I sit there like a little baby and watch TV and you talk to me? Am I a f***ing baby, Paul?'

The room 'fell silent', 'Devil's Bargain' says.

Manafort's dismissal was hastened by a New York Times article that ran the next day saying that he had been paid $12.7 million from a pro Russian party from Ukraine.

Manafort had not only kept this secret from Trump but he had not even told his wife who 'leaped up from the couch in fury' when she she found out, the book claims.
No, I really don't know how or why Green would possibly know how Manafort's wife reacted, but anyway. As for "you treat me like a baby," if the shoe fits... I mean, they keep having to arrange opportunities for him to look at big trucks at the White House, which is normally the sort of activity arranged for young children.

The book also claims Christie's downfall came on election night when he tried to have Trump use his phone to receive a call from President Obama, because it had Chris Christie cooties all over it:
Chris Christie fell completely out of Donald Trump’s favor when the New Jersey governor arranged to have President Obama call Christie’s cellphone to congratulate Trump on election night, according to a just-released book about Trump, Steve Bannon, and the campaign. “‘Hey, Chris, you know my fucking phone number,” Trump told Christie, according to the book, Devil’s Bargain, by Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Joshua Green. “Just give it to the president. I don’t want your fucking phone.” Trump, a germaphobe, was reportedly disgusted by the prospect of having Christie’s phone near his face. The interaction was, according to Green’s book, a critical error for Christie, a former Trump insider who was subsequently fired from his role as transition chief and received no role in the administration.

The Daily Beast has not yet been able to independently verify this version of events. However, the governor’s office is already bashing Green’s book as “fiction,” for which the author should be “ashamed.”
posted by zachlipton at 4:29 PM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


according to wikipedia, 64% of mesa county, co voted democratic

so, i'm a little puzzled at how this is a rural republican area - it's kind of a misleading article
posted by pyramid termite at 4:35 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


The problem is that you don't really need an iPhone but you don't have a choice about an appendectomy.

That is simply not true. In this great country of ours, you always have the freedom to refuse to buy any product. - Paul Ryan
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 4:37 PM on July 17, 2017


@Frank Thorp Just in: Sen Kennedy says McCain is "tough as a boiled owl"

I had not realized this was actually a thing. Do people boil owls and are they tougher than other birds?

In much darker news, I'm glad I read this even though it is heavy going because it really changed my perception of who is dying from pregnancy-related causes. Turns out it is not just the poor and unhealthy.

Pro Publica Lost Mothers
An estimated 700 to 900 women in the U.S. died from pregnancy-related causes in 2016. We have identified 120 of them so far.


The number is vague because it turns out that nobody keeps track of these deaths. You would think the CDC or a Medical Research facility tied to a university might be interested in knowing exactly how many pregnant women die before, during, or after birth so that the dangers can be addressed. The article has mini-bios, pictures, and how these women died.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:40 PM on July 17, 2017 [22 favorites]


This whole "citizenship proving id" requirement discussion seems to be seriously missing the point that they could also make it much harder or slower to get passports and effectively limit the electorate to folks who already possess them (a non-representative slice of the population at large, clearly).

I mean, clearly these dudes haven't thought this through. While this would exclude a lot of POC, it would also mean almost NONE of the poor rural whites that the GOP relies on would be able to vote. I can't think of a population that is less likely to have passports than my neighbors. When you have zero expectation of leaving your state, much less your country, you don't get a passport. And I'd be surprised if many of them could easily lay hands on a birth certificate, because when you're poor and constantly moving, you tend to lose track of important things.

Recent immigrants are going to be able to prove their citizenship in much higher numbers than poor whites. Because white folks are used to being able to rely on their skin color and accent to prove their status.

I don't think there's a chance in hell of this happening, but if a passport was suddenly required for voting, I think Dems would crush the GOP.
posted by threeturtles at 4:49 PM on July 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


@adamgoldmanNYT (7:39pm): Still reporting

Goddamn twitter. It's becoming a telltale heart.
posted by pjenks at 4:50 PM on July 17, 2017 [22 favorites]


So, who was the 8th person, and did he take a 50 grand payout at the meeting? Cuz I pegged Manafort as a bagman a long time ago.
posted by vrakatar at 4:52 PM on July 17, 2017


I would think that requiring a passport to vote would be just as detrimental to the Republican base as to the Democratic one, if not more so. I doubt rural communities have any more convenient access to passport-processing facilities than Democratic/minority communities that are typically the target for this kind of opposition. And even if everyone had the money, who's going to process 100,000,000 passport applications? The waiting list alone would last years.
posted by Autumnheart at 4:53 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


There isn't an end game. The whole game is "keep selling guns", and there's no win condition. Without the specter of Obama Coming To Take Your Guns, they have to keep potential gun buyers scared and buying more guns somehow. "The Violent Left" will have to do for now, until the next time Democrats have any kind of power, and then it'll be back to "Coming To Take Your Guns".

They may be targeting the wrong demo. My wife, a Bernie voter in the primary, daughter of immigrant parents, etc, who's never owned a gun, hadn't fired one until a year ago when my dad (avid gun collector; not an NRA member) talked her into coming along with us to the range (and who didn't enjoy it and said now that she'd done it, stop asking her to tag along to the range), has gotten it into her head that she needs a gun, and soon, to defend herself from the kinds of people Trump and the NRA are riling up. I've been slow dragging the research I told her we would have to do before I'd be comfortable with this idea (I don't own any guns).

She can't be the only one.
posted by notyou at 4:56 PM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


The Kansas City Star Thousands of Missourians are about to be cut from prescription drug program
More than 60,000 elderly Missourians got a letter from the state last month informing them they were about to be cut off from a program that had helped them pay for prescription drugs.[...]In May, state lawmakers voted to save $15 million in the state’s $27 billion budget by cutting a state program called MORx.

Those earning between 85 percent and 185 percent of the federal poverty level, or up to about $22,000 a year for an individual, had previously qualified for MORx, which covered 50 percent of out-of-pocket prescription drug costs.[...]

When lawmakers approved the cut this year, they expressed hope that it would not be permanent. If the state’s budget situation improves, the funding for the program could be reinstated.

“This is for one year,” Sen. David Sater, a Cassville Republican, said shortly before the legislation cutting the program was approved. “Hopefully, if we find the money, we can restore the funding.”
In the final paragraph a Republican voter said she was surprised that the face-eating leopard Party was about to eat her face but she thinks they just don't know any better.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:56 PM on July 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


boiled owl - Dictionary of Regional American English
posted by zakur at 5:00 PM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


I was just about to add Omaha Steaks to my personal Trump Boycott List when I realized I'd never buy their overpriced meat anyway.

But then I started thinking "are there any gun manufacturers that are NOT members of the NRA?" Now there would be a business worth supporting.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:00 PM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


I know we've got terrifying articles to read like this one about a secret plan for the Treasury if we default on the debt that may or may not exist and Congress really needs to get their shit together and do something about the debt ceiling, but let's all take a minute to enjoy these photos of the President of the United States playing with a fire truck.
posted by zachlipton at 5:01 PM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


From the link that Secret Life of Gravy posted:
The hospital staff ran some tests, but when Brittany heard the results she was so upset that she checked out and refused to tell her mother what the doctors had said. Back at the home the family shared in Floral City, Florida, Brittany withdrew into herself. “She did not even try to bond with [the baby],” Deneen said. Her swelling grew worse, and she started having chest pains. “I asked her every day, ‘Please let me take you to the doctor.’ She would refuse.” One morning, Brittany called her mother from a friend’s house: She was on her way to the hospital and didn’t think she’d be coming home. She died a few hours later from pregnancy-induced heart failure — the diagnosis, Deneen believes, that doctors had given her three weeks before. The condition is often treatable, but recovery can be long and uncertain, and Brittany’s Medicaid benefits were set to expire a couple of months after she delivered.
I am incoherent with rage and grief. Jesus Christ.
posted by joyceanmachine at 5:01 PM on July 17, 2017 [30 favorites]


The Right needs more guns to defend themselves against the Violent Left, and the Left needs more guns because JFC have you seen what those lunatics on the Right are up to

who knew that Sylvester McMonkey McBean was in the handgun business
posted by murphy slaw at 5:11 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]




Damian Paletta (@damianpaletta) in WaPo on the looming debt ceiling fiasco:
Unlike other issues facing the Trump administration — such as passing a health-care bill and overhauling the tax code — raising the debt limit comes with a hard deadline of late September, according to Mnuchin. Failure to do so could lead the U.S. government to miss paying its obligations, causing what analysts would consider a historic, market-rattling default on U.S. government debt.
posted by kingless at 5:22 PM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


I would think that requiring a passport to vote

Has this actually been put forth as a requirement, though? I feel like this notion's been conflated over the course of the day (since it was first suggested way upthread, and pretty casually), and it's snowballed into a derail. Maybe I missed something in the linked articles, but I didn't see anything suggesting people would need to get a passport in order to vote, and I'm not sure what good speculating over this is doing other than lengthening the thread.
posted by Rykey at 5:23 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


I am so sick of the NRA's hypocrisy. They argue it's okay for people to have guns, but meanwhile North Korea is developing nuclear weapons, but I don't see the NRA standing up for my right to own low-yield tactical nukes. Either we all get low-yield tactical nukes, or nobody gets guns.
posted by saysthis at 5:29 PM on July 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Unlike other issues facing the Trump administration — such as passing a health-care bill and overhauling the tax code — raising the debt limit comes with a hard deadline of late September, according to Mnuchin. Failure to do so could lead the U.S. government to miss paying its obligations, causing what analysts would consider a historic, market-rattling default on U.S. government debt.

Not pictured: Xi Jinping laughing his ass off and rubbing his hands with glee.
posted by Talez at 5:31 PM on July 17, 2017




Xi Jinping is sitting atop a trillion dollars in US debt holdings (they've been selling off pieces). China isn't eager to see the dollar crash.
posted by zachlipton at 5:35 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Boom. Sens. Moran and Lee are both nos on the motion to proceed for BCRA. The health care bill is once again, and I say this at least once a week now so don't necessarily expect it to last, dead.

Sen. Moran's statement (too much government, not enough repeal, doesn't control costs, and my favorite: if the government is involved this much, single-payer could happen, and that would be awful).
posted by zachlipton at 5:36 PM on July 17, 2017 [53 favorites]


It's going to rule when McConnell finally gets this through after making it so that bills don't need any text at all and only take 25 votes to pass.
posted by Copronymus at 5:40 PM on July 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


So confirmed no are Moran, Lee, Collins and Paul. Unknown: Murkowski, Moore Capito, Heller, Portman, and McCain. Is this correct?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:41 PM on July 17, 2017


> I imagine so. The article fleshes out his backstory, and highlights how what he's done with his healthcare bill so far sets a dangerous precedent for future Republican-controlled Congresses to follow in passing sweeping changes in secret.

Fixed for you. Democratic-controlled Senates will, of course, be expected to seek bipartisan consensus and hold dozens of on-the-record meetings for any legislation beyond naming a post office.
posted by tonycpsu at 5:41 PM on July 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


but I didn't see anything suggesting people would need to get a passport in order to vote, and I'm not sure what good speculating over this is doing other than lengthening the thread.
posted by Rykey at 8:23 PM on July 17

It was the part about proving citizenship to vote. The only documents that could prove that is a birth certificate (which does not have a photo) or a Passport. Unless they come up with a whole new ID card that everyone in America can apply for, then you would presumably have to provide multiple ID forms which may be problematic.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:42 PM on July 17, 2017


Moran got a brain?
posted by delfin at 5:42 PM on July 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


Please now enjoy my favorite Senate tradition, which is all the Senators who previously stayed silent rushing to say how opposed they are only now that the bill is dead. I think it's traditional for Sen. Rubio to go first.

So confirmed no are Moran, Lee, Collins and Paul. Unknown: Murkowski, Moore Capito, Heller, Portman, and McCain. Is this correct?

Yes. In emoji form.
posted by zachlipton at 5:43 PM on July 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Sen. Moran's statement (too much government, not enough repeal, doesn't control costs, and my favorite: if the government is involved this much, single-payer could happen, and that would be awful).

i was going to say something about the tea party faction holding the rest of the party hostage but in reality it's more like a two-handed all-way mexican standoff where every member is aiming at two other member's feet

i wish i could succumb to existential nihilism enough to laugh
posted by murphy slaw at 5:45 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Xi Jinping is sitting atop a trillion dollars in US debt holdings (they've been selling off pieces). China isn't eager to see the dollar crash.

The result of a US default is the spell on the world that maintains unquestioned US economic hegemony is broken. A trillion dollars is a drop in the bucket compared to the opportunities that would open for China, namely, they could take a much larger role in the world financial system without having to make their currency fully convertible which would be a massive economic coup for them. Where else are you going to put money if the US clusterfucks its treasuries? Europe? Ha!

Xi knows what's coming, that's why they've been unloading treasuries as fast as they can without making any significant noise.
posted by Talez at 5:49 PM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


CNN Trump Jr. attorney offers details about 8th person at meeting
Donald Trump Jr.'s attorney, Alan Futerfas, has told CNN he has spoken by phone to the eighth person in the room during the meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016.[...]

Futerfas says the person, who he declined to name, was a US citizen and said he was not employed by the Russian government. But Futerfas acknowledged he didn't know his entire history. The Agalarovs and their attorney have not publicly explained who the employee was who attended.
So an American male. Reince Priebus was in the Trump Building that day but so was Trump. Whoever it is should probably just come forward because the longer this drags out the more suspicious it will look when someone leaks who it was.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:54 PM on July 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


North Korea is developing nuclear weapons, but I don't see the NRA standing up for my right to own low-yield tactical nukes
Just wait until a couple of the major military nuke contractors join the NRA...
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:54 PM on July 17, 2017


So an American male. Reince Priebus was in the Trump Building that day but so was Trump. Whoever it is should probably just come forward because the longer this drags out the more suspicious it will look when someone leaks who it was.

No, I like this grown-up version of Guess Who? and request to know if the person has a mustache.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:58 PM on July 17, 2017 [34 favorites]


Please be Reince please be Reince please be Reince

I am not even going to say anything about the seemingly failed MTP because this fucking thing is like the goddamn Terminator
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:03 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm glad that Senator Jerry "Get a Brain" Moran came out against the bill and all but in his statement he simultaneously calls for less government intrusion into healthcare and more protections for people with pre-existing conditions. What? I mean, what? Do they read these things before they put their names on them? Are they just morans?
posted by Justinian at 6:04 PM on July 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


Roger Stone (for the eighth man): because he is like that devil character in The Twilight Zone who appears at the scene of every disaster but gets freed from jail due to skeptics.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:07 PM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


No, I like this grown-up version of Guess Who? and request to know if the person has a mustache.

Actually we should ask if they have facial hair. That way if the answer is no, we'll have ruled out mustaches and beards.
posted by diogenes at 6:07 PM on July 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


What? I mean, what?

Dear Senator Moran,

Attached is the statement that we received on July 17, 2017. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid statements.

Very truly yours,
MetaFilter
posted by Talez at 6:08 PM on July 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


At least BRCA has had a bullet put in it with this latest inanity. Let's hope that it's fatal because McConnell could always tourniquet it by veering it to the right to try and pick up Paul and Lee.
posted by Talez at 6:13 PM on July 17, 2017


@Jim Sciutto Just in: Russian Dep Foreign Minister Rybakov says Russian government "almost" at a deal on getting back property seized by the US

That was posted at 6:05 tonight

@Caroline O
These compounds were used for espionage targeting critical US infrastructure. Given the GOP's silence, it appears they are fine with that.

Posted at 8:28

It is hard to believe he is going to do this but there has been ominous threats and a lot of pressure from Putin and no legislation passed by the House to prevent Trump. I think Trump is going to do it quickly before anyone can stop him.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:13 PM on July 17, 2017 [17 favorites]


Maybe the Russian property return is a trial balloon for sanctions.

Also, it's funny af after seeing Trump rail about Obama giving Iran back its seized cash while doing the exact same thing with Russia. Trump's mirror indeed.
posted by Talez at 6:19 PM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


I like this grown-up version of Guess Who?

I was thinking What's My Line?, but that may be a reflection of my age. "Contestant #8: Are you the head of an American political party who may have committed a little light treason?"
posted by octobersurprise at 6:21 PM on July 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


It's still completely insane that there are only 48 people in the country who wanted that bill to pass and they all happened to be Republican senators
posted by theodolite at 6:24 PM on July 17, 2017 [41 favorites]


@Mark Knoller In speech tonight to @CUFI, VP Pence calls Israel "our most cherished ally," and vows "the US will always stand with Israel."

Our most cherished ally? Hmmph it's a bit like trying to name your favorite child. Right now Canada is in the corner sobbing and Great Britain has stormed off to her bedroom.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:25 PM on July 17, 2017 [20 favorites]


Our most cherished ally? Hmmph it's a bit like trying to name your favorite child. Right now Canada is in the corner sobbing and Great Britain has stormed off to her bedroom.

And Australia sure as hell isn't coming home for Christmas.
posted by Talez at 6:26 PM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


France is America's first and oldest ally. A lot of people don't know that. [Trump last week, real]
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:28 PM on July 17, 2017 [27 favorites]


The words "Christians United for Israel" make my skin crawl a little but at least I found out there's a book called ABRAHAM: GOD'S SPECIAL FRIEND
posted by theodolite at 6:29 PM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


Also this tchotchke with the Lord's Prayer in Hebrew is the first thing I've ever seen where "Judeo-Christian" might actually be the right adjective
posted by theodolite at 6:38 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


The Kansas City Star Thousands of Missourians are about to be cut from prescription drug program

More than 60,000 elderly Missourians got a letter from the state last month informing them they were about to be cut off from a program that had helped them pay for prescription drugs.[...]In May, state lawmakers voted to save $15 million in the state’s $27 billion budget by cutting a state program called MORx.


They are cutting off poor people's medication to save $15 million. If they had implemented the Obamacare Medicaid expansion they would have gotten over $2 billion from the federal government, 100 times as much. But they turned the money down -- because they are Republicans and helping poor people is against their religion.
posted by JackFlash at 6:38 PM on July 17, 2017 [100 favorites]


"are there any gun manufacturers that are NOT members of the NRA?"

It's pretty difficult to find a comprehensive donors list, but of the manufacturers you're likely to find available in the United States, only Bersa SA (Argentine) and Tanfoglio (Italian) seem likely to not be donating money to the NRA directly.

Or, you could go with a used one, since that doesn't result in additional profit to the manufacturer.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 6:41 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


I would think that requiring proof of citizenship (passports) to vote would be a huge mistake for Republicans. Don't people who travel and have an interest in foreign countries vote more Democratic? (Glibpaxman, 12:13 pm)

Oh that, psssh. Notice how:

Passport Books and Cards that are damaged or reported lost or stolen are not proofs of Citizenship. (carsonb, 11:30 am)

"Sorry sir, your passport is reported stolen. Yes sir, it's on the list. No sir, there's nothing I can do about it; I didn't make the list. I just have to follow what it says."

Also, I've known tons of people to have trouble getting hands on an original (not copy) birth certificate to GET a passport (we're required to get a red official one at work). And that's with no extra voter-suppression obstacles thrown in the way. It's just a pain in the ass. I had to go in person to Santa Ana, CA when I live in WA. So it's not like that's a better option.
posted by ctmf at 6:57 PM on July 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


This pussyfooting around the eighth person in the meeting confuses me. They weren't doing anything wrong, they say, and anyone would have done the same, so... why so coy?

(hashtag sarcasm)
posted by Devonian at 7:06 PM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


They can *try* that messaging but that dog won't hunt.

Yeah it will. The republican base is so desperate to not be proven to be gullible stooges, THEY scramble to HELP find the fig leaves, then determinedly believe in the fig leaves 100%. Preferably with fingers in ears going "lalalalalalaaaaaa!" There's nothing for the shithead demagogues to do but pick an excuse already being argued for them from facebook, twitter, redstate or on the air on Fox, then say it. Done.
posted by ctmf at 7:06 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


So here's a thing. Lawfare Blog brings the story of a new front opening on Trump/Russia.
Last week, a group called United to Protect Democracy filed suit against the Trump campaign and Roger Stone on behalf of three people whose emails and personal information were among the material stolen by the Russians and disclosed to Wikileaks. The suit alleges that the campaign and Stone conspired with the Russians to release information about the plaintiffs—who are not public figures—in a fashion that violates their privacy rights under D.C. law. and intimidates them out of political advocacy.
posted by scalefree at 7:16 PM on July 17, 2017 [45 favorites]


Brutal editorial at the Baptist News Global web site: Donald Trump stole my old church.
posted by Sublimity at 7:19 PM on July 17, 2017 [16 favorites]




More from Joshua Green's Devil's Bargain, as reported by The Daily Beast: Trump’s Campaign Conceded in a Memo That Comey Was Having Major Impact
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign acknowledged in an internal memo that former FBI Director James Comey’s 11th hour decision to reopen an inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email helped shift the results.

Reported in Joshua Green’s new book Devil’s Bargain, the memo gives credence to an argument long espoused by Clinton world that Comey’s announcement propelled Trump to victory.
...
“The last few days have proven to be pivotal in the minds of voters with the recent revelations in reopening the investigation of Secretary Clinton,” the memo read, according to Green. “Early polling numbers show declining support for Clinton, shifting in favor of Mr. Trump.”

It added: “This may have a fundamental impact on the results.”
In case you're wondering how we found ourselves in this situation. Also:
Elsewhere in his book, Green makes clear just how surprising the final win was to Trump’s team. In the close of the campaign, he reports, chief strategist Steve Bannon had devised a scorched-earth approach to the close of the campaign that was premised on a Clinton victory.

“Our backup strategy,” he said of Clinton, according to Green, “is to fuck her up so bad that she can’t govern. If she gets 43 percent of the vote, she can’t claim a mandate.”

Later, Bannon added: “My goal is that by November 8, when you hear her name, you’re gonna throw up.”
posted by zachlipton at 7:26 PM on July 17, 2017 [30 favorites]


(Direct link to The Hill - warning, automatically playing video.)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:26 PM on July 17, 2017


On the apparent demise of Trumpcare (while not assuming anything is ever really over-over with this zombie of a bill):

Thank you, MeFites.

Thank you for contacting your Senators, for sharing info here and elsewhere on the awful content and consequences of this terrible bill, for keeping the faith, for encouraging us to stay involved even when outrage fatigue sets in, and for keeping your eyes on the ball (when not bean-plating, of course).

Thank you.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:27 PM on July 17, 2017 [52 favorites]


Well, that Bannon gentleman seems nice.

God, these nightmare garbage people
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:28 PM on July 17, 2017 [43 favorites]


Senators Mike Lee and Jerry Moran have tweeted out that they will not support this version of the BCRA, to which I say THANK GOD.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:30 PM on July 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


is to fuck her up so bad that she can’t govern

In historical terms, or relative to their clown show? Because the latter would be fucked up indeed, beyond the even possible.
posted by ctmf at 7:31 PM on July 17, 2017


"The health care bill is once again, and I say this at least once a week now so don't necessarily expect it to last, dead. "

It's the Jon Snow of health care bills.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:35 PM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


Well they won't support it for Rand Paul like not cruel enough reasons, but a no is a no.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:37 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Eyebrows, I get more of an Iron Islands vibe from the GOP bill: what is dead need not be insured.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:38 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Remember the AHCA. It's not dead until it's dead.
posted by notyou at 7:38 PM on July 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


Deathcare Bill? Killed by Kansas. Of course the KS R sen tweeted "How About No?" - his constituency has been living in the Event Horizon hell ever since Brownback took office.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:39 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


The words "Christians United for Israel" make my skin crawl a little

Yeah, these Dominionozionists are creepy fucks. As a Reform Jew with a lot of sympathy for displaced Palestinians, I have no real affection for Zionism among Jews and those who have culturally aligned themselves with Judaism, but I can at least see how their perspective is one which is fundamentally comprehensible. But the premillenialists literally just want Israel and Jews around to play a supporting role in their wack-ass eschatological roleplay, and it's uncomfortably like being a fetish object.
posted by jackbishop at 7:43 PM on July 17, 2017 [26 favorites]


It's the Jon Snow of health care bills.

At this point it's more the Double Extra Beric Dondarrion, With Sprinkles On Top, of health care bills.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:43 PM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


So now Trump is tweeting: "Republicans should just REPEAL failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan that will start from a clean slate. Dems will join in!"

Setting aside the utterly comical idea that "Dems will join in" on repealing Obamacare, I don't think Trump realizes you need 60 votes for a clean repeal, because he doesn't understand these earthly concepts of votes and Congress and bills and laws.

And honestly, I'm at least a little worried the Senate is desperate enough to go nuclear and destroy the filibuster to do it anyway. Or, failing that, Trump can go nuclear on his own and make a whole hog investment in sabotaging Obamacare by shutting off the CSR payments and doing everything he can to scare off insurers. He'll think he's "helping." I don't actually watch Game of Thrones, but I assume there's an appropriate Jon Snow analogy to be applied here too.

Anyway, Made In America Week is going great. So much winning!
posted by zachlipton at 7:45 PM on July 17, 2017 [28 favorites]


I can't shake the feeling that Senator McCain's absence is what led to the recent defections from Lee and Moran. They were probably going to need McCain to be present in order to pass the bill, and it wasn't looking good for him returning for another few weeks. That would be another few weeks of Senators having to deal with (or dodge) questions about a bill nobody likes, taking angry calls from constituents, etc.

I guess what I'm saying is that perhaps this is the first time in John McCain's Senate career that he did something substantial to block his party from doing something he was "concerned" about, and he did it by simply not showing up for work.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:46 PM on July 17, 2017 [70 favorites]


Eyebrows, I get more of an Iron Islands vibe from the GOP bill: what is dead need not be insured.

Indeed, when it comes to the GOP's attempt to "reform" health care, the traditional Iron Islands saying is far more apt than I care to imagine:

"What is dead may never die."

"But rises again harder and stronger."
posted by darkstar at 7:47 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Best comment I've seen on the McCain delay (from NYT, I think? Paraphrased.): Congress is literally waiting for an old white Republican to get the taxpayer-funded healthcare he needs, so he can return to work in time to throw millions off theirs.
posted by Rykey at 7:53 PM on July 17, 2017 [75 favorites]


The Agalarovs and their attorney have not publicly explained who the employee was who attended.

So it was somebody who worked for the Agalarovs?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:54 PM on July 17, 2017


The words "Christians United for Israel" make my skin crawl a little but at least I found out there's a book called ABRAHAM: GOD'S SPECIAL FRIEND

Man, you must be putting me on.
posted by Daily Alice at 7:58 PM on July 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


MCCONNELL now says Senate to now vote on clean repeal of Obamacare with two-year delay
-- tweet by Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post (with press release from McConnell

Anyone want to speculate on the chances of this happening? What the strategy is? Does this mean they are giving up on the BCRA?
posted by mcduff at 8:00 PM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


McConnell says he'll put up for a vote (should require 60 votes unless they go nuclear) in the coming days of a straight repeal of Obamacare with a two year delay.

As a reminder, the CBO scores that as +32M uninsured and massive premium hikes for those left. It also means an end to all the stuff everybody really likes about Obamacare, like staying on your parents' plan under 26.

Is there a Game of Thrones analogy for this level of stupidity too or should we be looking to another series?
posted by zachlipton at 8:00 PM on July 17, 2017 [22 favorites]


I would presume that either a.) they're just going to let it fail, say "yep, we tried", and continue obstructing the ACA for another few months, or b.) they're going to find *some* way to push it through (nuclear armageddon, anyone), and then count on blaming the Dems for not working with them to fix it before it goes into effect.
posted by jferg at 8:05 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


If repeal fails they can tell their voters "we did everything we could and the Democrats stood in the way of our repeal!"

It might die on the vine but it's kind of a win for them since they won't enact legislation with insanely unpopular side effects.
posted by Tevin at 8:05 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Is there a Game of Thrones analogy for this level of stupidity too or should we be looking to another series?

Another series: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

The Gang Repeals Healthcare
posted by Barack Spinoza at 8:05 PM on July 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


zachlipton: Is there a procedural reason it should require 60 votes? They passed it 52-47 in 2015 when Obama vetoed it.
posted by Justinian at 8:06 PM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm sorry, I screwed that up. A complete 100% repeal of Obamacare requires 60 votes. What McConnell wants to vote on is the bill they passed in 2015 for Obama to veto. That bill doesn't repeal all the Obamacare regulations, but it repeals a bunch of the taxes, ends all the marketplace subsidies, kills the Medicaid expansion, sets the penalties for the individual and employer mandates to $0, and fucks with Planned Parenthood, because they can. That can be passed with just 50 votes.

I don't personally think at this moment they have 50 votes for that—if you were concerned about Medicaid cuts in BCRA, surely you'll be extremely concerned about the even worse Medicaid cuts in this repeal—, but even if they fail, it lets McConnell keep this alive to fight another day, and the longer he keeps it alive, the more he can keep messing around with amendments to try to sell a deal.
posted by zachlipton at 8:07 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


By the way, I think that's the lever people are missing; what McConnell is putting up is a bill almost all of them already voted for less than 2 years ago. So to stop it some of the Senators have to explain why they voted for it in 2015 but not in 2017. The answer, of course, is that they knew Obama would veto it in 2015 but Trump would sign it in 2017. But I'm not sure they can actually say that.
posted by Justinian at 8:07 PM on July 17, 2017 [29 favorites]


> zachlipton: Is there a procedural reason it should require 60 votes? They passed it 52-47 in 2015 when Obama vetoed it.

That version of "repeal" was done under reconciliation. There are provisions for which repeal requires 60 votes.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:09 PM on July 17, 2017


This is the dumbest senate.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:10 PM on July 17, 2017 [16 favorites]


Is this maybe McConnell wanting to force a party orthodoxy check on his fellow Republicans? Less about actually repealing the ACA and more about quickly putting together a vote to show who supports him and who's in the doghouse?

I wouldn't think McConnell's position was in jeopardy over this. It's a failure and a black eye, sure, but he held everyone together on their stubborn bullshit and blocked lots of progress from the Obama administration, to the point of even stealing a Supreme Court seat. And this bill was originally a steaming pile in its inception he could blame on the House, anyway. But this seems kinda... I dunno, desperate? Petulant, even.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:13 PM on July 17, 2017


You Can't Tip a Buick: "Establish democratically elected workers' councils. [...]"

This time I *know* you have this block of text saved for bringing out as needed.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:14 PM on July 17, 2017 [18 favorites]


I guess what I'm saying is that perhaps this is the first time in John McCain's Senate career that he did something substantial to block his party from doing something he was "concerned" about, and he did it by simply not showing up for work.

McCain’s achievements have always only been not being around.
posted by phearlez at 8:15 PM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


tonycpsu: yes, but those provisions won't be repealed. This is the "fuck everything, we'll destroy the village to save it" repeal bill.

AFAIK the only current Republican senator who voted against this bill in 2015 was Collins. So she'll vote No again. That means they need 2 more NO votes from people who already voted for this bill in 2015. There are 2 freshman republican senators who weren't in the Senate then but they are Todd Young from Indiana and John Kennedy from Louisiana and they are obvious yes votes.
posted by Justinian at 8:15 PM on July 17, 2017


So if they can't pass this healthcare thing, imagine how angry the tea party conservatives will be for the debt ceiling negotiations. Like negotiating with a swarm of bees who have decided to attack a can of Raid.
posted by Glibpaxman at 8:17 PM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Let's be very clear in case people are not aware; a straight repeal of the form the Republicans can pass with 50 votes is a significantly worse proposition than BCRA or the House bill, and those were fucking terrible.

We're talking about essentially nuking the individual market and the Medicaid expansion in the next 2 years. I wasn't kidding when I called it the "destroy the village to save it" bill.
posted by Justinian at 8:17 PM on July 17, 2017 [26 favorites]


Also, Politico's story on the Trumpcare development has details on the point zachlipton cited earlier today about how McConnell got caught talking out of both sides of his mouth to his own party:

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), another Obamacare repeal skeptic, on Monday accused McConnell of committing a “breach of trust.”

The Wisconsin Republican was stunned to read in The Washington Post that McConnell was privately arguing that major reforms to Medicaid were so far in the distance that they would never take effect. Johnson said Monday that he’d confirmed through conversations with other senators that McConnell had made the remarks, which he said now puts a procedural vote on the bill in “jeopardy.”

posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:17 PM on July 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


McCain’s achievements have always only been not being around.

Hurm, seeing as he was a POW that statement is complicated. He's a crunchy boiled owl grandpa who ran for prez. I'm a leftist all the way and I'd have a beer with McCain. Get well, senator, then do the right thing!
posted by vrakatar at 8:20 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


I don't think it's dumb, under the circumstances.
  • As others have said, if they don't have the votes in whatever circumstance that plays out, they can blame Democrats and kick the can down the road another day.
  • If they do have the votes, in whatever circumstance that plays out, the two-year timeline means they, again, get to kick the can down the road another day for a real solution.
Given the Republicans' increasingly toxic brand in Congress, I wouldn't be surprised if that second point also wagers a bit on Democrats picking up more seats in the intervening time, for a short-term win—only to be completely bamboozled with Republican ratfuckery once it's time to really pay the piper (have a solution for the increasing healthcare crisis time bomb they created here) two years down the road, with the standard brand of ratfuckery that Congressional Republicans always bring as their expertise, given their complete inability to actually govern. Surprise! Another sweeping of Democrats from Congress as Republicans get to play Destroy the Country for another however-many years.

Mitch McConnell is not dumb. He's very good at taking his best shot available to continue to be an unbelievable prick in a Senate chair.
posted by Brak at 8:21 PM on July 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Note that the 2015 bill is even worse than a full repeal. CBO scored complete repeal as +23M uninsured, while this monstrosity is +32M uninsured.

This bill would leave the regulations on insurance companies intact. A complete repeal would at least mean we'd go back to 2009 and some young, healthy people with cash to spare could buy non-group policies, while this bill would leave us with an individual market where insurers have to sell policies to everyone, but there's no mandate and no subsidies to help people buy insurance. The insurance markets would death spiral pretty much immediately: half the population would have no insurers to cover them after a year, extending to 3/4ers of the population over 10 years.

Anyway, the Capital Weather Gang would like us to know that: In 48-72 hours, "Hostile wind shear is expected to shred apart Don's vulnerable core"
posted by zachlipton at 8:24 PM on July 17, 2017 [28 favorites]


Yep, set time bomb, hand government to dems,
- obstruct defusing the bomb, blame dems for the explosion OR
- extract some extreme concession for allowing the bomb to be defused at 11:59 pm on the last day
posted by ctmf at 8:28 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Is there a procedural reason it should require 60 votes?

The Democrats will filibuster. Of course, the Republicans could just kill the filibuster...
posted by dirigibleman at 8:28 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Catastrophe terrorism is the only way R's know anymore. See: debt ceiling, government funding. Attach conditions to not destroying the country.
posted by ctmf at 8:31 PM on July 17, 2017 [26 favorites]


The Democrats will filibuster. Of course, the Republicans could just kill the filibuster...

... I know about the filibuster. I was being polite and pointing out that this bill isn't a full repeal, it's a partial repeal which actually can pass with 50 votes, without being all NYAH YOU'RE WRONG THIS ONLY TAKES 50 VOTES. I guess I'm not very good at not being a prick...
posted by Justinian at 8:35 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


I guess I'm not very good at not being a prick. ... and the new Democratic Party tag line (requested above) coins itself. :p
posted by Barack Spinoza at 8:40 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


If I were a political hack having to write copy for a "moderate" R senator who voted against this bill in 2017 even though he or she voted for it in 2015, I think it would take the form of:

I voted to repeal Obamacare in 2015 with a two-year time frame to institute a replacement. I still believe this was the correct vote under the circumstances. However, the events of recent weeks have shown that replacing Obamacare is a complicated process which must be done through regular order and with due deliberation. Given the difficulties that have now been revealed in formulating the replacement I no longer in good conscience can vote for a bill which would result in so many people losing coverage or being thrown off medicare without a replacement plan already in place.

It's not perfect but it's at least partially true which is always a plus.
posted by Justinian at 8:42 PM on July 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


A few people smarter than I am are speculating as to how this works going forward, e.g. Paul Kane at the Post. The only way to get a vote on the 2015 bill, as McConnell promised, is to get 50 votes on the motion to proceed (specifically, a MTP on the AHCA the House passed). If that happens, the bill is once again alive, and there can be a billion amendments, of which "delete everything and make it the 2015 partial repeal" would be just one. Maybe that wins, maybe that loses, but once Senators vote to proceed, their only control over what they're actually proceeding with is their single vote. And perhaps conservatives might trust McConnell not to pull a fast one slightly more if he hadn't just been caught telling RonJohn™ one thing and moderates another. I'm not really sure how there's a motion to proceed happens under such conditions, because even if you had 50 Senators to vote for it, and I don't think you have those votes, you also need 50 Senators to vote to proceed in general, and even people who would vote for the 2015 bill are going to have a problem opening up a process they can't control.

Pretty much to the minute as the bill collapsed, Trump was bloviating, per Politico:
At a dinner with GOP senators on Monday evening, Trump said the party would look like “dopes” if they couldn’t pass the bill after sending a full repeal bill to President Barack Obama’s desk, which was vetoed.

“If the Republicans have the House, Senate and the presidency and they can't pass this health care bill they are going to look weak,” Trump said, according to a source familiar with the meeting. “How can we not do this after promising it for years?”

Trump had no idea defections were coming tonight, according to another White House official with knowledge of the meeting. "Why would we have a dinner like that if we knew people were going to drop out?" the official said.
Dopes.

without being all NYAH YOU'RE WRONG THIS ONLY TAKES 50 VOTES.

I deserved the "NYAH YOU'RE WRONG" approach, but appreciate the politeness. Taking Senate procedure advice from anyone other than Senate procedure gurus is a dangerous game, and I've been burnt before too.
posted by zachlipton at 8:49 PM on July 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


Yeah "repeal and go fuck yourself" is good for a T-shirt but I'm not sure Senator Turtle has fully thought through the gambit. Or maybe he has and this is his last-ditch "we tried everything so let's move on" play.
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:52 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Associated Press is feeling a little frisky, it seems.

From the AP tweet on Tropical Storm Don:

Hurricane center calls Tropical Storm Don “small” and ″not particularly well organized.”


From the full linked article:

It is unlikely that Don the storm will be retired.
posted by darkstar at 8:52 PM on July 17, 2017 [23 favorites]


Isn't Murkowski on record recently (as in, sometime in 2017) against full repeal? None of these "moderates" are going to have it any easier voting for a repeal+2yrs bill. Never count on Republicans doing the right thing, ever, but repeal under Trump is not repeal under Obama, and all the same concerns apply even more so to a straight repeal. McConnell is desperate now, forcing a vote on straight repeal would be a pure play to the FOX base for no possible political benefit. I think he's bluffing to win tomorrow's FOX and Friends. That's as far as he's planned after tonight.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:57 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


The only priority for McConnell et al. Is rolling back taxes on the 0.1% -- which is why none of this mess resembles a health care bill. Killing Medicare gradually is a bonus for the Paul Ryans.
posted by benzenedream at 9:01 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Oh, I don't know. they want to murder us all so very, very much, they may find a way to do it yet.
posted by Artw at 9:04 PM on July 17, 2017


That procedural stuff in your links is interesting, zachlipton. Senate rules are fascinating! I'm not being sarcastic!

So it sounds like this may be posturing from McConnell and we're not likely to see a vote on the 2015 repeal-and-go-fuck-yourself bill come up. That would be ideal. It doesn't require moderate Republicans to try to come up with a face saving reason to vote for not killing everyone.
posted by Justinian at 9:05 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


In good news for my city, the Trump name is finally being removed from the Toronto skyline. I'm out of town for the next week, will be glad to see it gone when I return.
posted by yellowbinder at 9:05 PM on July 17, 2017 [32 favorites]


I hope people are getting lots of B-roll footage for Democratic candidates to use in commercials.
posted by mmoncur at 9:17 PM on July 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


It occurs to me that perhaps, perhaps, this concept of saying whatever logically-inconsistent crowd-pleasing horseshit you want, and promising to act on said horseshit, has finally met reality.

But I do not trust these fuckers. So I'll try to exorcise that hope, and assume it still plays.
posted by pjenks at 9:20 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


“If the Republicans have the House, Senate and the presidency and they can't pass this health care bill they are going to look weak,” Trump said, according to a source familiar with the meeting. “How can we not do this after promising it for years?”

I like how Trump's only role in this whole process is as a whip. He doesn't even care what is or isn't in the bill. It strains the bounds of my imagination, how there are constituents who still think this man is working for their interests.
posted by Brak at 9:20 PM on July 17, 2017 [24 favorites]


In good news for my city, the Trump name is finally being removed from the Toronto skyline.

I bet they had to buy their way out of a contract for the privilege.
posted by rhizome at 9:22 PM on July 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


To be fair, this is the rare time Trump is right - they DO look weak. Lucky for them, the Tea Party types are not paying much attention.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:29 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


@BraddJaffy 2 years ago today: Trump declared that John McCain, who spent 5 ½ years as a POW, is “not a war hero … I like people that weren’t captured” (video)
I watched a little bit of the video and found that the most remarkable thing was how coherent he sounded two years ago. I mean it's the same nutso narcissistic crap we're all used to now, but two years ago the man could compose a sentence.
posted by pjenks at 9:30 PM on July 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


To be fair, this is the rare time Trump is right

Sure, but he's done nothing to help them. I mean, it's not surprising—he basically does nothing ever, other than bloviate. But I find this particular example to be such an incisive depiction of his presidency on the whole.
posted by Brak at 9:37 PM on July 17, 2017


Donald Trump stole my old church.

Budweiser is the devil’s poison though.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:38 PM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


I'm not really sure how there's a motion to proceed happens under such conditions, because even if you had 50 Senators to vote for it, and I don't think you have those votes, you also need 50 Senators to vote to proceed in general, and even people who would vote for the 2015 bill are going to have a problem opening up a process they can't control.

Shorter: the people who voted for the 2015 bill can avoid the awkwardness of explaining a different vote two years later by voting not to proceed, and from one to several will do that.

Much easier to explain away -- "it wasn't ready," "we promised repeal and replace," etc.
posted by msalt at 9:45 PM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


is it just me or does donald trump only tell the truth when he's talking about how congressional republicans are a bunch of asshats
posted by murphy slaw at 9:46 PM on July 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


The only way to get a vote on the 2015 bill, as McConnell promised, is to get 50 votes on the motion to proceed

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, but not sure. So then, instead of the 2015 bill, Turtle substitutes the Barack-(I-Mean-BCRA), McCain shambles in all bed-head, two other R's yell "psych!" and it passes.
posted by ctmf at 9:46 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


So what is McConnell's real game here?
Get a Republican orthodoxy vote to affirm his control in the Senate? Have a symbolic vote that won't pass? Is this a Hail Mary to get it to amendments and then wreak havoc there?

I kinda have to wonder if he isn't just looking for some way to shift blame here. What are the chances of a repeal-without-replacement passing the House? If they're really good, then that's awful of course, but could it be his plan to kick it over there and hope they fall apart on it and take the blame?

...or is this his insurance that things will be really shitty for Democrats if they do come into Congress in 2018 with a wave, but not enough of a wave to take control?

Some combination of any of these?

Christ, what an asshole.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:54 PM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


I was listening to NPR with half-an-ear in the car today and someone was on talking about McCain. The interviewer asked something like, McCain has criticized the bill and expressed concern, were they really counting on his vote anyway? And the guy kind of hemmed and err-well-ed for a second and I was SURE he was about to say "Don't be fooled, McCain ALWAYS votes the party line." Too much MetaFilter I guess.
posted by ctmf at 10:01 PM on July 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


That procedural stuff in your links is interesting, zachlipton. Senate rules are fascinating! I'm not being sarcastic!

If you are ever curious about this stuff, get a copy of the Oleszek bible. It's as clear a guide as exists, it makes a handy soporific, and you can also use it to smush bugs!
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:09 PM on July 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Now would be a good time for Democrats to put together a genuinely awesome health care plan. It's cheaper, it covers everyone, it solves XYZ market problems! Republicans vote for it or look like shitheads, because their plan was to kill people and give their money to the rich.

Or, I guess we could wait for the Republican plan to torpedo the insurance industry, and THEN enact a socialized model. They get the blame and we get single payer! Woohoo!
posted by Autumnheart at 10:24 PM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Now would be a good time for Democrats to put together a genuinely awesome health care plan. It's cheaper, it covers everyone, it solves XYZ market problems!

There is no such plan. This is basically what Republicans were promising and is why they can't deliver.

There is single payer which is more efficient and covers everyone but is not cheaper. Personally I don't see any benefit in proposing it now. Since it won't pass it helps no one, and a vote would hand Republicans a legislative victory.
posted by mark k at 10:41 PM on July 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


There is single payer which is more efficient and covers everyone but is not cheaper.

...actually single payer (though I know what you mean) would be cheaper. I think the real point is that single payer should be brought up again and again until the boring truth of it - that it is the only moral and reasonable solution - sinks in.
posted by From Bklyn at 11:03 PM on July 17, 2017 [32 favorites]


The Republicans bitched about Obamacare for 8 years and promised to repeal it and replace it with something better. Trump promised to do that on Day One. They hold the White House and both houses of Congress. If they can't get it done with those advantages the Democrats would have to be incompetent imbeciles to take any blame.

But I repeat myself.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:06 PM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Now would be a good time for Democrats to put together a genuinely awesome health care plan

Now would be a good time for Democrats to introduce an actually existing healthcare plan, preferably something that's been demonstrably working, if imperfectly, in the real world, or maybe even right here in America. They could call it "The Status Quo." Or if the want to get all "brand me" about it, perhaps "Obamacare."

Anything else constitutes interrupting your enemy while they're making a mistake.

actually single payer... would be cheaper

I'm actually convinced that all that's needed to sell it is an accounting gimmick. If it can be introduced as a single payer option that shows up on your paycheck just like your current healthcare, but maybe a little cheaper, and edges out private options over time, people will be fine with it. You're just replacing a tax-like-deduction people already see deducted from their paycheck with an actual tax that shows up in the same line item. The thing that drives everybody nuts is the "tax increase" in their withholding line, which they don't realize would be offset by the elimination of the health plan cost in a different line item. Engineer it so it doesn't move numbers around on their paycheck in year one, and nobody will care.
posted by dirge at 11:17 PM on July 17, 2017 [45 favorites]


There is no such plan. This is basically what Republicans were promising and is why they can't deliver.

There IS a plan IF you don't start with the axiom, "All taxation is theft"
posted by mikelieman at 11:31 PM on July 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


There are Plans and then there are Plots. When the Republican Party resembles one of the Batman '66 villains in the between-parts cliffhanger, this is not Planning, it's Plotting.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:44 PM on July 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Daily Beast: Trump’s Air War Has Already Killed More Than 2,000 Civilians: "Trump’s Air War Has Already Killed More Than 2,000 Civilians"
Civilian casualties from the U.S.-led war against the so-called Islamic State are on pace to double under President Donald Trump, according to an Airwars investigation for The Daily Beast.

Airwars researchers estimate that at least 2,300 civilians likely died from Coalition strikes overseen by the Obama White House—roughly 80 each month in Iraq and Syria. As of July 13, more than 2,200 additional civilians appear to have been killed by Coalition raids since Trump was inaugurated—upwards of 360 per month, or 12 or more civilians killed for every single day of his administration.

The Coalition’s own confirmed casualty numbers—while much lower than other estimates—also show the same trend. Forty percent of the 603 civilians so far admitted killed by the alliance died in just the first four months of Trump’s presidency, the Coalition’s own data show.

The high civilian toll in part reflects the brutal final stages of the war, with the densely populated cities of Mosul and Raqqa under heavy assault by air and land. But there are also indications that under President Trump, protections for civilians on the battlefield may have been lessened—with immediate and disastrous results. Coalition officials insist they have taken great care to avoid civilian deaths, blaming the rise instead on the shifting geography of battles in both Iraq and Syria and Islamic State tactics, and not on a change in strategy.
...
“Remarkably, when I interview families at camps who have just fled the fighting, the first thing they complain about is not the three horrific years they spent under ISIS, or the last months of no food or clean water, but the American airstrikes,” said Belkis Wille, Iraq researcher for Human Rights Watch. “Many told me that they survived such hardship, and almost made it out with the families, only to lose all their loved ones in a strike before they had time to flee.
And now for a completely unrelated article I'm just going to put here for no reason whatsoever. Just completely and totally unrelated. Foreign Policy: Tillerson to Shutter State Department War Crimes Office
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is downgrading the U.S. campaign against mass atrocities, shuttering the Foggy Bottom office that worked for two decades to hold war criminals accountable, according to several former U.S. officials.

Tillerson’s office recently informed Todd Buchwald, the special coordinator of the Office of Global Criminal Justice, that he is being reassigned to a position in the State Department’s office of legal affairs, according to a former U.S. official familiar with the move. Buchwald, a career State Department lawyer, has served in the position since December 2015.
...
Even before the Donald Trump administration took power, the future of the war crimes office was in question. The State Department during the Barack Obama administration also considered downgrading the office and folding it into the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Following the August 2015 departure of Stephen Rapp, the last full-fledged ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, the Obama administration never nominated a successor for the top post, leaving his deputy, Jane Stromseth, in charge until December 2015.

