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January 25, 2018 11:07 AM   Subscribe

Installment #*@&^% of the US political threads. This edition features fun at Davos, more Muellery, and DACA & CR continued.
posted by yoga (1946 comments total) 92 users marked this as a favorite
 
Another link to the political thread expectations metatalk.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 11:10 AM on January 25, 2018 [14 favorites]


Trump at Davos is only more mortifying than me at Davos because Trump actually is at Davos. I fully expect to see more pathetic shit like when he went to the G20. Or was it NATO? Hell any room full of adults who don't owe him anything more than superficial good manners.
posted by From Bklyn at 11:16 AM on January 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


I was thinking that with Operation Janus (two-face) and Romney's Bain Capital, the recent Republican leadership are covering the Batman villains one by one.
It's like the Trump administration is the Suicide Squad.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:18 AM on January 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


The Onion was pretty spot on, I thought.
posted by Grither at 11:19 AM on January 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


I fully expect to see more pathetic shit like when he went to the G20. Or was it NATO?

If you mean the place where he literally pushed aside the Prime Minister of Montenegro and shoved out his chin, all puffed up like a little marshmallow, that was indeed NATO.
posted by holborne at 11:20 AM on January 25, 2018 [40 favorites]




(Disclaimer: only bet what you can afford to lose; don't bet if it's a problem; the bank/casino/bookies always wins in the long run, and you always lose)

Paddy Power, a bookmaker known for being a bit PR-savvy and engaging in various online stunts, has a range of bets available concerning the current POTUS. Though categorised as political bets, they can be probably recategorised as novelty bets. Most are for the publicity and won't attract any takers. They include, with the current odds (UK fractions as opposed to US decimals):

- Whose nuclear button is bigger? Donald Trump 4/7, Kim Jong-Un 13/8
- Melania to leave Trump and file for divorce before November 8th: 16/1
- Melania to be revealed to be living with another man during Trump's first term: 8/1
- Trump to be impeached in 2018: 9/4 (those odds have considerably shortened since I last looked)
- Trump accidentally refers to Putin as 'Vlad' during a press conference: 7/1
- Putin and Trump to holiday together, and Vlad to pee on Donald to help with a jellyfish sting: 300/1
- Trump to be filmed falling on a state visit in 2018: 10/1
- Trump to have his likeness minted on US currency during his term: 100/1
- Trump gets banned from Twitter: 20/1
- Will France ask for the Statue of Liberty back? Yes: 50/1
- Michael Moore to be deported: 80/1

But there's one bet that I keep coming back to and side-eyeing and thinking "Maybe just a small wager on this", namely:

- Trump to publicly reference a country that does not exist during a 2018 press conference: 10/1
posted by Wordshore at 11:28 AM on January 25, 2018 [91 favorites]


Trump at Davos is only more mortifying than me at Davos because Trump actually is at Davos. I fully expect to see more pathetic shit like when he went to the G20. Or was it NATO? Hell any room full of adults who don't owe him anything more than superficial good manners.
posted by From Bklyn


Purely by virtue of the fact that you once paid $5 to become a MeFite and (presumably) are an American, I consider you to be a less mortifying potential representative of the US than Trump will be.

This applies to all American Mefites, I think, with the notable exception of plannedchaos.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:36 AM on January 25, 2018 [42 favorites]


Krang's snark aside, there is one thing in that NYT piece that I'd like to see someone do more follow-up on.
such as E-Verify, an electronic worker-verification system that many Republicans want to make mandatory for employers
E-Verify has been around for a while - 20 years now, in fact - and in many past situations where we've discussed immigration and foreign worker hypocrisy I've mentioned it. Because they've had plenty of chances to work towards making it mandatory and they haven't done so. Only about 10 states require it and it's not exactly a big challenge to defeat it.

I'm curious if this was a sloppy statement by the NYT - which I think is likely - or if there's some more movement on this. There's a piece here from the icky numbersUSA organization about a Lamar Smith introduced bill to make E-Verify mandatory. It's HR 3711, and I'm not sure the assertion of "many Republicans" bears up, at least as a percentage of legislators.

It's not quite stunt bill territory, but it's got 50 cosponsors... a sum total of 2 more than it did when he introduced a previous version. It's not even as many as the 64 cosponsors he got when he introduced it four congresses ago. It looks like the go-to move for this is they let it die in committee, so I guess a shifting tide might mean they stop doing that. But I'm unsure I buy it. On the other hand, the statistical analysis folks govtrack links to give it a 24% chance of passage.

The bill creates a huge carve-out for agriculture, btw. Compliance is supposed to start between 6 months after passage for large employers and the smallest get about 18 months to start complying. Unless you're hiring people to pick food or haul meat. Ag gets a full 30 months before they have to start complying, regardless of their size. Whether that's hypocrisy and a sign that they'll set up some shenanigans to let food growers continue to exploit the undocumented or just an effort at not causing a sudden uptick in grocery prices I dunno.
posted by phearlez at 11:36 AM on January 25, 2018 [10 favorites]


- Trump to publicly reference a country that does not exist during a 2018 press conference: 10/1

How soon we forget the brave people of Nambia
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:37 AM on January 25, 2018 [116 favorites]


Trump accidentally refers to Putin as 'Vlad' during a press conference: 7/1

I'd expect "Volodya," since "Vlad" is short for Vladislav, not Vladimir.

On the other hand, Trump getting that right? Ha.
posted by explosion at 11:39 AM on January 25, 2018 [11 favorites]


How soon we forget the brave people of Nambia

Oh wait, I would retract my above comment if plannedchaos were to ask Trump about the Elbonian refugee crisis / swamp creatures.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:40 AM on January 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


E-Verify has been around for a while - 20 years now, in fact - and in many past situations where we've discussed immigration and foreign worker hypocrisy I've mentioned it. Because they've had plenty of chances to work towards making it mandatory and they haven't done so.

And from what I understand, it isn't a very effective system, and basically gives corporations a way to pretend to care about not hiring undocumented workers while still hiring lots of them anyway.
posted by diogenes at 11:41 AM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


Disney's King John
posted by Melismata at 11:42 AM on January 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


Nikki Haley: “Where is the Palestinian Anwar Sadat?”

Well he was murdered after and because of his signing a peace treaty with Israel so while I’m not entirely sure, that might be a reason people aren’t all that keen to emulate him.
posted by Talez at 11:50 AM on January 25, 2018 [48 favorites]


Trump accidentally refers to Putin as 'Vlad' during a press conference: 7/1

I wouldn't take that bet. Putin is the only world leader that Trump doesn't neg by referring to them by their first name, eg Theresa, Rodrigo, Jae-in, Justin from Canada.
posted by peeedro at 11:54 AM on January 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


- Trump to publicly reference a country that does not exist during a 2018 press conference: 10/1

I wouldn't take this bet, because it presupposes Trump holding a press conference.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:58 AM on January 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


Mod note: I appreciate the odd humor of the bookmaking thing as an addition to the thread but let's not go deep in the woods on our own speculation there, please, or we're gonna fill up a brand new thread overly fast.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:00 PM on January 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


For those who didn't catch the end of the last thread: Operation Janus is DOJ program targeting naturalized citizens for denaturalization. They have already succeeded in revoking the citizenship of Baljinder Singh, a native of India who had been a citizen for 11 years, because he "was granted citizenship without proper fingerprint records, meaning before fingerprints were digitized...Operation Janus identified 315,000 cases in which people were granted citizenship without the proper fingerprint data available, and USCIS intends 'to refer approximately an additional 1,600 for prosecution.'"

Relatedly, if you want to stay informed about immigration issues, Rewire News immigration reporter Tina Vasquez is doing amazing work at translating the complex legalities of our immigration system and bringing attention to the (often heartbreaking) stories of people who are caught in the system. She's the author of both pieces I linked above. She's also a great follow on Twitter.
posted by joedan at 12:02 PM on January 25, 2018 [52 favorites]


Carrying over the DACA discussion about mass deportations:


It's preposterous to say that the GOP and Trump could pass and sign into law a bill that allows for mass deportations but somehow couldn't make the funding for it happen. Once it's legal to deport people, they will find a way to shuffle money around -- or just borrow, as they've shown they don't care about the deficit -- to ensure that mass deportations happen.


There are already in the ballpark of 8 to 10 million people they can legally deport, before we even begin counting DACA recipients. There are people in detention centers waiting to be shoved through immigration court so they can be deported. The system is at capacity. They cannot legally borrow or spend any money beyond what Congress authorizes, and without an actual appropriations bill, funding is frozen at continuing resolution levels. I'm not saying everything is okay; I'm saying that the immigration deals on the table are not going to cause mass deportations beyond what we already have. All they do is strip people's legal status - that's bad enough. But they don't increase how many people will fit through the pipeline of deportation. And they don't increase the rate at which ICE can detain people.

Unfunded mandates happen all the time in Congress, and this isn't even a mandate. The most likely outcome, whatever bill passes, is that ICE does some scary public stunt and everyone's lives get more scary and uncertain.

I don't know how much money the executive branch can shuffle around inside State, to be fair, and ICE is hiring as if they expect a bigger budget. But I haven't heard anything about increasing the courts.

I'm also not convinced that enough Congressional Republicans actually want mass deportations. The Trump side of the things, sure. But Congress, and the Senate in particular, hasn't been helping them in that goal. And the executive branch hasn't been taking the most effective steps to achieve it. They're acting like their actual goal is to scare people and keep them powerless.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 12:02 PM on January 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


It's not real challenging to get around E-Verify, no. You need some fake documents if the employer isn't in on it, or just someone else's data to punch in if they are. Smith's bill does a little to try to make it more effective but it doesn't sound like it would be all that tough to keep faking unless the pilot programs it sets up actually go somewhere.

The teeth in it doesn't strike me as all that frightening, at least not for a first offender. Smith ups the penalties for a place that's been caught, ordered to shape up, and then found to still be violating to 10 to 25k per undocumented worker, rather than the current law's 3-10k. But I think it's telling that there's a big ol' thing added about employers being able to show good faith explanation and get around the whole matter, where the existing law has judicial review.

And where a bunch of stuff fell under the Attorney General before, this bill moves it to The Secretary of Homeland Security.

It's also telling, I think, that the criminal penalty only goes up from 3 to 5k and from 6 months in the hoosegow to 18 months. Not fun, but compare it to the other section of the law amended, fraud and misuse of visas, permits, and other documents.

This is the bit where Smith's bill adds the bolded bit to the section right below the above paragraph.
(b) Whoever uses—
(1) an identification document or document meant to establish work authorization (including the documents described in section 274A(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act), knowing (or having reason to know) that the document was not issued lawfully for the use of the possessor,
(2) an identification document knowing (or having reason to know) that the document is false, or
(3) a false attestation,
for the purpose of satisfying a requirement of section 274A(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
Employ an undocumented person and use fake docs, 18 months. Use a fake doc to get work, 5 years.
posted by phearlez at 12:05 PM on January 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


Gotta love when the Chief of Staff for the US Air Force subtweets the president.

@GenDaveGoldfein
This is Staff Sgt. Eric Piime. He's a boom operator with @121ARW & he's an inspiration. His story began in his native Ghana where he developed a fascination with aviation & an appreciation for the U.S. His is a story of hope, hard work, perseverance & patriotism. #Airpower

VIDEO
posted by chris24 at 12:08 PM on January 25, 2018 [47 favorites]


Burgess Everett: Rubio rejects bipartisan immigration gang
“I don’t believe that what we’re going to end up doing here can be a product of a gang,” Rubio said. “There won’t be a 12-person gang. What we do here cannot be a product of a group of people that come out of a room and say: ‘This is a direction we’re going.’”

In fact, other senators say Rubio prefers a more conservative approach than the bipartisan group. And his reluctance to join the new gang underscores the steep challenge — and sense of pessimism — for reaching an agreement on a tight schedule that can win support from the House, Senate and President Donald Trump.
[...]
Rubio is strongly signaling that he will not support whatever emerges from breakneck negotiations based on a bill from Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) that would provide some young immigrants with a pathway to citizenship and billions for border security. Instead, Rubio has spoken in private GOP lunches enthusiastically about restricting family-based migration and indicated to Republicans he believes what can become law is something far more conservative than that bipartisan bill, according to GOP senators.

Three GOP senators said in interviews that the recently-reelected Rubio is privately aligning with a group of immigration hard-liners behind a bill that would cut some legal immigration and further limit refugees. Asked directly, Rubio did not specifically say he would back the measure by Sens. David Perdue (R-Ga.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), but said “there’s a lot of concepts in that bill I could support.”

And he insisted that it’s not because his views on immigration have changed or that he’s become more conservative on the matter. Instead, he said, a bipartisan gang seems to ignore the political reality in Washington that Senate Democrats are no longer in the driver’s seat.
I'm shocked, shocked that Rubio would side with the crazypants racists because it's what his crazypants racist party wants! Who could have guessed that he would do such a thing?

Apart from anybody that had paid attention to his stances for more than 30 seconds, I mean.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:10 PM on January 25, 2018 [14 favorites]


Really looking forward to Trump testifying to Mueller. Given his ego, and his fact/detail checking, and how it appears he thinks he will outsmart Mueller AND his staff (as Trump has stated he is "looking forward" to being under oath with Mueller), I foresee some serious podiatric munching.
posted by Samizdata at 12:13 PM on January 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


Trump and the great GOP abdication (Greg Sargent / WaPo)
Something remarkable is happening in our politics right now. On multiple fronts, it has fallen to Democratic elected officials to step up and defend the integrity and basic functionings of our government — against Republican efforts to pervert and manipulate them in service of the goal of shielding President Trump from accountability.

At the same time, in some cases Democrats have escalated their tactics in a kind of guerrilla operation designed to smuggle as much basic information about this great GOP abdication out to the public as possible.

Today, I’m told, Sen. Mark Warner (Va.) — the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee — will publicly say that classified information debunks the arguments reportedly made in the now-notorious secret memo by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), which bolsters the idea that the Russia investigation is a Deep-State Coup against Trump. Nunes has made this memo available to members of Congress, in what Democrats charge is a selective cherry-picking of intelligence designed to arm Republicans with talking points to discredit the Russia probe.

“Senator Warner will say publicly that unlike almost all of the 200 GOP congressmen who’ve seen the memo, he has actually read the underlying documents,” Rachel Cohen, a spokeswoman for Warner, emailed me this morning. “He is confident that there was nothing improper like what this memo seems to allege.” ...

In another effort to counter the apparent Nunes disinformation campaign, Rep. Adam Schiff — Nunes’s Democratic counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee — announced that he would produce his own report purportedly debunking the Nunes memo and will ask the committee to allow members of Congress to view it, too, in effect (again) smuggling bits of counter-information out to the public.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department released a letter to Nunes arguing that the memo’s release would compromise intelligence operations and would deviate from a “good faith” arrangement on the terms of access to classified info negotiated between the Justice Department, the House Intelligence Committee and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office. It is unclear whether Ryan has blessed the “release the memo” strategy, but it probably wouldn’t go forward without his tacit approval. Given that the Justice Department says its release would be dangerous and would violate a deal Ryan himself entered into, I asked Ryan’s office today whether he disputes that claim and whether he supports the memo’s release. I got no response.

... All this is happening on multiple other fronts. Trump officials have conceded that he’s failing to protect our elections against future Russia sabotage, because he won’t diminish his great victory by admitting it happened last time at all. So Foreign Relations Committee Democrats released a report detailing this abdication for the public. Republicans keep pushing the idea that the Steele dossier sparked the FBI probe. So Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) released the testimony by a co-founder of Fusion GPS, the firm that bankrolled Steele, in which he challenged that account. In these cases, independent reporting has confirmed Trump’s failure to secure our elections and that the GOP’s account of the FBI probe’s genesis is bogus.

Still more: House Intelligence Committee Democrats are mulling a minority report that would detail the ways Nunes frustrated a full accounting into the conduct of Trump and his top officials, once again detailing this great abdication for the public. And so on.

The Russia probe, of course, may clear Trump and/or his associates of wrongdoing. But what’s at issue here is whether there will also be a full accounting into what Russia did to undermine our elections and democracy. One party is trying to frustrate and discredit this accounting, and is perverting the basic workings of government to do so. The other party is trying to defend those workings and to facilitate that accounting — and to get word out to the public about what’s really happening here.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:16 PM on January 25, 2018 [69 favorites]


It's not real challenging to get around E-Verify, no.

Considering that E-Verify takes PDFs rather than original documents checked by a human... no, it wouldn't be. A valid combo of B & C documents includes "voter registration card" and either birth certificate or social security card - and PDFs of any of those could be easily edited. (Fake originals would also not be difficult, but jpgs tolerate even more distortion than standard photocopies.)

The penalties being worth prison time are fairly meaningless compared to the penalty of deportation, and the more companies that use e-verify, the harder it will be to spot the fakes - especially as the tech requirements have gone down, not up, recently. Five years ago, you'd expect a scanned copy of a driver's license or voter reg card. Today, you can expect a smartphone photo, possibly taken under weird lighting conditions.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:17 PM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


I've Watched Trump Testify Under Oath. It Isn't Pretty.
Hammered by White and her deputies, Trump ultimately had to admit 30 times that he had lied over the years about all sorts of stuff: how much of a big Manhattan real estate project he owned; the price of one of his golf club memberships; the size of the Trump Organization; his wealth; his speaking fees; how many condos he had sold; his debts, and whether he borrowed money from his family to avoid going personally bankrupt. He also lied during the deposition about his business dealings with career criminals.

Trump's poor performance stemmed in part from the fact that he was being interrogated by shrewd attorneys wielding his own business and financial records against him. But there were lots of other things that went wrong as well.

Trump is impatient and has never been an avid or dedicated reader. That’s OK if you’d rather play golf, but it’s not OK when you need to absorb abundant or complex details. Lawyers typically prepare binders full of documents for their clients to pore over prior to a deposition, hoping to steel them for an intense grilling. My lawyers did that prior to my own deposition in the Trump lawsuit. But Trump didn’t appear to be well prepared when we deposed him, a weakness that my lawyers exploited (and that Mueller surely would as well).
I wonder how subpoenaing the President will work. I've always wanted to know.
posted by Talez at 12:18 PM on January 25, 2018 [86 favorites]


A Republican candidate for Senate from Missouri named Courtland Sykes is getting attention at the moment for some crazypants views on women's rights.

Looks like the rant was originally sent to local reporters last fall and mystified people: “I’m 99.9 percent sure it’s not parody,” John Messmer, a political science professor at St. Louis Community College said. “It’s not something strategic done by the Democratic side or someone that’s looking to criticize the conservative or Republican position.

“I do hold back that .1 percent,” Messmer said. “This might be one of the greatest examples of political performance art I’ve ever seen.”
posted by rewil at 12:22 PM on January 25, 2018 [25 favorites]


No need to subpoena him; he volunteered! (Well, there's probably a need to subpoena him, because his lawyers have to realize that him testifying would be a disaster.)

I am delighted that he's apparently decided, "Hillary Clinton didn't testify under oath SO I WILL BECAUSE I AM BETTER." Nevermind whether she testified under oath. The point is, he doesn't think she did.

I hope he's decided he needs to speak up to "set the record straight" and all this collusion drama will go away.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:24 PM on January 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


> There are already in the ballpark of 8 to 10 million people they can legally deport, before we even begin counting DACA recipients.

I didn't think you were talking about DACA recipients specifically, but "mass deportations" along the lines of what could happen if the Goodlatte bill passed. Still, I do think deporting the class of immigrants given quasi-legal status by Barack Hussein Obama would have symbolic value, so I'd at least expect some DACA recipients to be among the first to go. Going after them all first might have too much negative PR, but the base (not just the Trumpist base, but the conservative Republican base) wants Obama's legacy reversed. Killing DACA and deporting Dreamers will be a priority.

> They cannot legally borrow or spend any money beyond what Congress authorizes, and without an actual appropriations bill, funding is frozen at continuing resolution levels. I'm not saying everything is okay; I'm saying that the immigration deals on the table are not going to cause mass deportations beyond what we already have.

Funding remaining constant doesn't mean the speed of deportations must remain constant. There are inefficiencies everywhere, and I'd imagine there is room between what the law allows and what the executive branch was doing under Obama to increase the number of deportations. If not, it's impossible for me as someone who works closely with government agencies to believe that funds can't be redirected from other programs in ways that, if not legal, will not be so illegal that a GOP-led Congress is forced to act to stop them. Your faith in the rule of law binding the actions of both those working in the executive branch and those who might be able to stop them in Congress seems misplaced to me.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:26 PM on January 25, 2018 [10 favorites]


Even before we can begin to miss the newly departed Taylor Weyeneth from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Daily Beast profiles another under-qualified, under-aged Trump staffer: How a Twentysomething Eagle Scout Became One of Donald Trump’s Top Trade Hands
Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative, is relying on a small group of relatively unseasoned officials to advance a complex agenda, including renegotiating landmark free trade deals and cracking down on allegedly unfair practices by China, Mexico, and other major global economic partners. None have drawn more scrutiny and attention within the trade policy community than G. Payne Griffin, Lighthizer’s deputy chief of staff.[...]

In September 2016, a month before the campaign ended, Griffin was placed on the Trump presidential transition team’s “landing team” at the office of the United States Trade Representative. Shortly thereafter, Griffin—not even three years out of college—was appointed deputy chief of staff at USTR, one of the more powerful perches in U.S. trade policy.

As part of the resume he submitted to the USTR—a resume obtained by the progressive watchdog group American Oversight and sent to The Daily Beast—he noted among his leadership skills that he was an Eagle Scout. The work experience portion included his stint as an “executive intern” at the College Republican National Committee.[...]

And those who’ve worked with Griffin say it appears he is in over his head.

“Everyone says he’s a nice guy, but doesn’t really know much about trade,” said a source familiar with USTR operations.

Critics, including some former USTR staffers who declined to go on the record, have worried that the relative inexperience inside USTR—not just Griffin’s specifically—will hamper the agency as it attempts to dramatically reshape U.S. trade policy around the world.
Meanwhile at Davos, Treas. Sec. Mnuchin has declared the US is "open for business", even as his offhand remarks about how "a weaker dollar is good for us as it relates to trade and opportunities" sent its value plummeting and Commerce Sec. Wilbur Ross proclaimed, "Trade wars are fought every single day. ... the difference is that U.S. troops are now coming to the rampart."

The. Best. People.
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:30 PM on January 25, 2018 [18 favorites]


Courtland Sykes is pretty much being ignored here. No one's convinced he isn't a stunt.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:32 PM on January 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


Footnote to the "Operation Janus" thing: Janus, in addition to being two-faced, was the Roman god of borders. It's a surprisingly apt classical reference, and further proof that a classical education, while praiseworthy in and of itself, is no guarantor against being a closeminded, hateful, fascist thug.
posted by biogeo at 12:40 PM on January 25, 2018 [59 favorites]


Rubio is strongly signaling that he will not support whatever emerges from breakneck negotiations based on a bill from Sens. Lindsey Graham...
Which we know Graham will back out of.

Would you, could with a vote? Would you, could you with a gloat?
I do not like reneges and Graham,
I do not like them Uncle Sam.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:44 PM on January 25, 2018 [12 favorites]


I spent the better part of the afternoon trying to figure out if Sykes is a real person or an Instagram fascist. He appears to be a real person, or at least, someone went through a lot of effort to make a background for him.

Word on Facebook is that he's very politically naive and being manipulated by Trumpists.
posted by khaibit at 12:47 PM on January 25, 2018


We all thought the RNC's 2012 election autopsy report (oh, this seems so quaint now) would result in outreach to Latino and immigrant communities, since they were a growing part of the electorate.

Operation Janus and its ilk confirm that the RNC reached the conclusion that instead of reaching out to the growing non-white populations, they would try to eliminate as many as possible instead.
posted by benzenedream at 12:51 PM on January 25, 2018 [35 favorites]


I'd like to re-up a reminder that after a week off on the special elections front, we have four Missouri House seats up on Feb 6th. These are all tough races, but a) we've seen some big flips lately, and b) we want to build enthusiasm going into Claire McCaskill's tough election in the fall.

If you have a few bucks or can otherwise help, please consider it.

HD-39 - Ethan Perkinson - 71-24 Trump
HD-97 - Mike Revis - 61-33 Trump
HD-129 - Ronna King Ford - 80-16 Trump
HD-144 - Jim Scaggs - 78-19 Trump
posted by Chrysostom at 12:52 PM on January 25, 2018 [37 favorites]


Meanwhile at Davos, Treas. Sec. Mnuchin has declared the US is "open for business", even as his offhand remarks about how "a weaker dollar is good for us as it relates to trade and opportunities" sent its value plummeting and Commerce Sec. Wilbur Ross proclaimed, "Trade wars are fought every single day. ... the difference is that U.S. troops are now coming to the rampart."

Ah, see, you're stuck in yesterday's thinking, where the Secretary of the Treasury said our monetary policy is a weaker dollar.

Over here in today's thinking, the President said exactly the opposite: "the dollar is going to get stronger and stronger and ultimately I want to see a strong dollar." He thinks this will happen because the country is strong.

Yes, our country reversed its monetary policy overnight. Of course, those of you who have been following this horror show for a while will remember the time Trump called Flynn at 3am to ask if a strong dollar or weak dollar was better and Flynn had to tell him to ask an economist. It sounds like he still hasn't gotten around to that.
posted by zachlipton at 12:55 PM on January 25, 2018 [75 favorites]


From the last thread:

"Each deportation conducted by ICE cost taxpayers an average of $10,854 in fiscal 2016, an official from [ICE] told CNNMoney. This amount includes everything from housing and feeding a detainee to transporting him back to his home country."

So far starters it'll cost us about $8.8 billion, not even counting the injury to the economy. That's how vile and vindictive the racists in this country are..


Let's talk about some of the knock-on effects of sanctioning a state-level terror group like ICE. My wife is a middle-school principal. Want to know what she and her admin staff have spent several person-weeks doing since the inauguration? Crafting a formal plan for what to do when a student, or a student's family, get picked up by an ICE raid. Setting out policies about what to do if immigration officials demand to come into the school. (Spoiler: give them a nicer, more lawyerly version of "go fuck yourselves and come back with a warrant). Monitoring the local Facebook groups and NextDoor posts about ICE officials literally lying in wait outside of housing complexes to grab people on their way to work and school, so they can warn students and their families. Organizing fundraisers to get her students legal representation, because you don't have a right to an attorney once you're in immigration custody. Setting up counseling sessions for kids who have PTSD after seeing their parents dragged off in windowless vans. Using every communication channel available to them to tell students' families "for the love of god, don't cross the border into New Hampshire, because they're setting up highway checkpoints there with the cooperation of the state police."

Because, while only a handful of her students lack legal status, her school is in a primarily Hispanic community, and nearly everyone there has loved ones who could essentially be legally kidnapped any day. A sizable majority of her school spends each day in constant fear that they'll come home to find one of their family members gone forever. And this is in a sanctuary city! In the bluest state in the goddamn country!

So let's talk economic impact. Let's talk about the millions of people who are afraid to leave their houses to go to work, because they know their families won't be able to survive without them if they get snatched off the street. Or the billions of dollars in lost productivity from people like my wife, who now have to essentially build plans for what to do in the distressingly-likely-event of a de facto terror attack on her school by the goddamn government. Or the next generation of citizen, who is so scarred from seeing the only country they've ever lived in turn on them and their families that maybe they won't make it to college after all.

Fuck everything about ICE and its gestapo bullshit, and fuck every level of government that's letting it happen.
posted by Mayor West at 12:59 PM on January 25, 2018 [221 favorites]


Word on Facebook is that he's very politically naive and being manipulated by Trumpists.

yeah but so is trump
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:02 PM on January 25, 2018 [33 favorites]


Want to know what she and her admin staff have spent several person-weeks doing since the inauguration? Crafting a formal plan for what to do when a student, or a student's family, get picked up by an ICE raid. Setting out policies about what to do if immigration officials demand to come into the school. (Spoiler: give them a nicer, more lawyerly version of "go fuck yourselves and come back with a warrant).

Wait, it took them this long? We did this on our campus back in February.

Just kidding. We were told to leave legal questions to the legal department and stay out of their way.
posted by parliboy at 1:08 PM on January 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


Or the fact that people are too scared to go to the fucking doctor bc of ICE

ICE are, as aptly put above, terrorists. The suffering they inflict on people and the damage they inflict on society is, like with other terrorist groups, not limited to direct action.

Literal, actual terrorists, operating with the sanction of the government, and with practically no oversight.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:10 PM on January 25, 2018 [40 favorites]


Courtland Sykes is pretty much being ignored here. No one's convinced he isn't a stunt.

Dear plot writers for the last few years: Can you knock it off with the weird slash fanfic names already? It breaks the 4th (dimensional?) wall in the most unsettling ways. It's already hard enough to take reality seriously these days. No, not Reality. Damnit, stop.

Also, I just saw this in one of the related twitter threads searching his name. "This is what happens when you let God take the wheel and it crashes into a tanker truck full of Axe body spray."
posted by loquacious at 1:10 PM on January 25, 2018 [24 favorites]


3 potential problems for an obstruction of justice case against Trump
“If Trump exercises his power — even his lawful power — with a corrupt motive of interfering with an investigation, that’s obstruction,” Lisa Kern Griffin, an expert on criminal law at Duke University, recently told my colleague Zack Beauchamp. “The attempt is sufficient, and it seems to be a matter of public record already.”

Experts who disagree believe that Mueller would likely need much more damning evidence to justify making an obstruction case — through either an indictment or an impeachment referral — against Trump. They tend to make some combination of these three arguments:

1) The uniqueness of the president’s role creates a whole host of legal, constitutional, and political obstacles here.

2) Trump’s allegedly obstructive conduct doesn’t quite match the two presidential precedents we have here. The obstruction of justice impeachment articles Presidents Nixon and Clinton faced accused them of destroying or withholding evidence and telling witnesses to lie under oath.

3) Finally, Trump’s possible motive is more difficult to prove than many are acknowledging with the evidence we have so far. That’s because he can still make the case that rather than acting to cover up crimes, he acted because he genuinely believes the Russia investigation is “fake news” and that he did nothing wrong.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:23 PM on January 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


The most likely outcome, whatever bill passes, is that ICE does some scary public stunt and everyone's lives get more scary and uncertain.

I really am not okay with making the laws much worse under the idea that probably we won't have enough money to enforce them, though.
posted by corb at 1:24 PM on January 25, 2018 [17 favorites]


Mark Warner throws shade:
I’m glad somebody’s hot on the trail of this secret society. As soon as we’re done investigating Russia, we’ll join the hunt for the Illuminati.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:27 PM on January 25, 2018 [26 favorites]


The obstruction of justice impeachment articles Presidents Nixon and Clinton faced accused them of destroying or withholding evidence and telling witnesses to lie under oath.

And "fire someone to make him stop investigating me" doesn't rise to that level? Neither Nixon nor Clinton took presidential action to make the investigation go away.

Trump’s possible motive is more difficult to prove ... he acted because he genuinely believes the Russia investigation is “fake news” and that he did nothing wrong.

Believing the police are chasing a false trail is not a legal defense against obstruction. He knew they were investigating, and he worked to end that investigation. "But the charges were totally bullshit!" would not change the situation at all. (If that were the case, people couldn't be charged with resisting arrest if the charges turned out to be false.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:30 PM on January 25, 2018 [16 favorites]


Good lord, that is stupid echoing of a GOP talking point (I know: Vox. But see NPR)

1. The president is special. Sure. Got it.

2. Seriously, the point is that it's different from how it went down before? really?

3. He TOLD us what his motive was (and this is only the easiest Google hit): "I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off."
posted by Dashy at 1:30 PM on January 25, 2018 [24 favorites]


I searched in the threads and don't think I saw this - the missing FBI texts aren't missing anymore.

“The [Office of the Inspector General] has been investigating this matter, and, this week, succeeded in using forensic tools to recover text messages from FBI devices,” the letter read.

(Also, can I just add: 50,000 texts over six months? Isn't that, like, 273 messages a day? Is that supposed to be just between those two people? Isn't that kind of... a lot? Like I'm sensing exaggeration or misinformation somewhere.)
posted by dnash at 1:31 PM on January 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


273 messages a day? Is that supposed to be just between those two people? Isn't that kind of... a lot?

Not if it's someone you're banging.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:36 PM on January 25, 2018 [33 favorites]


>(Also, can I just add: 50,000 texts over six months? Isn't that, like, 273 messages a day? Is that supposed to be just between those two people? Isn't that kind of... a lot? Like I'm sensing exaggeration or misinformation somewhere.)

Not really. I have friends that I have background conversations with that can tally up to 250 messages easily over the course of a day.
posted by Tevin at 1:37 PM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


50,000 texts over six months? Isn't that, like, 273 messages a day? Is that supposed to be just between those two people? Isn't that kind of... a lot?

As a mother of a teenager....no. If someone is really, really into texting, that isn't even unusual.
posted by corb at 1:39 PM on January 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


Ugh, reading all these news articles about Trump's supposed willingness to fix stuff for Dreamers, as long as Democrats agree to dramatically reduce legal immigration --- with Durbin and others saying he's "headed in the right direction".

I'm worried that Dems will throw family visas and visa lottery under the bus in order to claim some sort of victory for DACA. Those should not be acceptable bargaining chips.
posted by thefoxgod at 1:39 PM on January 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


@NBCPolitics: BREAKING: Trump will support a path to citizenship for DACA recipients and Dreamers who were eligible for DACA but didn’t apply, which is about 1.8 million Dreamers, per conference call between Stephen Miller and House Republican staff that @NBCNews was on.
The immigration plan, expected to be unveiled Monday, also includes a $25 billion fund for the border wall, an end to chain migration and ending the visa lottery system

Handing your dial-in code to NBC is a new twist on leaking, but I'll take it. The real question here is what does "an end to chain migration" actually mean and what does the resulting policy mean for the total number of immigrants admitted? Whether the $25B is guaranteed all in year 1 or doled out over time also matters. Also doesn't sound like any kind of protection for Dreamers' parents is involved.
posted by zachlipton at 1:49 PM on January 25, 2018 [21 favorites]


Shep shepping.

@MattGertz (MMFA)
Shep Smith just totally shattered the Nunes memo narrative his colleagues Fox News have been pushing.

VIDEO
posted by chris24 at 1:53 PM on January 25, 2018 [16 favorites]


Democrats will never agree to completely end both chain migration and the visa lottery plus $25 billion for a wall. They might as well be asking for a flying telepathic unicorn.

On a different topic, 538 looked at the effects of gerrymandering nationwide. They estimate that if Democrats drew the districts in every state they would control the House 251-184 while if Republicans had that power they would hold 264-172 seats.

I continue to maintain that Democrats should maintain a standing offer to Republicans to enact non-partisan districting nationwide (well, it would have to be state-by-state but you know what I mean) while simultaneously gerrymandering the shit out of every state they control. No unilateral disarmament.
posted by Justinian at 1:57 PM on January 25, 2018 [20 favorites]


DNC hires Bob Lord as chief security officer. "Lord was responsible for detecting two massive data breaches that occurred prior to his arrival at Yahoo, and worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to track down those responsible."
posted by Chrysostom at 1:58 PM on January 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


Democrats will never agree to completely end both chain migration and the visa lottery plus $25 billion for a wall. They might as well be asking for a flying telepathic unicorn.

I'll believe it when I see it.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:58 PM on January 25, 2018 [15 favorites]


The Democrats not agreeing, that is. The flying telepathic unicorn is whole other story.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:00 PM on January 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


Handing your dial-in code to NBC is a new twist on leaking

I feel like I have seen a lot of mentions of things that were based on letting reporters listen in on conference calls, so I'm not sure it's really all that unusual. Certainly once you get into the number of folks in play with "House Republican staff" there's a lot of chances for reporters to have a sympathetic source.
posted by phearlez at 2:00 PM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


What do you remember about October 7th, 2016? That was when the pussygate tape dropped of course. It's a pity that the coverage of that overshadowed the much more important news story on that day:

US officially accuses Russia of hacking DNC and interfering with election.

Yeah, that was the same day. It should have been huge, it should have been the only thing anyone was talking about. Everyone should remember the day when the government revealed the Russians were actively interfering with the election. Instead, people doubt that it ever happened.

More recently, was it the 16th? Trump pays off a porn star! How salacious, and just in time to distract from shitholegate, DACA backflips, and the looming shutdown. It didn't swallow all the air in the room, but it's taking up space anyhow. He might be the first person to pay a porn star to keep their mouth closed.

I think the same thing will happen when he testifies. It's a pattern, but not really a design. It's misdirection, he's like the silly rodeo clown acting like a fool that everyone looks at while the gored cowboy is hustled off the paddock.

So instead of talking about testifying to Mueller, we'll be talking about the latest egregious/salacious breach of decency because there always is one.
posted by adept256 at 2:01 PM on January 25, 2018 [24 favorites]


The real question here is what does "an end to chain migration" actually mean and what does the resulting policy mean for the total number of immigrants admitted?

"An end to chain migration" means, in decreasing order of likelihood, an end to sibling petitions (very likely; immigration professionals have been predicting it for years), an end to adult child petitions (possible), an end to parent petitions (also possible), and/or an end to child petitions (very unlikely).

As for the total number of visas granted, who knows? That changes every month. You can always view the latest visa bulletin here, and it will tell you how long it will take for various groups of people to have their visas granted. (Example: If you're from Mexico and filed a petition for your sister to come to the US in November of 1997, she's going to get her visa very soon!)
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:01 PM on January 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


Newsweek: Trump Administration Hangs "Propaganda" Posters at EPA Boating Rollback of Obama-Era Protections

New Environmental Achievements:

✓ Confidence for American families
✓ Certainty for American businesses
✓ Proposal to repeal the so-called Clean Power Plan


Imagine being a poor long-suffering holdover civil servant in the EPA and having to see these posters in your workplace while you helplessly watch the environment be destroyed.
posted by Rust Moranis at 2:03 PM on January 25, 2018 [69 favorites]


Can we, at least here in this discussion, us the term "family immigration" which is both an accurate description of the process and not something Stephen miller and his ethnofascist friends conjured up yesterday?
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 2:04 PM on January 25, 2018 [111 favorites]


The immigration plan, expected to be unveiled Monday, also includes a $25 billion fund for the border wall, an end to chain migration and ending the visa lottery system

Absolutely ricockulous. "In exchange for letting 1.8 million people get on the path to citizenship, I want $25 billion for my Xenophobic Monument Which Will Never Be Completed. Oh, and family members and other relations of immigrants won't be able to tag along anymore. And no more visa lottery."

It would be, in other words, a net loss for immigrant rights if this is accepted. I sincerely hope the Democrats have at least enough spine to reject this outright.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 2:05 PM on January 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


What do you remember about October 7th, 2016? That was when the pussygate tape dropped of course.
It was a trifecta if I remember correctly, the third part being of course buther_emailspart666 < CNN endless emails reporting
posted by rc3spencer at 2:05 PM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


3) Finally, Trump’s possible motive is more difficult to prove than many are acknowledging with the evidence we have so far. That’s because he can still make the case that rather than acting to cover up crimes, he acted because he genuinely believes the Russia investigation is “fake news” and that he did nothing wrong.

Vox's playing Devil's Advocate is balanced with other opinions in their article:
“If Trump exercises his power — even his lawful power — with a corrupt motive of interfering with an investigation, that’s obstruction,” Lisa Kern Griffin, an expert on criminal law at Duke University, recently told my colleague Zack Beauchamp. “The attempt is sufficient, and it seems to be a matter of public record already.”[...]

Now, Griffin cites the fact that Trump asked others to leave the room before talking to Comey about Flynn as evidence of his corrupt intent. And that’s not all.

“He initially attempted to justify Director Comey’s dismissal by referencing the Clinton investigation,” she said. “And he later told Russian officials in an Oval Office meeting that he had terminated Director Comey to relieve pressure on his administration.”
Furthermore, although it's worthwhile to consider the arguments Trump's partisans might make in his defense against obstruction of justice, we're still speculating about the extent of Mueller's discoveries in this ongoing and wide-ranging investigation:
If the skeptics are right, Mueller probably needs substantially more — and more damning — evidence than we currently know of to justify an obstruction of justice finding.

But again, Mueller has held his cards remarkably close to the vest throughout this investigation. He’s reportedly interviewed a plethora of administration officials — White House aides, intelligence officials, and law enforcement officials — on the topic of potential obstruction of justice. We don’t know the full extent of what he’s learned.[...]

Finally, Mueller could also bolster an obstruction finding’s legal and political fortunes if he finds evidence of an underlying crime — especially evidence connecting Trump to Russian interference in the 2016 election. If it happened, this would provide stronger evidence of Trump’s corrupt intent — that he was acting to cover up criminal acts — as well as making the whole investigation tougher to dismiss politically.
And Vox doesn't even address the question of Trump trying to cover up the possible money-laundering at Trump Org, especially in roubles, or his attempts at deal-making for his businesses in Moscow even while he was running for president.
posted by Doktor Zed at 2:07 PM on January 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


In exchange for letting 1.8 million people get on the path to citizenship, I want $25 billion for my Xenophobic Monument Which Will Never Be Completed.

Every time the racists lose something, they get to have a monument, that's how it works.
posted by adept256 at 2:08 PM on January 25, 2018 [100 favorites]


Democrats will never agree to completely end both chain migration and the visa lottery plus $25 billion for a wall.

One, can we not use their "chain migration" terminology and instead call it family preference? On preview, I see Exceptional_hubris has said the same thing.

Two, if the deal can be expanded to offer at least some residency protection for their parents and the wall monies aren't all in a big up-front lump, I'm not sure I think this is a deal that should necessarily be dismissed. It's shitty and wrong, but the status quo is that the DACA folks are gonna get deported, and potentially soon. Unless the legal challenge is doing well this is an immediate triage matter. The other items can be rolled back later, Grodd willing, but once these folks get sent away they're potentially in immediate danger and it may never be correctable.

"In exchange for letting 1.8 million people get on the path to citizenship

And not deporting them, as quickly as possible. Sometimes to places they don't know and where they don't speak the language. These are people who are in spirit, if not by document, Americans. I want a robust and diverse country that welcomes all sorts of folk, but they have us against a wall (whoops; but I'm leaving it) and I'm not sure where the right point is to say we're gonna protect the people already here over the yet-to-come.

This is the problem with an enemy whose goals are to blow it all up. A lot of reasonable weapons just give them another variation of what they want.
posted by phearlez at 2:10 PM on January 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


I sincerely hope the Democrats have at least enough spine to reject this outright.

So, I'm thinking out loud here.

Column A: Agree to the deal, and get a path to citizenship for people already here, who are at risk (or might already be, it's hard to keep track) of being deported to a country they might not even speak the language of

Column B: Don't agree to the deal, to try and save future immigration slots, and in the meantime DACA folks have big problems


Absolutely agree in a net loss with the deal as written, but some things (immigration policy) are reversible in the future, and some things (people's lives) aren't. What's the leverage to reject this?
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 2:10 PM on January 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


It would be, in other words, a net loss for immigrant rights if this is accepted. I sincerely hope the Democrats have at least enough spine to reject this outright.

I'm unable to speak for Dreamers, nor would I want to, but based on the ones I know/follow/have heard I don't think this is the deal they want. NYT from last October seems to agree.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 2:11 PM on January 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


The immigration plan, expected to be unveiled Monday, also includes a $25 billion fund for the border wall, an end to chain migration and ending the visa lottery system

Those are the same demands they were working with last week that led into Durbin-Graham.

Vox's Weeds podcast talked about the visa lottery a few episodes ago. One of the options on the table was to end the diversity visa lottery, and apply some of those visas to people with Temporary Protected Status who have been here for more than like 10 years (whose protected status is also being ended by the president's administration.) Some of the visas would still be reserved for diversity purposes, but not awarded via lottery. I think that made it into Durbin-Graham ... I'm pretty sure that's something Democrats were going to vote for. That's specifically the thing that Trump scuttled with his "shithole countries" remark.

Dara Linde is covering immigration for Vox and she's doing a very good job keeping all the nonsense straight.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 2:11 PM on January 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advances the Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight, the closest it has ever been (tied with its setting in 1953).
“As of today,” Bulletin president Rachel Bronson told reporters, “it is two minutes to midnight” — as close as the world has ever been to the hour of apocalypse.

In moving the clock forward, the group cited “the failure of President Trump and other world leaders to deal with looming threats of nuclear war and climate change.” ...

The decision to move the clock forward was motivated largely by the Bulletin's sense of looming nuclear peril. But the danger is compounded by humanity's continued inaction on climate change, they said, as well as vaguer concerns about unchecked artificial intelligence, the spread of disinformation, and the public's eroding trust in institutions that could keep these threats at bay.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:13 PM on January 25, 2018 [12 favorites]


Bannon is such a strategic genius. Daily Beast, Betsy Woodruff, Mueller Wasn’t Interested in Bannon Until ‘Fire and Fury,’ Source Says
Steve Bannon appears to have accidentally sicced Robert Mueller on himself.

The FBI visited Bannon’s home on Jan. 9 to subpoena him, according to NBC News, and he is expected to talk with the special counsel’s team by the end of the month.

A lawyer close to Mueller’s investigation told The Daily Beast that before the release of Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury, the special counsel’s team indicated zero interest in questioning President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist for their Russia probe. The team hadn’t asked to interview him, the source said.
Also, @jleibenluft: Totally 100% on the level to:
- Propose $200 billion in infrastructure
- Claim states/cities/etc. will magically pony up another $800 billion+
- Say the $200 billion will be paid for by cutting other infrastructure programs
And then call it a $1 trillion plan
posted by zachlipton at 2:16 PM on January 25, 2018 [34 favorites]


This could be explosive news about Russian hackers behind "Cozy Bear" and their cyberattacks on the DNC and the US government: Dutch Agencies Provide Crucial Intel About Russia's Interference In US-Elections
It's the summer of 2014. A hacker from the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD has penetrated the computer network of a university building next to the Red Square in Moscow, oblivious to the implications. One year later, from the AIVD headquarters in Zoetermeer, he and his colleagues witness Russian hackers launching an attack on the Democratic Party in the United States. The AIVD hackers had not infiltrated just any building; they were in the computer network of the infamous Russian hacker group Cozy Bear. And unbeknownst to the Russians, they could see everything.

That's how the AIVD becomes witness to the Russian hackers harassing and penetrating the leaders of the Democratic Party, transferring thousands of emails and documents. It won't be the last time they alert their American counterparts. And yet, it will be months before the United States realize what this warning means: that with these hacks the Russians have interfered with the American elections. And the AIVD hackers have seen it happening before their very eyes.

The Dutch access provides crucial evidence of the Russian involvement in the hacking of the Democratic Party, according to six American and Dutch sources who are familiar with the material, but wish to remain anonymous. It's also grounds for the FBI to start an investigation into the influence of the Russian interference on the election race between the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and the Republican candidate Donald Trump.[...]

Three American intelligence services state with 'high confidence' that the Kremlin was behind the attack on the Democratic Party. That certainty, sources say, is derived from the AIVD hackers having had access to the office-like space in the center of Moscow for years. This is so exceptional that the directors of the foremost American intelligence services are all too happy to receive the Dutchmen. They provide technical evidence for the attack on the Democratic Party, and it becomes apparent that they know a lot more.
And Mueller has had all this information from the outset of his investigation.
posted by Doktor Zed at 2:17 PM on January 25, 2018 [103 favorites]


Absolutely agree in a net loss with the deal as written, but some things (immigration policy) are reversible in the future, and some things (people's lives) aren't. What's the leverage to reject this?


You don't think there are people waiting for family visas who are also in a bad situation if they don't get them? It's not that simple. People will be in danger / hurt by either ending DACA or ending family/lottery visas.

And no, I do not believe we will ever get the lottery back if it ends now. Mayyyybe family immigration, but I'm not sure about that either. In the current (forseeable future) climate, the GOP is not going to vote for either of those things, so unless you get 60 votes in the Senate you're not getting them back.
posted by thefoxgod at 2:26 PM on January 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


Tangential but true, today is Australia Day and we've chosen our Australian of the Year, a quantum physicist and climate refugee named Michelle Yvonne Simmons. An immigrant.
posted by adept256 at 2:27 PM on January 25, 2018 [34 favorites]


A key question to me, when they talk about "an end to chain migration", is what change would that mean for the prospects of Melania Trump's family coming to the U.S. in the future? Because of course what they're really talking about is an end to non-white migration and maybe an end to non-rich migration.

(Not using the term "family migration" here because it's the term from conservative media headlines that contains the racial component.)
posted by XMLicious at 2:27 PM on January 25, 2018


The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advances the Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight

I hate this. Now I have to remember to manually change every clock in the house.
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:28 PM on January 25, 2018 [55 favorites]


I found this data (from 2014, granted) today and thought it was really interesting.

The states that swung the election:

PA 1.4%
WI 1.3
MI 1.3
OH .8

Those are the estimated percentages of each state population that are unauthorized immigrants (the source's wording). They fearmonger well enough to convince states that ONE PERCENT of their population are "taking all the jobs".
posted by nakedmolerats at 2:30 PM on January 25, 2018 [10 favorites]


> They fearmonger well enough to convince states that ONE PERCENT of their population are "taking all the jobs".

It's the same logic that leads you to believing that you should support tax breaks for the top 1% of earners, under the assumption that you'll be one of them some day.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:31 PM on January 25, 2018 [10 favorites]


You don't think there are people waiting for family visas who are also in a bad situation if they don't get them? It's not that simple.

Right. This is a case where the people helped by DACA are easy to identify and point at while those who will be helped by the policies on the chopping block are theoretical future people. But that doesn't make them any less real.

It's as though the Republicans offered to double the amount of money for current food stamp recipients in exchange for permanently halving the number of people eligible. That isn't a good trade even though it would look like it was helping people in the very short term.
posted by Justinian at 2:34 PM on January 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


They fearmonger well enough to convince states that ONE PERCENT of their population are "taking all the jobs".

It's the same logic that causes people to get angry at an open parking spot reserved for a disabled person, reasoning that if it weren't reserved then surely it would be open to them.

People are very bad at reasoning about marginal effects and very good at special pleading for themselves.
posted by jedicus at 2:39 PM on January 25, 2018 [38 favorites]


Those are the estimated percentages of each state population that are unauthorized immigrants (the source's wording). They fearmonger well enough to convince states that ONE PERCENT of their population are "taking all the jobs".

They're the same people who are convinced crime is rampant. There's nothing statistical about either issue, it's because it feels right to them. You can argue about what percentages of that are because of their own personal life anxieties and what is racist fear - I know what I think - but it's all about their own fearful perception. It's the same mentality that folks glom onto in order to convince themselves they're safer if they don't wear their seatbelt or have an airbag. They heard a story from someone who heard a story and they want to believe it, so they do.

(Not using the term "family migration" here because it's the term from conservative media headlines that contains the racial component.)

The term I see all over is chain, not family. They elaborate with "bring their whole families here" but on Google site:foxnews.com "family migration" gets 17 results. site:foxnews.com "chain migration" gets "About 8,100 results." site:stormfront.org "chain migration" is 284. site:stormfront.org "family migration" is 5.
posted by phearlez at 2:40 PM on January 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


You don't think there are people waiting for family visas who are also in a bad situation if they don't get them? It's not that simple. People will be in danger / hurt by either ending DACA or ending family/lottery visas.

Yes, and some of this is just straight up triage at this point. If the offer is, as has been rumored, something like ending F3 and F4 family preference visas (adult children and siblings of US citizens), but letting those currently "in line" for such visas continue to wait for their number to come up, that's going to be a lot easier for many people to swallow. The wait for those is running 13-24 years right now; not letting more people join the end of that list right now is something a lot of people will eat if it means protecting people already in the country from deportation, even more so if those visas are reallocated to others in need, rather than reducing overall immigration.

So much of this comes down to whether the goal is to slash net migration (as Goodlatte and company want) or shift it around somewhat.
posted by zachlipton at 2:40 PM on January 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


The wait for those is running 13-24 years right now;

This. Apparently immigrants are descendants of Methuselah or some shit that can wait decades to import a dozen more.

Chain migration is a big heaping pile of nothingburger.
posted by Talez at 2:43 PM on January 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


@JStein_WaPo
Rep. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) on Trump's immigration proposal: "$25 billion as ransom for freeing Dreamers recipients doesn’t pass the laugh test. It would be far cheaper to erect a 50-foot concrete statue of a middle finger and point it towards Latin America."

@TheToddSchulte (FWD.us)
NEW - Initial analysis of WH plan shows it SLASHES legal immigration by 45%-50% (details could vary).

@imillhiser (ThinkProgress)
Just so we're clear, Trump's new immigration proposal is not a serious proposal. It is a plan that is designed to be rejected by Democrats so that Republicans can try to shift blame to Dems for the failure of the DREAM Act.
posted by chris24 at 2:43 PM on January 25, 2018 [64 favorites]


NT Alexandra Petri, WaPo: A letter from the director of the FBI’s secret society
To whom it may concern (Lisa), from the director of the Secret Society in the FBI dedicated to bringing down Donald Trump:

Wow, Lisa. Just, wow. Way to ruin this for everyone.

We used to be in a secret society, Lisa, but: news flash! When you send a text about a “secret society,” it stops being a “secret society” and just becomes a “regular society people know about and send texts about openly,” as if it were brunch or a Meetup group. That wasn’t what this was, Lisa.

Could you not tell the vibe we were going for? Did the total secrecy in which we shrouded our activities not suggest anything to you about the type of organization this was?

I have put my blood (plus the blood of dozens of infants sacrificed under full moons), sweat (just mine, no infants’) and tears (mostly mine, but also some from Dave in IT. Do not talk to Dave yet; his heart is broken) to set up a Secret Society within the FBI so we could take down Donald Trump, and you just … sent a text about it. Way to go, Lisa.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:43 PM on January 25, 2018 [39 favorites]


The other poison pill in there: "Closing loopholes in the system that make it almost impossible to deport illegal immigrants," such as the court backlog or the "catch and release" policy through which immigrants are released while awaiting a hearing.

What they call loopholes are what others would call the slightest modicum of due process (if that, which is really isn't) and not keeping people locked up forever.
posted by zachlipton at 2:47 PM on January 25, 2018 [30 favorites]


Hey, the good news is we hate it for being too awful. House Rs hate it for not being awful enough for them and their base.

@rachaelmbade (Politico)
House Rs not happy w/this new WH immigration plan -> "This is the beginning of the end of the GOP majority in the House. In a year when the Democrats impeach Trump, we can point to this moment," one R on the call tells me.
posted by chris24 at 2:52 PM on January 25, 2018 [24 favorites]


"Catch and release", jesus, they're not even pretending immigrants are humans anymore are they?

My experience when it comes to dealing with lawmakers who offer a minor concession in immigration policy in exchange for even tougher restrictions elsewhere is that when you open the door for these restrictions, it is nigh impossible to roll them back again. They become normalized and entrenched. You have to dig in your heels and fight until you get the deal you want, plain and simple.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 2:52 PM on January 25, 2018 [17 favorites]


To be super, super clear, those percentages nakedmolerats listed next to each state are NOT related to the election in any way. It's simply that four swing states were chosen to make a point. All states have similar numbers (although they unsurprisingly peak at 6% for Texas and California).

(Maybe I'm alone in this, but I had to read the comment multiple times to understand it wasn't discussing some new right-wing fever dream about the swing states states' undocumented population conveniently matching up with the same states' electoral margin of victory, even though such a conspiracy would only make sense if all the immigrants voted for Trump rather than against him.)
posted by InTheYear2017 at 2:54 PM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


In that 10+ year period, over half a million people would have been admitted on diversity visas (50,000 a year) that will not under this deal.
posted by thefoxgod at 2:58 PM on January 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


Dutch Agencies Provide Crucial Intel About Russia's Interference In US-Elections

If this follows the pattern of revelations about the Russia investigation, we're going to get headlines later today or tomorrow of "Oh yeah, the Dutch stuff was a nice corroboration of what we knew, too."

And then everyone's gonna be like, "Wait, the Dutch weren't the primary warning? Who was?"
posted by scaryblackdeath at 3:07 PM on January 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


The timing of that Dutch report (a joint effort between public broadcaster NOS and De Volkskrant) is a big fucking deal, even if those with good sources who'd paid close attention knew some of the details. The prospect of Devin Nunes shitting all over their collaboration with the FBI and NSA seems to have left them with very few fucks to give about having this go to press.

And Pete Hoekstra thought he could finally settle down to his nice junket in the Hague.
posted by holgate at 3:19 PM on January 25, 2018 [27 favorites]


Mod note: Folks, the usual reminder to dial back the snark and one-liners and sidebars appears necessary again.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 3:27 PM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


@BenjySarlin:
Okay some interesting deets from @kwelkernbc on WH proposal:

-Parents and siblings and extended families can still apply for family visas but not citizenship

-Uses diversity lottery visas to process the family-based backlog and high-skilled backlog
If true (there's some confusion since it's not in the talking points), this would seem to confirm that the White House's objection to family visas is rooted in the racism and/or electoral politics of allowing people to become citizens rather than anything to do with jobs or economics. This is outright just saying "your brother can come, but he can't really be one of us."
posted by zachlipton at 3:29 PM on January 25, 2018 [36 favorites]




I don't understand what "Uses diversity lottery visas to process the family-based backlog and high-skilled backlog" means?
posted by thefoxgod at 3:31 PM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


-Parents and siblings and extended families can still apply for family visas but not citizenship

Like, ever? So if they're here for 50 years, still no?
posted by corb at 3:34 PM on January 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


don't understand what "Uses diversity lottery visas to process the family-based backlog and high-skilled backlog" means?

Conservatives want to take slots from the diversity visa program and use them for skills based visas. For some reason it’s a zero sum game for them
posted by dis_integration at 3:35 PM on January 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


@jonathanvswan: Sources tell me Stephen Miller had a pretty feisty conference call just now with immigration hardliners. Lots of them hate the proposal. Seems like the WH has managed to piss off just about everyone!

Statement from DREAMer advocacy group United We Dream: "Let’s call this proposal for what it is: a white supremacist ransom note....Our fear, our pain, and our lives must not be used to shackle our parents and ban those seeking refuge; we must not be used to tear apart the moral fabric of this country."

I still think it comes down to the Senate trying to craft a simpler deal, which is just straight-up trading border security money for protection for Dreamers without making major changes to the entire legal immigration system. The House and the White House have much bigger demands, but if the Senate passes something smaller, that forces Ryan to move. What I fear though is that we'll just have Obamacare repeal in reverse, where nothing that can pass the House can pass the Senate.
posted by zachlipton at 3:44 PM on January 25, 2018 [29 favorites]


@ddale8:
Statement from DREAMer advocacy group United We Dream: "Let’s call this proposal for what it is: a white supremacist ransom note."


@mattyglesias:
Like what is the problem that a 50% cut in legal immigration is solving? It will reduce productivity and per capita income, make Social Security & Medicare less sustainable, speed up China overtaking us as the #1 economy, raise the debt:GDP ratio ...... why do this?


@JamilSmith:
Replying to Matt Yglesias
They want a white ethno-state, folks.
Or, at least, as close to one as possible.
We should state it explicitly.
It makes it infinitely more comprehensible.


@chrislhayes:
Replying to Matt Yglesias
Well, one "problem" it would address if not solve, is the rate at which the country is getting less white.
posted by chris24 at 3:47 PM on January 25, 2018 [64 favorites]


Do people like Matt Yglesias really not understand what's happening? Or do they just want other people to say it for them? Or do they just not want to have to reflect on their own racial bias?

The answer to so many "puzzling" things about Trump and the Republicans is always, every time, racial. And yet so many pundits continue to be "puzzled".
posted by chaz at 3:52 PM on January 25, 2018 [29 favorites]


> (Not using the term "family migration" here because it's the term from conservative media headlines that contains the racial component.)

The term I see all over is chain, not family. They elaborate with "bring their whole families here" but on Google site:foxnews.com "family migration" gets 17 results. site:foxnews.com "chain migration" gets "About 8,100 results." site:stormfront.org "chain migration" is 284. site:stormfront.org "family migration" is 5.

Sorry, I agree with you and I worded that poorly: I didn't use the term "family migration" when discussing the implicit racism because it's the term I used, "chain migration", which is the term from conservative media headlines that contains the racial component.
posted by XMLicious at 3:54 PM on January 25, 2018


Another choice quotes from United We Dream: "This isn’t a serious attempt to get a bipartisan DACA deal done, it’s a legislative burning cross. The White House’s immigration “reform” framework is dead on arrival, plain and simple."

A legislative. Burning. Cross.

Like I said this proposal is DOA. That doesn't mean the WH won't successfully shift blame for the failure to reach a deal, of course, since the policy argument doesn't fit on a bumper sticker. Even some people in this thread were leaving the door open for this deal being acceptable. It isn't.
posted by Justinian at 3:55 PM on January 25, 2018 [19 favorites]


Per Rainbo Vagrant on Dara Lind at Vox (above), here's Lind's latest on the Trump immigration proposal:

The immigration deal Trump’s White House is floating, explained

1.8 million immigrants could ultimately get access to citizenship — but the White House wants big cuts to family-based immigration in return. (Dara Lind | Vox)
The Trump administration is finally playing ball on immigration. On Wednesday, it announced it would release a “framework” for a bill it hoped to see pass Congress. On Thursday, details of that framework leaked to several news outlets, including NBC and the Daily Beast.

Those reports say that the administration is willing to allow 1.8 million unauthorized immigrants who came to the country as children to become legal residents and ultimately apply for US citizenship — including the 690,000 beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, as well as others who would have been eligible for DACA but did not apply — in exchange for a $25 billion fund for its wall on the US/Mexico border; reallocating slots currently given to immigrants via the diversity visa lottery on the basis of “merit”; and preventing people from sponsoring their adult children, or siblings to immigrate to the US.

Such a framework is exactly what members of both parties in Congress — especially Republicans — have been asking for. As Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said on Tuesday: “At some point, we’re going to need to know exactly what the White House is thinking, because who wants to pass a bill only to have it vetoed?” But the question now is whether the White House will stick to its framework — and whether it can get it to pass.

With little room to maneuver on policy (for a bill to pass, it will have to be liberal enough to attract 60 votes in the Senate and conservative enough to satisfy a majority of House Republicans) and very little time to debate the issue, a Trump-endorsed framework could be a game changer. Or it could put a stake through the heart of any hopes for an immigration deal by March 5, the date on which, as it currently stands, 1,100 or so immigrants will start losing their DACA protections each day. Which path it takes is as unpredictable as President Trump himself.

Trump’s framework might thread the needle of a bipartisan agreement — or it might not. The four issues addressed in the framework as reported — the wall, DACA, “chain migration,” and the diversity visa lottery — are clearly Trump’s own priorities. They’re the ones he’s been tweeting about for weeks. But it’s been very hard to get agreement on them between bipartisan reformers and conservatives, with the White House (and, sometimes, Trump himself) squarely in the latter camp. ...

The White House’s insistence on these four pillars is a little weird at this point. Not only did they reject the only proposal that was designed to meet them (the one presented by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Dick Durbin (D-IL)), but they called that plan so liberal that it couldn’t even serve as a starting point for negotiations. Meanwhile, Goodlatte’s bill, which several White House figures have held up as a model, also includes several enforcement provisions that go way beyond these policy areas; if anything, Goodlatte’s bill overhauls immigration enforcement in the interior of the US even more than border security. Congress ultimately doesn’t really need the White House to issue a policy proposal. It needs an assurance that Trump is going to pick some things that he needs out of an immigration deal, stick to them, and encourage members of Congress to get on board.

Many Senate Republicans aren’t interested in sticking their necks out for a bill that might not pass the House; many House Republicans aren’t interested in making themselves vulnerable to primary challenges by voting to offer any protections to any unauthorized immigrants. The president needs to rally his party. It’s not something he’s been able to do so far — he hasn’t even been able to make up his mind about whether he wants to make a deal on immigration even if it involves a compromise, or if he wants a radical overhaul of American immigration policy and will settle for nothing less.

Getting the president to say what he wants is the easy part; getting him to commit to it, and to try to get other people to commit to it, is much harder.
It's a thorough take and I recommend it. I just didn't want to post the whole piece here.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 3:57 PM on January 25, 2018 [10 favorites]


On eVerify, from upthread, not only is it an easily-faked system, it isn't even a comprehensive one. Cards issued by the federal government that, according to their own documentation, prove both identity and citizenship (the ones that people who enroll in NEXUS, SENTRI, or Global Entry receive) are not accepted as a List A document. They're lumped in as a generic List B/C document so the person being verified still has to come up with something else.

Same goes for "Enhanced Driver License" and "Enhanced ID cards," or cards issued by some states (and Canadian provinces, but that's neither here nor there) that also prove US citizenship and identity, particularly for crossing the border into Canada. They're just "driver's licenses" and require showing a not-at-all secure Social Security card or easily-mocked-up voter registration even though the actual card is, by rule, accepted on the same basis as a passport card.

So they want to double down on a system that's not even fully up to speed on modern documents...
posted by fireoyster at 4:04 PM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


Congress ultimately doesn’t really need the White House to issue a policy proposal.

This is correct.

It needs an assurance that Trump is going to pick some things that he needs out of an immigration deal, stick to them, and encourage members of Congress to get on board.

This is not. Congress just needs to pass something - the president doesn't want to veto anything, because then he's the guy who's at fault for all the problems. Work out a plan, get it through House and Senate, and send this week's trump-whisperer to convince him this was his real agenda all along, so he can boast about this fine bipartisan legislation that he made by being so stubborn that they *had* to work together.

He isn't going to veto anything and deal with the "we had a plan and YOU fucked it up!" fallout.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:05 PM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


So in the mid-late 1990s, after a couple of decades of St. Louis bleeding a fuckton of it's population of pearl-clutching racists to the suburbs, we took in a significant number of Bosnian refugees. I believe at one time, we had the largest population of Bosnians outside of Bosnia. I live in this part of South City. 20 years later, it's seen as nothing but a net positive for St. Louis. The city needs people. We have the housing stock. We have an infrastructure for nearly 1 million with a population 1/3 of that right now. I wonder if there's a way to counter any of this using us as an example (or Minneapolis with Somalis and Hmong, Garden City with Vietnamese) to come out loud and open saying that immigration works and it's a benefit to the communities they move to.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 4:08 PM on January 25, 2018 [54 favorites]


I mean, there was even a replica of the Sarajevo Sebilj built up the street from me and the President of Bosnia came to the groundbreaking.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 4:12 PM on January 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


How the GOP Rigs Elections
posted by Artw at 4:17 PM on January 25, 2018 [20 favorites]


I'm in St. Louis and I used to work at a store that employed a bunch of Bosnian immigrants. They were all terrific workers. There were occasional interpersonal conflicts that I think were caused by cultural differences (Bosnians can come across as brusque to Midwesterners, if you can believe it) but they were incredibly motivated and reliable, to a person.
posted by EarBucket at 4:18 PM on January 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


From the end of the last thread:

Even if Mueller wraps up the obstruction probe, other elements of his investigation -- such as whether Trump or anyone close to him helped Russia interfere in the 2016 presidential election or broke any other laws -- are likely to continue for months more, said two officials who asked to remain anonymous speaking about the probe.

Reading the tea leaves here....how does this work? Assuming Mueller determines there was obstruction, does he report this and then let everything fall out while he keeps working on "collusion"? Sit on it until he finishes up the entire investigation? Or does this tend to indicate that he isn't seeing a case for obstruction and wants to get it out of the way while he continues with the Russia investigation?
posted by Preserver at 4:19 PM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


No kidding about St. Louis. The city is empty. Abandoned buildings all over. But there are opportunities. They turned this abandoned gothic cathedral into a skatepark. Makes me want to visit.
posted by adept256 at 4:19 PM on January 25, 2018 [11 favorites]


It's also pretty interesting to me that people who are purportedly pro-business can be anti-immigration. I mean the arithmetic for the economics of it is pretty simple: people get old, and retire, and then you need new people to replace them and pay into social security, and as birthrates are notoriously subject to peaks and valleys, you need immigration to fill the gaps and keep the engine running. Otherwise, you end up with a recessive economy.

I mean I personally place zero value in capitalism, but it's fascinating to me how virulent racism can override even the most basic economic principles of self-described capitalists.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 4:20 PM on January 25, 2018 [25 favorites]


WSJ, Donald Trump Descends on Skeptical Davos Audience (sorry for the AMP link; it bypasses the paywall)
At a reception Thursday evening with global corporate executives, Mr. Trump expressed optimism that the U.S. economy would grow faster than expected. He told the group he had spoken with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who mentioned that India’s economy was growing at 7%. Mr. Trump told the executives he could deliver the same economic growth if given a second term, according to attendees.

Some in the audience said the remarks sounded boastful, while others said he was likely joking. The Department of Commerce reports fourth quarter growth on Friday. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expect growth of 2.9%, annualized in the quarter.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
posted by zachlipton at 4:31 PM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


it's fascinating to me how virulent racism can override even the most basic economic principles of self-described capitalists.

Virulent racism and sexism drive policies that make life demonstrably worse for everyone. There's a large portion of the country that believes what's really important is to punish the undeserving, regardless of how many people that hurts.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:40 PM on January 25, 2018 [30 favorites]


No kidding about St. Louis. The city is empty.

No shit, we can't even gentrify so that argument is dead when there's no one to price out to begin with.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 4:42 PM on January 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


The timing of that Dutch report (a joint effort between public broadcaster NOS and De Volkskrant) is a big fucking deal, even if those with good sources who'd paid close attention knew some of the details. The prospect of Devin Nunes shitting all over their collaboration with the FBI and NSA seems to have left them with very few fucks to give about having this go to press.

The article's concluding note of warning is particularly telling in light of Nunes's threat to declassify his shoddily assembled memo without going through the standard review process to prevent compromising intelligence assets, but it's not hard to see that Dutch intelligence is pissed off with their US counterparts for the way this has been handled:
President elect Donald Trump categorically refuses to explicitly acknowledge the Russian interference. It would tarnish the gleam of his electoral victory. He has also frequently praised Russia, and president Putin in particular. This is one of the reasons the American intelligence services eagerly leak information: to prove that the Russians did in fact interfere with the elections. And that is why intelligence services have told American media about the amazing access of a 'western ally'.

This has led to anger in Zoetermeer and The Hague. Some Dutchmen even feel betrayed. It's absolutely not done to reveal the methods of a friendly intelligence service, especially if you're benefiting from their intelligence. But no matter how vehemently the heads of the AIVD and MIVD express their displeasure, they don't feel understood by the Americans. It's made the AIVD and MIVD a lot more cautious when it comes to sharing intelligence. They've become increasingly suspicious since Trump was elected president.
Meanwhile, Russian bots are pushing back against this story (Hamilton 68 is already tracking the related #Nieuwsuur hashtag's increased 1100% in). We'll see how if it's picked up in American newspapers like the NYT and the Washington Post, but so far I see only Reuters's coverage.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:08 PM on January 25, 2018 [17 favorites]


I would really like to stop discussing immigrants and refugees in economic terms. We take in people and treat them well because it is the moral, right thing to do. Their contribution to our economy in employment, taxes, whatever is nice but not what determines their humanity. I understand that the economic argument may be a tool to convince people to, like, stop being virulently racist, but it really just reinforces the idea that there are "good" (productive) and "bad" immigrants. I'd like to push back on that.
posted by Ragini at 5:11 PM on January 25, 2018 [77 favorites]


I understand that the economic argument may be a tool to convince people to, like, stop being virulently racist, but it really just reinforces the idea that there are "good" (productive) and "bad" immigrants. I'd like to push back on that.

Well when the right's honking argument is 'STEALING OUR JORBS. MURICA FIRST (because we can't outright say we're racist)' what do you want us to lead with?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:14 PM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


Sure, I get that, and I didn't mean to argue that we should let people in because they're productive grist for the capitalist machine. I think America should welcome anybody who wants to come in, no ifs, ands or buts. That's just my own anecdote about the Muslim immigrants I've known.
posted by EarBucket at 5:16 PM on January 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


Woah. NYT, Trump Ordered Mueller Fired, but Backed Off When White House Counsel Threatened to Quit
President Trump ordered the firing last June of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation, according to four people told of the matter, but ultimately backed down after the White House counsel threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive.

The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel. Mr. Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.

Amid the first wave of news media reports that Mr. Mueller was examining a possible obstruction case, the president began to argue that Mr. Mueller had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him from overseeing the investigation, two of the people said.

First, he claimed that a dispute years ago over fees at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., had prompted Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director at the time, to resign his membership. The president also said Mr. Mueller could not be impartial because he had most recently worked for the law firm that previously represented the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Finally, the president said, Mr. Mueller had been interviewed to return as the F.B.I. director the day before he was appointed special counsel in May.

After receiving the president’s order to fire Mr. Mueller, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, refused to ask the Justice Department to dismiss the special counsel, saying he would quit instead, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.
posted by zachlipton at 5:16 PM on January 25, 2018 [127 favorites]




Russians got tens of thousands of Americans to RSVP for their phony political events on Facebook (WaPo)

America: In our defense, we thought we clicked ‘Maybe’
posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:18 PM on January 25, 2018 [17 favorites]


Woah. NYT, Trump Ordered Mueller Fired, but Backed Off When White House Counsel Threatened to Quit

Welp, there it is. The word "bombshell" is thrown around far too easily these days. But this would seem to qualify. It's at least a kiloton-yield level bombshell.

I am both shocked and completely unsurprised at the same time.
posted by Justinian at 5:19 PM on January 25, 2018 [39 favorites]


Ignore my comment. Read Zach’s instead. Holy crap.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:19 PM on January 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


I don't think this has been mentioned yet: GOP looks to increase Democratic support for 20-week abortion ban
The vote, scheduled for Monday, is expected to fail, since it is highly unlikely it will reach the 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster. However, anti-abortion groups plan to single out vulnerable senators up for re-election this year who vote against the ban.
Graham's the main sponsor of the bill.
the bill does not offer an exception for an abortion in the case of the health of the mother, only for the "life" of the mother, because that exception can be too "amorphous and something you can drive a legal truck through," Graham said.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 5:22 PM on January 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


Let's quote another paragraph, shall we:
The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel. Mr. Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.
They managed to keep this quiet since June. If Mueller is really making an obstruction case, and it sure looks like he is, Trump ordering Mueller's firing has got to be yet another piece of it.

This is also yet another example of Trump not actually being the President, issuing an order that's ignored until he gives up.
posted by zachlipton at 5:23 PM on January 25, 2018 [48 favorites]


It must be very strange for Robert Mueller that a key piece of evidence in his obstruction of justice investigation is an attempt to obstruct justice by firing him for investigating potential obstruction of justice.
posted by scarylarry at 5:23 PM on January 25, 2018 [138 favorites]


It must be very strange for Robert Mueller that a key piece of evidence in his obstruction of justice investigation is an attempt to obstruct justice by firing him for investigating potential obstruction of justice.

The word meta is thrown around a lot these days...
posted by saturday_morning at 5:26 PM on January 25, 2018 [52 favorites]


This really is Stupid Watergate. We had the Saturday Night Massacre last June, except this time, the President couldn't be bothered once someone told him no.
posted by zachlipton at 5:30 PM on January 25, 2018 [80 favorites]


Well when the right's honking argument is 'STEALING OUR JORBS. MURICA FIRST (because we can't outright say we're racist)' what do you want us to lead with?

I mean, I'd rather we (try to) change the debate. (Which, to be clear, a million advocacy organizations are already doing.) Letting the right set the terms of engagement is not exactly a winning tactic. They're never going to say yes, you're right, immigrants ARE good for the economy. It was never really about jobs to begin with.
posted by Ragini at 5:32 PM on January 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


Just to let you know, the Grand Jury in this case meets on Friday mornings.
posted by Ironmouth at 5:33 PM on January 25, 2018 [23 favorites]


I am both shocked and completely unsurprised at the same time.

... The part that surprises me is that second part, where the White House counsel threatened to resign. In what world does Donnie Trump not just say "Fine. I'll hire another one." ?
How is that even a thing that stopped him?
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 5:34 PM on January 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


Feels like we're getting closer to a "Did you order the Code Red?! / YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT I DID!" moment.
posted by bluecore at 5:34 PM on January 25, 2018 [14 favorites]


Can I just say it's still extremely funny that Trump is too much of a baby to personally fire someone? Even when he's obstructing justice he has to get someone else to do the dirty work.

I think he has to ask Rosenstein to do it. That's why the Saturday Night Massacre happened.
posted by BungaDunga at 5:35 PM on January 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


... The part that surprises me is that second part, where the White House counsel threatened to resign. In what world does Donnie Trump not just say "Fine. I'll hire another one." ?
How is that even a thing that stopped him?


He doesn't know how anything works, and has the attention span of a goldfish on Adderall.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:37 PM on January 25, 2018 [24 favorites]


How is that even a thing that stopped him?

Theory: that's not the full story, and we'll learn what actually stopped him eventually.
posted by BungaDunga at 5:38 PM on January 25, 2018 [19 favorites]


I think he has to ask Rosenstein to do it. That's why the Saturday Night Massacre happened

Correct, Robert Bork was never President! :)
posted by rhizome at 5:40 PM on January 25, 2018


@jbenton: Part Saturday Night Massacre, part Alice’s Restaurant Massacree

Rep. Meehan used the avalanche of news as the perfect time to announce he will not, in fact, run for re-election amid sexual harassment allegations.
posted by zachlipton at 5:41 PM on January 25, 2018 [18 favorites]


This could be explosive news about Russian hackers behind "Cozy Bear" and their cyberattacks on the DNC and the US government: Dutch Agencies Provide Crucial Intel About Russia's Interference In US-Elections

Here's Nieuwsuur's article on the AIVD Cozy Bear op (they collaborated with Volkskrant on reporting this). They're even harsher in their conclusion about the state of US-Dutch intelligence relations:
Last Sunday on Dutch television programme College Tour, Rob Bertholee, head of AIVD, said that he had no doubt that the Kremlin was directly responsible for the Russian cyber campaign against U.S. government agencies. Bertholee as well as Pieter Bindt, who was heading MIVD at the time, personally discussed the DNC matter with James Clapper, at the time overall head of the US intelligence services, and Michael Rogers, who is soon to retire as the head of the NSA.

As of now, the AIVD hackers do not seem to have access to Cozy Bear any longer. Sources suggest that the openness of US intelligence sources, who in 2017 praised the help of a Western ally in news stories, may have ruined their operation. The openness caused great anger in The Hague and Zoetermeer. In the television programme College Tour, this month, AIVD director Bertholee stated that he is extra careful when it comes to sharing intelligence with the U.S., now that Donald Trump is President.
Still, one must appreciate the exquisite timing of this story's release while Trump is at Davos with all the other European leaders.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:47 PM on January 25, 2018 [30 favorites]


Rosenstein has to do it under the DOJ regulation. The DOJ is part of the executive branch of which the President is the head. So theoretically Trump could declare that regulation null and void and fire Mueller himself. Which would be the nuclear option.

Trump doesn't have the guts to do it, though, he is a big man baby.
posted by Justinian at 5:47 PM on January 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


Rachel Maddow starts in 10 minutes and you know her staff is running around like chickens with missing heads.
posted by Sophie1 at 5:51 PM on January 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


This NYT story substantially increases my suspicion that McGahn is cooperating with the Mueller investigation, possibly on principle, but probably out of sheer self-preservation. I do wonder who leaked it now, and why. It will be very interesting to see whether McGahn remains on as White House counsel after this story.
posted by scarylarry at 5:54 PM on January 25, 2018 [33 favorites]


The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel.

Did this not jump out at everyone like it did to me?

the first time
the first time
the FIRST time
posted by rodeoclown at 5:56 PM on January 25, 2018 [133 favorites]




"Closing loopholes in the system that make it almost impossible to deport illegal immigrants," such as the court backlog or the "catch and release" policy through which immigrants are released while awaiting a hearing.

Let's be super-clear about precisely what this means: it means the ability to do speedy mass deportations based on "expedited," i.e., non-existent, hearings held in large-scale detention camps. Straight-up ethnic cleansing from the Milošević / Karadzic playbook.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:04 PM on January 25, 2018 [30 favorites]


The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel

That jumped out at me too, but the cautious part of me is assuming this is just some awkward phrasing that means "this story coming out is the first time he is known to have tried" yada yada
posted by saturday_morning at 6:06 PM on January 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


Why would he ask McGahn to fire Mueller? Maybe they mean he asked McGahn to support the legal pretext he gave, about supposed conflicts of interest?
posted by Coventry at 6:06 PM on January 25, 2018


Why would he ask Keith Schiller to fire Comey?
posted by rc3spencer at 6:08 PM on January 25, 2018 [10 favorites]


I wonder if Trump hates the lionization of Stephen Miller, or loves having him as a henchman/Svengali.

Svenchman?
posted by rhizome at 6:09 PM on January 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


Miller's his little Roy Cohn version 2.0 and I expect that he treats him with pride and reverence befitting a reincarnated mentor.
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:11 PM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


the FIRST time

Well, Michael Wolff did warn us it came up a lot: "And then there was the president’s insistent claim he could do something. I can fire him, he would say. Indeed, it was another of his repetitive loops: I can fire him. I can fire him. Mueller."

Here's a good roundup of Trump, John Dowd, and Kellyanne Conway all denying in August that Trump even considered firing Mueller, a month after the Times reports he actually ordered it. Trump claimed "I haven't given it any thought" on August 10th.
posted by zachlipton at 6:12 PM on January 25, 2018 [47 favorites]


Why would he ask McGahn to fire Mueller?
I don't think that is how it went down. Donnie wanted to do it, and Mcgahn gave his client an ultimatum- do this and I walk.
posted by vrakatar at 6:13 PM on January 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


The phrasing struck me as well, but given the way newspapers in genera and the NYT in particular fire copy editors - like Trump wishes he could fire Mueller amirite? - I assume it's just a rhetorical flourish that should have been struck rather than actual information.
posted by phearlez at 6:14 PM on January 25, 2018


Why would he ask McGahn to fire Mueller? Maybe they mean he asked McGahn to support the legal pretext he gave, about supposed conflicts of interest?

The article seems to imply that the president was chicken.
posted by Sophie1 at 6:14 PM on January 25, 2018 [12 favorites]


This really is Stupid Watergate. We had the Saturday Night Massacre last June, except this time, the President couldn't be bothered once someone told him no.

This is what makes me understand why Ron Johnson thought the "secret society" text was not a joke. Because if it were DonToo texting Manafort he totally would have done that! Wasn't their email subject line like "Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Great Russkie Dirt on Hillary!"?
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:17 PM on January 25, 2018 [12 favorites]


Here's a good roundup of Trump, John Dowd, and Kellyanne Conway all denying in August that Trump even considered firing Mueller, a month after the Times reports he actually ordered it. Trump claimed "I haven't given it any thought" on August 10th.

You have to admit that "I haven't given it any thought" is undeniably true.
posted by uosuaq at 6:19 PM on January 25, 2018 [47 favorites]


Can I just say it's still extremely funny that Trump is too much of a baby to personally fire someone?

He always does that, despite his posturing. One of the many things that makes me hold him and the fucknuggets who voted for him in contempt.

He didn't even decide who got fired on The Apprentice.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:20 PM on January 25, 2018 [16 favorites]


Miller's his little Roy Cohn version 2.0 and I expect that he treats him with pride and reverence befitting a reincarnated mentor.

No, his Roy Cohn is Michael "Sez who?" Cohen. Both are bullies hiding behind their law degrees, threatening or paying off his problems.

Miller's more like his Salacious B. Crumb.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:27 PM on January 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


The question I have about this whole thing is cui bono? We're talking about something kept under wraps for 6+ months. So who benefits from going to the NYT now? McGahn, sure, but it doesn't seem likely to me that he leaked it. It really doesn't help TrumpCo to leak it. That doesn't leave a lot of options. The Mueller team could benefit if it led to more protections against being fired but they have been nearly rock solid in stopping leaks so far and I don't see it. Who's left?

Bannon going scorched earth? Who?
posted by Justinian at 6:28 PM on January 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


Who?

I'd guess it's somebody at the White House who either wants McGahn fired*, or who wants his job.

* perhaps so that Trump actually will fire Mueller. Because they know that Republicans in Congress have no spine and won't do anything.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:33 PM on January 25, 2018


Kelly? He's in the doghouse at the moment.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:33 PM on January 25, 2018


The Post has an interesting Trump/Kelly relationship story (and no, Kelly didn't leak the Meuller firing order, that doesn't make sense to me at all) that's worth reading: Trump bristles under some of his orderly chief of staff’s restrictions. This bit stands out:
Kelly has slashed security clearances into the West Wing and reduced the number of people on the access list that once allowed relative free roaming within the White House, officials said. People such as former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski have seen their access reduced, with Kelly requesting that they work through him on all visits.

After Lewandowski had a lengthy meeting at the White House with Kelly this month, he went to say hello to a friend from the campaign, White House counsel Donald McGahn, according to people familiar with the incident. When Jim Carroll, a White House lawyer, saw Lewandowski sitting in the waiting area without an appointment with McGahn, he told the operative that he had to leave and offered to escort him out, the people said, requesting anonymity to describe sensitive exchanges. They added that escorts for all guests are now part of White House culture.
So what's Lewandowski doing meeting with Kelly and wanting to talk to McGahn for?
posted by zachlipton at 6:42 PM on January 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


zachlipton: "Rep. Meehan used the avalanche of news as the perfect time to announce he will not, in fact, run for re-election amid sexual harassment allegations."

He was almost certainly DOA at this point. This makes it easier for the GOP Legislature to do their court-ordered redistricting, as well, since they don't have to try and protect him.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:42 PM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


This foreign trip is different than the last two. I'm not seeing any stories out of Davos spun to tell the tale that Trump did something presidential. Even with the Saudi Arabia trip there were a few "look at how he didn't fuck up!" articles in the media. No one is calling him a leader anymore.
posted by frecklefaerie at 6:44 PM on January 25, 2018 [28 favorites]


WSJ: Idaho to Allow New Insurance Plans Outside of Federal Health Law
Under ‘state-based plans’ companies could consider enrollees medical history in setting premiums, include dollar limits on total benefit payouts

Idaho officials said they will begin allowing insurers to sell new plans that don’t meet requirements set by the Affordable Care Act, a move that will test the limits of states’ ability to carve out their own health-insurance rules under the Trump administration.
Motherfuckers.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:52 PM on January 25, 2018 [57 favorites]


chaz: "Do people like Matt Yglesias really not understand what's happening? Or do they just want other people to say it for them? Or do they just not want to have to reflect on their own racial bias?

The answer to so many "puzzling" things about Trump and the Republicans is always, every time, racial. And yet so many pundits continue to be "puzzled".
"

Of course Yglesias knows what Miller, et al. want. His point - which he went on to elaborate on - is that the GOP is not even presenting a rationale.

As far as "their own racial bias" - Yglesias is a Hispanic Jew.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:12 PM on January 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


Trump wins over global elites at Davos. All it took was a $1.5 trillion tax cut
“I like a lot more stuff than I don’t like,” Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein said on CNBC on Wednesday...

at the annual gathering of corporate and political elitein Davos, Dimon portrayed Trump as a leader who has unconventional methods but gets things done, especially for businesses...

Still, the positive reaction at Davos has surpassed the expectations of Trump allies.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 7:12 PM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


Who's left? Bannon going scorched earth? Who?

@MattGertz (MMFA)
This seems like the sort of story you put out if you are worried that the president might imminently be planning to fire Mueller.

---

Though it's just as likely it's someone who wants him to fire Mueller and hopes the whole 'he didn't have the Nixons to go full Saturday Night Massacre' goads him into it this time.
posted by chris24 at 7:31 PM on January 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


This Hannity clip is a compelling display of the bottomless bad faith applied here. He starts off knocking the Times for bad reporting, then is told Fox News confirmed the story and he has to roll with it, arguing it’s fine and cutting to a car chase clip, saying he’ll get to this tomorrow.
posted by zachlipton at 7:43 PM on January 25, 2018 [55 favorites]


@AJentleson: (Harry Reid senior advisor)
Trump tried to fire Mueller, but Ryan has sanctioned a Nunes-led attack campaign on Mueller's credibility.

Take a step back and think about Congressional Republicans' campaign against Mueller in this light.

We're flying without a safety net, folks.
posted by chris24 at 7:53 PM on January 25, 2018 [51 favorites]


He starts off knocking the Times for bad reporting, then is told Fox News confirmed the story and he has to roll with it, arguing it’s fine and cutting to a car chase clip,

The Times is trying to distract you! Well, maybe they aren't completely wrong with what they are saying. Now look at this car chase! You're the distraction!
posted by nubs at 8:00 PM on January 25, 2018 [10 favorites]


cutting to a car chase clip

car *crash* clip. it's a poignant commentary on Trump, really. "oh shit, the cops! drive faster! it'll be okay!"
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 8:01 PM on January 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


Approximately 96% of the people in the U.S. are in the country legally. Getting to 100% would require a police state and an infinite amount of money. No projects are run to 100%; they run to what is needed. There are no fiscally conservative explanations for how spending 25 billion dollars to change from 96 to 97% would improve anyone's quality of life.

If there were fiscally conservative Republicans, they would bring the executives of Customs and Border Protection to hearings to explain why they have failed to secure the borders. Congress has been shoveling money to CBP for two decades. During the George W. Bush administration the number of border agents was increased from 4,000 to 20,000. This isn't enough agents to hold hands for the 2,000 mile length of the U.S. - Mexico border, but CBP also has drones and blimps and electronic sensors. Republicans are not fiscally conservative, they are security scare mongers.
posted by llc at 8:05 PM on January 25, 2018 [114 favorites]


If the desperation of the GOP to discredit Mueller and the FBI wasn’t hint enough, McGahn seemingly pulling the rip cord to parachute out of the blast zone makes me think something bad is about to happen.

@christinawilkie: (CNBC)
This type of story doesn’t happen by accident, where 4 sources all know about a request the president made to his WH counsel, and all corroborate it to reporters. With no denial from McGahn. This suggests McGahn’s team wants it known that he stood up to Trump.


@CharlesPPierce: (Esquire)
Am I alone in thinking that Don McGann is negotiating a deal with Mueller in real time?
posted by chris24 at 8:07 PM on January 25, 2018 [48 favorites]


Idaho officials said they will begin allowing insurers to sell new plans that don’t meet requirements set by the Affordable Care Act

I chose Idaho as the obvious example of a state that could try to exploit "across state lines" stuff (because Delaware and South Dakota were taken) by selling dogshit insurance for $10/mo that covers a hotel sewing kit and a bottle of vodka if you need surgery (after a $5000 deductible) and the fuckers only went and did it.
posted by holgate at 8:09 PM on January 25, 2018 [10 favorites]


The Post has its take on the story, with an addition:
In one meeting with other advisers, Bannon raised the concern that if Trump fired Mueller it could trigger a challenge to his presidency based on the 25th Amendment, which lays out the process of who would succeed a president in case of incapacitation.

Despite internal objections, Trump decided to assert that Mueller had unacceptable conflicts of interest and moved to remove him from his position, according to the people familiar with the discussions.

In response, McGahn said he would not remain at the White House if Trump went through with the move, according to a senior administration official.

The president, in turn, backed off.
Bannon seriously thought the groveling idiots in Trump's cabinet would invoke the 25th Amendment if he tried to fire Mueller? That seems hard to believe.
posted by zachlipton at 8:12 PM on January 25, 2018 [14 favorites]


@GreatDismal: (William Gibson)
I tend to eyeroll at “exactly like a William Gibson novel”, but the Dutch hacking the camera in the corridor of Cozy Bear’s Moscow Square building...
posted by chris24 at 8:17 PM on January 25, 2018 [60 favorites]




The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel.

And now Trump confidante/surrogate Chris Ruddy of Newsmax is telling PBS NewsHour Trump's thinking about it… it would be bad… but he's thinking about it…
RUDDY: I think he's considering perhaps terminating the special counsel. I think he's weighing that option. I think it's pretty clear by what one of his lawyers said on television recently. I personally think it would be a very significant mistake, even though I don't think there's a justification, even though, I mean, here you have a situation…
JUDY WOODRUFF: You don't think there's a justification for…?
RUDDY: For a special counsel in this case.
Expect more such trial balloons from Team Trump along these lines.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:30 PM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


(That Ruddy clip is from June, around the time Trump actually did order Mueller's firing)
posted by zachlipton at 8:33 PM on January 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


@Bill Kristol's theory: "Who leaked this? Probably McGahn (perhaps with Cobb).
Why now? Well, its effect will presumably be a negative reaction to firing Mueller. Which may well mean Trump recently returned to the idea, and this is a desperate effort by McGahn to stop him again.

"If you put this article together with the DOJ letter on the Nunes memo (which WH Counsel would presumably have seen and signed off on before it was sent), we might be witnessing a last ditch attempt by McGahn and DOJ (and COS Kelly?) to restrain Trump from going full Nixon."
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:35 PM on January 25, 2018 [12 favorites]


I think Trump's cronies have realized they've warmed the pot enough. There's too many Republicans who are in too deep at this point to flip around calling for Trump's head.
posted by Talez at 8:36 PM on January 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


Elizabeth de la Vega (@Delavegalaw):

Trump is not going to sit down voluntarily with Mueller. He can not possibly do that without lying, not because it's a trap, but because he lies all the time. And, despite his bravado, Trump is a coward. He is just trying to make people think he wants to do it for PR purposes. 1/

Trump, his friends & the GOP are trying to malign Mueller and the investigation so Trump has a way out. He just says he's not sitting down with Mueller because the investigation is suspect. But does this mean that Mueller will subpoena him??? NO! Mueller does NOT need to talk 2/

to Trump in order to indict him. In fact, prosecutors RARELY talk to defendants before charging them. And, yes, Trump would lie, but Mueller does NOT need more evidence or charges. The evidence of conspiracy to obstruct justice is overwhelming. Trump's self-serving statements 3/

add nothing to the case. Trump does have a valid 5th Am right and it would not help the prosecution to have an indictment after the defendant took the 5th in front of the same grand jury. (His lawyers are not concerned he will tell the truth, btw.) What else does Mueller NOT 4/

need? The Special Counsel does NOT need or want a big fight about a grand jury subpoena to the president. He does NOT need or want chaos or delay. All he needs to gain from the interview overture to Trump is to have Trump squarely reject the opportunity to tell his story. Once 5/

Trump does that, then Mueller can present the conspiracy to obstruct justice case for indictment w/Trump as an indicted coconspirator, or unindicted coconspirator. Sometimes prosecutors pull their punches to achieve a larger goal. Don't be surprised if that happens here!
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:39 PM on January 25, 2018 [38 favorites]


A quick google to see if I could make some kind of joke about "going full Nixon" has lead me to the discover that the biography "Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full" was written by Lord Conrad Black, media mogul, convicted criminal, and of late Trump apologist. Because of course, of course, it's shitstains all the way down.
posted by nubs at 8:40 PM on January 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


There are two obvious initial readings: the DOJ letter and McGahn leaking are designed to stop some crazy shit from happening by creating a public reaction, or the DOJ and McGahn know that some crazy shit is going to happen and are getting their excuses in first. (McGahn, Bannon and Priebus still share a lawyer, so they presumably haven't reached a point where their interests and exposure creates a conflict.)

There's a long flight tomorrow due to leave Switzerland around 10:30am Eastern. Cranky old man on plane does crazy shit.

And I do think we're without a safety net right now and headed to a place where Nixon analogies offer no guidance.
posted by holgate at 8:41 PM on January 25, 2018 [15 favorites]


McGahn seemingly pulling the rip cord to parachute out of the blast zone.

This is really the perfect analogy for the WH -- ever reaching for the chute ripcord, thinking it's an ejector seat.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:41 PM on January 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


I can't even fathom what combination of substances the writers are abusing that have brought us to this point, and I once saw the aftermath of a guy who was reportedly hopped up on PCP who tried to rob a security guard school, where he was enrolled at the time trying to become a security guard:

@jimmykimmel: I am pleased to announce that the very gifted @StormyDaniels will be on #Kimmel Tuesday 1/30 after the #StateOfTheUnion. I have MANY QUESTIONS! #MAGA
posted by zachlipton at 8:42 PM on January 25, 2018 [40 favorites]


From the WaPo story on firing Mueller:
At the time, Trump’s legal team was urging him to take an aggressive posture toward the special counsel and was compiling arguments about why Mueller could not be impartial. Among the points cited: an allegation that Mueller had gotten into a dispute over membership fees before he resigned from a Trump-owned golf course in Northern Virginia in 2011.

The dispute was hardly a dispute at all. According to a person familiar matter, Mueller had sent a letter requesting a dues refund in accordance with normal club practice and never heard back.
Mueller was Director of the FBI in 2011 and Trump tried to rip him off. Hilarious, and par for the course.
posted by peeedro at 8:42 PM on January 25, 2018 [57 favorites]


i suspect it’s no coincidence that this dropped while trump was out of the country
posted by murphy slaw at 8:43 PM on January 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


NBC has joined NYT, WaPo and Fox in confirming the story. All within a couple hours. This is quite the coordinated leak.
posted by chris24 at 8:47 PM on January 25, 2018 [24 favorites]


NBC has joined NYT, WaPo and Fox in confirming the story. All within a couple hours. This is quite the coordinated leak.

Someone seriously wanted this to rise above the chaos and be highly visible -- like Regan's "help me" in The Exorcist.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:54 PM on January 25, 2018 [26 favorites]


NBC has joined NYT, WaPo and Fox in confirming the story.

Fox didn't really join anything. Hannity confirmed it, said it was the President's right to do so and they went back to Jeanine Pirro lost in the woods trying to confirm secret societies that are sword to uphold the constitution instead of being loyal to the President.
posted by Talez at 8:57 PM on January 25, 2018


Fox didn’t really join anything.

I know you’re snarking on their awfulness, but they did actually really report it with their own confirmed source.

@FoxNews:
BREAKING: Trump was talked out of firing Mueller last June, source says http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/25/trump-was-talked-out-firing-mueller-last-june-source-says.html
posted by chris24 at 9:03 PM on January 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


It's 6:00 am in Switzerland. Rise and shine, asshole.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:10 PM on January 25, 2018 [59 favorites]


It's 6:00 am in Switzerland. Rise and shine, asshole.

No way his ass is up that early.
posted by leotrotsky at 9:22 PM on January 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


The Trumps' anniversary was Monday, but you wouldn't have known it

I’m sure he bought her something nice.

Melania Trump skips Davos, visits museum and heads to Florida

I’m sure she lit a candle for him.
posted by valkane at 9:23 PM on January 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


What's funny about Ed Henry's Fox News story: the only original reporting is a few sentences single-sourced to "a source close to the White House" but that's apparently enough for Hannity to hit the "show a car crash!" panic button.
posted by holgate at 9:24 PM on January 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


@edatpost:
CONFIRMED: @RepJoeKennedy to give Democratic response to the State of the Union. Virginia Del. Elizabeth Guzman, first Latina elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, set to deliver @TheDemocrats response in Spanish.
Kennedy is regarded as a good speaker, I believe (I'm a terrible judge at what other people find compelling), and he's been vocal in criticizing the administration. This sounds like a pretty good choice.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:28 PM on January 25, 2018 [25 favorites]


Of course Yglesias knows what Miller, et al. want. His point - which he went on to elaborate on - is that the GOP is not even presenting a rationale.

Is that a point? I'm not sure, it seems like it might be, but then it also seems like dancing around the point.

As far as "their own racial bias" - Yglesias is a Hispanic Jew.

Hispanic Jews can't have racial bias? Anyway, regardless of any one reporter's ethnic/religious background, it's racist that the white media find it so hard to explicitly call out racism and instead criticize "not even presenting a rationale."
posted by chaz at 10:00 PM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


the times provides some context for trump's remarks about being eager to speak to mueller under oath that i seem to have missed in other reporting:
To the surprise of the 20 or so reporters who were in the office, Mr. Trump dropped into a briefing on immigration that was only getting started. It was ostensibly just to say hello after Mr. Trump learned from Mr. Kelly that the session was taking place. Mr. Trump, despite his criticism of “fake news,” rarely misses a chance to speak with reporters.

The president boasted that he was eager to speak with Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He emphasized his interest in a path to citizenship as a solution for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants. He expressed joy about going to Davos, Switzerland.

The planned background briefing on immigration was abruptly called off after the president left.
posted by murphy slaw at 10:05 PM on January 25, 2018 [11 favorites]


The actions of Trump, Nunes, Ryan et al seem to indicate that these guys are heading into the area of full blown panic. These guys know a lot of the guys that Mueller has talked to, although he’s undoubtedly talked to others they don’t know about. They know what’s in the documents that have been turned over to Mueller. So if they’ve done anything illegal, they’re sweating bullets. As I’ve said before, Trump is dirty. Pence is dirty. Ryan is dirty. Nunes is dirty. The Turtle is dirty.
posted by azpenguin at 10:12 PM on January 25, 2018 [39 favorites]


@piersmorgan (who Trump gave an interview to): BREAKING NEWS:President Trump has publicly apologised for retweeting far-right group Britain First. Says he didn't know who they were. 'I don't want to be involved with these people. If you're telling me they're horrible racist people. I certainly apologise.'

One of the few times in his life Trump has apologized (meaninglessly), and it's to Piers Morgan of all people?
posted by zachlipton at 10:26 PM on January 25, 2018 [25 favorites]


cutting to a car chase clip

seriously, this is how all of this is going to end. Trump on the run in prime time, and if Hannity's driving, I wouldn't be entirely surprised. The best car chase. Way better than this one.
posted by philip-random at 11:09 PM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


As Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said on Tuesday: "At some point, we're going to need to know exactly what the White House is thinking, because who wants to pass a bill only to have it vetoed?"

So an earlier query of mine was, why care what the White House thinks? why care about a potential veto? Trump notoriously flip flops on every policy discussion. Just proceed without him and if a popular-according-to-the-polls piece of legislation like DACA gets vetoed, the blame will be squarely on Trump (and I don't think he'd risk that).

However I've since learned that Ryan, McConnell et al are actually using "Trump's veto" as a shield to hide behind. They won't bring *anything* to the floor if it has the potential to rouse the deplorables and be primaried out. DACA is just the most blatant example. But they can't come out and say that, thus the face-saving fiction "we don't know what the president wants us to do" or "Trump will just veto it so it's not worth trying".
posted by TWinbrook8 at 1:02 AM on January 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


> "Catch and release", jesus, they're not even pretending immigrants are humans anymore are they?

House GOP DACA Bill Would Criminalize Dreamer Poverty - "The House GOP is so determined to see these immigrants as not just illegal, but as criminals that they have decided to try to make their view reality."

-GOP Bill Spends More on Border Patrol in 5 Years Than It Has Spent in 5 Decades
-"why do this? ...white genocide..."
-"Either America succeeds as a polyracial nation, or it does not succeed as a nation at all."
posted by kliuless at 1:18 AM on January 26, 2018 [20 favorites]


I'm intrigued by the Times' phrasing "the first time". What other attempts are we yet to hear about?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:23 AM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


As others have said, I think the "first time" wording is just awkward phrasing. Kind of like, Trump has been obviously unhappy with Mueller for awhile, and there have been rumors, but this "marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel."
posted by Roommate at 3:59 AM on January 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


Kansas Governor Sam Brownback to resign on Jan. 31 to join the Trump admin. as "U.S. ambassador for international religious freedom."

Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer is to succeed him; up for re-election this November.
Julie Zauzmer, WaPo; Daniel McCoy, Wichita Business Journal; Kansas City Star Editorial Board editorial [having trouble finding a link to one comprehensive article]

Wisconsin Senate Republicans vote to oust state's ethics and elections chiefs, Patrick Marley, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Republican state senators Tuesday denied the confirmations of the directors of Wisconsin's ethics and elections commissions — and the leader of the state Senate said he hoped to remove two civil servants at those agencies next.
Republican [Wisconsin Gov. Scott] Walker embraces Democratic ideas in election year, Scott Bauer, AP/WaPo
Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s embrace of Democratic ideas as he mounts his re-election campaign generated blowback from conservatives Thursday, while his longtime political foes warned voters should focus on his record, not his promises.
Scott Walker Is Literally Preventing Wisconsinites From Voting, John Nichols, The Nation [can't find another cite at this time but I think this general issue was brought up in a previous megathread]
The governor is deliberately denying Wisconsinites representation in the legislature by refusing to call special elections to fill open seats in the State Assembly and the State Senate.

In doing so, he is rejecting the clear intent of Wisconsin’s statutes, which declare: “Any vacancy in the office of state senator or representative to the Assembly occurring before the 2nd Tuesday in May in the year in which a regular election is held to fill that seat shall be filled as promptly as possible by special election.” ...

Whatever his reason, the fact remains that Walker has refused to call special elections to fill the seats of former state senator Frank Lasee, of De Pere, and former state representative Keith Ripp, of Lodi, a pair of Republicans who quit the legislature in December to take posts with the governor’s administration. The governor wants to leave those seats open until January 2019—denying tens of thousands of Wisconsinites representation for a full year.
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 4:06 AM on January 26, 2018 [44 favorites]


Oh look, the FBI text story falls apart even more. Strzok and Page wanted to appoint a special prosecutor for Clinton. Yep, definitely working to get her e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶e̶d̶ investigated.

Politico: Texts: FBI considered Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor for Hillary Clinton emails
Senior FBI officials involved in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server considered naming former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as a special prosecutor for that probe, according to text messages released Thursday.

The proposal for a special counsel appears to have arisen in March 2016, relatively early in the FBI's inquiry into Clinton's email use, based on a limited set of texts exchanged by senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page that were made public by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley.

While it appears from the messages that the idea of a special prosecutor was discussed at high-level FBI meetings, it is unclear whether the thought of naming Fitzgerald to that job was as widely discussed.

"Thought of the perfect person [FBI Director James Comey] can bounce this off of?" Strzok wrote in a March 18, 2016 text to Page. "Pat....You got to give me credit if we go with him....And delay briefing him on until I can get back and do it, Late next week or later."

"We talked about him last night, not for this, but how great he is," Page replied.

"I could work with him again....And damn we'd get sh*t DONE," Strzok wrote.
posted by chris24 at 4:06 AM on January 26, 2018 [9 favorites]


I've never heard him apologize before and I don't know if that's what that was...

If you're telling me that they're horrible people, horrible racist people, I would certainly apologize if you'd like me to do that.

"If you said they're racist I would apologize". It's not exactly dripping with a burning need to confess to past wrongs and seek redemption in good faith.
posted by adept256 at 4:09 AM on January 26, 2018 [12 favorites]


I know this is a small thing, but I wanted to share with MetaFilter a story about the ongoing efforts of the administration to cripple federal agencies with one little attack after another. I’ve already mentioned that we’re under a Department-level hiring freeze, leading to several hundred vacancies at my research agency, including 4 in my lab. A couple weeks ago, Secretary Perdue (R-GA) announced a major change to our telework policy. Since then, I’ve spoken with friends at other Departments, and this appears to be a coordinated change across the executive branch. The gist of the change is that, in order to better serve our customers, employees may telework no more than two days per pay period, or one day a week. If you’re on an alternative work schedule where you flex one day a week, you may not telework at all. The Obama administration spent years expanding telework and encouraging its use whenever job duties and individual performance warrant, and people have built their lives around it, particularly folks with young families. There is a 30-day phase-in period (it was expanded a little this week), but it’s a needlessly short time period given the major changes to child care and things folks will have to make. Telework also was always a privilege, not a right of employment, so the idea that people are using it as a day off instead of working is a lie. It’s a nasty, mean-spirited but if work that’s going to cause a lot of hardship. It’s one more way to make federal service unappealing as a career choice. It’s also clever in its own way, because it’s hard to argue against in the court of public opinion without being painted as “a lazy whiner whose feelings are hurt because they can ONLY telework one day a week.” The traffic taken off roads doesn’t matter, the hundreds of hours of time people save from reducing commutes doesn’t matter, nor do energy savings, lower operating costs for federal facilities, reduced wear and tear on cars, etc. it’s not getting much press, but the current administration is prosecuting a pretty successful campaign against the federal workforce.
posted by wintermind at 4:39 AM on January 26, 2018 [151 favorites]


> The president boasted that he was eager to speak with Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Trump couldn't possibly be saying that stuff out loud without adding "shame he's gonna be fired before that happens" in his head.
posted by klarck at 5:06 AM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Keith Ellison may run for Minnesota AG.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:32 AM on January 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


CONFIRMED: @RepJoeKennedy to give Democratic response to the State of the Union

Kennedy is regarded as a good speaker, I believe (I'm a terrible judge at what other people find compelling), and he's been vocal in criticizing the administration. This sounds like a pretty good choice.


That's my rep! I saw him speak recently at a district event. He comes across as competent and intelligent. Not quite eloquent, but close. Not quite charismatic, but close. The biggest problem is that he talks low and fast. Sometimes it's close to mumbling. He definitely doesn't shy away from criticizing the administration.
posted by diogenes at 5:34 AM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


The sort of power previous paramilitaries have only dreamed of....

Exclusive: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US.
While it collects few photos itself, Vigilant Solutions has amassed a database of more than 2 billion license plate photos by ingesting data from partners like vehicle repossession agencies and other private groups. Vigilant also partners with local law enforcement agencies, often collecting even more data from camera-equipped police cars. The result is a massive vehicle-tracking network generating as many as 100 million sightings per month, each tagged with a date, time, and GPS coordinates of the sighting.

ICE agents would be able to query that database in two ways. A historical search would turn up every place a given license plate has been spotted in the last five years, a detailed record of the target’s movements. That data could be used to find a given subject’s residence or even identify associates if a given car is regularly spotted in a specific parking lot.

...

ICE agents can also receive instantaneous email alerts whenever a new record of a particular plate is found — a system known internally as a “hot list.” (The same alerts can also be funneled to the Vigilant’s iOS app.) According to the privacy assessment, as many as 2,500 license plates could be uploaded to the hot list in a single batch, although the assessment does not detail how often new batches can be added. With sightings flooding in from police dashcams and stationary readers on bridges and toll booths, it would be hard for anyone on the list to stay unnoticed for long.
posted by Buntix at 5:34 AM on January 26, 2018 [44 favorites]


The source of the data is not named in the contract, but an ICE representative said the data came from Vigilant Solutions, the leading network for license plate recognition data.

So if civil liberties hero hackers were actually a thing, this company would be an interesting target

A historical search would turn up every place a given license plate has been spotted in the last five years, a detailed record of the target’s movements. That data could be used to find a given subject’s residence or even identify associates if a given car is regularly spotted in a specific parking lot.

They’re hunting people.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:51 AM on January 26, 2018 [63 favorites]


Ethnic cleansing, the game: it's on.
posted by Dashy at 5:59 AM on January 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


schadenfrau: They’re hunting people.

Did you see that TV show last season called "Hunted" [Wiki] where people volunteer to be chased around the Atlanta area for a chance at $250,000?

My kids were interested in it as entertainment but I thought it was more of a warning.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:00 AM on January 26, 2018 [16 favorites]


So, literally The Running Man?
posted by Chrysostom at 6:10 AM on January 26, 2018 [11 favorites]


They won't bring *anything* to the floor if it has the potential to rouse the deplorables and be primaried out.

If Ryan and McConnell are smart, they know that the deplorables aren't beholden to Trump, only Trumpism. Trump said vote for Strange, they vote for the true Trumpist candidate despite their master's seal of approval.

Giving over a million immigrant kids citizenship? Hell hath no fury like a base scorned.
posted by Talez at 6:14 AM on January 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


So, literally The Running Man?

No, nobody gets killed unless they accidentally come across a police officer.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:18 AM on January 26, 2018 [19 favorites]


WaPo: The Daily 202: Five takeaways from Trump’s thwarted effort to fire Mueller
THE BIG IDEA: The revelation that Donald Trump sought to fire Bob Mueller last June, but reluctantly backed off after Don McGahn threatened to resign, is the latest reminder that fear of political fallout has done more to insulate the special counsel from the president than respect for the rule of law.
...
  1. Trying to fire Mueller is a data point that could be used to build a larger obstruction case.
  2. The White House’s credibility gap has become a chasm.
  3. This news will create fresh momentum for Congress to take up bipartisan bills to protect Mueller, even if GOP leadership continues to pigeonhole them.
  4. McGahn threatening to quit is a reminder that White House staffers do not need to enable Trump.
  5. Managing Trump can be a herculean task for his top aides.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:37 AM on January 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


Keith Ellison may run for Minnesota AG.

Seems like a step back, but from the article, many other opportunities seem to have been closed off to him.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:39 AM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'd rather see him run for Franken's Senate seat.
posted by Flannery Culp at 6:41 AM on January 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


Trump Dismisses Reports He Tried To Fire Mueller
    “Fake news, fake news,” Trump told reporters at the Davos World Economic Forum early Friday morning. “Typical New York Times. Fake stories.”
posted by mikepop at 6:48 AM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Did you see that TV show last season called "Hunted" [Wiki] where people volunteer to be chased around the Atlanta area for a chance at $250,000?

My kids were interested in it as entertainment but I thought it was more of a warning.


This has been my feeling about reality television since the late '90s. Big Brother, Survivor, The Amazing Race, The Bachelor -- all of them are about conditioning people to submit their minds and bodies to frankly terrifying structures of totalitarian control and forced precarity, in return for a small pittance in cash and prizes. And the only reason anybody even saw Trump as anything other than a joke after the 1980s was because The Apprentice overhauled his image into a stern, shrewd business guru instead of a barely-functional failclown.
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:50 AM on January 26, 2018 [75 favorites]


Giving over a million immigrant kids citizenship? Hell hath no fury like a base scorned.

Absolutely. Breitbart types are already talking about leading protest marches in Washington over this Absolute Betrayal of Everything Candidate Trump Promised and Every Reason They Voted for Him, which were No Amnesty and Build The Wall and Deport Absolutely Every Illegal and Keep Them Out Forever.

"Once the demographics of this nation are changed, they are changed forever," one said without a trace of irony, completely failing to grasp how far the poison pills in Trump's proposal would change them in white supremacists' favor. But that's par for the course, as they view negotiating with Democrats _at all_ to be nauseating and unnecessary.
posted by delfin at 7:05 AM on January 26, 2018 [13 favorites]


I'm opposed to any bill that gives the dreamers a path to citizenship.

Let's just end the BS games and fucking give them citizenship. No path nonsense, no maybe in a few decades nonsense, just citizenship now. They're as American as I am, this is the only country they've ever known, in many cases they only speak English and if they were deported they would be unable to communicate with people in their supposed "home" country, they're working, paying taxes, they're American. Enough with the racist games.
posted by sotonohito at 7:28 AM on January 26, 2018 [113 favorites]


For all the flak we give (and they deserve), NPR does some good work. Recent example: humanizing the thumbnail stories and statistics of detained and deported immigrants -- A Father, A Husband, An Immigrant: Detained And Facing Deportation, a 19 minute story of a family in the Pacific Northwest.
Manuel's case illustrates not only the giant, complicated bureaucracy involved in immigration enforcement but also the ripple effects one arrest can have on a family and a community.
And then it gives air time to Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, who's a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, to describe his "never-ending probationary citizen status" offer to DREAMers. But it has him on record stating that he doesn't differ the "sins of the parents" from the "sins of the children."
KELLY: These are people who didn't make a choice, though, who were brought here as children.

