"I may declare a national emergency dependent on what's gonna happen…"
January 7, 2019 4:47 PM   Subscribe

At the beginning of the third week of the US government shutdown over Trump's demands to fund his border wall—originally a campaign mnemonic device (Forbes)—he announced that on Tuesday evening he would make his first Oval Office address in regard to "the Humanitarian and National Security crisis on our Southern Border" and visit the Mexican border on Thursday (NYT). He also threatened to "declare a national emergency" to build the wall (CNN) if Congress did not allocate $5.7 billion for it. NBC offers a Fact Check: What's a 'national emergency,' and can Trump declare one to get his wall? And Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman writes in the NYT, No, Trump Cannot Declare an ‘Emergency’ to Build His Wall "Not only would such an action be illegal, but if members of the armed forces obeyed his command, they would be committing a federal crime." There are lots of things, however, the President could do if he declares a state of emergency (Atlantic).

• Shutdown Round-up: CNN: The Government Is STILL Shut Down (live feed); NYT: A Wall and Two Prayers, but Little Progress at Weekend Meetings on Shutdown; NYMag: Trump Literally Did Not Understand What a Shutdown Would Do; National Geographic: National Parks Face Years of Damage From Government Shutdown; WaPo: As Shutdown Drags On, Trump Officials Make New Offer, Seek Novel Ways To Cope With Its Impacts; BuzzFeed: The Government Shutdown Is “Life And Death” For Low-Wage Subcontractors Who Likely Won’t Be Repaid For Lost Time; NYT: I.R.S. Will Issue Tax Refunds During Shutdown, Trump Official Says ("But committee lawyers believe the law prohibits such a move, because refunds are paid out of the government’s general fund.")

• Impeachment Roundup: Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Free Speech For People President John Bonifaz, writing in the Detroit Free Press: Now is the time to begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump; CNBC: Trump Rages About Impeachment Talk As Democratic Leaders Play Down The Issue; NYMAG: Republican Solidarity Will Protect Trump From Impeachment; NYT Opinion—David Leonhardt: The People vs. Donald J. Trump "He is demonstrably unfit for office. What are we waiting for?"

• Trade War Roundup: CBS: China and U.S. Restart Trade Talks As a Warship Clouds Negotiations; NYT: Trump Has Promised to Bring Jobs Back. His Tariffs Threaten to Send Them Away.; Bloomberg: White House Predicts ‘Heck of a Lot’ of Companies Sharing Apple Pain “It’s not going to be just Apple,” CEA chairman Kevin Hassett said in an interview on CNN. “There are a heck of a lot of U.S. companies that have sales in China that are going to be watching their earnings being downgraded next year until we get a deal with China.”

• 2018's winners of Talking Points Memo's annual corruption awards have been announced! Best Scandal — General Interest; Best Scandal — Local Venue; Meritorious Achievement In The Crazy; Best Conspiracy Theory; Best Campaign Gaffe; Literary Achievement In 280 Characters; and Outstanding Ineptitude In the Cabinet.

IN OTHER HEADLINES:

• Politico: House Democrats Prepare Fusillade of Trump Investigations—Trump Hotel, taxes, cabinet members are all targets.

• WaPo: Contradicting Trump, Bolton Says No Withdrawal From Syria Until Isis Destroyed, Kurds’ Safety Guaranteed; Politico: Pompeo, in Cairo speech, to rebuke Obama’s Mideast Vision

• Mother Jones: The EPA Hired GOP Oppo Firm Because it Was Sick of “Fake News”

• PBS: The Minimum Wage Is Increasing In These 21 States; AP 29 States Have Minimum Wages Above the Federal Level

• Miami Herald: Most Ex-Felons Can Register to Vote Tuesday If All Terms of Their Sentence Are Met. Voters overturned Florida’s 1868 ban on residents with felony convictions from having their voting rights restored setting up one of the largest enfranchisements of U.S. citizens in the past century.

• NBC: World Bank President Resigns, Paving The Way For a Trump Appointee At the Helm of This Global Lender Jim Yong Kim announced Monday he is resigning at the end of January—nearly three years before his term was set to expire—but provided no reason for his sudden departure.

• Lawfare: Climate Change and National Security, Part I: What is the Threat, When’s It Coming, and How Bad Will It Be?, Part II: How Big a Threat is the Climate?

Today is the 717th day of the Trump administration, and the 17th day of the Trump Shutdown. There are 665 days until the 2020 elections.

Previously in U.S. Politics Megathreads: "We need wall"

Megathread-Adjacent Posts and Sites:
• Salvator Mundi: The Art of the Deal (oligarchs, money-laundering, Robert Mueller, and the world's most expensive painting)
• When your neme culture war backfires (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dance video)
• 2018: Escalation (What were the most important events of 2018, and what were the least?—The Morning News)
• Let's Get to Work (New Green Deal)
• OnceUponATime's Active Measures site
• Chrysostom's 2018 Election Ratings & Results Tracker

Elsewhere in MetaFilter: Working for a Campaign 101 (AskMe).

As always, please consider MeFi chat and the unofficial PoliticsFilter Slack for hot-takes and live-blogging breaking news, the new MetaTalk venting thread for catharsis and sympathizing, and funding the site if you're able. Also, for the sake of the ever-helpful mods, please keep in mind the MetaTalk on expectations about U.S. political discussion on MetaFilter. Thanks to Box, I.forgot.my.password, and zachlipton for helping to create this thread. U.S. Politics FPPs are generally collaborative, and a draft post can be found on the MeFi Wiki.
posted by Doktor Zed (2078 comments total) 123 users marked this as a favorite
 
The speech is supposed to be no more than 8 minutes. It seems like making a speech that short would be a signal he's using it to declare the national "emergency" he's been contemplating? What else could you say in 8 minutes?