Buchwald, then a career State Department lawyer, was plucked out of the bureaucracy to head the office. He was given the title of special coordinator and granted temporary ambassadorial ranking, which has since expired. His appointment was never sent to the Senate for confirmation, meaning the office has not had a full-fledged ambassador-at-large for more than two and a half years.
posted by zachlipton at 11:48 PM on July 17, 2017 [30 favorites]


Isn't Murkowski on record recently (as in, sometime in 2017) against full repeal?
Murkowski was just re-elected in November and isn't up for election again until 2022. Given the time dilation effect we are currently experiencing in American politics that might as well be 100 years from now.

She can vote as she pleases in the knowledge that the events of 2017 will be five years distant before she has to face voters again, which is part of what makes her dithering and failure to commit to any firm position on a bill she knows will be disastrous for Alaska so particularly contemptible.
posted by Nerd of the North at 12:40 AM on July 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson), a former Deputy Chief of Staff for Harry Reid has a fascinating 20-odd tweetstorm on what he calls an unprecedented, full-blown rebellion by Republican senators against their leader, McConnell. I am not sure what the etiquette is in posting a long tweet storm but it is worth reading in full if you can. Basically Jentleson posits McDonnell has failed to deliver anything of value to the Republican Senators yet has stripped away a significant amount of their power and authority. This has angered them, and the failure of the BCA is a massive humiliation for McConnell, he argues. He also suggests the rebellion may well have been coordinated. He is somewhat aghast at the scale of the 'rebellion'.

Given Jentleson's position in that he dealt with McConnell's office for many years, this gives him a unique perspective.
posted by vac2003 at 12:47 AM on July 18, 2017 [53 favorites]


I can't get over thinking there's an intentional aspect to McConnell's madness. The people like Obamacare and want more, the Republicans don't, so the middle road is to threaten to make it worse, fail at that, and kill any changes to it for a couple of years, even the good kind. It's a perfect obstruction, there's just too much WTF in the process for me to assume they're blindsided by every negative development.
posted by rhizome at 1:09 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


JFC, tRump's address for Made In America week was just another fountain of unsupportable assertions, sloganeering and bullshit. Small assembly of minions responded with anemic and unenthusiastic applause that rapidly died off, despite Pence being the first and last to start clapping every time.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 2:18 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


For a little light relief, someone has uncovered 45's saurian alter ego. (From that prehistoric time of last year, so it may have been in one of the megathreads before, but I don't think so.)
posted by Devonian at 4:49 AM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


wrt: proof of citizenship/passport - it is completely inconceivable that proof of citizenship won't be selectively enforced.

You look like you're going to vote R white? That's ok, we'll take your word that you're an American citizen.


Edited for clarity.
posted by Gelatin at 5:14 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I guess what I'm saying is that perhaps this is the first time in John McCain's Senate career that he did something substantial to block his party from doing something he was "concerned" about, and he did it by simply not showing up for work.

McCain’s achievements have always only been not being around.


You can always tell a Milford man.

Brought to you by the party of #Repeal&GFY
posted by tilde at 5:15 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


There is single payer which is more efficient and covers everyone but is not cheaper.

It absolutely is cheaper. OECD countries that have single payer system pay just over 10% of GDP on medical care. The United States spends over 17% on its current garbage system that only works for about half the population.
posted by srboisvert at 5:15 AM on July 18, 2017 [33 favorites]


Last night it occurred to me that I don't think I've ever witnessed something of this scale, where a major political party worked this hard at this many attempts to kill this many of their own constituents for money and power.

Clinton was right. They're the death party.
posted by middleclasstool at 5:22 AM on July 18, 2017 [52 favorites]


One thing I never hear mentioned in media, even on the left, is the dangerous and disingenuous way "budget reconciliation" procedures have become a de facto "nuclear option," used ideologically to effect policy, not responsibly to manage spending and debt. The point of reconciliation was to immunize strictly fiscal and tax policy decisions from the irrationality of ideological partisanship. Yet another rule and agreement the republicans have just blown right by like it wasn't there. Small in the scheme of things except that now we approach a debt ceiling and budget crisis with zero trust between parties that any agreement to protect markets and businesses and productivity from the ideological bullshit of an incoherent and incompetent government will actually be honored.

So they used the last trust bullet in the gun used for staving off a bear attack (as in bear fucking market) to try to screw Americans out of health care and hand the savings to billionaires while telling their base this --killing grandma and grandpa and disabled kids and heroin addicts next door -- will show those uppity coastals who voted for the black guy twice.

The stupid it burns.gif
posted by spitbull at 5:32 AM on July 18, 2017 [29 favorites]


Also get out of stocks soon.
posted by spitbull at 5:34 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Now this is how you write a headline:

Jeff Sessions wants police to take more cash from American citizens (Christopher Ingraham / WaPo)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:44 AM on July 18, 2017 [39 favorites]


This is a pretty good headline (and first graf) too.

The Master of ‘Kompromat’ Believed to Be Behind Trump Jr.’s Meeting
posted by Brainy at 5:48 AM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Also get out of stocks soon.

/glances at 403b
/weeps
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:49 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Just read that forfeiture article, wow. Why was it EVER considered constitutional to seize property without charges, and at least not have to give it back if there was no conviction? It seems like Republicans and Libertarians would be the most opposed to this.

TFW you realize as you're typing a question that the answer will most probably entail the words "brown people" and "poors"...
posted by Rykey at 5:52 AM on July 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


I ask seriously, though: by what legal mechanism can law enforcement take my property if it's not connected to a crime?
posted by Rykey at 5:54 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Small assembly of minions responded with anemic and unenthusiastic applause that rapidly died off ...

But on the plus side, Donnie got to ride in a firetruck! JFC, we're living in some demonic, hellish version of Big.
posted by octobersurprise at 5:55 AM on July 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Hah. Big 2: Yuuuge!.
posted by notyou at 5:58 AM on July 18, 2017 [28 favorites]


I ask seriously, though: by what legal mechanism can law enforcement take my property if it's not connected to a crime?

They bring legal proceedings against the property itself, known as in rem cases. Because the "defendant" is not a person, it can be "convicted" without proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Is this transparent bullshit? Absolutely! Has it been upheld by the Supreme Court? Of course.

On the other hand, it does get us cases with names like United States v. Article Consisting of 50,000 Cardboard Boxes More or Less, Each Containing One Pair of Clacker Balls.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:59 AM on July 18, 2017 [50 favorites]


I ask seriously, though: by what legal mechanism can law enforcement take my property if it's not connected to a crime?

Legal mechanism? A cop's hand putting your money in a bag is mechanism enough. The US rule of law is now as follows: anything is legal if you don't get caught and punished, and nothing is legal if those in power don't like you. That's it.
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:00 AM on July 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


Now would be a good time for Democrats to put together a genuinely awesome health care plan
Or any health care plan.
Removing the apparent anathema of an 'Obama(anything)' label, I would guess would speak volumes to the racist GOP. Just having some old white dude put his name on an otherwise identical ACA plan would be an enlightening experiment.
posted by rc3spencer at 6:08 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm going to my first Tuesdays with Toomey today, and because I am a vindictive and small-minded person, the knowledge that this is one of the worst if not the worst day in McConnell's professional life will lend a full-throated celebratory rage effect to my chanting.
posted by angrycat at 6:12 AM on July 18, 2017 [24 favorites]




he said my country wasn't great
posted by pyramid termite at 6:19 AM on July 18, 2017 [34 favorites]


And on the topic of Donnie being a fucking baby, Esme Cribb* at TPM highlights a scene from Joshua Green's book, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency, where Trump explodes at Paul Manafort:
“You think you’ve gotta go on TV to talk to me?” Trump shouted. “You treat me like a baby! Am I like a baby to you? I sit there like a little baby and watch TV and you talk to me? Am I a fucking baby, Paul?”
Yes, you're a fucking baby, Donnie. Now eat your ice cream and shut the fuck up.

*Yes, I lol'd.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:23 AM on July 18, 2017 [23 favorites]


Legal mechanism? A cop's hand putting your money in a bag is mechanism enough. The US rule of law is now as follows: anything is legal if you don't get caught and punished, and nothing is legal if those in power don't like you. That's it.

Ah, but as Holy Zarquon explains above, apparently it's even worse than that: there's nothing for the state to get caught and punished for by taking my property, because apparently their taking it is enshrined in case law and upheld by the Supreme Court (sorry if I'm misusing any legal terms here, as IANAL).

I'll quit now in the interest of avoiding a derail, but this is fucking insane. #UnitedStatesvTwoMiddleFingersWayUp
posted by Rykey at 6:33 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Civil asset forfeiture was a big story in my neck of the woods a few years ago. This story from 2013 (Sarah Stillman, The New Yorker) will induce much rage, but it's also a glimpse into all the Trumpism that existed before Trump was even a candidate.

In police surveillance footage, Agostini can be heard pleading with Russell, “Can I kiss my son goodbye?”
Afterward, Russell dryly recounted to a colleague, “I said no, kiss me.”


Sessions just wants to Make American Police Free To Arbitrarily Steal Your Money And Take Your Children Again.
posted by mcdoublewide at 6:46 AM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Esme Cribb (Twitter) has been doing some good writing for TPM, especially for someone who was in college and working as a barista 2 years ago. "Esme" has a French origin but is more popular as a Scottish name.
posted by spitbull at 6:47 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Civil asset forfeiture, plus Session's 80's style War On Drugs wet dream, plus the open season on journalists. Man, you journalists better keep yourselves squeaky clean.

Just in case.
posted by yesster at 6:54 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]




Now would be a good time for Democrats to put together a genuinely awesome health care plan

Conyers already re-introduced his single payer bill in the House. I believe Bernie is intending to introduce a substantially similar bill in the Senate anon.

I believe the thinking was to wait for the whole AHCA/BCRA thing to go pear-shaped and then highlight these plans.

Meanwhile, Ol' Maverick says ACA reform needs to start afresh and follow the actual process this time (normal order, hearings, etc., etc.)
posted by Chrysostom at 6:59 AM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Dems have been introducing bills of various kinds related to improving ACA/single payer but they don't get any attention because zero of them will ever actually make it out of committee while Republicans hold both houses.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:02 AM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Agreed, but this is a great time to highlight them.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:04 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Programming update: the Senate Finance Committee is holding a hearing on tax reform right now with former Treasury tax policy people [cspan link]. Tax twitter is tweeting it under the hashtag #TRIH ("tax reform is hard").

If any of your Senators are on the Committee, today might be a good day to contact them about taxes. Some talking points that you could use:

-Absolutely no net tax increase on households making <$150K (or whatever your threshold is)
-increase the estate tax; reduce the estate tax exemption amount ($5M currently)
-increase EITC and child tax credit
-substantially increase funding for compliance and enforcement
-the Laffer curve is bullshit
-crack down on 1099 abuse by employers
-simplify the W-4/withholding calculation process, especially for two-earner households and people with multiple jobs or self employment income
-tax long term capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income or lengthen the holding period for being a "long term" gain (to e.g., 5 years)
-limit like-kind exchanges
-TAXES ARE NOT HIGH HERE, WE JUST DON'T GET ANY SERVICES FOR OUR MONEY

(edit: something happened with this comment and part of it was cut off in the middle, I tried to fix it, sorry if it's confusing!)
posted by melissasaurus at 7:04 AM on July 18, 2017 [46 favorites]


Dems have been introducing bills of various kinds related to improving ACA/single payer but they don't get any attention because zero of them will ever actually make it out of committee while Republicans hold both houses.

There's a difference between "attention" and "votes on the floor of the United States Congress". Of course John Conyers, who has been in the House of Representatives since 1965 (he voted on Medicare, remember), does not think that all he has to do is write a bill and then Schoolhouse Rock takes over. But he knows that it gets attention regardless, and it's getting more attention than it ever has before, and those of us who live in districts represented by Republicans get to call them up and give them an actual HR number and ask why they're not voting for that actual thing rather than just asking "Oh, hey, why not more Medicare for people I guess that would be nice please?"
posted by Etrigan at 7:08 AM on July 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


The US rule of law is now as follows: anything is legal if you don't get caught and punished, and nothing is legal if those in power don't like you. That's it.

"Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Yossarian shouted at her in bewildered, furious protest. "How did you know it was Catch-22? Who the hell told you it was Catch-22?"

"The soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. The girls were crying. 'Did we do anything wrong?' they said. The men said no and pushed them away out the door with the ends of their clubs. 'Then why are you chasing us out?' the girls said. 'Catch 22,' the men said. All they kept saying was 'Catch-22, Catch-22. What does it mean, Catch 22? What is Catch-22?"

"Didn't they show it to you?" Yossarian demanded, stamping about in anger and distress. "Didn't you even make them read it?"

"They don't have to show us Catch-22," the old woman answered. "The law says they don't have to."

"What law says they don't have to?"

"Catch-22."


... there's no "is now" about it.
posted by delfin at 7:09 AM on July 18, 2017 [30 favorites]


News roundup:

** Trump trying to end Iran nuclear deal despite literally everyone telling him it is a terrible idea. [NYT]

**Meadows: Republicans Don't Have the Votes to Pass a Budget in the House [IJR]

** Meanwhile, the House introduced their budget plan today. It is really, really draconian. [WP]

** Trump Air Traffic Control plan in trouble. [Political Wire]

** House and Senate GOP divided on how to handle looming debt ceiling. [Politico]
posted by Chrysostom at 7:09 AM on July 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


It [single payer] absolutely is cheaper. OECD countries that have single payer system pay just over 10% of GDP on medical care. The United States spends over 17% on its current garbage system that only works for about half the population.

That is what I meant when I said "more efficient."

The government is paying more for single payer than for the current system. Taxes go up or other things get cut. It's not going to meet people's definition of a "cheaper" government program*.

I do like the public option politically but even that I don't see a point formally introducing until it has a chance to pass. Let people campaign on it and pitch it to their constituents, sure.

*And FWIW I've had many discussions trying to explain to people that transfer payments like Social Security shouldn't be thought of the same way as actual expenditures like military spending. If my taxes went down 6% but I had to put 6% more into saving to help support an elderly parent I haven't saved anything. The money is coming from somewhere or elderly people are in poverty. People still think it's an expense, though, not an accounting formality.
posted by mark k at 7:18 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


-Absolutely no net tax increase on households making [less than] $150K (or whatever your threshold is)

I make less than $150K and I would be absolutely fine, more than fine, to see my taxes go up in exchange for single payer, or free higher ed for all, or universal basic income, &c.

This is a good a time as any for us to flip the script. Republicans have owned the "party of fiscal responsibility" label for far too long and "lower taxes for everybody!!1! [and by everybody we mean the top 1% mostly!!]" is not fiscally responsible in a country where the infrastructure is crumbling, where schools and libraries are falling apart and teachers make less than a living wage, where homelessness continues to climb and the social safety net is weaker than it's ever been. Democrats should become known as not only the party of fact and reality but also the party of fiscal realism -- "We want to make everybody's lives better and that costs money, so yes your taxes may go up, because that's how the world actually works. We'll make increases proportionate and we'll make sure the top 1% and corporations are paying their fair share. Here's what it'll cost you, and here's what you get out of the deal."
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 7:23 AM on July 18, 2017 [34 favorites]


melissasaurus has a good list of tax points.

To that I would add taxing all dividends as ordinary income and
Tax stock buybacks to shareholders the same as a dividend distribution.
posted by JackFlash at 7:25 AM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Reminder: Senate Fallback Plan Would Mean 18 Million Lose Insurance In First Year
The number of people without insurance would jump by 18 million within a year or so, and 32 million within a decade. Premiums would go up by 20 percent to 25 percent right away; by 2026, they’d be double what they would be under current health care law.

Such are the likely consequences of passing legislation that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says he intends to bring to a vote, now that the Republican Party’s effort to craft a replacement for the Affordable Care Act has fallen apart.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:32 AM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


House and Senate GOP divided on how to handle looming debt ceiling.

Now would be a good time for the donor class to make some phone calls.
posted by notyou at 7:33 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


The disillusionment, it burns.

@IngrahamAngle
There's no point pretending that the GOP will pass major legislation on its own. Must either work w/ Dems or do nothing.

--

And the banner headline on Drudge:

MOST UNPRODUCTIVE CONGRESS IN 164 YEARS
posted by chris24 at 7:36 AM on July 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


Just now: GOP Sen. Susan Collins is officially going to vote no procedurally on the pure repeal bill. That's one.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:38 AM on July 18, 2017 [32 favorites]


I'm bemused by the items chosen to highlight Made in America Week

WaPo Why the White House sent a last-minute request to South Dakota for leather pants
The chaps — velvety soft, with silver buttons and fringed sides — sat on display for an hour Monday at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Also at the party, according to the White House's list, were golf clubs, wheelbarrows, craft beer, model helicopters, pianos and Chick-fil-A sandwiches. It's unclear who, specifically, requested the items, which were spread out on the South Lawn and the State Floor.

A White House spokeswoman said the administration worked with the governors of each state and “did independent research” to make their choices.

More famous products that did not make the cut included Pyrex glassware (Pennsylvania), Kitchen-aid mixers (Ohio) and Wilson footballs (Ohio)
If the point was to highlight interesting and unusual handcrafted products made in America, then leather chaps made by a woman in ND does fit the bill but Chick-fil-A does not. If the point was to remind Americans to choose American-made products then I think the omission of pyrex but inclusion of chaps is odd. How many Americans will be buying glassware at some point vs. how many will be buying chaps? Am I overthinking this? Perhaps but one of the many things that drive me crazy about this White House is how sloppy their work is.

If you want to see how your state was represented, here is the complete list. Cheerwine soda was chosen from NC.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:39 AM on July 18, 2017 [24 favorites]


Capito and Portman also sound like nos on that, but nothing 100% definitive yet
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:39 AM on July 18, 2017


Also get out of stocks soon.

This is bad advice 99% of the time, but I'll admit we're potentially living in the 1%.

For 10 years or so I've been using Calculated Risk as my barometer of when to act, and he's not currently worried about the debt ceiling.

What is your go to source for the "freak out" argument?
posted by diogenes at 7:40 AM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]






Sublimity: Brutal editorial at the Baptist News Global web site: Donald Trump stole my old church.

Except Brett Younger opens with this:
When I was a high school senior I became angry with my church. The story of Jesus was leading me away from what they taught me. I wondered if they had read the Bible they kept telling me to read.

Here is a partial list of things I stopped believing: Christians are going to fly up into the sky any minute. The earth is 6,000 years old. Budweiser is the devil’s poison. Women are disqualified from telling the Christian story if there is a pulpit in front of them. Gay organists can serve the church only if they are not seen in public with their partners. The Pope is the anti-Christ. My Jewish friends are going to burn in hell forever. Everyone who smokes marijuana should be executed. Kindergarten teachers should carry handguns. Poor people get what they deserve

I decided that my church was filled with narrow-minded fundamentalists who were not worthy of my new enlightened state.

But as time passed, I made peace with the church of my childhood. I have been growing more appreciative. They may have taught me a few terrible things, but they also introduced me to Jesus. I defended them by saying that my old church is a victim of the culture.
So ... your consolation was that your racist, homophobic, misogynistic church did one thing right and you're OK with them? Oh, I see your photo - you're a white dude, I understand now.

Also, just like complaining about traffic while you're sitting in your car, complaining about the culture of the church you attend also reflects on you: traffic and culture are made of people. It's not some act of God, or Satan, or nature. Your church is shitty because of the beliefs of the people in your church. The belief that Trump is a good president is just another shitty belief. He stole nothing, he's just the newest verse in your churches favorite hymn of God Hates The Others.

If you love your church so much, why not help it change? Get folks involved in soup kitchens, outreach to the elderly and sick, after school day care for kids of working parents?
posted by filthy light thief at 7:41 AM on July 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


President Pigeon Joe Pesci From Goodfeathers
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:42 AM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


CNN Nevada GOP official tweets article calling for McCain's death
Diana Orrock, the Republican national committeewoman for Nevada, shared an article on Monday calling for the death of Sen. John McCain for his hawkish foreign policy views.
"Amen," Orrock wrote in a now-deleted tweet sharing a post on Medium titled "Please Just F***ing Die Already."
Yikes.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:42 AM on July 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


McCain recently said that repeal without replacement would be "bad for America", so you can put him down as a "yes" vote
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:43 AM on July 18, 2017 [31 favorites]


Collins + Capito - McCain (ill) = toast?
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:44 AM on July 18, 2017


Basically Jentleson posits McDonnell has failed to deliver anything of value to the Republican Senators yet has stripped away a significant amount of their power and authority. This has angered them, and the failure of the BCA is a massive humiliation for McConnell, he argues.

I've wondered about that phenomenon for some time. The fact that McConnell gets Senate Republicans to vote more or less in a bloc, with the implied threat of a primary challenge from the right for non-compliance, actually takes away much of the power from Republican senators in a body whose members are supposed to value their own prerogatives (much like Newt Gingrich's eliminating earmarks concentrated his own power at the expense of individuals members of Congress).

Take the stealing of Obama's SCOTUS pick, for example -- Republicans got the seat, yes, but individual committee members were told to not even meet with Garland, much less hold a hearing (and remember, the Republican Senate could have gone thru the motions and still voted him down). So McConnell gained the power to thumb his nose at the president at the expense of members of his own party's senate caucus. So it seems this humiliation is long overdue, and I hope (faint hope though it be) that it creates a perception of weakness on McConnell's part that encourages Republicans to turn away from the extremism that has dominated their party.
posted by Gelatin at 7:46 AM on July 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


If you want to see how your state was represented, here is the complete list.

Heh, it's horseshoes for Massachusetts. I would have gone with something from the biotech industry, but horseshoes are cool too. The recent advances in horseshoe technology are impressive, and the booming horseshoe corridor in Cambridge is pretty exciting.
posted by diogenes at 7:46 AM on July 18, 2017 [49 favorites]


Capito hasn't explicitly said she won't vote to proceed. Bill remains almost-toast.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:46 AM on July 18, 2017


Assuming one to five more GOP Senators stick their heads up, now we move on to budget and debt ceiling, with the tax reform "blitzkrieg" coming after?
posted by notyou at 7:48 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


encourages Republicans to turn away from the extremism that has dominated their party

i dunno, up to now every time extremism has failed they have decided that the solution is more extremism
posted by murphy slaw at 7:49 AM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


If you want to see how your state was represented, here is the complete list. Cheerwine soda was chosen from NC.

That list says New Hampshire is represented by Cider Belly Doughnuts. But Cider Belly Doughnuts is in Albany, NY. Perhaps they meant Cider Bellies Doughnuts, sold at Moulton Farm in Meredith, NH? I'm pretty sure they got the wrong donuts.
posted by schoolgirl report at 7:51 AM on July 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


Cheerwine soda was chosen from NC

Actually... that's not a bad choice. Cheerwine is damn good.
posted by azpenguin at 7:51 AM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Oh man, thanks for sharing the Made in America list.

Indiana sent brooms, Arkansas sent a conveyor belt, and Hawaii sent Rum.
posted by notyou at 7:52 AM on July 18, 2017


(Sounds like my usual Tuesday.)
posted by notyou at 7:52 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump: The Senate must go to a 51 vote majority instead of current 60 votes. Even parts of full Repeal need 60. 8 Dems control Senate. Crazy!

Absurd as it sounds after Republicans failed to accrue 51 votes, Donnie actually has a point here. Without the legislative filibuster and the need to follow the Byrd rule for reconciliation, Republicans might be able to put together a bill that could win over a majority of the Senate. Fortunately, enough senators recognize the immense power that the legislative filibuster will provide them personally over the rest of their careers to make this an unlikely prospect.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:53 AM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


If you want to see how your state was represented, here is the complete list. Cheerwine soda was chosen from NC.

Maine was .. wait for it .. Hinckley Yachts. They represented Maine with an item that is basically for summer people. Which seems doubly strange considering that they could have chosen L.L.Bean Boots (my guess is that the company likely declined given the whole Linda Bean Tweet fiasco) or New Balance shoes or any of the 2000+ other products that carry the official Maine Made label.

Gotta wonder how many companies declined this 'showcase'.
posted by anastasiav at 7:54 AM on July 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


Assuming one to five more GOP Senators stick their heads up, now we move on to budget and debt ceiling, with the tax reform "blitzkrieg" coming after?

The House is doing appropriations for fiscal year 2018 right now, which is what you might think of as the “budget” – it divides up money among the federal government, and if we don't have an active appropriations bill on Oct. 1 then the government shuts down. But it's different from what the House Budget Committee is doing, which is a bigger-picture spending plan designed to guide appropriations for multiple years. Appropriations is hitting its stride just as budget work is getting underway. The debt ceiling also has to be dealt with, no later than early/mid-October, but might be lumped in with whatever they end up doing for appropriations.

After that, yes, it's tax reform time, but the failure to pass a healthcare bill will make it more difficult to enact their tax wishlist through reconciliation. So sad.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:56 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


It absolutely is cheaper. OECD countries that have single payer system pay just over 10% of GDP on medical care. The United States spends over 17% on its current garbage system that only works for about half the population.
posted by srboisvert at 5:15 AM on July 18


Including employer contributions (which are budgeted for everyone's total compensation package) I pay around 20% of my paycheck in private insurance and another 3% in Medicare taxes. My income is pretty comparable to the national household median so I would say it's a good example.

Can a single-payer system exist with less than a 23% increase in federal taxes? I think the answer is hell yes it can.
posted by FakeFreyja at 7:59 AM on July 18, 2017 [16 favorites]


Assuming one to five more GOP Senators stick their heads up, now we move on to budget and debt ceiling, with the tax reform "blitzkrieg" coming after?

House GOP unveils budget plan that attaches major spending cuts to coming tax overhaul bill

They should not be able to pass a budget with only 50 votes, much less the Trump/Ryan end-of-all-things budget, so this is stupid posturing that won't go anywhere in the Senate. There's going to have to be another status quo compromise at the last second, or else they shut down their own government. They could do tax cuts first, but that leaves even less time for the budget. We're in for 2 months of concentrated idiocy because Republicans have no positive agenda or ability to even conceive of one. And this is where Paul Ryan morphs into his final form and becomes the thing he hates, John Boehner. This will end with passing a budget with mostly Democratic votes, again, like always, because the Republicans are the party of death and destruction.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:01 AM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


>>Hinckley Yachts

Even more interesting, Wikipedia says that that Hinckley Yachts is now owned by an investment group on Massachusetts.

Story of Maine in a nutshell.
posted by anastasiav at 8:01 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


After that, yes, it's tax reform time, but the failure to pass a healthcare bill will make it more difficult to enact their tax wishlist through reconciliation.

Er, assuming BCRA/Repeal and Wait are kaput, does this mean McConnell has used his one reconciliation bullet for the budget year or does he get to try again? (I understand tax reform was to be done under a different budget year/authorization to give McConnell a second bullet in 2017.)
posted by notyou at 8:01 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


ELECTIONS NEWS

** Special elections:
-- The special in NH House Merrimack 18 is tonight, it's a likely Dem hold. Polls close 7 pm ET.

-- GOP voters in UT-03 are still pretty undecided on a nominee. This is about the 16th most GOP seat in the country, so a likely hold, eventually.

-- There's a ton of madness going on with the Alabama special elections for Senate and governor, but I can't even get the energy to talk about it. Suffice it to say it features Roy Moore (the Ten Commandments judge) prominently.
** Election integrity:
-- South Carolina experienced 150k attempts to hack into their election systems on Election Day alone. [WSJ]

-- The Electoral Assistance Agency also experienced hacking attempts in December. [WSJ] You will recall the GOP is trying to terminate the agency.

-- The NRCC has blown off the DCCC's request for a united front against election hacking. [WP]
** 2018 Senate:
-- Another potential GOP candidate in MO has declined to run. McCaskill has to be considered one of the more vulnerable Dems, so it's a bit surprising we haven't like six people jump in by now.

-- As mentioned earlier, Trump is actively taking meetings with possible opponents of AZ sen Jeff Flake, including with Kelli Ward, who made a credible primary run at McCain in 2016. [Politico] Dems have a good shot here, if they round up a candidate soon.

-- Surprisingly credible candidate in the UT race, with Salt Lake County council member Jenny Wilson jumping in. [SL Tribune] SL County is about 1/3 of the state's population, so she should have good name recognition. Obviously, UT is a very tough reach for Dems, but if Hatch doesn't run (he's still waffling), they could have an outside chance.
** 2018 House:
-- DCCC running stealth effort to recruit Blue Dog Dems for conservative GOP seats they're targeting. This is...not universally popular. [Bloomberg]

-- An unprecedented flood of Dem candidates is signing up for House races. This is an opportunity, but also a challenge in managing party division. [Politico]
**2020 prez:
-- Kasich skipping Ohio GOP dinner with VP Pence, cites "family plans." (i.e., he's running) [Columbus Dispatch]

-- Kamala Harris buzz is growing. [The Hill]

-- But also buzz about Montana governor Steve Bullock. [NYT] Personally, I'm fine with a Harris-Bullock ticket. Something for everyone!
** Odds & ends:
-- GOP nervous about demographic trends in the Mountain West. [The Hill]

-- Trump approval is really poor, but his DISapproval is historically horrible. [538]

-- More evidence that GOP gerrymandering is very effective, bad. [AP, Princeton]
posted by Chrysostom at 8:04 AM on July 18, 2017 [49 favorites]


How would they be able to pass this latest shit sandwich of a healthcare bill through the reconciliation process, short of rules fuckery? Repealing the Essential Health Benefits seems like something that is not a financial matter.

Mitch definitely won't be able to get 60 votes to invoke cloture on a bill through normal procedures--even Donnelly, Heitkamp, and Manchin have held the line on the ACA (much to their credit).
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 8:09 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Charles P. Pierce/Esquire: Hey Mitch, Was It Worth It? (or Why the Senate Healthcare Bill Failed and What Happens Next)
(Optional Musical Accompaniment To This Post)[chosen by Charles Pierce]

There are even bigger losers here than McConnell. The House Republicans now alone own their votes for a series of deeply unpopular bills. (Happy 2018, folks!) Senator Dean Heller, Republican of Nevada, futzed around long enough that, once Moran and Lee defected, he was the guy standing when the music stopped. His re-election just got a little tougher. Meanwhile, they've all got the staff of Camp Runamuck at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue heckling them to pass some deeply unpopular bill so the president* can cock-a-doodle-doo a victory on the electric Twitter machine.

I still am wary about this whole matter. I still think McConnell can craft a bill that is punitive enough to get Lee and Rand Paul back on board and, anyway, ni shagu nazad. The problem is that, as Roy Blunt noted, that will cost him more votes than it will pick up. McConnell is now stuck more deeply into the corner with which he's grown quite familiar, and into which he wandered, eyes open, at the bidding of a president* who doesn't know anything about anything. Ignorance and cruelty are the pre-existing conditions here, and the Republicans are finding out they're not covered for those.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:11 AM on July 18, 2017 [17 favorites]


According to Salon, Trump's pick for head of the Bureau of Land Management (which manages tens of millions of public domain land throughout the western US) is likely to be ... the Bundys' lawyer.

I am out of evens, and it's only 8:15AM.
posted by suelac at 8:13 AM on July 18, 2017 [65 favorites]


Toddler: As I have always said, let ObamaCare fail and then come together and do a great healthcare plan. Stay tuned!

This -- let it fail, let people die, let the debt limit go -- is what you get when you elect someone whose proven business strategy is serial bankruptcy.

Move out of stocks, indeed. He's gonna burn it all down.
posted by Dashy at 8:14 AM on July 18, 2017 [22 favorites]


DCCC running stealth effort to recruit Blue Dog Dems for conservative GOP seats they're targeting. This is...not universally popular. [Bloomberg]

Pelosi's DCCC Is Now Openly Admitting They Are Recruiting Blue Dogs Masquerading As Democrats
The report mentions the 3 worst freshmen in Congress, Blue Dogs Tom O’Halleran (a "former" Republican), Stephanie Murphy and Josh Gottheimer. All three vote consistently against anything that smacks of progressive legislation. Each is rated "F" by ProgressivePunch. O'Halleran and Gottheimer are tied at 28.12 and Murphy is nearly as bad with a crucial vote score of 35.48. When Ryan and McCarthy boast that this hideous piece of legislation or that piece of destructive, toxic puke won with "bipartisan" support, they're talking about 7 very right-wing Blue Dogs: Stephanie Murphy, Dan Lipinski (IL), Josh Gottheimer, Tom O'Halleran, Collin Peterson (MN), Henry Cuellar (TX) and, worst of all, Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), who, for example sits on the House Financial Services Committee and votes with the Republicans to set Wall Street free to plunder Americans in return for taking $1,003,940 in bribes from the Finance Sector last year. When weak-minded scumbags like Lujan, who should have been kicked out of the DCCC after losing miserably instead of getting to be chairman again, talk about giving the Blue Dogs a role, they're not just talking about Republican-lite conservatives, they're talking about corrupt bribe takers. There are no Blue Dogs who don't take special interest payoffs for their votes-- none, not one, not ever.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:14 AM on July 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


Secret Life of Gravy: If you want to see how your state was represented [for Made in America Week], here is the complete list.

As others have pointed out, the list is shit. New Mexico, I've got one word for you: plastics. Yeah, that's it -- not green chile, which is both a local crop, and (TIL) developed by pioneer horticulturist, Dr. Fabián Garcia, at New Mexico State University in 1894. I don't know if plastic is better or worse than Indiana, who had brooms, courtesy of Broomcorn Johnnys.

But my favorite entry on the list was Wisconsin, for the very specific "two firetrucks" provided by Pierce Manufacturing. Which makes it sound like Pierce only produced two firetrucks last year, and they're showing them both off. Or maybe they just gave them to the president, so he could drive around the white house grounds like a real fire man and blare the sirens when ever he's feeling down. You know, from all the winning.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:15 AM on July 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


Move out of stocks, indeed. He's gonna burn it all down.

(maybe don't convert your stocks to USD though, if you think that's what's going to happen)
posted by melissasaurus at 8:16 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


As with Franken, I'd much rather see Harris stay in the Senate and make a mark there -- both because she's proving to be an effective legislator and hearing pitbull (like Franken) but she also has a long history of shitty moves as a prosecutor that make me wary of how her executive branch would operate. I trust her waaaaaay more as a legislator (though of course I'd still vote for her against any Republican).
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:16 AM on July 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


> @BraddJaffy: GOP Sen. Capito is a NO on repeal without replace
> @BenjySarlin: Capito is a "no" on repeal vote. With Portman talking it down, Collins unlikely to support, McCain still out, this should about do it

This is all reassuring to hear, but there's a procedural issue here that I don't understand. Maybe someone with deeper knowledge could clarify:

- Reconciliation bills, like other "money stuff", must originate in the House. That's why the Senate was going to take the House-passed AHCA as a vehicle, substitute its text with the BCRA, and go from there.

- But after voting for a motion to proceed, the bill is open to amendments - including the Cruz Amendment, or one that might say "Substitute the entire text of the bill with repeal and go fuck yourself". Each amendment lives or dies by the 50 vote threshold.

- And then finally, if the bill is still eligible under reconciliation rules, it can be passed by 50+1 votes.

I thought Senator Turtle was now offering "repeal only" (repeal + gfy) as one of those possible amendments on the menu, like the Cruz amendment? Is that not right? So if the people who've already refused to vote to proceed stand firm, the whole thing is still a non-starter, isn't it?

(That which is dead can not die, though.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:17 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


RedOrGreen, that's correct. The proposal that came out of Yertle The Jackass' office was that if the GOP votes to proceed on BCRA, then the first amendment to be considered would be a full substitute to Repeal And Go Fuck Yourself.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:20 AM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Nevada GOP official tweets article calling for McCain's death

Looks like the 2024 GOP primary season has already started!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:21 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


So when can we impeach McConnell?
posted by saysthis at 8:23 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


The proposal that came out of Yertle The Jackass' office was that if the GOP votes to proceed on BCRA, then the first amendment to be considered would be a full substitute to Repeal And Go Fuck Yourself.

And, uh, why would the people who have already pledged not to vote to proceed suddenly decide to vote to proceed, on the basis of a promised amendment that is unlikely to pass?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:23 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Usually, driving my kids to camp or school I've got NPR news on. Usually the top of the hour, so we get halfway through the headlines before they start broadcasting 45 speaking or tweeting and I start shouting at the radio and turn it off.

Today, we drove around for three hours running errands, and en route to the grocery store, one of them commented: "You haven't had anything to say about the news today." So I told them about the woman in Florida who opted to just die because Medicare was going to get cancelled on her (and that our unprintable govenor is probably the reason why when he rejected Medicare expansion) and she didn't want to saddle her family with debt especially if she might die anyway.

Then the tweets from 45 started coming faster and being updated live and I just ran out of all kinds of grips on myself and cried the rest of the way to the grocery store. President unprintable Pinocchio. Wishes he was a real President.
posted by tilde at 8:25 AM on July 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


(maybe don't convert your stocks to USD though, if you think that's what's going to happen)

Or US bonds. Good luck with your investment portfolio that doesn't include domestic stocks, US Treasury notes, or dollars!
posted by diogenes at 8:26 AM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Filthy light thief--on mobile, so briefly--the salient part of that Baptist News op-ed is that the scales fell from his eyes about how unChristian his home church had really become.

I posted it here because it's reassuring to see people on the "red" end starting to get it.
posted by Sublimity at 8:27 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


The sales pitch would be "the bill is going to fail as is, so you can vote to proceed confident that you and your friends will be able to kill it on the up-or-down vote unless Repeal Or GFY passes."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:27 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


why would the people who have already pledged not to vote to proceed suddenly decide to vote to proceed, on the basis of a promised amendment that is unlikely to pass?

One particularly heady vintage of schadenfreude I'm enjoying this morning is that aside from the other reasons McConnell's caucus may be ticked off at him, it also seems that senators from the faux-moderate and barking-loon caucuses didn't like reading in the WaPo that he was promising them both irreconcilable goodies in exchange for their support ("don't worry, the Medicare cuts will never actually get enacted!"). So they have no reason at all to trust that whatever he promises them will go in the amendment actually will, and they'll be stuck having to vote on yet another 60 pounds of manure stuffed in a 50 pound bag.
posted by Gelatin at 8:29 AM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]




Pelosi's DCCC Is Now Openly Admitting They Are Recruiting Blue Dogs Masquerading As Democrats

Progressive activists are going to kill the Democratic Party if they insist on ideological purity nationwide. Support the most liberal candidate *that can win*. You're not going to win in the Deep South with the same policies that win in New York City. And we need to be competitive everywhere.

A true this point, I'd welcome Karl Rove into the party if he was a reliable vote for a democratic speaker.
posted by empath at 8:29 AM on July 18, 2017 [41 favorites]


Putin-Trump Administration (SLTw)

[Image of the Douche Canoe standing in front of the desk in Oval Office, with Vladimir Putin peaking over his shoulder. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell picture below in Soviet military dress uniforms with shit-eating grins on their faces. Text reads: "Putin-Trump Administration" and "The Russian Security Team".]

Seriously, though, Ryan and McConnell have run interference for Putin's election interference for over a year at this point. They should be disqualified, in the eyes of voters, from holding public office for their irresponsibility. Country Over Party, you motherless fucks.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 8:29 AM on July 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


Subliminty, I see that, but he re-grew some scales because "they taught me about Jesus, and that's what really matters," and then blamed Trump for making his church as shitty as he thought it was when he was a teenager. I wish I could see the positive in it, but I'm cynical of white men who place the blame on Trump, instead of the systematic issues within their communities that made self-reporting as a Deplorable bumper-sticker worthy.


Chrysostom: GOP nervous about demographic trends in the Mountain West.

You can sum this up on one linke: “The Wild West is slowly becoming an Urbanized West,” said Mike Slanker, a Republican strategist in Las Vegas.

And it's not just people moving from rural communities into the urban centers, which is happening (New Mexico only became classified as an Urban state in the 2010 census, in part due to shrinking rural communities, because the urban/city populations didn't grow that much). From The Hill:
The vast majority of Nevada’s growth has come in Clark County, which has seen its population jump from 48,000 in 1950 to 2.1 million today. Waves of immigrants from Central and South America, Asia, the Midwest and California have flocked to the Las Vegas area.

The challenge for Democrats is that many of those new residents are disproportionately unlikely to turn out to vote, especially in midterm elections.

But if they do show up, the GOP’s nightmare scenario will be realized.
Growing cities need more service industry people, especially in "experience" and service-heavy cities like Las Vegas. And that last line from The Hill gets to a big reason why the GOP is going full-out Voter Discrimination and Intimidation now - if they can't maintain control and write the laws they want now, a major GOTV effort from Dems can flip the tables pretty quickly.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:31 AM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


empath: A true this point, I'd welcome Karl Rove into the party if he was a reliable vote for a democratic speaker.

I think that's the issue with the Blue Dogs: Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), who, for example sits on the House Financial Services Committee and votes with the Republicans to set Wall Street free to plunder Americans in return for taking $1,003,940 in bribes from the Finance Sector last year.

It doesn't matter what you call yourself if you vote with the GOP.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:34 AM on July 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


If you want to see how your state was represented, here is the complete list. Cheerwine soda was chosen from NC.

SC was represented by cushions from the Casual Cushion Corporation in Rock Hill. Why cushions and why Casual Cushion? Who knows? I thought the company might've been donors, but I haven't found any evidence of that. In fact, the company founder appears to give, when he has, to liberal candidates.

Gotta wonder how many companies declined this 'showcase'.

Many, I imagine. There's a cool list of American-made products—or largely/partly American-made: many companies merely assemble in the US or make a single product or line of products in the US while relying on non-US labor for the rest of their products—at The American List. (A glance will reveal that it's largely "life-style" products and many fairly high-end, expensive life-style products at that.) I don't see a lot of overlap between the two.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:35 AM on July 18, 2017


Progressive activists are going to kill the Democratic Party if they insist on ideological purity nationwide. Support the most liberal candidate *that can win*. You're not going to win in the Deep South with the same policies that win in New York City. And we need to be competitive everywhere.

There's a difference between supporting moderate liberals for swing districts and actively recruiting Republican moles who will vote the same as a Republican would, and act as the token "bipartisan" smokescreen for Republican policy. Or worse, appointing those "former" Republicans to leadership positions in the Democratic party apparatus.

Just a tad of " ideological purity" is actually required if the goal is to achieve Democratic policies, rather than imitate Mitch McConnell and win for the sole purpose of accumulating seats you can never use to do anything (except line pockets of Democratic consultants and corrupt candidates to start their lobbying careers).
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:36 AM on July 18, 2017 [31 favorites]


You're not going to win in the Deep South with the same policies that win in New York City. And we need to be competitive everywhere.

And if the Democrats capture the House and Senate with big enough margins, then Blue Dogs can cast individual votes against whatever they please, as long as the overall legislation proceeds on its merry way -- you know, the same legislative footsie Susan Collins plays to be able to vote more or less in lockstep with the rest of her horrid caucus and still pose as a "moderate" for the voters back home.

Pelosi's DCCC Is Now Openly Admitting They Are Recruiting Blue Dogs Masquerading As Democrats

Hey, you know one way the Republicans defeated Ossoff in the recent Georgia special election? Demonizing Nancy Pelosi. It'd be kind of nice if people who should be making common cause with Democrats not take a page out of the Republican playbook.
posted by Gelatin at 8:37 AM on July 18, 2017 [48 favorites]


It does matter, as long as you do the bare minimum as a party member and vote for your party's leader as head of the chamber -- and Kyrsten Sinema still votes Pelosi for Speaker. If Pelosi were speaker, it wouldn't matter whether Sinema is willing to vote with Republicans to pass bills overturning, for instance, Dodd-Frank, because the Speaker can simply choose not to bring any Dodd-Frank repeal bill to the floor for a vote.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:37 AM on July 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


Maine was .. wait for it .. Hinckley Yachts. They represented Maine with an item that is basically for summer people. Which seems doubly strange considering that they could have chosen L.L.Bean Boots (my guess is that the company likely declined given the whole Linda Bean Tweet fiasco) or New Balance shoes or any of the 2000+ other products that carry the official Maine Made label.

Gotta wonder how many companies declined this 'showcase'.
posted by anastasiav at 10:54 AM on July 18 [4 favorites +] [!]


Hinckley certainly is an odd name for a Republican-controlled White House to promote.
posted by emelenjr at 8:42 AM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


It does matter, as long as you do the bare minimum as a party member and vote for your party's leader as head of the chamber -- and Kyrsten Sinema still votes Pelosi for Speaker. If Pelosi were speaker, it wouldn't matter whether Sinema is willing to vote with Republicans to pass bills overturning, for instance, Dodd-Frank, because the Speaker can simply choose not to bring any Dodd-Frank repeal bill to the floor for a vote.

On top of that, Democratic control of either house of Congress means chairpersonship of the various committees, the subpoena power to investigate Trump, and the presumable willingness not to make open meetings a laughable dog-and-pony show of five-minute question sessions.

Beyond that, for all the talk of impeaching Trump, it's clear that that issue is a non-starter as long as Republicans hold Congress. They've made clear they will enable anything he does.

What might be nice, though, is electing moderate Democrats who can help sell progressive policies to conservative voters. Recruiting candidates like that should be the goal immediately after retaking Congress itself.
posted by Gelatin at 8:45 AM on July 18, 2017 [20 favorites]




MetaFilter: just another fountain of unsupportable assertions, sloganeering and bullshit
posted by kirkaracha at 8:47 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Democrats are going to fight us tooth and nail on this giving-the-democrats-a-majority thing, I am afraid.
posted by Artw at 8:47 AM on July 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


Blue Dogs Masquerading As Democrats

Blue Dogs are Democrats, just as Scotsmen who put sugar on their porridge are Scotsmen.

America has two big-tent parties with the opportunity to control the federal government, and to do so they rely on ideological coalitions which can appeal to various demographics in various regions of the country. In any given district, if the only electable alternative to a Blue Dog who will vote for a Democratic Speaker is a Republican who will vote for a Republican Speaker, the Blue Dog is the best option available.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:49 AM on July 18, 2017 [52 favorites]


Pelosi's DCCC Is Now Openly Admitting They Are Recruiting Blue Dogs Masquerading As Democrats

The D candidate who came closest to winning a special election* was Archie Parnell in SC-05, the most conservative Democrat of the specials and who used to work at Goldman and Exxon. He opposed single payer and higher taxes. But he did support keeping and fixing Obamacare, gun control, and holding Trump responsible for firing Comey. And spoke out against the nationalism of the Trump admin/Rs.

Do I agree with everything he believes? Not at all. But I'd be very happy to have him or others like him win in deep red states, vote for things we agree on, and vote Pelosi speaker.

* excluding CA-34
posted by chris24 at 8:49 AM on July 18, 2017 [37 favorites]


If the option is a person who will vote left of center in 7/10 things vs a person who will vote right of center on 9/10 things, I'm going with the 7/10 person.
posted by Twain Device at 8:52 AM on July 18, 2017 [23 favorites]


Kill gerrymandered districts and the demand for blue dogs practically evaporates.
posted by cmfletcher at 8:53 AM on July 18, 2017 [19 favorites]


Do I agree with everything he believes? Not at all. But I'd be very happy to have him or others like him win in deep red states, vote for things we agree on, and vote Pelosi speaker.

Pelosi as speaker is gravy. The real prize is if the Democrats have the house they have the committees. That's a billion times more important.
posted by Talez at 8:54 AM on July 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


Pelosi as speaker is gravy. The real prize is if the Democrats have the house they have the committees. That's a billion times more important.

Absolutely. I used Pelosi as speaker as shorthand for control of the House with its associated committee power, especially subpoena power and advancing bills, articles of impeachment, etc.
posted by chris24 at 8:57 AM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Yes on impeachment, but also yes on defunding Planned Parenthood, it's a yin and yang.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:59 AM on July 18, 2017


Kill gerrymandered districts and the demand for blue dogs practically evaporates.

Even without gerrymandering, there are still districts that are going to be conservative, so no, there will still be demand (though less.)

The problem is that progressives see themselves as "the core of the party", as opposed to another faction within it. As such, they expect to be dictating the party platform, and always wind up surprised when they get told "no, that's not how it works."
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:00 AM on July 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


There are more upsides to electing even conservative-leaning Democrats: It tarnishes the Republican brand, throws cold water on that party's phony triumphalism, puts the power of incumbency into Democratic hands, and, again, gives the Democratic Party an opportunity to sell progressive policy goals to conservative voters. Picture a Democrat running a town hall and repeating the message that the accept media reports that are based on facts, not partisan spin, or that they base their support for universal basic income on their christian faith.
posted by Gelatin at 9:03 AM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Also they assume that the party platform is waaaaaay more binding than it is, to the point where any D who doesn't vote in accordance with whichever parts the activists think are most important should be shunned. I too would prefer a world where every D votes in lockstep on abortion, financial regulation, environmental protections, etc., but that's clearly not how party platforms work in real life because Susan Collins still has RNC support.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:04 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Secret Life of Gravy: If you want to see how your state was represented [for Made in America Week], here is the complete list.