LABRADOR: It doesn't matter. Are we going to have a policy in the United States that if you come here as a child, you have a right to be in the United States? I think that would be the wrong policy for the United States to do.
You know, " 'Cause that's the way our immigration system works. " Hey jackass, YOU MAKE THE LAWS. YOU CAN CHANGE THEM.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:36 AM on January 26, 2018 [12 favorites]


I'm opposed to any bill that gives the dreamers a path to citizenship.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If there was a bill that gave Dreamers a path to citizenship and did nothing else it would be insane not to jump on it faster than me on an ice cream sundae. But of course it won't be a clean bill, it'll be a racist peace of hot trashfire which should be rejected out of hand. The reason for that rejection won't be the path to citizenship rather than straight-up immediate citizenship, though, it'll be all the other poison pills.
posted by Justinian at 7:38 AM on January 26, 2018 [22 favorites]


However I've since learned that Ryan, McConnell et al are actually using "Trump's veto" as a shield to hide behind.

I think it's more just general fear of Trump pivoting on a dime and putting them on blast. They know they can't predict what he'll do any given moment or if Kelly/Miller will get in his ear and he's shown a willingness to publicly slag his own party. So they send over a bill that on even numbered minutes he'd sign without comment and it catches him on an odd number minute and now they're the bad guys. Even with an approval rating in the 30s he's more liked than Congress as a whole.

It might not stop a group actually committed to governing but if your go-to plan is just do nothing and let entropy do its work, why not just send nothing? He's completely ignorant and uninterested in the process of governing (or any kind of work, it seems) so they can just shrug and tell him it's because of Democrats. Then they're not the ones he points his nutter base at.
posted by phearlez at 7:41 AM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]




Under Trump Appointee, Consumer Protection Agency Seen Helping Payday Lenders (NPR, Jan. 25, 2018)

But states fight back, where Trump's administration fails to help the working people of this country. New Mexico cap on storefront loans takes effect Jan. 1
Somewhere in New Mexico last year, somebody was on the hook for an installment loan with an interest rate of 1,679 percent.

But starting Jan. 1, a new state law capped interest rates on small loans. The move follows a yearslong campaign by consumer advocates who have decried what they call predatory business practices that send many New Mexicans spiraling into debt over loans for only a few hundred dollars.

The 175 percent cap is still far higher than the 36 percent limit consumer advocates have long sought. But they argue it could save New Mexicans $500 million over the next two years.
...
“We called this progress, not victory,” said Ona Porter, president and CEO of Prosperity Works, a consumer advocacy and financial literacy group based in Albuquerque.
...
Porter said the law is already having an effect. One year ago, the state licensed about 670 small-loan businesses. Since then, she said, her group has seen more than 50 locations close down or prepare to close down by the end of the month.

About 12,850 people took out payday loans in New Mexico in 2016. Adding up the money from interest rates that are above the new limit as well as fees, the group believes the 175 percent cap will save New Mexico consumers a half-billion dollars over the next two years.
What the everloving fuck - if a 175% cap can save a poor, rural state like ours (with a statewide population just over 2 million people) a half billion dollars, just think of what the impact could be to bring it down lower, and across the country. Fuck you, Mulvaney, fuck you, GOP, and fuck you, Trump. You are not representing the will of the people, you're representing the greed of the few. /rant
posted by filthy light thief at 7:49 AM on January 26, 2018 [69 favorites]


It’s Now Likely Mueller Thinks Trump Obstructed Justice (Politico)

“Thursday’s bombshell news points toward one conclusion: The special counsel has the goods on the president.”
Thursday’s explosive New York Times story that President Donald Trump ordered the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller last June renewed the public’s focus on the obstruction of justice investigation against Trump, which will soon culminate in Trump’s interview by Mueller. The case against Trump has grown stronger in recent months, and it now appears likely that Mueller will conclude that Trump obstructed justice.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:49 AM on January 26, 2018 [16 favorites]




Sophie1: In another baffling case of face-eating leopards, they never thought the leopards would eat their faces.

Context: an 8 minute video clip from BBC News on Pacific County, Washington, which voted for Trump, but a year into the Trump presidency, "people are shocked to see friends deported and schoolmates disappear. Now a community is coming to terms with the economic and emotional consequences.

The Trump team insists the actions of the deportation force, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is simply a matter of applying the law and delivering a key election pledge."
posted by filthy light thief at 7:51 AM on January 26, 2018 [11 favorites]


It might not stop a group actually committed to governing but if your go-to plan is just do nothing and let entropy do its work, why not just send nothing?

And if nothing is done and entropy does its work, the Dreamers lose and get deported in waves because of what Trump has already done. This is a dream situation for Ryan and McConnell because _neither one actually has to get anything passed_ to get their desired outcome. If they play the stall game and pass dead-end bills back and forth and we reach a standoff, they win big; the Dreamers lose, they can scream "Dems think illegals are more important than Americans" again, the Teahadi base calms down about RINOs and Amnesty and Betrayal, the progressive base is PISSED that the Dreamers aren't protected, and the chaos continues.

I just can't get into the mind of someone who looks at law-abiding Dreamers and thinks "THESE PEOPLE are the biggest threat facing our country and THIS is the line that cannot be crossed." And, frankly, I wouldn't want to.
posted by delfin at 7:56 AM on January 26, 2018 [12 favorites]


I'd also like to express frusturation with our Democratic reps for continuing to hem and haw and equivocate and bothsides and give Republicans benefit of the doubt instead of just getting aggressive talking points out there.

On my morning commute I listened to Joaquin Castro, theoretically one of the leading lights of the Democratic party and a person I personally hoped would be Clinton's VP pick instead of that bland forgettable white guy she wound up with, get on NPR and very carefully avoid hurting any Republican feelings or say anything directly.

Asked about the fucking memo, he blathered for a while in gentle, focus group tested, platitudes about the necessity of security and how it would be inappropriate to release it before the FBI had a chance to look at it.

Asked directly if he thought the fucking memo was a scam he didn't say "Yes, it's just an opinion written by a Trump sycophant who is abusing the classification system to publicize a bunch of bologna. I could write a memo that says moon men are organizing against Trump and it'd be just as valid as the propaganda from Nunes." Nope, instead he served up more unsalted oatmeal about proper procedures and hinted that maybe, possibly, in some vague and undefined way, it might be that Nunes wasn't completely, 100%, trustworthy and that you never know, perhaps the fucking memo isn't really worth wasting time over.

Asked if Trump firing Muller would be a red line, Castro said that it would be a worrying development and he would hope the White House would not do it, but when pressed on what (if anything) he and other Democrats would do if Trump did fire Mueller Castro had no answer and hemmed and hawed some more about proper procedures. He very much did **NOT** point out that since the Republicans have a majority in both houses of Congress any action would need to involve breaking the Republican lockstep protection of Trump, nor did he say that the only way to hold Trump accountable would be to get more Democrats elected.

He served up bland pablum, the result of triangulation, focus group testing, and carefully said exactly jack fucking shit during the entire interview.

How the fuck do they expect to win elections when that's what they offer?

I contrast this to a few days ago when NPR had a Republican Rep on and he was amazingly good. He had his talking points lined up, he put the blame squarely on the Democrats, he redirected any question to what he wanted to talk about, he got his points out there and in the news so they could be soundbited and rehashed later by the talking heads. And, again, he placed all blame on Democrats and their diabolical supporters and consistently hammered homed the point (lie) that without the Evil Democrats obstructing everything Trump would have brought about Utopia by now.

Their side brings fire, charisma, and answers (however wrong). Our side brings the blandest of rehashed bullshit and carefully triangulated bothsideism and even when asked directly by the interviewer if the other side is full of shit will not say yes.

Yeats was right. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."


Justinian I meant that more in a "here's the perfect, let's actually express it" sense. Of course I'll take what I can get. But let's get the perfect out there and heard.
posted by sotonohito at 7:59 AM on January 26, 2018 [53 favorites]


So they are definitely not rolling over on this.

I'll belive it when I see it.
posted by Talez at 8:00 AM on January 26, 2018 [12 favorites]




Which is to say: Talez, I respect your skepticism, but this time the Dems are recognizing the racist drivel this proposal is. They might lose (they are the minority party, for fuck's sake) but they're not going to smile and roll over.

I still want to hear them say it. I want to hear someone with a national profile call these proposals what they are: attempts at ethnic cleansing. Use the Dreamer’s language: a white supremacist ransom note.

Call it by its name. It will always feel like it’s too soon to do so, right up until it’s too late.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:18 AM on January 26, 2018 [45 favorites]


Asked if Trump firing Mueller would be a red line, Castro said that it would be a worrying development...

Ugh, if you can't muster up some fire to respond to that question, maybe you should retire from politics so you can spend more time napping.
posted by diogenes at 8:20 AM on January 26, 2018 [21 favorites]


Philip Bump does some fantastic data-driven journalism and is a one-man role-model for the industry in being able to use both English and JavaScript to tell his stories, but when he decides to turn his trolling game on, it's something else entirely. WaPo, Deep in Clinton country, voters stand by their candidate:
The pilings of long-gone piers still jut out of the murky Hudson River in New York County, N.Y., reminders of a shipping industry that’s all-but-vanished from the region. There’s almost no manufacturing left in the towering buildings at the southern end of the county where it once thrived. Throughout the area, large warehouses once used for trade have been torn down or repurposed.

You’d be forgiven for assuming that this is the sort of place where Donald Trump would have been successful in the 2016 election. Unless, that is, you know that shipping and manufacturing left New York County a very long time ago. New York County is Manhattan; the warehouses are now art galleries and the skyscrapers where piecemeal manufacturing once took place are now offices and expensive apartments.

Far from backing Trump, Manhattan was one of the most heavily pro-Hillary Clinton counties in the country in 2016, supporting her by a 77-point margin. (In his home county, Trump won only 9.7 percent of the vote; for every 2.6 votes he got, a third-party candidate got one.) We don’t hear much about how Manhattanites have responded to the first year of Trump’s presidency, though, despite how much we’ve heard about how regions central to Trump’s candidacy are still home to people who stand by their choice. There are a lot of reasons for not focusing on the views of people in Manhattan, including that the city is not without a voice in the media and that how it voted was not particularly surprising (compared to the fervent support Trump enjoyed in the Rust Belt).

Nonetheless, we decided to see if voters in Clinton country stood by their candidate one year into Trump’s tenure. We know Trump’s supporters are sticking with him, but are Clinton’s sticking with her? Is Trump convincing any opponents to rally to his cause?
posted by zachlipton at 8:22 AM on January 26, 2018 [57 favorites]


Sophie1: In another baffling case of face-eating leopards, they never thought the leopards would eat their faces.
I don't get it — why aren't those coalminers just relocating to Washington to shell oysters and pick cranberries? Now the foreigners aren't taking away American jobs, they should just get going. (/irony)

This morning I dreamt that the next American president was a woman of color. The dream was more specific, but I fell asleep again and forgot the details. Thinking about it, I realized that the significance of the dream is that Trump has crushed the idea of the white man as a superior being in my mind. A woman, a person of color is more likely to be intelligent, honest, hard working and patriotic. It's not just Trump, but his whole cabinet and all the Republican in Congress who appear ignorant, greedy, dishonest and just plain stupid — people who have only risen to their current status because of their given privilege. (I know, I know, not all white men, but hear me out).
I grew up in a family that was in many ways socially liberal, albeit politically conservative. But one thing was sure: men held the power. It was everywhere. Obviously men were the managers, the breadwinners, the heads of state etc. But it was also an aspect of everyday life in tiny ways. My mum would say "just wait till your dad gets home" if she was mad at me, as if she had no power of her own. When my stepdad was traveling, he would proclaim that now my little scrawny soft brother was "the man of the house". My military dad thought women in service was a terrible idea, and resented that I went for higher education. My grandparents where I lived for a large part of my childhood had different attitudes , they were who pushed me towards education, but my granddad literally was the smartest person I've ever known, so unwittingly he confirmed the patriarchy. And even though I intellectually know that all of this is rubbish, it sits so deeply in me that I couldn't, till now, entirely get it out of my system. Trump has helped me look at the men around me who are incompetent, liars and bullies and understand that there is no there there. It's a whole world of emperors with no clothes and it's going down, fighting and screaming as it goes. Most young people don't think that way. Even my little brother who is now over 50 hated that role and his sons are wonderful, gentle and caring young men who respect the women in their world. My daughters know they can become prime ministers or CEOs if they care for that, and both young men and women respect older women and listen to them in a way that was rare when I was young.
Hold out everyone, because if you do, change will come.
posted by mumimor at 8:39 AM on January 26, 2018 [51 favorites]


That Philip Bump article that zachlipton links to is a DELIGHT and a BALM FOR MY SOUL, particularly this bit about a man who is not identified as Metafilter's Own, but well:
All four expressed no hesitation about maintaining their support for Clinton. Smith went further, first saying that he would vote 18 times. Then he amended his plan.

“I wouldn’t even triple vote,” he said. “I would move to Ohio or Michigan, register to vote and vote there, if I had to do all over again. That’s what I would do.”

Though I am disappointed that the Bump didn't get out to talk to voters in Ogalala Lakota County, SD, which is apparently on the list of the 10 counties that went the most heavily for Clinton.
posted by joyceanmachine at 8:41 AM on January 26, 2018 [12 favorites]


re: plate tracking...

So if civil liberties hero hackers were actually a thing, this company would be an interesting target

i suggest that it might be interesting to publish every CP's and Sen's whereabouts for the last five years. any dutchmen interested?

i mean the *least* interesting thing would be the the brothels, strip clubs, and mistresses.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:43 AM on January 26, 2018 [15 favorites]


Meanwhile in the Republican primary for Tarrant County District Clerk in Texas:

At some point during the discussion with the newspaper’s editorial board, challenger Frank Palomino started wagging his finger at incumbent Tom Wilder and alleged that Wilder’s marriage to his longtime wife, Charlene, was a sham. “You got divorced in 1972,” Palomino said. “You’re not married.”

Wilder responded: “You’re a lyin’ dog!”


The best people.
posted by emjaybee at 8:50 AM on January 26, 2018 [13 favorites]


Though I am disappointed that the Bump didn't get out to talk to voters in Ogalala Lakota County, SD, which is apparently on the list of the 10 counties that went the most heavily for Clinton.

That is definitely the piece I want to see next!
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:53 AM on January 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


I said I wanted to hear Chelsea Manning's explanation, and for whatever you may think it's worth, here it is, via Katelyn Burns, Chelsea Manning on Her Alt-Right Partying: ‘I Was a Spy, Not a Racist’
“Charlottesville was a wakeup call for me,” said Manning, who at the time was just starting to rebuild her life after her release from prison. “I saw how these people will actually kill us, and we need to do something about it. I felt like I hadn’t done enough. I just can’t sit and watch everything get worse.”

Manning’s solution was to use her fame and celebrity to integrate with an admirer who had connections with several alt-right social media personalities. Enter Fairbanks.
...
In the end though, it’s impossible to really know what was going through Manning’s head as she decided to escalate her relationships with figureheads of the alt-right in order to supposedly gather intelligence on their plans. Manning’s decision-making process appears nonsensical to all but the most ardently engaged in the anti-fascist movement and the whole thing has an air of impulsiveness. Though she’s promised never to associate with the alt-right again, her lack of awareness of the symbol she’s become to many on the left, especially within a trans community facing constant attacks from the alt-right, have left many of her supporters confused and feeling betrayed.

“People have every right to be confused and hurt by this,” Manning said. “Regardless of good intentions, I leveraged my privilege to gain access to spaces others couldn’t dream of entering safely. I never meant to hurt my supporters. No amount of information on the alt-right is worth losing the trust of my supporters.”
posted by zachlipton at 8:54 AM on January 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


So if civil liberties hero hackers were actually a thing, this company would be an interesting target.

I'm thinking this might be a productive approach to the problem.
posted by scalefree at 8:59 AM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


So she's Laci Greening?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:59 AM on January 26, 2018 [8 favorites]


Mmmyeah, sorry Chelsea. You haven't been officially running a month and you're already needing to issue apologies for poor judgement. A better alternative is already sitting in that Senate seat. Thank you for your interest, we'll keep your resume on file.
posted by apparently at 9:01 AM on January 26, 2018 [52 favorites]


I'm not actually alt-right, I just have poor judgment and don't think things through. Okay..
posted by phearlez at 9:02 AM on January 26, 2018 [14 favorites]


"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat."

Will Rogers
posted by kirkaracha at 9:04 AM on January 26, 2018 [11 favorites]


Mmmyeah, sorry Chelsea. You haven't been officially running a month and you're already needing to issue apologies for poor judgement. A better alternative is already sitting in that Senate seat. Thank you for your interest, we'll keep your resume on file.

"Double agent" is not high on my preferred skills list for United States Senator. Also not there, "fucking shit up".
posted by scalefree at 9:04 AM on January 26, 2018 [39 favorites]


Manning’s decision-making process appears nonsensical to all but the most ardently engaged in the anti-fascist movement

Pretty sure her decision-making process looks the most nonsensical to those most ardently engaged in the anti-fascist movement.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:07 AM on January 26, 2018 [17 favorites]


Not to mention that there are people who do infiltrate these sorts of groups to recover intel on a serious, professional basis - and she just endangered their lives.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:10 AM on January 26, 2018 [15 favorites]


any dutchmen interested?

Guessing the Russians also have this sort of info. It may not always be the case, but it's a reasonable working assumption that any major politician who isn't pushing for the investigation into Russian interference is actively compromised.

That said their ability to retaliate is fairly terrifying. The plate tracking would be massively concerning if it had a strong due process regimen and strict oversight, but guessing neither of those things are the case. They may not just track undocumented residents, but their documented family/friends/people engaged him helping them. So people may be having to worry whether visiting a family member is going to get them disappeared.

Then there's the possibility that they may use it to target opponents and activists the same way Arpaio misused his power for personal/ideological reasons.

Then there's that the set of people who are ICE employees and also members of white supremacist/neo fascist organisations is probably fairly large, and the system may get used for their non-work interests.

The similarity with how the brownshirts helped bring about fascism in Germany by intimidating and harassing opposition and protest is not great.

Wish I could believe that this was paranoid hyperventilation, but ICE really do seem to increasingly be Trump's military wing. And as other arms of LE are being attacked, apart from his pet Sheriffs.
posted by Buntix at 9:13 AM on January 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


So when Cernovich and company respond to Manning's statement, do we have anyone well versed in Kremlinology that can interpret for us?
posted by Slackermagee at 9:14 AM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


In re Chelsea Manning: I'm not entirely sure how her actions endanger anyone's life, since it's not a mystery to the alt-right that people try to infiltrate those groups.

And I'm certainly glad that it's probably spectacularly bad judgement rather than "I can win the hearts of alt-right racists!!!!"

At the same time, though, it does not inspire the kind of confidence one would like to have in a political candidate.

On the individual level, Chelsea Manning is someone who has gone through an incredibly traumatic experience during the years when most young people are building social skills. "Huddling in a jail cell while your guards withhold food and blankets", "keeping your spirits up while receiving all kinds of threats", "dealing with the possibility that you will be in military prison for life" and so on are huge achievements, but also really traumatizing and not the same as "developing judgment about interacting with people in public".

It's not that no one on the left ever does a dumb thing unless they've had a traumatic experience - god knows plenty of people on the left do dumb shit all the time - but you have to admit that she's had really traumatic experiences!

If it takes you, like, half the time you were in a relationship to recover from a breakup, how long does it take you to recover from jail? Maybe a couple of years just being famous-activist-Chelsea-Manning and doing, like, friend stuff and sleeping and so on and then revisit?
posted by Frowner at 9:22 AM on January 26, 2018 [53 favorites]


Dozens of People Recount Pattern of Sexual Misconduct by Las Vegas Mogul Steve Wynn

For those wondering what this has to do with politics, Wynn is the current finance chair of the RNC.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:26 AM on January 26, 2018 [38 favorites]


There's a lot in the Steve Wynn story, and this is a good time for a reminder that Wynn is Trump's patron and the RNC finance chair, but this nightmare-fuel is just straight up movie villain stuff:
The contrast between Mr. Wynn’s position and that of the salon and spa employees is stark. Former employees said their awareness of Mr. Wynn’s power in Las Vegas, combined with the knowledge that the jobs they held were among the best-paying available there, added up to a feeling of dependence and intimidation when Mr. Wynn made requests of them.

Some said that feeling was heightened at times by the presence in a confined office space of one or more of his German shepherds, trained to respond to commands in German.
posted by zachlipton at 9:26 AM on January 26, 2018 [44 favorites]


I'm paraphrasing from twitter, but .... Hillary is a private citizen, and Maggie Haberman needs to get over it.

She is dragging the real victim through the mud solely for the objective of indulgently Clintonshaming again.
posted by Dashy at 9:27 AM on January 26, 2018 [17 favorites]


Some said that feeling was heightened at times by the presence in a confined office space of one or more of his German shepherds, trained to respond to commands in German.

@AdamSerwer: we are a few months away from a newspaper story about an evil rich guy who has dogs or bees, or dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you
posted by zombieflanders at 9:30 AM on January 26, 2018 [34 favorites]


Clinton is a private citizen now. In 2008 she was a candidate running for President. Although from the article it sounds like they did fire him, just not quickly enough.
posted by Justinian at 9:31 AM on January 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


I'm not entirely sure how her actions endanger anyone's life, since it's not a mystery to the alt-right that people try to infiltrate those groups.

They're aware, yes, but this is going to put them on guard,and probably get a few people being the organizational underbrush with a stick.


It's not that no one on the left ever does a dumb thing unless they've had a traumatic experience - god knows plenty of people on the left do dumb shit all the time - but you have to admit that she's had really traumatic experiences!

If it takes you, like, half the time you were in a relationship to recover from a breakup, how long does it take you to recover from jail? Maybe a couple of years just being famous-activist-Chelsea-Manning and doing, like, friend stuff and sleeping and so on and then revisit?


Then she shouldn't be running for US Senator. All this is not happening in a vacuum - she has ostensibly tossed her hat in the ring to become one of the more powerful figures in the US government. If she wants to be taken seriously as someone capable of wielding that power, then no, these sorts of missteps are not acceptable, just as they would be unacceptable for any other Democratic candidate.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:32 AM on January 26, 2018 [25 favorites]


Wynn is also the asshole who killed Dean Heller's political career by forcing him to sign on to ACA repeal when NV was clearly against.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:34 AM on January 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


I agree with Frowner that she might be a viable candidate if she takes a couple of years to recover and mature.
posted by Coventry at 9:34 AM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


“You got divorced in 1972,” Palomino said. “You’re not married.”

Texas has common law marriages. If they've been living together as spouses for years, they're married, regardless of whether there was a ceremony.

(Pre-Ogberfel, Iowa was the only state with both common-law marriage and same-sex marriage, and I am annoyed at the lack of fanfic that draws on these facts.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:39 AM on January 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


Love when he negotiates against himself.

@ddale8
Wait what. Right after his White House released an immigration proposal demanding $25 billion for The Wall, Trump told CNBC: "I don't need $25 billion to build a wall...we'll have a lot of money left over, and we'll spend it on other things. "
posted by chris24 at 9:51 AM on January 26, 2018 [32 favorites]


Name me a work that takes place in Iowa (all I can think of is The Music Man) and I'll work on it, Eris.
posted by chaiminda at 9:52 AM on January 26, 2018


I sympathize, but Frowner, whatever happened to getting a regular job? Just because she technically can run for office does not mean she should.
posted by Selena777 at 9:53 AM on January 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


The Bridges of Madison County is in Iowa
posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:54 AM on January 26, 2018


Oh , duh, Field of Dreams, too.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:55 AM on January 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


If they've been living together as spouses for years, they're married, regardless of whether there was a ceremony.

They apparently got divorced and remarried, but anyway I was more interested in pointing out the weirdness that can happen over mundane offices like District Clerk, up to (per the article) a near-fistfight in the offices of the local newspaper.

Meanwhile there is a Democratic candidate which Tarrant County residents can vote for. As far as I know, he hasn't threatened to clock anyone or accused them of living in sin for 40+ years.
posted by emjaybee at 9:56 AM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Mod note: Y'all I applaud the notion but an Iowa media brainstorming sesh would probably be better in a side channel.
Hie thee to FanFare Talk maybe?
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:57 AM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Every time I hear about Chelsea Manning partying with alt-right clownshoes, my brain parses it as "Chelsea Handler partying with Mike Cernovich" and it's a really unsettling mental picture.
posted by delfin at 9:57 AM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


"I don't need $25 billion to build a wall...we'll have a lot of money left over, and we'll spend it on other things. "

Possibly the only thing he understands is how kickbacks and payoffs in the construction industry work.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:58 AM on January 26, 2018 [28 favorites]


whatever happened to getting a regular job? Just because she technically can run for office does not mean she should.

I don't think anyone here is saying she should run for office.

I think it was pointed out last thread (or maybe this one) that she's still a private, with full pay and healthcare benefits.
posted by Coventry at 9:59 AM on January 26, 2018


"I don't need $25 billion to build a wall...we'll have a lot of money left over, and we'll spend it on other things. "


What, no. The way it works Mr President is you tell us beforehand what "other things" you want to spend money on and other elected officials decide to appropriate money for those purposes. You don't just get to spend "leftover" tax dollars on whatever you want!
posted by notyou at 10:02 AM on January 26, 2018 [21 favorites]


You don't just get to spend "leftover" tax dollars on whatever you want!

Hey, it worked for the Inauguration money thus far.
posted by chris24 at 10:07 AM on January 26, 2018 [11 favorites]


Wait what. Right after his White House released an immigration proposal demanding $25 billion for The Wall, Trump told CNBC: "I don't need $25 billion to build a wall...we'll have a lot of money left over, and we'll spend it on other things. "

I don't understand why "And Mexico will pay for it" isn't a bigger part of this discussion. He said over and over that the wall would cost zero dollars!
posted by diogenes at 10:13 AM on January 26, 2018 [18 favorites]


I suspect that Republicans don't want to mention it because wall, and Democrats don't want to be all "But you said Mexico would pay!" 'Cause that's just not a good look.
posted by mrgoat at 10:17 AM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


I don't understand why "And Mexico will pay for it" isn't a bigger part of this discussion.

Because Republicans knew that was bullshit and don't care, they're only pushing for the wall now because Trump is a simpleton and they know the extra money will really just go to building up the paramilitary CBP/ICE.

And because Democrats are too incompetent to make it a real part of the messaging and/or in the case of the Red State "Democrats", secretly agree with mass deportations anyway.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:19 AM on January 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


Hey, it worked for the Inauguration money thus far.

Wonder if that's where the million he pledged, and unbelievably, made good on for Harvey relief came from.

Mr. Strider, who was Mrs. Clinton’s faith adviser, a co-founder of the American Values Network, and sent the candidate scripture readings every morning for months during the campaign

Obviously profiling is deeply complicated and often flawed science and not something one should ever base hiring decisions on. But... short of wearing a day-glo baseball cap with "SEX PEST" written on it and being accompanied at all times by a Gary Glitter cover band; how much more obvious could be it that he was a wrong 'un.
posted by Buntix at 10:20 AM on January 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


Democrats don't need to say, "you said Mexico would pay;" they can stick to, "you said it wouldn't cost any US taxpayer dollars. Show us the money, and will budget the expenses."

And they should follow that with, "so... were you lying when you said US citizens would not be paying for the wall, or are you just bad at business?"
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:20 AM on January 26, 2018 [80 favorites]


Russia timeline: Key players, meetings and investigation details
NBC News has gathered information starting as early as 2004 to help make sense of the convoluted series of events around President Donald Trump and his inner circle. The timeline will be updated as new information develops.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:22 AM on January 26, 2018 [28 favorites]


Democrats don't need to say, "you said Mexico would pay;"

They should just say ask your Dad.
posted by Coventry at 10:23 AM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager at the time recommended that she fire the adviser, Burns Strider.

Mark Penn, the voice of reason
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:26 AM on January 26, 2018


Mark Penn, the voice of reason

According to the article, it was actually Patti Solis Doyle.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:28 AM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


You NBC, I'm really happy for you, and ima let you finish, but Sarah Kendzior wrote the best article about this of all time.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 10:28 AM on January 26, 2018 [37 favorites]


Chris Geidner tweets:

Pennsylvania lawmakers have formally asked the US Supreme Court to put the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's redistricting order on hold. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4360562-17A795-Turzai-v-League-of-Women-Voters.html https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/956957961808760833/photo/1

Apparently this was talked about yesterday but now it's officially on the SCOTUS docket.
posted by phearlez at 10:37 AM on January 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


From yesterday: The term I see all over is chain, not family. They elaborate with "bring their whole families here" but on Google site:foxnews.com "family migration" gets 17 results. site:foxnews.com "chain migration" gets "About 8,100 results." site:stormfront.org "chain migration" is 284. site:stormfront.org "family migration" is 5.

I'm sure they focus grouped the terms, and "family migration" sounds wholesome and safe, while "chain migration" can be made to sound ominous and vaguely sinister. And modern movement conservatism seem to have an unerring instinct for the ominous and sinister.
posted by Gelatin at 10:39 AM on January 26, 2018 [13 favorites]


Russia timeline: Key players, meetings and investigation details

Bill Moyers also maintains a regularly updated Interactive Timeline of Everything We Know About Russia and President Trump, as does Mother Jones with its Long, Twisted, and Bizarre History of the Trump-Russia Scandal. The Washington Post has a similar one focusing on what we know so far about Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests that's broken down by individuals, and Politico has a massive interactive guide to the 270 people connected to the Russia probes.

The problem isn't aggregating this data for ordinary Americans, it's keeping up with the constant developments and discoveries without either losing sight of the big picture or normalizing this situation as just the status quo of the Trump presidency. This scandal's enormity - in both the accurate and colloquial sense - presents a challenge to journalism it's never faced before in US politics. The Trump-Russia affair makes Watergate look like the coverup of a third-rate burglary.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:46 AM on January 26, 2018 [71 favorites]


Dara Lind, Vox.com: The White House is trying to force Democrats to choose between current immigrants and future ones
The White House’s framework is more moderate than its previous demands when it comes to the treatment of unauthorized immigrants currently living in the US.

But it doesn’t moderate the White House’s previously stated position that substantial cuts are needed to legal immigration, specifically family-based immigration. Legal immigration hawkishness has rapidly gone from an outlier position within the GOP to the core conservative ask.

That shift could, in theory, put political pressure on Democrats. For years, the Democratic agenda on immigration has been shaped by the desire to protect current unauthorized immigrants. The White House’s framework forces Democrats to choose: Are they willing to win citizenship for 1.8 million unauthorized immigrants by abandoning future immigrants?
The short answer seems to be no.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:47 AM on January 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


I'm not an immigration expert but surely there is research that having family members immigrate too results in more stable adaptations to the US, having a family safety net, etc? I want to see a journalist hammer the "family values" party on why they suddenly don't think families are the most important predictor of social stability.
posted by nakedmolerats at 10:56 AM on January 26, 2018 [46 favorites]


Something stood out to me in that NPR story about the near-deportation of a father of three US-citizen kids. The reporter is interviewing local dipshits about their feelings on immigration and has this exchange:
MARK HITE [local dipshit]: Change the law if they want to come in without legalization. But if it's illegal, it's illegal. We're a country of laws. It ain't right for them to get away with the law if I can't go rob a bank.

SHAPIRO: So the story that we're reporting is about a guy who came here illegally 20 years ago.

HITE: Why don't he go down and get papers now and get signed in?

SHAPIRO: There's no program to do that.

HITE: Oh yeah, there is. Yes, there is. You can go down and get immigration papers. Do it like everybody else does it comes to the country.
I think this is a common misconception: that a path to citizenship already exists, and that Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants are just.. willfully disobedient, or something. So the Democrats are stuck in this position where they're asked to make horrific concessions in exchange for a common-sense idea that low-info voters believe is already in place. It's not great.
posted by theodolite at 10:59 AM on January 26, 2018 [89 favorites]


I'm sure they focus grouped the terms, and "family migration" sounds wholesome and safe, while "chain migration" can be made to sound ominous and vaguely sinister.

A reference that I am surprised hasn't come up before* related to this is the Chinese Exclusion Act and its horrible xenophobic siblings. IIRC it (or related) were also aimed squarely at preventing 'family' migration. They needed the 'coolies', but if they ever wanted to see their families again (those that survived -- SPOILER: most didn't) they would have to go back to China.

The current political language seems to be aimed squarely at a lock-step recreation of one of the most horrific miscarriages of humanity in U.S. American history.


* I did do a quick search to see if it had been mentioned while I was on a sanity break from watching the world burn, but couldn't see anything obvious.
posted by Buntix at 11:02 AM on January 26, 2018 [19 favorites]


I'm not an immigration expert but surely there is research that having family members immigrate too results in more stable adaptations to the US, having a family safety net, etc?

Wait, who are you going to trust? Those poindexter eggheads with with their "research" or your gut?

In other words, "yes" to your question, but that's roughly how effective pointing this out would be.
posted by Quindar Beep at 11:02 AM on January 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


I'm sure they focus grouped the terms, and "family migration" sounds wholesome and safe, while "chain migration" can be made to sound ominous and vaguely sinister.

Certainly to black people.
posted by rhizome at 11:05 AM on January 26, 2018 [18 favorites]


The best branding I've seen (and has been used for decades) is "family reunification." I think we should keep that going. If they manage to rebrand it "chain migration," it makes this harder. (See "death tax", "pro-life")
posted by obliquity of the ecliptic at 11:09 AM on January 26, 2018 [20 favorites]


HITE: Oh yeah, there is. Yes, there is. You can go down and get immigration papers. Do it like everybody else does it comes to the country.

This is the stuff that makes it hard to sleep these days. This could have been so easily pushed back on but Mr. Shapiro chose to make an emotional appeal instead of STATE THE EFFING FACTS.
posted by Bacon Bit at 11:15 AM on January 26, 2018 [19 favorites]


According to the article, it was actually Patti Solis Doyle.

It's depressing how much more likely that sounds
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:22 AM on January 26, 2018


Oliver Milman, The Guardian: [American] Museum of Natural History urged to cut ties with 'anti-science propagandist' Rebekah Mercer
The American Museum of Natural History is under pressure to sever its ties to Rebekah Mercer, one of Donald Trump’s top donors who has used her family’s fortune to fund groups that seek to undermine scientists’ work on climate change.

More than 200 scientists have put their names to a letter that urges the museum to “end ties to anti-science propagandists and funders of climate science misinformation” and axe Mercer from its board of trustees, a position she has held since 2013.

A separate missive also calling for Mercer’s dismissal has been circulated among the museum’s own curators amid growing concern that the New York institution risks having its mission subverted by Mercer.
posted by ZeusHumms at 11:24 AM on January 26, 2018 [59 favorites]


@nedprice:
Trump's pick to head his intelligence advisory board is a GOP megadonor who lacks any intel or even govt experience, & whose large stake in conflict-zone contractor represents a huge conflict of interest.

Other than that, he's perfect.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:32 AM on January 26, 2018 [41 favorites]


Sounds like Brownie.
posted by Melismata at 11:34 AM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


chain migration : family migration :: death tax : estate tax
posted by JackFlash at 11:34 AM on January 26, 2018 [9 favorites]


We should go with Family Sponsorship. Rolls off the tongue nicely, is particularly accurate, and sounds very friendly.
posted by Justinian at 11:37 AM on January 26, 2018 [14 favorites]


Family reunification via sponsorship. Or REjoining Families Sponsorship - REFS for a better America.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:43 AM on January 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


I'm not an immigration expert but surely there is research that having family members immigrate too results in more stable adaptations to the US, having a family safety net, etc?

Can't find it offhand but saw some agitprop a couple days ago that explained the policy as favoring "nuclear families" because of their wholesomeness or some such.
posted by scalefree at 11:58 AM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


For years, conservatives pushed family reunification immigrants, because their big (fake emotional) fear was immigrants coming to the U.S. and living off of welfare.

Now that it's obvious that immigrants work harder than people born here, with often 2-3 jobs, and welfare is pretty much destroyed anyway, their own idea becomes the boogie man.
posted by msalt at 12:04 PM on January 26, 2018 [31 favorites]


My script for calls to my senators today:
I am calling to thank the Senator for her vote last week against a Continuing Resolution without a clean DACA resolution and to ask her to stand firm in unwavering support for full protection for Dreamers. I am extremely worried about ICE's recent attacks on innocent immigrants. We as a nation have begun to engage in ethnic cleansing and it has to stop. I am asking the Senator to do everything she can to continue working for policies that support, welcome, and broaden immigration, and in particular to stand firm against any continuing resolution without full support for Dreamers.
I got through to both Harris's and Feinstein's offices (only had to call Feinstein back once - her San Francisco office is routinely overwhelmed with phone calls).

I'll be sending thank-you faxes to Pelosi and Schumer for their statements, too.

And while I'm thanking people, my thanks to those in these threads who have been using the phrase "ethnic cleansing," which sadly had not occurred to me until I read it here. I think it's all too easy to slip into thinking that deportation just means "oh, well, they won't get to pursue the American Dream, too bad for them" and not "some of these people will DIE if we evict them from this country - their home."
posted by kristi at 12:12 PM on January 26, 2018 [18 favorites]




Just in case anyone doesn't know this, by the way ... I don't know the technical term for [visas given because the recipient is related to a US citizen] ... But they're only given out to family members of US CITIZENS. Typically naturalized citizens, I guess. But the term "chain migration" obscures that fact in particular. It implies that it's immigrants sponsoring more immigrants. But an immigrant can't sponsor anyone until they become a citizen. And it's right and proper for the US government to take it's citizens preferences into account when allotting visas.

If someone knows that and they're still using the term chain migration, it implies that they think it's impossible for immigrants to really become American. And that is an idea that very much needs to be fought.

(This is all to the best of my understanding per Dara Lind, I might be wrong, nobody actually understands our immigration system)
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 12:21 PM on January 26, 2018 [27 favorites]


I've been thinking a bit about the Guggenheim's offer to loan Trump "America," the solid gold toilet. The part that would really get to Trump is not the offer, but that it was a public toilet: thousands of people waited in line for hours for a chance to use it (the symbolism is rather muddled here by the Guggenheim's exclusionary $25 entrance fee, or do we just add that to the artwork's meaning too?). And then it was cleaned every 15 minutes by a team predominately made up of immigrants.

He can buy himself a gold toilet, sure, but there's only one gold toilet that could really repulse him, and that's the one thousands of strangers from all over the world have sat on.
posted by zachlipton at 12:22 PM on January 26, 2018 [14 favorites]


CNN's home page right now.

It's Chris Cillizza's world, we're just dying in it.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:25 PM on January 26, 2018 [38 favorites]


But they're only given out to family members of US CITIZENS.

There are some family preference categories for immediate family of permanent residents, though they are subject to quota (we're currently processing petitions from 1996-2016, depending on the category and nationality).

Of course, I consider permanent residents to be Americans, because they've chosen to make this their home for the long-term, if not permanently, and they shouldn't have to put their life on hold for decades if they want to live in the same country as their spouse or children, so it is right and proper they be allowed to bring them to the US (a process that still costs a considerable amount of time and money and frustration).
posted by zachlipton at 12:29 PM on January 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


there's only one gold toilet that could really repulse him, and that's the one thousands of strangers from all over the world have sat on.

Purely psychosomatic, of course. Gold is an antimicrobial surface.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 12:34 PM on January 26, 2018 [3 favorites]



CNN's home page right now.

It's Chris Cillizza's world, we're just dying in it.


What's wrong with these people? The election was more than a year ago. Is there any other example of the media still going after a candidate more than a year after they lost the election?
posted by mumimor at 12:37 PM on January 26, 2018 [25 favorites]


Other than tinpot autocracies?
posted by Celsius1414 at 12:43 PM on January 26, 2018 [13 favorites]


Just think how big the headlines will be when the real dirt on Mondale drops.
posted by stopgap at 12:46 PM on January 26, 2018 [63 favorites]


What's wrong with these people?

Trump gives them the biggest ratings and subscription numbers they've ever had in their history.

That's why they pushed his election, and it's why they're helping defend him from anything that could threaten it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:47 PM on January 26, 2018 [33 favorites]


theodolite: I think this is a common misconception: that a path to citizenship already exists, and that Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants are just.. willfully disobedient, or something. So the Democrats are stuck in this position where they're asked to make horrific concessions in exchange for a common-sense idea that low-info voters believe is already in place. It's not great.

Yes, exactly. My own conversations on the topic often reach this "they should just get in line" notion. I can hardly blame people for having the misconception, because like you say, it's just common sense that nobody is literally excluded from even the hope of becoming a citizen.

And one natural extension of that is an unspoken view that when politicians talk about a "path to citizenship", many assume they mean "fast track to citizenship" (which I'm in favor of, but obviously isn't a hugely popular idea). After all, if this "path"is some new thing, then it must be quicker than the "filling out a form and waiting a few years" option that surely exists (but actually doesn't).

There's a parallel with the infamous "it's one banana, Michael" ignorance of the ultra-rich; if you haven't been through the system, you figure it's about as bad as the red tape you've personally experienced at the DMV or paying someone's bail or whatever.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 12:47 PM on January 26, 2018 [20 favorites]


I think that one should be able to pass a citizenship test before criticizing those trying to get a chance to take one.
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:50 PM on January 26, 2018 [24 favorites]


What's wrong with these people? The election was more than a year ago.

The story's from Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. That's 10 years ago.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:13 PM on January 26, 2018 [56 favorites]


It's Chris Cillizza's world, we're just dying in it.

It's also Maggie Haberman's world we're dying in.

Breaking news alerts earlier today:

NYT - The U.S. economy showed continuing resilience in last year's fourth quarter, growing at a 2.6% annual rate

WaPo - U.S. economic growth slowed in 2017's fourth quarter, missing Trumps targets
posted by chris24 at 1:27 PM on January 26, 2018 [55 favorites]


Purely psychosomatic

That boy needs therapy.
posted by azpenguin at 1:28 PM on January 26, 2018 [44 favorites]


Plenty of harassment and assault allegations and allegations of people in power protecting harassers from more than 10 years ago have come out after the #MeToo wave.

Yes, but the Steve Wynn story came out today too - and he's an actual current Republican party official with real power. Why promote the Clinton related story with a leading headline and Sad Clinton picture, while relegating the worse story about the prominent Republican to the sidebar with tiny type?

Just kidding, we know why.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:29 PM on January 26, 2018 [82 favorites]


I fully expect there to be many stories, ala Franken, on the Democratic side as well as the Republican. We differentiate ourselves from the Republicans in how we react to these stories.

I would like to see more Democrats take a high-level approach along the lines of "Understanding the damage that sexism does is an ongoing education and process. As our understanding increases, we will discover that some actions and practices that were considered harmless by many did in fact cause harm, and we have a responsibility to address them quickly when that occurs. Because sexism is so embedded in our culture, we may feel we are in uncharted territory, but we must remained oriented towards justice and be unafraid to question ourselves and our organizations. That questioning will sometimes be painful, or embarrassing, or inconvenient, but it will always be necessary, and we must not waver from it."
posted by emjaybee at 1:34 PM on January 26, 2018 [28 favorites]


Pennsylvania lawmakers have formally asked the US Supreme Court to put the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's redistricting order on hold. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4360562-17A795-Turzai-v-League-of-Women-Voters.html https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/956957961808760833/photo/1

Apparently this was talked about yesterday but now it's officially on the SCOTUS docket.


The ruling was based on the state Constitution!

Federalism, you dumbasses.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:39 PM on January 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


Barack Spinoza: Russians got tens of thousands of Americans to RSVP for their phony political events on Facebook (WaPo)

Related: Mueller's Team Has Interviewed Facebook Staff as Part of Russia Probe (Issie Lapowsky for Wired, Jan. 26, 2018)
The Department of Justice's special counsel Robert Mueller and his office have interviewed at least one member of Facebook's team that was associated with President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The interview was part of Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and what role, if any, the Trump campaign played in that interference. Facebook and other social platforms have emerged as a key part of that investigation, not only because the company embedded staff with the San Antonio–based digital team working on Trump's campaign but also because it sold more than 3,000 Facebook and Instagram ads to fake accounts linked to the Russian propaganda group Internet Research Agency. All in, content shared by those accounts reached 126 million Facebook users, including more than 62,000 of whom signed up to attend events organized by those fake accounts.

A spokesperson for the special counsel's office declined WIRED's request for comment.
Emphasis mine -- because, wait, what? Facebook had "embedded staff" in the Trump tech team? Oh, that's right - Google AND Facebook, according to the campaign’s former digital director, Brad Parscale, who agreed to an interview with the House Intelligence Committee (Issie Lapowsky for Wired, July 14, 2017)
The campaign had designated liaisons from both Facebook and Google working inside Parscale's San Antonio-based office, who were intimately involved in the inner workings of the digital and data team, according to Parscale's statement. They helped carry out an effort of great scale and sophistication. During the campaign, the Trump campaign ran up to 50,000 variants of its Facebook ads a day, learning which ones resonated best with voters. It also deployed so-called “dark posts,” non-public paid posts that only appear in the News Feeds of the people the advertiser chooses.

Parscale has credited that collaboration with delivering Trump's victory. "Facebook and Twitter were the reason we won this thing," Parscale told WIRED shortly after the election. "Twitter for Mr. Trump. And Facebook for fundraising."
Trump wasn't just good for mainstream media companies, but Facebook and Google. Where's the coverage of Google's role here? There's a comment at the end of the WaPo article:
Google described the difficulty of distinguishing content from Russian operatives and American political activists. "Many times,” Google wrote, "the misleading content looks identical to content uploaded by genuine activists. We are dealing with difficult questions that require the balancing of free expression, access to information, and the need to provide high quality content to our users."
And in the end, we all lost.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:42 PM on January 26, 2018 [55 favorites]


The problem isn't aggregating this data for ordinary Americans, it's keeping up with the constant developments and discoveries without either losing sight of the big picture or normalizing this situation

I've got links to all those timelines plus a couple more (though I didn't have the Politico 270 person dramatis personae before -- thanks!) on the resources page of my web site.

But I continue to think timelines are the wrong way to organize this information if you want people to understand what is happening. Too many details!

If you want people to understand the big picture, you have to start by answering big picture questions, and drill down to the details only when it is called for. That's why I organized my own effort at aggregating these stories around "Questions and Answers."

I hope nobody minds if I plug it again. I've updated it and added content. As usual, please share the link, or use it to look up links that you want to share, or just copy and paste bits of the text as you like with no need for attribution. My goal is to get this information out there as much as possible.

Here are the questions it addresses (with lots and lots of links):

-Did Russia tamper with any votes or the vote counting process?
-What did Russia hope to accomplish?
-If they didn't tamper with votes, in what ways DID they interfere with the election?
-How do we know Russia was involved in hacking the DNC and Clinton campaign?
-Did Russian activities change the outcome of the election?
-Is there any evidence that Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia?
-Is there evidence that Trump or his campaign did anything illegal?
-Is there evidence that Trump obstructed justice?
-Is Russia planning to interfere in future elections?

posted by OnceUponATime at 1:42 PM on January 26, 2018 [48 favorites]


I'd also like to take this opportunity to share this brief statement which I have been shamelessly copying and pasting into comment threads all over Facebook... please feel free to copy and paste it yourself or adapt it as you like. Again the purpose of this is public education...
The evidence against Trump and his campaign is overwhelming. Felix Sater said "Buddy our boy can become president and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin's team to buy in on this."

Paul Manafort was offering briefings to a Russian billionaire on the campaign.

George Papadopoulos knew the Russians had hacked emails from the Clinton campaign.

And Michael Flynn took $60,000 from Russia and then negotiated with them about ending sanctions before he ever took office.

That's leaving aside Trump Jr's "treasonous" meeting (Bannon's word.)

And by the way, none of that has anything to do with the "dossier".
If they ask for cites or say "Fake news!", you can just give them that 2016activemeasures.org URL. It has links to all those stories. Or you can say:
"These two pieces of evidence come from Flynn and Papadopoulos's guilty pleas...

"George Papadopoulos knew the Russians had hacked emails from the Clinton campaign."
"Michael Flynn negotiated with Russia them about ending sanctions before he ever took office."

Flynn had to retroactively file paperwork as a foreign agent because of the money he took.

The Manafort offer of briefings comes from Manafort's emails, which were subpoenaed.

Felix Sater's comments about getting Putin's team to buy in come from emails that the Trump campaign turned over to congressional intelligence committees.

The details about Don Jr's meeting were released by Don Jr himself, through his Twitter account.
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:49 PM on January 26, 2018 [35 favorites]


Google described the difficulty of distinguishing content from Russian operatives and American political activists.

There's an easy fix for this! Google doesn't have to figure that out; just let the readers know:
* Who paid for it? (Did they use rubles?)
* Who uploaded it? Random person, association of people, organization with a legal identity, corporation?
* Is it earning money for someone? Who? Where is that money going?
* Has it been checked for TOS violations, or was it auto-approved?

Just tell the public the background details that we can't see, and we'll figure out which content is fake or biased.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:52 PM on January 26, 2018 [14 favorites]


The GOP will surely return Wynn's donations as a matter of principle like they requested the Clinton campaign return Weinstein's, right?

I mean it'd only bankrupt the fucking party trying to do it.
posted by Talez at 1:53 PM on January 26, 2018 [36 favorites]


leotrotsky: "The ruling was based on the state Constitution!

Federalism, you dumbasses.
"

Yeah, the stay request isn't really based on the ruling of the state constitution. The request makes two arguments:

1) That the PA SC has no right to intervene in mapping, becuase Article 1, Section 4 of the US Constitution states, "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof." However, SCOTUS found in 2015 in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission that non-legislative bodies could get involved, so this seems questionable.

2) That the ruling is too close to the election and would cause "chaos." This is also dubious, as there are numerous counter-examples of states making map changes closer to the election.

So, the request isn't prima facie ridiculous - even actions related to a state constitution still need to be legal under the US Constitution. However, they grounds seem to be pretty thin reads, and the vibe everyone has is that a stay is unlikely to be granted.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:04 PM on January 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


The ruling was based on the state Constitution!

Federalism, you dumbasses.


Look, I think this is a dumb move and it should fail. But it would take about 1 minute for you or anyone else to read the first two pages of the petition and see their argument for why this should fall under a federal court. Unless you want to lay claim to arguments that the fed should never have oversight over state actions (should we not intervene if a state is engaging in voting shenanigans but only for state level offices?) then it's fair for them to describe a scenario where the federal government should be involved.
posted by phearlez at 2:06 PM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Big ruling in North Carolina, where the GOP-controlled state legislature has been trying to install GOP majorities on election boards. The state Supreme Court just ruled this illegal.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:08 PM on January 26, 2018 [53 favorites]


I just can't believe that the HRC ten-year-old story is trending when the fact that we avoided a Saturday Night Massacre back in June broke yesterday. I mean, it's one of those things that make me tilt my head and go 'is this real?'
posted by angrycat at 2:12 PM on January 26, 2018 [84 favorites]


Construction is well under way on Wynn's $2.4-billion casino in Everett, MA, just outside Boston. Today, the Boston Herald reports: Gaming board to review sex harassment allegations against Steve Wynn.
"The commission is now aware of and is taking very seriously the troubling allegations detailed in the Wall Street Journal article. The suitability and integrity of our gaming licensees is of the utmost importance, and ensuring that suitability is an active and ongoing process," spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll said. "Consequently, the MGC’s Investigations and Enforcement Bureau will conduct a regulatory review of this matter to determine the appropriate next steps."
posted by adamg at 2:13 PM on January 26, 2018 [16 favorites]


Clinton rules. Duh.
posted by Dashy at 2:14 PM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


But I continue to think timelines are the wrong way to organize this information if you want people to understand what is happening. Too many details!

If you want people to understand the big picture, you have to start by answering big picture questions
...
I hope nobody minds if I plug it again.


No, your site is awesome and is taking just the right approach. It's a much clearer presentation than anything else I've seen.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 2:15 PM on January 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


If someone knows that and they're still using the term chain migration, it implies that they think it's impossible for immigrants to really become American. And that is an idea that very much needs to be fought.

It's the Bannonite/Millerite belief that naturalized citizens don't have the same rights and legitimacy as natural-born ones. Which, to a degree, is true, if the relevant institutions decide to go back and look at your paperwork.

Facebook had "embedded staff"?

This BBC interview with Theresa Wong talked about the "hands-on" reps from Facebook and Google/YouTube. I still want to know where Parscale got his Custom Audience datasets, and whether he posted all the tweets about Wikileaks on his boss's account.
posted by holgate at 2:18 PM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Good lord but this anti-immigration rhetoric just breaks my fuckin’ heart. I don’t get their fears. This entire nation only exists because of successive waves of immigration. It’s the height of selfishness and entirely unChristian to try to the shut the door once you’ve arrived. Conservatives have this ever present fantasy of the U.S. being a shining beacon of freedom, but turn viciously on the very people that follow its light. They don’t get it—immigrants agree with that image, they believe it despite knowing how very flawed we as a nation actually are and how far we fall short of that ideal. They’re here anyway. They want to help us reach it. It’s an ideal worth fighting for.

Both sides of my family have been here since well before the American Revolution. I’ve got Southern-WASP-American bona fides that’d make half the Trumpists faint with the vapors. Hell, I could join both the Sons of the American Revolution and the Sons of Confederate Veterans were I so inclined. If anyone has a claim to these idiot’s arguments you’d think it’d be someone like me. But I’m American only by the accident of my birth. I had no say in it, it just happened. Immigrants have a far greater claim to being real Americans than I; they’ve struggled to get here, they’ve chosen us, and our ideals. Me? I was just lucky.

The least we could do repay that faith and trust is to live up to it.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 2:21 PM on January 26, 2018 [85 favorites]


Foreign Policy, Trump Launched Campaign to Discredit Potential FBI Witnesses
President Donald Trump pressed senior aides last June to devise and carry out a campaign to discredit senior FBI officials after learning that those specific officials were likely to be witnesses against him as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, according to two people directly familiar with the matter.
...
Not long after Comey’s Senate testimony, Trump hired John Dowd, a veteran criminal defense attorney, to represent him in matters related to Mueller’s investigation. Dowd warned Trump that the potential corroborative testimony of the senior FBI officials in Comey’s account would likely play a central role in the special counsel’s final conclusion, according to people familiar with the matter.

In discussions with at least two senior White House officials, Trump repeated what Dowd had told him to emphasize why he and his supporters had to “fight back harder,” in the words of one of these officials.
...
That Trump may have been motivated to attack specific FBI officials because they were potential witnesses against him could demonstrate potential intent that would bolster an obstruction of justice case.
I mean, it's one of those things that make me tilt my head and go 'is this real?'

I know this is decidedly Not the Point, but I'm still really caught up on the bit of the story where Trump once thought it was a good idea to rip off the flipping FBI Director, of all people, over golf course dues.
posted by zachlipton at 2:21 PM on January 26, 2018 [52 favorites]


The immigration plan, expected to be unveiled Monday, also includes a $25 billion fund for the border wall, an end to chain migration and ending the visa lottery system

Once, just once, I'd like a reporter, a Representative, or a Senator demand to see evidence that this Wall has any efficacy whatsoever, much less cost-effectiveness. It's a good thing to ask for, because, AFAIK, there is zero evidence that it will be effective and a lot that it won't.
posted by Mental Wimp at 2:26 PM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


So the (obviously very implausible even for 2018) Nikki Haley thing seems to come from the Fire and Fury book -- not as text, but subtext, and only when coupled with Wolff's statement in an interview that he suspects Trump having a current affair with somebody (he won't say who). In addition, Haley's specific assertion that the book overstates the number of times she has been in Air Force One does strike me as the sort of detail Wolff might get wrong.

But my personal please-oh-please hope is that Trump takes Haley's slam against the rumor as "disgusting" to be a personal insult against him, and therefore he (falsely) brags to the world that it's true. More likely (but still remote) runner-up possibility: he denies any affair, while saying some gross braggy thing about the idea of it (see also, anything he's ever said about Ivanka). Still, he's kept his mouth shut on Stormy Daniels, and the affair with her really did happen, so never mind.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 2:28 PM on January 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


I know this is decidedly Not the Point, but I'm still really caught up on the bit of the story where Trump once thought it was a good idea to rip off the flipping FBI Director, of all people, over golf course dues.

I think this makes perfect sense. He's caught up in all sorts of Russian money laundering for his whole career, the FBI might know and care about such things, so "screw 'em!" Plus, what's the worst that could happen? It's not like he's going to be president or anything. Flash forward a few years and hindsight's 20/20.

Or he's an idiot. Both are plausible.
posted by mrgoat at 2:32 PM on January 26, 2018 [8 favorites]


President Donald Trump pressed senior aides last June to devise and carry out a campaign to discredit senior FBI officials

Jeez.

[Goes back to work on the "obstruction of justice" section.]
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:45 PM on January 26, 2018 [13 favorites]


Patty Wight & Fred Bever, Maine Public Radio: U.S. Border Patrol Checks on Buses Increasing Across Maine
The U.S. Border Patrol is running daily citizenship checks on buses traveling from Fort Kent toward the state's interior and making periodic checks on buses originating in Bangor. Civil rights advocates say these checks may be in violation of protections outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

Daniel Heibert, chief patrol agent for the Houlton sector, says the agency has the authority to make such checks anywhere within 100 miles of the border, a standard which encompasses the entire state of Maine.

"Our purpose for boarding any conveyances, a bus specifically in this case, would be to question anybody – anybody – about their right to be or remain in the United States, whether they are an alien or not,” says Heibert. “That's kind of the gist of it. We would have to have a reasonable suspicion to think that somebody isn't a citizen to continue questioning."
Good to see CBP isn't letting ICE leave them in the jackboot dust.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:48 PM on January 26, 2018 [19 favorites]


Jeff Sessions is starting the purge of the DOJ and the FBI: Sessions pledges to depoliticize Justice Department
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:53 PM on January 26, 2018 [14 favorites]


Walter Shaub: "We're going to depoliticize the department by removing everyone who may have voted for the other party's candidate," said no stable republic ever.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:54 PM on January 26, 2018 [88 favorites]


Wow. Y'know, after the way she has acted as UN Ambassador, I really didn't think anything would get me to feel any shreds of sympathy for Nikki Haley. It seemed absolutely crazy that she'd step down from a governorship to put herself in a subordinate position to Trump, so it had to be pure career ambitions of polishing her own presidential resume and such.

Still, when she was appointed I figured she'd at least be one of those theoretical "adults in the room" trying to limit the damage and embarrassment. So far her performance at the UN hasn't been anything like that at all. She has gone Full Orange Batshit over and over again.

But being maligned with affair rumors with this dude? Damn. Nobody deserves that.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 3:00 PM on January 26, 2018 [15 favorites]


Interesting that Nikki Haley is having to address rumors about an affair with Trump. She faced similar accusations during her gubernatorial campaign. Not a fan of Haley, but she is one of the less odious Trump appointees and there is a whiff of misogyny about these sort of rumors, as I am sure Hillary Clinton could sympathize with.

Meanwhile on the south side of the Savannah river, one of our local commissioners has gotten frustrated that his efforts to get noted racist and traitor John C. Calhoun’s name off of a major local thoroughfare have not gotten support, so now he wants to change the name to the Trump-Calhoun Expressway. Great political troll, and not the first time the comparison has been made.
posted by TedW at 3:05 PM on January 26, 2018 [14 favorites]




^^^This. Let’s stay on topic, y’know?
posted by scaryblackdeath at 3:22 PM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


@mccanner: I don't say this overtly a lot but: please read this. Please just read this and absorb it, and everything that it means. I was in college on 9/11. I spent half my adult journalism life at Stars and Stripes," where every day we ran an item titled "US deaths in Afghanistan." We are not very far off from a soldier who wasn't even alive in 2001 dying there. Please read this.

NYT, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Training Quick and Staffing Unfinished, Army Units Brace for Surging Taliban
They are being heralded as a key part of President Trump’s new strategy to resolve the nearly 17-year war in Afghanistan. But their training has been cut short by months, and units are still short-staffed, as some of the estimated 1,000 additional military advisers prepare to arrive in Afghanistan in time for the spring fighting season, officials said.

The Army soldiers are deploying as the Pentagon begins shifting resources from the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria back to Afghanistan. As part of its new assault against an increasingly tenacious Taliban, the Trump administration is planning to send some of the advisers back to small bases scattered across rural parts of the country to help train Afghan forces.

The new brigade of advisers was formed in August and is based at Fort Benning, Ga. Two military officials said its leaders were still trying to ensure that each small team had enough soldiers to train Afghans.

One of those officials, and an additional one, said that the advisers’ brigade was supposed to have around a year of training before deploying. Advisers in the new brigade are expected to begin deploying by early spring — roughly eight months after the brigade was created.

Additionally, a six-week Army course specifically for combat advisers was slashed to two weeks to more quickly cycle the American soldiers through training.
posted by zachlipton at 3:25 PM on January 26, 2018 [25 favorites]




Haley, however, told Politico she has only been on Air Force One "once and there were several people in the room when I was there." She added, "I've never talked once to the President about my future and I am never alone with him."

That seems wise.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:38 PM on January 26, 2018 [21 favorites]


Maxine Waters Is Giving A National Address On BET After Trump’s State Of The Union

Hey CNN, you gave the Tea Party air time for their response to Obama's State of the Union. Where's that for the vastly larger Women's March movement?
posted by chris24 at 3:49 PM on January 26, 2018 [57 favorites]


Brandon Carter, The Hill: Obama aide: ‘We would have been impeached’ for spending $24M to upgrade Air Force One fridge
Defense One reported this week that two aging refrigerators on the aircraft will be replaced at a cost of almost $24 million.

The coolers on the aircraft need to have the capacity to store 3,000 meals onboard, and two out of the five are in need of replacement, according to the publication. The refrigerators have been in use on the plane since 1990.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:40 PM on January 26, 2018 [21 favorites]


It's a drop in the ocean compared to the military budget, but couldn't we, I don't know, replace just one fridge and stock MRE's for everyone in case of some kind of national emergency that goes on long enough to require more than 1,500 meals for those on Air Force One without accessing a kitchen on the ground?
posted by zachlipton at 4:42 PM on January 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


> Please just read this and absorb it, and everything that it means.

One of my closest friends is getting ready for a deployment that he can't tell me much about outside of the fact that he's being deployed as a first sergeant - which is notable because he's been a mechanic for years - and that he'll be overseeing special forces. The other thing he's mentioned is that he's absolutely terrified of it.

The last time I talked to him, it was very clear that he was treating it as if it was very likely the last time we'd be talking. Reading that article, it's become very clear what he's going into - the timing adds up perfectly, as well as everything I can read between the lines from what he's told me. He's been a mechanic for over 15 years now, and has always been deployed as one - and now he's going in for the first time in an entirely new position, leading special forces. With minimal training. He's seen several deployments, but this one is the first one that has had him seriously afraid.

Seconding that everyone should read it. All of the history around this as well as the present analysis is showing this to be a likely disaster. This is extremely high risk - all so that Trump can "resolve the war in Afghanistan." They are sending people with two weeks of training into the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan - fighting the taliban and clearing explosives - and hoping for "victory". I've been so angry towards this administration since the election, but I'm so fucking angry and upset about this right now about this that I am in tears.

Thank you for the link, zachpilton.
posted by MysticMCJ at 4:46 PM on January 26, 2018 [102 favorites]


NYT, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Training Quick and Staffing Unfinished, Army Units Brace for Surging Taliban

That article only makes sense if "training" is a euphemism for something else.
As part of its new assault against an increasingly tenacious Taliban, the Trump administration is planning to send some of the advisers back to small bases scattered across rural parts of the country to help train Afghan forces.
Why would you train the Afghan army in small bases scattered in rural places? We don't train our marines at recruiting stations or deployed across the front line in a war zone, we send them to a safe, central location. The military know how training works; effective training is standardized, integrated, protected, resourced, and done in an environment that is a replica of the operating environment.
The advisers will help train Afghan forces, including marshaling air support and artillery when they are targeted by the Taliban, said one of the military officials who was familiar with the coming deployment.
Here we have it: that's not training, that's participating in a combat support role. This is about sidestepping any discussion or criticism of an intensification of US commitment to fight in Afghanistan by using misleading language to describe the mission.
posted by peeedro at 4:48 PM on January 26, 2018 [31 favorites]


I don't think it's two fridges on one plane. I think it's one fridge in each (of two) air force ones.
posted by cman at 4:48 PM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Air Forces One?
posted by rp at 4:50 PM on January 26, 2018 [12 favorites]


Air Forces One?

Air Force One is whichever plane the president is currently on. So wouldn’t that mean that plurals are impossible?
posted by C'est la D.C. at 5:01 PM on January 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


The Answer to Whether Trump Obstructed Justice Now Seems Clear (Jeffrey Toobin | The New Yorker)
The issue of whether President Trump obstructed justice centers on his decision to fire James Comey, the F.B.I. director, last May. This is a classic intent case. The President clearly had the right to fire Comey, but he did not have the right to do so with improper intent. Specifically, the relevant obstruction-of-justice statute holds that any individual who “corruptly . . . influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice” is guilty of the crime. “Corruptly” is the key word. Did Trump act “corruptly” in firing Comey?

It is this question of corrupt intent that makes the Times’s recent blockbuster scoop so important. According to the article, the President tried to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel, last June, but he stopped when Don McGahn, the White House counsel, threatened to resign if Trump insisted on the dismissal. Trump apparently offered three justifications to fire Mueller—that Mueller had left one of Trump’s golf clubs in a dispute about dues; that Mueller’s former law firm had represented Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law; and that Trump had interviewed Mueller as a possible interim replacement for Comey as F.B.I. director. McGahn’s threat to resign shows that he saw these purported reasons as pretexts. The golf-dues matter was obviously trivial; the law firm’s representation of Kushner, which did not involve Mueller at all, could only have biased the special counsel in favor of the President’s family; and Trump’s willingness to interview Mueller for the F.B.I. position showed how much the President trusted Mueller, not that he believed the former F.B.I. director harbored any animosity toward him.

McGahn recognized the key fact—that Trump wanted to fire Mueller for the wrong reasons. Trump wanted to fire Mueller because his investigation was threatening to him. This, of course, also illuminates the reasons behind Trump’s firing of Comey, which took place just a month before the President’s confrontation with McGahn regarding Mueller. Trump and his advisers have offered various tortured rationalizations for the firing of Comey—initially, for example, on the ground that Comey had been unfair to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. Trump himself came clean in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt and in a meeting with Russia’s foreign minister. In both, Trump acknowledged that he fired Comey to stall or stop the Russia investigation—that is, the investigation of Trump himself and his campaign.

This was an improper purpose, and McGahn clearly saw that the same improper purpose underlay Trump’s determination to fire Mueller. So McGahn issued the ultimatum that prompted the President to back down.
Mueller and his team surely have evidence on obstruction of justice that has not yet been made public. But even on the available evidence, Trump’s position looks perilous indeed. The portrait is of a President using every resource at his disposal to shut down an investigation—of Trump himself. And now it has become clear that Trump’s own White House counsel rebelled at the President’s rationale for his actions.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:02 PM on January 26, 2018 [46 favorites]


also btw, re: CBP 'papers please' checks

When Our Faces Are Our "Papers" - "What CBP officers did on the bus in Fort Lauderdale is shocking, but it was legal. Yet in the near future it is unlikely that CBP will have to ask people for documents in order to verify identification. Facial recognition technology is improving, and the law enforcement community has been taking notice."
posted by kliuless at 5:20 PM on January 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


The good news is that facial recognition is not yet good enough to be popular, and it will be that way for a long time, possibly decades. That story is basically a promo for Axon and a cop who is probably paid by Axon somehow, since he's the LVPD's bodycam and video guy.
posted by rhizome at 5:26 PM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


C'est la D.C.: "Air Force One is whichever plane the president is currently on. So wouldn’t that mean that plurals are impossible?"

Technically, yes. In common usage, "Air Force One" is used to mean "one of the planes that is usually used to carry the President around" which is currently either of two customized 747s.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:41 PM on January 26, 2018


Training Quick and Staffing Unfinished, Army Units Brace for Surging Taliban
He said the unit ran the risk of being judged by the American military’s typical measure of progress: regaining territory from enemy groups through airstrikes.

“We’re buying them time, but not addressing the underlying political dysfunction that makes them ineffective,” Dempsey said of Afghan forces. “The Afghans continue to be beat by a force that doesn’t need air power, so I’ll believe the Afghan Army is competent when they don’t need American air power.”
Oops, I think they spelled "South Vietnam" wrong.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:46 PM on January 26, 2018 [31 favorites]


ELECTIONS NEWS

** PA-18 special -- Two state of the race pieces: WHYY, Weekly Standard (it's by David Byler, their polling/analytics guy, who plays it pretty straight).

** 2018 House:
-- Lexington mayor Jim Gray enters the race for KY-06. Gray won the district when he ran for Senate in 2016, and Gov. Bevin lost the district in 2015, so this is a great flip opportunity for the Dems. There are several other folks already running, though.

-- Dan Jones poll has Mia Love with a narrow 47-42 lead in UT-04 over Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams.
** 2018 Senate -- Romney set to announce UT candidacy next week.

** Odds & ends:
-- WP: Dems dumping at least $5M into effort to pick up more Secretary of State offices.

-- Massachusetts SOS pushing legislature to pass same day registration bill (it's currently 20 days before Election Day).

-- Long Sabato walkthrough on Dem chances in both the House and state legislatures.
===

Personal note: I'm going to be out of the country next week, with minimal internet access. So probably no ELECTIONS NEWS next week. Have fun without me.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:58 PM on January 26, 2018 [63 favorites]


Have a great and much-deserved vacation, Tax Collector Chrysostom!
posted by zachlipton at 6:03 PM on January 26, 2018 [40 favorites]


Frustrated by Russia investigation, Trump turns ire toward Rosenstein (CNN)
Months after his reported effort to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, President Donald Trump is still fuming over the Russia investigation and has Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in his crosshairs.

The President has been venting about Rosenstein -- who oversees Mueller and the special counsel investigation -- in recent weeks, according to four sources familiar with the situation. At times, Trump even gripes about wanting Rosenstein removed, two of those sources said. One source said the President makes comments like "let's fire him, let's get rid of him" before his advisers convince him it's an ill-fated idea.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:09 PM on January 26, 2018 [15 favorites]


Uhhh, Trump liked the Wynn story on Twitter (I confirmed it’s not fake)

Does that mean he approves of the report or Wynn’s behavior?
posted by zachlipton at 6:41 PM on January 26, 2018 [8 favorites]


In addition to collusion and/or obstruction, isn't Mueller also looking at money laundering? Or tax evasion?
Or are those outside his mandate? I thought there was mention of this months ago, but I haven't heard anything about it lately.
It worked for getting Capone off the street.
posted by MtDewd at 6:48 PM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


I think the mandate was very broad: Anything related to Russia.
posted by Coventry at 6:52 PM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


In addition to collusion and/or obstruction, isn't Mueller also looking at money laundering?

I think laundering stolen Russian money through purchasing Trump Tower condos is well within his mandate, since it sets up Trump's compromise to the Russians which I believe predicates the election issues with the Russians.
posted by mikelieman at 7:02 PM on January 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


Surely investigation of alleged crooked Arkansas real estate, years before the President took office, is precedent.
posted by thelonius at 7:07 PM on January 26, 2018 [25 favorites]


The order I linked says "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation," which probably basically allows anything, if Mueller gets aggressive about it.
posted by Coventry at 7:10 PM on January 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


it’s obvious that no amount of lecturing from his lawyers or staff will convince trump that he did anything wrong in firing comey, and it’s all they can do to keep it from happening again.

if i were his legal team, i wouldn’t let him within a mile of mueller, especially not with a live mike.
posted by murphy slaw at 7:10 PM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Jeb! Tell us what you really think about Rubio!
"God forbid you actually took on something that was controversial and paid a political price," Bush said. "That's the attitude in D.C. right now. Certainly Sen. Rubio is no different in that regard. Marco is a talented guy and he understands this issue really well, and maybe behind the scenes he's working hard. But at some point, his leadership would be really helpful."
Jeb! may be low energy but he can really dish it out at times. I wonder what would have happened if we saw more glimpses of firebrand Jeb! instead of sanitized Jeb!
posted by Talez at 7:26 PM on January 26, 2018 [24 favorites]


it’s obvious that no amount of lecturing from his lawyers or staff will convince trump that he did anything wrong in firing comey

Oh I think he knows it’s wrong. He doesn’t care because he’s covering up worse and thinks he can maybe get away with it. Too often the media treats his obstruction as if it’s just Trump being Trump or crazy or stupid. Well, he knows what he did and maybe this is the best option?

And I’m not necessarily talking about collusion. I honestly think that is one thing that Trump doesn’t think of as wrong. He’s not covering for that cuz he thinks it was smart. He’s covering for the money laundering.
posted by chris24 at 7:27 PM on January 26, 2018 [12 favorites]


Facebook and other social platforms have emerged as a key part of that investigation, not only because the company embedded staff with the San Antonio–based digital team working on Trump's campaign

This cannot be allowed. I don't know how we stop it, or what laws need to be written, but I have been mainlining news and politics for an eternity of scaramucci's, and this is the first I've heard that FB and Google were sharing office space, and working as part of Trump's team. How is this not huge, headline banner news everywhere? I mean, am I alone in being outraged?


Training Quick and Staffing Unfinished, Army Units Brace for Surging Taliban
This is terrifying.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:29 PM on January 26, 2018 [19 favorites]


This cannot be allowed. I don't know how we stop it, or what laws need to be written, but I have been mainlining news and politics for an eternity of scaramucci's, and this is the first I've heard that FB and Google were sharing office space, and working as part of Trump's team. How is this not huge, headline banner news everywhere? I mean, am I alone in being outraged?

They do it for both candidates. They do it for anyone wanting to make huge ad buys and making their message most effective and giving value for money. In a non-political arena this is just considered good customer service for large value clients.
posted by Talez at 7:34 PM on January 26, 2018 [21 favorites]


It's like how if you're going to spend millions on TV ads the network sends out a nice person with Nielsen figures and shows you how to target the groups you're trying to target.
posted by Talez at 7:40 PM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


They do it for anyone wanting to make huge ad buys and making their message most effective and giving value for money.

Yup. And they wear really nice clothes and they can get the best seats at restaurants. And they make a lot of money. It’s called sales.
posted by valkane at 7:41 PM on January 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


this is the first I've heard that FB and Google were sharing office space

I think we were talking about it in October when Brad Parscale boasted about it on 60 Minutes. Politico has a pretty good summary: How Facebook, Google and Twitter 'embeds' helped Trump in 2016.
posted by peeedro at 7:42 PM on January 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


They do it for both candidates.

That was my assumption, and I went to confirm and source - Facebook offered but the Clinton campaign turned them down.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 7:43 PM on January 26, 2018 [21 favorites]


Have a great and much-deserved vacation, Tax Collector Chrysostom!

Chrysostom the Publican, you mean.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:44 PM on January 26, 2018 [8 favorites]


and plebeian tribune.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:58 PM on January 26, 2018 [18 favorites]


Facebook offered but the Clinton campaign turned them down.

Clinton’s data team turned down a lot of help and generally seemed to believe that they could do everything themselves.
posted by chrchr at 8:03 PM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Looks like everyone hates the White House right now. Nobody showed up for noted closet Aryan enthusiast, Laura Ingraham, tonight despite the White House promising they would. Probably because she was going to tear whichever poor soul showed up a new asshole and nobody really wants that job.

So WH immigration policy right now. The right doesn't like the ransom note because it's going to make over a million kids into citizens and the left doesn't like the ransom note because it basically turns immigration policy into 'circa 1960s White Australia.

I don't know if it's utter incompetence or if everyone's hating the White House it lets Congressional Republicans kick the can down the road with it being a giant clusterfuck.
posted by Talez at 8:42 PM on January 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


I will note that it’s pretty standard practice among large organizations to have a designated “person” or team that liases with another org’s designated person or team. Customer relationship management. And in a normal world it wouldn’t be surprising at all for a huge information company to have a team liasing with the White House. But with *this* White House, it taints everything it touches because, as we are finding, it is unbelievably corrupt to a degree that we still have not fully uncovered.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:43 PM on January 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


Re. the Polish doctor:

Matthew Walther, The Week: Is Trump about to deport an American citizen?
But Niec might actually be an American citizen. One of his parents became a citizen while he was a minor in possession of a green card, which would have granted him citizenship automatically, albeit unbeknownst to Niec. "He's probably a citizen and just doesn't know it," said Al-Rahhal, who added that Niec's attorneys are in the process of obtaining family records that could establish a timeline for his possible naturalization.

That ICE might detain and eventually deport an American citizen is not, however, beyond the bounds of possibility. "It has happened shockingly often," said Reed. One 2011 study found that as many as 4,000 citizens may have been deported in the previous year alone. […]

Before his detention, Niec had recently been promoted within his department and was responsible for the difficult task of coordinating the timetable for the internal medicine staff. "We were already hurting," said his colleague Rathburn. "The hospital is at capacity. He was one of our lead physicians. He managed our schedule. It's unreal that he's in a jail cell instead of helping people at a community hospital." […]

Reed, the immigration attorney, said that she expects cases like Niec's to become more common. She cited a shift from norms observed by the Obama administration to a more fluid sense of priorities for immigration enforcement under President Trump. "We are going to see more deportation cases that surprise people," she said. "The law hasn't changed but the people in charge of pressing the accelerator or the brake have changed."

At present the timeline for Niec's deportation proceedings are unknown. When he might be eligible for a bond hearing and when his case will come before an immigration judge are unclear.
Emphasis mine. ICE is a criminal fucking conspiracy.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:47 PM on January 26, 2018 [85 favorites]


Don't forget that Dr Niec's crime of "moral turpitude" was something that might be referred to as a "youthful indiscretion" that was expunged. What got their attention were moving violations.

Speed too often, don't wear a seat belt? ICE is coming for you, buddy. It's like some fucker up top couldn't stand Canada being more selective about people they let in.
posted by Talez at 8:51 PM on January 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


Calvin Trillin, New Yorker, The Button: A Nuclear Fable. Here's a taste, but read the whole thing behind the link for the final line:
Until that moment, the day had seemed like any other day at the White House. Many staffers were in their offices, meeting with their criminal-defense attorneys. Vice-President Mike Pence had been alerted that he might be required to appear in public with the President later in the day, and so, facing a wall on which a mirror and a picture of Nancy Reagan had been placed side by side, he was practicing his adoring smile. Stephen Miller was polishing his response to a newly published book, “Twenty-four Personality Types and How to Deal with Them,” in which the author, the renowned psychologist Sarah Stewart, mentioned him as the personification of a type she called Aggressive Dork.

That morning, Cabinet secretaries, assembled for a meeting in the Cabinet Room, had been passing the time before the President’s arrival by bantering about which description of the President that had leaked to the press was the most accurate. “I was right on the mark,” the Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, boasted, of his characterization of the President as an idiot. H. R. McMaster, the national-security adviser, argued that he’d been much more accurate in depicting the President as a dope. Rex Tillerson, displaying a scholarly streak that surprised his colleagues, pointed out that Merriam-Webster defined “dope” as “a stupid person,” while “moron,” the word Tillerson had used to describe the President, was defined as “a very stupid person.” The door opened, and they all stood and said, respectfully, “Good morning, Mr. President. You are the smartest of them all.”
posted by zachlipton at 8:56 PM on January 26, 2018 [14 favorites]


WEST WING EMPLOYEE: Mr. President, Calvin Trillin has just published a story making fun of you.

TRUMP: Who?
posted by valkane at 9:13 PM on January 26, 2018 [9 favorites]


Don't forget that Dr Niec's crime of "moral turpitude" was something that might be referred to as a "youthful indiscretion" that was expunged. What got their attention were moving violations.

Don't go overboard. He did plead guilty to operating on a patient while drunk in 2008, but completed probation.

Still ICE is a corrupt organization.
posted by JackFlash at 9:13 PM on January 26, 2018


Er what? I've seen articles that say he drove drunk in 2008, with the case dismissed after he completed probation. The WSJ does describe the offense as "operating impaired by liquor," but other articles (which go into the rest of the history on his background) just call it "drunk driving," so that's presumably operating a vehicle. I haven't seen anything that suggests he operated on a patient while drunk, or even that he's a surgeon.

Regardless, he was brought here when he was 5 years old, so he shouldn't be deported to a country he doesn't know even if he committed more serious crimes.
posted by zachlipton at 10:05 PM on January 26, 2018 [18 favorites]


Bombardier dispute: US court overturns punitive tariffs, BBC
Canadian aerospace firm Bombardier has won a landmark case in the US, overturning a decision to impose huge 292% tariffs on imports of its C-Series planes, partly built in the UK.

It follows a ruling by the US Commerce Department in December that the UK and Canada had given it unfair subsidies...
But it's seen as a blow to US President Trump's "America first" trade policy.

Bombardier had been widely expected to lose the case, which followed a complaint by its US rival, Boeing.
But in a surprise ruling, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled in favour of the Canadian firm...

The ITC voted 4-0 in favour of Bombardier, ruling that there was no injury to US manufacturers.
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 10:06 PM on January 26, 2018 [12 favorites]


Covered California: The first projections for Trumpcare 2019 are in: Expect rate increases of up to 30%, Michael Hiltzik, LATimes
Now, thanks to Covered California, the state's ACA insurance exchange, we have the first estimate of what those costs will be for 2019. The bottom line is premium increases in the range of 16% to 30%.

Covered California's report [pdf] is titled "The Roller Coaster Continues." That's apt. Beyond a background increase in medical costs of 7% across the board, the other increases are highly responsive to federal policies.
best people: Trump EPA pick for Chicago office wore false nose to help me beat driving test, daughter says, Kim Janssen, Chicago Tribune
[TLDR: daughter fails driving test; appointee dons disguise to follow another test-taker to learn test route; after practicing test route, daughter passes and comes to appointee's all-hands meeting to tell story in attempt to endear appointee to colleagues]

Incoming Midwest Environmental Protection Agency chief Cathy Stepp faced a skeptical audience when she addressed her staff in Chicago for the first time earlier this month.

The Trump appointee’s history of rolling back enforcement of antipollution laws, reducing funding for scientific research and scrubbing references to human-caused climate change from government websites during her time in Wisconsin state government had put her new employees on edge.

So Stepp, 54, took the unusual step of drafting her daughter, Hannah, 23, to humanize her by introducing her at an “all hands” meeting of her 200-plus staff...
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 10:37 PM on January 26, 2018 [25 favorites]


ACLU and EFF Ask Court to Allow Legal Challenge to Proceed Against Warrantless Searches of Travelers’ Smartphones, Laptops, ACLU news release
EFF and ACLU represent 11 travelers — 10 U.S. citizens and one lawful permanent resident — whose smartphones and laptops were searched without warrants at the U.S. border in a lawsuit filed in September. The case, Alasaad v. Neilsen, asks the court to rule that the government must have a warrant based on probable cause before conducting searches of electronic devices, which contain highly detailed personal information about people’s lives. The case also argues that the government must have probable cause to confiscate a traveler’s device...

The government seeks dismissal, saying the plaintiffs don’t have the right to bring the lawsuit and the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to border searches. Both claims are wrong, the EFF and ACLU explain in a brief filed today in federal court in Boston.

[links to list and descriptions of individual plaintiffs, including "a military veteran, journalists, students, an artist, a NASA engineer, and a business owner"]
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 10:47 PM on January 26, 2018 [23 favorites]


Trump EPA pick for Chicago office wore false nose to help me beat driving test, daughter says

Wait, what??? Who brings their 23-year-old daughter to praise her at a staff meeting when she's starting her new job? And why would you even need to wear a fake nose and sunglasses to follow someone taking a test at the DMV? There was no cause for a disguise at all. I have so many questions.
posted by zachlipton at 10:51 PM on January 26, 2018 [57 favorites]


I know, zach. I went through several rounds of "nah, this is too stupid to post...but this did happen at an EPA meeting, so it's relevant..." before finally clicking to post.
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 11:28 PM on January 26, 2018 [9 favorites]


Frustrated State Department employees hire attorneys, charging 'political retribution,' Elise Labott, CNN
A growing number of State Department employees are charging they are being put in career purgatory because of their previous work on policy priorities associated with President Barack Obama and in offices the Trump administration is interested in closing.

The situation has got so serious that several officials tell CNN they have retained attorneys after repeatedly trying unsuccessfully to raise concerns about being assigned to low-level jobs in Foggy Bottom such as answering Freedom of Information Act requests...

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has made clearing a backlog of FOIA requests a priority and reassigned staff to what State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert has called "an all-hands on deck" effort to clear the backlog.

[rest of article talks about one case in particular and general picture of cuts (30% budget cut; elimination of positions) and other changes being made in the Department]
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 11:48 PM on January 26, 2018 [21 favorites]


Today in Wingnut Welfare Watch: Hannity posted and deleted a few odd tweets earlier this afternoon and his Twitter account now appears to be deactivated entirely. Did he finally break? Maybe Joe Scarborough's open mockery this morning was the last straw? I mean, it can't be easy being Sean Hannity at the best of times, but last night's backpedal was a particularly egregious moment even for him.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 12:01 AM on January 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


You know what astonishes me the most, as I watch the Republicans flagrantly commit treason, and as these suits with SO MUCH TO HIDE start slagging off the people with all the tools to find all the things you've ever done, including all that stuff you forgot about. Yes, even that one time at summer camp.

I mean, how are these traitors not getting burned yet? Where's the leaks? I kinda expected earth shattering kabooms of leaks by now. Or, ya know, those quiet cloakroom conversations that rein the crazy back in. I am gobsmacked that we've suddenly had the Republican party turn against the entire FBI. The Russians or the Oligarchs or Mystery Player have some leverage that has seriously terrified the "law and order " party into attacking the top law enforcement agency in the country.

This simulation has gone off the rails. I blame the Hadron. They ran those protons into each other at unimaginable speeds in May of 2015, and a month later, Trump announced he was running. Lead proton collisions in October 2016: Trump elected. Clearly, the supercollider sent us into the wrong leg of the trousers of time.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 12:57 AM on January 27, 2018 [79 favorites]


I started listening to the Harry Potter books to escape from reality. My shrink is tired of my using Harry Potter analogies, as he's not familiar with the books and I'm sure looks down on YA/fantasy (I caught him rolling his eyes when I compared the state of adjuncts to house elves yesterday).

However, I'd forgotten how dark the books get. One thing that I've been mulling over the metaphorical implications of the allegiances made in the magical world when Voldemort resurrects himself. The dementors go to Voldemort's side because they get off on the same things he does, essentially, and a lot of his former supporters go back to him in part because they fear his wrath. Dumbledore insists on negotiating with the giants. There's this issue of pureblood v. muggleborn.

It's astonishing to see the GOP cover for Trump. I think that's what's pushed my shrink, who remembers Watergate well, over the edge into pessimism. It's astonishing to see media pushing the Clinton story as if it has any current significance whatsoever. I guess it earns the most page-clicks.

But maybe these alliances, when we get some historical perspective, will become obvious. Of course the GOP will allow itself to become an ally of Trump, because ultimately Trump is making their donors happy. I don't understand why, say, CNN would be pushing the old Clinton story. But maybe in an age of journalism scrambling to be heard, maybe that's the nature of the beast. For some reason, beating up on Clinton fills some societal function. I don't pretend to understand it.

Anyway! For those seeking similar escapism, just remember shit gets real in Harry Potter's world in book four.
posted by angrycat at 5:50 AM on January 27, 2018 [23 favorites]


It's astonishing to see the GOP cover for Trump. I think that's what's pushed my shrink, who remembers Watergate well, over the edge into pessimism.

The GOP covered for Nixon, as well, right up until it was no longer feasible.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:59 AM on January 27, 2018 [14 favorites]


Trump legal team seeking precedent to avoid Mueller interview: report (The Hill)
The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump's lawyers are researching a 1997 case in which a federal appeals court ruled that sitting presidents and their top advisers are protected against disclosing certain information about decision-making and official government actions.

In the case, the appeals court ruled that prosecutors who hope to override claims of executive privilege are required to show a court that they hope to obtain "important evidence" that is otherwise unobtainable.

Legal scholars told the Journal that Trump's lawyer's could use the case to make a potential interview with Mueller more favorable for Trump and prevent a long court fight over the process.
Here’s the WSJ story.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:20 AM on January 27, 2018 [10 favorites]


Anything Trump's lawyers can do to reduce his reliance on Trump's lawyers is probably smart.
posted by rhizome at 6:30 AM on January 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


Pope Guilty: "It's astonishing to see the GOP cover for Trump. I think that's what's pushed my shrink, who remembers Watergate well, over the edge into pessimism.

The GOP covered for Nixon, as well, right up until it was no longer feasible.
"

And then they engineered a pardon for his ass. And then only a few years later he was welcomed back as an elder statesmen, author and lecturer. There's really nothing that a Republican can do that will make him a pariah to the party.
posted by octothorpe at 7:18 AM on January 27, 2018 [22 favorites]


"Well it's in the Book of Poontang, Verse 7"

Rick Wilson once again displaying his disdain for the unholy alliance between Evangelicals and (little c) conservatives.
posted by Talez at 7:48 AM on January 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


And speaking of scripture...
Pope Francis‏ @Pontifex

Here we are, Lord, ashamed of what humanity, made in your image and likeness, is capable of doing. Remember us in your mercy.
And my first reaction is, "what the hell did Trump do in Davos while I was asleep?"
posted by Talez at 7:53 AM on January 27, 2018 [40 favorites]


Yeah, y'all need to Google up some of the speeches that George HW Bush and other Nixon-era Republican party leaders were giving circa 1973. You can play bingo with the same cards we use now. "It's a distraction!" "Let the President do his job!" "It's a witch-hunt!" "He makes the libs cry!" And, "these were all just independent actors with no connection to the president" on the free space and I win! (And by "win" I mean "we all lose.")
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:12 AM on January 27, 2018 [38 favorites]


See also Art Buchwald's Watergate-era column "Handy Excuses for Nixon Backers", a.k.a. "Oh Yeah! What About Chappaquididck?", which sounds incredibly familiar. Some items remain applicable with no changes:
"A President can't keep track of everything his staff does."
"The press is blowing the whole thing up."
"The Democrats are sore because they lost."
"Wait til all the facts come out."
"What's the big deal about finding out what your opposition is up to?"
And others simply need the proper nouns switched, starting with retitling the article to"Oh Yeah! What About [Her E-mails]?" :
"If you impeach [Trump], you get [Pence]."
"I'm sick and tired of hearing about [Russia] and so is everybody else."
"If you say one more thing about [Russia] I'll punch you in the nose,"
{A} If the person is bigger than you, "If you say one more thing about [Russia] I'm leaving this house."
{B} If it's your own house and the person is bigger than you, "What about [her e-mails]?"
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:31 AM on January 27, 2018 [35 favorites]


ProPublica reports that a man charged with murdering a gay, Jewish college student in Orange County, CA "was a member of the Atomwaffen Division, an armed Fascist group with the ultimate aim of overthrowing the U.S. government through the use of terrorism and guerrilla warfare."
The organization, which celebrates Hitler and Charles Manson, has been tied to four other murders and an elaborate bomb plot over the past eight months. Experts who study right-wing extremist movements believe Atomwaffen’s commitment to violence has made it one of the more dangerous groups to emerge from the new wave of white supremacists.
posted by adamg at 8:52 AM on January 27, 2018 [20 favorites]


Unexpected good news, Citing risks to fisheries, EPA retains proposed development limits on Pebble mine:
In a surprise move that buoyed hopes of groups trying to stop the Pebble gold and copper prospect in western Alaska, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said Friday the agency would keep alive its proposed restrictions on the mine because of the threat it could pose to fisheries in the Bristol Bay region.

Pruitt said in a statement Friday that he made the decision after reviewing public comments about the development limits, proposed by the EPA under Obama in 2014.

"Based on that review, it is my judgment at this time that any mining projects in the region likely pose a risk to the abundant natural resources that exist there," he said. "Until we know the full extent of that risk, those natural resources and world-class fisheries deserve the utmost protection."
There might be some limit to the drive to undo every action of the Obama administration.
posted by peeedro at 8:55 AM on January 27, 2018 [10 favorites]


I suspect it’s little accommodations like that which form the nebulous, backdoor negotiated package of quid pro quo that encourages a Senator to vote in favor of very unpopular legislation.

Earmarks don’t exist, but I’m certain little carveouts are made in Administrative rulemaking all the time to whip up votes in Congress.

That may just be my cynicism talking, but given the past couple of years, I think it’s not unreasonable.
posted by darkstar at 9:02 AM on January 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


frecklefaerie: I'm not seeing any stories out of Davos spun to tell the tale that Trump did something presidential.

Meanwhile, George Soros Upstaged Donald Trump at Davos (John Cassidy for the New Yorker, Jan. 25, 2018)
At the age of eighty-seven, Soros has retired from investing and spends most of his time on philanthropy. “I find the current moment in history rather painful,” he said at the outset of his remarks. “Open societies are in crisis, and various forms of dictatorships and mafia states, exemplified by Putin’s Russia, are on the rise. In the United States, President Trump would like to establish a mafia state, but he can’t, because the Constitution, other institutions, and a vibrant civil society won’t allow it.”

If the resilience of the U.S. system was encouraging, Soros intimated, there were still grave dangers to be faced, including the rise of authoritarianism in places like Hungary and the fact that under Trump “the United States is set on a course toward nuclear war by refusing to accept that North Korea has become a nuclear power.” This refusal had created an incentive for North Korea “to develop its nuclear capacity with all possible speed,” Soros argued, which in turn “may induce the United States to use its nuclear superiority preëmptively” and start a nuclear war. The only solution, he added, was to “come to terms with North Korea as a nuclear power.”

Harsh as they were, Soros’s criticisms of Trump weren’t exactly surprising. During the 2016 election cycle, Soros Fund Management donated about twenty-five million dollars to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, according to a spokesperson. This time last year, Soros called Trump a “would-be dictator” and predicted that he would fail. On Thursday in Davos, he went on: “I give President Trump credit for motivating his core supporters brilliantly, but for every core supporter he has created a greater number of core opponents who are equally strongly motivated. That is why I expect a Democratic landslide in 2018.”

More unexpected was where Soros went next. After acknowledging the dangers of climate change, he turned his attention to “another global problem: the rise and monopolistic behavior of the giant I.T.-platform companies,” such as Facebook and Google. Here was a threat, Soros suggested, that was likely to be more lasting than the Trump Administration.
He went on to say “They claim they are merely distributing information. But the fact that they are near-monopoly distributors makes them public utilities, and should subject them to more stringent regulations, aimed at preserving competition, innovation, and fair and open universal access.”

Fuck yeah, George Soros.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:22 AM on January 27, 2018 [105 favorites]


George Soros talks a big game, but I'm still waiting for my payment check from him for going to the Women's March last year.
posted by biogeo at 9:32 AM on January 27, 2018 [138 favorites]


Some interesting context for the "Trump wanted to fire X" stories. Michael Wolff says that's simply Trump's knee-jerk response to anyone who pisses him off.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:13 AM on January 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


"Will nobody rid me of this troublesome prosecutor?"
posted by Coventry at 11:26 AM on January 27, 2018 [10 favorites]


This seems like it should be a bigger deal? Five US Congressmen will meet the leader of a Czech party whose secretary has called for the gassing of Jews, gays and Roma (The meeting was canceled because of the shutdown crisis. The congressmen were Steve King, Andy Harris, Dana Rohrabacher, Louie Gohmert, and Paul Gosar. Source is a Czech NGO-funded news site.)
posted by donatella at 11:28 AM on January 27, 2018 [36 favorites]


The congressmen were Steve King, Andy Harris, Dana Rohrabacher, Louie Gohmert, and Paul Gosar.

Were Mark Sanford and Diane Black otherwise engaged?
posted by Talez at 11:40 AM on January 27, 2018 [5 favorites]


Steve Wynn resigns as RNC finance chair, GOP official says. Wynn stepped down a day after a report alleged sexual misconduct. (WaPo)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:04 PM on January 27, 2018 [23 favorites]


They're going to pay for their infrastructure bill by selling public lands. Eating our grandchildren's seed corn in order to subsidize private toll roads. Despicable.

Chris D'Angelo, Mother Jones: Leaked Documents Reveal the Trump Administration’s Plan to Sell off Our Public Lands

The draft plan, which Politico and Axios obtained this week, includes this line: “Disposition of Federal Real Property: would establish through executive order the authority to allow for the disposal of Federal assets to improve the overall allocation of economic resources in infrastructure investment.”
[...] Politico reported Wednesday that Trump could release his long-anticipated infrastructure plan in as little as two weeks. If it takes aim at public land, Zinke will almost certainly face the brunt of public outrage. After all, it was Zinke who said last month, “No one loves public land more than I. You can love it as much, but you can’t love it any more.”
posted by Rust Moranis at 12:16 PM on January 27, 2018 [27 favorites]


Notably missing from the RNC statement about Wynn: an offer to return the millions of dollars he raised for and donated to the RNC and Republican politicians.
posted by donatella at 12:18 PM on January 27, 2018 [14 favorites]


Looking ahead to the elections, I think I see the development of a multi-pronged strategy by the Republicans to minimize losses and win in 2020.

1. Defend gerrymandering, including serving cases up to a sympathetic Supreme Court.

2. Use ICE to suppress voter turnout by naturalized citizens and allies. I don't think they'll be able to ethnically cleanse all immigrants until next term, but they will be able to wholesale remove the citizenship of naturalized citizens in key states. I expect ICE agents raiding voting lines this fall.

3. A massive ratfucking effort through mass media sources like the Independent, NYT, and other, ostensibly liberal or leftist sources. The goal will be to exacerbate divisions among the opposition, weaken moral, and encourage people not to vote. As we saw last year, it's pretty damn effective. And as we saw here this week, it's already started.

4. Major Russian online propaganda campaign, combined with extensive hacking.

So while people are optimistic about a Blue Wave, I'm not. We are in no way prepared to deal with the dirty tricks campaign the Republicans will serve up.
posted by happyroach at 12:22 PM on January 27, 2018 [30 favorites]


Some interesting context for the "Trump wanted to fire X" stories. Michael Wolff says that's simply Trump's knee-jerk response to anyone who pisses him off.

Well, uh, me too kinda, that's why I'm not a manager of people.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:24 PM on January 27, 2018 [5 favorites]


(from the Wolffe article linked above): "He just repeats and repeats and repeats. Is it serious? Is it just him spouting off ultimately that's what the special prosecutor will have to decide. And it's a key thing, because the special prosecutor has to prove intent. If he's just a crazy person, which, in part he is, it's going to be very hard to prove intent. So was there a moment in which he directed this to happen? Well, actually, yes, but there were hundreds of moments in which he does that and in which everybody sort of deflects.

Is there some way that Muller can request that he sign a Thing saying that he is of sound mind and is entirely responsible for his own actions? Let's force him to decide if he wants to take the "criminally insane" route or the "criminally criminal" route out of office.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:28 PM on January 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


NYT, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Training Quick and Staffing Unfinished, Army Units Brace for Surging Taliban

At least 95 people are dead and 158 injured after a bombing in Kabul, and I can't stop thinking about the under-trained and under-staffed Army units we're about to send to Afghanistan.
posted by zachlipton at 12:34 PM on January 27, 2018 [19 favorites]


So while people are optimistic about a Blue Wave, I'm not.

I'm increasingly worried about Republicans being (unreasonably) assigned credit for an improved economy and tighter job market, too. Ten months is a long time in Trump-administration-disaster-potential years, though, and recent improvements could just be a blip.
posted by Coventry at 12:35 PM on January 27, 2018 [6 favorites]


Some interesting context for the "Trump wanted to fire X" stories. Michael Wolff says that's simply Trump's knee-jerk response to anyone who pisses him off.

Which only begs the question, doesn't refute it. As an unconstrained narcissist, Trump invariably follows his urges. I'm sure he uses it as an escape valve at times but his urges are an expression of his truest self, not to be ignored. He has no internal filters; the shortest path between what he says & what he wants is Donald Trump.
posted by scalefree at 12:52 PM on January 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


Is there some way that Muller can request that he sign a Thing saying that he is of sound mind and is entirely responsible for his own actions?

Wasn’t that the medical assessment?
posted by Artw at 12:58 PM on January 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


Exactly. They did a formal medical assessment including (one hopes) some form of cognitive assessment at least a little bit more meaningful than the chain-restaurant-children's-placemat that's made the rounds. The party line is, Trump passed with flying colors, he's the smartest most cognitively blessed man on Earth.

Is that true? No. Absolutely not. However -- should we use these claims, his own and the doctor's, as a weapon against Trump, to keep him from weaseling out of the harshest possible consequences for his actions? Yes. Absolutely.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 1:13 PM on January 27, 2018 [13 favorites]


Eating our grandchildren's seed corn in order to subsidize private toll roads.

"Let's eat the seed corn" is the only substantive policy idea these people have outside of stoking xenophobic cowardice.
posted by contraption at 1:19 PM on January 27, 2018 [24 favorites]




I'm optimistic about the Blue Wave. The other night I went to a candidate forum for my TX02 District that was SRO and some strong folks running. Our current Freedom Caucus dufus Ted Poe is not running so no incumbent on the right and the left is FIRED UP. Look up a map of TX02 it's ridiculously gerrymandered but I think it's actually in play now.

Here's Beto O'Rourke in Garland, TX (facebook link) last Friday night with an estimated 2000 people. It's not Austin. This is a Northeast of Dallas and part of Texas Bible Belt. I do not know where he gets his energy, but he says it's from us as he campaigns. It's completely inspiring. Sunday 5AM he's doing a non stop 24hr Facebook stream starting with a run in Houston ending with a rally in Austin. Y'all might want to watch because they are so oddly entertaining! Beto is getting the whole state worked up and it's going to tumble all the way down the ballot.
posted by dog food sugar at 2:47 PM on January 27, 2018 [43 favorites]


just once, I'd like a reporter, a Representative, or a Senator demand to see evidence that this Wall has any efficacy whatsoever, much less cost-effectiveness.

There's an even simpler question which has the benefit of making its point even if they refuse to answer:

"More than half of the US - Mexico border is a river, specifically "the deepest channel of the Rio Grande river. How are you going to put a wall in the middle of a river?"
posted by msalt at 2:56 PM on January 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


"Clinton kept advisor after he was accused of sexual misconduct."

You think that's bad? Republicans kept their president after he was accused of much worse sexual harassment.
posted by msalt at 2:58 PM on January 27, 2018 [72 favorites]


WaPo, Trump sought release of classified Russia memo, putting him at odds with Justice Department
On Wednesday, as Republicans were clamoring to make public a secret document that they think will undercut the investigation into Russian meddling, President Trump made clear his desire: release the memo.

Trump's directive was at odds with his own Justice Department, which had warned that releasing the classified memo written by congressional Republicans would be "extraordinarily reckless" without an official review. Nevertheless, White House chief of staff John F. Kelly relayed the president's view to Attorney General Jeff Sessions — though the decision to release the document ultimately lies with Congress.

Kelly and Sessions spoke twice that day — in person during a small-group afternoon meeting and in a phone call later that evening, and Kelly conveyed Trump's desire, a senior administration official said.
...
Trump "is inclined to have that released just because it will shed light," said a senior administration official who was speaking on the condition of anonymity to recount private conversations. "Apparently all the rumors are that it will shed light, it will help the investigators come to a conclusion."

The intervention with Sessions, which has not previously been reported, marked another example of the president's year-long attempts to shape and influence an investigation that is fundamentally outside his control. Trump, appearing frustrated and at times angry, has complained to confidants and aides in recent weeks that he does not understand why he cannot simply give orders to "my guys" at what he sometimes calls the "Trump Justice Department," two people familiar with the president's comments said.
...
The president also made clear in recent days that he hopes new questions facing the investigation allow him or his associates to make changes at the Justice Department, two people familiar with Trump's comments said.

The president has told close advisers that the memo is starting to make people realize how the FBI and the Mueller probe is biased against him and that it could provide him with grounds for either firing or forcing Rosenstein to leave, according to one person familiar with his remarks. He has privately derided Rosenstein as "the Democrat from Baltimore." Rosenstein is not a Democrat. He was appointed as a U.S. attorney in Maryland by President George W. Bush and later renominated for that post by President Barack Obama.
posted by zachlipton at 3:05 PM on January 27, 2018 [28 favorites]


The president also made clear in recent days that he hopes new questions facing the investigation allow him or his associates to make changes at the Justice Department

This seems like a key part of that new WaPo article. It seems like the memo is intended to provide a pretext for firing Rosenstein and / or Mueller. My guess would be that the McGahn leak was designed to test the potential blowback that might result from such a move against the DOJ, whether the leak was done with good intentions or bad ones. So far the GOP hasn't shown willingness to protect Mueller against the president's desire to have him fired. When the memo gets released, I'm guessing we'll be in for some interesting times.
posted by Dr. Send at 3:19 PM on January 27, 2018 [5 favorites]


Beto is getting the whole state worked up and it's going to tumble all the way down the ballot.

He is coming through my area for the second time in a couple weeks and I was SHOCKED that he's holding an event in my tiny, very red county. (I was planning on going to the one in the next town over, but then found out there's one HERE.) I mean, he's literally visiting every single part of Texas multiple times to talk to folks. Democrats don't even bother running for office in this county and the local party is like a dozen folks, but he's coming here. I swear, Beto is something special.
posted by threeturtles at 3:21 PM on January 27, 2018 [56 favorites]


The intervention with Sessions

Funny how a guy recused from the Russia investigation is intervening on the release of a memo about the Russia investigation.
posted by chris24 at 3:26 PM on January 27, 2018 [27 favorites]


A memo written by a guy who also recused himself from the Russia investigation. Funny how that works out, huh?
posted by zachlipton at 3:33 PM on January 27, 2018 [41 favorites]


I don’t think “the memo” ever gets released. They’re just going to say “we have the evidence that he’s done nothing wrong, but it’s classified. We really want to share it, but we can’t.” They’re going to tell us to take it on faith that this document that we haven’t and won’t see is proof he did nothing wrong. And they’ll just expect us to believe it.
posted by azpenguin at 3:35 PM on January 27, 2018 [5 favorites]


@VP: A few days ago, Karen & I paid our respects at Yad Vashem to honor the 6 million Jewish martyrs of the Holocaust who 3 years after walking beneath the shadow of death, rose up from the ashes to resurrect themselves to reclaim a Jewish future. #HolocaustRemembranceDay #NeverAgain

WHAT THE EVER-LOVING FUCK IS THIS? He used his official government account to turn the Jewish victims of the Holocaust into players in some kind of resurrection fanfic?
posted by zachlipton at 3:40 PM on January 27, 2018 [48 favorites]


@VP: A few days ago, Karen & I paid our respects at Yad Vashem to honor the 6 million Jewish martyrs of the Holocaust who 3 years after walking beneath the shadow of death, rose up from the ashes to resurrect themselves to reclaim a Jewish future. #HolocaustRemembranceDay #NeverAgain

WHAT THE EVER-LOVING FUCK IS THIS? He used his official government account to turn the Jewish victims of the Holocaust into players in some kind of resurrection fanfic?


this is the most disgusting thing I have seen as yet from Pence. It's as if he wasn't even there
posted by mumimor at 3:44 PM on January 27, 2018 [26 favorites]


So is he saying Jewish zombies won the 1948 Arab–Israeli War?
posted by kirkaracha at 3:47 PM on January 27, 2018 [17 favorites]


...No. He obviously doesn't mean that murdered Jews rose from the dead. He means that the Jewish people as a whole rose up from their tragedy. I'm disappointed to see this kind of reaction from Mefites.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 3:52 PM on January 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


What he said is that “6 million Jewish martyrs of the Holocaust [...] rose up from the ashes to resurrect themselves to reclaim a Jewish future. ” I don’t agree that his meaning was “obvious” in any way.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 3:57 PM on January 27, 2018 [31 favorites]


He's using extremely Christian language to talk about Jewish dead. It is beyond fucked up, even when you don't take into account the fact that it is worded so poorly it does sound like he's talking about zombies. -5 points for bad theology and -5 points for bad English. And please Mr. Seazer, please do tell us how we mefites, many of whom are Jewish should react to this bullshit from our VP? Please do tell us how we should react, clearly you know best.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:57 PM on January 27, 2018 [59 favorites]


I'm disappointed to see this kind of reaction from Mefites.

And I’m outraged to see this kind of offensive, dumbest-common-denominator evangelical pandering from my Vice President.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 3:57 PM on January 27, 2018 [38 favorites]


...No. He obviously doesn't mean that murdered Jews rose from the dead. He means that the Jewish people as a whole rose up from their tragedy.

::shrug:: You're putting words in Pence's mouth, and he's a really shitty poet.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:58 PM on January 27, 2018 [6 favorites]


Can somebody explain the three years part?
posted by angrycat at 3:58 PM on January 27, 2018


...No. He obviously doesn't mean that murdered Jews rose from the dead. He means that the Jewish people as a whole rose up from their tragedy. I'm disappointed to see this kind of reaction from Mefites.

Oh, come on. He's talking about Jews being "resurrected", and he even sneaks in a "3 years" (3 days) in there, just in case anyone missed it.

It's not so much dogwhistle as trainwhistle.
posted by gurple at 3:59 PM on January 27, 2018 [31 favorites]


Can somebody explain the three years part?

WW2 ended in 1945; Israel was founded in 1948. At least he got simple math right.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:00 PM on January 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


Can somebody explain the three years part?

End of WWII/Holocaust 1945, Israel established as a nation 1948.
posted by chris24 at 4:00 PM on January 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


He's taking one of the greatest horrors of modern times and making all about his Christian faith. Anybody who isn't blind can see that.
posted by Justinian at 4:02 PM on January 27, 2018 [53 favorites]


To be honest, Pence's language there frightens me more than anything that's come out of Trump's flapping yellow gob.

Trump is nothing more than a blustering bullshitter. Pence is a zealot.
posted by Pinback at 4:04 PM on January 27, 2018 [18 favorites]


Mod note: Pence is bad and his theology is creepy and his statement was beyond tasteless. Move on and definitely don't go after each others' throats over it!
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 4:08 PM on January 27, 2018 [22 favorites]


It's not just his theology/zealotry. he's full authoritarian too.

@joshtpm
It's extraordinary how dangerous a person Mike Pence is. Lockstep support for all the hallmarks of authoritarian and contempt for American values.
2/ FYI, this was in response to interview just aired with Andrea Mitchell, defends attacking opposition party in front of US soldiers abroad, foreign leaders, etc. That's strongman/dictator values.
posted by chris24 at 4:09 PM on January 27, 2018 [22 favorites]


threeturtles: "He is coming through my area for the second time in a couple weeks and I was SHOCKED that he's holding an event in my tiny, very red county. "

Beto has said he's going to hit every Texas county, all 254 of them.
posted by Chrysostom at 4:11 PM on January 27, 2018 [13 favorites]


Yeah there's a reason so many of us, while hating Trump a great deal and wanting him gone are slightly wary about any kind of impeachment that doesn't also nab Pence. Honestly, if impeachment is possible and doable but it wont grab Pence too... I'd personally rather we take back congress in 18 and the presidency in 20 rather than any chance of Pence getting the big chair. He terrifies me. But of course, fingers crossed that Muellergate grabs everyone! Wooo! *you* get impeached, and *you* get Impeached and....
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:13 PM on January 27, 2018 [16 favorites]


NBC: ‘I want my voice heard’: Women plot runs for office in record numbers
As of last week, 325 women were non-incumbent candidates for the United States House, along with 72 female members seeking reelection, according to data compiled by Walsh’s organization. Thirty-eight women not currently serving in the United States Senate are aiming for the upper chamber, along with 12 incumbents running again. And 75 women have set their sights on the nation’s governorships — plus four female incumbents fighting to keep their seats.

In 2016, a high water mark for female candidates overall, there were 167 female major party nominees for the United States House and 16 for the Senate — well fewer than half the number of candidates vying for one of those spots now.
posted by Chrysostom at 4:15 PM on January 27, 2018 [30 favorites]


Beto has said he's going to hit every Texas county, all 254 of them.

I know he's SAID that. I was still pretty damn surprised he's actually doing it. Guess that says something about my own expectations of Texas Democrats and/or politicians in general.
posted by threeturtles at 4:17 PM on January 27, 2018 [5 favorites]


I didn't catch the dog whistle in Pence's tweet, so the remark about "resurrection fanfic" and the "zombies" quip confused me. My tone was harsh and accusatory, and I apologize for that. I'll try to ask questions first when I don't understand why people are reacting so strongly to something.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 4:27 PM on January 27, 2018 [43 favorites]


I know he's SAID that. I was still pretty damn surprised he's actually doing it. Guess that says something about my own expectations of Texas Democrats and/or politicians in general.

Indeed. We're all astonished and pleased, and as soon as the primary is over I'm going to get a sign for the yard. (My partner wants to vote for a woman of color in the primary basically as encouragement, knowing full well Beto will win the primary, and as they can't vote I'm inclined to let them have my vote on that and not push them too hard on going YEAH BETO GO GO YEAH before the primary is over.

Afterwards, though, all bets are off. I'm terribly excited about him. And on a deeply, deeply strange note he happens to look exactly like my brother-in-law, aged up about twenty years. The resemblence is... uncanny.)
posted by sciatrix at 4:34 PM on January 27, 2018 [9 favorites]


I'll try to ask questions first when I don't understand why people are reacting so strongly to something.

That's as good a daily mantra as I've read in a while.
posted by LooseFilter at 4:35 PM on January 27, 2018 [38 favorites]


Just got back from spending the day at the Arizona State Democratic Party meeting, since I now find myself a state committee member with credentials and everything. I'm so fancy!

There was a really great energy, with tons of young people in the room (including a handful of high school students from Mesa, who've already registered 600 new voters!), and plans galore for every part of the state. We elected a new state chair who inspires a lot of faith in her leadership. There were representatives from every corner of the state, even the most remote, deep red areas. All reported record turnout to meetings and strong voter registration efforts already under way.

Arizona is working hard to move from purple to blue, folks.
posted by Superplin at 4:45 PM on January 27, 2018 [109 favorites]


Trump: 'I wouldn't say I'm a feminist' and neither would anybody else.
posted by scalefree at 5:33 PM on January 27, 2018 [26 favorites]


Yeah there's a reason so many of us, while hating Trump a great deal and wanting him gone are slightly wary about any kind of impeachment that doesn't also nab Pence.

Unfortunately, from what I remember of the chain of command, all of them are absolutely awful short of a "Designated Survivor" scenario happening.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:38 PM on January 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure what you mean? If Pence were caught up in the Mueller net you'd simply impeach both the President and the Vice President at the same time. In which case the Speaker of the House would take the oath of office and become President.