"I resign" would be short but unlikely.
posted by Justinian at 4:54 PM on January 7, 2019 [56 favorites]


The speech is supposed to be no more than 8 minutes.

Consider the source. Likely just a means to convince the networks to carry it, then dare them to cut away.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:04 PM on January 7, 2019 [29 favorites]


It seems like making a speech that short would be a signal he's using it to declare the national "emergency" he's been contemplating?

It does seem that way. And breaking into prime time is a great way to make it feel more like an emergency.
posted by diogenes at 5:05 PM on January 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


Yes, Justinian, but I can dream.
posted by evilDoug at 5:05 PM on January 7, 2019 [5 favorites]


An 8-minute speech would involve Trump being concise and on-topic, and I'm not entirely sure he's capable of that

Much like these threads
posted by Merus at 5:08 PM on January 7, 2019 [9 favorites]


8 is weirdly specific. I mean...why not 10? I get that someone's already written it and tried to time it, but...it's Trump. He's going to add his little embellishments, no matter what's on the teleprompter.
posted by uosuaq at 5:09 PM on January 7, 2019 [8 favorites]


Add little embellishments? This is the man who phoned up Turkey to tell it to back off, and changed his mind halfway through and said 'Oh, just take what you want. We're out.'

Nobody, probably including him, will know what he's going to say until he's said it.
posted by Devonian at 5:12 PM on January 7, 2019 [26 favorites]


I get that someone's already written it

Stephen Miller
posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:13 PM on January 7, 2019 [46 favorites]


Trump claimed ex-presidents told him they wished they built a wall. We now know he made it up.
Jimmy Carter became the latest ex-POTUS to come forward and call BS on Trump. Vox.

On Monday, the Carter Center released a statement from Jimmy Carter that says, “I have not discussed the border wall with President Trump, and do not support him on the issue.”
posted by bluesky43 at 5:14 PM on January 7, 2019 [99 favorites]


8 is weirdly specific. I mean...why not 10? I get that someone's already written it and tried to time it, but...it's Trump.

It's not necessarily finished—earlier this evening, the WSJ's Rebecca Ballhaus reported: Trump’s Oval Office speech tomorrow—in which he may or may not declare a national emergency over border security—is only expected to last 7-8 minutes, per White House official. The speech hadn’t been written as of this afternoon.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:17 PM on January 7, 2019 [7 favorites]


If you were the president's "speechwriter" would you even bother? I'd write about 2 opening sentences then just put random words picked via a dartboard in my office for the rest of it. It'd probably be more intelligible than what Trump will actually say, but we all know he won't read it first anyhow.

Seriously the only job I'd consider in the current administration would be this one. What a cakewalk.
posted by axiom at 5:25 PM on January 7, 2019 [14 favorites]


8 is weirdly specific. I mean...why not 10?

I don't know if it's the reason, but that's how many commercial minutes are in a half-hour of network programming.
posted by rhizome at 5:27 PM on January 7, 2019 [9 favorites]


If it's a National Emergency, I fully expect my cell phone to alert me to such.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 5:32 PM on January 7, 2019 [28 favorites]


The funny thing is, if he declares that there is a 'national emergency', he will be right.
posted by thelonius at 5:32 PM on January 7, 2019 [79 favorites]


@markknoller: In joint written statement, @SpeakerPelosi and @SenSchumer demand the networks give Democrats equal airtime immediately after Pres Trump's address to the nation Tuesday. The Dem leaders say they expect Trump's speech to be "full of malice and misinformation. [here's the statement]

I mean yes, but even that's entirely unsuited to this moment. Airing a speech full of lies and then handing some time to a Democrat after turns the whole thing into "both sides." Handing airtime to a known liar to tell lies is still lying to your viewers even if you give time to someone else after.
posted by zachlipton at 5:38 PM on January 7, 2019 [71 favorites]


@JenniferJJacobs

Pelosi and Schumer in statement: “Now that the television networks have decided to air the president’s address, which if his past statements are any indication will be full of malice and misinformation, Democrats must immediately be given equal airtime.”
posted by bluesky43 at 5:39 PM on January 7, 2019 [6 favorites]


House GOP leaders fear support eroding for Trump’s shutdown fight
A growing number of Republican lawmakers could vote for Democratic measures to reopen the federal government. Politico.

Several dozen House Republicans might cross the aisle this week to vote for Democratic bills to reopen shuttered parts of the federal government, spurring the White House into a dramatic effort to stem potential GOP defections.

White House officials and Republican congressional leaders worry that GOP support for the shutdown is eroding, weakening President Donald Trump’s hand as he seeks billions of dollars for a border wall that Democrats have vowed to oppose, according to GOP lawmakers and aides.

Hoping to sway skeptics in his party and the broader public, Trump will make an Oval Office address Tuesday night to discuss what he called the “Humanitarian and National Security Crisis on our Southern Border," he said on Twitter. Then he will visit the border region on Thursday.
posted by bluesky43 at 5:44 PM on January 7, 2019 [7 favorites]


I'm pleasantly surprised that Pelosi and Shumer took this step. Is there any precedent for giving equal airtime to the opposition party after a presidential address?
posted by diogenes at 5:44 PM on January 7, 2019 [5 favorites]


Is there any precedent for giving equal airtime to the opposition party after a presidential address?

Every televised State of the Union address since 1966.
posted by peeedro at 5:46 PM on January 7, 2019 [88 favorites]


The Orange King can't ring the bell any louder than he already is.

At this point he is begging to be taken off stage.
posted by Max Power at 5:48 PM on January 7, 2019 [8 favorites]


Every televised State of the Union address.

Does the rebuttal go out on every network for free? (I honestly don't know.)
posted by diogenes at 5:50 PM on January 7, 2019


And the airtime of the response definitely doesn't match the airtime of the State of the Union address.
posted by diogenes at 5:52 PM on January 7, 2019 [4 favorites]


House GOP leaders fear support eroding for Trump’s shutdown fight
A growing number of Republican lawmakers could vote for Democratic measures to reopen the federal government.