OMG Iowa's is just the best, containing, as it does, an unintentional sentence:

Iowa - RMA Armament - Body armor, dummies

I might've picked something like, I dunno, JOHN DEERE TRACTORS, or hey, even better, LA QUERCIA PORK.

But no. Body armor.
posted by Caxton1476 at 9:04 AM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


And yet again we sit here arguing about what makes a Democrat good enough to be a real Democrat while the Republicans will vote for a FUCKING PIG (President Trump QED) if there's an R by its name.
posted by lydhre at 9:04 AM on July 18, 2017 [30 favorites]


Maryland was apparently represented by a crab pot manufacturer, which is... technically accurate, I guess, but kind of boring. Then again, I'd have been disappointed in PRS Guitars if they're been asked and said yes, so maybe this is fine.
posted by nonasuch at 9:04 AM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yes on impeachment, but also yes on defunding Planned Parenthood, it's a yin and yang.

It isn't the Yeses you have to be wary about, it's the Noes. A Dem Speaker doesn't schedule a "Defund Planned Parenthood" vote.
posted by Etrigan at 9:06 AM on July 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


As such, they expect to be dictating the party platform, and always wind up surprised when they get told "no, that's not how it works."

Until the Democrats successfully pull in voters from the "I could but don't" demographic to match progressive voting numbers that's the sort of noise that will be made.
posted by Slackermagee at 9:06 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


If the option is a person who will vote left of center in 7/10 things vs a person who will vote right of center on 9/10 things, I'm going with the 7/10 person.
What if the left of center person vote is 1/10 of things? Cuz that's more representative of the last 20 years.
posted by rc3spencer at 9:07 AM on July 18, 2017


Conservatives do not care about good-governance, and you cannot reach them through logical explanations of the benefits of a given policy.

Conservatism is a culture. Remember - Gay Marriage was going to destroy civil society and lead to men marrying toasters and dogs and such. It's been 10 years of Gay Marriage in some places in America, and..... Exactly zero conservative talking heads have been held to account for how wrong they are. A similar thing happened with mixed race marriages. Smoking bans. Women voting. Ending slavery. The list is never-ending.

If you read that New Yorker article I linked to earlier, you can see this. None of the people interviewed talk about specific policy goals, or improvements in peoples lives. They just want to see Liberals Cry. This isn't even hyperbole - one of the interviewees says this specifically.

Liberals need to stop thinking that they can convince conservatives to come around. There is no around to come to. Conservatism is concerned first and only with cultural and ideological purity, and there is no appeal towards good governance that will reach them. Dems can't reach across the aisle - Dems need to move the aisle. Liberal efforts need to focus on GOTV and fighting voter suppression efforts. Vote suppression used to be far worse than it is, and it was overcome. Dems need to do that again.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:07 AM on July 18, 2017 [77 favorites]


Maryland was apparently represented by a crab pot manufacturer

I was surprised we didn't get Under Armour, since it's a major employer and the owner is a Trumpist. But maybe the brand is too "urban" and doesn't represent Trump's "real" America.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:07 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Kill gerrymandered districts and the demand for blue dogs practically evaporates.

If you see a gerrymandered district where a blue-dog Democrat might win, what you are looking at is a *Democratic* gerrymander and the alternative is a map electing several more Republicans.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:08 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Maine was .. wait for it .. Hinckley Yachts. They represented Maine with an item that is basically for summer people...
Hinckley Yachts is now owned by an investment group in Massachusetts...
Hinckley certainly is an odd name for a Republican-controlled White House to promote...


Coincidental, but interesting trivia: Barry Hinckley, whose family founded the yacht company, was the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Rhode Island in 2012. He lost to Democratic incumbent Sheldon Whitehouse in a 30-point landslide.
posted by martin q blank at 9:08 AM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


They just want to see Liberals Cry. This isn't even hyperbole - one of the interviewees says this specifically.

This is as good a synopsis of the current situation as I've seen.

@LOLGOP
35% of America wanted a guy whose only competency was insulting the other 65%.
posted by chris24 at 9:14 AM on July 18, 2017 [38 favorites]


35% of America wanted a guy whose only competency was insulting the other 65%.
To be fair it was like 24%, to insult another 25%. While 51% said fuck it as usual.
posted by rc3spencer at 9:17 AM on July 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


John Cassidy in the New Yorker: The Republican Health-Care Meltdown

Moran, for his part, said, “We must now start fresh with an open legislative process to develop innovative solutions that provide greater personal choice, protections for pre-existing conditions, increased access and lower overall costs for Kansans.” But in order to enable people with preëxisting conditions or modest incomes to obtain health coverage at a reasonable cost, you have to restrict the choices of others. The young and the healthy have to be persuaded, or forced, to join the same risk pools as older and sicker people. Insurers have to be prevented from creaming off low-risk customers into separate markets. Rich people have to be taxed to pay for Medicaid, or for the subsidies that enable working families on modest incomes to buy private insurance. As Milton Friedman noted long ago, there is no free lunch.

Obamacare, for all its complexity and teething problems, was, and is, a serious and comprehensive effort to face up to these difficulties and trade-offs. The Republicans never got serious about how to replace it. They are now paying the price.

posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:18 AM on July 18, 2017 [22 favorites]


They just want to see Liberals Cry. This isn't even hyperbole - one of the interviewees says this specifically.

This is as good a synopsis of the current situation as I've seen.


Coincidentally, yesterday was the tenth anniversary of cleek's law: Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily.
posted by Gelatin at 9:18 AM on July 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


It isn't the Yeses you have to be wary about, it's the Noes. A Dem Speaker doesn't schedule a "Defund Planned Parenthood" vote.

And yet we got the Stupak Amendment under Pelosi with a 60 seat majority.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:19 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


So the 8th person at the meeting has been identified by CNN. Oh and also WaPo
An American-based employee of a Russian real estate company took part in a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr., bringing to eight the number of known participants at the session that has emerged a key focus of the investigation of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian.

Ike Kaveladze’s presence was confirmed by Scott Balber, an attorney for Emin and Aras Agalarov, the Russian developers who hosted the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in 2013. Balber said Kaveladze works for the Agalarovs’ company and attended as their representative.
posted by Brainy at 9:20 AM on July 18, 2017 [21 favorites]


Field report:

Our local Lyndon LaRouche guy who used to periodically set up a card table outside the post office downtown has retired all the OBAMA=ANTICHRIST signs and has a whole new line featuring DEFEND TRUMP and RUSSIA IS NOT THE ENEMY WALL STREET IS. There was also something about Glass-Steagall, but I couldn't catch all of that one.

Just, you know, in case you were wondering what Lyndon LaRouche has been up to lately.
posted by yhbc at 9:21 AM on July 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


Ike Kaveladze

An adoption activist I bet
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:22 AM on July 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


Oh, yes. The plight of Russian orphans tears at every Georgian's heart.
posted by ocschwar at 9:24 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]




It isn't the Yeses you have to be wary about, it's the Noes. A Dem Speaker doesn't schedule a "Defund Planned Parenthood" vote.

And yet we got the Stupak Amendment under Pelosi with a 60 seat majority.


The Stupak Amendment A) didn't pass, B) was nowhere near "defund Planned Parenthood", and C) resulted mainly in Stupak being replaced by Dan Benishek and Jack Bergman, who actually vote to defund Planned Parenthood.
posted by Etrigan at 9:27 AM on July 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


"A lawyer, a spy, and a money launderer walk into a meeting ..."
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:27 AM on July 18, 2017 [22 favorites]


(The meeting is with the President's son, campaign manager, and senior adviser, and the punchline is "But what about Hillary?")
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:28 AM on July 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


@SethAbramson BREAKING NEWS: It's confirmed: "Ike" is Irakly Kaveladze, a 1991 Russian immigrant alleged to have been laundering Russian money in 2000.

Verrrry interesting. [/artejohnson] I wonder which side invited him?
posted by Gelatin at 9:30 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


in case you were wondering what Lyndon LaRouche has been up to lately.
I have a friend who is obesessed with LaRouche, and justifies it as a reliable canary/barometer of national mood/activities. So thanks!
posted by rc3spencer at 9:32 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]




So in the meeting we have:

Russian lawyer - sanctions expert/lobbyist
Russian spy - hacking/internet propaganda campaign specialist
Russian money launderer - secret transfers of money

Or as I like to call them, Quid, Pro, and Quo.
posted by chris24 at 9:35 AM on July 18, 2017 [91 favorites]




The LA Times story has a couple of nice paragraphs on Kaveladze:
Kaveladze “was asked to attend the meeting purely to…make sure it happened,” said [his attorney Scott] Balber. ““He literally had no idea what the meeting was about until he showed up right before ...

Balber said Kaveladze did not recall saying anything at the half-hour meeting on June 9, 2016 ...

Balber said Kaveladze does not understand why the meeting became so controversial.

“He’s absolutely baffled,” said Balber. “Even the Agalarovs are absolutely baffled. Nobody had any expectation this would be what it’s become, especially this poor guy, who had not been involved before."
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by octobersurprise at 9:38 AM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Trump said, according to a source familiar with the meeting. “How can we not do this after promising it for years?”

Maybe he should pretend it's an invoice from a contractor.
posted by Well I Was In The Neighbourhood at 9:39 AM on July 18, 2017 [51 favorites]




Don't go to a lot of meetings myself, but I usually know what they're about
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:40 AM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


He's getting dragged.

He answered a couple questions crushing him, and now he's digging deep past the top voted questions to cherry pick soft balls like "What was your first job in journalism"
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:40 AM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Kaveladze's pedigree... Laundering money seen as 'Easy' (NYTimes 29 Nov 2000):
In a a nine-month inquiry that subpoenaed bank records, the investigators found that an unknown number of Russians and other East Europeans moved more than $1.4 billion through accounts at Citibank of New York and the Commercial Bank of San Francisco.

The accounts had been opened by Irakly Kaveladze, who immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1991, according to Citibank and Mr. Kaveladze. He set up more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian brokers and then opened the bank accounts for them, without knowing who owned the corporations, according to the report by the General Accounting Office, which has not been made public.
posted by pjenks at 9:42 AM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


LOL that AMA thread. Thanks for the mid-morning pick-me-up!!
posted by orrnyereg at 9:43 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Chris I'd like to know about you wrote a story about 50 FBI agents investigating Clinton's email server when you got that information from only one person and never even tried to confirm whether it was real or not, information that not only proved to be false but you also kept the original story as if nothing at all was different. Are there ethical guidelines that you're supposed to follow or is this kind of behavior normal/typical?
posted by armacy at 9:43 AM on July 18, 2017 [52 favorites]


aveladze “was asked to attend the meeting purely to…make sure it happened,” said [his attorney Scott] Balber.

Asked by who, the Trump campaign or the Russians?

But even so, does that suggestion make any sense? Why would he have to attend the meeting "to make sure it happened"? The Russians wanted it to, because they reached out, and Donald "I love it" Junior's emails indicated he did too, bigly (because, you know, agents of the Russian government were offering dirt on clinton to help Trump get elected). Hapless bystander does not seem a plausible look for this guy.
posted by Gelatin at 9:43 AM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


... then opened the bank accounts for them, without knowing who owned the corporations ...
He was absolutely baffled.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:44 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Ha! Oops, I missed this from the article:
In an interview, Mr. Kaveladze said he had engaged in no wrongdoing. He described the G.A.O. investigation as a ''witch hunt.''
posted by pjenks at 9:44 AM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Another point in favor of the real kompromat being tons and tons of Russian oligarch money laundering
posted by theodolite at 9:45 AM on July 18, 2017 [32 favorites]


Now that her vote cannot possibly decide anything, Murkowski becomes a veritable Profile In Courage.

Where shall we place her commemorative statue?
posted by delfin at 9:45 AM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Don't go to a lot of meetings myself, but I usually know what they're about

Did no get an agenda.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:46 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Now that her vote cannot possibly decide anything, Murkowski becomes a veritable Profile In Courage.

Where shall we place her commemorative statue?


Facing the wall.
posted by Etrigan at 9:46 AM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Kaveladze “was asked to attend the meeting purely to…make sure it happened,” said [his attorney Scott] Balber. ““He literally had no idea what the meeting was about until he showed up right before ...

He just woke up one morning and someone had put "Meeting" on his Outlook calendar with location "Trump Tower NYC", he can't remember who, he's not the most proactive guy alright he just keeps showing up every damn day and that's got to count for something
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:47 AM on July 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


LOL that AMA thread. Thanks for the mid-morning pick-me-up!!

Glorious, isn't it?
posted by zarq at 9:50 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Don't go to a lot of meetings myself, but I usually know what they're about

"Trump Agenda Incoherent" - Sources
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:53 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Chris, have you considered the fact that your reporting style of repeated and absurd focus on completely inane subjects, like "an analysis of the Trump-Macron handshake" not only makes us all collectively stupider, but fundamentally devalues the role politics has in shaping our lives in favor of absurd horserace coverage that focuses on inside baseball to the exclusion of real working families?

Good stuff.
posted by Artw at 9:55 AM on July 18, 2017 [35 favorites]


In a press availability, Trump just interrupted himself to say something that sounded like, "You can't use his head as a stand, you're messing with the wrong guy here"

Does anyone know what that was
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:58 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


... then opened the bank accounts for them, without knowing who owned the corporations ...
He was absolutely baffled.


Hey, who among us hasn't at one time or another opened thousands of bank accounts for generic corporations we created out of wholecloth for no apparent reason, just on a lark? Clearly this is a case of innocent "boys will be boys" antics.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:59 AM on July 18, 2017 [25 favorites]


I, too, have gone to meetings with no agenda, where I didn't know the participants, and can't remember what was discussed...
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:01 AM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


I, too, have gone to meetings with no agenda, where I didn't know the participants, and can't remember what was discussed...
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:01 on July 18 [+] [!]


Oh, I see you've also undergone a workplace Agile Transformation.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 10:05 AM on July 18, 2017 [78 favorites]


Hey, who among us hasn't at one time or another opened thousands of bank accounts for generic corporations we created out of wholecloth for no apparent reason, just on a lark? Clearly this is a case of innocent "boys will be boys" antics.

Locker-room money laundering.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:06 AM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


I, too, have gone to meetings with no agenda, where I didn't know the participants, and can't remember what was discussed...
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:01 on July 18 [+] [!]

Oh, I see you've also undergone a workplace Agile Transformation.


Or has a toddler.

But I repeat myself.
posted by Etrigan at 10:08 AM on July 18, 2017 [17 favorites]


I, too, have gone to meetings with no agenda, where I didn't know the participants, and can't remember what was discussed...

Don't worry. This is a a very common phenomenon. In the literature it's known as "Russian Fugue State." Are you having any of the other common symptoms? Have you forgotten meeting the Russian ambassador? Are you having urges to loosen sanctions? Did you accidentally launder millions of rubles?
posted by diogenes at 10:10 AM on July 18, 2017 [19 favorites]


I'm experiencing strong urges to consume large amounts of pelmeni, borscht, pickled fish and vodka, but this is not unusual.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:12 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


I've gone to meetings with no formal agenda lots of times but they're always meetings where everyone knows exactly what is going to be discussed and how it is going to roll the instant the invite hits our inboxes.

I imagine that is the same thing that happened here.
posted by winna at 10:14 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Trump just now: "Let Obamacare fail, it'll be a lot easier... We're not going to own it, I'm not going to own it, I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it; we'll let Obamacare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us and say 'How do we fix it?'"

Yet another example of Donald Trump blaming everything on minorities.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:14 AM on July 18, 2017 [22 favorites]


The "revenge of the GOP women" (Capito, Collins, and Murkowski) being the latest ones to kill the health care bill seems like fairly sweet justice for McConnell's all-male "working group" earlier, even if it doesn't seem like the working group did any working.

A message from the President:
POTUS said he was "disappointed" about healthcare

He also said his plan was now "to let Obamacare fail, it will be a lot easier. And I think we're probably in that position where we'll let Obamacare fail. We're not going to own it. I'm not going to own it. I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it. We'll let Obamacare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us."
As Jon Favreau put it, Trump drops repeal, keeps "go fuck yourself"

Trump also wants credit because he came close: "would have been 48-4. impressive by any standard" Sad.
posted by zachlipton at 10:15 AM on July 18, 2017 [43 favorites]


Trump just now: "Something will happen and it will be very good. It may not be as quick as we had hoped, but it's going to happen."

If this gig doesn't work out he could try becoming an evangelical preacher...
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:16 AM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


"Let Obamacare fail, it'll be a lot easier... We're not going to own it, I'm not going to own it, I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it; we'll let Obamacare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us and say 'How do we fix it?'"

One problem with that Donny, 59% polled say they'll blame you and Rs, only 30% Ds.
posted by chris24 at 10:18 AM on July 18, 2017 [19 favorites]


Trump also wants credit because he came close: "would have been 48-4. impressive by any standard" Sad.

This is immediately after he pointed out how absurd it was for Republicans to promise immediate "repeal and replace" for seven years. Can't let a factual statement like that stand for longer than a minute.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:18 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Trump also wants credit because he came close: "would have been 48-4. impressive by any standard" Sad.

If at first you don't succeed, retroactively lower the bar and claim success!
posted by cmfletcher at 10:20 AM on July 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


Trump also wants credit because he came close: "would have been 48-4. impressive by any standard"

Yeah, not being able to deliver your own party's votes is unimpressive by any standard.
posted by chris24 at 10:20 AM on July 18, 2017 [25 favorites]


Trump just now: "Let Obamacare fail, it'll be a lot easier... We're not going to own it, I'm not going to own it, I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it; we'll let Obamacare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us and say 'How do we fix it?'"

Aw, did the loss sting, you faker?

Even the threat in his silly dominance ritual is silly. He tries to deny responsibility, of course, but when he says "we'll let Obamacare fail," he's admitting that he and the Republicans control the situation.

I hope the Washington press corps is astute enough to realize the fact.
posted by Gelatin at 10:21 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Trump: "Obamacare isn't failing by the way; it's failed. It's gone."

Man, morale at HHS must be through the fucking roof right now
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:22 AM on July 18, 2017 [17 favorites]


One problem with that Donny, 59% polled say they'll blame you and Rs, only 30% Ds.

30%? You don't say.
posted by Gelatin at 10:23 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Trump also wants credit because he came close: "would have been 48-4. impressive by any standard"

imagining young trump explaining to fred that his test score of 48% was nearly a D-, which is a passing grade by any standard
posted by murphy slaw at 10:23 AM on July 18, 2017 [16 favorites]


I get it. After the general election, he is legitimately confused how someone could a vote by a couple percentage points and not still get what they want anyway.
posted by zachlipton at 10:23 AM on July 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


Fox with the burn...
posted by Ella Fynoe at 10:24 AM on July 18, 2017 [28 favorites]




Irakly Kaveladze.

When did Iraq become an adverb?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:27 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


So, they're going to sabotage it like the Post Office? Defund it like teen pregnancy prevention programs (sex ed)?
posted by tilde at 10:28 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


they're not just talking about Republican-lite conservatives, they're talking about corrupt bribe takers. There are no Blue Dogs who don't take special interest payoffs for their votes-- none, not one, not ever.

It would be nice to see some evidence for an attack this vehement. I clicked through because one of the blue dogs listed, Josh Gottheimer, represents the district in New Jersey where I grew up. Redistricting has made the district slightly more hospitable to dems, but it's still very conservative. It was represented for 14 years by Scott Garrett, who voted against reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act, against immigration reform, and who was notable even amongst republicans for his anti-LGBTQ stances. I donated to Gottheimer this year and his defeat of Garrett was both unexpected and one of the very few bright spots on Nov 8th.

Of course I wish Gottheimer was more liberal but I know the area and I know that the only way to get a liberal elected consistently is to build the democratic party there from the ground up. In the meantime, accusing dems of corruption without a lick of evidence only helps republicans.
posted by galaxy rise at 10:29 AM on July 18, 2017 [22 favorites]


Balber said Kaveladze works as a vice president focusing on real estate and finance for the Agalarovs’ company, the Crocus Group.

POTUS/Crocus/Azerbaijan. Quite the witch hunt
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:36 AM on July 18, 2017


Trump also wants credit because he came close: "would have been 48-4. impressive by any standard" Sad.

He's so stupid he doesn't even realize all the senators who were waiting to vote against this as long as they had enough cover to do so.
posted by gladly at 10:38 AM on July 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


July 12th
Aras Agalarov on Russian radio: The letter @DonaldJTrumpJr posted is "all made up. I don't know these people." (via @maxseddon)
Today's NYTimes article on 8th person and Aras Agalarov:
Scott S. Balber, a lawyer for Aras Agalarov, the businessman, said he sent an associate named Ike Kaveladze to the meeting, which took place during last year’s presidential campaign. Mr. Balber said that Mr. Kaveladze attended the meeting “just to make sure it happened and to serve as an interpreter if necessary.”
posted by pjenks at 10:42 AM on July 18, 2017 [16 favorites]


I have to say, I'm not convinced that there's more to the Republican strategy than a ton of people, elected via Peter Principle, who are trying to look like they're working really hard. It's like the Congressional equivalent of me frowning intently at my laptop screen when my manager walks by.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:43 AM on July 18, 2017 [34 favorites]




Lots of people send representatives to meetings of people they don't know to make sure they happen, c'mon now
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:45 AM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Trump also wants credit because he came close: "would have been 48-4. impressive by any standard" Sad.

I wonder what he thinks of Chuck "48-0" Schumer now.
posted by Etrigan at 10:45 AM on July 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


If Trump wants to talk about winning records, he should be proud that he is now 2 for 2 on "cluelessly playing with big trucks while blindly oblivious to his health care bill going down in flames." Most Presidents are tremendously lucky if just once they get to pretend to drive heavy equipment while their signature legislative priority goes down in flames, but this guy, he's done it twice in just a few months.

I also like how they set up a health care dinner for him last night consisting entirely of people who were 100% definite yeses. They could tell him he was "helping," but couldn't risk having him be the one to screw it up.

Also please enjoy this photo of Sen. Moran jumping the tracks of the Senate subway to dodge reporters.
posted by zachlipton at 10:46 AM on July 18, 2017 [40 favorites]


For the sports fans in the house, one of the Chris Cilllizza AMA questions reads "Hi, Chris. I was wondering if you and Darren Rovell are bros?"
posted by Lyme Drop at 10:49 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Also please enjoy this photo of Sen. Moran jumping the tracks of the Senate subway to dodge reporters.

... At least we aren't cleaning him up off of the tracks? I can barely even muster the "grow a brain, Moran" comment.
posted by tilde at 10:50 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's hard to overestimate the rank incompetence it takes to be in control of Congress and the White House, and most state houses, and the Supreme Court, and not be able to pass a bill you've supposedly been crafting for eight years.
posted by OmieWise at 10:50 AM on July 18, 2017 [85 favorites]


cluelessly playing with big trucks while blindly oblivious to his health care bill going down in flames.

tbh i thought it was a little on the nose that he was pretending to drive a fire truck yesterday
posted by murphy slaw at 10:51 AM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


Can we just...buy a truck? Because I think it'd be worth it.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 10:53 AM on July 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


Trumpcare may lead to a loss of congressional majority. Do not operate heavy machinery when whipping Trumpcare.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:53 AM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Uh oh. Even noted Trump suck-up Andrew Napolitano of FoxNews thinks the Russia meeting warrants investigation:
“So the question is, is this enough to commence a criminal investigation?” Napolitano asked.
“Answer: yes. Because it is suspicious that they met with these people, they didn’t consult a lawyer, and one of these people is a former KGB/GRU.”
posted by FelliniBlank at 10:54 AM on July 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


Trump also wants credit because he came close: "would have been 48-4. impressive by any standard" Sad.

I wonder what he thinks of Chuck "48-0" Schumer now.


He doesn't think anything of it. He's just trying to find a way to satisfy his narcissism so he can say he really won even if he didn't.
posted by scalefree at 10:55 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Can we just...buy a truck? Because I think it'd be worth it.

Slam the doors, black out the windows, tow him to a 1:1 model White House in Montana and tell him his approval rating is 99%.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:55 AM on July 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


drive him to a 1:1 model White House in Montana

Can we make it New Jersey instead?
posted by Fleebnork at 10:57 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


> Slam the doors, black out the windows, drive him to a 1:1 model White House in Montana and tell him his approval rating is 99%.

This is the "buy him off and let him ride off into the sunset" option. I'd take it, I guess, because people are being hurt every day this moron continues, but I want him to face the consequences - just once in his life, to actually see that actions have consequences.

Yeah, that's not very generous and forgiving of me. What can I say.
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:59 AM on July 18, 2017 [21 favorites]


what if we stock the fake white house with timber wolves
posted by murphy slaw at 11:00 AM on July 18, 2017 [26 favorites]


just once in his life, to actually see that actions have consequences.

The only way this will ever happen is if he sees Ivanka go to jail.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 11:04 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Orange is the new Black
posted by OmieWise at 11:05 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


what if we stock the fake white house with timber wolves

That's one way not to get tired of winning
posted by Huffy Puffy at 11:06 AM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


It's hard to overestimate the rank incompetence it takes to be in control of Congress and the White House, and most state houses, and the Supreme Court, and not be able to pass a bill you've supposedly been crafting for eight years.

Made in America Week!
posted by nubs at 11:08 AM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Also please enjoy this photo of Sen. Moran jumping the tracks of the Senate subway to dodge reporters.

Something something off the rails.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:09 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Reminder that Trump promised to repeal and replace Obamacare "immediately":
“When we win on November 8th and elect a Republican Congress, we will be able to immediately repeal and replace Obamacare -- have to do it," said Trump, who also added, "Obamacare has to be replaced and we will do it and we will do it very, very quickly.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:11 AM on July 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


If this gig doesn't work out he could try becoming an evangelical preacher...
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:16 AM on July 18 [3 favorites +] [!]


And all it would take is a cheat sheet with the names of a few books of the Bible on it and a "How I came to Jesus after I was President" story he could throw together on the limo drive to the church. Word salad, no problem. Lack of intellectual aptitude, no problem. Shitty management skills, no problem. Narcissism bordering on self-destruction, no problem.

Fundamentalists love them some redemption stories, and his would be the sweetest. God DAMN you, EMRJKC.
posted by Rykey at 11:13 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Also please enjoy this photo of Sen. Moran jumping the tracks of the Senate subway to dodge reporters.

Something something off the rails.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:09 AM on July 18


More something something Crazy Train.
posted by Kibbutz at 11:16 AM on July 18, 2017


There's also a Trump campaign promise that "his" healthcare plan will be a fraction of the price!
posted by puddledork at 11:19 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


5/2 is still a fraction.
posted by tomierna at 11:21 AM on July 18, 2017 [62 favorites]


Uh oh. Even noted Trump suck-up Andrew Napolitano of FoxNews thinks the Russia meeting warrants investigation:

"If I've lost Andrew Napolitano then I've lost crazypants America"
posted by Talez at 11:24 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


So, um, Rand Paul just usurped McConnell's podium and is proclaiming that there'll likely be a vote tomorrow on a straight Obamacare repeal (looks like the 2015 repeal-lite).

It's not clear to me what the strategy is here besides "fail hard and deflect blame," or whether this is just Sen. Paul spouting off, but if you've got Republican Senators, would be a good time for a phone call to tell them hell no.
posted by zachlipton at 11:26 AM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


How does Mitch McConnell keep his position as majority leader at this point? I imagine some ambitious GOP Senators are looking at the prospect of 4 failed healthcare votes in a row and seeing themselves getting a promotion.
posted by 0xFCAF at 11:26 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]




More something something Crazy Train.

I know that things are going wrong for me / you've got to listen to my words tweets.

Say what you will about 2017, we are watching chyrons become an art. "FOX News alert: Trump: Eventually we will get something done."
posted by octobersurprise at 11:28 AM on July 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


How does Mitch McConnell keep his position as majority leader at this point? I imagine some ambitious GOP Senators are looking at the prospect of 4 failed healthcare votes in a row and seeing themselves getting a promotion.

Even if you were a bad guy, would you want to be in charge of this mess?
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:29 AM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


How does Mitch McConnell keep his position as majority leader at this point?

He only got the job in the first place because no one else wanted it. Boehner was all AHAHAHHAHAHAHHAAAA on his way out the door.
posted by Melismata at 11:30 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


> Even if you were a bad guy, would you want to be in charge of this mess?

A.K.A. the Boehner Gambit.
(For the House, not the Senate, but the same reasoning.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:30 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


If it's true that the Trumpists got nothing from the meeting, which is a big If, it's only because they were too damn stupid to realize who they were sitting in the room with -- a Kremlin point-person on sanctions, a hacking/propaganda pro, and a family friend who knows how to pay for it all. Not to mention a Trump campaign manager who was probably handpicked by Putin.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:30 AM on July 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


As ugly as this is for McConnell, I have a hard time expecting him to lose his position. They ran with a steaming pile of a bill given to them by the House, where it had to originate in the first place. Ultimately as much of the blame for this is on Ryan as McConnell. Beyond that, McConnell's strategy of scorched earth intransigence held back an incredible amount of, y'know, actual progress from the Obama administration, and it stole a Supreme Court seat for Republicans.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see McConnell go down in flames. The process would stall things even longer, and sooner or later Republicans might realize they have to negotiate and deal and compromise again to get anything done. A majority leader who actually gives a fuck about rules and standards is obviously too much to hope for, but even a little improvement is still an improvement. But I'm not sure this one major defeat will overcome a culture of stubbornness and bullshit that has reigned for years and gotten its adherents some actual results.

The wildcard, of course, is how much damage Trump does in trying to dodge any blame and disown this whole mess. He's bound to throw GOP senators under the bus for it, and possibly the whole caucus. Sooner or later, they're going to get tired of that shit and revolt in some way that actually matters. That will be a bigger crisis for McConnell.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:34 AM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


I honestly don't understand why you would take a doomed vote that would put repeal records [edit: of Senator's votes] out there. A symbolic vote to take away people's healthcare just seems like a particularly no-win situation.
posted by OmieWise at 11:34 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


So, um, Rand Paul just usurped McConnell's podium and is proclaiming that there'll likely be a vote tomorrow on a straight Obamacare repeal (looks like the 2015 repeal-lite).


i don't get it. if mcconnell can't whip the votes with bribes and double-dealing, what chance does rand "compromise is TREASON to your IDEALS" paul have?
posted by murphy slaw at 11:35 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Boehner was Speaker of the House, not Senate Majority Leader. So it was Ryan that he stuck with the job that nobody wanted. McConnell has been leader of the Senate Republican caucus since 2006.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:36 AM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


He only got the job in the first place because no one else wanted it. Boehner was all AHAHAHHAHAHAHHAAAA on his way out the door.

I think you mean Paul Ryan in the House.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 11:37 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


> Also please enjoy this photo of Sen. Moran jumping the tracks of the Senate subway to dodge reporters.

I guess I can understand why people do it, because the alternative is looking grumpy or scared or whatever, but damn do people in situations like this ever look stupid when they grin maniacally as though they're having the time of their lives (see also Tom DeLay's mug shot).
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:39 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


A symbolic vote to take away people's healthcare just seems like a particularly no-win situation.

Certain people, as my social media shows me, are still excited about "fixing health care by repealing Obamacare". But what's interesting is that the conservative wonky folks have been done with the repeal and replace mess for a while, because they've dug into this in good faith and found the solution lacking.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 11:40 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


I GOT IT

Pass a nice non binding resolution. "We, the undersigned, officially repeal Obamacare."
posted by tilde at 11:46 AM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


(maybe don't convert your stocks to USD though, if you think that's what's going to happen)
Or US bonds. Good luck with your investment portfolio that doesn't include domestic stocks, US Treasury notes, or dollars!


So what is the alternative then? Money Market funds? Overseas equities seem risky too. REIT funds?
posted by msalt at 11:47 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


How does Mitch McConnell keep his position as majority leader at this point?

Does anyone else have "- successfully stole a Supreme Court seat" on their resume?
posted by chris24 at 11:51 AM on July 18, 2017 [21 favorites]


Commodities? The epilogue frame in "The Big Short" said that the guy whom Christian Bale played is investing in water.
posted by Autumnheart at 11:51 AM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


So what is the alternative then?

Swiss francs.
posted by Talez at 11:51 AM on July 18, 2017




I hear Russian banks accept bitcoin now.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:53 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Commodities? The epilogue frame in "The Big Short" said that the guy whom Christian Bale played is investing in water.

If we're taking advice from movies a slightly more practical piece might be to buy five percent of Volvo and for the rest of your days live off the dividends happy in the knowledge you're helping to build the safest car in the world.
posted by Talez at 11:54 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Does anyone else have stealing a Supreme Court seat on their resume?

This isn't just glib MeFi sarcasm; this is what he literally just said:
Wow. "Well we have a new Supreme Court justice" McConnell says when asked how he'll justify failure on health care to voters
They stole their justice; nothing else matters.

(I don't have video, but I'm told the tone was "very much not triumphant")
posted by zachlipton at 11:55 AM on July 18, 2017 [44 favorites]


Because it’s 2017, we might have Tropical Storm Don and Tropical Storm Hilary at the same time.

I can just hear it now: "Mine was bigger, am I right? Just a tremendous storm." OR "Of course that nasty storm that hurt so many was hers. Mine was the nice one, right?"

You know, even as people suffer and die, he'd still be saying crap like this.
posted by greermahoney at 11:55 AM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]




Has this "Response List for Nixon Backers" by Art Buchwold circa 1973 been shared here yet?
posted by slipthought at 11:58 AM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


if you really want to hedge against a default on US sovereign debt, invest in arable land with its own aquifer :P
posted by murphy slaw at 12:01 PM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


One word.

Plastics.


seriously you guys if you owned a factory a year ago capable of molding plastic into cheap fidget spinners you'd own three states by now
posted by delfin at 12:03 PM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Tucker Carlson‏ @TuckerCarlson
"Gypsies" are settled in a small Pennsylvania town... and locals complain of them going to toilet in the street and beheading chickens.
YOU KNOW WHO ELSE VILLIFIED THE ROMANI?!?

I mean, this is the same fucking week that you swore black and blue you weren't a nazi apologist.
posted by Talez at 12:03 PM on July 18, 2017 [47 favorites]


I've really enjoyed watching the congressional GOP dunk on themselves, however, I'm disappointed that President Trump didn't do more to gum of the works instead of just sitting on the sidelines making snide comments.

I feel like if he'd really gone in there and (to carry on the basketball metaphor) stolen the ball and tried to promote his own "HEALTHCARE FOR EVERYONE" policy he ran on then the McConnel and company would feel like they had grounds to (again, sorry for the metaphor) kick him out of the stadium and onto the curb.
posted by Tevin at 12:05 PM on July 18, 2017


Tonight an elderly Romani will touch Tucker's cheek and murmur "Asshole..."

And nothing will change, inside or out.
posted by delfin at 12:05 PM on July 18, 2017 [33 favorites]


If we're taking advice from movies a slightly more practical piece might be to buy five percent of Volvo and for the rest of your days live off the dividends happy in the knowledge you're helping to build the safest car in the world.

Well, the premise of that movie was that Wall Street created the mortgage crisis because the lenders and investment banks were utterly out of control, and that was before Wells Fargo's fraudulent-account scandal and Trump's election, so...
posted by Autumnheart at 12:08 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


And nothing will change, inside or out.

He'll start wearing ridiculous bow ties again.
posted by Talez at 12:08 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


So Tucker Carlson thinks we should eat chicken with the head still on?
posted by peeedro at 12:09 PM on July 18, 2017 [22 favorites]


Commodities?

Turn those machines back on!
posted by thelonius at 12:10 PM on July 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


Can you imagine a Trading Places 2017? Billy Ray gets shot at the beginning of the movie, Louis still gets accused of stealing, gets fired, arrested, and loses everything, and the bosses still steal the crop report and make a kajillion dollars. Then the fraternity song gets sung at the closing credits. The end.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:14 PM on July 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


Tucker Carlson‏ @TuckerCarlson
Bow tie schmuck? I seriously didn't know he was still a thing. Huh.
posted by rc3spencer at 12:15 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


And nothing will change, inside or out.

And Richard Bachman will write the most boring book ever about this.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:16 PM on July 18, 2017


Bow tie schmuck? I seriously didn't know he was still a thing. Huh.

He got Bill O'Reilly's old slot time slot on Fish'N'Chips.
posted by Talez at 12:17 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Local article about the Roma settling in California, PA. Don't read the comments.
posted by octothorpe at 12:17 PM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Mitch McConnell gave a statement on his response to being unable to muster 51 votes to proceed on "repeal now replace later", and revealed his new strategy is... to hold a vote on "repeal now replace later". So, in case you were wondering what the current Senate GOP plan for healthcare is, it is to pretend that we dwell in a parallel universe.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:19 PM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Oh, haha. Ike Kaveladze lives in Huntington Beach, CA?

That's Dana Rohrabacher's (R-Moscow) district.
posted by notyou at 12:20 PM on July 18, 2017 [34 favorites]


Lest we forget:

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.


Fun jokes with the boys.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:22 PM on July 18, 2017 [29 favorites]


Did anybody else notice that the Administration doesn't consider the District of Columbia to be part of America?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:22 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


NPR interview with J Green reveals that in 2012, Bannon was pushing Sessions to run for president in 2016.
So . . today could be slightly worse.
posted by rc3spencer at 12:26 PM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Reminds me of Stephen Colbert's delightfully sassy interview on the status of the District with DC rep Eleanor Holmes Norton, who gives as good as she gets. (Also zomg that segment is almost 11 years old!)
posted by Rhaomi at 12:28 PM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Prediction: Trump will sign a bold new executive order instructing HHS to initiate a full review of how Obamacare is bad and how it should totally be replaced by something much better, cheaper, healthcare for everyone; you're going to love it, believe me. Review to begin within the next 9 years.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:29 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


NPR interview with J Green reveals that in 2012, Bannon was pushing Sessions to run for president in 2016.

Beauregard, come with me. Think of what we could do, together!
Unlimited!
Our racism will be unlimited!
Together we'll be the greatest team there's ever been...
Whites, the top of society!
Police seizing poor people's property!
There's no fight we cannot win!
Just you and I defying liberals!
posted by Talez at 12:30 PM on July 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


NPR interview with J Green reveals that in 2012, Bannon was pushing Sessions to run for president in 2016.
So . . today could be slightly worse.


I read this as Sessions pushing Bannon to run. Now there's a candidate I'd like to hurl a beer at and flee from
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:31 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


If the US defaults on our debt nothing will be safe. I'm so sorry to sound catastrophic but everything since Bretton Woods has been built on the US being a safe investment.

Use the energy you'd apply toward hedging the destruction of our civilization into calling your representatives and urging a clean debt ceiling.
posted by winna at 12:32 PM on July 18, 2017 [17 favorites]


> Good luck with your investment portfolio that doesn't include domestic stocks, US Treasury notes, or dollars!
> So what is the alternative then? Money Market funds? Overseas equities seem risky too. REIT funds?
> If you don't like equities or bonds, go for commodities, like gold.
> If you really want to hedge against a default on US sovereign debt, invest in arable land with its own aquifer :P
> One word. Plastics.


Guys, most of these statements are tongue in cheek, and I too am prone to making hyperbolic statements, so I say this with love and affection - please, please do not take financial advice from a MeFi thread and liquidate your retirement accounts, or something rash like that.

If you're not ultra-wealthy, your only investment strategy should be to buy and hold a set of diversified low cost index funds. The "hold" part of it sometimes requires a strong stomach, but historically, holding through the dips has consistently been an incredibly good decision. Remember, when you buy a low-cost diversified index fund, you're buying a share of the entire economy, and as the population increases and technology enables further gains in productivity per worker, the value of that share increases.

Everything else is noise.

Even if the dollar goes to shit - if you're going to retire in the US, that doesn't matter as much. The US has a third of a billion people, and the economy will be productive regardless of the decisions of a handful of morons. The government can help it along or hinder it, but the basic trends have so far consistently rewarded a buy-and-hold strategy.

Now, for a more advanced topic, you might consider a market crash as a sale on stocks. You could get a good deal on this share of the economy - it's used, showing some wear, but it's got a lot of life in it still. The very worst thing you could do for yourself is to panic because of Trump, owe taxes on sales, and bury gold bricks in the backyard or something else equally preposterous. Unless you're retiring in the next few years, there's nothing to do here other than sitting tight.

Yes, the market will crash, sooner or later. And then it will recover. Don't panic.

(Ok, I'll go back to stupid one-liners now.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:39 PM on July 18, 2017 [64 favorites]


An enfeebled America stands alone
Economic change has affected other countries, but they have managed globalisation


The greatest challenge posed by Donald Trump’s presidency is not that he will deploy American strength against the global common good. It is that he demonstrates how weak the US has become.

posted by infini at 12:40 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I for one was not planning on making any investment decisions after reading commentary in a Trump thread.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:43 PM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


MANAFORT: Did you ever hear the tragedy of Barry Goldwater "The White"? I thought not. It’s not a story the Kushners would tell you. Also, you are an idiot. Barry Goldwater was a far-right populist so powerful he could harness xenophobia to win, like, six states. But he didn't have a cyber-warfare unit dedicated to undermining and promulgating misinformation about his opponent.

TRUMP: Is it possible to learn this power?

MANAFORT: Not from an American.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:49 PM on July 18, 2017 [39 favorites]


My savings are tied up in pillow cases full of Sacagawea coins carefully blended into my bedding.

I've been thinking of diversifying into paper currencies. It would be more comfortable, but I'm concerned that in the event of social collapse, a sack of it can't be wielded as effectively in hand to hand combat.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:50 PM on July 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Had a great time at the ADAPT/Tuesdays with Toomey protest in front of his offices in Philly. Met a man in a chair whose bulldog rode with him in his power chair. The man told me that when he used his manual chair, his bulldog can pull him around. I told him that I had been dreaming about this for years. But, I said, it would be with three cats! And he looked at me like I'd lost my mind. But my SO told me that in Norse mythology, a goddess rides a chariot pulled by cats, so take that, wheelchair brother.
posted by angrycat at 12:53 PM on July 18, 2017 [57 favorites]


Just in: @SenFeinstein says #SpecialCounsel Mueller gave Senate Judiciary all-clear to interview Don Jr and Manafort in public session

Just realized what's a good investment at this time:
Popcorn companies.
posted by NorthernLite at 12:54 PM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


I don't have any coherent investment advice, but I'm thinking a "TrumpCoin" or "MAGACoin" ICO would raise a lot of Ether...
posted by Coventry at 12:54 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


in Norse mythology, a goddess rides a chariot pulled by cats,

Indeed! We even named our Corgi after her.
posted by Twain Device at 12:54 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Dang, someone beat me to it! Buy now & save!
posted by Coventry at 12:55 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Prediction: Trump will sign a bold new executive order instructing HHS to initiate a full review of how Obamacare is bad and how it should totally be replaced by something much better, cheaper, healthcare for everyone;

This just reminded me of that time when 45 confused health insurance with life insurance. Do we even know if he understands what this all about?
You're going to have absolute guaranteed coverage. You're going to have it if you're a person going in…don't forget, this was not supposed to be the way insurance works. Insurance is, you're 20 years old, you just graduated from college, and you start paying $15 a month for the rest of your life and by the time you're 70, and you really need it, you're still paying the same amount and that's really insurance.
"It's one banana health insurance, Michael. What could it cost, $15?"
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 12:55 PM on July 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


What if you bought one of those "Big Maple Leaf" giant gold coins? It could double as a table/doorstop and probably be a little easier to store.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:56 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Isn't Manafort and Don Jr's testimony just going to be them repeatedly pleading the fifth amendment?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:56 PM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


This is Don Jr. we're talking about. By the end of his testimony, he'll have pled the Third and Seventh, then Tweeted the Ninth and most of what's on the Dr. Bronner's soap label.
posted by delfin at 1:00 PM on July 18, 2017 [71 favorites]


Isn't Manafort and Don Jr's testimony just going to be them repeatedly pleading the fifth amendment?

They'll probably do what Sessions did. Refuse to say anything because they are reserving the right to invoke Executive Authority at a later date. Sure, it doesn't make any sense, and it isn't actually a thing, but it worked pretty well for Sessions.
posted by diogenes at 1:01 PM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Do we even know if he understands what this all about?

He has no clue. Last night, he had dinner with a bunch of Senators who were already definite yeses just so he could say he "helped," and he reportedly talked about selling insurance across state lines and lowering drug prices. The former can't be done under reconciliation and is largely stupid, while the latter is a different bill, and Republicans don't care. That was his 11th hour pitch, stuff that has nothing to do with the bill, because those are literally the only two things he knows about health care. During the campaign, he would confuse Medicaid and Medicare.

The pathetic part is that he managed to go seven months without ever being pressed on a health policy question.
posted by zachlipton at 1:01 PM on July 18, 2017 [34 favorites]


What is your go to source for the "freak out" argument?

Trump? Bugfuck nuts GOPpers running things? Bankruptcy is his business? The rest of the world feeling like now is as-good-a-time as there ever will be to boot the dollar? The first defaulted debt will be military pensions? Dogs and cats pulling wheelchairs together? Mass hysteria?!

Seriously though, the debt-cap bullshit will be smack in the middle of uncovering Russian money laundering and astrologically that's an opportune time to invest in doughnuts.
posted by petebest at 1:02 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I did the thing of posting and then going back and reading 80+ comments, and saw the comments about the dude jumping the subway tracks to get away from reporters, and was like, 'holy shit, that takes serious commitment to escape' envisioning an NYC subway station where jumping the tracks would be quite a thing.

So the photo was disappointing, although he did have that weird shit-eating grin of escape on.
posted by angrycat at 1:03 PM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


They'll probably do what Sessions did. Refuse to say anything because they are reserving the right to invoke Executive Authority at a later date. Sure, it doesn't make any sense, and it isn't actually a thing, but it worked pretty well for Sessions.

Democrat: "Wait. You're invoking executive privilege based on something that happened before the election, and you're doing it in anticipation of the President possibly doing it later?"
Junior: "Yeah, whaddaya gonna do about it, nerd?"
Republican: "The real crime here is that someone leaked this meeting of people who were not and are not currently in the government."
posted by Etrigan at 1:04 PM on July 18, 2017 [17 favorites]


My local mall has a train a lot like that, only it's decorated like a choo choo and it's ridden by children
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:05 PM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


envisioning an NYC subway station where jumping the tracks would be quite a thing.

Or Boston, where you can actually get killed doing so.
posted by Melismata at 1:06 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Barry Goldwater was a far-right populist so powerful he could harness xenophobia to win, like, six states
After being spotted and recruited by Clif White (for the purpose of the GOP), the Roger Stone of the early 60s.
posted by rc3spencer at 1:06 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]




John McAfee just bet that it would hit $500,000 within 3 years or he would eat his own dick on national TV.
The new Halt and Catch Fire season is taking a bizarre turn...
posted by pxe2000 at 1:08 PM on July 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


Ooh, ooh, a new McAfee story! Thank you!
posted by Melismata at 1:09 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Wow, yet another How Not to Do PR Messaging module in today's Trump comments on healthcare.

First, he delivers the Democratic Party view for free: "For seven years it's been 'repeal, repeal, repeal,' and then when we get in there and can do it, nothing happens." Thanks, Don! Throw the GOP Congress under the bus again (and again, and again).

Then, as usual, he shows utter and complete and open disregard for any single American's well-being other than his own by restating the whole "let's just let it fail" and talks about how the important thing is that he and the Republicans won't own it. Good luck with that.
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:11 PM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


As long as he doesn't put catsup on it, sure, whatever.
posted by notyou at 1:11 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Response List for Nixon Backers
by Art Buchwald

These are difficult times for people who are defending the Nixon administration. No matter where they go they are attacked by pseudo-liberals, McGovern lovers, heterosexual constitutionalists and paranoid John Dean believers.

As a public service I am printing instant responses for loyal Nixonites when they are attacked at a party. Please cut it out and carry it in your pocket.
  1. Everyone does it.
  2. What about Chappaquiddick?
  3. A President can't keep track of EVERYTHING his staff is doing.
  4. The press is blowing the whole thing up.
  5. Whatever Nixon did was for national security.
  6. The Democrats are sore because they lost the election.
  7. Are you going to believe a rat like John Dean or the President of the United States?
  8. Wait til ALL the facts come out.
  9. What about Chappaquiddick?
  10. If you impeach Nixon you get Agnew.
  11. The only thing wrong with Watergate is they got caught.
  12. What about Daniel Ellsberg stealing the Pentagon Papers?
  13. It happens in Europe all the time.
  14. People would be against Nixon no matter what he did.
  15. I'd rather have a crook in the White House than a fool.
  16. L.B.J. used to read FBI reports every night.
  17. What's the big deal about finding out what your opponents are up to?
  18. The President was too busy running the country to know what was going on.
  19. What about Chappaquiddick?
  20. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
  21. McGovern would have lost anyway.
  22. Maybe the Committee for the Re-Election of the President went a little too far, but they were just a bunch of eager kids.
  23. I'm not breaking the law but sometimes you have to do it to save the country.
  24. Nixon made a mistake. He's only human.
  25. Do you realize what Watergate is doing to the dollar abroad?
  26. What about Harry Truman, and the deep freeze scandal?
  27. Franklin D. Roosevelt did a lot worse things.
  28. I'm sick and tired of Watergate and so is everybody else.
  29. This thing should be tried in the courts and not on television.
  30. When Nixon gives his explanation of what happened there are going to be a lot of people in this country with egg on their faces.
  31. My country right or wrong.
  32. What about Chappaquiddick?
  33. I think the people who make all this fuss about Watergate should be shot.
  34. If the Democrats found the money they would have done the same thing.
  35. I never trusted Haldeman and Ehrlichman to begin with.
  36. If you say one more word about Watergate I'll punch you in the nose.
    Or A: If the person is bigger than you: "If you say one more word about Watergate I'm leaving the house."
    Or B: If it's your own house and the person is bigger than you: "What about Chappaquiddick?"
posted by kirkaracha at 1:11 PM on July 18, 2017 [53 favorites]


Did anybody else notice that the Administration doesn't consider the District of Columbia to be part of America?