This isn't going to happen, of course, outside the sweaty nighttime fanfics of the Seth Abramsons of the world but there isn't anything particularly complex about it.
posted by Justinian at 5:59 PM on January 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


Politico: Obama planning to actively campaign for candidates in the midterms.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:09 PM on January 27, 2018 [34 favorites]


Justice Ginsburg will not attend Trump's first State of the Union (The Hill)
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not be in attendance at President Trump's first State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Ginsburg is scheduled to be at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island for her speaking tour on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.

While Ginsburg has been critical of Trump in the past, her talk at the university was announced last August.
*wink*
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:16 PM on January 27, 2018 [27 favorites]


We'll be lucky if we even get someone with more than 2 degrees of Trump convicted of anything. To think that he and Pence would be impeached? Forget all that, focus on the midterms and then the re-election.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:40 PM on January 27, 2018 [7 favorites]


all of them are absolutely awful short of a "Designated Survivor" scenario happening.

I'm not sure Ben Carson would be an improvement, but at least his M.D. credential suggests he once had a work ethic and the ability to conform to external standards.
posted by Coventry at 7:00 PM on January 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


but at least his M.D. credential suggests he once had a work ethic and the ability to conform to external standards.

There are like a dozen threads on the blue about various topics that all eventually boil down to how 90% of doctors hideously fail women so...
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 7:02 PM on January 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


From the 'I wouldn't say I'm a feminist' link posted by scalefree above:
“No, I wouldn't say I'm a feminist. I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far,” Trump said in the interview, according to Morgan. “I’m for women, I'm for men, I’m for everyone.”
"So when would you say was the last time you grabbed someone by the dick, Mr. President?" asked the voice in my head that, for better or worse, will never work in American journalism.

Seriously, I wish you would say that you're a feminist, you orange shitstain. I could use a good belly laugh today.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 7:03 PM on January 27, 2018 [15 favorites]


Matthew Yglesias, Vox: Trump’s latest interview shows he’s not really the president
He’s holding the office but not doing the job.

President Donald Trump’s first non-Fox television interview in a long time, conducted with CNBC’s Joe Kernen from Davos, Switzerland, is in many respects weirdly devoid of substance. And much of the substance that’s there consists of misstatements of fact.

But lurking in that is an important insight: Trump is holding the office of president, but he’s not doing the job of president. He seems to have no real idea what’s going on, even with his own signature policy moves.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:53 PM on January 27, 2018 [44 favorites]


Eric Levitz, New York Magazine: Democrats Paid a Huge Price for Letting Unions Die
The GOP understands how important labor unions are to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, historically, has not. If you want a two-sentence explanation for why the Midwest is turning red (and thus, why Donald Trump is president), you could do worse than that.

With its financial contributions and grassroots organizing, the labor movement helped give Democrats full control of the federal government three times in the last four decades. And all three of those times — under Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama — Democrats failed to pass labor law reforms that would to bolster the union cause. In hindsight, it’s clear that the Democratic Party didn’t merely betray organized labor with these failures, but also, itself.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:10 PM on January 27, 2018 [59 favorites]


I don’t think there was much “letting” involved, considering the demonization of unions and the erosion of worker’s rights was led by the GOP in a decades-long effort funded by wealthy donors and corporate interests. When one side plays dirty ball, that doesn’t mean the other side “let” them win.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:21 PM on January 27, 2018 [16 favorites]


When one side plays dirty ball, that doesn’t mean the other side “let” them win.

It does when the Democrats decided to agree with them and did nothing to fight back. That was an affirmative choice.

You can draw a direct line from the Democrats abandoning the union vote in the 90's (and worker's right generally) and stabbing unions in the back by cozying ever closer to Wall Street and Trump's victory in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Imagine if Democrats did...not that.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:27 PM on January 27, 2018 [37 favorites]


As the article says in the pull-quote, there were three times when the Dems had the power to enact the labor reforms the article is suggesting, and did not do so.
posted by Coventry at 8:31 PM on January 27, 2018 [6 favorites]




It seems like the failure to act goes back a lot further than the 90s, or even the 70s. Taft-Hartley was passed in 1947.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:39 PM on January 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


Mod note: The union thing feels like a cul-de-sac here (beyond the interesting original article); if there's a substantive conversation to be had, let's break it out in a separate post where people can go over the history of the union movement and Democratic politics without it turning into the dreaded politics-thread-rehashing of past Democratic sins.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 8:47 PM on January 27, 2018 [6 favorites]


Devonian: ‘Get out of the country!’: Navajo lawmaker harassed by Arizona Trump supporters accusing him of being here ‘illegally’

Yeah. You will not be surprised to hear that this incident was discussed at great length--and repeatedly--at today's State Party meeting. The leader of the Native American Caucus got a standing ovation of support when he brought it up at the plenary session.

State Senator Katie Hobbs (mentioned in the linked article) is from my district, and now running for Secretary of State against Michele Reagan, the Republican behind all kinds of lovely voter suppression acts.

Oh, I forgot to mention earlier: the state treasurer noted a few statistics, including keywords associated with funding levels. Our #1 keyword for fundraising in 2017? Flake. Currently leading the pack in 2018? Arpaio.
If nothing else, I certainly can't complain that this state's politics are boring...
posted by Superplin at 8:51 PM on January 27, 2018 [9 favorites]


The source of the data is not named in the contract, but an ICE representative said the data came from Vigilant Solutions, the leading network for license plate recognition data.

So if civil liberties hero hackers were actually a thing, this company would be an interesting target


Just for context, the same person (Adi Pinhas) founded Vigilant and Superfish (which was, um, not popular among civil liberties hero hackers). Spying on people is his thing I guess.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:53 PM on January 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


Today's politics/sexual harassment news:

Ruby Cramer at BuzzFeed with Hillary Clinton Let Him Stay. Women Say His Harassment Continued, in which Burns Strider continued to harass women at Correct the Record in 2014-2015, including another unwanted kiss.

Marco Rubio fires his chief of staff Clint Reed for violating policy on "proper relations between a supervisor and their subordinates."
posted by zachlipton at 9:14 PM on January 27, 2018 [5 favorites]


Regarding (hypothetical, not-gonna-happen) impeachment of 45 without Pence:

At the very least, we'd get three solid months of chaos and staff changes as the agenda changed from "bestest tv ratings and lots of indirect bribes" to "institute Republic of Gilead." And that would happen during campaign season.

More likely, the attempt to switch back to "normal politics," combined with the heightened media attention, would mean swarms of uncomfortable questions pointed at everyone involved in the administration - including a whole lot of, "hey, if you had these awesomely talented people sitting around not doing cabinet-ish and executive department jobs, why didn't you bring them up last year?" and "so, if you thought 45 was corrupt and incompetent, why didn't you tell anyone?" and so on.

Sarah Huckabee is doing a bang-up job of dodging questions - but she gets away with it because nobody believes Trump is remotely competent or even conscious of much of what's going on. A president who pushed a message of, "well that was a mess; let's set the country back on track" would have to deal with all those questions, or quickly wind up in the same place: oh look, someone with an agenda that has nothing to do with improving the country.

And his hands aren't clean. It might take an extra few months to impeach him if Trump goes down, but the evidence would start rolling in, and the baseline of "omg you can't really accuse the president!" would be gone.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:49 PM on January 27, 2018 [10 favorites]


His poll numbers are ticking slightly up to 38-42ish%, Republicans are recanting even their tepid support for Mueller, and they're FAR more shameless than the Nixon era -they're already laying the groundwork to ignore whatever Mueller comes out with. There will be no impeachment, of Trump much less Pence on top, at least without Democrats retaking both houses. We need to buckle down for the long, long fight until 2020. Fantasy impeachment theater was fun for a year, and maybe The Russia Stuff will ramp up during the midterms to ive Democrats a turnout boost, but wasting thoughtpower on "But Pence is just as bad" and "President Pelosi" fanfic seems increasingly like tonedeaf denialism as the time for real work to retake Congress is here.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:06 PM on January 27, 2018 [13 favorites]


Mod note: A couple deleted. Please don't drop surprise triggery shocking abuse stuff here without a warning. Better to link to the article with a warning.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:17 PM on January 27, 2018 [5 favorites]


The plate tracking would be massively concerning if it had a strong due process regimen and strict oversight, but guessing neither of those things are the case. They may not just track undocumented residents, but their documented family/friends/people engaged him helping them.

You know how it turned out that the US wasn't just indiscriminately tapping phone lines overseas, but also calls that crossed the US borders, and it turned out that domestic US calls may in fact be routed overseas for no very good reason? And it also turned out that they didn't consider phones to be tapped if they didn't actually listen to the calls, and that they distinguished between a recording of the conversation and the so-called "metadata" that includes the number called, the number calling, their location and so forth? So basically nobody knows just what they're doing and it may very well be "recording everybody, all the time, just in case it's useful".

Well, a record of number plate data consists of the plate number, date and time, location, maybe speed and a bunch of other stuff making a small handful of bytes. It's vastly less than you need to record a phone call and it's much easier to search. I think you have to assume that all such systems record everybody, all the time, and the only safeguard is that they may not bother looking at your records. But of course, it wouldn't be hard to automate a search of anyone they chose and (as they do with phone data) subsequently come up with an excuse that would justify a search. So basically, someone's going to have a record of not only drug houses and immigrants' safe houses, but also politicians' mistresses' houses. The ability for the executive to blackmail the legislature will be unparalleled.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:44 PM on January 27, 2018 [20 favorites]


As an interesting comparison to that license plate data, there's a flurry of interest on Twitter on the interesting places you can find publicly-accessible Fitbit Strava tracking data -- including military and other secret/secure locations ranging from Groom Lake to the Paracel Islands to Syrian outposts.
posted by dhartung at 1:10 AM on January 28, 2018 [14 favorites]


The ability for the executive to blackmail the legislature will be unparalleled.

Also from Jpfed's Superfish link above, this is a company created by a guy whose previous gig was running an adware/malware company, and who presumably has the same moral and ethical code as any other two bit spammer. Seems like if there's a chance historical or non-person-of-interest numbers can be sold at some point, they are going to be kept (and, indeed, sold).

Superfish also notable for using a third party library to conduct man-in-the-middle SSL hijacking to allow them to embed ads in secure pages. A library backdoor it turned out any moderately competent script kiddie could also use to hijack said pages.

This seems like a guy who should have a restraining order preventing him from using any form of advanced communication technology. Not being given juicy federal contracts and all the sensitive, privacy violating data, he can monetize.


But of course, it wouldn't be hard to automate a search of anyone they chose

And you just know that there's going to be that particular sort of stupid the very educated and real world blind are prone to*, resulting in them fishing the data with pattern recognition / social graphs / ML neural nets. So even not being worth looking up isn't going to help if your PTA meeting gets mistaken for a hotbed of radical pro-migration insurgents.


* C.f. pretty much the entire recent history of Facebook and Twitter.
posted by Buntix at 3:30 AM on January 28, 2018 [18 favorites]


msalt: ""More than half of the US - Mexico border is a river, specifically "the deepest channel of the Rio Grande river. How are you going to put a wall in the middle of a river?""

They are defacto seceding that land to Mexico by building the wall 100s of metres inland from the riparian zone. The current wall/fence segments do the same thing. Famously in the case of a golf course.
posted by Mitheral at 6:34 AM on January 28, 2018 [5 favorites]


The PTA dragnet was the day Trump truly became president
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:40 AM on January 28, 2018 [4 favorites]


Strategy When They're Playing Constitutional Hardball and You Think It's the Wrong Game – with tips for Democrats trying to reinstitute norms. (Hat tip to Sam Wang who retweeted a link to this.)
posted by StrawberryPie at 7:48 AM on January 28, 2018 [3 favorites]


In a new low for Washington, yesterday @chefjoseandres was asked to leave the Alfalfa dinner after-party at @CafeMilanoDC by its owner, Franco Nuschesse, apparently because his presence made Ivanka Trump uncomfortable (Cafe Milano is the watering hole of the Trump Admin).
Ivanka walked in ahead of him, not comfortable with his presence. Already inside. He’s approached and asked to come outside where Franco, who he knows perfectly well for many years, wants to talk to him. Once outside, he’s not allowed back in.

At the Alfalfa dinner, Franco came up to Jose Andres and gave him a friendly kiss. A little later he would be asked to do the Trump’s dirty work and, like Judas, betray an old friend.
posted by scalefree at 7:49 AM on January 28, 2018 [38 favorites]


GOP goes on offense with 20-week abortion vote (The Hill)
Anti-abortion activists celebrated when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced that a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks would be brought to the floor for a vote next week.

With a slim Republican majority, the bill isn’t expected to pass — but that’s not the point. Activists think the 20-week abortion ban is a potent election issue for 2018, particularly against Democrats hailing from red-leaning states who are expected to vote against the bill.

“There will be consequences for senators in vulnerable Senate seats in 2018 when the grassroots lets itself be heard at the ballot box,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion advocacy group in Washington.

“I can promise you, in those states — we’re especially looking at Missouri and North Dakota and the women that represent them — we will absolutely be on the ground.”
posted by Barack Spinoza at 8:11 AM on January 28, 2018 [4 favorites]


Anti-abortion activists celebrated when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced that a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks would be brought to the floor for a vote next week.

With a slim Republican majority, the bill isn’t expected to pass — but that’s not the point. Activists think the 20-week abortion ban is a potent election issue for 2018, particularly against Democrats hailing from red-leaning states who are expected to vote against the bill.


Every. Hostage. They. Can. Do not underestimate the evil we're dealing with, ever. There is no Republican position left except "who can we shoot next?"
posted by saysthis at 8:18 AM on January 28, 2018 [58 favorites]


In a new low for Washington, yesterday @chefjoseandres was asked to leave the Alfalfa dinner after-party at @CafeMilanoDC by its owner, Franco Nuschesse, apparently because his presence made Ivanka Trump uncomfortable (Cafe Milano is the watering hole of the Trump Admin).
I bet Ivanka is uncomfortable. Apart from the whole Trump restaurant thing, I was just reading this: JOSÉ ANDRÉS ON FEEDING PUERTO RICO AFTER HURRICANE MARIA - it looks like a principled chef can do what the US administration can't.
posted by mumimor at 8:19 AM on January 28, 2018 [30 favorites]


Vox: Should Democrats run anti-abortion candidates in red states? A new poll casts doubt on the strategy: Democrats may have more to lose than to gain from compromising on abortion.
But a new poll calls this approach into question. Just 8 percent of Democrats would be more likely to vote for a candidate who opposes abortion, according to a report released by the polling firm PerryUndem earlier this month, ahead of Roe v. Wade’s 45th anniversary on Monday. Meanwhile, 31 percent of Republicans would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights.

The findings suggest it may be Republicans, not Democrats, who have the most to gain from broadening their approach on reproductive health. That’s something Democrats may want to consider in the runup to this year’s midterms. [...]

In general, abortion appeared to be a bigger issue for Democrats than for Republicans — 71 percent of Democrats said they were more likely to vote for a candidate who supported women having the right to an abortion, while just 36 percent of Republicans said a candidate’s opposition to that right would help win their support. Thirty percent of Republicans said a candidate’s position on abortion made no difference to their vote, while only 20 percent of Democrats said the same.

Of course, fielding anti-abortion candidates isn’t just a strategy to appeal to socially conservative Democrats — it’s also a move to entice independents. But according to PerryUndem’s data, that may not work so well either — 46 percent of independents told the firm they’d be more likely to vote for a candidate who supported abortion rights, and just 15 percent said they’d be more inclined to vote for someone who opposed them.

Researchers also looked at how Clinton and Trump voters thought about candidates’ abortion positions. They found that while 27 percent of Trump voters were more likely to vote for a candidate who supported abortion rights, just 6 percent of Clinton voters were more likely to vote for an anti-abortion candidate. In other words, Trump voters were about four times more likely than Clinton voters to cross party lines on abortion rights.

All of this suggests that “Democrats may have more to lose than to gain by widening their tent,” according to the report. By going after the 8 percent of Democrats who want a candidate who opposes abortion, the party risks losing the 71 percent of Democratic voters who want their candidates to support abortion rights, Tresa Undem, a partner at PerryUndem, told Vox.
posted by chris24 at 8:19 AM on January 28, 2018 [55 favorites]


The plate tracking would be massively concerning if it had a strong due process regimen and strict oversight, but guessing neither of those things are the case. They may not just track undocumented residents, but their documented family/friends/people engaged him helping them.

I imagine one could build a database of diplomatic plate sightings very, very quickly.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:33 AM on January 28, 2018 [3 favorites]






Funny how he never speaks out against Eminem who's been trashing him for months. But has gone after Jay-Z and Beyonce multiple times now.

Wonder what the difference is?
posted by chris24 at 9:14 AM on January 28, 2018 [90 favorites]


From the NY Post link about the Jay Z/Trump “twitter war”:
The rate [unemployment for African-Americans] has been in decline since falling from 16.4 percent in August 2011 to 7.8 percent in January 2017.
That means your predecessor knocked that rate down 8.6 percent over six years, or 1.4 percent a year, which is 40 percent better than your 1 percent effort this year, Mr President.

In other words, your twitter dunk is rejected!

ps: can folks include the source and a brief summary when sharing links? Both help thread scanners decide whether or not the click is worth it.
posted by notyou at 9:21 AM on January 28, 2018 [35 favorites]


Meanwhile, the President responds to Jay Z’s comments about the President’s comments about “shithole” countries in Africa by pointing to African-American unemployment rates here as proof that he, the President, is not racist. Instead, his linking of African-Americans to those countries (rather than this one, which is everyone’s as much as his), reconfirms his racism. He’s so deep in it he can’t sense it as anything other than what is, like a catfish in mud.

This was a really poor dunk attempt by the President.
posted by notyou at 9:38 AM on January 28, 2018 [31 favorites]


Ivanka walked in ahead of him, not comfortable with his presence. Already inside. He’s approached and asked to come outside where Franco, who he knows perfectly well for many years, wants to talk to him. Once outside, he’s not allowed back in.

I did ponder for a moment some snark about "Princess Ivanka" but the better demons of my nature suggested "nah, that is snark bereft of merit".

But then there were so many capitalisations of the word "republican" in the comments that followed.

Is it even worth pointing out the absurdity that there's party that proclaims; predicates; and names itself on the ideal that we are better off without aristocracy and monarchs. Yet is now essentially a (third stage*) aristocracy trying to implement a monarchy?


* Defined by which means of existence they were gatekeepers or controller of: 1 was land, 2 the factories and means of production, 3 is complex but mostly Fox News, Facebook, and the gig-economy.
posted by Buntix at 10:18 AM on January 28, 2018 [4 favorites]


In December, PerryUndem surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,029 voters around the country. The researchers asked questions aimed at capturing the nuances of Americans’ thinking about the issue of abortion

That Vox article on abotion voting is so damn dumb. Of course a poll of 1000 random Americans will skew pro-choice, because more people are in large cities. We're not discussing whether it makes sense to run antichoice candidates in San Francisco, we're asking if it makes sense in rural Kansas and Georgia. You would have to run district polls to see if it was a viable strategy.
posted by benzenedream at 10:44 AM on January 28, 2018 [6 favorites]


As George W. Bush on ‘S.N.L.,’ Will Ferrell Wants to Remind You: ‘I Was Really Bad’

This is one of their better ones, actually. Those who don’t remember history...
posted by Melismata at 10:50 AM on January 28, 2018 [7 favorites]


Is it even worth pointing out the absurdity that there's party that proclaims; predicates; and names itself on the ideal that we are better off without aristocracy and monarchs. Yet is now essentially a (third stage*) aristocracy trying to implement a monarchy?

Clinton, Bush, and Obama's people would have either ignored the political enemy in the restaurant, or gone over to shake hands in an uncomfortable display of faux friendliness that plays well in the media.
posted by Teegeeack AV Club Secretary at 2:40 AM on January 29 [+] [!]


Consider this -
Just like today, when we have a huge range of tabloids to choose from, the Londoner in search of scandal had a range of rags and broadsheets, including The Tatler [sic], The Flying Post, The British Apollo, The Observator, and The Female Tatler. Some were published for years. Others folded within weeks or months. The periodicals were themselves the subject of scandal, such as The Female Tatler, whose authorship by "Mrs. Crackenthorpe" was debated, and, for a time, there were two Female Tatlers, each claiming to be real.

Almost all of these scandal sheets claimed that their purpose was to be instructional and morally edifying.
Public disgust goes hand in hand with monarchy y'all. Leaders who fear and respect the people do not act like this. For contrast, here's Bill Clinton reacting to someone he doesn't particularly like as a normal, democratically elected human does.
posted by saysthis at 10:53 AM on January 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


> This is one of their better ones, actually. Those who don’t remember history...

can't get fooled again?
posted by tonycpsu at 10:53 AM on January 28, 2018 [6 favorites]


Women live everywhere, so it doesn't make sense to run anti-abortion candidates anywhere. The polling is irrelevant.
posted by melissasaurus at 10:53 AM on January 28, 2018 [69 favorites]


It's kinda funny (not funny) how bad the Trumps are at playing the game. All Ivanka had to do was go over to Chef Andres, shake hands, praise him for his work in PR and elsewhere, and she would probably change the prevailing storyline about the boorish Trumps. At least for a day or two.

I think that's probably true, but I also think that 'playing the game' is two things:

A) Not something that the super wealthy either want to do, nor care to engage in. They want to make the rules and then be in a position where nobody dares judge them. It's a primary conflict of the trump admin, and is apparently what is meant by 'running government like a business'.

B) NOT playing the game is something that projects the sort of strength that trump voters desire. Jeb Bush plays the game, because he's (to them) a spineless politician. trump and co. ignore the rules because they are strong. That's what anti-establishment means to these people - doing what you want and ignoring the rules. They don't want a skilled player, they want a cheater who's in the bag for them (that is: a white nationalist).

I suppose that, luckily for us all, the trumps are still in a position where they can be judged, which frequently incites trump to rage, and also that the voting bloc described in B) isn't completely running the country yet.
posted by codacorolla at 10:58 AM on January 28, 2018 [7 favorites]


That Vox article on abotion voting is so damn dumb. Of course a poll of 1000 random Americans will skew pro-choice, because more people are in large cities. We're not discussing whether it makes sense to run antichoice candidates in San Francisco, we're asking if it makes sense in rural Kansas and Georgia. You would have to run district polls to see if it was a viable strategy.

I used to think this. The biggest problem is that even if this does make electoral sense to a point (letting single issue abortion voters hold the balance of power and continually keeping the Democratic party hostage is not something I'm fond of) the party is asking "can't you take one for the team" when women (and especially black women) have been taking EVERYTHING for the team for so god damn long. Issues especially relevant to women have been long been put on backburners for decades as we make slow, incremental "bend the moral arc of the universe" level of progress. Yes things are better but things could have been much better if we paid attention.

No. We can't ask this of women anymore. We've come too far.
posted by Talez at 11:03 AM on January 28, 2018 [68 favorites]


Of course a poll of 1000 random Americans will skew pro-choice, because more people are in large cities

I get your point, but, also, more people are pro-choice.
posted by box at 11:09 AM on January 28, 2018 [10 favorites]


Sacrificing popular positions in the name of "electability" only makes sense if it helps you get elected. Democrats, wit the fetish for compromise and "bipartisanship", forget this.
posted by Artw at 11:25 AM on January 28, 2018 [12 favorites]


Women live everywhere, so it doesn't make sense to run anti-abortion candidates anywhere

We can't ask this of women anymore. We've come too far.

Women live everywhere, but pro-choice Women do not live everywhere. 38% of women believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. A minority, but hardly a tiny minority.

This is not just something "we" are asking of women (who is we?)

It is something rural women are asking of urban women, and of each other.
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:32 AM on January 28, 2018 [6 favorites]


Seth Masket, Pacific Standard: The "Electability" Fallacy
The concept of electability has been central to modern political strategy. Even hardcore political activists, devoted to an ideology or a particular cause, recognize that there's limited value in backing a candidate who appears to be unelectable, and they're willing to make some policy concessions to support an imperfect candidate who appears able to win.

...Recent research suggests that those elections [in 1972, with McGovern and 1984, with Mondale] have actually been misinterpreted, and argues that those electoral wins can, in fact, be explained largely by economic conditions and other political fundamentals. Any penalty for ideological extremism, it turns out, is actually pretty small.
In other words: To hell with throwing women under the bus in the name of the elusive "Swing" voter. I've always maintained that we need to elect the Democrats we can, and that Missouri, for instance, is going to elect more conservative Dems than California, especially in Senate races. But I think the "pro-life Democrat" is a vanishing, if not vanished, breed. Those who are passionate about "SAVE TEH BAYBEEZ" are already Republicans. Women are one of the backbones of the Democratic party, so it's not going to benefit us to deny women our bodily and reproductive autonomy in the name of maybe capturing a few conservative voters.

Even in deep-red districts which are more economically and socially conservative, there are women who need healthcare and, yes, abortions. And we need to move the pro-choice Overton window to include "I, personally, would never have an abortion, but I support the choice of other women to have one."
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 11:45 AM on January 28, 2018 [61 favorites]


That Vox article on abotion voting is so damn dumb. Of course a poll of 1000 random Americans will skew pro-choice, because more people are in large cities.

That's really not how the findings in this study came about. They conducted in-depth interviews with 1,029 subjects. The findings are not as simplistic as you seem to imagine: people in one instance were asked if they were more or less likely to support abortion rights, and those results sorted to show if Clinton/Trump voter and Male/Female. It wasn't just a basic yes/no telephone poll without regard to people's point of view and voting record or gender.

There's a link in the Vox article that shows how in depth this poll was. I highly recommend checking it out before declaring the findings "dumb".
posted by oneirodynia at 12:40 PM on January 28, 2018 [9 favorites]


The Chef Jose saga continues.

[missing: presumed DM from Ivanka to Chef Jose]

Chef Jose: Thank you @IvankaTrump for reaching out. I believe now that you personally had nothing to do.
Let’s now work on what’s important: Immigration reform, where #DACADreamers and Undocumented citizens will become part of a strong USA. With secure borders. With economic growth.👍🏼

Cafe Milano: . @chefjoseandres, you are always welcome at @CafeMilanoDC when we are open and in fact, I will host you and toast to all your successes.I am sorry for the misunderstanding.Last night the restaurant was closed for a private Alfalfa Dinner after party. Of note, the dinner and after party are different guest lists. Also, Ivanka Trump had no role on determining event attendees. Franco

Chef Jose: Thank you @CafeMilanoDC and Franco for the apology. I understand was a “misunderstanding”. Still hard to understand why I was the only person not allowed in! Please people of @washingtondc keep supporting a great resturant institution. Now let’s all be friends. #USAforward
posted by scalefree at 12:40 PM on January 28, 2018 [10 favorites]


It is something rural women are asking of urban women, and of each other.

No. It is a form of oppression, a removal of fundamental rights to bodily autonomy, demanded by fucking patriarchy. That some women work to support patriarchy is not remotely relevant to whether you can consider “should we allow women human rights or not?” as a viable question when considering electoral strategy, and this should not be a surprise to anyone who has bothered to educate themselves about how misogyny and patriarchy actually work.
posted by schadenfrau at 12:48 PM on January 28, 2018 [81 favorites]


Where is this "rural women are asking for antichoice candidates/policies" coming from? Rural women are disproportionately affected by lack of access to sex ed, contraception, abortion, family planning, and sexual assault resources. I wouldn't be surprised if most of those 38% of women were suburban/exurban residents.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:04 PM on January 28, 2018 [22 favorites]


Abortions are necessary healthcare that must be made available to every place where a person may become pregnant. It doesn't matter if the local population supports abortion. We don't decide whether to give people appendectomies based on polling data; we shouldn't with termination of a pregnancy. A percentage of pregnant people will die without access to abortion. It needs to be available anywhere there are pregnant people.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:05 PM on January 28, 2018 [109 favorites]


It’s not so much rural women, either, IIRC. It’s white evangelical women.

So like...women living in the most patriarchal of patriarchies, whose choices may not be, shall we say, unconstrained.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:08 PM on January 28, 2018 [15 favorites]


@ddale8:
Oh man. Here's Trump on climate change to Piers Morgan: “The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they’re setting records." They're setting record lows, not highs.

To his credit, Piers Morgan is the first interviewer of Trump's presidency, I believe, to press Trump on whether he believes climate change is real. His answer: "There is a cooling, and there's a heating."

Finally, Trump said he'd consider getting back into the Paris climate agreement because, "as you know, I like Emmanuel." He has continually suggested that he believes the Paris agreement is an actual French thing rather than a global accord simply agreed to in France.
Politico, Elana Schor, Deadline looms for Trump and Russia sanctions, in which Monday is the deadline for Treasury to implement sanctions. The deadline comes as Russia arrested (and later released) Alexei Navalny and hundreds of protesters and raided Navalny's office.
posted by zachlipton at 1:11 PM on January 28, 2018 [27 favorites]


It’s not so much rural women, either, IIRC. It’s white evangelical women.

And white, evangelical women are already voting Republican. And they will continue to vote Republican as long as the Republicans continue to be the White Supremacist Party. These are not people the Democrats can realistically win, nor should they try.

Democrats are not going to chase away swing voters, even in more conservative states, by being the party of Justice And Body Autonomy For All. The era of "Democrats For Nixon" and "Reagan Democrats" and even "Democrats For Bush Post 9/11" is dead, gone, pushing up daisies.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 1:17 PM on January 28, 2018 [54 favorites]


On a topic raised earlier, an in-depth discussion on LGM: DID DEMOCRATS “LET UNIONS DIE?”
posted by prefpara at 1:42 PM on January 28, 2018 [5 favorites]


No, Ivanka Trump didn’t stop José Andrés from getting into a party. Here’s what really happened.
(WaPo)

TL;DR: Andrés attended the dinner, knew he wasn't invited to the even-more-exclusive after party, posted a petulant tweet and hijinks ensued.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:53 PM on January 28, 2018 [4 favorites]


The Plot Against America, The Atlantic. This is a fascinating longform piece on Paul Manafort’s career and his innovations in political lobbying during the 80s and 90s. It illustrates the cultural shifts that enabled oligarchs to take over the Republican Party and why Manafort took the risks that finally got him indicted after a lifetime of white collar crime.
This is really a great article. One thing is that there is no way Manafort isn't a Russian asset. Another that it really underlines the depravation of the Republican party.
posted by mumimor at 1:58 PM on January 28, 2018 [9 favorites]


So Trump’s Interior Department announced it will create a board of hunters called the “International Wildlife Conservation Council” with the stated goal of boosting public awareness of the "benefits that result from U.S. citizens traveling to foreign nations to engage in hunting."

These fucking assholes want to shoot elephants and call it wildlife conservation. And with that, I log off for the day before I throw this laptop across the room.
posted by bluecore at 2:16 PM on January 28, 2018 [74 favorites]


The Atlantic also has a story about the relationship between Trump and Steve Wynn with a few interesting details about how they went from rivals in the casino world to a budding bromance. The takeaway is that they're close now and there's no reason to believe that's going to change anytime soon; Wynn flatters Trump, and that's all that matters.

Wynn apparently knew that the sexual abuse story was in the works but left the RNC in the dark about it. They had to put on hold attacks on both Tim Kaine, for accepting money from someone who has been accused of sexual misconduct, and against Hillary, of course:
Moreover, officials had begun informally strategizing on how to capitalize on a New York Times report that Hillary Clinton had shielded a staffer from accusations of sexual misconduct. Those talks were put on hold.
This detail was facepalm-worthy:
Trump courted him by giving him a tour of the White House, pausing often to ask Wynn—an avid art collector—about certain paintings. “He would ask him what the valuation of all the art was,” said a Republican consultant to whom the exchange was relayed. “You know, that’s Trump, he’s always wanting to know what things are worth.” For his part, the source said, Wynn thought it was “funny.” “I think he found it charming.”
I hope the White House Curator double checks the inventory when Trump leaves office.
posted by peeedro at 2:21 PM on January 28, 2018 [32 favorites]


I hope the White House Curator double checks the inventory when Trump leaves office.

I hope that when Trump leaves office, it will be due to heading to prison, with all of his assets being forfeit to the US Government.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 2:28 PM on January 28, 2018 [18 favorites]


If Pence were caught up in the Mueller net you'd simply impeach both the President and the Vice President at the same time. In which case the Speaker of the House would take the oath of office and become President.

Trump and Pence might very well be impeached, but not for the same exact thing and not at the same time. There will be a time gap which will allow whoever goes first (probably Trump) to be replaced (by Pence) who will appoint a new VP who will take over if and when Pence is impeached.

We had this before, as you'll recall, with Nixon and Agnew. Only Agnew went first, and was replaced by Ford long before Nixon resigned. Pence could appoint a new VP within minutes of taking over, and either could resign while the other drags the process out. There is no way both will be forced out at the exact same moment.
posted by msalt at 2:34 PM on January 28, 2018 [7 favorites]


me: "half of the US - Mexico border is a river, specifically 'the deepest channel of the Rio Grande river.' How are you going to put a wall in the middle of a river?"
Mitheral: They are defacto seceding that land to Mexico by building the wall 100s of metres inland from the riparian zone.

Interesting. However, it still remains a strong argument/question with which to challenge proponents of a wall, since everybody can understand the problem.

Also, won't this create a lawless no-man's-land south of the wall? Seems like people will be easily able to get on a sliver of American soil and request asylum, bear children, commit crimes without realistic risk of being arrested, dump toxic waste, etc. Has Neal Stephenson written a novel about this yet?
posted by msalt at 2:45 PM on January 28, 2018 [19 favorites]


There's an out-of-left-field story from Axios that the NSC is shopping around a plan to build a nationalized 5G network within three years, which we apparently have to do because of China, for reasons not particularly fleshed out beyond buzzwords (I mean, we should have a robust nationwide 5G network for all sorts of good reasons, but 'China is developing AI' is not really one of them).

Somehow, by the time the plan is done, I'm pretty confident it will morph into "let's give AT&T a gazillion taxpayer dollars to build the network, then let them keep all the profits."

Also, we're firmly in "troll admits he's trolling but we're so deep into it that it doesn't even matter" territory: @meridithmcgraw: Trump to Piers Morgan on his Twitter habits:

PIERS: And are you actually lying in bed with your phone, working out how to wind everybody up?
TRUMP: Well, perhaps sometimes in bed and perhaps sometimes at breakfast or lunch or whatever.
posted by zachlipton at 3:23 PM on January 28, 2018 [23 favorites]


Also, won't this create a lawless no-man's-land south of the wall? Seems like people will be easily able to get on a sliver of American soil and request asylum, bear children, commit crimes without realistic risk of being arrested, dump toxic waste, etc.

This operates under the false assumption that US authorities don’t care what happens on US territory. Like if you’re Canadian there’s nothing stopping you from walking a few yards into the US and dumping a whole heap of toxic waste. The US is still going to care even if it’s a few yards from the border. If they find you they will indict you, they will extradite you, and they will make an example of you.
posted by Talez at 3:26 PM on January 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


There's an out-of-left-field story from Axios that the NSC is shopping around a plan to build a nationalized 5G network within three years, which we apparently have to do because of China, for reasons not particularly fleshed out beyond buzzwords

Because they’re perpetually afraid of what Huawei also has running on their cell equipment and what interesting stuff they’re sending back to the CPC Politburo. Any USG financed 5G network would require American vendors to provide the gear and block Huawei from getting CPC listening posts in mobile base stations.
posted by Talez at 3:31 PM on January 28, 2018 [4 favorites]


As the other story on this points out, we already banned US carriers from using Huawei's equipment (and there aren't American vendors for most of this stuff), so it's not clear why a government-financed network would be any different in that regard.
posted by zachlipton at 3:37 PM on January 28, 2018 [1 favorite]



It’s not so much rural women, either, IIRC. It’s white evangelical women. / And white, evangelical women are already voting Republican.


There is a good chunk of the population that's somewhere in the middle on abortion, though. Most people ( I am told) do not think abortion has the same moral valence, is in the same category, as an appendectomy. (I do think that, personally.) Most people (I am told) think that abortion should be legal with reasonable restrictions (I don't think any restrictions are reasonable, myself). There are people who say they are pro life and Democrat; there are people who think abortion is a horrible thing that is sometimes necessary and we should reduce the number of abortions by reducing the necessity. It's true that "abortion is literally murder" is a fringe viewpoint, not a majority, but it's not true that a majority of people believe the exact opposite ("abortion is nothing more than a medical procedure that should be legal and regulated no more than every other procedure").

I'm really, really divided on this. On the one hand, it's not my business what politicians get elected in e.g. Missouri - I don't live there. I don't get a say. Especially when one of the politicians who set off this discussion last year was a mayoral candidate.

On the other hand, I - and we - have been relying on a blue firewall my entire life to keep abortion rights safe. That wall has been eroding over the past ten years. If it cracks, it affects everyone.

On the other hand, more conservative or icky Democrats have still been part of that wall over the years. Tim Kaine, Al Franken, Manchin, just off the top of my head. The wall is not eroding because of Blue Dogs. It's eroding because Democrats of all stripes didn't win elections.

But the reason that all of those conservative dems held the line is because that was the party line. Note, the party explicitly had room for Dems who didn't like abortion, as long as they voted the right way. And that's been a consequence of having that centralized-power party establishment that everyone hates. We can take a few cracks in the wall, as long as that party line remains firm. But we can't let anti-abortion politicians get a real foothold in the party.

And on the other hand, with Pence being so close to power, it could become very crucial very quickly that we have Dems in power who will hold the line.

So I don't know where my conclusion ends up, I really don't. I'm terrified of losing abortion rights. But it's complicated. Ultimately though, I think we can have politicians who moderate their language without moderating their voting. "When someone needs an abortion, it's the worst day of their life. I don't want any government barriers getting in the way."
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 3:43 PM on January 28, 2018 [18 favorites]


Oh boy, on twitter Chelsea Clinton responded with laughter and grace to somebody who tweeted at her that she looked like the donkey in Shrek, and Twitter responded basically like you are our model and some Trump supporter came in there and was a shit and feminist Twitter just tore him to shreds.

Twitter is bad and stupid in a number of ways, but just like people in general, it has its moments of beauty.
posted by angrycat at 3:51 PM on January 28, 2018 [14 favorites]


There is a good chunk of the population that's somewhere in the middle on abortion, though.

No, they're somewhere in the middle on whether other women should be allowed to have abortions. Over and over, it gets shown that when they have to deal with an unwanted pregnancy, they believe their circumstances are "special" and an abortion should be okay. This includes everyone from women who protest abortion clinics and wind up becoming clients, to congressmen who want abortions for their mistresses while lobbying against abortion rights for the public.

If they were really "against abortion," and not just anti-woman, they'd want the alternatives that other countries have found to be effective: widely-available contraceptives, good sex education, gov't sponsored prenatal care and childcare. Additional funding for any of those would reduce abortions - even better access to them without specific gov't funding would help - but they don't want those; they want women to be punished for having sex, including women who didn't choose to have sex.

They're not pro-life, they're pro-birth, because that keeps women tied down.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:57 PM on January 28, 2018 [157 favorites]


Pence could appoint a new VP within minutes of taking over, and either could resign while the other drags the process out.

no, both the house and the senate would have to approve any appointee by a majority vote
posted by pyramid termite at 4:11 PM on January 28, 2018 [10 favorites]


I hope the White House Curator double checks the inventory when Trump leaves office.

Hell, I hope they check everything for elbow damage the moment Wynn is in the next room.
posted by dhartung at 4:43 PM on January 28, 2018 [4 favorites]


I've mentioned this before, and I don't know if this is really the place to hash out abortion again, but the pro-life abortion movement is really not about the ethics of abortion, but about feeling morally superior to desperate women. Engaging with American pro-life people on the issues is a waste of time because they don't give a shit about the issues. If they gave a shit about the issues, there would be a ton of things they would be doing instead of trying to make women getting an abortion feel guilty about it.

Rural women support bans on abortion because rural women in America are likely to be evangelicals, and evangelicals support bans on abortion because at this point opposition to abortion is basically the only thing that defines evangelicals. (The reason why it defines them is because it would be an existential crisis for a sect focused on living so you'll go to Heaven to have to confront their long history of advocating for positions we recognise now as deeply abhorrent.)
posted by Merus at 4:47 PM on January 28, 2018 [48 favorites]


Metafilter: I don't know if this is really the place to hash out abortion again
posted by uosuaq at 5:04 PM on January 28, 2018 [15 favorites]


Omarosa Manigault will be continuing her post-White House career as a member of the cast of Celebrity Big Brother, which again, the title seems a little on the nose.
posted by zachlipton at 5:28 PM on January 28, 2018 [12 favorites]


How does this administration think it's going to deregulate the Internet while nationalizing wireless? What an utter clusterfuck.

Just hand Qualcomm a giant subsidy (or a huge defense contract for something using the same tech as 5G) and be done with it.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:41 PM on January 28, 2018 [2 favorites]


You're both still engaging on the stereotype of evangelical Christian pro-lifers. You're not engaging with the reality of people who aren't evangelical Christians, who may or may not be rural, who are moderately pro-choice, pro-birth control, but feel a range of squicky feelings about abortion and may call themselves pro-life.

There's a podcast I've been listening to recently called "Impolite Company", about the intersection of politics and religion, and this is what they were talking about in a recent episode - and it made me a little furious to listen to them talk about this middle range of positions. If someone has data showing that this middle range doesn't really exist, that there are only two positions anyone takes on abortion, I'd love to hear it. But I'm pretty sure there is a range of positions that people feel. And you may think that those positions are wrong, illogical, poorly thought through - you may think that the "reasonable restrictions" they imagine are just self-serving justification, as I do - but those are still the opinions and positions that people hold.

There's a range within the Democratic party itself, even within just democratic elected officials. There's a cohort of people who really don't like abortion, but don't want to make it illegal, they want to reduce the necessity for abortion by making birth control and family planning more available - like Tim Kaine and, surprise, the Clintons back in the '90s. There are people who want abortion to be illegal but they also sort of don't care and they vote based on other issues - Joe Manchin. There's even Joe Donnelly from Indiana who is very staunchly anti-abortion and votes that way a lot of the time but also votes in support of other women's issues like VAWA funding and gender discrimination suits. All of those positions presumably have some constituency within Democratic Party voters as well.

I have no problem with taking an extreme position on abortion - I do so myself. But it seems to me that what you-plural are doing is seeing the whole range of people through an extremist lens, and not seeing reality accurately. I don't think ... i don't know if that should change your political conclusion very much. but.

Additionally, Joe Donnelly is defending his seat in 2018, as far as I can tell.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 5:50 PM on January 28, 2018 [17 favorites]


Trump and Pence might very well be impeached, but not for the same exact thing and not at the same time.

I was making the point, in response to the idea that the line of succession was complicated, that they could be impeached at the same time. My very next sentence was that this was never going to happen in practice. My comment wasn't about what would happen only what could.

Pence could appoint a new VP within minutes of taking over, and either could resign while the other drags the process out.

As pyramid termite says confirming a VP takes majority votes in both houses. If Democrats were to control, say, the House of Representatives they could block any such appointment. Which could leave us with the situation where Pence is President and clearly deserves impeachment, has no vice president and no prospect of getting one confirmed, and the Senate refuses to impeach and make Nancy Pelosi president. But now we're in nighttime fanfic territory again.

The point was that the presidential line of succession is not complicated. It is simple, direct, and clear. The only wrinkle as far as I know is that some folks argue that the Speaker of the House is ineligible to be in the line of succession and that has never been litigated.
posted by Justinian at 6:10 PM on January 28, 2018


I've thought for a while that just as the 22nd and 25th amendments were created to codify blurry informal elements of term limits and succession, the US will probably need an amendment at the end of this that allows for entirely new presidential elections in the event of a vacancy, with the role of the VP (at best) reduced to that of caretaker during the process. The idea that one party might lose its popular mandate to the presidency during a term is both imaginable and not accounted for other than by convoluted kludges. (This all goes back to the original intention of making the runner-up in a presidential election the Veep. That only lasted to 1800, but the cleanup was a mess.)

Article 7 of the current French constitution covers this:
If, for whatever reason, the Presidency of the Republic falls vacant, or if the incapacity of the President has been certified by the Constitutional Council, at the request of the Government and by an absolute majority of its members, the functions of the President, except those conferred by articles 11 and 12 below [referendum powers and dissolution of the National Assembly], are performed temporarily by the President of the Senate. When a vacancy occurs, or when the incapacity is certified by the Constitutional Council to be permanent, and unless force majeure has been certified by the Constitutional Council, the election of a new President takes place not less than twenty and not more than fifty days after the opening of the vacancy or the declaration of the permanence of the incapacity.
That's how modern republics work. You have to have a mechanism to kick out the chief executive and everyone elected alongside the chief executive.
posted by holgate at 6:33 PM on January 28, 2018 [9 favorites]


Mod note: I think we've gone far enough on the abortion issue for this thread.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 8:01 PM on January 28, 2018 [16 favorites]


The Grammy's bleeped Bono (or possibly Logic; I've seen conflicting reports) saying "Blessed are the shithole countries, for they gave us the American Dream"

And James Corden held auditions for the Fire and Fury audiobook, including a special appearance by Hillary Clinton.
posted by zachlipton at 8:08 PM on January 28, 2018 [18 favorites]


I just saw Clinton reading the excerpt for the Grammys and started to tear up.

We will never live in a world where she was President and Donnie LeftSwipe wasn’t. Our reality will always have his stench on it.

It is so sad, what might have been, and so frustrating, what is.
posted by darkstar at 8:32 PM on January 28, 2018 [72 favorites]


The Grammy's bleeped Bono (or possibly Logic; I've seen conflicting reports) saying "Blessed are the shithole countries, for they gave us the American Dream"

That was U2 during their performance. But Logic also had a shithole comment bleeped. “To all the beautiful countries... You are not shitholes.”
posted by chris24 at 8:42 PM on January 28, 2018 [15 favorites]


we should have a robust nationwide 5G network for all sorts of good reasons, but 'China is developing AI' is not really one of them

If the US really wanted to play to its strengths there, it would encourage further immigration of researchers and technical workers. I doubt that's what's going to happen, though.
posted by Coventry at 9:22 PM on January 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


Pacific Standard, 'That's Just the Life of a Warrior': How Disability Activists Are Playing the Long Game Under Trump:
Over the fall and winter, I've been speaking to many ADAPTERS about their experiences during the "#SummerofADAPT," a hashtag and rallying cry that Prizio created in what his colleague Gregg Beratan calls a "moment of genius." The message was consistent. The actions we saw last summer were not frantic, ad-hoc efforts born of simple desperation at the assault on Medicaid—although that threat is real. Instead, ADAPTers would like to be understood as one of America's most practiced and effective civil disobedience organizations.

To tell this story and make the work behind the rallies apparent, Pacific Standard spoke to Anita Cameron. Among disability rights activists, Cameron is legendary. She's been performing acts of civil disobedience for almost four decades, with over 130 arrests. She also pushes the disability community to confront issues of race, class, sexuality, and other aspects of intersecting justice within its own ranks.
...
What's coming next?

We are trying to get co-sponsors for the Disability Integration Act. The act is legislation that will give people with disabilities the right to live in the community with the services and supports that they need. Our previous bills (Community First Choice, etc.) were written for medicaid programs. This was written in a civil rights framework: It's the civil right of people with disabilities to live in the community. The bill addresses transportation, housing, services, and supports in the community. Insurance companies will have to pay. It's a bipartisan bill with bipartisan support. ADAPT is non-partisan. We pick on Democrats and Republicans and independents all equally.

If you're messing with our civil rights, you're going to hear from ADAPT.

Katherine Miller, BuzzFeed, The Past Year And The Breakdown Of Institutional Power:
Donald Trump has an unusual kind of power: He reveals weakness.

This quality he extends to all things — people, traditions, movements — and while you know all this by now, the way he traffics in lingering doubts (e.g., Lyin’ Ted) and the malleable dignity of those around him, in all the small compromises people make with themselves toward an end, what all these individual shortfalls do in the aggregate is to expose the fragility of our modern, national institutions.

What exactly, for instance, is supposed to happen if the president wonders why we accept immigrants from “shithole” countries? Or says a group of white supremacists included “very fine” people? Backhandedly calls the North Korean dictator short and fat?

Nothing, of course. There’s no institution to guard against any of that. And since there’s no way to quantify the harm in any of it, either, (no laws broken, no physical destruction) all these things that President Trump says just land in a weird, rhetorical DMZ, where there is no recourse. That unease defined the last year. And it’s this kind of phantom feeling that something should’ve happened, but didn’t or won’t, that flows through each of the central stories of the moment: Trump’s presidency, the nightmare revelations of sexual abuse, and the accumulating problems of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. What brings all these things together is the assault, from the White House and from journalists, for worse and for better, on core institutions.
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, The antisocial politics of Trump:
At his inauguration, President Trump promised to renew the unity of the American people, claiming that "through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other." Then, Trump seemed intent on creating a reborn civic and social consciousness, and on empowering ordinary people against big government and big money.

And yet, Trump's administration has ushered in a virulently antisocial politics that dissolves the most basic bonds and leaves individuals powerless against both market and state. Trump, like many populists of the right, gained a foothold by promising that a resurgent nationalism could make people feel cohesive, trusting and strong again. But like his right- ­leaning populist predecessors, he has offered only the imaginary bonds of nationalism — the illusion of fellow-feeling and homogeneity — even as his policies destroy the real and foundational bonds of family and community in the arenas of health care, immigration, labor and more.
posted by zachlipton at 10:28 PM on January 28, 2018 [52 favorites]


Yeah, the last couple of ADAPT meetings I've been to have been are like so what is our next strike. Can we get to Toomey's house in Allentown and somehow humiliate him there. They remind me a lot of ACT-UP in their happy warrior/we are going to get them/DIRECT ACTION approach. Toomey should be counting his blessings that most of us are in wheelchairs, because the number one thing keeping us from protesting in front of his stupid house day and night is the fact that there's no good public transportation to his joint and it would mean renting three vans just to get ten of us up there with all of our fly cripple accessories.
posted by angrycat at 4:13 AM on January 29, 2018 [67 favorites]


What exactly, for instance, is supposed to happen if the president wonders why we accept immigrants from “shithole” countries? Or says a group of white supremacists included “very fine” people? Backhandedly calls the North Korean dictator short and fat?

Nothing, of course. There’s no institution to guard against any of that. And since there’s no way to quantify the harm in any of it, either, (no laws broken, no physical destruction) all these things that President Trump says just land in a weird, rhetorical DMZ, where there is no recourse. That unease defined the last year. And it’s this kind of phantom feeling that something should’ve happened, but didn’t or won’t, that flows through each of the central stories of the moment: Trump’s presidency, the nightmare revelations of sexual abuse, and the accumulating problems of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. What brings all these things together is the assault, from the White House and from journalists, for worse and for better, on core institutions


This X a thousand is exactly how I feel lately- he's doings things that aren't technically illegal (to the public eye) with his dangerous actions and statements, but objectively to anyone with half a brain he's betraying his oath to our country. There needs to be recourse, there needs to be justice, but it hasn't arrived yet. That unease and waiting for one of our institutions to swoop in and save us feeling just leads to this weird middle ground. If 2018 isn't the year that saves us, what's left of our institutions in 2019 may not be enough to recover.
posted by andruwjones26 at 5:35 AM on January 29, 2018 [36 favorites]


Three teenagers — all of whom declined to give their last names — said that, above all, it is time for someone new to lead the country.

I get the feeling that even if Putin lost the election, he wouldn't go quietly and would still be pulling strings from the background if he supposedly did. Not in a conspiracy kind of way, but more in the kind of way in which he's so entrenched that they'll never really be rid of him until he's dead, and even then his cronies will continue to carry on with business as usual.
posted by Servo5678 at 6:06 AM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


I love that Nunes and Rs see Rosenstein renewing the FISA warrant on Page as a good thing, instead of holy shit, even a newly Trump-appointed R DAG saw there was a huge problem. To anyone sane this confirms that someone in the Trump campaign had links with Russia, because it wasn't the Obama DOJ that did it.

Also love that the article says Trump has long distrusted Rosenstein. You mean after he refused his resignation as US Attorney when Sessions fired them all? After he nominated him for DAG? And after he concocted the Comey firing memo with him? Then he started distrusting him?
posted by chris24 at 6:14 AM on January 29, 2018 [24 favorites]


John Crace, the Grauniad's sketch writer, on the recent UK TV show featuring Piers Morgan and Donald Trump...
...The real reason the president was so keen on having a state visit to Britain had nothing to do with his insatiable desire to be flattered by someone even more important than Piers. It was because his mother was Scottish and he wanted to return to his roots. Cut to archive footage of his mother. The hair resemblance was uncanny. At the mention of Scotland, Trump gave a quick plug to his golf course. Business was business.
Narcissistic buddies meet in the Piers and Donald show
posted by Mister Bijou at 6:15 AM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


I get the feeling that even if Putin lost the election, he wouldn't go quietly and would still be pulling strings from the background if he supposedly did. Not in a conspiracy kind of way, but more in the kind of way in which he's so entrenched that they'll never really be rid of him until he's dead, and even then his cronies will continue to carry on with business as usual.

Could you repeat that? I was distracted by Sean Hannity crowing about how the DEEP STATE is so entrenched that we'll never really be rid of it because Obama and Hillary's cronies are continuing to carry on with business as usual.

Not that projection has ever been a primary tool of the Mirror Universe Media.
posted by delfin at 6:24 AM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


Trump Tower Russian Lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, Exposed in Swiss Corruption Case (Daily Beast)

Gonna need some more pieces of red string
posted by stonepharisee at 6:29 AM on January 29, 2018 [34 favorites]


Meanwhile, a reminder that 'Russian involvement' really mean's 'Putin's involvement' and/or 'Russian governmental involvement,' separable from what the Russian people may want -

Let me follow up with a reminder that Putin's information operations are far more intensely deployed in Russia, and that instability there means a higher risk of him creating a diversion by escalating violence in any of the trouble spots he has in reserve.

Including potentially the Baltics.
posted by ocschwar at 6:45 AM on January 29, 2018 [4 favorites]


OMG - I just skimmed the actual 5G memo. It is crazypants^maxint. It makes no sense strategically, economically, politically or technically. It's like you gave a bright 14 year old a Heinlein book and told them to come up with a moon landing strategy.
posted by Devonian at 7:00 AM on January 29, 2018 [27 favorites]


There's an out-of-left-field story from Axios that the NSC is shopping around a plan to build a nationalized 5G network within three years[...]

Somehow, by the time the plan is done, I'm pretty confident it will morph into "let's give AT&T a gazillion taxpayer dollars to build the network, then let them keep all the profits."


It's the Broadband Scandal all over again! It makes perfect sense as a way to transfer money from taxpayers to huge corporations unaccountably.
posted by jabah at 7:04 AM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


Also love that the article says Trump has long distrusted Rosenstein. You mean after he refused his resignation as US Attorney when Sessions fired them all? After he nominated him for DAG? And after he concocted the Comey firing memo with him? Then he started distrusting him?

That's exactly it. After the Comey firing, Rosenstein didn't make sure the Russian Affair died a quiet death. That's not being loyal to Donald Trump, and there is nothing which triggers Trump's hatred more than disloyalty.

At that point, all the prior acts are retconned into "He never trusted him", because admitting that Trump was wrong about his original opinion is something that never can happen.
posted by mikelieman at 7:07 AM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


> instability [in Russia] means a higher risk of [Putin] creating a diversion by escalating violence in any of the trouble spots he has in reserve.

Or doing something like orchestrating "conveniently" timed apartment bombings or a school siege right at home.
posted by Westringia F. at 7:10 AM on January 29, 2018 [7 favorites]


About 58 percent of U.S. adults surveyed said that large U.S. corporations or wealthy Americans stand to benefit most from the tax legislation. Just 13 percent said the middle class will benefit the most, the poll showed.

This hyper-reality shit is ridiculous. This example, yes, but the whole phenomenon in general. Why do we lead with a poll about what people believe?! What is important are the facts, what is actually going to happen, and that can be worked out with mathematics. The guy on the street is not the one who knows, stop asking them!

It is a complete abdication of journalistic responsibility when we constantly go to the polls as the main story... If people could be informed and educated, maybe their beliefs would start to align with reality, but if all we ever hear are what people believe, those beliefs will become more and more unmoored.

Stop this fucking train!
posted by Meatbomb at 7:13 AM on January 29, 2018 [122 favorites]


Again Doonesbury is spotty these days, but yesterday's new one was on target.
posted by Melismata at 7:17 AM on January 29, 2018 [24 favorites]


This hyper-reality shit is ridiculous. This example, yes, but the whole phenomenon in general. Why do we lead with a poll about what people believe?! What is important are the facts, what is actually going to happen, and that can be worked out with mathematics. The guy on the street is not the one who knows, stop asking them!

It's a measure of the political will to enact change. I know our system is broken & no longer responds to the will of the people but hopefully someone figures out how to tap into that to reboot us.
posted by scalefree at 7:26 AM on January 29, 2018


This hyper-reality shit is ridiculous. This example, yes, but the whole phenomenon in general. Why do we lead with a poll about what people believe?! What is important are the facts, what is actually going to happen, and that can be worked out with mathematics.

But as is pointed out - what is important doesn't vote. People do. And what dumb-ass thing they believe (or have come to believe in order to justify their preconceptions/desired outcomes) is what drives elections.
posted by phearlez at 7:38 AM on January 29, 2018 [8 favorites]


I don't want to put words into Meatbomb's mouth but I think the point is that yeah reporting on what people think is important... but journalists in general seem to be obsessed with just reporting on opinions. I mean if the reporting was "90% of people think that A is true, here is what reality really is" or preferably the story could just be "here is reality" and the poll was just some additional flavour, things might be better off.
posted by cirhosis at 7:47 AM on January 29, 2018 [24 favorites]


I get the feeling that even if Putin lost the election, he wouldn't go quietly and would still be pulling strings from the background if he supposedly did.

This happened and he did. Russia has a two consecutive term limitation on the Presidency which Putin ran up against in 2008. He made sure that his man, Dmitry Medvedev, was elected president and then Putin proceeded to stick his hand so far up Medvedev's ass that when Medvedev yawned you could see Putin's wedding ring.

Putin was a smart cookie and had them extend the terms from four to six years while Medvedev was in charge and now he won't have to go through that uncomfortable bullshit until 2024.
posted by Talez at 7:47 AM on January 29, 2018 [19 favorites]


Why do we lead with a poll about what people believe?! What is important are the facts, what is actually going to happen, and that can be worked out with mathematics. The guy on the street is not the one who knows, stop asking them!

But the importance of this story is that despite all the sophisticated and coordinated Republican propaganda machinery, and despite the general friendliness of Americans to the idea of tax cuts, and yes, despite the fact that corporate media have generally abdicated responsibility for reporting the facts about partisan policies, people are seeing the truth through the lies. In this case, what people believe is important. If the Republicans can't even convince Americans that tax cuts are a good idea, this is a bellwether of how little public credibility they now have.
posted by biogeo at 7:47 AM on January 29, 2018 [20 favorites]


What is important are the facts, what is actually going to happen, and that can be worked out with mathematics.

It is very difficult to win ideological debates with facts. Perhaps this has always been true, but it appears even more true now. For every fact you can come up with, your opponent can come up with one as well. Maybe his fact isn't actually a fact, so you then have to come up with another fact to demonstrate that, ad infinitum. But there are plenty of people paying plenty of money to define their own sets of "facts" just for the purpose of winning hearts and minds.
posted by me & my monkey at 8:25 AM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


That a wide majority of people have not seen a benefit from the cuts, nor do they expect to see a benefit from the cuts, is a good fact to know heading into the 2018 midterms and should (and likely will) inform a lot of the political messaging we see around them

By next fall, we should have some really good data on supply-side, "trickle-down" economics.

Maybe we can kill it for good.
posted by Dashy at 8:26 AM on January 29, 2018


Maybe we can kill it for good.

Surely THIS is the head that will slay the hydra!
posted by biogeo at 8:38 AM on January 29, 2018 [11 favorites]


It is very difficult to win ideological debates with facts.

Yes, but we don’t need to win the ideological debate. We just need to win elections so we can control the ideology used to create legislation.

There’s a repeating pattern of “How can we convince people to vote for our side?” when that really should not be the focus. We already know that the people who aren’t voting for our side are not interested in facts. The focus should be on energizing the base and getting out the vote, not on educating the willfully ignorant. Again, stop trying to sway the opposition—that is literally a losing game. It is especially wrong-headed to speculate on swaying the opposition by giving up party backbone ideals, like reproductive rights, which will turn away the people who already identify with the party. That’s like throwing two of your 4 aces back in the pile to try to get a royal flush.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:46 AM on January 29, 2018 [31 favorites]


Frelinghuysen won the district 58-39 in 2016. The district went to Trump, 49-48.
posted by notyou at 8:48 AM on January 29, 2018


There’s a repeating pattern of “How can we convince people to vote for our side?” when that really should not be the focus. We already know that the people who aren’t voting for our side are not interested in facts.

I strongly disagree.

People say "there is no changing the minds of people who disagree with us. We just have to concentrate on getting the people who agree with us to show up." And I agree that is easier. But I think if persuasion is really impossible, then democracy is unworkable. It's just the old struggle for power, with no hope of debate and consensus.

But I have to tell you, I think persuasion IS possible. If it were not, advertising would not be such a big industry. And the tools of marketing work. I think the Russian trolls, for instance, have proved that! They can't vote and they are not physically present in the US, yet they influenced people! Or look at Paul Manafort's lobbying career. What is lobbying but persuasion?

That is persuasion used for evil. But it can also be done in good cause. Look at how opinions of gay marriage have changed. What was the civil rights movement, but persuasion? What is any non-violent protest movement?

Here is what I think. I think cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable. I think when you calmly and rationally point out the contradictions in someone's belief system, that is painful to them. And they will get angry at you. But it also undermines their ability to maintain that belief system. It undermines their willingness to fight for their beliefs.

There is not a human on earth who isn't a hypocrite, at least to some extent. So you can use this against anyone. You can use it for good or evil. But I believe it can be a stronger tool for good! The problem is that many good people are unwilling to use it, because they don't like causing that pain. But I believe a little relationship pain now is nothing compared to the pain of war or dictatorship or ethnic cleansing. And those are things that CAN happen anywhere, once people give up on persuasion.

I think these are the rules of persuasion... 1) Repetition works 2) Peer pressure and showing support in numbers work 3) Personal stories work, but telling them makes us vulnerable, and requires courage 4) "We" statements, not "you" statements 5) You can't persuade someone who feels threatened by you. 6) You can't persuade someone who thinks you hold them in contempt. 7) Your credibility is your greatest asset. Stick to facts. 8.) You don't have to agree on everything. Stick to your main point. 9) You may persuade people who are listening to the conversation even if you don't persuade anyone participating 10) Don't expect them to change their mind during the conversation. Just make your point and move on. It takes time for the discomfort of cognitive dissonance to grow intolerable.

You can change minds but you'll never see them change. That's what I think. Plant the seeds and move on. Like Johnny Appleseed. Some of them will bear fruit, later.

Because I believe this, I believe democracy can work. But it requires eternal vigilance. It requires work. It requires all of us to keep planting seeds.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:48 AM on January 29, 2018 [59 favorites]


It doesn’t matter if persuasion is possible. That shouldn’t be the focus. We already have the numbers to win, we need to worry about getting the people who already agree to the polls. We can worry about persuasion when we have the majority. And frankly I don’t give a shit if they are never persuaded. I give a shit that my rights are intact and that the party obtains, and retains, enough power in the future to assure it. Let the dumbasses of the nation stew in their ignorance, I could not possibly care less.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:51 AM on January 29, 2018 [42 favorites]


cjelli: "Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen (R), Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, to retire, per multiple sources, including the NRCC, which confirms he will not be running for reëlection."

Nice. As someone who grew up in one of the few democratic areas of Morris County, NJ, it's nice to see that area trending blue. My mother knew Rodney personally and was known to make catty remarks about how he was an example of the effects of inbreeding in the upper classes. I miss that woman.
posted by octothorpe at 9:02 AM on January 29, 2018 [16 favorites]


They aren't mutually exclusive. Where they are, I certainly agree that turnout is the key and that politician's should NOT change their positions in the hope of capturing undecided voters.

But it's not like you're going to bow out of a conversation at Christmas dinner where you're trying to convince your slightly racist uncle to maybe be less racist to go out and knock on doors to convince people to go vote. You can and should do both.

All OnceUponATime is saying, I think, is that while the focus should be on getting more people to vote more often, it doesn't follow that we should give up trying to convince those who aren't already convinced. If it did, then the next most effective tactic would be to keep those we don't agree with from voting and more generally destroying democracy.
posted by VTX at 9:04 AM on January 29, 2018 [7 favorites]


Trump's most desperate move yet? Here's what pushing out Rod Rosenstein would mean. (Aaron Blake | WaPo)
It wouldn't bring the already-advanced Russia investigation to an end, but former federal prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg said it would carry a “huge upside for Trump.”

“Rosenstein is in charge of the Mueller probe. He picked Mueller and has testified under oath that he won't fire him absent clear misconduct,” Zeidenberg said. “So if Rosenstein goes, Trump would pick a new deputy attorney general who would no doubt be much more compliant to Trump.”

While White House Counsel Donald McGahn effectively stopped Trump from trying to fire Mueller in June, Rosenstein is technically the gatekeeper for that decision. With Attorney General Jeff Sessions having recused himself from the Russia probe — a decision that Trump has publicly lamented — Rosenstein has taken oversight of it as the Justice Department's No. 2-ranking official.

That means he has final say on decisions like whether to fire Mueller, with Trump's only recourse being to remove Rosenstein and try to get someone else to do what he wants. If Rosenstein were removed, that “someone else” would either be a replacement deputy attorney general or the No. 3-ranking Justice Department official, Rachel Brand. (Philip Bump has the sequential rundown of who would take oversight of the Russia probe if Trump began firing people who refuse to do his bidding.)

But while firing Mueller appears to be off the table — for now, at least — this person could also hypothetically make more Trump-friendly decisions in other ways.

“He could install someone who would limit Mueller in subtle ways that are defensible,” former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti said. “Under the special counsel regulations, the attorney general (or acting attorney general, in this case) can ask Mueller for explanations of his actions and overrule them.”
posted by Barack Spinoza at 9:07 AM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


At this point in time, if Rod Rosenstein left, it would look like he was pushed out, especially as Trump has the subtlety of a hammer. The last time Trump got rid of someone with that amount of hamfisted-ness, he got the Mueller probe.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 9:14 AM on January 29, 2018 [12 favorites]


'Turning out the base' also requires persuasion.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:14 AM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


> "As someone who grew up in one of the few democratic areas of Morris County, NJ ..."

Morris county represent!

(I'm from Madison.)
posted by kyrademon at 9:16 AM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


All OnceUponATime is saying, I think, is that while the focus should be on getting more people to vote more often, it doesn't follow that we should give up trying to convince those who aren't already convinced. If it did, then the next most effective tactic would be to keep those we don't agree with from voting and more generally destroying democracy.

Considering that these beliefs tend to come from a religious fundamentalist point of view, or other deeply-seated cultural indoctrination starting from childhood on up, I think that the likelihood of convincing these people is roughly equal to the likelihood of converting them from religious fundamentalism to atheism—and in fact, not even roughly equal, but almost literally that, to their minds. It’s not gonna happen.

And quite frankly, considering the opposing party is totally fine with suppressing the vote, buying up media outlets to control propaganda dissemination, rewriting school books, and otherwise controlling the cultural identity of the country so that even the left thinks we have to give a fair shot to totalitarianism and theocracy or we can’t call ourselves liberals, I would also say that this mealy-mouthed approach where we have to have everyone on board before we feel comfortable about taking power has gotten us precisely into this position, where we are watching our democracy crumble before our eyes to the delight of people who are happy to be unfair to the citizenry.

Enough. This is like the trickle-down economics of ideology, it doesn’t work and it has never worked and never will work. The opposition has all the facts at their fingertips. They are not ignorant of them, they are deliberately excising them and misleading people in order to solidify their power. We are not in school. We are not here to teach. We are here to regain control.
posted by Autumnheart at 9:17 AM on January 29, 2018 [33 favorites]




...[econometric facts and future economic events] can be worked out with mathematics.

Why do you believe that? It doesn't seem to have been true up to this point, and I think the economy is too complex for tractable mathematical models to have much predictive power.

Also, I think there's a strong case to be made that people's views of economic circumstances and events have a big impact on the economy, and surveys are the only way to measure such views.
posted by Coventry at 9:31 AM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


Sorry, but oh shit.
posted by Sophie1 at 9:32 AM on January 29, 2018 [6 favorites]


Susan Hennessey (Lawfare) re: McCabe: This is slightly early than anticipated but not entirely out of keeping with McCabe’s long-states plans to retire in spring.

If he was already looking to retire in a couple months I can't blame him for deciding he's had enough of this shit and bailing early. But in the context of, y'know, everything, it's hard not to feel deeply uneasy about it.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:36 AM on January 29, 2018 [16 favorites]


98% of people have seen no benefit from tax cuts

I'm waiting on the IRS to update their withholding calculator so I can file a new W-4, as are most Americans.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:38 AM on January 29, 2018 [7 favorites]


Somebody on twitter said he was eligible for his pension in March. Anybody have a bead on that? Wouldn't that sort of raise the oh shit stakes of his leaving now?
posted by angrycat at 9:39 AM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


Sounds like he's burning his PTO so he's technically still employed until March but won't actually be doing the job.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:40 AM on January 29, 2018 [19 favorites]


If his eligibility is in March by calendar date then it would be almost shocking if he didn't have enough stored leave - at this point in the age of his career - to take him through that point by today.
posted by phearlez at 9:41 AM on January 29, 2018 [8 favorites]


JoeZydeco remember that many of the tax cuts for people in the bottom 99% expire quickly, and may never actually be put in place.

After the Bush tax cuts expired several people who had adjusted their withholding downward got seriously burned.

I'm leaving mine at the current level, if the tax cuts are real I'll get a somewhat bigger return, if they're illusory then I won't wind up owing the IRS money. I'd expect it's possible that this year, and maybe next, people will see lower taxes. Don't count on it for much longer though.
posted by sotonohito at 9:42 AM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


If it were all on the up-and-up I would think he would've announced that he's taking paid leave before his step-down actually became effective.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:44 AM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


Was McCabe the one Trump was talking about when he was going on about how "Terry is Hillary"
posted by angrycat at 9:54 AM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


@Dafna Linzer BREAKING: Andy McCabe just quit as deputy FBI director, per @petewilliamsnbc he will remain on "leave" till Spring when he can officially retire from the bureau.

So he's retiring at the expected time, will get his benefits, etc.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:58 AM on January 29, 2018 [4 favorites]


Any chance that McCabe is retiring now so that he can testify at some point in the near future?
posted by Mister Fabulous at 10:04 AM on January 29, 2018


McCabe has already testified before Congress a couple times. I thought he went before Mueller, too, but I can't find a link for that so I'm not sure.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:11 AM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


CBS News is tweeting: "NEW: FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has stepped down, CBS News' Pat Milton reports; source says McCabe was "forced to step down""
posted by mcduff at 10:17 AM on January 29, 2018 [11 favorites]


welp, here goes?
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:18 AM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


It might not be the end of the world since McCabe was retiring anyway, but there's no way we can have any confidence he wasn't pressured into quitting early...since Trump has been pressuring him publicly. Wray needs to make some sort of statement that this wasn't a political retribution, and if he doesn't, I think we can read between the lines.

Also, McCabe retiring has no effect on his ability to testify to Trump's obstruction, it might even free him up to do so without fear of reprisal. Who replaces McCabe will be the most important question, and whether that people is a respected career FBI and law enforcement officer...or someone only one step removed from the Trump crimeworld like Wray.

But the good news is either way we can expect Democrats to overwhelmingly confirm them.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:18 AM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


CNN is also reporting McCabe was forced out:

Steve Brusk‏ @stevebruskCNN
From our Justice team One source said FBI Deputy Director McCabe's departure was not in the plans as of Friday. The source said McCabe was told this morning to step down. A second source described McCabe’s departure as being “removed”.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:18 AM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


After the Bush tax cuts expired several people who had adjusted their withholding downward got seriously burned. I'm leaving mine at the current level, if the tax cuts are real I'll get a somewhat bigger return, if they're illusory then I won't wind up owing the IRS money.

Same here.

I'd expect it's possible that this year, and maybe next, people will see lower taxes. Don't count on it for much longer though.

Thus spake Patercallipygos, while I was visiting for Christmas - "yeah, it looks like the new tax plan is going to be good for both me and the cranberry business this year and next year, at least. ....Which kills me, becuase I can't stand that fucker."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:20 AM on January 29, 2018 [12 favorites]


I wonder who they’re going to replace him with. At the rate this administration is going, I wouldn’t be surprised if Toonces the Cat got appointed.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:21 AM on January 29, 2018 [12 favorites]


so did Wray just get the Nunes memo
did the Nunes memo target McCabe
are we fucked
sorry for all the questions
posted by angrycat at 10:24 AM on January 29, 2018 [12 favorites]


considering the opposing party is totally fine with suppressing the vote, buying up media outlets to control propaganda dissemination, rewriting school books, and otherwise controlling the cultural identity of the country

I think, in the eternal debate over whether we need to try to convince "the other side", it's important to remember this particular fact. They have weaponized everything, and we have to as well. We need to get out the vote, we need the activism, and we especially need to take back the media. They decry the liberal media, let's give 'em what they want - liberal media! Where is it? Where's our Fox News?

But those questions aside, it's nearly impossible to accomplish what it takes to protect our rights without the determination, time, action, and ideology. Giving up is not an option, because authoritarianism seems to be a cancer built in to human society. The battle will never end. Getting out the vote to our side and persuading the other side to come around to our point of view aren't mutually exclusive, they're both part of the fight against autocrats, dictators, oligarchy, and other abusers of power.

At least that's how I see it. I'll never be a politician, and if you're reading this, you probably aren't one and won't ever be either, so our ability to exercise influence is limited to the time and energy of a single person, which means that whatever we believe, our job is pretty much the grunt work of organizing, voting, signing petitions, and the other chores of democracy. Given that, I think it's pretty obvious who we should be working against - the people trying to suppress the vote. Fight them however, wherever, and whenever you can.
posted by saysthis at 10:26 AM on January 29, 2018 [8 favorites]


> FBI Deputy Director McCabe's departure was not in the plans as of Friday. The source said McCabe was told this morning to step down. A second source described McCabe’s departure as being “removed”.

It's been said before that we are living through a faster and stupider version of the Nixon timeline. This would be the first step of the stupid Saturday Night Massacre. If Rosenstein is pushed out next, I think it's take-to-the-streets or goodbye to Rule of Law.
(NYT: Secret Memo Hints at a New Republican Target: Rod Rosenstein)
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:27 AM on January 29, 2018 [13 favorites]


I wish! Toonces would almost certainly be more ethical than whoever the real replacement turns out to be.

Plus, at least we would know in advance that Toonces would drive everyone off the cliff, instead of having to speculate.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:30 AM on January 29, 2018 [26 favorites]


See, when I said "Oh shit." I meant it. He wasn't going to retire in the middle of this shitshow. He was forced out.
posted by Sophie1 at 10:30 AM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


This would be the first step of the stupid Saturday Night Massacre

I was going to say we could call this one the Monday Morning Massacre, but then I realized that it's already afternoon in Washington. So much for alliteration.
posted by nubs at 10:31 AM on January 29, 2018


Monday Midday Massacre.
posted by Sophie1 at 10:32 AM on January 29, 2018 [10 favorites]


Seeing conflicting reports now. CBS changed from "forced" to "urged" which could mean this was at the behest of Mueller.

Also: Alliteration, uh, finds a way.
posted by Slackermagee at 10:34 AM on January 29, 2018 [11 favorites]


From the Department of Too Fucking Late Now: CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin: ‘I regret my role’ in Hillary Clinton false equivalence

“I think there was a lot of false equivalence in the 2016 campaign. That every time we said something, pointed out something about Donald Trump — whether it was his business interests, or grab ’em by the p–––y, we felt like, ‘Oh, we gotta, like, talk about — we gotta say something bad about Hillary.’ And I think it led to a sense of false equivalence that was misleading, and I regret my role in doing that.”

These people don't ever get to recover their reputations. There's no living 2016 down.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:37 AM on January 29, 2018 [125 favorites]


The renewal shows that the Justice Department under President Trump saw reason to believe that the associate, Carter Page, was acting as a Russian agent. But the reference to Mr. Rosenstein’s actions in the memo — a much-disputed document that paints the investigation into Russian election meddling as tainted from the start — indicates that Republicans may be moving to seize on his role as they seek to undermine the inquiry.

So this bit is really interesting, as Asha Rangappa points out. By the time Rosenstein would have approved the application to extend a FISA warrant on Carter Page, the warrant would have had to have been extended at least once before. Which means before Rosenstein was even in the job, the FBI must have already had to demonstrate to the court some kind of foreign intelligence they obtained through the surveillance on Page. And then, for Rosenstein to approve an application for an extension, they would have had to have identified new evidence obtained during the previous three months.

While I'm sure the Nunes memo cherry-picks facts, this all blows up in their face to the extent it confirms surveillance of Carter Page was repeatedly found to be producing intelligence on foreign intelligence operations.
posted by zachlipton at 10:42 AM on January 29, 2018 [17 favorites]


Donald Trump isn't the President, part infinity:

@peterbakernyt: Trump on Afghanistan: "There’s no talking to the Taliban. We don’t want to talk to the Taliban."

@DefenseBaron: WTF? We just spent two nights in Afghanistan w @CENTCOM’s Gen Votel this weekend where US commander after commander said they were GLAD they had a new S. Asia strategy SPECIFICALLY w the mission goal to pressure the Taliban to reconciliation talks.

@nancyayoussef: I was there and can confirm. Reconciliation is the lynchpin of the strategy in Afghanistan, US mil says.
posted by zachlipton at 10:52 AM on January 29, 2018 [77 favorites]


Greg Sargent, WaPo: Is Trump a greater threat than Nixon? Here’s the big danger ahead.
The Sunday shows confirmed an alarming development: Republicans in Congress do not feel any urgency to protect special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, even though it has now been confirmed that President Trump tried to fire Mueller — and that the possibility of Trump trying to remove Mueller is seen as very real by Trump’s own advisers right now.

This sets up a possible worst-case scenario in the coming confrontation with Mueller that could take us into territory that is beyond anything this country endured during Watergate. To flesh this out, I spoke to Tim Weiner, the veteran journalist and author of a highly regarded, harshly critical history of the FBI that chronicles Richard Nixon’s battles with the agency.

“We are two tweets away from an extraordinary constitutional crisis,” Weiner told me. “We are in a very dangerous point now in American political life.”
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:55 AM on January 29, 2018 [21 favorites]


That every time we said something, pointed out something about Donald Trump — whether it was his business interests, or grab ’em by the p–––y, we felt like, ‘Oh, we gotta, like, talk about — we gotta say something bad about Hillary.’

Well the elephant in the room is why they felt they had to do this. And we all know why. The GOP/conservative faction in this country purposely set about to create this situation by loudly complaining every time something bad was said about them or their positions, until the news media began reflexively censoring themselves unless they had something bad to say about non-GOP/conservative and their positions. It was an intentional, crafty, long-range plan that worked as well as they hoped and gave the Predisency* to the Mangled Apricot Hellbeast.
posted by Mental Wimp at 11:02 AM on January 29, 2018 [58 favorites]


9.5 months to the midterms, and it literally feels like a race with the Nazis for the arc of the goddamn covenant.

For anyone else whose adrenals are freaking out a little bit right now: I’m telling myself that Mueller and co have a plan for every scenario. That plan might be releasing all the information and trusting in direct civic action, which is still bloody terrifying, but there will be a plan.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:05 AM on January 29, 2018 [78 favorites]


it's not the years, it's the mileage
posted by entropicamericana at 11:10 AM on January 29, 2018 [39 favorites]


From the WaPo: David Bowdich, a senior FBI official who led the agency’s response to the San Bernadino terrorist attack, is expected to serve as the next deputy director, according to people familiar with the plans.

So a career FBI person, and not a Trumpette, one hopes.
posted by stonepharisee at 11:13 AM on January 29, 2018 [17 favorites]


Has a country ever had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission aimed only at journalists? I see a great need.

Fuck Toobin. Not that I was previously on his side or anything, but he should have to turn in his newsman license.

I’m telling myself that Mueller and co have a plan for every scenario.

Everbody on Mueller's side has been working on this kind of thing for their entire careers, decades, probably centuries combined. Trump's team arrives on the scene like Eddie the Eagle.
posted by rhizome at 11:17 AM on January 29, 2018 [4 favorites]


Mod note: Let's not lapse too much into anxious chatter, y'all.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:22 AM on January 29, 2018 [8 favorites]


About? It's still morning for some of us.

Last week it was reported that Christopher Wray threatened to quit if McCabe was forced out.

Welp, that's happened.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 11:23 AM on January 29, 2018 [11 favorites]


I'm putting this up a little anxiously, but this is the time to read "The Open Society and Its Enemies" by Karl Popper. And know that Popper was not really writing up against Plato or Marx, but against our old friend, Leo Strauss, the inspiration and mentor for the neoconservatives in the Bush administration.
Popper is relevant now because he wrote during the darkest darkness for upholding democracy, transparency and freedom, even in the fight against the Hitler (while Strauss argued for "the noble lie", and necessary authority and manipulation of the masses).
I'm not linking to anything, because all I can find online is dominated by all the university leftists who didn't get the context and primarily read it at an attack on Marx (which it also was) rather than an attack on the fantasy of good totalitarianism which it primarily was. When I read Popper during my graduate program, my professor said it was all fine, but I should never quote from him in my work if I wanted a job.
Today Popper is mostly problematic because he inspired the "Third Way" people, and of course Soros. But read before you shout…
posted by mumimor at 11:23 AM on January 29, 2018 [11 favorites]


They're not pro-life, they're pro-birth, because that keeps women tied down.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:57 PM on January 28 [107 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]


Agree with everything you said up to this point, Eris, but I have to disagree here. If they were pro-birth they'd agitate to fully fund health care for pregnant women. Instead they try to withdraw funding for community clinics that provide reproductive care to low-income families and cut out the ACA requirement that pregnancy be covered in insurance policies. So, no, they are not pro-birth, they are "slut"-haters, where a slut is defined as a woman who gets pregnant but didn't want to. That's what keeps women down.
posted by Mental Wimp at 11:28 AM on January 29, 2018 [23 favorites]


Meanwhile Trump's boss is keeping his pen from the paper.

CNN: Russian jet flies within 5 feet of US Navy plane, Pentagon says

Politico, yesterday: Deadline looms for Trump and Russia sanctions
posted by Rust Moranis at 11:35 AM on January 29, 2018 [7 favorites]


Politico, yesterday: Deadline looms for Trump and Russia sanctions

Don’t worry, Donald. You’re a straight white male who’s just having a bit of trouble with the most important job on the planet. I’m sure Congress is ready to give you all the do-overs you want.
posted by Talez at 11:37 AM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


From that CNN piece about the Russian jet:
"This interaction was determined to be unsafe due to the SU-27 closing to within five feet and crossing directly through the EP-3's flight path, causing the EP-3 to fly through the SU-27's jet wash," Capt. Pamela Kunze, a spokesperson for US Naval Forces Europe told CNN.
The writers are ripping off Top Gun now?
posted by hanov3r at 11:40 AM on January 29, 2018 [21 favorites]


Frankly, if I were a career civil servant in this ridiculous administration, I'd also be doing some basic math along the lines of:

(Date of pension eligibility) - (accrued sick and personal leave time) = the earliest possible second I can get off of the HMS Trumptanic.
posted by darkstar at 11:43 AM on January 29, 2018 [25 favorites]


The writers are day-drinking and doing everything they can to get fired without losing their pensions and healthcare
posted by mumimor at 11:46 AM on January 29, 2018 [16 favorites]


Considering that these beliefs tend to come from a religious fundamentalist point of view, or other deeply-seated cultural indoctrination starting from childhood on up, I think that the likelihood of convincing these people is roughly equal to the likelihood of converting them from religious fundamentalism to atheism—and in fact, not even roughly equal, but almost literally that, to their minds. It’s not gonna happen.

I think that the change that needs to happen is hard and unlikely, but possible. My own political journey was a bit backwards. Over the span of a decade, I went from an atheist Randian libertarian to Christian Democratic Socialist.

The two biggest factors (besides basic empirical evidence) that turned me liberal were Jesus and Metafilter. Jesus is pretty clear about how to treat the poor, marginalized, sick and downtrodden and not very fond of their powerful, hateful oppressors.

Being on Metafilter (and the internet at large) for years exposed me to voices outside my own little bubble. I read, and read, and read the life experiences of others both in the linked post content and comments. I don't comment much - but the effects this exposure has had on my worldview, my tolerance and general humanity has been staggering.

Spurred by changes in me and our resulting conversations - my husband has gone from a 2nd amendment gun nut Republican/ Libertarian to a (mostly) pacifist Democratic Socialist Marx quoter. He left his job in Banking IT to go to Nursing School because he could no longer stomach working for what he sees as evil.

Enough. This is like the trickle-down economics of ideology, it doesn’t work and it has never worked and never will work. The opposition has all the facts at their fingertips. They are not ignorant of them, they are deliberately excising them and misleading people in order to solidify their power. We are not in school. We are not here to teach. We are here to regain control.

I don't think it's an either/or thing. As a liberal Christian I feel a responsibility to educate the Christians around me who seem ignorant of the actual tenets of their faith. This past year I have felt called to a kind of reverse evangelism. I have never felt ok proselytizing to non believers, but I feel a strong need to speak the truth against oppression and lies to fellow Christians. While I'm not under any illusions that I am changing many minds, as things further deteriorate with this administration, people do seem to at least listen to my words with an if not open, not totally closed mind.

I'm also a part of the homeschooling community here - which brings me into contact with the children of these Christians as well. As we are often having these conversations in front of (and oftentimes with) their kids, I have hope that the exposure to other views will plant seeds for future thought.

This isn't something I expect everyone to be doing at all. While I don't think it is a responsibility for the rest of the left to be reaching out to anyone in the religious right I feel a personal responsibility to do so. Even for me it often seems fruitless and unrewarding. I have lost friends and been shut out of so many learning and social opportunities for my kids because of my views.

TLDR : While I don't think this is something that everyone needs to do, it hurts a bit to be told it's useless.
posted by Lapin at 11:47 AM on January 29, 2018 [91 favorites]


TLDR : While I don't think this is something that everyone needs to do, it hurts a bit to be told it's useless.

It might be an admirable path for an individual, and you might reap a harvest of a soul or two or three somewhere down the line. But as a strategy, it does not scale. It is staggeringly labor intensive, and it necessarily calls upon the labor of people who are already threatened and abused — it calls on the abused to help redeem their abusers.

If that’s something you want to do with your life, fine. But discussing it as a political strategy, or as a matter of policy, myopically perpetuates those same dynamics of abuse.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:53 AM on January 29, 2018 [24 favorites]


so my negative take was not approved for this thread but it is best summed up in this twitter thread which hopefully is more acceptable.
posted by Wilder at 11:53 AM on January 29, 2018 [8 favorites]


TLDR : While I don't think this is something that everyone needs to do, it hurts a bit to be told it's useless.
posted by Lapin at 11:47 AM on January 29 [5 favorites +] [!]


I don't think you discussing these ideas with fellow Christians is useless. Far from it. If everyone like you did the same and changed 2 or 3 minds enough to see that Trump is not the means to their ends, this would have an enormous impact. It's not the only thing we need to do and other things may be more "efficient" in terms of time and money, but even in this day and age it's acknowledged that retail politics is still enormously important and effective.

TLDR: Keep it up, Lapin.
posted by Mental Wimp at 11:57 AM on January 29, 2018 [39 favorites]


Here is the thing: I don't think it's useless. And I think we shoot ourselves in the foot by insisting it is. Because people like Lapin--and thank you for sharing your story, because I appreciate that--people like Lapin make it easier for people in the middle of this--this cult indoctrination, shall we say, to access a different kind of world. People like Lapin who are snapping "Excuse me, but you are unChristian" at people who are not behaving in accordance with Jesus' teachings have a weapon that someone like me doesn't have, and it's harder to write someone like her off.

This culture war, we win it by fighting it on all fronts. Someone who is turning to her church and saying "You are being unkind to foreigners, and Jesus said we were to be kind. You are turning away the hungry. You are acting like the Philistines, and I am so sorry to be in this temple because if Jesus were to visit it, he'd drive your tax collectors out of i" is hard to write off, especially if she's been in that church for a good long time.

Remember my tired old "quit randomly insulting and writing off "red" states, Metafilter, because you have allies there and you are only isolating them and disenhearting them" drumbeat?

Well, here it comes again: we win nothing by telling people who are making their own way as best they can that their efforts are worthless. This is not a culture war--because now it is a culture war--that we will win in any one single way. We win it through empathy and little chats over coffee and angry fights between sisters and repudiated parents and children given a place to stay for the holidays. We win it through sincerely reaching out and forming relationships and resonating down our own existing networks the message: love wins, and if it doesn't, it should. We send ripples out around us, wherever we are.

It is a bad idea to drop what you are doing, if you are ensconced in a blue state and surrounded by other liberals, and to go find a chunk of what you think are conservative strongholds and proselytize to strangers. It does not work. That much is true. Those of you who have no connection to any of these corners, or who (like me!) can't touch relationships with conservative family members again, who burn at the touch--well, to you and I it falls the task of galvanizing people who don't realize what is wrong, who mean well but don't act well, who hold more regressive ideas than they think. To those of us with connections to conservative circles, or who run in these waters and have the social networks necessary to enforce change: my, you have weapons to wield indeed.

Instead of finding a concentrated set of strangers to bear your message, set out feelers and listen--to people who are already in contact with you--and speak to them back. Reach out to people who already have a reason to trust you, who have some association with you as a real person and not just a shill. That's where you make a difference. And wherever you are, whoever you know, just by speaking up for what you believe in and living according to those beliefs as best you can: that is the thing you can do that will make change.

I am taking a very different path from Lapin, or from corb, or from Chrysotom our new elected overlord! But just because my path is different from theirs does not make it lesser, or less likely to be effective. To those whom much are given, much will be expected: and the inverse too applies. Let us all go through the world doing the best we can as we can.
posted by sciatrix at 12:04 PM on January 29, 2018 [67 favorites]


By next fall, we should have some really good data on supply-side, "trickle-down" economics.

Maybe we can kill it for good.


We had plenty of data from the Kansas experiment, which ruined their economy to the point that Brownback left office in disgrace (no doubt to a cushy lobbying job) and Republicans in the legislature implemented tax increases.

Heck, we had plenty of data from the Reagan tax cuts and Clinton and Obama tax increases. The so-called "liberal media" still refused to report objective facts and stuck with their phony "balanced" storyline of "Republicans say tax increases will spur economic growth while critics say most of the tax cuts go to the rich" -- balancing, that is, an objective falsehood with objective truth. And hiding behind attribution in both cases. Feh.
posted by Gelatin at 12:06 PM on January 29, 2018 [20 favorites]


tl;dr: use your resources. if you happen to be well placed to convert others, do that. if you are not well placed in the center of a web of relationships to act as an emissary, fucking do something else.

be the moral center of your world. Do the right thing, and by all the gods don't do it silently. Make a point of doing the right thing, unflinchingly and openly, and in doing so set an example for the people who are already part of a group with you.
posted by sciatrix at 12:06 PM on January 29, 2018 [26 favorites]


If that’s something you want to do with your life, fine. But discussing it as a political strategy, or as a matter of policy, myopically perpetuates those same dynamics of abuse.

I'm not calling for this as a national strategy at all - and definitely not expecting anyone other than myself (and perhaps other white liberal Christians) to do this work. I just think it is valid labor to be doing on an individual level.
posted by Lapin at 12:07 PM on January 29, 2018 [19 favorites]


(To be honest, if anything I am extremely angry that other white liberal Christians aren't already doing that work and allying themselves with Black progressive churches. For more on that, see my commentary in the Satanic Temple thread.

Seriously, guys, you guys have so much high ground, and the liberal denominations are so very quiet and timid about using it. At least from my admittedly ex-Catholic perspective over here.)
posted by sciatrix at 12:10 PM on January 29, 2018 [19 favorites]


which ruined their economy to the point that Brownback left office in disgrace (no doubt to a cushy lobbying job)

Worse. He's on the taxpayer dime as the "U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom". He basically gets paid by us to go around preaching that bigoted Christians should be allowed to hate and ostracize the gays without consequence.

Because, you know, if a middle-aged white, straight, Christian man can't fail upwards what do they really have in life?
posted by Talez at 12:13 PM on January 29, 2018 [13 favorites]


The House of Representatives has printed tickets inviting guests to attend the "State of the Uniom," so this is going to go great.
posted by zachlipton at 12:14 PM on January 29, 2018 [64 favorites]


“The state of our Uniom is Stromg!”
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:16 PM on January 29, 2018 [70 favorites]


msalt: "Also, won't this create a lawless no-man's-land south of the wall? Seems like people will be easily able to get on a sliver of American soil and request asylum, bear children, commit crimes without realistic risk of being arrested, dump toxic waste, etc. Has Neal Stephenson written a novel about this yet?"

Maybe it'll end up a nature preserve like the Korean DMZ.

Metafilter: "a race with the Nazis for the arc of the goddamn covenant. "
posted by Mitheral at 12:16 PM on January 29, 2018 [10 favorites]


Ladies amd Gemtlemem, the Presidemt of the Umited States of Anerica!
posted by Sophie1 at 12:18 PM on January 29, 2018 [20 favorites]


Bloomberg, Jennifer Jacobs, On Flight to Davos, Trump Erupted Over DOJ Role in Russia Probe
President Donald Trump’s frustrations with the Russia investigation boiled over on Air Force One last week when he learned that a top Justice Department official had warned against releasing a memo that could undercut the probe, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

Trump erupted in anger while traveling to Davos after learning that Associate Attorney General Stephen Boyd warned that it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to release a classified memo written by House Republican staffers. The memo outlines alleged misdeeds at the FBI and Justice Department related to the Russia investigation.
...
Trump warned Sessions and others they need to excel at their jobs or go down as the worst in history, the two people said.
...
Trump met with Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray at the White House last Monday to discuss missing text messages sent between two FBI agents who had expressed anti-Trump views. One of the agents later left his investigation and Mueller removed the other after learning of the texts.

Kelly held separate meetings or phone calls with senior Justice Department officials last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to convey Trump’s displeasure and lecture them on the White House’s expectations, according to the people. Kelly has taken to ending such conversations with a disclaimer that the White House isn’t expecting officials to do anything illegal or unethical.

After Trump’s strong reaction on Air Force One over the Boyd letter, White House officials, including Kelly, sprang into action again, lashing Justice Department officials Thursday over the decision to send the letter, according to the people. Sarah Isgur Flores, director of public affairs at the Department of Justice, declined to comment.
posted by zachlipton at 12:19 PM on January 29, 2018 [30 favorites]


What liberal denominations? United Church of Christ, maybe (though they are Congregational, so it varies from church to church). Unitarian Universalists aren't technically Christian anymore. Mainline denominations (Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist) have all been undermined and split by the Religious Right for decades, trying to keep women and gays from being assigned humanity and dignity. Liberal Christianity is not an organized group, and what there is of it is already in a fight for its life.
posted by rikschell at 12:20 PM on January 29, 2018 [6 favorites]


The House of Representatives has printed tickets inviting guests to attend the "State of the Uniom," so this is going to go great.
posted by zachlipton at 12:14 PM on January 29 [12 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]

As one Twitter reply said, "Greatmess!"
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:22 PM on January 29, 2018 [38 favorites]


Liberal Christianity is not an organized group, and what there is of it is already in a fight for its life.

Why not, for heaven's sake?

Pun not intended but there for the taking.
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:27 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


> Kelly has taken to ending such conversations with a disclaimer that the White House isn’t expecting officials to do anything illegal or unethical.

Does he say "wink wink" out loud when it's a phone conversation?
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:32 PM on January 29, 2018 [25 favorites]


Because liberals tend to be concerned with education, facts, rationality, and the more you study the Bible the more you see that you cannot square the circle. Jesus has some great teachings, but once you start picking and choosing beliefs at a certain point it gets easier to just give up and become agnostic.
posted by rikschell at 12:35 PM on January 29, 2018 [7 favorites]


Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Politico interviews Senator Mark Warner, who has some significant updates about the Senate Intel Committee's investigation: ‘We’ve Had New Information That Raises More Questions’
Congress late last year received “extraordinarily important new documents” in its investigation of President Donald Trump and his campaign’s possible collusion with the 2016 Russian election hacking, opening up significant new lines of inquiry in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe of the president, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) says in an exclusive new interview.

Warner, the intel committee’s top Democrat, says “end-of-the-year document dumps” produced “very significant” revelations that “opened a lot of new questions” that Senate investigators are now looking into, meaning the inquiry into Trump and the Russia hacking—already nearly a year old—will not be finished for months longer. “We’ve had new information that raises more questions,” Warner says in the interview, an extensive briefing on the state of the Senate’s Trump-Russia probe for The Global Politico, our weekly podcast on world affairs.[...]

On the revelations contained in the latest document dumps, for example, Warner says the panel still cannot attest to their “veracity or truthfulness” and is now “trying to either corroborate or not” by calling up to a dozen new witnesses. He also says that the allegations contained in the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele and made public last year remain neither “proven nor, conversely, disproven,” despite the extensive investigations. “That's pretty amazing,” he says, “because as long as that sits out there, there's going to be a cloud that hangs over this administration.”
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:36 PM on January 29, 2018 [16 favorites]


I think the main impediment to church union is institutional inertia combined with disagreements over polity (how the church is organized) and, yes, race.

The mainline churches are sorta kinda engaged in various talks about how to unite but they were suspended at one point because all the black churches basically said "we're not going to continue this conversation if we don't address the history of racism in the church". Plus polity -- Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians have bishops (though their function is somewhat different in each denomination) and Presbyterians have committees basically, while other churches have a local (congregational) model and relatively weak centralized bodies.

Basically the mainline churches spent the 70s and 80s fighting over the ordination of women, and the 90s through the 00s fighting over gay clergy and marriage equality. I think race is probably next, oh and let's not forget about class...

Meanwhile, on the conservative side of things denominational affiliation tends to be less important, there are more parachurch organizations (like Focus on the Family and whatnot) and megachurch leaders who don't particularly have accountability to a wider organization but who generally are recognized as "leaders" of the evangelical church(es).

I think there's probably enough common ground at this point that they could seriously start talking about institutional union, but it won't happen yet. (They already generally recognize one another's baptisms, clergy ordinations, and so on.)
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:38 PM on January 29, 2018 [8 favorites]


In re: Steve Wynn and his sexual assault allegations, Sean Spicer (remember him?) is calling on the RNC to return donations from Wynn from within the last year.
posted by hanov3r at 12:39 PM on January 29, 2018 [6 favorites]


The House of Representatives has printed tickets inviting guests to attend the "State of the Uniom," so this is going to go great.

President Josiah Bartlet: We meant stronger here right?

Sam Seaborn: What's it say?

President Josiah Bartlet: I'm proud to report our country's stranger than it was a year ago.

Sam Seaborn: That's a typo.

President Josiah Bartlet: Could go either way.
posted by MrVisible at 12:39 PM on January 29, 2018 [88 favorites]


I'm hesitant to post this article because the headline is going to encourage fighty reactions, but I think it fits well with what Lapin has been saying, and it's backed by some data: Ruy Teixeira, The math is clear: Democrats need to win more working-class white votes.

The argument here is that the 2016 exit polls significantly undercounted non-college white voters. I can't assess the truth of that, but if that holds up, it's an argument against the "fuck white voters, get people of color to turn out" school of thought that's been so popular on MetaFilter:
To put this into fuller context: If Clinton had replicated the black turnout levels enjoyed by Obama in 2012, she still would have lost the 2016 election, because the other shifts against her were so powerful.
I do think we need to keep having the kinds of difficult conversations Lapin has been having; we can't write off entire demographics as lost causes.

And the conclusion of the article is a lot better than one might fear based on the headline. It doesn't argue in favor of bland centrism to try to win back these voters, but rather embracing a "massive public jobs program."
posted by zachlipton at 12:46 PM on January 29, 2018 [12 favorites]


Warner, the intel committee’s top Democrat, says “end-of-the-year document dumps” produced “very significant” revelations that “opened a lot of new questions” that Senate investigators are now looking into, meaning the inquiry into Trump and the Russia hacking—already nearly a year old—will not be finished for months longer.

I have no problem with them taking all the time they need if it means that they uncover the whole story.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:47 PM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


According to the Hill, Kirsten Gillibrand is bringing Carmen Yulin Cruz as her guest to the SOTU. That should be fun.
posted by Sophie1 at 12:47 PM on January 29, 2018 [55 favorites]




Because liberals tend to be concerned with education, facts, rationality, and the more you study the Bible the more you see that you cannot square the circle. Jesus has some great teachings, but once you start picking and choosing beliefs at a certain point it gets easier to just give up and become agnostic.

Bluntly, bullshit. And I say this as an atheist, but it's not as if I haven't met plenty of educated, fact-oriented, analytical people of faith. One particular white evangelical woman I worked with comes to mind; she did a lot to make sure that students in her classes felt safe regardless of their faith and brought evolutionary biology to her church with gusto while I worked with her.

I mentioned the tradition of Black progressive churches for a reason, folks: and that reason is that those churches made up the foundation of the civil rights movements in the 60s, and they are continuing to play a pivotal role in those fights, because the theological tradition of these churches is deeply built upon that kind of community resistance. You can't have those churches without exactly this kind of resistance. Which is why I am explicitly calling on white Christian denominations here.

And I'm not actually just mentioning the heads of these denominations, either: look, I'm ex-Catholic, I understand what a goddamn chore it is to take the upper hierarchy and make them bestir their overstuffed asses to make meaningful change. I'm talking about local churches and denominations like the ELCA.

There are plenty of reasons for progressive church denominations, or even for smaller units of organization--hell, even for the new liberal evangelical movement that I'm beginning to see around me!--to take a stand on this. Even at smaller levels, a single church and congregation can make one hell of a local difference in things, and religious leaders have massive power on a political scale--especially, of course, if those leaders aren't inconveniently brown. Which is again why I'm gazing pointedly at the white denominations. Make this a religious fight instead of immediately ceding the religious ground.
posted by sciatrix at 12:50 PM on January 29, 2018 [40 favorites]


Kelly has taken to ending such conversations with a disclaimer that the White House isn’t expecting officials to do anything illegal or unethical.

This from the mouthpiece for the guy who offered from the stage to bankroll the legal defense of any one of his followers who would assault peaceful protestors on his behalf.
posted by contraption at 12:53 PM on January 29, 2018 [21 favorites]


Trump warned Sessions and others they need to excel at their jobs or go down as the worst in history, the two people said.

I wonder if any of the actual career politicians in the Trump administration think there's any chance at all of them not going down as the worst in history at their jobs. I know the Treasonous Trumps have no frame of reference, but even the professional monsters like Sessions have to have some sense of this, right?

The House of Representatives has printed tickets inviting guests to attend the "State of the Uniom," so this is going to go great.

If this had come out like the stronger/stranger situation from West Wing mentioned above I could understand it, but how on Earth did "Uniom" get past the spellcheckers that are now embedded in basically every piece of software?

The argument here is that the 2016 exit polls significantly undercounted non-college white voters. I can't assess the truth of that, but if that holds up, it's an argument against the "fuck white voters, get people of color to turn out" school of thought that's been so popular on MetaFilter....

It's not really, though. The argument that article makes is that if the percentage of eligible voters who actually vote doesn't change much, the Democrats need to win more uneducated white voters. This completely misses the argument that you're claiming it counters, which is that we need to significantly increase the percentage of eligible voters who actually vote. If we were anywhere near the kind of voter turnout that most other democratic nations see, we'd never have another Republican president. That article also completely disregards things like re-enfranchising voters. Almost any strategy that we could pursue is going to have a better return on investment than trying to convince people who vote Republican that they should actually care about their fellow man.
posted by IAmUnaware at 12:58 PM on January 29, 2018 [6 favorites]


They damn well better be allowing McCabe to use his stored-up leave, because if they fucked him on his pension, I will happily donate generously to his Sue the Pants off the Bastards GoFundMe.
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:01 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


Can we please keep the theological sidebars to a minimum in here? I’d like to avoid incurring the wrath of Mod.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 1:02 PM on January 29, 2018 [30 favorites]


Brussels prepared for trade war with US if it restricts EU imports
TLDR: it's all because he was bothered by restrictions on his golf courses. And not in the article, but it's the US that will lose bigly if this trade war happens.
posted by mumimor at 1:03 PM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


NBC News, Carol E. Lee, Trump’s gripes against McCabe included wife’s politics, Comey’s ride home
The day after President Donald Trump fired James Comey, he became so furious watching television footage of the ousted FBI director boarding a government-funded plane from Los Angeles back to Washington, D.C. that he called the bureau’s acting director, Andrew McCabe, to vent, according to multiple people familiar with the phone call.

Trump demanded to know why Comey was allowed to fly on an FBI plane after he had been fired, these people said. McCabe told the president he hadn’t been asked to authorize Comey’s flight, but if anyone had asked, he would have approved it, three people familiar with the call recounted to NBC News.

The president was silent for a moment and then turned on McCabe, suggesting he ask his wife how it feels to be a loser — an apparent reference to a failed campaign for state office in Virginia that McCabe’s wife made in 2015.

McCabe replied: “OK, sir.” Trump then hung up the phone.
posted by zachlipton at 1:03 PM on January 29, 2018 [84 favorites]


IAmUnaware: "but how on Earth did "Uniom" get past the spellcheckers that are now embedded in basically every piece of software"

You are assuming a base line of competence that does not exist.
posted by Mitheral at 1:05 PM on January 29, 2018 [31 favorites]


Metafilter: Ok, sir.
posted by Melismata at 1:07 PM on January 29, 2018 [21 favorites]


According to the Hill, Kirsten Gillibrand is bringing Carmen Yulin Cruz as her guest to the SOTU.

Am I too early to pre-donate to her legal fees stemming from her arrest and prosecution for flinging a roll of paper towels down from the gallery?
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 1:07 PM on January 29, 2018 [18 favorites]


I'm pretty sure the Uniom is that orb from Saudia Arabia. We'll be finding out what state it's in.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 1:07 PM on January 29, 2018 [44 favorites]


but how on Earth did "Uniom" get past the spellcheckers that are now embedded in basically every piece of software

Not for nothing, back when I was doing Larp Trek I found myself doing a quick re-render of probably every second strip after the first comment of the post was "you spelled [x] wrong", because I did all the layout and much of the actual dialogue writing in Photoshop Elements which doesn't by default do any spell checking.

That said, you hire a fuckin' copyeditor if you're Congress and not just some random asshole doing a webcomic from his home computer.
posted by cortex at 1:10 PM on January 29, 2018 [27 favorites]


In light of the NBC story, it's worth remembering that the FBI's former #2 went on to become Deep Throat.
posted by zachlipton at 1:10 PM on January 29, 2018 [74 favorites]


The president was silent for a moment and then turned on [his acting FBI director], suggesting he ask his wife how it feels to be a loser

There was a time when this wasn't normal.
posted by Rust Moranis at 1:16 PM on January 29, 2018 [122 favorites]


if you do not believe Uniom is deliberate and part of the resistance, I don't know what to tell you.....

kids of 15 are marching in Russia saying "OK shoot me already Putin!"

this is the administration equivalent of those 15 year old kids because we're in an earlier phase of autocracy.
posted by Wilder at 1:18 PM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


I think the main impediment to church union is institutional inertia combined with disagreements over polity (how the church is organized) and, yes, race.

I meant organize politically, the way right-wing fundamentalists have. As I understand it, they are not all the same denomination. They are informally organized politically.

I'm not understanding why liberal ideology prevents an analogous sort of affiliation around social justice causes that many liberal Christians espouse.
posted by Mental Wimp at 1:19 PM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


The thing that I find horrifyingly fascinating about the Uniom mistake is that multiple people likely saw it and could have corrected it* but instead went, "fuck it, not my problem" probably because this shit happens 53,295 times a day with this admin and it's actually a small problem compared to all the other shit going on. I'm not a fan of this type of reaction BUT I find it fascinating which shit has very quickly become normalized.

(*For all I know maybe people did point out the error and were overruled. Or maybe they've got an intern who sent this off to vistaprint and looked at pdf proof and went, "I'm so good at this" and hit the ok button.)
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 1:23 PM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


"This interaction was determined to be unsafe due to the SU-27 closing to within five feet and crossing directly through the EP-3's flight path, causing the EP-3 to fly through the SU-27's jet wash," Capt. Pamela Kunze, a spokesperson for US Naval Forces Europe told CNN.

SU-27 is roughly equivalent to the F-15 while the EP-3 is a turboprop with a crew of 20-25 that basically functions as an airborne RF sniffer. You can guess which is more maneuverable. Playing this sort of game is highly irresponsible, it's just not an even match.
posted by scalefree at 1:23 PM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


The math is clear: Democrats need to win more working-class white votes ... To put this into fuller context: If Clinton had replicated the black turnout levels enjoyed by Obama in 2012, she still would have lost the 2016 election, because the other shifts against her were so powerful.

His analysis is entirely missing the point.

Clinton out-performed Obama with all white voters, particularly white women. Where she significantly under-performed Obama was with white men. Clinton matched Obama's performance with black women. She under-performed Obama with black men.

It is not the case that Democrats need to make a special effort to court working class whites. The deciding issue in the election was women vs men. Enough with the white working class bullshit.
posted by JackFlash at 1:24 PM on January 29, 2018 [63 favorites]


NYT on McCabe:
In a recent conversation, Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, raised concerns about a forthcoming inspector general report examining the actions of Mr. McCabe and other senior F.B.I. officials during the 2016 presidential campaign, when the bureau was investigating both Hillary Clinton’s email use and the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia. In that discussion, according to one former law enforcement official close to Mr. McCabe, Mr. Wray suggested moving Mr. McCabe into another job, which would have been a demotion.

Instead, the former official said, Mr. McCabe chose to leave.
posted by zachlipton at 1:26 PM on January 29, 2018 [6 favorites]


@tedlieu As a Member of the House Judiciary Committee, I read the partisan, classified Nunes House Intel memo. I can't talk about it. However, here's an analogy.

Remember Geraldo Rivera and the infamous Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults? It's like that, but Geraldo Rivera has more integrity.

posted by Artw at 1:28 PM on January 29, 2018 [100 favorites]


From the McCabe phone call article:
The combination of those sentiments whipped the president into such a fury over Comey last year that he wanted his firing to abruptly strip him of any trappings that come with the office and leave him across the country scrambling to find his own way home.
Christ, what an asshole.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:28 PM on January 29, 2018 [76 favorites]


In light of the NBC story, it's worth remembering that the FBI's former #2 went on to become Deep Throat.

Felt has nothin' on old Moneyshot Mueller
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:32 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


Quite true, especially since Felt is dead.
posted by Melismata at 1:33 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


It's things like the "loser" shit that have me expecting (and fearing) a kind of bureaucratic Saturnalia, where a bunch of career officials decide that all bets are off and that there's no point in being steamrollered by a gang of crooks unacquainted with rule of law.
posted by holgate at 1:33 PM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


> McCabe replied: “OK, sir.” Trump then hung up the phone.

I am not implying that they deserve any sympathy, because to date they've been happy to abet his policies and/or benefit personally from being a member of his administration, but...just imagine how much the vast majority of people who work for Trump must hate his guts on a personal level.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:33 PM on January 29, 2018 [46 favorites]


> The president was silent for a moment and then turned on [his acting FBI director], suggesting he ask his wife how it feels to be a loser

There was a time when this wasn't normal.


But by heaven, the NYT's in-house Trump Whisperer will do her utmost to normalize it.

Maggie Haberman @maggieNYT tweets: "Calling McCabe’s wife a loser is just how he talks"
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:35 PM on January 29, 2018 [46 favorites]


The combination of those sentiments whipped the president into such a fury over Comey last year that he wanted his firing to abruptly strip him of any trappings that come with the office and leave him across the country scrambling to find his own way home.

Ah yes, the old Lane Kiffin/Reince Priebus humiliation.
posted by Existential Dread at 1:35 PM on January 29, 2018


Maggie Haberman @maggieNYT tweets: "Calling McCabe’s wife a loser is just how he talks"

I'm very far from a Haberman fan but this is clearly sarcasm.


Still, when your paper is busy normalizing the racist fascism of Stephen Miller via the Opinion page, it might be time to reconsider your joke routines
posted by Existential Dread at 1:38 PM on January 29, 2018 [81 favorites]


In light of the NBC story, it's worth remembering that the FBI's former #2 went on to become Deep Throat.

Felt has nothin' on old Moneyshot Mueller


Wouldn't it be more appropriate to use the actual title of a Stormy Daniels film?
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:38 PM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


> I'm very far from a Haberman fan but this is clearly sarcasm.

Clearly? The reason we've been asked to be more diligent about use of [real] and [fake] tags is because POTUS45 has ruined our sense of what's normal and what's "clearly" satire. And here we have a reporter with a very long track record of saying the exact same kind of thing she's saying here without any irony or sarcasm whatsoever, as if it were her job to normalize the administration's actions. Why would anyone who's familiar with her body of work believe that *this* one crosses some imaginary line?
posted by tonycpsu at 1:39 PM on January 29, 2018 [71 favorites]


So Wray did give in to pressure from Trump and the right wing propaganda machine after all, despite last week's report he threatened to resign if McCabe was forced out. How much would you bet that whatever is in the IG report is regarding the Clinton emails handling...exactly the pretext that was used to fire Comey.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:43 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


The false things Trump said last week (full, ongoing list)

Daniel Dale, everyone. I wish there were more (any?) American reporters doing this kind of work.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:45 PM on January 29, 2018 [19 favorites]


Mod note: Hey, lets maybe stop belaboring either uniom or the Haberman tweet at this point.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:51 PM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


I'm very far from a Haberman fan but this is clearly sarcasm.

Lesson from linguistics Prof. George Lakoff on how to effectively criticize Trump: 'Don't retweet Donald Trump and don't use his language'
Q: Are you suggesting we should then not try and refute Trump's falsehoods if that only helps him?
Lakoff: No, I am not saying don't refute them. I am saying you don't refute them by repeating his language and repeating his claims.
Emphasis added, because Habberman clearly doesn't get this. Or rather, by employing Trump's own language in a sarcastic comment, she carefully avoids taking a direct stance criticizing him. Instead this tweet amplifies him and reinforces his language and behavior in the public discourse. In passing, it also leaves open her all-important whisper line to him.

When/if Trump reads that he'll chuckle and say to himself, yeah, I do.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:52 PM on January 29, 2018 [45 favorites]


I hope this isn't a derail but I would like to share something with regard to religion and politics.