NBC: Vulnerable Republicans Seek Distance From Trump In New Congress—A handful of Republicans who face tough re-elections have bucked their party's leadership on the government shutdown.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:52 PM on January 7, 2019 [7 favorites]


WSeveral dozen House Republicans might cross the aisle this week

Which is useless.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:53 PM on January 7, 2019 [10 favorites]


My first draft of the Democratic response.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:53 PM on January 7, 2019 [41 favorites]


Politics Monday, PBS. Tamara Keith and Amy Walter.

NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter from the Cook Political Report join John Yang to discuss why the border wall is so important to President Trump right now, how neither side is feeling enough pain to be interested in yielding and whether a "generational divide" in the Democratic Party might affect the new Congress.

Amy Walter:

So, no one feels like they have anything to lose, right?

And when you are in a process where you're not feeling any pain, you're not going to make any changes. And the only way, it seems, that the folks who are in Congress will feel the pain is they're — either their constituents come to tell them or they see polling that suggests that voters are blaming them.

What is really different this time, too, from back when we were talking about these issues in 2016 and '17 and '18, not just that the House changed control, but look at the Senate map. The Senate map in 2018, it was tilted very much in favor of Republicans. It was red state Democrats who were on the ballot, and so there was a lot of political calculation from folks like Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, about protecting those vulnerable incumbents.

Well, guess what? In 2020, there's only one red state Democrat on the ballot. There are a number of blue and purple state Republicans on the ballot. How many of them? We have already seen a number of them come out and say, we would like to see the shutdown end. It's going to take a lot more than a couple of them.

But they're certainly much more vulnerable than — Republicans are more vulnerable on this issue than they were, at least in the Senate, back in 2018.
posted by bluesky43 at 5:55 PM on January 7, 2019 [7 favorites]


the media both sides-ism is maddening, more so with each passing month. CBS headlines scream about DSA plan to "jack up" taxes to 70% (of course 10 paragraphs down it explains this is a proposal for a marginal rate on dollars above 10m) and anderson cooper demands to know how dems will pay for all their programs (that they have no power to pass, and following a giant unpaid repub tax break for the rich).

meantime, the standard for repubs to be considered "serious" on policy is whether they can successfully piss into a bucket quicker than a corresponding dem can solve quantum gravity.

if trump declares a national emergency (either to save face and end this shutdown or for some other reason, like losing in 2020) and there are troops in the streets, i fully expect legacy media to run headlines like "Democrats' Tax Plan Inadequate To Pay for Ongoing Martial Law"

I say this as an ardent supporter of old school media- Until they start seeing themselves as a civic institution rather than just a storyteller, we're in deep shit.
posted by wibari at 5:58 PM on January 7, 2019 [93 favorites]


NYT, ‘It’s Just Too Much’: A Florida Town Grapples With a Shutdown After a Hurricane. Lots of leopards eating faces action going on here as federal workers deal with not getting paid while trying to put their lives back together after the hurricane, but the final quote is someone really telling on themselves:
The shutdown on top of the hurricane has caused Ms. Minton to rethink a lot of things.

“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
posted by zachlipton at 5:59 PM on January 7, 2019 [285 favorites]


Trump aides lay foundation for emergency order to build wall, saying border is in ‘crisis’. WaPo.

Vexed by Democrats’ refusal to yield to his demand for $5.7 billion for wall funding, Trump increasingly views a national emergency declaration as a viable, if risky, way for him to build a portion of his long-promised barrier, according to senior administration officials.

Although Trump has made “no decision” about a declaration, Pence said, lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office are working to determine the president’s options and prepare for any possible legal obstacles.

Such a move would be a fraught act of brinkmanship at the dawn of a newly divided government, sparking a firestorm with House Democrats and certain challenges in federal courts. But Trump believes forcing a drastic reckoning by executive action may be necessary given the Democratic resistance and the wall’s symbolic power for his core voters, officials said.
posted by bluesky43 at 5:59 PM on January 7, 2019 [6 favorites]


A little Googling isn't turning up any rapid response protest plans in case he does pull some national emergency bullshit. So far everything I come up with is all about Mueller.

I'm still not sold on the premise that he's going to do that, but if he does, it seems like we need to be out in the streets right after that. If there are such plans in the works by the sort of people who organize this stuff, I'd love to see links, 'cause so far I'm not finding them.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:02 PM on January 7, 2019 [19 favorites]


Several dozen House Republicans might cross the aisle this week

Which is useless.

I disagree. Shout from the rooftops that reopening the government has bipartisan support. Get it included in every headline.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 6:04 PM on January 7, 2019 [85 favorites]


Further shutdown round-up news stories:

Bloomberg: Shutdown Threatens $200 Million a Day in Federal Contracts

WaPo: Government Contractors Feel the Heat as Shutdown Enters Week Three

CNN/Gray News: Federal Workers Turn to Crowdfunding to Pay Bills During Shutdown

WBUR: 'You Feel Like You're Being Held Hostage': Air Traffic Controller On Working Through Shutdown

After the shutdown's comparatively calm first two weeks, the situation is beginning to heat up. No wonder Team Trump is panicking.
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:04 PM on January 7, 2019 [19 favorites]


If the Democrats don't have a speech or press release prepared that includes the sentence:

"Donald Trump himself is a national emergency."

...then they have no idea what they're doing.
posted by mmoncur at 6:06 PM on January 7, 2019 [50 favorites]


Seconding the request for streets-taking info. I dunno, but declaring a state of emergency feels like one more tick box on the checklist to dictatorship. I’d like to believe he’s doing this to give himself a way to end the shutdown without losing face, but I don’t trust his ability to stick with his own plan. I’m sure he’d love the power that comes with a state of emergency, and do as much damage as he can before it gets overturned.
posted by greermahoney at 6:07 PM on January 7, 2019 [34 favorites]


@costareports:
Pay close attention to what this administration is doing...