Well, the list there is "States", so D.C. not so much. Nor Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, United States Virgin Islands or American Samoa.
posted by achrise at 1:13 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


> "Top Republican: Trump 'playing with a firetruck' as bill died."

"I would remind you, sir, that this was the man *your* party thought was a suitable candidate for President of the United States."
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:13 PM on July 18, 2017 [16 favorites]


For those not familiar, Chappaquiddick was the early ARPANET term for "her email."
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:16 PM on July 18, 2017 [53 favorites]


Bitcoin. John McAfee just bet that it would hit $500,000 within 3 years or he would eat his own dick on national TV.

Bath salts are a hell of a drug
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:16 PM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Chappaquiddick > Benghazi
posted by kirkaracha at 1:17 PM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Ok but- Hilary's emails were nothing and meant nothing, but Ted Kennedy really did kill a woman through inaction so... how about let's not compare the two things?
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 1:18 PM on July 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


Carl P. Leubsdorf in Dallas Morning News: Let's outline Trump's achievements during his first six months in office

(No, it's not just a blank page)
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:18 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Especially on a Triple Word Score.
posted by delfin at 1:18 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Bitcoin. John McAfee just bet that it would hit $500,000 within 3 years or he would eat his own dick on national TV.

I'm not at all sure what network would carry it but that's a problem for another day.
posted by scalefree at 1:19 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Mod note: WE ARE NOT FIGHTING ABOUT CHAPPAQUIDDICK OMG FFS
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:22 PM on July 18, 2017 [152 favorites]


we've also all seen the Art Buchwald thing already at least a couple of times by now
posted by yhbc at 1:24 PM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


During the campaign, he would confuse Medicaid and Medicare.

The pathetic part is that he managed to go seven months without ever being pressed on a health policy question.


Our "liberal media," ladies and gentlemen.
posted by Gelatin at 1:33 PM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


Oh gods, I'm reading Devil's Bargain and I just want to vomit my eyeballs out. He's a good writer but oh man ... seeing just how it all wasn't a dream but a terrible living nightmare.

And I'm only on page 9. I don't think I can do this.
posted by tilde at 1:34 PM on July 18, 2017 [16 favorites]


Good news break:
Associated Press: California’s signature initiative to fight global warming will get another decade of life after lawmakers from both parties joined Gov. Jerry Brown in extending the law credited with reducing the state’s carbon footprint.

Monday night’s votes to renew California’s cap-and-trade program bolster the Democratic governor’s quest to portray the state as a leader in the fight against climate change. At a bipartisan celebratory press conference following the vote, members from both parties noted the contrast with Washington, where Republicans have struggled to pass legislation and have taken a skeptical view of regulations to combat greenhouse gases.

posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:34 PM on July 18, 2017 [24 favorites]


I've been thinking of the "party of small government" nonsense. This is a ridiculous phrase and one that we should no longer let pass. Small didn't mean better. Heck, larger doesn't mean better. Dare I write, size doesn't matter. What matters is that government runs effectively in the service of the people.

When a Republican says "small" what they really mean is "cede control to the largess of the wealthy." It means reduce environmental protections (so the wealthy can make more money) or worker protection (so the wealthy can make more money) or basically anything that gets in the ways of the wealthy exploiting and ruining things in the pursuit of more money.

So the simple attack on that statement is "small does not mean good." The slogan the democrats should embrace is the simple "the party of good government."
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:37 PM on July 18, 2017 [30 favorites]


Ian Bremmer told Charlie Rose (7 minute video) that Trump had a second meeting with Putin at the G20 on top of the big one he had with Tillerson and Lavrov present: "an hour that evening that no one's even heard of."

So that's not suspicious at all.
posted by zachlipton at 1:38 PM on July 18, 2017 [52 favorites]


During the campaign, he would confuse Medicaid and Medicare.

Silver hair -- Medicare
Underpaid -- Medicaid
posted by JackFlash at 1:40 PM on July 18, 2017 [71 favorites]


To a Republican, "small government" = "ability to exploit people with impunity".
posted by Autumnheart at 1:42 PM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


To a Republican, "small government" = "ability to exploit people with impunity".

And "job-killing regulations" == "tilting the playing field to corporate freeloaders and cheats."
posted by Gelatin at 1:45 PM on July 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


When it comes down to it, the number of voters who truly support "small government" is negligible, just as the number of voters who truly support "states' rights" is negligible. By and large, the voter who espouses these principles in fact supports the following:

- Low taxes for themselves.
- A government which provides whatever services and protections they need at any given time.
- A government which doesn't give away their hard-earned money to those other types of people who also desire services and protections.
- A government which regulates the bad behavior of the other types of people, regardless of whether it's at the federal, state or local level.
- A government which gives the voter in question the freedom from regulation they so richly deserve.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:47 PM on July 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


unless you're disabled after working x amount, then it's Medicare or some combination of Medicare/Medicaid. For the record.
posted by angrycat at 1:48 PM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


You also have to not count the military and police as the government to join the small-government club.
posted by Rykey at 1:48 PM on July 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


How long until @realdonaldtrump takes credit for healthcare fiasco by proclaiming: "Dems thanking me for saving Obamacare. Just happy to give better healthcare to all Americans. #trumpcare #maga"
posted by Glibpaxman at 1:49 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Not sure how we could confirm this to be true, but this blog asserts pretty strenuously that there are covert recordings of (some) meetings between Donald Jr., Manafort, and Russians.
posted by newdaddy at 1:54 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Not sure how we could confirm this to be true

We wait for it to come from a better source.
posted by diogenes at 1:57 PM on July 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


Good tweetstorm (sigh) on how the Dems should now be pushing for Medicaid expansion in the states that haven't done so.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:00 PM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Patribotics is Louise Mensch's blog site. Believe accordingly.
posted by chris24 at 2:00 PM on July 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


From the Patribotics link: ...exploits allowing the phones of every Russian national at the meeting to be used as a “hot mike”, in other words, to record what those around them are saying, had already been placed on the phones of the Russian intelligence agents and assets present. This excludes Boris Epshteyn, who although he is an FSB agent and a long-term Russian asset, these sources say, is also a U.S. citizen.

As far as I can tell from other sources, Boris Epshteyn was not at the meeting. This does not bode well for the journalistic accuracy of this article.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:01 PM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]



In a press availability, Trump just interrupted himself to say something that sounded like, "You can't use his head as a stand, you're messing with the wrong guy here"

Does anyone know what that was

posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:58 PM on July 18

Still waiting on an answer to this.


Did anybody else notice that the Administration doesn't consider the District of Columbia to be part of America?

Well, the list there is "States", so D.C. not so much. Nor Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, United States Virgin Islands or American Samoa.

posted by achrise at 4:13 PM on July 18

DJT is very bigoted against any parts of America that he doesn't deem American enough. He treats Hawaii like a foreign country so it is not surprising that no one thought to include any of the territories in the Made in America display.

It's kind of ridiculous but the discussion about this list took up quite a bit of our free time this afternoon here at the Gravy house. I was most surprised that no American cars were included-=- that would have been unthinkable a few years ago and it is quite the slap in the face to the union workers. Mr. Gravy surmised that none of the cars being built in America are built with all American components but I doubt the helicopter and "2 firetrucks" are either.

The second thing that surprised me was that GA was represented by Chick-fil-A rather than Coke. I mean you can't get more American than Coca-Cola and it is still bottled here in the US in several states including Georgia. I hear that even our President drinks coke-- daily. Either Coke turned them down or Chick-fil-A donated to Georgia Governor Deal's campaign so he suggested that brand.

Mr. Gravy was a bit surprised that there were no bicycles featured. Like microbreweries, American bicycle manufacturing is going through a bit of a renaissance and there are a lot of companies on both coasts.

I do applaud them for one thing, Fiestaware (WV) Fiestaware is a great product that is as well regarded today as it was 86 years ago when they first started producing it. Collectors love it, interior decorators love it, and I have a whole cupboard full in every shade of blue and green.


Ian Bremmer told Charlie Rose (7 minute video) that Trump had a second meeting with Putin at the G20 on top of the big one he had with Tillerson and Lavrov present: "an hour that evening that no one's even heard of."

So that's not suspicious at all.

posted by zachlipton at 4:38 PM on July 18

Holy Fuck. Wut?! How could we lose track of our President like that?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:01 PM on July 18, 2017 [21 favorites]


galaxy rise: "I clicked through because one of the blue dogs listed, Josh Gottheimer, represents the district in New Jersey where I grew up. Redistricting has made the district slightly more hospitable to dems, but it's still very conservative. It was represented for 14 years by Scott Garrett, who voted against reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act, against immigration reform, and who was notable even amongst republicans for his anti-LGBTQ stances. I donated to Gottheimer this year and his defeat of Garrett was both unexpected and one of the very few bright spots on Nov 8th. "

Incidentally, Gottheimer has yet to draw any GOP opponents.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:03 PM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Trump had a second meeting with Putin at the G20 on top of the big one he had with Tillerson and Lavrov present

That's probably where Putin told Trump he has to return those compounds regardless of how bad it looks.
posted by diogenes at 2:04 PM on July 18, 2017 [21 favorites]


It's becoming clear that the major roadblock to a Democratic majority is actually members of the Democratic Party. Ugh.

Here's how you get a majority; in a general election if its got a D next to its name you pull the lever.
posted by Justinian at 2:06 PM on July 18, 2017 [26 favorites]


> The slogan the democrats should embrace is the simple "the party of good government."

So there's a tradition among progressives, dating back to the early 20th c., of running on Good Government platforms. Historically this hasn't worked out very well; it leads the people who espouse the position to foreground inside-baseball concerns about how the work of government gets done, and to meanwhile ignore the question of what work the government should do. It's a way of pretending that political disputes are about establishing a clear process for decisionmaking, rather than about the actual decisions themselves; to focus on the form of politics ("by what means will we decide how to write laws and allocate resources?") over the content of politics ("what laws do we write and how do we allocate resources?")

Formal arguments tend to appeal to people who are comfortable; people for whom things are more or less working out, and whose primary botheration is over politics being a messily material process. The good government slogan and platform promises a solution to that botheration. It first presupposes that the worries of the comfortable class — over government being opaque, corrupt, inept, inefficient, or otherwise divergent from how it's supposed to work on paper — are worries shared by everyone, and then reasons that if a party can develop a system of government that's transparent, effective-in-technocratic-terms, efficient-in-technocratic-terms, and rule-driven, that party will win and everyone will sing the reformers' praises forever.

Needless to say I have little faith in the efficacy of form-driven politics; the thing I'd like to highlight, though, is that form-driven politics doesn't have much broad political appeal, because folks with real problems — problems like abusive bosses and landlords, exposure to police violence, the need to work multiple jobs to afford rent and food, lack of access to medical care — aren't primarily concerned with the process by which government decides to offer assistance or withhold it. Instead, they're primarily concerned with the simple fact of whether or not they receive assistance, without much concern given to the process by which decisions about that assistance are made.

Running on "the party of good government" is a suicidal strategy; it'll appeal a great deal to the 15% or so of the population that falls into the comfortable-moderate-liberal demographic, and not at all to everyone else.

We should by whatever means be marginalizing the institutional apparatus of the Democratic Party and replacing it with our own leadership. And as we do this, we need to rally behind slogans that appeal to content, not form.

Living wage for all. Medicare for all. Guaranteed employment for everyone who wants it. All stuff about content, about moving resources into the hands of common folk; nothing about form or procedure whatsoever.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:06 PM on July 18, 2017 [38 favorites]


Still waiting on an answer to this.

Something happened off camera, I think
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:07 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


"an hour that evening that no one's even heard of."

8:30? 10:15? 11:50?

I dunno, I'm pretty sure I've heard of all the hours of evening.
posted by neroli at 2:08 PM on July 18, 2017 [21 favorites]


"Never in my life as a political scientist have I seen two countries — major countries — with a constellation of national interests that are as dissonant, while the two leaders seem to be doing everything possible to make nice and be close to each other," Ian Bremmer, reporting on 2nd G20 meeting between Trump and Putin.
posted by rc3spencer at 2:08 PM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


In a press availability, Trump just interrupted himself to say something that sounded like, "You can't use his head as a stand, you're messing with the wrong guy here"

Washington Post has video. It looks like he's just making a spur-of-the-moment comment to an off-camera photographer. Sorry, no actual craziness here.
posted by scalefree at 2:10 PM on July 18, 2017


Missouri got some hinge stamping outfit in Winter's Bone country.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 2:11 PM on July 18, 2017


That's probably where Putin told Trump he has to return those compounds regardless of how bad it looks.

I'm really super curious about who leaked that DTJ email thread to the NYT.
posted by notyou at 2:11 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


envisioning an NYC subway station where jumping the tracks would be quite a thing.

Yeah, the level of danger is more in the "golf cart" range there. Also, just to be clear, the electricity is in a third rail, but that third rail is on the ceiling.
Also there are really three subways and one of them looks more like an airport/Logan's Run people mover. And it has glass walls so you can't cross the tracks.

Hinckley certainly is an odd name for a Republican-controlled White House to promote.

True sidebar here, but Hinckley is a blue-blood name; there was one on the Mayflower, and there's a fellow named Samuel Hinckley who is, of course, an ancestor of the notorious John, Jr., but also ... wait for it ... then-Vice-President George H.W. Bush. Something raised again as recently as last year by some irrelevant nutcase nobody's ever heard of with no connection to current political craziness whatsoever. Indeed, though the distant cousin thing was a coincidence they may not have even known about, John Hinckley, Sr. and George "41" Bush were pals back in Texas, and some allege the former was indebted to the latter through a bailout, so it's actually a very Republican name. I don't know for sure that the yacht company founder was also a relative, but chances are probably pretty high.

As for Pierce Manufacturing, they're in Appleton and the Oshkosh area and have done these show-off things for Walker and Sen. Johnson in the past. I expect that sort of gladhanding/logrolling is behind most of the products selected for the WH event.
posted by dhartung at 2:13 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


The second thing that surprised me was that GA was represented by Chick-fil-A rather than Coke. I mean you can't get more American than Coca-Cola and it is still bottled here in the US in several states including Georgia. I hear that even our President drinks coke-- daily. Either Coke turned them down or Chick-fil-A donated to Georgia Governor Deal's campaign so he suggested that brand.

Doesn't even need to be that. I just assume that Chick-fil-A is there for conservative signaling. See also: liking things liberals don't/gay marriage.

The omission of DC is also obnoxious because the District is seeing a real surge in local manufacturing, particularly in beverages. DC Brau would have been a good inclusion. Chups if you want the micro-business (helped into existence by both Kickstarter funding and guidance from food incubator Union Kitchen) and are afraid of booze.
posted by phearlez at 2:13 PM on July 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


I wonder what Representative Rohrabacher is up to today.

Rohrabacher asked a panel of space experts testifying before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology if civilizations could have existed on Mars thousands of years ago.

ok thanks
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:17 PM on July 18, 2017 [63 favorites]


More on the *second* Putin-Trump meeting here. (The Hill, maybe just a write-up of the Charlie Rose interview):
The meeting took place during the G-20 heads of state dinner, according to Bremmer, hours after Trump's formal bilateral sit-down with Putin.

In that conversation, Trump spoke with the Russian leader for roughly an hour, joined only by Putin's translator. The meeting had previously gone without mention by the White House.

Trump's interactions with Putin are the subject of particularly intense scrutiny in the U.S., because of the ongoing special counsel and congressional investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

That Trump was not joined in the conversation by his own translator is a breach of national security protocol, Bremmer noted, though one that the president likely would not know about.
posted by pjenks at 2:17 PM on July 18, 2017 [65 favorites]


Missouri got some hinge stamping outfit in Winter's Bone country.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:11 PM on July 18

Well at least it is something manufactured. Nebraska got Beef, which is almost as bad Cheerwine. When I set out to buy my food I always try to buy local so telling me to buy Made in American Beef is sort of useless. It just doesn't even enter my head to think, better not buy that Argentinian Beef.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:17 PM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Spotted at the White House today: Boris Epshteyn, Lewendowski, and Bossie. And they just announced a rally for the 25th in Ohio.

Sounds like Trump is sad so they invited all his campaign buddies over and scheduled him an out-of-town field trip.
posted by zachlipton at 2:21 PM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


So now we have evidence of a clandestine, hour-long meeting between our President and the President of Russia, when they were both supposed to be at the dinner table?

It's like they've totally abandoned tradecraft.
posted by pjenks at 2:22 PM on July 18, 2017 [34 favorites]


In that conversation, Trump spoke with the Russian leader for roughly an hour, joined only by Putin's translator.

This is the conversation Trump wanted to have from the start, with its contents kept secret from everyone including his Secretary of State. Someone must have persuaded him that it would look suspicious not to have the first meeting.

This is all really happening.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:23 PM on July 18, 2017 [72 favorites]


The second thing that surprised me was that GA was represented by Chick-fil-A rather than Coke.

I'm personally relieved since I'm adding every company that signed onto Trump's publicity stunt to my personal Boycott Trump List. But going down the list, there was only one whose products I ever use, Campbells Soup, and that's mostly because they have a Cream of Broccoli that I substitute for Cream of Mushroom because I just don't like mushrooms. Of course, Campbells also has other brands, most of which I do not put in the top tier of their categories (Prego, Pepperidge Farm, Goldfish, Pace... wait a minute, they make a big deal about being made in Texas, and they didn't get the pick for that state?) And I don't drink wine at all, so the "California Wine Institute" is irrelevant; still, I'm going to contact some local SLO County wineries about their membership. But can we get some rock stars to smash ALL their Gibson Guitars?
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:24 PM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Rohrabacher asked a panel of space experts testifying before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology if civilizations could have existed on Mars thousands of years ago.

I'm sure Matt Damon would have spotted something if that were true, Congressman.
posted by nubs at 2:24 PM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


So this thread is starting to nuke my phone. Is it time for a new one?
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:30 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


It was a bright cold day in Third February, and the clocks were striking 12:60.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:30 PM on July 18, 2017 [21 favorites]


Remember when "Russia o'clock" used to mean when the scoops dropped
posted by theodolite at 2:31 PM on July 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


Trump was right that he would bring change to Washington though. A business as usual politician would tour the country holding events to build public support for their legislative agenda, but this guy, he waits for his agenda to collapse and only then does he have a rally.
posted by zachlipton at 2:32 PM on July 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


So this thread is starting to nuke my phone. Is it time for a new one?

I'd probably wait for the iPhone 7S
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:33 PM on July 18, 2017 [67 favorites]


In good news for my city, the Trump name is finally being removed from the Toronto skyline.

I bet they had to buy their way out of a contract for the privilege.

posted by rhizome at 12:22 AM on July 18

Good Instincts.

Bloomberg Trump's Company Gets Millions So Toronto Hotel Can Erase Brand

Breakup fee for switching brand said to be at least $6 million
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:37 PM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


I dunno, I'm pretty sure I've heard of all the hours of evening.

the hour you're looking for is treason o'clock
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:40 PM on July 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


Pentagon study declares American empire is ‘collapsing’

srsly, am not digging this stuff up, it keeps popping up in my TLs along with fires in subways and whatnot
posted by infini at 2:40 PM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]




Democrats, Wake Up and Smell The Failure
That's the fucking problem with Democrats. They mistake weakness for pragmatism. They mistake pandering for savvy. They always seem to imagine that the closer they edge to Republican policy positions, the more votes they will inevitably capture, due to math. They--the establishment, the ones in control, with all of the plugs plugged into the current power grid--are unable to imagine a world in which they lead voters to their side with bold, progressive policies, and by telling the truth. That is considered hopelessly unrealistic, by the circle of operatives that helped to lose to Donald Trump. The entire apparatus of Democratic operatives who spent decades accumulating power, riding their way up through the Bill Clinton and Obama administrations, are still there. And they did their best in 2016. And here we are.
...
Democrats who have wielded power for many years: America is sick of your bullshit. Maybe let the grass roots give it a shot for once. You suck.
Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million running on the most progressive majority-party platform in American history.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:45 PM on July 18, 2017 [47 favorites]


Bloomberg Trump's Company Gets Millions So Toronto Hotel Can Erase Brand [...] Breakup fee for switching brand said to be at least $6 million

And worth every loonie.
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:46 PM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million running on the most progressive majority-party platform in American history.

But it wasn't the right sort of progressive. I'm just tired of this sniping from progressives who demand the Democrats hand the reins over, despite their own pisspoor electoral track record and fairweather relationship with the party.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:52 PM on July 18, 2017 [27 favorites]


Mod note: Hello friends. "Must the Democrats go more lefty", it's a fascinating question, let's imagine now that we have a website with thousands upon thousands of comments going over and over and over this question in exhausting eyewatering detail for the last say 18 months, which you can peruse at your leisure when you feel like re-living those moments -- rather than going over them again in here.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:56 PM on July 18, 2017 [123 favorites]


Financial Times on a roll here.

The ex-spy who casts a light on the Trump-Russia saga


Yet for any devotee of a good John le Carré thriller or James Bond film, it is also rather depressing. If Moscow did want to establish a relationship with the Trump campaign, was the initial connection really as easy and obvious as firing off an email? More disturbingly: what has become of the top brass of Russia’s spy network? Has Moscow’s opinion of the US really fallen so low that it phones espionage operations in via the D-Squad?
posted by infini at 2:56 PM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Maybe, but this CBO score scares me a bit. It will still be horrifically awful, but if they score it with the Cruz Amendment, Republicans will have a new line of attack, which is essentially "the CBO says that a 60-year-old man can have great insurance that he loves, but it doesn't have maternity coverage he doesn't need, and they'll say he's uninsured. Therefore the CBO is bogus." And they'll use that to discredit the whole operation, even though the Medicaid cuts and everything have nothing to do with that.

Ideally, the CBO will do scores with and without the Cruz Amendment so we can compare, but I'm worried the whole thing will be used to discredit the CBO. If HHS puts out their own numbers, this easily gets turned into a "well, even the experts don't know, math and science are meaningless and stupid, time to go vote" situation.
-- posted by zachlipton at 2:39 PM on July 17


In case it didn't get mentioned here, two WH aides wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post on July 14 smearing the CBO. The piece concluded with the line, "the CBO’s estimates will be little more than fake news." So, yeah. No need to worry about the CBO being branded as FAKE NOOZ; it's already being done.

The CBO is non-partisan (hell, their tagline is "Nonpartisan Analysis for the US Congress"), but there's no longer any such thing as a non-partisan government agency because there's no longer any such thing as an objective fact or an objective reality. No one can agree on what is real and what is not. No authority can be trusted. For fucksakes, a college education is now a net negative in the mind of the average Republican.

The question being asked of the American public is, "who are you gonna choose to believe?" Climate change propagandists have been asking us that question for 25 years. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth asked us 13 years ago. Now everything is fair game. The front lines have expanded. To wit: now there are billboards cropping up asking people to investigate the flat earth hypothesis, because why the fuck not? Yesterday a friend of a friend posted an image on Facebook saying that George Soros had been a Nazi during WWII. It did not matter that the responders pointed out that Soros was a Hungarian Jew who was 13 when the Nazis invaded; the poster was absolutely adamant that Soros was a Nazi.

I used to believe in the old adage "the truth will out," but these days I'm less and less convinced that it won't just be buried forever under a mountain of bullshit.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 2:58 PM on July 18, 2017 [35 favorites]


Trump's Company Gets Millions So Toronto Hotel Can Erase Brand

Please please dismantle that sign in this sequence: First the letter T, then the R, then the P, then I guess the M. With like a week between each removal.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 3:01 PM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Wow, between pineapple ketchup, 9:120 (in the p.m.?), a seekrit Putin meeting, the return of thou-bloggeress-what-shan't-be-named, and a bunch of other crazy crap just in the last hour, I'm pretty sure something's up.

I will return shortly, and I expect to see cake wagers by the bushelful. (Gentle Reminder: John McAfee cake dick is grounds for hellbanning trebuchet to the 60-pound-drugwall. Just say no, kids.)
posted by petebest at 3:02 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]




"an hour that evening that no one's even heard of."

Truly Donnie Bumblefuck is the Kung Fu Joe of timekeeping. He can meet at 7:15, 9:00, 10:77, eleventy forty-twelve, and all kinds of shit you ain't even heard of.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:04 PM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Please please dismantle that sign in this sequence: First the letter T, then the R, then the P, then I guess the M. With like a week between each removal.

no, the R U keep, so that you can hear every scream of every child as they look at the skyline and ask "Dear God, what is the country code for Russia?"
posted by Cold Lurkey at 3:04 PM on July 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


> John McAfee cake dick is grounds for hellbanning trebuchet to the 60-pound-drugwall.

You know you've exceeded your Recommended Daily Allowance of Internet when all the phrases in that sentence make perfect sense to you.
posted by RedOrGreen at 3:06 PM on July 18, 2017 [45 favorites]


infini: "what has become of the top brass of Russia’s spy network? Has Moscow’s opinion of the US really fallen so low that it phones espionage operations in via the D-Squad?"

I think this is sort of a Police Academy-type situation: the D-team gets to handle Trump ("You mean that money-laundering New York real estate thug? дерьмо́!") in a stupid bid to fuck with HRC. Nobody in the KGB expects them to succeed, but they put in some oddball work and whoops, the idiot becomes president.
posted by TypographicalError at 3:06 PM on July 18, 2017 [24 favorites]


More disturbingly: what has become of the top brass of Russia’s spy network? Has Moscow’s opinion of the US really fallen so low that it phones espionage operations in via the D-Squad?

Well it worked, didn't it?
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:07 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Police Academy: Mission from Moscow
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:08 PM on July 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


Trussiamp.com is available. Just sayin'.
posted by petebest at 3:09 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


>> John McAfee cake dick is grounds for hellbanning trebuchet to the 60-pound-drugwall.

> You know you've exceeded your Recommended Daily Allowance of Internet when all the phrases in that sentence make perfect sense to you.


I basically am the Internet and I'm still not clear on what the "cake dick" part means.

no this is not a request for clarification
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:11 PM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


I think this is sort of a Police Academy-type situation: the D-team gets to handle Trump ("You mean that money-laundering New York real estate thug? дерьмо́!") in a stupid bid to fuck with HRC.

Except I think the one to put the offer in writing was Goldstone, not the Russians. I am fairly sure the Russians would have covered their tracks such that nothing subject to a US subpoena could be traced directly to them...
posted by suelac at 3:12 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94: "Police Academy: Mission from Moscow"

Apparently [real]!?!??!? But the movie has the Police Academicians (?) stopping Russian money laundering, instead of the other way around.
posted by TypographicalError at 3:20 PM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


That's Mission TO Moscow! This is a worrisome gap in your knowledge of the cinematic arts
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:22 PM on July 18, 2017 [16 favorites]


WE ARE NOT FIGHTING ABOUT CHAPPAQUIDDICK OMG FFS]

COME VISIT WE CAN FIGHT ABOUT CHAPPAQUIDDICK ON ACTUAL CHAPPAQUIDDICK IF YOU WANNA
posted by vrakatar at 3:26 PM on July 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Does anyone read anything down here or is it just muffled giggling at night so that the neighbours don't wake up?
posted by infini at 3:30 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


It never fails. 2012...

@realDonaldTrump
Obama's complaints about Republicans stopping his agenda are BS since he had full control for two years. He can never take responsibility.
posted by chris24 at 3:32 PM on July 18, 2017 [44 favorites]


Major Accomplishments of the 111th Congress

explodyrage.gif
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:35 PM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


"Police Academy: Mission to Moscow"... when reality starts emulating bad '90s comedies...

It's Time For Hillary Clinton to Gracefully Bow Out Of Public Life (Along with All Other Women)
That's well below New Yorker's usual standard for satire. Maybe the title SHOULD be "(Along With All Other Clintons)". 24 years as a target for Republican slander made Hillary unique. What the Democratic Party needs is a woman with as much experience as Barack Obama had in '08... that's why Kamala Harris' name keeps bubbling to the top.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:38 PM on July 18, 2017


You Can't Tip a Buick: "I basically am the Internet and I'm still not clear on what the "cake dick" part means."

There are about 3-4 regular posters on Metafilter that I'm basically *never* sure what exactly they are talking about. This isn't a criticism, it's just like they're from some reality about 15° askew from mine.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:42 PM on July 18, 2017 [32 favorites]


I have no doubt that if Kamala Harris ran the response would, as always, be "Of course I'd vote for a woman... just not this woman!" That appears to be the current popular form for misogyny to try to fig leaf.
posted by Justinian at 3:42 PM on July 18, 2017 [54 favorites]


24 years as a target for Republican slander made Hillary unique.

And Kamala Harris will be unique because of how much the GOP hates nonwhite women. And Elizabeth Warren because of how much they hate academics. And and and...

Clinton's unique way of being hated by the GOP was an excuse, not a reason.
posted by Etrigan at 3:43 PM on July 18, 2017 [43 favorites]


Also they'd be fine with any woman leading the Democrats in the House except Nancy Pelosi.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 3:47 PM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


Re: "cake dick". See, whatshisname said he would eat his dick on live TV if (XYZ) happened. Here on MetaFilter, though, the standard "I will do this if (XYZ) happens" is to say you will print your words on a cake and eat the cake. Hence, conflating the two concepts together becomes cake dick.

You're welcome.
posted by yhbc at 3:49 PM on July 18, 2017 [22 favorites]


given the revelation of the second conversation at the G20, i'm going to put my pastry where my mouth is and declare that if trump's visit to "Camp David" was not actually spent at putin's dacha in sochi, i will bake a cake in the shape of mcaffee eating his own dick, and eat it
posted by murphy slaw at 3:53 PM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


They must have blown through this season's budget so fast that they had to write a Trump-Putin bottle episode.
posted by Well I Was In The Neighbourhood at 4:01 PM on July 18, 2017 [40 favorites]


There is one thing worth pointing out about Nolan's insipid diatribe - a large part of why Clinton's ratings are so low at the moment is because of people like him, who would rather blame her for Trump winning, as opposed to actually confronting the social dynamics that lead to his rise - because it's easier to make her the scapegoat, rather than confront the long simmering racism and sexism in the US.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:01 PM on July 18, 2017 [21 favorites]


...and the Republicans' "Of course I'd vote for a black man... just not this black man!" worked SO WELL on Barack Obama. He who beat Hillary herself in the primaries. Of course, misogyny is a big problem (Ask the 13th Doctor; misogynists are worse than daleks), but I'm not looking for a White Male Knight to save the party.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:02 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


It kind of sounds to me like Trump thinks he's going to fix the health care bill all by himself now. The vote on the 2015 repeal-lite is being pushed off to next week "at Trump's request," he's having all GOP Senators to the White House tomorrow for a meeting, and he's got the Ohio rally scheduled next week. Oh, and the cost sharing reduction payments are supposed to go out Thursday, and nobody knows if the White House will pay up or not.

Can this thing just stay dead for at least five minutes?
posted by zachlipton at 4:03 PM on July 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


And once again the Democrats are not invited to the Sooper Sekrit Clubhouse because Who gives a shit about them...except when you need a scapegoat?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:08 PM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


to be fair, it would probably be hard for republicans to have a conversation about the bill with all of the democratic senators there laughing their asses off
posted by murphy slaw at 4:11 PM on July 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


@Zeke Miller Inbox: Trump officially nominates Huntsman as Ambassador to Russia

Except that following their rules for introducing mistakes, typos, and other errors whenever possible, the administration has formally announced the nominee as John Huntsman, Jr. rather than Jon. Whoops. Hope it is spelled right on his diplomatic passport.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:12 PM on July 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


Of course, Trump is going to sabotage every part of the ACA that he can administratively touch. And not just because he's trying to ruin it. His method of management is total incompetence. He couldn't even keep CASINOS from going out of business. But then again, maybe, JUST MAYBE, if he intentionally tries to ruin the ACA, he could end up actually strengthening it???
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:15 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


White House statement on "second meeting" goes all in:
There was no "second meeting" between President Trump and President Putin, just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner. The insinuation that the White House has tried to "hide" a second meeting is false, malicious and absurd.
They're basically begging the witnesses (heads of state all) to rat on them.
posted by pjenks at 4:18 PM on July 18, 2017 [34 favorites]


My violent thug congressman doesn't want to be treated as a common criminal from the smallfolk rabble. I bet he was bummed to discover that he can't body-slam every reporter in DC.

Dana Liebelson, HuffPo: Lawmaker Who Assaulted Reporter Fights Court-Ordered Fingerprints, Photos

Gianforte entered his guilty plea on June 12 and was fined $300 and ordered to pay $85 in court costs. He also was given a 6-month deferred sentence and ordered to perform community service, attend anger management counseling and appear at the Gallatin County Detention Center to be photographed and fingerprinted.

But Gianforte demurred from the latter part of his punishment. Just a few days later, his legal team filed a motion arguing that the county’s Justice Court does not have the authority to force him to be fingerprinted or photographed because, among other things, he was neither arrested nor charged with a felony. [...] Gianforte, 56, was silent at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday when HuffPost asked why he was fighting the court order. When asked whether he believed other Montanans cited for misdemeanor assault also shouldn’t be fingerprinted and photographed, he walked into his office without comment.
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:19 PM on July 18, 2017 [65 favorites]


I wish Biden was 10 years younger. He would clean up. I realize he's not quite far enough left for some people but, dammit, I like the guy. And I think he'd do a great job.
posted by Justinian at 4:30 PM on July 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


Gianforte is a thug. I can only assume he is fighting fingerprinting so that they don't find his fingerprints on some old cold cases.
posted by Justinian at 4:31 PM on July 18, 2017 [57 favorites]


The vote on the 2015 repeal-lite is being pushed off to next week "at Trump's request," he's having all GOP Senators to the White House tomorrow for a meeting

52 Senators, plus Trump and presumably any number of his aides, staffers, and personal spawn.

The only way anything actually gets done at a meeting that big is if Putin shows up in person to cut out the middlemen and give them their marching orders directly.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 4:32 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I don't think Gianforte's fighting the fingerprints: he's fighting the mugshot. Too embarrassing for him, too entertaining for us.
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:33 PM on July 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


Gianforte should never be allowed to think we have forgotten he pulled a reporter to the ground and punched him repeatedly in the face and then received a lot of campaign cash for doing so. He should be treated like the thug he is.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:35 PM on July 18, 2017 [39 favorites]


Hypothetical 2020 GEs from Public Policy Polling:

Sanders 52% Trump 39%
Biden 54% Trump 39%
Warren 49% Trump 42%
Booker 45% Trump 40%
Harris 41% Trump 40%

Now, Harris is probably lowest just due to lack of name recognition and relative youth, but gee, can't help but wonder why those numbers drop the second you deviate from old Christian white man.
posted by yasaman at 4:50 PM on July 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


"But Gianforte demurred from the latter part of his punishment."
So many people in jail right now saying "dammit, my lawyer never told me that I could just demur!"
posted by mcduff at 4:50 PM on July 18, 2017 [37 favorites]


If you're not ultra-wealthy, your only investment strategy should be to buy and hold a set of diversified low cost index funds. The "hold" part of it sometimes requires a strong stomach, but historically, holding through the dips has consistently been an incredibly good decision. Remember, when you buy a low-cost diversified index fund, you're buying a share of the entire economy, and as the population increases and technology enables further gains in productivity per worker, the value of that share increases.

Devil's advocate:

1) historically, Trump has never been president before. I am not 100% confident that he does the only intelligent thing here and makes sure that the US doesn't default. I think history gives as much support to the "default is possible" position as the opposite, starting with Trump explicitly proposing that the US default on its debt. Out loud, and in all seriousness.

2) What if, hypothetically, your only equities are in college funds for two kids -- one halfway through college already, and the other a senior in high school likely to begin college in September 2018. So possible gains are minimal, risk of loss is disastrous with no time to recover. Asking for a self.
posted by msalt at 4:53 PM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


I think those PPP numbers track pretty closely to Q Score / name recognition.
posted by notyou at 4:53 PM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Bear in mind that the Republican part hasn't even started smearing Sanders yet. That's got to take some of the wind out of his sails.
posted by puddledork at 4:54 PM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Sanders and Biden will both be 78 in 2020. I mean, that's really pushing it IMHO.
posted by dhens at 4:55 PM on July 18, 2017 [17 favorites]


Looks like FNC is floating Trump's 2020 slogan.

Trump 2020: Eventually we will get something done.
posted by Talez at 4:55 PM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


FWIW, one of my big regrets is not taking the investment advice from Metafilter seriously enough to tell my mother about it prior to the 2008 crash. If I had, she wouldn't have lost the majority of her savings (I wasn't aware of exactly how her investments were placed until it was too late.) If I had bothered to ask her at the time, she wouldn't be 73 and working in retail right now.
posted by threeturtles at 4:57 PM on July 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


can't help but wonder why those numbers drop the second you deviate from old Christian white man.

Sanders, though old, white, and a man, isn't Christian.

I think anyone involved in 2016 needs to take about 8 steps way back for 2020, though. Way too much baggage.
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:57 PM on July 18, 2017 [29 favorites]


Bear in mind that the Republican part hasn't even started smearing Sanders yet. That's got to take some of the wind out of his sails.

If Bernie does win the primary in 2020 his Benghazi is going to be Burlington College. The GOP and their propaganda arms will turn it into Iran-Contra 2020 once they're done.
posted by Talez at 4:58 PM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Hypothetical 2020 GEs from Public Policy Polling:

Skipped the most relevant one!
Zuckerberg 40% Trump 40%
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 4:59 PM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Well, yes, exactly, and he's two points lower than Biden.
posted by yasaman at 4:59 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Not Hillz & not Bernie, please God! They're both great in their own way but I just can't.

Also the thought of watching Trump run again is making me feel sick.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:00 PM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


If the standard form for secret meetings with Russians is followed, we'll get:

1. Have secret meeting.
2. Get found out
3. Deny secret meeting
4. More proof comes out
5. Admit secret meeting happened, but it was no big deal
5. Yet more proof comes out
6. Admit everything in the proof, say 'but you can't prove anything more'.

I'm not quite sure whether we're at stage 3 or 5 yet.
posted by Devonian at 5:01 PM on July 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Ah gotcha. I just kind of zeroed in on the 50s vs. 40s.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:01 PM on July 18, 2017


if we've gotta have someone in their 70s be President I nominate Barbara Lee.

or maybe Lee should be VP on Angela Davis's ticket...
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:05 PM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


5. Admit secret meeting happened, but it was no big deal

We are definitely on 5. because the WH admits that a meeting took place but it was only a few seconds/ it was only dessert.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:07 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


As a generation Xer I really think that we shouldn't have to nominate someone in their 70s. Contrary to popular belief our entire generation wasn't completely made up of losers.
posted by Quonab at 5:09 PM on July 18, 2017 [51 favorites]


Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown, Adam Schiff, Amy Klobuchar, Ted Lieu. I'd take any of them. Let's get Pete Buttigieg and Jason Kander into a federal seat while we're at it.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:09 PM on July 18, 2017 [19 favorites]


Pre-litigating the 2020 primary is the "I'm not touching you!" version of re-litigating the 2016 primary. Don't do it.
posted by 0xFCAF at 5:11 PM on July 18, 2017 [56 favorites]


I think that a "President Whitehouse" is precisely the sort of thing this season's writers would pull.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:11 PM on July 18, 2017 [52 favorites]


Fuck it I want Kander to run in 2020. Qualifications are out the window now, no one needs to run for lower office first.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:12 PM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


If Bernie does win the primary in 2020 his Benghazi is going to be Burlington College. The GOP and their propaganda arms will turn it into Iran-Contra 2020 once they're done.

We'll probably still be unraveling all of the satellite Trumpgate stuff by then.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:13 PM on July 18, 2017


There is a 100% chance that that's conversation was recorded by 10+ different intelligence agencies and that the CIA/NSA has it.
posted by empath at 5:13 PM on July 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Kander was Missouri Secretary of State
posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:14 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


> Contrary to popular belief our entire generation wasn't completely made up of losers.

I mean point taken... but Barbara Lee is still pretty great.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:14 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


As a "Baby Boomer" I agree that we shouldn't have to nominate someone in their 70s. My entire generation WAS completely made up of losers; they're the ones that got us into this mess.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:14 PM on July 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


According to PPP, 29% of Trump's voters would disapprove of him shooting someone on Fifth Avenue.

The personality cult's fully baked in. No proven treason will penetrate it, nor will any other crime of any severity.
posted by Rust Moranis at 5:20 PM on July 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


Zuckerberg 40% Trump 40%

brb gonna go claw my eyes out so i don't have to see zucc's moist humanoid skinball making small talk with iowa farmers in a hometown buffet
posted by Existential Dread at 5:21 PM on July 18, 2017 [17 favorites]


When Roberts, the network’s chief White House correspondent, got up to leave the briefing early, Sanders noticed and joked, "John Roberts is bored today; he's stepping out."

“If it was on camera, I might not be,” Roberts shot back.

He explained on Twitter that he left the briefing early for an appearance on his network.

Warning, popups
Fox is the first to step out? Surprising coincidence. I can't see that being done in a deliberate way "just because".

But, yeah, finally.
posted by tilde at 5:23 PM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


The President of Tunisia is 90 and was elected at 88 after the Arab Spring uprisings. So. 77 and 78 could be doable? Just choose a VP in their 40s!
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:25 PM on July 18, 2017


anyway we're all just going to have to become resigned to the 2020 election being between Zuck(D) and Rock(R).

Let's just hope that Rock(R) is The Rock instead of Kid Rock.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:29 PM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Guys, can we please please please not do the 2020 speculation? We have so much work to do before then.
posted by greermahoney at 5:35 PM on July 18, 2017 [24 favorites]


oneswellfoop: "As a "Baby Boomer" I agree that we shouldn't have to nominate someone in their 70s."

I seem to recall a some amount of commentary around Bill Clinton being the first Baby Boomer president. I don't think many people have commented that Donald Trump is also a Baby Boomer president -- born in 1946, the first year of the Baby Boom as designated by the Census Bureau (pdf link) -- and maybe the last? Probably because he doesn't fit many of the hoary old stereotypes of Baby Boomer-dom.
posted by mhum at 5:36 PM on July 18, 2017


Trump is leaning real hard into the "baby" part of "baby boomer"
posted by juice boo at 5:39 PM on July 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


More like baby doomer amirite?

I'll show myself out
posted by 0xFCAF at 5:41 PM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


(Are others also seeing funny characters scattered over rhizome's comment at 8:28 EST or is the matrix glitching just for me?)

Also, new thread, anyone?
posted by RedOrGreen at 5:42 PM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


Probably because he doesn't fit many of the hoary old stereotypes of Baby Boomer-dom.

He doesn't? I mean... wealthy, owns real estate, guts the environment and social safety net to benefit his generation over future ones, has produced boomerang children. :)
posted by Emily's Fist at 5:45 PM on July 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


I don't think many people have commented that Donald Trump is also a Baby Boomer president -- born in 1946, the first year of the Baby Boom as designated by the Census Bureau (pdf link) -- and maybe the last?

Oh, but do pundits ever disagree there. Donald Trump: 'Me Generation' Boomer-In-Chief (CNN); Donald Trump, Baby Boomer (Slate); and Baby Boomers Have Been a Disaster For America, And Trump Is Their Biggest Mistake Yet (Washington Post).

See also Boomer Bust - Clinton and Trump are two of the oldest presidential candidates ever. When will the Me Generation loosen its grip on American politics?
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:49 PM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Boomer Bust - Clinton and Trump are two of the oldest presidential candidates ever. When will the Me Generation loosen its grip on American politics?

When we pry it from their cold, dead hands!
posted by Justinian at 5:52 PM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


(Are others also seeing funny characters scattered over rhizome's comment at 8:28 EST or is the matrix glitching just for me?)

Have you heard David Brooks talk recently? He has an accent.
posted by rhizome at 5:53 PM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Trump freaking out on twitter about the second meeting
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:06 PM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


RedOrGreen: "(Are others also seeing funny characters scattered over rhizome's comment at 8:28 EST or is the matrix glitching just for me?)

Also, new thread, anyone?
"

Zalgo text (link to a stackoverflow explainer) is a Lovecraftian looking effect that you can get anywhere that Unicode is sold, although I suspect mod fingers are ready to deal with overuse.
posted by TypographicalError at 6:07 PM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


Donny know he done fucked up. Already tweeting/lying about it.

@realDonaldTrump
Fake News story of secret dinner with Putin is "sick." All G 20 leaders, and spouses, were invited by the Chancellor of Germany. Press knew!

@realDonaldTrump
The Fake News is becoming more and more dishonest! Even a dinner arranged for top 20 leaders in Germany is made to look sinister!

---

Uh dude, nobody said the dinner was secret. It was the private talk you didn't tell anyone about.
posted by chris24 at 6:08 PM on July 18, 2017 [37 favorites]


4 days until he can golf again. Will he ragequit before the weekend?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:11 PM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Zalgo text [...]
posted by TypographicalError at 20:07 on July 18 [+] [!]

Eponysterical.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 6:12 PM on July 18, 2017 [17 favorites]


I would like a 2nd grade teacher to write a 140 character tract that explains to Donald Trump that putting quotes around a word does not mean what he thinks it means. Jesus.
posted by xyzzy at 6:14 PM on July 18, 2017 [16 favorites]


I can totally see Donnie thinking he was sneaking in a meeting. But Putin? He absolutely knew there would be no keeping this a secret. He must love this whole thing: He gets to deliver a super-serious-horse-head-in-your-bed message to Trump and he knows it's just going to sow even more chaos.
posted by maxwelton at 6:15 PM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


ELECTIONS NEWS

** Special elections -- Kris Schultz has won in the special election in New Hampshire House Merrimack 18. This is a hold for the Dems; it also continues the trend of outpacing HRC's results - Clinton won the district 59-37, Schultz won it 78-22.

** Healthcare -- NBC/WSJ poll finds support for BCRA is at 12% in key Trump-voting counties. Hopefully, no more updates on healthcare!

** Election integrity:
-- GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner [WI-05] with a WaPo op-ed about his just re-introduced Voting Rights Amendment Act. Co-sponsor is John Conyers, so it's legit.

-- Managers of Romney and Hillary campaigns teaming up to, "develop ways to share key threat information with political campaigns and state and local election offices; create “playbooks” for election officials to improve cybersecurity; and forge strategies for the United States to deter adversaries from engaging in hacks and information operations." [WP]

-- New lawsuit against Kobach commission from the NAACP LDF. Multiple grounds, including 15th Amendment concerns. This is at least 7 federal lawsuits against the commission.

-- Dems on House Oversight have formally asked for Kobach's resignation.
** Odds & ends:
-- Bloomberg poll finds favorables of GOP, Ryan, Trump all crashing since December. Dems have been steady.

-- A Michigan group has launched ballot measure to put redistricting in hands of independent commission rather than the legislature. MI is one of the more gerrymandered states, this could result in a few Dem pickups.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:24 PM on July 18, 2017 [58 favorites]


With healthcare bill derailed, GOP wonders: What now? (The Hill)
The stunning collapse of ObamaCare repeal on Tuesday forced Republicans to confront a sobering reality: Their party and agenda are in a deep hole, and it’s not going to be easy to get out.

Republicans have campaigned on repealing and replacing ObamaCare for the past seven years but find themselves unable to deliver on that promise despite having unified control of Congress and the White House.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:25 PM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


UPCOMING SPECIAL ELECTIONS - AUGUST

Boilerplate: Lots of law comes out of state legislatures, plenty of it bad. These elections don't get much attention, doubly so for special elections. Because of the small scope, a small amount of your money or time could help elect these folks! Please pitch in, if you can!

Previously noted: July elections. The NH Senate 16 on July 25 is getting a lot of attention, since the NH Senate is fairly narrowly GOP, and the GOP is abusing their trifecta, so both parties are trying to make 2018 easier.

New: August elections
August 8 -- Iowa House District 82 -- Phil Miller

HD-82 is currently a D seat (the incumbent passed away); the D ran unopposed in 2016, won 52-48 in 2014, and won 59-41 in 2012. District went for Trump 58-37, and for Obama 50-48. The Rs control the Iowa House by about 20 seats.