I am a liberal Christian. I have lived in rural Ohio by way of Seattle these last two years. It has been, to say the least, difficult to find a church that properly reflects my views on what it actually means to be a Christian.

Recently, my wife suggested we attend a Mennonite church. I knew very little about Mennonites, except the ones I knew growing up, who were the most conservative of the most conservative. This church, I quickly noticed was in the most Republican voting ward of our very Republican county. Only three people voted for Hillary in 2016, and I already know all three!

My hopes were not high, let's say. What are the chances these folks will be anything but gun-toting , immigrant loathing, evangelical wingnuts?

Reader, that was prejudice, and I like to think that God was teaching me a lesson.

We first attended two weeks ago, the Sunday prior to our national celebration of MLKJR. The pastor preached a sermon about racial justice. He specifically quoted the lines of MLKJR that a lot of Christians like to forget: that racial justice is economic justice, that justice delayed is justice denied. That our role as Christians is not to avoid the tension created by facing those facts but to lean into it and take an active role in fixing it.

I have been longing to hear these words from the pulpit for two years. And here, in the most conservative wards of the most conservative county I heard it loud and clear and met with a chorus of "amens!" from the congregation.

Yesterday he spoke about the need to grow our numbers in church. "Oh boy," I thought, "here it comes." But the way we grow the church, he explained, is by providing healing. Specifically by healing the sins of racism that are expressed in our treatment of immigrants and our sins of economic injustice expressed as homelessness. That a church that is not actively engaged with healing the very real hurt that exists in the world is no church at all. Unironically I say, "Hallelujah!" and unironically I heard the same reflected in the congregation in the very conservative ward in the very conservative county.

I don't know the journey of this congregation. I don't know if their minds have been changed or the sincerity of their hearts. But I know that those messages resonated with those churchgoers, and it resonated with this churchgoer, and I know others can respond accordingly. Like Lapin said so elegantly above it is not useless to persuade, and I'm not about to give up.
posted by Tevin at 1:54 PM on January 29, 2018 [91 favorites]


The combination of those sentiments whipped the president into such a fury over Comey last year that he wanted his firing to abruptly strip him of any trappings that come with the office and leave him across the country scrambling to find his own way home.

Holy cow. Aside from being a fucking BABY at every opportunity, Trump also takes every possible opportunity to do glaringly obvious, easily avoidable actionable abusive shit. Instead of waiting until the guy gets home from official business travel to can him, you fire him while he's all the way across the country. Fine. But then to refuse to provide him transport home and just DUMP him in California and make him use personal money to get home? Oh my god you would get sued so hard your teeth would rattle.
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:01 PM on January 29, 2018 [27 favorites]


John Lewis Says He Gets Taunted By People Who Yell "Trump!" At Him
Georgia lawmaker Rep. John Lewis said he gets taunted in public, recalling a specific account of boarding a plane where someone was shouting "Trump!" at him.

On Lift Every Voice, a new podcast by Sen. Cory Booker, Lewis said the taunt happened on a recent flight he had taken from Atlanta to Washington.

"I was coming back to Washington on Sunday night," Lewis said. "I was on a flight from Atlanta. And I'm walking down the aisle and the gentleman said as loud as he could, 'Trump!' So I didn't — I just kept walking. I didn't say anything. And sometimes I'm walking in the airport in different places. I guess [people think] they're getting to me or harassing me. But they don't understand... I've been called many, many things. But I'm not going to let anything get me down. I'm going to keep walking, keep moving."
This is something that's been happening since at least 2016. There were reports back then of kids yelling "Trump" at classmates of color, and the drunk guy I saw shouting "Trump! Check his papers" at Yasiel Puig.

Despite all the hand-wringing over "is Trump racist?," racist people seem to have figured out the answer from early on, because they tuned the name of the President of the United States into a racist taunt from the beginning.
posted by zachlipton at 2:19 PM on January 29, 2018 [138 favorites]


The combination of those sentiments whipped the president into such a fury over Comey last year that he wanted his firing to abruptly strip him of any trappings that come with the office and leave him across the country scrambling to find his own way home.

By and large, senior officials at Comey's level are probably gonna land on their feet if they lose their job for anything short of the sort of thing that puts people in jail. But just the same, I have to imagine that literally every top career gov't official these days has to factor "What if I lose my job and/or have to resign in protest today" into their every financial consideration.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 2:23 PM on January 29, 2018 [6 favorites]


National Hero John Lewis, surely.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 2:24 PM on January 29, 2018 [20 favorites]


leave him across the country scrambling to find his own way home

Clearly Trump's idea of a power move because he's pulled it on his own wife and child.
posted by peeedro at 2:25 PM on January 29, 2018 [8 favorites]


They damn well better be allowing McCabe to use his stored-up leave, because if they fucked him on his pension

What happened?
posted by Coventry at 2:29 PM on January 29, 2018


John Lewis Says He Gets Taunted By People Who Yell "Trump!" At Him

He's seen worse. Much worse.
In the South, Lewis and other nonviolent Freedom Riders were beaten by angry mobs, arrested at times and taken to jail.
posted by Mental Wimp at 2:35 PM on January 29, 2018 [8 favorites]


Big Lies, Law Enforcement, and the Defense of Rod Rosenstein
That big lie is the notion that federal law enforcement is already behaving as corruptly as the president aspires for it to. The wrinkle is that the big lie imagines that law enforcement is behaving corruptly not in support of the president but on behalf of his political enemies. Instead of saying the truth, which is that Trump wants a law enforcement apparatus that will act corruptly on his behalf, he created an audacious smear in which it is acting to protect Hillary Clinton and destroy him.

The purpose of this big lie is twofold: the lie discredits the investigation against Trump in the minds of a large swath of the public and, perhaps more importantly, tends to tear down the institutions responsible for such investigations in general, with an eye toward their reconstitution in the image of the lie itself. In other words, the goal is to use the lie of politicized law enforcement to effectuate the politicization of law enforcement. By falsely describing a set of corrupt institutions, even by complaining of them, it is possible to lower public expectations to the point of accepting their corruption. Indeed, the lie seeks not merely to destroy the current leadership and install leadership more apt to behave in the fashion the president wants; it also erodes public confidence in the premise that a different reality ever existed.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:43 PM on January 29, 2018 [33 favorites]


People are shouting "Trump" at John Lewis because they know that it's socially unacceptable to shout the n-word in public (for the moment, anyways).
posted by mhum at 2:49 PM on January 29, 2018 [63 favorites]


The Atlantic provides some helpful context on McCabe's resignation, even if their conclusion is essentially (as it so often is these days) "What is going on?"

Also, saw this, another sign that that particular plot is thickening, while perusing Maggie Haberman's Twitter:

NEW: Immediately after news of McCabe stepping down, Dep Ag Rosenstein & FBI Director Wray came to White House to meet with WH Chief of Staff John Kelly. @FoxNews per @johnrobertsFox @BlakeBurman @finnygo
posted by cudzoo at 2:49 PM on January 29, 2018 [7 favorites]


This church, I quickly noticed was in the most Republican voting ward of our very Republican county. Only three people voted for Hillary in 2016, and I already know all three![…]
Reader, that was prejudice, and I like to think that God was teaching me a lesson.


I understand that for historical and theological reasons, many Mennonites don't vote. I don't know this congregation's view on the matter, but you are in a position to serve as an example of someone choosing for moral reasons to exercise their franchise and encourage others to do so. I'm not going to suggest that you proselytise them directly, but I don't imagine that they will be offended if they know of your activities outside their congregation.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:50 PM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


Politico, Elana Schor, Deadline looms for Trump and Russia sanctions, in which Monday is the deadline for Treasury to implement sanctions.

So, uh, they're just refusing to do it. The State Department says the existing sanctions from last year are "serving as a deterrent," so there's no need to announce sanctions against individuals.
posted by zachlipton at 3:02 PM on January 29, 2018 [25 favorites]


People are shouting "Trump" at John Lewis because they know that it's socially unacceptable to shout the n-word in public (for the moment, anyways).

And the best part of Lewis' response, "But they don't understand... I've been called many, many things. But I'm not going to let anything get me down. I'm going to keep walking, keep moving."
posted by mikelieman at 3:05 PM on January 29, 2018 [6 favorites]


The 20-week abortion ban in the Senate fails to achieve cloture, 51-46. (Collins and Murkowski crossing the aisle to vote against, Donnelly, Manchin and Casey in favor (all three voted in favor of the 2015 version of the bill as well)).

And Schiff says the House Intelligence Committee voted to release the Nunes memo but not the Democratic memo, in case you somehow harbored any illusions about the goodness of that particular committee.
posted by zachlipton at 3:23 PM on January 29, 2018 [31 favorites]


What actually happens if the Executive just doesn't implement those laws? Is there an enforcement mechanism

Depending on how the law was written (e.g. how much discretion the executive was given), members of Congress may have standing to sue the administration [pdf].
posted by jedicus at 3:25 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


According to the [GOP] majority, the FBI is under investigation and so is the Department of Justice.

What entity is in charge of investigating the FBI and the Department of Justice?
posted by diogenes at 3:34 PM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


Here’s WaPo on Nunes and the vote to release their stupid memo (and block release of the Dem memo):

House Intelligence Committee votes to release documents alleging missteps by the FBI while surveilling a Trump campaign operative
posted by Barack Spinoza at 3:35 PM on January 29, 2018


What entity is in charge of investigating the FBI and the Department of Justice?

HPSCI, apparently.
posted by stopgap at 3:36 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


Democrats should unilaterally release the Schiff counter memo. It's malpractice not to.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:36 PM on January 29, 2018 [46 favorites]


If they release it, I can''t imagine any US allies are going to share any information until the Trump regime has gone. The US will then officially be a rogue state. This is truly absurd. What will NATO do now?
posted by mumimor at 3:41 PM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


Trump dropped top secret intel about Israeli operations to the Russians like he was bragging about his inside line on sweet tickets to some concert. It's hard to believe any of our allies continued sharing truly sensitive intelligence with us after that. I'm kinda surprised anyone kept doing it even before then. People knew this administration was garbage from before day one.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 3:45 PM on January 29, 2018 [29 favorites]


And here’s the NYT’s take on the vote to release their stupid memo.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 3:45 PM on January 29, 2018


Andrea Mitchell (NBC News): @RepAdamSchiff says GOP Majority Chairman Nunes also told Committee it is launching investigation into FBI and DOJ
posted by Barack Spinoza at 3:49 PM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]



Trump dropped top secret intel about Israeli operations to the Russians like he was bragging about his inside line on sweet tickets to some concert. It's hard to believe any of our allies continued sharing truly sensitive intelligence with us after that. I'm kinda surprised anyone kept doing it even before then. People knew this administration was garbage from before day one.


I think a lot of people believed/wanted to believe that the generals are in charge.
posted by mumimor at 3:49 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


So . . Nunes memo is about giving Trump an excuse to fire Rosenstein? Wonder how long that will take. Friday maybe?
posted by rc3spencer at 3:51 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


From the NYT article:

There is no known precedent for the Republicans’ action.

I don't like being in uncharted waters...
posted by diogenes at 3:53 PM on January 29, 2018 [13 favorites]


if trump does axe rosenstein, i wonder who is going to get nominated as his replacement (which job is essentially volunteering to be the Robert Bork for this cover version of the saturday night massacre)
posted by murphy slaw at 3:54 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


Jeez, the TPM roundup of the Obstruction case was pretty thorough, too. This morning.

Sounds like there are a few more paragraphs to add to it this afternoon.
posted by darkstar at 3:59 PM on January 29, 2018 [6 favorites]


So, the House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines to ask the President to declassify the Republican committee chair’s memo, but overruled the minority in order to keep the Democratic ranking member’s memo classified. They similarly voted along party lines to refuse to allow the Trump-appointed FBI Director to brief the House regarding the memo.

Real subtle stuff.

My question is, if the President chooses to declassify the GOP memo, does that not mean that the matters discussed therein without redaction are permanently declassified for all purposes? Would the Democratic minority not be entitled to unilaterally release a (possibly-redacted) memo discussing the same previously-classified matters?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:06 PM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


I love TPM but I take issue with this claim:
So how might the news about Trump’s effort to fire Mueller fit into the obstruction of justice case that Mueller may be building?

In a nutshell, it’s unlikely to be at the core of any case the special counsel brings. For one thing, everyone agrees that Trump has the legal right to fire Mueller.
This seems exactly backwards. Everyone agrees that Trump had the technical right to fire Comey, though not without the possibility of obstructing justice if it were done for malicious reasons. The question of whether Trump can fire Mueller without Acting Attorney General Rosenstein finding cause to do so is very much disputed.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:10 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


So now we wait and see what congress does when the President willfully chooses to disobey the law which he swore to uphold. If we allow presidents to pick and choose which laws they wish to obey and which not, our country will cease to exist as we know it. Too bad John McCain is not here to put some backbone into the spineless cowards of congress.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:12 PM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


Spicer: I Regret Embarrassing ‘Myself, My Family, Friends’ As Press Secretary

The headline sounds much worse than his complete, mealy-mouthed "regrets." He's still essentially prostrating himself before Lord Trump:
Spicer said that part of being White House press secretary was “going in and having to tell the President of the United States, ‘Hey, I embarrassed myself, your administration, and in some cases I think, you know, did something the American people are probably not pleased with.'”
His VERY FIRST embarrassment - in his very first press conference - was inflating the inauguration attendance numbers because Trump ordered him to.
posted by zakur at 4:16 PM on January 29, 2018 [17 favorites]


The White House knows what's in the memo and has some kind of plan to exploit it. The White House does not know what may or may not be released in retaliation or how to deal with that other than to scream hashtag-fakenews. It is probably gambling on people playing by the rules while it does not. We'll see how that plays out.
posted by holgate at 4:19 PM on January 29, 2018 [12 favorites]


Dear everyone, I really want the Dems to leak that memo like a sieve.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 4:24 PM on January 29, 2018 [18 favorites]


I think 8 am tomorrow the Don Jr testimony transcript would make a delicious breakfast.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 4:25 PM on January 29, 2018 [14 favorites]


Secret Life of Gravy So now we wait and see what congress does when the President willfully chooses to disobey the law which he swore to uphold.

Regrettably I think we know the answer: nothing.

Donald J. Trump is now openly and blatantly violating his oath of office. And there will be no consequences whatsoever.

It's arguable if the US was ever a nation governed by rule of law, but to the extent that it ever was that has now ended. My panic level is back to around 80%, we're watching the underpinnings of democracy, rule of law, and separation of powers be ripped to pieces.
posted by sotonohito at 4:32 PM on January 29, 2018 [28 favorites]


He's still essentially prostrating himself before Lord Trump:

Once a ringwraith always a ringwraith. People really need to stop eating the damn meatloaf
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:33 PM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


Can't Democrats release the memo - or basically anything - just by reading it into the record?
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:34 PM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


fluffy battle kitten Dear everyone, I really want the Dems to leak that memo like a sieve.

Leak hell, Senator Feinstein (of all people) already showed us the way. Don't leak anything, just put it straight into the Congressional record.

And not just the counter memo, but **EVERYTHING** related to Trump. The rules are broken, the Republicans are blatantly cheating, breaking the law, and setting up to end the investigation of Trump. The time has come to take the gloves off and play hardball.

they should release Don Jr's testimony, they should release every memo they can find, they should release it all.

The only question at this point is whether the Democrats will fight back, or whether they'll let America die without even lifting a finger to oppose the lawless Republican Party.
posted by sotonohito at 4:35 PM on January 29, 2018 [59 favorites]


@Elana Schor -

The Trump admin has notified Congress that last year’s bipartisan Russia sanctions bill is serving as a “deterrent” and as such, specific sanctions aren’t needed at this time.

Well thats weird. Hard to believe none of Putin's pals are put on the list.
posted by H. Roark at 4:36 PM on January 29, 2018 [19 favorites]


It’s a great deterrent. Why do you think Crimea is now a de facto part of Ukraine and Bashar al-Assad is rotting in jail? More sanctions would be a waste of everyone’s time, bigly
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:51 PM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


...for those like me not keeping track at home, the Russia sanctions bill passed the house 419-3, and moved through the sentate 98-2 - a vetoproof majority if there ever was one...only to be unilaterally unimplemented via State Dept? How is this even a thing?
posted by H. Roark at 4:56 PM on January 29, 2018 [57 favorites]


Liberal media still not actually liberal dept: ABC News has hired Chris Christie as a contributor, to be announced tomorrow morning
posted by octothorpe at 5:00 PM on January 29, 2018 [16 favorites]


Well well. Captain Meatloaf-Eater-in-Chief himself, hired just in time to have to defend the worst State of the Union address in recorded human history.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:02 PM on January 29, 2018 [4 favorites]


Hillary Clinton, winner of the popular vote by 2.9 million should shut up and go away forever.

Chris Christie, embarrassingly distant also-ran for Republican nomination, here's your new major network pundit job.
posted by chris24 at 5:02 PM on January 29, 2018 [117 favorites]


Dear everyone, I really want the Dems to leak that memo like a sieve.

Every one of them on the intel committee has access to the Schiff rebuttal, and absolute immunity under the Speech and Debate clause to read it into the Congressional record at any time. Schiff could do it tonight, before Nunes can release his.

If they don't do this, they're not fighting back. This is the same level as the Pentagon Papers.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:05 PM on January 29, 2018 [39 favorites]


If you were struggling to choose who to root for between Trump supporters/friends Patriot owner Bob Kraft, coach Bill Belicheck and QB Tom Brady versus the Eagles...

@kylegriffin1 (MSNBC)
Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Chris Long says he won’t join his team on the traditional White House visit if the Eagles win the Super Bowl: "Are you kidding me?”

---

(He also skipped last year as a Patriot.)
posted by chris24 at 5:06 PM on January 29, 2018 [24 favorites]


Delayed response but: I followed the link to the article StrawberryPie cited yesterday, where, in turn, there's a link to How Democracies Die, which I'm now looking forward to reading.

And what do you know, the authors of the book are on today's episode of the Ezra Klein Show. It's a great (if terrifying) listen.

So, thanks Straw!
posted by Rykey at 5:07 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


Pointing out that QB Tom Brady already did not join his team on their traditional White House visit.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:11 PM on January 29, 2018


should shut up and go away forever.

but she has like bazillions of dollars from speaking to banks lolz

also, names of campaign donors to flash on djt's website's during its live stream of the state of the union. I thought that was an Alexandra Petri article at first glance on twitter. It is not.
posted by numaner at 5:24 PM on January 29, 2018 [13 favorites]


Daily Beast, Ben Collins, Julian Assange Thought He Was Messaging Sean Hannity When He Offered ‘News’ on Democrat Investigating Trump-Russia
At about 4 a.m. on Saturday morning, a couple hours after she started pretending to be Sean Hannity, Dell Gilliam says she got a direct message back from the head of Wikileaks, Julian Assange. That’s when she said she “kind of panicked.”

“I felt bad. He really thought he was talking to Sean Hannity,” said Gilliam.

Gilliam, a technical writer from Texas, was bored with the flu when she created @SeanHannity__ early Saturday morning. The Fox News real account was temporarily deleted after cryptically tweeting the phrase “Form Submission 1649 | #Hannity” on Friday night. Twitter said the account had been “briefly compromised,” according to a statement provided to The Daily Beast, and was back up on Sunday morning.

When Gilliam made the account, she did not expect to be setting up a meeting over “other channels” for Assange to send “some news about Warner,” an apparent reference to Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
So Assange believes he has already existing "other channels" to talk to Hannity to spread dirt on Warner. Holy crap.
posted by zachlipton at 5:33 PM on January 29, 2018 [80 favorites]


Every one of them on the intel committee has access to the Schiff rebuttal, and absolute immunity under the Speech and Debate clause to read it into the Congressional record at any time.

I hope this happens, but since the Democratic opposition to the release of the Nunes memo is based on the FBI’s concerns about possible damage to national security, they might be wise to wait until the President signs off on declassifying that memo before publicizing theirs.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:42 PM on January 29, 2018 [6 favorites]


So Assange believes he has already existing "other channels" to talk to Hannity to spread dirt on Warner. Holy crap.

However far we think the Russia conspiracy goes, it goes much, much further.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:42 PM on January 29, 2018 [24 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump Somebody please inform Jay-Z that because of my policies, Black Unemployment has just been reported to be at the LOWEST RATE EVER RECORDED!

@Guy Endore-Kaiser
After all these years, Jay-Z finally has a bitch problem.
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:48 PM on January 29, 2018 [73 favorites]


LOL. While The White House is busy not enforcing the sanctions against Russia for meddling in the election, the BBC has this for us: Kremlin accuses US of meddling in election
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 5:50 PM on January 29, 2018 [14 favorites]


BBC, Russia 'will target US mid-term elections' says CIA chief
The director of the CIA expects that Russia will target the US mid-term elections later this year.

Mike Pompeo told the BBC there had been no significant diminishing of Russian attempts at subversion in Europe and the US.
...
Even though there has been co-operation in counter-terrorism (the CIA helped stop a plot in St Petersburg last year), Mr Pompeo says he still sees Russia primarily as an adversary, sharing the concerns in many European countries about its subversion. "I haven't seen a significant decrease in their activity," he said.

Asked if his concerns extended to the upcoming US mid-term elections in November, he replied: "Of course. I have every expectation that they will continue to try and do that, but I'm confident that America will be able to have a free and fair election [and] that we will push back in a way that is sufficiently robust that the impact they have on our election won't be great."
In completely unrelated news that I've stuck into this comment despite there obviously being no connection between the story above and the story below, Politico has a write-up on the lack of new sanctions against Russia, from Elana Schor, White House to Congress: Russia sanctions not needed now
The Trump administration informed lawmakers Monday that new Russia sanctions called for in a bipartisan bill passed last year are not necessary yet because the measure is already "serving as a deterrent."

The announcement came as lawmakers in both parties nudged the administration to implement a sanctions legislation that passed overwhelmingly in July — with only five no votes in both the House and Senate. The sanctions bill requires the imposition of penalties by Monday against entities doing "significant" business with Moscow's defense and intelligence sectors, unless Congress is notified that prospective targets are "substantially reducing" that business.

A State Department spokesperson said by email that the administration is "using this legislation as Congress intended to press Russia to address our concerns related to its aggression in Ukraine, interference in other nations’ domestic affairs and abuses of human rights."
It damn well doesn't seem like the existing sanctions are "serving as a deterrent" if the bloody CIA chief says Russia is going to target the next election too!
posted by zachlipton at 5:51 PM on January 29, 2018 [62 favorites]


The director of the CIA expects that Russia will target the US mid-term elections later this year. Mike Pompeo [co-conspirator in the installation of a Russian asset as president of the united states] told the BBC there had been no significant diminishing of Russian attempts at subversion in Europe and the US.
posted by Rust Moranis at 5:54 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


The House Democrats need to unilaterally release their memo. Period. If that's illegal they need to sack up and do it anyway. Schiff is my guy, I live in his district, and this is a big test.
posted by Justinian at 6:01 PM on January 29, 2018 [42 favorites]


The convergence of events today is incredibly unsettling. A lot of it isn't necessarily related. If McCabe has just had enough and/or wants to burn his remaining vacation time on terminal leave, that's totally reasonable. Did he know the Nunes memo vote or the bullshit on the Russia sanctions was coming down today, though? Did he know from whatever connections he has how they'd play out?

Even if the timing of all these events really is unrelated, each of them is unsettling on their own. Together? This is the worst I've felt about where we are since Comey was fired.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:11 PM on January 29, 2018 [25 favorites]


I'm left hoping yes, HOPE, I know that his utter inability tomorrow night to deliver a passibly coherent speech to the nation might be the last turning point. TTTCS, etc.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:13 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


So Assange believes he has already existing "other channels" to talk to Hannity to spread dirt on Warner. Holy crap.

I think I might be trapped inside of a Black Mirror episode.
posted by diogenes at 6:14 PM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


I'm left hoping yes, HOPE, I know that his utter inability tomorrow night to deliver a passibly coherent speech to the nation might be the last turning point. TTTCS, etc.

if he doesn't start playing with his poo in the middle of the speech, the "liberal" media will fall all over themselves praising him

citation: the last sotu
posted by entropicamericana at 6:16 PM on January 29, 2018 [24 favorites]


It is sort of hilarious that the great hacker and encryption messiah Assange doesn't have the opsec to verify the identity of the right wing celebrity account he's attempting to collude with, despite obvious cues on his end like a lack of DM history with a new account.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:18 PM on January 29, 2018 [61 favorites]


I'm left hoping yes, HOPE, I know that his utter inability tomorrow night to deliver a passibly coherent speech to the nation might be the last turning point. TTTCS, etc.

Unless he gets a sharp scoop o'clock kick to the groin before the SOTU, I imagine he's going to walk in with his confidence bolstered by all this bullshit and that's all the media is going to notice. "Seems more presidential" and all that garbage.

Also I evangelized for TTTCS hard during 2016 and actually did it several times on election day. At this point TTTCS is in the same grave as "What if they reboot Firefly?"

...although oh god what if it's TTTSC?

posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:24 PM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


My mother died last year, just a month or so after Comey was fired. Cancer. It was slow until it was fast. I was by her side for months in the hospital, checking all the monitors all the time.

I hate to admit it, but this feels like the darkest times, right before we got the bad news but we could tell it was coming. It feels the same with the dawning of unsettling details, the coincidences that aren’t coincidences. The Assange/Hannity thing is delicious ownage, but it also means the cancer has, in fact, tunneled under. These aren’t random lumps, they’re metastasized parts of the original, which is bigger than you thought.

There’s a John Mulaney bit about a mariachi band on the subway feeling like a mob hit. I think about that every day, especially today.
posted by Brainy at 6:25 PM on January 29, 2018 [30 favorites]


Rachel Maddow is doing a great job of pointing out that the Republican rationale for possibly firing Rod Rosenstein is that he authorized continued surveillance of Carter Page, a known Russian agent whose handler went to federal prison for being a Russian agent. That was Rod Rosenstein’s big mistake: authorizing surveillance of a known Russian agent in America, a primary goal and purpose of the FBI. Kinda like he authorized a Special Counsel investigation of the Donald Trump campaign. Except, obviously, that’s completely dissimilar and unrelated.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 6:33 PM on January 29, 2018 [57 favorites]


It is sort of hilarious that the great hacker and encryption messiah Assange doesn't have the opsec to verify the identity of the right wing celebrity account he's attempting to collude with

I think that was good opsec. He loses nothing by people believing that he has secure communication channels with Hannity and dirt on Warner. It's kind of his schtick.
posted by Coventry at 6:36 PM on January 29, 2018 [4 favorites]


@lapin:

I don't think it's an either/or thing. As a liberal Christian I feel a responsibility to educate the Christians around me who seem ignorant of the actual tenets of their faith. This past year I have felt called to a kind of reverse evangelism. I have never felt ok proselytizing to non believers, but I feel a strong need to speak the truth against oppression and lies to fellow Christians. While I'm not under any illusions that I am changing many minds, as things further deteriorate with this administration, people do seem to at least listen to my words with an if not open, not totally closed mind.

Thank you for this and all the rest you wrote in that incredibly wonderful post.

In many ways, I feel I am the opposite but for the exact same reason. I do not believe someone died for my sins. Still the teachings are good things and things I strive towards daily.

As I am not particularly inclined to call Christ my savior, I recognize my thoughts and ideas will fall on deaf ears more often than not.

So, thank you for helping people examine their ideas of what being a Christian is and how it relates to the actual teachings (as best that we can understand them.)

Believe it or not, I have had some success without being a member of a church by doing what I think is something you are doing... simply asking questions and proposing that one's idea of Christianity is not aligned with the Golden Rule or other teachings. (B.A. in Philosophy and Religion kind of helps.)

Thank you again, lapin. While I expect we don't agree on some of the very big questions, I think we are working towards a similar goal. I 100% agree with you that this should be a multi-pronged effort in which talking to people to open their minds is worthy, as well as getting more people (that agree with us. :-D) to vote.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:38 PM on January 29, 2018 [6 favorites]


WaPo has what seems like a mess of an article up right now, coming out of the gate with (what else?) Clinton ....
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe — who became a symbol for President Trump of what he considers the bureau’s political bias — abruptly stepped down Monday amid an internal probe examining his handling of the bureau’s investigations into Hillary Clinton, according to people familiar with the matter.
... going on to also cite planned retirement, Wray "holding people accountable", Drump's dislike ... the only thing missing is The Memo.

Golly, could be anything, but when in doubt, lead with Burn Her!
posted by Dashy at 6:48 PM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]


Not to abuse the edit window: of course, the article ends with Emails!
posted by Dashy at 6:51 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]




be the moral center of your world. Do the right thing, and by all the gods don't do it silently. Make a point of doing the right thing, unflinchingly and openly, and in doing so set an example for the people who are already part of a group with you.

If you ever find yourself in my neck of the woods, sciatrix, I hope you'll allow me to buy you a beverage of your choice for this.
posted by biogeo at 7:08 PM on January 29, 2018 [10 favorites]


when in doubt, lead with Burn Her!

I didn't like HRC during Bill's presidency and I really didn't like her when she went up against Obama in the Dem primary -- I felt like she punched him below the belt a few too many times. However, after Obama secured the nomination and I began reading inside accounts and things she actually said and did, my respect for her actually shot up. I began to admire her. I still do. I'm still crushed when I think of how she must have felt on election night in 2016.

However, even at my most intensely felt loathing for her, I wasn't obsessed with attacking her and hating on everything she did and said, hellbent on dragging her name into matters at the slightest pretext.

What could she have possibly done to all these journalists to earn this unrelenting hatred? Is it because she has the nerve to keep speaking and doing things despite not performing femininity the way they want it performed?

I feel like she's long past the point where she could justifiably do a "Fuck you (NYT), fuck you (WaPo), fuck you (Fox), you're cool (???), and fuck you (CNN), I'm out [mic drop]" scene and get massive approval from a lot of us.
posted by lord_wolf at 7:09 PM on January 29, 2018 [46 favorites]


T.D. Strange: House rules are different from Senate rules. I bet Schiff wouldn't be allowed through his first sentence.
posted by holgate at 7:17 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


The simple truth is that if House Democrats wanted their memo out badly enough they could get it out. If it doesn't come out along with the Republican memo it's because House Democrats didn't want it out badly enough to rock the boat.
posted by Justinian at 7:20 PM on January 29, 2018 [10 favorites]


It's not the Senate Rules, it's the Speech or Debate Clause of the United States Constitution. And neither the House nor the Senate is equipped to stop a Member quickly from saying something somebody thinks they shouldn't say on the floor.

Nancy Pelosi talked about this on CNN's show with Chris Cuomo tonight. She did not have a good answer. Which, as much as I admire Nancy Pelosi, is not exactly a rare occurrence. Maybe she should stick to doing her job which is wrangling votes.

She said that reading classified intel into the record would hurt national security which, ok fair enough, but when Cuomo rightly riposted with "then redact it first and read only the non classified portions" she just started complaining that what the Republicans were doing was wrong and hurtful to the nation.

Well no shit Speaker Pelosi. Maybe if we whine about it some more they'll stop.
posted by Justinian at 7:25 PM on January 29, 2018 [18 favorites]


TWF, her primary objection seemed to be essentially "this isn't the way things are done". It's as though the Democratic leadership has page faulted and cannot adapt to the new reality. This is exactly why norms are no protection against autocrats.
posted by Justinian at 7:29 PM on January 29, 2018 [23 favorites]


I think I'll go with the ACLU's interpretation here, thanks. There's nothing stopping Democrats from doing exactly what Mike Gravel did.

If they don't, they're actively abetting the Republican cover-up of treason. Period.

This isn't a "well maybe..." or "how would it play with the white working class..." situation. This is a bright line test on standing against treason, which I fully expect Democrats to fail, and Pelosi just admitted they intend to fail. Because they stand for nothing, and have learned nothing, and will not fight to save our democracy.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:30 PM on January 29, 2018 [24 favorites]


She said that reading classified intel into the record would hurt national security

Hey, you know what else isn't so great for national security?
posted by contraption at 7:33 PM on January 29, 2018 [48 favorites]


In a fundraising solicitation on Monday, Trump offered those willing to pay at least $35 the opportunity to see their name displayed during a live streaming of the address on his campaign website.

Are they going to be 'selected' names, and is somebody who knows what they're doing going to do the selecting? (Does Trump have anybody who REALLY knows what they're doing?) If not, it would be totally worth $35 going to the wrong people to have certain names pop up on the screen... "Vladimir Putin", "Harvey Weinstein", "the estate of Charles Manson"...
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:33 PM on January 29, 2018 [23 favorites]


FWIW before I get quoted more, I've been skimming through the interview with Pelosi again looking for the exact spot about hurting national security and while I am not going to listen to the entire 20minute interview again, I can't find those exact words. She certainly says things which imply it, but let me stipulate it may well not be an exact quote. (It may be but like I said, I can't find it in a quick fast forward through the interview.)
posted by Justinian at 7:36 PM on January 29, 2018


NYT, Miriam Jordan,Many Muslim Refugees Will Face Additional Scrutiny Under Trump Plan
The Trump administration said on Monday that it is resuming the admission of refugees from 11 countries with additional screening that it said will increase security but which refugee groups say will make it harder for Muslims to find safe haven in the United States.

In late October, after a pause in admissions, the administration began accepting new refugees except for those from the 11 countries, citing the need for a 90-day security review. Officials did not name the countries, but they were widely reported to be Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Those countries have accounted for more than 40 percent of all refugee admissions in recent years.

Refugees from those countries will now be admitted again, but only after additional screening. “These additional security measures will make it harder for bad actors to exploit our refugee program, and they will ensure we take a more risk-based approach to protecting the homeland,” the secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, said in a statement.
NYT op-ed, Michelle Goldberg, Please Don’t Call Him Presidential
After a tumultuous and divisive year in office, Donald Trump has the opportunity for a fresh start with his first State of the Union address on Tuesday. The president can surprise those who think the worst of him, and prove that he’s been underestimated. All he has to do is apologize to his fellow Americans for the shame he’s brought upon this country, and resign effective immediately.

Since that’s not going to happen, I’m begging my fellow pundits not to get too excited should Trump manage to read from a teleprompter without foaming at the mouth or saying anything overtly racist. No matter how well Trump delivers the lines in his State of the Union — announced theme: “Building a safe, strong and proud America” — he will not become presidential. There will be no turning of corners or uniting the country. At best, Trump will succeed in impersonating a minimally competent leader for roughly the length of an episode of “The Apprentice.” And if he does, recent history suggests that he will be praised as the second coming of Lincoln.
Also, we should probably get a mod ruling on whether we want a new SOTU thread tomorrow evening or just keep it in here+chat for contextless liveblogging
posted by zachlipton at 7:39 PM on January 29, 2018 [47 favorites]


we should compensate two of us that will sit there and watch while the rest of us pick a (long) movie and live-chat/comment on fanfare. then we come back here for their insights. i do not nominate myself.

to abuse the edit window: i meant compensating with money or food or whatever will get them through watching that shitshow.
posted by numaner at 7:54 PM on January 29, 2018 [12 favorites]


I’d do it.

Do I have to be sober? Cuz that’s gonna cost ya.
posted by darkstar at 8:24 PM on January 29, 2018 [9 favorites]


Do I have to be sober? Cuz that’s gonna cost ya

Dear God, we’re not monsters.
posted by corb at 8:38 PM on January 29, 2018 [76 favorites]


...and cost you even more, I fear.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:38 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


WaPo editorial, In a house fire, America loses a devoted servant. Ed "@CaptainPAYGO" Lorenzen died in a house fire trying to rescue his young son. He worked in Hoyer's office to write the statutory PAYGO bill and spent years at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget sharing his knowledge and advocating for sensible fiscal reform. If, at any time over the past year, it has seemed like I had the slightest idea what I was talking about when it came to the budget, sequestration caps, the Byrd Rule, or the costs of GOP health care and tax proposals, there's a good chance it came from him and his team.

.
posted by zachlipton at 8:41 PM on January 29, 2018 [34 favorites]


So the Dems' memo contains information that is not only classified, but the disclosure of which Pelosi believes would hurt national security? My imagination is running wild over here.

The Dems' problem, as best as I can tell, is that the Nunes shitmemo is written in a sufficiently deceitful and blinkered way that refuting it means burning underlying sources and methods. Lie gets round the world, etc.

The Speech or Debate clause, yeah, but the House simply doesn't allow the kind of extended reading into the record on the floor that the Senate does. It's simultaneously packed with erratic zealots and run with ruthless discipline.
posted by holgate at 8:44 PM on January 29, 2018 [8 favorites]


Mod note: Just to get ahead of this a little: the SOTU liveblogging ("omg", one-line reactions, "here's what I'm drinking", etc) tomorrow will be in Chat, and we'll be asking folks to keep this thread for somewhat more-substantial summary or comment.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:58 PM on January 29, 2018 [17 favorites]


The Speech or Debate clause, yeah, but the House simply doesn't allow the kind of extended reading into the record on the floor that the Senate does.

This really isn't the reason for Democrats abetting the coverup that you seem to think it is. House rules of procedure really wouldn't prevent them from reading it into the record, or entering it as a document, or simply fucking tweeting it out and claiming the privilege. And if one Democratic congressman has to risk jail time over it, they need to do it. It's that serious. We're talking about the sitting president covering up treason. If Democrats aren't willing to go to the mat over that, let's all pledge fealty to Putin right now and Adam Schiff can lead us in the Russian anthem.

If Democrats don't release the underlying intel to rebut the Nunes coverup, they're making the choice to assist in that coverup, and giving up on holding Republicans accountable.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:09 PM on January 29, 2018 [17 favorites]


We're not fundamentally disagreeing here. Where we disagree is that there's some kind of obvious method that's "within the rules" when in the minority, or that there aren't consequences to going outside "the rules" when lined up against a gang of crooks that have the power to use the rulebook for shitty treasonous purposes. There's no salvation in defending the rule of law right until those who don't give a fuck about it get bored of your lofty principles and lock you up, but there's also risk in deciding that emergency procedures apply.

That's why I talked upthread about being afraid of a kind of bureaucratic Saturnalia: if people decide that all bets are off, all bets are seriously off, and we shouldn't assume that people playing dirty for the first time will win against people who've played dirty and got away with it their entire lives.

That's to say: if Democrats are willing to go to the mat, what are you willing to do to protect them?
posted by holgate at 9:28 PM on January 29, 2018 [11 favorites]


So if what Schiff is saying in this CNN hit is true, Nunes hasn't actually seen the underlying intelligence on which his memo is based.

Fundamentally, as I understand it, Nunes is trying to claim that the FBI applied for a FISA warrant for surveillance on Page based on the dossier, so the whole FBI is corrupt. What would rebut that would be information about why the FBI really suspected Page and what the FBI learned from its surveillance that convinced a judge to reauthorize it. And that's the vulnerability Nunes is exploiting: his memo is nonsense and he hasn't even read the FISC applications he's condemning; but a real memo from the Democrats would have to be based on real intelligence, and yeah, there can be really negative aspects to releasing that. It's not about House rules or the personal consequences for whoever does it, but rather about being responsible with what is released.

At the same time, we've had more of a year of this, and at some point, we need public evidence of what's been going on. I don't know how you do that without revealing sources and methods, but we're well past the point where dueling chants of "trust me; it's classified" is going to work.

I also don't understand why Republicans would want to call this much attention to Carter Page being under surveillance, because, well, look at the guy; he's really damn suspicious.
posted by zachlipton at 9:29 PM on January 29, 2018 [64 favorites]


That's to say: if Democrats are willing to go to the mat, what are you willing to do to protect them

I’d like to see them show one iota of courage first, because I’m 35 and it’s never once happened in the entire time I’ve been alive.

If Democrats looked out at the energy over the last year and the 3 million marchers last week and their takeaway was “we should cave in at the first possible moment to Stephen Miller and Devin Nunes”, I don’t think the question is on us - it’s on them with power, where they’ve been failing us for a year.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:39 PM on January 29, 2018 [27 favorites]


We're definitely in a "when in the course of human events" moment, so keeping rhetorical and parliamentary powder dry at this time is functionally democratic suicide. It's not often that the right thing to do appears with a big shiny "Press Me" button on it. Come on Dems, take the fight in a sustained manner to the traitorous Republican-Trump-Russian-NRA-Fascist cabal (wherever those tentacles are found to have imbedded) and git 'er DONE!!! If we don't deal perfectly with the thief who has snuck in in the middle of the night, the shame for that is mainly on the thief for having snuck in and burgled to begin with, we needn't paralyze ourselves with worry about every. single. dotted. i. as we prosecute our national rescue from this foul oligarchic incursion.
posted by riverlife at 10:00 PM on January 29, 2018 [11 favorites]


I don’t think the question is on us - it’s on them with power, where they’ve been failing us for a year.

If that's where you are, then assume that they won't and plan accordingly. It's a misreading of history to think that when authoritarianism shows up, those in (some) power who remain committed to existing institutional norms always drop the ball.
posted by holgate at 10:02 PM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]


Quick reminder, there's a network of planned protests if Mueller is fired.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 10:18 PM on January 29, 2018 [26 favorites]


Mueller won't be fired, Rosenstein will be fired and his replacement will neuter the investigation while nominally keeping Mueller in place. This is a frog-in-slowly-heating water situation. By the time the water is boiling it's already too late.
posted by Justinian at 10:26 PM on January 29, 2018 [18 favorites]


I’d like to see them show one iota of courage first, because I’m 35 and it’s never once happened in the entire time I’ve been alive.

Perhaps you are too young to have been paying attention but Obamacare required a lot of bravery on the part of Democratic representatives. In 2010, leading up to the congressional votes, healthcare reform was distinctly unpopular, registering less than 40% approval. The majority of the country was satisfied with their employer insurance and were afraid to rock the boat in any way to provide healthcare for the less fortunate.

Obama had to give an impassioned speech to the Democratic caucus to buck them up in which he conceded that Democrats likely would pay the price in the mid-terms but reminded them that's what they were there for -- much like LBJ's concession that the Civil Rights Act would cause Democrats "to lose the South for a generation" but it was the right thing to do.

And Obama was right. Democrats did the best they could with the bare majority necessary and indeed they were slaughtered in the next mid-terms because of their vote for Obamacare. A lot of Democratic senators and representatives knowingly sacrificed their seats for Obamacare.
posted by JackFlash at 10:54 PM on January 29, 2018 [97 favorites]


By the time the water is boiling it's already too late.

Frogs jump out of the water when it gets too hot, and so must we.
posted by thelonius at 3:21 AM on January 30, 2018 [13 favorites]


Not that I'm anxious to add another hostage to the mix, but is protection of Mueller something that could be tied to the CR in Fed?
posted by angrycat at 4:21 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


TPM:

For impeachment referral, Mueller would need Rosenstein

"Susan Low Bloch, professor of constitutional law at Georgetown Law School, agreed. “'Rosenstein decides what to do, and if he sees an impeachable offense I would say that he should send it to Congress,” she said in a phone interview on Monday. 'But if he chooses not to, I don’t think you can do anything.'"
posted by angrycat at 4:38 AM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]




Hey, wonder what ABC's new pundit has to say...

@ABC
Former NJ @GovChristie says he doesn’t think Pres. Trump should sit down with Special Counsel Mueller: "I don't believe so. Listen, I don't think there's been any...credible allegations against the President of the United States."

VIDEO
posted by chris24 at 4:49 AM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


I will note that Christie did make the point that, "one of the things that I loved about being a prosecutor was only I knew what I knew. Only Bob Mueller really knows what he knows, and we won't know it for a while" ... "Bob Mueller knows what's going on"
posted by mikelieman at 5:19 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


When Nunes' stupid memo comes out, please ask people "Were you scandalized when this story came out in April? Or only when a hashtag tells you to be scandalized?"

That's a CNN story saying "The FBI last year used a dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Donald Trump's campaign as part of the justification to win approval to secretly monitor a Trump associate ... This includes approval from the secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor the communications of Carter Page, two of the officials said."

I can't believe Nunes is getting away with pretending to be shocked by classified information revealing... the same story he didn't react to at all when CNN published it nine months ago. How can anyone believe these "worse than Watergate" reactions are sincere, when none of these guys reacted that way the first time we talked about this?

By the way, according to CNN...

"Officials familiar with the process say even if the application to monitor Page included information from the dossier, it would only be after the FBI had corroborated the information through its own investigation. The officials would not say what or how much was corroborated"

I'm assuming that last part is what Democrats would like to explain, but don't feel they can.
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:19 AM on January 30, 2018 [27 favorites]


Putin got himself another win in one of his new colonies. WaPost Czech elections on Sat.
posted by rc3spencer at 5:21 AM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


> I’d like to see them show one iota of courage first, because I’m 35 and it’s never once happened in the entire time I’ve been alive.

Perhaps you are too young to have been paying attention but Obamacare required a lot of bravery on the part of Democratic representatives.


I'm 33, and I remember the political risk and sacrifice the Dems consciously made to get Obamacare passed quite well. I also remember that at the time, a lot of folks on the left were more focused on hating the Dems for passing Obamacare instead of universal healthcare than they were on recognizing the political risk and probable costs to the Dems in congress. The greatest risk the Dems took, of course, was in trusting that Democratic voters would have their backs in 2010, and we saw how that turned out.

Some things haven't changed since then, I guess.
posted by biogeo at 5:22 AM on January 30, 2018 [36 favorites]




For impeachment referral, Mueller would need Rosenstein

I think this is basically a non-issue. Let’s imagine that Mueller produces a detailed description of felonies committed by the President and goes to the Acting Attorney General to ask for a referral for impeachment, and the Acting Attorney General says, that’s very nice Bob, but no thanks. Does anyone imagine that Mueller’s team would bow their heads and silently trudge back to their old day jobs? Of course not. Both the detailed evidence justifying felony charges against the President, and the fact that the Acting Attorney General was now impeding the prosecution, would be swiftly leaked. Impeachment is a political process that does not depend on an official referral from a third party. Congress would be just as compelled to act, or to not act, in this scenario. Indeed, they would be more compelled than ever. But, perhaps even that would not be sufficient until we have a Democratic House of Representatives.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:27 AM on January 30, 2018 [10 favorites]


Those hoping the special counsel will prosecute the president are engaging in fantasy.

Maybe. That's really an endpoint, but I don't think we'll get there because the real leverage is Mueller indicting Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Jared, but will cut a deal IF Donald Trump resigns. Drilling down in to their money laundering is going to expose Donald Trump's money laundering. The variable, I think, is "Is Donald Trump Sane Enough To Know When To Fold". That's not trivial, btw.
posted by mikelieman at 5:29 AM on January 30, 2018 [20 favorites]


I'm assuming that last part is what Democrats would like to explain, but don't feel they can.

I'd also like to remind folks that one of Steele's dossier sources may already have been killed for talking to him, according to Glenn Simpon's testimony transcripts that Feinstein released.

So when you demand pollitical courage from Democrats, to release their counter memo, remember that it could cost lives.
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:30 AM on January 30, 2018 [32 favorites]


So if what Schiff is saying in this CNN hit is true, Nunes hasn't actually seen the underlying intelligence on which his memo is based.

... And that's the vulnerability Nunes is exploiting: his memo is nonsense and he hasn't even read the FISC applications he's condemning; but a real memo from the Democrats would have to be based on real intelligence, and yeah, there can be really negative aspects to releasing that. It's not about House rules or the personal consequences for whoever does it, but rather about being responsible with what is released.


For what it's worth, that's the message Schiff was relating on NPR this morning, while heavily implying that the Nunes memo is a pile of dishonest garbage. Of course, the NPR interviewer was all, if the Republican memo is partisan hogwash, couldn't the same thing be said about the Democratic one? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To his credit, Schiff shot back that the Democratic memo is based on fact while the Republican one isn't. And, he said, they are weighing what they can release without burning sources and methods, which is something else the Republicans didn't do. '
posted by Gelatin at 5:44 AM on January 30, 2018 [26 favorites]


Also the way that impeachment actually works is that, once the House votes to impeach, the Senate holds a trial. I'd expect the Democrats to call Mueller as a witness during that trial.
posted by Merus at 5:48 AM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


Trump's white evangelical defenders embody slaveholder Christianity.

Which is hilarious, because if memory serves me correctly, the blogger Slacktivist has suggested that evangelicals took up their absolutist position on abortion in an attempt to recapture the moral high ground after their failure to be on the right side of the civil rights effort.

Let’s imagine that Mueller produces a detailed description of felonies committed by the President and goes to the Acting Attorney General to ask for a referral for impeachment, and the Acting Attorney General says, that’s very nice Bob, but no thanks. Does anyone imagine that Mueller’s team would bow their heads and silently trudge back to their old day jobs? Of course not.

Besides the political process of impeachment, Mueller would be free to pass along the results of his investigation to the New York State prosecutor, where money laundering is illegal and whose charges Trump would have no power to pardon.

Mueller's investigation of Trump poses political risks to him and the Republicans in general, but it also puts him and many of his inner circle in serious jeopardy of criminal prosecution regardless of whether Senate Republicans join the effort to remove him.

To which I say, let justice be done though the heavens fall.
posted by Gelatin at 5:56 AM on January 30, 2018 [32 favorites]


Which is hilarious, because if memory serves me correctly, the blogger Slacktivist has suggested that evangelicals took up their absolutist position on abortion in an attempt to recapture the moral high ground after their failure to be on the right side of the civil rights effort.

It was more mercenary than that. Protestants didn't used to be anti-abortion. But they got pissed off over the government's work to desegregate religious schools and seminaries. This is where Falwell's "Moral Majority" came from. They courted the Catholics as part of that, and the Catholics demonstrated to them that abortion would be a really good wedge issue they could gain ground with conservative voters on. Basically the entire evangelical anti-abortion movement is about white supremacy. Use the issue to build the movement to keep white Christianity white. Also important: control women.
posted by middleclasstool at 6:11 AM on January 30, 2018 [63 favorites]


From Slothrup's link above:
> Jerry Falwell, Jr., responding to critics, claimed Jesus’ teachings are about private morality, not public policy: “Jesus said love our neighbors as ourselves but never told Caesar how to run Rome,” he wrote on Twitter.
This from a man who, along with his father, built a national movement around telling Caesar how to run Rome. A movement that consequently helped create the political mess we're now in.
posted by Rykey at 6:16 AM on January 30, 2018 [61 favorites]


So when you demand pollitical courage from Democrats, to release their counter memo, remember that it could cost lives

As opposed to the lives at stake as the country with the greatest military capability ever assembled slides into a white supremacist patriarchal authoritarian dystopia?

None of the people in that dossier are babes in the woods. All of them had information worth getting because of the roles they themselves occupy, the power they held, the choices they made.

Please try to keep perspective. Between this and the abortion stuff...just try.
posted by schadenfrau at 6:30 AM on January 30, 2018 [19 favorites]


As opposed to the lives at stake as the country with the greatest military capability ever assembled slides into a white supremacist patriarchal authoritarian dystopia?

Don't forget that the white supremacist patriarchal authoritarians are also beholden to a hostile foreign power.
posted by diogenes at 6:35 AM on January 30, 2018 [5 favorites]


Here is a sample phone script from the always amazing Prof. Jennifer Taub for calling your Senators and Representative regarding Trump's decision not to enforce the Russian sanctions. Please call. This is brazen disregard for the integrity of our country.

SAMPLE SCRIPT:
Hello, my name is ____. I am a constituent and am calling about the president’s refusal to follow the Russia sanctions law.

This law was passed by a vote of 98-2 in the Senate and 419-3 in the House. This was a vetoproof majority. It was passed in response to overwhelming, credible evidence of Russian government interference in our presidential election. This included hacking into the Democratic and Republican party emails and even into multiple states’ voter databases.

I am deeply concerned that we are now facing a constitutional crisis. We have three branches of government. We do not have a monarchy. Moreover, failing to address future Russian interference places our entire Democracy at risk. How can we trust the integrity of our elections and our democratic system if congress cannot even stand up to the president on this matter?

What does the [senator/representative] plan to do about this?

Thank you

posted by lydhre at 6:44 AM on January 30, 2018 [75 favorites]


Who Really Writes Trump’s Speeches? The White House Won’t Say
Officials declined to engage on the subject in a way that seems almost suspicious, like the speechwriters might all be lizard people or something. “Unfortunately we will not be able to facilitate an interview with the speechwriting team,” Lindsay Walters, a deputy press secretary, told me in an email. “On record,” she added, “when President Trump communicates with the American people, his words are his own and come directly from his heart. His unparalleled ability to speak to and connect with people from across the country, including those who have felt forgotten by Washington for many years, will never waver.”
...
Two days before his inauguration, Trump tweeted a picture of himself at a strange-looking desk, holding a pen and a pad of paper. “Writing my inaugural address at the Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, three weeks ago,” he said. As it turned out, the desk was the Mar-a-Lago concierge desk, and the desktop computer and brochures that usually sit on top of it had been cleared off and replaced with an eagle statue for the photo. The pen in his hand was a marker, his preferred writing instrument but less than an ideal one with which to write a long, inherently historic speech.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:11 AM on January 30, 2018 [39 favorites]


Trump’s State of the Union and the Consequences of Low Expectations
...on the eve of his first State of the Union address, expectations of Trump remain stubbornly low. In some respects, the bar has fallen even further: the question on many Americans’ minds today is not “What is the state of our union?” but “What is the state of the President’s mental health?” Neither the White House physician’s stamp of approval nor Trump’s own insistence that he is, in fact, “stable” has put the matter to rest. Publications such as Time are still throwing around terms like “cognitive impairment”; STAT, a science-news outlet, has analyzed interviews of Trump, going back to the nineteen-eighties, and notes a “striking” deterioration in the “fluency, complexity, and vocabulary level” of his unscripted remarks. The upside of all this, for Trump, is that he is again set to outperform predictions by speaking, as he likely will on Tuesday night, in complete sentences.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:17 AM on January 30, 2018 [9 favorites]


“On record,” she added, “when President Trump communicates with the American people, his words are his own and come directly from his heart. His unparalleled ability to speak to and connect with people from across the country, including those who have felt forgotten by Washington for many years, will never waver.”

This is legitimately frightening. Like, this is something you might read in a press release about Ronald McDonald or Mickey Mouse. Except it's about the President.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:21 AM on January 30, 2018 [53 favorites]


This is legitimately frightening. Like, this is something you might read in a press release about Ronald McDonald or Mickey Mouse.

Or Josef Stalin. Or Idi Amin. Or Big Brother.
posted by Gelatin at 7:23 AM on January 30, 2018 [52 favorites]


Well sure, I chose to work light. Because the alternative...
posted by uncleozzy at 7:24 AM on January 30, 2018 [12 favorites]


To be fair, when President Trump communicates with the American people his words are (usually) his own and do in fact come directly from his id heart. His ability to speak to and connect with people across the country is, in fact, unparalleled, thanks to the prevalence of 24-hour cable news and social media. And I doubt that this ability (note that ability is a neutral word in this context) to speak to and connect with people across the country will ever waver for as long as he lives.

But, yeah. They know we can see and hear him when he talks, right? Really looking forward to the Speech When Trump Finally Becomes President tonight. Or maybe he actually will go off the rails! You never know with this guy. I have a hard time believing he'd be able to stick to even the best speech ever written for a full hour without getting bored, but perhaps a room full of every important Republican doing their best to out-cheer each other will be enough to satisfy his ego.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:36 AM on January 30, 2018 [5 favorites]


Two days before his inauguration, Trump tweeted a picture of himself at a strange-looking desk, holding a pen and a pad of paper. “Writing my inaugural address at the Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, three weeks ago,” he said.

I'm mystified if they really think that pictures like that really convince anyone that he's really writing his speech. Also, it's weird that they think that anyone cares. All presidents have speechwriters, even the most eloquent ones.
posted by octothorpe at 7:37 AM on January 30, 2018 [13 favorites]


Please try to keep perspective.

I love MeFi deeply and mostly just read through threads favoriting things and clicking links. I post only when I've got a bee in my bonnet, a link to share, a question google can't answer... Or when I think a complex issue is being oversimplified. That always bugs me. But really I'm not as contrarian as I seem. It's just that there's a little plus sign for saying "I agree" and the only way to say "no, it's more complicated than that" is to type it out.

In particular, I think it is easy to say "Democrats should release their memo and burn our sources" when you have no idea what is in that memo or who those sources are.

But 1) Then we will get no more intelligence from those sources, or from others who are deterred by what happened to them, and this is a moment in history when knowing what the Kremlin is planning might be really important.

And 2) It's not clear that it's necessary to release Schiff's memo in order to refute the one Nunes put together. We don't know yet whether that gambit by Nunes is actually going to work. Getting people killed (and also losing our access to information) to refute a memo which turns out to be transparently stupid and which goes nowhere once it actually comes out (which is pretty much what happened last time Nunes tried this)... That would be tragic.

I'm aware that we are in a crisis, but just because we should do something doesn't mean we should do that. There may be much less costly ways to handle this situation.

Feinstein just proved that she at least is willing to take the kind of minor personal risk which is required. So I think it is too glib to attribute the unwillingness to release Schiff's memo at this point to a lack of personal courage on the part of Democrats. There are almost certainly risks involved that we know nothing about, to people who are much more vulnerable than members of congress, and to whom we have made promises in return for their help.

Really, I would not post half as much if there were a little * next to the little +, which I could click to show I thought something was oversimplified. Pony request?
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:42 AM on January 30, 2018 [39 favorites]


It seems to me that now would be a great time for Rod Rosenstein, who is surely a material witness to Trump's obstruction of justice in firing Comey under false pretenses, to recuse himself from all matters relating to the Russia investigation. The GOP would have to come up with a new reason to fire and replace him, or to fire and replace the subsequent Acting Attorney General, Rachel Brand, who is sufficiently non-Trumpy to have been appointed by Obama to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:43 AM on January 30, 2018 [5 favorites]


Trump has requested in his budget proposal a reduction of 6,000 Bureau of Prison positions, including more than 1,800 correctional officers. The extra world will be transferred to -- you guessed it -- private prisons.

The Obama administration has begun to phase out private prisons and the prison industry heavily contributed to the Trump campaign.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:46 AM on January 30, 2018 [37 favorites]


I'm mystified if they really think that pictures like that really convince anyone that he's really writing his speech. Also, it's weird that they think that anyone cares. All presidents have speechwriters, even the most eloquent ones.

That whole tableau was 100% Trump. Why do they care? Trump's narcissism must be appeased. It cannot allow the idea that he ever has help from anyone on anything because that implies he is anything less than the Perfect Being he believes himself to be.
posted by scalefree at 7:51 AM on January 30, 2018 [6 favorites]


I'm mystified if they really think that pictures like that really convince anyone that he's really writing his speech.

They seem to satisfy some portion of the base. They're shared and approvingly commented-upon by his supporters and followers on social media. Some people are truly determined to believe him 'presidential' no matter what, and even poorly-staged photos seem to serve the purpose for the true believers. Everyone else thinks they look ridiculous, naturally, but I suspect his staff cherry-pick positive social media responses to show him and say 'see? everyone says you look so presidential!' when heading off tantrums or trying to improve his moods.

Also, it's weird that they think that anyone cares.

It may partly have to do with efforts to defuse the he's-not-really-president / he's-cognitively-compromised narratives, but I'm also not 100% sure that Trump and his staff *do* know that presidents usually have speechwriters. There is an awful lot about the executive branch, and functioning government in general, that they seem not to know. Also, since Obama was widely praised for his ability to give great speeches, Trump is likely jealous and hell-bent on making it look like he's even better than Obama and does it *all by himself* too.
posted by halation at 7:52 AM on January 30, 2018 [12 favorites]


Trump would comfortably take credit for writing the Declaration of Independence if he thought he could get away with it.

In isolate, sure, whatever, he's pretending he doesn't have speech writers but in aggregate? It is a symptom of Dear Leader-itis and it is very very concerning because the base is ENCOURAGED to buy into the lie. It further cements the narrative of Trump vs. the World for them and it is going to get worse.
posted by lydhre at 8:03 AM on January 30, 2018 [5 favorites]


She said that reading classified intel into the record would hurt national security

That's undisputably not the case with all classified information, just a subset of it.


classification pedantry...there are three types of classification: confidential, secret, and top secret. each is based on the very concept of impact to national security.

TOP SECRET – Will be applied to information in which the unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.

SECRET – Will be applied to information in which the unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the national security.

CONFIDENTIAL – Will be applied to information in which the unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause damage to the national security.

plainly, if a thing is classified, by definition it impacts national security.

there are other categories and mechanics of information protection, but not other classifications.

information can be misclassified. that is, information that *does not* impact national security can be mistakenly classified, or intentionally classified for a variety of reasons. for example. organizational embarrassment (e.g. collateral murder).

if The World Famous is suggesting that the memo's classified information clearly does not impact national security, pelosi's reticence is still correct.

to *really* do it right. she needs to go to the original classifying authority (oca) and request a new review and determination.

she *can* read whatever she wants into the record, but it's a real can of worms, optically.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:03 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


Guardian: FBI has second dossier on possible Trump-Russia collusion

Among other things, both documents allege Donald Trump was compromised during a 2013 trip to Moscow that involved lewd acts in a five-star hotel.

Pee Tape 2: Ureic Boogaloo
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:12 AM on January 30, 2018 [65 favorites]


Absolutely brutal interview with former RNC chair Michael Steele in the WaPo today.

Looks like lots of people are finally figuring out that, yes, those jaguars are gonna eat your face too.
posted by Sublimity at 8:14 AM on January 30, 2018 [26 favorites]


I'm mystified if they really think that pictures like that really convince anyone that he's really writing his speech.

Just noting here that a not insignificant number of people genuinely believed, and continue to genuinely believe, that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were running a sex-trafficking ring for pedophiles from the basement of a pizza restaurant.
posted by holborne at 8:20 AM on January 30, 2018 [44 favorites]


Also from:

Guardian: FBI has second dossier on possible Trump-Russia collusion
Trump now has five days to decide whether the Nunes document should become public.
What are the odds that he chooses the State of the Union address to announce that he's ordering it released and uses that as an opportunity to make the SOTU a partisan attack on the Democrats and (again) demand that Hillary Clinton be locked up (along, perhaps, with the fake news & deep state)?
posted by Buntix at 8:21 AM on January 30, 2018 [7 favorites]


> “That’s right, baby, I built that bad boy out of steel,” Steele told me in the latest episode of “Cape Up.” “Now, having done that, I can’t help it if they went inside and started tearing up the floorboards and knocking out the windows, and crapping all over the house.”

I hear you, Mike. I mean, it's not like the GOP already had a decades-long history of religious hypocrisy, fiscal irresponsibility and turning a blind eye to the character defects of its leaders before Trump came along to ruin their spotless record.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:24 AM on January 30, 2018 [22 favorites]


Just to support what OnceUponATime is saying, I think most of us would be thrilled to see the Democrats take unilateral action against the Nunes memo like reading Schiff's memo into record. And I think we're all exhausted and frustrated at how slow the formal processes take, compared to the speed at which the lawless Republicans can move. But the manichean rhetoric that some people are using here presumes that there is no cost to Democrats abandoning the norms of governance that the Republicans have already abandoned, or that it is trivially obvious that this cost is less than the benefits. But this is far from obvious, and it also should be clear that elected Democrats have more access to the kind of information that will complicate this decision.

None of this is to say that the elected Democrats are necessarily doing the right thing by being cautious in releasing the Schiff memo, or any other frustratingly cautious action they take. Rather, we should simply recognize that we do not yet have sufficient information to evaluate their decisions. I'm frustrated at how slow they're moving, too, but to claim that this is evidence that they are cowards, or idiots, or have deliberately abandoned the American people, is counterproductive, defeatist, and unjustified. Maybe they are moving slowly because they have access to information we don't.
posted by biogeo at 8:26 AM on January 30, 2018 [21 favorites]


Julia Manchester, The Hill: Ex-RNC chair rips evangelical leaders standing by Trump: ‘Don’t ever preach to me’ again
Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele ripped evangelicals for standing by President Trump amid reports Trump had a sexual encounter with an adult film star while he was married.

"Just shut the hell up and don't ever preach to me about anything ever again," Steele said during an MSNBC appearance on Tuesday.

"I don't want to hear it, because after telling me how to live my life, who to love, what to believe, what not to believe, what to do and what not to do, and now you sit back. And if the prostitutes don't matter, if the grabbing the you-know-what doesn't matter, the outright behavior and lies do not matter, just shut up," he said.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:27 AM on January 30, 2018 [104 favorites]


Or maybe he actually will go off the rails! You never know with this guy. I have a hard time believing he'd be able to stick to even the best speech ever written for a full hour without getting bored,

I would think that his chances of ad-libbing are pretty good. Donny's noted for being illiterate/impatient with reading, and is he really going to read anything for that long? He only went, what, fifteen minutes with his inaugural address?
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:27 AM on January 30, 2018


His unparalleled ability to speak
... you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me, it would have been so easy, and it's not - as important as these lives are - nuclear is so powerful. My uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, and that was 35 years ago, he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right. Who would have thought? But now when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners - now it used to be three, now it's four - but when it was three, and even now, I would have said: it's all in the messenger. Fellas, and it is fellas, because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's it's going to take them about another 150 years. But the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators. So, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.
- The unfiltered prose poetry of the clown-vandal.

His ability to speak is unparalleled in that it diverges from what we understand as speech and travels it's own uncharted path.
posted by adept256 at 8:27 AM on January 30, 2018 [35 favorites]


"Just shut the hell up and don't ever preach to me about anything ever again," Steele said during an MSNBC appearance on Tuesday.

Does Michael Steele say at any point in the interview that he no longer considers himself a Republican, will no longer support GOP candidates or elected officials, and will give Democratic candidates his vote, his speech, and his cash? If not, then he should take his own advice and shut up.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:31 AM on January 30, 2018 [69 favorites]


They seem to satisfy some portion of the base.

“You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:32 AM on January 30, 2018 [22 favorites]


Has anything significant ever happened at a SOTU address, ever? I don't remember anything over the time I've been paying attention.
posted by Coventry at 8:32 AM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


Well, some moron called President Barack Obama a liar.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:34 AM on January 30, 2018 [34 favorites]


biogeo We anticipate the Democrats will betray us and basically surrender without a fight because that's what past experience has lead us to think is most likely.

I concede that it is possible that the Democrats are acting wisely and with great intentions and fully intend to fight back with every weapon they possess. I also think that's the least likely explanation for the lack of fight from our elected Democrats and that the more likely explanation is that they're too weak willed, too cowardly, too whatever, to actually stand and fight.

If we on the liberal/left side of things have this view of the Democratic party, I'd suggest it's because past experience has lead us to have that view. If the Democrats have a reputation for surrendering, backing down, giving in to Republican demands, and generally taking the cowardly way out whenever possible it's because they've eared that reputation by surrendering, backing down, giving in to Republican demands, and generally taking the cowardly way out whenever possible.

j_curiouser What you describe is certainly the theoretically ideal situation for how classification works, but as various leaked documents have proven that theoretical ideal does not match reality. We don't suspect, but thanks to heroes like Snowden and Manning, we know for a stone cold certain fact that the US government routinely classifies virtually everything for no reason at all, or simply to avoid embarrassment.

she *can* read whatever she wants into the record, but it's a real can of worms, optically.

I think the optics of letting the Republicans, yet again, curbstomp an unresisting Democratic Party while leading the US further down the path to despotism, autocracy, and rule by an insane clown, are a lot worse.
posted by sotonohito at 8:36 AM on January 30, 2018 [10 favorites]




Honestly, at this point we shouldn't even need the Mueller investigation. Worse and more immediate issues are right in front of us. Congress passed the Russia sanctions bill with veto-proof majorities. Across both houses, a total of FIVE GUYS voted against it. Instead of vetoing, the White House says, "Yeah, but I don't wanna."

Forget Mueller. Forget the investigation. The fact that the White House is just gonna ignore a veto-proof law from Congress and we aren't already moving on impeachment is the scariest fucking thing.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:39 AM on January 30, 2018 [150 favorites]


We anticipate the Democrats will betray us and basically surrender without a fight because that's what past experience has lead us to think is most likely.

I disagree with your interpretation of past Democratic actions, but given that that's your view, I can understand your perspective here.
posted by biogeo at 8:40 AM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


Has anything significant ever happened at a SOTA address, ever

I guess it wasn't technically a SOTA last year, I'm still pissed about the way Trump exploited the widow of the Navy SEAL who died in that botched raid Trump ordered in Yemen. Along with 20 civilians including an 8 year old girl.

That was a thing that happened.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:46 AM on January 30, 2018 [26 favorites]


scaryblackdeath: "Forget Mueller. Forget the investigation. The fact that the White House is just gonna ignore a veto-proof law from Congress and we aren't already moving on impeachment is the scariest fucking thing."

They should have impeached him day one for violating the Emoluments clause. He's been flaunting the law ever since.
posted by Mitheral at 8:51 AM on January 30, 2018 [69 favorites]


Forget Mueller. Forget the investigation. The fact that the White House is just gonna ignore a veto-proof law from Congress and we aren't already moving on impeachment is the scariest fucking thing.

On the...plus? side, this is an...unimpeachable (goddammit) case for impeachment, after the midterms. Like there is no ambiguity, no possible other interpretation. Just straight up dereliction of duty.

Assuming we get a Congress after midterms that has one last fuck left to give.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:52 AM on January 30, 2018 [28 favorites]


I'm still pissed about the way Trump exploited the widow of the Navy SEAL who died in that botched raid Trump ordered in Yemen. Along with 20 civilians including an 8 year old girl

The 8 year old girl we shot in the neck was a US citizen. Not that being American objectively makes her death more tragic, but...Trump milked an extended standing ovation over his murder of an 8 year old American girl and was lauded by mainstream media for his presidentiality. That's what we can look forward to from CNN and NYT after whatever monstrous SOTU we get.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:52 AM on January 30, 2018 [35 favorites]


I've always watched the SOTU address. Doesn't matter who is in office, it's a part of the American political landscape and even when I haven't agreed with a president, I also recognize there are certain privileges that go with the office.

I will not watch any address by Trump. I refuse to normalize him. I refuse, after all he has done, to allow him his chance to look presidential. He has had his chances. He's had his chances for a year. He has repeatedly refused. W, even at his worst, could give a presidential (if sterile and canned, as these often are) response to a question or comment on a breaking situation. Trump has had these chances and he has refused to even try to look the part of a world leader. He can't expect us to respect the office when he himself refuses.
posted by azpenguin at 8:54 AM on January 30, 2018 [46 favorites]


mumimor: I was just reading this: JOSÉ ANDRÉS ON FEEDING PUERTO RICO AFTER HURRICANE MARIA - it looks like a principled chef can do what the US administration can't.

Related: FEMA To End Food And Water Aid For Puerto Rico (NPR, Jan. 29, 2018)
In a sign that FEMA believes the immediate humanitarian emergency has subsided, on Jan. 31 it will, in its own words, "officially shut off" the mission it says has provided more than 30 million gallons of potable water and nearly 60 million meals across the island in the four months since the hurricane. The agency will turn its remaining food and water supplies over to the Puerto Rican government to finish distributing.

Some on the island believe it's too soon to end these deliveries given that a third of residents still lack electricity and, in some places, running water, but FEMA says its internal analytics suggest only about 1 percent of islanders still need emergency food and water. The agency believes that is a small enough number for the Puerto Rican government and nonprofit groups to handle.
...
But some say Puerto Ricans are not all ready to resume with their normal, pre-hurricane lives.

In Morovis, a municipality located in the island's lush, mountainous interior, Mayor Carmen Maldonado said that about 10,000 of her 30,000 residents are still receiving FEMA's food and water rations.

"There are some municipalities that may not need the help anymore, because they've got nearly 100 percent of their energy and water back," she said. "Ours is not so lucky."

While the government reports that island-wide, nearly a third of Puerto Rican customers still lack electricity, Maldonado estimated that in her municipality that figure is more like 80 percent.
Semi-related: Puerto Rico's Governor Announces Plan To Privatize Island's Troubled Electric Utility (NPR, Jan. 23, 2018)
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló says he is moving to sell off the U.S. territory's public power company, as nearly a third of the island's electric customers remain without power four months after Hurricane Maria struck the island on Sept. 20.

Rosselló said Monday that it might take 18 months to privatize the insolvent Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA, the largest U.S. public utility as measured by the number of customers — 3.3 million.

"The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority does not work and cannot continue to operate like this," Rosselló said in a televised address. "With that PREPA, we cannot face the risks of living in an area of high vulnerability to catastrophic events."
Not everyone agrees: The Peril of Privatizing Prepa (Vann R. Newkirk II for The Atlantic, Jan. 24, 2018)
The burden that the governor mentioned is mostly related to the $9 billion debt accrued by Prepa, the largest component of the island’s fiscal and bankruptcy crisis. Over the past few decades, Prepa has been deeply connected to demographic and economic woes across Puerto Rico. As industries and people left the island en masse, the monopoly faced both a sharply decreasing revenue base and an obligation to provide power for the remaining citizens. It racked up debt even as it charged consumers more and more, and as service suffered and the island relied on an ever-more-inefficient and more environmentally corrosive fossil-fuel importation scheme, with generation in the southeast corner feeding the metropolis of San Juan in the north. By 2017, the Puerto Rican power infrastructure lagged some 30 years behind average mainland municipalities, and routine maintenance had been mostly ignored for the constituent pieces of the power grid.

Accordingly, Prepa’s woes were the central focus for the federally-appointed Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB) created with the 2016 PROMESA legislation intended to give Puerto Rico debt relief. That board clashed with the Puerto Rican government for control of the island’s politics and finances, but it appeared that for both sides, partial or total privatization of the power authority was the preferred course of action.
...
According to John Mudd, an expert in Puerto Rican law, the process will roughly resemble the federally-assisted 2009 Chapter 11 reorganization of Chrysler, where revenue-generating pieces of the automaker were packaged off and resold to Fiat, and bondholders—including a number of pension plans—agreeing to receive a fraction of the value of the assets they had liens against. “They probably won’t sell the whole thing to one party,” Mudd told me. “They’ll probably sell pieces of it to multiple parties.” Still, there’s been no negotiation yet with bondholder groups and Rosselló still owes a big chunk of change to government employees and their pension plans, and also the large group of Prepa employees who’ve left during the crisis. “It’s questionable how much money the government will get out of it,” Mudd says.

Still, regardless of the form privatization takes, the end-result will be the functional end of a public sector that has defined life in Puerto Rico for the majority of the island’s history as a United States territory. Since its creation in 1941, Prepa has been part of the economic bedrock of the island, augmenting its public sector and providing many of the jobs that controlled some of the demographic erosion to the mainland. Even with Prepa’s mounting failures over the years, mass privatization of it and other formerly public-sector arenas on the island will further reduce the input of, and regulation by, Puerto Ricans over Puerto Rican issues, after a few years when the federal government has wielded even more power on the island and attempts by its citizens at exercising sovereignty have largely been brushed aside.
And in the background of all this, Puerto Rico’s most ambitious push yet for statehood, explained -- The island sent seven potential members of Congress to Capitol Hill. (Alexia Fernández Campbell for Vox, Jan. 11, 2018)
It's possible that Puerto Rican's views of statehood may have shifted in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. More than three months after Maria passed through the island, 40 percent of the island remains without power, and running water is unreliable.

The slow federal response, and President Trump's overall dismissiveness of the disaster, shed new light on the problem of having no real representation in Washington. It meant that Puerto Rico had no role in deciding how much disaster relief money would be allocated to the island, and that Puerto Rico had no say in how the tax bill would affect Puerto Rico.

Instead, the island has had to rely on members of Congress who represent large Puerto Rican districts in the United States to do their bidding. They are mostly Democrats, like Rep. Nydia Velázquez of New York and Rep. Darren Soto of Florida.

But their influence is limited in the GOP-controlled Congress.

It's unclear if this has warmed more Puerto Ricans to the idea of becoming a state, even though that would mean they’d pay more federal taxes. No polls have asked Puerto Ricans this question recently.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:56 AM on January 30, 2018 [33 favorites]


With the caveat that there is little I would put past Trump and his venal gang of idiots...I am old enough and have been on this site long enough to remember people here freaking out about how Bush and Cheney and that crew were likely to impose martial law, suspend elections, etc..
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:01 AM on January 30, 2018 [11 favorites]


With the caveat that there is little I would put past Trump and his venal gang of idiots...I am old enough and have been on this site long enough to remember people here freaking out about how Bush and Cheney and that crew were likely to impose martial law, suspend elections, etc..

I rememember this, too, post-2004 especially. And Cheney, at least, was much more competent than Trump and any of his minions.

Zack Beauchamp, Vox: How American Democracy Survived Trump's First Year:
There’s another factor that shaped the way American institutions responded to Trump’s policies: mass protest...

...It can be extremely difficult to measure the effect this kind of mass activism has on restraining Trump’s authoritarian impulses. But when I spoke to Chenoweth over the phone, she emphasized that her own research on how nonviolent resistance can topple governments suggests that it influenced people in positions of power to push back as well.

“People in federal government agencies ... aren’t going to have the courage or moral core to stand up to that stuff unless they see that there are millions of people who agree with them and are willing to put their feet to the pavement,” Chenoweth says.
Let's keep the momentum up for a blue wave in 2018. That is what we really need to save us.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 9:20 AM on January 30, 2018 [47 favorites]


cjelli: NBC News: Inspector general accuses Pentagon of censoring Afghanistan data

Related: U.S. Military Auditor Suggests The Afghan War Is Still At A Stalemate -- Steve Inskeep talks to John F. Sopko, special inspector general for Afghan Reconstruction. His report suggests the war is at a stalemate, with signs of continued decline in Afghan government control. (NPR, Jan. 30 - audio only for now, transcript up in a few hours)

Sopko said that the censored Afghanistan data has been publicly availalbe for the past ten years, and only the last two quarters of data are now censored. Beware warhawk proclamations without any supporting documentation tonight, especially with regard to Afghanistan.

I was about to write that this is deeply troubling, but on a moment of reflection, I realize this is just another example of this administration crafting a message as it likes based on controlling the flow of information, covering up or hiding its own ineptitude, failures and corruption.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:23 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


“Unfortunately we will not be able to facilitate an interview with the speechwriting team,” Lindsay Walters, a deputy press secretary, told me in an email.

Lindsay Walters, a deputy press secretary
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:29 AM on January 30, 2018 [9 favorites]


Remember when he negged America in the inaugural address?

Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.

An education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.

And the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.


This American carnage! Anyhow my prediction is he's going to claim Obama's economic recovery as his own. Expect exaggerated unemployment and stock figures. Based upon nothing he's actually done, that's all the work of the previous eight years. Everything negative will be Obama's fault, and the deep state sleeper cells he left behind. Nothing will be said of Russia, nevermind that they attacked and continue to attack the democratic process and nothing has been done about it. If he mentions Mueller at all, you have to chug a bottle of Stoli.

He will lie, natch. He'll have a boast about something he's definitely not the greatest at. He'll mispronounce at least three things. He'll insult a country, maybe a continent, and/or a political leader, needlessly upsetting diplomatic relationships. Probably with Palestine, but who knows, it may be with Nambia. He'll attack the media and the democrats HARD, these are the internal enemies to MAGA. Overt racism will be left out in favour of xenophobic dog whistles, because those people aren't real Americans.

Anyhow those are my predictions. I know it's futile to predict anything from this person, other than what he'll say will be awful. You don't need a magic octopus to predict that though.
posted by adept256 at 9:31 AM on January 30, 2018 [9 favorites]


Mod note: Hey gang, I know everyone's antsy with the news from yesterday and the anticipation of whatever SOTU crap tonight, but still, gonna suggest that people find something to do with that nervous/fearful/angry energy other than making predictions in here, either in the vein of "he's going to be offensive tonight" or "there will never be free elections again" -- totally understandable, and I feel these same things, and nobody's doing anything wrong -- but still let's really aim to keep this thread more narrowly focused on actual events.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:36 AM on January 30, 2018 [25 favorites]


Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley announced today she's running against Mike Capuano in the Democratic primary this fall for the 7th CD in Mass. Whoever wins the primary is pretty much assured of winning in November.
posted by adamg at 9:40 AM on January 30, 2018 [6 favorites]


Related: U.S. Military Auditor Suggests The Afghan War Is Still At A Stalemate -- Steve Inskeep talks to John F. Sopko

I heard this during the morning commute... Inskeep said NPR had gotten a document via FOIA that said the Afghan government now controls 56 of the country's districts, down from 72 previously (a year ago, I think), which is barely half the country. Bear that in mind tonight if Trump says the war there is going swimmingly.
posted by martin q blank at 9:45 AM on January 30, 2018 [8 favorites]


If you are chilly and want to warm by a fire, nice and toasty in Bethlehem. At the bottom of the wapo article.
posted by Oyéah at 9:46 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


So, in regards to *The Memo*...Has there been any indication/confirmation that anything about it is actually legit, and not just a bunch of 2+2=17 nutjobbiness?
posted by Thorzdad at 9:55 AM on January 30, 2018


None of the people in that dossier are babes in the woods. All of them had information worth getting because of the roles they themselves occupy, the power they held, the choices they made.

Lord Fahquaad: "Some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

You burn informants now in order to score points for a dubious political advantage, then the next time you need Intel, what are you going to tell them? "We'll protect you, until some guy sitting safely at home on hid computer says we need to expose you."

I'm extremely skeptical that the Democrats releasing their memo would do much, if any good at all. And frantic waving of arms and screaming "Do something! Anything!" won't change that.
posted by happyroach at 10:02 AM on January 30, 2018 [8 favorites]


You burn informants now in order to score points for a dubious political advantage, then the next time you need Intel, what are you going to tell them?

lol I think the horse is out of the barn on “does the US maintain credibility with anyone, anywhere”

If there are still sources in there in use...I think, given that many Republicans who literally appear to be active Russian assets have already seen it and have access to the classified intel, we may assume anything in the memo is already blown

So regarding that horse...also the barn is on fire and is awfully close to the house, so like...extraordinary measures and all that

I'm extremely skeptical that the Democrats releasing their memo would do much, if any good at all

That may be so; only people who’ve seen the info know that. But that is not really any argument so much as an uninformed opinion.

Me? I’m pretty much willing to try anything that will stop the slide into autocracy, because holy shit, this is literally an existential threat. The President has just, this week, refused to enforce a law at the likely behest of a foreign power, and his relationship to that foreign power is discussed in these memos. The information is relevant. Whether its release “does any good” would depend a lot on civic action.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:14 AM on January 30, 2018 [15 favorites]


EPA Head Scott Pruitt in Feb 2016 interview: Trump would be "more abusive to the Constitution than Barack Obama -- and that's saying a lot." He goes on to describe Trump as a bully and dangerous.

And yet here Pruitt is, happily and meekly do Trump's bidding. Granted, he's helping Trump abuse the environment rather than the Constitution, but still.

What's with these guys who either voiced dismissive opinions of Trump or have been repeatedly and publicly dragged by him nevertheless kneeling submissively when he tells them he needs a place to rest his feet? Sessions, Cruz, Rubio, Pruitt, Tillerson -- the list goes on and on.

Do they get a text each morning from an untraceable source that reads "Po 84" with never-before-seen photos of Alexander Litvinenko in the final few seconds before he was poisoned attached?

Is there stuff in the compromising material that the Russians have on them that's just straight up inexcusable: not just evidence of extramarital affairs, closeted homosexuality (while being extremely homophobic in their roles as legislators), drug use and visits to websites with kinks that go beyond what even the mulligan-granting Evangelicals are willing to forgive, but stuff that would get them killed if they were placed in gen pop in prison?

Seriously, what's going on? A few more millions of dollars in their already swollen bank accounts? Promises of positions of power once we're openly a client state of Russia? What?
posted by lord_wolf at 10:28 AM on January 30, 2018 [53 favorites]


I wonder if the Venn diagram showing the set of people who would question the Nunes memo and take the Schiff memo seriously and the set of people who understand the national security concerns the Democrats have and the recklessness of the Republicans is not two completely overlapping circles. The Nunes memo is not about a serious debate of facts, what does the set of people credulous enough to buy into it before the release of the Schiff memo but still change their minds after the release even look like? There's a good chance that audience is almost entirely made up of those journalists and editors committed to false equivalence narratives.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:31 AM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


What are the odds that he chooses the State of the Union address to announce that he's ordering it released and uses that as an opportunity to make the SOTU a partisan attack on the Democrats and (again) demand that Hillary Clinton be locked up (along, perhaps, with the fake news & deep state)?

Daniel Dale: Yes, there is betting on the State of the Union

Picture of odds chart
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:33 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


What's with these guys who either voiced dismissive opinions of Trump or have been repeatedly and publicly dragged by him nevertheless kneeling submissively when he tells them he needs a place to rest his feet? Sessions, Cruz, Rubio, Pruitt, Tillerson -- the list goes on and on.

Wraithing Factors (exact order of importance is up to you): (1) Corrupting influence of proximity to power among those with authoritarian tendencies, (2) Standing to personally benefit in the kleptocracy, (3) Profound denial in the face of the death of their party and plausibly nation/species, (4) Self-preservation due to entanglement with the same criminal/treasonous activities as the regime, (5) Direct extortion by foreign state powers, generally via kompromat.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:39 AM on January 30, 2018 [8 favorites]


The Shearer Memo - Second Trump-Russia dossier being assessed by FBI

The timing of this bombshell, between Trumpist attacks on the FBI and the Nunes memo's imminent release, isn't coincidence—even as Paul Ryan called for a "cleanse [of] the organization", according to Fox News. Its corroboration for parts of the Steele Dossier shouldn't be a surprise either, not after l'affaire Stormy Daniels.
The second memo was written by Cody Shearer, a controversial political activist and former journalist who was close to the Clinton White House in the 1990s. Unlike Steele, Shearer does not have a background in espionage, and his memo was initially viewed with scepticism, not least because he had shared it with select media organisations before the election. However, the Guardian has been told the FBI investigation is still assessing details in the ‘Shearer memo’ and is pursuing intriguing leads.

One source with knowledge of the inquiry said the fact the FBI was still working on it suggested investigators had taken an aspect of it seriously. It raises the possibility that parts of the Steele dossier, which has been derided by Trump’s supporters, may have been corroborated by Shearer’s research, or could still be.[...]

The Shearer memo was provided to the FBI in October 2016. It was handed to them by Steele – who had been given it by an American contact – after the FBI requested the former MI6 agent provide any documents or evidence that could be useful in its investigation, according to multiple sources. The Guardian was told Steele warned the FBI he could not vouch for the veracity of the Shearer memo, but that he was providing a copy because it corresponded with what he had separately heard from his own independent sources.

Among other things, both documents allege Donald Trump was compromised during a 2013 trip to Moscow that involved lewd acts in a five-star hotel. The Shearer memo cites an unnamed source within Russia’s FSB, the state security service. The Guardian cannot verify any of the claims.
What's interesting about this leak is that it almost certainly comes from the FBI or their allies in the intelligence community. If it had been Steele and/or Shearer himself, the Guardian would probably have felt comfortable with identifying them as the source. As to why the FBI would pass this particular story on to the Guardian rather than US news outlet, (a) the Shearer memo doesn't burn any of their sources at a time when Capitol Hill is going nuts about declassification and (b) the FBI's media allies can pick up the Guardian story without looking compromised themselves. (c.f. CIA Director Mike Pompeo warning Russia will interfere with the US mid-terms in an interview with the BBC.) It's strange to see a classic Cold War journalism tactic like this in the 21st century, but here we are.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:39 AM on January 30, 2018 [20 favorites]


So the White House's apparent admission (in obfuscating language) that it's going to, like, reject the actual sanctions almost unanimously voted in by Congress and substitute its own is obviously scary. They're just flat-out saying "nuh-uh". (Some have reached for a comparison to Obama's DACA executive order. I think from a strictly legalistic perspective, that would only be comparable if Congress had passed a veto-proof law prioritizing the deportation of people brought in as children, since all DACA did was shuffle that through deferment.)

When that initial sanctions vote happened, I was deeply heartened that there was apparently something Republicans would stand up to Trump on, and I figured it came down to "Yay Russia" not being actual red meat that any voters would primary them over.

This turn of events, whereby Trump does sign the bill but then ignores it, forces me to re-evaluate my original positivity. Is there a solid possibility that the Republicans voted for this law knowing it just wouldn't be enforced? Was the law itself kayfabe? Did Russia issue dozens of permission slips on this one? What the hell is going on?
posted by InTheYear2017 at 10:39 AM on January 30, 2018 [32 favorites]


Statement from repugnant POS Paul Gosar, R-Arizona:

Today, Congressman Paul Gosar contacted the U.S. Capitol Police, as well as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, asking they consider checking identification of all attending the State of the Union address and arresting any illegal aliens in attendance.

Additionally, Congressman Gosar asked that they arrest those using fraudulent social security numbers and identification to pass through security.

“Of all the places where the Rule of Law needs to be enforced, it should be in the hallowed halls of Congress. Any illegal aliens attempting to go through security, under any pretext of invitation or otherwise, should be arrested and deported," said Congressman Gosar.




Man, fuck that guy.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 10:48 AM on January 30, 2018 [71 favorites]


NBC News, Howard Fineman, The ‘state’ of Donald Trump? He thinks it couldn’t be better.
Sources say that Trump has adopted a two-track strategy to deal with the Mueller investigation.

One is an un-Trumpian passivity and trust. He keeps telling some in his circle that Mueller — any day now — will tell him he is off the hook for any charge of collusion with the Russians or obstruction of justice.

But Trump — who trusts no one, or at least no one for long — has now decided that he must have an alternative strategy that does not involve having Justice Department officials fire Mueller.

"I think he's been convinced that firing Mueller would not only create a firestorm, it would play right into Mueller's hands," said another friend, "because it would give Mueller the moral high ground."

Instead, as is now becoming plain, the Trump strategy is to discredit the investigation and the FBI without officially removing the leadership. Trump is even talking to friends about the possibility of asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to consider prosecuting Mueller and his team.

"Here's how it would work: 'We're sorry, Mr. Mueller, you won't be able to run the federal grand jury today because he has to go testify to another federal grand jury,'" said one Trump adviser.
This plan is even stupider than a Zack Morris scheme from Saved by the Bell.
posted by zachlipton at 10:48 AM on January 30, 2018 [51 favorites]


The Hoarse Whisperer has a comforting take on the McCabe situation (ThreadReader)
10/
Andrew McCabe had become a distraction and Trump had found some storylines that were effectively muddying the waters.

Chris Wray just did exactly what he did with James Baker's role.

He not only robbed Trump of his ammo, he returned fire with a Howitzer.

11/
Wray just screwed Trump so damn hard, it's gonna leave a mark... and Trump is too dumb to even realize he just got game-set-matched by an appointee who ain't having any of it.

Wray just stole Trump's talking points AND turned up the heat on him.

12/
Even better, Bowditch's elevation entirely earns the trust of the rank and file FBI. They have now seen twice that Wray is on their side not Trump's.

Comey was their homey but now it's Wray all the way.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:50 AM on January 30, 2018 [41 favorites]


As an example of why trying to compromise with this administration is foolhardy in the extreme, when the Russian sanctions bill was being considered, additional sanctions on Iran and North Korea were added to it as a way to give Republicans a little red meat. Those sanctions were rushed into place by an administration eager to stoke wars and obliterate a key part of Obama's legacy, and now the sanctions the Democrats wanted aren't even going to happen.

Democrats in Congress need to stop voting for things that Trump wants because they think they'll get something else out of it, because his administration will work as hard as possible to get rid of whatever it is they want or is good in favor of making the world worse for 99.9% of humanity. It's been a year of this shit and somehow total opposition remains off the table, but it should be the only course anyone with any power in government is taking.
posted by Copronymus at 10:55 AM on January 30, 2018 [18 favorites]


sotonohito, we'll have to disagree.

a surreptitious leak could be tactical gold. reading classified info into the congressional record would be a circular firing squad. remember the emails? those weren't even public. 'another dem woman traitor' is what i imagine the nyt/wp would run with.
posted by j_curiouser at 10:57 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


Pelosi tells Democrats not to disrupt ‘slobbering’ Trump during SOTU

“Let the attention be on his slobbering self,” Pelosi told members, according to two sources in the room. “If you want to walk out, don’t come in.”

Democratic leaders are hoping to avoid any kind of disruptive moments a la Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), who yelled “you lie!” during President Barack Obama’s joint address to Congress in 2009.

Any kind of similar interruption by Democrats would only fuel the Republican base and distract from Democratic attempts to rebut the speech after the fact, Pelosi argued.

Man, I just can't disagree with her more. I want people yelling, I want interruptions. I want to hear "WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT THE RUSSIA SANCTIONS" and "YOU'RE A TRAITOR AND A COWARD" and "MY CONSTITUENTS LIVE IN FEAR BECAUSE OF YOU." I want Trump to have to shout "Get 'em out! Go home to mommy!" to elected officials as they're forcibly removed. I want it to be a scene, I want it to be chaos.

Pelosi still doesn't understand that the game has changed. She seems to think that maintaining an air of decorum will protect a civil society that no longer exists. The D establishment worships the image of a functioning government in the hopes that it will return to them. It's not a party, it's a cargo cult.
posted by Rust Moranis at 11:04 AM on January 30, 2018 [78 favorites]


So the way I came across the info (via an argument with a right winger on Facebook who found it by following Jack Posobiec on Twitter) makes me think this is not a reliable source at all... But that this might indeed be the narrative the right wing and the Nunes memo will be pushing.

Some guy named Paul Sperry on Twitter:

"BREAKING: FISA abuse memo alleges Steele lied to FBI affiants who swore out affidavit for FISA warrant on Page, telling them he hadn’t shared dossier info included in the application with media. This is why Grassley made crim referral on Steele for making false statements to FBI."

If that's it... I mean. I guess that fulfills my "minor wrongdoing which will be blown out of proportion" prediction for the content of the memo. But that's so minor. What difference does it make to anyone or anything whether Steele talked to the media before he talked to the FBI?
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:05 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


The Hoarse Whisperer has a comforting take on the McCabe situation (ThreadReader)

I'd be more comforted by this analysis if it wasn't presented in such breathless sensationalist terms. The whole things smacks of bitcoin-like BAD NEWS = GOOD NEWS boosterism.
posted by Justinian at 11:06 AM on January 30, 2018 [10 favorites]


Of all the places where the Rule of Law needs to be enforced, it should be in the hallowed halls of Congress.

Say, Mr. Gosar, about that Rule of Law you are saying needs to be enforced in the hallowed halls of Congress... have you seen this Trump guy openly defying a bill you guys passed almost unanimously? Could you see to it that some laws get enforced relating to that?
posted by azpenguin at 11:07 AM on January 30, 2018 [35 favorites]


I'd be more comforted by this analysis if it wasn't presented in such breathless sensationalist terms.

I don't disagree, but the FBI announcement talks about Bowdich's experience with "racketeering convictions" and "a large-scale RICO case", and mentions his time handling the transition of a new FBI director after a certain Director Mueller's term was due to end.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 11:11 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


Ronna McDaniel says the RNC won't be returning Steve Wynn's money just yet, because he's denied the allegations.
Saying that "unlike Harvey Weinstein and Al Franken and others," Wynn has "denied these allegations," McDaniel said the RNC would return the donations if Wynn is "found guilty" of any wrongdoing.

"There is an investigation that is going to take place," she said. "He should be allowed due process. If he is found guilty of any wrongdoing, we will absolutely return 100% of the money."
posted by hanov3r at 11:20 AM on January 30, 2018 [8 favorites]


asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to consider prosecuting Mueller and his team.

I keep thinking I can't be surprised by Trump, yet my jaw actually dropped reading that. I guess it is his natural inclination to arrest and lock-up people he doesn't like. Thank god that for most of his life he had no power to do so. I have to admit that I was so disturbed by yesterday's events, I had insomnia and one of my worst fantasies was Trump using the SOTU to announce the arrest of HRC & Obama for treason.

Moving on...
Listening to the Weeds episode of January 26 "The White Genocide Episode" it finally sank into my thick skull that the GOP has fully embraced the Steven Miller idea of ending all immigration, except maybe for the wealthy or the hot babes from Sweden. This change in immigration policy happened so fast that many Trump supporters still think that all the measures discussed are about illegal immigration. That somehow the despised "chain migration" has to do with illegal immigrants coming here and then sending for all their family. However, an interesting point made on The Weeds is that when Trump made his infamous speech about Mexico not sending their best-- he didn't explicitly say illegal immigrants. Until Trump, Sessions was really the only politician in America who was against all immigration and the Trump administration is filled with many former Sessions staffers, not just Stephen Miller.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 11:21 AM on January 30, 2018 [29 favorites]


Dara Lind has a deep dive today on family migration and how badly it has been misrepresented in the media. For instance, the average petition to bring over family members by a naturalized citizen takes 13+ years to process.
posted by suelac at 11:22 AM on January 30, 2018 [40 favorites]


In other Trump administration refusing to do things Congress tells them news, this man was deported despite the House Judiciary Committee asking for a 6 month stay to review the (seemingly bogus) revocation of his green card.
posted by Copronymus at 11:23 AM on January 30, 2018 [30 favorites]


The second memo was written by Cody Shearer, a controversial political activist and former journalist who was close to the Clinton White House in the 1990s

I just love the way Fox News uses this phrasing to imply that "former journalist" reduces Shearer's credibility.

[Narrator: He doesn't love it]

(Some have reached for a comparison to Obama's DACA executive order. I think from a strictly legalistic perspective, that would only be comparable if Congress had passed a veto-proof law prioritizing the deportation of people brought in as children, since all DACA did was shuffle that through deferment.)

I don't know if it's been emphasized in a while -- Ford knows the so-called "liberal media" won't mention it -- but the whole "deferment" thing is based on the fact that -- at least heretofore -- Congress refused to provide ICE with the resources to deport everyone, which implies the President has authority to set priorities, and Obama simply said, "Okay, we aren't going to spend resources going after this bunch." Its legality is beyond question, which is why conservatives complained to Fox News and not the courts.
posted by Gelatin at 11:24 AM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


What the hell is going on at Treasury? Under the new sanctions law, yesterday was the deadline to produce a list of, essentially, Russian oligarchs (and I hate to play a card that sounds anything like whataboutism, but maybe we should have such a list for domestic purposes too?). They dropped a document in the middle of the night just before the deadline that was a copy-paste job of the list of Kremlin officials off the Kremlin website and a Forbes list of rich people in Russia.

Now Anders Åslund of the Atlantic Council says it wasn't a slapdash effort from the start: there was a real list, and they replaced it with this crap at the last minute:
The most interesting element of the new law was section 241. It called on the secretary of the treasury, in consultation with the director of national intelligence and the secretary of state, to submit within 180 days a detailed report identifying “the most significant senior foreign political figures and oligarchs” in Russia, “as determined by their closeness to the Russian regime and their net worth” and an “assessment of the relationship between individuals" and "President Vladimir Putin or other members of the Russian ruling elite” and an “identification of any indices of corruption with respect to those individuals.”

This anticipated report was called the “Kremlin list” and it was due at midnight on January 29. The obvious aim was to identify those who had made their fortune on illicit contacts with the Kremlin. The various US government bodies involved clearly carried out conscientious work along these lines.

At the last minute, however, somebody high up—no one knows who at this point—threw out the experts’ work and instead wrote down the names of the top officials in the Russian presidential administration and government plus the 96 Russian billionaires on the Forbes list. In doing so, this senior official ridiculed the government experts who had prepared another report, rendering CAATSA ineffective and mocking US sanctions on Russia overall. By signing this list, the secretary of the treasury took responsibility for it.
posted by zachlipton at 11:28 AM on January 30, 2018 [84 favorites]


The Card Cheat: I am old enough and have been on this site long enough to remember people here freaking out about how Bush and Cheney and that crew were likely to impose martial law, suspend elections, etc..

Rosie M. Banks: I rememember this, too, post-2004 especially. And Cheney, at least, was much more competent than Trump and any of his minions.

Except where Cheney was a war profiteer, it's clear that Trump and Co are more racist than greedy (see the Muslim ban, ending a program for Central American child refugees and putting the future of 57,000 Hondurans and 2,500 Nicaraguans in jeopardy, his responses (and repeated defense of his comments) to Charlottesville, and on and on and on....) -- those are actions and comments that come from nowhere but racism, as there is no profit angle for them.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:29 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


Man, I just can't disagree with her more. I want people yelling, I want interruptions...

I think a simple “you lie!” would be perfect. And true. In fact I will go on record as saying that I will send $500.00 to the re-election campaign of any Democratic representative or senator who does so. Of course I could probably offer a million dollars and not have to worry about it happening. But that much might look too much like a bribe, and since my name isn’t Koch I’m not that good at skirting the various legalities involved in such large um, donations.
posted by TedW at 11:39 AM on January 30, 2018 [11 favorites]


I'll send $100 to the second dem who says it.
posted by j_curiouser at 11:42 AM on January 30, 2018 [13 favorites]


Meanwhile, NASA has gone a year without a formal leader—with no end in sight -- Confirmation of Jim Bridenstine as administrator remains bogged down. (Eric Berger for Ars Technica, Jan. 29, 2018)
More than a year has now passed since four-time astronaut Charles Bolden resigned as NASA administrator on January 20, 2017, after seven years on the job. NASA has been led by an acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, ever since. It is unprecedented for NASA to go without formal leadership for this long.

Five months ago, the Trump administration finally put forward a nominee for the post of administrator, Oklahoma Congressman and pilot James Bridenstine. Although he was confirmed along a party-line vote twice during Senate confirmation hearings, he has yet to receive a vote before the full Senate. Increasingly, it is obvious that the White House does not have the votes to confirm Bridenstine in a Senate where Republicans hold only a narrow margin.

Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, has led opposition to Bridenstine, saying he is too politically polarizing a figure to lead NASA. Nelson has convinced his fellow Floridian Senator, Republican Marco Rubio, to oppose Bridenstine as well. However, Nelson's motivations may not be just the sanctity of NASA's bipartisanship, as Bridenstine may not be pliable enough for the Florida Senator who is looking out for the interests of Kennedy Space Center. Nelson may be more interested in someone like Kennedy's director, Bob Cabana, as a potential Bridenstine replacement.
I know NASA isn't particularly the most eye-catching department to make a stand, but fuck it, I'll take what we can get after 1) the utter bullshit of withholding judicial nominations, and 2) the shitty partisan hacks put forth for most positions under Trump.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:43 AM on January 30, 2018 [12 favorites]


From the Oh My Fucking God Kill Me Now file -- WaPo: State of the Union gives Trump the chance to ‘act presidential,’ at least for a night. Yeah, no surprise, the expected shitty normalizing, but here's the money shot:
After a year as president, Trump has proven himself capable of reading words from a teleprompter. The former reality TV star can summon a performance to rival that of Martin Sheen as the aspirational President Jed Bartlet on “The West Wing” when he chooses.
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:45 AM on January 30, 2018 [10 favorites]


I haven't really paid attention to politics for a week or so and I have no idea what's going on right now, absolutely none. I read the past 50-odd comments in this thread and I still barely know. A whole huge lot of crazy shit, seems to be the gist.

I am bothering to post this because when I AM paying attention, I can fall into the trap of assuming that everyone else has all the same information about current political developments that I do. Remember my total bafflement when you're out there in the world.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:45 AM on January 30, 2018 [23 favorites]


With only 144 weeks until election day, the first ads for the 2020 US Presidential election will start to air this Sunday coming in Iowa. Des Moines Register:

John Delaney, a Maryland congressman who declared his candidacy for president last year, will begin advertising in the first-in-the-nation caucus state with a Super Bowl ad this Sunday. In an interview with the Des Moines Register on Tuesday, Delaney, said the Super Bowl spot will kick off a million-dollar ad buy that will run for four weeks on stations across Iowa. Delaney is a Democrat.

I'd better start putting together an election2020 FPP in this case.

Off-screen sounds of moderators hurriedly beating Wordshore until he can't type...
posted by Wordshore at 11:46 AM on January 30, 2018 [20 favorites]


Julian Sanchez (Just Security):
This is the endgame. And it’s scary. Trump pretty clearly didn’t understand how things work when he first took office—was basically willing to appoint whomever the Federalist Society assured him was a competent lawyer—then fumed he couldn’t use DOJ as a hit squad. Now he pretty clearly gets it. Expect leadership post-cleanse to be chosen with a lot more personal involvement, with personal loyalty & willingness to carry out orders as prime criteria. By 2020, we won’t be seeing angry tweets impotently wondering why DOJ won’t investigate his Democratic opponents like Hannity says they should, because he’ll be a lot more careful about picking replacements who will. A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal argued that fears of an autocratic Trump administration were overblown because, essentially, our institutions have checked Trump’s openly autocratic impulses. And they weren’t totally wrong. But that was partly a lucky byproduct of Trump’s ignorance of how those institutions worked. He’s clearly been both surprised and frustrated to find that career Justice Department attorneys won’t automatically protect his friends & harass his foes. Again, he gets it now. And I know some of this probably sounds like paranoid hyperbole — I wish it were — but this isn’t me just imagining the worst. This is what he openly says he wants DOJ and FBI to become. Repeatedly. He’s angry that it isn’t already. Trump reportedly wanted to fire Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia inquiry, because he expected the Attorney General to “protect’ him. Fake news? No, he later *said outright in an on-the-record interview* that’s what he thinks the AG’s job is. “Trump, appearing frustrated and at times angry, has complained to confidants and aides in recent weeks that he does not understand why he cannot simply give orders to ‘my guys’ at what he sometimes calls the ‘Trump Justice Department’”

None of this is speculative. Trump has *told us repeatedly* what he wants FBI & DOJ to do. And it’s equally clear why—the only reason why—it hasn’t happened: because those agencies are staffed by people who are willing to tell him “no, that’s not appropriate.” He has been equally explicit about wanting that changed. You don’t have to believe liberals or the “fake news media” to think Donald Trump wants FBI and DOJ staffed by loyalists who’ll protect him without question & carry out his bidding. You just have to believe Donald Trump. People are rightly focused on the prospect Trump will try to fire Mueller. But Trump running a purge at DOJ/FBI and installing people who will carry out his stated intent for those agencies would be much, much, much more dangerous in the long run.

I feel like we’re somehow going to be shocked if this starts to happen because it all sounds a little hysterical — it sounds that way to me! — even though literally the only premise required is that Trump really means what he constantly says.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:48 AM on January 30, 2018 [82 favorites]


Pelosi still doesn't understand that the game has changed. She seems to think that maintaining an air of decorum will protect a civil society that no longer exists.

a civil society that no longer exists


Go ahead and spit in the faces of the tens of thousands of government employees at every level of government who are waking up every day, going to work, and trying to do their jobs serving the American people as best they can despite the handful of psychopaths and sycophants at the top. They'll still be there ready to work when the next crop of politicians take charge. They're just hoping you'll at least get out of the way while they keep the civil society you no longer believe in functioning until some adults are prepared to take the reins and work with them again to rebuild it.

Or you could take a crap on their front lawns. Christ.
posted by biogeo at 11:49 AM on January 30, 2018 [33 favorites]


Sounds like Russia's not happy about the list of influentials from zachlipton's treasury comment above. WTF Teasury indeed.

I feel like I'm living inside a Robert Ludlum novel.
posted by yoga at 11:50 AM on January 30, 2018


Two indirectly related stories on the sad state of health care in the US: Hospitals eye making generics for 20 drugs that they say are overpriced or in short supply (Dan Mangan for the write-up, CNBC hosts interviewing Dr. Marc Harrison, Intermountain President & CEO in a video segment, Jan. 18, 2018)
- Groups representing more than 450 hospitals plan to form their own generic drug company.
- The new firm is looking to create generic versions of about 20 existing drugs that the hospitals say cost too much now or are in short supply.
- The firm expects the first of its pharmaceutical products to become available in 2019.

Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase to partner on US employee health care (Angelica LaVito and Jeff Cox for CNBC, Jan. 30, 2018)
- Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan announce a partnership to cut health costs and improve services for employees.
- The idea is to create a company that would be "free from profit-making incentives."
- News of the deal slammed suppliers in the industry including Express Scripts, Cigna, CVS, United Health and Aetna.

The first is a sad comment on the state of medical supplies in the U.S., and the second ... I'm still not sure what to think. I'm interested to see how different parties spin this, and what the reality looks like for the nearly one million employees who (may?) be covered.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:52 AM on January 30, 2018 [15 favorites]


Today, Congressman Paul Gosar contacted the U.S. Capitol Police, as well as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, asking they consider checking identification of all attending the State of the Union address and arresting any illegal aliens in attendance.

Additionally, Congressman Gosar asked that they arrest those using fraudulent social security numbers and identification to pass through security.


I just found out that my congressman, David Price, is bringing a high school teacher from Raleigh who happens to be a DACA recipient. I'm sure she has identification but I don't believe DACA program members were issued social security numbers.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 11:52 AM on January 30, 2018 [9 favorites]


The former reality TV star can summon a performance to rival that of Martin Sheen as the aspirational President Jed Bartlet on “The West Wing” when he chooses.

you shut your mouth right now WaPo some things are sacred

Or put in other words: how far we have fallen that the bar isn’t even “he can play a president on tv” but rather “he can play a president on tv for ONE night.” We could put it lower still, I guess, but then we’d be underground and he might have to actively dig.
posted by lydhre at 11:55 AM on January 30, 2018 [13 favorites]


Additionally, Congressman Gosar asked that they arrest those using fraudulent social security numbers and identification to pass through security.

No undocumented person is going to try to enter the Capitol using fraudulent identification, because they're not as stupid as Congressman Gosar.
posted by biogeo at 11:55 AM on January 30, 2018 [14 favorites]


and the second ... I'm still not sure what to think. I'm interested to see how different parties spin this, and what the reality looks like for the nearly one million employees who (may?) be covered.

Isn't this basically how Kaiser Permenante began -- as a non-profit health care service for Kaiser Steel's many, many wartime employees?
posted by notyou at 11:58 AM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


Re: the WaPo article about Trump and teleprompters - to be fair, the article then goes on to say some of the things we're saying here now ("we should be able to expect more than this from our presidents").
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:58 AM on January 30, 2018


@kasie:
MITCH MCCONNELL says he sees no need for a bill to protect Bob Mueller

“I’m unaware of any effort, official effort, by the White House to undermine the special counsel,” says he sees no need to bring up legislation to “protect someone who doesn’t need protection.”
There is no end to the bottomless well of bad faith that is GOP leadership.
posted by zachlipton at 11:58 AM on January 30, 2018 [77 favorites]


July 21, 2014 FBI sends agents to Holocaust museum

"We send every one of our agents to the Holocaust Museum before they're agents to know and understand what happens when an agency goes rogue," ex-FBI director Robert Mueller explained recently.
...
The FBI isn't alone. Nearly every federal law enforcement agency sends new recruits to the museum. The 90,000 who have been there since 1999 include agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Secret Service and U.S. Marshals, according to the Anti-Defamation League.


That's news to me and I'm both glad this is done and glad Mueller was involved with it.

I wonder how that program is going these few years later. We've had Spicer deny the holocaust in the White House since then. Especially important right now for ICE, who are preparing the lists and the camps. Maybe they see it like 1984, more of a how-to guide than a dire warning.
posted by adept256 at 11:59 AM on January 30, 2018 [54 favorites]


I just looked it up, DACA people DO have social security numbers. I must have gotten bad information from somewhere else.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:00 PM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


McConnell, wowzers. My idea has been that most of GOP Congress (or at least the leadership) thought the Mueller investigation was a good idea -- it pressures Trump without them actually applying the screws. I sure hope they still think that's a good idea.
posted by notyou at 12:02 PM on January 30, 2018


“I’m unaware of any effort, official effort, by the White House to undermine the special counsel,”

"No official effort," just Donald Trump demanding that he be fired and only backing down from the prospect of needing a Saturday Night Massacre sequel to do it. As Alexandra Erin is fond of saying, the President does not speak for the President.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:03 PM on January 30, 2018 [15 favorites]


"We send every one of our agents to the Holocaust Museum before they're agents to know and understand what happens when an agency goes rogue," ex-FBI director Robert Mueller explained recently.

I very much look forward to the day when I have the luxury of once again thinking of the FBI as the people who want to bust you for drugs or set you up for entrapping counterterrorism stings, rather than thinking of them as the most powerful organization currently trying to prevent us from being murdered under fascism.
posted by Rust Moranis at 12:07 PM on January 30, 2018 [54 favorites]


zachlipton: NBC News, Howard Fineman, The ‘state’ of Donald Trump? He thinks it couldn’t be better.

Dow plunges 341 points as stocks sell-off continues (CNBC, Jan. 30, 2018) -- talking heads say "don't freak out, the market is great and it's going to get better this year! Look - it's mostly health companies! But no one pays attention to the really big stocks that shift the indices! " Oh no, Trump's SOTU isn't at all in play here.

STOCKS TUMBLE FOR 2ND DAY say chyron, then DOW, S&P HAVE BIGGEST DROP SINCE AUGUST 2017

CNBC is really pushing against that possibility, with another piece: This stock market drop is about one thing: Fear of rising interest rates
- Stocks could be in for a 3 to 5 percent correction before dip buyers jump in to put a floor in the market, strategists say.
- Stocks sold off on a jump in interest rates and a health-care deal between Amazon, J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway that analysts say could threaten margins of traditional health-care providers.
- A 5 percent correction would be the biggest since the 5.3 percent decline around Brexit in June 2016.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:08 PM on January 30, 2018 [6 favorites]


Donald Trump didn't put a line item in the budget proposal for an official Let's Get Bob Mueller Task Force so Mitch McConnell doesn't see the issue.

I mean fuck, that caveat about "no official effort" cannot make it any clearer that yes, McConnell knows about an effort, and no, he does not want to do anything to stop it and is likely part of it.
posted by jason_steakums at 12:10 PM on January 30, 2018 [6 favorites]


From Vox, An ER visit, a $12,000 bill — and a health insurer that wouldn’t pay: A new insurance policy expects patients to diagnose themselves:
We cannot approve benefits for your recent visit to the emergency room (ER) for pelvic pain,” the letter that Cloyd received from Anthem stated, which she shared with Vox. “Emergency room services can be approved ... when a health problem is recent and severe enough that it needs immediate care.”

The Anthem letter goes on to list “stroke, heart attack, and severe bleeding” as examples of medical conditions for which ER use would be acceptable.

Anthem’s new policy mirrors similar recent developments in state Medicaid programs, which increasingly ask enrollees to pay a higher price for emergency room trips that the state determines to be non-urgent.

Indiana implemented this type of policy in 2015, and the Trump administration recently approved a request from Kentucky to do the same. Beginning in July, Kentucky will charge Medicaid enrollees $20 for their first “inappropriate” emergency room visit, $50 for their second, and $75 for their third.
I am unsure how this does not directly violate the ACA requirement of ER coverage.
posted by Dashy at 12:11 PM on January 30, 2018 [47 favorites]


There is no end to the bottomless well of bad faith that is GOP leadership.