1. Weekend talks with Democrats were futile. Dems there frustrated that Rs didn't have budget numbers ready and OMB had to rush to compile them. Mtgs. instead focused on admin's bleak presentation on border situation

2. POTUS, encouraged by friends on right, increasingly sees a nat'l emergency declaration as a way to rattle empowered Dems and show his core voters he's going to the brink for wall

3. Instead of trying to negotiate to reopen the gov't with a wall-less bill, the admin spent Monday continuing to make its case of a border crisis to reporters and need for $5.7B. VP and @SecNielsen briefed. Laying foundation ahead of POTUS's Tues. speech to nation.

4. My top Trump admin sources say they see little downside to going "all out" now on the wall. Rallies their voters, tests Dems' mettle, and gives POTUS a chance to be seen as fighting on his signature issue ahead of a likely rough year of probes and battles w/ House Dems

5. The only caveat to all of this is that WH knows GOP holding together is critical. That's why POTUS and VP are phoning mbrs. That's in part why there is a speech to nation and trip to border. Direct msg to skittish Rs that this is the line, this is a crisis, so hold on tight.
He's figured out that the only way to get what he wants is to do what he always does: create a crisis out of nowhere and drag the Republicans in Congress along with him.
posted by zachlipton at 6:09 PM on January 7, 2019 [69 favorites]


A little Googling isn't turning up any rapid response protest plans in case he does pull some national emergency bullshit.

I don't know about a national emergency protest but there is a, I think DSA hosted, protest outside the White House on Thursday. I will be there, as my contract funding runs out on Friday and if the government doesn't reopen on Monday I am well and truly fucked.
posted by runcibleshaw at 6:10 PM on January 7, 2019 [14 favorites]


Demanding equal rebuttal time isn't going to work. The cablenewsers will be running countdown clocks all day.
Get out front and say that you'll treat a bullshit declaration of emergency as a cue to impeach. And follow through.

(And tomorrow would be a good day to occupy the Old Post Office tower.)
posted by holgate at 6:12 PM on January 7, 2019 [40 favorites]


What is the crisis? One graph shows Trump's lie - apprehensions of illegal crossings at southern border are the lowest in nearly 50 years. Bloomberg
posted by meech at 6:20 PM on January 7, 2019 [43 favorites]


Get out front and say that you'll treat a bullshit declaration of emergency as a cue to impeach. And follow through.

I think this is a great idea!
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 6:25 PM on January 7, 2019 [11 favorites]


Good lord, maybe he resigns.

“You guys don’t care about border security, so fuck you, I’m out. I’m not resigning in disgrace. You’re the problem, not me. I won. I’m taking my ball and going home.”
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 6:29 PM on January 7, 2019 [16 favorites]


The often cited exception to the first amendment is yelling FIRE in a theatre when there isn't a fire. I hear it all the time when people talk about the limits of free speech. Everyone agrees it's stupid and dangerous. So, what exactly is the legal penalty for yelling about a fake emergency?
posted by adept256 at 6:32 PM on January 7, 2019 [18 favorites]


Is that a serious question? The penalty is impeachment. Whether it will be applied is left as an exercise for the reader.
posted by Justinian at 6:40 PM on January 7, 2019 [15 favorites]


Actually, I'm going to take my suggestion back after reading Robert Costa and seeing what he said on MSNBC. A blazing Dem prebuttal with talk of impeachment is going to unite congressional Republicans when there are currently waverers. It can still be framed as an abuse of power, and also shitting on The Troops® because it's stealing money from the military.
posted by holgate at 6:41 PM on January 7, 2019 [7 favorites]


neither side is feeling enough pain to be interested in yielding

That's a remarkably unhelpful way of putting it, PBS, thank you. Why not make clear that it isn't primarily Congress holding things up, but the petulant man-baby in the White House whose threatened veto has scared the Republicans into blocking legislation that they themselves previously supported.

Amy Walter explicitly says “the only way, it seems, that the folks who are in Congress will feel the pain is they're — either their constituents come to tell them or they see polling that suggests that voters are blaming them.” Why are Republicans acting this way? It's a mystery!
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:43 PM on January 7, 2019 [15 favorites]


MSNBC replays Trump on the times he said he was the expert on something.
posted by Brian B. at 6:48 PM on January 7, 2019 [16 favorites]


Let's write letters to the editor in response to local newspaper coverage of Trump's speech. There's likely to be a hastily written Page 1 story on the speech, it would be good to have letters to the editor that critique the b.s.

Looking at some of the main immigrant justice groups like Southern Border Communities Coalition or National Immigrant Justice Center to see if they have talking points to share, I found this tweet/photo:
Here’s us camping on “our very dangerous Southern Border” a few weeks ago. We had s’mores and hot chocolate. We sang Feliz Navidad around a campfire. It was beautiful! #NoBorderWall #RevitalizeNotMilitarize
posted by spamandkimchi at 6:52 PM on January 7, 2019 [7 favorites]


It is a serious question.

In Australia the police will go ahead of a fire, door to door, and do mandatory evacuations. We all think this is a great thing; people may be unaware, or stubborn, or unprepared, or idiots. The truth is, we need the government to have special powers in an emergency. We only allow that when there is a FIRE.

But without the fire, the government can't just yank you out of your home. If they lie about there being a fire, that doesn't make it okay, it just compounds the abuse of power we'd hopefully hold them to account for.
posted by adept256 at 7:07 PM on January 7, 2019 [31 favorites]


Deutsche Welle, Trump administration downgrades EU mission to US
The Trump administration has downgraded the diplomatic status of the European Union's delegation to the United States, an EU official has confirmed to DW. The demotion happened at the end of last year without notice.