=> This is probably a decent pickup opportunity for the Rs, given how the region swung towards Trump.

====

August 8 -- Missouri Senate District 28 -- Albert Skalicky

SD-28 is currently an R seat (the incumbent was appointed Lt. Governor); no D ran in 2014 or 2010. No 2016 presidential breakdown yet, but district went for Romney 68-30. The Rs control the Missouri Senate by about 15 seats.

=> Well, this is a reach, but at least we're running someone this time.

====

August 8 -- Missouri House District 50 -- Michela Skelton

HD-50 is currently an R seat (the incumbent resigned to join the governor's staff); no D ran in 2016, 2014, or 2012. No 2016 presidential breakdown yet, but district went for Romney 60-38. The Rs control the Missouri House by about 70 seats.

=> Again, have to start somewhere, and you never know.

====

August 22 -- Rhode Island Senate District 13 -- Dawn Euer

SD-13 is currently a D seat (the incumbent resigned to take a non-government job); the D won 68-32 (against an independent) in 2016, won 55-45 in 2014, and 70-30 in 2012. The district went for Clinton 65-30, and for Obama 65-33. The D's control the Rhode Island senate by about 25 seats (one might reasonably question the need for Rhode Island to have quite so many legislators).

=> This looks like a fairly safe D hold.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:29 PM on July 18, 2017 [34 favorites]


Chris Christie took in a Mets game today - and caught a foul ball. Mets fans rose to the occasion.
posted by adamg at 6:29 PM on July 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


If Bernie does win the primary in 2020 his Benghazi is going to be Burlington College.

Bernie Sanders has several unexplored vulnerabilities; don't forget that he never released his taxes, except for the most recent year (after he knew he would be running for president and could clean it up.) There's also the Sierra Blanca nuclear waste dump he pushed through Congress, paying his wife and daughter-in-law out of campaign funds, hiring his wife to a job in Burlington government when he was mayor, columns he wrote with weird ideas about sex and cancer, etc.
posted by msalt at 6:38 PM on July 18, 2017 [26 favorites]


Sort of funny seeing critics of misogyny and racism in candidate selection blithely declare apparently healthy people in their 70s to be simply too old. Just saying.
posted by spitbull at 6:54 PM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Whatever might happen in a 2020 primary, I hope we can find some way to not have any candidate's former campaign chair preside over it. That seems like something which shouldn't even be possible in the first place.
posted by XMLicious at 6:55 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


>> (Are others also seeing funny characters scattered over rhizome's comment at 8:28 EST or is the matrix glitching just for me?)

> Zalgo text is a Lovecraftian looking effect that you can get anywhere that Unicode is sold


Ahhh, it looked much weirder on Mobile Safari. On my computer it looks "normal" and familiar enough - I guess I'd never seen it rendered on my phone before.

Carry on.
posted by RedOrGreen at 6:56 PM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Hey, you folks remember how way back 11 billion years ago, there were a bunch of stories about how the government was going to pay a bunch of money to lease space in Trump Tower so the White House Military Office could support Trump while he's there? Turns out, per WSJ, they did that, to the tune of $130K/month, except Trump doesn't hang out in Trump Tower, so money well spent, right?

The space is supposedly being leased from a private owner, not from Trump, but it still seems like a rather poor use of funds.
posted by zachlipton at 6:58 PM on July 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


Sex and cancer? Never heard of 'em.
posted by vrakatar at 7:00 PM on July 18, 2017


Oh, and further to that NH House special: in 2013 specials, Dems ran 12 points behind Obama on average. This year, Dems running *ahead* of Clinton by 12.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:03 PM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Sort of funny seeing critics of misogyny and racism in candidate selection blithely declare apparently healthy people in their 70s to be simply too old. Just saying.

I don't have very many relatives that got to 80 from 70. And many had significant health issues despite having survived a depression, privation and a war or two.

Its not to diminish from their value as a person - in fact, I would love to have my grandmother back and would murder any number of you to do it - but rather that the demands of being President are substantial.

Plus if it were up to me, retirement at 55 would be mandatory.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:04 PM on July 18, 2017 [26 favorites]


The stunning collapse of ObamaCare repeal on Tuesday

Stunning? It was not stunning.
posted by Melismata at 7:05 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


"... repeal"
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:06 PM on July 18, 2017


The stunning collapse of ObamaCare

Stunning? It was not stunning.


Obamacare was stunning. As a former cancer patient, it's an amazing improvement.


It's just not collapsed.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:07 PM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


August 8 -- Missouri House District 50 -- Michela Skelton

HD-50 is currently an R seat (the incumbent resigned to join the governor's staff); no D ran in 2016, 2014, or 2012. No 2016 presidential breakdown yet, but district went for Romney 60-38. The Rs control the Missouri House by about 70 seats.

=> Again, have to start somewhere, and you never know.



The good news is that district encompasses Columbia.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:17 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


he doesn't fit many of the hoary old stereotypes of Baby Boomer-dom.

Only the ones about draft-dodging and turning into a monumentally selfish money-obsessed asshole? (Although he was ahead of the curve on the second one since he was always like that, it took the rest of the Boomers until the '80's to catch up!)
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 7:26 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Plus if it were up to me, retirement at 55 would be mandatory.

Well that's nice but there's demographic reasons for raising, not lowering, the retirement age. On average people are living longer and healthier. And I know dozens of highly effective and mentally sharp septuagenarians.
posted by spitbull at 7:28 PM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


More disturbingly: what has become of the top brass of Russia’s spy network? Has Moscow’s opinion of the US really fallen so low that it phones espionage operations in via the D-Squad?


It is because Natasha Fatale and Boris Badenov were known to be members of Local 12 of the Villains, Thieves, and Scoundrels Union and thus the Republican presidential could not have anything to do with the no-goodniks. Because they were in union. Not because they were Villains, Thieves or Scoundrels. Or spies.
posted by srboisvert at 7:30 PM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


More disturbingly: what has become of the top brass of Russia’s spy network? Has Moscow’s opinion of the US really fallen so low that it phones espionage operations in via the D-Squad?

Spies caught in the US get deported or turned.

Either way, that's definitely the place to send the D-Squad.
posted by ocschwar at 7:31 PM on July 18, 2017


he doesn't fit many of the hoary old stereotypes of Baby Boomer-dom.

A TV obsessed, draft-dodging (but not anti-war), adulterating, selfish, lying asshole ?

As a Gen-Xer, I don't really care, because I was raised by those uptight asshats. "Don't talk during M.A.S.H." "don't play D&D" "Don't listen to rock music". They've always been full of shit.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:33 PM on July 18, 2017 [43 favorites]


Well that's nice but there's demographic reasons for raising, not lowering, the retirement age.

Please tell me this doesn't refer to Social Security. Rich white collar people in good health can delay retirement to 67 or later. Many, MANY people who are not one of those things are desperate to claim reduced benefits as early as possible because that's their only income at age 62. Increasing the retirement age is a crime against humanity.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:38 PM on July 18, 2017 [44 favorites]


No, I wasn't talking about social security, but about the injustice of ageism. I mean my mom is 80, just retired from a 50 year career as a nurse, and within two months she started taking fill in shifts because she missed working, not for the money. She goes to church almost every day and thinks nothing of a 6 hour drive. Lots of 55 year olds who lose jobs can't get hired again at the same level even when they want to work. I'm talking about age discrimination, not money.

She is neither "rich" nor "white collar." (But nurses can always work.)
posted by spitbull at 7:41 PM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


No talking during M*A*S*H is a perfectly fine rule. Getting mad about that is like getting mad that Jimmy Carter told us all to turn the heat down and put on a damned sweater.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 7:41 PM on July 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


Also worth pointing out that the presidents most beloved of liberals -- FDR and Kennedy -- served with serious health issues throughout their time in office.
posted by spitbull at 7:45 PM on July 18, 2017


Here are two feel good stories from the Washington Post, first from Fahrenthold, business is way down at Trump's LA golf course: Is the presidency good for Trump’s business? Not necessarily at this golf course. For the past two years business has been declining for greens fees, pro-am and celebrity tournaments, filming permits, and weddings and events rentals. Sad! (not actually sad)

Also, from Antonio Olivo, Va. transgender candidate raised nearly 20 times more than GOP opponent in June:
Democrat Danica Roem, the transgender ex-journalist who is challenging Del. Robert G. Marshall in Prince William County, far outpaced the conservative Republican in fundraising last month, an early indication that her campaign is drawing significant interest from inside and outside Virginia.

Roem, 32, raised $85,637 between June 2 and June 30, according to campaign disclosures released Monday by the Virginia Department of Elections. Marshall, 73, collected $4,585 during the same period.

The two candidates offer stark differences to voters in the changing 13th District, with Roem pushing to be the first openly transgender person elected in Virginia, and Marshall, a longtime foil to the LGBT community, reflecting a conservative streak that remains in the area he has represented since 1992.
That's a bit of an understatement as Bob Marshall is truly a garbage person who's greatest hits include sponsoring Va's constitutional ban on same sex marriage, introducing a bathroom bill, proposing a ban on IUDs and oral contraceptives, supporting forced trans-vaginal ultrasounds before legal abortions, proposing that teachers be required to carry concealed handguns in public schools, and too much more awfulness to list.

The delegate seat they are competing for is one of the priority elections on flippable.
posted by peeedro at 7:45 PM on July 18, 2017 [32 favorites]


She is able however, and many people her age are not due to heavy labor in youth, and therefore to raise the retirement age would be horrifically amoral.

Your mom sounds nice though.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 7:47 PM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Nursing is heavy labor. In case you didn't know that. Healthy people who want to work in their 70s should be able to do so without being labeled as too old to work a priori. I said nothing about damn social security. I was responding to comments saying "70 is too old to be president."
posted by spitbull at 7:49 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Older people shouldn't be discriminated against provided age and health are not a material impediment to their ability to do the job.
People should not be required or expected to work into old age, particularly if age or health are an impediment in their line of work.

Hopefully we can all agree on that and leave that particular derail there?

But there's a totally different question about electing 70 year old baby boomers, regardless of whether they're qualified or capable. Are they, presumptively, unrepresentative? I don't necessarily agree that they are, but there is an argument to be made there, and it's a fair topic for a politics thread.
posted by dirge at 7:56 PM on July 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


Bernie will be 79 on election day in 2020, not 70. If he makes it through two terms, he'll be 87 when his term ends. And yeah, I have some concerns about whether that's a good idea.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:59 PM on July 18, 2017 [41 favorites]


peeedro: "The delegate seat they are competing for is one of the priority elections on flippable."

Yeah, I'll do the preview for those in a couple of days? I need to do the WA specials tomorrow.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:00 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


fluttering hellfire: "The good news is that district encompasses Columbia."

Looks like it cuts out Columbia proper, though? I don't claim to know the area, but from the map, it mostly seems to be a lot of nothing between Columbia and Jefferson City.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:02 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


he'll be 87 when his term ends

Sure, and at that point it's probably reasonable to suggest that age/health is an impediment to his ability to do his job, an important component of which is the ability to inspire confidence that he'll be able to see it through to the end.

That said, he's probably slightly more representative, politically, of younger Democrats than most people his age.
posted by dirge at 8:03 PM on July 18, 2017


Actually Bernie is getting slammed on Twitter right now for taking credit for helping stop the Trumpcare bill. Many women/disability activists are not having it.
posted by emjaybee at 8:06 PM on July 18, 2017 [25 favorites]


Can we not have any more Boomers, just because I'm sick of Boomer Politics? Like, just sick unto death.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:08 PM on July 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


Ugh yeah, looks like it has a little CoMo in there, but not all. Still, I hope their blue bleeds over. This is why I'm all hyphy about McCaskill's race and current efforts. It's part of the momentum.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:10 PM on July 18, 2017


Never trust anyone over... Umm... A couple years older than me, I guess?
posted by dirge at 8:11 PM on July 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Can we not have any more Boomers, just because I'm sick of Boomer Politics?

I'd also be okay with not so much of white guys for a while.

For the record, I am a white guy, but I pledge not to run for President.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:14 PM on July 18, 2017 [22 favorites]


Missouri is a lot of nothing between a handful of point of somethings, but in those nothings is killer camping and hiking. If there's one thing this state does well it's the state park system.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:17 PM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'd also be okay with not so much of white guys for a while.

I agree with that but I gotta say, apropos of my comment earlier in this thread, if you're running against Trump in the general and have a D next to your name I'm pulling the lever. Boring white guy. Exciting non-white woman. Androgynous genderbending person. Whatever, I'm pulling the lever.
posted by Justinian at 8:17 PM on July 18, 2017 [72 favorites]



I know that there are many more important things that have happened and it's likely my brain focusing on something simple for some psychological protection sake but I can't seem to get over and stop boggling at Trump playing in the fire truck. The first truck picture and this new firetruck one are being posted all over the place and my brain just doesn't want to accept that HE DID IT AGAIN. He got into that truck, did the same 'honk honk woo woo look and me. firemen yeah!' and the same idiotic and pathetic manchild picture was taken.

I'm 40+ so have been around for many US Presidents. The feeling I now have about the US is bizzare. It doesn't feel like there is a President and anyone in charge right now. I never felt this way during other Presidents that I had issues with like Bush. He still was President. Now I find myself regularly having to remind myself that actually yes, there is actually a physical and very real President.

Not sure I'm explaining it very well. It's really weird.
posted by Jalliah at 8:24 PM on July 18, 2017 [69 favorites]


For the record, I am a white guy, but I pledge not to run for President.

They just don't make white guys like they used to. Always checking their privilege, white guys, these days. Not running for president and such-like. What'll become of the country, I wonder, with white guys like that?
posted by dirge at 8:26 PM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Scrolled back a bit to look for more on this, and found nothing, so, according to MSNBC, the second Putin Trump meeting at the G20 did occur in the middle of a bigger dinner with leaders and spouses and not privately, just as Trump tweeted. There's some concern that Trump didn't have his own translator, but let's not go birther on this.
posted by notyou at 8:31 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


For the record, I am a white guy, but I pledge not to run for President.

They just don't make white guys like they used to. Always checking their privilege, white guys, these days. Not running for president and such-like. What'll become of the country, I wonder, with white guys like that?
posted by dirge at 12:26 PM on July 19 [+] [!]


I am a white guy and I pledge to vote for anyone, white guy or not, who will bring us toward a fairer, safer, less discriminatory, more inclusive, and more competently governed society.

And now, speaking as a white man, shut up saysthis.
posted by saysthis at 8:33 PM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Scrolled back a bit to look for more on this, and found nothing, so, according to MSNBC, the second Putin Trump meeting at the G20 did occur in the middle of a bigger dinner with leaders and spouses and not privately, just as Trump tweeted. There's some concern that Trump didn't have his own translator, but let's not go birther on this.

Eh, it was a little more than that. It was during the dinner, yes, but the two of them went off to the side with just Putin's translator where nobody else could hear and talked for an hour, with their motorcades among the last to leave the dinner. See also the NYT report.
posted by zachlipton at 8:39 PM on July 18, 2017 [35 favorites]


Trump and Putin had a first meeting and a last meeting. There was no second meeting.
posted by perhapses at 8:44 PM on July 18, 2017


So he cornered Putin at a dinner party for an hour?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:44 PM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


I know. You almost feel sorry for Putin. Almost.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 8:49 PM on July 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


The failure of Obamacare repeal marks Mitch McConnell’s lowest point as Senate GOP leader.

Despite having a Republican in the White House, full GOP control of Congress and seven years of campaign promises — “pulling out Obamacare root and branch,” as the Kentucky Republican famously declared — McConnell acknowledged this week that he didn’t have the votes to even start debate on replacing the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

It’s a serious defeat for McConnell, and one that leaves deep bitterness among rank-and-file GOP senators, as moderates and conservatives blamed each other over who is at fault for the setback.

It’s also a blow to McConnell’s reputation as a master legislator and raises doubts in the White House about what Senate Republicans can actually deliver for President Donald Trump. McConnell, like Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), finds himself caught between the factions in his own party. And like Ryan, McConnell hasn’t demonstrated that he knows how to resolve the dispute.
- Health care collapse a blow to McConnell
posted by Barack Spinoza at 8:51 PM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


McConnell: master legislator or just a master b...
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:52 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Read that NYT report. Read the WaPo! The meeting is sourced in both to the Ian Bremerton report of an hour long meeting between the two. The press wasn't there, but the pool reporter noted that the Trump motorcade left a few minutes after Putin's. Here are some comments from observers about how weird it seemed Trump and Putin would talk with only a Russian translator, but come on! There were dozens of people in the room. Not a lot there. Let's simmer down.
posted by notyou at 8:55 PM on July 18, 2017


Now Trump Vodka makes sense!
posted by perhapses at 8:58 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'll simmer a little, but Trump initiated it like some obnoxious wedding guest. He was obvs eager to see him and get him alone.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:59 PM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


He. should. know. better. That's just simple incompetence.

It's not incompetence at this point. Ever. It's intentional treason.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:06 PM on July 18, 2017 [30 favorites]


White House explanation: Other leaders weren't talking to Putin and Trump felt bad that Vlad looked lonely so he went over to talk to him. What's the big deal? [fake]
posted by perhapses at 9:10 PM on July 18, 2017


Deedra Abboud is a Muslim woman running for the AZ Senate seat, and because people are awful, she's been getting a ton of shit. Jeff Flake - the guy she's running against - sent a kind tweet telling her to hang in there.

Yes, I know this is the bare minimum of human decency. But think if she was running against, say, Steve King.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:12 PM on July 18, 2017 [55 favorites]


You know who I am appreciating at this point? Mueller. Guy's a pro, like he's ducked behind a couch or a little garbage car and you can't even see him. No Anonymous US Official "leaks" seem to be coming from his domain. His spokesman's job is to decline comment. No soap opera bullshit. Occasionally I read he has hired some other professional. Everything else is a damn clown show, good at least this guy is treating the matter seriously.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 9:13 PM on July 18, 2017 [80 favorites]


Interesting development. Rep. Barbara Lee had an amendment in the defense appropriations bill that would have revoked the post-9/11 AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force) in eight months, thus requiring Congress to debate and come up with new terms for the War on Terror. The leadership hated it, but much to everyone's surprise, the amendment passed the Armed Services Committee with bipartisan support.

Anyway, Rep. Lee tweets tonight that Speaker Ryan stripped the amendment out "in the dead of night. This is underhanded & undemocratic. The people deserve a debate!"
posted by zachlipton at 9:18 PM on July 18, 2017 [75 favorites]


Damn it. How the hell can even a Republican think that the President having unrestrained warmaking powers is a remotely good idea at this point.
posted by XMLicious at 9:24 PM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Well, Ryan (among some others) needs some irresponsible warmaking from the Trump House to distract from what he's doing...
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:27 PM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


It's concerning for a few reasons:

Another reason: let's recall what happened the last time the President had a nice friendly chat with a couple of Russians. He blurted out classified intel gathered by the Israelis, as part of bragging about how important he is. God only knows what inappropriate, damaging, batshit-insane and/or dangerous info he blabbed about one of the many, many subjects he's unqualified to talk about during this hour-long conversation. This is a guy who has zero impulse control and can't stay on script during a 5 minute purely ceremonial presser.

He shouldn't be allowed to order a fucking pizza without a crew of minders.

Even if it was entirely innocuous, Jesus, how can anyone anywhere, especially a roomful of US allies, trust a guy who is so completely arrogant and clueless? If your boss suspects you of violating company policy by shagging your student intern, how dumb and reckless do you have to be to cuddle up on the couch with said intern for an extended period at the office holiday party in full view of your coworkers?
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:29 PM on July 18, 2017 [75 favorites]


Interesting development. Rep. Barbara Lee had an amendment in the defense appropriations bill that would have revoked the post-9/11 AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force) in eight months, thus requiring Congress to debate and come up with new terms for the War on Terror. The leadership hated it, but much to everyone's surprise, the amendment passed the Armed Services Committee with bipartisan support.

Anyway, Rep. Lee tweets tonight that Speaker Ryan stripped the amendment out "in the dead of night. This is underhanded & undemocratic. The people deserve a debate!"
posted by zachlipton at 1:18 PM on July 19 [3 favorites +] [!]


Who should we call? How do we turn this into a major campaign issue? How do we get more Democrats talking about this, and force Ryan and the rest of the R's to publicly defend and debate this?
posted by saysthis at 9:29 PM on July 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


Even if it was entirely innocuous, Jesus, how can anyone anywhere, especially a roomful of US allies, trust a guy who is so completely arrogant and clueless?

US allies can't. But Republicans have to get those tax cuts.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:33 PM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Here's the video of Dana Rohrbacher making a strong showing as he tries to say something as stupid as Trump did, in this case asking NASA if there was a civilization on Mars thousands of years ago or maybe billions, whatever.
posted by scalefree at 10:06 PM on July 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


How does Ryan have any control of the text?
posted by ctmf at 10:08 PM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


I can imagine that Rohrbacher question being cute when asked by a second grade student on a field trip to NASA.
posted by perhapses at 10:13 PM on July 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Boomer Bust - Clinton and Trump are two of the oldest presidential candidates ever. When will the Me Generation loosen its grip on American politics?

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

You've been telling lies so long
Some believe they're true
So they close their eyes to things
You have no right to do
Just as soon as you are gone
Hope will start to climb
Please don't stay around too long
You're wasting precious time

posted by mikelieman at 10:22 PM on July 18, 2017


Can someone please eli5 the Barbara Lee thing? Is what Ryan did allowed just unpopular? Or did he break a rule? Need more info, please, if anyone is willing to explain.
posted by greermahoney at 10:45 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


I've been looking for an hour, and I can't find either the amendment or where it was removed in the congressional record. (It's not an easy thing to browse)
posted by ctmf at 10:50 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


When does Mattis snap and just go Vulcan death grip on Trump
posted by angrycat at 11:31 PM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


When does Mattis snap and just go Vulcan death grip on Trump

Not before he gets his war with Iran.
posted by PenDevil at 11:33 PM on July 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


The amendment is over here (in a tweet anyway); you'll find it buried in an earlier version of the appropriations bill. I'm not positive on the mechanics of where it was removed, and I'd be up all night trying to trace through the details of the committee markups looking for it, and there's a good chance that information isn't online, but my hunch is that it got removed somewhere in the Rules Committee, where everything goes to die. There's nothing inherently against the rules about it being removed (AFAIK), and it's frankly not surprising that it's gone, but the thing unexpectedly made it in with bipartisan support.

It's not sustainable for us to be fighting a vastly different war nearly 16 years later based on the 2001 AUMF. Somehow or another, there needs to be an actual Congressional policy for what we're trying to achieve and what the military is allowed to do to accomplish it.
posted by zachlipton at 11:45 PM on July 18, 2017 [67 favorites]


Thank you, Zachlipton.
posted by greermahoney at 11:47 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]




Maybe we're misinterpreting this whole thing

When Trump wondered in 2013 if Putin would be his best friend; what if he is

What if they just get together to talk about Pokemon
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:40 AM on July 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


I have a horrible feeling that that's basically the truth: the other G20 leaders are mean and laugh at him, but Putin is nice and listens to him, even when he forgets the ending to his stories. So he got bored at dinner and went to sit with his friend because he wasn't allowed to go home yet. And he told Putin about the time he got to drive the truck, and Putin told him the story about the bad people in London and what happened to them, and they had a really good time together until the man with the car came to pick him up.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:01 AM on July 19, 2017 [78 favorites]


Mod note: A couple deleted. Folks, please cut it out with the various derails. And when the news is slow (apparently anything less than full on breakneck whirlwind whatthefuckery), instead of just hanging out in here picking desultory fights with your compadres, consider visiting other threads and giving some love to our hardworking NOT AMERICAN POLITICS posters?
posted by taz (staff) at 4:06 AM on July 19, 2017 [58 favorites]


So I posted a long anonymous rant from a Breitbart-type. Which got deleted, which I understand It was infuriating.

But it was a little more articulate and honest than most such rants, and I have been thinking ever since I read it about what I would say to that guy. The jist of it was "You liberals hate me. You judge all my life choices, from the junk food I eat to the football I watch to the slang I use. You write articles about how you are waiting for my kind to die off or be diluted out. If you want me to take you seriously, stop judging me. And offer something that helps ME, not all these other demographics you tell me I'm supposed to care about more than myself, ME. Stop telling me I have to give up all these supposed privileges I have and tell me you are on my side."

It is a selfish and ignorant and short sighted. Me me me. But I think it is kind of understandable from a human point of view. We all indulge in that kind of selfishness sometimes. I keep trying to figure out what to say to guys like this... And I am trying out my ideas on actual Breitbart commenters.

What "positive message" can we give them? Oh I know, everyone just says we have to turn out the non-voters.... But... I think a lot of non-voters feel the same way. Besides, every one of these guys we flip counts double, since it's not just one more vote for a Democrat, it is also one less vote for Trump. And because even if we beat them at the polls they could still be dangerous in the streets.

Anyway, here is my latest response to someone who literally asked "What is in it for me if I for a Democrat" on the Breitbart Facebook page. I'm curious what you guys think of this message.
Look, automation is destroying jobs. It is emptying out rural areas. Mines are automated, factories are automated, combines do the work of dozens of people on farms.

And stuff that can't be automated gets more and more expensive compared to all the cheap stuff that is made in those factories and grown on those farms.

Wages are high enough to buy a big Mac or a used car, but stuff that can't be automated gets more and more expensive in comparison and wages don't keep up. Health care. Education. Childcare. Pensions - you can't automate work that has already been done.

We all have houses full of crap but pretty soon only billionaires will be able to afford to see a doctor. It is called Baumol's cost disease. Look it up!

Right now neither party has a solution to this problem. But the Democrats at least sort of recognize that it is a problem. And they want to get the money to help people pay for that stuff from the only people who have a lot of money these days... The corporations who own those automated factories, who are making record profits because they don't have to pay employees.

Republicans are like "oh, blame the immigrants, blame Muslims" whatever. It's the robots that are taking our jobs. And we can't turn back the clock. It's not going to work. Technology is not going back to the 50s and neither is society.

That's what is in it for us. Some help paying for health care and doctors and pensions for now. And facing our real problems so we can try to solve them. Not pretending we can go back in time.
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:51 AM on July 19, 2017 [49 favorites]


The ADL released a list of some of the who's who of alt-right (and """alt-lite""") scumbags, some of whom have been around since GamerGate.

(Predictably, they're being swarmed by anti-semites, MAGA Hats, and employees of think tanks to try to... defame them.)

Link to the ADL's comment that attracted the most hate. Although they are firing with full guns from multiple Twitter accounts and tweets. They're not being apologetics or shying back from the truth of who these people are. It's amazing and glorious and the SPLC is really going to have to step up their game.
posted by Yowser at 4:59 AM on July 19, 2017 [24 favorites]


The fire truck episode, and how it duplicated his big rig experience, is more evidence that Trump is miserable. He or his handlers keep trying to manage his emotions by providing fun and uplifting experiences that aren't golfing at his private club (see also: Bastille Day Parade, campaign rallies, etc.) and it's not working very well; Trump's refractory period, as it were, is shrinking and he needs more chum to sustain him. It's like narcissistic supply, in a way.

Full disclosure: A few months ago my brother and I sold our late mother's home to people who wanted to close within a matter of weeks. Thus began a grueling period cleaning it out and dealing with all of the estate stuff. At one point, the fire inspectors arrived to make sure our smoke and CO detectors complied with state law... in the hook and ladder! It was glorious and we clustered around the cab, giddy with happiness. We each had our photos taken behind the wheel. We are both in our mid 50s, but we were giggling like little kids. Our lives were that bleak, and it stands out even now as one of the best things that happened during a thoroughly rotten period.
posted by carmicha at 5:00 AM on July 19, 2017 [61 favorites]


A few other points about the Trump-Putin tête-à-tête... Putin speaks English well, which makes me question whether the other Russian was really a "translator." I don't know who his assigned dinner partner was, but Putin was seated next to Melania, which makes Trump's behavior weirder and ruder; he left his wife in a social lurch. Intriguing speculation: Trump thought Putin was hitting on Melania and intervened, not to help her but to guard his "property." Another intriguing possibility: Putin was hitting on Melania as a dominance play.
posted by carmicha at 5:10 AM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Putin speaks English well, which makes me question whether the other Russian was really a "translator."

Probably the dude wearing the wire to record their conversation.
posted by PenDevil at 5:12 AM on July 19, 2017 [16 favorites]


Re that Trump-Putin conversation at G20... I just can't believe one of Trump's people wasn't there to cut in with "Uh, Mr. President, a quick word, please" or at least mouthing THIS LOOKS REALLY BAD behind Putin's back or something. Is there no such competent person in his entourage? Or would this violate some VIP protocol at this kind of gathering?

I mean, I'm glad it happened, to the extent that this is one more horrible optic for Trump, but I'm just surprised it did.
posted by Rykey at 5:22 AM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Look, automation is destroying jobs. It is emptying out rural areas. Mines are automated, factories are automated, combines do the work of dozens of people on farms.

Automation is happening all over the world, but in some countries, workers are acquiring the skills needed to man the robots and thus increase productivity. And a fully automated plant works just as well in a small town as in a big city. But if the local government won't prioritize taxes to pay for education, a small town will loose jobs. To be honest, I think the movement towards the urban areas is about to reverse itself soon — or rather, it has begun already. Costs are driving all those businesses that are not dependent on city life out. But only rural areas which have planned for it will be able to reap the gains of that reversal. You need good education and infrastructure, and a mindset which is open to change.
IMO, the message for the many who feel left behind is that this will change and they need to vote for those who are ready to facilitate that change. Looking back is not the way. Unfortunately, many liberals have been so caught up in urban renewal (which is also important) that they have forgotten how to support the smaller towns and rural areas. So before the next election they need to get going.
posted by mumimor at 5:30 AM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


3. It was a nearly hour-long conversation, which suggests a substantive conversation (but needn't, to be fair, demand it);

He probably gave Putin the entire region of New England and spent the rest of the time playing with toy trucks.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 5:37 AM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


In Canada, urbanization has crept up from 77% to 82% in less than half my (not too extensive)lifetime. That's what we call a breakneck pace.

Small towns aren't coming back.
posted by Yowser at 5:38 AM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Does Melania speak Russian?

Stuck-in-the-80s Donny TwoScoops sees Pootz as the only world leader there to get major press, hence the only valid world leader. Unlike that Monkonegrie guy, what a loser. Anyway, pull Pootz aside and have some straight-talk art-of-the-deal conversations like:

"Of course we'll give your spy compounds back, I just have to sign some crap say that minds me, you get that thing I sent ya about some beautiful new real estate in Sochi? So classy, this'll be the biggest, believe me you should get in on this. Also when does the Rose-nerf money get here? Can you just jail all the journalists? Like how do you do that. Did you see the Japanese translator? [gross sex comment]".

Wrong, damaging, stupid, ignorant, collusional, typical. Of course we should blow it up, it's more of the same from these cheating crooks and bastards.
posted by petebest at 5:40 AM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


> 3. It was a nearly hour-long conversation, which suggests a substantive conversation (but needn't, to be fair, demand it);

It's actually not that long, after you factor in 45 minutes or so of handshaking at the beginning..

---

From George Monbiot: A despot in disguise: one man’s mission to rip up democracy - James McGill Buchanan’s vision of totalitarian capitalism has infected public policy in the US. Now it’s being exported
It’s the missing chapter: a key to understanding the politics of the past half century. To read Nancy MacLean’s new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, is to see what was previously invisible.

The history professor’s work on the subject began by accident. In 2013 she stumbled across a deserted clapboard house on the campus of George Mason University in Virginia. It was stuffed with the unsorted archives of a man who had died that year whose name is probably unfamiliar to you: James McGill Buchanan. She says the first thing she picked up was a stack of confidential letters concerning millions of dollars transferred to the university by the billionaire Charles Koch. [cont...]
---

> Does Melania speak Russian?

Nope, just Slovenian, English, French, Serbian and German. Although guessing there's crossover with the Baltic languages.
posted by Buntix at 5:46 AM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


IIRC Putin speaks German very well. He came up in East Germany.
posted by some loser at 5:49 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


You judge all my life choices

I would never say this if I was trying to persuade anyone but... that is some fragile white masculinity right there. People are judging your life choices? Welcome to life for literally everyone else. It sucks, doesn't it?
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:49 AM on July 19, 2017 [64 favorites]


"Stop telling me I have to give up all these supposed privileges I have and tell me you are on my side."

Drop the privileges through policy, and we'll talk. That's the most generous offer I could make.
posted by rc3spencer at 5:56 AM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump
I will be having lunch at the White House today with Republican Senators concerning healthcare. They MUST keep their promise to America!

@realDonaldTrump
The Republicans never discuss how good their healthcare bill is, & it will get even better at lunchtime.The Dems scream death as OCare dies! [my bold]

---

WTfuckingF?
posted by chris24 at 6:00 AM on July 19, 2017 [31 favorites]


it will get even better at lunchtime.The Dems scream death [...]

Maybe avoid the lunch special at the cafeteria today.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 6:02 AM on July 19, 2017 [39 favorites]


Sounds like Bannon got hold of the Twitter phone.
posted by PenDevil at 6:03 AM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


it will get even better at lunchtime.The Dems scream death as OCare dies!

... holy unhinged POTUS, Batman!
posted by lydhre at 6:09 AM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


The Dems scream death as OCare dies!

This was my favorite track on the last Fallout Boy album.
posted by Etrigan at 6:10 AM on July 19, 2017 [48 favorites]


The Republicans never discuss how good their healthcare bill is

I mean, it's generally impolite to come out of the bathroom and brag about the dump you took.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:10 AM on July 19, 2017 [21 favorites]


Republicans now cannot wait for McCain to die - presumably because they get to fill his seat with a free Nazi instead of a reluctant party line voter with "concerns".
posted by Artw at 6:10 AM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


> The Republicans never discuss how good their healthcare bill is, & it will get even better at lunchtime.The Dems scream death as OCare dies!

A boy has never wept, nor dashed a thousand kim.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:11 AM on July 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


You know who I am appreciating at this point? Mueller.

Ditto! It would be weird to dress up as him for Halloween, right? Grey hair, suit, briefcase. It would fit with my lifelong theme of "Costumes I Think Are Awesome That Nobody Else Gets".
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:15 AM on July 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


The Dems scream death as OCare dies!

are these the same dems you keep saying need to work with you?
posted by pyramid termite at 6:15 AM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Hey, Jimmie! The Chimney Sweeps. Talk to the Sword. Shut up, you got a big mouth! Please come help me up, Henny. Max come over here. French Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone.
posted by Artw at 6:16 AM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


it will get even better at lunchtime.

Calling back to the famous Churchill quote: "Now this is not dinnertime. It is not even lunchtime. But it is, perhaps, the end of breakfast."

Republicans now cannot wait for McCain to die

For the record, the original article the RNC committeewoman responded to was written by Caitlyn Johnstone, a bernie-or-buster, trump-is-better-than-clinton-because-reasons supposed leftwinger with no obvious income stream who is definitely not being paid by Putin.
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:18 AM on July 19, 2017 [25 favorites]


The Dems scream death as OCare dies!

There's really no way to imagine this other than Ray and Teodor inventing hip-hobbit.

THE BOILING LOG THAT CRUSHED OCARE DID BEAR THE WIZARD'S HEX
THE TURTLE FAILED TO BURN THE POOR, HIS MASTER HE DID VEX
posted by delfin at 6:23 AM on July 19, 2017 [30 favorites]


Just wondering: is anyone keeping a list somewhere of the Republicans who have straight up said no to this and have consistently gone anti-Trump? I'm trying to think off the top of my head who they are and at the moment am only coming up with Egg McMuffin, Joe and Mika and Jennifer Rubin, but there's got to be more than that, right? Slightly more than that?
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:28 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Ana Navarro
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:29 AM on July 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


Just wondering: is anyone keeping a list somewhere of the Republicans who have straight up said no to this and have consistently gone anti-Trump?

Tom Nichols. Rick Wilson. Max Boot. John Weaver. Bill Kristol for the most part. John Kasich for the most part.
posted by chris24 at 6:30 AM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


> is anyone keeping a list somewhere of the Republicans who have straight up said no to this and have consistently gone anti-Trump?

GOP strategist Rick Wilson has been a very loud, exuberant Trump/party critic. He's a good Twitter follow.
posted by Tevin at 6:30 AM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


it will get even better at lunchtime.The Dems scream death as OCare dies!

It was . . . the salmon!
posted by petebest at 6:33 AM on July 19, 2017 [17 favorites]


Let me get this straight, Orrock retweeted a Medium post that contains a cartoon by Ben Garrison (I know there was a sympathetic article here about him, but for those not keeping track, Garrison leaned in to his reputation as an anti-(((globalist)))). Lots of cartoons for Breitbart, to give a baseline that MeFi will understand quickly)

Orrock might want to consider firing their PR people.
posted by Yowser at 6:35 AM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


There's lots of Never Trumpers you shouldn't be listening to. Accessory to war crimes David Frum, to give an obvious example. Ben "Love me Some Nixon" Stein. Lots of neocons who you should try to remember are absolutely horrible people.
posted by Yowser at 6:37 AM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Ditto! It would be weird to dress up as him for Halloween, right? Grey hair, suit, briefcase. It would fit with my lifelong theme of "Costumes I Think Are Awesome That Nobody Else Gets".

and if anyone asks you what your costume is, just smile knowingly and say "that will be revealed in due time"
posted by murphy slaw at 6:37 AM on July 19, 2017 [22 favorites]


Oh look at that someone upthread recommended Bill Kristol, literal alleged war criminal.

If only we could show this list to 2003 MeFi.
posted by Yowser at 6:39 AM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


ThePinkSuperhero: Grey hair, suit, briefcase.

And the eyebrows. Can't do it without the eyebrows.
posted by Too-Ticky at 6:41 AM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


The Dems scream death

Can we now drop the façade that he's President of more than Republican bootlickers? WH press if you're done being shat on yet, make this A Thing.

"A leader for all Americans", no fuck you.. I have no national leader.

Speaking of, what is this "The Democrats" I keep seeing? Are they doing something? Are they doing it stupidly? 'Cause I'm in their wheelhouse and there's nothing in here.

Im n thr base killin thr d00dz
posted by petebest at 6:42 AM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


The Republicans never discuss how good their healthcare bill is

Sigh. Because their healthcare bill is shit, Donny, and they know it.

Are there any Dem Senators that have a . . . tolerable? (I won't hope for "good") relationship with the President*?

Because, if there are, in all seriousness they need to put together a 5-minute PowerPoint with bright colors and "explain it like I'm five" language and get a meeting with Trump and explain that BOTH the House and Senate versions of the health care bill BREAK ALL OF HIS CAMPAIGN PROMISES about "better, cheaper health care for more people."

(Not that I'd think he'd remember it longer than 5 minutes, but it should be good for some angry "Betrayed by the Republicans!!!!" tweets, and sow more discord in the Republican ranks.)
posted by soundguy99 at 6:48 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Dems scream death as OCare dies!

Well, if I ever get around to starting a band, I think I found our first album title.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:50 AM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


This was interesting. My respect for Jeff Flake just went up a bit:

GOP Senator defends Dem challenger who was attacked for being Muslim (Brooke Seipel in The Hill. )
posted by spitbull at 6:51 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Are there any Dem Senators that have a . . . tolerable? (I won't hope for "good") relationship with the President*?

Bannon and Priebus would never let such a person get within 50 yards of POTUS.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:51 AM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]




The Republicans never discuss how good their healthcare bill is

The one you called "mean," right?
posted by spitbull at 6:53 AM on July 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


58% disapproval at Rasmussen, the single pollster the administration doesn't call fake news and the only one it relies on for claims of actual popularity.
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:55 AM on July 19, 2017 [29 favorites]


Oh look at that someone upthread recommended Bill Kristol, literal alleged war criminal.

The question was which Republicans have been consistently NeverTrump, not vouch for someone being a great person. Also, if FDR and Churchill could work with Stalin to defeat Hitler, I think it's possible to acknowledge that certain Republicans, while horrible in many ways, are not fascist, racist autocrats trying to destroy America at this particular moment and in fact are trying to preserve a semblance of democracy.
posted by chris24 at 6:57 AM on July 19, 2017 [35 favorites]


Also, for the NeverTrump list, Stuart Stevens. former Romney chief strategist.
posted by chris24 at 7:03 AM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Maybe avoid the lunch special at the cafeteria today.

There's no avoiding the meatloaf. The meatloaf is the reason for the lunch!
posted by gladly at 7:09 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Bill Kristol can be beneficial from an enemy-of-my-enemy perspective and remain someone who should eat a bag of salted dicks. At this point I am willing to accept somewhat strange bedfellows.
posted by delfin at 7:12 AM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


For the dying embers of this thread, something that we've discussed at length here:

NYT Washington Memo: Trump as a Novel: An Implausible ‘Soap Opera Without the Sex and Fun’
... Some have chafed at the pacing and repetitive story lines, like Republicans’ halting efforts to pass health care legislation. Others wonder whether some elements are a bit on the nose, like the subject line on Donald Trump Jr.’s email chain about meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer last year: “Russia - Clinton - private and confidential.” Chekhov’s gun is not supposed to be fired skyward like a flare.

Also worthwhile for the quote about "Stupid Watergate".
posted by RedOrGreen at 7:34 AM on July 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


So Australian media are starting to get frustrated with what passes for policing in the US.

I'm sort of hoping it becomes enough of a problem that the government's hand is forced and it becomes an international incident. That'll be fun.

Oh who am I kidding, they're going to pin it on the brown cop. He's a bad apple, they'll say, and no-one will say 'so that means the entire barrel is rotten?' even though it is 100% true
posted by Merus at 7:35 AM on July 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


Eew, that Caitlyn Johnstone is a nasty piece of work.

For the last too long I've been looking at photos and videos from the G20 dinner in order to get a sense of the set-up there. First of all, it seems Christine Lagarde is the life of any party. Yeah for her! What is better than a smart woman having fun?
Second, from what is available online, it seems Trump is beyond socially awkward. It's not so much that the others are ignoring him, more that he has no idea how the conventions of a formal dinner party work, which makes sense. We always only hear about that meatloaf and KFC and there is no indication Trump ever felt obligated to participate in or host a traditional formal meal. This is not a class issue; the Clintons and the Obamas were not high class. The whole point of formal rules for international diplomacy is to override class and culture by making the same explicit and transparent rules equal for all.
Anyway, at the dinner Melania had Argentianian president Mauricio Macri on her other side, and Merkel was next to him. Macron was sitting opposite of Putin and Melania. I can't find pictures of who sat on the other side of Putin. Who cares, they had a great time. Video shows their "translator" taking notes. But the most obvious people to let out that they were surprised by Trump's conversation with Putin are the French, the Germans and the Argentinians. Lots of others including a lot of translators can have had opinions, and on the other hand, I can't see China raising this as an issue, even if they were shocked.
Maybe everyone started moving around during dessert, maybe only Trump did - who knows? The combination of him not being a gracious guest and then blocking off Putin for an hour would be enough for many G20 participants to raise eyebrows. All of Europe, but most of all Eastern Europe and Germany worry about Russian ambitions. Any American president having an hour-long tete-a-tete with Putin would bring up anxious thoughts.

Oh, and back in the day - like a few years ago, Eastern Europe could count on the UK for security. So now that is over.
posted by mumimor at 7:35 AM on July 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


The ADL released a list of some of the who's who of alt-right (and """alt-lite""") scumbags, some of whom have been around since GamerGate.

(Predictably, they're being swarmed by anti-semites, MAGA Hats, and employees of think tanks to try to... defame them.)


The comments on that tweet. Good lord. Blatant antisemitism, including shit that's straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Blatant racism. A demand to know the name of the person who wrote the article. Multiple people celebrating that the ADL has offered them a list of people to follow and support. A bunch of people voicing support for those on the list. Multiple complaints that Black Lives Matter is not included. That Palestinian-American political activist Linda Sarsour was not included. Multiple complaints that conspiracy theorist and rape apologist Mike Cernovich was included on the list, including at least a couple that say he shouldn't have been included at all because he's not an antisemite.

Chilling. And that's nothing compared to how the some of the people named in the article reacted.

Affinity Magazine:
In a dictionary-definition display of White Fragility, various Alt-Right and “Alt-Lite” figures spent yesterday clutching their pearls over an Anti-Defamation League article, “From Alt-Right to Alt-Lite: Naming the Hate,” that highlighted some of the Internet’s most unsavory, far-right personalities. Some of these racists didn’t seem to enjoy being called racist and labeled the ADL’s article a “Hit List,” then accused the ADL (an international Jewish organization formed to fight antisemitism that now works to eradicate all forms of hate) of inciting terrorism.

“American Nationalist” and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich took to Twitter yesterday afternoon to denounce the list in a Periscope video labeled with the clickbait title, “The ADL is trying to get my family murdered.” In the livestream watched by over 50k viewers, he announces, “The ADL has targeted my family for murder and assassination.” He goes on to reference the shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, though he incorrectly places the altercation at a basketball game.
--
They're not being apologetics or shying back from the truth of who these people are. It's amazing and glorious and the SPLC is really going to have to step up their game.

I fear for their safety. I really do. That said, the ADL was founded in 1913 and the SPLC was founded in 1971. This is exactly why the both organizations were created, and why they are still vitally important to us all.
posted by zarq at 7:36 AM on July 19, 2017 [31 favorites]


Trump Just Fired America’s Top Cyber Security Official

Poor Barron. I heard somewhere that he was good at the cyber.
posted by Servo5678 at 7:47 AM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Just wondering: is anyone keeping a list somewhere of the Republicans who have straight up said no to this and have consistently gone anti-Trump?

Steve Schmidt was McCain's senior campaign advisor and is firmly anti-Trump.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:48 AM on July 19, 2017


In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy(based on the true case of when a Soviet spy Philby took over British Intelligence) Le Carré puts forward the premise that what a Russian agent who takes charge of an organization does is fire or demote the competent and promote the incompetent and promote petty jealousies.
Trump is doing the same.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:01 AM on July 19, 2017 [57 favorites]


Rick Wilson's on the side of the angels in terms of hating Trump, but I get the impression he wants a boring, competent Republican President who can get the work of impoverishing society (on both a moral and financial level) done without all the embarrassing sideshows (and treason, to be fair).

He was also making jokes about automatic rifles when the Miami nightclub shooting happened, so...yeah.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:01 AM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Is Putin's translator a woman? That'd explain stepping aside for an hour. Imagine having to translate that sleazebag's pick-up lines to a stone cold KGB apparatchik. She's going to disappear.
posted by adept256 at 8:03 AM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Eew, that Caitlyn Johnstone is a nasty piece of work.

I didn't read the Medium piece so at first I didn't understand what that meant. Having said that, a couple of things:

1. It's Caitlin with an I.
2. HOLY FUCKING SHIT I USED TO DATE THIS WOMAN YEARS AND YEARS AGO AND I HAD NO IDEA SHE WAS LIKE THIS NOW I HAVE SO MANY PEOPLE TO CALL
posted by um at 8:08 AM on July 19, 2017 [94 favorites]


Just wondering: is anyone keeping a list somewhere of the Republicans who have straight up said no to this and have consistently gone anti-Trump?

George Will.
Michael Chertoff

A number of Republicans, such as Bill Bennett, Lindsay Graham and Condoleeza Rice, sounded the alarm against Trump during the campaign but have since fallen in line and praised him.
posted by zarq at 8:08 AM on July 19, 2017


Yo um, did she ever strike you as the sort of person who would be indoctrinating gullible otherwise-D-voting Americans about Pizzagate last October without anybody paying her to do so?
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:12 AM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Daily Beast: GOP Lawmaker Got Direction From Moscow, Took It Back to D.C.

Oh, Dana!
Members of the team of Russians who secured a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner also attempted to stage a show trial of anti-Putin campaigner Bill Browder on Capitol Hill.

The trial, which would have come in the form of a congressional hearing, was scheduled for mid-June 2016 by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a long-standing Russia ally who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe. During the hearing, Rohrabacher had planned to confront Browder with a feature-length pro-Kremlin propaganda movie that viciously attacks him—as well as at least two witnesses linked to the Russian authorities, including lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Ultimately, the hearing was canceled when senior Republicans intervened and agreed to allow a hearing on Russia at the full committee level with a Moscow-sympathetic witness, according to multiple congressional aides.
posted by notyou at 8:13 AM on July 19, 2017 [25 favorites]


In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy(based on the true case of when a Soviet spy Philby took over British Intelligence) Le Carré puts forward the premise that what a Russian agent who takes charge of an organization does is fire or demote the competent and promote the incompetent and promote petty jealousies.
Trump is doing the same.


He is doing this but not based on the same sort of thinking. Trump is not the type that does the sort of big picture thinking that the spy did. Trump does this because he doesn't want or like to have people around him who are smarter and more competent then he is. If I recall correctly he has said this specifically at some point when talking about how to manage a company and people. The promoting jealousy and petty infighting more about projection of how he operates and sees the world. It's all about him and trying to mirror his own psyche and playing in a world he's comfortable manipulating because he is not capable of doing anything different.