Mitch McConnell, in particular, is a veritable gusher of bad faith. It truly appears to be his only joy in life.
posted by Gelatin at 12:15 PM on January 30, 2018 [9 favorites]


I am unsure how this does not directly violate the ACA requirement of ER coverage.

This case is about employer insurance, not Obamacare individual insurance. The rules for employer insurance are somewhat different. For Obamacare, prior approval for ER coverage is prohibited, but no so for employer insurance.
posted by JackFlash at 12:17 PM on January 30, 2018 [5 favorites]


355 is a big drop for a day, but nothing alarming. These things happen from time to time and the stock market is a long game. I actually wouldn't be surprised to see the Dow drop to 15-16,000 in the next year or two. We're long overdue for a correction. That's not doomsaying or panic - corrections are part of the stock market. The problem is that if you stave them off too long then they become worse.
posted by azpenguin at 12:18 PM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


Goodness, remember when Americans were worried that universal health care would mandate rationing care? Good thing we kept basically the same system and never had to deal with that nightmare.
posted by Copronymus at 12:19 PM on January 30, 2018 [23 favorites]


Dow plunges 341 points as stocks sell-off continues (CNBC, Jan. 30, 2018) -- talking heads say "don't freak out, the market is great and it's going to get better this year! Look - it's mostly health companies!

Shoutout to Jeff Bezos for fucking up Trump's day a little. That almost makes up for the Jed Bartlet thing.
posted by FelliniBlank at 12:19 PM on January 30, 2018 [7 favorites]


This case is about employer insurance, not Obamacare individual insurance. The rules for employer insurance are somewhat different. For Obamacare, prior approval for ER coverage is prohibited, but no so for employer insurance.

In the 90s our HMO required you to get approval from your GP in order to get admitted to the ER. I was turned away once. My surgeon told me to meet him in the ER where he was working when I described my trouble breathing a few days after surgery. The ER called my GP and she refused to approve the visit because I didn't call her first so they turned me away even though I was visibly in pain and struggling to breathe. This is to say that unregulated Insurance markets can pull some nasty shit.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:23 PM on January 30, 2018 [24 favorites]


My prediction for the memo: unless there really is something explosive in there (doubtful), or some minor detail they can exploit and make a big stink of (more likely), Trump will not allow it's release. Why? Because if there isn't anything damning in there, why would you? After all the republican shenanigans, to put your cards on the table and have the memo be exposed for the sham it is doesn't seem politically worthwhile.

BUT, what if you could have your cake and eat it too? What if the leader of the free world could lie about it, claim that his compatriots in the House committee want to expose all the evil-Clinton-FBI-folk, but for national security reasons, he can't? Doesn't that seem like a big win-win? He can "vindicate" himself on a lie, saving face and also looking like he ultimately puts America's safety and security first. How might that look....

"In this memo is the proof that the FBI is corrupt and the Russia investigation is totally fake! But, my friends at the Justice Department have assured me that releasing such sensitive material will jeopardize American lives. Therefore, I cannot release the memo at this time, but it totally proves the FBI is doing illegal things and we need to start replacing people immediately."


Of course, this plan assumes more cunning on behalf of 45 et al than they deserve, but I wouldn't put it past them. If this actually comes to fruition, I would imagine the House Repubs were complicit the whole time and knew this was the endgame; line up behind some bogus bullshit knowing it won't actually be exposed, and have the president* veto it because of source/methods and being responsible. It's a good thing this asshole or his cronies will never read MetaFilter, otherwise I would seriously worry about posting such a plot.
posted by andruwjones26 at 12:23 PM on January 30, 2018 [1 favorite]


The concept of "correctly diagnose yourself BEFORE you go to the ER or we won't pay" is absolutely obscene. It will lead directly to dead people and lots of 'em. Is it heartburn or a heart attack? Bad gas or appendicitis? That bleeding will stop eventually, won't it? Better not take a $12,000 chance on that WHOOPS there goes Grandpa! At least that $12,000 will cover funeral costs.

Yes, there are people who go to the ER for non-urgent concerns. The idea is to get them access to affordable care that won't turn them away, not to make them unlock the ER doors by swiping a credit card.
posted by delfin at 12:25 PM on January 30, 2018 [63 favorites]


Trump could announce himself as Dictator King God Trump during the SOTU and McConnell ain't gonna do shit about it.

One thing word I'm sick of seeing in the press in association with this mess is, "unbelievable." Trump and co. have been pulling this shit since before he ran so to me it's totally believable. We need to move the press and general public into being aware that all this shit is actually happening so that we can get people on the road to (lol) doing something to stop the fucker (and co.)

It's great that people on this site are proactive but that unfortunately doesn't extend to the general public.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 12:27 PM on January 30, 2018 [1 favorite]


Those hoping the special counsel will prosecute the president are engaging in fantasy.

By now, Special Counsel Mueller knows what we all have gathered from these months of threads -- that Trump has been in bed with the Russian mob and/or oligarchs and/or state actors thru money laundering and other crimes that amount to one or more criminal conspiracies. Many of Trump's inner circle, including Ivanka and Jared Kushner, are involved as well, not to mention cockroaches like Manafort.

He also knows that Trump and many of his cronies -- possibly including sitting members of Congress -- have engaged in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice.

The also knows that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to rig the 2016 presidential election. And that at least part, but not all, of the aforementioned conspiracy to obstruct justice stems from a blatantly obvious effort to conceal that treason.

Now, the collusion itself may not violate state laws, but everything else does, and how. So no, Mueller himself may not be the one prosecuting Trump, but I have little doubt the New York state prosecutor would, at least on those charges that violate the laws of the State of New York.

Now, if I were to engage in fantasy, I'd add on some Federal RICO racketeering charges on the Trump Organization and various arms of the Republican Party. But those can wait until after 2020.
posted by Gelatin at 12:27 PM on January 30, 2018 [11 favorites]


Healthcare.gov says:
You have the right to choose the doctor you want from your health plan’s provider network. You also can use an out-of-network emergency room without penalty.
...
Access to out-of-network emergency room services: Insurance plans can’t require higher copayments or coinsurance if you get emergency care from a hospital outside your plan's network. They also can’t require you to get prior approval before getting emergency room services from an out-of-network provider or hospital.

Does this apply to my plan?

Probably. These rights don’t apply to health plans created or bought before March 23, 2010, which are known as grandfathered plans. Check your plan’s materials or ask your employer or benefits administrator to find out if your health plan is grandfathered.
So it doesn't sound like it's a state-level thing, although Indiana and Trump are treating it as such.
posted by Dashy at 12:31 PM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


@Yamiche:
Just came back from the White House and lunch with President Trump and a number of television anchors. Ahead of his speech tonight, Pres Trump said: "I want to see our country united. I want to bring our country back from a tremendous divisiveness."

Pres Trump also said, "I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity. Without a major event where people pull together, that's hard to do. But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing."
He, uh, seems to be describing some kind of war or terrorist attack.

Also, the off the record anchors lunch before the State of the Union tradition has got to go. It was always crap, but people with a repeated record of lying shouldn't get to go off the record.

Erik Wemple has a modest suggestion in that regard, Here's how Trump could really 'reset' his presidency. The plan is simple: instead of giving the usual SOTU speech, Trump can stand up there and issue corrections for the more than 2,000 false and misleading statements he's made since he took office. Wemple estimates it would take about 33 hours.
posted by zachlipton at 12:31 PM on January 30, 2018 [67 favorites]


Pres Trump also said, "I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity. Without a major event where people pull together, that's hard to do. But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing."

Good news for Trump: he will indeed be responsible for a new surge of national unity and civic engagement.
Bad news for Trump: The "major event" will be the coming reckoning with his own criminal activities.
posted by contraption at 12:37 PM on January 30, 2018 [20 favorites]


WaPo, David Nakamura and Anne Gearan, Disagreement on North Korea policy derails White House choice for ambassador to South Korea
The White House's original choice for U.S. ambassador to South Korea is no longer expected to be nominated after he privately expressed disagreement in late December with the Trump administration's North Korea policy, according to people familiar with the matter.

Victor D. Cha, an academic who served in the George W. Bush administration, raised his concerns with National Security Council officials over their consideration of a limited strike on the North aimed at sending a message without sparking a wider war — a risky concept known as a "bloody nose" strategy.

Cha also objected to the administration's threats to tear up a bilateral trade deal with Seoul that Trump has called unfair to American companies. The administration last week imposed new tariffs on imports on washing machines and solar energy panels, a move criticized by the South Korean government.
So it sounds like we're not making him the ambassador because he's not an utter and complete moron then.
posted by zachlipton at 12:42 PM on January 30, 2018 [20 favorites]


Chicago Cubs Co-owner and unrepentant union-buster Ricketts. Lovely. (He fired all the employees of the media sites he owned, having bought them to force them to take down stories critical of him, and presumably to prevent any new unflattering stories from getting published, so he's really just an all-around charmer).

Ricketts was earlier nominated for a position in the Trump administration but withdrew due to ethics concerns arising out of an unwillingness to divest

I guess they've since figured out that since no one's actually going to make POTUS divest, and since optics no longer matter one whit, there's no real reason to bother about making anyone else do it, either.
posted by halation at 12:42 PM on January 30, 2018 [6 favorites]


California Senate defies FCC, approves net neutrality law, Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica
California may be the closest to passing such legislation after yesterday's Senate approval of SB-460, a bill proposed by Sen. Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles).

The bill passed 21-12, with all 21 ayes coming from Democrats. The bill is now being moved to the State Assembly, where Democrats have a 53-25 majority over Republicans.

[article has a summary of provisions and quotes of bill text: prohibitions on blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization; plus broader prohibitions on interfering with consumer access and on misleading marketing); penalties under consumer protection laws; state agencies purchasing requirements]

The Montana and New York executive orders focus exclusively on the purchasing requirements for state agencies instead of imposing requirements directly on ISPs. The California bill is a more direct challenge to the FCC's preemption order because it requires all ISPs to follow net neutrality rules regardless of whether they provide Internet service to state agencies.
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 12:44 PM on January 30, 2018 [40 favorites]


The organization 500 Women Scientists objects to the planned presence of Bill Nye “The Science Guy” at the State of the Union address tonight as a guest of Republican Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), Trump’s nominee for NASA Administrator. They state that Bill Nye Does Not Speak for Us and He Does Not Speak for Science.
posted by exogenous at 12:47 PM on January 30, 2018 [51 favorites]


Since we're discussing NASA this deserves attention. Trump administration wants to end NASA funding for the International Space Station by 2025. One way or another this has Trump's greasy fingerprints all over it.
posted by scalefree at 12:51 PM on January 30, 2018 [7 favorites]


Reuters: Russian spy chief visited United States: Russian embassy

Sergey Naryshkin, who is under U.S. sanctions according to the Treasury Department, held talks with U.S. officials that included the “joint struggle against terrorism,” Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, told Russian television. The visit took place last week, sources familiar with the matter said.

Is there a word that combines "flagrant" and "flaunting?"
posted by Rust Moranis at 12:57 PM on January 30, 2018 [31 favorites]


Bill Nye “The Science Guy” at the State of the Union address tonight as a guest of Republican Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), Trump’s nominee for NASA Administrator

Oh no, what will the Trumpists of Reddit do now? Continue to hate Bill Nye because he acknowledges gender science, or do an about-face and love him as he bows and scrapes before their god-emperor? Tune in tomorrow to find out (or don't; I won't).
posted by uncleozzy at 12:59 PM on January 30, 2018 [1 favorite]


RE: Bill Nye, for a minute there, I thought there was some harassment allegation that caused the objection, but no, it's just garden-variety support for a fascist regime! whew?

That does bring up a interesting discussion about the optics of guests at the SOTU. If you're in the opposition party, then you should bring people to poke the administration in the eye, but if you are majority party, then you can only bring people who support your position? Is Nye being there supporting the anti-science policies, or trying to bring to light climate science and science knowledge? I guess it's based on what the court of opinion says it is. I guess Nye thinks he can convince Rep. Bridenstine (R-OK) to not gut NASA, but good luck with that.
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 1:00 PM on January 30, 2018 [5 favorites]


It seems like the only time the public hears about legislation is when it's absolutely batshit insane; either ACA attacks or taxation, or more often the news gets made by stunt bills.

So you probably are unaware that legislation about dealing with sexual harassment and the like in Congress is continuing to move forward. Possible Congressional Accountability Act changes are in the committee stage in the House, with a markup scheduled for next week. I don't know much about it beyond feeling good about Jamie Raskin being on the committee. He's not one to put up with shit quietly.
posted by phearlez at 1:02 PM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


Pres Trump also said, "I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity. Without a major event where people pull together, that's hard to do. But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing."
I really hope I'm being alarmist here, but to me, that looks like a threat. I really hope the CIA, FBI, etc. are actively working against whatever they are plotting, because I have no reason to believe the Trumpists would hesitate before killing of civilian Americans in order to remain in power.
posted by mumimor at 1:03 PM on January 30, 2018 [22 favorites]


> Remember my total bafflement when you're out there in the world.

Can I steal this for my tombstone inscription?
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:03 PM on January 30, 2018 [31 favorites]


Caroline O: WOW. The sanctions bill called on the Treasury Dept to compile a list of corrupt, Putin-linked oligarchs. But at the last minute, somebody high up in the Trump admin threw out the experts’ work & replaced it w/ the Forbes list of Russian billionaires. The purpose of the initial list was to identify oligarchs who made their $ through illegal dealings w/ the Putin regime. Instead, the Trump admin produced a list that, if it has any effect at all, "will solidify the Russian elite behind Putin."

She includes a link to an article but I could not get it to load so I quoted her tweets instead.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 1:05 PM on January 30, 2018 [22 favorites]


The question now becomes if there were people on the first list who didn't make the second list. More fodder for Mueller, I expect.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 1:08 PM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


Trump talking about “a major event” to unify our country reminds me of all those Russian-Chechen hostage crises that people think the FSB setup, and which Litvinenko talked about a bunch before being killed (alongside some of his sources who died mysteriously as well).
posted by gucci mane at 1:09 PM on January 30, 2018 [12 favorites]


Say, has anyone else noticed that the Trump administration all-but-cancelled the scientific review of a filthy mining project adjacent to Minnesota's crown jewel -- indeed, one of America's great national parks -- the Boundary Waters Canoe Area -- about a week back?
Less than a year later, it turns out the study will be cancelled after all, to be replaced by an "abbreviated" environmental assessment, according to the Washington Post, which obtained a draft news release prepared by the Forest Service.

An irate McCollum condemned the discovery on Friday, saying, "The Trump administration's decision to abandon a comprehensive and public Environment Impact Statement appears to demonstrate that an Interior Department hell-bent on advancing toxic mining is calling the shots about the future of this untouched wilderness."
(- Susan Du, City Pages, 29-JAN-18)

None of the people in Trump's orbit look like they have ever visited, or will ever visit, the BWCA. So it must be graft or a kick-back. *loud sigh* Is there nothing they won't sacrifice for mere money? No national patrimony they won't hand over to the scrapper? No common good so irreplaceable that they won't sell it for a few dollars?


Man, seriously, I hate these people.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:14 PM on January 30, 2018 [55 favorites]


Pelosi still doesn't understand that the game has changed. She seems to think that maintaining an air of decorum will protect a civil society that no longer exists.

"When they go low, we go high" flat out did. not. work.

What's with these guys who either voiced dismissive opinions of Trump or have been repeatedly and publicly dragged by him nevertheless kneeling submissively when he tells them he needs a place to rest his feet?

Power. Look what happens to those who keep disagreeing with him. Sudden retirements.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:17 PM on January 30, 2018 [14 favorites]


Pres Trump also said, "I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity. Without a major event where people pull together, that's hard to do. But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing."

Remember when he publicly asked a foreign power to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails because he knew they already had?

He’s...got some tells.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:23 PM on January 30, 2018 [73 favorites]


Writer G. Willow Wilson (@GWillowWilson) pushes back against the mainstream narrative of normalcy in the Trump era (Thread Reader version):
It's a mistake to think a dictatorship feels intrinsically different on a day-to-day basis than a democracy does. I've lived in one dictatorship and visited several others--there are still movies and work and school and shopping and memes and holidays.

The difference is the steady disappearance of dissent from the public sphere. Anti-regime bloggers disappear. Dissident political parties are declared "illegal." Certain books vanish from the libraries. The press picks a side. The military picks a side. The judiciary picks a side. This part should already feel familiar.

The genius of a true, functioning dictatorship is the way it carefully titrates justice. Once in awhile it will allow a sound judicial decision or critical op-ed to bubble up. Rational discourse is never entirely absent. There is plausible deniability. People still have rights, in theory. The right to vote, to serve on a jury, etc. The difference is that they begin to fear exercising those rights. Voting in an election will get your name put on "a list."

So if you're waiting for the grand moment when the scales tip and we are no longer a functioning democracy, you needn't bother. It'll be much more subtle than that. It'll be more of the president ignoring laws passed by congress. It'll be more demonizing of the press.

Until one day we wake up and discover the regime has decided to postpone the 2020 elections until its lawyers are finished investigating something or other. Or until it can 'ensure' that the voting process is 'fair.' A sizable proportion of the citizenry will support the postponement. Yes, absolutely, we must postpone elections. The opposition is corrupt! Our leader is just trying to protect us! A dictator is never without supporters.
(As a reminder, the idea of postponing the 2020 elections doesn't present a problem to Republican voters.)
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:31 PM on January 30, 2018 [120 favorites]


Chicago Cubs Co-owner Ricketts Expected to Head G.O.P. Fund-raising

Chicago Cubs Co-owner and unrepentant union-buster Ricketts. Lovely. (He fired all the employees of the media sites he owned, having bought them to force them to take down stories critical of him, and presumably to prevent any new unflattering stories from getting published, so he's really just an all-around charmer).

Two different Rickettses. The asshole union-buster is Joe Ricketts, the paterfamilias; the asshole fund-raiser is Todd Ricketts, Joe's son.
posted by Iridic at 1:32 PM on January 30, 2018 [5 favorites]


Tonight, The Rundown with Robin Thede will live stream our president, Barack Obama, delivering his 2010 SOTU address on its FB page, during their president's sotu.
posted by numaner at 1:36 PM on January 30, 2018 [7 favorites]


There should be comment periods for the Environmental Assessment for the BWCAW, and I find it really hard to believe that DOI won't find a single significant impact that would have to trigger a Environmental Impact Statement. I'm sure that Sierra Club and Friends of the Headwaters will be looking to sue if they think DOI is blowing it off. Not to say that Perdue won't try to blow the whole thing off, but there is a certain level of bureaucratic buffer. I do wonder how the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is going to fare by the end of this administration, as I know that the border wall was getting exceptions from some of its provisions.

There are also a whole set of MN permits that need to be approved for PolyMet, and at least one Army Corps permit, so if you're opposed to the project, check out their comment periods and submit a comment.
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 1:37 PM on January 30, 2018 [7 favorites]


Trump’s Law Enforcement Purge Is Now Republican Policy (Jonathan Chait | NY Mag)
Until very recently — as in, yesterday — a plausible argument could be made that Donald Trump’s authoritarianism was entirely aspirational. However deeply he yearned to rule with an iron fist, he was too bumbling, too lazy, too distractible and childlike to actually carry out his plans. “We’ve learned over the last year that Trump is probably even more haphazard and incompetent than some of the people most fearful about his presidency believed, which makes it much more difficult for him to undermine the system,” argued Yascha Mounk, who has expressed alarm about the threat posed by Trump. Ross Douthat has made the same case previously.

The events of the last 24 hours made the case for complacency look weaker, and the case for concern stronger.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 1:38 PM on January 30, 2018 [45 favorites]


> It's a mistake to think a dictatorship feels intrinsically different on a day-to-day basis than a democracy does.

I'm Canadian, but I drift in and out of re-experiencing the visceral fear I felt on the night of November 8th, 2017; I was pretty sure I had just watched the United States of America, as I thought I understood it to be, die on live television. I keep waiting for that feeling to go away, but at best I forget it for a short while and then it flares up worse than ever.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:40 PM on January 30, 2018 [42 favorites]


I do wonder how the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is going to fare by the end of this administration

They're already rewriting the regulations for NEPA. Most recently they want to remove EPA's authority to review and score EISs, in the name of "speeding up duplicative reviews". They also want to remove the conflict-of-interest rules that limit an applicant's ability to prepare the EIS for the development they want to do on federal land. They want to put hard deadlines on inter-agency coordination schedules, so that if the local USFWS is too busy to respond to your endangered species act consultation request in 30 days, you just get to go forward with your project.

This is all in the name of "expediting" reviews, but the end result will be decisions made without proper notice to the public, without adequate justification in the administrative record, and with inadequate science.
posted by suelac at 1:44 PM on January 30, 2018 [19 favorites]


They want to put hard deadlines on inter-agency coordination schedules, so that if the local USFWS is too busy to respond to your endangered species act consultation request in 30 days, you just get to go forward with your project.

This is the big one. They essentially want to be able to DDOS the environment.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:48 PM on January 30, 2018 [18 favorites]




i really want to make an FPP out of this but i don't have the energy right now: Amy Hoggart from Full Frontal with Samantha Bee asked some linguists to come up with a new word to describe djt and they arrived at kakafueally, in the manner of a shit fire.
posted by numaner at 2:04 PM on January 30, 2018 [11 favorites]


Here’s a choice passage from the latest Chait piece (above):
The [Republican] party’s cooperation must also be understood within the context of the authoritarian sentiment that has become the norm in conservative discourse. Kellyanne Conway today rebutted charges that Russia interfered with the election by accusing the mainstream media of interfering with the election. “Everybody who said Donald Trump couldn’t win …” she insisted, “every anchor, every pundit who said, ‘This is over, it’s a joke, he can’t win, he can’t govern’ tried to interfere in the election.” In Conway’s estimation, political punditry hostile to Trump is no more legitimate than Russian intelligence agents stealing Democratic files. After Sean Spicer told Fox & Friends yesterday that the news media would fail to give Trump’s inevitably positive State of the Union speech enough attention, host Ainsley Earhardt replied, “It’s just so anti-American. I mean … where’s the unity?”
:/
posted by Barack Spinoza at 2:06 PM on January 30, 2018 [12 favorites]


He’s...got some tells.

He's utterly transparent & literal. He hates brown people so his solution is to literally put up a wall to keep them out. He wants to have complete control over diplomacy so he neglects to nominate any ambassadors. He saw how the country came together after 9/11 & wants that same unity & admiration directed at him so he fantasizes about disasters. He's a slow learner but he is putting together the pieces for unchecked power & wealth.
posted by scalefree at 2:12 PM on January 30, 2018 [42 favorites]


NT Alexandra Petri, WaPo: The State of the Union was so presidential that it’s like the past year didn’t happen
Tuesday marks the State of the Union, that magical night when President Trump steps behind a Very August Lectern to address all the members of Congress. Something about the lighting, maybe, or about all the besuited gentlefolks rising to their feet always seems to inspire in pundits a feeling that this man is Not So Bad and Maybe He Can Change, After All.

I have taken the liberty of anticipating what these pundits will say afterwards. I hope I am wrong.

Wow.

Wow. This was a whole new President Trump. This was the pivot we have been looking for.

After reading “Fire and Fury,” I had expected him to appear at the lectern with a hamburger in each hand and call half of America an Unprintable Word, but he did not do that. Instead he read very mildly off a teleprompter. And I thought, this might be a man I could learn to love in time. This man is a true president. When I closed my eyes and wished for a president, this is what I pictured. This, in fact, is what I did for most of the speech, which is why I was so convinced of its quality.

There were shades of John F. Kennedy in the president’s speech, and not just in the sense that they are both bipeds who addressed Congress at some point, but also in the sense that Trump used the word “America,” and I thought I heard a shade of JFK in that.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:31 PM on January 30, 2018 [53 favorites]


WaPo, Paul Sonne, U.S. can destroy ‘most’ of N. Korea’s nuclear missile infrastructure, top general says
The U.S. military is confident it could destroy "most" of the infrastructure underpinning North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's nuclear missile program if necessary in a favorable scenario, a top American general said Tuesday.

Air Force Gen. Paul J. Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. military could "get at most of his infrastructure" when asked about Kim's nuclear missile program, but he declined to specify the percentage of North Korean missiles U.S. forces could dismantle in the event of any military action.
...
Selva declined to rule out the possibility of a preemptive strike on North Korea's weapons facilities but suggested that preemption is not generally how the U.S. has approached nuclear-armed adversaries.

"We don't do preemption," Selva said. "Our method of warfare: If they launch one, then game on. But preemption is not something we do as a matter of course."
His comments about our normal policy on preemption notwithstanding, this when read with the Victor Cha story upthread is increasingly terrifying. Cha did what diplomats are supposed to do: candidly provide advice on the astonishingly severe consequences of a military strike on North Korea, and they dropped his nomination. Whatever Trump says tonight, I do think this is the most important thing going on right now.

Oh, and the head of the CDC bought tobacco stocks after she took office, along with shares in Merck, Bayer, and Humana. The CDC does research on the harmful effects of smoking, and she toured their tobacco lab the day after her financial advisor bought the stock.
posted by zachlipton at 2:56 PM on January 30, 2018 [43 favorites]


It's not really whether North Korea would be able to launch a nuclear strike at us - the real damage would come from the artillery aimed at Seoul. We're talking tens of thousands of casualties, hundreds of billions of dollars in destruction, and the ruining of the South Korean economy.

Now, the question is, would Trump think that's good for the American economy?
posted by happyroach at 3:25 PM on January 30, 2018 [7 favorites]


We're talking tens of thousands of casualties...

Not to mention, increasing the likelihood of war with China by at least an order of magnitude, which would be even more lethal.
posted by Coventry at 3:28 PM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


But OTOH, such a war would definitely be the "major event where people pull together" Trump wants.
posted by Coventry at 3:29 PM on January 30, 2018 [7 favorites]


Please, someone remind the president that, in case of any war event that has a chance of reaching the US - like Korea's launch of nuclear missiles, regardless of how much bigger ours are - he will be locked away in a bomb-proof bunker until the immediate danger has passed.

Oh, and he won't have access to TV or Twitter.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:32 PM on January 30, 2018 [1 favorite]


Daily Beast, Betsy Woodruff and Spencer Ackerman, Devin Nunes Won't Say If He Worked With White House on Anti-FBI Memo
During Monday’s contentious closed-door committee meeting, Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democrat, asked Nunes point-blank if his staffers had been talking with the White House as they compiled a four-page memo alleging FBI and Justice Department abuses over surveillance of President Trump’s allies in the Russia probe.

According to sources familiar with the exchange, Nunes made a few comments that didn’t answer the question before finally responding, “I’m not answering.”
If you'll recall, last year, Nunes rushed to the White House to brief Trump on information he received...from the White House. It sounds like we're still playing the same game.
posted by zachlipton at 3:38 PM on January 30, 2018 [56 favorites]


But OTOH, such a war would definitely be the "major event where people pull together" Trump wants.

I'm not so sure about that. I know I wouldn't be lining up to buy war bonds if Trump launched his phallic symbol at Korea.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 3:46 PM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


Kellyanne Conway today rebutted charges that Russia interfered with the election by accusing the mainstream media of interfering with the election. “Everybody who said Donald Trump couldn’t win …” she insisted, ... “tried to interfere in the election.”

The difference is, it's LEGAL for US citizens to "interfere with the election" by trying to persuade people to vote they way the wan. It's legal for us to spend money to support the candidates we like, and badmouth the ones we don't. It's legal for us to spread drama and wild speculation. Hell, it's legal for us to restrict entire sections of our citizens from voting, by changing the eligibility and polling time-and-location rules.

It's not legal for a foreign country to do that. It's not legal for a US political group to accept the aid of foreign nationals; they're not allowed to donate to campaigns nor buy political ads.

Given that we've had no problems arresting Russians for computer crimes not committed in the US before, you'd think this would be an easy legal situation.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:49 PM on January 30, 2018 [30 favorites]


Meanwhile in “Well-played/WTF, marketing department” movie news, the upcoming entry in the “make mass murder great again” Purge horror series has a teaser poster that’s explicitly Trump-themed.
posted by nicebookrack at 4:01 PM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


In case you were feeling optimistic for some reason: The Supreme Court’s conservatives may be preparing an attack on states’ ability to combat partisan gerrymandering.
And yet, here we are: Alito indicated that he takes this appeal seriously by ordering a response, suggesting that five justices may vote to freeze the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling. What could possibly justify their intervention?

The disturbing answer comes from the Bush v. Gore playbook. Recall that in Bush v. Gore, SCOTUS overturned a Florida Supreme Court decision ordering a recount of ballots. The majority relied upon an equal protection rationale. But three justices—Chief Justice William Rehnquist, as well as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas—also cited a constitutional provision similar to the Elections Clause that instructs the state legislature to dictate the rules of presidential elections. Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas insisted that under this clause, the Florida Supreme Court lacked authority to demand a recount in contravention of the legislature’s wishes. This trio later reiterated its belief that the federal Constitution restricts state supreme courts’ power to regulate redistricting.
And so much for the "non-precedential" nature of Bush v. Gore
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:04 PM on January 30, 2018 [23 favorites]


From the speech excerpts: "Americans love their country. And they deserve a government that shows them the same love and loyalty in return."

Aside from casting away the "ask not what your country..." tradition, this line couches government in transnational terms around loyalty, where we only deserve what we're willing to give.

He also repeats the lie that the tax cuts were the biggest in history.
posted by zachlipton at 4:08 PM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


The U.S. military is confident it could destroy "most" of the infrastructure underpinning North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's nuclear missile program if necessary in a favorable scenario.

Presumably, unfavorable scenarios exist as well.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 4:22 PM on January 30, 2018 [7 favorites]


Senate Republicans Want Nothing To Do With This #ReleaseTheMemo Business

Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee have distanced themselves from a House memo that is said to accuse the Justice Department and FBI of impropriety in the Trump-Russia probe. (Buzzfeed News)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 4:26 PM on January 30, 2018 [6 favorites]


The Planetary Society offers some explanation behind the presence of Bill Nye (their CEO) at the State of the Union tonight.
I want to restate the fact that attending the SOTU as Bridenstine's guest does not mean that either Bill Nye or The Planetary Society is endorsing his nomination. The Society does not make endorsements for NASA Administrator nominees—we are committed to working with whomever serves in that position.
...
Another critique surrounding the participation was Jim Bridenstine's previous stances on climate change. To his credit Bridenstine testified before the Senate that he accepts the climate is changing and that humans play a role in that. Compared to previous (and erroneous) statements on the issue, this represents a greatly improved public stance. The Senate will determine if this is enough to be the NASA Administrator, but the fact remains he did publicly change his mind to a more pro-science position.
posted by exogenous at 4:30 PM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


From the speech excerpts: "Americans love their country. And they deserve a government that shows them the same love and loyalty in return."

Aside from casting away the "ask not what your country..." tradition, this line couches government in transnational terms around loyalty, where we only deserve what we're willing to give.


That would be a great line, if it weren't being mouthed by a white nationalist autocratic wannabe.
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:43 PM on January 30, 2018 [8 favorites]


Breaking now:

Justice Dept. officials appealed to White House to halt release of memo alleging FBI abuses related to author of Trump dossier (WaPo)
Top Justice Department officials made a last-ditch plea Monday to White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly about the dangers of publicly releasing a memo alleging abuses by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to people briefed on the meeting.

Shortly before the House Intelligence Committee voted to make the document public, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein warned Kelly that the four-page memo prepared by House Republicans could jeopardize classified information and implored the president to reconsider his support for making it public, those people said. Rosenstein was joined in the meeting at the White House by FBI Director Christopher A. Wray.

Rosenstein, who is supervising special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, said the Department of Justice was not convinced the memo accurately describes its investigative practices. He said making the document public could set a dangerous precedent, according to a person familiar with the discussion.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 4:58 PM on January 30, 2018 [19 favorites]


How to Handle an Intelligence Committee Chairman Gone Rogue (Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes | Lawfareblog)
Barring an intervention from the heavens, the so-called Nunes memo will be #released at some point over the course of the next week, either because President Trump actively chooses to release it or because he does nothing for four more days.

The Justice Department has warned House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes that #releasing the memo before allowing full review by the department and the FBI—which Nunes has denied—would be “extraordinarily reckless.” (Nunes has since allowed FBI Director Christopher Wray to view the document, though he has apparently disregarded Wray’s plea to keep the memo classified.) The department has also denied that there is any evidence of wrongdoing related to the FISA process—an allegation apparently central to the memo. Nunes’s Democratic counterpart Adam Schiff has excoriated the memo as “transparently cynical and destructive.”

If that wasn’t enough, little else about this episode gives the memo any more credence. Out of Nunes’s twelve GOP colleagues on the committee, only three would tell us that they had confidence in the memo’s claims. And because only the Gang of Eight have access to the intelligence behind the memo, the vast majority of the members of Congress who read the document had no way to evaluate its substance anyway. What’s more, Nunes initially refused to share the memo with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr and Vice Chairman Mark Warner. According to Schiff, the House committee majority quashed a motion to share the underlying evidence with the full committee before voting to #ReleasetheMemo. Nunes reportedly refused to tell a colleague during the vote whether he has coordinated the memo with the White House.

And the President wants the memo public—so public it will be. The Washington Post reported this weekend that President Trump views the document as evidence of his mistreatment by federal law enforcement. He also sees it as a means by which to push out Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, whom he has distrusted since Rosenstein’s appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller: the memo reportedly targets Rosenstein’s role in approving an FBI request for an extension of a FISA warrant monitoring former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. CNN now writes that Trump has made up his mind and that the memo’s release is a certainty over the next few days.

The result is that Schiff, Burr, and Warner now face the thorny question of how to handle the fallout: What should responsible intelligence committee leadership do when one of its own goes rogue—and goes rogue with the backing of a president whose concern for the matter is deeply self-interested?
posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:10 PM on January 30, 2018 [13 favorites]


Oh FFS, this is like what the third potential constitutional crisis in 48 hours? Kill us now, kind writers
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:14 PM on January 30, 2018 [33 favorites]


i know this is petty but

"America is a nation of builders. We built the Empire State Building in one year -- isn't a disgrace that it can now take ten years just to get a permit approved for a simple road?"

Roads aren't 'simple' -- I'm pretty sure most roads require more than one 'permit' even, given issues of land ownership, land use, environmental studies, traffic and congestion studies, drainage and erosion studies, material studies...

Also, roads aren't buildings?
posted by halation at 5:14 PM on January 30, 2018 [20 favorites]


Financial Times, White House abandons planned pick for South Korea ambassador
According to the two people familiar with the discussions between Mr Cha and the White House, he was asked by officials whether he was prepared to help manage the evacuation of American citizens from South Korea — an operation known as non-combatant evacuation operations — that would almost certainly be implemented before any military strike. The two people said Mr Cha, who is seen as on the hawkish side of the spectrum on North Korea, had expressed his reservations about any kind of military strike.
And then they stopped returning his calls. My god.
posted by zachlipton at 5:15 PM on January 30, 2018 [27 favorites]


It's happening in my locale. Per previous mod requests, I think we're to keep general riffing/liveblogging to Chat.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:24 PM on January 30, 2018


Colin Kahl: For a few months now, reports have circulated that Trump is considering a limited "bloody nose" strike on North Korea to set back its missile program & bolster coercive diplomacy. The threat could be real or a bluff. I've argued it is real.

I just got a literal chill down my spine that Trump's quote earlier about a unifying event is referring to their intent to strike North Korea.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:30 PM on January 30, 2018 [8 favorites]


I just got a literal chill down my spine that Trump's quote earlier about a unifying event is referring to their intent to strike North Korea.

Same. You know this administration is just stupid and craven enough to do it. And -- inexplicably? inevitably? I don't even know anymore -- we've apparently got folks in the military chain of command fully on board already. I read that bit from WaPo that zachlipton linked above --
Air Force Gen. Paul J. Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. military could "get at most of his infrastructure" when asked about Kim's nuclear missile program, but he declined to specify the percentage of North Korean missiles U.S. forces could dismantle in the event of any military action.
-- and all I hear is
Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 5:46 PM on January 30, 2018 [13 favorites]


I couldn't believe the story today about Victor Cha, who is one of the most qualified people you could think of to serve in that position. What a waste, when we could have had someone really good and steady serving us at an important time and place. Turns out Mr. Cha has no fucks left to give, apparently...

Victor Cha: Giving North Korea a ‘bloody nose’ carries a huge risk to Americans
Editorial in the Washington Post, posted this evening.
posted by gemmy at 5:47 PM on January 30, 2018 [31 favorites]


Mod note: Folks, this is going to be a busy night - please keep the chatter/speculation about North Korea etc to an absolute minimum, because we could spend 4000 comments on it (and, no doubt will) but during the SotU is not a good time.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 5:55 PM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


No separate thread for the State of the Union? Here's a link:

C SPAN
posted by Billy Rubin at 6:04 PM on January 30, 2018


Hug a mod, come visit us in Chat.
posted by RolandOfEld at 6:06 PM on January 30, 2018 [10 favorites]


https://chat.metafilter.com/

!
posted by Fizz at 6:15 PM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


[I can't bear to listen to the shitstain speak, but the firehose in Chat is a little too much for me today. If anyone feels inclined to add mod-approvable highlights or interesting notes here, that'd be welcome.]
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 6:15 PM on January 30, 2018 [17 favorites]


This still of Pelosi will sum it up if you're not watching.
posted by zachlipton at 6:22 PM on January 30, 2018 [38 favorites]


Do any chat pro’s have suggestions for getting around “authentication failed” repeatedly coming up when trying to log in? I’ve quadruple checked my user name and password.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 6:28 PM on January 30, 2018


Yeah I'm not getting any love from chat either, it must be overwhelmed.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 6:30 PM on January 30, 2018


There's a forgot password link in the login box. I think I had to set a separate password, the first time I used it, but I'm not sure.
posted by Coventry at 6:30 PM on January 30, 2018


If you donated to the Trump campaign hoping to see your name on their SOTU livestream, well, you better watch very closely because they're scrolling fast. The print is so small and the scroll so fast, nobody can read them.

(This is only on the campaign's FB page stream, not others)
posted by zachlipton at 6:31 PM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


Yeah, already reset it. The new password is fine for the main site, but still no luck with chat. Oh well; hope things are going well for y’all.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 6:33 PM on January 30, 2018


@NarangVipin: The North Korea section of the SOTU. Makes the fundamental mistake of equating brutal regimes with undeterrable regimes. The two have nothing to do with each other.

The text is behind the link; that section of the speech has not been delivered yet.
posted by zachlipton at 6:36 PM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


I thought Trump's "New American Moment" SOTU line sounded familiar. Sure enough, here it is in a 2010 speech by Hillary Clinton She also used the phrase in her confirmation hearings.

45 literally plagiarized from Hillary in his SOTUA.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:36 PM on January 30, 2018 [85 favorites]


For those who want to follow without listening to 45, NPR has a live transcript here annotated with fact checks and commentary.
posted by earth by april at 6:40 PM on January 30, 2018 [7 favorites]


The transcript enables you to be well informed without having to listen to the fucking applause.
posted by puddledork at 6:47 PM on January 30, 2018 [10 favorites]


45 literally plagiarized from Hillary in his SOTUA.
If you were a speechwriter for 45, I couldn't think of a more poetic and sublime way to write your resignation letter.
posted by schmod at 6:54 PM on January 30, 2018 [10 favorites]


@ddale8: Oh man. This ICE gentleman goes by CJ, as Trump's prepared text said. But Trump accidentally said DJ, so instead of just conceding he'd slipped, he said the man told him "call me either one."

Trump just bullshitted the name of the ICE agent he was honoring instead of acknowledging he misspoke.
posted by zachlipton at 6:56 PM on January 30, 2018 [53 favorites]


If we're going to hear her words I would much rather hear her saying them.

My dad loved the moment when the sergeant at arms opens the doors and says "ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States." And before the election I really really really wanted her to be the one to walk in the door.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:56 PM on January 30, 2018 [5 favorites]


Of course he said DJ, it's his own initials.
posted by rc3spencer at 7:05 PM on January 30, 2018 [15 favorites]


This line is particularly ominous; "So tonight I call on Congress to empower every cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workers and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust, or fail the American people."

It's a straight up attack on the civil service.
posted by zachlipton at 7:09 PM on January 30, 2018 [118 favorites]


But to people who distrust the government, that's running the gov. like a business. A shady, corrupt business under Trump, but that's what he was hired to do.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:10 PM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


This line is particularly ominous; "So tonight I call on Congress to empower every cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workers and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust, or fail the American people."

Federal employees like Special Counsels?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:13 PM on January 30, 2018 [7 favorites]


The NPR fact checks and commentary are pretty weak. When Trump tells a lie, or grossly misleads with a half-truth, the commentary is like “It would be difficult to make the case that...”

No. It’s called a “lie”. Or at least “misleading.” I swear, get off the fence and call it clearly. Exercise the free press franchise to speak truth to power, already.

Once he’s gone full Mussolini, it’ll be too late.
posted by darkstar at 7:14 PM on January 30, 2018 [31 favorites]


Will that be before, or after, 800,000 Americans are driven underground or placed in indefinite detention?
posted by perspicio at 7:20 PM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


NYT Headline right now: "Trump Calls Union, and Its People, Strong"
said every president, ever...?
posted by BigBrooklyn at 7:21 PM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


There's a good chance Trump's successor, like Ford and Carter, won't.
posted by Coventry at 7:25 PM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


Meanwhile, if you're waiting for a transcript and hot takes on the SOTU, you can read a portion of the White House Draft Plan to Streamline Federal Permitting for Infrastructure Projects, labeled "Draft, predecisional and deliberative, do not distribute," which as Think Progress notes, reveals another ‘political favor’ for oil, gas industry.

If that 23 pages is too long, you can read a different six page excerpt that supports tolling of the interstates, and tries to flip the ratios -- the federal grants could not exceed 20 percent of a project’s costs, according to the document, but currently the federal government generally pays 80 percent of the cost for highway construction on federal routes.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:26 PM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


Takeaways:

Just devoid of content. Essentially zero news in this speech besides Guantanamo, which is a really weird and ominous thing to highlight as the only newsworthy thing to announce. Quite long in time despite lack of content, with every line apparently having to be an applause line, for which he felt compelled to clap for himself. A heavy use of special guests instead of information or anything new.

Republicans are absolutely in lockstep. They may have differences on specific details when it comes to policy details Trump doesn't care about, but when it comes to throwing themselves behind whatever Trump says and chanting "USA USA," they're all in.
posted by zachlipton at 7:34 PM on January 30, 2018 [38 favorites]


So, shitty things coming up then based on what Trump was given to read:

Politicizing the federal workforce by letting cabinet members sack people.

Adding (?) a nebulous standard of good moral standing to immigration requirements.

Rendition is making a comeback.

Less money for services, more money for a to-be-unsequestered military budget.

Stripping aid from countries that are our "enemies" (so anyone who criticizes us I'm guessing).

I'm sure I missed one or two other legislative priorities for them.
posted by Slackermagee at 7:38 PM on January 30, 2018 [6 favorites]


Yea, even Shields found that pretty grim. PBSNewshour
posted by rc3spencer at 7:39 PM on January 30, 2018 [1 favorite]


This went live shortly before the speech: Victor Cha: Giving North Korea a ‘bloody nose’ carries a huge risk to Americans (Cha is the person we've been talking about today who will apparently not be the Ambassador to South Korea).

I mean, I'd prefer he give a damn about South Korean lives too, but since Trump and company don't, this is seemingly a public attempt to convince them not to do something insanely catastrophic.
posted by zachlipton at 7:40 PM on January 30, 2018 [9 favorites]


I just spent a fair bit of time live transcribing in Chat but I wanted to pop in and say that the story about the cop adopting/abducting a baby from a pregnant mom he saw/stopped from shooting up heroin was not the oddest thing about that speech and I'm sad to admit it. I love you all but it was a weird speech to say the least.
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:40 PM on January 30, 2018 [7 favorites]


The USA USA chant was so gross. Old guys doing a nationalistic, jingoistic chant while women and POC sit silently is such a bad look. It looked like a black caucus member stood up and left when that started. Can anyone confirm?
posted by triggerfinger at 7:43 PM on January 30, 2018 [21 favorites]


I hope it isn't overlooked that he said when colonists arrived, "they found America a vast wilderness." The human population of the Americas was higher in 1492 than in the early 19th century. He erased Native Americans as a people and nobody seemed to care.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:43 PM on January 30, 2018 [136 favorites]


Also, Joe Kennedy is giving me flashbacks of some Democratic response where it was an old guy sitting in like, a darkened diner in the middle of the night, talking to silent, stonefaced people. Way to make it weird, Democrats. Was that just last year?

(iirc, it was a good speech, just weird optics)
posted by triggerfinger at 7:46 PM on January 30, 2018


Also, "protects the nuclear family by ending chain migration" is straight up white supremacist dogwhistling. You're only allowed to petition for immediate family, it can take over a decade, and someone else's family being reunited doesn't have a damn thing to do with anybody else's nuclear family. Do not get me started on "Americans are dreamers too."
posted by zachlipton at 7:47 PM on January 30, 2018 [89 favorites]


Politicizing the federal workforce by letting cabinet members sack people.

Im pretty sure this would take actual legislation to change federal workforce protections, like they passed with the VA. Republicans are already pushing to expand this to the entire federal workforce, along with other morale killing measures like increasing pension contributions (an effective pay cut), pay freeze (an actual pay cut), and retirement formula changes (a future pay cut).
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:47 PM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


The Washington Post's take: Trump acts presidentially in State of the Union, at least for a night.

What the fuck is wrong with these "journalists"?
posted by biogeo at 7:49 PM on January 30, 2018 [75 favorites]


Immediately following the SOTU with the new Purge teaser was one of most inspired ad buys I’ve ever witnessed.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 7:52 PM on January 30, 2018 [56 favorites]


The bit that stuck out to me about the baby anecdote was that helping the mother in any way wasn't part of the story at all. I mean, it's not surprising but it's still depressing.

I mean it's possible that the mother was helped of course but it's just telling that that's not even worth a mention.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 7:52 PM on January 30, 2018 [33 favorites]


This is a hell of a response from Rep. Gutierrez. It includes lines like "whoever translated it for him from Russian did a good job" and "if you look at how the President has treated Puerto Rico, you have to conclude that he just doesn't care and probably thinks of Puerto Rico as just another shithole country" and "I was hoping to get through my life without having to witness an outwardly, explicitly racist American President, but my luck ran out." He is not optimistic about an immigration deal.
posted by zachlipton at 8:00 PM on January 30, 2018 [68 favorites]


That Kennedy chap did all right just now.

I was very gratified that he mentioned Women's March signs and said "Black Lives Matter" aloud. That was a speech aimed at the Democratic voters who matter, not at placating some mythical swing voters.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:00 PM on January 30, 2018 [38 favorites]


I am disgusted, given this urgent climate, by the erasure of women.

Imagine a president standing up and saying 'this has been a brave year for women. I hear you. I hurt for your hurts, so widespread and significant as they are in a world we have made. Action will be taken in the government I lead. Your workplace, your home, your streets should be safe. Your body is yours. We will do everything to make every part of the world you inhabit safe.' Or similar.
posted by honey-barbara at 8:03 PM on January 30, 2018 [16 favorites]


This was a vapid, horrible speech, designed to be more than half applause, with statements that have no reasonable back up in action to effect the mythical threats he discussed. Notice the generals did not clap when he talked nuclear weapons. Some looked disturbed. It was like a high school speech. I noticed Pence mouthing some of the words, he probably helped write. That Pence choirboy show behind Trump is terrifying. So, yes, the speech had no content, it was just bully pulpit talk for scared and rich white folk, with the typical waving around of heroes, and talk of regular people he would not speak to on the street, and who could not afford his hotels or golf courses. Terrifyingly empty, glad handing, among the congratulatory sycophants. Horrific.
posted by Oyéah at 8:06 PM on January 30, 2018 [31 favorites]


FWIW, pundits all seem to think that Kennedy's response was gangbusters.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:18 PM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


The Washington Post's take: Trump acts presidentially in State of the Union, at least for a night.

What the fuck is wrong with these "journalists"?


They've been writing stories with the same tropes for so long they're effectively incapable of writing anything outside of them when presented with the slightest hint of a familiar narrative.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:19 PM on January 30, 2018 [15 favorites]


I dunno, I think the opposite is true. Trump is so unpresidential that it’s news when he actually gives a speech that isn’t word salad. I mean, like it or not, he is the president; we’ve just become so used to his idiocy that when he makes complete sentences it’s a relief, even when it’s authoritarian garbage, like his speech tonight.

I mean, the flip is no one kept commenting on how presidential Obama was, because, yeah, he was.
posted by valkane at 8:25 PM on January 30, 2018 [8 favorites]


I mean it’s a relief for journalists.
posted by valkane at 8:26 PM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


Guardian: Greg Gianforte, politician who assaulted reporter, to lead communications workshop

Venturing further into the surreal, the monthly workshop is held at the National Indian Gaming Association offices in Washington and the invitation points out, specifically, that eats will be provided by Chick-fil-A, the fast food company that made headlines in 2012 for its leadership’s anti-gay stance. The workshop is typically attended by press relations aides to GOP members of Congress. [...] Gianforte’s bio on the invitation further boasts that the congressman is known for his written work and presentations on time management, hiring and “bootstrapping” and points out that he “retains his passion for helping others achieve professional success”.

"The most important thing to remember in communication is this: make sure to violently assault the press, lie about it, be found guilty of assault, and then face no political or personal repercussions. Heck, your voters and congressional colleagues will pat you on the back for pummeling the little degenerate and then name you to lead a communications workshop! In conclusion being a congressman is fun."
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:40 PM on January 30, 2018 [28 favorites]




Rep. Jeff Duncan asked Trump to "release the memo" on his way out of the chamber. "Don't worry 100%" was Trump's response.

Which brings us to Amanda Carpenter, I’m a Republican. Why Is My Party Gaslighting America?
Riddle me this: If Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have smoking gun evidence of a deep-state conspiracy that threatens American democracy itself, wouldn’t they be doing more than playing silly hashtag games, such as #ReleasetheMemo?

Hint: The answer is yes. If this were a serious undertaking, congressional investigators would be collaborating with the Department of Justice, FBI and relevant Senate committees to save America from the threat within. But we’re no longer dealing in the realm of facts and reason when it comes to grave matters of security and justice. We are, at Donald Trump’s behest, fully engulfed in a narrative explicitly designed to impugn and destroy the credibility of the law enforcement agency tasked with investigating the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia during the 2016 election.
posted by zachlipton at 8:58 PM on January 30, 2018 [68 favorites]


Last month, I also took an action endorsed unanimously by the U.S. Senate, just months before. I recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Shortly afterwards, dozens of countries voted in the United Nations General Assembly against America's sovereign right to make this decision.

In 2016, American taxpayers generously sent those same countries more than $20 billion in aid. That is why, tonight, I am asking Congress to pass legislation to help ensure American foreign assistance dollars always serve American interests and only go to friends of America, not enemies of America.
So, are we leaving the UN?
posted by hanov3r at 9:00 PM on January 30, 2018 [6 favorites]


Amanda Carpenter: I’m a Republican. Why Is My Party Gaslighting America?

Better title: "I'm a Republican. Why am I still a Republican?"
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:00 PM on January 30, 2018 [122 favorites]


Shortly afterwards, dozens of countries voted in the United Nations General Assembly against America's sovereign right to make this decision.

The sovereign right to participate in a vote in an international forum to advocate for borders in another country, but whatever...
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:13 PM on January 30, 2018 [6 favorites]


Just so you know, Jeff Duncan:

In 1984, he graduated from Ware Shoals High School. He is a 1988 graduate of Clemson University, where he appears as a wide receiver on the 1985 football team roster, although he did not appear on the depth charts, or make a play during competition.

That’s all wikipedia has on his early life, education and business career. Also this:

On the 1st of August 2012, Duncan took part in the ´Chick-fil-a appreciation day

Duncan was a "Tea Party freshman" in the 112th Congress.

Immediately following the November 13, 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, France, the deadliest in that country's recent history, Rep. Duncan tweeted "How's that Syrian refugee resettlement look now? How about that mass migration into Europe?”
posted by valkane at 9:16 PM on January 30, 2018 [6 favorites]


The Post's headline ("a call for bipartisianship") got ratio'd so bad by people asking "what call?" that they changed it to "A 'new American moment'" for later printings, which while not great, demonstrates an extremely minimal effort to suck less that is rarely seen, and hey, that's Hillary Clinton's line!

And I don't know WTF is going on with Stormy Daniels, but this has gotten even weirder. @mkraju: Stormy Daniels plays coy with Kimmel then suggests that the denial posted today saying she didn’t have an affair with Trump was NOT from her. “I do not know where it came from.”

I realize people sometimes sign things different ways, but the signature is quite different from other things she's signed too. When asked if the details in the InTouch interview are true, she says "define true."
posted by zachlipton at 9:30 PM on January 30, 2018 [21 favorites]


Stormy Daniels on Jimmy Kimmel is a pretty fascinating interview. She, yes, has a non-disclosure agreement, and cannot disclose the non-disclosure agreement, and Kimmel was fairly clever about how he brought it out. She's being pretty savvy about how she dances around things, and Kimmel is actually being more journalistic than a lot of serious journalists in how he draws out what he can, given the constraints of her non-disclosure agreement ... between the jokes.

(Oh, now there's carrots. And puppets.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:31 PM on January 30, 2018 [9 favorites]


MarketWatch: Anonymous donor pays $2,500 to name shark after Robert Mueller
A sea pilot will fly over the Atlantic Ocean this June to spot a male great white shark, then a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries will tag the predator with a location tracker. The donor will be sent a photo of the animal. And anyone with a smartphone will be able to follow Mueller the shark as he cruises around the Atlantic with an app called SharkTivity that tracks tagged sharks.
* * *
The donation is one of a slew of contributions that shark-related charities reeled in after the publication of anti-shark comments by President Donald Trump in an interview with an adult film star.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:36 PM on January 30, 2018 [61 favorites]


Ben Jacobs, Guardian: American carnage, diluted: Trump finally says something forgettable
The star of Celebrity Apprentice and performer in such films as Home Alone 2 and Zoolander played his greatest role on Tuesday. Donald Trump acted like a president. At the very least, a modern day one.

For over an hour, Trump read off a script and recited mostly rote, unmemorable lines. This was not a sign of a pivot or a transformation. It is simply the role of a president any time at any State of the Union.

State of the Union addresses are rarely memorable or noteworthy. In recent history, only a few lines from entire administrations stand out, in front of Congress or not: perhaps a vague memory here of George W Bush’s “axis of evil” or a recollection of Bill Clinton’s declaration that “the era of big government is over”.

Instead, these hour-long laundry lists, crafted by assembly lines of speechwriters, are the ultimate content for the modern news cycle. They start with countdown clocks and end in a frenzy of analysis and spin on Twitter and cable TV. Almost no one can remember much of anything about it 24 hours later.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:58 PM on January 30, 2018 [5 favorites]


I realize people sometimes sign things different ways, but the signature is quite different

Looks like almost the same signature, some of it is probably the difference between a ballpoint pen and a felt-tip marker...but in both of the other signatures the downstroke of the terminal "Y" in "Stormy" is carried through into the upright of the "D" in Daniels, and the whole thing is written without lifting the pen from the paper (which the ballpoint signature clearly isn't), and the "D" is separate from the "S" (where in the ballpoint signature the bottom loop of the S doubles for the "D"). I find it kind of implausible that someone's signature would vary by that much (especially someone who signs some number of autographs, because, muscle memory).
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 10:25 PM on January 30, 2018


For over an hour, Trump read off a script and recited mostly rote, unmemorable lines. This was not a sign of a pivot or a transformation. It is simply the role of a president any time at any State of the Union.

Really. This is what we're going with, after eight years of the Presidency being held by one of the greatest orators to ever fill the office. Okay.
posted by biogeo at 10:30 PM on January 30, 2018 [28 favorites]


whitehouse.gov: Presidential Executive Order on Protecting America Through Lawful Detention of Terrorists

The day still has a little fresh awfulness left in it.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:32 PM on January 30, 2018 [11 favorites]


Stormy Daniels' lawyer writes in to say that the statement she put out earlier and her signature are real.

The extent to which the incredibly serious question of whether the President is paying hush money to people who could blackmail him has been turned into a game is profoundly disturbing.
posted by zachlipton at 10:53 PM on January 30, 2018 [26 favorites]


Does anyone have a video link for Maxine Waters response?

I tried searching YouTube and mostly got links to a lot of vile, ugly, racist shit. Excuse me while I go wash my eyes out and try to restore my soul.
posted by marsha56 at 11:05 PM on January 30, 2018 [1 favorite]




I briefly watched some of the SOTU speech on Al Jazeera. The thing that struck me the most about his demeanour was the absolute similarity with that of Il Duce - Mussolini: the strutting jaw, the punk look of "I got this, gimme your best shot", the utter fascist nature of his delivery, right down to the clapping of his own remarks. It was aggressive, toxic masculinity at its worst, and yet oh so fragile. The speech was delivered with the amateur bluffers pose: seemingly self-confident, but with nothing behind the swagger. He is a busted flush, and the world can see this. No-one fears him. He's got nothing, nada, zilch. The Republicans self-abasing cheer-leading was just as repulsive as the speech itself. It was utterly shameful.
posted by vac2003 at 11:19 PM on January 30, 2018 [67 favorites]


Trump’s simultaneously unifying and dividing State of the Union address, annotated

Breaking down Trump’s much-praised 2017 address to Congress: Where we stand today
Looking back today, with Trump set to deliver his first official State of the Union address on Tuesday night, his February 2017 speech looks more like a toned-down, aspirational version of the inconsistent hyperbole he was offering on the campaign trail. Below, I've pulled some relevant sections, along with where we stand 11 months later.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:21 PM on January 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


Maxine Waters will be on tomorrow night (I was confused about this and spent a while trying to find it).
posted by zachlipton at 11:26 PM on January 30, 2018 [5 favorites]


That's the one I really want to see. I haven't bothered to watch Kennedy's response.
posted by Coventry at 11:29 PM on January 30, 2018


All of us, together, as one team, one people, and one American family can do anything.

Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. Not the first time he's paraphrased Hitler. Not surprising for a guy who kept a book of Hitler speeches by his bed.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:31 PM on January 30, 2018 [33 favorites]


Thanks zachlipton!
posted by marsha56 at 12:52 AM on January 31, 2018


Seriously? He clapped for himself? I heard someone say so in some of the post-SOTU television commentary earlier. And per kirkaracha's link it wasn't once but more than half a dozen times. Just when you thought you'd never see something more pathetic than Jeb Bush saying, "Please clap."

Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.

I couldn't help but notice that he was standing between a literal pair of fasces, though per the Wikipedia article they're always there in the House.
posted by XMLicious at 1:06 AM on January 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


So his speech plagiarized lines from both Hillary and Hitler... that's got to be the first time ever...
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:17 AM on January 31, 2018 [15 favorites]


The USA USA chant was so gross.

Beyond gross. It sounded unnervingly like chants of sieg heil to my ears.
posted by popcassady at 2:00 AM on January 31, 2018 [21 favorites]


I briefly watched some of the SOTU speech on Al Jazeera. The thing that struck me the most about his demeanour was the absolute similarity with that of Il Duce - Mussolini: the strutting jaw, the punk look of "I got this, gimme your best shot", the utter fascist nature of his delivery, right down to the clapping of his own remarks. It was aggressive, toxic masculinity at its worst, and yet oh so fragile. The speech was delivered with the amateur bluffers pose: seemingly self-confident, but with nothing behind the swagger. He is a busted flush, and the world can see this. No-one fears him. He's got nothing, nada, zilch. The Republicans self-abasing cheer-leading was just as repulsive as the speech itself. It was utterly shameful.
I've been thinking about this for a while, even looking up old film-clips. The main difference is that Mussolini did actually have some military background, and that some discipline. Trump is the sloppy Mussolini.
posted by mumimor at 2:12 AM on January 31, 2018 [19 favorites]


After hearing the stories of the people Trump brought, and also wondering myself... what happened to the mother of the baby adopted by the police officer? This morning I found this story that talks about her. It also seems (per the same link) that the police officer and family have started a GoFundMe for the mother and her partner to help them overcome their addiction.
posted by meowf at 2:41 AM on January 31, 2018 [8 favorites]


Juan Cole: The Fascist underpinnings of Trump’s State of the Union.
Although the corporate media will at least to some extent call out Trump’s racism, the strongly Fascist overtones of his speech will largely be ignored, as will the punitive character of his policies for the average American worker
posted by adamvasco at 2:49 AM on January 31, 2018 [43 favorites]


"Amazing. Trump's Approval/Disapproval numbers from Gallup are now a net negative in every state defined as a swing state at some point in the last four presidential elections; plus he's at -12 in Georgia and Arizona, and -15 in Texas (!)" GALLUP LINK

CHART
posted by chris24 at 5:00 AM on January 31, 2018 [61 favorites]


I'm 32. My parents, however, were much older and both grew up in fascist Italy and lived through WWII.

They spent their lives reminding me how NORMAL authoritarianism seems, when you're living in it. How utterly banal it is. How you're not surprised when your neighbors start leaving and how you are resigned when they start taking them away. How you understand the things you can and can't say in public. How you try to find pride in your leaders because the alternative is being seen as the enemy.

This is fascism, pure and simple. The chants of USA USA should chill our blood.
posted by lydhre at 6:01 AM on January 31, 2018 [142 favorites]


I'm often down on NPR, but for what it's worth, the morning top-of-the-hour news segment included fact checks of Trump's claims (no, not the biggest tax cut in history), and the discussion panel all but scoffed at the idea that it was meant to be uniting, noting the plentiful divisive rhetoric. So it seems NPR was none too impressed by the mere fact Trump made it thru the speech without an obvious breakdown.
posted by Gelatin at 6:09 AM on January 31, 2018 [15 favorites]


There's a lot to be angry about, but I am just so, so mad at anybody who would participate in a "USA" chant outside of the context of professional wrestling. It's just so disgusting.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:19 AM on January 31, 2018 [27 favorites]


USA chant

this slobbering jingoism ball has always been with us, but really got rolling in the madness following 9/11, so it's been with us for basically a generation now and is completely normalized; now the scoundrels have to keep outdoing themselves in performative acts of meaningless patriotism, so i don't really see it getting better anytime soon

fascism, america, flag, cross, etc
posted by entropicamericana at 6:24 AM on January 31, 2018 [36 favorites]


Ian Milhiser: The chilling attack on liberal democracy buried in Trump’s speech
On the surface, this proposal may seem benign — who doesn’t want public employees who “fail the American people” to be removed? But laws protecting civil servants against politically motivated firings are one of the foundations of liberal democracy.

They are what enable a prosecutor ordered to bring frivolous charges against the president’s political rivals to say no.

They are what permit investigators to target people suspected of genuine legal violations, not companies that compete with the president’s businesses.

They enable environmental regulators to tell the presidents’ appointees that they must obey the Clean Air Act. They empower Labor Department officials to target employers who give generously to the president’s party. They ensure that Medicaid benefits are still paid out to populations the president disapproves of.

Under current law, most civil servants may not be fired without “good cause” once they have served for a three-year probationary period. Protections like these are what prevents Trump from firing every civil servant who refuses to obey an illegal order.

And now Trump wants to eliminate this shield against unchecked presidential power.
Once again, just a huge thanks to all the conservatives who spouted this anti-democratic bullshit for the last decade and now cry crocodile tears about how horrible Trump is while fervently hoping no one remembers that they're the ones who normalized this. Hell they fought for it, but of course now the ideology of personal responsibility refuses to take ownership of the horrors they helped create.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:26 AM on January 31, 2018 [109 favorites]


Follow-up: it was Luis Gutierrez who walked out when the USA USA chants started. "I was hoping to get through my life without having to witness an outwardly, explicitly racist American President, but my luck ran out."
posted by triggerfinger at 6:33 AM on January 31, 2018 [83 favorites]


Under current law, most civil servants may not be fired without “good cause” once they have served for a three-year probationary period. Protections like these are what prevents Trump from firing every civil servant who refuses to obey an illegal order.

And the current system -- from civil service protections to regulations to the mere existence of a strong Federal government -- all exists because we, as a nation, already tried it the other way and it didn't work.

If people think Reagan's chortling propaganda about "Federal bureaucrats" makes sense, they have no idea what thing are like under a patronage system -- though libertarians should rejoice, because one really did have to pay individual fees for the fire department.

We can have debates about certain regulations being excessive or having unintended consequences. We can argue about just how confiscatory taxes on the rich should be. But there is no argument that the platform put forward by Republicans is utterly horrific and unpopular, which is why they have to lie about it, and cow a compliant media into accepting their lies whether they know better or don't.
posted by Gelatin at 6:35 AM on January 31, 2018 [43 favorites]


al-Jazeera is also, unsurprisingly, not buying the "unity" bit:

Neo-Nazis and white supremacists celebrate Trump's SOTU
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:00 AM on January 31, 2018 [20 favorites]


FBI's Wray Opposes GOP Memo Release, Citing Inaccuracies
FBI Director Christopher Wray has informed the White House of his opposition to releasing a controversial, classified GOP memo alleging bias at the FBI and Justice Department because it contains inaccurate information and paints a false narrative, according to a person familiar with the matter.
posted by PenDevil at 7:02 AM on January 31, 2018 [24 favorites]


Vanity Fair via Nieman Lab: Mike Cernovich is bidding $500,000 to buy Gawker.com.
“For the past eighteen months I have assembled a video and audio crew who are talented at creating viral content,” Cernovich writes in the letter, addressed to Gawker bankruptcy plan administrator William Holden. “I also work with a network of independent journalists. Since Gawker has brand recognition, a blog with a high page rank, and two large social media accounts, my team will be able to leverage these properties to continue my journalistic work.”
posted by notyou at 7:06 AM on January 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


The CDC thing is such a pedestrian example of public corruption in the age of Trump that I'm amazed she bothered to resign.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:15 AM on January 31, 2018 [35 favorites]


> The CDC thing is such a pedestrian example of public corruption in the age of Trump that I'm amazed she bothered to resign.
Probably just the tip of an iceberg and she wants people to stop looking.
posted by lumnar at 7:23 AM on January 31, 2018 [34 favorites]


She still gets the money when the CDC makes smoking mandatory, right?
posted by Artw at 7:30 AM on January 31, 2018 [10 favorites]


This is a really confusingly written article, but the gist of it is that the DC Circuit Court just ruled that the President cannot remove the head of the Consumer Protection Bureau without cause.

However, because Republican, it will only take effect once 45 nominates someone, so it would stop the next president from getting rid of 45s choice, assuming 45 ever actually nominates anyone, rather than continuing to have cronies as interim leaders who have openly stated that their goal is to destroy the agency. (Basically, the court said that what 45 did was unconstitutional, but hey, what can you do?)

This ruling has no impact on the continuing court battle about who should be leading the agency.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:43 AM on January 31, 2018 [6 favorites]


"Since Gawker has brand recognition, a blog with a high page rank, and two large social media accounts, my team will be able to leverage these properties to continue my journalistic work."

I can see why Cernovich would have an interest, because he thinks he's an alpha gorilla or whatever and probably still resents Gawker for out-attentioning him, way back when, since he still tweets about them. And since a sale would also give him ownership of the (still extant, still accessible) archives, and since he "reserves the right to accept financing from other parties," I suspect Peter Thiel might have an interest in this too -- or at least that Cernovich might be banking he would.

But even though Gawker has been a millstone since Univision bought the whole package, I can't imagine them risking the rest of Fusion's brand, such as it is, by going for this. I'm pretty sure their strategy is 'hope real hard that eventually everyone will just forget Gawker.com ever existed,' and even in a depreciating media environment, $500K for that kind of toxic association isn't enough.
posted by halation at 7:59 AM on January 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


So... I tuned out of the SOTU (obviously) but all the reactions are so muted - even here, we're back to talking about #releasethestupidmemo and the CDC director (The. Best. People.) and so on. Was that it? One big yawn?

Kevin Drum, Liveblog summary:
Offhand, I can’t think of any truly new proposals for the coming year. Nothing but a few brief tough-guy platitudes about North Korea. Nothing about Afghanistan or Syria except for some bragging about how he single-handedly defeated ISIS. Nothing about Russia sanctions. Nothing much about veterans except that he supports them 100 percent. Nothing about opioids except that he’s against them. Nothing much about trade except that “the era of economic surrender is over.” Etc. [...] The speech didn’t accomplish much, but neither did Trump make any mistakes.
So, one big yawn it is. Back to our regularly scheduled constitutional crisis dumpster fire, I guess.
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:00 AM on January 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


Mod note: Several deleted. I get that for some people guillotine riffing is a good way to let off bleak steam, but for others it's part of a actually-really-hard-to-take overall bleakness that's not great for mental health when it's repeated hundreds of times.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:01 AM on January 31, 2018 [24 favorites]


"Nothing much about opioids except that he's against them."

He explicitly blamed the opioid crisis in illegal immigrants: "These [immigration] reforms will also support our response to the terrible crisis of opioid and drug addiction."
posted by hanov3r at 8:05 AM on January 31, 2018 [10 favorites]


Which pharmaceutical companies do they own again?
posted by Artw at 8:07 AM on January 31, 2018 [35 favorites]


Warning: possible paranoia ahead. As some of you may recall, I attended an August '16 Trump rally for anthropological research reasons. That required me to join the Trump campaign's mailing list. I'm still on it, despite a few efforts to unsubscribe, but in fairness I also hate-complete some of his ham-handedly biased "surveys."

Last night a friend watching the SOTU on Fox grabbed a screen capture of my name (first initial and last name) scrolling by as a "supporter" along with the names of other people, known republicans all, who live in my small Wisconsin town. My name had no dollar figure next to it, but the others had what looked like their campaign contribution amounts. I'm going to research that.

I feel violated.
posted by carmicha at 8:18 AM on January 31, 2018 [80 favorites]


@ryansruyk: 70% of speech-watchers had a positive view of Trump's speech — that's the worst in @CNN polls stretching back two decades.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:19 AM on January 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


You do have to appreciate the pathos of the sorry old shit boasting about the superlative greatness of his performances when in fact they really are historical outliers, just in the other direction.
posted by contraption at 8:27 AM on January 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


I also hate-complete some of his ham-handedly biased "surveys."

Those are really push polls, designed to spread messaging, not gather data. They will typically not be scientifically analyzed and are essentially worthless (though it might feel satisfying to fill one out).

And the campaign donations (any over $200) are public record:
Disclosure
The FECA requires candidate committees, party committees and PACs to file periodic reports disclosing the money they raise and spend. Candidates must identify, for example, all PACs and party committees that give them contributions, and they must identify individuals who give them more than $200 in an election cycle. Additionally, they must disclose expenditures exceeding $200 per election cycle to any individual or vendor.
I guess if you still have the terms of the email signup agreement, it might cover this kind of use.
posted by Miko at 8:29 AM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


The Dubious Legal Claim Behind #ReleaseTheMemo

As a Fourth Amendment nerd, it seems to me that the premise of #ReleaseTheMemo is pretty dubious. The apparent idea is that the failure to adequately document the funding behind Steele's work is a huge deal and a fraud on the court. But as a matter of law, that seems pretty unlikely to me. When federal judges have faced similar claims in litigation, they have mostly rejected them out of hand. And when courts have been receptive to such claims, it has been because of specific facts that are likely outside the scope of the memo that will be released.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:37 AM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


"Was that it? One big yawn?"
I didn't so much yawn as black out. I had wanted to watch it just in case he keeled over or spat out his dentures, but I couldn't keep my eyes open at all. I was pushed under by the inexorable rhythm. Yack for a bit, clap for a bit, yack, clap, yack, and the metronomic rising and subsiding of this year's fleet of the bereaved. It all acted on me like mother's heartbeat when in utero. I'm not surprised anybody would keep Hitler's speeches by the bed. It turns out fascism makes good white noise.
posted by Don Pepino at 8:37 AM on January 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


I didn't so much yawn as black out. I had wanted to watch it just in case he keeled over or spat out his dentures, but I couldn't keep my eyes open at all. I was pushed under by the inexorable rhythm. Yack for a bit, clap for a bit, yack, clap, yack, and the metronomic rising and subsiding of this year's fleet of the bereaved.

Actually, that pretty much describes all SOTUs. Or so we all said before the current administration.
posted by Melismata at 8:39 AM on January 31, 2018 [1 favorite]










FBI Director Christopher Wray has informed the White House of his opposition to releasing a controversial, classified GOP memo alleging bias at the FBI and Justice Department because it contains inaccurate information and paints a false narrative, according to a person familiar with the matter.


@LOLGOP
This is Trump's FBI Director saying House Republicans' goal with this memo is to obstruct justice.
posted by chris24 at 9:17 AM on January 31, 2018 [63 favorites]


So, the Democrats who lost to the anti-establishment candidate (in presentation, if not in fact) and with an electorate which continues to be strongly anti-establishment, choose to have their response given by .... a Kennedy. Good read on the mood there. They still aren't getting it.
posted by Bovine Love at 9:25 AM on January 31, 2018 [14 favorites]




"Rep. Trey Gowdy says he will not run for reelection, the latest in a series of GOP lawmakers to announce their retirement ahead of the 2018 midterms. Gowdy says he will 'return to the justice system.'" Twitter link via ABC News.
posted by anya32 at 9:28 AM on January 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


Going to prison counts as returning to the justice system, right?
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:28 AM on January 31, 2018 [65 favorites]


I dunno, it's been a while since we've had a Kennedy. People have short memories.
posted by Melismata at 9:31 AM on January 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


Am I wrong to be worried that Wray is about to get fired and replaced by Gowdy? Does his state replace reps by special election or by appointment?
posted by Freon at 9:31 AM on January 31, 2018 [6 favorites]


NEWS — The train carrying GOP lawmakers to the retreat in West Virginia has collided with a dump truck. .

oh my god, that's horrible! is the train alright?
posted by entropicamericana at 9:33 AM on January 31, 2018 [59 favorites]


Whoa - Gowdy laying down was not something I expected.
posted by eclectist at 9:40 AM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


The people on the truck were injured, apparently one killed, and we're going to have to hear about how traumatic it all is for the congressmembers
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:43 AM on January 31, 2018


So, the Democrats who lost to the anti-establishment candidate (in presentation, if not in fact) and with an electorate which continues to be strongly anti-establishment, choose to have their response given by .... a Kennedy. Good read on the mood there. They still aren't getting it.

There is much gushing on Daily Kos about Joe Kennedy III and OMG his speech! and here's our future President!!!11111 I think at least some Democrats are looking to anoint a Great White Male Hope for the party.

I agree we need a deep bench, and we need to help younger Democratic politicians move up in the ranks, but come on, Kennedy might be great and awesome and have that family name and all, but he's several political offices and many years of experience away from being a presidential candidate.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 9:43 AM on January 31, 2018 [11 favorites]


I don't know whether he was actually aboard, and that it was probably an aide back at the office that posted the announcement anyway, but I'm still really enjoying the mental image of Trey Gowdy announcing his resignation while standing beside the smoking wreckage of the semi-derailed train that just killed a sanitation worker while carrying Gowdy and his buddies to some rich-guy glamping trip.
posted by contraption at 9:43 AM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


The people on the truck were injured, apparently one killed

.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:45 AM on January 31, 2018 [38 favorites]


Politico: Kelly: Nunes memo to be released ‘pretty quick’

Between this and Trump caught on mic telling Jeff Duncan that it'll be released "100%," the Trumpian vague phrasing looks to me like there isn't a solid plan to release the memo and they might as well be saying they'll release it in "two weeks, tops" like so many unmet promises.

That's not to say the memo won't be released - I'm pretty sure it will, and probably soon - all indications are that there is no set date for the release and no real plan about when or how to do it. They've been hesitant up til now because they either aren't fully confident that it will help them or because Trump's personally indecisive and feckless [Ron: he is]. It will likely be released without much deliberation as a knee-jerk response to some bad news coming out for Trump (Mueller-related or otherwise), risking for them the benefit they might get from it.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:45 AM on January 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


Whoa - Gowdy laying down was not something I expected.

Good riddance.

But you know how it feels like 1 year of trump has been like 800 normal years and we're all Maggie Smith now? Imagine what it's like if you're on Capitol Hill. Every day must feel like an eternity, even if you're getting your white supremacist dreams fulfilled. I do not envy anyone who has to be in the thick of this mess. Chaos is putting years on us all. I swear my beard got 10 fresh white hairs since last January.
posted by dis_integration at 9:46 AM on January 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


Are there more or fewer R. congress critters not seeking re-election? Does anyone have a read on this? Because it seems like every two days comes an announcement about some other R. not running again.
posted by From Bklyn at 9:46 AM on January 31, 2018


I'm gonna suggest that despite the humorous possibilities inherent in "GOP train derailed in freak garbage accident", real people lost their lives in this incident and it's sort of gruesome to dwell on it for laffs.
posted by murphy slaw at 9:47 AM on January 31, 2018 [48 favorites]


From Bklyn: by "more or fewer", are you asking if an actual majority of Republicans are retiring? Because that's nowhere near where we are. The number choosing not to run is just unusually high. (The old record was 29 and now there are at least 31, I think.)
posted by InTheYear2017 at 9:51 AM on January 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


I was honestly just about to type, "Well, if the FBI were not already openly at war with Trump, they sure will be after this" when this here story pops up:

Daily Beast: FBI Launches Preemptive Strike on Devin Nunes’ Memo, Ripping It for ‘Omissions of Fact’
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:55 AM on January 31, 2018 [26 favorites]


Rep. Matt Gaetz , fresh off appearing on InfoWars, invited Chuck Johnson to the State of the Union. There are conflicting explanations in the article for how this came to be, but the long and the short of it is that the white supremacist holocaust denier who solicited donations to "take out" Deray McKesson keeps spending time with members of Congress (he also arranged the meeting between Rep. Rohrabacher and Assange).

Also, Menendez should retire.
posted by zachlipton at 9:57 AM on January 31, 2018 [18 favorites]


While I agree that it would have been better for a woman or person of color (or a woman of color) to deliver the Democratic rebuttal, I can't fault the speech itself.

It wasn't as blistering a condemnation as I'd like, but it was harsh, it was no bullshit, and it went directly to attack Trump, Trumpism, and the Republican Party. It's the kind of speech I've been longing to see Democrats give and that far too few (with a few notable exceptions) will give.

I read the transcript of Trump's SotU address, I can't stand to actually watch it.
posted by sotonohito at 9:58 AM on January 31, 2018 [9 favorites]


, Devin Nunes Won't Say If He Worked With White House on Anti-FBI Memo...
If you'll recall, last year, Nunes rushed to the White House to brief Trump on information he received...from the White House. It sounds like we're still playing the same game.


Serious question - can Mueller indict Nunes for obstruction of justice, violations of classified info rules, etc.?
posted by msalt at 9:59 AM on January 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


Rep. Matt Gaetz , fresh off appearing on InfoWars, invited Chuck Johnson to the State of the Union.

Did he at least put down some newspaper or something
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:02 AM on January 31, 2018 [16 favorites]


Rep. Matt Gaetz , fresh off appearing on InfoWars, invited Chuck Johnson to the State of the Union.

Chuck Johnson is a holocaust denier. That's the person Gaetz chose to bring to the SOTU, and his was one of those voices chanting U-S-A. This is what we are now.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:02 AM on January 31, 2018 [62 favorites]


Maybe that's why Sen. Kennedy brought a custodian as his guest.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:03 AM on January 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


Anybody want to lay odds on Chris Wray's career longevity prospects?
posted by FelliniBlank at 10:04 AM on January 31, 2018


They likely tapped Kennedy precisely because he’s young, and on the rise in the party, but not reasonably in consideration for higher office - yet. None of the 2020 canidates, which include several women and POCs, want or should need to put a target on themselves this early, and the SoTU response is normally a thankless task that has more often hurt the respondent than helped them. You shouldn’t want the strongest person in that role, it’s too big a risk for self inflicted failure with essentially zero upside.

We’re going to need everyone in the party to rebuild (well, until we can build enough of a margin to kick Joe Manchin out), and that includes famous trust fund liberals with famous names as well as our Kamala Harris and Cory Bookers.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:08 AM on January 31, 2018 [50 favorites]


Anybody want to lay odds on Chris Wray's career longevity prospects?

I actually think he has a fair amount of leverage. Firing two FBI Directors in a year when normally they're never fired and have 10 year terms would maybe be a little too Banana Republic even for the Banana Republicans. Not for Trump, but I think the issues it would cause him might restrain him. He was Trump's handpicked successor and now he's bad too?
posted by chris24 at 10:10 AM on January 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


Abramson: BREAKING: It's looking more and more like Trump attorney (and now RNC executive) Michael Cohen forged a key document he released to the press about Trump's infidelities.

(referring to the statement Stormy Daniels says she didn't sign, denying the "affair" with Drumpf)
posted by Dashy at 10:11 AM on January 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


BREAKING: Seth Abramson re-packages Stormy Daniels' comments on Kimmel last night to make it sound like Michael Cohen is in immediate legal jeopardy.
posted by murphy slaw at 10:15 AM on January 31, 2018 [27 favorites]


BREAKING: "Breaking" no longer has any meaning.
posted by schoolgirl report at 10:16 AM on January 31, 2018 [48 favorites]


Her own lawyer says she signed it, I believe.
posted by gerryblog at 10:16 AM on January 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


I actually think he has a fair amount of leverage. Firing two FBI Directors in a year when normally they're never fired and have 10 year terms would maybe be a little too Banana Republic even for the Banana Republicans. Not for Trump, but I think the issues it would cause him might restrain him. He was Trump's handpicked successor and now he's bad too?

I suspect you're right, which makes the Fuck You to Trump extra delicious because you know he is going batshitinsane over "his guy" Wray flipping him off in this manner. "Come on, now THIS one's in my face too, going against me in public? And I can't get rid of him? What's with all these guys that they won't do my bidding like Devin Nunes?"
posted by FelliniBlank at 10:18 AM on January 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


Abramson and Cohen are both lawyers, one of whom represents the President, so that's the more interesting part.

I know some Mefites are less enthused with Abramson, but I have not yet seen evidence to put him in the same category as Mensch. So this particular accusation will be interesting to follow. I'd assume he wouldn't say this without some evidence. We'll see.
posted by Dashy at 10:18 AM on January 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


Here's what merits a guest seat at the State of the Union Address these days:

"I do not and never have believed the six million figure. I think the Red Cross numbers of 250,000 dead in the camps from typhus are more realistic. I think the Allied bombing of Germany was a ware [sp] crime. I agree with David Cole about Auschwitz and the gas chambers not being real [...] I’m more or less of the view that the war was an outgrowth of the efforts of communism to spread itself throughout the world."

Any of Matt Gaetz's constituents here should probably call his office and ask him if he agrees with this. Maybe also stand in front of his office with a MATT GAETZ IS A HOLOCAUST DENYING NAZI FUCK sign. Maybe that.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:19 AM on January 31, 2018 [70 favorites]


Abramson is overreaching (not for the first time).

Buzzfeed's Anthony Cormier @a_cormier_ confirms:
NEW: Lawyer for Stormy Daniels tells me she signed the statement today, in front of him and her PR rep. “Stormy did indeed sign both denials. ... I thought stormy did a fantastic job on Jimmy Kimmel tonight. She was having fun on Kimmel and being her normal playful self.”
Still, given how Trump suggested the Moore's accusers were forging signed documents, it's hard to look away from Trump's Mirror.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:19 AM on January 31, 2018 [6 favorites]


I don't think anyone has linked one yet so here is a transcript (and sadly auto-playing video) of the Democratic response to the State of the Union. It's better than I expected.
posted by exogenous at 10:22 AM on January 31, 2018 [9 favorites]


Daily Beast: FBI Launches Preemptive Strike on Devin Nunes’ Memo, Ripping It for ‘Omissions of Fact’

I was desperately hoping against all hopes that the FBI would stand up for themselves on this front. I am genuinely surprised and thrilled to see that they have. I hope they keep at it, because the repubs will take any chance they have to lie.
posted by Sophie1 at 10:26 AM on January 31, 2018 [18 favorites]


Vice, EXCLUSIVE: Trump officials discussed “reversing” abortion for undocumented teen
The Trump administration official in charge of the Office of Refugee Resettlement discussed trying to use a controversial, scientifically unproven method to reverse an undocumented teen's abortion, according to documents reviewed by VICE News.

Scott Lloyd, a longtime crusader against abortion who heads the agency that oversees undocumented minors who enter the country without their parents, spoke with staffers about trying to reverse the abortion of a pregnant teen in their custody, according to a deposition he underwent as part of a lawsuit between the Trump administration and the American Civil Liberties Union.

In the past few years, opponents of abortion have championed the idea of halting a medication abortion midway by using the hormone progesterone. Anti-abortion activists have pushed governors in four states to sign laws requiring healthcare providers to tell patients about this so-called “abortion reversal” method. But there is no credible medical evidence that such a procedure works, and the mainstream medical community worries that using it amounts to experimentation on women.
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?
posted by zachlipton at 10:29 AM on January 31, 2018 [123 favorites]


I have to think Pence has his fingerprints on that story and it seriously makes me reevaluate if his being a "normal politician" would be worth the nightmare of him being president in a post-impeachment scenario.
posted by gerryblog at 10:33 AM on January 31, 2018 [10 favorites]


Trump officials discussed “reversing” abortion for undocumented teen

I support any gestational time-travel research as a stepping stone to the development of technologies that will allow abortions to be induced in the past, ideally as far back as the 1940s and as far away as Queens.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:34 AM on January 31, 2018 [57 favorites]


BREAKING: My sanity, will to live, et cetera.
posted by entropicamericana at 10:36 AM on January 31, 2018 [65 favorites]


Now we have government officials discussing how to forcibly impregnate women and girls? Are you fucking kidding me?
posted by Autumnheart at 10:43 AM on January 31, 2018 [15 favorites]


Here and Now on NPR this morning, re: SOTU, because I was channel-flipping: "You have to hand it to the president. He stayed on script. He was civil."

Those were actual words from an actual media person and alleged journalist's mouth. This is the bar she set for him while doing the standard "let's hear what a Republican and Democratic talking head have to say" bit. She didn't even try to qualify that. We have to give him credit, you see, because he briefly met bare standards of public human conduct... while reading from a script and getting coached along by the entire Republican apparatus in DC. Apparently he gets some sort of credit for that.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:47 AM on January 31, 2018 [27 favorites]


Now we have government officials discussing how to forcibly impregnate women and girls? Are you fucking kidding me?

Last night the President basically celebrated a cop for bringing back the Lebensborn practice
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:52 AM on January 31, 2018 [21 favorites]


while the woman is imprisoned, by people interested in human experimentation and no care for ethics

but but Margaret Sanger planned parenthood eugenics
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:54 AM on January 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


Here and Now on NPR this morning, re: SOTU, because I was channel-flipping: "You have to hand it to the president. He stayed on script. He was civil."

Atrios predicted this reaction from the press two days ago:
Journalists are already teeing up the "TRUMP IS REALLY PRESIDENTIAL NOW" narratives, because reading from a teleprompter is the sole qualification for the job. They literally will not judge him on the content, just the ability to not shit himself visibly for 45 minutes. I have no idea why "objective" political journalists feel like part of their job is bad theater criticism, but apparently they do.
Not that Atrios is some mad prognosticator here, for some reason reporters are obsessed with finding any excuse to normalize Trump.
posted by octothorpe at 10:54 AM on January 31, 2018 [20 favorites]


"You have to hand it to the president. He stayed on script. He was civil."

OK, I think now is the time we finally agree NPR is nothing but an endless fount of Horseshoe Theory centrist garbage, a living shrine to the View From Nowhere, serving no other purpose than a case study in Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 10:55 AM on January 31, 2018 [35 favorites]


Here and Now on NPR this morning, re: SOTU, because I was channel-flipping: "You have to hand it to the president. He stayed on script. He was civil."

"He proposed a return to 'extraordinary rendition' and a political purge of the civil service without cursing or using a racial epithet once! A bravura performance."
posted by murphy slaw at 10:58 AM on January 31, 2018 [36 favorites]


Here and Now on NPR this morning, re: SOTU, because I was channel-flipping: "You have to hand it to the president. He stayed on script. He was civil."


This sounds just like "every kid gets a trophy." More than anything else, this un-presidency seem to me like a wonderful lesson in how not to raise children.

-No accountability, critical feedback (which every good leader should always want to have)
-Enabling bullying, emboldening racism, sexism, trans-bi-homo phobia, xenophobia, anti-semitism, islamophobia, abelism, colonization, you name it
-Enabling gender based violence
-Supporting the idea that bluster is more important than thought
-The idea that invoking terror and anger is the appropriate response to our own insecurities.
-More things that I have time to write

Last night I was trying to explain to my kids what the SOTU was supposed to be and what was happening. After going to the zoo we started using the term "stinky lemur" to discuss "leadership" these days. And it was painful to talk about what a government could be (always idealized but so far from where we are) to what is happening in this country today.

So no, reading a speech that nazis wrote without fumbling is not a great achievement. It is a disgrace to the dignity of our nation, and is something to unteach to our kids.
posted by anya32 at 10:58 AM on January 31, 2018 [21 favorites]


He was civil

He called undocumented immigrants vicious savages, called for the purging of the federal government of dissenters and political opponents, and promoted an unconstitutional concentration/torture camp.

NPR is not your friend. "Normalize Pinochet Radio" isn't a joke, it's reality.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:59 AM on January 31, 2018 [91 favorites]


NPR was doing yet another tiresome point/counterpoint this a.m., which, in these dark days leading up to The New Dark Ages, is not a democrat and a republican but a republican and a teaparty republican. The teaparty guy gushed predictably, and the regular republican said, "Yeah, it was good, but watch his twitter. If in 48 hours he hasn't issued a tweet that reverses all the good he did in the state of the union, I'll be surprised. And pleased!"

So that's the new standard for our age. If the POTUS can abstain from committing twittertreason for 48 whole entire hours, that's the president being presidential.
posted by Don Pepino at 11:06 AM on January 31, 2018 [22 favorites]


OK, I think now is the time we finally agree NPR is nothing but an endless fount of Horseshoe Theory centrist garbage, a living shrine to the View From Nowhere, serving no other purpose than a case study in Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance

Agree completely. Walter Cronkite's comment at the Chicago Democratic convention where he said we've become a police state at a convention for democracy keeps running through my head.

It seems like they're just reporting on their own relief that he didn't go off the rails and start ranting and threatening to nuke Poland or something. Except that would have sold more papers, so I'm baffled.
posted by Melismata at 11:07 AM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


WaPo: Russian spy chiefs met in Washington with CIA director to discuss counterterrorism

From the article:
Meetings between U.S. and Russian spy chiefs aren’t unheard of and Pompeo himself met with some Russian intelligence officials when he visited Moscow last May.

But current and former U.S. intelligence officials said they couldn’t recall so many heads of Russia’s espionage and security apparatus coming to Washington at once and meeting with a top American official. They worried the Kremlin could conclude the United States is open to forgiving Russia for its actions and wasn’t resolved to forcefully prevent future meddling.

A description of the meeting sent to U.S. intelligence officers portrayed Russia as a partner willing to work with the United States, and said the countries should look for ways to cooperate on counterterrorism issues.

There is now friction between the operational elements of the U.S. intelligence community, who want to step up action to punish and deter what they see as a rising threat from Russia, and the White House, which is looking for ways to repair the U.S.-Russia relationship, according to current and former U.S. officials.

[sorry if someone already posted this, I didn't come up with anything in search]
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:10 AM on January 31, 2018 [9 favorites]


Foreign Policy (who, again, has been crushing it this past year), Robbie Gramer, Kellyanne Conway Botched Trump Damage Control Meeting With African Ambassadors
Conway, a key architect of Trump’s presidential bid and one of his top surrogates, hosted a group of African ambassadors on Tuesday morning at the prestigious Blair House near the White House. But the meeting was bereft of one key topic: Africa.

Conway instead focused on Trump’s achievements during his first year in office and previewed his State of the Union speech. She said almost nothing on his priorities for Africa, leaving some participants confused and bewildered, according to two people in attendance and two sources briefed on the meeting.

One African ambassador, speaking on condition of anonymity, told FP that while Conway didn’t bring up African policy, the meeting was positive in that someone from Trump’s inner circle “actually met” with them.
posted by zachlipton at 11:18 AM on January 31, 2018 [25 favorites]


So if anti-abortion zealots force a refugee teen to halt her abortion and eventually give birth while in ORR custody, is the child then a US citizen or is there a "while in custody in preparation for deportation doesn't count" loophole in current citizenship law?
posted by delfin at 11:32 AM on January 31, 2018 [10 favorites]


Read the VICE article linked above if you haven't already. The idea of a head of the "Office of Refugee Resettlement" (in of itself a positively orwellian name) forcing an experimental drug while also preventing completion of an attempt to prevent a birth - a birth that would be a product of rape - is straight out of dystopian fiction, without exaggerating of being selective in any way... It would be considered extremely non-subtle and heavy-handed in fiction. But it isn't fiction - this is our reality in the USA.

I didn't even know that ORR was a thing until now. Supposedly, their mission is "to assist in the relocation process and provide needed services to individuals granted asylum within the United States." Sounds great, right? That is, until you start realizing that the current administration sees "relocation" (read: deportation) and "needed services" (furthering the interests of the present regime) the way that they do.

I'm really thinking hard about what others have mentioned about how normal things can seem under an authoritarian regime at the individual level. I had honestly felt like we were going down the path during the GWB years, as many of the things I saw as being part of a fascist regime started there... drone strikes, gitmo, the patriot act, the fetishization of the military, further militarization of law enforcement... I felt that we were already there in many ways for some time. But at that time, I believed that we were a largely democratic culture with elements of fascism... I had no idea how much further to full-on fascism we would shift in so little time.

Looking at everything that has happened under this administration so far, it's increasingly more difficult to believe that as the US is no longer a fascist regime, and it's undeniable that the present administration operates as such, and has it in mind as a goal for everything it touches. From what we've read about the ORR, to how ICE and CBP operate, to voting suppression, to "religious freedom" laws that are anything but, to laws not being applicable to those in power.... and so on, and so on, and so on.

I don't mean to sound bleak and hopeless, as while I believe that our federal governance cannot be identified as anything but fascism, I believe that the majority of people of the country do not share these views - but it may take some serious action to keep things that way or improve the ratio. It won't be easy, as there's a lot of disinformation to work against and a strong arm of governance that wants to keep on this path, but I truly believe we can break free of this as a society. In order to do so, we must acknowledge it for what it is. It's denial to do otherwise, and I think that needs to be something that we are communicating constantly and clearly. How to do that and have the message taken seriously is something that escapes me, because it sounds so hyperbolic to declare that the Trump regime is fascist, thanks to how we have tossed around political labels as baseless slurs for so long. But I don't know how our federal governance can objectively be considered anything else.

Again, I'm not trying to just vent or sound despairing here... I feel like this is something that needs to be acknowledged, I do not feel that I am being hyperbolic myself in this declaration, and I feel like this is a serious problem that we are going to have to deal with. And we aren't 100% fascist, I"m truly referring to federal governance here - there's much local and state governance that is not that is operating with autonomy, but we've seen wars on that as well... One good example of many is the present stance on cannabis legalization.
posted by MysticMCJ at 11:32 AM on January 31, 2018 [34 favorites]


Get ready to feel the excitement: Jamie Dimon 2024.

It might honestly be relief to just be able to vote for Coca-Cola as president and skip the intermediate stage where we vote for the human embodiments of capitalism.
posted by Copronymus at 11:40 AM on January 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


So Monmouth is one of if not the highest rated pollster at 538, and they just pegged Trump's approval up to 42% (pre-SOTU). It makes me so angry that Trump is gonna get credit for Obama fixing the economy. It also makes me angry that the economic narrative under Obama was "okay but not growing fast enough" while under Trump it is "economic gangbusters!!" despite both job creation and gdp growth being marginally faster under Obama. So, so angry.

Trump inherited a good economy, is doing what he can to drive it over a cliff, and people are approving of it.
posted by Justinian at 11:49 AM on January 31, 2018 [45 favorites]


Hey I forgot the worst bit from that poll! The Dem generic ballot lead was only +2. Not only is +2 not enough to take the House, it may not be enough to gain seats at all. Sure, this poll might be an outlier but Monmouth is a great pollster so here's hoping.
posted by Justinian at 11:52 AM on January 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


It makes me so angry that Trump is gonna get credit for Obama fixing the economy. It also makes me angry that the economic narrative under Obama was "okay but not growing fast enough" while under Trump it is "economic gangbusters!!" despite both job creation and gdp growth being marginally faster under Obama.

He's praising an economy that isn't much different than the one he was deriding as a depressed mess on the campaign trail. One might think that the media would be able to draw a trend line to determine how, if at all, the economy Trump is taking credit for is different, but I guess not.
posted by Gelatin at 11:52 AM on January 31, 2018 [28 favorites]


The idea of a head of the "Office of Refugee Resettlement" (in of itself a positively orwellian name

Hey, so...ORR is for helping refugees resettle in the US. It's part of the Administration for Children and Families, home of Head Start and TANF. ACF (and by extension, ORR) is largely staffed by social workers and government employees and contractors who really are trying to make things better. Their mission statement is to make life easier here for millions of people forced to flee their home countries. The people they serve are survivors of violence, human trafficking, basically the stuff that most of us only have nightmares about.

So, no, they're not in service to an "Orwellian" organization. They'd consider folks calling it "Orwellian" to be a slap in the face. Take out your anger at subhuman shitstains like Lloyd all you want, but please do at least a modicum of research about the organizations of people that have to work for them before you paint with such a broad brush.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:11 PM on January 31, 2018 [47 favorites]


So this is weird. It's been 3 days since Trump tweeted. Pretty sure that's the longest he's gone, except maybe when he was overseas. His staff have posted since then but they're all PR posts, clearly not from the man himself. Given his addiction to Twitter this means something. Not sure what but something.
posted by scalefree at 12:25 PM on January 31, 2018 [11 favorites]


@mcpli: PA senate president pro tem Scarnati tells Pennsylvania Supreme Court that it usurped legislative authority in ordering redraw of congressional map and that, therefore, he is not going cooperate with court order.
posted by zachlipton at 12:34 PM on January 31, 2018 [14 favorites]


they told him he couldn't have his twitter machine back unless he made a nice speech with no bad words
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:35 PM on January 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


Given his addiction to Twitter this means something.

Phone fell in toilet.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 12:36 PM on January 31, 2018 [11 favorites]


It makes me so angry that Trump is gonna get credit for Obama fixing the economy.

Voters have a famously short tem memory for the economy. If the 2008 crash had happened a couple of months later, George Bush Jr. would have been taking credit for economic boom times.

This may help Trump's poll numbers at this second but it's going to kill him in 2020, and probably in 2018 midterms because the Obama expansion will end before then. The Dow dropped 363 points yesterday, which didn't get nearly enough attention, but it will took wind out of Trump's sails.
posted by msalt at 12:38 PM on January 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


Here's a little comic relief from Reuben Bolling: Trump's New Lawyer: Harvey Richards, Lawyer for Children!

It's uncanny how the "I'm Rubber, You're Glue, Everything You Say Bounces Off Me, and Sticks to You" Defense works for Trump.
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:38 PM on January 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


I believed that we were a largely democratic culture with elements of fascism... I had no idea how much further to full-on fascism we would shift in so little time.

This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 political crisis in Poland, which overlapped with an antisemitic ("anti-Zionist") campaign by that country's leaders. In 1967 there were 20-30,000 Jews in Poland. In 1972 there were 5-10,000. The daily Yiddish newspaper went to weekly, then monthly, then became a Government-produced propaganda sheet with half its content in Polish. Jews were fired, called out in official government editorials, and blamed for the coincidental student riots. In a neat touch, the government ultimately "let" Jews (many or most of whom had no interest in religion or Zionism) leave only by relinquishing their citizenship and with a passport good only for travel to Israel, so it could say "See? We told you those Jews were Zionist traitors."

So that's how fast things can happen.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:39 PM on January 31, 2018 [58 favorites]


The Dow dropped 363 points yesterday, which didn't get nearly enough attention,

363 points is less than 1.5% when the Dow is as high as it is. I'm not saying the market isn't overextended; I think any reasonable interpretation is that the market's p/e is higher than sustainable. But 363 points when you're over 26,000 is a blip. If it falls 3000 points in a few weeks we might have something to talk about.
posted by Justinian at 12:48 PM on January 31, 2018 [5 favorites]




Hey, so...ORR is for helping refugees resettle in the US. It's part of the Administration for Children and Families, home of Head Start and TANF. ACF (and by extension, ORR) is largely staffed by social workers and government employees and contractors who really are trying to make things better.

Yes, the Office of Refugee Resettlement is not a Trumpian creation, and generally does good work, although it is clearly subject to "regulatory capture" or whatever the equivalent term would be, as demonstrated by this creepy abortion story.

In particular, I know of them because they are one of the funders of the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, which is the organization that Chobani works with to hire refugees in upstate New York. For some reason the actual agency is rarely mentioned in Chobani stories although I know they do crazy good work and could use some publicity and scratch. The last time I was there (admittedly, a few years ago now) there was a rumor that they were going to stop offering night time ESL classes because they didn't have the budget for a night security guard. So if you are feeling so inclined in these uncertain times, etc etc.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 12:53 PM on January 31, 2018 [8 favorites]


He's praising an economy that isn't much different than the one he was deriding as a depressed mess on the campaign trail.

It's actually very different now vs then. Back then Obama was in charge & now Trump is. America was a nightmare because Obama was President. It's now rapidly turning into Heaven on Earth because of Trump.
posted by scalefree at 12:56 PM on January 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


that's how fast things can happen.
Here's something I chanced across yesterday that left me profoundly creeped out: People on Sunday.
Berlin and Berliners, looking completely inoffensive and sunnily, happygoluckily quotidian, three years before everything went spinning into the nightmare sewer.
posted by Don Pepino at 12:59 PM on January 31, 2018 [11 favorites]


MO Senate Republican challenger to McCaskill's seat:
“We have a human trafficking crisis in our state and in this city and in our country because people are willing to purchase women, young women, and treat them like commodities. There is a market for it. Why is there? Because our culture has completely lost its way. The sexual revolution has led to exploitation of women on a scale that we would never have imagined, never have imagined,”
Hawley just Troy Akined himself. Human trafficking has been one of Claire's biggest issues.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:03 PM on January 31, 2018 [14 favorites]


An exclusive from CNN: Trump asked Rosenstein if he was 'on my team'

"Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein visited the White House in December seeking President Donald Trump's help. The top Justice Department official in the Russia investigation wanted Trump's support in fighting off document demands from House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes.

"But the President had other priorities ahead of a key appearance by Rosenstein on the Hill, according to sources familiar with the meeting. Trump wanted to know where the special counsel's Russia investigation was heading. And he wanted to know whether Rosenstein was "on my team."

"The episode is the latest to come to light portraying a President whose inquiries sometimes cross a line that presidents traditionally have tried to avoid when dealing with the Justice Department, for which a measure of independence is key. The exchange could raise further questions about whether Trump was seeking to interfere in the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking into potential collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia and obstruction of justice by the White House.

"At the December meeting, the deputy attorney general appeared surprised by the President's questions, the sources said. He demurred on the direction of the Russia investigation, which Rosenstein has ultimate authority over now that his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has recused himself. And he responded awkwardly to the President's "team" request, the sources said.

""Of course, we're all on your team, Mr. President," Rosenstein told Trump, the sources said. It is not clear what Trump meant or how Rosenstein interpreted the comment."
posted by scarylarry at 1:04 PM on January 31, 2018 [28 favorites]


> So, no, they're not in service to an "Orwellian" organization

My apologies there, I don't mean to trivialize what real workers are doing here, or what the actual and original mission of the organizations are... There are plenty of federal workers who are doing excellent and necessary work. I probably lost a lot of context in what I was trying to say. This does provide a great example of why it's so challenging to acknowledge the fascism as what it is, though... I fell into the exact trap of labeling that I am concerned about, by painting the organization with that brush. This is another thing I struggle with how to answer.

It's difficult to look at the actions of the leadership of the ORR here and see anything but the future that the Trump administration wants for it, hence my labeling. Consider the CPB (Consumer Protection, not border control) - while they are a vastly different organization, they are one of many that the Trump administration appears to intend to warp into a dystopian version of itself, by twisting the mission of the department to their own desires, one that actively works against the group it was intended to protect. All without actually changing the name or mission of the department, just by changing the meaning. It doesn't take much imagination to see how they could take advantage of the positioning of so many other bureaus to do some very awful things.

To be clear: While I believe that the goals, public stance, leadership, and current trajectory of our federal administration are objectively fascist, I am not intending to label every federal worker as complicit in fascism. There are many out there fighting the good fight, and I am incredibly thankful for that. They are an endangered species in this current administration, but they are so very important, and I do not ever want to diminish the good work that they do. They are absolutely our resistance.

There are many federal organizations and divisions who are dealing with people who are fundamentally at a disadvantage. Their original missions and goals are noble. And they are all having leadership installed who are taking advantage of this positioning to further some horrifying agenda... Of course that doesn't mean that everyone involved in these large divisions is a fascist. But when the leadership of said organizations are expressly acting in such a fashion, I think it's important to acknowledge that they are steering and guiding the entirety of it down a path that is difficult to stop, and expressly naming it, as opposed to waiting until there's a certain saturation point to call them what they are at the top.
posted by MysticMCJ at 1:10 PM on January 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


Pennsylvania Senate Leader Refuses to Turn Redistricting Data over to State Supreme Court to Remedy Gerrymandering Found to Violate the State Constitution, Calling Court Actions Unconstitutional.

Between this and Trump ignoring the Russian sanctions law, I hereby declare 2018 the Year of the Constitutional Crisis.
posted by jetsetsc at 1:11 PM on January 31, 2018 [37 favorites]


Pennsylvania Senate Leader Refuses to Turn Redistricting Data over to State Supreme Court to Remedy Gerrymandering Found to Violate the State Constitution, Calling Court Actions Unconstitutional

So...now what? I mean, what happens when they just decide they don't have to obey the law any more? Because, clearly, they've decided just that.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 1:12 PM on January 31, 2018 [47 favorites]


Agreed, MysticMJ.

Like Snarl Furillo, I've seen the people who make up ORR in action, and I was just worried at them being lumped in with actual Orwellian organizations like various intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:15 PM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


"Of course, we're all on your team, Mr. President," Rosenstein told Trump, the sources said. It is not clear what Trump meant or how Rosenstein interpreted the comment."

You have to wonder when even the Deputy Attorney General cannot distinguish between taking an oath to protect the Constitution and an oath to protect the President.
posted by JackFlash at 1:27 PM on January 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


I dunno, I read that more along the lines of Comey's offer of "honest loyalty". In both cases they are answering a question which Trump is not asking, and not answering the question he is asking.

If Rosenstein were purely Team Trump he would not have appointed Mueller.
posted by Justinian at 1:34 PM on January 31, 2018 [29 favorites]


>> "Of course, we're all on your team, Mr. President," Rosenstein told Trump, the sources said. It is not clear what Trump meant or how Rosenstein interpreted the comment."

> You have to wonder when even the Deputy Attorney General cannot distinguish between taking an oath to protect the Constitution and an oath to protect the President.


To be fair, if the President asks you such an appalling question, there are few good avenues to take. And the memory of Jim "honest loyalty" Comey's firing has got to be pretty fresh in everyone's minds. I'd choose to generously interpret that response as the minimal "Get me out of here!" response.

(On preview, jinx...)
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:36 PM on January 31, 2018 [9 favorites]


"Of course, we're all on your team, Mr. President,"

The referent of "we" can be extended to Muller and to you and I, and far far beyond. So he's basically acknowledging that T is an organism. Not much more.
posted by stonepharisee at 1:38 PM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


CNN, Exclusive: Controversial FBI agent co-wrote initial draft of explosive Comey letter reopening Clinton email probe

So Strzok, the guy Republicans are excoriating for being anti-Trump, wrote the first draft of the Comey memo and wanted to reopen the Clinton investigation.
posted by zachlipton at 1:39 PM on January 31, 2018 [47 favorites]


Angrycat acupuncture session:

Me: I've been in a bad place since Monday about politics.
Acupuncturist: I know, it's been bad [talk about what's happened since Monday]
Me: Yeah, I know I'm not managing my emotions well when I get cross with my SO because he has a migraine and can't take talking about politics.
Acupuncturist: Well, I don't know, but I ever told you about Louise Mensch?
Me: Oh well, not sure [CUE INTERIOR ZANY MUSIC TO BLOCK OUT WHATEVER IS GOING TO FOLLOW]
Acupuncturist: She says that it's all going to be over in a couple of weeks.
Me: Oh. Oh, wow.
[we start talking about other shit and then circle back around to politics]
Me: [having had blocked the Louise Mensch discussion] I guess it'll be like, didn't the British call the year that Diana died their annus horriblis? Maybe it'll be like that for us, but times four, what's the Latin for four, cuatro?
Acupuncturist:[DEEPLY horrified] FOUR???!!

Fin.
posted by angrycat at 1:49 PM on January 31, 2018 [20 favorites]


Charlie Sykes on MSNBC: "His head didn't spin around and projectile vomit so we call him presidential"
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:50 PM on January 31, 2018 [49 favorites]


When the FBI agent leaked the Stzrok story to CNN in retaliation for the Nunes memo, do you think he or she had to walk outside to get out of earshot of the other FBI agent leaking the Rosenstein story to CNN at the same time?
posted by scarylarry at 1:51 PM on January 31, 2018 [29 favorites]


Voters have a famously short tem memory for the economy. If the 2008 crash had happened a couple of months later, George Bush Jr. would have been taking credit for economic boom times.

This, and it's also completely partisan for "your guy" for many voters. I heard my own family swear up and down that a) the recession was mostly the fault of Clinton administration policies catching up to us, b) most of Bush's terms couldn't be blamed for any economic woes because of 9/11 ..... BUT c) the Obama-era gains were, you guessed it, because of GOP policies finally bearing fruit. Yep. It really doesn't go beyond "well I know Democrats want to spend all my money, so if anything's going well it must be because of something the GOP did before."
posted by nakedmolerats at 1:53 PM on January 31, 2018 [6 favorites]


NT Alexandra Petri, WaPo: Where was Mike Pence during the State of the Union?
Where does Mike Pence go during these speeches? He is always somewhere, just barely making it back in time to rise and clap. But where, specifically, does he go?

Mike Pence stands on top of a wedding cake under a plastic trellis covered in fondant roses. Acres of white frosting spread as far as the eye can see. He is safe on top of this cake, safe from anyone whose hand might reach out and try to slice off a piece for an undeserving couple. Nothing can touch him here on this layered sponge. Somewhere a distant organ is playing Pachelbel’s Canon.

In the distance there is a vague rumbling. Perhaps the bride and groom are approaching on horseback. No. The sound is too loud. The cake begins to collapse. He falls all the way through the cake, and then he is in the House of Representatives and they are clapping all around him. He is standing behind President Trump again and clapping, and President Trump has just suggested the nuclear arsenal needs to be bigger. Sure.

Mike Pence is in a quiet mountain glade. A unicorn with Ronald Reagan’s voice stands beside a slow-moving stream whispering softly to him about deregulation. He smiles. A stream trickles slowly down, as prosperity is sure to do. There is a faint sound in the distance, and the unicorn turns its head. He follows the sound. The stream has become a waterfall. He is trapped in the waterfall. The sound, he realizes, is his own hands clapping. He is standing behind President Trump and clapping ferociously. President Trump has just said something about protecting nuclear families by ending “chain migration.” Everyone is applauding. Mike Pence applauds.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:55 PM on January 31, 2018 [47 favorites]


Ray Walston, Luck Dragon: Did Sykes literally say that or are you mocking him? I had a whole comment written up about my secret fantasy that one of the talking heads would articulate the low standards in explicit "He didn't shit his pants" terms (not just "he was civil", but actually voicing the phrase "not shitting his pants"). Putting it that way is good for the republic in a way that letting it be unsaid isn't.

My only worry is that the Reality Barrier has already been broken so hard that Republicans will starting repeating the point, but with seriousness - they'll just flat-out lie that Obama did projectile vomit and Trump didn't, so score one for Trump.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 1:59 PM on January 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


Alexandra Petri and David Lynch should collaborate on a screenplay.
posted by orrnyereg at 2:00 PM on January 31, 2018 [16 favorites]


No, that's what he said. I mean, I might not have got the words exactly right, but he definitely said the exorcist stuff.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:01 PM on January 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


InTheYear2017: I missed whether Sykes said that specifically but neither MSNBC nor CNN seem to be buying what Trump was selling. I think... I think they kind of learned?
posted by Justinian at 2:02 PM on January 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


If anyone has a subscription to philly.com (I don't) this guy is covering gerrymandering:

https://twitter.com/Elaijuh/with_replies
posted by andreap at 2:08 PM on January 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


Additional thought on the SotU and responses... the official opposition response to a SotU is always mediocre regardless of party. I'm glad if this one, from Joe Kennedy, was less so. However, one lesson Democrats need to learn from the media's relationship with Trump is the value of sheer outrageousness. Saying something sufficiently "out there" will compel attention like nothing else.

I'm sure Joe Kennedy said some strong words, but apparently nothing so strong that it overshadowed the speech, or resulted in a Republican demand that he apologize. Clear and forceful language is great! But we need more than that. "President Trump, who admitted on TV to obstructing justice, probably belongs in prison. If the prisons are overcrowded, he can go to hell. He's a Nazi sympathizer who abandoned Puerto Rico, ignores laws at a whim, displays zero leadership qualities, assaulted multiple women, is obviously up to his eyeballs in Russian mob/government connections, and explicitly lusts after his own daughter, for God's sake." It has to be said both because it's true, and because it gets airtime.

(Arguably, that could have been a potential benefit of choosing a white man for the job -- the political ability to afford to hold nothing back. A speech like that could be dissected from all sides without some awful gender/race subtext.)
posted by InTheYear2017 at 2:09 PM on January 31, 2018 [15 favorites]


@chrislhayes
This is a narratively perfect denoument.

The man supposed to be behind the FBI's anti-Trump conspiracy was behind the letter that did more to get Trump elected than any single event.

LOL
posted by chris24 at 2:16 PM on January 31, 2018 [63 favorites]


In Reversal, FEMA Says It Won't End Puerto Rico Food And Water Distribution Wednesday, Adrian Florido, NPR
A spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday that the agency's plan to end its distribution of emergency food and water in Puerto Rico and turn that responsibility over to the Puerto Rican government would not take effect on Jan. 31.

"Provision of those commodities will continue," spokesman William Booher said. A different spokesperson, Delyris Aquino-Santiago, had earlier told NPR that it would "officially shut off" its food and water mission on the island on Jan. 31 and hand its remaining food and water supplies over to the Puerto Rican government to finish distributing. But on Wednesday, Booher said that date "was mistakenly provided." ...

The turnabout came after politicians from both political parties reacted angrily to news of FEMA's plan and after the Puerto Rican government released a statement saying it had not been informed of the impending change. On Tuesday, lawmakers from both parties had called on the agency to reverse its decision...