The unannounced move by the US State Department, which has not previously been reported, downgraded the EU delegation's diplomatic status in Washington from member state to international organization.

"We don't exactly know when they did it, because they conveniently forgot to notify us," an EU official who is familiar with the matter told DW in an interview. "I can confirm that this has not been well received in Brussels," the person said, adding that the issue and an official EU response was still being discussed.

After the delegation noticed that the EU's Washington ambassador had not been invited to certain events late last year, officials organizing the state funeral for President George H.W. Bush provided final confirmation to EU diplomats that the status of the representation had in fact been downgraded. Diplomats believe the downgrade must have been implemented in late October or early November.
They had been upgraded by the Obama Administration.
posted by zachlipton at 7:11 PM on January 7, 2019 [67 favorites]


It will not be improvised. He'll read it word for word, exactly as Hannity wrote it.

That's not a joke.
posted by davebush at 7:15 PM on January 7, 2019 [18 favorites]


@nycsouthpaw: Why wasn’t it an emergency when they couldn’t pass border wall funding through a Republican Congress over the course of two years? It’s only an emergency now that Democrats have the House? I don’t see how that flies.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:17 PM on January 7, 2019 [111 favorites]


the devolution will not be improvised
posted by uosuaq at 7:19 PM on January 7, 2019 [42 favorites]


Brian B.: "MSNBC replays Trump on the times he said he was the expert on something."

In the clip The Cheeto claims to be the best/most knowledgeable/an expert/at the top of knowledgeable people of the following areas:
  • Technology (and specifically drones)
  • Safety (probably in regards to drones but maybe not)
  • Campaign Finance
  • Military
  • Terrorism - Could have stopped 9/11
  • ISIS
  • Courts (#1 expert on the planet)
  • Social Media - Hemmingway of 140 characters, Facebook better than anyone else
  • He was his own #1 transition expert
  • Very good brain. Knows the best words.
  • King of Banking
  • Nobody knows Construction better.
  • Understands money better than anyone.
  • Trade
  • The "System"
Really I'm surprised he bothers having any cabinet at all.
posted by Mitheral at 7:22 PM on January 7, 2019 [27 favorites]


After the shutdown's comparatively calm first two weeks, the situation is beginning to heat up. No wonder Team Trump is panicking.

No federal employee has missed a check yet. That happens Friday. You'll start seeing stories about employees missing rent and mortgage payments next week.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:24 PM on January 7, 2019 [21 favorites]


WaPo, To build border wall as a national emergency, Trump would need to tap existing military budget. And what does tapping the existing military budget mean? It means not doing whatever the hell else the military is supposed to be doing:
If President Trump declares a national emergency to force the military to build a wall on the border with Mexico, the Pentagon may have to figure out which military construction projects around the world to cancel, pare back or put on hold to free up money for the initiative.
...
But the law that authorizes the defense secretary to order military building projects in the event of a national emergency requires the Pentagon to draw upon funds that Congress has already appropriated for military construction. The result is that the administration could have to claw back money from projects Congress has debated and funded.
This is money that Congress already appropriated for existing projects. Republican appropriators, who fought for that money, are going to have some real problems if Trump swoops in and redirects it to the wall. Whether they'll be too cowed to say anything is a different matter.
posted by zachlipton at 7:26 PM on January 7, 2019 [32 favorites]


I think it's worth noting that it seems like creating an emergency to respond to out of thin air is the Trump administration's go-to strategy. Whether it's gassing migrants who are trapped in Mexico because we trapped them there, banning people from traveling to the US from muslim majority countries, or shutting down the government over a non-existent crisis at the border, it's a strategy to acquire power by manufacturing various crises. They keep trying it and it hasn't really worked yet, but eventually it will unless we stop them. I'm not an expert on the history of fascism, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that this is a tried and true strategy of fascist leaders in the past.
posted by runcibleshaw at 7:31 PM on January 7, 2019 [29 favorites]


They won't have to say anything if the projects can be described as depriving our troops of something important. Imagine if it took money from some research project that would save American lives or a body armor purchase or something along those lines.
posted by VTX at 7:33 PM on January 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


Reporters and all the democratic talking heads need to ask:

Why is this an emergency NOW?

What has changed in the last 2 years that makes this an emergency NOW?

The Trump administration cannot answer that question honestly.

(The fact that the Trump administration can't answer any question is obvious to most of us)
posted by yesster at 7:36 PM on January 7, 2019 [43 favorites]


The Bill Clinton impeachment was totally illegitimate and shouldn't be a guide for us, of course, but out of curiosity I looked through a few links (1, 2, 3) and noted with interest that one of the bases in the articles of impeachment charging a couple counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and “Abusing His Office by Lying to and Obstructing Congress”, involved at one point Clinton failing to mention (in written answers to Congress, on that count) a necktie that Monica Lewinsky gave him for Christmas.

(I also noted with curiosity something I'd somehow missed, that “perjury trap” appears prominently as a talking point from Democrats in that era. Which must be one reason it's been used with such gusto by Nationalist propaganda channels.)
posted by XMLicious at 7:46 PM on January 7, 2019 [16 favorites]


If they had spoken with a lawyer before asserting it was possible to declare a national emergency under these circumstances, it probably would have helped avoid this recent awkwardness:
White House counsel is reviewing whether the president has the ability to declare a national emergency in the current situation, Pence told reporters on Monday. He added that the administration would prefer to secure the funding for border security from an agreement with Congress.
And coincidentally:
“We know that roughly nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists come into our country illegally, and we know that our most vulnerable point of entry is southern border,” Sanders began, but Wallace cut her off.

“I know the statistic, I didn’t know if you were going to use it, but I studied up on this,” Wallace said. “Do you know what those 4,000 people come where they are captured? Airports.”