Of course the consequences end up being similar. Trump's end up happening more by default then some sort of purpose based plan like the spy.
posted by Jalliah at 8:14 AM on July 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


2. HOLY FUCKING SHIT I USED TO DATE THIS WOMAN YEARS AND YEARS AGO AND I HAD NO IDEA SHE WAS LIKE THIS NOW I HAVE SO MANY PEOPLE TO CALL
posted by um at 11:08 AM on July 19 [7 favorites +] [!]
eponysteicallyunderstated
posted by tilde at 8:16 AM on July 19, 2017 [29 favorites]


From the New York Times piece:

So it’s a few days before the election last November — just a few more days, surely, before Donald J. Trump would return to his golden tower to start a niche TV venture and fill a sagging Twitter feed with exclamation-pointed despair — and a book agent goes to his client with an idea: How about something on the Trump White House That Wasn’t?

The writer — Steve Israel, then a Democratic congressman from New York, now at work on his third political satire — whips up a proposal, “Trumplandia.” Plot lines include a furtive meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, overnight social media rockets fired from Mar-a-Lago and a top administration post for Ben Carson, now the secretary of housing and urban development, who once suggested through a surrogate that he was not qualified to run a federal agency.

“Highly implausible,” the agent said of the pitch then.

“My pen name could have been Nostradamus,” Mr. Israel says now.

posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:16 AM on July 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


The writer — Steve Israel, then a Democratic congressman from New York, now at work on his third political satire — whips up a proposal, “Trumplandia.” Plot lines include a furtive meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, overnight social media rockets fired from Mar-a-Lago and a top administration post for Ben Carson, now the secretary of housing and urban development, who once suggested through a surrogate that he was not qualified to run a federal agency.

Someone find this Death Note motherfucker and make him write a happy ending
posted by theodolite at 8:23 AM on July 19, 2017 [42 favorites]






> The comments on that tweet. Good lord. Blatant antisemitism, including shit that's straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The alt-right don't seem to have got the memo about the PotEoZ being a fabrication. See for e.g. Katie Hopkin's bit of holiday fluff
posted by Buntix at 8:34 AM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


What...what is this voter fraud hearing? We are beyond through the looking glass -every fucking scandal this man has going on and he gets to hold a bullshit meeting to a) feel better about his fake popular vote victory and b) use this to take more rights from the already marginalized groups of society? I can't. The reality hurts too much.
posted by andruwjones26 at 8:34 AM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


The President says that voting by the deceased must be stopped. That is literally something he just said.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:35 AM on July 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


The President says that voting by the deceased must be stopped. That is literally something he just said.

The over-under on "Republicans discovered to be voting on behalf of dead people" is next Thursday.
posted by Etrigan at 8:40 AM on July 19, 2017 [47 favorites]


Well, they are zombie Republicans.
posted by Devonian at 8:40 AM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Daniel Drezner, WaPo: The harbingers of doom for the Trump administration

Tarini Parti, Adrian Carrasquillo and John Hudson, Buzzfeed: Trump Is Showing The World What A Weak American Presidency Looks Like
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:40 AM on July 19, 2017 [19 favorites]


Callum Borchers, WaPo: ‘The battle over health care isn’t over’: Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s defiantly optimistic briefing, annotated
A day after support for Senate Republicans' health-care bill collapsed, deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders banned TV cameras and live audio broadcasts from Tuesday's media briefing. Saying that “the battle over health care isn't over,” Sanders tried mightily to cast the failure as a mere setback.

“You’re speaking as if this is over and done, and it certainly isn’t,” she told reporters.

The Fix has annotated a transcript of the briefing, using Genius, since it could not be seen on TV. We'll continue the practice whenever White House spokesmen go off camera. To view an annotation, click on the yellow, highlighted text.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:45 AM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


The over-under on "Republicans discovered to be voting on behalf of dead people" is next Thursday.

Nope, little earlier

Audrey Cook is a Republican election judge in Illinois. She and her husband applied for absentee ballots because he was ill. He died before completing his, so she filled it out for him and sent it in. The ballot will not be counted.


This is one of four, count 'em, verified fraudulent votes in the 2016 election. And, of course, it wasn't counted.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:46 AM on July 19, 2017 [44 favorites]


New thread?
posted by pxe2000 at 8:53 AM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm surprised that half of the election commission consists of Democrats.

Matthew Dunlap, Secretary of State of Maine (D) just said that President Trump has never questioned the outcome of the 2016 election, which is demonstrably false. (He may not have questioned the outcome of the Electoral College vote, of course.)
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:01 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yo um, did she ever strike you as the sort of person who would be indoctrinating gullible left-wing Americans about Pizzagate last October without anybody paying her to do so?

Based on a brief, horrified survey of her work over the past 12 months, and what I know of her from personal experience I am reluctantly forced to conclude that the only time in her life where she has displayed unambiguous evidence of good judgement was when she decided to dump me.
posted by um at 9:04 AM on July 19, 2017 [80 favorites]


“I think after health care, taxes are gonna be so easy,” Trump said in an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network last week.

This fucking guy. Everything's "easy" when you expect other people to do all the work and then blame them when it doesn't pan out.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:14 AM on July 19, 2017 [21 favorites]


To be followed days/weeks later by his inevitable
"No one knew how tough _______ is!"
which of course is his way of saying
"I had zero idea or meaningful thoughts about the thing I was talking about--I still really don't."
posted by blueberry at 9:23 AM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


There have been a couple of mentions of avoiding "disenfranchisement" in the commission meeting so far. But there hasn't been a mention of "voter suppression". It is not enough to allow people the technical ability to vote if they're willing to put the time and effort into obtaining the required identification and waiting in a long line at the polls. Voting needs to be something which is easy and simple, because otherwise people will make the perfectly rational personal decision not to participate, and whole demographic groups will be under-represented in our democracy. The problem of actual fraudulent votes cast is currently infinitesimal in comparison.

And there are most certainly members of the commission that see this problem of under-representation as a positive.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:32 AM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


The question is whether people who shouldn't be voting are voting

The answer depends on who you think deserves the franchise

Responses may vary
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:57 AM on July 19, 2017


Why Trump's Base of Support May Be Smaller Than It Seems - NYT

Basically, the short piece argues that people are increasingly disinclined to identify as Republicans because of Trump, so percentages of Republicans supporting him may not change even as his base shrinks in real numbers.
posted by OmieWise at 9:58 AM on July 19, 2017 [29 favorites]


But are those Republicans who aren't identifying as Republicans at the moment actually going to vote Democratic/Libertarian (or stay home) next cycle? Because if not they can call themselves Monster Raving Loony Party supporters for all the good it will do when it counts.
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:03 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


(not Monster-Raving-Loony-Party-ist)
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:05 AM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


are those Republicans who aren't identifying as Republicans at the moment actually going to vote Democratic/Libertarian (or stay home) next cycle?

Probably not, but they may decide not to show up at the polls at all.
posted by Gelatin at 10:06 AM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


But are those Republicans who aren't identifying as Republicans at the moment actually going to vote Democratic/Libertarian (or stay home) next cycle? Because if not they can call themselves Monster Raving Loony Party supporters for all the good it will do when it counts.

BRB gonna re-register as Lord Buckethead and try to get on the ballot
posted by azpenguin at 10:15 AM on July 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


Trump just said that BCRA has better pre-existing condition protections than Obamacare. What? Is this just the "blatantly lie and say whatever bullshit comes to mind" portion of the debate? Don't answer that.
posted by Justinian at 10:16 AM on July 19, 2017 [36 favorites]


They had some "Democrats" who voted for Trump and still support him on the Today show this morning. We just need to give him a chance, they said.

I gave him a chance. He's been insulting anyone who voted against him since the election. He promised to do a lot of things on Day One and didn't. He promised to do a lot of things in his first 100 days and didn't. I disagree with pretty much everything he promised, but why don't they hold him accountable for not doing things he promised to do?

They strongly approve of 1) bombing Syria and 2) being tough on North Korea. I guess it feels good to bomb brown people, but do we have any strategy for Syria, or any reason to be involved? And what toughness has he demonstrated towards North Korea except blustering Tweets, which did not prevent them from developing ICBMs.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:18 AM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


> Trump just said that BCRA has better pre-existing condition protections than Obamacare.

What? I'd ask for a [real|fake] tag but I'm afraid I know it's all too real - but say what?

Maybe he thinks that it's the pre-existing conditions that need protection? Wouldn't want to hurt that nice asthma you've got going there...?
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:21 AM on July 19, 2017


Trump just said that BCRA has better pre-existing condition protections than Obamacare. What?

Better for insurance companies and the Congressfolk who take kickbacks from them, sure.
posted by Mchelly at 10:22 AM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


“I think after health care, taxes are gonna be so easy,” Trump said

I'm worried that he might be right about this. It was easy to see why the health care bill ultimately failed: everything about it sucked, really obviously and undeniably, in really concrete terms. For a lot of people, and for good reason, it wasn't about the bullshit tax cuts it also entailed—it was about the fact that millions of people would lose health care. Everybody knew somebody who would be thrown off their health insurance under the bill, and the more we all learned about it, the more pissed off we got, and people of all political persuasions were calling their House reps and Senators.

Tax policy, on the other hand, is more abstract (not for MeFi-level followers of the news, I'm talking about Joe Walmart and Jane Soundbite). If the past is any indication, it's fairly easy for the Kochs and Roves and Bushes of the world to seize on people's general antipathy toward taxation, and obscuring the effects of budget-slashing is relatively easy too (see: can-kicking, "Thanks Obama," welfare-shaming, etc.).

Taxation is also a uniter within the GOP—Cruz and Paul and Ryan and Egg and McConnell and Murkowski may not be able to agree on health care, but they will on lowering taxes. So no intraparty self-sabotage there.

And I'd expect Congress and Trump to unite in their messaging on the tax cuts (because they are united on that front, after all) with some weak appeal like "this will create jobs" or "We can't get out from under the economy Obama left us with without tax cuts" or "You know where most of your tax money goes? To Those People." If they lied about health care, they're gonna lie their ass off about taxes.

TL;DR: Where "Yes, your grandmother will be thrown off her health insurance, doesn't that sound like a great plan?" won't fly with the average person, "Taxes, gee, they're too darn high, am I right?" is a generally familiar and palatable truism that would serve the Republican agenda where their tax plan is concerned.
posted by Rykey at 10:23 AM on July 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


It's possible Trump isn't even lying becuase there's no way he actually knows what is in Trumpcare.
posted by Artw at 10:25 AM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


dude's a parrot. he's just repeating what the people around him are saying. He's not valuable as a source of information on the world; he's a Markov chain generator that's only valuable for insight into what sorts of statements were used to seed the algorithm.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:27 AM on July 19, 2017 [60 favorites]


Making declarative statements about things you have no knowledge of is lying in my book. If a salesman says the car he's selling has cruise control and when you find out it doesn't he says "what do i know, I never even opened the door and went inside!" I think we'd all call that lying, too.
posted by Freon at 10:28 AM on July 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


Is this just the "blatantly lie and say whatever bullshit comes to mind" portion of the debate? Republican strategy?

'Cause, c'mon, we all know that they all know that ObamaCare is RomneyCare is the only actual possible "republican" version of expanding health care, so they all knew from the start that any Republican replacement was gonna be a shit bill that made life worse for many people, and they were just counting on bullshitting their way through it.
posted by soundguy99 at 10:28 AM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Everything's "easy" when you expect other people to do all the work and then blame them when it doesn't pan out.

This whole damn year has been a replay of my worst bosses set loose on geopolitics.
posted by winna at 10:30 AM on July 19, 2017 [32 favorites]


I have no idea how anyone can look at trump and not see their worst ever bosses combined and magnified into the worst ever boss ever. People vote for that? WTF? Have they never had to work for a shit like that?
posted by Artw at 10:31 AM on July 19, 2017 [46 favorites]


I think Trump was just reading a list of bullet points handed to him on a sheet of paper. Really. I'll see if I can find a transcript.
posted by Justinian at 10:34 AM on July 19, 2017


Are we moving over to this thread or shall I continue toggling between tabs?
posted by Heretic at 10:35 AM on July 19, 2017


Have they never had to work for a shit like that?
Come on, many of them have BEEN bosses like that. Others look at shit bosses with ENVY.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:35 AM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Mod note: That new thread is specifically for discussing the Buchanan stuff described in the Monbiot article, the underlying philosophy/agenda. If folks want a new catch-all for miscellaneous newsy updates, better to make a thread just for that, I think.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:37 AM on July 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


"guy owns a boat! must be doing something right." -- precisely how far many people's conceptual framework of socioeconomic justice goes
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:39 AM on July 19, 2017 [34 favorites]


"guy owns a skyscraper! give him the nuclear football!"
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:41 AM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Taxation is also a uniter within the GOP—Cruz and Paul and Ryan and Egg and McConnell and Murkowski may not be able to agree on health care, but they will on lowering taxes. So no intraparty self-sabotage there.


Tax cuts in general are a uniter in the GOP, but once you start getting into the actual reform plans they've floated, there's quite a bit of disagreement (the border adjustment tax idea, in particular, seems to open up some fractures).

Similarly, repealing ObamaCare was a uniter in the GOP. But once they began putting it into policy terms, and constituents saw the stakes, boom, near-death (not dead yet).

Tax reform may be easier. It won't be easy.
posted by notyou at 10:50 AM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


The Hill: SCOTUS rules that travel ban remains unenforceable against grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-laws, sisters-in-laws, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews and cousins of US persons.

A victory for common sense as the Supreme Court lets stand the district court's ruling that grandchildren are capable of being "close family". The Trump administration had argued otherwise, which seems pretty mean to Trump's eight grandchildren. Maybe he could give them some Werther's Originals or something.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:56 AM on July 19, 2017 [28 favorites]


Breaking: ZombieCare lives! Maybe!

WaPo: Trump challenges senators to resurrect Obamcare repeal effort: ‘We’re close’

A day after the GOP strategy to rollback the ACA appeared dead, Trump invited Republican senators to lunch at the White House and challenged them to work out an agreement even if it means remaining in Washington through their summer recess next month. [...] “People should not leave town unless we have a health insurance plan, unless we give our people great health care,” Trump said ... “We’re close, very close … We have to hammer this out and get it done.”

(Bold added - no points for guessing who "our people" are. It's definitely not "those people", believe me.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:59 AM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


‘We’re close’

is that "getting Mexico to pay for the wall" close or "watching time-delayed Fox and Friends on the Tivo" close
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:00 AM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


We have no choice,” Trump told Republican senators gathered at the White House for lunch. “We have to repeal and replace Obamacare. We can repeal it, but the best is repeal and replace.

Lol, so Trump's cunning plan is for the them to do exactly what they just failed to do. Brilliant!
posted by diogenes at 11:02 AM on July 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of the art of the deal
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:03 AM on July 19, 2017 [60 favorites]


"general trump, we have failed to take moscow and winter is setting in, what shall we do?"
"worry not! i have a plan!"
"excellent, sir. what is it?"
"first, we take moscow…"
posted by murphy slaw at 11:05 AM on July 19, 2017 [37 favorites]


He seems to have missed the import of Moran and Lee both coming out against the bill at the same time. This isn't a game of numbers, it's a game of irreconcilable differences.
posted by OmieWise at 11:05 AM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


they can call themselves Monster Raving Loony Party supporters for all the good it will do when it counts.

Jam Wrestling Party or GTFO.
posted by octobersurprise at 11:06 AM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Trump: Mr. Inside-Outski, like some goddamn Bolshevik picking up his orders from Yegg Central.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:07 AM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


He seems to have missed the import of Moran and Lee both coming out against the bill at the same time. This isn't a game of numbers, it's a game of irreconcilable differences.

Now that Trump is a Republican he doesn't believe in no-fault divorce.
posted by Talez at 11:07 AM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Supreme Court stopped banned refugees who have assurances of assistance from a US refugee agency though, until the 9th Circuit rules on that. So not a total victory there, but progress.

Gorsuch joined Thomas and Alito in saying they would have struck down the district court's order in its entirety, in case you're wondering what kind of a Justice he's going to be.
posted by zachlipton at 11:07 AM on July 19, 2017 [23 favorites]


From what I saw of Trump's bullshit spewing what he added to the situation was a clear threat to cut off the subsidies to states. That would fuck up the markets essentially instantaneously.
posted by Justinian at 11:09 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


There is no reason to treat Trump's words as an accurate description of reality. He says "we're close" because that's what feels good to him, not because it is in any way true.

The same rule can safely be applied to any future statements as well.
posted by parallellines at 11:09 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


A spot of good news in terms of retaining some form of cultural respite: Many thanks to all who have raised outrage at the proposed defunding of the NEA and the NEH. Partial funding is better than nothing and I hope those who have made noise continue to do so. We Humanities folks appreciate it!
posted by Heretic at 11:12 AM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


There is no reason to treat Trump's words as an accurate description of reality. He says "we're close" because that's what feels good to him, not because it is in any way true.


Well, sure, but that's actually a bigger problem for the GOP, who is not looking good through this whole mess. Having the President say "We're close," when the conference is literally split as to the problems with the bill, creates a false impression in people who are listening to Trump and aren't paying attention. It doesn't raise the pressure enough to make those problems disappear, however, which means that the whole thing just looks worse and worse. He also chided the GOP for not being able to deliver on their years long promise, threatened Sen Heller, and also Moran and Lee. It sounds like a great lunch.
posted by OmieWise at 11:15 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Things rattleing around my brain while driving to the dealer to get the car serviced:

Art of the squeal - conceptual art of what whitehouse leakers are saying
art of the repeal - a breakdown of how people are getting screwed out of health insurance and care and who is profiting because of it.

clinging to the idea that mockery is our way out but Devils Bargain says that's why he's in: getting beaten at the White House correspondents dinner.
posted by tilde at 11:17 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


From what I saw of Trump's bullshit spewing what he added to the situation was a clear threat to cut off the subsidies to states. That would fuck up the markets essentially instantaneously.
posted by Justinian at 3:09 AM on July 20 [+] [!]


With a heavy helping of regret for those who will die (and many will) on account of his bullshit, I welcome such an attempt, because the "fake media" will blame him for all the murders. At least I will. So I say, try it. because him, and anyone who goes along, gets remembered. For murder.

Trump wants to murder your relatives, for the rich. Remember.
posted by saysthis at 11:25 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, and Justice Gorsuch would have stayed the District Court order in its entirety

Is that the entirety of the dissent? I was hoping to see a detailed argument for why grandparents are incapable of being close family. That sounds Real Interesting.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:28 AM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


> I was hoping to see a detailed argument for why grandparents are incapable of being close family.

Yeah, you'd think those Justices probably have grandkids of their own. Or, maybe, that's the entire point. See, kids? You don't write Thank You notes to grandma, and suddenly foreigners are being denied entry to the US. Write your Thank You notes!
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:31 AM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Playbook:
“Karl Rove told an off-the-record McDonald’s corporate conference Monday in D.C. that he would not have taken a meeting with Russian operatives, like Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner did. Rove told the crowd at the J.W. Marriott that if a campaign gets an email saying an agent of a foreign adversarial government wants to meet and pass on damaging information about an opponent, they shouldn’t take the meeting, and they should call the FBI.”
When you're too scummy for *Karl Rove*....
posted by Chrysostom at 11:31 AM on July 19, 2017 [64 favorites]


Rhetorically, I wonder what the insurance companies are going to do when premiums aren't paid....
posted by mikelieman at 11:31 AM on July 19, 2017




Yo why is McDonald's hiring Karl Rove as a conference speaker? Are they rolling out a new ad campaign about how Taco Bell gives you syphilis?
posted by theodolite at 11:37 AM on July 19, 2017 [21 favorites]


IndyStar: Carrier lays off first 300 employees on six-month anniversary of Trump's presidency
Carrier Corp. plans to eliminate 338 jobs at its Indianapolis furnace factory Thursday — and the timing is likely to raise some eyebrows.

The previously announced layoffs coincide, to the day, with the six-month anniversary of Donald Trump's presidency. They are part of a deal Trump struck with the company in December to prevent deeper job cuts at the plant.

The terminations are the first wave of about 630 planned before the end of the year as the company shifts work to Mexico. Carrier's parent company, United Technologies Corp., also plans to lay off another 700 workers at a factory in Huntington near Fort Wayne.
I don't see Trump flying in to save them this time either.
posted by zachlipton at 11:37 AM on July 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


Yo why is McDonald's hiring Karl Rove as a conference speaker?

He does a damn good Grimace.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:40 AM on July 19, 2017 [23 favorites]


From the senator lunch-n-learn today, there is an attendant that pushes his chair in and gives him a squirt of hand sanitizer around 00:21. It's so weird. Just another day in Pepperland whenever I see him at an event.
posted by rc3spencer at 11:43 AM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


From the senator lunch-n-learn today, there is an attendant that pushes his chair in and gives him a squirt of hand sanitizer around 00:21. It's so weird.

That's some suspiciously surreptitious sanitizing.
posted by diogenes at 11:44 AM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Those Carrier jobs were always going away -- the deal Trump and Pence made saved ~1000 jobs (700 in the plant and 250 engineering and design and HQ jobs) and "kept the plant open" for 10 years, in exchange for $7M in tax incentives.
posted by notyou at 11:49 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


He just had to shake a dozen hands and is a notorious germaphobe. What's interesting to me is that he made it through two years of campaign + presidency without being filmed doing something so obvious and disrespectful.

Is he getting worn down from the various pressures or just getting more relaxed and letting it hang out?
posted by no1hatchling at 11:51 AM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Politico:
House GOP leaders are resorting to Plan B on their spending strategy after falling woefully short of the support needed to pass a massive government funding package without Democratic votes.

Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced Tuesday night that the House will vote next week on a measure that includes just four of the 12 bills needed to fund the federal government. That decision comes after GOP leaders failed to get enough Republican support to pass the full dozen without the help of their minority-party counterparts.
Things don't seem very happy inside the House GOP conference.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:53 AM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Did you think the health care bill was dead? Sorry. McConnell is saying the Senate will vote next week on a motion to proceed. He says "no matter what I offer as a substitute first, it's fully amendable," which applies the text will be substituted with something, but doesn't actually say what the substitute will be (the 2015 repeal-lite or who knows), followed by open amendments. So chaos basically.

Completely unclear to me why anyone would vote for the MTP since they'll be on record as voting to go ahead with this whatever the final bill ends up being, but here we are.
posted by zachlipton at 11:53 AM on July 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


What the actual fuck?
.@KatyTurNBC to Kris Kobach: Are you saying Hillary Clinton didn't win the popular vote?

Kobach: "We may never know the answer"
posted by zachlipton at 11:54 AM on July 19, 2017 [63 favorites]


I don't know about you guys but I have that feeling from The Odyssey or maybe it was the movie Jason and the Argonauts that this is sort of a moment where the cyclops gets the log in its eye and is is blundering around the cave in a rage while Odysseus or maybe Jason is trying not to get trampled.

We are Odysseus and/or Jason in this example

See, this is what you get with an English B.A. after many young years of Saturday afternoon TV watching plus twenty years to forget and confuse shit. Somehow learn from my example, young ones.
posted by angrycat at 11:54 AM on July 19, 2017 [24 favorites]


@KatyTurNBC to Kris Kobach: Are you saying Hillary Clinton didn't win the popular vote?
Kobach: "We may never know the answer"


Me: "Maybe we should just vote again to be sure."
posted by Glibpaxman at 12:03 PM on July 19, 2017 [101 favorites]


McConnell is saying the Senate will vote next week on a motion to proceed. He says "no matter what I offer as a substitute first, it's fully amendable," which applies the text will be substituted with something, but doesn't actually say what the substitute will be (the 2015 repeal-lite or who knows), followed by open amendments. So chaos basically.

Well, yeah, but as I said yesterday, given that McConnell made contradictory promises to both the conservative and so-called "moderate" wings of his party, both of which have irreconcilable demands, neither side would likely be much inclined to trust McConnell that whatever amendment he pledges in exchange for the motion to proceed will actually wind up in the final bill -- yet once the bill is being debated, the pressure to support it anyway will be all the greater. I hope various senators see McConnell's statement for the bluff it is, but it's an interesting tacit admission of weakness.
posted by Gelatin at 12:05 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I don't know about you guys but I have that feeling from The Odyssey
"Nobody voted for Hillary!"
posted by bibliowench at 12:07 PM on July 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


The popular vote is of merely symbolic value, but there are countless state and local elections whose outcome would have been transformed if Donnie 'n Kobach's claims had any basis in reality. The lack of any serious disputation of the results of those races is evidence that they do not have basis in reality, and indicate the possibility that these men are lying liars who lie a lot
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:08 PM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


When you're too scummy for *Karl Rove*....

Nothing is too scummy for Karl Rove. But Karl Rove has some sense of how the world works and the basic capacity to operate within structures such that he won't get arrested/fined, as well as - and here's where he really outstrips the Trumps - some sense of the repercussions of things past two weeks from now. He's garbage but he's not incompetent.

He just had to shake a dozen hands and is a notorious germaphobe. What's interesting to me is that he made it through two years of campaign + presidency without being filmed doing something so obvious and disrespectful.

I am loathe to defend Trump on anything, but I don't see it as a sign of disrespect to recognize that hands are germy. There's a lot of ground between cleaning your hands (however pointless and counterproductive I personally think hand sanitizer may be) after shaking forty+ of them and, I dunno, wiping your hand on your shirt with disgust after shaking one person's hand.

You want to judge someone for using hand sanitizer at all if they're not legit immunocompromised, I'm down with it. But since our culture has decided that this junk is okay and mounted dispensers to walls in public places for folks to use while they're strolling through the mall? Eh. If they're not disrespectful then I don't see how using some right before you eat a meal is rude.
posted by phearlez at 12:08 PM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


@KatyTurNBC to Kris Kobach: Are you saying Hillary Clinton didn't win the popular vote?
Kobach: "We may never know the answer"

If he's willing to say we may never know the answer to that question I'm more than willing to say we may never know whether Trump actually won Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
posted by Green With You at 12:08 PM on July 19, 2017 [45 favorites]




> Washington Post: Trump ends covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move sought by Moscow


Hm.

Well, I guess we know what Putin and President Trump talked about in their private G20 meeting huh?
posted by Tevin at 12:18 PM on July 19, 2017 [47 favorites]


If he's willing to say we may never know the answer to that question I'm more than willing to say we may never know whether Trump actually won Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Yep. My response lately to people who bring up the voter fraud thing has been "So Trump claims that three to five million people voted illegally in the election? Well, I say only twenty-six people voted illegally in the last election. And I have the same amount of evidence for my claim that Trump has for his. Why do you believe him instead of me?"

It hasn't changed anybody's mind (of course), but nobody's given me a satisfactory answer yet.
posted by Rykey at 12:19 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Trump ends covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move sought by Moscow

In principle I oppose covert CIA programs to arm anybody, but Trump did it, so this must be bad somehow.
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:19 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Assad is backed by Putin so now I guess we are going to be backing Putin. Reagan would have slit his own throat if he knew that America would be taking our Foreign Policy position from Russia.

The hand sanitizer moment was odd because Trump didn't try to spread it around at all. A dab on your palm isn't going to do much.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:24 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


ALEC is still pushing to overturn the 17th amendment to take away direct election of senators, just so you know.
posted by emjaybee at 12:25 PM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Reagan would have slit his own throat if he knew that America would be taking our Foreign Policy position from Russia.

My twitter quip on this was "It's a shame Republicans dislike alternative energy because harnessing Reagan's spinning corpse could probably power the entire East coast."
posted by phearlez at 12:27 PM on July 19, 2017 [40 favorites]


A dab on your palm isn't going to do much.

he's a fucking moron; the hand sanitizer is a talisman against cooties, he's not operating from any understanding of germ theory here
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:27 PM on July 19, 2017 [44 favorites]


In principle I oppose covert CIA programs to arm anybody, but Trump did it, so this must be bad somehow.

Well, yeah, that's a good enough reason alone, but if we're going to end a covert CIA program, I'd rather we do it to further our own national interests and not Russia's.
posted by Gelatin at 12:27 PM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


time for some germ theory
posted by Tevin at 12:28 PM on July 19, 2017 [44 favorites]


Reagan would have slit his own throat if he knew that America would be taking our Foreign Policy position from Russia.
POST-Soviet Russia, I think even he could've supported. After all, Putin did as much to break up the Evil Empire Soviet Union as we did, right?
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:32 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I honestly don't get the "Reagan would be displeased" stuff. Russia's a white nationalist kleptocracy now, so why wouldn't Reagan love it? The cultural anticommunism he drew from was arguably directed at least as much inward as it was at the USSR, so in these circumstances I expect he'd be doing exactly what Trump's doing now: directing blame at ethnic and religious minorities and the "liberal elite."
posted by Rust Moranis at 12:32 PM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Since I am currently in an argument on Facebook about how single payer would "get the government involved in health care [this is taken as being defacto bad]" and "would destroy the USA's world class healthcare services" I can't help but marvel at how completely the insurance industry has brainwashed people. I guess when you make that much money off of pain and suffering you are not only disinclined from progressive change, but also extremely well equipped to fight that change.
posted by codacorolla at 12:33 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Newsweek from 2016: “You know that I, like millions of Soviet citizens, over 20 million, was a member of the Communist Party of the USSR and not only was I a member of the party but I worked for almost 20 years for an organization called the Committee for State Security,” Putin said, referring to the KGB.

“I was not, as you know, a party member by necessity,” he said. “I liked Communist and socialist ideas very much and I like them still.”

posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:34 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Putin's political philosophy can be approximated by opening the communist manifesto and replacing "worker" with "oligarch"
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:36 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Who gives a shit what Reagan would think? He left the presidency almost 30 years ago, his foreign policy views are not particularly timely at this point.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:37 PM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


I couldn't give less of a fuck what Reagan would like, for sure. But I am damned sure gonna prod everyone who has spent the last thirty years genuflecting at his shrine about their hypocrisy.
posted by phearlez at 12:40 PM on July 19, 2017 [43 favorites]


Trump 2016: Win One Despite The Gipper
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:41 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


One bright side: Fox continues its downward spiral, in a desperate attempt to avoid discussing the wounded elephant in the room.

Last night on Apple News, their top story was how Red Skelton was heartbroken when CBS canceled his variety show for being too cleancut and not relevant -- in 1970. Is there any doubt about why their ratings are down? How old would you have to be to even understand that story, much less care about it?

Republicans seemed to truly suffer (in results) after Lee Atwater died. I'm optimistically hoping that Roger Ailes is another rare (evil) talent who simply can't be replaced.
posted by msalt at 12:42 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Would have been nice to see him slit his own throat though.
Obligatory: SCP 1981
posted by Rust Moranis at 12:42 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


In principle I oppose covert CIA programs to arm anybody, but Trump did it, so this must be bad somehow.

Assad is in large part responsible for the deaths of 400,000 civilians or so, for the largest wave of refugees since WWII -- more than half the surviving citizens of Syria have been displaced from their homes either within Syria or by fleeing the country-- and for killing about 11,000 people by gassing them. That article also has headings about Assad using "Siege Tactics and Starvation" and "Targeting of Hospitals." About between 5,000 and 13,000 people have been executed at a literal death camp oeprated by Assad -- a prison camp which no one survives for long.

I mean as far as I know we don't want his oil or anything. We just oppose him because he's a monster and tyrant.

We were backing (overtly as well as covertly) rebel factions who were trying to depose him, without going as far as sending our own troops. Because in general we are opposed to people operating death camps and gassing children. but Obama didn't want to get us into another war.

I personally don't have any better ideas about how we ought to react to that sort of behavior. I don't want to get us into another war either. But just turning the other way doesn't seem very moral. It also isn't really in our national interests -- wars like Syria's tend to spread and escalate as we have seen and can grow into conflicts that threaten everyone, including us -- ISIS is just one of the side effects of Assad's war. The refugee crisis is another.

So I more or less approve of Obama's compromise -- support the fighters who are trying to depose him without getting into the war ourselves. What better option do we have?

But Putin, of course, supports Assad. So now we do too.
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:44 PM on July 19, 2017 [46 favorites]


Kobach doubled down:
[Katy Tur]: So are the votes for Donald Trump that led him to win the election in doubt as well?
KOBACH: Absolutely.
This isn't cutting off your nose to spite your face; this is decapitating yourself, chopping yourself up into tiny little pieces, and toring yourself in a creepy basement freezer for years to spite a hangnail. How unbelievably stupid are these people?

IJR/Haley Bird: Mulvaney to Insurers on Trump Plans if Health Bill Fails: 'You Probably Won't Like It That Much'
At the event, a Blue Cross Blue Shield employee asked Mulvaney whether the White House has given any thought to what comes next for health care if the Senate fails to pass an Obamacare repeal next week as expected.

“My guess is you probably won't like it that much,” Mulvaney said, adding that the White House has been evaluating options.

“We are looking at the cost-sharing payments on a month-to-month basis. We made them today. We'll make them tomorrow. But I don't think we'll see a long-term commitment from this administration,” Mulvaney explained.
It's hard to overstate how messed up this all is. This, the HHS report on the Cruz Amendment. These are government agencies that used to care that the law worked, and they've rapidly been co-opted into propaganda tools to spread lies and threaten insurance companies.

Daily Beast: Trump Keeps Failing to Destroy Obama’s Legacy, as Aides Assure Trump All Is Fine
Whether Trump is absorbing how the Obama agenda has persevered is another question entirely. White House aides and the president’s advisers say they try to keep him happy by routinely conveying to him that his administration has been a smashing legislative and political success—despite ample evidence to the contrary.

Multiple Trump administration officials detailed to The Daily Beast how senior staffers have a long-standing practice of assuring Trump of the quantity of his major accomplishments (of which he has barely any legislative and some administrative) and of placating him by flagging positive media coverage, typically from right-wing outlets.

This is, in part, a means to avoid further upsetting a president who is already prone to irrationally taking out his anger and professional frustrations on senior staff and who also has a penchant for yelling at the TV. It’s also one of the reasons President Trump will often boast, on Twitter and in other public fora, of how “no administration has accomplished more in” a comparable amount of time, or how “we’ve signed more bills—and I’m talking about through the legislature—than any president, ever.”

Many of the president’s advisers are well aware of the scoreboard. “I mean, of course we know that,” one White House official told The Daily Beast. “It’s not… tough to see how little movement there’s been [on major agenda items].” And they’ve begun looking for scapegoats for why major chunks of Obama’s legacy remain intact.
Dana Milbank: Callista Gingrich’s nomination to the Vatican stinks to high heaven
But really, Gingrich was receiving a confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because of one qualification: She is married to Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and a major backer of President Trump.

And now, for his support of Trump, he is getting the ultimate patronage: the chance to live in Rome on the taxpayer’s dime while his wife, the president of Gingrich Productions, enjoys a plum posting. Newt, who converted to Catholicism several years ago, set his wife up nicely for the job by co-hosting two videos with her about Pope John Paul II, produced with a Gingrich political ally.

But if it is good news for the Gingriches, it is an(other) insult to Francis from Trump, who has sparred with the pope over immigration and climate change. Newt carried on a six-year extramarital affair with Callista in the 1990s when she, 23 years his junior, was a House staffer and he, as speaker, led the impeachment of Bill Clinton over his extramarital affair with an intern. National Catholic Reporter’s Michael Sean Winters called it “astonishing that a party that celebrates family values at every turn has a president who is on his third wife and who has bragged about his extramarital affairs and who is appointing an ambassador to the Vatican who had a six-year affair with her future husband while he was still married to his second wife.”
posted by zachlipton at 12:46 PM on July 19, 2017 [37 favorites]


Students Are the Newest U.S. Weapon Against Terrorist Recruitment
This week in the Ministry of Truth.
posted by rc3spencer at 12:50 PM on July 19, 2017


"astonishing"

It really isn't astonishing anymore. There are plenty of good descriptors for it in my opinion, but I don't get anyone experiencing any degree of surprise over their shameless hypocrisy at this point.
posted by Golem XIV at 12:52 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


A bit off-topic: Just ran across this book and it purports to explain everything we're seeing in the GOP these days, from the wild tilt-rightward to the destruction of the social safety net and the debilitation of government itself. In other words, all the stuff that's led up to the Trump/GOP chimera. The author, a history professor at Duke, was drawn into this research by gaining access to the accumulated papers of James McGill Buchanan, a key right-wing libertarian philosopher and promoter funded by the Kochs. I just ordered it.
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:53 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


“I was not, as you know, a party member by necessity,” he said. “I liked Communist and socialist ideas very much and I like them still.”

Well, he obviously means the "imprison dissidents, forbid protest and consolidate power among an unaccountable elite" kinds of Soviet ideas rather than the "everyone should be economically equal and have equal access to education, medical care, work and housing" kinds of ideas.
posted by Frowner at 12:53 PM on July 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Mental Wimp, there's a thread about the MacLean book on Buchanan over here.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:54 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


If Donnie finds out that Kris Kobach went on TV and cast doubt on whether Trump really won the election, Kris Kobach will not be not in Kansas any more.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:59 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


argument on Facebook about how single payer would "get the government involved in health care

As I understand it, that's really only true, in terms of actual care, in varieties of single-payer where the government itself is the health care provider (i.e., doctors and hospitals are actual government-run entities). Other varieties include the government being involved only as the payee and negotiator (i.e., the "single payer") for care, and the government being involved as setting regulations on how much can be charged (i.e., very little) by a group of private or nonprofit providers.
posted by Rykey at 1:00 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


So I more or less approve of Obama's compromise -- support the fighters who are trying to depose him without getting into the war ourselves. What better option do we have?

Not giving money to groups that are literally al-Qaeda and strongly affiliated with ISIS would be a good start. Assad is extremely bad, but the groups that have emerged as leaders of the coalition that is fighting him are possibly worse (I have a soft spot for the YPG, but they're not really fighting Assad directly at this point). The better option would be to not give any money or support to either side of this civil war and to find some way to help refugees and other people who have been caught in the middle of this hell.
posted by Copronymus at 1:02 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Time to break out the world's tiniest violins: TPM: Several Trump Associates Are Struggling To Pay Legal Bills For Russia Probe
posted by un petit cadeau at 1:07 PM on July 19, 2017 [26 favorites]


I think Kobach's comment was an attempt to portray his sham commission as legitimate and serious-minded about getting to the bottom of election "uncertainties" on both sides of the aisle. (See? They're even willing to call into question the legitimacy of trump's victory margin? They must really be on the side of Truth!)
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:14 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Who gives a shit what Reagan would think?

I suspect the point is that Republicans who still claim to worship at his feet might feel a twitch of that unfamiliar emotion, shame, not that we should be celebrating him now.

Russia's a white nationalist kleptocracy now, so why wouldn't Reagan love it?

At least in theory, Reagan represented "movement conservatism" more than any individual before or since (pundits and theorists aside). He was the embodiment of the movement to many up to the present day. And while it's clear to many outsiders that the definition of the Republican Party as an ideological projection of the philosophy of conservatism always was largely false, figures like Paul Ryan continued to believe it, and were probably able to convince themselves of it .... until the rise of Trump proved it was always an illusion.

Certainly the best expression of Reagan's conservative philosophy was the "city on a hill" metaphor taken from the Pilgrim John Winthrop, especially in his farewell address. That may be many things (and it's interesting how coherent he sounds just a few years prior to his Alzheimer's diagnosis, compared to .... *cough*), but it isn't a paean to white nationalism.

Again, I don't think it's a stretch to say that crocodile was always lurking beneath the surface of the party's appeal, but it was never part of the surface messaging. It's dangerous to interpret the political opinions of someone no longer alive based on events of the day, but I do suspect Reagan would be appalled by where the party has gone. The #NeverTrump cadre is almost entirely made up of people who deem themselves true-blue intellectual conservatives. Perhaps they aren't the "base", but they were the guiding force in the party for decades. To bring this back around to relevance, it's a motivating factor to them. They want that party back, whether it's possible or not.
posted by dhartung at 1:17 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


I honestly don't get the "Reagan would be displeased" stuff.

Part of me thinks that at least when Reagan said "America First" he meant it, but who the hell knows what the Gipper might've done in Trump's position. I mostly just invoke the memory of the Sainted Ron to shame Republicans.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:19 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


.@KatyTurNBC to Kris Kobach: Are you saying Hillary Clinton didn't win the popular vote?

Kobach: "We may never know the answer"


remember, folks: nothing is knowable, everything is mutable, there are no facts, there is no objective reality, no information can be trusted, no authorities can be trusted, and everything -- absolutely every fact of the world -- is now subject to your opinion and your personal beliefs. Now, pick the echo chamber you find most comforting and let's get out there and run this democracy!
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 1:20 PM on July 19, 2017 [41 favorites]


Several Trump Associates Are Struggling To Pay Legal Bills For Russia Probe

How about an Executive Order directing Los Alamos National Laboratory to construct a violin from individual carbon atoms
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:20 PM on July 19, 2017 [33 favorites]




Yep. My response lately to people who bring up the voter fraud thing has been "So Trump claims that three to five million people voted illegally in the election? Well, I say only twenty-six people voted illegally in the last election. And I have the same amount of evidence for my claim that Trump has for his. Why do you believe him instead of me?"

case in point. it's a choose your own reality adventure!
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 1:22 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Taxation is also a uniter within the GOP—Cruz and Paul and Ryan and Egg and McConnell and Murkowski may not be able to agree on health care, but they will on lowering taxes. So no intraparty self-sabotage there.

This was from a while back, but I want to address it. It *seems* like the GOP is united on "lowering taxes" - and they are! But, as with healthcare, once you get more detailed than that soundbite, the coalition begins to fall apart. Taxes are already very very low, so there aren't a lot of places to cut from without raising taxes on another group (and they don't have 60 votes so they're subject to the Byrd rule). The impact of taxation tends to break down along geographic and industry lines rather than clear party lines (e.g., Sen. Cotton will never vote for a BAT, even if the revenue allows the GOP to cut other taxes; on the personal income side, eliminating the state tax deduction seems like it would impact only high-tax blue states, but 22% of tax returns filed by Texas residents claim the state tax deduction, etc.). Also, state tax policy and revenues are significantly affected by federal tax policy; we can leverage some GOP governors and legislatures against certain tax proposals in the same way we did for healthcare (state budgets are seriously hurt up right now).

Once it looks like there might actually be a bill or concrete proposals, I'm happy to help people craft a particular message to use in their state.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:22 PM on July 19, 2017 [27 favorites]


I assume the EPA etc.. etc... are all just flat out gone after this budget, never to be restored without recreating from scratch?
posted by Artw at 1:24 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


I fell for the old "new thread" trick ...

I'm slowly working my way through Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency

It's a tough (disheartening) read, but well written. Showing the growth of a pop culture icon silently brooding about politics is the impression he's giving (summarized on page 99 of my Kindle edition), though it's hard to imagine DJT being silent about anything.

One thing that struck close to home was the talk about Bannon's time running a gold-farming company (video game, World of Warcraft, ultimately undermined when Blizz decided to go to pay to play model and sell to the consumer directly) and his ownership stake in one of my old hangouts: Allakazham. Now I'm glad my little gaming websites never grew enough to get bought out by this ... d00d.

Another notable bit:
Inside Trump's circle, the power of illegal immigration to manipulate popular sentiment was readily apparent, and his advisers brainstormed methods for keeping their attention-addled boss on message. They needed a trick, a mnemonic device. In the summer of 2014, they found one that clicked. "Roger Stone and I came up with the idea of 'the Wall,' and we talked to Steve [Bannon] about it," said [Sam] Nunberg. "It was to make sure he talked about immigration."

Initially, Trump seemed indifferent to the idea. But in January 2015, he tried it out at the Iowa Freedom Summit, a presidential cattle call put on by David Bossie's group, Citizens United. "One of his pledges was, 'I will build a Wall,' and the place just went nuts," said Nunberg. Warming to the concept, Trump waited a beat and then added a flourish that brought down the house. "Nobody," he said, "builds like Trump."
posted by tilde at 1:27 PM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


How about an Executive Order directing Los Alamos National Laboratory to construct a violin from individual carbon atoms

I fear that only a quark-based violin created using unholy manipulations in the LHC would do justice to the occasion.
posted by Behemoth at 1:27 PM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


This is extremely media inside baseball, but if you love to hate Chris Cillizza, it's oh so good. Erik Wemple decided to dabble in satire by analyzing Chris Cillizza's AMA exactly as Chris Cillizza would have done it, complete with links to some of Cillizza's worst hits: CNN’s Chris Cillizza did a Reddit AMA. Here are six reasons that’s a great move:
However: Regardless of the content of the questions and Cillizza’s replies, the decision to do a Reddit AMA was a fabulous move for CNN as a broadcaster and for Cillizza as an emerging television media personality. Six reasons:

1) Important people do Reddit AMAs: Barack Obama has done an AMA. Steve Wozniak has done an AMA. Ronda Rousey has done an AMA. Jake Tapper has done an AMA. See those names? They are famous people — figures who leave a deep imprint on culture and society in the United States. By jumping in on an AMA as a CNN personality, Cillizza moves to affiliate himself with them. So even as sophisticates may take issue with one or two responses by Cillizza, what really matters is the broader public perception of his standing post-AMA.

2) Timing: Political analysts are always working toward a deadline, and for Cillizza, that’s the 2020 presidential election — something that CNN surely hopes to dominate. While many people in the business may view this pivotal contest as far off on the horizon, a recent edition of “The Point” — the newsletter that Cillizza writes with Saba Hamedy — points out that this pivotal election “draws ever closer.”
On another note, if you're looking for esoteric procedural details on what happened to Rep. Lee's AUMF amendment, and I know some of you are, the BuzzFeed team is absolutely on it. In short, the Rules Committee put together a consolidated "minibus" appropriations bill, and they simply left that part out. Then they passed that and sent to the floor.
posted by zachlipton at 1:28 PM on July 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


Time to break out the world's tiniest violins

Ah! Now we see the violins inherent in the system!
posted by Celsius1414 at 1:29 PM on July 19, 2017 [75 favorites]


melissasaurus: "This was from a while back, but I want to address it. It *seems* like the GOP is united on "lowering taxes" - and they are! But, as with healthcare, once you get more detailed than that soundbite, the coalition begins to fall apart. "

From your lips....
With President Trump’s promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act nearly dead, administration officials are scaling back their ambitions to cut the corporate tax rate sharply, apparently taking a more pragmatic approach as they scramble to secure a major legislative victory this year. [NYT]
posted by Chrysostom at 1:44 PM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]




Not giving money to groups that are literally al-Qaeda and strongly affiliated with ISIS would be a good start.

It's a messy, multi-sided conflict, but I don't think this is a good characterization of it. This is what Putin says about Assad's enemies. But based on what I've read it is not really true.

For instance this Vox explainer says:
Most rebel groups were preoccupied fighting Assad, and had no ability to really refocus on the Islamic State. The same was true, in reverse, for Assad; he had long maintained a sort of de facto ceasefire with ISIS so he could focus on fighting the moderate rebels whom he saw as a bigger threat.
As I understand it ISIS does not support Assad OR the rebels. ISIS just wanted to take advantage of the chaos. It offered an opportunity to seize territory and establish their own theocracy, which would not be governed by a Assad or by democratically elected leaders. ISIS was therefore fighting against both Assad and against the rebels.

But the US actually has been putting boots on the ground in opposition to ISIS, and Putin has been backing Assad's troops against them as well as against the rebels (but mostly against the rebels), and ISIS has now effectively lost all the territory they once controlled. The question is who is going to control that territory, going forward.

With Trump in office -- it will apparently be Assad and Putin.
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:45 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


This health care bill is like fucking Jason Vorhees. In more ways than one.

WON'T IT JUST DIE ALREADY.
posted by Justinian at 1:51 PM on July 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


The Hill: Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) plan on Thursday to introduce a new version of a bill granting legal status and a path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children.

This is a great opportunity for Trump to achieve a legislative win by doing the opposite of what he pledged to do.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:53 PM on July 19, 2017 [19 favorites]


Not giving money to groups that are literally al-Qaeda and strongly affiliated with ISIS would be a good start.

Are we talking about Hobby Lobby again?

The thing I'm fearing is that now we are seeing Trump, Assad and Putin all cosying up together and now that it's looking like the coup/countercoup in Turkey has she swung them towards Russia against NATO we might see a US-backed, or at least US-ignored, genocide against the Kurds.
posted by Artw at 1:53 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


OH MY FUCKING GOD I AM SO SICK OF THIS BILL PLEASE DIE AND STAY DEAD

(and by "sick of" I mean "heartsick to my very core that there are humans alive who could be so cruel, and not only are they alive but people chose them to be their leaders")
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:54 PM on July 19, 2017 [28 favorites]


rc3spencer, my point is not that Reaganism divorced the party from white nationalism (another example I'm well aware of), but that Reaganism allowed the party to pretend that it had. Today's party has stopped pretending, and movement conservatives like Ryan are hated by the base (though perversely holding power). Given the legislative and policy disarray it's hard to argue there's a coherent organizing principle anymore -- beyond, perhaps, as Pogo_Fuzzybut put it above,
None of the people interviewed talk about specific policy goals, or improvements in peoples lives. They just want to see Liberals Cry. This isn't even hyperbole - one of the interviewees says this specifically.