But perhaps the most surprising reaction came from the government of Puerto Rico itself. In a statement, the island's public security secretary, Hector Pesquera, said that while he was aware that FEMA would eventually transfer responsibility for distributing food and water supplies over to the island's government, "this has not happened yet and we were not informed that supplies would stop arriving."
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 2:27 PM on January 31, 2018 [46 favorites]


I Watched a Ghoulish Masquerade in Washington
How does eliminating family reunification in the immigration system protect the nuclear family? “Chain migration” is a racist term of art contrived over the last few years because it sounds ominous. And then, later, while celebrating the triumph of a Korean refugee named Ji Seong-Ho, who fought through the perils of hell to get to South Korea, the president* said:

"Seong-ho traveled thousands of miles on crutches across China and Southeast Asia to freedom. Most of his family followed."

Do you think he even was aware of how perfectly he had contradicted himself?
posted by kirkaracha at 2:37 PM on January 31, 2018 [70 favorites]


How does eliminating family reunification in the immigration system protect the nuclear family?

I bet it protects the nuclear family in the same way legalizing gay marriage has torn it apart.
posted by Coventry at 2:39 PM on January 31, 2018 [26 favorites]


InTheYear2017: Clear and forceful language is great! But we need more than that. "President Trump, who admitted on TV to obstructing justice, probably belongs in prison. If the prisons are overcrowded, he can go to hell. He's a Nazi sympathizer who abandoned Puerto Rico, ignores laws at a whim, displays zero leadership qualities, assaulted multiple women, is obviously up to his eyeballs in Russian mob/government connections, and explicitly lusts after his own daughter, for God's sake." It has to be said both because it's true, and because it gets airtime.

I think there's some merit to this approach. I hope that if anyone goes there, they remember that the one insult that really gets under Trump's skin is questioning his net worth:
Trump Tower made it known that two subjects were off-limits: Trump’s past bankruptcies, and any suggestion that he was not as wealthy as he claimed to be. “I don’t think we ever got that in writing, but that was definitely conveyed verbally,” Larsen said. In August, Aaron Lee, another roast writer, posted a note on the app Li.st that referenced Trump’s prohibition on, “any joke that suggests Trump is not actually as wealthy as he claims to be.” Bankruptcy jokes are the “one thing [Trump’s] super sensitive about,” Ross told Jimmy Kimmel in July.
I'm thinking this can be meme'd. Maybe something like this?
posted by joedan at 2:43 PM on January 31, 2018 [20 favorites]


An exclusive from CNN: Trump asked Rosenstein if he was 'on my team'

A ha ha haha hahaha, deja vu! Rosenstein, with Trump poised to fuck him and Justice/FBI like he did Comey, pulls a total Comey move with this leak. And now FBI and Justice are both shooting across the bow of the White House. I predict Jeff Sessions is probably going to have an unhappy Thursday. Rosenstein and Wray tried to reason with Paul Ryan, and then they went to the WH and tried to reason with Kelly, to no avail. So they bust out the Bite Me Trump grenades. Love. It.
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:15 PM on January 31, 2018 [24 favorites]


they remember that the one insult that really gets under Trump's skin is questioning his net worth

Once again, a hit dog always hollers.
posted by azpenguin at 3:34 PM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


Politico has more on the Chuck Johnson situation, and it's weird, Why a Florida congressman invited a notorious alt-right troll to SOTU
“I had no idea who he was,” Gaetz said Wednesday, disavowing some of the racist views attributed to Johnson, which the congressman said he learned of after they met earlier this week.

But even after Gaetz found out just how controversial Johnson was — the Capitol Police had flagged the name and called Gaetz to inquire about Johnson in a mysterious unrelated matter — the first-term congressman decided not to pull his ticket to President Trump’s speech.
...
“Capitol Police called us immediately and said they wanted to speak to my guest. Not about any challenges or something related to the state of the union, but they thought he could help them with on some other matter,” Gaetz said.

Gaetz said he asked if Johnson would be a problem as a guest. Capitol Police said he wouldn’t be.

Did Capitol Police tell the congressman what the issue was?

“They did not,” Gaetz said. “And I did not ask.”
Gaetz says another member of Congress introduced them, but he refuses to say who it was.
posted by zachlipton at 4:02 PM on January 31, 2018 [18 favorites]


Gaetz says another member of Congress introduced them, but he refuses to say who it was.

Because it was obviously Dana Rohrabacher. DUI Gaetz is very eager and very dumb.
posted by holgate at 4:05 PM on January 31, 2018 [12 favorites]


Bullshit. Gaetz is an alt-right celebrity himself, he knows exactly who Chuck Johnson is, that's why he was invited.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:06 PM on January 31, 2018 [24 favorites]


Showdown escalates between Trump, Nunes and the FBI (WaPo)
The FBI, the White House, and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee were embroiled in a public standoff Wednesday over the expected release of a Republican memo criticizing the bureau’s use of secret surveillance orders.

In a highly unusual move, the FBI issued a statement challenging the classified memo’s anticipated release, saying: “We have grave concerns about the material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact” its accuracy.

The FBI’s statement followed remarks made by President Trump on Tuesday night indicating he wanted the document to be made public.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the Intelligence Committee chair, fired back at FBI officials, calling their objections to the memo’s release “spurious.”

... It is highly unusual for the White House and the FBI to be publicly at odds over a matter of national security, and it was unclear what impact the disagreement might have on the standing of FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, two Trump appointees who went to the White House on Monday to urge that the memo not be released.

That private lobbying effort now has morphed into a public fight, the outcome of which is unclear. Both sides expect that the memo in question will be released soon.

The FBI statement said federal agents carefully adhere to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which provides a legal framework for national security investigations.

“The FBI takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals in the Department of Justice and the FBI,” the statement said. “We are committed to working with the appropriate oversight entities to ensure the continuing integrity of the FISA process.”

Its statement Wednesday underscores the concerns among federal law enforcement and intelligence officials who say that the memo is inaccurate and that its release would set a dangerous precedent for disclosures of classified information involving political affairs.

Current and former law enforcement officials said a major concern inside the FBI is that the rules governing classified information will impede their ability to respond to the memo’s accusations when it becomes public.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 4:09 PM on January 31, 2018 [14 favorites]


“Chain migration” is a racist term of art contrived over the last few years because it sounds ominous. And then, later, while celebrating the triumph of a Korean refugee named Ji Seong-Ho, who fought through the perils of hell to get to South Korea, the president* said:"Seong-ho traveled thousands of miles on crutches across China and Southeast Asia to freedom. Most of his family followed." Do you think he even was aware of how perfectly he had contradicted himself?

Not only did he contradict himself about chain migration, he also contradicted himself by celebrating a North Korean refugee - at a time when he has banned refugees from North Korea from entering the United States.

He isn't just contradicting himself. He is a hypocrite.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:10 PM on January 31, 2018 [48 favorites]


In a highly unusual move, the FBI issued a statement challenging the classified memo’s anticipated release, saying: “We have grave concerns about the material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact” its accuracy.

I see this as a very, very clear warning. The FBI has 18 USC 371 and 18 USC 1001, and isn't afraid to use them.
18 U.S. Code § 1001 - Statements or entries generally

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—

(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;

(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or

(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;...
posted by mikelieman at 4:14 PM on January 31, 2018 [15 favorites]


Not to abuse the edit,

There's an exemption from this for the legislative branch, BUT, it does apply to:
(2) any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress, consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate.
In other words, just another fucking constitutional crisis.
posted by mikelieman at 4:16 PM on January 31, 2018 [11 favorites]


The amazing part is that Trump is somehow not trash-talking these guys on Twitter for the moment; he must still be sleeping off the SOTU, which kept him up past his bed-and-cheeseburgertime.
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:23 PM on January 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


There's no way 18 USC §1001 applies in this situation. They can lie to the public all they want. They could not lie to Mueller, but this isn't an interview.
posted by Justinian at 4:25 PM on January 31, 2018 [8 favorites]


With FBI statement on memo, Christopher Wray could now be in the president’s crosshairs (Matt Zapotosky | WaPo)
... For months, President Trump has attacked the Justice Department and the FBI — calling his hand-picked attorney general "beleaguered" and saying the bureau's reputation was "in tatters." Wray, though, had largely been spared the president's ire. Just more than a week ago, the White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump had "100 percent confidence" in his director.

The showdown over the memo could be a defining moment for Wray — threatening to alienate him from the president as he demonstrates his independence. Trump already fired James B. Comey after the FBI director would not give him a hard vow of loyalty, and he has toyed with ousting Attorney General Jeff Sessions, despite Sessions's vigorous implementation of the president's agenda.

Trump also is said to have recently suggested firing Deputy Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, who, because Sessions recused himself, is supervising special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation into the Trump campaign's contact with agents of the Russian government. According to a person familiar with his comments, the president has told advisers the memo might make people realize how the FBI and Mueller are biased against him, and that could give him reason to force Rosenstein out.

Friends and supporters of Wray say he is a cautious decision-maker who attempts to weigh all the possible consequences of his actions before he commits to doing anything — and probably would have carefully considered publicly criticizing the memo before doing so.

Wray, they say, also generally shirks the spotlight but is not afraid of making a public stand if he thinks that is the proper course.

"I'm sure he would love to serve the president and have a good working relationship with him, but he's going do what he thinks is right," said Joe Robuck, a retired FBI agent and friend of Wray, adding, "He's not going to care about whether it puts his job in jeopardy."

The spat over the memo has been brewing for weeks. It comes as Wray has dealt with staff changes in FBI leadership and controversy surrounding Andrew McCabe, his former deputy director who stepped down from his post Monday amid a Justice Department inspector general investigation.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 4:31 PM on January 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


ok everyone get back on Team Manchin:

Leopards ate his face eh? I'm sure it'll all be patched up and he'll get back to being bipartisan or electably racist or whatever the fuck it is that h does that means we have to keep him around soon enough.
posted by Artw at 4:34 PM on January 31, 2018 [15 favorites]


There's no way 18 USC §1001 applies in this situation. They can lie to the public all they want. They could not lie to Mueller, but this isn't an interview.

They're not just lying to the public. They're abusing Congress' lawful role of oversight. Defrauding the US is 18 USC 371, and I see overt acts for those elements, too.

Wouldn't it be great for all this to end up in a court of law, where you can't just lie -- even to just move to dismiss? I doubt it'll work out that way, but my reading of the paperwork doesn't show any reason they couldn't. And it's not "Dog playing basketball" level either.
posted by mikelieman at 4:37 PM on January 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


I see them releasing this memo as obstruction of justice. They are doing this to attempt to impede an investigation. It also looks like one hell of a Hail Mary.
posted by azpenguin at 4:45 PM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


... For months, President Trump has attacked the Justice Department and the FBI — calling his hand-picked attorney general "beleaguered"

Or is he just trying and failing to say Beauregard
posted by jason_steakums at 4:47 PM on January 31, 2018 [41 favorites]


“Chain migration” is a racist term of art contrived over the last few years because it sounds ominous.

Nope. I wish. The term "chain migration" was coined in the social sciences and in wide use by the 1960s to describe historical immigration patterns. It was a perfectly acceptable term that has been used in history museums and academic papers for decades until it was co-opted by racists in the past few years. I really wish it hadn't, because now it's tainted and we'll have to find new ways of describing it so as not to be using dogwhistles accidentally in historical instruction and interpretaiton.
posted by Miko at 4:48 PM on January 31, 2018 [41 favorites]


Showdown escalates between Trump, Nunes and the FBI
On Tuesday night, Trump told a Republican lawmaker he would “100 percent” authorize the memo’s release.
...
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told CNN on Wednesday morning that the president had not “seen or been briefed” on the memo’s contents before he made those comments Tuesday night.
“He was just shooting his mouth off without knowing what he was saying,” she continued not saying.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:59 PM on January 31, 2018 [23 favorites]


ok everyone get back on Team Manchin

You mean after he clapped his heart out they still went after him? I mean, who could've ever seen that coming?
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:09 PM on January 31, 2018 [5 favorites]




"Of course, we're all on your team, Mr. President," Rosenstein told Trump, the sources said. It is not clear what Trump meant or how Rosenstein interpreted the comment."

Do none of these fuckers have even a millimeter of spine left? Or is that all surgically removed when you show up in Washington, now? The correct answer to a question like this is:

"Mr. President, I don't know what team you're referring to, but I took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So did you. So let me ask you instead: are we on the same team?"
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 5:48 PM on January 31, 2018 [23 favorites]


Although we've discussed Brenda Fitzgerald's CDC scandal in this thread, it's not the only corruption case breaking in the last day or so. NY Magazine has a round-up:
Also today, the Washington Post reports that Health and Human Services Secretary Ben Carson’s son, Ben Carson Jr., participated in his father’s work in ways that may have benefited his son’s businesses. The scandal would come as no surprise if you had read Alec MacGillis’s report on HUD from last August. MacGillis found Carson Jr. constantly hanging around and networking HUD projects in ways that implied some relation to his own businesses. And sure enough, HUD staffers privately expressed concern that he was inviting clients or potential clients to HUD events and “gave the appearance that the Secretary may be using his position for his son’s private gain.”

A report [PDF] yesterday found that Trump’s infrastructure council is filled with business owners who stand to benefit from the policies Trump is advancing. For instance, Richard LeFrak, one of the developers on Trump’s council, has lobbied against flood-risk regulations that Trump has eliminated. The plan writ large would steer public funding toward privately owned infrastructure projects that would benefit the developers on Trump’s committee, as well as potentially members of his own family.

Meanwhile, the Palm Beach Post reports that Trump Realty is expanding its operations in southern Florida. The ongoing business by Trump’s business empire is a massive corruption risk, as Trump and his family can benefit from the publicity conferred by his public office, and stand to benefit by anybody who wants to curry favor throwing business their way. [...] One of Trump Realty’s agents tells the Post that she “is confident the recent tax law will further spur relocations from high-tax states in the Northeast to South Florida.” This was not an exposé of a reporter discovering that Trump stands to benefit from his tax law. It was a casual boast by the business’s manager to a journalist.
Also, 2018 Writers, isn't "LeFrak" too on the nose?
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:48 PM on January 31, 2018 [32 favorites]


Upthread I posted about how my friend captured a screen grab of my name appearing on the Fox News SOTU chyron. I’m chagrined to report that my friend photoshopped said evidence. I was completely fooled and apologize for passing along erroneous information.
posted by carmicha at 6:13 PM on January 31, 2018 [65 favorites]


NYT, Mueller Zooms In on Trump Tower Cover Story. This is a detailed story on the explanation for the Trump Tower meeting that they cobbled together on Air Force One, which is apparently of increasing interest to Mueller. There's a lot in here:
The latest witness to be called for an interview about the episode was Mark Corallo, who served as a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team before resigning in July. Mr. Corallo received an interview request last week from the special counsel and has agreed to the interview, according to three people with knowledge of the request.

Mr. Corallo is planning to tell Mr. Mueller about a previously undisclosed conference call with Mr. Trump and Hope Hicks, the White House communications director, according to the three people. Mr. Corallo planned to tell investigators that Ms. Hicks said during the call that emails written by Donald Trump Jr. before the Trump Tower meeting — in which the younger Mr. Trump said he was eager to receive political dirt about Mrs. Clinton from the Russians — “will never get out.” That left Mr. Corallo with concerns that Ms. Hicks could be contemplating obstructing justice, the people said.

In a statement on Wednesday, a lawyer for Ms. Hicks strongly denied Mr. Corallo’s allegations.

“As most reporters know, it’s not my practice to comment in response to questions from the media. But this warrants a response,” said the lawyer, Robert P. Trout. “She never said that. And the idea that Hope Hicks ever suggested that emails or other documents would be concealed or destroyed is completely false.”
...
The president supervised the writing of the statement, according to three people familiar with the episode, with input from other White House aides. A fierce debate erupted over how much information the news release should include. Mr. Trump was insistent about including language that the meeting was about Russian adoptions, according to two people with knowledge of the discussion.
...
According to [Corallo's] account, Ms. Hicks responded that the emails “will never get out” because only a few people had access to them. Mr. Corallo, who worked as a Justice Department spokesman during the George W. Bush administration, told colleagues he was alarmed not only by what Ms. Hicks had said — either she was being naïve or was suggesting that the emails could be withheld from investigators — but also that she had said it in front of the president without a lawyer on the phone and that the conversation could not be protected by attorney-client privilege.
posted by zachlipton at 6:21 PM on January 31, 2018 [46 favorites]


Nobody would ever find out, because only people on the e-mail chain or in the Trump Organization knew about the deception, according to a person who saw the e-mail.

Somebody remind me, what was that dirt on Hillary again that this whole chain focused on? Oh, right, hacked emails.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:47 PM on January 31, 2018 [22 favorites]


but also that she had said it in front of the president without a lawyer on the phone and that the conversation could not be protected by attorney-client privilege.

That’s.… not how attorney–client privilege works. You can’t just have sooper sekrit conversations with someone else because your lawyer also happens to be on the line.
posted by stopgap at 6:50 PM on January 31, 2018 [18 favorites]


Hope Hicks met with Mueller and his team in December. I'm sure Miss "It'll Never Get Out" wouldn't have lied to him about this and other things. That would be bad.
posted by chris24 at 7:04 PM on January 31, 2018 [29 favorites]


The other bit of the Times article that's important is:
The president supervised the writing of the statement, according to three people familiar with the episode, with input from other White House aides. A fierce debate erupted over how much information the news release should include. Mr. Trump was insistent about including language that the meeting was about Russian adoptions, according to two people with knowledge of the discussion.
There's an ambiguity here, in that I can't be entirely sure whether "Mr. Trump" is describing the President or Don Jr. If it's Don Jr., he's trying to cover himself. If it's the President, why was the guy who supposedly wasn't in the meeting and supposedly knew nothing about it so insistent that the meeting, which again, he supposedly knew nothing about, be described this way?

The article goes on to say that Don Jr. was the one who insisted that "primarily" be added before the adoption bit, which is some nice face saving going on.
posted by zachlipton at 7:04 PM on January 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


Of course Trump's Ehrlichman is a 29 year old ex-model
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:04 PM on January 31, 2018 [12 favorites]


And now this other absurd thing just happened.

@ChrisMegerian: Breaking news -- Rep. Schiff says Rep. Nunes "secretly altered" the memo before sending it to the White House. There were "material changes" to the memo, Rep. Schiff says in a new letter, and the process for releasing it must restart.
posted by zachlipton at 7:08 PM on January 31, 2018 [52 favorites]




Mods forgive me, but:

WHAT
THE
FUCK
NUNES?!
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:12 PM on January 31, 2018 [13 favorites]


Also can we just have Schiff as president?
posted by Brainy at 7:14 PM on January 31, 2018 [11 favorites]


There is really no explanation other than that Nunes is criminally implicated in this whole thing and his actions now - stupid and obvious and probably illegal actions - are a desperate attempt to shut Mueller down to avoid jail.
posted by chris24 at 7:15 PM on January 31, 2018 [48 favorites]


So I guess the theory that Nunes was playing some long game, milking time to encourage everyone to pump up the worst possible speculations about The FBIs Secret Society To Overthrow Trump, was really just him going over the memo in private to make some "material changes".

Jfc Nunes did you also perform a blood sacrifice in front of an altar to Joe McCarthy?
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 7:17 PM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


And of course, now that all the knaves and rogues at 1600 have the fucking memo in their greasy grimy paws, no way in hell it doesn't go public, legalities be damned.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:23 PM on January 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


Hope Hicks must have something awful on poor Nunes, what with him taking the fall tonight so as to distract from revelations that she, too, obstructed justice.

:p
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:23 PM on January 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


When the president began questioning Mr. Corallo about the nature of the documents, Mr. Corallo cut off the conversation and urged the president to continue the discussion with his lawyers.

Mr. Corallo told colleagues that he immediately notified the legal team of the conversation and jotted down notes to memorialize it. He also shared his concerns with Stephen K. Bannon, then the president’s chief strategist.
So uh, more contemporaneous notes, and directly implicating Bannon. Mueller's biggest problem right now (other than dodging the ongoing obstruction to shut him down) is probably who to indict next. The next round of real movement is going to be the good stuff.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:28 PM on January 31, 2018 [14 favorites]


It’s always best to read it.

Hicks began working for public relations firm Hiltzik Strategies in 2012, after meeting the firm's founder at an NFL Super Bowl event, working for among others its client Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump's daughter, on her fashion line, and then on other Trump ventures.

In August 2014 she joined The Trump Organization full-time. Hicks worked for Ivanka Trump inside Trump Tower, helping expand her fashion label (the Ivanka Trump Collection) and modeling for her online store. In October 2014 she began working directly for Donald Trump in The Trump Organization.

In January 2015, Donald Trump earmarked Hicks, who was 26 years old at the time, for the role of press secretary for his potential presidential campaign. Donald Trump summoned her to his office and, as she tells it, "Mr. Trump looked at me and said, 'I'm thinking about running for president, and you're going to be my press secretary.'"

Until that time, she had never worked in politics, nor volunteered on a campaign.
posted by valkane at 7:28 PM on January 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


This soap opera sucks. It doesn't make sense. The story arc is taking far too long. The characters are transparent and impossible to believe in. The names alone move it into farce territory. I don't think America is ready for this sort of comedia del arte. I mean, I get how it was pitched and accepted, I do...but it's just not working out. Let's look around the hopper and see what we can find for a midseason replacement.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:28 PM on January 31, 2018 [57 favorites]


Also, 2018 Writers, isn't "LeFrak" too on the nose?
posted by Doktor Zed

Richard LeFrak is the son of Samuel LeFrak, and the grandson of Aaron LeFrak; the family real estate company (est. 1905) owns more than 40 million square feet of residential, office, retail and hotel properties in New York, Los Angeles, London and Miami.

Richard's been a Trump crony for nearly half a century.
posted by Iris Gambol at 7:33 PM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


Dick LeFrak?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:34 PM on January 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


I assume in the future all politically motivated intentionally misleading memos will be transmitted through the blockchain
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:39 PM on January 31, 2018 [18 favorites]


Let's look around the hopper and see what we can find for a midseason replacement.

I understand that The Handmaid’s Tale has been renewed for another season...
posted by darkstar at 7:40 PM on January 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


> I assume in the future all politically motivated intentionally misleading memos will be transmitted through the blockchain

This is the new alternative to "Christ, what an asshole," for all New Yorker cartoons.
posted by Freon at 7:44 PM on January 31, 2018 [19 favorites]


@moira: (former State Dept & DHS)
Corallo: I hung up the phone, reported it to my boss, told 3 colleagues, wrote it all down and then quit my job in order to get away from it
Hicks: nu uh. never happened.

This is not he said/she said, folks. This was a person who took an oath realizing he had seen the enemy

———

Corallo was DOJ Communications Director under Ashcroft.
posted by chris24 at 7:47 PM on January 31, 2018 [88 favorites]


Let's look around the hopper and see what we can find for a midseason replacement.

Science fiction has been well received, how about we flesh out this "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism" treatment?
posted by contraption at 7:49 PM on January 31, 2018 [52 favorites]


Nunes was already pressured once to recuse himself because of his unethical behavior in conspiring with the White House on that “unmasking” nonsense.

Now he’s un-recused himself so he can wade back in and do it again, twice more, with the bullshit memo and then with the alteration and forgery thereof.

As one commenter in dKos said, “it’s like a Gish Gallop of unethical behavior.”

It really emphasizes the timeless aptness of that old Watergate chestnut: “The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things just got out of hand.”
posted by darkstar at 7:54 PM on January 31, 2018 [34 favorites]


@AJentleson: (former Deputy CoS for Harry Reid, Democracy Forward Director)
It has been weird to watch people decide that the June 9 meeting isn’t a smoking gun because it’s public and we’ve all absorbed it.

The fact that the smoking gun is lying on the floor in the middle of a crowded room doesn’t mean it’s not a smoking gun.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/us/politics/trump-russia-hope-hicks-mueller.html
posted by chris24 at 8:01 PM on January 31, 2018 [35 favorites]


Are things getting weird? It feels like things are getting weird.
posted by rhizome at 8:09 PM on January 31, 2018 [73 favorites]




I've been waiting all this time for the memo to come out and for it to be so utterly bland and lame that even Fox News will bury it. Like we're having all this tension and precedents broken and another catastrophic exposure of American electronic intelligence over what will amount to a junior high note complaining about Joey being a fartface.

But I didn't expect the memo to turn out to be this level of embarrassing clownshoes incompetence before it was even released.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:10 PM on January 31, 2018 [6 favorites]


Justice Department Dismisses Corruption Case Against Menendez

That sounds like it would be a good thing, but the article says that it's because recent rulings make it harder to prosecute officials for corruption, so?
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:10 PM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


We’ve had two stories - Hope Hicks and Nunes - in just the last two hours that are both bigger deals than Clinton’s email server. And we’ll be on to the next and blow past these in a day. Meanwhile, the Clinton coverage was daily for two years.
posted by chris24 at 8:15 PM on January 31, 2018 [92 favorites]


I submit that Metafilter synchronicity has delivered unto us the headline for the next politics thread:

I am contractually obligated to excerpt all of my political thread titles from Matt Groening affiliated properties. Fortunately, this still leaves the Tracy Ullmann Show and the Life Is Hell series as rich, untapped veins.

Meanwhile, it sounds like another federal judge is going to smack Donnie Shithole over his handling of DACA.
A federal judge hearing a case concerning the Trump administration's phaseout of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program issued a blistering critique of what he called the President's "recurring, redundant drumbeat of anti-Latino commentary."

"It's not just an ad hoc comment that was overheard on an open mic," Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis said Tuesday in a Brooklyn courtroom. "It's not just that somebody at INS said something derogatory about Mexicans. This came from the top."

"It's extreme, it's recurring, it's vicious," he added.
posted by darkstar at 8:32 PM on January 31, 2018 [33 favorites]


That sounds like it would be a good thing, but the article says that it's because recent rulings make it harder to prosecute officials for corruption, so?

Yeah, the Supremes have basically defined corruption so narrowly that the only thing that counts now is a notarized contract stating "this is a instance of quid-pro-quo corruption to the amount of $x so that I, Senator Y, will do action Z"
posted by dis_integration at 8:32 PM on January 31, 2018 [9 favorites]


Bannon is such a strategic genius. Daily Beast, Betsy Woodruff, Mueller Wasn’t Interested in Bannon Until ‘Fire and Fury,’ Source Says

In light of tonight's NYT story, maybe Mueller's interest in Bannon can best be illuminated by this quote from Wolff:
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” shouted a livid Bannon at Hicks, demanding to know who she worked for, the White House or Jared [Kushner] and Ivanka. “You don’t know how much trouble you are in,” he screamed, telling her that if she didn’t get a lawyer he would call her father and tell him he had better get her one. “You are dumb as a stone!”
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:33 PM on January 31, 2018 [18 favorites]


The headline writes itself:
HICKS FLIPS.

would also accept: Loose lips sink Hicks.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 8:49 PM on January 31, 2018 [22 favorites]


And, for those of you who may have forgotten, those emails that would “never get out” got out because... Don Jr. went ahead and tweeted them out.

I don’t know whether to laugh at the comic genius of all of this or to cry because these people are running the country.
posted by azpenguin at 9:00 PM on January 31, 2018 [40 favorites]


As we finally say goodbye to the January that lasted 47 years, we can look back at the month that was.

HuffPost has a timeline. Did you know that Trump's nuclear button tweet was less than a month ago? How can that even be possible?

Ashley Parker has a more poetic take, The month of January felt like a year and the pilot episode for the 12-part series to come:
And on the 31st day of January, the news gods gave us: a train crash involving Republican lawmakers, the unexpected retirement of a powerful House chairman, dropped federal corruption charges against a sitting Democratic senator, the resignation of a top federal health official amid reports she purchased tobacco stock, and an FBI statement expressing “grave concerns” with President Trump’s expected decision to allow the release of a controversial classified memo slamming the agency.

And that was just the first half of the day.
...
Which brings us to the government shutdown, the three-day federal blackout that marked the first anniversary of Trump’s presidency. A government shutdown is a remarkable occurrence, but in some ways, we were prepared for this after years of squabbling on the Hill among difficult characters before any agreement is reached. It felt like an inevitable long weekend, where all your relatives followed through on their promises to visit and you had to feed a family of more than a dozen, while reconciling your vegan uncle’s preference for tempeh with your hipster cousin’s demand that you nose-to-tail slaughter a whole hog on the back deck.
Also, a quick plug for #AGoodGame, in which two Patriots fans (Josh Gondelman, Last Week Tonight writer and Emma Sandoe, health care policy expert) are collecting pledges to donate to worthy organizations after they felt "conflicted about supporting their team, some of whose key players and administration figures had such close ties to the Trump administration." Fans can pick the team they hate least and pledge any amount per touchdown/point/field goal/whatever.
posted by zachlipton at 9:04 PM on January 31, 2018 [10 favorites]


And, for those of you who may have forgotten, those emails that would “never get out” got out because... Don Jr. went ahead and tweeted them out.

Don't forget, they put a Giuliani loyalist in the GSA to watch their back, but didn't notice he'd died
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:06 PM on January 31, 2018 [43 favorites]


Don Jr. tweeted them out after the NYT had them. He didn't volunteer them for no reason.

(note: may have been WaPo. but I think it was NYT.)
posted by Justinian at 9:10 PM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


I don’t know whether to laugh at the comic genius of all of this or to cry because these people are running the country.
posted by azpenguin at 9:00 PM on January 31 [+] [!]


The US government has become a spinoff of Arrested Development for reals.
posted by Mental Wimp at 9:13 PM on January 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


I have to imagine Mueller's strategy is in part to see if it leads to Trump, which will short circuit pardons for everybody involved in Trump's debacle, which they are all surely betting their lives on receiving. Hmm, maybe I should state that simply as my preferred sequence of events.
posted by rhizome at 9:14 PM on January 31, 2018


The US government has become a spinoff of Arrested Development for reals.

I may have committed some light nation-threatening treason
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:31 PM on January 31, 2018 [19 favorites]


Justinian: It makes me so angry that Trump is gonna get credit for Obama fixing the economy.

Corey Booker wasn't fooled, and spoke on NPR this morning (still audio only) -- "he's taking up a lot of Barack Obama's accomplishments ... job growth was greater under the last year of Obama than the first year of Trump." (Forbes article, for citation) -- And he continues.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:37 PM on January 31, 2018 [23 favorites]


Sockin'inthefreeworld: A spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday that the agency's plan to end its distribution of emergency food and water in Puerto Rico and turn that responsibility over to the Puerto Rican government would not take effect on Jan. 31.

That's good, because Puerto Rico wasn't even aware of the Jan. 31 deadline until it was in the news:
Hector Pesquera, Puerto Rico's state coordinating officer, said in a statement: "The government of Puerto Rico is waiting for critical data provided by FEMA in order to determine when the responsibilities should be transferred from FEMA to the government of Puerto Rico, as part of the transition from the response phase to the recovery phase. This has not happened yet and we were not informed that supplies would stop arriving, nor did the government of Puerto Rico agree with this action."
Another stellar example of the Trump Rot spreading critical agencies, undermining public trust in the government as a whole, and particularly the federal government.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:46 PM on January 31, 2018 [31 favorites]


Senator Harris isn't having the credit swiping, either -- when Jake Tapper tried to call out the Congressional Black Caucus for failing to applaud the "lowest level of black unemployment in years" SOTU line, she responded:

[P]robably because we all know that the way he should have made that statement is that at the end of that statement, he should have said, "Thank you, President Obama," because truly what happened is that it was because of the priorities of the previous administration that we saw a five-point drop in unemployment among the black population of the United States, and that trend has continued -- but frankly, actually, last year by only one percent.

So I'm sure that had a lot to do with the response, by people who actually know what happened, and what led to it.

posted by Iris Gambol at 9:54 PM on January 31, 2018 [56 favorites]


It's like Obama ran the first three legs of a relay race & Trump is crowing about how it was him who crossed the finish line.
posted by scalefree at 10:13 PM on January 31, 2018 [14 favorites]


Don't ever forget that the dumpster fire party was talking about the "Obama recession" in late 2008 , before Obama's first inauguration. There's no refuting people who don't care at all about facts; they have to be defeated.
posted by thelonius at 10:15 PM on January 31, 2018 [49 favorites]


Senator Harris isn't having the credit swiping, either -- when Jake Tapper tried to call out the Congressional Black Caucus for failing to applaud the "lowest level of black unemployment in years" SOTU line, she responded:


As a native son of the golden west Californian, I've been pretty happy with Senator Harris. I appreciate the many years of service of DiFi and the same for Barbara Boxer and I voted for both of them every time they were up for election. But I think that I'm ready for a progressive firebrand in that senate seat. Whats the next Feinstein/Boxer, Harris/Lieu?
posted by ActingTheGoat at 10:23 PM on January 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


when Jake Tapper tried to call out the Congressional Black Caucus for failing to applaud the "lowest level of black unemployment in years" SOTU line

You know what, fuck you, Jake Tapper. You call yourself a journalist and this shit is the best you can do? How about you and your colleagues in the media try doing your goddamn jobs for once and actually ask somebody in this garbage fire administration, "What exactly did you do, what policies did you enact, that resulted in the lowest level of black unemployment in years?" Rather than just taking the latest mouthful of bullshit at face value like you always do? And how about you do even the tiniest bit of research or questioning before you give the Congressional Black Caucus shit for failing to jump up and applaud a flimsy claim like this? What the fuck kind of value are you adding to anyone, if the best you can do is make a Tinker Toys-level connection in your head, like, Trump says more black people have jobs, a lot of people applauded, these people are black, they did not applaud, OMG I DO NOT UNDERSTAND AND BLACK PEOPLE MUST EXPLAIN THIS TO ME.

Good Christ, the stupidity and incompetence is everywhere now.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 10:40 PM on January 31, 2018 [92 favorites]


Hey, if he wants to cue up home runs for Harris I'm not going to complain.
posted by Coventry at 10:44 PM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


Hey, if he wants to cue up home runs for Harris I'm not going to complain.

So I took my frustration about the NPR Here and Now ("He stayed on script!") segment I noted above to Facebook earlier today. A friend said she heard the same thing and thought it was subtle sarcasm from the anchor, setting up the Democratic talking head to rebut the whole thing. (I should also note in fairness: the anchor herself stomped all over Trump's claim of credit for the drop in black unemployment.) And yeah, I've heard people say the whole reason NPR has put up so many Republican talking heads and so many Trump voters is to show everyone how ridiculous they are without editorializing. In truth, it should be obvious: they are ridiculous. It shouldn't require any elaboration beyond the ridiculous shit they say.

Except I just don't buy it. I didn't hear any sarcasm from the NPR anchor, and I really wish I had. But I don't think this approach works. All it does is create the false equivalency that drives so much of this garbage. It puts the right and left positions on an ostensibly level playing field, but then the people running it just walk away. It creates the impression that both of these points of view are of some sort of equal worth when they simply aren't at all.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:55 PM on January 31, 2018 [30 favorites]


Even if there was some apparent tone shift, as if the NPR anchor was implying through sarcasm that some positions are ridiculous and others aren't -- that's NPR trying to have it both ways and it's just more of the same useless bullshit.

It's as if a judge is talking to a defendant and a plaintiff, and every time he addresses the defendant there is sympathy and compassion in his voice, and then every time he addresses the plaintiff his voice is dripping with sarcasm and he can't help but roll his eyes. And then he dismisses the case on a technicality with no further comment. If you were in the courtroom, sure, maybe you got the impression that the judge thought the plaintiff's case was bullshit and he supported the defendant's position. But on paper, in court records, on websites, anywhere where the court's position actually matters in any meaningful way, none of that is present. None of it matters.

If a judge wants to make a clear statement, he or she has to, you know, make a clear statement. And if NPR or any other news outlet wants to offer America anything beyond this empty mealy-mouthed false-equivalence pap, they need to, you know, actually fucking do that instead of maybe cryptically implying something through tone of voice, or clever audio engineering, or the host making really dramatic eye rolls and sarcastic air quotes while speaking on the radio, or whatever the fuck else. But instead it's the same profits-über-alles crap we're seeing everywhere else -- taking or even seriously implying a position, that one side might be right and the other wrong, means risking access and/or ad dollars, and heaven forfend anything in the actual course of world events should ever be serious enough to warrant that kind of drastic action.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 11:23 PM on January 31, 2018 [20 favorites]


So, is there any sort of immunity stopping Mueller from indicting Nunes for obstruction of justice? I know he has some protection for statements made on the floor of the House, and that the President (arguably, and by general consensus) has immunity from indictment until impeached or leaving office.

But I'm not aware of any such thing for House members, and he looks guilty as hell, and is not doing a good job of covering his tracks.
posted by msalt at 11:26 PM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


Reuters: Russian spy chief visited United States: Russian embassy

Because we live in the Trump Universe things are pretty much always worse than they appear at first. Like this:

Chiefs Of Three Russian Intelligence Agencies Travel To Washington.
The directors of Russia's three main intelligence and espionage agencies all traveled to the U.S. capital in recent days, in what observers said was a highly unusual occurrence coming at a time of heightened U.S.-Russian tensions.

Russia’s ambassador to the United States had earlier confirmed that Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), was in Washington in recent days to meet with U.S. officials about terrorism and other matters.

But the presence of the two other chiefs -- Aleksandr Bortnikov, director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), and Lieutenant General Igor Korobov, chief of Russian General Staff’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) -- was not previously known.

The Washington Post said on January 31 that Bortnikov and Korobov came to the U.S. capital last week, and that Bortnikov had met with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, as did Naryshkin.
posted by scalefree at 11:29 PM on January 31, 2018 [23 favorites]


Maybe the FSB/GRU team will be advising Trump on how to blow up apartment buildings then claim MS-13 did it.
posted by benzenedream at 11:40 PM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


Heads of SVR, FSB & GRU. It's a wonder they didn't link arms & do the Hopak together down Pennsylvania Ave.
posted by scalefree at 11:41 PM on January 31, 2018 [8 favorites]


They just came to drop off a few more compromised phones for Trump and his staffers.
posted by PenDevil at 11:48 PM on January 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


I would genuinely be unsurprised if they had a private contest over how many listening devices they could surreptitiously slip into Mike Pompeo's body.
posted by Rust Moranis at 11:57 PM on January 31, 2018 [9 favorites]


Makes you wonder if the US of A has a touch of Russian Greyscale. At what point do we recognise that the actors in this drama are no longer as distinct as we thought they were?
posted by stonepharisee at 12:06 AM on February 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


SOTU responses from Maxine Waters and Bernie Sanders.
posted by Standard Orange at 1:40 AM on February 1, 2018 [7 favorites]


Politico: Trump's Saturday Night Massacre is happening right before our eyes

Might want to skip if you hope to have a super mellow day, although if that's the case I'm not sure why you're reading the thread.
posted by angrycat at 3:55 AM on February 1, 2018 [18 favorites]


He's back on Twitter complaining about Dems on DACA and lying about the SOTU.

@realDonaldTrump
Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech. 45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history. @FoxNews beat every other Network, for the first time ever, with 11.7 million people tuning in. Delivered from the heart!

---

In reality...

Obama 2010 - 48 million
Bush 2003 - 62.1 million
Bush 2002 - 51.8 million
Clinton 1998 - 53.1 million
Clinton 1994 - 45.8 million

Which means his first SOTU was the lowest of the last 4 presidents.

I'm sure he'll get a nice participation trophy for 6th place.
posted by chris24 at 4:44 AM on February 1, 2018 [53 favorites]


Flannery O'Connor had a description of an unreasonably hostile person in one of her stories that she described something like "a rooster fighting with itself in a mirror." That's what these size obsession outbursts remind me of.
posted by angrycat at 5:05 AM on February 1, 2018 [35 favorites]


Rebecca Savransky at the Hill has a story which the Hill's Facebook page summarizes this way:
President Trump has sued the Palm Beach County property appraiser to try to lower the tax bill from his Florida golf club, which the county estimated to be worth $19.7 million. Trump claimed in financial disclosures that the club was worth "over $50 million."
Here is a nice detail:
Trump received a $398,315 bill from the Palm Beach County tax collector, according to the Daily News. The amount was based upon the valuation of the property by the property appraiser.

Trump sent a wire transfer of $296,595.01 and sued. His Tampa-based attorney called the amount Trump sent "a good faith estimate" of the actual amount he should pay, according to the newspaper."
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:32 AM on February 1, 2018 [14 favorites]


Obama 2010 - 48 million
Bush 2003 - 62.1 million
Bush 2002 - 51.8 million
Clinton 1998 - 53.1 million
Clinton 1994 - 45.8 million


It actually makes sense that Bush, months after the 9/11 attacks and then, a year later, in the later stages of buildup to the Iraq invasion, would have very high viewership.
posted by thelonius at 5:33 AM on February 1, 2018 [7 favorites]


Yes that was the Yellowcake speech.

It feels like epochs ago.
posted by notyou at 5:37 AM on February 1, 2018 [9 favorites]


A Viewer’s Guide to Donald Trump by ANTHONY ATAMANUIK /NYTimes
A Trump impersonator explaining the body language. More interesting than you'd think.
posted by mumimor at 5:52 AM on February 1, 2018 [30 favorites]


All of Trump's bigly numbers claims have to be taken in the context of November 9, 2016 being the beginning of Year 0. Nothing existed before Trump. Everything is the biggest and best ever because history didn't begin until he became President. That's like on page 1 of the Authoritarian handbook.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:58 AM on February 1, 2018 [37 favorites]


Senate Republican leadership is not going all in on the memo.

@LisaDNews (PBS)
MEMO NEWS from SEN. THUNE off camera now:
- 1. Sen. Intel should see Nunes memo before it's released (have been blocked so far)
- 2. And they should release Dem memo at same time, so American ppl can make their own judgments.

(This is counter to the House GOP position.)
posted by chris24 at 6:02 AM on February 1, 2018 [19 favorites]


David Atkins, Washington Monthly: Some Reasons for Optimism in a Time of Darkness
... all is not lost, and there are strong reasons for optimism even as a would-be dictator tries to protect himself from the consequences of his malfeasance.

The first is that all of Trump’s actions, and those of the Republicans around him, are ones not of confidence but defensive desperation. Republicans know that Trump is guilty of colluding with Russia to undermine the election. ... They know that Trump is guilty of a bevy of financial misdeeds. They know that Mueller has the evidence for all this, and that the truth is going to come out one way or another. All they can do is try to muddy the waters. The intensity with which they are doing this shows the level of their desperation.

Why so desperate? Because they have to be. ... The rising tide of millennial voters despises them, and Republicans have doubled down on old white people—a recipe for guaranteed electoral disaster.

Republicans know that Trump is their last shot to remake the country before it irrevocably turns against them. Sure, it’s a two-party system subject to Duverger’s Law, so the pendulum will swing back. But when it does, the Republican Party that regains power won’t look anything like its current manifestation.

And what have Republicans managed to do with the first year of what could be a short, two-year window? Not much.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:10 AM on February 1, 2018 [34 favorites]


"Not much" feels better when you're not one of the people affected by that "not much."

And the head count of Americans affected by tax code fuckery, health care fuckery, and/or Neil Gorsuch being on the Supreme Court is, um, pretty high.
posted by delfin at 6:31 AM on February 1, 2018 [56 favorites]


A Trump impersonator explaining the body language. More interesting than you'd think.

That is indeed acutely observed, accurate insofar as it accords with my own personal experience of the way he takes up space, and fascinating. Thanks mumimor!

Can I take a moment to plug Phil Sandifer's epic takedown of the roiling, shambling man-shaped void in the vital NEOREACTION A BASILISK, BTW? It eviscerates him without ever uttering the dread name, for reasons that will become apparent in the text but are very much appreciated regardless of motivation.
posted by adamgreenfield at 6:42 AM on February 1, 2018 [5 favorites]


The first is that all of Trump’s actions, and those of the Republicans around him, are ones not of confidence but defensive desperation. Republicans know that Trump is guilty of colluding with Russia to undermine the election. ... They know that Trump is guilty of a bevy of financial misdeeds. They know that Mueller has the evidence for all this, and that the truth is going to come out one way or another. All they can do is try to muddy the waters. The intensity with which they are doing this shows the level of their desperation.

As Josh Marshall pointed out at the beginning of the Russia scandal, even if Trump, improbably, is a pure as the driven snow, he and his surrogates are sure acting like they have something terrible to hide.

Every breathlessly excited NPR report about Nunes' memo should have a Democrat saying exactly that -- that the memo is evidence not of FBI wrongdoing but of Republican desperation to cover up Trump's many crimes, to which Nunes has willingly and deliberately made himself an accomplice.
posted by Gelatin at 6:49 AM on February 1, 2018 [20 favorites]


A Viewer’s Guide to Donald Trump by ANTHONY ATAMANUIK /NYTimes
Donald Trump doesn’t like to turn his head. Instead, he turns his entire upper body and shoulders, leaning his head forward like a pigeon eyeing stale bread crust. He obviously wants to stabilize himself at the lectern for fear of falling over, and his rigid upper body is like that of a litigious courtroom charlatan strapped in a neck brace checking to see if people believe him.
...
President Trump reads from a teleprompter in the cadence of a grandmother reading “Goodnight Moon.” He rarely seems familiar with the material. If he likes a line or idea in the speech, he’ll take a moment to repeat it and savor it — it’s as if he’s hearing it for the first time, because it’s the first time he’s reading it.
...
No matter what he’s saying, his body is telling the world, “I’m pretending, I’m scared and I’m totally unprepared.”
posted by kirkaracha at 7:06 AM on February 1, 2018 [45 favorites]


David Atkins, Washington Monthly: This Time Trump Has No Fixer Who Can Clean up His Mess
Donald Trump has spent his entire life insulated from repercussions by his father’s money, and by an entire coterie of much more intelligent and talented people protecting him from his actions. A fixer like Roy Cohn takes care of everything for him: every woman he assaults or uses gets paid off or destroyed in the press, every business partner or contractor he burns gets pennies on the dollar or countersued, every bad investment and scam that would put a normal person into the poorhouse or worse gets taken care of through clever legal and accounting jujitsu. Trump shoots first, asks questions later, and then expects “his people” to clean up the messes he leaves behind.

The problem for Trump is that there is no fixer for the situation he is in. He famously asked “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” when the walls of the Russia investigation slowly began to close in around him, expecting some mafia man like “The Wolf” from Pulp Fiction to take care of all his problems.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:14 AM on February 1, 2018 [38 favorites]


Trump sees Nunes memo as a way to discredit the Russia investigation

In phone calls last night and over the past days, Trump has told friends he believes the memo would expose bias within the agency's top ranks and make it easier for him to argue the Russia investigations are prejudiced against him, according to two sources.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:15 AM on February 1, 2018 [13 favorites]


"Of course, we're all on your team, Mr. President," Rosenstein told Trump, the sources said. It is not clear what Trump meant or how Rosenstein interpreted the comment."

I believe (hope) the relevant concept here is "dramatic irony".
posted by whuppy at 7:19 AM on February 1, 2018 [5 favorites]


Trump has told friends he believes the memo would expose bias within the agency's top ranks and make it easier for him to argue the Russia investigations are prejudiced against him

Republicans whining about bias is especially rich given that they ran a biased investigation of Bill Clinton that even so found no prosecutable wrongdoing -- though the investigation, and the steadfast refusal of the so-called "liberal media" to recognize the obvious bad faith in which it was run, arguably contributed to Hillary Clinton's defeat by establishing negative perceptions about her.

Mueller has evidence. Trump himself has provided evidence of his guilt, notably by bragging about firing Comey to obstruct the Russia investigation on national television. Alleging "bias" in an investigatory team made up of a significant number of Republicans is, once again, an obvious, if feeble, attempt to distract from the objective evidence the investigation has revealed, to the public, so far.

Bias or no bias, the evidence is clear. And by their desperation, the Republicans are conceding the fact.
posted by Gelatin at 7:22 AM on February 1, 2018 [13 favorites]


Why so desperate? Because they have to be. ... The rising tide of millennial voters despises them, and Republicans have doubled down on old white people—a recipe for guaranteed electoral disaster.

"Trump's behind by between 7 and 15 points! Georgia and Texas are polling within the margin of error! This electoral landslide will mark the beginning of the GOP's demise, and maybe give us a second national party whose core values aren't white nationalism and tax breaks for billionaires." — Metafilter, November 7th 2016.

Old white people have been winning elections for the GOP for sixty years. They don't have to revise their tactics or try to sell to a younger and less racist crowd, so long as they can get away with gerrymandering the hell out of swing states and suppressing votes from people of color, college students, or any of the other core demographics of the left. We cannot lose sight of the fact that the GOP is not here to play fairly; they're here to burn the motherfucker down and loot what they can on the way out of the burning building. Literally the only chance of stopping them from establishing a permanent entrenched position where they don't even have to appease their own base is to retake the House in time to stop the hemorrhaging in the 2020 census. Then we can talk impeachment, or packing the Supreme Court, or whatever the leftist fan-fiction of the day is. Until then, we have exactly one goal, and that is a blue midterm where we stop these sons of bitches from railroading the American experiment.
posted by Mayor West at 7:41 AM on February 1, 2018 [84 favorites]


Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech. 45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history.

The highest number hahahahahohoheeheehee I guess we should have known that's what he'd focus on.
posted by Melismata at 7:44 AM on February 1, 2018 [5 favorites]


OK I know this is probably too much drama, but I'm worried those Russian intelligence bosses were in the US to help rig the midterm elections. It becomes more and more apparent that those elections are all important, and everyone should get onboard to save US democracy. The midterms, and all the locals. If the Republicans keep their stranglehold on the whole system, Trumpists are going to turn the entire USA into a kleptocracy.
posted by mumimor at 7:55 AM on February 1, 2018 [11 favorites]


Why isn't anyone holding News Corp/Fox News management accountable? I haven't seen anything like this since Ailes left.
posted by andreap at 7:58 AM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


@FoxNews beat every other Network, for the first time ever, with 11.7 million people tuning in. Delivered from the heart!

A thing the President cares about
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:01 AM on February 1, 2018 [16 favorites]


The fact that Fox News had the best ratings, if that's even true, tells you pretty much all you need to know about this new era of bipartisanship from Trump.
posted by feloniousmonk at 8:03 AM on February 1, 2018 [5 favorites]


@NBC Politics: BREAKING: Minority Leader Pelosi calls on Speaker Ryan to remove Devin Nunes as chair of the House intel committee.

statement here
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 8:06 AM on February 1, 2018 [93 favorites]


I'm worried those Russian intelligence bosses were in the US to help rig the midterm elections.
I'm worried they were here for bad public optics (check.) and to get us on the road to a military coup by dropping evidence/corroborating info on Trump campaign collusion. A coup attempt in the good ole US after any Trumpian unconstitutional chaos is right in the current Putin playbook: democracies fail.
posted by rc3spencer at 8:06 AM on February 1, 2018 [7 favorites]


Republicans have defined "bipartisanship" as "doing what Republicans want" since at least the Newt Gingrich era. They have done so so successfully that the so-called "liberal media" use the same criteria: Democrats are expected to compromise, but Republicans face no consequence for voting in lockstep.
posted by Gelatin at 8:08 AM on February 1, 2018 [24 favorites]


Napolitano's a scumbag but on occasion over the last year he's spoken quite bluntly against the White House (often on the Russia investigation), essentially breaking the fourth wall for a moment to look the viewer in the eye and say "this is fucked, yo." It's a weird dynamic seeing as Trump actually listens to him: one of these moments a few weeks ago directly led to Trump giving the congressional GOP a real headache over FISA. And it looks like maybe he's trying to reach out again on Fox and Friends, the President's primary source of useful information.

Fox News' Napolitano: If Nunes changed memo to satisfy political needs, 'innocent people will suffer'

“This is about very serious material, this is about raw intelligence data and interpreting it,” Napolitano said on “Fox & Friends.” “If you’re going to shade the interpretation of raw intelligence data to please political needs, that is very wrong and highly misleading, and innocent people will suffer because of that.”
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:10 AM on February 1, 2018 [12 favorites]


They just read out that claim and those other SOTU viewing figures during the headlines of the BBC radio news summary just now. So congratulations, 45, the only thing being reported about you today in the UK is the fact that you lie, and lie really badly. Make Abroad Giggle Again!
posted by Devonian at 8:14 AM on February 1, 2018 [13 favorites]


I'm worried they were here for bad public optics (check.) and to get us on the road to a military coup by dropping evidence/corroborating info on Trump campaign collusion. A coup attempt in the good ole US after any Trumpian unconstitutional chaos is right in the current Putin playbook: democracies fail.

They absolutely came to be seen. The heads of all 3 Russian intelligence agencies, at least one on a do-not-enter list? They should've hired a marching band to follow them playing the Internationale as they went about their business in DC, it would've gotten about as much attention.
posted by scalefree at 8:14 AM on February 1, 2018 [13 favorites]


Fox News' Napolitano: If Nunes changed memo to satisfy political needs, 'innocent people will suffer'

That reminds me of an interesting bit from NPR's coverage this morning -- NPR reported that Republicans said that the changes were only minor edits.

Nowhere did they point out that Republicans had conceded changes were made, but they did indeed concede the fact. I don't know if "minor editorial changes" to a memo what has been approved by a committee are a normal thing, but the best defense Republicans can muster is that changes were made, but they were no big deal. Uh-huh.
posted by Gelatin at 8:15 AM on February 1, 2018 [9 favorites]


Not that I expect Ryan to lift a finger to censure Nunes in any way, but that Pelosi statement is really strong. I'd been tearing my hair out at the fact that Dems weren't formally calling for Nunes to be removed from the HIC. The guy is clearly dirty, and a doof, to boot.
posted by scarylarry at 8:16 AM on February 1, 2018 [19 favorites]


OK I know this is probably too much drama, but I'm worried those Russian intelligence bosses were in the US to help rig the midterm elections.

I don't see how any rigging gets easier with those Russians' physical presence in the country, considering how widely distributed and heterogeneous our states' voting systems are.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:21 AM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


Because Pelosi's statement is extraordinarily strong I wanted to post it in full here rather than leave it in a twitter link.
The decision of Chairman Nunes and House Republicans to release a bogus memo has taken the GOP’s cover-up campaign to a new, completely unacceptable extreme.

Both the DOJ and FBI oppose releasing the Nunes memo. As the Department of Justice warned, the public release of the memo would be an “unprecedented action” and “extraordinarily reckless.” The FBI also expressed that the agency has “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

It has now come to our attention that Congressman Nunes deliberately and materially altered the contents of the memo since it was voted on by the House Republicans. This action is not only dangerous, it is illegitimate, and violates House rules.

From the start, Congressman Nunes has disgraced the House Intelligence Committee. Since pledging to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation, Congressman Nunes has abused his position to launch a highly unethical and dangerous cover-up campaign for the White House.

Congressman Nunes’ deliberately dishonest actions make him unfit to serve as Chairman, and he must be removed immediately from this position.

House Republicans’ pattern of obstruction and cover-up to hide the truth about the Trump-Russia scandal represents a threat to our intelligence and our national security. The GOP has led a partisan effort to distort intelligence and discredit the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities.

It is long overdue that you, as Speaker, put an end to this charade and hold Congressman Nunes and all Congressional Republicans accountable to the oath they have taken to support and defend the Constitution, and protect the American people.

The integrity of the House is at stake. We look forward to your immediate action on this subject.
posted by winna at 8:23 AM on February 1, 2018 [133 favorites]


He's back on Twitter...lying about the SOTU
You have to admit, that’s one thing he does well. And I don’t mean lying. There’s a saying in politics that goes “if you’re explaining you’re losing.” Trump successfully get his message out even if it’s a lie. Wet the left needs to do is understand what’s important to him and beat him to the punch. We know he likes numbers. We know he likes shiny things. Get the real info out first.

Whenever he does something, there should be an immediate headline or tweet comparing him unfavorably to a previous administration, he won’t be able to stand not getting to be out in front, image-wise.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:34 AM on February 1, 2018 [14 favorites]


That is the kind of language Democrats need to use and use constantly. I love Nancy.
posted by LarsC at 8:41 AM on February 1, 2018 [25 favorites]


As it's looking more and more favorable for a Dem takeover of the House (and the resignation of 9 House Committee Chairs suggest they see the writing on the wall), it's only going to be a matter of another year before the House Intelligence Committee will be chaired and controlled by Dems.

So a year from now, I'd expect to see a few things happen:

I. Nunes will not be in any position of control. If he's still in the House and hasn't retired, then I would expect to see his actions come up before an ethics committee hearing in the House, and he'd likely be censured. That may have no practical effect on him, but it will at least establish in the record that his actions were unethical.

II. The Dems have an opportunity to make public a formal refutation of the Nunes memo.

III. The Dems can actually launch legitimate investigations of the issues related to (1) Russian collusion, (2) obstruction, (3) emoluments, (4) money laundering, and (5) many cases of filing false records. The water will be muddied, of course, because of the GOP shenanigans in the previous two years, but those investigations are still feasible.

So we may have on the horizon the dawning of a bright new day. It just remains to be seen if the Dems will pursue justice or decide we need to "look forward, not backward" because they don't want to upset those so-called moderates with perceptions of partisan combativeness, leading up to the 2020 elections.
posted by darkstar at 8:47 AM on February 1, 2018 [6 favorites]




It just remains to be seen if the Dems will pursue justice or decide we need to "look forward, not backward" because they don't want to upset those so-called moderates with perceptions of partisan combativeness

I was both inordinately frustrated with Obama giving the Bush gang of war criminals a free pass, and understanding of the constraints he was operating under (and even he didn't understand at first the extent to which Republicans never, ever deal in good faith).

But this time, after having yet another election stolen by Electoral College shenanigans, and having this terrible, obviously unqualified man in the White House, and seeing every Republican in Congress enabling him -- yes, Susan Collins, every one -- I doubt Democrats will be in a forgiving mood. And 2020 will also be a census year; if a wave election puts more Democrats in charge of state legislatures, they can redistrict in favor of themselves, if not to the extremes Republicans did a decade earlier.

What simultaneously interests me and scares me is that in 2020, after four years of Trump, the safeguards in place against taking political revenge on one's opponents might be worn thru to the point that the Democrats could exact significant revenge on Republicans, and the temptation to abuse that power might be too great. It probably would be for me.
posted by Gelatin at 9:00 AM on February 1, 2018 [11 favorites]


I don't think we have to worry about Democrats abusing power to exact overbearing revenge on their opponents. Have you ever seen the Democratic Party? They're so afraid of rocking the boat that they don't even let it see water.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 9:04 AM on February 1, 2018 [18 favorites]


SecretAgentSockpuppet: This soap opera sucks. It doesn't make sense. The story arc is taking far too long. The characters are transparent and impossible to believe in.

It's not a soap opera, it's The Room 2: Political Ambitions. Copying they key portion of my comment on The Disaster Artist
I have come to realize Donald Trump is much like Tommy Wiseau, except more successful in his scams and abuses, probably because he's better at appearing competent. Both are aging men who surround themselves with young people, both do weird things to their hair and lie about how healthy and/or old they are, both are terribly manipulative and abusive of people around them, and both have lied, bluffed and conned their way into various forms of success.
And they keep going through supporting staff as people get burnt out (or in the case of Trump, identified for having explicit conflicts of interest, except for the Trump family itself, natch). Tommy "won" in the end, as The Room is now a cult movie phenomenon, and Donny "won" the election, but hopefully there's a second arc, where this cast is all in jail, and we get a full re-boot to the main story line.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:04 AM on February 1, 2018 [8 favorites]


That Pelosi letter was not the action of someone afraid of rocking the boat.

Not that I'm accusing Pelosi or anyone else of having vengeful motives. My point is, the Democratic base is getting sick and tired of the will of the majority of Americans being thwarted by the creeps, scoundrels, grifters, misogynists, gun fetishists, oligarchs, and God-botherers of the Republican Party. And that's setting aside the increasingly obvious fact that Trump's victory was the fruit of a treasonous conspiracy that the entire party leadership, including every single Republican member of Congress, is aiding and abetting.

The kindest explanation I can think of for Republican voters is they act out of fear that Democratic constituencies will treat them the way that the Republican parties treat non-Republicans. The possibility of that vision becoming a self fulfilling prophecy, however much poetic justice it may entail, seems uncomfortably high.
posted by Gelatin at 9:14 AM on February 1, 2018 [14 favorites]


Well, the Democratic idea of revenge is to enact policies like progressive taxation, universal healthcare, and environmental, worker and consumer protections, so the sooner we could start on that, the better off everyone will be. Even Republicans. That’s the critical difference between Democratic oversight and Republican oversight.
posted by Autumnheart at 9:22 AM on February 1, 2018 [68 favorites]


CBS News: White House will return secret memo to House Intelligence Committee

Two sources directly involved in the process say the GOP-authored House Intelligence Committee memo will not be released Thursday. The plan now is for the White House to return the memo – with redactions approved in consultation with the FBI – to the Intelligence Committee Friday.

The memo will not be released by the White House. House Intelligence Committee Republicans will determine the timetable and procedure for making the memo public.

posted by Rust Moranis at 9:26 AM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


The memo will not be released by the White House. House Intelligence Committee Republicans will determine the timetable and procedure for making the memo public.

Lol the only hope we have right now is that they are so very bad at everything they do.
posted by dis_integration at 9:29 AM on February 1, 2018 [8 favorites]


So a police officer finds a homeless woman in possession of heroin and instead of arresting her offers to take her baby in trade for her going free? Isn't this like corruption? Abuse of power? What would have happened if she said no?
posted by lumnar at 9:31 AM on February 1, 2018 [37 favorites]


The memo will not be released by the White House.

Translation: Trump is going to post it on Twitter this afternoon.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:32 AM on February 1, 2018 [16 favorites]


Not if Don Jr. does it first!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:35 AM on February 1, 2018 [11 favorites]


Well, the Democratic idea of revenge is to enact policies like progressive taxation

And the sooner the Democrats get on with confiscatory taxation of the top 1%, re-redistributing the half of America's wealth they captured since the Reagan Administration, the better off all Americans will be. Particularly as -- just as Republicans target trial lawyers, teachers, and unions -- that part of the Republican base will have fewer resources to fuel their political activities (though still more than the aforementioned Democratic constituencies).

And I hope that, while I want to see malefactors like Mitch McConnell punished for their criminal acts -- I wonder if his refusal to publicly admit the Russian interference that was shown to him during the election constitutes an overtly treasonous act before two or more witnesses -- I am not at all sanguine that the impulse for revenge will be tempered simply out of the goodness of Democratic hearts, or that a Democratic scoundrel couldn't manipulate events in a manner as shameful and criminal as, say, in which ICE and BCP are currently indulging.

Moreover, Democrats and liberals need honest conservatives to keep them in check. I know there aren't any currently holding national office, but that's a seriously disturbing development. The Laffer curve is the bunk, but there is a point at which taxation pr regulation becomes excessive enough to harm the economy. There are Democratic priorities that should be scrutinized for unintended consequences before implementing. Censoring Fox News would be bad, even if a popular Democrat got away with it. The Founders were quite right not to trust individuals with power, and to impose checks and balances. Democrats without constraints have the potential to harm the nation too, as Trump is doing now.

Not even Democrats should be allowed to govern as Trump is doing. Those norms were there for a reason. I don't know where we're going to get these honest conservatives, but even as we ensure Republicans get nowhere near the levers of power, and undo their policies, we have to find a way to encourage and value good faith, loyal opposition, even if the Republicans don't. Their abandoning the American ideal is no reason we shouldn't.
posted by Gelatin at 9:39 AM on February 1, 2018 [11 favorites]


Bloomberg BNA, Labor Dept. Ditches Data on Worker Tips Retained by Businesses
Labor Department leadership scrubbed an unfavorable internal analysis from a new tip pooling proposal, shielding the public from estimates that showed employees could lose out on billions of dollars in gratuities, four current and former DOL sources tell Bloomberg Law.

The agency shelved the economic analysis, compiled by DOL staff, from a December proposal to scrap an Obama administration rule. The proposal would permit tip pooling arrangements that involve restaurant servers and other workers who make tips and back-of-the-house workers who don’t. It sparked outrage from worker advocates who said the move would permit management to essentially skim gratuities by participating in the pools themselves.

Senior department political officials—faced with a government analysis showing that workers could lose billions of dollars in tips as a result of the proposal—ordered staff to revise the data methodology to lessen the expected impact, several of the sources said. Although later calculations showed progressively reduced tip losses, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and his team are said to have still been uncomfortable with including the data in the proposal. The officials disagreed with assumptions in the analysis that employers would retain their employees’ gratuities, rather than redistribute the money to other hourly workers. They wound up receiving approval from the White House to publish a proposal Dec. 5 that removed the economic transfer data altogether, the sources said.
They didn't like the analysis because it assumed employers wouldn't suddenly become generous, so they ordered staff to revise the methodology, then just threw it away and said they don't know what the economic effects will be.
posted by zachlipton at 9:39 AM on February 1, 2018 [53 favorites]


Thank you for the further admission that facts have a liberal bias, Trump Labor Department.
posted by Gelatin at 9:42 AM on February 1, 2018 [5 favorites]


The Democrats don’t need Republicans per se to fulfill the “honest conservative” requirement. There are certainly enough centrists within the party to do the job.
posted by Autumnheart at 9:44 AM on February 1, 2018 [22 favorites]


From today's NYT, "Top Diplomat Resigns, Continuing Exodus at State Department":
The State Department’s top career diplomat announced his resignation on Thursday, contributing to an exodus of senior diplomats during the Trump administration.

Thomas A. Shannon Jr., the under secretary of state for political affairs, is the department’s third highest ranking official. He will serve until his successor is confirmed by the Senate, according to Heather Nauert, the department’s spokeswoman.

[...]

The timing of Mr. Shannon’s announcement was driven by his promise to stay through Mr. Tillerson’s first year, an anniversary that arrived Thursday, said Steve Goldstein, the department’s under secretary for public affairs.

[...]

Most of the State Department’s top diplomats have left since the start of the Trump administration. Of the five “career ambassadors,” the department’s highest rank, who were in place in January 2017, only one, Stephen D. Mull, will remain after Mr. Shannon departs. Mr. Mull is presently on sabbatical and has been repeatedly bypassed for top jobs.
posted by mhum at 9:45 AM on February 1, 2018 [10 favorites]


The officials disagreed with assumptions in the analysis that employers would retain their employees’ gratuities, rather than redistribute the money to other hourly workers. They wound up receiving approval from the White House to publish a proposal Dec. 5 that removed the economic transfer data altogether, the sources said.

Those officials have never worked in the restaurant industry.

My first job in the big city (Pasadena, CA!) was at a diner/bakery where they pooled tips and shared them among servers and back-of-the-house. No problem there, but management absolutely played favorites with the shares, rewarding some staff with more, others with less. God knows if they skimmed some for themselves, but how would any of us know?
posted by notyou at 9:46 AM on February 1, 2018 [8 favorites]


The Democrats don’t need Republicans per se to fulfill the “honest conservative” requirement.

Well, maybe, but if there's anything worse that the American experience with two party rule, it's the experience with one party rule everywhere else.
posted by Gelatin at 9:47 AM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


Just got the word that the University of Pennsylvania has decided to take action re: Steve Wynn, who was a former Penn Trustee and College alumnus.

"First, we will remove the name Wynn Commons, named for Mr. Wynn, from the centrally located outdoor plaza bounded by Houston Hall, Claudia Cohen Hall, College Hall, and Irvine Auditorium. Second, Mr. Wynn’s name will be removed from a scholarship fund established by a donation from him. The scholarships will continue to be awarded. Third, we will revoke Mr. Wynn’s honorary degree.

At the same time we are taking these actions, we will also revoke the honorary degree awarded to Bill Cosby, who has similarly been accused by multiple parties of sexual assault. "
posted by lazaruslong at 9:50 AM on February 1, 2018 [57 favorites]


I guarantee that in the fantasy world where the Republicans are finally vanquished, there will be some other second party emerging to take their place. If the Democrats were as all-powerful in that situation as you're imagining, then it would probably be a Socialist splinter group that would go and create their own leftist party, and I would vote for them in every election forever.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 9:54 AM on February 1, 2018 [8 favorites]


The University of Iowa is also removing Wynn's name:
IOWA CITY — Marking the first time the University of Iowa has scrubbed reference to a donor from a namesake project, it will erase the name of casino mogul Stephen A. Wynn from its Institute for Vision Research after reports last week that the billionaire harassed and assaulted women for years.
They aren't giving the money back either.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 9:56 AM on February 1, 2018 [16 favorites]


Am I the only person who hears of Steve Wynn and thinks of the Dream Syndicate?.
posted by jetsetsc at 10:00 AM on February 1, 2018 [11 favorites]


no
posted by entropicamericana at 10:02 AM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]




He has a zillion dollars so I think the only thing bruised will be his ego. Named donations are a scourge anyway.
posted by rhizome at 10:08 AM on February 1, 2018 [4 favorites]


WaPo: The Daily 202: Why Trump is so eager to release the Nunes memo
As Mueller and his team move closer to the president and his inner circle, a sense of panic is palpable on the Hill. GOP members recognize that the probe threatens not only the president but also their majorities in Congress,” Schiff writes in an op-ed for today’s newspaper. “In response, they have drawn on the stratagem of many criminal defense lawyers — when the evidence against a defendant is strong, put the government on trial.”
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:08 AM on February 1, 2018 [17 favorites]


As it's looking more and more favorable for a Dem takeover of the House

Can we please stop counting on the Democratic wave before it happens? Does anyone remember 2016?

There’s a Monmouth poll today showing the generic ballot is down to D+2, and the RCP moving average has tightened to D+7. That’s not a wave, that won’t even win the House back after accounting for gerrymandering.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:10 AM on February 1, 2018 [37 favorites]


Can we please stop counting on the Democratic wave before it happens? Does anyone remember 2016?

we're already backlashing against the overreach of the New Future Democratic Supermajority, get with it
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:11 AM on February 1, 2018 [40 favorites]


Even worse than the SOTU is his speech going on right now at the republican retreat circle-jerk.
posted by HyperBlue at 10:12 AM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


Politico, Burgess Evertt, Republicans give up on Obamacare repeal
Republicans are giving up on their years-long dream of repealing Obamacare.

Though the GOP still controls both chambers of Congress and maintains the ability to jam through a repeal-and-replace bill via a simple majority, there are no discussions of doing so here at House and Senate Republicans’ joint retreat at The Greenbrier resort. Republicans doubt they can even pass a budget providing for the powerful party-line “reconciliation” procedure used to pass tax reform last year, much less take on the politically perilous task of rewriting health care laws in an election year.
There will still be a ton of health care fuckery via executive actions and waivers though, including more Medicaid work requirements. But it's seriously looking like they just won't manage to pass a budget at all, and without a budget, there's no reconciliation bill.

Erik Wemple, It’s the Michael Wolff self-destruction tour, in which Wolff needs to stop, immediately.

Anyway, Trump is speaking to the GOP retreat. It's stuff like, @Phil_Mattingly: Pres. Trump says Sen. Orrin Hatch told him he was a better president than Washington and Lincoln.

The response from Hatch's office? @Bencjacobs: Per Hatch spox, he has said that Trump “can be” the greatest president ever but has never said "is"

He's now pivoted to discussing how ex-prisoners have trouble getting jobs. Somehow I don't think addressing that is about to become a GOP priority. It also makes me wonder if the man has ever actually heard of Jeff Sessions.
posted by zachlipton at 10:13 AM on February 1, 2018 [12 favorites]


Can we please stop counting on the Democratic wave before it happens? Does anyone remember 2016?

Realtalk. I love you Metafilter, but this is the only place I hear the phrase "Democratic wave" used with any regularity.
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:15 AM on February 1, 2018 [26 favorites]


Just for a moment, let's point and laugh at alt-nazi Richard Spenser: White nationalist can't get a lawyer, wants Charlottesville suit tossed (CNN) He had to file his own motion to dismiss on Tuesday.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:15 AM on February 1, 2018 [19 favorites]


> Just for a moment, let's point and laugh at alt-nazi Richard Spenser: White nationalist can't get a lawyer, wants Charlottesville suit tossed (CNN) He had to file his own motion to dismiss on Tuesday.

White, powerless.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:17 AM on February 1, 2018 [31 favorites]


this is the only place I hear the phrase "Democratic wave" used with any regularity.

But just as the Republicans are sure acting like they know Trump is guilty, they are acting like they know they're going to get crushed in the midterms. So many Republican committee chairs retiring doesn't look to me like a sign of confidence.
posted by Gelatin at 10:17 AM on February 1, 2018 [5 favorites]


At the same time we are taking these actions, we will also revoke the honorary degree awarded to Bill Cosby, who has similarly been accused by multiple parties of sexual assault. "

My humble U is voting upon revoking an honorary degree next month. Probably the only all-U faculty meeting I'll go to this year.

Hear me vote, you orange buffoon.
posted by Dashy at 10:18 AM on February 1, 2018 [8 favorites]


Anyway, Trump is speaking to the GOP retreat. It's stuff like, @Phil_Mattingly: Pres. Trump says Sen. Orrin Hatch told him he was a better president than Washington and Lincoln

Neither of them would put up with the current treasonous GOP.
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:18 AM on February 1, 2018 [4 favorites]


Can we please stop counting on the Democratic wave before it happens? Does anyone remember 2016?

1. We're adults here, we already know this.
2. It comes up in damn every one of these POTUS 45 threads and we go around the same loop every time.

"The blue wave is coming!"
"You guys, you can't just count on it happening on it's own!"
"Yeah, we know and we're not. We know damn well it's going to take a lot of work and everyone needs to do their part to make it a victory."
posted by VTX at 10:19 AM on February 1, 2018 [31 favorites]


Wouldn’t they appoint Spencer a lawyer if he can’t hire one?
posted by Autumnheart at 10:19 AM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


But just as the Republicans are sure acting like they know Trump is guilty, they are acting like they know they're going to get crushed in the midterms

If Perez and Ellison can pull it off, about which I'm not 100% confident. I'm not sure I'm even 50% confident.
posted by rhizome at 10:20 AM on February 1, 2018


White nationalist can't get a lawyer, wants Charlottesville suit tossed

I highly recommend not reading this article if you don't have something handy to break that you won't miss later. In a nutshell, Spencer has the temerity to contend that Antifa was responsible for the violence in Charlottesville, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Wouldn’t they appoint Spencer a lawyer if he can’t hire one?

The article indicates this right doesn't apply in civil cases.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 10:21 AM on February 1, 2018 [9 favorites]


Moreover, Democrats and liberals need honest conservatives to keep them in check. I know there aren't any currently holding national office, but that's a seriously disturbing development.

Nonsense. I once asked in one of these threads for someone to name a single policy or initiative proposed or enacted by Republicans that made the country a better place in the last half century.

The only one anyone could think of was the interstate highway system in the 1950s over 60 years ago. Republicans simply have no ideas at all to make a better country. None. We don't need Republicans at all. They have nothing useful to contribute.

The Laffer curve is the bunk, but there is a point at which taxation pr regulation becomes excessive enough to harm the economy.

More nonsense. The U.S. is one of the lowest taxed countries in the developed world. Parts of Scandinavia and Europe have tax rates that are almost twice that in the U.S. and they are doing fine. In fact better than fine with lower poverty and better health outcomes. So we don't even know what the upper limits on taxes might be because no country has yet seen them. You could raise the taxes in the U.S. by nearly 100% from their current rates, doubling them. So, no, we don't need Republicans to rein in excessive taxes.
posted by JackFlash at 10:26 AM on February 1, 2018 [73 favorites]


The generic ballot trend isn’t even hinting at “wave” territory and moving the wrong direction, talking about a wave is months out of date with the polling data which peaked during the ACA repeal battle and steadily regressed ever since, with the Dems best issue, healthcare, now totally out of the spotlight. Without something changing the debate again, Democrats are limping into the midterm with only Trumps unpopularity to bank on. I’d love for that to be enough for a wave, but all evidence we have says it’s not and won’t be. Retirements are favorable, and gerrymandering very much not, which points towards a coin flip to retake the House.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:29 AM on February 1, 2018 [7 favorites]


If you want a blue wave, get out there and register voters. Where you are. Start now and keep at it.
posted by Sublimity at 10:32 AM on February 1, 2018 [35 favorites]


Maybe Republicans are retiring because Trump is an awful person to work with and they don’t want to have to defend him to voters or in clownish committee hearings like Devin Nunes. Also, retiring means they can keep clear of the Mueller investigation and NOT go to jail. Trey Gowdy is a partisan hack who wouldn’t have trouble winning re-election. But he knows the law.

The wave is gonna depend on turnout. And that can’t be predicted very well. Who knows.
posted by Glibpaxman at 10:33 AM on February 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


Just got the word that the University of Pennsylvania has decided to take action re: Steve Wynn, who was a former Penn Trustee and College alumnus.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, where Wynn's $2.4-billion Everett casino is under construction, the head of investigations for the state gaming commission said yesterday that neither Wynn nor anybody at his company ever told investigators about the $7.5-million payment to that manicurist, which a Wynn attorney now admits was actually paid, but hidden, because it was "private" and not made in connection with any court action that might have tipped off regulators. The commission will make the actions of Wynn's board relative to the payment part of its deliberations on whether Wynn is still "suitable" to own a casino. Transcript and video of the meeting.
posted by adamg at 10:35 AM on February 1, 2018 [5 favorites]


Politico reports that the House is going to vote on a six-week CR (the government shuts down again on February 8th), and it's not clear they have enough Republican votes. This as Trump claims Ryan is calling him up telling him how united the Republican Party is. Specifically:

@MEPFuller: Trump says Paul Ryan called him the other day and told him: “He has never, ever seen the Republican Party so united, so much in like with each other, but literally 'united' was the word he used.” Ah yes.

So united, they can't agree on having a government for six weeks.
posted by zachlipton at 10:36 AM on February 1, 2018 [15 favorites]


Moreover, Democrats and liberals need honest conservatives to keep them in check.

No worries, there are plenty of DINOs in the party to do all the concern trolling for them.

Less glibly, I wonder what the result would be of "unchecked" Democrat abandon in the hallowed halls of Congress. Would it really be so terrible? Would they easily shake off decades of capitulation with the right and swing hard to the left, or would we have some kind of diluted mainstream centrism? I think that's very hard to gauge from this vantage point. Compared to the current administration, Ronald Reagan looks like Voltairine de Cleyre. The only thing I am certain of is that the Republicans today are utterly devoid of any ideology, if they ever had one to begin with, apart from "whatever will piss off the libruls".
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 10:40 AM on February 1, 2018 [6 favorites]


It would be a full spectrum of political beliefs from center-center-right to center-right with a radical fringe pushing for maybe just center.
posted by Artw at 10:49 AM on February 1, 2018 [11 favorites]


Republicans aren’t devoid of ideology, they’re just white supremacists through and through, that’s their ideology. That’s why they worship Putin and are mimicking his style, because he’s the ringleader of global white supremacy.
posted by gucci mane at 10:50 AM on February 1, 2018 [21 favorites]


I wonder what the result would be of "unchecked" Democrat abandon in the hallowed halls of Congress. Would it really be so terrible?

Ask Illinois, especially in Cook County.

One party rule sucks. We need at least two parties, and we need them both to be sane.
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:51 AM on February 1, 2018 [14 favorites]


Republicans aren’t devoid of ideology, they’re just white supremacists through and through, that’s their ideology.

This is untrue, they are also criminals.
posted by Artw at 10:52 AM on February 1, 2018 [10 favorites]


With regards to the Spencer lawsuit, anyone ask why Ken White or Marc Randazza haven't jumped in to his defense? His argument seems to be up their alley, especially for Randazza.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:57 AM on February 1, 2018


CNN, White House worried FBI director could quit over Nunes memo release
Top White House aides are worried FBI Director Christopher Wray could quit if the highly controversial Republican memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance tools is released, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation tell CNN.

Wray has made clear he is frustrated that President Donald Trump picked him to lead the FBI after he fired FBI Director James Comey in May, yet his advice on the Nunes memo is being disregarded and cast as part of the purported partisan leadership of the FBI, according to a senior law enforcement official.

Wray's stance is "raising hell," one source familiar with the matter said.
Threatening to quit seems to be the only thing these people listen to.
posted by zachlipton at 11:09 AM on February 1, 2018 [45 favorites]


Moreover, Democrats and liberals need honest conservatives to keep them in check.

I've said this before and I never get tired of saying it. It's my fervent hope that we can make what we're seeing today the beginning of the end of the GOP that will lead to a future where the Democratic party is the "conservative" party and the DSA rises to be the new "progressive" party.
posted by VTX at 11:13 AM on February 1, 2018 [42 favorites]


Top White House aides are worried FBI Director Christopher Wray could quit if the highly controversial Republican memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance tools is released

So, if I'm reading this right, White House aides are worried that their FBI Director will quit if the memo they themselves have been pushing and alluding to is released? The level of public dipshittery is just incomprehensible.
posted by Existential Dread at 11:13 AM on February 1, 2018 [18 favorites]


White House will return secret memo to House Intelligence Committee

Kevin Drum called it yesterday, The Nunes Memo Will Soon Be a Harvard Business School Case Study:
You have to give Republicans credit: as political theater, the Nunes memo has been sensational. If Devin Nunes had just written his memo and released it, no one would have cared. Adam Schiff would have gone on TV to denounce it, and by the next day it would have been forgotten. But no. That’s not what happened.
...
Presumably Trump will release the memo, but if he doesn’t it hardly matters. Someone would just leak the whole thing to make sure it gets into the press. In fact, it might even be more newsworthy if Trump pretends to withhold the memo because it’s based on sensitive intelligence. That would add to the memo’s authority and whet the public’s appetite even more for the eventual leak.
The longer the memo is in play the more coverage it gets. It helps Trump if the media is talking about secret exonerating information, even if it's known to be based on lies.
posted by peeedro at 11:14 AM on February 1, 2018 [8 favorites]


Threatening to quit seems to be the only thing these people listen to.

Because the threat is the only thing that touches Trump's ego, which is the only thing he listens to. If they just quit one day, Trump could just call them losers and be done with it, but he can't do that if they announce a line in the sand first.
posted by rhizome at 11:16 AM on February 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


One party rule sucks. We need at least two parties, and we need them both to be sane.

It's been pretty good for California the past decade.
posted by notyou at 11:21 AM on February 1, 2018 [18 favorites]


OnceUponATime: Trump sent a wire transfer of $296,595.01 and sued. His Tampa-based attorney called the amount Trump sent "a good faith estimate" of the actual amount he should pay, according to the newspaper."

Oh my gosh, I get it now! He doesn't understand how government works! You cannot counter a government request or charge with "a good faith estimate" of what you think you owe.

Hell, that's not how businesses work. You don't go into a grocery store, pick up a gallon of milk and toss the cashier a dollar bill, because that's your "good faith estimate" of the cost of milk. Even in his supposed profession of notable success, you can't write someone a check for $500,000 for a property they're trying to sell for $750,000 as your "good faith estimate" of its value and expect to get the keys to the property in return.

WHAT THE FUCK.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:24 AM on February 1, 2018 [32 favorites]


Oh right, I forgot - you then sue the grocery store, or the property seller to demand that they take your money, because ... something? I clearly don't understand law.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:25 AM on February 1, 2018 [12 favorites]


Gawd, the Republican talking point on the "majority memo" has gone full Gamergate: "it's not at all about the Russia investigation or going after people involved in it. Nope, it's entirely about FISA abuse."
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:27 AM on February 1, 2018 [13 favorites]


Per Hatch spox, he has said that Trump “can be” the greatest president ever but has never said "is"

Someone travel back 20 years and tell me that the Republican President is going to be unclear on what the meaning of "is" is.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:28 AM on February 1, 2018 [32 favorites]


The administration's attempts to allow development of public lands is running aground on their incompetence.
Last week, Mr. Zinke approved a land swap allowing the construction of a long-contested road through Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a decision made under the Obama administration. The earlier decision was based on a four-year scientific analysis concluding that the road would irreparably harm critical waterfowl habitat.

In reversing the decision, Mr. Zinke offered no new public scientific analysis supporting the change. Traditionally, findings like those would be publicly available.

Speaking to reporters last week, Mr. Zinke said, “We looked at everything,” adding: “There is no significant issue the Department of Interior has found environmentally.” Asked for a copy of the findings, Mr. Zinke suggested making a Freedom of Information Act request.
posted by suelac at 11:29 AM on February 1, 2018 [9 favorites]


One party rule sucks. We need at least two parties, and we need them both to be sane.


1. When one party is "center right to progressive spectrum" and the other is "racist theocratic bastards", having the second one is more a liability than anything.
2. The Dems could easily be two parties by themselves.
3. Why stop at two? Maybe binary thinking and rushing to the middle is what helped pave the way for this mess.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 11:31 AM on February 1, 2018 [20 favorites]


When one party is "center right to progressive spectrum" and the other is "racist theocratic bastards", having the second one is more a liability than anything.

I would add 'actively working to undermine the democratic process and incapable of holding power without doing so'.
posted by Artw at 11:33 AM on February 1, 2018 [12 favorites]


Pence is confident Republicans will maintain a majority in the midterms.

Yep, he knows the fix is in, between gerrymandering and the Russians.

My admittedly quick and shallow look at authoritarian regimes tells me they tend to have two nodes for longevity: 10 years and less commonly, 40 years, with a couple lasting 70+ years.

Obviously the Republicans are going for a 70 year regime, but given how bad they are with the economy, I think they'll be burned out and unable to keep control by the middle of Pence's first term in 2026. Of course by then, the damage they will have done will take a century to get over.

Is going to be an ugly decade, people.
posted by happyroach at 11:34 AM on February 1, 2018 [9 favorites]


3. Why stop at two? Maybe binary thinking and rushing to the middle is what helped pave the way for this mess.

Then you want a different electoral system -- either multi-member districts, top-up seats allocated by proportional votes, or a more purely prop-rep system.

Unless you're in a situation where there are very different electorates in different parts of the country (cf. Canada, the UK to some extent), first-past-the-post tends to lead to a two-party system.

Now at the state level, there are probably a few places where Republicans are weak enough that a party from the left could potentially push in to be one of the two major parties. California, Illinois, New England, maybe New York.

But federally, it's not going to happen barring a major shift in politics (which is not unthinkable, mind). The best option federally is to support the leftmost viable candidate in the Democratic primary (or Republican primary if it's a deep-red district) and then the leftmost viable candidate (i.e. the Democrat) in the general.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:41 AM on February 1, 2018 [8 favorites]


What do you have to lose, Trump administration strips consumer watchdog office of enforcement powers in lending discrimination cases (WaPo):
The Trump administration has stripped enforcement powers from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau office that specializes in pursuing cases against financial firms accused of breaking discrimination laws, according to two people familiar with the matter and emails reviewed by The Washington Post.

The move comes about two months after President Trump installed his budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, at the head of an agency that has long been in the crosshairs of Republicans. The Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity had penalized lenders that it said had systematically imposed interest rates on minorities that were higher than those for whites.

Now that office, which had been part a powerful CFPB division, will move inside the office of the director, where staffers will be focused on “advocacy, coordination and education,” according to an email Mulvaney sent them this week. They will no longer have responsibility for enforcement and day-to-day oversight of companies, he said.
posted by peeedro at 11:41 AM on February 1, 2018 [9 favorites]


VTX: "I've said this before and I never get tired of saying it. It's my fervent hope that we can make what we're seeing today the beginning of the end of the GOP that will lead to a future where the Democratic party is the "conservative" party and the DSA rises to be the new "progressive" party."

My only regret here would be that Trump likely wouldn't be coherent enough to recognize that the destruction of the GOP was ALL HIS FAULT.
posted by Grither at 11:44 AM on February 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


How is it not plainly apparent to anyone who's ever heard of the CFPB that everything Mulvaney is doing is intended to destroy it?

Or is it just that nobody who matters cares?
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 11:52 AM on February 1, 2018 [12 favorites]


Donald Trump Jr. attacks the press, misspells Washington Post motto as 'Democracy Dies in Dankness'

Correlation/causation fallacy: it just appears that way because the dankness dulls the grief.
posted by Rust Moranis at 11:56 AM on February 1, 2018 [11 favorites]


He didn't misspell darkness, he misspelled "Denver" as "Washington".
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:57 AM on February 1, 2018 [15 favorites]


Donald Trump Jr. attacks the press, misspells Washington Post motto as 'Democracy Dies in Dankness'

Also, he calls it a "byline" instead of a motto. Everything about these people is so cartoonishly mediocre. Gob Bluth has nothing on Don Jr.
posted by mhum at 12:01 PM on February 1, 2018 [23 favorites]


Donald Trump Jr. attacks the press, misspells Washington Post motto as 'Democracy Dies in Dankness'

*thinks of all those Pepe memes, concedes he may have a point, although not the one he thought he was making*
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 12:12 PM on February 1, 2018 [32 favorites]


Statement from the FBI Agents Association (emphasis mine)

“The FBI Agents Association appreciates FBI Director Chris Wray standing shoulder to shoulder with the men and women of the FBI as we work together to protect our country from criminal and national security threats. As Director Wray noted, FBI Special Agents have remained steadfast in their dedication to professionalism, and we remain focused on our important work to protect the country from terrorists and criminals—both domestic and international. Special Agents take a solemn oath to our country and to the Constitution, and the American public continues to be well-served by the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency.”
posted by Rust Moranis at 12:21 PM on February 1, 2018 [52 favorites]


the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency

Americans just cant help themselves, can they?
posted by rocket88 at 12:25 PM on February 1, 2018 [26 favorites]


To be fair, discussing the FBI is probably one of the few times making that kind of claim can have some basis in reality.
posted by fullerine at 12:28 PM on February 1, 2018 [9 favorites]


So a police officer finds a homeless woman in possession of heroin and instead of arresting her offers to take her baby in trade for her going free? Isn't this like corruption? Abuse of power? What would have happened if she said no?

Why do you hate our Protectors, lumnar??
posted by Coventry at 12:33 PM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


This NBC News tweet throws some cold water on the idea that Wray might quit over the daffy Nunes memo.
posted by scarylarry at 12:37 PM on February 1, 2018


The CNN story comes from White House sources, while Pete Williams at NBC is plugged in at the Justice Department. Seems like someone on the White House side started the "Wray will quit" story to try to influence events.
posted by zachlipton at 12:40 PM on February 1, 2018 [9 favorites]


@malika_andrews (NYT Sports)
Eagles Malcolm Jenkins on the Presidents’ tweets condemning players protests: “I’d say the guys that have put their jobs and reputations on the line to better their communities are more American than anybody he knows.”
posted by chris24 at 12:44 PM on February 1, 2018 [70 favorites]


NYT, Max Fisher, In Afghanistan’s Unwinnable War, What’s the Best Loss to Hope For?
After 16 years of war in Afghanistan, experts have stopped asking what victory looks like and are beginning to consider the spectrum of possible defeats.

There are a handful of plans, whose advocates see glimmers of hope barely worth the stomach-turning trade-offs and slim odds of success. All involve acknowledging the war as failed, American aims as largely unachievable and Afghanistan’s future as only partly salvageable.

“I don’t think there is any serious analyst of the situation in Afghanistan who believes that the war is winnable,” Laurel Miller, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, said in a podcast last summer, after leaving her State Department stint as acting special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Six possible endgames are presented, from perpetual stalemate to Somalia.

Also in world affairs, Syrian rebels brutally attacked a Kurdish female fighter, which means our allies in Syria are in a shooting war with each other (warning: this link, if you click through the chain of retweets, will take you to a graphic description of a video showing an atrocity).
posted by zachlipton at 12:53 PM on February 1, 2018 [7 favorites]


Quoted above:
As Mueller and his team move closer to the president and his inner circle, a sense of panic is palpable on the Hill. GOP members recognize that the probe threatens not only the president but also their majorities in Congress,” Schiff writes in an op-ed for today’s newspaper. “In response, they have drawn on the stratagem of many criminal defense lawyers — when the evidence against a defendant is strong, put the government on trial.”
This is literally how you go about converting a democracy to an authoritarian state via political means. When this memo comes out, is used as "grounds" for firing Mueller, and the GOP does nothing about it, that will be the day that America became an authoritarian state.
posted by dis_integration at 1:01 PM on February 1, 2018 [8 favorites]




Donald Trump Jr. attacks the press, misspells Washington Post motto as 'Democracy Dies in Dankness'

Um, that's how the WaPo advertises on Reddit: their "promoted" posts say "Democracy Dies in Dankness" as the headline. (I would link to one now, but I am only getting some other ad as the promoted posts when I look right now.)
posted by wenestvedt at 1:05 PM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


The CNN story comes from White House sources, while Pete Williams at NBC is plugged in at the Justice Department. Seems like someone on the White House side started the "Wray will quit" story to try to influence events.

This makes a lot of sense but im not so sure im buying it. Through people who know people who go way back with him it seems likely that he is in fact considering leaving - he was making over $9M a year at King and Spalding, you don't need a conspiracy to explain why he would pack his bags.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 1:06 PM on February 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


Why are we still calling it the "Nunes Memo" instead of the "Page Page"?
posted by 0xFCAF at 1:12 PM on February 1, 2018 [24 favorites]


[Trump] has now pivoted to discussing how ex-prisoners have trouble getting jobs.

Wow, that's a lot more foresight and planning ahead than I've ever seen Trump demonstrate.
posted by msalt at 1:17 PM on February 1, 2018 [77 favorites]


Eagles Malcolm Jenkins on the Presidents’ tweets condemning players protests: “I’d say the guys that have put their jobs and reputations on the line to better their communities are more American than anybody he knows.”

I've had the pleasure of interviewing Malcolm Jenkins, and he is extremely intelligent, well-spoken, politically informed and diplomatic. He's also an entrepreneur as well as an NFL star.

I could easily see him being a Senator from Pennsyvlania, and I think he'd be a damn good one.
posted by msalt at 1:20 PM on February 1, 2018 [14 favorites]


Top White House aides are worried FBI Director Christopher Wray could quit
FBI Director Chris Wray has no intention of quitting


To be fair, these two stories aren't mutually exclusive, and in fact, the first story might have been truer before the NBC tweet.
posted by Dr. Send at 1:22 PM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


You cannot counter a government request or charge with "a good faith estimate" of what you think you owe.

It's a sane thing to do in a tax dispute, because it reduces the fines and interest you'll suffer if you lose. In some circumstances, it also helps because it shows that you respect the authority of the taxation system you're disputing (the IRS is going to be more intransigent in any negotiations if they've concluded you're a scofflaw.)
posted by Coventry at 1:26 PM on February 1, 2018 [6 favorites]


@DonaldJTrumpJr: It was good enough to fire McCabe, no one argues its factually inaccurate, but now days later they want to protect the names of those involved in a scandal that was big enough to fire a senior official a month before retirement? They don’t deserve a pass on that!

Ummmmmm. I thought we were going with the McCable wasn't fired story? But thanks Don Jr; you helped. Remember when he was supposed to be off running the business not having anything to do with politics?
posted by zachlipton at 1:26 PM on February 1, 2018 [63 favorites]


So, this firing senior officials to protect an attempt to obstruct justice - that's also obstructing justice, right? That Mueller chap's never going to be able to close his investigation at this rate...
posted by Devonian at 1:32 PM on February 1, 2018 [26 favorites]


On yesterday's Fresh Air, Ronen Bergman, Israeli investigative journalist and author of a book about Israel's targeted assassination program, implied that Trump revealed far more sensitive Israeli intelligence to Lavrov and Kislyak than was previously disclosed:

DAVIES: So if I understand it, you know of specific information that the U.S. shared with the Russians that has not been revealed publicly and that you are not revealing publicly?

BERGMAN: The nature of the information that President Trump revealed to Foreign Minister Lavrov is of the most secretive nature. And that information could jeopardize modus operandi of Israeli intelligence.

DAVIES: And this is different from what was publicly reported at the time. There were some question about, you know, plans for, I think, laptop computers on airlines. This - you're referring to something that we don't yet know.

BERGMAN: Most of it, we don't yet know. And there were conflicting reports. I cannot - in order not to be part of disclosing secret information and jeopardizing Israeli and the U.S. ability to track down terrorists and proliferate, I prefer not to go into the details of that.
posted by johnny jenga at 1:34 PM on February 1, 2018 [26 favorites]


So, this firing senior officials to protect an attempt to obstruct justice - that's also obstructing justice, right? That Mueller chap's never going to be able to close his investigation at this rate...

thats trump's plan! he's crazy like a fox
posted by entropicamericana at 1:34 PM on February 1, 2018 [12 favorites]


FiveThirtyEight Roundtable: What happened to the democratic wave?
Perry Bacon, Jr.: I think if the generic ballot stays in this range for a few months, Democrats should be panicking. But I don’t think they should panic now. I don’t know exactly what caused Trump and Republicans to make gains, but assuming that it’s the good economic news, is there a way for the GOP to keep touting this news, keep generating news about the economy? That will help their political standing. Also, we didn’t mention Russia or Mueller much here. More indictments/controversies on that front will basically drown out any good economic news.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 1:35 PM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


I wish there was another special election of some sort in the near future. I'd like to see how the previously apparent enthusiasm gap held up during a period of somewhat higher approval for Trump and a narrower generic ballot advantage. Is this tightening simply disaffected Republicans and Republican leaning "independents" coming home and those people weren't gonna show up to vote anyway, and the enthusiasm gap remains? Or do the bullshit tax cuts and racist DACA stuff rile up the Republicans enough to turn out in closer numbers to the anti-Trump forces we saw in VA and AL?

Without an election to test things we're left in limbo, and the Justinian Panic Level will just peg to the redline for months and months.
posted by Justinian at 2:00 PM on February 1, 2018 [19 favorites]


So, this firing senior officials to protect an attempt to obstruct justice - that's also obstructing justice, right? That Mueller chap's never going to be able to close his investigation at this rate...

Yo dawg, I herd u like obstructing justice...
posted by azpenguin at 2:02 PM on February 1, 2018 [14 favorites]


Justinian Panic Level

oh god
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:03 PM on February 1, 2018 [39 favorites]


Good news! Judge Strikes Down Felon Disenfranchisement System in Florida
Judge Mark Walker’s ruling Thursday does not address the legality of felon disenfranchisement, but rather the manner in which the state haphazardly restores voting rights to some former felons. In Florida, felons must individually apply for rights restoration, often imploring the governor and his Cabinet in person for their rights. That practice, detailed in 2015 by Mother Jones, makes restoring a person’s suffrage a personal decision by top state officials. Governors often determine whether to restore a citizen’s voting rights based on unrelated matters, such as his religiosity or number of traffic citations. Sometimes, the voting rights group challenging Florida’s regime has argued in this case, Republican governors may be swayed to restore voting rights to ex-felons who will vote for Republicans.

“In Florida, elected, partisan officials have extraordinary authority to grant or withhold the right to vote from hundreds of thousands of people without any constraints, guidelines, or standards,” Walker wrote in his opinion. “The question now is whether such a system passes constitutional muster. It does not.” Walker’s ruling, which came without holding a trial, found that Florida’s process violates the First Amendment as well as the 14th, which extends equal protection of the law to all residents.
Applying the first amendment rights of free association to expression to voting is rather novel, and would have good implications if upheld.
posted by zachlipton at 2:11 PM on February 1, 2018 [54 favorites]


Pod Save America guys today talking about how Republicans and Trump are selling the tax plan as responsible for the economy and Democrats aren't making any counterarguments against like, oh hey, actually it just gave 1$ trillion to rich people.

Dan Pfeiffer even said, "If Democrats allow them to win this argument, we will not win back the House." So.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:12 PM on February 1, 2018 [14 favorites]


The special election in.PA-18 is March 13. Is that soon enough for the JCPL?
posted by soren_lorensen at 2:13 PM on February 1, 2018 [6 favorites]


Mueller’s Endgame: How he can ensure that Congress sees any case against Donald Trump. - Frank Bowman, Impeachable Offenses blog via Slate.

Seems to be mostly a technical legal article describing possible paths for Mueller to communicate his conclusions to Congress. It considers the restrictions on his position, and how he could work around those successfully.
posted by ZeusHumms at 2:14 PM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


> Without an election to test things we're left in limbo, and the Justinian Panic Level will just peg to the redline for months and months.

Special elections aren't very good test cases for what's going to happen in the mid-terms, though. They're great for morale, but more often than not the races are hyper-localized, and don't necessarily have any correlation with the party's strength nationwide. The fact that Dems typically do terrible in them and managed to put some points on the board was a great sign, but even if there were 10 special elections next week and Dems won 8 of them, I would pay more attention to the polling averages and the impressions of campaign volunteers than I would the results of a handful of relatively low-turnout elections.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:14 PM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


If for no other reason than your own mental well-being, maybe hold off on the despair over the Democrats losing the midterms until after the midterms.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:16 PM on February 1, 2018 [35 favorites]


hold off on the despair over the Democrats losing the midterms until after the midterms.

AKA Perverse Psychology
posted by Celsius1414 at 2:18 PM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


Regarding Dan Pfeiffer even said, "If Democrats allow them to win this argument, we will not win back the House" – is there anything that average people like me can do to help this? Is there a way to contact democratic leadership and tell them that we, people who support them, want them to fight this argument? I mean, I can tweet all day long but it'll have no effect.
posted by StrawberryPie at 2:18 PM on February 1, 2018 [4 favorites]


So Rick Gates' lawyers just filed to withdraw "immediately," with reasons to be filed under seal.

That's odd.
posted by zachlipton at 2:19 PM on February 1, 2018 [42 favorites]


Meanwhile here in The Bold North of Minnesota (apparently that's what we call ourselves when we're not busy saying "ope"), we are girding ourselves against the onslaught of both Superb Owl LII and the threat of Tim Pawlenty running for governor. He's meeting this week with his "inner-circle" aka "money people" to decide if the state is tired of the Dayton prosperity. I guess he could run on his record of destroying the economy here and ruining a failed presidential campaign. So good odds there!
posted by misterpatrick at 2:21 PM on February 1, 2018 [7 favorites]


The only reasons I can think of for such a move are

1) A previously unknown serious conflict of interest.
2) The lawyers discovered Gates lied and therefore they cannot be associated with testimony they know to be false. You're allowed to let a client lie as long as you don't actually know he or she is lying even if you sorta know because your client is a lying scumbag who lies a lot. But you can't present testimony you absolutely know to be false.
posted by Justinian at 2:22 PM on February 1, 2018 [16 favorites]


Lawyers might know of other reasons, though.
posted by Justinian at 2:23 PM on February 1, 2018


suelac: Speaking to reporters last week, Mr. Zinke said, “We looked at everything,” adding: “There is no significant issue the Department of Interior has found environmentally.” Asked for a copy of the findings, Mr. Zinke suggested making a Freedom of Information Act request.

THIS IS NOT HOW NEPA WORKS.

The hi-lar-ious thing here is they could have gone with a response like Trump's actions on Russian sanctions -- following the letter of the law to the bare minimum.

Or, you can say "fuck it, here's our new plan, don't worry about that prior environmental report that was publicly released" (LIKE IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE) -- "let's burn that one and just say "everything's good here, fire up the bulldozers!"

And then when asked "where is your environmental report supporting this decision?" you can say "yeah? make me!" which then gives you time to thrown some bullshit together.

But then you get taken to court on the grounds that your environmental review was not robust enough, and you lose, months or years later.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:26 PM on February 1, 2018 [6 favorites]


hold off on the despair over the Democrats losing the midterms until after the midterms.

Don't hold off on your sense of urgency to do something about them, though.
posted by Coventry at 2:26 PM on February 1, 2018 [27 favorites]


1) A previously unknown serious conflict of interest.
2) The lawyers discovered Gates lied and therefore they cannot be associated with testimony they know to be false. You're allowed to let a client lie as long as you don't actually know he or she is lying even if you sorta know because your client is a lying scumbag who lies a lot. But you can't actually present testimony you absolutely know to be false.


3.) He didn't pay his bills (not always considered cause for withdrawal)
4.) He stopped cooperating with their representation
posted by melissasaurus at 2:28 PM on February 1, 2018 [14 favorites]


You know, all this worry about the blue wave has me thinking about that metaphor for politics as n-dimensional hyperchess that is always getting bandied about. I think that metaphor is back-asswards wrong, as um said last week; where I differ from them is that I don't think politics is like a game at all.

I think politics is like war. These politics, anyway.

You need strategy; this is true. You need heart, and you need gonads, and you need bravery. You need some way to motivate your soldiers to get out and throw their shoulders behind you, and battles are won and lost half on numbers and half on the sheer belief among the base--or the foot-soldiers!--that this battle is worth fighting in the first place. People desert under you all the damn time, and conditions can be terrible and terrifying; in both cases, the unlucky are chewed up under the wheels of the system.

You need information, and you need to know what your party is thinking; you need to know whether you can bluff a show of force and have your opponent break and panic. You need discipline among your own side, too; if your soldiers won't march or desert in droves, you've got nothing behind you. The whole thing is built in trust: can you convince thousands to follow you, to risk their lives and livelihoods, and back you with hands and ballots? if you follow your leader, can you trust them to lead you down a fruitful path?

I thought of this a week ago, but let me just spell out why I'm reminded of this today:

That blue wave we want to see? It's not going to happen unless we a) simultaneously believe it can be done as we stare up that reddened hillside, and b) find in ourselves the drive and the will to make it happen. We patriots, we good people, we people who value the poor and the starving and the homeless, our vision of America as a shining hill, no matter how much tarnish coats it?

We cannot forget that this is a battle. We cannot rest easy and think "ah, my sword isn't necessary." We cannot think "it'll happen or it won't." We cannot trust to chance: we must make victory happen by the sweat of our brows and the work of our hands. But we simultaneously cannot gaze upon their ranks in their shining, well-polished armor and let fear creep into our hearts. If we stand in fear, or worse: if we break and turn from the line to flee, the nation's heart stands to be cut to tatters behind us. But if we can steel ourselves and--most important to this metaphor--if we can maintain party discipline, goddamn you!--we can charge those smug, self-centered assholes and run them through... and in the running, find that their armor was so much lacquered paper against our beaten and dented steel.

Lock shields, friends, and let's form the turtle. It falls to us to hold the line for democracy this year, and we need to get moving to make that thing go. We can do it--but only if we think we can, and if we don't let our fears hold us back. And the hell with impressions and the hell with the polling averages and the soothsayers trying to read the future in the entrails of slaughtered chickens and forecasted numbers. Those things are a distraction. The meat will meet the metal or it won't; and whether or not we wind up as the meat or the metal in this greatest upcoming pitched battle in a war that can't be won for years yet will depend heavily on how well prepared we are for the election.

We can do this thing, if we try.
posted by sciatrix at 2:30 PM on February 1, 2018 [97 favorites]




Regarding Rick Gates' lawyers, ABC reported last week that he was hiring Thomas Green (not the lawyer who signed the withdrawal motion) but Chris Geidner whos original tweet was linked to with the withdrawal said he hadn't yet appeared in the case.

It doesn't seem super scandalous if this is just a pro-forma change in representation, but if that is what this is, then why do it "immediately" and before bringing on the new counsel?

/not a lawyer, don't have any answers to these questions.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 2:33 PM on February 1, 2018


Regarding Dan Pfeiffer even said, "If Democrats allow them to win this argument, we will not win back the House" – is there anything that average people like me can do to help this? Is there a way to contact democratic leadership and tell them that we, people who support them, want them to fight this argument? I mean, I can tweet all day long but it'll have no effect.

Personally, I have one Democratic rep, and I contact him every chance I get when he tries to fight these battles and praise the shit out of him. I contact him and I urge him to take a harder stance nearly as often. I try and breathe bravery into him--because I imagine he's at least as scared as I am of the future and where we're going; he's certainly an experienced politician and he's always struck me as a bright fellow--and I tell him that if he takes this fight, I'll support him even harder.

Do that. Contact people. Donate money behind it if you can. Don't tweet, even--contact them via email and letter and phone, because these are metrics that are still weighted more heavily than social media. The more effortful your method of contacting your reps, the more they'll listen--and all the tactics for shaming the Republican reps work just as well for breathing heart into the Dems.
posted by sciatrix at 2:33 PM on February 1, 2018 [16 favorites]


and the threat of Tim Pawlenty running for governor.

His floating the idea of running for Senate was met with a response in the resoundingly negative. I can’t imagine his running for governor would be any more popular, and considerably less. He was a terrible governor and he would be following a stellar governor who improved MN’s measurable indicators of quality of life dramatically in almost every category. What would his platform be, “Success is boring and life should suck more”? We’re still patching his fucking potholes.
posted by Autumnheart at 2:38 PM on February 1, 2018 [11 favorites]


This is a country that went from Bush Jr. to Obama to Trump. let's not rule out the t-paw-mentum just yet
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:56 PM on February 1, 2018 [4 favorites]


I believe in the blue wave because I woke up on the first day of 2018 thinking "This is the year we take back the House," and I know a lot of other people did too. I'm counting on them to DO THE WORK, and they can count on me to do it too.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 3:05 PM on February 1, 2018 [23 favorites]


Cillizza, with a single article title, shows exactly how professional a journalist he is:

Donald Trump lied about his State of the Union ratings. Whyyyyyyyy?

On the other hand, he closes strong:
But someone who lies about little things -- things that are easily proven wrong -- will also lie about big things. Big things that impact the country -- now and in the future. When the person doing the lying (and lying and lying and lying) is also the President of the United States, we have a very big problem on our hands. And it's no laughing matter.
posted by hanov3r at 3:11 PM on February 1, 2018 [9 favorites]


Minnesota-filter (Minnefilter?)today there was a rather public response to Michele Bachmann wanting God to weigh-in on her potential Senate run.
posted by nathan_teske at 3:21 PM on February 1, 2018 [54 favorites]


Elsewhere in Trumplandia: Rachel Maddow took just a couple minutes on her show Wednesday to point out that Trump's HUD Secretary provided his son (& daughter-in-law) with a no-bid government contract worth $485,000.

In any other administration, Rachel says, "that's the kind of thing that would be front page news for days and lead to multiple congressional investigations. it would be something a whole presidency was remembered for, in a bad way."

In the Trump White House, however, that's known as "Wednesday."
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 3:32 PM on February 1, 2018 [107 favorites]


shade: @Comey: All should appreciate the FBI speaking up. I wish more of our leaders would. But take heart: American history shows that, in the long run, weasels and liars never hold the field, so long as good people stand up. Not a lot of schools or streets named for Joe McCarthy.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 3:37 PM on February 1, 2018 [24 favorites]


This is hardly an original thought at this point, but James Comey went to work every day for years in the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
posted by zachlipton at 3:40 PM on February 1, 2018 [60 favorites]


Even having to release a public statement to the effect that you told Trump that he "can be" (instead of "is") the greatest President in the history of the United States is, or should be, a humiliating level of toadying that a Senator shouldn't lower him or herself to.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:40 PM on February 1, 2018 [6 favorites]


Pod Save America guys today talking about how Republicans and Trump are selling the tax plan as responsible for the economy and Democrats aren't making any counterarguments against like, oh hey, actually it just gave 1$ trillion to rich people.

Dan Pfeiffer even said, "If Democrats allow them to win this argument, we will not win back the House." So.


Here's the thing, though. If we're talking about an audience who can be persuaded to believe utter complete crazytalk like "the tax plan of 2018 is responsible for the economy of 2012-17," then a) they obviously will believe anything Repubs/Trump say about anything and b) no convincing counterargument can be produced, especially if it comes from Democrats, who are inherently not going to be believed by that audience, because arguments depend on logic and rationality and basic functional intelligence. And good faith.

I suppose I could present a very shiny, unassailable counter-argument to "the sky is orange with black polka dots," but what's the point?
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:55 PM on February 1, 2018 [7 favorites]


My only regret here would be that Trump likely wouldn't be coherent enough to recognize that the destruction of the GOP was ALL HIS FAULT.
posted by Grither at 11:44 AM on February 1 [2 favorites +] [!]


My opinion is that Trump is merely the worst symptom (so far) of the disease that is the GOP.
posted by Mental Wimp at 4:02 PM on February 1, 2018 [34 favorites]


Unprecedented”: 9 historians on why Trump’s war with the FBI is so stunning (Sean Illing | Vox)

“I can’t think of a single time any president has done anything like this.”
posted by Barack Spinoza at 4:29 PM on February 1, 2018 [15 favorites]


Here's the thing, though. If we're talking about an audience who can be persuaded to believe utter complete crazytalk like "the tax plan of 2018 is responsible for the economy of 2012-17," then a) they obviously will believe anything Repubs/Trump say about anything and b) no convincing counterargument can be produced, especially if it comes from Democrats, who are inherently not going to be believed by that audience, because arguments depend on logic and rationality and basic functional intelligence. And good faith.

Keep in mind that there is a spectrum of folks out there on two relevant dimensions: 1) affinity for Trump and 2) awareness of political realities. While those on the right end of 1) are unconvincable, those more in the middle of both need to hear from Democrats. The GOP has won by never conceding a point, whether or not there is a legitimate argument for it. We should at least fight for the ones we know are true.
posted by Mental Wimp at 4:31 PM on February 1, 2018 [11 favorites]


I just heard this quote from Mueller on Fresh Air and I had to rewind and slow down the podcast so I could transcribe it:

It is not enough to stop the terrorist, we must stop him while maintaining his civil liberties. It is not enough to catch the criminal, we must catch him while respecting his civil rights. It is not enough to prevent foreign governments from stealing our secrets, we must prevent that from happening while still upholding the rule of law. The rule of law, civil liberties, and civil rights, these are not our burdens, they are what make us better.
posted by antinomia at 4:37 PM on February 1, 2018 [197 favorites]


More from the NYT about those Russian spy chiefs, "C.I.A. Director Defends Meeting With Russian Spy Chiefs":
The joint visit represented an exceptionally high-level Russian intelligence presence in Washington, and even before Mr. Schumer’s comments this week, some Democrats were suggesting privately that there was a connection between the visit and the Trump administration’s decision on sanctions.

Mr. Pompeo did not directly address the issue in his letter. But he did insist that neither he nor any other American officials went easy on the Russian spy chiefs in their meetings.

[...]

Mr. Schumer responded to the letter by pointing out that it did not address his concerns about whether sanctions were discussed with the Russian intelligence officials.
Why are all of these doofuses so goddamn lame? "We didn't go easy on them." First of all, who talks like that? What the heck is that supposed to mean? Second of all, the State Department list and the refusal to enforce sanctions already shows that this administration doesn't take the sanctions seriously. After that, what else is there to "go easy on"?
posted by mhum at 4:48 PM on February 1, 2018 [18 favorites]


Daily Beast, Lachlan/Swin, Sean Hannity Has Been Advising Donald Trump on the Nunes Memo, Because Of Course He Has
President Donald Trump is at odds with his own chief law enforcement officers over a controversial memo fueling Republican allegations of a conspiracy against the Trump presidency. But by all indications, the president is less amenable to the concerns of his own FBI than those shared by a less formal, more bombastic adviser.