“Not always…” Sanders said weakly.

“Airports. The state department says there hasn’t been any terrorists found coming across the southern border,” Wallace said.
posted by Little Dawn at 8:05 PM on January 7, 2019 [97 favorites]


I'm seriously unsure what the game is here. If he goes on TV in support of the shutdown, he's risking owning it even more than he already does. A week passes, the GOP congress folds and he loses.

If he goes on TV to declare a "national emergency" and takes funds from the military, then it goes into the courts - where he again loses. (Plus he likely will alienate the rank and file of the military.)

So what on Earth is he trying to do here?
posted by elwoodwiles at 8:16 PM on January 7, 2019 [4 favorites]


Samuel L. Jackson endorses Rashida Tlaib's use of 'mother****er'.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:17 PM on January 7, 2019 [59 favorites]


I myself just drove back into the US across the border in Lukeville AZ last Sunday. Absolutely zero signs of any crisis or emergency.

I too am searching for planned protests if this declaration actually goes down. This is my last straw.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 8:19 PM on January 7, 2019 [24 favorites]


So what on Earth is he trying to do here?

I'm scared, to be honest. Obviously, the plan with this motherfucker (I know, snarky names don't help, but let me do it this once) has only ever been to raise the stakes...right up into blatant authoritarianism. I hope he loses, I optimistically think he will, and I'm honestly frightened he might not, but I think his plan is as simple as butting up against every institution to see which walls crumble.
posted by saysthis at 8:22 PM on January 7, 2019 [31 favorites]


I'm seriously unsure what the game is here.

It’s Reality TV. Which is all he knows. Around here we call it lies. At the NYT they call it falsehoods. At CBS and CNN they call it ratings.
posted by valkane at 8:22 PM on January 7, 2019 [42 favorites]


So what on Earth is he trying to do here?

I see it differently. With his base, which is who he wants to appeal to, he can't lose. He's going on the TV to make a big speech about the big dangerous emergency because that is what presidents do, and they like that. None of the words he says will be displeasing to them unless he has a literal and obvious stroke in front of the camera, and even then they would believe it was the Democrats' fault. Similarly, none of the words that Democrats can say will make a dent in his base. The Democrats need to fire up theirs by refusing to act like this is any kind of normal.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:23 PM on January 7, 2019 [23 favorites]


Nobody, probably including him, will know what he's going to say until he's said it.


And then he will decry it as fake news after.

/em throws money away by betting its a resignation tirade like Cool Papa Bell says. “I am not a crook! Fake news! You guys are mean and deserve me leaving you!”

717 days. Ye gods.
posted by tilde at 8:25 PM on January 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


"Network executives’ job is to make themselves and their shareholders richer. Trump being in office helps them achieve that goal and they make programming decisions accordingly."
posted by bookman117 at 8:32 PM on January 7, 2019 [24 favorites]


The prime time speech reminds me of shenanigans pulled by the Sinclair Broadcast Group (who I expect will make their stations plug the speech heavily).
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:36 PM on January 7, 2019 [6 favorites]


declaring a state of emergency feels like one more tick box on the checklist to dictatorship

I think greermahoney is absolutely right. We were all warned so many times about normalizing fascism, but you can't maintain emergency mode for years on end. The horrible people who never belonged anywhere near a president's cabinet seem like elder statespeople compared to the jokers in there now. By now I've mostly forgotten to be mad about Rick Perry being in the cabinet.

I'm grateful there are folks on here still saying it's all fucked up, though. We are doing our best.

What I can share for hope is that today my county commissioner (one of the first two commissioners of color in our county) was sworn in with her hand on the The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. She is the first person I ever campaigned for solely on the basis of hearing her speak once. No group invited me, I didn't have a friend at the campaign reach out - I just heard her talk about what she wanted for our community and thought "I want to be a part of this." <3
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:37 PM on January 7, 2019 [93 favorites]


So what on Earth is he trying to do here?

According to the Washington Post:
Consider Sen. Lindsey O. Graham’s (R-S.C.) description of Trump’s conundrum during an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity on Wednesday:

“If he gives in now, that’s the end of 2019 in terms of him being an effective president,” Graham said. “That’s probably the end of his presidency. Donald Trump has made a promise to the American people: He’s going to secure our border.”
posted by Little Dawn at 8:42 PM on January 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


For what it's worth: Robert De Niro: ‘Trump is a real racist, a white supremacist' (David Smith, The Guardian)
What bothers me is that there will be people in the future who see him as an example but they’ll be a lot smarter ...
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:42 PM on January 7, 2019 [21 favorites]


Consider Sen. Lindsey O. Graham’s (R-S.C.) description of Trump’s conundrum during an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity on Wednesday

Both of these people will say whatever is best for the plot of the reality show, in fact, they are both senior cast members. Hannity is worthless, and Graham will blow with whatever wind makes the most sense for Graham. I’m still waiting on Hannity to waterboard himself, as he promised to do.
posted by valkane at 8:47 PM on January 7, 2019 [5 favorites]


The Trump administration is considering a major rollback of civil rights regulation (P.R. Lockhart , Vox)
A recent Washington Post report says plans to alter disparate impact regulation, a key part of civil rights enforcement, might be in the works.
...

Two years into the Trump presidency, one of the most effective parts of the administration has been its efforts to reduce the federal government’s role in promoting civil rights regulation. A recent report from the Washington Post suggests that this effort could soon enter a new phase, as the government considers a large-scale rollback of measures protecting marginalized groups from discrimination.

On January 3, the Post reported that the administration was considering “a far-reaching rollback of civil rights law that would dilute federal rules.” The report noted that a recent internal memo from the Justice Department encouraged civil rights officials to look at how anti-discrimination guidance, some of which is decades old, could be removed or changed and what the effects would be.