This is ressentiment, pure and simple, and not even disguised by rhetoric. It's a blunt anger and permission has been given to express it in the worst ways.
posted by dhartung at 1:58 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


How about an Executive Order directing Los Alamos National Laboratory to construct a violin from individual carbon atoms

Stradivarenes.
posted by Mental Wimp at 2:00 PM on July 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


Gotta admire the GOP's hapless yet malicious tenacity, though. By golly, I guess they're going to keep reanimating this piece of shit bill in the most Lovecraftian possible manner until they make every solitary American old and young hate their guts. Godspeed, you assholes!
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:01 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Understood dhartung, but I lived and voted during those screamy-war-chant Atwater-y days, and those young Reaganite pups were quite fired up by Reagan's speeches on the blatant nationalism theme. It was as scary and as ugly a time as I remember, much like now. A diifferent more huggable death clown maybe, but just as ugly.
posted by rc3spencer at 2:03 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


And whoever agreed with Trump that tax cuts will be easier, how the hell are they planning to finance those without their Loot the ACA & Medicaid slush fund?
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:04 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Interesting thought here - McConnell has basically now it the rule that legislation can pass on 51 votes. He didn't pull it off (apparently), but that's what would have happened. These things would have passed with a 51 vote threshold:
DREAM
Bigger Stimulus
Second Stim
Public option
ANWR
Cap & Trade
ENDA
Minwage hike
...and there's no reason they can't pass once we get 51 Dem Senators.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:06 PM on July 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


Joel Clement in WaPo: I’m a scientist. I’m blowing the whistle on the Trump administration.
I am not a member of the deep state. I am not big government.

I am a scientist, a policy expert, a civil servant and a worried citizen. Reluctantly, as of today, I am also a whistleblower on an administration that chooses silence over science.

Nearly seven years ago, I came to work for the Interior Department, where, among other things, I’ve helped endangered communities in Alaska prepare for and adapt to a changing climate. But on June 15, I was one of about 50 senior department employees who received letters informing us of involuntary reassignments. Citing a need to “improve talent development, mission delivery and collaboration,” the letter informed me that I was reassigned to an unrelated job in the accounting office that collects royalty checks from fossil fuel companies.

I am not an accountant — but you don’t have to be one to see that the administration’s excuse for a reassignment such as mine doesn’t add up. A few days after my reassignment, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke testified before Congress that the department would use reassignments as part of its effort to eliminate employees; the only reasonable inference from that testimony is that he expects people to quit in response to undesirable transfers. Some of my colleagues are being relocated across the country, at taxpayer expense, to serve in equally ill-fitting jobs.

I believe I was retaliated against for speaking out publicly about the dangers that climate change poses to Alaska Native communities.
posted by zachlipton at 2:07 PM on July 19, 2017 [102 favorites]


Permanent tax cuts depend on looting the ACA & Medicaid. But they can pass 10 year tax cuts without doing so... but not with reconciliation unless they try to pull some bullshit claiming that tax cuts lead to an increase in revenue.
posted by Justinian at 2:07 PM on July 19, 2017


And whoever agreed with Trump that tax cuts will be easier, how the hell are they planning to finance those without their Loot the ACA & Medicaid slush fund?

planning? There is no planning. Dog caught the car.
posted by mikelieman at 2:07 PM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


@washingtonpost: A reporter broke White House rules by streaming live audio of an off-camera briefing

It's about fucking time.
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:08 PM on July 19, 2017 [85 favorites]


McConnell has basically now it the rule that legislation can pass on 51 votes

The Byrd Rule is still in place, no?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:09 PM on July 19, 2017


Yeah, the point of the list at Chrysostom's link isn't that we can pass those things now with only 51 votes but rather that if the threshold were 51 votes those would all have passed. Which is why they won't kill the legislative filibuster.
posted by Justinian at 2:11 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


They also won't kill the legislative filibuster because of the power it gives to each individual senator to block legislation until they get what they individually desire.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:12 PM on July 19, 2017


this bill needs a scene from that Buffy episode "When She Was Bad" where, after PTSDing all over her friends she rids herself of her demons by pounding the bones of the Master into dust.
posted by angrycat at 2:12 PM on July 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


And whoever agreed with Trump that tax cuts will be easier, how the hell are they planning to finance those without their Loot the ACA & Medicaid slush fund?

There was an interview with Paul Ryan on talk radio today here in Milwaukee where he said tax reform would be revenue neutral - closing loopholes, simplifying the code, etc. A lot of talk of cutting corporate taxes due to concerns over tax inversion.

He also answered a softball "Is this really the least productive Congress" question by saying the current House has been the most productive in passing numerous bills looking all the way back to Clinton, but that "things take a little longer with the Senate" .... which last I checked was part of Congress, so..
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 2:16 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


@washingtonpost: A reporter broke White House rules by streaming live audio of an off-camera briefing

It's about fucking time.


Indeed. Why should the Administration be the only people allowed to break White House rules?
posted by Rykey at 2:17 PM on July 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


Which is why they won't kill the legislative filibuster.

I think this remains to be seen. No one thought they would kill the nomination filibuster either, but we eventually got there.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:19 PM on July 19, 2017


The new CBO score is in.

32 million people lose their insurance in the next 10 years. L-O-fucking-L.
posted by Justinian at 2:20 PM on July 19, 2017 [44 favorites]


No one thought they would kill the nomination filibuster either, but we eventually got there.

I was confident they would kill the nomination filibuster because we live in a partisan era in which there is going to be little intra-party division regarding whether any given presidential nominee should be appointed. Whereas, as we have seen, there is tremendous intra-party division regarding legislation.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:23 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


The CBO numbers are on the Republican straight repeal. 17 Million lose their insurance in one year. Premiums double in 10 years.

Sounds the same as the last CBO score on straight repeal.
posted by Justinian at 2:26 PM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


"Please appraise this Shit Sandwich."
"Very well. This Shit Sandwich is not good."
"If I sprinkle this Arsenic on the Shit Sandwich, what then?"
"Let me see... the Shit Sandwich is significantly worse than before."
"Thank you."
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:28 PM on July 19, 2017 [41 favorites]


Here's the CBO score link for ORRA (Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act, basically repeal all the taxes, end Medicaid expansion, end the subsidies, but keep all the regulations).

It's basically the same as 2015 when they scored this before. This is what a death spiral looks like:
In CBO and JCT’s estimation, under this legislation, about half of the nation’s population would live in areas having no insurer participating in the nongroup market in 2020 because of downward pressure on enrollment and upward pressure on premiums. That share would continue to increase, extending to about three-quarters of the population by 2026.
There would be no individual market for most of the country. If you don't have employer coverage and you're ineligible for government coverage (and many people eligible for Medicaid now would be kicked off), tough luck, you're uninsured.
posted by zachlipton at 2:31 PM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


The new CBO score is in.

32 million people lose their insurance in the next 10 years. L-O-fucking-L.
posted by Justinian at 2:20 PM on July 19 [8 favorites +] [!]


It's no longer attributable to incompetence. It's pure malice.
posted by Mental Wimp at 2:35 PM on July 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


"That depends. Is it artisanal shit?"
posted by kirkaracha at 2:36 PM on July 19, 2017


Manu Raju: Ron Johnson would NOT say if he'd support MCCONNELL for leader next Congress when I asked him just now. Also critical of healthcare process
posted by Chrysostom at 2:38 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]




Reminder that the CBO Director is a conservative Republican appointed by John Boehner and Orrin Hatch.

And hand-picked by the then-chairman of the House Budget Committee, who is--and this is almost too good to be true--Secretary of HHS Tom Price. Not that that's stopped Price from attacking Hall and trying to gaslight Americans into thinking he's a liberal partisan who was appointed by Obama/Pelosi/Reid.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:47 PM on July 19, 2017 [32 favorites]




Seems like things got desperate enough that Trump called out his security blanket/attack dog Corey Lewandowski. I guess we know which faction lost that fight.

Seems shitty of CNN to do that story without also declaiming that, yeah, we employed that guy for a while.
posted by penduluum at 2:56 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


TORARA is an okay name for a monster that kills hundreds of thousands of people.
posted by Rust Moranis at 2:57 PM on July 19, 2017 [16 favorites]


My impression is that this bill will not pass and is named so that conservative senators can return to their states saying "I voted for the Obamacare Repeal Act" and moderate-ish senators can return to their states saying "I voted against repealing Obamacare without a replacement".

But call your senators etc
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:57 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


All of these awful bills should be called what they are: The Republican Insurance Plan (R.I.P.)
posted by Mchelly at 2:57 PM on July 19, 2017 [49 favorites]


Don Jr. and Manafort are listed as witnesses before Senate Judiciary next Wednesday.

[insert something about popcorn here, whatever]
posted by zachlipton at 3:03 PM on July 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


Fredo will be great under pressure I'm sure.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:10 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Bill Browder is on that list as well. This is the precursor testimony everybody needs to hear before Jr. swears in.
posted by cmfletcher at 3:14 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Also Kushner to testify before the Intelligence Committee on Monday (closed session though, sigh).

Meanwhile, from Daily Beast: Trump Takes Four Health Care Positions In 48 Hours, Aides Shrug
President Donald Trump can’t seem to decide what he wants Congress to do on health care, but internally, aides say there isn’t much point in keeping him on message, and they’ve generally stopped trying.

“There is no mechanism in place for making sure the president stays on message when he doesn’t have one,” a senior Trump administration official told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. There’s also “no real [internal] effort to keep him from contradicting” himself on what, exactly, the GOP’s next steps on health care should be, the official said.
...
The president has floated no fewer than four different health care proposals in the past 48 hours. As the Senate GOP’s Obamacare replacement bill hit the skids on Monday evening, Trump mused that they should simply go for repeal and leave it at that. The following morning, as the repeal efforts prospect’s diminished further, Trump suggested leaving Obamacare in place—”as I have always said”—and waiting for what he’s described as its inevitable failure before officially repealing it and moving on a replacement.

On Wednesday morning, after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had admitted that the Republican repeal effort lacked the necessary support, Trump was back to promoting Obamacare replacement. “The Republicans never discuss how good their health care bill is,” he complained.

By Wednesday afternoon, the president was promoting health care policies that weren’t even in the Senate bill. That bill, he incorrectly claimed, would permit the selling of health insurance across state lines. “You’ll have forms of insurance you don’t even know about right now,” he promised. Selling insurance plans across state lines was one of Trump’s go-to lines on the campaign trail, but was left out of the Senate bill to allow it to proceed under rules requiring a simple majority.

It was a dizzying series of pivots for a president who often seems to want to get something done on health care more than he wants to get any particular thing done. It doesn’t help that Trump frequently confuses basic details about the U.S. health care system. Asked last month whether he understands the intricacies of that system, an administration official who works on health policy told The Daily Beast, “the president understands winning.”
It also doesn't really matter because he's not changing anything and will just take credit for whatever happens anyway:
“Nothing he says really changes what’s happening,” a senior White House official told The Daily Beast. “Mitch [McConnell] knows what the score is. He’s gonna do what he can do, and at the end of the day the president can say that’s what he wanted all along.”
Rev. Barber is spitting fire—An open letter to clergy who prayed with Donald Trump:
Dear Reverends Jack Graham, Johnnie Moore, Greg Laurie, Paula White, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr., and others,
...
The nation needs our prayers, and no doubt the president does, too. But the Scripture cautions us to lay hands on no man suddenly, lest we become a party to his sins. (1 Timothy 5:22) We cannot simply p-r-a-y pray over people while they p-r-e-y on the poor and vulnerable among us. The teachings of Jesus are clear about caring for the poor and the sick, and we are called to share His message; we cannot simply serve as chaplains to imperial power. If we pray for a person engaging in injustice we must offer prayers that lead to conviction, not prayers that further embolden them in their wrongdoing. And since faith comes by hearing, we must speak prophetically and truthfully to them about using political power to inflict public pain. If they refuse to listen, we must put legs on our prayers and demand that those leaders attend instead to the weightier matters of love justice and mercy.

Hence I am troubled by your silence and lack of guidance as the president and his political allies in Congress attempt to deconstruct America’s health care system. If Jesus did anything, he offered health care wherever he went — and he never charged a leper a co-pay. Like most Americans, I know the Affordable Care Act is not perfect. In considerable measure, this is because over twenty states sabotaged the ACA by refusing to expand Medicaid. Its main shortcoming is that it needs to be transformed into a single payer system with universal healthcare for all.
posted by zachlipton at 3:17 PM on July 19, 2017 [74 favorites]


TORARA is friend to no children.
posted by delfin at 3:22 PM on July 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


Speaking of Bill Browder, he was the guest on the most recent Trumpcast and he talks a bit about the Russian propaganda covered in the Daily Beast article notyou linked above, it's worth a listen.
posted by peeedro at 3:22 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


The Obamacare Repeal and Reconciliation Act

Can't wait for the movie: TORRA! TORRA! TORRA!
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:23 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


The "Furthering Uninsured Citizens Knowingly via Executive Dysfunction" act
posted by MysticMCJ at 3:24 PM on July 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


Here's a good bit of Bill Browder on CBS This Morning.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 3:28 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


A 12-Month Timeline of the Trump Team's Lies and Excuses About the Russia Meeting
Along the way, Junior and various other Trumpworld equivocators have repeatedly, reflexively lied about or misrepresented that June 9, 2016, meeting. They lied about the existence of the meeting, they lied about the reason for it, they lied about who was there, and they followed all that up by offering every excuse under the sun to try to explain the whole thing away. It's worth taking a look back at all the ways that the Trump Team has misled the public about a powwow they still say anyone in politics would have attended.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:30 PM on July 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


NYT: Manafort Was in Debt to Pro-Russia Interests, Cyprus Records Show
Financial records filed last year in the secretive tax haven of Cyprus, where Paul J. Manafort kept bank accounts during his years working in Ukraine and investing with a Russian oligarch, indicate that he had been in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17 million before he joined Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in March 2016.

The money appears to have been owed by shell companies connected to Mr. Manafort’s business activities in Ukraine when he worked as a consultant to the pro-Russia Party of Regions. The Cyprus documents obtained by The New York Times include audited financial statements for the companies, which were part of a complex web of more than a dozen entities that transferred millions of dollars among them in the form of loans, payments and fees.
His spokesman says that he wasn't in debt at the time he started working for Trump. Whether you believe that or not, there's got to be something suspicious about being $17 million in debt and then suddenly working for free as a campaign manager for Donald Trump, right? People were milking that campaign for every dollar they could, and the guy who was up to his eyeballs in debt is the one saying "nah, I don't need a paycheck?"

Sidenote: this is an excellent graphic showing how the various health care bills would increase the number of uninsured, as compared to current law.

~155 health care protesters arrested at the Capitol.
posted by zachlipton at 3:41 PM on July 19, 2017 [51 favorites]


The "Furthering Uninsured Citizens Knowingly via Executive Dysfunction" act

For the Pod Save America fans - The Repeal and Gutting Obamacare, Further Uninsuring Citizens Knowingly. Yep - Openly Un-appropriating Reasonably Significant Lifesaving Funds Act 2017
posted by TwoWordReview at 3:59 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Initially, Trump seemed indifferent to the idea. But in January 2015, he tried it out at the Iowa Freedom Summit, a presidential cattle call put on by David Bossie's group, Citizens United. "One of his pledges was, 'I will build a Wall,' and the place just went nuts," said Nunberg. Warming to the concept, Trump waited a beat and then added a flourish that brought down the house. "Nobody," he said, "builds like Trump."

posted by tilde at 4:27 PM on July 19


Thank you so much, tilde!

I was looking in vain for this story when we were talking about the wall a couple of days ago and someone asked, "Why a wall?" I remembered this anecdote but when I tried to google, "When did Trump first talk about the building a wall?" all the answers came back, "When he rode down the escalator to announce his candidacy." I started thinking I had imagined it

What really resonated with me is that he would talk about a variety of things and some would bored the crowds, some topics lit the crowds up. Nothing made the crowds more excited than building a wall. That's why we may end up building some stupid wall at great expense for no good reason.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:01 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


It's Scoop-o'Clock!

The New York Times: Financial records filed last year in the secretive tax haven of Cyprus, where Paul J. Manafort kept bank accounts during his years working in Ukraine and investing with a Russian oligarch, indicate that he had been in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17 million before he joined Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in March 2016.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:05 PM on July 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


This explains why the sign on Trump's desk says "The Buck Stops Five Thousand Miles To The East"
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:07 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


What I really don't get about all these financial entanglements with Russia: How "Oh gosh I'm in debt to Russia(ns)" becomes "Well, I guess the best way to fix this is treason."

Seriously, how do you decide that defaulting on your international debts will lead to WORSE consequences than actively selling out your country?
posted by scaryblackdeath at 4:08 PM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Seriously, how do you decide that defaulting on your international debts will lead to WORSE consequences than actively selling out your country?

Well, we're not gonna kill him.
posted by schadenfrau at 4:13 PM on July 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


Seriously, how do you decide that defaulting on your international debts will lead to WORSE consequences than actively selling out your country?

Because one will kill you and the other will let you buy your freedom.
posted by Talez at 4:14 PM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


I hear Trump got a pretty good job out of this also
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:14 PM on July 19, 2017


your handlers probably show you a PowerPoint presentation illustrating how treason convictions are relatively rare compared to coincidental and mysterious not-at-all-polonium-related deaths of very natural causes.
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:14 PM on July 19, 2017 [22 favorites]


Trump really doesn't get optics and how they've changed now that he's at this level.
Trump trying to get Putin's attention at dinner. (twitter gif)

I know it's the camera angle but lordy this one is gonna haunt him forever.
posted by Jalliah at 4:15 PM on July 19, 2017 [47 favorites]


I'm not quite ready to believe Russian oligarchs actively hunt down and kill everybody outside their country who owes them money. Surely it happens in some cases, but I just... what the fuck.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 4:16 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's not about owing them, it's about owing them and not responding favorably when the day comes that the Kremlin calls on them for a favor. It is an oligarchy which rules by fear.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:19 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Who owes them money? Nah. Dead men are lousy payers.

Now, if you embarrass them, if you threaten them, if you betray them, if you desert them, if you speak openly against them? Watch your ass.
posted by delfin at 4:21 PM on July 19, 2017


The Atlantic: What has emerged is an “adhocracy,” in which people find themselves tapped for roles as and when needed. What matters is not your formal job, nor your official place in the pecking order, so much as your personal connections, especially to Putin himself, and how useful and agreeable you can be. When the Kremlin wanted to build a new palace for Putin, for example, or needed funds for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, rather than raising taxes, it turned to the rich oligarchs and expected them to “contribute.” After all, everyone knew that this was the price for staying in business.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:22 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Speaking of Bill Browder, he was the guest on the most recent Trumpcast and he talks a bit about the Russian propaganda covered in the Daily Beast article notyou linked above, it's worth a listen.
posted by peeedro at 6:22 PM on July 19

I was just listening to this on my way home from the gym and was going to post about it-- it's that good. Browder has quite a bit to say about the Magnitsky Act, the people around it and the results. For example, he believes that the Oligarchs including Putin have stolen $1 Trillion from the Russian Government over time. They are frantic to get the Magnitsky Act removed because while it is in place they cannot bank anywhere in the world. This means if there is a new Government in Russia they will find it difficult to run and hide.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:28 PM on July 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


Trump trying to get Putin's attention at dinner. (twitter gif)

Hmm
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:29 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


!! NYT: In Interview, Trump Expresses Anger at Sessions and Comey, and Warns Mueller
President Trump said on Wednesday that he never would have appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions had he known Mr. Sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation that has dogged his presidency, calling the decision “very unfair to the president.”

In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that should not have happened. “Sessions should have never recused himself and if he was going to recuse himself he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Mr. Trump said.

In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, the president also accused James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director he fired in May, of trying to leverage a dossier of compromising material to keep his job. Mr. Trump criticized both the acting F.B.I. director who has been filling in since Mr. Comey’s dismissal and the deputy attorney general who recommended it. And he took on Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel now leading the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election.
More inside, as they say.
posted by zachlipton at 4:34 PM on July 19, 2017 [60 favorites]


That's important stuff. There is obviously bad stuff in Trump's finances that he cannot let Mueller find.

I think Mueller is going to get fired and we're going to have a political crisis unmatched since the Civil War.
posted by Justinian at 4:39 PM on July 19, 2017 [27 favorites]


"I wouldn't have to obstruct justice so much if you wouldn't make me! Why do you keep making me obstruct justice?"
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:39 PM on July 19, 2017 [22 favorites]


Trump trying to get Putin's attention at dinner. (twitter gif)

Needs a catchy soundtrack.

posted by FelliniBlank at 4:40 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


He accuses Comey of blackmail because he warned him about the Steele dossier:
In the interview, Mr. Trump said he believes Mr. Comey told him about the dossier to implicitly make clear he had something to hold over the president. “In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there,” Mr. Trump said. As leverage? “Yeah, I think so,’’ Mr. Trump said. “In retrospect.”
And then he says he talked to Putin about adoption! Adoption!
“The meal was going toward dessert,’’ he said. “I went down just to say hello to Melania, and while I was there I said hello to Putin. Really, pleasantries more than anything else. It was not a long conversation, but it was, you know, could be 15 minutes. Just talked about things. Actually, it was very interesting, we talked about adoption.”

He noted the adoption issue came up in the June 2016 meeting between his son and Russian visitors. “I actually talked about Russian adoption with him,’’ he said, meaning Mr. Putin. “Which is interesting because it was a part of the conversation that Don had in that meeting.”
I don't even. What is this? How?
posted by zachlipton at 4:40 PM on July 19, 2017 [50 favorites]


U.S. Lawmakers Seek to Criminally Outlaw Support for Boycott Campaign Against Israel
The bill’s co-sponsors include the senior Democrat in Washington, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, his New York colleague Kirsten Gillibrand, and several of the Senate’s more liberal members, such as Ron Wyden of Oregon, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Maria Cantwell of Washington. Illustrating the bipartisanship that AIPAC typically summons, it also includes several of the most right-wing senators such as Ted Cruz of Texas, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Marco Rubio of Florida.
Way to keep your eye on the ball, guys.
posted by tonycpsu at 4:43 PM on July 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


ACLU A Federal Appeals Court Just Shot Down Government Prayer on Steroids in North Carolina
In Rowan County, North Carolina, the county board of commissioners was intent on taking government prayer to a whole new level. Every board meeting opened with a prayer. But it wasn’t just government prayer. It was government prayer on steroids.

The prayers were delivered by commissioners themselves. No one else was allowed to give the prayer. Over the years, the prayers referred to only one faith — Christianity — and were proselytizing. Multiple prayers, for example, described Christianity as “the one and only way to salvation.” In others, commissioners apologized for the community’s sins and failure to follow Jesus Christ, suggested that Christianity is a superior faith, and expressed a desire for meeting attendees to accept Christ.

Before every prayer began, a commissioner instructed audience members to stand and directed those assembled to join in the prayer. When some residents objected to the prayers, several commissioners loudly recommitted to the practice. One even announced he would go to jail before ending the prayers while another declared that he was being persecuted.
Ugh. It doesn't surprise me that this took place in NC-- the Independent Baptist Churches are rife here and some communities have more churches than grocery stores.

Here's a little different take on the situation:

Washington Times Un-American court demands Rowan County quit praying
But let’s be blunt. The issue isn’t so much that prayer is unconstitutional, or in violation of Founding Fathers’ beliefs, visions or personal practice. Our nation’s founders, not all of whom worshipped with the same level of religious intensity, nonetheless appealed to a higher authority — Nature’s God, the Creator, as noted in the Declaration of Independence, for instance — on a regular basis. And note to would-be historical revisionists: It wasn’t the god of Islam, or Buddha or Wicca they prayed to and petitioned for intercession and aid.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:43 PM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Elsewhere in Republican Fuckery: GOP Moving Forward With Plan To Block New Legal Protections For Bank, Credit Card Customers (Chris Moran, Consumerist)
The CFPB rule does not outlaw the use of arbitration clauses. Rather, it prevents affected financial operations from using these clauses to prevent class actions. Thus, individual cases could still be resolved through arbitration, but banks under CFPB’s oversight would not be able to block multiple wronged customers from combining their cases.

Now, two heavily bank-backed lawmakers are expected to introduce legislation to roll back the CFPB rule. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX) and Sen. Mike Crapo (ID) will attempt to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) — a law that allows lawmakers to voice their disapproval of new federal regulations — to stop the arbitration rule.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:46 PM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


“Sessions should have never recused himself and if he was going to recuse himself he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Mr. Trump said.

For want of a flux capacitor, a kingdom was lost. [hopefully]
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:47 PM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


"I would obviously have picked someone who would obstruct justice for me!"
posted by Justinian at 4:49 PM on July 19, 2017 [25 favorites]


I think Mueller is going to get fired and we're going to have a political crisis unmatched since the Civil War.

I think Mueller is going to get fired, and Republicans will do exactly jack fucking shit about it. (Because they are craven, cowardly opportunistic asshats who care only about their own immediate fortunes.) It may look like a political crisis, but Rump's going to keep on being predisent, playing in fire trucks and handing intel to Russia. 'Cause ain't no one gonna stop him.

Until midterms.
posted by mrgoat at 4:51 PM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


My mom thinks Melania is Trump's KGB handler
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:51 PM on July 19, 2017 [66 favorites]


Simple solution: fire Sessions and hire an AG who won't recuse himself from Russia. That guy can fire Mueller.
posted by notyou at 4:51 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm half expecting Rosenstein to get fired during Maddow's A segment tonight.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 4:54 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Simple solution: fire Sessions and hire an AG who won't recuse himself from Russia. That guy can fire Mueller.

No, Sessions recused himself. Mueller was appointed by Rosenstein! It's Rosenstein that would have to be replaced. That's literally what the Saturday Night Massacre was all about! This really is Stupid Watergate!

The nuclear option is that the special prosecutor statute is not a law, it's an executive branch order. So the President could simply attempt to unilaterally render the order no longer operative and then fire Mueller directly. This would be... bad. Supreme Court bad?
posted by Justinian at 4:55 PM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


The bill’s co-sponsors include the senior Democrat in Washington

Y'know, living in a deep blue district of Seattle has meant so far most of my calls to my representatives have basically been obligatory efforts since they're clearly in line with my views on the crazypants nonsense of this regime. But for once, I got to call my senator's office and say, "What the HELL are you thinking?"
posted by scaryblackdeath at 4:59 PM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


Breaking that John McCain has been diagnosed with brain cancer. (per CNN)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:01 PM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Surely Mueller is going to take Trump's insistence that he not investigate his finances as a sign he really really needs to investigate his finances, right?

This has all the subtlety of someone telling a cop "yeah search all you want, but hey, don't look under the toilet tank, there's nothing there."
posted by zachlipton at 5:01 PM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


I feel bad about laughing at his questioning in the Senate hearings.

Good luck, Senator.
posted by Justinian at 5:02 PM on July 19, 2017 [24 favorites]


@Sarah Kendzior:
NYT should just release transcript of the interview. I don't GAF about how Trump is "amiable" or his grandchild. Stop sucking up and report. Note that before hearings, NYT often claims Sessions is on the outs and near termination. They published this lie before Comey hearing too. Goal of stories, as I've explained, is to create illusion of internal dissent instead of consolidated power. NYT did same on Bannon, Gorka. You may notice Sessions, Bannon and Gorka are still there, enacting terrible policies. Be careful when you read these stories, esp from NYT. And be extra careful when stories arrive before hearings, as they often do. In Comey case, was done in anticipation of comments on Sessions.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:02 PM on July 19, 2017 [46 favorites]




Just terrible.
posted by mynameisluka at 5:05 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


“The meal was going toward dessert,’’ he said. “I went down just to say hello to Melania, and while I was there I said hello to Putin. Really, pleasantries more than anything else. It was not a long conversation, but it was, you know, could be 15 minutes. Just talked about things. Actually, it was very interesting, we talked about adoption.”

He noted the adoption issue came up in the June 2016 meeting between his son and Russian visitors. “I actually talked about Russian adoption with him,’’ he said, meaning Mr. Putin. “Which is interesting because it was a part of the conversation that Don had in that meeting.”


Is it possible that the President is so stupid he does not realize what "adoption" is referring to, despite Putin's best efforts?

Yes. Always yes.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:06 PM on July 19, 2017 [16 favorites]


My heart goes out to John McCain. Cancer is scary. Imagine how much scarier it is when you're wondering if you'll be able to afford treatment and whether it will leave your entire family financially destitute. Maybe he can think about how his party wants to rip access to healthcare away from millions of Americans while he gets top notch treatment at the Mayo clinic.
posted by supercrayon at 5:08 PM on July 19, 2017 [95 favorites]


I just received an Arizona Republic news alert that John McCain has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, but the story isn't available on their website
posted by Superplin at 5:08 PM on July 19, 2017


Maybe Putin wants to adopt Trump?
posted by jferg at 5:09 PM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


The president also expressed discontent with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, a former federal prosecutor from Baltimore. When Mr. Sessions recused himself, the president said he was irritated to learn where his deputy was from. “There are very few Republicans in Baltimore, if any,” he said of the predominately Democratic city.

And here we have the President of the United States condemning his own "hand-picked" currently-serving appointee on the basis of that appointee's city of origin. Year of our Lord Twenty-Seventeen.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:09 PM on July 19, 2017 [17 favorites]


Oops, slow connection--missed that it was already on here. Sorry!
posted by Superplin at 5:09 PM on July 19, 2017


So, um, I just came home to a Washington Post alert that John McCain has brain cancer? Fuck.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:12 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


But... Rosenstein is a Republican. He is a Republican.
posted by Justinian at 5:12 PM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


I don't GAF about how Trump is "amiable" or his grandchild

This interview seems seriously damaging, in so far as anything is damaging to Trump. Maybe the NYT would not have gotten the opportunity if not for this puff piece. It's a tricky balance.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:13 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


It's good that John McCain is getting good, government funded healthcare. I look forward to his statements supporting the availability of similar care to all Americans, and against denying it to 23+ million people. Cancer is a scary, terrifying thing, and I hope he at least recognizes that it's the same way for other people, before he heads back into the senate and votes to make others suffer it without treatment.
posted by mrgoat at 5:20 PM on July 19, 2017 [28 favorites]


The nuclear option is that the special prosecutor statute is not a law, it's an executive branch order.

It's actually a federal regulation, and the only legal way to change it is governed by the Administrative Procedure Act. Trump firing Mueller would undoubtedly result in a lawsuit.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:22 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump
The Republicans never discuss how good their healthcare bill is, & it will get even better at lunchtime.


Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) after the lunch: "I don't think there are 40 votes to repeal."

So much winning.
posted by zakur at 5:26 PM on July 19, 2017 [41 favorites]


Trump would have to argue that his privilege to fire executive branch employees supersedes any regulation.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:27 PM on July 19, 2017


Thanks EMRJKC!
posted by Justinian at 5:28 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I can't be the only one wondering what happens if McCain can't finish his term.

This says that:
"...the governor makes an appointment to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy, and the appointee serves until the next regularly-scheduled, statewide general election. The person elected at that next regularly-held general election serves for the remainder of the unexpired term, if any."

In Arizona "The governor's appointee must be of the same political party as that of the vacating Senator."

The next regulary-scheduled elections in Arizona are: August 29th and November 7th, 2017. Then March 13th and May 15th, 2018.
posted by mcduff at 5:33 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm sorry McCain has brain cancer, but if this disease has a bright side, I hope it makes some changes in his decision making for the better.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:33 PM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


The statement from the Mayo Clinic sounds like things are about as good as one can hope for Senator McCain's condition. Their neuroimaging (which is not 100% effective at detecting tumors, but is pretty good) indicates that the tissue they removed to deal with the blood clot seems to have included the entire tumor. Speaking as a non-physician, it sounds pretty promising that he will be able to make a full recovery, and I hope he will.

Orbitofrontal glioblastomas of the type they describe can have subtle but profound effects on a person's personality, including effects on moral judgments and social cognition. If any of McCain's recent abandonment of his long-stated principles has been influenced by his medical condition, I sincerely hope this treatment will help lift a veil from his mind. And like others here, I hope his recovery gives him a chance to reflect on the tremendous fortune he has to be treated by some of the finest physicians and surgeons in the world without needing to worry how to pay for it, and what duty he has as a U.S. Senator to secure such fortune for the people he represents.
posted by biogeo at 5:37 PM on July 19, 2017 [53 favorites]


McCain has a glioblastoma. I think the doctors on the news are doing the doctor thing where they don't come right out and say it, but it's not curable, and he's going to die of this.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:42 PM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


It's the same cancer that killed Senator Ted Kennedy according to Chris Cilllizza.

I was going to ask if there were any medical MeFiers who might clue me in as to whether this is the kind of cancer that could be knocked out with some chemo and radiation or if that just buys him a little time, but on preview I guess that's been answered.

My maternal grandfather also died of this type of brain cancer. He went from being a gentle Methodist minister and loving family man to a man who swore from the pulpit and beat his wife. That was back in the 40's and they didn't have much treatment available. He died in a psych ward unable to eat so he starved to death.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:44 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


He died in a psych ward unable to eat so he starved to death.

Thanks for some context. I'd favorite this but it's just too weird... .
posted by Slothrup at 5:46 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yet more NYT, which is on fire tonight: Big German Bank, Key to Trump’s Finances, Faces New Scrutiny
During the presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump pointed to his relationship with Deutsche Bank to counter reports that big banks were skeptical of doing business with him.

After a string of bankruptcies in his casino and hotel businesses in the 1990s, Mr. Trump became somewhat of an outsider on Wall Street, leaving the giant German bank among the few major financial institutions willing to lend him money.

Now that two-decades-long relationship is coming under scrutiny.

Banking regulators are reviewing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans made to Mr. Trump’s businesses through Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management unit, which caters to an ultrarich clientele, according to three people briefed on the review who were not authorized to speak publicly. The regulators want to know if the loans might expose the bank to heightened risks.

Separately, Deutsche Bank has been in contact with federal investigators about the Trump accounts, according to two people briefed on the matter. And the bank is expecting to eventually have to provide information to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the federal investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
This is a nice follow-up to Trump's instance that Muller better not be looking into his finances. It also features the time Trump fell behind on his loan payments and then he turned around and sued the bank for $3 billion, ultimately getting a new loan from Deutsche Bank to pay off...Deutsche Bank .
posted by zachlipton at 5:48 PM on July 19, 2017 [27 favorites]


ArbitraryAndCapricious, that depends strongly on where the glioblastoma manifests. I'm making the inference that this was an orbitofrontal glioblastoma based on the (appropriately minimal) description of the surgery. Those can be successfully treated by surgical resection. In other areas that is not necessarily the case, though.
posted by biogeo at 5:48 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


He noted the adoption issue came up in the June 2016 meeting between his son and Russian visitors. “I actually talked about Russian adoption with him,’’ he said, meaning Mr. Putin. “Which is interesting because it was a part of the conversation that Don had in that meeting.”
I don't even. What is this? How?


I genuinely think he's trying to bolster the fiction that it was just a meeting about adoption - even though they gave up on that deception days ago. He continues to act like a guilty 5 year old.
posted by howfar at 5:48 PM on July 19, 2017 [17 favorites]


From the American Brain Tumor Association's page on glioblastoma:
Prognosis is usually reported in years of "median survival." Median survival is the time at which an equal number of patients do better and an equal number of patients do worse. With standard treatment, median survival for adults with an anaplastic astrocytoma is about two to three years. For adults with more aggressive glioblastoma, treated with concurrent temozolamide and radiation therapy, median survival is about 14.6 months and two-year survival is 30%. However, a 2009 study reported that almost 10% of patients with glioblastoma may live five years or longer.
You'll notice they don't give chances for being cured, presumably because nobody gets cured.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:51 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I can't help but wonder if McCain's brain cancer is responsible for his incoherence a few weeks ago.

I'm fuzzy on the details now because it was a few years ago, but one of my HS classmates was diagnosed with a glioblastoma and was able to have it successfully removed. Apparently the best brain tumor surgeon in the business lives in, coincidentally enough, Arizona. The tumor recurred and was successfully removed a second time. My classmate is half McCain's age and a personal trainer by profession, so she was in probably as ideal condition to fight the disease as anyone could be. McCain has skilled physicians in the field upon whom to draw, but I'm sure his age will be a factor.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:56 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


NYT:
“Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president,” he added. “How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair — and that’s a mild word — to the president.”
I'm still confused by this-- time machine jokes notwithstanding. Jeff Sessions "forgot" his meeting with Kislyak when he testified to Congress. When that was pointed out to him he rather reluctantly said he would recuse himself from the Russian Investigation. From what Trump said I think either he was never clear on what happened, or he was told and he forgot. Otherwise it makes little sense.

This maybe the most important part of the interview:
Asked if Mr. Mueller’s investigation would cross a red line if it expanded to look at his family’s finances beyond any relationship to Russia, Mr. Trump said, “I would say yes.” He would not say what he would do about it. “I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia.”
This will be his excuse for firing Mueller.

The Guardian Deutsche Bank expects subpoenas over Trump-Russia investigation
Executives inside Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump’s personal bankers, are expecting that the bank will soon be receiving subpoenas or other requests for information from Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating possible collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

A person close to the matter who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity said that Mueller’s team and the bank have already established informal contact in connection to the federal investigation.A person close to the matter who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity said that Mueller’s team and the bank have already established informal contact in connection to the federal investigation.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:57 PM on July 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Reading this quote: "On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put forward the idea that the party should vote on a clean repeal bill and set a deadline in the future for creating a replacement plan."

You know what this reminds me of?

"Marshall: So, when Lily and I get married, who's gonna get the apartment?
Ted: Oh, that's a tough one. You know who I think could handle a problem like that?
Marshall: Who?
Ted: Future Ted and Future Marshall.
Marshall: Totally. Let's let those guys handle it.
Ted: [Back to Ted, Barney and Robin in bar] Dammit Past Ted!"

posted by jenfullmoon at 5:59 PM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Jeff Sessions "forgot" his meeting with Kislyak when he testified to Congress. When that was pointed out to him he rather reluctantly said he would recuse himself from the Russian Investigation. From what Trump said I think either he was never clear on what happened, or he was told and he forgot. Otherwise it makes little sense.

I believe Trump is not saying that Sessions didn't have grounds to recuse himself: about this, Trump cares not. Trump is saying that a genuinely loyal member of la famiglia would never recuse themselves under any circumstances, because family comes first, capiche?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 6:02 PM on July 19, 2017 [17 favorites]


Prognosis for cancers is pretty much always reported in years of median survival, though. Talking about "curing" a disease of that type is a tricky thing, since you can't ever definitively prove that a cancer has been eradicated, only that it is in remission. Talking about median survival is an objective measure that is less dependent on possibly erroneous diagnostic techniques. 2-3 years median survival for cancer of this type means 50% of people die sooner than that, and 50% live longer, possibly much longer. If someone McCain's age lives another 10 years following his diagnosis, that could be within the normal range for the disease (survival quartiles would give more information as to how likely that is) but would also constitute a pretty normal lifespan.

At any rate, surgery absolutely is an effective treatment for at least some cases of glioblastoma. As I said, it depends very much on where in the brain it occurs, as well as how aggressive the tumor is at metastasizing, as well as numerous other factors. McCain probably has about as good a shot of surviving this as anyone could hope, but that doesn't mean it won't kill him. Anyway, I'll drop the brain tumor derail. The best source of information on McCain's prognosis is him, his family, and his physicians.
posted by biogeo at 6:04 PM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


McDuff, the next regularly scheduled statewide election in Arizona is the fall 2018 primary and then the November 2018 general. The odd numbered years are for local elections unless something like a special election for a referendum like a sales tax or what not comes up.
posted by azpenguin at 6:04 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


From Obama's twitter: John McCain is an American hero & one of the bravest fighters I've ever known. Cancer doesn't know what it's up against. Give it hell, John.
posted by Justinian at 6:05 PM on July 19, 2017 [66 favorites]


.A person close to the matter who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity said that Mueller’s team and the bank have already established informal contact in connection to the federal investigation.

Yeah, cue totally fucking ruined summers and astounding Seamless tabs for a whole pack of associates at the law firm that Deutsche uses for holy-shit-holy-shit-HOLY-SHIIIIIIIIIIIT level crises.
posted by joyceanmachine at 6:06 PM on July 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


If the Trump Organization finally loses access to credit from Deutsche Bank, they may have to resort to their sinister rival Deutschest Bank.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 6:09 PM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


You'll notice they don't give chances for being cured, presumably because nobody gets cured.

It's dark, but Obligatory xkcd.

Cancer's a shitshow. It happens to people. There are things you can do to raise or lower your risk, but sometimes people just get it and die. My uncle died of brain cancer a few years ago - he was diagnosed after a fainting episode at work a little before thanksgiving. We didn't see him for christmas.

He had insurance, and because of it, he died in a hospital bed, comfortable, with his wife and his children nearby. Somewhere, someone has the same story, except they died in pain and someone found the body on the floor in the morning. (Actually, not just "someone", I know that person too, though I am not them.)

I wish these anecdotes would have some impact on the people who supposedly write our laws.
posted by mrgoat at 6:10 PM on July 19, 2017 [41 favorites]


It's an odd coincidence that McCain's brain cancer may hold up the repeal of Obamacare because it was Ted Kennedy's brain cancer that almost ended Obamacare. It was his baby and his committee and when he was sick they released the details without him. It was not well received and a lot of work had to be done to save it. Plus there were complaints from both Republicans and Democrats that Kennedy was not around to help negotiations. All through 2009 he was in and out of the Senate, going months in between appearances. Sadly, he died before he could vote for it.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:11 PM on July 19, 2017 [22 favorites]


The Arizona branch of the Mayo Clinic has proton beam therapy facilities - my girlfriend went through proton radiation at Mayo in Rochester MN (thank you Medicaid, and sincerely, thanks, Obama) and it's insane how much better it is for the patient than traditional radiation therapy, it's so well targeted, doesn't damage tissue behind the tumor site, minimal side effects... McCain is in great hands. And maybe, just maybe, there were effects on his personality, and the McCain we get back is the McCain we need right now.
posted by jason_steakums at 6:11 PM on July 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Also tweets from:

@billclinton: As he’s shown his entire life, don’t bet against John McCain. Best wishes to him for a swift recovery.

@HillaryClinton: John McCain is as tough as they come. Thinking of John, Cindy, their wonderful children, & their whole family tonight.

And a really touching statement from Megan McCain.

And, er, silence from the White House?
posted by zachlipton at 6:15 PM on July 19, 2017 [43 favorites]


If nothing else, his medical crisis would give McCain cover to vote against repealing the ACA. There has to be a part of him, however small, that sees the devastation of repealing the law and the potential heroism of taking a stand. Maybe.

I hope so, anyway, because I'd like him to not end up in the history books as an enabler of evil.
posted by lydhre at 6:16 PM on July 19, 2017


John McCain has always been the same guy he was two weeks ago. His shitty politics and craven, self-aggrandizing media whoring have defined him since the 80s. It's not the brain tumor, he's always been a horrible person, and whether he lives or dies from this has nothing to do with his choices over the last year, 8 years, and 30 years.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:16 PM on July 19, 2017 [45 favorites]


And, er, silence from the White House?

He likes senators that don't get cancer.
posted by theodolite at 6:17 PM on July 19, 2017 [51 favorites]


I'm sorry guys, I want to lionize him but I have to agree with T. D. Strange.

So now we wait to see how long it takes for McCain to get back to work.

At this point McConnell only has 51 Senators to vote Republican and they have to get a lot done in the next few months.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:17 PM on July 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


There are about 3-4 regular posters on Metafilter that I'm basically *never* sure what exactly they are talking about. This isn't a criticism, it's just like they're from some reality about 15° askew from mine.

smock.
smock smock.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 6:19 PM on July 19, 2017 [38 favorites]


I'm sure he'll get great care which throws the whole health care thing in sharp relief for sure. I'll lend him my strength. Love him or hate him he is a statesman and a hero. What a revolting development.
posted by vrakatar at 6:20 PM on July 19, 2017


Asked if Mr. Mueller’s investigation would cross a red line if it expanded to look at his family’s finances beyond any relationship to Russia, Mr. Trump said, “I would say yes.” He would not say what he would do about it. “I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia.”

Here's the thing: Trump's finances are almost certainly insanely entangled with Russia and sorting out where the influence ends involves looking at all of them. This isn't even an extrapolation from his behavior in the last two years; this is just common sense. What are the major financial assets attached to Donald Trump? Large-scale real-estate projects, many of them in NYC. Where do Russian oligarchs and gangsters shelter their ill-gotten gains? Say it with me, folks: large-scale real-estate projects, many of them in NYC. You would be hard-pressed to find a significant aspect of Trump's finances which isn't entangled with Russians (not all of whom, in fairness, are necessarily Putin's stooges. But any of them could be!).
posted by jackbishop at 6:22 PM on July 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


There was a White House statement, just after the report came out:
Senator John McCain has always been a fighter. Melania and I send our thoughts and prayers to Senator McCain, Cindy, and their entire family. Get well soon.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:24 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Perhaps some of you are curious about how Senate vacancies are filled in Arizona. The governor appoints a senator of the same party as the vacating senator.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 6:27 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


MSNBC chyron-writers are getting snarky again with their parentheses
TRUMP: FBI DIRECTOR REPORTS DIRECTLY TO THE PRESIDENT (HE DOESN'T)
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:28 PM on July 19, 2017 [42 favorites]


"Senator John McCain has always been a fighter" seems to have become the theme for tonight. Pretty much what everyone says exactly. I expect Hallmark to bust out a special "You've always been a fighter" card.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:29 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Perhaps McMuffin has a second house in Phoenix that he'd suddenly like to move to on a more permanent basis?
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:29 PM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Ah, the ol' Ron Howard chyron.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:29 PM on July 19, 2017 [42 favorites]


Apparently the best brain tumor surgeon in the business lives in, coincidentally enough, Arizona.

Everyone says this about their own (or a friend's/relative's) surgeon if they are successful. There is no "best in the business" really except for very rare specialties. It's the "my great great grandmother was a Cherokee Princess" of post-surgical discourse.
posted by spitbull at 6:30 PM on July 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


TRUMP: FBI DIRECTOR REPORTS DIRECTLY TO THE PRESIDENT (HE DOESN'T)

Jesus is Ron Howard writing for MSNBC
posted by Twain Device at 6:30 PM on July 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


Part of me wants McCain, like any person, to make his exit with as much dignity and as little pain and trauma as possible.

Part of me imagines a world in which McCain won the 2008 election, and THEN the tumor showed up.

Ehhh. I hope he'll get one more chance to win back some respect, and that he takes it.
posted by delfin at 6:33 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


I do remember back when McCain was calling out Bush Jr.'s idiocy for making tax cuts while starting two wars. He did have mavericky moments. I could live with conservatives who are hawks because they earned their stripes and kick out all the chicken hawks.
In my vision of a better world, the Democrats would be in charge and McCains would make up 35 seats in the Senate.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:36 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


I in no way want to lionize John McCain. I agree that he's spent much of his career pushing policies that make things worse for average Americans. But up until a few years ago (around the time he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate), he did genuinely seem capable of setting ideology aside and working with his political opponents on important legislation, like the McCain-Feingold Act, even against the wishes of more extreme members within his own party (like McConnell, in that case).

I never would have voted for John McCain, but for most of his political career I think he was a genuine, if flawed, representative of his constituents. That is a low, low bar to ask of a politician, but sadly for the Republican party that made him stand out.

Regardless of my opinion of him as a politician, I hope for his quick recovery as a fellow human. As an American, I also hope his Senate seat flips and is occupied by a pinko lefty socialist in the next cycle.
posted by biogeo at 6:37 PM on July 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


Jesus is Ron Howard writing for MSNBC? (HE ISN'T)
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:38 PM on July 19, 2017 [28 favorites]


The Times posted excerpts of their interview with Trump. This stands out:
TRUMP: And nothing was changed other than Richard Nixon came along. And when Nixon came along [inaudible] was pretty brutal, and out of courtesy, the F.B.I. started reporting to the Department of Justice. But there was nothing official, there was nothing from Congress. There was nothing — anything. But the F.B.I. person really reports directly to the president of the United States, which is interesting. You know, which is interesting. And I think we’re going to have a great new F.B.I. director.

HABERMAN: Chris Wray.

TRUMP: He’s highly thought of by everybody. I think I did the country a great service with respect to Comey.
He thinks what happened in response to Nixon was a courtesy?

We also have Maggie Haberman losing it after Trump essentially explains he couldn't have said much worse about Clinton even if he got info from the Russians (to be clear, he didn't say the part about the Russians, but did say he couldn't have said much worse):
TRUMP: There wasn’t much I could say about Hillary Clinton that was worse than what I was already saying.

HABERMAN: [laughs] I’m sorry.

TRUMP: I mean, I was talking about, she deleted and bleached, which nobody does because of the cost. How she got away with that one, I have no idea. 33,000 emails. I talked about the back of the plane, I talked about the uranium deal, I talked about the speech that Russia gave Clinton — $500,000 while she was secretary of state — the husband. I talked about the back of the plane — honestly, Peter, I mean, unless somebody said that she shot somebody in the back, there wasn’t much I could add to my repertoire.