That adviser is Sean Hannity, who has been hyping the so-called Nunes memo all week, and with whom the president continues to speak regularly.

According to three sources with knowledge of their conversations, Trump has been in regular contact with Hannity over the phone in recent weeks, as the Fox News primetime star and Trump ally has encouraged the prompt release of a controversial four page memo crafted by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. Hannity has gone to the wall to push for the public release of the memo, which the Intelligence Committee and its chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), authorized this week in a party-line vote despite the classified information therein.
posted by zachlipton at 4:55 PM on February 1, 2018 [30 favorites]


"Trump is merely the worst symptom (so far) of the disease that is the GOP."
This is exactly what I think. I think the republic has the flu. Trump is not the disease; he's the snot. Well, and all the other symptoms--fever and delirium; shakes; terrors; constant, wracking pain; nausea; longing for the sweet release of death. All that stuff, but mostly the snot.
posted by Don Pepino at 4:57 PM on February 1, 2018 [35 favorites]


And you know what they say: if you get the flu, take steps. Don't just carry on as usual as if nothing were different, because that's how people end up dead.
posted by Don Pepino at 5:02 PM on February 1, 2018 [4 favorites]


I think the republic has the flu. Trump is not the disease; he's the snot.

The Republic's immune system is compromised by the GOP and Trump, like an otherwise unremarkable soil bacterium, is the opportunistic infection that kills it.
posted by Rust Moranis at 5:04 PM on February 1, 2018 [8 favorites]


Sean Hannity Has Been Advising Donald Trump on the Nunes Memo, Because Of Course He Has

This of course needs to be paired with this: Julian Assange Offered Hannity Impersonator ‘News’ About Top Democrat. One would hope Mueller is on top of this.
posted by Dr. Send at 5:25 PM on February 1, 2018 [10 favorites]


It is not enough to stop the terrorist, we must stop him while maintaining his civil liberties. It is not enough to catch the criminal, we must catch him while respecting his civil rights. It is not enough to prevent foreign governments from stealing our secrets, we must prevent that from happening while still upholding the rule of law. The rule of law, civil liberties, and civil rights, these are not our burdens, they are what make us better.

I thought Mueller was a Republican? This sounds like Democrat talk.

(I am going to enjoy the mental image of Sean Hannity being interrogated by Mueller. I figure Fox News hosts can't be meaningfully prosecuted for selling out America to the Russians, but god wouldn't it be entertaining.)
posted by Merus at 5:33 PM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


Of course Hannity is advising Trump, he’s in a big position where he can decisively create the narrative around the memo, rile up the base, and continue making sure his RT-esque propaganda makes the coup work out so that he can get a pay raise.

It should be flagrantly illegal for a media personality to have this much association with a sitting president. Fox is directly setting the president’s priorities and advising his decisions. That’s literally authoritarian shit, no more “subtlety”.
posted by gucci mane at 5:37 PM on February 1, 2018 [13 favorites]


The Republic's immune system is compromised by the GOP and Trump, like an otherwise unremarkable soil bacterium, is the opportunistic infection that kills it.

The GOP isn't the disease, either. The disease is colonialism syndrome.

We've never repented. We've never really done more than the bare minimum to fix the shit that the institutions created to further Anglo (and later other "white" immigrant) people did to indigenous, black and latinx people: first by blatant extermination, then by enslavement, then by legal segregation, then by social segregation--

The Republic is the problem. Not that it can't, maybe, be saved. But its problems are bigger than a bunch of white guys sitting around the table at the RNC.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:40 PM on February 1, 2018 [33 favorites]


Not to mention, of course, the injury we've done to the very land.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:41 PM on February 1, 2018 [8 favorites]


Hey vegas, the Republic may be the problem, but it certainly can be saved. For all this shitstorm people out there are being good to each other. Plus we got the nukes and the central banking system so exploding the nation is, while tempting, probably unwise.
posted by vrakatar at 5:53 PM on February 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


You cannot counter a government request or charge with "a good faith estimate" of what you think you owe.

The thing is, especially with property taxes, fat cats do this all the time. (For property taxes, you won't see a lien for a year or more, and foreclosure is 3, 5, or ten years down the road depending on state.) It isn't worth it for regular folks who might owe a couple thou on their ranch, but it's abso-fckin-lutely worth it if you owe tens or hundreds of thousands to spend a tiny fraction of that on a lawyer who will send in a pro forma appeal, which in many jurisdictions you can expect to be granted almost automatically. This is a combination of pro-business sentiment and sometimes disguised practicality (limiting fees for legal disputation). This strategy is routinely engaged in by national and regional big box chains, who make the standard argument that their empty box buildings are suitable for no other economic use -- which is on the one hand nonsense and on the other hand pragmatically true as the successor to your property will likely raze it and build anew. I'm sure there's been a post about this, but in the retail sector it's called the "dark store" strategy, and hurts municipalities who depend on those taxes to build and maintain the infrastructure that support the big box in the first place (so those costs get pushed onto other taxpayers -- just another way of privatizing the gains and socializing the costs). Wisconsin is one state looking at countering it. But yes, the answer is, for people like Trump, that is now exactly how it works.
posted by dhartung at 5:54 PM on February 1, 2018 [36 favorites]


emptywheel zeros in on something important: Trump Has Told Friends and Aides that Paul Manafort Can Incriminate Him . In the NBC News story about Trump wanting Mueller prosecuted, there's another important bit:
He’s decided that a key witness in the Russia probe, Paul Manafort, isn’t going to “flip” and sell him out, friends and aides say.
Which...to decide that is to imply that Manafort could flip, that there exists information Manafort knows that incriminates Trump. And Trump is stupid enough to run around telling people this. People who aren't guilty aren't worried that someone may flip on them, because there's nothing to tell.

Politico, Trump’s talk of GOP ‘unity’ a myth, featuring perhaps Charlie Dent's best ever:
President Donald Trump said Thursday that Speaker Paul Ryan called him the other day and said he’d “never ever seen the Republican Party so united.” Yet on Trump’s key priorities, congressional Republicans are painfully split.

After spending barely 24 hours together at a ritzy resort here in the West Virginia mountains, Senate Republicans bade farewell to their House counterparts on Thursday afternoon with no clear path forward on immigration, infrastructure or how to raise the debt ceiling. House Republicans spent part of the getaway regurgitating long-running gripes with the Senate filibuster.

Trump tried to talk past those differences with a speech promoting Republican solidarity. “There is a great coming-together that I don’t think either party has ever seen for many, many years,” he declared.

But any sense of harmony evaporated in short order, when Trump left without taking any questions from lawmakers that might have provided clarity on the most pressing issues they’re facing. Such Q&A sessions have been standard practice for past presidents appearing at party retreats.
...
Retiring Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) likened the party’s efforts to avoid discussing difficult issues to “a dysfunctional family. Dad’s drunk again but we don’t talk about it.”

“DACA, debt ceiling, budget, agreement, omnibus? There aren’t 218 votes on those. Are we united on issues? No. We never are. It’s not going to change now,” Dent said.
Brian Beutler, #ReleaseTheMemo and the GOP War on Empirical Reality, in which the premise behind the Nunes memo is that there is no reality to be found, just differing worldviews based on partisianship:
But there is a third category of concern that should infuriate everyone from journalists to news consumers to citizens who care about whether their elected leaders deploy information in good faith or bad in the course of exercising political power. The George W. Bush presidency eventually ran aground because its efforts to persuade the public to support the Iraq were rooted in deception. In the Trump era, the cynicism runs even deeper, and the #ReleaseTheMemo effort embodies that cynicism in all respects. It is part of a larger effort to relegate what should be shared truth into the realm of partisan politics so that political accountability becomes impossible.
...
The idea is that the empirical truth of how the Trump campaign came to be under investigation can essentially be rendered indiscernible through disinformation.

As Greg Sargent of the Washington Post wrote recently, “Trump is not trying to persuade anyone of anything as much as he is trying to render reality irrelevant, and reduce the pursuit of agreement on it to just another part of the circus. He’s asserting a species of power—the power to evade constraints normally imposed by empirically verifiable facts, by expectations of consistency, and even by what reasoned inquiry deems merely credible.” The Nunes stunt is part of this same effort.
Sabato has a detailed guide to The Districts That Will Determine the Next House Majority, detailing the seats Democrats would have to win to take the House.

If something has gone terribly wrong in your life such that reading 6,000 words worth of lies from Anthony Scaramucci as part of his rehabilitation tour is something you want to do, there's “F---ing Sith Lord,” “Horrific Leakers,” and “Berserkazoid Craziness”: The Mooch Recalls His Brief Shining Fortnight at the Center of American Politics. It's an extremely self-serving narrative, mostly devoted to attacking Bannon and Priebus, in which he believes his call with Ryan Lizza was off-the-record even though he never said as such because "I feel that I have a personal rapport with a human being, and inside the spirit of human relations, journalists and their sources know what’s on and off the record." The idiot who said those words was somehow briefly the nation's highest profile communications professional.

----

And with that, I'm headed off the grid-ish for a week or two. I am already dreading the point where I resurface and everyone is outraged that the President, I don't know, fired somebody I've never heard of and everyone will have written thinkpieces about how this violates all sorts of norms but nothing matters because it turns out we built the whole system on the inherent goodness of people rather than laws. Try to still have a country when I get back; we're all counting on you.
posted by zachlipton at 6:00 PM on February 1, 2018 [93 favorites]


"Certainly can" is a bit of an oxymoron. I mean, I agree. It *can* be saved.

But that might not happen, too. Empires (even ostensibly republican ones) rise and fall.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:10 PM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


AZCentral: Arizona House votes to expel a member for harassing women for years - Don Shooter, R-Yuma.
posted by adamg at 6:21 PM on February 1, 2018 [37 favorites]


> And with that, I'm headed off the grid-ish for a week or two.

Zach, I hope you have a good break but the rest of us in the thread will miss you and your reliable updates. Don't forget about the Trump time dilation effect - when you come back in two weeks, look for the people who look twenty years more haggard.
posted by RedOrGreen at 6:26 PM on February 1, 2018 [42 favorites]


Russell Neiss, creator of the @realPressSec bot, has a new one: @aScaramucciAgo, which tweets the news from ~10 days ago.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:31 PM on February 1, 2018 [18 favorites]


Trump to approve release of GOP memo Friday over objections from law enforcement, intelligence community (WaPo)
President Trump is expected to approve the release of a controversial congressional memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI, and House Republicans are likely to make it public on Friday, according to senior administration officials.

The memo, which has created a political firestorm, suggests that the origins of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election were tainted by political bias. It alleges that the FBI, when obtaining a surveillance warrant, relied in some part on a dossier of allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump that was underwritten by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Trump has read the GOP memo, the administration officials said, and once he formally approves its release, the White House will transmit it back to the House Intelligence Committee, which has the authority to make it public.

Law enforcement and intelligence officials have expressed “grave concerns” about the memo’s release, saying it contains classified information and inaccuracies. Early Thursday, a senior White House official said the administration was likely to make redactions in response to those concerns.

Hours later, however, the White House appeared to change course, saying the memo was likely to be released without redactions.

... The president has expressed a desire to get rid of Rosenstein, which would allow him to appoint a new official to oversee Mueller, according to people familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The president has also told advisers that he thinks the memo is “gaining traction” and could help him convince the public that the Mueller probe is a witch hunt, the people familiar with the matter said.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:50 PM on February 1, 2018 [7 favorites]


If he does can Rosenstein does Rachel Brand take over oversight or does Trump get to pick somebody? If it's Rachel Brand I think that will be hilarious. Maybe he can find a way to fire her too.
posted by Justinian at 6:51 PM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


I went looking to answer my own question and this article from NYT is persuasive. It reads to me like whoever becomes thew new acting AG takes over the investigation but that isn't automatically Brand. The reason she may be likely is that she has already gone through Senate confirmation and so could be appointed directly. More toadyish choices would have to make it through Senate confirmation and the Republicans only have a 50-49 advantage now (since McCain is, not to put too fine a point on it, likely on or near his deathbed).

I suppose Trump could do something drastic like put someone from outside DOJ but who has gone through Senate confirmation to be deputy AG. That would be... crazy. Scott Pruitt for deputy AG? Rick Perry for deputy AG?

Rachel Brand served under Bush but she sounds like another Rosenstein. Imperfect, Republican, and in her case completely inexperienced in criminal justice... but frankly far better than a Trump political appointee. Which says a lot about where we're at.
posted by Justinian at 6:59 PM on February 1, 2018 [5 favorites]


Trump can appoint a new DAG pretty much at will if he fires Rosenstein, but that person would be subject to Senate confirmation. In the meantime someone else Senate confirmed would have to be Acting DAG, presumably Brand, but Trump can also appoint a different DOJ official as acting instead if he found one willing to fire or hamstring Mueller. He's already changed the order of succession, there's nothing really stopping him from promoting someone else over Brand. The interesting thing would be if Rosenstein recused, I'm not sure Trump can really dictate who would take over supervision of the Special Council in that case, that should ordinarily be Sessions' decision...who is also recused allegedly so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ In that case it might be Brand appointing herself to take over.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:01 PM on February 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


Kelly and McMaster are not attorneys.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:51 PM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


is mulvaney an attorney/senate confirmed? he's a great evil pick.
posted by localhuman at 7:54 PM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


Mulvaney is indeed an evil Senate-confirmed attorney at law.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:58 PM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


From the Vanity Fair Scaramucci piece: “Rancid Penis”—the Mooch’s name for Reince Priebus, then Trump’s chief of staff—"you know, he just cannot believe this. He’s just very jealous, can’t believe I’m this close to Trump..."

The Mooch suspects Priebus got his parents disinvited from the White House. He compares Bannon to the Creature from the Black Lagoon, then likens him to Napoleon from Animal Farm. He calls both men "jamokes;" when they want him out of the sphere of influence, he says they recommended him for a posting to Paris, as the United States ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Also, he seems to believe he influenced Spicer's resignation.

IT WAS TEN DAYS.

The main thing is that he clearly wants back in. Every Trump reference glistens with toady slime, and this is the close: The Mooch’s tumultuous days did not alter his perception of Donald Trump. “My point is this guy’s a winner,” he said, warming to his subject. “He’s been winning his whole life, and he’s not a choke artist. He’ll hit the shot.” Then he was fully taken with his reverie. “The shot’s going in,” he continued. “Michael Jordan, that last shot in the championship, he wanted the ball. That’s Trump.” Somewhere, an orange-hued president is nodding enthusiastically.

Also, he reconciled with Mrs. Mooch.

Every time this guy surfaces, I think, I hope they get Sebastian Stan for the part, he would knock it out of the park.
posted by Iris Gambol at 7:59 PM on February 1, 2018 [13 favorites]


@ryanjreilly: “You know it’s not true, if someone pees on the bed, where you going to sleep?” - Jesse Watters, talking about the pee tape on Hannity [video]
posted by zachlipton at 8:00 PM on February 1, 2018 [17 favorites]


Obama 2010 - 48 million
Bush 2003 - 62.1 million
Bush 2002 - 51.8 million
Clinton 1998 - 53.1 million
Clinton 1994 - 45.8 million


It actually makes sense that Bush, months after the 9/11 attacks and then, a year later, in the later stages of buildup to the Iraq invasion, would have very high viewership.
posted by thelonius


I have a theory about the "biggest audience ever" thing.

Trump demands that his toadies feed him a steady diet of positive reports about himself every day; this is already established. Trump is also obsessed with the idea of "ratings," more than anything else. And in Trump's mind, nothing other than "best" or "most" or "biggest" counts as positive. So on the morning after the SOTU, the toadies knew they had to include something in his daily briefing citing it having the biggest audience ever. Of course they could just lie, but most people, unlike Trump, feel at least weakly bound to at least verisimilitude. So one of the toadies came up with the clever report: "Mr. President, your ratings were the highest of any president's first State of the Union address!" This offering would have appeased Trump, and he would have happily tottered off to the john to tweet the good news, absent the original qualifier that never really penetrated his mind in the first place.
posted by biogeo at 8:22 PM on February 1, 2018 [7 favorites]


Never any hesitation’: Trump was quickly persuaded to support memo’s release (WaPo)
President Trump was only vaguely aware of a controversial, classified memo about the FBI’s Russia investigation when two House conservatives brought it to his attention in a Jan. 18 phone call.

The conversation piqued Trump’s interest.

Over the next two weeks, according to interviews with eight senior administration officials and other advisers to the president, he tuned in to cable television segments about the memo. He talked to friends and advisers about it. And, before he had even read it, Trump became absolutely convinced of one thing: The memo needed to come out.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 8:23 PM on February 1, 2018 [9 favorites]


Amount of time zachlipton lasted between going "off the grid-ish" and coming back to the US politics megapost: 0.0083 Scaramuccis.

(I keeeed....)
posted by tonycpsu at 8:25 PM on February 1, 2018 [25 favorites]


I figured you all knew there was an implicit pee tape exception in there.
posted by zachlipton at 8:38 PM on February 1, 2018 [41 favorites]


So while contemplating the White House meeting with the heads of the Russian SVR, GRU, and FSB intelligence services... I was thinking: by my understanding, Russian intelligence services (and American, Chinese, various European, and every other intelligence agency) sometimes obtain diplomatic credentials for their agents while active in foreign countries so that those agents are protected by diplomatic immunity, like this CIA thing in Pakistan.

Furthermore, as I understand it diplomatic immunity, if respected in the manner of international convention, would grant even greater protection from prosecution than would the Presidential pardon power. (Excepting Danny Glover shooting you in the forehead through your passport, of course. )

I'm thinking, could the Republican-Russian Axis, with the combination of the ability to grant Russian diplomatic credentials and control over any U.S. authorities who might theoretically have the jurisdiction to prosecute a foreign diplomat in extraordinary circumstances where that would be appropriate, leverage that combination in some unusual way? Either to give someone time and opportunity to flee, or for example to grant someone who would never be expected to have Russian diplomatic credentials (say a White House official) those credentials immediately before they do something which should otherwise get them in serious unavoidable trouble, then shrug and pretend nothing can be done because of diplomatic immunity?
posted by XMLicious at 8:55 PM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


NT Alexandra Petri, WaPo: Why do I feel as if some things may have been omitted from this memo?
To: The American People
From: The Most Unbiased of Arbiters, Devin Nunes’s Staff
Date: 2/2/2018
Subject: The Vast Conspiracy Beneath Your Feet

Here are some documents that came to us from the FBI that we feel the American people deserve to see in their true and unedited form. It just shows you what is going on right under our very noses in this secretive and evil organization. We have not edited them selectively, as you will be able to tell.


[humorously redacted text that I'm too lazy to recreate here; go read it]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:12 PM on February 1, 2018 [12 favorites]


Diplomatic immunity is granted by the host country and can potentially be withdrawn. If Trump granted himself diplomatic immunity and skedaddled I presume the new President would withdraw its recognition of the country concerned. Also, I don't think the world community would criticise a US response even if it were technically a breach of convention. International law is basically mutual consensus, not blackletter rules to be gamed without repercussions.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:52 PM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


Well yes, but in the scenario I was envisioning it would be someone else rather than Trump needing the protection, like Flynn and Manafort expecting to get away with not disclosing that they were paid agents of other governments, and Trump-plus-Trump-host-organisms are the ones who would be in control of the U.S. response; hence the shrugging in feigned helplessness.

(I realize that those two—hopefully, as far as information currently available in the public domain shows—weren't agents in the sense of a directly-employed trained intelligence agent as Raymond Allen Davis appears to have been, but I'm imagining the same basic pattern of a miscreant being shielded from consequences.)
posted by XMLicious at 10:08 PM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


Trump to approve release of GOP memo Friday over objections from law enforcement, intelligence community
President Trump is expected to approve the release of a controversial congressional memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI, and House Republicans are likely to make it public on Friday, according to senior administration officials.
...
Trump has read the GOP memo, the administration officials said, and once he formally approves its release, the White House will transmit it back to the House Intelligence Committee, which has the authority to make it public.
Why does the president get to approve the release of a memo by Congress? Something something separation of powers?
posted by kirkaracha at 10:57 PM on February 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


The fact that it hasn't been released yet, despite approval from the top, shows that they're just dragging the whole thing out because the anticipation is much more useful for sowing doubt than the reveal will be.
posted by Coventry at 11:05 PM on February 1, 2018 [18 favorites]


Why does the president get to approve the release of a memo by Congress? Something something separation of powers?

The House Intelligence Committee is relying on a 40-year old, never used provision that was presumably passed during the post-Nixon reforms, after lots of scandals about the CIA and FBI being involved in assassinations, LSD experiments and other bad behavior.

The provision says that the H. I. C. can vote to release it, but the President has 5 days to block the release. If he does nothing, it becomes public.
posted by msalt at 11:33 PM on February 1, 2018


Why does the president get to approve the release of a memo by Congress? Something something separation of powers?

The intelligence the memo relies on falls under Executive Order 13526, signed by Obama in 2009 to streamline the declassification process, which includes the concept of Original Classification Authority; that the people responsible for creating the classified information must justify its classification. Over time milestones occur & trigger a reevaluation of its category by an appropriate originating authority.

The new default is to declassify unless an OA can defend a valid reason (from a list) for keeping it classified until the next milestone. As president, Trump is the ultimate OA & can override anyone else. In general EO 13526 is a very good thing, the government is awash in crap that has no business being kept secret & this strikes a decent balance that drains the pointlessly secret archives while still protecting info that needs to stay secret, mainly by just asking "why is this secret in the first place & why does it need to stay secret?" In this case though, it relies on the good faith of Trump which is a thing that doesn't exist.
posted by scalefree at 12:19 AM on February 2, 2018 [9 favorites]


So basically Nunes has to ask an appropriate OA if it's safe to reveal the secrets in the memo. Pretty much the entire IC seems to be rising up as one to shout "no!" but Trump has veto over them so "yes" it is.
posted by scalefree at 12:32 AM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


Well today should be interesting.

@realDonaldTrump
The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans - something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!

@realDonaldTrump
“You had Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party try to hide the fact that they gave money to GPS Fusion to create a Dossier which was used by their allies in the Obama Administration to convince a Court misleadingly, by all accounts, to spy on the Trump Team.” Tom Fitton, JW

---

And of course...

1) Sessions, Rosenstein and Wray are Republicans appointed by Trump. And Mueller and McCabe are Republicans.

2) The dossier was started by a Republican outlet. And wasn't the genesis of the Carter Page FISA warrant anyway.

3) The FBI actually interfered publicly against protocol in the election twice, against Hillary - not counting numerous leaks - on something they cleared her on. And refused to acknowledge and in fact denied an ongoing investigation into Trump & Co.

But sure, the FBI was all in on Clinton. They just forgot to use any of the info they had to help her and accidentally released damaging info to hurt her. Twice. And Republicans appointed by Trump are covering up this supposed malfeasance.
posted by chris24 at 4:25 AM on February 2, 2018 [84 favorites]


Oh, forgot one...

4) The official reason for Trump firing Comey was that he'd been unfair to... Clinton.
posted by chris24 at 4:46 AM on February 2, 2018 [47 favorites]


I still don't get this whole memo stuff. FISA on Page was in early 2016 wasn't it? When none of the current leadership of the FBI or DOJ was in place? How does Trump possibly think this helps him? Even if it were to conclusively prove that the FBI was overreaching, A) Trump has already "solved" the problem by firing Comey and McCabe, and B) Mueller has already indicted 4 people and uncovered enough to lend strong credence to the dossier...it's sort of hard to take that back, even if the FBI had started the investigation from false pretenses.
posted by Room 101 at 4:46 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


Woke up to Trump's tweets and Maggie Haberman re-tweeting a gif of Phil Connors "rise and shine-ing Campers" and I laughed about the funny political joke and this endless loop we're in...

Never occurred to me that it was actually Groundhog's Day.

Happy Groundhog's Day everyone. See you again tomorrow.
posted by pjenks at 4:51 AM on February 2, 2018 [30 favorites]


Rosenstein renewed the FISA warrant on Page in early 2017, he's the real target of the memo. And the theory seems to be that Steele was at one point paid in part by Democrats, therefore everything he wrote and everything that came afterwards is irrevocably tainted and biased, no matter that much of the dossier has later been confirmed, and no matter that the dossier wasn't the basis of the Russia investigation anyway. It's weaksauce even as far as Republican conspiracies go, but that apparently won't stop them from attacking the FBI and DOJ.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:56 AM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


WaPo Editorial Board goes after Paul Ryan: A process that tarnishes the House


And Joe Walsh (the asshole tea partier who doesn't pay child support) goes hard after Nunes in WaPo: Devin Nunes is acting like a partisan hack. That’s just how I remember him.
posted by chris24 at 5:04 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


I am just having trouble processing the seeming fact that this memo is going to be released, in spite of its ludicrousness, in spite of the objections of law enforcement minus ICE, and in spite of all that is good and decent.

I think what terrifies me especially is that we see this happening because of one man and his enablers, and this one man and his enablers are also hungering to attack North Korea.

I haven't been this anxious since the week after the election.
posted by angrycat at 5:13 AM on February 2, 2018 [15 favorites]


“You had Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party try to hide the fact that they gave money to GPS Fusion to create a Dossier which was used by their allies in the Obama Administration to convince a Court misleadingly, by all accounts, to spy on the Trump Team.” Tom Fitton, JW

I've read this like ten times and it makes less sense each time.
posted by octothorpe at 5:18 AM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


I heard someone on the radio say that Trump is talking so much about how politicized the FBI is so that people will have that in their minds (though the pundit claimed the FBI works extremely hard to be nonpartisan) and accept it as fact. Then he’ll be free to truly make it a political hit squad, because “that’s what it’s always been.”
posted by rikschell at 5:19 AM on February 2, 2018 [22 favorites]


"I am just having trouble processing the seeming fact that this memo is going to be released, in spite of its ludicrousness, in spite of the objections of law enforcement minus ICE, and in spite of all that is good and decent."

I always had trouble processing the Donation of Constantine - but not so much anymore.
posted by klarck at 5:20 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


I heard someone on the radio say that Trump is talking so much about how politicized the FBI is so that people will have that in their minds (though the pundit claimed the FBI works extremely hard to be nonpartisan) and accept it as fact. Then he’ll be free to truly make it a political hit squad, because “that’s what it’s always been.”

This, so much this. Their whole thinking works that way, they've all believed the conspiracy theories, and now they think they are just doing what "everyone" does.
posted by mumimor at 5:27 AM on February 2, 2018 [27 favorites]


The conservative Mirror Universe Media Machine has had one consistent message statement for forty years: The Mainstream Media are all corrupt liars. If we say X and the mainstream says Y, take it on faith that X is true. No matter how outlandish what we say may be, we are truthful and tell it how it actually is and THEY are nothing but liberal spin.

Which is a neat 180 on reality, for the most part. But Projection has always been up there as a primary conservative virtue. If the news outlets say that our lies are lies and our spin is spin, call their reporting lies and spin. Turn fact-based reporting into simple He-Said-She-Said who-do-you-trust two-tribes games.

And in no uncertain terms, it has worked.

The bit earlier in the thread about Sean Hannity unofficially advising Trump on the Nunes memo is, well... there are two possibilities and I'm not sure which is more chilling. That either Hannity is knowingly feeding Trump partisan spin and ridiculousness about how the Democrats are trying to steer the direction of the nation based on false information, in doing so trying to steer the direction of the nation based on false information while painting that as a treasonous offense by Hillary/Strzok/Comey/Rosenstein/Mueller/etc., which is in and of itself hypocritical behavior on Biblical levels... or that Hannity actually believes the shit he's selling, he is completely high on his own supply, and is basically Alex Jones But For Real.

Not entirely sure here which is worse.
posted by delfin at 5:46 AM on February 2, 2018 [22 favorites]


Trump is bragging behind closed doors how he aced that dementia test.
posted by PenDevil at 6:08 AM on February 2, 2018 [16 favorites]


If anyone else is curious, Buzzfeed has an approximation of the MoCA test that one can take to test their own ability on that type of question.
posted by mosst at 6:17 AM on February 2, 2018 [10 favorites]


Something to keep in mind: the Whitewater investigation, which genuinely was a hyper partisan witch hunt run by a virulently anti-Clinton Ken Starr, started because of allegations that a $300,000 loan to a Clinton business partner was made improperly. After years of investigation the extremely anti-Clinton investigators finally had to admit that there was no crime.

$300,000. From a loan.

Dr. Ben Carson, who may be a fine neurosurgeon but has no business running HUD, was found to have stolen $500,000 from HUD by giving it as a no bid contract to his son. It's a textbook example of graft, corruption, and neopotism.

Note that Secretary Carson outright stole $200,000 more than the Clintons were falsely accused of getting improperly as a loan.

Of course we don't notice, every week Trump steals multiple millions from the Treasury by taking his weekend vacation down to Mar-A-Lago and billing the government for it. How can the mere theft of a measly half million from HUD even register when compared to the ongoing, weekly, looting of the Treasury by the President?

Seriously, if we ever manage to get control of the government again we need some **SERIOUSLY** draconian laws put into place. The truth is, the fact that back in the late 1980's Governor Clinton could be involved in business is a problem even if he didn't actually break the law. We need a wall of separation between business and government.

We need to have a law that requires every single elected official (and high ranking appointed official) in the USA divest themselves entirely of all business interests they have, put every cent they have in a genuinely blind trust (ideally a common trust administered by neutral parties (foreign parties maybe?) not selected by the politician themselves). Not just the actual elected official, but also their spouse, if your partner goes into politics you have to get out of business. Period. And a law mandating that any business employing any member of the immediate family of any elected official is barred from getting any government contracts on penalty of that company being dissolved and all of its assets seized by the government.

No more of this businessman/politician shit. No more of this owning a business where, trust us we're totally not taking advantage of our government position to enrich ourselves, shit.

Room 101 I still don't get this whole memo stuff. FISA on Page was in early 2016 wasn't it? When none of the current leadership of the FBI or DOJ was in place? How does Trump possibly think this helps him?

One thing I fear is that he's trying to set the stage for arresting and imprisoning both Obama and Clinton. The Trump Cultists would love that, Trump personally is a vindictive and vengeful man who has a deep and abiding hatred for both Obama and Clinton. He wants, desperately, to put his predecessor and opponent in prison.

I think others in the Trump administration may also see it as a way to prime the public for turning the FBI into (more of) a hyper partisan Republican outfit by convincing people that it's always been partisan for whatever party holds the Presidency, but I don't think Trump can think that far ahead.

He knows the FBI is "against him", in that it's investigating him and not kowtowing to him, so he wants to hurt the FBI, and he thinks he has a chance at "proving" that Obama and Clinton were criminals and putting them in prison. When he chanted "Lock Her Up!" I am 100% certain he meant it, he really does have imprisoning Clinton as one of his major life goals now.
posted by sotonohito at 6:24 AM on February 2, 2018 [68 favorites]


We need to have a law that requires every single elected official (and high ranking appointed official) in the USA divest themselves entirely of all business interests they have,

No. Not without a robust public safety net, and not before we’re able to redistribute wealth in a stable way. Otherwise this is how you guarantee a moneyed ruling class.

The problem isn’t that we don’t have laws or rules. The problem is that the branch of government which should be enforcing them is choosing not to for political reasons. We do not have a problem of laws; we have a problem of politics. And it can only be solved politically.
posted by schadenfrau at 6:31 AM on February 2, 2018 [31 favorites]


He's going to do enough so that there won't be mass protests in the streets that will shut the country down. Arrests of HRC and Obama would shut the country down.

What I fear is that agencies that could possibly check DJT are being dismantled in a way that people, looking at the jobs numbers, say, won't notice.

I'm in Philly and I should be all blah blah about the super bowl, and hey, go Eagles now Vick isn't on the team, but I'm getting increasingly grumpy about how fucking distracting it is. Go Eagles and I guess Go Democracy but really what we care about is Go Eagles because what is wrong with our nation is so disorienting and pervasive and seemingly unfixable in the short term.
posted by angrycat at 6:33 AM on February 2, 2018 [11 favorites]


All business interests, not all assets. The norm before Trump was presidents placed everything index funds and blind trust. Remember, they made Jimmy Carter sell his peanut farm. But like, actual blind trust, not "My sons Uday and Qusay will run it and definitely not tell me". That should be codified for not only the president, but all members of congress and agency heads. Sure, have a billion dollars, but only in index funds. Not Bob Corker and Ron Johnson owning passthrough real estate empires while voting for special tax breaks for passthroughs or the head of the CDC investing in cigarettes. All norms have to be laws going forward, because norms are insufficient.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:36 AM on February 2, 2018 [51 favorites]


He's going to do enough so that there won't be mass protests in the streets that will shut the country down. Arrests of HRC and Obama would shut the country down.

What I fear is he's not smart enough to know that. He's certainly not smart enough to know that his Emmanuel Goldsteins are more valuable to him "out there, at large" than they are "defeated."
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 6:40 AM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


What some commentary show needs to do is have a group of ten year olds take the exam. Maybe a class of dreamers and then have them end by saying "please don't deport us."
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:42 AM on February 2, 2018 [9 favorites]


schadenfrau considering we pay members of Congress $174,000 a year and the President $400,000 a year, I think even if we just declared they had to put all assets, not just their business interests, in a blind trust they'd be fine. And I'm just talking about business interests here.

And "put into a blind trust" doesn't mean the money vanishes, it just means they can't control how its invested and therefore can't pass laws that benefit them. They can still withdraw a few million for those super important new gold plated yacht purchases.
posted by sotonohito at 6:43 AM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Blind trusts, mandatory release of taxes, minimum requirements for Federal judges, defined penalties for not enacting passed legislation, no vote on nominations within 90 days = confirmation. All of this sort of thing should be spelled out in a Democratic party platform. Forget Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism. Make cleaning up government priority one.
posted by jetsetsc at 6:49 AM on February 2, 2018 [42 favorites]


cjelli: "“You know why, because you use your hips so much,” he said, before adding. “I may have problems, but I’m never going have knee problems or hip problems.”"

So part of his health paranoia arrived at independently in similar vein to his apparent need to sleep in his own bed and the reason he doesn't walk anywhere or a justification for the inability to walk anywhere.
posted by Mitheral at 7:04 AM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


I've always thought of those changes to our political system (mandatory tax return disclosure, blinds trusts for all reps, etc.) as necessary first steps towards Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.

A well functioning government is the boring foundation on which all the cool stuff gets built. We need to fix the foundation and reinforce the hell out of it so that it's as strong and resilient as it can be or FALGSC will fall apart before it gets off the ground.
posted by VTX at 7:16 AM on February 2, 2018 [18 favorites]


Blind trusts, mandatory release of taxes, minimum requirements for Federal judges, defined penalties for not enacting passed legislation, no vote on nominations within 90 days = confirmation.

There are tons of problems with money in Congress right now and endless amounts of soft corruption. But is that really our problem? It seems like the crisis in American governance right now is a consequence of ideology, not money. Specifically, the ideology of white supremacy. Citizens United could be overturned tomorrow and the revanchist backlash against the withering of the white majority wouldn't lose any momentum. America has only ever been able to find peaceful compromise when it agreed that the white man should rule. Whenever we attempt to modify that principle, chaos breaks out. This moment, the Tea Party moment, began with racist backlash to Obama, and Trump was the chief birther. I dunno. We should solve money in politics but our problem is much bigger and more essential to the American soul than even money. How do we kill whitey?
posted by dis_integration at 7:25 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


How do we kill whitey?

paging garrett morris to this thread
posted by entropicamericana at 7:32 AM on February 2, 2018 [9 favorites]


I don't think you can separate white supremacy from economics, as much of it is about perceived status, and providing pseudo-scientific racist cover for the theft of property inherent to eliminationism.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:32 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


dis_integration I don't disagree, but I don't know how to fix the problem that around 60% or so of white men seem wedded to the idea of America being a white, Christian, ethnostate.

One of my axioms is that when presented with problems you can't solve, fix what you can and then re-examine the situation to see if the insolvable problem has become solvable.

Fixing the problem with whitey is not something I can see a way to do.

Fixing the problem of corruption at the level of the House, Senate, Supreme Court, and Presidency is difficult, but has a fairly clear solution.

So let's do that and then see if that helps fix whitey, or gives us a new perspective on the problem of whitey.

Also, while I do hate to sound like one of those brocialists, I can't help but suspect that fixing the corruption problem might at least take off some of the pressure that causes my more racist fellow white dudes to push for America as a white, Christian, ethnostate.
posted by sotonohito at 7:34 AM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


The problem with whitey is being fixed permanently even as we wait. Thus the tantrums over the last 10 years. I actually have no worries in the long run, it's the damage from the thrashing, stamping tantrums over the next few years that have me hoping people get through alive, or not imprisoned.
Brookings on the diversity demographics happening now and into the future.
posted by rc3spencer at 7:51 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


Because the whole U.S. isn't a shithole: With Marijuana Legal In California, San Francisco Is Dismissing Thousands Of Convictions -- San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón announced Wednesday that his office will dismiss thousands of marijuana-related convictions dating back to 1975. This is in response to California legalizing recreational marijuana this year. (NPR, Feb. 1, 2018)
Under Prop 64, residents could petition their convictions, but only 23 people did so in the city last year. Gascón tells me that's because it was complicated.

Gascón: The problem is that if you go through that process, you have to hire an attorney. You have to petition the court. You have to come for a hearing. It's a very expensive and very cumbersome process. And the reality is that the majority of the people that were punished and were the ones that suffered in this war on marijuana, war on drugs nationally were people that can ill afford to pay an attorney. They're poor people. They're people that do not have the ability to go to court without missing work.

So what we're doing is we're wiping out all the misdemeanor convictions. And on the felony convictions, we have to review them before we can downgrade them because we have to determine whether they qualify or not. And we're going to do the work ourself. The public will not have to do anything.

SHAPIRO: In real-world terms, if somebody was convicted of marijuana possession or use 20 years ago, what kind of an impact would that have had on a person's life?

GASCON: If you have a felony conviction on your record, let's begin by saying you cannot vote. There are many places where you will not be able to rent or buy a home. There are employers that will not hire you. You cannot get certain types of student loans, cannot get certain public assistance. So there's a whole bunch of things that preclude you from participating to the fullest in the social society by having that conviction. And what we're saying is, the public in California has determined that this should not be a crime. Then let's go back and repair some of the harm.
...
we're hoping to get all this done within a year.
The District Attorney’s office said it will review, recall and re-sentence as many as 4,940 felony marijuana convictions, in addition to dismissing 3,038 misdemeanors.

I haven't seen any mention of how much this could cost San Francisco to review all these cases, or how much the city would save in future detention and court expenses, but the industry is stupid lucrative in California -- analysis estimated that as of November [2017], aggregate annual sales in medical marijuana were $2 billion a year (about 25% of total marijuana sales) and sales in the illegal market were $5.7 billion (75%). Legal marijuana could be a $5-billion boon to California's economy. That's an approximately 10% increase to the entire agriculture sector for the state, which was $50 billion or so in products that farmers sell on an annual basis, as of a KECT article in 2015.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:53 AM on February 2, 2018 [64 favorites]


no vote on nominations within 90 days = confirmation

Doesn't Trump have a backlog of nominated but not confirmed positions that have been sitting there for a while? And that's with a Senate on board with his agenda. Which makes it seem like an easy system for a bad actor to flood and get a whole bunch of free confirmations. So you'd need hard rules, not just norms, governing how many positions can be submitted for confirmation and ticking down from 90 days at one time. Or the countdown could apply only to cabinet level and Supreme Court nominations? But the refusal of the Republicans to seat lower court judges hurt too and still needs a remedy.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:53 AM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


Also mandating divestment to blind trust would cut down on our current government-by-billionaire problem. Would Wilbur Ross and Rex Tillerson really want to completely divest just to take a relatively powerless cabinet seat, if such divestment was required? Would Trump have even run if we had ironclad laws requiring proof of complete divestment to even get on the ballot? Somehow I doubt it. Of course that wouldn't stop the Kochs from buying our elections, but it might deter the billionaires themselves from ruling us directly. It'd be part of a government reform agenda, but not itself enough to save us.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:55 AM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


Brookings on the diversity demographics happening now and into the future.

Demographic trends only continue if there's a surviving demos. See also:

NYT: White House Wants Pentagon to Offer More Options on North Korea

The White House has grown frustrated in recent weeks by what it considers the Pentagon’s reluctance to provide President Trump with options for a military strike against North Korea, according to officials [...] [T]he Pentagon, they say, is worried that the White House is moving too hastily toward military action on the Korean Peninsula that could escalate catastrophically. Giving the president too many options, the officials said, could increase the odds that he will act.

posted by Rust Moranis at 7:58 AM on February 2, 2018 [10 favorites]


Catching up from last night, am I understanding people correctly that Senate confirmed positions don't require confirmation for the actual position, but just a more general "sure, this person is confirmed for any position that require such confirmation"? I always assumed confirming an appointment was about this person in this role. The Wikipedia explanation doesn't really seem to address it explicitly either way, unless I'm looking in the wrong spot.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 8:02 AM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


Doesn't Trump have a backlog of nominated but not confirmed positions that have been sitting there for a while?

Of 635 key positions requiring Senate confirmation …

No nominee: 239
Awaiting nomination: 5
Formally nominated: 145
Confirmed: 246
posted by kirkaracha at 8:07 AM on February 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


We need to have a law that requires every single elected official (and high ranking appointed official) in the USA divest themselves entirely of all business interests they have, put every cent they have in a genuinely blind trust (ideally a common trust administered by neutral parties

I would suggest the trustee be the US Treasury, and we could issue bonds against them.
posted by mikelieman at 8:12 AM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


NYT: White House Wants Pentagon to Offer More Options on North Korea

James Fallows has annotated Trump's SotU address, and his take on it is interesting, but there was one amazing bit of snark on Trump's line about a "magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons" the annotation reads: Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan referred to these magical moments as “arms control negotiations.”
posted by peeedro at 8:12 AM on February 2, 2018 [38 favorites]


Senate confirmation is for a specific position, but if an office becomes vacant, because the last appointee resigns, is dismissed, or becomes incapacitated/dies, the president can appoint a temporary replacement who is either: (a) a sufficiently senior civil-service employee; (b) Senate-confirmed in another position; or (c) the primary assistant/deputy to the former office-holder.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:12 AM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


Politico: Russia Probe Lawyers Think Mueller Could Indict Trump
While many legal experts contend that Mueller lacks the standing to bring criminal charges against Trump, at least two attorneys working with clients swept up in the Russia probe told POLITICO they consider it possible that Mueller could indict the president for obstruction of justice.

Neither attorney claimed to have specific knowledge of Mueller’s plans. Both based their opinions on their understanding of the law; one also cited his interactions with the special counsel’s team, whose interviews have recently examined whether Trump tried to derail the probe into his campaign’s Russia ties.

“If I were a betting man, I’d bet against the president,” said one of the lawyers.

The second attorney, who represents a senior Trump official, speculated that Mueller could try to bring an indictment against Trump even if he expects the move to draw fierce procedural challenges from the president’s lawyers – if only to demonstrate the gravity of his findings.

“It’s entirely possible that Mueller may go that route on the theory that, as an open question, it should be for the courts to decide,” the attorney said. “Even if the indictment is dismissed, it puts maximum pressure on Congress to treat this with the independence and intellectual honesty that it will never, ever get."

The lawyers’ assessments hardly resolve the public debate about whether a federal prosecutor can indict a sitting president — one that several attorneys involved in the Russia probe said they are closely tracking through online op-eds and Twitter dustups. (“It’s so much fun!” said one.)
In addition, "The lawyer who said he would 'bet' against Trump said he thinks Mueller could wrap up his case soon, potentially with an indictment, to avoid acting too close to this fall’s midterm elections. 'If he’s going to do it, I think he’ll do it in the spring,' the attorney said. 'I don’t think he wants to be accused of trying to influence the election that dramatically.'"
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:14 AM on February 2, 2018 [14 favorites]


the annotation reads: Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan referred to these magical moments as “arms control negotiations.”

The US successfully concluded one such agreement only recently -- with Iran. Though nearly everyone else regards the treaty as successful in curbing Iran's nuclear program, Trump calls it a terrible deal.
posted by Gelatin at 8:14 AM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


I would suggest the trustee be the US Treasury

... and in the event of a government default, Congress's assets are the first to be offered up to debtors. We can see how willing they are to play chicken with the world economy when their net worth is on the line.
posted by 0xFCAF at 8:15 AM on February 2, 2018 [24 favorites]


Got it. Using a previous confirmed person to simply fill a vacancy makes sense, rather than being able to play musical chairs with your cabinet positions whenever there's a slow day in the Oval. Thanks Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish and cjelli .
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 8:26 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


CNN's Shimon Prokupecz on twitter reporting "Sen. Orrin Hatch says he has confidence in Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein but said Trump may have to get rid of him if he becomes too controversial and cant oversee the investigation."
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 8:33 AM on February 2, 2018


> "Sen. Orrin Hatch says he has confidence in Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein but said Trump may have to get rid of him if he becomes too controversial and cant oversee the investigation."

"Controversial" like releasing classified information against the advice of the FBI, DoJ, DNI, among others? That Rosenstein, he's just so controversial! Why is he stirring up all this controversy?!
posted by BungaDunga at 8:39 AM on February 2, 2018 [41 favorites]


Also on the vacancies, all these people are serving only in an acting capacity, and under the Vacancies Reform Act, are only permitted to serve for 210 days. So it's not totally that Mick Mulvaney could be the only person confirmed and then appointed to every position in the government for 4 years.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:45 AM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Time: Donald Trump is Playing a Dangerous Game of Nuclear Poker
Since 1993, the Department of Energy has had to be ready to conduct a nuclear test within two to three years if ordered by the President. Late last year, the Trump Administration ordered the department to be ready, for the first time, to conduct a short-notice nuclear test in as little as six months.

That is not enough time to install the warhead in shafts as deep as 4,000 ft. and affix all the proper technical instrumentation and diagnostics equipment. But the purpose of such a detonation, which the Administration labels “a simple test, with waivers and simplified processes,” would not be to ensure that the nation’s most powerful weapons were in operational order, or to check whether a new type of warhead worked, a TIME review of nuclear-policy documents has found. Rather, a National Nuclear Security Administration official tells TIME, such a test would be “conducted for political purposes.”
I guess the "waivers and simplified processes" means scrapping the Test Ban Treaty
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:45 AM on February 2, 2018 [20 favorites]


"Sen. Orrin Hatch says he has confidence in Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein but said Trump may have to get rid of him if he becomes too controversial and cant oversee the investigation."

"I have confidence in the priest, but since Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro keep calling him meddlesome the King may have to wonder if no one will rid His Highness of him."
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:49 AM on February 2, 2018 [50 favorites]


BREAKING: Pres. Trump has declassified the GOP memo and approved of its release by the House Intelligence Committee without redactions, White House official tells @ABC.
posted by Sophie1 at 9:00 AM on February 2, 2018


@realDonaldTrump
The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans - something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!

@realDonaldTrump
“You had Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party try to hide the fact that they gave money to GPS Fusion to create a Dossier which was used by their allies in the Obama Administration to convince a Court misleadingly, by all accounts, to spy on the Trump Team.” Tom Fitton, JW


Classic Trump, once again unable to stop himself from dismantling his own false cover story with this crazytalk right after Ryan and the Rep stooges spent all day yesterday yammering about how the memo and the release of it have NOTHING TO DO WITH the Russia-Trump investigation and are 100% about preventing abuse of the FISA warrant system.

You have to admire how it knits together all the wackadoodle strings of his previous lies (Obama "taping" him, FBI in bed with Hillary, Steele dossier a Dem plot against him, etc.), though.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:01 AM on February 2, 2018 [14 favorites]


two attorneys working with clients swept up in the Russia probe told POLITICO they consider it possible that Mueller could indict the president for obstruction of justice.

So two lawyers with clients who are about to be potentially in big legal trouble are trying to scare Trump into getting rid of Mueller? Not saying Trump can or cannot be indicted, but these two are probably not the most unbiased opinions.
posted by chris24 at 9:07 AM on February 2, 2018 [13 favorites]


Marcy Wheeler connects the dots on the Russian spy front. There's a lot to unpack, just a summary or snippet won't do. Under Cover of the Nunes Memo, Russian Spooks Sneak Openly into Meetings with Trump's Administration.
posted by scalefree at 9:13 AM on February 2, 2018 [30 favorites]


BBC Liveblogging the release of the memo.

This mirror goes to 11.
Trump just said in the White House: "I think it’s terrible. I think it’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country.

"A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves and much worse than that."
posted by Buntix at 9:14 AM on February 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


So like, this whole thing where he releases a classified memo that jeopardizes US intel methods, they can impeach him for that if they really want, right?

I mean they probably won't, but y'know, the potential is there if enough people were to say, express outrage and take to the streets. That's a potential that exists, I think, right?
posted by saysthis at 9:14 AM on February 2, 2018


"Tom Fitton, JW"

I wondered about that and googled it!

Wikipedia tells us that's Tom Fitton, head of Judicial Watch, who has been among the louder, wack-a-doodlier right-wing deep state paranoiacs.
posted by notyou at 9:18 AM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


remember, an impeachment is sorta like an indictment - there still has to be a trial. and that's the senate. so...

(btw - i dint watch SOTU for mental health reasons. who was the 2nd dem to shout it out?)
posted by j_curiouser at 9:18 AM on February 2, 2018


they can impeach him for that if they really want, right?

If they wanted to, they could impeach and remove him for office for his stupid combover or extra-long ties.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:21 AM on February 2, 2018 [13 favorites]


Somehow my work email got on a Judicial Watch mailing list. It was the most wackadoodle bullshit I had ever seen. I reported them as spam.
posted by vibrotronica at 9:23 AM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


Here's the memo, via the Post.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:23 AM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


The memo: a wet fart that nonetheless will serve as cover for a fascist agenda run by nincompoops.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:27 AM on February 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


Jesus, why did the Dem committee members even bother to write a response?
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:32 AM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Ok, I read the memo. Was this supposed to be the key takeaway? Boldface in the original memo, really:
Steele admitted ... his feelings against then-candidate Trump when Steele said he "was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president." This clear evidence of Steele's bias ...

Since Steele was biased against Trump, the facts he uncovered clearly inherited that liberal bias? That's the argument?

I'm speechless.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:34 AM on February 2, 2018 [18 favorites]


I can't see any way that this whole ~*RELEASE THE MEMO*~ fiasco helps Trump. I mean, there's no actual proof of any wrongdoing in this memo. Everyone has been following the hype about it, and there's just nothing that sensational or interesting in there at all. Even the psychotic right wing spin on it is kind of boring. I don't think it's going to make the kind of waves that Trump and Nunes want it to, and now they've got an extremely pissed off FBI with legitimate grievances against them.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 9:34 AM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


So like, this whole thing where he releases a classified memo that jeopardizes US intel methods, they can impeach him for that if they really want, right?

Under EO 13526 this is the section on sanctions:
Sec. 5.5. Sanctions.

(a) If the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office finds that a violation of this order or its implementing directives has occurred, the Director shall make a report to the head of the agency or to the senior agency official so that corrective steps, if appropriate, may be taken.
(b) Officers and employees of the United States Government, and its contractors, licensees, certificate holders, and grantees shall be subject to appropriate sanctions if they knowingly, willfully, or negligently:

(1) disclose to unauthorized persons information properly classified under this order or predecessor orders;
(2) classify or continue the classification of information in violation of this order or any implementing directive;
(3) create or continue a special access program contrary to the requirements of this order; or
(4) contravene any other provision of this order or its implementing directives.
(c) Sanctions may include reprimand, suspension without pay, removal, termination of classification authority, loss or denial of access to classified information, or other sanctions in accordance with applicable law and agency regulation.
(d) The agency head, senior agency official, or other supervisory official shall, at a minimum, promptly remove the classification authority of any individual who demonstrates reckless disregard or a pattern of error in applying the classification standards of this order.
(e) The agency head or senior agency official shall:

(1) take appropriate and prompt corrective action when a violation or infraction under paragraph (b) of this section occurs; and
(2) notify the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office when a violation under paragraph (b)(1), (2), or (3) of this section occurs.
None of which looks like it can be applied to a President. Impeachment would still be on the table though & this would be a predicate act. If Congress could be persuaded to pull the trigger.
posted by scalefree at 9:35 AM on February 2, 2018


nonetheless will serve as cover for a fascist agenda

Only if the media ignores the obvious bad faith in which it's offered, and the fact that it doesn't contradict any of the known facts of the case, and pretends it's a legitimate...oh, wait...
posted by Gelatin at 9:35 AM on February 2, 2018 [16 favorites]


Okay, I've been looking through this memo and just wanted to point out the first of many inaccuracies and distortions:

The Honorable Devin Nunes

okay that's as far as I've gotten
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:36 AM on February 2, 2018 [72 favorites]


peeedro: James Fallows has annotated Trump's SotU address

He covers a lot, and well, including the omission of California in the list of natural disaster locations, which is not a surprise given that judging from his response to the wildfires, Trump doesn't care about California (Alexander Nazaryan with an opinion piece for Los Angeles Times, Oct. 19, 2017)
As the fires burned, President Trump flew to Northern California, comforting the displaced residents of Santa Rosa and promising the fullest emergency response possible. Wait, sorry, that was fake news. Trump played golf. The same man who eagerly monitored the Florida and Texas hurricanes had only this to say about the California fires: “We have FEMA there. We have military there. We have first responders there. It’s a tragic situation.” Also: “We’re doing a good job.”

Since the fires began, Trump has used his Twitter account to malign “Crooked” Hillary Clinton, the media in general, the “failing” New York Times in particular and to celebrate the condition of the stock market. He tweeted nothing germane until Wednesday: “Our hearts are with all affected by the wildfires in California,” he said, in a show of compassion worthy of a Russian bot.

I've asked communications officials in the White House twice whether Trump will visit Northern California. The lack of response is far more telling than any answer could be. The president doesn't care about our state.
As of Dec. 28, 2017, Trump still hadn't visited California as president as reported by the L.A. Times, and even re-reported by Breitbart (no link or Google juice necessary, you can take my word on it), where the title was Trump First President Since Eisenhower Not to Visit California in First Year. But hey, he declared states of emergency! It's not like he pretended the state didn't exist, right?

And then there was the catastrophic flooding (MetaFilter, January 11, 2018), and still Trump was a no-show.

Oh, but he also mentioned the two guests from California that he invited to the State of the Union speech: firefighter David Dahlberg, who helped rescue 62 people in a wildfire in rural Santa Barbara County last year, and Preston Sharp, a 12-year-old from Redding who started a movement to place flags on veterans’ graves. Both got standing ovations. So it's practically like he was there to support the state in its times of need. Practically.

That bit about his guests is from The Mercury News' coverage of California Democrats' responses to Trump’s State of the Union, which cited an issue that James Fallows didn't pick up, specifically:
Trump’s promise to “build gleaming new roads, bridges, highways, railways and waterways across our land” with a $1.5 trillion new infrastructure plan could spark interest among California officials. Increased federal funding could theoretically help fund embattled projects like California’s Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high-speed train.

But the president also urged the investment of private sector funds for public infrastructure projects and proposed streamlining regulations surrounding infrastructure construction — proposals sure to be controversial.
Emphasis mine - because the focus is on "leveraging" other funds, particularly private funds.

And on top of that being a non-starter, the GOP Tax Sham undercuts the efforts of states like California who have higher state taxes to fund their own infrastructure. But don't worry, some in California have a plan, and Republicans Seem Oblivious To States Undercutting Their New Tax Law -- If they’d had hearings on the bill, they might have seen this coming. (Arthur Delaney for HuffPo, Jan. 9, 2018)
Democrats in states such as California and New York are considering legislation that would subvert a new limit on the amount individuals can deduct from their federal tax liability for what they’ve paid in state and local taxes.

If the state legislation works as intended, it could cost the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars that Republicans had counted on to offset the revenue loss from the corporate and individual tax cuts in the bill they passed last month. But Republicans don’t seem to be sweating it, or even thinking about it.

“I don’t know much about what their conditions are, so I hesitate to comment,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate’s lead author of the new tax law, told HuffPost on Tuesday.

Other senators who’d been closely involved in writing the tax bill, including Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), were similarly unprepared to comment on developments in the coastal states, which have been the subject of national news stories since last week.

“I’m not really familiar with what they’re doing,” Collins said.

What they’re doing is this: Legislation by California Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) would allow Californians to “donate” to a state fund in the amount they would have paid in state taxes, receive a credit for their state taxes for that donation and then, because the federal tax law still allows households to deduct charitable donations from their adjusted gross income, they could write off the amount they’d charitably “given” to the state.

Essentially, de León’s bill would let state residents dodge a new $10,000 limit on the state-and-local tax deduction, thus allowing the state to continue collecting revenue from its relatively high taxes rates. His office said roughly 6 million California households claim the deduction, reducing their federal taxable income by an average of about $18,000.
Fuck yeah, California and others. Fuck you, GOP, you fucking idiots.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:37 AM on February 2, 2018 [47 favorites]


Rosenstein still has the original Comey firing draft...
posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:38 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


It took me less than 10 minutes to read it, though it apparently took Trump a few hours (has anyone asked Nunes if he's managed to clear enough time out of his busy schedule to actually read his own memo yet?). It's all just regurgitated "Fusion GPS was funded by the Dems!" nonsense and documentation of how much Steele hated Trump, as if the source's motivations have anything to do with the veracity of the information. This is such a nothingburger that McDonalds should make a new $0 category on its 1-2-3 dollar menu.

In the simplest terms: the memo is a Republican's claim that the FBI was wrong to use information from a former top spy in applying for a warrant, because the former top spy didn't like Trump, was kind of a leaker, and was working (eventually) for Democrats.
posted by AndrewInDC at 9:40 AM on February 2, 2018 [21 favorites]


I can't see any way that this whole ~*RELEASE THE MEMO*~ fiasco helps Trump.

It already has, by providing the "she said" the media has so desperately wanted to counter the "he said" of the steady drumbeat of revelations -- some from Trump himself! -- of the criminal and treasonous behavior of him and his campaign. Now, the media can, and does, and will, run with the narrative of "critics say Trump and his accomplices colluded with the Russians to subvert the election and then conspired to obstruct justice, but Republicans say one of the FBI's sources was biased, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "

See the past few weeks of NPR for an example. Though they have had some good reporting, they've been positively breathless about repeating "classified memo," which helps cement the phony narrative by sheer repetition.
posted by Gelatin at 9:41 AM on February 2, 2018 [19 favorites]


there's no actual proof of any wrongdoing in this memo

That's not the point. It contains the words "Hillary Clinton" adjacent to "Michael Steele," which is enough to get lots and lots of people to think the Page warrant -- and, therefore, any investigation related to Russian meddling in the election -- is politically-motivated and, therefore, invalid.

There's no substance here, but that's sort of the Trumpian way.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:41 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


I can't see any way that this whole ~*RELEASE THE MEMO*~ fiasco helps Trump. I mean, there's no actual proof of any wrongdoing in this memo. Everyone has been following the hype about it, and there's just nothing that sensational or interesting in there at all.

You are assuming that proof matters. From a legal standpoint, it often (but not always) does. From a political standpoint, it couldn't be more irrelevant. This will reinforce to the base that their collective persecution complex and conspiracy theories are justified, that the problem isn't that they're supporting an actual mobbed-up former slum lord. And it will likely sway a number of uninformed and not-very-bright/attentive voters.

Trump got elected in the first place because he understood that the theater matters more than the facts. The perception matters more than the reality. Yes, this release helps him.
posted by middleclasstool at 9:42 AM on February 2, 2018 [30 favorites]


Since Steele was biased against Trump, the facts he uncovered clearly inherited that liberal bias? That's the argument?

Yes. Everything he did was to find a way to bring down Trump so therefore everything he says or found is discredited even if it had photographic video Mother Teresa level of sainthood truth telling.


And the fact that Carter Page was under investigation since 2013 and all the previous grounds for the initial FISA warrant and renewals before 2016 are completely immaterial, of course.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:43 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


In practical terms here what it'd take to successfully impeach Trump:

21/40 member of the House Judiciary Committee voting to send a Bill of Impeachment to the floor. There are 17 Dems there now.

218/435 Representatives vote Aye on sending it to the Senate. 193 Dems now.

67/100 Senators vote Aye on the Articles, removing him from office. 48 Dems now.
posted by scalefree at 9:43 AM on February 2, 2018 [26 favorites]


So on the one hand, it's supposed to be 100% suspect and Not Cool to get a judge to approve a warrant on a dude who perspires his own criminal connections if he spends two minutes on a camera, because one of the umpteen initial informants saying "dude is a spy" was paid by someone with political motivations.

But on the other hand, foreign hacking of a political party's emails, done for the benefit of the opposing candidate and at his explicit behest ("Russia, if you're listening...") under circumstances where the surveillance target's sole potential "crime" amounts, amazingly enough, to having kept emails in a theoretically (but never actually) vulnerable location... that's just "being smart" or "politics" or whateverthefuck.

I'm half-wishing for someone to just start paraphrasing all the things Donald Jr and Sr have said as justifications for their cooperation with the Kremlin to get dirt on Hillary. Like, why didn't they dot every I and cross every T first? (Although to be clear, it looks like the intelligence community has done so with respect to Russia-Lago.)
posted by InTheYear2017 at 9:45 AM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


McCain is concerned. A bit.

"The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests – no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s."

Thanks, John.
posted by Devonian at 9:51 AM on February 2, 2018 [30 favorites]


There's nothing new in this memo. It advances the exact same narrative they were using prior to releasing it. It would have been more powerful to keep the memo confidential, and continue alluding to the incredible secrets contained within. Now that they've released it, the mystery is gone. The only thing sensational about this memo was the secrecy of it, and the controversial nature of its release. The memo isn't compelling or entertaining in itself.

Declassifying it just pisses off the FBI and weakens the Republican narrative by putting an end to a compelling storyline.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 9:52 AM on February 2, 2018 [22 favorites]


Since Steele was biased against Trump, the facts he uncovered clearly inherited that liberal bias? That's the argument?

Precisely. The basis of the argument is that facts are utterly irrelevant, and all that matters is what team you're on. Brian Beutler nailed it yesterday. If you're not on Team Trump, everything you do is wrong and bad. Information is no longer assessed on its own terms, but is entirely a partisan matter. Same as climate change or any other factual matter.

The FBI also renewed the FISA warrant, which would have required they show some new evidence to a judge. And again, it's Carter Page: the really suspicious guy. Who the FBI was interested in as early as 2013.

Hell, Nunes even admits the whole thing is sham in the last paragraph by acknowledging there was other evidence:
The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok.
That's, in fact, what the New York Times has previously reported. The FISA application was months later. They'll continue to scream about this, but they can't hand-wave Papadopoulos away.

(I'm at the airport, ok? Moving away from the grid. It's a gradual process.)
posted by zachlipton at 9:53 AM on February 2, 2018 [70 favorites]


That's exactly it: Trump's entire base finds every nutball thing he said in today's tweets to be gospel truth, the entire Republican Party is ready to back it and promote it, the media will devote 972 hours to breathlessly both-sides-ing it, and the amorphous mass of semi-attentive to utterly tuned-out voters will happily swallow it down as "more partisan bickering and plotting" in the most generous reading.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:53 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


"The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests – no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s."

I appreciate your input here, Senator, and I'll agree with your first and last assertions, but I gotta say I'm squinting a little at the middle two.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:56 AM on February 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


Carter Pages (hot) take:

MY STATEMENT: "The brave and assiduous oversight by Congressional leaders in discovering this unprecedented abuse of process represents a giant, historic leap in the repair of America's democracy. Now that a few of the misdeeds against the Trump Movement have been partially revealed, I look forward to updating my pending legal action in opposition to DOJ this weekend in preparation for Mondays next small step on the long potholed road toward helping restore law and order in our great country."

Well, then. That sure is something. Good to know the 2013 FBI investigation into Mr Pages foreign activities was a pre-emtive move against the not yet existent Trump Movement (tm).
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 9:56 AM on February 2, 2018 [10 favorites]


this is just a memetic device for his supporters to spew out without actually understanding what they're saying, it's just "their side"

Exactly. I doubt if one person in ten -- present company excepted, but very much including the media -- could have actually explained what "Hillary's emails" was supposed to be about, but the mere phrase, just like "Benghazi!" (and, for that matter, "Whitewater") was repeated enough times that it carried a vaguely sinister connotation of wrongdoing, even if nothing was ever proven. "The memo" is meant to serve the same purpose, and the media is playing right along.
posted by Gelatin at 9:56 AM on February 2, 2018 [25 favorites]


The memo works in their favor because, even though we all know that what is in the memo is bullshit, Trump’s base will merely regurgitate “but the memo!” and the media will follow suit, just like they did with “but her emails!”
posted by gucci mane at 9:58 AM on February 2, 2018 [13 favorites]


"was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president."

Maybe this had something to do with the fact this top British spy and expert on Russia discovered Trump was compromised by Russia? Not some liberal bias?
posted by chris24 at 9:58 AM on February 2, 2018 [58 favorites]


Also don’t forget that Fox News is basically running the nation now. They’re in control of this narrative, and they have a pipeline directly to the president.
posted by gucci mane at 9:59 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


Carter Page: an adjective for every noun; an adverb for every verb.
posted by klarck at 9:59 AM on February 2, 2018 [30 favorites]


The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok.
That's, in fact, what the New York Times has previously reported.


No, the key phrase in that was "by FBI agent Pete Strzok", who is a boogeyman of bias as far as the right as concerned.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:59 AM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


From the Nunes memo:
Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.
We're supposed to take this to mean that the dossier itself was an essential justification for the warrant. But what if McCabe was saying that the dossier was merely a stepping stone to finding new, verified information, and it's that information which was the basis for the warrant? That would really undermine Nunes' argument, wouldn't it?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:03 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


That would really undermine Nunes' argument, wouldn't it?

I mean, if Nunes actually had an argument, yes, it would
posted by halation at 10:04 AM on February 2, 2018 [13 favorites]


And the gloves come off. House Judiciary Democrats (via Medium): Republicans Are Complicit in Efforts to Obstruct Justice with Release of Nunes Memo.
posted by FelliniBlank at 10:05 AM on February 2, 2018 [90 favorites]


I would add that the FBI would have to be well used to sources who have motives against the people they are informing on, usually ones far greater than partisan bias. Mobsters turning on each other, people cutting deals to keep themselves out of prison, that's what the FBI does. They don't always get it right, but it's laughable to think they were utterly incapable of dealing with a potentially-biased informant. Witnesses usually have axes to grind.

You can read Schiff's statement, which says the Democratic memo lays out why the FBI was interested in Page, other information about what the FBI knew about Russia interfering in the election, and other information the FBI had on Page. He says they'll be scheduling a vote on Monday to again ask to release that memo, but I'd strongly argue he needs to read it, with any necessary redactions, into the record this damn afternoon.
posted by zachlipton at 10:05 AM on February 2, 2018 [40 favorites]


Trump is bragging behind closed doors how he aced that dementia test.

Personally, I'd like to see him take the Wonderlic test, the one used for NFL players when they're drafted.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:07 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


That's not the point. It contains the words "Hillary Clinton" adjacent to "Michael Steele,"

(You're getting your anti-Trump Steeles mixed up. Micheal Steele was the bassist for the Bangles the ex-chair of the RNC. Christopher Steele was the British ex-spy author of the dossier.)
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:07 AM on February 2, 2018 [16 favorites]


It has been _0_ days since the last Trump disaster.
posted by Melismata at 10:08 AM on February 2, 2018 [21 favorites]


That statement from the House Judiciary Democrats is pulling no punches:

"“Despite the intelligence community’s unanimous conclusion that our last election was compromised, and their warning that Russia and others will attempt to interfere in our next election, President Trump and the Republicans have taken no action to secure our democracy against sabotage from foreign adversaries. Republicans seem not to care that President Trump has tried to pressure all three of his FBI directors to make the Russia investigation go away, and continues to smear career officials with lies and innuendo. And now, with the release of the Nunes talking points — a deliberately misleading document that politicizes and distorts highly classified information in order to discredit our intelligence and law enforcement agencies — President Trump has successfully added the Republican Majority in Congress as accessories to his continuing obstruction of justice."

There are a lot of statements that I have missed in the last year and a half so correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels as if we've turned a new rhetorical corner and are into some new territory here.
posted by Tevin at 10:11 AM on February 2, 2018 [79 favorites]


House Judiciary Democrats (via Medium): Republicans Are Complicit in Efforts to Obstruct Justice with Release of Nunes Memo.

One small step toward the acknowledgment of generalized GOP criminality that will be necessary to hold the tatters and shreds of the country together, should the electoral tables ever turn. Good.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:11 AM on February 2, 2018 [27 favorites]


You're getting your anti-Trump Steeles mixed up

Indeed! Oops.
posted by uncleozzy at 10:12 AM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'd strongly argue [Schiff] needs to read it, with any necessary redactions, into the record this damn afternoon.

For one thing, it'd change the media narrative from "Republicans release classified memo!!!" that we're unable or unwilling to tell is a load of hogwash to "Democrat puts takes controversial move to change the narrative." Yes, indeed he should.
posted by Gelatin at 10:12 AM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


I'm reading this memo and I feel like we've finally found Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:13 AM on February 2, 2018 [19 favorites]


Schiffs Burbank office picked up the phone almost immediately. His DC office's mail box is full. I called and urged him to read his memo into the congressional record today.
posted by Uncle at 10:14 AM on February 2, 2018 [18 favorites]


I'm reading this memo and I feel like we've finally found Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Now that's a callback!
posted by eclectist at 10:15 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


re:memo, I was prepared to be vastly underwhelmed, and yet am even more underwhelmed than I anticipated.
posted by rc3spencer at 10:16 AM on February 2, 2018 [50 favorites]


This memo's release illustrates the problem with the concept of "bias." Bias is a very confused term, in that it conflates having a political opinion -- or more precisely, having a non-centrist political opinion -- with being wrong. "Fake news," as muddled as that concept is, is a step in the right direction, inasmuch as it doesn't classify news by whether it's unbiased or not but by whether it's false or true. The center and right still love the term "bias" because it serves both of their agendas: reducing the clout of competing news organizations with liberal "biases" -- ie, liberal goals, such as opposing Trump. And every time the left uses the term "biased" or "unbiased," they reinforce this conflation of "non-centrist" and "false or misleading." Once you separate the two, you can say yeah, the NYT is left-ish and Steele hated Trump, but that doesn't make what they say false. But arguing about whether it makes what they say "biased" or not is just feeding into the damaging concept. We need to stick with true/false, real/fake and, along with so many other nefarious terms, ditch the center-right idea of "bias."
posted by chortly at 10:17 AM on February 2, 2018 [13 favorites]


I think I've worked out why the GOP has decided to pin its hopes on a defense of bizarre man-baby Carter Page of all people. It is because Carter Page is perhaps the only guy who a) is publicly known to have been the target of a FISA warrant, and also b) has not yet been charged with a crime.

It would be tricky to argue that a FISA warrant was unjustified against the guys who have pleaded guilty or who have been indicted by a grand jury.

It's also tricky to argue that about Carter Page, but slightly less tricky.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:18 AM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


I'm not even sure that Carter Page is self-aware that he's been a spy for years. He seems just as malleable as Trump but without any id.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 10:20 AM on February 2, 2018 [21 favorites]


Given how devoid of information the memo is, it does seem pretty clearly staged to be a talking point rather than anything actionable

Indeed, and in that regard, it's worked beautifully. Everyone is focused on the sufficiency of the probable cause for the FISA warrant on Carter Page rather than every other piece of evidence we already know about, or the failure to issue sanctions after all the Russian intelligence heads dropped in for a visit, or, you know, that time Trump publicly invited Russia to hack his opponent's emails.

And thanks to the way Nunes's staff has written the memo, it's impossible to actually evaluate whether the warrant applications met the legal standard, beyond the fact that we know a judge repeatedly ruled as such. Heck, Nunes doesn't even know, because he never even read the documents in question. So everyone is spending their time arguing about something that is ancillary to the actual investigation, and entirely unresolvable without knowing the actual evidence the FBI put forward. Mission accomplished.

Anyway, they can't even keep their excuses straight. @pwnallthethings: If you want to say this was the Obama administration spying on the Trump administration, it would help if the Trump administration hadn't said in September 2016 "Mr. Page is not an advisor and has made no contribution to the campaign ... He's never been part of our campaign"
posted by zachlipton at 10:22 AM on February 2, 2018 [55 favorites]


cjelli: Via Twiter, Senate Intel Vice Chair Mark Warner: "Unlike almost every House member who voted in favor of this memo's release, I have actually read the underlying documents on which the memo was based. They simply do not support its conclusions."

I initially misread this as Warner including himself in the set of " every House member who voted in favor of this memo's release". (My first thought was "Then why the hell did you cast such a vote?") So to be clear, he didn't vote for the release.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 10:22 AM on February 2, 2018


I feel like I just watched that stupid MRA-edit of The Last Jedi where they cut out all the women. Except I bet those douchebags probably tried harder to still keep a coherent narrative.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:28 AM on February 2, 2018 [10 favorites]


Just a little follow-up on my earlier post (no better time for philosophy than in the middle of breaking news, right?), there is one potentially useful meaning of "biased," which is that the organization does not actively promulgate untruths, but only selectively reports on/releases bits of information that support their side. However, it's incredibly difficult to pin down in that case what "unbiased" would mean, since it suggests that someone knows objectively what the true, unbiased distribution of available news items is, which unlike true/false, is almost impossible to specify in an objective, non-ideological way. If everyone's already talking about the Clinton emails, is a new organization "biased" if it doesn't report on the Comey letter?

The alternative is just to stick to your guns, say the truth is liberal, that centrist and right media are the biased ones, and that talking about BS like Clinton emails is biased nonsense. I'm often in favor of fighting to take back terms the right has stolen and debased, but in this case, "bias" is so owned by the center (and possibly invented by them) that it's probably better to abandon it in favor of some better terminology when discussing the right -- such as morally, conceptually, and factually wrong.
posted by chortly at 10:29 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


Bias is a very confused term, in that it conflates having a political opinion -- or more precisely, having a non-centrist political opinion -- with being wrong.

Not even that. Conservatives approve of being biased against all things not of their tribe. But just as they cried "liberal media" about accurate reporting on Vietnam and Watergate, and "fake news" about Trump's vast incompetence and corruption, they take a "with us or against us" attitude toward anything that doesn't toe the party line. It's of a piece why compromising with Democrats is viewed, ironically enough, as tantamount to treason. It's a sickness.
posted by Gelatin at 10:31 AM on February 2, 2018 [14 favorites]


The Republican theory of the case is that the FBI, led by Republican James Comey:
  • Held an unprecedented press conference to shit on a person, Hillary Clinton, whom they had just determined did not commit a crime
  • Intentionally leaked the status of an investigation into a person, Hillary Clinton, specifically because the Director knew that this would get leaked anyway if he didn't personally leak it first
  • Kept completely silent about their investigation into Donald Trump's campaign's sprawling connections to an array of Russian operatives, both inside and outside the campaign
  • Authorized, through legal means, continued secret surveillance of these Trump campaign operatives, again keeping this surveillance completely secret
  • Did all of the above in a coordinated effort to get Hillary Clinton elected?
It's so fucking stupid that when you write it all down, it sounds like a joke. The FBI was working tirelessly to sink the Trump campaign by... doing the exact set of things that cost Clinton the election? What?
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:37 AM on February 2, 2018 [94 favorites]


I love that the Nunes memo talks about Pete Strzok and Lisa Page's "improper text messages... where they demonstrated a clear bias against Trump" with the implication that it is the their dislike of Trump which makes the text messages improper. The only improper thing was that they were dumb enough to use government phones. Believe it or not, FBI agents are not prohibited from having political opinions.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:38 AM on February 2, 2018 [18 favorites]


Did they send the memo certified mail?
posted by guiseroom at 10:38 AM on February 2, 2018 [18 favorites]


If the state legislation works as intended, it could cost the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars that Republicans had counted on to offset the revenue loss from the corporate and individual tax cuts in the bill they passed last month.

Friendly reminder the bankrupting the federal government and eliminating oversight is just as much an end-game for Republicans as screwing over blue states.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 10:40 AM on February 2, 2018 [11 favorites]


So, if I have this right, Nunes' argument is: "If you see or have evidence of a crime, but you don't like the criminal, then you shouldn't report it to the police because that would be unfair."
posted by Freon at 10:42 AM on February 2, 2018 [88 favorites]


If you see something, really think about how it makes you feel, and if you're feeling pretty neutral about it, say something
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:44 AM on February 2, 2018 [63 favorites]


The Russians must have some good stuff on Nunes from the RNC hack, the guy is at this point a human vessel for spewing RT-style propaganda. Either that or Trump has promised him 12 porn stars when he ascends to Trump Tower.
posted by benzenedream at 10:55 AM on February 2, 2018 [19 favorites]


I think the most comical part of this memo is that argument that Steele is biased against Trump. As in, irrationally opposed to him separate from the facts.

Because Occam's Razor says it's more likely he was passionate about Trump not becoming president because he had discovered that Trump was a Russian spy.
posted by msalt at 10:55 AM on February 2, 2018 [62 favorites]


The FBI was working tirelessly to sink the Trump campaign by... doing the exact set of things that cost Clinton the election? What?

The Trumpist theory of the case is that Comey and the FBI were covering their butts because they, like everyone else, were so sure that Clinton was going to get elected anyway that they wanted to make sure that it didn't look like they went easy on her (this by itself is hilarious because it implicitly acknowledges that there was a conservative bias in the rank and file at the FBI that Comey was catering to). Because in the mind of a Trumpist, the only alternative to "going easy" is "try to completely destroy."
posted by AndrewInDC at 10:56 AM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


> Gelatin:
"Bias is a very confused term, in that it conflates having a political opinion -- or more precisely, having a non-centrist political opinion -- with being wrong.

Not even that. Conservatives approve of being biased against all things not of their tribe. But just as they cried "liberal media" about accurate reporting on Vietnam and Watergate, and "fake news" about Trump's vast incompetence and corruption, they take a "with us or against us" attitude toward anything that doesn't toe the party line. It's of a piece why compromising with Democrats is viewed, ironically enough, as tantamount to treason. It's a sickness."


And I'm gonna say not even that. The bad-faith accusation of "bias" is to pretend that objectivity can be produced by people. But they don't mention objectivity, they just talk about bias so that they can promote their favored bias against the bias they're trying to disempower.

People are biased, period, even judges have to write their opinions in terms of (simplistically) the facts of a case and the law as it exists at the time, just in order to minimize bias. It has nothing to do with party except in its application.

"Everybody does it," and that's exhausting, but we have to attack the implication of objectivity instead of trying to beat their bias with another bias.
posted by rhizome at 10:56 AM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


There is one charge in the memo that was new to me, and I think bears some scrutiny. They allege that an unknown DOJ official named Ohr was involved in greenlighting this investigation, at the same time that his wife was working for Fusion GPS.

Does anyone know the background there? (OTOH, there is next to nothing at all about Rod Rosenstein and I am mystified how anyone could think this memo might justify firing him.)
posted by msalt at 10:58 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


“This person has feelings and therefore must be acting negatively on them at every turn” is completely consistent with the decades-long war on professionalism
posted by phearlez at 11:01 AM on February 2, 2018 [17 favorites]


Now that the memo has come out, I would just like to re-iterate my comment from upthread.
When Nunes' stupid memo comes out, please ask people "Were you scandalized when this story came out in April? Or only when a hashtag tells you to be scandalized?"
...
How can anyone believe these "worse than Watergate" reactions are sincere, when none of these guys reacted that way the first time we talked about this?

I would also like to share this very entertaining timeline of Carter Page's contacts with Russia, which is worth passing along to people who hadn't heard of Carter Page until now. And this account of the 2013 FISA warrant against him, including this quote which just sums up Carter Page: "The Russians were heard laughing, saying Page had no idea they were government agents."
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:03 AM on February 2, 2018 [16 favorites]


#ReleaseTheMemo has been kind of a shitshow, but one good thing that may come out it is that it's a pretty good test case for the Clinton Rules. The GOP has a pretty strong record getting the phoniest of phony scandals to stick to Bill (and eventually Hillary) enough to do significant political damage, thanks to a press corps that's primed to run any insinuation of a Clinton scandal above the fold on page A1, but the inevitable conclusion that it was all manufactured bullshit months later somewhere in the margins of page A24.

This, of course, is the most manufactured scandal possible, one where the manufacturer (Nunes) has been openly carrying water for the Trump administration, one where even some Republican colleagues have expressed no small amount of fremdschamen over Nunes' actions, and one where even if you take as gospel every single thing said in the memo, none of it makes any sense on Nunes' own terms.

Can our media resist the temptation to go along with the bullshit simply because it makes for easy writing and gets lots of clicks? I eagerly await Maggie Haberman's take, as she's probably a pretty good weather vane for the centrist media, and has at least a few more brain cells to rub together than Chris Cillizza.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:04 AM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


Trey Gowdy isn't even buying it:

As I have said repeatedly, I also remain 100 percent confident in Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The contents of this memo do not - in any way - discredit his investigation.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:06 AM on February 2, 2018 [39 favorites]


We're in an episode of Fringe; when the rogue Observer who goes by "Carter Page" realizes he's an unwitting Russian operative, the timeline resets by exactly 48 minutes and the initial conditions are slightly perturbed. It's an experiment in Chaos Theory and we're all stuck in it.
posted by 0xFCAF at 11:07 AM on February 2, 2018 [16 favorites]


This could be easily cleared up with a section of the transcript from McCabe’s interview. As in, that was clearly omitted from the memo on purpose.
posted by zachlipton at 11:07 AM on February 2, 2018 [10 favorites]


Here's a thread from Brad Heath (USA Today legal reporter) about bias in warrant applications. One case he cites is Scherr v. Chicago (7th Cir. 2014):
But candor in the affidavit would not have undermined the existence of probable cause. Curtis [the cop and co-mj-grower] had, so far as appears, seen marijuana plants in Jennifer's [the defendant and daughter in law of the cop] basement just a few days earlier. Her possession of them had been criminal even if she'd been planning to get rid of the plants and just hadn't gotten around to doing so yet (though in fact she had). What was wrong with the affidavit was the motivation — Curtis's spite, his desire to see his daughter-in-law arrested just four days after the death of her child (his grandchild) and maybe even prosecuted (though that would be an unlikely sequel to the search even if the plants had still been in her basement) — though if she were prosecuted he might be as well, as her accomplice in the growing of the marijuana.

The law is settled, however, that a police officer's motive in applying for a warrant does not invalidate the warrant.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:08 AM on February 2, 2018 [9 favorites]


@TGowdySC
As I have said repeatedly, I also remain 100 percent confident in Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The contents of this memo do not - in any way - discredit his investigation.

I no longer believe it was a coincidence that Gowdy announced he wasn't seeking re-election immediately after he read the memo. Dude wants out.
posted by Rust Moranis at 11:09 AM on February 2, 2018 [51 favorites]


Are any of the Republicans who are up in arms about how poorly Carter Page has been treated proposing actual changes to the way FISA works?
posted by Copronymus at 11:10 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


If you end up arguing with wingnuts and Trumpeters about this, I think the tack is simple:

1) Ask, "Have you actually read the memo? The whole thing"? (No)

2) Pull a printout out of your pocket and offer it to them. Wait while they read it. (They then change the subject).

This will be devastating with any undecided or low information voters. I guarantee their reaction at the end will be, "Where's the rest of it?"
posted by msalt at 11:17 AM on February 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


The Nunes Memo and the Right's Long Campaign to Declare Its Critics Invalid by Definition
In November 1981, President Reagan's controversial interior secretary, James Watt, said this:
I never use the words Democrats and Republicans. It's liberals and Americans.
Over the past few decades, that's been a subtext -- and sometimes the main text -- of a great deal of conservative argumentation. Liberals and Democrats simply aren't American. They aren't trustworthy. Nothing they say is worth acknowledging unless it's being corroborated by a Republican. [...]

That's the gist of the argument in the Nunes memo: The renewal of a FISA warrant for Carter Page was based on information from the Christopher Steele dossier. The dossier was financed by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign, therefore it's invalid. Steele himself didn't like Trump, therefore what he reported is invalid. [...]

What the memo refers to as Steele's "bias" might just be Steele's attitude toward Trump after learning all the skeezy things he'd learned about Trump in the course of his investigations. If you're spying on Joe Blow and your espionage uncovers the fact that Blow is a bad person, does learning about Blow's deparavity mean you have bias against Blow and should no longer stay on the Blow case? That's not a standard I'd like applied to law enforcement officers investigating serial killers, rapists, terrorists, pedophiles, child pornographers, industrial polluters, Ponzi-scheme operators....

But to Nunes and the rest of the right, opposition to Trump invalidates everything the opponent says. It's "liberals and Americans" all over again.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:17 AM on February 2, 2018 [61 favorites]


Here's a rundown of the Ohr situation, for the curious. Bruce Ohr had two titles with the DOJ: associate deputy attorney general (specialising, apparently, in Transnational Organized Crime and International Affairs), and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) -- but stepped down from the former position in December (or 'was demoted' / 'stripped of his title,' as Breitbart has it) during the dossier freakout. It's unclear whether his stepping down was due to his involvement or whether it's just not a good idea to have a person doing two rather large jobs simultaneously; Rosenstein claimed it was the latter but of course the anti-dossier crowd thinks it's a demotion and a coverup.

Ohr has been working violent gang crime / organised crime / racketeering cases for twenty years. If Nunes et al were being anything but disingenuous, it might occur to them that the man has probably previously dealt with sources who might have... feelings. (putting aside the whole issue that ANYONE WHO DISCOVERED A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WAS COMPROMISED BY A FOREIGN POWER WOULD MAYBE TEND TO FEEL THAT SAID CANDIDATE WAS MAYBE NOT A GOOD CHOICE FOR PRESIDENT)
posted by halation at 11:19 AM on February 2, 2018 [18 favorites]


In my periodic efforts to see if I can understand where the Trumper narrative is going, I did my usual thing of writing down my predictions for what various pro-Trump forums would be saying, then checking to see how well my predictions matched reality.

Prediction #1: They'd be talking up the "fruit of a poisoned tree" thing and arguing that thanks to the memo now anything Mueller turns up, even actual criminal intent, is inadmissible and doesn't count.

I was 100% correct. That's the current big thing they're talking about on /r/The_Donald.

Prediction #2: It proves that Trump really was "wiretapped" and we were idiots for doubting the God Emperor's word.

This was also 100% correct.

Prediction #3: It proves that the FBI really is anti-Trump so Mueller must be fired immediately and the whole Russia investigation closed forever.

This was also 100% correct.

What I didn't anticipate, and therefore I'm counting it as a missed prediction even though I only made three predictions, was that there was also a huge feeling that this would shatter the Democratic Party, cause a massive outflow of people from the Democrats to the truth and light of Trump, and that the blue wave will become a red shift because we will realize our foolishness thanks to the memo.

They took the fact that the memo was just a rehashing of old tired Trump Cult talking points as evidence that they were smart and insider, "the memo isn't for us, it's for the MSM and the Democrats!"
posted by sotonohito at 11:20 AM on February 2, 2018 [10 favorites]


So as not to abuse the edit window, I think that the Democrats should retaliate by reading the totality of Don Jr's testimony into the Congressional Record and thereby declassifying it. Surely Uday (or is he Quasay?) didn't say anything that truly needs to be classified.
posted by sotonohito at 11:23 AM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


My understanding is that reading something into the Congressional Record makes it public, but does not declassify it, because only the Executive Branch can declassify things. Whether anyone could be charged with a crime for discussing something publicly available in the Congressional Record is unclear to me.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:25 AM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


Regarding the "fruit of the poison tree" argument outlined above, im curious how that could/would be applied to one former NSA Michael Flynn (by trumpists).

Does it mean they should go back and invalidate his guilty plea? Does the apparent inability to square the rampant bias of federal law enforcement with the acknowledgement of guilt by presidents #1 security advisor cause so much dissonance heads actually explode?
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:28 AM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


Does the apparent inability to square the rampant bias of federal law enforcement with the acknowledgement of guilt by presidents #1 security advisor cause so much dissonance heads actually explode?

posted by Exceptional_Hubris


Eponistyerical, or too on the nose?
posted by mosk at 11:32 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


> msalt:
"This will be devastating with any undecided or low information voters. I guarantee their reaction at the end will be, "Where's the rest of it?""

I've watched a lot of Trumpists who have read the memo act completely satisfied. It's Seelie Truth - it tells a story they want to hear even if the whole truth is something different.
posted by charred husk at 11:34 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


there was also a huge feeling that this would shatter the Democratic Party, cause a massive outflow of people from the Democrats to the truth and light of Trump, and that the blue wave will become a red shift because we will realize our foolishness thanks to the memo.

AKA rapture.
posted by rhizome at 11:38 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


The FBI relying on the Clinton Cash stuff to investigate Hillary Clinton is totes okay though. That information was put together by extremely disinterested parties.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:38 AM on February 2, 2018 [27 favorites]


Are any of the Republicans who are up in arms about how poorly Carter Page has been treated proposing actual changes to the way FISA works?

No. They just renewed the law last month:
Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican of California who leads the House Intelligence Committee, celebrated the outcome. “The House of Representatives has taken a big step to ensure the continuation of one of the intelligence community’s most vital tools for tracking foreign terrorists,” he said.
posted by stopgap at 11:39 AM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


The Russians must have some good stuff on Nunes from the RNC hack, the guy is at this point a human vessel for spewing RT-style propaganda.

More likely that Mueller's got some good stuff on him between Flynn's cooperation and his cache of the entire transition team's e-mails. Not only was Nunes was on the executive committee of Trump's transition team, but he also had a closed-door meeting with the then-incoming national security adviser and Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on January 18, just before the inauguration. The way Nunes is jumping through hoops to protect the Trump administration, he may very well be aware of, even peripherally involved in, Flynn's foreign agent shenanigans and Team Trump's covering for him.
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:41 AM on February 2, 2018 [26 favorites]


How do the Carter Page defenders interpret Nunes' ensuring there will be more Carter Pages in the future?
posted by rhizome at 11:42 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


Would it help if the judge who issued the warrant would say "By the way guys, I would still totally have issued that warrant"?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:42 AM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


RedState.com isn't having it, either.
..in determining whether you trust Nunes’s summary, it might be relevant that it inaccurately summarizes something that is public record: James Comey’s testimony in 2017 regarding whether the allegations in the memo had been verified.

Goes on to detail how the memo claims Comey's testimony was that the entire dossier is "salacious and unverified," which is by no means what he actually said.

(I'm just so happy to see such a moment of sanity from right wing Bizzaroworld.)
posted by dnash at 11:42 AM on February 2, 2018 [26 favorites]


RedState.com has always been #NeverTrump, despite being very pro tax-cuts-for-the-super-rich.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:44 AM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


Are we just going to let the whole thing about how #Releasethememo was a bot-orchestrated operation on Twitter that succeeded drop, then? No digging further into that?

Where do you suggest we start digging?
posted by rhizome at 11:45 AM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Goes on to detail how the memo claims Comey's testimony was that the entire dossier is "salacious and unverified," which is by no means what he actually said.

(I'm just so happy to see such a moment of sanity from right wing Bizzaroworld.)


Call me kooky, but I'm not sure these two sentences belong adjacent to each other.
posted by rhizome at 11:47 AM on February 2, 2018


The entire Nunes Memo Thing, from the time he began making noises about it until the day it was released, has been like a Road Runner cartoon where the bird runs past sign after sign announcing that they are getting ever closer to some amazing thing, the signs getting bigger and more breathless the closer the Road Runner gets, and then they finally arrive and there's like 20 different arrows pointed to a pile of bird seed.

Only there's no giant anvil on a rope over the bird seed, it's just empty sky.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 11:50 AM on February 2, 2018 [21 favorites]


I no longer believe it was a coincidence that Gowdy announced he wasn't seeking re-election immediately after he read the memo. Dude wants out.

It does seem that way. When a dude who for years led the withchunt of Hillary Clinton without an ounce of shame or compassion goes full "are we the baddies?" it's time for your party to re-evaluate its life choices.

NARRATOR VOICE: They won't.

I had extremely low expectations for this memo and I am still surprised at how thin it is.
posted by Justinian at 11:52 AM on February 2, 2018 [38 favorites]


The way Nunes is jumping through hoops to protect the Trump administration, he may very well be aware of, even peripherally involved in, Flynn's foreign agent shenanigans and Team Trump's covering for him.

We're going to see Nunes get indicted. Then we're going to see Republicans come to Nunes's defense by saying he's only being indicted because he fought so hard to shut the Mueller probe down. And they're never going to blink at the fact that Nunes did anything worthy of indictment in the first place.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:52 AM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


I was talking with my shrink today whether the correct model for somebody who wants to spend their remaining three or four decades writing is expatriates like Hemmingway and Miller or Solzhenitsyn, the latter being all 'put me in the worst gulag so I can represent the Russian people.' I'm not comparing myself to them in terms of, you know, anything but the general endeavor, but I have been agonizing about it a bit, because I have a partner with skills that might get us out of the country.

I was talking with this about my shrink today who is 89/90 and my shrink likes to give these closing comments to our sessions and he said, 'Can you imagine what it is like for a person like me to witness this? This man, whom I wouldn't let rake the leaves of my lawn? When I can remember FDR, Churchill, and Stalin?' Then he chuckled and said, 'Not sure why I threw Stalin in there.'

Anyway, back to the memo.
posted by angrycat at 11:53 AM on February 2, 2018 [42 favorites]


you can lead a crabby, bigoted horse dying of thirst to water, but if some other crabby bigoted horse behind them says "don't drink it, it's liberal water" i 1000% guarantee you that in almost all cases that first horse will piss in the pool and choose die of thirst instead.

I'm not talking about liberal anything. I'm talking about their own cherished Nunes memo. Have a copy on you and insist that anyone defending it have read it.

They may refuse to, but if you can't out-argue a guy defending a memo he refuses to read, I can't help you.
posted by msalt at 11:54 AM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


And the point isn't to convince the Trumper, of course, but to show them up in front of any third parties who might be undecided.
posted by msalt at 11:55 AM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


This will be devastating with any undecided or low information voters. I guarantee their reaction at the end will be, "Where's the rest of it?"

I once watched a lawmaker confront a group of racists who were furious over some (what turned out to be entirely made-up) changes to immigration law. The lawmaker had his laptop open, the law itself up on the screen, offering to show them and explain to them just exactly what the law says and why these guys were mistaken. You know how many of these low information voters were actually interested in knowing? Zero. And they went home still convinced the law had erased the countries borders and guaranteed fat bank accounts for refugees.

Facts and information, even from the source of a particular grievance, if those facts and information contradict what a group of people desperately want to believe is true, are going to be ignored, every time.

I can agree with you though on the bit about the actual Nunes Memo probably falling flat to "undecideds" about the controversy. Although it does make me wonder: are there any "undecideds" in this whole matter? That's a serious question, I honestly don't know. Anecdotally I know no one who is shruggo about Trump anymore.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 12:00 PM on February 2, 2018 [27 favorites]


Shep Smith stepped on a Freudnana peel just now on Fox News:

"The Russian document - I mean the Republican document - reads like a press release."
posted by Rust Moranis at 12:03 PM on February 2, 2018 [83 favorites]


I haven't seen 'undecideds' about this whole ordeal as much as I have seen 'low informations'
posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:05 PM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


So I spent all of January abstaining from refined sugar as a challenge to myself and my sweet tooth. How did I celebrate my success? I spent all night baking this recipe, complete with cream cheese buttercream and candied carrot roses.

In light of all the swirling news, I'm just saying: I have cake ready if I need it
posted by scarylarry at 12:07 PM on February 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


Aya Hirano: I can agree with you though on the bit about the actual Nunes Memo probably falling flat to "undecideds" about the controversy. Although it does make me wonder: are there any "undecideds" in this whole matter?

I was unclear in my phrasing; when I said said the memo itself would be devastating for low-information voters, I meant as opposed to Trump believers. There's no convincing them, though I could see it shutting them up or making them change the subject in an obvious flailing wa.

But yeah, I think a lot of people are busy with work and life and don't really know what's involved here, and have seen the hype and Democrats and the FBI trying to stop release of the memo and might really be wondering if there is something there after all.

That's why handing them them memo is so important. Spin can be anything but the memo is Nunes' best foot forward, and there's nothing there.
posted by msalt at 12:08 PM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


They may refuse to, but if you can't out-argue a guy defending a memo he refuses to read, I can't help you.

I'm beginning to think that you're one of the rare few who doesn't have to share a table with Angry Racist Trumper Uncle at every holiday.
posted by Mayor West at 12:09 PM on February 2, 2018 [22 favorites]


From way upthread, re:SOTU, approximately one million years ago:

Trump's line about a "magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons"

This is just bullshit, even at face value. In no universe does Trump want the USA to not have any nuclear weapons. He wants himself (through the US government, if they must have it that way) to have all the nuclear weapons, and all other parties in the world to have zero.
posted by Rykey at 12:09 PM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


I'm beginning to think that you're one of the rare few who doesn't have to share a table with Angry Racist Trumper Uncle at every holiday.

Again, the point isn't to convince Uncle MAGA; it's to make him look ridiculous to everyone else at the Thanksgiving table.
posted by msalt at 12:12 PM on February 2, 2018 [19 favorites]


Are any of the Republicans who are up in arms about how poorly Carter Page has been treated proposing actual changes to the way FISA works?

No because their solution is to replace the "bad" FBI people with "good" FBI people, see?
posted by AndrewInDC at 12:13 PM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


I think a lot of people are busy with work and life and don't really know what's involved here, and have seen the hype and Democrats and the FBI trying to stop release of the memo and might really be wondering if there is something there after all.

Source information is always going to be important, especially to people actually open to that information, no argument there. I'm glad we agree on that same information having null effect on Trump supporters. This is why I tell my well-meaning progressive and liberal friends to save their breath about "fighting them in the marketplace of ideas". Their opponents aren't interested in new ideas. No one is going to deliver some devastating rhetorical blow, some factual kung fu that is going to make a fascist go wide-eyed and bellow "oh my god i was sooo wrong". The very best thing we can do is rally support between all of us on the left (and I mean the entire left, not just the establishment left), stay focused on our own agenda, and push it.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 12:19 PM on February 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


Perhaps this angle might help [with non-Trumpers]: the whole Nunes memo tries to suggest that the October 2016 FISA warrant on Carter Page showed anti-Trump bias at the FBI. Trump apparently even thinks this proves his bizarre charge that he was personally wiretapped at Trump Tower. But:

1) Carter Page left the Trump campaign a month earlier in September 2016.

2) Also in September 2016, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said “Mr. Page is not an advisor and has made no contribution to the campaign. He’s never been part of our campaign. Period."

So nothing that happened with Carter Page matters anyway. Why are they even talking about him?
posted by msalt at 12:24 PM on February 2, 2018 [28 favorites]


seen the hype and Democrats and the FBI trying to stop release of the memo

Why DID they try so hard to stop it? I mean I don't see what was so sensitive here. Why didn't they just shrug and say "Knock yourself out, Nunes" ?

Their opponents aren't interested in new ideas.

No, but it is possible to plant seed of doubt which will sprout much later.
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:24 PM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


No, but it is possible to plant seed of doubt which will sprout much later.

Maybe? Or maybe it's a waste of energy better spent organizing allies. I mean I get the impulse to try and deliver the truth to people so sorely mistaken, even in sowing "seeds of doubt". But I do think progressives have already burned too much powder on trying to "win over" people closer to right of center, when they could be organizing people left of center instead. Less of an uphill battle and more productive in the end, I believe.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 12:28 PM on February 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


I think from the FBI and intel community perspective there's a basic institutional concern with the precedent being set, as well.
posted by AndrewInDC at 12:32 PM on February 2, 2018 [15 favorites]


Also, I think the thing about Papadopoulos was new, yes?
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 12:35 PM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]




I haven't seen 'undecideds' about this whole ordeal as much as I have seen 'low informations'

The problem with the LI term is that it fails to differentiate between folks who happen not to know stuff and the ones who work hard at being in this category.
posted by phearlez at 12:37 PM on February 2, 2018 [14 favorites]


I'm surprised that with all this talk of "bias", nobody has referred to Stephen Colbert's immortal quote from 2006: "It is a well known fact that reality has liberal bias." Never more true than today.

It must also be noted that Donald Trump has had a long career of being protected from prosecution by corrupt prosecutor/politicians like Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie and he's just still suffering from the shock that similar treatment would not be forthcoming from the DOJ and FBI.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:38 PM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


The FBI has a notorious anti-crime bias.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:40 PM on February 2, 2018 [76 favorites]


Sarah Sanders: "This decision was made with input from the President’s national security team — including law enforcement officials and members of the intelligence community, for whom the president has great respect."

Yeah, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave a whole bunch of input. Their input was that the memo was deliberately misleading and releasing it was dangerously irresponsible.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:43 PM on February 2, 2018 [13 favorites]


Yeah, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave a whole bunch of input.

No, you're misreading it. "law enforcement officials... for whom the president has great respect" == Jefferson Beauregard Sessions
posted by jammer at 12:46 PM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


I'm struggling to find an analogy for how ludicrous this whole "law enforcement can't be fair when evaluating criminals because they're biased against people who commit crimes" stance is. Like, I'm definitely biased against one of the products I currently support (it sucks--I still do my job and support it), so does that mean that my input on an proposal from a competing vendor with a better product should be thrown out? It's... I mean... it's bananas.

I think out of this whole hellish two years the thing that has just driven me most around the bend is the intellectual dishonesty by grownass professional college-educated adult humans who definitely absolutely know that they are being intellectually dishonest.

The only thing keeping me going is the knowledge that, if we survive this, in about 10-20 years, as many of the major players reach the No More Fucks To Give age, there's going to be some fascinating books. I most especially want to hear some of them try to justify this shit to themselves in their old age.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:50 PM on February 2, 2018 [26 favorites]


anem0ne: i would bet ten cakes on this, all to be eaten in less than 30 minutes.

That's not how it's done. You need to write words on the cake, and then when it turns out you're wrong, you eat your words.
It's important to get this right. Cake betting should not be applied in incorrect ways. It matters too much for that.
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:50 PM on February 2, 2018 [36 favorites]


It would have been more powerful to keep the memo confidential, and continue alluding to the incredible secrets contained within.

They couldn't keep the tease going forever, though. (How long has this memo been a thing? Feels like weeks, but it might just be my experience of Trump Time.)
posted by Coventry at 12:53 PM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


The point of the memo is to provide quack for Republican duckspeak. "But the memo. The FBI was biased" is the whole of it.
posted by vibrotronica at 12:53 PM on February 2, 2018 [15 favorites]


I love that the Nunes memo talks about Pete Strzok and Lisa Page's "improper text messages... where they demonstrated a clear bias against Trump" with the implication that it is the their dislike of Trump which makes the text messages improper.

WSJ finds no evidence of a conspiracy against Trump. Inside the FBI Life of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, as Told in Their Text Messages
"Texts critical of Mr. Trump represent a fraction of the roughly 7,000 messages, which stretch across 384 pages and show no evidence of a conspiracy against Mr. Trump."
posted by chris24 at 12:59 PM on February 2, 2018 [25 favorites]


It would have been more powerful to keep the memo confidential, and continue alluding to the incredible secrets contained within.

Absolutely. But it's clear now that Trump is one of the rubes they're taking in with this stuff. He watches Fox News day and night and literally talks back to the newscasters. (Bizarrely, he's the one person on earth for whom that works.)

No doubt advisers came up with the strategy. But they certainly can't tell Trump to join the con, because he believes it all.
posted by msalt at 1:02 PM on February 2, 2018 [11 favorites]


"law enforcement can't be fair when evaluating criminals because they're biased against people who commit crimes"

Related to this: it was Christopher Steele's actual fscking job to be biased against Trump, find evidence against Trump, even if it wasn't "fair" &|| "balanced" with respect to said Trump.

You don't hire a PI to investigate someone if you think they are as so very NPOV that they'll be like: "only one or two moderate transgressions? They had their reasons, not worth reporting!"
posted by Buntix at 1:04 PM on February 2, 2018 [13 favorites]


Memo week is feeling like another Scaramouche experience more and more by the minute. Another unused Trivial Pursuit/CAH question for the future.
posted by rc3spencer at 1:04 PM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


K.T. McFarland asks Trump to withdraw her nomination as envoy to Singapore

McFarland’s nomination became stalled due to concerns about her testimony to Congress over communications with Russia, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said in December.
posted by Devonian at 1:06 PM on February 2, 2018 [22 favorites]


So the Nunes Memo is the Infrastructure Week of memos?
posted by chris24 at 1:07 PM on February 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


The clock is about to start on Congress' 60 day window to overturn the FCC's net neutrality vote:

The Senate has received the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) official notice of measures to scrap net neutrality rules, two congressional sources confirmed.

The notice is one of the first procedural steps in starting the 60-day deadline Congress has to stop the FCC’s net neutrality repeal with the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The House must also receive notice, and it must be published in the Federal Register for the rest of the process to start.

Sources said that it has yet to be determined when this will happen but noted it could be as early as Friday or next week.


Call! Call! Call! Call!

We are one Senator short of 51 and I have no idea about the House numbers. Light up those lines.
posted by Emmy Rae at 1:07 PM on February 2, 2018 [27 favorites]


Why's that name familiar?

Pyotr Levashov is the King of All Spam.

Now IIRC there was a server in Trump Tower sending out Spam to Russia or some such thing? Alfa Bank?
posted by mikelieman at 1:08 PM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


WaPo says that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats also objected to the release of the un-redacted memo.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:08 PM on February 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


The DOW dropped 666 points today. Well played, Writers. Well played.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 1:09 PM on February 2, 2018 [92 favorites]


K.T. McFarland asks Trump to withdraw her nomination as envoy to Singapore

McFarland’s nomination became stalled due to concerns about her testimony to Congress over communications with Russia, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said in December.


i.e. she doesn't want to answer questions under oath about her transition-era e-mail in which she says Russia “has just thrown the U.S.A. election to” Trump—and which the Trump Team may have withheld from Mueller.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:13 PM on February 2, 2018 [44 favorites]


In summary, unless you are ok with Trump being a Russian agent, it is inappropriate for you to investigate (or talk about) Trump being a Russian agent.
posted by diogenes at 1:15 PM on February 2, 2018 [25 favorites]


I just don't have the heart to tune into Hannity on the way home today to hear his reaction. I'm surprised I can't hear it already even though my satellite radio is off. Just a high-pitched "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" and the sounds of mop boys cursing as they clean up the room.
posted by delfin at 1:19 PM on February 2, 2018


>>The Russians must have some good stuff on Nunes from the RNC hack...
>More likely that Mueller's got some good stuff on him...


Exactly. Nunes probably knows that he faces prison time, and needs a pardon. Trump's successor won't give him that, and Trump can hardly pardon him now when there's no accusation on the table; Nunes would lose his intelligence committee post (and ability to run interference).

Is Mueller holding his fire on Nunes so he can document Nunes and Trump engaging in blatant obstruction? Because that sure looks like what is happening. Maybe Mueller has less than airtight evidence against Nunes on one charge, that Nunes is worried about, and wants to build rock solid charges over the coverup.

Because Nunes would be a wonderful target for flipping.
posted by msalt at 1:20 PM on February 2, 2018 [9 favorites]


Would it help if the judge who issued the warrant would say "By the way guys, I would still totally have issued that warrant"?

Judges plural, it seems. NBC reports that "a Democratic congressional source with direct knowledge told NBC News that four separate FISA judges reviewed the surveillance application and renewals of Page."
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:23 PM on February 2, 2018 [27 favorites]


So the Nunes Memo is the Infrastructure Week of memos?

Another Weapon of Mass Distraction.
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:25 PM on February 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


I know Mueller doesn't play the politics game and shouldn't, but I was really hoping for either a new indictment, or unsealing the Gates indictment today right after the memo bullshit.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:25 PM on February 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


I think the news about extraditing the Russian programmer to the US from Spain today that Rust Moranis linked upthread is pretty damn significant.
posted by yoga at 1:29 PM on February 2, 2018 [13 favorites]


Ok, forgive me if this argument has been made above, but I didn't quite grok this until I saw this on Twitter:

"the reason the FBI didn't want the memo released is NOT because they didn't want to look bad. It's because the memo lists the exact dates of when Carter Page was under surveillance. This means Russia now knows exactly what was heard by the FBI. "

That was an element of this drama that I didn't grasp. I was focused on how Nunes was trying to help build the bogus story to invalidate the investigation, I hadn't realized he might also have been trying to tip off his minders in Moscow.
posted by dnash at 1:30 PM on February 2, 2018 [148 favorites]


I think Mueller just kicks back and chills while he gets work done, while the babies of the country deal with this stuff. There's no doubt in my mind that if Mueller felt he was in danger there'd be major leaks coming out all of a sudden.
posted by gucci mane at 1:31 PM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


Would it help if the judge who issued the warrant would say "By the way guys, I would still totally have issued that warrant"?

Furthering the inanity, anyone who knows anything about the FISA process already knows that's true because FISA, statistically, never refuses any warrants. In 2016 they made a record by denying 9 out of 300+. Which was a record because that was just shy of half of all the warrants they had denied in the entire history of their existence. If a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich a FISA court would tell you that you should probably look into that bread knife, jar of mustard, and let's go ahead and tap the butcher's phone while we're at it.
posted by phearlez at 1:40 PM on February 2, 2018 [13 favorites]


"the reason the FBI didn't want the memo released is NOT because they didn't want to look bad. It's because the memo lists the exact dates of when Carter Page was under surveillance. This means Russia now knows exactly what was heard by the FBI. "

And likewise, Dems wanted it withheld not because it's terrible for us - it's clearly not and is in fact helpful to Dems - but because it was a blatantly partisan ploy and pure disdain toward rule of law.
posted by chris24 at 1:41 PM on February 2, 2018 [16 favorites]


Brian Buetler: What I want to know is how Carter Page knew back in October that Paul Ryan would use his power to expose the dossier’s inclusion in the Page FISA affidavit.

Skip to 7:00
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:49 PM on February 2, 2018 [17 favorites]


There are a lot of statements that I have missed in the last year and a half so correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels as if we've turned a new rhetorical corner and are into some new territory here.

I'll tellya, today is the first time I've ever heard an MSNBC roundtable discussion that sounded pretty much indistinguishable from a #potus45 thread. For example:

Rick Schmidt: [usual MSNBC dismayed outrage]

Repub strategist guy: Where is the Republican leadership?

Nichole Wallace: What Repub leadership? Wray and Rosenstein went to Paul Ryan and begged him, begged him, not to release classified info, and what did he say? "Pound sand." They're in on it now; they looked the other way at Comey and are now fully on board with trying to make the Mueller investigation go away.

Donnie Deutch [paraphrase]: Congress is not going to save us; stop looking to them. This has been a year of constant undermining of the press and judiciary and rule of law and institutions. We're in scary territory, kids. Next year at this time, it may be dangerous for us to be here talking like this. We're getting to the place where there needs to be revolution, and I'm not "doing the pundit thing" or "being dramatic on TV." I'm serious. This is frightening. If Rosenstein goes, the country needs to be in the streets.
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:55 PM on February 2, 2018 [82 favorites]


TPM: Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) wrote in a statement that the memo “is not just evidence of incompetence but clear and convincing evidence of treason.”

Absolutely! Expel Nunes immediately!

“The FBI knowingly took false information from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign and then used it to smear Donald Trump in order to hurt his campaign,” he wrote.

Oh.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:55 PM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


Slate's Dahlia Lithwick calls the Nunes Memo a victory for Trump in the long term: The Nunes Memo Is a Big Win for Donald Trump—It’s Incomprehensible and Deeply Misleading And It Will Give Trump The Tools He Needs To Stymie The Mueller Investigation:
The memo is so silly, and technical, and logic-defying on its face that it’s easy to miss the fact that its genius lies in precisely that. Unless one ambles comfortably in the murky weeds of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation, this will all be just arcane and confusing enough to mean nothing. For the vast majority of Americans, it will be enough that the president has now declared that his own federal intelligence apparatus is corrupt and out to get him, and has conveniently produced an enemies list that conveniently sweeps in all the villains, from Christopher Steele to Dana Boente to Sally Yates to Andrew McCabe, who have declined to play on the president’s “team.” If the point here is to raise doubts about every investigatory agency capable of scrutinizing Trump, it has been achieved. As John McCain responded, when the memo was released, “If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.”

This memo has the twin benefits of being both incomprehensible and boring. It serves as a glittering distraction from a host of other insanities unspooling around the administration’s consequential failures of governance and immolation of normalcy. But the other purpose of this memo, as has long been predicted, is that it serves as scaffolding for Donald Trump to fire deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein without having to use the pretext that his defining fault is that he is a “Democrat from Baltimore.” As Matthew Miller put in Friday morning, Rosenstein’s “dismissal would put special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation in great peril.” By appointing a new acting deputy attorney general, Trump could stymie the Mueller investigation without having to take the political hit of shutting it down altogether. And for progressives poised to take to the streets if Mueller is fired, Rosenstein’s ouster might present as a lesser constitutional outrage that perhaps warrants a sad-face emoji rather than a march to the courthouse steps.

Lest you have any doubts about the long game here, the New York Times reports that when he was “[a]sked at the White House on Friday whether he would fire Mr. Rosenstein, the president cocked his head suggestively and said: ‘You figure that one out.’ ”
posted by Doktor Zed at 2:00 PM on February 2, 2018 [10 favorites]


Furthering the inanity, anyone who knows anything about the FISA process already knows that's true because FISA, statistically, never refuses any warrants. In 2016 they made a record by denying 9 out of 300+. Which was a record because that was just shy of half of all the warrants they had denied in the entire history of their existence.

You know, I'd heard this fact before, and it worried me a lot more before I understood what's involved in applying for a FISA warrant. Given the process described inFive Questions the Nunes Memo Better Answer it seems like, yeah, if you have to have that much documentation before you can even apply, then you should probably have the application granted most of the time.
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:01 PM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


I still haven't heard an answer to whether Trump's nominee for Attorney General or Deputy/Acting Attorney General requires Senate confirmation before they can fire Mueller.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:03 PM on February 2, 2018


SFGate: Immigration agents raid 77 Northern California workplaces; no arrests reported
ICE has formulated plans for a broader operation in Northern California, intended to arrest large numbers of people considered deportable, but those have been placed on hold because of the sensitivity of congressional negotiations over immigration changes, said a source familiar with the matter.

Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, said this week’s raids appeared to be a “retributive move by ICE to punish California and the Bay Area for their decision to not cooperate with other federal enforcement efforts.”
posted by Existential Dread at 2:04 PM on February 2, 2018 [14 favorites]


Nichole Wallace also noted that her sources among Trump allies/connections have told her they're scared of him: "He's out of control; all the guardrails are gone, and the only thing that might make him listen to a single word anybody says is losing the House in 2018."
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:06 PM on February 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


Remember the better days when Donald Trump had guardrails and was controlled, shortly before he learned to walk
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:09 PM on February 2, 2018 [30 favorites]


it serves as scaffolding for Donald Trump to fire deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein

But how? The memo only mentions him twice, in passing, and with no criticial or new information:
"Then-DAG Sally Yates, then-Acting DAG Dana Boente, and DAG Rod Rosenstein each signed one or more FISA applications on behalf of DOJ. ... Before and after Steele was terminated as a source, he maintained contact with DOJ via then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, a senior DOJ official who worked closely with Deputy Attorneys General Yates and later Rosenstein."
If you want to argue that it set up Trump to fire Bruce Ohr, I'd agree 100%. But no one has ever heard of him.
posted by msalt at 2:10 PM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


How? Because fuck you, that's how.
posted by Justinian at 2:12 PM on February 2, 2018 [26 favorites]


I just did something I've never done: donated to a political party (the DNC). And then I wrote my congresswoman (R) a letter indicating such. If I can stomach it, I think I'll start doing that (the donation + letter) every single day until Trump's gone.

I think I've been in denial that at some point the Republican leadership will pull the plug because they'll begin to view Trump as an electoral liability instead of an asset. But it's clear that they're not getting any signals to that effect--yet. They're going to just sit there and wait, and then maybe, maybe, if they lose the midterms, they'll start taking a more forceful position.

How do we put the fear of God into these fucks?
posted by Room 101 at 2:13 PM on February 2, 2018 [17 favorites]


How long has this memo been a thing? Feels like weeks, but it might just be my experience of Trump Time.

The memo itself is dated January 18 but most sources say it was compiled in mid-January making it at least 1.5 Scaramuccis old. According to the various timelines:

Dec 28 - Nunes steps up the obfuscation game with letters to the DOJ and FBI on demanding information the FBI's involvement with the dossier
Jan 3 Nunes gets his information
¿...Memo drafted mid-January...?
Jan 18 Trump speaks to Mark Meadows and another unnamed congressman about the memo, but was already "vaguely aware" of it beforehand
Jan 19 The GOP and Hannity begin the #releasethememo media push, supported by Russian bots
posted by peeedro at 2:13 PM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


Ohr 'worked with Rosenstein' and 'had an office four doors down from Rosenstein' so now NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION YOU'RE THE COLLUSION is the plan I think here basically
posted by halation at 2:14 PM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


Nancy Pelosi, in a twitter-linked-image of a press release because #2017 and text is too difficult or whatever:

President Trump has surrendered his constitutional responsibility as Commander-in-Chief by releasing highly classified and distorted intelligence. By not protecting intelligence sources and methods, he just sent his friend Putin a bouquet.

She then asks: "What do the Russians have on Trump, politically, financially, and personally?"
posted by cjelli at 10:25 AM on February 2 [51 favorites +] [!]


Nancy Pelosi was busy this morning in Chicago at a "TrumpTax Town Hall" LIVE from Chicago: Leader Pelosi, Rep. Schakowsky, Rep. Davis, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Indi Dutta-Gupta, Mrinalini Chakraborty, and Nicole Gill join us for a #TrumpTax Town Hall put on by TaxMarch. I got an e-mail from Tax March Wednesday inviting me to the event, so I signed up -- I thought it would be a video conference, but no, it was real people in real time. I was watching Leader Pelosi this morning when she got a folded note handed to her (10:53 Central Time), and snapped a photo of her as what she had just read sunk in -- it was the note telling her the memo would be released at noon (Eastern time). She made the announcement the next time it was her turn to share on the panel. So, for what its worth, while the Republicans are running around Washington trying to create diversion, Nancy Pelosi is travelling around the country having TrumpTax townhalls with local Representatives and local politicians, spreading the truth about the Tax Bill and its effects on the population.

They plan to have 100 of them, look here to see if they are coming to a city near you.

It was AWESOME! I have never been a fan of Nancy Pelosi until I started following the MeFi political thread last year -- thanks to all of you who enlightened me on her unparalleled ability to get things done in Congress. In person she is awesome. Still the overly serious person I see being interviewed on tv or on Capital Hill, BUT with a great sense of humor and wit. I wish she would use those more in public -- those of us to the left of and the way left of center might come to adore her (I do now!). My two favorites -- she was talking about Trickle Down Economics and the lies that have been told about it from the beginning and she said "We've all felt the trickle, it's quite warm." ("we've been pissed on" for those that don't get the hidden meaning) and, in reference to House Republicans "They pray in Church on Sunday's and Prey on People the rest of the week." Nancy spoke from her heart when she was talking about helping people, and supporting programs like Meals on Wheels, and Veterans, and Public Schooling, and Feeding Kids in Schools, and Affordable Education, and Healthcare for ALL, and protecting our Dreamers, and opening our arms to all Immigrants, and how those are the investments that grow a society and an economy and bring long term funds into the Treasury. THAT Nancy Pelosi is not shown in the Media. If anyone here knows her or knows anyone that knows her, pass on the message, please, that we need to see much more of that side of Nancy!

For those of you that don't know Rep. Jan Schakowsky, she's awesome (not my rep, I have Mike Quigley, whom I am loving more and more). The panel was asked for the best short answer to give to a Trump supporter when they were touting the benefits of the Tax Plan. Jan responded first by smiling and shouting "Bullshit!".

Indi Dutta-Gupta was awesome once he stopped reading off of a paper. His ability to speak to the audience and the panel members and the depth and breadth of his knowledge and his eloquence were superb. I heard several people commenting on him after the panel ended.

And Jesse Jackson was awesome. He spoke, but did not participate in the panel. As I listened to his words, to his message, I looked across the panel and I started crying. I never would have believed anyone if they would have told me a year ago that I would be in downtown Chicago on Groundhog Day, 2018, listening to the Reverend Jesse Jackson speaking with Leader Pelosi sitting behind him. And as afraid as I am for my country and my friends, I am also hopeful that we, all of us together, will come out of this horror and form a better, more inclusive, United States of America.

So, for all of the hype going on in the news about the Repubs, there were Democrats out today, speaking with local organizers and local resisters giving us facts to work with and a much needed pep talk and encouragement AND GRATITUDE for our involvement. The men and women on the stage were grateful to the people in the audience. That was palpable. They knew/know that they need people on the ground marching, demonstrating, calling, writing, knocking on doors, registering people to vote, getting people to the polls, holding Republicans accountable. Standing up for the Truth.
posted by W Grant at 2:15 PM on February 2, 2018 [93 favorites]


For the vast majority of Americans, it will be enough that the president has now declared that his own federal intelligence apparatus is corrupt and out to get him

If this were accurate, Trump wouldn't have an approval rating in the 30s. The majority of Americans think that Donald Trump is a crooked sleazebag, and they are unlikely to have their minds changed by this damp squib of a memo.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:17 PM on February 2, 2018 [20 favorites]


Lest you have any doubts about the long game here, the New York Times reports that when he was “[a]sked at the White House on Friday whether he would fire Mr. Rosenstein, the president cocked his head suggestively and said: ‘You figure that one out.’ ”

Oh please, he says that shit not because he's got cunning plans in the works, but because he has no idea what the hell he's doing. It's like a sitcom where the wife asks her husband where they're going for her birthday dinner but he forgot to make reservations so he smiles nervously and says "You'll see!" and then runs to make a call. I love Dahlia, but long game, give me a break.
posted by schoolgirl report at 2:27 PM on February 2, 2018 [40 favorites]


I think for high information voters, this is a nothing burger. For low information voters, it might actually just be "more headlines about Trump and Russia." Which might work kind of like headlines about Clinton and emails.... A lot of confusing smoke that leaves people who aren't paying attention with just the vague impression that there is probably a fire. I can hope, anyway.

Also, I hope it leads to a whole bunch of people Googling Carter Page.
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:28 PM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


It's like a sitcom where the wife asks her husband where they're going for her birthday dinner but he forgot to make reservations

The Winchester
posted by fluttering hellfire at 2:29 PM on February 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


If this were accurate, Trump wouldn't have an approval rating in the 30s

Unfortunately, this is no longer true. Trump's approval is above 40. His disapproval is creeping down towards 50. Somehow, someway, people are buying what he's selling. Not a majority but enough.
posted by Justinian at 2:34 PM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]




Watching his numbers on a weekly basis is about as healthy and predictive as watching your 401k account numbers daily
posted by phearlez at 2:38 PM on February 2, 2018 [42 favorites]


Somehow, someway, people are buying what he's selling.

What he's selling is his supposed role in people's improved economic circumstances
posted by Coventry at 2:39 PM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Trey Gowdy isn't even buying it: As I have said repeatedly, I also remain 100 percent confident in Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The contents of this memo do not - in any way - discredit his investigation.

Holy cow, when your memo is too much of a fake politicized sleazy nothingburger for Trey Gowdy, you have really arrived, my dude.
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:39 PM on February 2, 2018 [24 favorites]


Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla. Lunatic Fringe) goes full bugfuck insane on camera. Transcript for those who hate his face.

"Well, Harris, we now know the facts of what happened. The Democratic Party hired the Perkins [Coie] law firm. The Perkins law firm hired Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele to go and dig up the dossier, and then they hired Nelly Ohr, the wife of Bruce Ohr to get the fake dossier from a political environment into the bloodstream of the intelligence community and to convert it into an intelligence document.

And what’s most outrageous to me is that this fake dossier was so unreliable that the way that it was validated to the FISA Court was a Yahoo News article written by Michael Isikoff, planted by Christopher Steele.

So Christopher Steele wrote the fake dossier, and then he went and planted fake news stories to validate the dossier.

The FBI was going to pay Christopher Steele. They had authorized payment, but then when they found out he was talking to the media and that he was unreliable, they canceled payment to him. But even after canceling payment to Christopher Steele, the FBI and the Department of Justice re-authorized the FISA warrant to spy on American citizens based on a political document that had its origins at the Democratic National Committee.

Harris, I’ve been waiting a long time to stitch together that fact pattern for the American people."

posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 2:40 PM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


Gallup doesn't even do daily tracking anymore, EMRJKC, only weekly. The best resource, by far, is 538's average. Denying that there is very real movement towards trump over the last month is the same head-in-the-sand blinkers that led people to give Clinton a 99% win chance.
posted by Justinian at 2:40 PM on February 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


Somehow, someway, people are buying what he's selling.

What he's selling is his supposed role in people's improved economic circumstances
posted by Coventry at 16:39 on February 2 [+] [!]


And racism.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 2:41 PM on February 2, 2018 [9 favorites]


So Christopher Steele wrote the fake dossier, and then he went and planted fake news stories to validate the dossier.

This is the moment I would love, love, love for the pee tape to surface.
posted by nubs at 2:43 PM on February 2, 2018 [36 favorites]


The Democratic Party hired the Perkins [Coie] law firm. The Perkins law firm hired Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele to go and dig up the dossier, and then they hired Nelly Ohr, the wife of Bruce Ohr to get the fake dossier from a political environment into the bloodstream of the intelligence community and to convert it into an intelligence document.

And after they'd done that - get this - the Democratic Party chose to keep the Trump-smearing fake document which they had created A SECRET until after a Presidential Election which they LOST TO DONALD TRUMP, THE TARGET OF THE FAKE SMEAR! Those devious swine!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:49 PM on February 2, 2018 [37 favorites]


Watching his numbers on a weekly basis is about as healthy and predictive as watching your 401k account numbers daily

*sheepishly closes fivethirtyeight and Schwab tabs*
posted by contraption at 2:49 PM on February 2, 2018 [38 favorites]


And Steele cleverly managed to keep the dossier out of the fake news until after the election. The plan all along was to trick Trump into winning, in order to discredit the Republican party! It's genius!
posted by BungaDunga at 2:49 PM on February 2, 2018 [14 favorites]


To avoid catastrophizing or at least the appearance of it, note that I'm not convinced the straight approval rating comparison can account for the apparent enthusiasm gap we've seen in the past special elections. Obviously an increase in Trump's approval is not good but it's not necessarily a 1-1 reflection on what we would expecting in a vote.
posted by Justinian at 2:49 PM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


OnceUponATime: For low information voters, it might actually just be "more headlines about Trump and Russia."

Yes, I think that could be to the good here. The memo's "argument" is basically fruit-of-a-poisoned-tree, and that principle is meant to protect the accused (while it obviously doesn't apply to Steele-FISA-Page, it has merit in itself). But this is a country whose citizens are frequently suspicious of the existence of defense attorneys. You're really not going to get them on board with "Yeah, Trump may have conspired with Putin, but it's a legal travesty that anyone even knows he did!"

As a tangent from that, I've been surprised by the absence of right-wing alternative "innocent explanations" for the Trump/Russia dalliances out there. The whole spiel amounts to "FBI has it in for him!" and "Fake News!" but there's no actual point of dispute that I'm aware of, no specific thing they insist Trump did/didn't do in all this. Even moon-landing deniers have an ethos, a whole narrative of a secret movie studio, etc. But there's no "Here's what Trump was really doing that only looks like collusion."

(Actually, I did once encounter one such narrative, whereby Trump so excessively praising Putin is actually a brilliant ploy to make Democrats become vocally anti-Putin, after which Trump dramatically reveals Democrats' secret Russia connections and makes them the world's biggest hypocrites. It was an astonishing combination of facts and unreality, like those fanfictions that attempt to reconcile contradictory origin stories. I haven't been able to find the bookmark.)
posted by InTheYear2017 at 2:50 PM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


So Christopher Steele wrote the fake dossier, and then he went and planted fake news stories to validate the dossier.
Interesting, this sounds vaguely familiar... It's almost as if another group of people created fake information and planted fake propaganda on social networks.
posted by gucci mane at 2:52 PM on February 2, 2018 [9 favorites]


Don't forget that only a few days ago, there were more than three million people on the streets demonstrating against Trump all over the country. That's seven to eight times larger than the Tea Party movement ever was, and they managed to flip the house in 2010. Opinion polls in January are one thing, but who shows up to the polls in November is quite another.
posted by vibrotronica at 2:53 PM on February 2, 2018 [49 favorites]


Plus, there's essentially no easy target to attack this time, other than Trump himself.
posted by Coventry at 2:56 PM on February 2, 2018


BBC obtained a troop-rallying email from Wray to FBI employees. He looks to be circling the wagons around the institution.

"Talk is cheap; the work you do is what will endure. We speak through our work. One case at a time. One intelligence product at a time. One decision at a time. We do that work, and we stay laser-focused on doing great work, even when it's not easy, because we believe in the FBI. We believe in what it stands for and in what this institution means to people. And nothing is going to change that.

We're going to keep doing that work, because we know who and what we are, and because we know that our mission comes first. The American people come first. So I ask you to keep doing your great work and keep being the great people you are. And I know that I consider it an incredible privilege to work beside you - and that I'm determined to defend your integrity and professionalism every day.

Remember: keep calm and tackle hard.

Thank you for standing strong together, and for keeping your faith in this institution that means so much to all of us. - Chris Wray"
posted by Rust Moranis at 3:04 PM on February 2, 2018 [45 favorites]


5 Points On How The Nunes Memo Is Basically One Big Self-Own (Tierney Sneed | TPM)
The four-page document is missing key background information about what prompted the ongoing federal investigation into Russia’s ties to the Trump campaign. It misstates details like the date of an article about the former British spy who helped compile the so-called “Trump-Russia dossier.” And a good amount of the information included actually undercuts the Republican authors’ own conclusions.

The memo was supposed to reveal that the DOJ and FBI omitted key information in obtaining a surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. But without the reams of underlying evidence supporting the warrant’s approval, all it does is tell a pre-judged, partisan story.

Below are TPM’s key takeaways on how the memo doesn’t add up.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 3:05 PM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


A Timeline of the House Intelligence Committee Chairman: All the Nunes That’s Fit to Print (Lawfareblog)

A nice summary of Nunes’ objectively wacky antics over the past 12 months. Useful to see it all in one place. Dude is compromised.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 3:10 PM on February 2, 2018 [18 favorites]


Since WW2, there hasn't been a president with as low ratings in their first year as Trump. He lost the popular vote. Imagining that he has the votes of a majority is buying into the false perception that only white male people are Americans. The fight against Trump is important on moral and political grounds (I say as a citizen of the world that is impacted by US policies), but it is also a fight that can be won. Help your 18-yo nephew register, drive your gran to the polls, stand up for the disenfranchised, and obviously, vote in local and state elections, they are essential.
Here, we have a very different system and very high participation in elections, but still there are elections where every single last vote count. GOTV!
posted by mumimor at 3:13 PM on February 2, 2018 [10 favorites]


Even If You Take the Nunes Memo Seriously, It Makes No Sense
...et’s take the Nunes memorandum on its merits and assume that it is what it purports to be—an accurate summary of a purported problem with the FISA application process. What then should we make of it?

Under the most fair reading of the memorandum, the argument it makes is as follows: The Steele dossier—a collection of reports filed by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele—is a biased and flawed document produced by someone out to “get” the president; FBI and Justice Department officials knew of the bias and did not disclose it to the judges of the FISA court who approved the FISA warrant; as a result, the rights of an American citizen (Carter Page) were violated; and (more importantly, from the perspective of the Republican Party) the FBI’s reliance on the Steele dossier corrupted the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign—all of which is, in effect, the “fruit of a poisonous tree” that should no longer be credited.

Given that story line, one can only conclude that the Nunes memo fails to make its case—and fails quite badly at that.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:15 PM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


Let me rephrase Gaetz's theory here, for clarity...

Steele was paid $160k by Democrats to make up fake stories, instead of them just making up fake stories themselves, for free. Then they decided NOT to publish the fake stories they had paid so much for. Instead they told Steele to talk to Mother Jones anonymously and reveal, on October 31st, 2016, that he'd been paid by Democrats to write a dossier, but not what was actually IN the dossier. Then they cleverly LOST the election, so that they could use the dossier to attack President Trump.

That about it?

(If anyone wants to share that summary, BTW, you have my permission to use it without attribution. I would like to see that one get around.)
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:20 PM on February 2, 2018 [69 favorites]


This is interesting - for those of you who don't know, the EPA has been trying to roll back the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan (the cornerstone of us being able to realistically achieve our Paris Agreement commitment), and only hosted one public meeting.... in West Virginia.

They have now delayed the repeal, reopened the comment period through April, and are hosting three more meetings, in Wyoming, Missouri, and California. I'm not totally sure what to make of this but... interesting.

Details here.
posted by mostly vowels at 3:22 PM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


That about it?

Well, you did a nice job and all, but more succinctly: BUT BUT DEMOCRATS!!!!!1one
posted by Fleebnork at 3:25 PM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


When the National Review is saying you've scored a own goal...

The Big Flaw in the Memo: It may have just confirmed a key New York Times scoop
"Ironically enough, the memo in fact confirms the necessity of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller."
posted by chris24 at 3:28 PM on February 2, 2018 [49 favorites]


Please proceed, Congressman.

@nedryun
Devin Nunes: “This is just the first memo. There will be another one dealing specifically with the State Department’s role in all of this.”
posted by chris24 at 3:33 PM on February 2, 2018 [14 favorites]


Oh Christ, he thinks he's McCarthy.
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:37 PM on February 2, 2018 [37 favorites]


Worse, he thinks he's right.
posted by Pendragon at 3:39 PM on February 2, 2018 [10 favorites]


@kathrynw5 (CBS)
.@BretBaier asks Devin Nunes if he read the actual FISA applications: "No, I didn't," he says. Says he sent Trey Gowdy to do that job.
- Nunes says Rosenstein, Sessions and Wray "have work to do," says they've been "unwilling" to admit they have a problem
- "I don't believe somebody like Mr. Page should be a target of the FBI," Nunes says (ME: WTF? Has he seen Page talk?)
- Nunes, asked if they'll vote to release the Democrats' rebuttal memo: "Yeah, we will." "I've only read through it once."
- Nunes says he, Gowdy, and two staff investigators wrote the memo
- "They wouldn't have received a warrant without the dossier," Nunes says
- For clarity/background on this, the agreement was to have one investigator read it — Nunes thought Gowdy, a lawyer and former prosecutor, would be better suited for the job

---

@ddale8 (Toronto Star)
Retweeted Katie Watson
So the whole memo was about the FISA applications. Nunes just said he didn't actually read them. He said Gowdy read them.

Gowdy said today, "The contents of this memo do not - in any way - discredit (Mueller's) investigation."
posted by chris24 at 3:40 PM on February 2, 2018 [67 favorites]


One group to keep an eye on vis-a-vis the Nunes memo is the Republican congress. As terrible as Trump is, his terribleness is enabled and/or limited by the Republican congresspeople. There will, of course, be outliers (both pro and con). They key is if and how the mass of legislators shift their positions around in reaction to the memo.
posted by mhum at 3:49 PM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


National Hero Bree Newsome On Twitter:
The official GOP position is that police are an incorruptible force when it comes to patrolling Black neighborhoods, but also the top law enforcement agency in the nation is corrupt in its investigation of Trump LOLOLOLOLOLOL
posted by TwoStride at 3:49 PM on February 2, 2018 [69 favorites]


The Big Flaw in the Memo: It may have just confirmed a key New York Times scoop

Ah yes, would-be #nevertrump presidential candidate David French, he's still got a lot of influence in the Trump-FOX-Brietbart-Infowars era Republican party.

They key is if and how the mass of legislators shift their positions around in reaction to the memo.

Yea, we can answer that right now. There's nothing to watch, they won't do a damn thing. They're all fully bought into undermining Mueller, and wondering who keeps putting incompetent Devin Nunes on the job of manufacturing the cover story.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:51 PM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


I hereby propose we suspend all jokes about "military intelligence" being an oxymoron and substitute Devin Nunes jokes instead until the House Intelligence Committee chairman is not explicitly the dumbest person in Congress.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 3:52 PM on February 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


The official GOP position is that police are an incorruptible force when it comes to patrolling Black neighborhoods, but also the top law enforcement agency in the nation is corrupt in its investigation of Trump LOLOLOLOLOLOL

And Radley Balko: Pear[l] clutching over alleged misleading info on the Page warrant applications reminds me of gasps over the no-knock raid on Manafort. When the political class gets the tiniest taste of injustices inflicted on regular people daily, they make themselves into Mandelas.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:56 PM on February 2, 2018 [70 favorites]


I think one of the worst things about the current situation is I'm reduced to waiting for our economy to have a major economic setback, in order to put the lie to Republican claims.

Worse, even though I know it takes time to have economic knock -on effects, I have to hope we have an economic crisis before October, just to have a chance of getting a majority in the Senate. I mean it's going to happen sooner or later, and I'm hoping it's sooner.

Which is really fucked. People will suffer when the Republican economic crash happens. I know people who still haven't recovered from 08. I hate what this situation is making me think.
posted by happyroach at 3:58 PM on February 2, 2018 [16 favorites]


South Korean paper the Hankyoreh reports, in "Trump’s 'Bloody Nose' Strategy Must Be Completely Off the Table":
White House National Security Council senior director for Asian affairs Matthew Pottinger was reported as saying in a recent closed-door meeting with US experts on Korean Peninsula issues that a limited strike on the North “might help in the midterm elections.”
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:59 PM on February 2, 2018 [46 favorites]


happyroach, it's one bitter silver lining of the regulatory mayhem: It makes some kind of economic disaster before the election that much more likely.

It's a mild form of accelerationism, I suppose.
posted by Coventry at 4:04 PM on February 2, 2018


NT Alexandra Petri, WaPo: The memo really is worse than the abuses that led to the American Revolution
When I saw that the memo from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes’s (R-Calif.) office had been released, I could not believe my eyes. I sat bolt upright in my long nightshirt and grabbed my flintlock musket. I ran to the window and threw up the sash (no, hang on, that is a different poem), hopped on my steed, and went galloping off to alert my brethren.

King George had done certain things, of course, that were not to be borne, but next to this memo, I was sure, they paled.

“AWAKE, AWAKE!” I cried, clanging into Medford Square, “UP AND TO ARMS!”

“Why?” demanded the honest townsfolk.

“Remember how upset we were when King George plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns and destroyed the lives of our people?” I demanded to know. “Well, I have the Nunes memo, and compared with its contents, I can assure you, that was child’s play!”

“What does the memo say?” a townsman inquired.

“SOMETHING ABOUT CARTER PAGE!” I shouted, spurring my horse. “SOMETHING THE DEMOCRATS DID NOT WISH TO BE SEEN! On, on to Lexington!” I reined in my steed beneath the gilded weathercock. A small crowd had followed me from one town to the next with weapons in hand, but they as yet lacked direction.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:13 PM on February 2, 2018 [33 favorites]


I think one of the worst things about the current situation is I'm reduced to waiting for our economy to have a major economic setback, in order to put the lie to Republican claims.

If it happens before the midterms, they'll blame it on Obama.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:16 PM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


Trump’s 'Bloody Nose' Strategy Must Be Completely Off the Table

This proposed attack would be the moral and legal equivalent of Germany attacking Poland or Japan attacking Pearl Harbor.

By the way, and I had thought we were clear on this, they were the bad guys and those attacks were bad things.

I'm not comparing the Trump administration to the atrocities committed by Germany and Japan during World War II, only comparing illegal and immoral military attacks.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:34 PM on February 2, 2018 [24 favorites]


The memo... wow. This is less than a nothingburger, it's actually harmful to Trump in the court of public opinion, it's so ham-fisted and sleazy. This is an inverse-burger. This is two slabs of meat holding a piece of bread, only the bread has been replaced by breading and a slice of sauce-drowned cheese. This is KFC DoubleDown territory.

I was afraid it would be a credible document carefully recounting masterful fabrications. Nope. It's about as believable as a Hannity monologue. Worse. It's about as believable as a Hannity Monologue endorsing "Pajama-grams" as a Valentines Day gift she's sure to remember.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:39 PM on February 2, 2018 [11 favorites]


Given the cravenness, the obviousness, the depth of treason, I think the comparisons worth mulling over, pending future events.
posted by stonepharisee at 4:40 PM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


White House National Security Council senior director for Asian affairs Matthew Pottinger was reported as saying in a recent closed-door meeting with US experts on Korean Peninsula issues that a limited strike on the North “might help in the midterm elections.”

"Vote GOP 2018! We're why half of Seoul is dead!"

I mean, he might not be wrong: who knows whether a shocked, grieving and outraged population would turn out to vote in an election after North and South Korea are gone, should there still be an election in a state of global crisis and tragedy unprecedented since WW2. Certainly a bold strategy in any case.
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:41 PM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


Given the cravenness, the obviousness, the depth of treason, I think the comparisons worth mulling over, pending future events.

Pearl Harbor or Pajama-Grams?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:42 PM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


Meanwhile in things we're currently being distracted from: Paul Ryan is moving on with the agenda to end Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:55 PM on February 2, 2018 [32 favorites]


Under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, UN member countries can only use military force if:
  • The Security Council authorizes it (Article 42), or
  • If an armed attack occurs against the member country (Article 51)
Looks like President Trump has already violated Chapter I Article 2(4) of the charter, which says that, "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations." (So has "Rocket Man," I guess.)

The UN Charter is a treaty, and treaties "shall be the supreme Law of the Land" equivalent to the Constitution under the Supremacy Clause.

So to me it seems that an attack on North Korea would be illegal under international and US law
posted by kirkaracha at 4:56 PM on February 2, 2018 [9 favorites]


Everything about this administration is illegal. We see what the ruling party is doing about it.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 5:05 PM on February 2, 2018 [22 favorites]


Matthew Pottinger was reported as saying in a recent closed-door meeting with US experts on Korean Peninsula issues that a limited strike on the North “might help in the midterm elections.”

Until I see evidence to the contrary, I'm assuming the recent rushed deployment to Afghanistan was accelerated so that Trump could talk about it during the SOTU.
posted by Coventry at 5:10 PM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Matthew Pottinger was reported as saying in a recent closed-door meeting with US experts on Korean Peninsula issues that a limited strike on the North “might help in the midterm elections.”

While this is the kind of Strangelovian nonsense I can imagine being said by various of the assorted Trump D-list "policy makers", this item's original attribution has no sourcing mentioned. So I'm skeptical.
posted by meehawl at 5:37 PM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]



The memo... wow. This is less than a nothingburger, it's actually harmful to Trump in the court of public opinion


I just had to endure listening to my in laws eating it at dinner time.
posted by ocschwar at 5:52 PM on February 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


Yeah, I think it's important here to reference Snow Crash, if only because more people have heard of Nam Shub in that concept.

There is a segment of the population which is so indoctrinated, that they might as well be speaking in tongues. They hear a message that we do not. We can not. They are inculcated with this virus. Those of us which have immunity, for whatever reason, don't hear the dogwhistle. Even if we can see it, even if we can watch it be disseminated, we can't hear it. But we ignore it at our own peril.

This whistle worked. How well it worked, and how long it stays, in this time of scaramucci measurement, I don't know. But never forget that Republicans are the masters of nam shub. (Well, the Old Republicans, I'm not sure how much power the Ryan generation has for nam shub, I think they're too indoctrinated to actually control the message long term.)
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:03 PM on February 2, 2018 [43 favorites]


ocschwar : I just had to endure listening to my in laws eating it at dinner time.

It is instructive, and enraging to the nth degree, to sometimes dip into the right-wing fever swamps to see what's what. Even here in New Zealand there are ample fetid comments in right-wing blogs, along the lines of "As expected it’s damning for the FBI, the DOJ and some very crooked people in the DNC, most likely up to and including Obama himself.". This particular commentator even admitted that he had typed up his comments the night before in preparation for the memo's release. We continue to hope logic, rational, and factual debate will prevail but right-wing ideology has metastasized into cult-like lunacy.
posted by vac2003 at 6:38 PM on February 2, 2018 [13 favorites]


We continue to hope logic, rational, and factual debate will prevail but right-wing ideology has metastasized into cult-like lunacy.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
posted by kirkaracha at 6:59 PM on February 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


So to me it seems that an attack on North Korea would be illegal under international and US la

Counterpoint: right-wing freakbots in the USA think the UN should die in a fire anyway.
posted by rhizome at 7:00 PM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


Dossier: Carter Page is a Russian agent.
FBI: We'd better investigate that.
FBI, later: Oh yeah, it turns out Carter Page is a Russian agent.
Carter Page: You got me guys. I was a Russian agent all along.
Nunes: THIS PROVES THE DOSSIER IS FULL OF LIES
posted by miyabo at 7:39 PM on February 2, 2018 [75 favorites]


Freon: "So, if I have this right, Nunes' argument is: "If you see or have evidence of a crime, but you don't like the criminal, then you shouldn't report it to the police because that would be unfair.""

I'm reminded of this bit from another scandal-o-rama:
Jon Stewart paraphrasing G. Gordon Liddy: "Because of Mark Felt's unethical behavior, I went to jail for crimes... I committed!"
posted by Mitheral at 8:04 PM on February 2, 2018 [16 favorites]


So to me it seems that an attack on North Korea would be illegal under international and US law

Trump never signed any such treaty so he isn't bound by it.
posted by scalefree at 8:25 PM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


Similarly, it’s well-established that Donald is not bound by contracts he does sign.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:52 PM on February 2, 2018 [14 favorites]


Trump never signed any such treaty so he isn't bound by it.

To be fair, this would appear to be the gravamen of his Constitutional analysis.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:55 PM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


Why I Am Leaving the F.B.I. Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) is a former supervisory special agent with the F.B.I. who served as a counterterrorism investigator and special assistant to the bureau’s director.
"After more than a decade of service, which included investigating terrorism, working to rescue kidnapping victims overseas and being special assistant to the director, I am reluctantly turning in my badge and leaving an organization I love. Why? So I can join the growing chorus of people who believe that the relentless attacks on the bureau undermine not just America’s premier law enforcement agency but also the nation’s security. My resignation is painful, but the alternative of remaining quiet while the bureau is tarnished for political gain is impossible."
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:35 PM on February 2, 2018 [42 favorites]


I wish I knew what to think about Carter fucking Page, and I still don't. He somehow managed to predict last October that Paul Ryan would debase himself around the FISA application; he was officially described as off the campaign -- indeed, never part of the campaign -- in September 2016, but Endangered Species Murderer Junior acts as if he was an integral part of it when the FISA warrant was first approved in late October 2016; his testimony to Congress is like that of a 19th-century fairytale goblin. My best guess is that he is an idiot with an unerring knack of getting close to people with actual insidious intent, but the alternative is much more fucked up, and both Zelig and Keyser Söze analogies feel weird in 2018.
posted by holgate at 9:42 PM on February 2, 2018 [27 favorites]


The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that boy ain't right.
posted by fullerine at 9:47 PM on February 2, 2018 [25 favorites]


The Moron has reappeared. This means we're at the top of the third act, right?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:48 PM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


I know what to think about Carter Page: dude's an idiot

Let's be honest here, if he was smart he wouldn't be down that low on the totem pole. He'd be, like Ivanka's special advisor, having shoved all the other fucking idiots out of the way.

Who is Ivanka's special advisor?
posted by Merus at 9:48 PM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


My money's on Page being a schmuck, an overconfident hanger-on who gets batted around within the campaign as a useful idiot. But not a run-of-the-mill idiot. This is a crowd who put a 24 year old campaign volunteer at the top of national drug policy, it likely takes little more than expressing interest in a non-confirmation slot in order to advance.
posted by rhizome at 10:09 PM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


#YoMemoJokes
posted by rhizome at 10:14 PM on February 2, 2018 [15 favorites]


It's generally accepted that Carter Page was sent back in time to prevent the God Emperor's Reich from coming to fruition. He is the hero we need
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:22 PM on February 2, 2018 [11 favorites]


Folks, I want you all to bow down to the master of the #YoMemoJokes: @alyssa_milano.

Yo’ memo so broke, the @GOP taxed it.
Yo’ memo is so unqualified, Trump made it a cabinet member.
Hey, Yo’ Memo...Y2K called...it wants it’s pointless hype back.

Also, Alyssa Milano is the kind of hardcore celebrity activist that travels to special elections to literally drive people to the polls. She's the real deal.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:46 PM on February 2, 2018 [69 favorites]


Gallup doesn't even do daily tracking anymore, EMRJKC, only weekly. The best resource, by far, is 538's average. Denying that there is very real movement towards trump over the last month is the same head-in-the-sand blinkers that led people to give Clinton a 99% win chance.

Looking ahead to the distant future (when we'll all be saying "I can't believe the Nunes memo was only five days ago"), the thing I wish more Democrats would bear in mind looking at Trump's approval rise since mid-Demember is: Note the one signficant dip in that trend. January 17 - January 23. The government shutdown. "Schumer Shutdown" utterly notwithstanding, Trump and the Republicans took a huge hit during the shutdown, with no sign it was bottoming out before the deal. (See also here.) Remember this five days from now.
posted by chortly at 10:54 PM on February 2, 2018 [21 favorites]


>>>Somehow, someway, people are buying what [Trump]'s selling.
>>What he's selling is his supposed role in people's improved economic circumstances
>And racism.


The racism is his 30% hardcore. He will never lose that group. But until just recently he has been reduced to only that group, and that's bad enough to lose a wave election in November. That's the territory where gerrymandering backfires and hurts you more than it helps, because you moved your support out of "safe" districts that are no longer safe.

His recent rise is due to the economy, which has been humming. That's just a fact. Voters infamously credit or blame the current president for the current economic situation, no matter that a minute of reflection suggests that policies over years are what affect the economy.

BUT: the stock market fell 666 points today, after falling 383 points Tuesday. We're nine years into a rally, P/E rations are sky high, and Trump earned a fall by stimulating a full employment economy. The result was, not surprisingly, upward pressure on inflation and interest rates, and as the saying goes, "Expansions don't die of old age, they're killed by interest rate hikes."

You don't have to hope for bad economic news, it's already here.
posted by msalt at 11:03 PM on February 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


it's war of a kind. Trump and the GOP will be defeated by a superior army, better organized, better supplied, with better morale.

keep at it, folks.
posted by philip-random at 11:24 PM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Expansions don't die of old age, they're killed by interest rate hikes.

Is the new Fed chair hawkish?
posted by Coventry at 11:34 PM on February 2, 2018


I don't know about that, but the turbulence today was widely attributed to concern over wage pressure and interest rate hikes.
posted by msalt at 12:07 AM on February 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


Republicans who were in the position where Democrats are now would not think twice before leading large demonstrations in support of the FBI. And it would kill among average, low-information voters.

Why aren't Democrats doing this? Sure, some annoying far-left people would complain and roll their eyes. Fine. Dismissing them will only help the election prospects of those who actually stand for election, in a Sister Souljah way.
posted by msalt at 12:14 AM on February 3, 2018 [3 favorites]



Republicans who were in the position where Democrats are now would not think twice before leading large demonstrations in support of the FBI. And it would kill among average, low-information voters.

Why aren't Democrats doing this?


The FBI partnered with local police to kill black activists in the 60s. You might think that the 60s are two generations ago but the core mission of the FBI remains the same. They are there to control political dissent. For an example just pay attention to the FBI's rhetoric about "black identity" groups being a significant domestic threat.

Also, you might want to remember that they released the Comey letter about Hillary's e-mails but kept silent on their investigations of the Trump campaigns ties to Russia. The FBI is not your friend. They just happen to be on the right side of some issues sometimes and we're better off as a nation if the executive branch can't point them at their political enemies.
posted by rdr at 12:47 AM on February 3, 2018 [78 favorites]


Yeah it would kind of be tempting fate to get all rah-rah about the law enforcement agency which will become the secret police if successfully subverted by the Trump administration.
posted by XMLicious at 1:00 AM on February 3, 2018 [6 favorites]


TIL that www.nunesmemo.com redirects to the campaign site for his challenger, Andrew Janz, Fresno County Deputy District Attorney and candidate in the CA-22 Congressional seat election.
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 3:11 AM on February 3, 2018 [32 favorites]


I got an email from the organizers of the Atlanta march prepared to respond to Mueller's firing:
Here's a message from the host of the Mueller Firing Rapid Response event you signed up to attend:

In response to groups like ours which came together to partner on Nobody Is Above the Law; we have updated the list of so-called red lines, which if crossed, would signal an attempt by the Trump administration to obstruct the investigation. If these red lines were crossed, the coalition would quickly convene and determine whether to launch the 700+ "Nobody Is Above the Law" events and would communicate with you.

THE RED LINES:
1) Firing Mueller
2) Pardons of key witnesses
3)Actions that would prevent the investigation from being conducted freely, such as replacing Mueller’s current supervisor, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, or repealing the regulations establishing the office

(Please note that this one is a key difference. Originally, we set up this rapid-response network for a Mueller firing. Firing Rosentstein, though, would be comparable to Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre." Nixon had ordered the firing of the Watergate special counsel, and his attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned rather than carry out the order, after which Nixon fired the prosecutor. Rosenstein's ouster would similarly open the route to firing Mueller, or stifling the investigation from above, which is why we need to take it so seriously.)
Nobody Is Above the Law began back in July as an effort to prepare a reactive response if Trump fires Mueller. And we grew to be a deterrent force against such a firing. Now that the Trump strategy has expanded from firing the special counsel to undermining Mueller and throwing sand in the gears of the investigation, we need to adapt our strategies, as well. But together we can overcome these antics to make sure that Donald Trump does not put himself above the law.
I'm ready to hit the streets when needed. I hope y'all are, too.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:13 AM on February 3, 2018 [53 favorites]


Y2K called...it wants it’s pointless hype back

I had my usual rant on this subject all prepared, but then I realized...this is going to keep happening, isn't it? People are going to keep insinuating Y2K wasn't a thing, not realizing the reason it wasn't a thing is because countless people put in a lot of thankless hours and days and months making sure that, for instance, your credit cards didn't charge you for 99 years of late payments or your medical records didn't suddenly say you were 157 years old.

And it's going to happen over and over and over for the rest of my life, until I'm on my deathbed and croaking the only justified "Well, actually..." that will ever come out of my mouth.

I'll be in the angry dome.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 5:01 AM on February 3, 2018 [188 favorites]


And it's going to happen over and over and over for the rest of my life, until I'm on my deathbed and croaking the only justified "Well, actually..." that will ever come out of my mouth.

Seriously. We busted our ass updating our 4GL property and casualty program, and had to play a bunch of hardware updates at the same time, moving from serial terminals to PC's ( we've always been a unix shop )

I did get thanked, though. I got sent to Widespread Panic's NYE2K shows in Atlanta, and on the stopover in Chicago on New Year's Day, my lead operator called and said, "Everything's as expected". Last time I flew on a plane.
posted by mikelieman at 5:34 AM on February 3, 2018 [14 favorites]


Now that the Memo is a negaburger - even without mass knowledge that the two biggest claims, McCabe saying they wouldn't have gotten the warrant without the Dossier and that the FISA judge didn't know some info came from partisan sources, are false - Trumpettes are resorting to "Imagine if Clinton had been investigated because of something from partisans, you'd be burning down the FBI."

Well, we don't have to imagine. From the week before the election.

WaPo: Why an anti-Clinton book from Breitbart got the FBI’s attention

Funny how during a 2015 and 2016 wrapped up in a Breitbart-fueled/Clinton Cash FBI investigation and smearing of Clinton, we managed not to torch the FBI despite the heat of an election and control of DOJ.
posted by chris24 at 5:34 AM on February 3, 2018 [23 favorites]


And regarding the above...

WaPo: Justice Dept. told court of source’s political influence in request to wiretap ex-Trump campaign aide, officials say
The court that approved surveillance of a former campaign adviser to President Trump was aware that some of the information underpinning the warrant request was paid for by a political entity, although the application did not specifically name the Democratic National Committee or the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

A now-declassified Republican memo alleged that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was duped into approving the wiretap request by a politicized FBI and Justice Department. The memo was written by House Intelligence Committee Republicans and alleged a “troubling breakdown of legal processes” flowing from the government’s wiretapping of former Trump aide Carter Page.

But its central allegation — that the government failed to disclose a source’s political bias — is baseless, the officials said.

The Justice Department made “ample disclosure of relevant, material facts” to the court that revealed “the research was being paid for by a political entity,” said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

“No thinking person who read any of these applications would come to any other conclusion but that” the work was being undertaken “at the behest of people with a partisan aim and that it was being done in opposition to Trump,” the official said.
---

WSJ confirms this:
At least two of those renewals occurred while Mr. Trump was president and at least one was authorized by a Justice Department official he appointed. A person familiar with the matter said that four separate federal judges approved the surveillance of Mr. Page, and all of those judges were appointed by Republican presidents.

The memo is critical of Mr. Steele and notes that prosecutors in their application for the warrant didn’t explicitly state that he was working for a firm funded by Democrats. But the FISA application did disclose Mr. Steele was being paid by a law firm working for a major political party, according to a person familiar with the matter. Redacting the names of U.S. people or organizations who aren’t the subject of an investigation is a common practice in government legal filings, designed to protect privacy.
---

And it seems DOJ has no issues with Mueller's work.

@ZoeTillman (Buzzfeed)
New tonight: The Justice Dept. has asked a judge to toss out Paul Manafort's lawsuit challenging special counsel Mueller's appointment. How do they start? By arguing that Mueller "is properly operating within the scope of his authority"
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4365828/2-2-18-DOJ-Mueller-Motion-to-Dismiss.pdf
posted by chris24 at 5:44 AM on February 3, 2018 [28 favorites]


And to complete the trifecta, the Times also confirms that the court was informed of the partisan sourcing.
One of its chief accusations centers on the inclusion in the warrant application of material from a former British spy, Christopher Steele. Mr. Steele was researching possible connections between Russia’s election interference and Trump associates, but the application to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge did not explain that he was partly financed by the Democratic National Committee and lawyers for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the memo says.

“Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the D.N.C., Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior D.O.J. and F.B.I. officials,” said the memo, which was written by committee staff members.

But a 10-page Democratic memo written to rebut the Republican document says that the F.B.I. was more forthcoming with the surveillance court than the Republicans say. The F.B.I. told the court that the information it received from Mr. Steele was politically motivated, though the agency did not say it was financed by Democrats, according to two people familiar with the Democratic memo.
posted by chris24 at 5:52 AM on February 3, 2018 [29 favorites]


Fox news is doing the interesting thing of determining that all the news outlets/reporters/anchors who have expressed doubts about the memo are by definition liberal organs out to get the president.

I know this is probably not news to anybody but me, but for some reason I was working and I thought, 'You know, I bet people are coming to their senses about this memo," and looked at the Fox News website for the first time in my life, and voila, the memo is just another divisive thing, and belief in its relevance is being used as a loyalty test.

I wonder if the reaction to the fact that the judges knew that the Steele dossier had partisan backing is going to be criticism of the judiciary. Or is just going to be yomemo jokes/Super Bowl/we attack NK/what memo and nobody but the writers of the books of this time will give a fuck.
posted by angrycat at 6:33 AM on February 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


Isn't the provenance of evidence presented central to any court proceedings? In open court, if you produce a document and refuse to say where it came from and how, it's not admissible. Closed courts exist precisely because there are cases where such matters can't be revealed in public: in other words, testing provenance is their entire raison d'etre.

So not only is the central assumption of the memo amply rebutted by people saying this was so, there's no room to think that it could have been any other way.

It can happen - I've seen it - that there is an inherent flaw in the declared provenance, not so much that evidence didn't come from where it was claimed it came but that there's no way to test the bona fides of the people who originate the evidence. For example, if the state is prosecuting a computer crime and the evidence comes from logs produced on a state-controlled system. If you can't test that, the evidence is questionable at best - but the court can decide not to go down that path if the defence chooses not to bring it up. If the FISA judges were of that mindset, because they too were acting on political motives, then that might be harder to disprove.

I don't for a microsecond think that; the investigation was underway before the dossier and there's apparently plenty of corroborating evidence. I do expect that to be floated as 'more evidence of structural institutional bias against 45', because that's entirely in line with the trajectory of the motherfuckers' desperate attempts to pervert every other arm of state.

In earlier times, these people would be hung from lamp-posts, and those are the times to which they wish to return us. It's a good thing for them that we're better than that.
posted by Devonian at 6:35 AM on February 3, 2018 [4 favorites]


Contributing editor at National Review.

@AndrewCMcCarthy
I don’t understand commentary about whether FISA warrant is ‘invalid.’ That’s crim law concept. FISA is intel — it’s not like govt has to give back information it learns. This is not prosecution situation where not fruit-of-poisonous-tree doctrine applies.
posted by chris24 at 6:42 AM on February 3, 2018 [28 favorites]


Isn't the provenance of evidence presented central to any court proceedings?

This Lawfare link was posted earlier and seems to argue that it could have been omitted without affecting the validity of the warrant.

"The apparent idea is that the failure to adequately document the funding behind Steele's work is a huge deal and a fraud on the court. But as a matter of law, that seems pretty unlikely to me. When federal judges have faced similar claims in litigation, they have mostly rejected them out of hand."
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:45 AM on February 3, 2018 [4 favorites]


It's been a while since law school, but wouldn't any issue with the warrant affidavits only impact Carter Page's prosecution? I.e., only Page has an expectation of privacy in his communications. If the police break into my house in violation of the 4th amendment and find a recording of someone else committing a crime, they might not be able to use it against me but they could still use it against the person in the video (if that person didn't have an expectation of privacy in my house). Evidence is suppressed when it violates the defendant's rights, not anyone's rights. Trump, Manafort, Gates, Flynn, etc don't have standing to assert Page's 4th amendment rights.
posted by melissasaurus at 7:02 AM on February 3, 2018 [12 favorites]



How intelligent is Nunes? I know nothing about him beyond all of these Trump shenanigans and I've been trying to figure him out. I think it's pretty obvious that he is caught up in it somehow and is trying to save himself, that or he is an utterly true believer willing to sacrifice himself on the alter. Does he really think that this memo shows this vast conspiracy that discredits the investigation? Or is he smart enough to understand muddying the water as a valid technique and thinks that this is enough to do it? Is it a situation of wishful thinking where he is too desperate to be able to see clearly much this thing could backfire and make it worse?

I find that with many of these people it's difficult to suss out what comes from being stupid (and maybe desperate) and what comes from a more intelligent attempt at political manipulation.
posted by Jalliah at 7:04 AM on February 3, 2018 [6 favorites]


Trumpettes are resorting to "Imagine if Clinton had been investigated because of something from partisans, you'd be burning down the FBI."

Well, we don't have to imagine. From the week before the election.

WaPo: Why an anti-Clinton book from Breitbart got the FBI’s attention

Funny how during a 2015 and 2016 wrapped up in a Breitbart-fueled/Clinton Cash FBI investigation and smearing of Clinton, we managed not to torch the FBI despite the heat of an election and control of DOJ.


...I have had the uncomfortable realization that: maybe we didn't torch the FBI because it was Hillary Clinton who was being attacked as opposed to Bernie Sanders or Barack Obama.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:08 AM on February 3, 2018 [26 favorites]


I remember plenty of people (myself included) laying into the FBI and recalling how often the FBI has fucked anything left of center previously. The current situation doesn't absolve them of that. There was a funny piece on NPR on how the FBI wouldn't let partisan politics distract them and for whatever reason I thought they were going to add "from fucking over the democrats again".

So I think the Trumpets are once again just full of shit.
posted by Slackermagee at 7:12 AM on February 3, 2018 [6 favorites]


How intelligent is Nunes? I know nothing about him beyond all of these Trump shenanigans and I've been trying to figure him out.

Nunes is a former dairy farmer of Portuguese descent and was elected to congress when he was 29 (roughly 14 years ago). In 2012 his net worth was estimated somewhere in the range of $183,000. That puts him far below the average net worth of Republican representatives in Congress (in 2012), which was $7.6 million.

He was a member of Trump's transition team, advising on intelligence and. . . .

Sorry, I hit the wall, the guys an idiot.
posted by jeremias at 7:52 AM on February 3, 2018 [7 favorites]


It's a matter of just how far off the rails Republicans have gone to attack the FBI. The FBI historically has been the political police...on behalf of Republicans. Literally not one Democrat has been head of the FBI, ever. Obama's legacy will include appointing Republican attack dog James Comey to a position where he could later sabotage everything Obama worked to achieve. They helped assassinate left activists in the 60s, and kept tabs on 1000s of political activists up through 2016, when they interfered in the election...to help Trump.

And yet, persecuting Democratic activists and leaders was always only the secondary mission of the FBI. The first was countering Russian communism, and then Russian aggression post-fall, plus Al-Queda/ISIS terrorism. Now that the FBI belatedly realized their man at the top was a Russian agent the entire time, Republicans are willing to turn on their own former allies to protect their new best friend, Putin.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:54 AM on February 3, 2018 [53 favorites]


Please don’t think ill of dairy farmers because of Devin Nunes.
posted by wintermind at 8:07 AM on February 3, 2018 [26 favorites]


Please don’t think ill of dairy farmers local milk people because of Devin Nunes.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:11 AM on February 3, 2018 [41 favorites]


Nor those of Portuguese descent.
posted by Mister Bijou at 8:14 AM on February 3, 2018 [17 favorites]


I find that with many of these people it's difficult to suss out what comes from being stupid (and maybe desperate) and what comes from a more intelligent attempt at political manipulation.

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? It sure does seem to be shameless and desperate behavior with no regard for anything they might destroy, just to keep themselves out of prison. But, it sure as hell seems to be working in the short term, and it still might work! Until they actually get indicted, hauled into court, tried, and convicted...... All of this Trumpery is working.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 8:26 AM on February 3, 2018 [4 favorites]


I turned to my husband last night while going over the day's news and said, "There must be some freak-kay kompromat on Devin Nunes sitting in an FSB desk drawer."

My husband countered that maybe not freaky, but treasonous.

My reply is that Devin Nunes is too simple to actually recognize that being a bad thing. Like, if Joe Amerika, undercover FSB spy, came to him and said "We have video of you doing a treason" I am pretty sure our friend Devin would just be uncomprehending. However, if the message was that "We have a video of you getting down and dirty with [whatever--I don't want to kinkshame, just insert whatever you think Devin Nunes would literally do anything to hide]" then that would pretty easily explain his constant series of OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT-typed decisions.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:38 AM on February 3, 2018 [8 favorites]


All of this Trumpery is working.
Yes, and this is what I can't stand the very most about being alive right now in the universe. Why couldn't we put his grifting scamming thieving moneylaundering mayberaping but in any event constantly criming ass in jail back in the EIGHTIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES! Why don't we ever enforce the laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw?!?! Failing that, and having not enforced it for fucking decades, why did we allow this transparently obvious gambit to snag "get out of jail free" cards for himself and all his begginforabitchslap progeny by becoming a serious candidate for the presidency?
posted by Don Pepino at 8:42 AM on February 3, 2018 [27 favorites]


It is entirely plausible that the Special Counsel will present conclusive evidence for charging the President with felonies, a Democratic House of Representatives will impeach the President, and a sufficient number of Republican senators will see political advantage in joining their Democratic colleagues to convict the President. Donald Trump is not a popular man. There is hope!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:42 AM on February 3, 2018 [23 favorites]


One of the long term consequences of Trumpism might be that the Democratic party becomes allied with all the institutions that had previously been antagonistic to liberal idealogy. Trump is forcing the Republicans to declare war on "The Swamp" and all these institutions are turning to Democrats for survival. This includes the FBI, the DoJ, and maybe even the DoD. Wall Street and Silicon Valley are already Democratic things. Business beyond the 1% donor class is also growing less fond of Republicans. They got their big tax cut but Trump destroyed TPP, might do the same to NAFTA, and is destroying alliances and friendships around the world. Trump's business council disbanded in an attempt to force him to be less caustic and racist after Charlottesville, but if Neo-Nazis marched again what do you think Trump would say? The media are not biased towards the Democrats, but they are biased towards their own institutional survival and the upholding of concepts like freedom of speech.

The further the Republican Party follows Trump down his dark path of destruction, the harder it is for them to come back. The American people have short memories, scandals come and go with every news cycle. Institutions have very long memories and they carry grudges for generations. The FBI is going to remember that Republicans betrayed them, repeatedly, to prop up a traiterous fool.

The Democrats are becoming the party of institutions, or traditional small-c conservatism, and the Republican Party is radicalizing even further into conspiracy theory deep state racist victimhood buffoonery. They won't win many elections and might be relegated to permanent minority status. But there won't be room for other ideas to form. The dream of gay space utopia will have to wait just so we can protect the basic principle of the rule of law.

You could almost say that conservatives will win by losing.
posted by Glibpaxman at 9:26 AM on February 3, 2018 [23 favorites]


You could almost say that conservatives will win by losing.

If they lose, and if we come out of this with institutions to represent. Best to concern ourselves with preventing them from winning by winning before we bemoan their winning by losing.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:46 AM on February 3, 2018 [27 favorites]


After tweetbragging a couple days ago that Hostess was going to provide a free snack a week to its employees in 2018, Paul Ryan is now out with this gem to prove how successful the tax cut is.

@PRyan
A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week ... she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year.
posted by chris24 at 9:52 AM on February 3, 2018 [37 favorites]


ISTR that German fascism got a toehold in its very early days through a criminal finding out that he could get enough power to cover his various (and quite banal) crimes by getting elected in the shires by agricultural folk willing to buy into his anti-semitism/anti-elitism/national exceptionalism message. A process that appealed to others in his situation.

So if you want to argue that far-right politics has its roots in, encourages the flourishing of, and in the end exists in symbiosis with, criminality, I think the evidence then and now is extremely strong. Of course they attack the independent judiciary and state policing organisations - they have to, as a matter of urgency.
posted by Devonian at 9:56 AM on February 3, 2018 [18 favorites]


while the FBI is perhaps not entirely representative of this, many of the people who work for 'the institutions' -- that is, federal employees -- tend to be at least of a liberal bent. perhaps, if we can get through all this, we'll see some of these traditionally-more-conservatively-allied institutions say 'you know what, fuck that,' and finally realise that people who want to drown the government in a bathtub aren't your friends when you are yourselves in fact a part of 'the government.' we may not instantly achieve the dream of fully automated luxury gay space communism, but we could well see a liberalising of these institutions. we originally had reasons for institutions like these, after all. previously we could never wrest them away from the entrenchment of conservative ideology, but maybe they'll finally be persuaded to abandon conservatism on their own. this could be an opportunity -- again, provided we can hang on to enough territory to maintain some functioning form of government -- to help these institutions reform.
posted by halation at 10:01 AM on February 3, 2018 [7 favorites]


A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week ... she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year.

Yay, she can afford to pay a company for the privilege of paying them more of her own money for school supplies that the district can't afford to buy any more.
posted by octothorpe at 10:02 AM on February 3, 2018 [66 favorites]


ISTR that German fascism got a toehold [...]

The real downside to this is that the Germans didn't get themselves out of their mess on their own. Once it got a toe-hold, it was in and done until the Allied Forces put an end to it.

I wonder who the new Allied Forces are going to be?
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 10:05 AM on February 3, 2018 [8 favorites]


There's a political ad running constantly here in Southwestern Pennsylvania that attacks PA-18 Democratic hopeful Conor Lamb for being too close to Nancy Pelosi (despite the fact that he said she should step down) and for saying that the GOP's tax plan "gives crumbs to the middle class." The ad of course uses a phony $2,900 number (sourced only to "House Ways and Means Committee") to describe the size of the tax cut for the "middle class", but here's Paul Ryan going apeshit over the fact that a teacher is saving $75 a year.

The ad will probably be effective here, but I have to wonder what the blowback will be when these voters start noticing that it really is crumbs that they're getting.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:18 AM on February 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


So given the news that Trump wants to test-fire a nuke to make a point to North Korea I decided to see what governance actually exists regarding testing nuclear weapons. Turns out there are two main treaties on the subject: the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 (PTBT) & the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty of 1996 (CTBT).

The PTBT basically prohibits testing nuclear weapons in the air, sea & outer space, leaving open underground tests as long as the fallout doesn't drift into another nation. 126 nations have ratified it including the US, 10 more have signed but not ratified. 60 have not including 3 countries with nukes, China, France, and North Korea.

The CTBT, as its name suggests, bans all use of nuclear weapons for any purpose whatsoever. 166 countries have ratified it so far, 17 have signed but not ratified. The treaty contains a list called Annex 2 of 44 nuclear capable (weapons or reactors) states. When all 44 have ratified it the Treaty goes into effect. All but 8 Annex 2 states have ratified it. Of the 8 holdouts China, Egypt, Iran, Israel & the US have signed but not ratified it; India, North Korea & Pakistan have not signed.

What's the difference between signing & ratifying? Glad you asked! Signing is a non-binding statement of intent. Ratifying is binding once the Treaty goes into effect. PTBT has been in effect since 1963; CTBT will go into effect once the final eight Annex 2 nations ratify it.

So there you have it. Yes, according to our current obligations under international law, Trump could test fire a nuclear weapon underground because the CTBT isn't in effect yet.
posted by scalefree at 10:20 AM on February 3, 2018 [7 favorites]


The Senate's the hard part, we'd need about 20 out of 52 R's to cross over. Possible? Yes. But not easy.
posted by scalefree at 10:37 AM on February 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


Ryan's tweet was deleted -- I guess a staffer finally realized how ridiculous it looks when you're lauding a $1.50/week pay bump as evidence that you're helping the proles out -- but @LOLGOP sees an opportunity to share another testimonial:
Charles, a Koch brother in Wichita, said he was pleasantly surprised that his pay went up $26,923,076 a week... he said [that] will more than cover the cost of buying several more Paul Ryans.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:37 AM on February 3, 2018 [172 favorites]


When trends collide, everyone wins --
@localbookshop: Hey @SpeakerRyan , with my $1.50 I went out and bought a better memo.

#YoMemoJokes
#ThanksPaulRyan
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:56 AM on February 3, 2018 [33 favorites]


The Senate's the hard part, we'd need about 20 out of 52 R's to cross over. Possible? Yes. But not easy.
It's 51 R's, I thought?
posted by floomp at 12:01 PM on February 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


I know posting Trump's dumb tweets in here isn't ideal, so I'll just share one sentence from the WaPo's coverage of the morning tweet from the consistently good Jenna Johnson:
It's unclear why the president put his last name in quotation marks, although he often speaks of himself in the third-person, and the tweet used the word “their” instead of “there.”
posted by peeedro at 12:01 PM on February 3, 2018 [8 favorites]


It's 51 R's, I thought?

Yep. I pulled the number from Google's preview of Ballotpedia on the Senate. Ballotpedia has it right, Google's preview is outdated.
posted by scalefree at 12:15 PM on February 3, 2018


Mod note: A few deleted; still aiming the thread back toward less noise/less chitchat/less one-liner snark, even though again nobody's doing anything wrong, and it's not gonna be perfectly consistent what gets deleted, but still it's a broad general aiming kind of thing.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:21 PM on February 3, 2018 [6 favorites]


> So to me it seems that an attack on North Korea would be illegal under international and US law

These professors of international law agree with you:
Except in the narrowest of circumstances (which are not foreseeable here), it would be unlawful. Our best assessment is that it would amount to a violation of the prohibition on the use of force set forth in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and customary international law.
posted by BungaDunga at 12:40 PM on February 3, 2018


Does anyone think Trump would hesitate for one second over concern for international law? The Jerusalem move and Paris Agreements decisions erased any doubt on that score.
posted by msalt at 2:21 PM on February 3, 2018 [9 favorites]


Does anyone think Trump would hesitate for one second over concern for international law?

No. And UN law generally is simply not equipped to deal with aggression by a permanent member of the Security Council. That's why the UN did nothing against Russia invading Ukraine, or Georgia, or shooting down plane full of Dutch citizens. The US and the EU led international sanctions, but the UN was utterly powerless. The UN could do nothing against the US either, because the US has a veto over any UN action. Even beyond that, the US isn't even a member of the ICC treaty, which would theoretically have jurisdiction over crimes of aggression, but has never brought such charges. International law, especially over war crimes issues (vs trade disputes and the like), is sort of an aspirational hall of mirrors, the underlying principals are noble and well-intentioned, but there's no real enforcement that doesn't swiftly come back to realpolitik, so it's only even been used by powerful western countries against far weaker states like Rwanda and former Yugoslavia.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:40 PM on February 3, 2018 [12 favorites]


"Sen. Orrin Hatch says he has confidence in Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein but said Trump may have to get rid of him if he becomes too controversial and cant oversee the investigation."

Senate Republicans are all in on fascism and Trump.

@JohnCornyn
1) I respect the men and women of the FBI and DOJ; 2) I respect both former Director Mueller and current Director Wray; and 3) I believe an impartial ethics investigation of leadership of both organizations during last administration is essential to restore public confidence

---

Former R congressman posted this yesterday, but even more true today.

@DavidJollyFL
Folks, starting today, this is no longer about the Russians. This is now about the GOP.
posted by chris24 at 2:49 PM on February 3, 2018 [67 favorites]


Rewire: New Hampshire Republicans: Ban Abortion Care at Eight Weeks

I understand this doen't have a hope of passing but 8 weeks...wow. They are introducing this really extreme legislation to get people used to the idea that 20 week ban is not so draconian. Sooner or later one of these bills is going to pass and end up in the Supreme Court which (depending on how many more justices Trump/Pence get to nominate) may eventually overturn Roe v Wade. Then it will be up to each state to decide on abortion limits. Then the Red States will counter with some sort of murder charge for anyone crossing state lines to get an abortion. I'm sure that is where we are headed.

On a lighter note....

For WIs Future:
Right now, Paul Ryan is at a fundraiser in Tennessee where you can pay $10,000 to get a pic with him. We expect more.

Matthew Yglesias: That’s 128 years worth of $1.50 a week for each photo.

I'm really enjoying the stupidity of the $1.50 tweet right now-- it takes my mind off the memo. I realize the memo is a nothing burger written by a stupid man, you realize the memo is a nothing burger written by a stupid man but the problem is that it is going to be used as a weapon. Logic, facts, reason are not helping us here. We can carefully dissect it all we want but it just doesn't matter. It is still an effective weapon for the Republicans. And that makes me crazy.

Finally, one note about The Weeds podcast. They did a great episode on MS 13 which goes into depth on the background of MS 13 and how various groups have handled it. One thing that really jumped out at me is that Yglesias notes that Trump advertised them in his SOTU address. By focusing on their brutal murder methods he-- in effect-- was telling the nation, "Be very scared of these people." It was everything an MS 13 gang could wish for in free advertisement and they will find it that much easier to extort money from their victims. They are not an especially large group nor a particularly deadly group but they just got a big boost from the President.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:54 PM on February 3, 2018 [25 favorites]


The U.S. government is set to borrow nearly $1 trillion this year, an 84 percent jump from last year (WaPo):
It was another crazy news week, so it's understandable if you missed a small but important announcement from the Treasury Department: The federal government is on track to borrow nearly $1 trillion this fiscal year — Trump's first full year in charge of the budget.

That's almost double what the government borrowed in fiscal year 2017.

Here are the exact figures: The U.S. Treasury expects to borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, according to a documents released Wednesday. It's the highest amount of borrowing in six years, and a big jump from the $519 billion the federal government borrowed last year.
posted by peeedro at 3:05 PM on February 3, 2018 [31 favorites]


ProPublica: New Details Alleged in Scheme to Make Millions Off First Border Wall in Texas
The kickback scheme was allegedly hashed out over weeknight drinks at a steakhouse in a border county in south Texas. Amid surf and turf and expensive scotch, a Hidalgo County official said he would meet with contractors in the clubby confines of the restaurant in a strip mall in McAllen.

There, Godfrey Garza Jr., director of the county’s drainage district, cajoled company executives to hire a firm owned by his family in exchange for a cut of lucrative construction contracts, according to new documents filed in state district court in Hidalgo County. The target of the plan: a $232 million project funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the county to build a border fence and rehabilitate aging dirt levees along the Rio Grande.
It's pretty much what we all suspected. This multi-billion dollar wall is going to be a magnet to the pigs trying to push their snouts into the trough. The only question in my mind is if the Trumps will figure out a way to get their family in there somewhere.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:07 PM on February 3, 2018 [31 favorites]



@JohnCornyn
1) I respect the men and women of the FBI and DOJ; 2) I respect both former Director Mueller and current Director Wray; and 3) I believe an impartial ethics investigation of leadership of both organizations during last administration is essential to restore public confidence


I have no I idea where I've read it now, but I was reading somebody about how in a fascist state, the poison will be mixed in with reason, kind of like my mom would give me jam to cover the taste of this disgusting-tasting medicine.

So I was reading the tweet above and like cool cool cool way wait aren't you GOP and is there fascism in this tweet and OH point three is the significant part.

It's sort of like Trump's idea in the SOTU of making it easy for cabinet officials to fire anybody was in the guise of "we want to be able to recognize the really good workers!" It takes a little bit before you realize something really foul is in your mouth.
posted by angrycat at 3:17 PM on February 3, 2018 [33 favorites]


Finally, one note about The Weeds podcast. They did a great episode on MS 13 which goes into depth on the background of MS 13 and how various groups have handled it.

One thing to note is that MS-13 even exists because of US policy to deport violent non-citizen gang members. The Unintended Consequences of Deporting Criminals.
posted by scalefree at 3:25 PM on February 3, 2018 [5 favorites]


But sure, totally outrageous to get a FISA warrant on this guy. Love that the GOP tied themselves to this guy's credibility. New from TIME.

Carter Page Touted Kremlin Contacts in 2013 Letter
Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the Kremlin in a letter obtained by TIME that raises new questions about the extent of Page’s contacts with the Russian government over the years.

The letter, dated Aug. 25, 2013, was sent by Page to an academic press during a dispute over edits to an unpublished manuscript he had submitted for publication, according to an editor who worked with Page.

“Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,” the letter reads.
posted by chris24 at 4:24 PM on February 3, 2018 [35 favorites]


...and 3) I believe an impartial ethics investigation of leadership of both organizations during last administration is essential to restore public confidence

Wait. Shouldn't there be quotation marks around the word "impartial"?
posted by Mental Wimp at 4:39 PM on February 3, 2018


@JohnCornyn
1) I respect the men and women of the FBI and DOJ; 2) I respect both former Director Mueller and current Director Wray; and 3) I believe an impartial ethics investigation of leadership of both organizations during last administration is essential to restore public confidence


tl;dr:
@JohnCornyn
All Lies Matter
posted by lefty lucky cat at 4:51 PM on February 3, 2018 [17 favorites]


We went to a David Price (D) town hall this morning. A lot was covered in about 2 hours. It was good because it felt reassuring that there is indeed at least 1 adult in the room up in DC, who IS in touch with constituency and realities of life at our level. His values align with the blue camp, and he's been working it in DC for over 30 years. I had no idea his credentials (undergrad from UNC, graduate degree in divinity from I forgot where and PhD in Poli Sci from Yale.)

But it was also bad, because it was a glimpse into the battles he's fighting for us, and it hit home that this shit is REAL, not a VR thing on screens and paper, and how utterly horrible & destructive this administration is.

It was overwhelming, honestly, but the bottom line, as we have all been saying & focusing on is we've got to take back everything we can with upcoming elections.

One of the questions was about impeachment. And he said it hasn't gotten close to that but it is on the radar, and they want to let Mueller do his work. He also mentioned that he felt the emoluments clause issues (Trump's continued profiteering hotels etc) are as big or bigger than impeachable issues. And he said he thought $25B for a wall was "completely preposterous".

So we're having wine & feeling dwarfed by all this bullshit. Some of it is not sleeping worth a shit for various reasons (barfing cats & work stress) but somehow just crushed under the weight of what we're all facing.
posted by yoga at 5:11 PM on February 3, 2018 [40 favorites]


I believe an impartial ethics investigation of leadership of both organizations during last administration is essential to restore public confidence

Actually, it's about ethics in the Executive branch.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:12 PM on February 3, 2018 [42 favorites]


Actually, it's about ethics in the Executive branch.

Legislative too, I think.
posted by scalefree at 6:23 PM on February 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


Carter Page Touted Kremlin Contacts in 2013 Letter

Now THAT'S a proper Deep State leak. Well done. Your move, Trumpers.
posted by scalefree at 6:38 PM on February 3, 2018 [31 favorites]


They are not an especially large group nor a particularly deadly group but they just got a big boost from the President.

You might want to tell that to the families of the three teenagers shot to death by MS-13 in a four-month period in 2015/2016 in East Boston, the mother whose three young kids watched her die from a bullet shot into their apartment by an MS-13 member in a gun battle outside their apartment in nearby Chelsea in 2014 or the bystander who almost died when an MS-13 member opened fire on a rival in a Blue Line subway car.

The reason we know all about MS-13's involvement in these and other murders and attempted murders in and around East Boston is because in 2016, the FBI and local police in Boston and some neighboring communities arrested 61 MS-13 members in a large sweep - aided in large part by tips from members of the immigrant communities the gang was targeting.

The problem, of course, is that you probably won't see something like that again now that people are terrified of going to the police, even in places like Boston and Chelsea, which have declared themselves sanctuary cities.
posted by adamg at 6:53 PM on February 3, 2018 [12 favorites]


Ha ha ha ha... In the continuing annals of amateur hour in the Trump administration, it may turn out that the act of declassifying the Nunes memo discloses the previously classified existence of the FISA warrants on Carter Page, which...

... wait for it ...

... are now subject to FOIA requests.

Brad Heath and the James Madison Project have done just that.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 7:21 PM on February 3, 2018 [56 favorites]


John Cornyn won a seat on the Texas supreme court in a partisan election, then was elected as a Republican to be state Attorney General. His career is founded upon a politicised justice system.
posted by holgate at 7:27 PM on February 3, 2018 [5 favorites]


Brad Heath and the James Madison Project have done just that.

As has Carter Page.
posted by compartment at 7:52 PM on February 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


Oh. Maybe THAT'S why people cared about this damp squib of a memo coming out. But really? Declassifying the existence of those warrants automatically declassified the contents? That doesn't sound right. I don't think that's how it works.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:10 PM on February 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


Declassifying the existence of those warrants automatically declassified the contents?

No. The government response to the FOIA suit was to neither confirm nor deny the existence of requested information; now the DOJ has to update its response to say "yeah, it exists, and you still can't see it."
posted by holgate at 8:21 PM on February 3, 2018 [11 favorites]


Katie Rogers and Matthew Rosenberg of the NYT are reporting that a young attorney named Kashyap Patel was the main author of the Nunes memo. Fun facts from their profile:
-- 37, graduated from Pace Univ. Law School in 2005
-- In 2016, prosecuting a counterterrorism case, he pissed off a judge who said to him, "The last thing I need here, Mr. Patel, is a bureaucrat who flies down here at great expense and causes trouble rather than actually is a productive member of the team.”
-- She then filed an "Order of Ineptitude" addressing his department as a whole.
-- Last summer, he and another House Intel. Committee staffer flew to London unannounced and tried to meet Christopher Steele of dossier fame. They were turned away.
-- BUT he goes bowling at the White House with "the Dons"
posted by msalt at 9:43 PM on February 3, 2018 [35 favorites]


-- She then filed an "Order of Ineptitude" addressing his department as a whole.

Oh yeah, that's him. I'd recognize that ineptitude anywhere.
posted by scalefree at 10:03 PM on February 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


Heh. Leaking the name of a low-level (non-white) staffer so they can try to pin this whole fiasco on him. Classic.
posted by MrVisible at 10:09 PM on February 3, 2018 [13 favorites]


Seems like they really buried the lede on that story:
A senior official for the Republican majority on the Intelligence Committee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, said the purpose of the visit had been to make contact with Mr. Steele’s lawyers, not Mr. Steele. Still, the visit was highly unusual and appeared to violate protocol, because they were trying to meet with Mr. Steele outside official channels.

Ordinarily, such a visit would be coordinated through lawyers, conducted with knowledge of the House Democrats, who were not informed and the American Embassy.
Who sent them, and why'd they do it on the sly?
posted by Coventry at 10:12 PM on February 3, 2018 [7 favorites]


(Just noting for the sake of accuracy that US District Judge Lynn Hughes, who signed the order on ineptitude — not order of ineptitude, which would be something quite different indeed — is a he, not a she.)
posted by holborne at 10:13 PM on February 3, 2018 [6 favorites]


The story implicitly calls bullshit on that rationalization, because Patel and his associate went to Steele's office first. They only went to his lawyers' office after being told Steele wasn't in, but was at his attorneys. In fact Steele was there when they arrived, but refused to see them.

So it sounds a lot to me like a BS excuse, "Oh we were only trying to see his lawyers in our international travel" (but actually didn't meet with them either, except to ask for Steele.) Contacting his lawyers is precisely what the normal channels are, that they avoided. And could easily be done by phone or email or, you know, with a scheduled meeting.
posted by msalt at 10:17 PM on February 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


Judge Lynn's hostile and petty reaction on first meeting Patel looks unfounded, and probably arose from irritation with some aspect of the broader situation, or perhaps racism. Also, Patel's involvement with the transcript order is unclear.
posted by Coventry at 10:29 PM on February 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


Is there some kind of cute name for it when you get both the Order of Ineptitude and the Order of Lenin, kind of like with winning entertainment awards but with treason?
posted by Artw at 10:31 PM on February 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


The Trumpies.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:49 PM on February 3, 2018 [9 favorites]


graduated from Pace Univ. Law School

Hey, it's in the top 120 law schools in the country!

Only the best. Seriously, I do not want to dunk on the existence of PULS which is necessary and fee accessible to many persons who aspire to the noble profession and will do good work for their clients across the decades -- but this is what it takes to be a counsel to one of the most complex, technical, and sensitive areas of law there can be? I'm sure he must have some other salutary quality because his CV

he goes bowling at the White House with "the Dons"

Ah. There it is.
posted by dhartung at 11:05 PM on February 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


Loony Left update HOUSTON DSA continues to repair and muck out homes
posted by The Whelk at 11:06 PM on February 3, 2018 [43 favorites]


Judge Lynn's hostile and petty reaction on first meeting Patel looks unfounded, and probably arose from irritation with some aspect of the broader situation, or perhaps racism.

And you're basing your charges of racism and "unfounded" criticism on ... what? Pure conjecture apparently, because it's certainly not even hinted at in the linked ABA Journal article. This IS the guy who wrote the Nunes memo, universally panned because of it's sub-high-school debate level of analysis and obvious manipulation of facts. This is the guy who brags about bowling at the White House with "the Dons" on Facebook, who was photographed playing air guitar in the Raw Story article on him.

In the case under discussion, he breezed into a courtroom at age 36 without a suit and declared himself an important member of the trial team a month into the trial, but said he couldn't be bothered to dress up because he had just flown in from Kazakhstan. Which doesn't even make sense. He couldn't find 90 seconds to unzip his suit bag and pull out a suit and tie to wear? And couldn't plan ahead enough to wear his jacket on the plane?

There are ten pieces of evidence that he's a callow frat boy of a half-assed lawyer, and literally nothing indicating any skill or significant experience in his entire career. Where in that body of evidence do you find indications of racism?
posted by msalt at 1:43 AM on February 4, 2018 [32 favorites]


holborne: (Just noting for the sake of accuracy that US District Judge Lynn Hughe... is a he, not a she.)

My mistake, thanks for that.
posted by msalt at 1:49 AM on February 4, 2018


Take it easy, SakuraK -- you deleted the part of my comment where I mitigated any implied criticism. [Whatever the actual value of that ranking, it's not something I created, after all.] Obviously there isn't any necessary direct relationship between the school one goes to and the actual quality of the law one practices. Case in point, you could objectively say that given his public service in the National Security Division of the DOJ as well as his advancement to advising a key Congressional committee that he certainly maximized the potential of a degree from a lower-tier state school, which is something positive in both his and the school's favor.

But, as msalt notes, we're dealing here with what is purportedly one of the most momentous four-page national security legal opinions in, well, ever (even if the WH downplays it, that's not the case with Hannity/Dobbs!). You'd expect this to be a well-formed and -argued legalistic product, but most experts seem of the opinion it falls well short of that and is mainly partisan hackery.

Now, it's clearly possible to go to Harvard, as Alberto Gonzalez did, and produce what is arguably one of the worst legal opinions ever handed to a President, the torture memo [n.b. the original musings from 2002, not the formal one produced by Yoo, and see also his role in the Ashcroft hospital-room visit]. So again, no direct relationship. But then even Gonzalez has said the Nunes Memo is worthless.

So I think it's worth asking how we got here. I imagine that if you're from Harvard you might have the confidence and, indeed, pride to produce something that at least seems like a legal opinion, but that doesn't seem to be a way to describe this memo. So how come this guy from a LTSS, who had a seemingly solid career that was, unlike a lot of administration appointees (enemies of their own agencies, as it were), well-founded in the domain for which the committee presumably employed him? Is it because his actual legal cojones are illusory crap (per the courtroom presentation, notwithstanding whatever Zero-Dark-Thirty shenanigans preceded)? Or is it because he wasn't good enough to push back against his bosses' illusory crap? Is that perhaps a function of his coming from a LTSS instead of Harvard, and maybe even a factor in how (as some suggest) he's being hung out to dry? All we really know is that the Nunes Memo will be remembered as gobbledygook by history, and whatever his actual input, his name is now attached to it forever. Not exactly a proud legacy, whatever school conferred his law degree.
posted by dhartung at 3:43 AM on February 4, 2018 [5 favorites]


I mean the whole law school ranking and the snobbery within the legal profession is angrifying (see Better Call Saul for examples of this) but it's also true that within the legal community this exists pervasively, and so if you're going to get a memo that is going to further the eroding of democratic standards bigtime it makes sense that you're going to reach for a guy that has credentials that will impress other legal professionals. It's possible to be like that fucking snobbery sucks but also weird that the snobbery didn't come into play or was accounted for in who they chose to write this thing.
posted by angrycat at 5:17 AM on February 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


CBS has an annotated excerpt from Gowdy's interview for Face The Nation today. Hilariously he was able to respond to Teabag's tweets yesterday.
- "You need an investigation into the Trump Tower and the Cambridge Analytica email, separate and apart from the dossier. So those are not connected issues to me. They may be for other Republicans, but they're not for me. I say investigate everything Russia did, but admit that this was a really sloppy process…"
posted by rc3spencer at 5:23 AM on February 4, 2018 [9 favorites]


Trey Gowdie, it's like I don't even know who you are anymore.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:53 AM on February 4, 2018 [10 favorites]


It's like at the end of Evolution when that one chucklefuck dazzles everyone by knowing stuff about selenium. He's still a chucklefuck though.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:46 AM on February 4, 2018 [5 favorites]


Doesn't look like this one's been linked here yet: Top Democrats warn Trump not to attempt obstruction of justice

Aside from its face value as a valid warning that, in light of the memo, firing Rosenstein would be further obstruction, it's also a delightful bit of "PLEASE OH PLEASE don't throw us in that briar patch!"
posted by Rykey at 7:56 AM on February 4, 2018 [3 favorites]


Mod note: This whole "yeah but which law school?" thing is sort of hitting a perfect clash between understandable contempt for the malicious crappiness of the Trump machine and the reasonable desire to not stumble into casually participating in 0.01-percenter status signaling bullshit, and I think it'd be a real good idea to just let it drop at this point because we're not gonna snark our way out of that contradiction.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:06 AM on February 4, 2018 [26 favorites]


Molly McKew reports in an article in Politico about her group's analysis of the computational propaganda campaign used to push the release-the-memo meme. IMHO this is an important article to read. Some excerpts (emphasis mine):
[...]
Cross reference this analysis and inputs from things like the Hamilton68 dashboard, and you can see #releasethememo is carried forward by automated accounts overnight after it begins to trend. It continued to do so from its appearance until the memo was released. The volume and noise matter — and so does the targeting.
[...]
By midnight, the hashtag was being used 250,000 times per hour. At 2:53 a m. on Jan 19, the pro-Trump conservative personality Bill Mitchell was posting an article from Breitbart about how #releasethememo was trending online. The hashtag had become the organizing framework for multiple stories and lanes of activity, focusing them into one column, which got a big boost from right-stream media and twitter personalities.
[...]
the hashtag benefited from computational promotion already built into the system. It was used to target lawmakers who would play a role in releasing the memo — lawmakers who argued that there was public pressure to release the memo.
[...]
Regardless how much of the campaign was American and how much was Russian, it’s clear there was a massive effort to game social media and put the Nunes memo squarely on the national agenda—and it worked to an astonishing degree.
posted by StrawberryPie at 8:14 AM on February 4, 2018 [69 favorites]


Metafilter: we're not gonna snark our way out of that contradiction
posted by biogeo at 8:18 AM on February 4, 2018 [37 favorites]


the hashtag benefited from computational promotion already built into the system. It was used to target lawmakers who would play a role in releasing the memo — lawmakers who argued that there was public pressure to release the memo.

A major talking point out of all this needs to be that the Republican leadership, and media outlets, have allowed themselves to be manipulated by Kremlin-run psyops, repeatedly and transparently. These are stupid, easily-led people, whose blind hatred for their fellow Americans has made them willing tools for America's enemies.
posted by biogeo at 8:24 AM on February 4, 2018 [53 favorites]


Regardless how much of the campaign was American and how much was Russian, it’s clear there was a massive effort to game social media and put the Nunes memo squarely on the national agenda—and it worked to an astonishing degree.

Well, it looks like Russian/GOP disinformation tests for 2018 elections are going well then.
posted by rc3spencer at 8:25 AM on February 4, 2018 [20 favorites]


Trey Gowdie, it's like I don't even know who you are anymore.

It's like at the end of Evolution when that one chucklefuck dazzles everyone by knowing stuff


It’s way more insidious than that, at this point it’s a well documented phenomena, Republican elected office holders KNOW they are lying to the American people, whipping up mobs and feeding the rise of white supremacist fascism, and they know full well the consequences of what they’re doing, even feel bad about it. But they won’t admit or speak out until they’re retiring from office, at which point they suddenly grow concernfeels. Trey Gowdy isn’t some night school hack lawyer, he was a top student at South Carolina, had several federal clerkships, was a federal prosecutor and then state Solicitor (what SC calls it’s attorney general). The fact that Gowdy IS actually such a well qualified and experienced prosecutor makes everything he’s been part of in Congress SO much worse, because he should’ve known better. He did know better, because now he’s telling us so. As he’s quitting.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:30 AM on February 4, 2018 [55 favorites]


We can't shut down Fox News because it's technically* a member of the press, but we really need to shut down Twitter when (if?) saner heads prevail. When it figures out how to deal with the propaganda bots, it can open up again.

*not really
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:33 AM on February 4, 2018 [3 favorites]


Republican leadership, and media outlets, have allowed themselves to be manipulated

Some are manipulated, but others are driving the manipulation. Russian tools were being used to support what happened, but this benefitted people in the US.
posted by StrawberryPie at 8:36 AM on February 4, 2018 [9 favorites]


Republican elected office holders KNOW they are lying to the American people, whipping up mobs and feeding the rise of white supremacist fascism, and they know full well the consequences of what they’re doing, even feel bad about it.

Which means the important question to ask is, why are they still doing it? These are not cartoon villains doing evil because they want to do evil, they believe they are doing good. What is the moral calculus that leads them to believe that as bad as they know their actions to be, they are still morally justified or even necessary?

I fear the answer is that they hate and fear Democrats so much that almost anything is justified in their minds to keep them out of power.
posted by biogeo at 8:40 AM on February 4, 2018 [6 favorites]


Johnny Wallflower The First Amendment protects Twitter too, even if you don't like it.

I will agree the propaganda bots need to be dealt with, but that's a fairly simple fix (which Twitter so far refuses to implement): they can mark all bots with the text "BOT" so we know what's going on.

Bots aren't inherently bad, there's several on Twitter that range from interesting, to educational, to funny. But bots masquerading as people, especially for the purposes of disseminating political propaganda, are bad and they need to be clearly identified as bots.

I'm not sure the 1st would even allow a legal mandate that Twitter mark bots, though since the Courts have so far rejected arguments that forcing doctors to read anti-abortion scripts to people seeking abortion I suppose the argument that compulsory speech violates the 1st isn't so strong as it used to be.

But shutting down Twitter isn't going to happen, and we on the left shouldn't be calling for it to happen anyway.
posted by sotonohito at 8:41 AM on February 4, 2018 [8 favorites]


He did know better, because now he’s telling us so. As he’s quitting.

Gowdy on Face the Nation: "I’ve been a pretty lousy politician"

The "best" of elected republicans have the self-knowledge but lack all conviction. The worst, as the fun and true poem goes, are full of passionate intensity.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:42 AM on February 4, 2018 [14 favorites]


But shutting down Twitter isn't going to happen, and we on the left shouldn't be calling for it to happen anyway.

Making Twitter enforce moderation guidelines in an open, transparent manner is do-able. IIRC, they filter for illegal Nazi references in Germany already, so some legislation to make them accountable for the publication of anonymously sourced, anonymously posted content by bots shouldn't be infringing on anyone's free speech.
posted by mikelieman at 8:46 AM on February 4, 2018 [13 favorites]


they can mark all bots with the text "BOT" so we know what's going on

You cannot always tell a human from a bot. At best you could hope for some kind of automated pattern-detection approach to flag bots based on activity, but it wouldn't take long for that to be gamed. If Twitter were to implement some sort of verification step at sign-up time, all that will happen is the bad actors will create a human farm somewhere to do the work of creating accounts for propaganda organizations.
posted by StrawberryPie at 8:56 AM on February 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


Fraud/bad actor detection is always a race. Right now Twitter is lying on the couch eating bon bons.
posted by benzenedream at 9:12 AM on February 4, 2018 [44 favorites]


https://botcheck.me/ is already a thing. Detecting propaganda bots is not an inscrutable problem.
posted by ryoshu at 9:27 AM on February 4, 2018 [9 favorites]


These are not cartoon villains doing evil because they want to do evil, they believe they are doing good. What is the moral calculus that leads them to believe that as bad as they know their actions to be, they are still morally justified or even necessary?

Most of the actors involved here are not considering questions of good or evil in the moral sense. They will do what they believe is good for their careers, or for their personal finances, or, more frequently, both. I think that's about it for 'moral calculus,' here, frankly. The flag-waving liberal-bashing rhetoric has long been in furtherance of those two aims -- with the former to be pursued for only as long as it aids the latter. They stay til they make all the money, or until they can make more money in office. Then they leave. If there is money to be made by having a 'change of heart,' or by being a 'maverick,' or becoming a 'bold truth-teller,' they will promptly sell out. Some may eventually decide that their personal gains were not worth the social damage. I'm not sure that's what we're seeing with those currently turning away from the Republican party.

Some of the younger and dimmer ones may hate or fear Democrats. They were elected without really understanding how the game is played. Nunes may be one of these, and I'm sure there are others. They are locked in, though, and likely are not able to see what they're doing and what they've done as anything but, in fact, good. They may not be cartoon villains, but they are nearly as one-dimensional; they don't do moustache-twirling evil for the sake of that pure evil, but they do like hurting 'liberals' for the sake of hurting 'liberals,' because it makes them feel powerful and righteous, and after a while that's pretty indistinguishable from straight-up cartoon evil.
posted by halation at 9:31 AM on February 4, 2018 [14 favorites]


If Twitter were to implement some sort of verification step at sign-up time, all that will happen is the bad actors will create a human farm somewhere to do the work of creating accounts for propaganda organizations.

This already basically exists, yeah.
posted by halation at 9:35 AM on February 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


@ryoshu By their own description, botcheck.me uses a machine-learning based approach to guessing whether an account is a bot or not. It won't always be accurate. One of the points I was trying to make is that methods like this can and will be gamed. My earlier comment was in response to @sotonohito's comment that Twitter "can mark all bots". I was trying to point out that there's no foolproof way of doing that.

I agree completely with @benzenedream that it's an arms race, and that Twitter doesn't seem to be doing much right now, and could do more. OTOH, given the vast resources apparently available to the people engaged in computational propaganda now, I expect it (sadly) wouldn't take long for bad actors to find ways of defeating verification methods.
posted by StrawberryPie at 9:36 AM on February 4, 2018


To help Justinian after that 2 point margin on Monmouth.

ABC/WaPo poll: Democrats up 14% in generic congressional ballot (likely voter screen)
posted by chris24 at 9:37 AM on February 4, 2018 [24 favorites]


Twitter doesn't seem to be doing much right now, and could do more.

You'd also think that when country A has country BR subverting its democratic process in a direct and in a blatantly evidencable manner they might resort to some sort of punitive diplomacy, I dunno, sanctions or something...

To do otherwise seems like a fairly clear case of collusion by inaction. Or just plain collusion if there's co-operation with the goal of country R.
posted by Buntix at 9:43 AM on February 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


These are not cartoon villains doing evil because they want to do evil, they believe they are doing good. What is the moral calculus that leads them to believe that as bad as they know their actions to be, they are still morally justified or even necessary?

I've seen this happen close up, not in US politics but I believe the process is the same. Everyone enters politics because there is something they want to fight for, but when you are young, there are tons of things you don't get. You might be for lower taxes because you don't want to pay for poor people's food, and then when you get involved, it turns out it's much more complicated. You might want to socialize medicine and then the whole medical industry hits you like a hammer. Heck even Obama was surprised at how hard it was to shut down Guantanamo. Depending on who you are and who your mentors are, that reckoning may well turn into cynicism. I've seen honest and caring young people turn into corrupted monsters in shorter time than it took them to get their thesis done. For some people, discovering that things aren't that simple is a gateway drug into literal evil.
The mantra is "the others do this too" never mind that the others don't do it. The "mentors" getting them into this will convince them with gossip and lies, and this is not the right-wing crazies type of lies. It's far more subtle. It's not that the Clintons run a pedo-ring from a pizzeria, it's "look at these numbers" (which innocent young person doesn't get at all) "they clearly show that the Clintons are taking money from Arab states/Jewish billionaires/Hollywood. So we don't need to have scruples about doing the same". As the other side, you can scream and shout and document all you want, that evil mentor is just going to say that it proves you are smarter at cheating and confusing the electorate than they are. And eventually the impressionable young person is going to believe it, because increasingly their livelihood depends on it.
posted by mumimor at 9:50 AM on February 4, 2018 [25 favorites]


But shutting down Twitter isn't going to happen

Always with the negative waves, sotonohito, always with the negative waves.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:59 AM on February 4, 2018 [10 favorites]


Do algorithms have first amendment rights? Is the output of an algorithm legally equivalent to the speech of its human creator?
posted by biogeo at 10:14 AM on February 4, 2018 [5 favorites]


Mod note: Hello friends. Buncha comments deleted. We 1000% do not need another whirl on the carousel of "if only people were nicer to white agrarian whatever"; we all know how this goes.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:51 AM on February 4, 2018 [21 favorites]


METAFILTER: discovering that things aren't that simple is a gateway drug into literal evil
posted by philip-random at 10:51 AM on February 4, 2018 [11 favorites]


Republican lawmakers distance themselves from Trump on memo (WaPo)
Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee dissented Sunday from President Trump’s view that corruption has poisoned the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In a sign of a growing rift within the House GOP, four members of the panel dismissed the idea pushed by Trump and other Republicans that a controversial memo criticizing how the FBI handled elements of its Russia probe undermines the investigation led by Robert S. Mueller III into possible coordination between Trump associates and the Kremlin. The memo’s release Friday by the Intelligence Committee has raised fears Trump will fire Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the probe. ...

Their comments came as Democrats prepared to push for a committee vote Monday night on releasing their rebuttal to the GOP memo. Ranking Member Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) is expected to offer a motion to release the 10-page document, which Democrats have promised to send to the Justice Department for redactions. Republicans have warned that the document might contain too much classified information to release, and even if the motion succeeds, Trump has five days to block it.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 11:09 AM on February 4, 2018 [14 favorites]


Holocaust denier poised to claim GOP nomination in Illinois race for Congress

I guess this is what happens when anyone remotely sane on the right is running for t the hills...

rthur Jones — an outspoken Holocaust denier, activist anti-Semite and white supremacist — is poised to become the Republican nominee for an Illinois congressional seat representing parts of Chicago and nearby suburbs.

“Well first of all, I’m running for Congress not the chancellor of Germany. All right. To me the Holocaust is what I said it is: It’s an international extortion racket,” Jones told the Chicago Sun-Times.

I...]

Jones, 70, a retired insurance agent who lives in suburban Lyons, has unsuccessfully run for elected offices in the Chicago area and Milwaukee since the 1970s.

He ran for Milwaukee mayor in 1976 and 13th Ward alderman on Chicago’s Southwest Side in 1987.

Since the 1990s to 2016, Jones has jumped in the GOP 3rd Congressional District primary seven times, never even close to becoming a viable contender.

The outcome will be different for Jones in the Illinois primary on March 20, 2018.

To Jones’ own amazement, he is the only one on the Republican ballot.


posted by Devonian at 11:10 AM on February 4, 2018 [8 favorites]


The Illinois 3rd Cong. District hasn't had a Republican rep in 40 years and only one in the last 60. This isn't Jones' year.
posted by rhizome at 11:16 AM on February 4, 2018 [5 favorites]


The Illinois 3rd Cong. District hasn't had a Republican rep in 40 years and only one in the last 60. This isn't Jones' year.

You're right that it's highly improbable that he'll win. However I know of a certain US state that hadn't had its less-powerful party win a senate seat in decades, in which last year was Jones' year, albeit another Jones.

A lot of rules and no longer apply, a lot of certainties aren't, and the im of impossible gets smaller each day. For better and worse. Fascism is a threat everywhere and not to be laughed off whenever it's one of two offered choices.
posted by Rust Moranis at 11:29 AM on February 4, 2018 [7 favorites]


My takeaway is that the Republican party couldn't be arsed to put up anybody to at least keep Jones from winning the primary. They must not care that much about being perceived as Nazis.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:34 AM on February 4, 2018 [22 favorites]


This is Chicago, IIRC we are the only city that successfully kept Trump from campaigning in it....for all of our issues, fighting fascists is one of our strengths. We have an amazing ground game here and are even sending people to Wisconsin to help with their primaries and voter registration (and probably to Indiana and Iowa, too, but I can only confirm personally to Wisconsin). As the Blues Brother's said we "...hate Illinois Nazi's." If the Nazi steals the election, he will not last long.
posted by W Grant at 11:46 AM on February 4, 2018 [22 favorites]


You cannot always tell a human from a bot.

As that Politico piece makes clear, there are plenty of Joe & Jane Magahats [flag emoji, eagleflag avi, etc] who are real people whose social media activity is "slightly less efficient versions of bots."
She may be a real person... but when she tweets hundreds of times over the course of a week using #releasethememo, while artificially enhancing her followers (using the “follow-back” lists, etc.) and exhorting others to amplify the hashtag, she is just as much an element of computational propaganda against the American public as a Russian bot.
These are the people who forwarded all those chain emails to your in-laws who forwarded them to you. They respond to likes and RTs and increased follower counts like bots seeking to maximise quantitative results, but also like humans who enjoy being the centre of attention. Twitter right now rewards humans for bot-like behaviour.
posted by holgate at 11:49 AM on February 4, 2018 [27 favorites]


I am happy with classifying meatbots as a subtype of bot. The account is the result of a process, not a person, and is absolutely not a Turing pass.
posted by Artw at 12:01 PM on February 4, 2018 [19 favorites]


If a fedora-wearing Nazi creep nobody has heard of beats a seven-term incumbent in Chicago then nothing is real.

I'm more worried about Jeanne Ives, who's trying to primary Governor Bruce Rauner from the right. She's a state rep who's been running this truly vile commercial (fyi: transphobia) but she sounds relatively sane in interviews and Rauner is so unpopular she might have a shot. If she wins she's likely to face off against JB Pritzker, a gazillionaire establishment Dem nobody is really excited about, so it could get weird.
posted by theodolite at 12:04 PM on February 4, 2018 [5 favorites]


The account is the result of a process, not a person, and is absolutely not a Turing pass.

"Searle's Russian Room."
posted by Coventry at 12:06 PM on February 4, 2018 [6 favorites]


(on second thought, "establishment Dem" isn't really the right word, since Pritzker's never held political office - please mentally substitute "moderate." Polls are still pretty unreliable at this point, but tall-headed progressive mathboy Daniel Biss does have an outside chance of beating him.)
posted by theodolite at 12:17 PM on February 4, 2018


That Politico article lead me to find this "Hamilton 68" project, which has tasked itself with tracking and reporting on Russian propaganda bot activity in near real-time.

This one should not be missed.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 12:29 PM on February 4, 2018 [5 favorites]


Twitter doesn't seem to be doing much right now, and could do more.
Especially since according to Twitter, they were able to detect and take down hundreds of thousands of ISIS related accounts, not too long ago. On Russia/GOP/MAGA related bots, they def seem to have a case of the Siberian foot-drag.
posted by rc3spencer at 12:33 PM on February 4, 2018 [4 favorites]


If a fedora-wearing Nazi creep nobody has heard of beats a seven-term incumbent in Chicago then nothing is real.

Dan Lipinski (IL-3) is also one of the most conservative Democrats in the caucus, particularly for the district he represents (a chunk of the city, but also some fairly affluent suburban areas that do have Republicans) and he's quite possibly going to get primaried from the left.

I also doubt that a Republican would win the seat, but I wouldn't give the chances at 0%.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:34 PM on February 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


Holocaust denier poised to claim GOP nomination in Illinois race for Congress

What scares me is that Republican supporters will be working for him and establishing a principle that a Holocaust denier can be a Republican candidate and receive support from other Republicans. Even if he doesn't get elected, it's more normalisation.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:49 PM on February 4, 2018 [34 favorites]


Republican supporters will be working for him and establishing a principle that a Holocaust denier can be a Republican candidate and receive support from other Republicans

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. This is a tremendous opportunity to pin these qualities on Republicans, even if only Illinois Republicans at first.
posted by rhizome at 12:57 PM on February 4, 2018 [6 favorites]


Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. This is a tremendous opportunity to pin these qualities on Republicans, even if only Illinois Republicans at first.

You might be right, and I don't want to be that guy, but a lot of people in 2015 thought Trump was a great opportunity to pin racism on Republicans. He did pin it on them but that didn't do much good.
posted by Rust Moranis at 12:59 PM on February 4, 2018 [20 favorites]


Gift horses like Donald Trump and Roy Moore? Yeah, let's encourage every terrible, awful, morally bankrupt extremist to run for office so we can score political points off them. This is not a game.
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:00 PM on February 4, 2018 [10 favorites]


Jones was copiously profiled by the Chicago Reader years ago. He's absolutely a for-real Illinois Nazi -- runs his own America First Committee, and describes his beliefs as "revolutionary pan-Aryanism".

Interestingly, there's a local connection for me. Jones is a native of Beloit, Wis., and there's an anecdote in there about starting a Nazi group there and holding a march past the bar where his father, a WWII veteran, happened to be drinking. Running out to confront the marchers with his fists, he saw his son leading it, and "walked away in tears". Also, one of his close associates is another Illinois Nazi figure, John McLaughlin, who was the guy who got into that fistfight with Geraldo Rivera down the street from my house a couple decades back. (SPLC keeps tabs on him as McLaughlin remains active with mainline Nazi groups such as the National Alliance.) FYI, I am preparing to do an oral history of the Geraldo event and how it affected the organization of progressive and anti-racist activist groups here (the KKK guy gave up soon afterward and has tried to repudiate that part of his life in recent years). Anyway, in case you doubted that this guy was the real thing....

Joe, i don't expect him to get mainstream party support for any fundraising or campaign activities. The Illinois GOP is about as bad as everywhere else (except with more actual corruption than usual), but they're not stupid. Anyway, his district was +15 for Hillary.
posted by dhartung at 1:04 PM on February 4, 2018 [23 favorites]


Josh Marshall highlights the letter Harry Reid wrote to Comey on 30 Oct 2016, where he alludes to the FBI and McConnell sitting on the Page and Papdopolous info before the election.
posted by PenDevil at 1:25 PM on February 4, 2018 [20 favorites]




Josh Marshall highlights the letter Harry Reid wrote to Comey on 30 Oct 2016

I remember that day. If I remember correctly, Obama gave his last speech shortly after that, and it wasn't initially clear what the subject was going to be. I was hoping he was going to warn the country about what was happening. He probably should have.
posted by diogenes at 1:35 PM on February 4, 2018 [8 favorites]


It's one of the two times a day when Evan McMullin is right o'clock:
How in Sam Hill did GOP leaders get to the point of choosing a two-bit treason rat like Carter Page as their hill to die on? I just don’t get it.
posted by Dashy at 1:38 PM on February 4, 2018 [26 favorites]


Guys, the Illinois Nazi (I hate Illinois Nazis) is happening because nobody in the GOP wants to run in Bruce Rauner's tire-fire of a 2018 election, not if they have any hope of any political future. And the reason the state GOP is badly-run enough that a Nazi could get on a primary ballot unopposed? Bruce Rauner bought it. The Illinois GOP is a wholly-owned subsidiary of wildly unpopular, ineffective GOP billionaire governor Bruce Rauner, who provides 95% of its funding and it only does his bidding and uses its cash (Rauner's cash) not to run a GOP slate but to prop up Rauner, reward his allies, and attack his foes. So it turns out that when you let an incompetent billionaire who knows nothing about politics buy a political party, they don't actually know a lot about Doing Politics, and let the already-weak state GOP apparatus atrophy into complete uselessness, on everything except media buys and right wing media propaganda.

One of the bizarre consequences of this bizarre situation is that the Chicago GOP has been expelled from the state party because they don't back Rauner. (Or, their committeemen were ousted, and now there's some legit dispute about who's the boss of Chicago GOP-y stuff, which there isn't a whole lot of anyway, but there are competing Chicago GOP organizations this month.)

The state GOP has already disavowed Jones (and in past elections have successfully ousted him from the ballot, but this year he managed challenge-proof petitions). The state GOP doesn't want him and has disavowed him over and over for years, including this year. He won't get very much media coverage because he's not a real candidate and the GOP will repeatedly block him from appearing at events, and the Dem challengers will refuse to appear with him, and Chicago media doesn't have a lot of time for Nazis. The only reason he slipped through is that with two Chicago GOPs in absolute chaos, neither of them competent, nobody was organized enough to block him with another candidate, because nobody wants to run on the GOP ticket in this tirefire for a 2018 election where Bruce Rauner will be an anchor dragging down the whole party.

Lipinski will get primaried from the left because he's too conservative for his district. His challenger is lefter than he is, but she's not unelectably left or weirdly left; she's more in line with the district.

Rauner's getting primaried from the right because he didn't veto a bill allowing state funds to pay for abortions that he promised the cardinal archbishop of Chicago he would veto, which is a promise nobody made him make, because he's been clear for four years that he's pro-choice (ish), but the dumb-fuck incompetent was trying to get good press during the state budget standoff and promised the cardinal he'd veto it, getting the (relatively small) pro-life Illinois contingent slavering with joy, and then turning around and fucking them over by passing it. Rauner, having created this moronic dilemma by publicly promising both to veto and pass the same bill, (correctly) calculated that the Illinois GOP weighed far more heavily pro-choice than pro-life and he'd hold on to a lot more voters by passing it. It would have provided some weak primary ads that he passed it and was pro-choice, but it's not an issue that works well for the Illinois GOP -- but the fact that he LIED TO THE CARDINAL has turned it into a HUGE issue (Rauner's got major truthfulness problems, and might be looking at false financial disclosure problems now), and he managed to fire up the loony right base by promising them to veto it and then passing it.

Anyway, it's tough to say what will come out of the Rauner/Ives matchup, but this is a situation entirely of Rauner's own making, and if he managed to piss off the loony right enough to lose the primary, I would be impressed because they are not that big here. It could happen! It seems unlikely. (Meanwhile, we all get to feel uneasy because Ives is HORRIBLE, but Rauner is a flaming misogynist and watching him act that out in public towards a female GOP opponent is awkward, even though Ives is awful.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:49 PM on February 4, 2018 [43 favorites]


Trump to Americans on Super Bowl Sunday: 'Stand for the National Anthem' (The Hill)

Americans to Trump: ‘Not your call, buddy.’
posted by Barack Spinoza at 1:50 PM on February 4, 2018 [27 favorites]


My takeaway is that the Republican party couldn't be arsed to put up anybody to at least keep Jones from winning the primary. They must not care that much about being perceived as Nazis.

And/or they are afraid that they could run a not-nazi and end up showing the world their voters prefer the nazi, a la the way their voters prefered a child molester in Alabama.
posted by phearlez at 2:15 PM on February 4, 2018 [10 favorites]


Pentagon Takes Down Nuclear Report After Labelling Taiwan as Part of China
Saturday's hiccup comes amid rising tensions between Taiwan and the mainland.

In December, China's People’s Liberation Army released a video of an H-6K bomber and two Su-30 fighter jets conducting “encirclement” patrols close to the island. A week earlier, China's air force released footage of warplanes conducting similar exercises near Taiwan. The drills sparked fears of an imminent attack.

On Tuesday, Taiwan’s military battled an imagined invasion at the Port of Hualien as part of its yearly military drills around Chinese New Year. Taiwan did not explicitly state that the exercise simulated fending off an invasion from China.

The drills come two weeks after Taiwan’s Defense Ministry announced that the island will receive 250 U.S.-made FIM-92 Stinger missiles sometime later this year. The missiles are part of a $453 million arms package that was approved in 2015.
posted by Coventry at 3:24 PM on February 4, 2018 [4 favorites]


Axios has (unattributed) word from Republicans that Nunes is only just getting started. House GOP: More Memos to Come
"The memo" — which pitted the Justice Department against the White House and brought ugly partisan sniping into stark relief — is only the beginning. Republican sources close to Devin Nunes tell me he's assured them there's much more to come.

The House Intelligence chair and his team have told members and associates they've found other examples of politically motivated "wrongdoing" across various agencies, including the FBI, the broader Justice Department, and the State Department.

What we're hearing: Republicans close to Nunes say there could be as many as five additional memos or reports of "wrongdoing." But a source on the House Intelligence Committee tells me there's no current plan to use the same extraordinary and highly controversial process they just went through, with a vote and ultimately a presidential approval to declassify sensitive information.

A Republican member briefed on Nunes' investigations told me: "There are several areas of concern where federal agencies used government resources to try to create a narrative and influence the election."
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:10 PM on February 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


Jared Kushner's property empire had to thrive under Trump, right? Wrong
The first son-in-law has run into trouble with some high-profile buildings but has rejected claims that debts could sink him.
posted by adamvasco at 4:24 PM on February 4, 2018


What we're hearing: Republicans close to Nunes say there could be as many as five additional memos or reports of "wrongdoing."

in related news, import firms in washington dc report a record number of orders for monkeys and typewriters
posted by pyramid termite at 4:45 PM on February 4, 2018 [8 favorites]


Trump to Americans on Super Bowl Sunday: 'Stand for the National Anthem'

Trump missed the anthem tonight because he was schmoozing with cheerleaders.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:49 PM on February 4, 2018 [6 favorites]


If a fedora-wearing Nazi creep nobody has heard of beats a seven-term incumbent in Chicago then nothing is real.

If a bad-toupee-wearing failed-businessman-turned-reality-tv-star wannabe-Nazi buffoon everybody has heard of but thinks is a total joke of a human being beats a former Senator and Secretary of State then nothing is...

Oh.

Oh fuck.
posted by biogeo at 4:54 PM on February 4, 2018 [14 favorites]


The House Intelligence chair and his team have told members and associates they've found other examples of politically motivated "wrongdoing" across various agencies, including the FBI, the broader Justice Department, and the State Department.


Revelation #1:. Comey and Clinton (!!!1!) colluded
Revelation #2: They were caught up in a tree.
Revelation #3: K-I-S-S-I-N-G
posted by benzenedream at 5:36 PM on February 4, 2018 [12 favorites]


Republicans close to Nunes say there could be as many as five additional memos

As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly. Proverbs 26:11.
posted by SPrintF at 6:00 PM on February 4, 2018 [22 favorites]


As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.

It's not folly so long as 35-40+% of the country finds that dog vomit super yummy.
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:15 PM on February 4, 2018 [7 favorites]


Just to be safe, some of you mid-westerners might want to look at putting the band back together.
posted by bonehead at 8:16 PM on February 4, 2018 [13 favorites]




Wowwwwww I just saw that Ives ad (Illinois governor's race) mentioned above, which she paid to run during the post-superbowl coverage, and it was slightly edited from what I read about, but still STUPIDLY OFFENSIVE. Like I am not sure I have ever seen a political ad quite so ... whew. Certainly not during Superbowl coverage!

I had read that her team was thinking of doing that, since they don't have much cash on hand and a superbowl ad buy would ensure the most people saw it, but other members of her team were warning it would set off a firestorm because it was too offensive, and should run online-only if at all. I guess the "offend as many eyeballs as possible with one big ad buy" people won.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:28 PM on February 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


Alright, so apologies on that hair thing. To make up for it, here's a (real!) video of Carter Page talking about all the time he lived in Russia. On Russian TV. It's quite something.
posted by scalefree at 9:58 PM on February 4, 2018 [6 favorites]


I remember that day. If I remember correctly, Obama gave his last speech shortly after that, and it wasn't initially clear what the subject was going to be. I was hoping he was going to warn the country about what was happening. He probably should have.

And the very next day the NYT drops their 'Investigating Donald Trump, FBI sees no clear link to Russia' article. That coupled with Giuliani boasting 5 days later of his access to the FBI who he claims are outraged they can't prosecute Clinton implies to me that the rumour that the FBI NY field office was putting out BS stories to attack HRC and cover for Trump is probably true.
posted by PenDevil at 11:26 PM on February 4, 2018 [33 favorites]


Mod note: Maaaany comments deleted re mobypicture.com Trump Bald video plus fake or not plus possible malware or not. If you clicked the page, it's most likely okay, but if in doubt, run a malware checker. And folks, let's please vet links a little better. Nearly 20 comments in an already overburdened thread for what looks like an obviously fake make-fun-of-trump click is not great generally, and we've been asking begging people to try to keep things in these long threads more targeted to substantial links and commentary for better noise to signal ratio.
posted by taz (staff) at 1:07 AM on February 5, 2018 [22 favorites]


45 is putting in the groundwork for a really warm reception from the Brits if/when he visits, with stuff like this tweet -

The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working. Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!

There was indeed a big demonstration in London this weekend, but it was entirely in support of the NHS and UHC. It was against underfunding and creeping privatisation, which people see as the semi-covert path to a US-style system and to which Do Not Want is the near-universal response.

We take this sort of lie very personally.
posted by Devonian at 4:54 AM on February 5, 2018 [95 favorites]


Fox & Friends chuckling indulgently this morning at footage of white people overturning cars, setting things on fire, and generally breaking shit in Philadelphia last night. If the people had been black, they would have been condemning the "thugs" for "rioting," but since they were white it was a story about "fans" who were "celebrating."

(The guy I'm dating watches a LOT of Fox News, so I've been using these incidents as teaching moments to educate him about what real "media bias" looks like.)
posted by Jacqueline at 5:07 AM on February 5, 2018 [41 favorites]


45 is putting in the groundwork for a really warm reception from the Brits if/when he visits, with stuff like this tweet -

It is instructive to notice that Trump is only visiting countries that still have lèse-majesté laws on the books making it is illegal to insult heads of state.
posted by winna at 5:33 AM on February 5, 2018


'I Hope This Is an Instance of Fake News': FBI Messages Show the Bureau's Real Reaction to Trump Firing James Comey

Simply put, it shows that Ellingsen nailed it when she described a reaction of “shock” and “profound sadness” at the removal of a beloved figure to whom the workforce was deeply attached. It also shows that no aspect of the White House’s statements about the bureau were accurate—and, indeed, that the White House engendered at least some resentment among the rank and file for whom it purported to speak. As Amy Hess, the special agent in charge in Louisville, put it: “On a personal note, I vehemently disagree with any negative assertions about the credibility of this institution or the people herein.”

Before detailing the story these documents tell, let’s pause a moment over the story they do not tell. They contain not a word that supports the notion that the FBI was in turmoil. They contain not a word that reflects gratitude to the president for removing a nut job. There is literally not a single sentence in any of these communications that reflects criticism of Comey’s leadership of the FBI. Not one special agent in charge describes Comey’s removal as some kind of opportunity for new leadership. And if any FBI official really got on the phone with Sanders to express gratitude or thanks “for the president’s decision,” nobody reported that to his or her staff.

posted by T.D. Strange at 6:07 AM on February 5, 2018 [34 favorites]


It's about time for a new thread, so I'll warm up the loom. Should be ready in a few...
posted by darkstar at 6:20 AM on February 5, 2018 [9 favorites]




It's about time for a new thread, so I'll warm up the loom. Should be ready in a few...

Yes, yes, technically, it's a spindle and/or spinning wheel that makes new thread, not a loom. (YouTube)
posted by darkstar at 8:06 AM on February 5, 2018 [10 favorites]


What darkstar did was "thread the loom," which is the fiddly, endless process of putting on the warp. We will now all add the weft over the next few weeks/days/hours, depending on events, and the weft will dictate the pattern of the endproduct. Together all our politics threads constitute a set of nightmare linens that we can store away in a hope chest for future generations, if there are any, to take out and unfold and fall back gasping from and regard with shuddering horror so that with luck they do not repeat this particular noxious bit of history again for at least a few decades.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:35 AM on February 5, 2018 [36 favorites]


Hey where'd everybody go
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:41 PM on February 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


New thread is new.

Also:

Metafilter: Hey, Speaking of Fascism ...
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:16 PM on February 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


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