This memo is reportedly the first step in a larger review that could see some of these guidance completely rescinded in the coming months. The Post notes that the Education Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development [WaPo story] are also looking at similar guidance in their respective agencies.

The Justice Department memo explicitly targets federal civil rights guidance that focus on mitigating “disparate impact”— the concept that a practice or system can be discriminatory if it is found to disproportionately affect minorities, even if the policy itself is not rooted in intentional discrimination.

“Disparate-impact discrimination is not a simple question of discrete outcomes; on their own, divergent results do not prove discrimination,” the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer explains. “Rather, the regulations prohibit behavior that would discriminate if there are other ways to achieve the desired objective, or if there’s no valid interest being pursued."
Emphasis mine.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:48 PM on January 7, 2019 [31 favorites]


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: The rookie congresswoman challenging the Democratic establishment (Anderson Cooper, 60 Minutes)

Full interview w/video & transcript. Seems mostly forgotten now, in light of things that Trump said or did today.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:53 PM on January 7, 2019 [7 favorites]


Both of these people will say whatever is best for the plot of the reality show, in fact, they are both senior cast members.

Indeed, but also according to an opinion published in the Wall Street Journal today:
The possibilities of anything but outright victory are more stark for Mr. Trump. Oh, sure, if he accepts a deal that doesn’t give him a wall he can blame Democrats along with any Republicans who abandon him. But he still would have lost a fight that he picked. He’d end the shutdown weaker than he started. And some of his most ardent supporters could well turn on him for selling them out on his signature issue, affecting his re-election in 2020. None of this guarantees a Trump victory. It does suggest the president realizes he is now in a fight he can’t afford to lose.
[The link is accessible if clicked on the Drudge Report headline "Can't Afford to Lose..."]
posted by Little Dawn at 8:59 PM on January 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


I saw my first QAnon bumper sticker today! Very exciting, if also creepy.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:12 PM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


I also think constitutional law scholar Lawrence Lessig made an important point last week about how the shutdown isn't really a fight over a wall or border security, it's about the exercise of unilateral executive branch power in an otherwise democratic form of government:
Of all the constitutional norms that this president has upset, this, ultimately, may be the most significant. And it is this innovation that the Republicans especially should check. For do they now concur in the precedent that a president has the constitutional authority to insist upon whatever policy he likes, regardless of its support in the public? If a Democrat were elected on the promise to establish single-payer healthcare, does she then have the moral authority to shut down the government until Congress nationalizes the insurance industry? Or directly regulates pharmaceuticals? If she were elected on the promise to address climate change, can she stop the ordinary functioning of government until Congress passes a carbon tax?
posted by Little Dawn at 9:17 PM on January 7, 2019 [99 favorites]


If she were elected on the promise to address climate change, can she stop the ordinary functioning of government until Congress passes a carbon tax?

Fascists don't care about this because their own election is always the last legitimate one.
posted by benzenedream at 9:34 PM on January 7, 2019 [36 favorites]


Mod note: A few comments deleted. Let's rein in the "ugh these fuckers" and the "here's a terrible scenario that will happen" spinning-out. Let's keep the thread for actual updates, and if folks need something to do, there's a Best Post Contest on, so go vote for some posts you like by Flagging them as Fantastic.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:38 PM on January 7, 2019 [21 favorites]


I don't quite understand why Democrats aren't taunting Trump more for hiding behind McConnell. Call him a coward and wimp for not having the guts to veto the bill, and instead asking McConnell to sit on it and protect him from having to do the gutsy thing himself. It seems like one of the few places where persistent needling by politicians on TV, talking heads, folks on Twitter, etc, might actually have an effect by offending his pride. It won't solve the shutdown, but if we can get to the point where Trump feels like his manliness requires him to wield the veto pen -- the sort of response Pelosi and Schumer managed a few weeks ago -- and he feels forced to ask McConnell to bring it to a vote so he can veto, that would get us a lot closer to an ultimate Trump capitulation.
posted by chortly at 9:44 PM on January 7, 2019 [32 favorites]


I don't quite understand why Democrats aren't taunting Trump more for hiding behind McConnell.

It looks like the Democrats are getting underway today with taunting McConnell for hiding behind Trump:
Democrats moved on two fronts Monday to goad Republicans into reopening the federal government, lining up House bills to fund shuttered agencies and preparing to block action in the Senate until the shutdown is resolved.

The moves amounted to an increasingly calculated and confrontational strategy from congressional Democrats as the shutdown over President Trump’s demand for money for a wall on the Mexican border entered its third week.
And particularly this:
This week’s action in the House will be coupled with a new Democratic strategy in the Senate, where Democrats are coalescing behind a plan to block any legislation on the floor that doesn’t reopen the federal government.
posted by Little Dawn at 9:53 PM on January 7, 2019 [15 favorites]


Slate, Dahlia Lithwick, Why Men Find the New Congresswomen So Frightening
Sit with that image for a moment: Men in government are fussing and fuming about all the ways in which the government they run doesn’t actually matter much, while criticizing women in government for attempting to govern. It’s almost as if they are smashing up the toys of political leadership just as women are finally being allowed to move on the game board.
posted by zachlipton at 10:07 PM on January 7, 2019 [89 favorites]


That Thursday shutdown protest I mentioned before.
posted by runcibleshaw at 10:09 PM on January 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: The rookie congresswoman challenging the Democratic establishment (Anderson Cooper, 60 Minutes)

Rewatching this it's striking how unbelievably condescending Anderson Cooper is to AOC. You cannot find any interview Cooper has ever done with a Republican where his tone is this dismissive. It's approaching sexual predator Matt Laurer antagonizing Hilary during the debate level.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:19 PM on January 7, 2019 [82 favorites]


Why do you think that is, T.D.?
posted by valkane at 10:25 PM on January 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


He's a Vanderbilt, and old money hates saucy peasants demanding their rights. The nerve!