HABERMAN: On Fifth Avenue——
posted by zachlipton at 6:40 PM on July 19, 2017 [23 favorites]


Please no more excerpts from that interview!!

I've run out of smartphones to hurl at the wall.
posted by notyou at 6:44 PM on July 19, 2017 [19 favorites]


[wistfully] This is one of those moments in life when I wish supernatural shit existed, so that Maggie Haberman could actually go to hell. Tee-fucking-hee, Maggie.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:45 PM on July 19, 2017 [16 favorites]


Really the most on brand "McCain" thing he could possibly do now would be to refuse to resign and literally phone in (via mavericky soundbite) being a Senator for the next 5 years as he does, in fact, defeat cancer. Best wishes.
posted by Glibpaxman at 6:45 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm old, so this feels like a couple days ago to me, but perhaps some of you haven't seen this recently:
John McCain and Barack Obama stand-up routines at the Al Smith dinner, October 17, 2008.
McCain starts at about 6:15, Obama at 23:15.

I think it's my favorite McCain moment. In my opinion he "beat" Obama in this little comedy battle, but ended his routine with a really gracious (basically) concession speech.
posted by pjenks at 6:45 PM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


I remember when I first heard of Senator McCain, as one of the Keating Five, and the only one who today has not yet retired or died. 28 years later, it colors my feelings toward him.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:47 PM on July 19, 2017 [26 favorites]


Please no more excerpts from that interview!!

I've run out of smartphones to hurl at the wall.


At least they edited out the parts where Haberman and Trump painted each other's nails and played Truth or Dare.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:48 PM on July 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


honestly, Peter, I mean, unless somebody said that she shot somebody in the back, there wasn’t much I could add to my repertoire.

Oh, but many somebodies did say just that at the height of the campaign, including his associates and advisors.
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:48 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]




I didn't think of that, Delfin. The real crunch would have come if he had tried to run for President in 2016. I think there would have been a noticeable difference on the campaign trail.

Preet Bahara believes that Trump asked Sessions to resign in that NYTimes interview.

she deleted and bleached, which nobody does because of the cost

This crap again. It's one of those times where I don't know if he has repeated the lie so often he has forgotten it is a lie OR no one ever told him it was a lie OR he knows it is a lie and doesn't care OR he is so senile that he was told over and over that is a lie but he keeps forgetting.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:52 PM on July 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


Haberman has an infuriating tendency for Cilllizza-like bothsidesism and absolutely no sense of scale when it comes to things that are not normal, but Trump also has a weird obsession with her, and that fact is one of the only ways we get to ever have anybody who doesn't work for Fox interview him. Honestly, I've come to terms with it. Haber's gonna habe, as they say, and much as I hate to say it, I've seen her do the same routine so many times that I'm no longer really upset by it and am just resigned to the fact that this is what we're going to get from her like it or not.
posted by zachlipton at 6:53 PM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


Preet Bahara believes that Trump asked Sessions to resign in that NYTimes interview.

I don't know how else to interpret it. He said: I wouldn't have appointed you if you were going to recuse. If I were Sessions I would have steam coming out of my keebler elf ears. But it also means Trump wants an AG who will squash any investigation into Russia.
posted by dis_integration at 6:59 PM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


Weird how Trump has a chat with Putin, then goes home and has a chat with Republican Senators. Who then decide to revive zombie bill and keep trying even though any idiot Republican would see it's hopeless. Or is it? Did Trump decide it's time to call in a favor and have the kompromat-on-demand machine gassed up? Now that the holdouts have conveniently identified themselves? Seems like a Trumpian "get what you want while simultaneously chilling future resistance" move. [wild speculation with no evidence]

McCain... well let's just say I'm furrowing my brow and expressing concern. Yeah, nobody deserves cancer, but still, not a fan.
posted by ctmf at 7:01 PM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Bateman hasn’t seen the comparisons yet. “Really? They’re calling Don Jr. Gob?” he asks, laughing hysterically. “That’s so funny. Wait… does that make me Eric?”

Holy cow, I never considered Jared as Trump's Tobias Fünke. That's . . . disturbing.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:01 PM on July 19, 2017 [19 favorites]


Preet Bahara believes that Trump asked Sessions to resign in that NYTimes interview.

Remember the last time Sessions was supposedly on the outs? It's going to take more from Trump than a single NYT interview to convince us that he's going to cut his veteran supporter Sessions loose. We've seen this kabuki play before from Team Trump with Bannon and Gorka, who haven't gone anywhere either.

Trump instinctively knows that he needs to create some distracting chaos in the media going into Kushner's closed-door testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday and the testimonies of Manafort and Donald Jr. to the Senate Judiciary Committee next Wednesday. With that in mind, the real scoop in the NYT today isn't their interview, it's their story of how Manafort was $17M in debt to pro-Russia interests before he was hired by the Trump campaign.
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:17 PM on July 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


The Donald has had plenty of friends at the New York Times since the 1980s... probably in exchange for all the real estate ads he bought there over the years. So the Newspaper of Record was never particularly interested in his mob connections, whether with Russian mobs or New Jersey mobs. Or how many bodies are buried in the foundation of Trump Tower. That's why he's so upset that some people at the NYT are writing negative stories about him... even worse, investigative stories about him. That's a betrayal from an old friend. When he said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue, it was with the confidence that the Times would bury the story. (Of course, if the NYT had bothered to seriously investigate him a couple decades ago, today he'd probably be in a Federal Prison instead of the White House.)

As for Jason Bateman, the only Trump family member comparable to his Arrested Development character is maybe Barron.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:17 PM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Москва владеет мной
posted by kirkaracha at 7:19 PM on July 19, 2017


Ivanka is Michael Bluth, presented as the reasonable one, but just as bad as the rest.

Scott Baio, of course, is Bob Loblaw.
posted by dirigibleman at 7:24 PM on July 19, 2017 [26 favorites]


Trump instinctively knows that he needs to create some distracting chaos in the media going into Kushner's closed-door testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday and the testimonies of Manafort and Donald Jr. to the Senate Judiciary Committee next Wednesday.

Instinctively, maybe, but certainly not rational or crafty. The central principle here is that every single statement Trump makes about anything all the time is almost entirely random meaningless pointless bullshit, of which the only leitmotif is shallow petty puerile self-regard.

(And if Eric is a Bluth, he's obviously Buster.)
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:26 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Also Rosneft, so someone is connecting dots.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:31 PM on July 19, 2017 [33 favorites]


Given how dumb and bad they are at everything else, there's probably a check with "Rosneft proceeds" on the memo line in their files.
posted by strange chain at 7:35 PM on July 19, 2017 [29 favorites]


Obviously, we'll have to just wait and see on McCain. FWIW, I asked a physician of my acquaintance (whose father also died of glioblastoma about 15 years ago) what she thought. "At his age...4-8 months."

If he does die or resigns, that sets up both AZ seats being elected next year, which would be interesting.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:37 PM on July 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Given how dumb and bad they are at everything else, there's probably a check with "Rosneft proceeds" on the memo line in their files.

I'm betting on "vault in Trump Tower stuffed full with actual bags of rubles."
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:40 PM on July 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


Instinctively, maybe, but certainly not rational or crafty.

Good grief, no. This is an indication of his desperate mood as much as his narcissism. It's like a monumentally stupid take on Wilde's maxim that "there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." Face-time with the press and manufactured internal dissention has, however, worked for him in the past, and he doesn't really have any other options after the recent legislative and diplomatic debacles as far as media narratives to push.

Also Rosneft, so someone is connecting dots.

And also the Ritz Carlton Moscow Hotel, where the pee taping allegedly took place. But before we get too encouraged, it's worth keeping in mind that committee chair Chuck Grassley has constantly been trying to divert the Trump-Russia investigation down other paths and to provide alternate interpretations of the scandal that are more favorable to Trump.
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:47 PM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


FWIW, I asked a physician of my acquaintance (whose father also died of glioblastoma about 15 years ago) what she thought. "At his age...4-8 months."

For the record, a physician's opinion on this is worth more than mine.
posted by biogeo at 7:50 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm thinking they're storing a gallon jug of polonium in a Trump Tower closet.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:50 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Doktor Zed: With that in mind, the real scoop in the NYT today isn't their interview, it's their story of how Manafort was $17M in debt to pro-Russia interests before he was hired by the Trump campaign.

...But still insisted he work as campaign manager for free.
posted by carsonb at 7:52 PM on July 19, 2017 [21 favorites]


Senate Judiciary Committee is asking DJTJr to turn over any communications he's had with a whole host of Russians and...Jill Stein?

Ugh, at this point I wouldn't even be shocked if she's wrapped up in all this somehow. 2017 is showing us that every shitty person on this planet is somehow intertwined in the world's biggest rat king. I only hope that if we do manage to sink Trump he takes the whole lot of them with him.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 7:53 PM on July 19, 2017 [27 favorites]


Lest we forget, Stein was present at that Russia Today dinner
posted by Twain Device at 7:55 PM on July 19, 2017 [30 favorites]


> Stein was present at that Russia Today dinner

Yeah, maybe it's just me getting more crabby and uncharitable with time, but my opinion of Jill Stein has gone from "useful idiot" to something much more sinister.

(Won't someone please think of a new thread?)
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:07 PM on July 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


I remember when I first heard of Senator McCain, as one of the Keating Five, and the only one who today has not yet retired or died. 28 years later, it colors my feelings toward him.

I wish cancer on no-one, but it's bizarre how McCain gets sick and now everybody is doing his hagiography. Even if he's basically Pericles of Athens in comparison to Trump, he still sucks, would've been a terrible President, and has been mostly bad news as a Senator.
posted by dis_integration at 8:10 PM on July 19, 2017 [33 favorites]


ELECTIONS NEWS

**Healthcare:
-- GOP base blames Congressional GOP rather than Trump for healthcare failure. [WP]

-- Fox poll has 74% wanting GOP to work with Dems on ACA reform. 59% of Republicans, even.

-- Pew poll finds 60% say federal government is responsible for healthcare coverage. 33% support single-payer, up 12 points since 2014.
** Election integrity:
-- In a bit of a surprise, a judge denied a request to force the Kobach commission to have public meetings and greater disclosure of records. [Politico]

-- Latest GOP budget proposal reverses course on abolishing Electoral Assistance Administration, and actually increases funding.
** VA gov -- GOP nominee Gillespie has decided to get on board the Trump train: "Virginia needs a governor who is eager to work with President Trump, not be at odds with him." I'm not the former head of the RNC, but this strikes me as a bad idea.

** 2018 House -- WP/ABC poll has Dems leading the generic ballot 52-36. 538 average stands at 48-38.

** Odds & ends -- As expected, RI's gov signed the Automatic Voter Registration bill into law. Notably, this is "strong" AVR - pretty much any interaction with the state will get you registered, not just with the DMV.

** Fun fact of the day -- In 1932, Hoover retained 80% of people who voted for him in 1928, while losing by almost 18 points. Something to think about when you read all these, "Trump voters still like him" stories.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:10 PM on July 19, 2017 [37 favorites]




Looks like Donnie Two-Scoops thinks he deserves August Recess just like Congress gets.

@KristinaWebb: Looks like @POTUS plans to be in Bedminster from Aug. 3-20
with a link to the FAA flight control notice for Bedminster, NJ
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 8:13 PM on July 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


If anything finally breaks the GOP apart, it will be McConnell cancelling part of the August recess while Trump skips town to take a long vacation himself.
posted by zachlipton at 8:17 PM on July 19, 2017 [16 favorites]


I genuinely think he's trying to bolster the fiction that it was just a meeting about adoption

It's also textbook doublethink, as it requires you to accept that but also to understand why Putin would give a shit about adoption
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:19 PM on July 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


2017 is showing us that every shitty person on this planet is somehow intertwined in the world's biggest rat king.

From President Putin's autobiography:

There, on that stair landing, I got a quick and lasting lesson in the meaning of the word cornered. There were hordes of rats in the front entryway. My friends and I used to chase them around with sticks. Once I spotted a huge rat and pursued it down the hall until I drove it into a corner. It had nowhere to run. Suddenly it lashed around and threw itself at me. I was surprised and frightened. Now the rat was chasing me. It jumped across the landing and down the stairs. Luckily, I was a little faster and managed to slam the door shut in its nose.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:19 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


The Hill: House Dems question Ivanka Trump’s security clearance
posted by Chrysostom at 8:20 PM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


“Sessions should have never recused himself and if he was going to recuse himself he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Mr. Trump said.

It really beggars belief what an idiot this guy is. Hey Donald, you remember when you essentially said that Gonzalo Curiel should recuse himself from presiding over a lawsuit against you entirely because his parents were born in Mexico, because you'd been trying to sell your stupid border wall idea? Well, Sessions had slightly better reasons than that.
posted by XMLicious at 8:22 PM on July 19, 2017 [30 favorites]


Looks like Donnie Two-Scoops thinks he deserves August Recess just like Congress gets.

Earlier today:
At the lunch, Trump said, “People should not leave town unless we have a health insurance plan, unless we give our people great health care,” meaning that recess plans should be put off if a deal isn’t reached. Marc Short, the White House’s legislative director, told reporters afterward that “this is not something that we can walk away from.”
Vacation for me, but not for thee.
posted by peeedro at 8:22 PM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


To him that's not vacation. It's what a president does.
posted by ctmf at 8:24 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yeah, maybe it's just me getting more crabby and uncharitable with time, but my opinion of Jill Stein has gone from "useful idiot" to something much more sinister.

From reading Sarah Glidden's cartoon account of following Jill Stein on the campaign trail, Stein would crawl over broken glass to piss on the Democrats.
posted by sebastienbailard at 8:24 PM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Vacation for me, but not for thee.

AKA How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Chris Christie. Maybe he and Trump can hit the beach for some nice meatloaf al fresco.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:25 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


John McCain was asked to select someone who would make a good candidate to be the most powerful person in the world, and he had about 300 million candidates, and he selected Sarah Palin. Attaining redemption after such an act is quite an undertaking, but I hope he has the opportunity.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:26 PM on July 19, 2017 [33 favorites]


I tried to decide if I think Palin or Trump would be a better president. I... actually talked myself into Palin but only in the sense that I'd rather get run over by a van than a semi.
posted by Justinian at 8:28 PM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


Doktor Zed: "With that in mind, the real scoop in the NYT today isn't their interview, it's their story of how Manafort was $17M in debt to pro-Russia interests before he was hired by the Trump campaign."

Huh. I ctrl-f'd for "$17" on this page to find the article that Doktor Zed was talking about and got confused because instead of finding today's article, I was sent all the way back to this comment from July 15 referencing a different NYT article from June 27 about Manafort declaring that he received over $17M from that the Party of Regions, the pro-Russian Ukrainian political party he consulted (read: "consulted") for. Weirdly, today's NYT article doesn't seem to reference the June 27 article but rather an even earlier one from last August about the handwritten ledger entries amounting to $12.7M in (allegedly) off-the-books payments from the Party of Regions to Manafort.

So, the obvious question I have is why isn't the NYT drawing a link between these two incredibly coincidentally similar numbers: $17M owed and $17M received. Today's article indicates that the $17M debt was based on filings dated to 2015. However, the earlier June 27th article only says that Manafort received $17M "over two years" without specifying which two years (weird, right?). Luckily however, this NY Mag article does make clear that those two years were between 2012 and 2014. So the timing lines up, the amounts line up... I mean... it shouldn't take frickin' Hercule Poirot to solve this case, right?

Anyways, all these fuckers are crookeder than a barrel of snakes and I hope Mueller cracks them wide open.
posted by mhum at 8:32 PM on July 19, 2017 [35 favorites]


At least she wouldn't have been beholden to Russia and I doubt Trig would be a senior advisor with a security clearance.
posted by perhapses at 8:32 PM on July 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Ah, the days when "I can see Russia from my house" was but a parody line on SNL
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:33 PM on July 19, 2017 [23 favorites]


I saw excerpts of that Bill Clinton and Bush 43 Q&A the other day and found myself sincerely thinking, "God damn I miss Dubya," for a few minutes. That's a hell of a thing.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:34 PM on July 19, 2017 [26 favorites]


Best wishes to Senator McCain. He's definitely soiled his legacy in the last 10 years but maybe a frontal tumour could explain some of that, though just because you have a tumour it doesn't mean you might not also have dementia.

Anyway, the discussion of his health care makes me reflect on my daughter's treatment here in Canada. She had a brain tumour when she was 21 months old and went through a full year of intense treatments. She's eight now and still needs certain kinds of treatment such as endrocrinology, hearing aids, etc. I asked her oncologist, an American, what it would have cost in the States for comparable treatment and he answered without hesitation "at least a million dollars, maybe two million".

As it happened, the entire cost out of pocket to us was less than 1,000 dollars - and I had to think really hard to remember enough things we paid for to get it that high - mostly shipment costs so she could have certain medications at home on the island. We sure didn't have a million dollars, or two million.

Here she is being a normal kid, and thanks to Canadian health care, we aren't living in a cardboard box. McCain won't be either, but this should be true of all citizens of the world.
posted by Rumple at 8:36 PM on July 19, 2017 [94 favorites]


A President Palin would be better than President Trump only, but very significantly, in that her occupancy of the office wouldn't directly send the message that about half of the voting electorate are perfectly okay with a President who brags about sexual assault. I'm sure her White House would be just about as corrupt and bumbling as the current one, but at least there are some depravities to which she hasn't sunk and bragged about.

God I fucking hate making these comparisons, though.
posted by biogeo at 8:41 PM on July 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


McKay Coppins, Atlantic: What Congressional Republicans Really Think About Trump and Russia
But what do congressional Republicans actually think about the Russia controversy? And what would the investigation have to turn up for members to abandon the president and his agenda en masse? Is a breaking point of that sort even possible—and if so, what would it look like?

Over the past week, I’ve put these questions to a wide range of GOP sources on Capitol Hill (granting most of them anonymity in an attempt to elicit more candor). Their answers varied, as did their relative levels of exasperation with Trump’s handling of the Russia affair. As one senior Senate aide told me, the private reactions from Republican lawmakers to the most recent spate of bombshells has run the gamut. “Some people are like, ‘This is bullshit, this is just an effort to undermine Trump,’ then some are like, ‘Trump needs to be removed from office.’ It’s all over the place.”

But on one point, at least, there seems to be widespread consensus: All of them believe they’re already doing everything they can within reason to hold the president accountable—and they fiercely reject any argument to the contrary.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:42 PM on July 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


A President Palin would be better than President Trump only, but very significantly, in that her occupancy of the office wouldn't directly send the message that about half of the voting electorate are perfectly okay with a President who brags about sexual assault. I'm sure her White House would be just about as corrupt and bumbling as the current one, but at least there are some depravities to which she hasn't sunk and bragged about.

I Can't Believe It's Not Trump!: All of the corruption, nepotism, and racism with none of the sexual assault after taste!
posted by Talez at 8:43 PM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


But on one point, at least, there seems to be widespread consensus: All of them believe they’re already doing everything they can within reason to hold the president accountable—and they fiercely reject any argument to the contrary.

These fucking morons have no clue what the job they are in even is.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:46 PM on July 19, 2017 [23 favorites]


But on one point, at least, there seems to be widespread consensus: All of them believe they’re already doing everything they can within reason to hold the president accountable—and they fiercely reject any argument to the contrary.

Said the addicts.
posted by perhapses at 8:46 PM on July 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


lol imagine Jefferson Beauregard working in Greenwich Village lol
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:48 PM on July 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Ah, the days when "I can see Russia from my house" was but a parody line on SNL

Political cartoon idea: Donald Trump standing at the door looking into the Oval Office, with Putin seated at the Resolute Desk surrounded by his aides, and a flag of the Russian Federation hanging behind him. Donald brags, "I can see Russia in my house!"
posted by biogeo at 8:52 PM on July 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


Maybe he's saying this to Sarah Palin in order to make the reference as obvious as references are supposed to be for political cartoons.
posted by biogeo at 8:55 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


More interview excerpts, including this on healthcare:
I mean, you think of Hillary Clinton, and you look, she went eight years — very capable — went eight years as the first lady, and could not get health care. So this is not an easy crack. The one thing I’ll say about myself, so, Obama was in there for eight years and got Obamacare. Hillary Clinton was in there eight years and they never got Hillarycare, whatever they called it at the time. I am not in here six months, and they’ll say, “Trump hasn’t fulfilled his agenda.” I say to myself, wait a minute, I’m only here a very short period of time compared to Obama. How long did it take to get Obamacare?

BAKER: March, March 2010.

TRUMP: So he was there for more than a year.

HABERMAN: Fourteen months.

TRUMP: And I’m here less than six months, so, ah, you know. Something to think about.
Remember, this is a guy who promised he would have a bill on his first day and campaigned on how easy health care would be.

And oh my god he thinks insurance costs $12/year (he previously thought $15/month, though nobody was sure if he was talking about life insurance then):
HABERMAN: That’s been the thing for four years. When you win an entitlement, you can’t take it back.

TRUMP: But what it does, Maggie, it means it gets tougher and tougher. As they get something, it gets tougher. Because politically, you can’t give it away. So pre-existing conditions are a tough deal. Because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance, and by the time you’re 70, you get a nice plan. Here’s something where you walk up and say, “I want my insurance.” It’s a very tough deal, but it is something that we’re doing a good job of.
And on another subject:
TRUMP: Yeah. It was beautiful. We toured the museum, we went to Napoleon’s tomb …

[crosstalk]

TRUMP: Well, Napoleon finished a little bit bad. But I asked that. So I asked the president, so what about Napoleon? He said: “No, no, no. What he did was incredible. He designed Paris.” [garbled] The street grid, the way they work, you know, the spokes. He did so many things even beyond. And his one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death. How many times has Russia been saved by the weather? [garbled]

[crosstalk/unintelligible]

TRUMP: Same thing happened to Hitler. Not for that reason, though. Hitler wanted to consolidate. He was all set to walk in. But he wanted to consolidate, and it went and dropped to 35 degrees below zero, and that was the end of that army.

[crosstalk]

But the Russians have great fighters in the cold. They use the cold to their advantage. I mean, they’ve won five wars where the armies that went against them froze to death. [crosstalk] It’s pretty amazing.

So, we’re having a good time. The economy is doing great.
*faints*
posted by zachlipton at 8:55 PM on July 19, 2017 [60 favorites]


Political cartoon idea: Donald Trump standing at the door looking into the Oval Office, with Putin seated at the Resolute Desk surrounded by his aides, and a flag of the Russian Federation hanging behind him. Donald brags, "I can see Russia in my house!"


Better caption: "I can't see Russia from my house!"

Because Trump would still lie even if that happened.
posted by mmoncur at 8:55 PM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Paging thread cartoonist to the courtesy phone.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:56 PM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


And his one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death.

sweet jesus
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:58 PM on July 19, 2017 [29 favorites]


Huh. I ctrl-f'd for "$17" on this page to find the article that Doktor Zed was talking about and got confused

Just to keep things straight, this is what I was referencing from the NYT's article Manafort Was in Debt to Pro-Russia Interests, Cyprus Records Show: "Financial records filed last year in the secretive tax haven of Cyprus, where Paul J. Manafort kept bank accounts during his years working in Ukraine and investing with a Russian oligarch, indicate that he had been in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17 million before he joined Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in March 2016."

But yeah, the financial jiggery-pokery going on is labyrinthian.

Given how dumb and bad they are at everything else, there's probably a check with "Rosneft proceeds" on the memo line in their files.

The people working for them aren't that dumb. The senate committee needs to instead ask about records relating to the mysterious QHG Cayman Limited, the shell company involved with the Rosneft sale.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:58 PM on July 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance

I mean, it's one banana, Michael. How much could it cost? $10?.
posted by Justinian at 8:59 PM on July 19, 2017 [32 favorites]


The Mariana Trench is but a surface scratch compared to the depths of Trump's ignorance.
posted by vac2003 at 9:03 PM on July 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


And his one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death.

President Trump, noted graduate of the Mr. Peabody and Sherman Institute of History Studies.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:03 PM on July 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


I mean, it's pretty clear that Trump has no idea what health insurance even is. He's clearly talking about life insurance. I think. Or his brain is firing at random. What he isn't talking about is health insurance, because THAT'S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS.

Just when you think there couldn't possibly be an even left, there's one more hiding in a dusty corner somewhere.
posted by threeturtles at 9:21 PM on July 19, 2017 [25 favorites]


I swear to GOD if Dubya's imbecility, frattitude and incompetence fades to relative insignificance, and he is thus considered by history as somewhat benign, just because of the Overton-Window-shifting whatthefuckery of Trump's subsequent Presidency, my spleen will LITERALLY leap from the nearest body orifice and explode in moist technicolor confetti all OVER
posted by darkstar at 9:23 PM on July 19, 2017 [55 favorites]


Remember how annoying it was when we realized that Dubya was making his father's inept presidency look benign and insignificant by comparison?

May whatever god or gods you believe in help us if the next (R) president does the same thing to Donald.
posted by biogeo at 9:27 PM on July 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


Oh goddammit. Now I'm almost out of laptops to throw.
posted by notyou at 9:27 PM on July 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


If I post the bit about holding hands with Macron, I'm worried notyou is going to throw a refrigerator, so just go follow the link yourselves. No part of this isn't utterly batshit insane.
posted by zachlipton at 9:29 PM on July 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


There are no depths to Trump's ignorance. It's ignorance all the way down, from the surface ignorance to the molten core.
posted by Archelaus at 9:31 PM on July 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


I swear to GOD if Dubya's imbecility, frattitude and incompetence fades to relative insignificance, and he is thus considered by history as somewhat benign, just because of the Overton-Window-shifting whatthefuckery of Trump's subsequent Presidency, my spleen will LITERALLY leap from the nearest body orifice and explode in moist technicolor confetti all OVER

Worse yet: what if I'm sitting here 16 years from now contemplating someone way, way more horrible than Trump? Egad. On the upside, I'm almost 56, so it may be a non-issue.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:32 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


I can only read that transcript in the voice of Alec Baldwin doing his impersonation of Trump for it to seem like a real thing.
posted by perhapses at 9:35 PM on July 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


My mom thinks Melania is Trump's KGB handler

Melania's father was a member of the elite Communist Party in Yugoslavia, which included less than 5% of men in the country, and drove a Maserati and a Mercedes.
posted by msalt at 9:35 PM on July 19, 2017 [19 favorites]


Intriguing speculation: Trump thought Putin was hitting on Melania and intervened, not to help her but to guard his "property." Another intriguing possibility: Putin was hitting on Melania as a dominance play.

Which is exactly what Putin did to the president's wife in House of Cards.
posted by msalt at 9:36 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


There are no depths to Trump's ignorance. It's ignorance all the way down, from the surface ignorance to the molten core.

While I agree with the spirit of your argument, I take issue with the physical model you invoke.

I'm pretty sure Trump's ignorance is, at its fundament, supported by a turtle.
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:37 PM on July 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


Trump's ignorance is, at its fundament, supported by a turtle.
McConnell?
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:39 PM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


My friend's husband died of glioblastoma in AZ. They wrote a letter to McCain begging for his help. He advised them to move.

Well, fuck him then.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:39 PM on July 19, 2017 [29 favorites]


Based on Trump's comments about the accomplishments expected of first spouses, Melania surely must be too busy finishing her comprehensive infrastructure and tax reform legislation package and delivering it to Congress to be Trump's handler right now.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:41 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Greatest speech ever given on foreign soil!

"Ich bin ein Trumplander!"
posted by notyou at 9:41 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


@chrislhayes: Million dollar idea: Trump launches a version of drunk history, but sober, where he just describes his idea of important historical events.
posted by zachlipton at 9:41 PM on July 19, 2017 [74 favorites]


I think there might be some recency bias in evaluating 43 v. 45. Bush Jr is still (so far) the worst president by virtue of the Iraq invasion. Mptru's failing in this area is for the time being hypothetical. I mean, I wouldn't put starting a staggeringly pointless and destructive war past him. But he hasn't done it yet.
posted by um at 9:44 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


So based on my calculations, the next Republican president (after a Democratic interlude) will be Gallagher.
posted by perhapses at 9:46 PM on July 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


What if there's a plan for hackers that isn't about election results but about creating fake and duplicate records as "proof" of widespread voter fraud? Is that possible?

From zachlipton's link: NYT: Outgoing Ethics Chief: U.S. Is ‘Close to a Laughingstock’
On top of giving the appearance that he is “profiting from the presidency” by hosting foreign governmental events at his hotels, Shaub said the request from the President’s attorney about not signing financial disclosure forms was the “weirdest moment of my entire career.”

“I’ll give him credit that he filed his financial disclosure form voluntarily this year as past Presidents have done, so at least that’s one tradition that he stuck to. I was horrified when I sat across the table from his attorney and she asked me if he could file it without signing it to certify that it’s true,” he said. “I pointed out to her that millions of financial disclosure reports have been filed in the past four decades and every one of them has been certified as true, and I think we could ask that of our President.”

He said the President did eventually sign it, even though his lawyer tried to convince Shaub to accept it unsigned because signing is voluntary. He said he would like to see rules changed so that Presidents are required to release their tax forms as well.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:47 PM on July 19, 2017 [31 favorites]


Jesus, this is depressing:

Ronald Klain, WaPo: The one area where Trump has been wildly successful
Progressives breathed a sigh of relief recently when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy decided to remain on the Supreme Court for presumably at least one more year. But no matter how long Kennedy stays, a massive transformation is underway in how our fundamental rights are defined by the federal judiciary. For while President Trump is incompetent at countless aspects of his job, he is proving wildly successful in one respect: naming youthful conservative nominees to the federal bench in record-setting numbers.

[…]

Moreover, Trump’s picks are astoundingly young. Obama’s early Court of Appeals nominees averaged age 55; Trump’s nine picks average 48. That means, on average, Trump’s appellate court nominees will sit through nearly two more presidential terms than Obama’s. Many of Trump’s judicial nominees will be deciding the scope of our civil liberties and the shape of civil rights laws in the year 2050 — and beyond.

How conservative are Trump’s picks? Dubbed “polemicists in robes” in a headline on a piece by Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, Trump’s nominees are strikingly . . . Trumpian. One Trump nominee blogged that Kennedy was a “judicial prostitute” for trying to find a middle ground on the court, and said that he “strongly disagree[d]” with the court’s decision striking down prosecution of gay people under sodomy laws. Another equated the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, upholding a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, to the court’s 19th-century Dred Scott finding that black people could not be U.S. citizens. Another advocated an Alabama law that denied counsel to death-row inmates.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:47 PM on July 19, 2017 [36 favorites]


How on earth do you interview him and listen to him babble on about $12/year health insurance and not say "hold up, how much do you think insurance should cost for a 21-year-old?" They really let that go with no follow-up? That he could be off by a factor of, on average nationwide, 300 or so?
posted by zachlipton at 9:48 PM on July 19, 2017 [39 favorites]


I think there might be some recency bias in evaluating 43 v. 45. Bush Jr is still (so far) the worst president by virtue of the Iraq invasion.

Absolutely. I was using the Relative Personal Buffoonery, Malice, Incompetence, and Incoherence scale rather than their records since Trump's is 7.5 years shorter than Bush's.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:51 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


So based on my calculations, the next Republican president (after a Democratic interlude) will be Gallagher.

My investigators say he's actually Gallagher Two/Too. The things they're turning up, it's unbelievable.

Another equated the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, upholding a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, to the court’s 19th-century Dred Scott finding that black people could not be U.S. citizens.

I think these days you need to specify whether or not that was meant as a compliment.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:58 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


How on earth do you interview him and listen to him babble on about $12/year health insurance and not say "hold up, how much do you think insurance should cost for a 21-year-old?" They really let that go with no follow-up?

Isn't it a fundamental rule of access journalism never to ask something that might cause your media outlet to lose access?
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:59 PM on July 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


So, what happens if Sessions resigns now? There were reports that he offered to resign before, and now Trump publicly described him as useless in state of recusal. If he resigns, is this a blow to the administration? Does this change anything in respect to Mueller investigation?
posted by rainy at 10:09 PM on July 19, 2017


I mean, it's pretty clear that Trump has no idea what health insurance even is. He's clearly talking about life insurance.

So extrapolating from this, Donnie probably saw his premiums go up when he renewed his term life insurance and his complaints about Obamacare premiums come from him not understanding the difference.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:14 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Who's even getting life insurance for $12 / year? Am I massively overpaying for that?
posted by mmoncur at 10:17 PM on July 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


The following are excerpts from that conversation, transcribed by The Times. They have been lightly edited for content and clarity, and omit several off-the-record comments and asides.

I suppose it's possible that Donny had the presence of mind to say "the following is off the record and for background information only," but a more probable explanation is that NYT let the White House delete the most embarrassing bits.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:25 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


How could there be anything more embarrassing?!
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 10:31 PM on July 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Metafilter comment, circa 2030:
You guys, I never thought I'd say this, but I miss President Trump. Say what you will, at least when he went to the G20 he spent his time talking to Putin and other world leaders, instead of spending an entire state dinner shrieking wordlessly and publicly masturbating while trying to make eye contact with the British Prime Minister.
Metafilter comment, circa 2040:
Ugh, you guys, remember when the worst you could say about the president was that he was overly fond of public masturbation and screaming?
posted by biogeo at 10:41 PM on July 19, 2017 [90 favorites]


And taking his cue from those endless life insurance commercials that run during the day on cable.

I wonder how narrowly you can run an ad on cable. And would it cost more, or less, to run an ad only between 15th and 17th, between E st. and Pennsylvania?
posted by ctmf at 10:44 PM on July 19, 2017


Last Week Tonight took out some commercials to air in D.C. aimed directly at Trump. They were pretty funny. They were playing off those old-cowboy-looking-dude who uses catheters commercials.
posted by Justinian at 10:45 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Why is Manafort in debt for $17m? What did he spend it on?
posted by PenDevil at 10:46 PM on July 19, 2017


Why is Manafort in debt for $17m? What did he spend it on?

Cocaine is a helluva drug.
posted by mightygodking at 10:48 PM on July 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Here she is being a normal kid, and thanks to Canadian health care, we aren't living in a cardboard box.

As the father of a daughter born two months premature and diagnosed with a Wilms' tumor at five, my heart goes out to you. I am glad your daughter is doing so well. My daughter's treatment was fully covered by my employer's health plan. Had I not had that, I would have been bankrupted. The US system is arbitrary and unfair.
posted by Mental Wimp at 11:10 PM on July 19, 2017 [30 favorites]


It's been half-joked half-fantasized about more than once in these threads, but can anyone weigh in with a considered legal opinion about the possibility of removing/impeaching Trump's judicial appointments, if he's impeached and/or the 2016 election results are determined to be illegitimate in some way?

I mean, I think we all understand that a do-over of 2016 is not going to happen regardless, but I guess I'm holding out a shred of hope that if we can manage to oust Trump, maybe we can get rid of his nightmarish judicial legacy as well. Is that just a pipe dream? please say no please please please
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 11:35 PM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's 100% a pipe dream. Sorry.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:46 PM on July 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Well, that's 100% fucked. I can't believe we live in a country where, regardless of any action we might possibly take to fix or avoid it, the next fifty years of jurisprudence are effectively going to be determined by a guy whose most notable achievement in office so far is getting to sit in and pretend to drive not one but TWO awesome trucks.

Fuck everything about that.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 11:53 PM on July 19, 2017 [35 favorites]


It might be easier just to pack the courts.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:57 PM on July 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


I'm gong to propose that adding 2 new supreme court justices in the event that we do get all three branches in 2020 is an appropriate response to the theft of Garland's seat.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:26 AM on July 20, 2017 [36 favorites]


You know, I really didn't think anything could top Infrastructure Week, but this is shaping up to be one hell of a Made In America Week.
posted by zachlipton at 12:32 AM on July 20, 2017 [6 favorites]


So, the obvious question I have is why isn't the NYT drawing a link between these two incredibly coincidentally similar numbers: $17M owed and $17M received.

I think the key to why this is being reported without that sort of speculation is that one of the figures, Oleg Deripaska, has already filed a libel lawsuit against the AP for a story on him this spring.

There's a long, deep rabbit hole here and some reporting goes all the way back to last summer when Manafort was campaign manager and receiving unwelcome attention. Adam Khan on Twitter has been connecting the dots of various aspects of this particular money trail for months now. It's begged for more high-powered attention, especially since Commerce Secretary Ross is somehow also in the general vicinity of whatever was going down (presumably some sort of money-laundering-cum-tax-shelter slouching beast).

BTW, here's one place some of the money may have ended up.
posted by dhartung at 1:02 AM on July 20, 2017 [12 favorites]


And taking his cue from those endless life insurance commercials that run during the day on cable.

Trump, next week: "I don't know why people are upset about losing Medicaid. They can just get that great reverse mortgage healthcare instead." [fake]
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:03 AM on July 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Trump trying to get Putin's attention at dinner. (twitter gif)

am i crazy or does it really look like he is suggesting they meet for mutual masturbation?
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 1:59 AM on July 20, 2017 [14 favorites]


hoooo boy that hand-holding thing is like wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
posted by angrycat at 3:04 AM on July 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


For a normal president having his attorney general resign because the president wants to interfere with an investigation would be an embarrassment. Trump does not give a fuck what anyone who does not worship him thinks so getting Sessions to resign would be a win. Sessions' recusal inhibits Trump attempts to interfere with Mueller's investigation. If Trump can get someone else in there, then he gets more control over the investigation.
posted by rdr at 3:18 AM on July 20, 2017


also, I don't know anything about the interviewer I guess she's not very cool but that they ended the transcript with the hand-holding thing? It was like like a subtextual THIS MAN IS FUCKING CRAZY thing.

I mean really, if this were TV, one would expect the next episode to feature the POTUS in a state of undress and foaming at the mouth or something.
posted by angrycat at 3:40 AM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


It appears that as well as meeting up with holocaust deniers, Katie Hopkins is also going to be spending the week aboard a ship chartered by the far right group 'Defend Europe'.

Their intent being to try and prevent Médecins Sans Frontières Sea from rescuing refugees in the Med.


twitter thread with links
posted by Buntix at 3:46 AM on July 20, 2017 [12 favorites]


"Their intent being to try and prevent Médecins Sans Frontières ..." see it doesn't even matter how this sentence ends. It should always spark the "Are we the baddies?" conversation.
posted by supercrayon at 4:00 AM on July 20, 2017 [65 favorites]


Can't wait til someone explains to him how much health insurance costs on average. And then he realizes he's wasted his life inheriting millions, ripping off contractors, rolling lawsuits into even bigger loans and becoming a tv star and president. He could have made some REAL money, if only he had known!
posted by rc3spencer at 4:20 AM on July 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Their intent being to try and prevent Médecins Sans Frontières Sea from rescuing refugees in the Med.


Which reminds me, time to send in a donation to MSF.
posted by Tsuga at 4:24 AM on July 20, 2017 [7 favorites]


It should always spark the "Are we the baddies?" conversation.

The "are we the baddies" sketch.
posted by Talez at 4:27 AM on July 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


Trump trying to get Putin's attention at dinner. (twitter gif)

After having read the NYTimes transcript, I think he was waving and making obscene gestures at Melania. He says quite clearly that he didn't enjoy sitting between two strange people, one of whom didn't speak English (and both of whom were smarter than him and female). I can believe that.
I can also believe they were talking about adoptions — Putin being all hint-hint, wink-wink, and Trump being utterly clueless.

also, I don't know anything about the interviewer I guess she's not very cool but that they ended the transcript with the hand-holding thing? It was like like a subtextual THIS MAN IS FUCKING CRAZY thing.
That's the thing. I know a lot of people here want journalists to go harder at Trump, but he is so extremely stupid it would be overkill, and confirm the idea that the media are biased. It doesn't make sense, but that is how public perception works. There is this Danish quote by a locally famous newsman: Rather than hitting a man, throw him up in the air so he can fall down and hit himself.
That transcript is so depressing I almost cried when I'd finished it, because there is literally no there, there. And this is the so-called leader of the free world.
While I have no doubt that the whole Trump organization is bought and owned by Russian interests, both private and state, the main problem is not that Trump is a Manchurian candidate but that he is too stupid even for that, he can't even do Putin's bidding.
And every single person in the administration is equally close-minded and incapable even if they are not technically as un-intelligent as Trump and family. (I mean, Bannon, Tillerson and Mattis all probably have high IQs but they also all have these weird glitches in their comprehension, mainly because they are ignorant).
This time round, there is no Cheney, no Rumsfeld, no Rove. Not even a Laura. Just a bunch of bumbling narcissistic and greedy fools.
posted by mumimor at 4:32 AM on July 20, 2017 [35 favorites]


That Atlantic article was perhaps the most depressing thing I've read in a solid several months of depressing things. I finished feeling like I'd just been gaslit.
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:43 AM on July 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


I woke up this morning half thinking last night was a fever dream. I remember laughing so hard that I couldn't breathe. Was it all real?
The $12.00 Insurance?
The FBI answering to the DOJ out of "curtesy"?
Napoleon's extracurricular activities freezing to death?
Macron loves to hold Donald's hand?
This cannot possibly be reality. Our President is both insane AND dumber than pig shit.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:45 AM on July 20, 2017 [46 favorites]


Everything Donald Trump knows about history he learned from Bill and Ted
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:10 AM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


The "Are we the baddies" conversation would be much easier if they didn't insist on only responding in fourteen-word increments.
posted by delfin at 5:12 AM on July 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


The "Are we the baddies" conversation would be much easier if they didn't insist on only responding in fourteen-word increments.

David Mitchell has never answered a question with less than eleven words.
posted by Talez at 5:15 AM on July 20, 2017 [7 favorites]


The Hill: President Trump acknowledged on Wednesday that the government's monthly jobs reports are legitimate — a departure from his campaign trail claims that the assessments are fraudulent.

"When we got those great reports, I kept saying, 'you know, those numbers, whether it's 4.2, 4.3 [percent], I said, for a long time, they don't matter," the president said during at a "Made in America Week" roundtable discussion. "But now I accept those numbers very proudly. I say they do matter."


It's like he can no longer perform a scam without narrating the scam he's performing
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:21 AM on July 20, 2017 [29 favorites]


This is the man who [...] thought so little of the presidency that he considered Sarah Palin fit for the office. In some ways, Palin's nomination made Trump possible. Once you've nominated dumb, why not nominate dumber?

I think this is a great point. I don't think we would have Trump without McCain having picked Palin as running mate, with the subsequent use she put that to.

It is a struggle. We don't have a great way to talk about a person's public failings in the face of sickness and death, or even their private failings for that matter. This is related to, but obviously different from, our problems handling the art/artist divide when someone makes what we consider to be great art but is a racist or a sexist or a homophobe. Individuals handle it in all sorts of different ways, but as a society we aren't sure what to do about it.
posted by OmieWise at 5:27 AM on July 20, 2017 [14 favorites]


Quayle put the idea in people's heads, then Palin made it happen.
posted by Melismata at 5:31 AM on July 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


How could there be anything more embarrassing?!

Just you wait. I found an entire fucking bag of evens just reading that transcript and I saved a few for later because Trump.
posted by spitbull at 5:35 AM on July 20, 2017 [13 favorites]


John McCain was asked to select someone who would make a good candidate to be the most powerful person in the world, and he had about 300 million candidates, and he selected Sarah Palin. Attaining redemption after such an act is quite an undertaking, but I hope he has the opportunity.

It's important to realize that while the buck certainly stops with McCain on this choice it was the result of a process involving a lot of players in the McCain campaign who are key members of the Republican party. It was a team that produced that outcome and it was made up of people who will still be wielding influence after John McCain is done as a politician.

It's highly tempting to personalize politics but it is important to remember it is driven by a broader community than just its figureheads. Something has gone very badly wrong with the right that all it can offer up is dunderheads. I'm thinking there must some sort of latent prion disease in humanity that gets activated when one reaches a certain level of selfishness or inhumanity.
posted by srboisvert at 6:08 AM on July 20, 2017 [11 favorites]


@Mark Salter (long-time McCain aide): "J.McCain will be around for a long while. I've always known he'd outlive me. I wrote the eulogy he'll give at my funeral. It's very touching."
posted by AwkwardPause at 6:08 AM on July 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm thinking there must some sort of latent prion disease in humanity that gets activated when one reaches a certain level of selfishness or inhumanity.

any society that eats its young will eventually succumb to kuru, so yeah, makes sense.
posted by murphy slaw at 6:17 AM on July 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


@Mark Salter (long-time McCain aide): "J.McCain will be around for a long while. I've always known he'd outlive me. I wrote the eulogy he'll give at my funeral. It's very touching."

It is just me or is this wildly, bonkersly creepy in a cultish way?
posted by winna at 6:20 AM on July 20, 2017 [14 favorites]


And now for your moment of city planning pedantry... The Emperor Napoleon (Napoleon I) didn't design Paris, which became France's major city during the 1100s. He didn't even redesign Paris, although he gets credit for the canal and aspired to do much more. It was Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, aka Napoleon III, who took on revamping Paris and hired Georges-Eugène Haussmann to do it, an effort that became known as Haussmann's Renovation of Paris. Haussmann leveled many medieval areas of the city, which made it extremely controversial: it was France's time to wrestle with urban renewal. Anyway, Trump seems to have conflated the two.

I just had to get that off my chest.
posted by carmicha at 6:27 AM on July 20, 2017 [73 favorites]


Bob Menendez's corruption trial starts in September. If he's convicted and ousted from the Senate, Chris effing Christie can appoint a Republican replacement.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:28 AM on July 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


> It is just me or is this wildly, bonkersly creepy in a cultish way?

It honestly read like a pretty funny joke to me. I mean, if it's not a joke it's hella creepy, for sure. But I think it's a joke.

Speaking of dead things: how about this thread, that's trying to kill my browser? Anyone starting a new one?
posted by Tevin at 6:32 AM on July 20, 2017 [11 favorites]


"But now I accept those numbers very proudly. I say they do matter."

He... he truly cannot conceive of reality outside of his own experience of it, can he? It's like he's literally, constitutionally made of television signals.

This is the President we're talking about here. Of the United States.
posted by Rykey at 6:36 AM on July 20, 2017 [8 favorites]


Here she is being a normal kid

She's adorable, but your dog has the look of one thinking "If she does that bunny ear thing one more time, I'm pooping in her shoes".
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:43 AM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


New thread.
posted by murphy slaw at 6:45 AM on July 20, 2017 [10 favorites]


The Times' partial transcript is pretty crazy, after reading it I think Trump has invented a new sub-genre of insult comedy because I sure feel insulted.

Kevin Drum at MotherJones has a breakdown of the questions they asked Trump, it's almost all softball stuff. Looking at that list, the questions that stand out as actual attempts to pin him down on any facts are where the transcript cuts out where presumably his answer is taken off the record. The only exception to this is when he's talking about Comey but Ivanka and his granddaughter interrupt the conversation (and Trump, ever the eugenicist, says she has "smart genes" because she can say two phrases in Chinese).
posted by peeedro at 6:50 AM on July 20, 2017 [6 favorites]


any society that eats its young will eventually succumb to kuru, so yeah, makes sense.

The culture in question practiced funerary cannibalism. They did not eat their young. Leave that to the GOP.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:54 AM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


I read it as a joke, too (joke being that Slater has written many speeches and books for McCain over the years).
posted by AwkwardPause at 6:58 AM on July 20, 2017


He... he truly cannot conceive of reality outside of his own experience of it, can he?

Yes, like his concept of fairness. Because he's been able to buy and bully his way out of consequences he thinks anything that has a negative impact on him or his family is unfair. He equates fairness with people agreeing with him and telling him he's right. When he says it's was unfair to "the president" for Sessions to recuse himself he means it's not fair that he can't force the Attorney General to quash all the investigations.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:02 AM on July 20, 2017 [7 favorites]


It is just me or is this wildly, bonkersly creepy in a cultish way?

I don't read it as creepy at all.
posted by OmieWise at 7:07 AM on July 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


Maybe I need to watch the video, but from the transcript my sense was that the NYT journalists were intentionally letting him ramble, but every now and then they..., well they didn't pounce, but they tried to get him to make definitive statements, and they knew more than he did about past events. You could see their ears prick up. They kept it conversational ("How was lunch?" kicks off the session), because that was the format; it wasn't a press conference or a Q and A style interview, which I'm not sure Trump can even do at this point. I sympathize with the reporters, because talking to someone with those thought patterns is really hard, especially when you layer on the freight of his office, his relationship with the press and NYT in particular, his raging narcissism, his lying, etc.
posted by carmicha at 7:12 AM on July 20, 2017 [7 favorites]


New thread? Yeah, I've fallen for that one before.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:24 AM on July 20, 2017 [15 favorites]


I just had to get that off my chest.

Napoleon had a very good brain, and he said a lot of things
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:36 AM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


Napoleon should not take back Joséphine de Beauharnais. She cheated on him like a dog & will do it again--just watch. He can do much better!
posted by maxsparber at 8:03 AM on July 20, 2017 [8 favorites]


New thread.

🍪🍪🥛
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 8:25 AM on July 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


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