Also an older dude talking to a younger woman, in general.

The condescension she's getting, overall, is disgusting.
posted by emjaybee at 10:35 PM on January 7, 2019 [83 favorites]


No federal employee has missed a check yet. That happens Friday. You'll start seeing stories about employees missing rent and mortgage payments next week.

That's not correct - many employees should have received a check for overtime after December 22nd, and it is this missed paycheck that has enabled this lawsuit by the federal employees union for failing to meet FLSA requirements of prompt payment, and this similar one by a CBP officer with the National Treasury Employees Union.

Anyone working as a contractor to the federal government has also lost the money they would have earned by working over the last few weeks, as there is no allowance for backpay for them.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 10:44 PM on January 7, 2019 [25 favorites]


Re: Protests - they might crop up organically, depending on what the content of 45's blatherings will be.

Might be wise to just be prepared, in case some spring up suddenly. I already carry extra snacks in my murse; it wouldn't be a stretch to make it more protest-ready. Snacks, a charged phone battery, scarf, tell others where you are going, etc. There's plenty of threads that detail what to bring to a protest, if you need guidance.
posted by spinifex23 at 11:44 PM on January 7, 2019 [5 favorites]


Because it's worth repeating, from @cnni: World Bank President Jim Yong Kim abruptly resigned nearly 3 years ahead of schedule, setting up an opening for US President Trump to fill -- and a potential clash with other countries over the long-standing practice of the US making the appointment

Well, then. That potential clash is not so 'potential' given the figures involved. The quick and abrupt resignation reminds me of the Supreme Court judge who abruptly resigned and turned out to have history/family involved with Deutsche Bank -- I wonder if that'll be a factor here as well?
posted by E. Whitehall at 12:25 AM on January 8, 2019 [49 favorites]


Here's my own tiny shutdown story. On Wednesday I'm supposed to begin a two and a half month residency at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History to work on examining and describing some possibly new fish species. This opportunity will get me through a significant part of my (already embattled and fraught with failure) doctoral dissertation. I guess I'm still going to Washington, but it looks like I won't be getting much work done.

My thing obviously pales in comparison to contractors who will go entirely unpaid and families literally starving because their SNAP benefits stop coming, but it's one of the many examples of how this bullshit spreads out in possibly unexpected ways
posted by deadbilly at 12:54 AM on January 8, 2019 [97 favorites]


It'll never see light of day but I wonder who has the contract to build the 'fence/wall/obstruction'? I wonder if they have any, you know, connection with the current administration. I'm talking bribery. cause a 5% cut of 5+billion is pretty juicy. (Why 5%? That's what I remember the average payment being in NYC to 'buy lunch' for an inspector.)

Yeah, I think there's a bit of 'face saving' on Trump's part - he doesn't want to look like he's not delivering on what he promised to his 'base', but as someone with lots of experience 'helping out' inspectors 'for the holidays' and 'buying lunch' I find it hard to believe he wouldn't get a cut.

But seriously, in the hurricane of bullshit I can't imagine this will ever be researched/verified or in any other way prove relevant. I mean look at the emoluments business.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:22 AM on January 8, 2019 [13 favorites]


Twitter thread on AOC in particular and the Democratic party in general:
@PrettyBadLefty:
The ease at which Alexandria Ocasio Cortez basic answers fluster reporters and dictates the terms of the public discourse on policies should show you just how little the Democrats have tried over the past 4 decades.

It should also show you how conditioned the rank and file liberal has become to symbolic, theoretically moral victories instead of actual victories and material solutions

This might be a hottake, and I do like AOC, but she is not some preternatural political genius, she is just a normal person with good politics based in her experience with material deprivation.

The fact that the Democratic party could not do this is at best gross incompetence and at worst enabling.

No wonder they hate her, she is an constant reminder to the population that despite their mastery of the language of symbolic resistance they simply weren't trying to make things better.

Dumb reporter: "How are we going to pay for [insert basic human right]"
AOC: "How do we pay for anything?"
Exactly. EXACTLY.

Or even people who recognize politics as the primary method by which we solve societal problems as opposed to a game of optics and grift to enrich aligned think tanks and consultancies
@BrianoMobile
We could use more candidates who recognize politics as a series of moral choices rather than technocratic obstacles.

People really do not recognize how serious and insidious the Democratic Parties shift from a party of substantive structural programs and social reforms to a party of symbolic moral and intellectual victories was and I'm hope we are starting to shift away

In summary, everyone whose job it was to do politics over the past 40 years should probably be fired.
posted by PontifexPrimus at 1:57 AM on January 8, 2019 [157 favorites]


everyone whose job it was to do politics over the past 40 years should probably be fired

Wasn't that Trump's original campaign pitch?
posted by flabdablet at 2:28 AM on January 8, 2019 [11 favorites]


Further to that: I don't want to see the swamp drained; I'm just happy to see somebody like AOC having a red-hot go at getting the lily garden up and running again.
posted by flabdablet at 2:31 AM on January 8, 2019 [24 favorites]


The ease at which Alexandria Ocasio Cortez basic answers fluster reporters and dictates the terms of the public discourse on policies should show you just how little the Democrats have tried over the past 4 decades.

AOC is amazing, and it's great she has arrived in Congress. But let's not pour petrol on the retorical fire the Republican spin-machine is building. Who says the older Democrats "hate" Alexandria Ocasio Cortez? Should they not challenge her at all? Should Nancy Pelosi just step down? Politics are above negotiation of power, all the time, every day, and that is not an expression of "hate" or "love", it's what politicians do. The new young generation of politicians are bringing something important to the table, and they can do it and be succesful, I'm sure. But so have each young generation before them. Everybody has brought in what was real and possible at the time when they entered.
The political landscape after Reagan had moved so far to the right, that Clinton had to do what he did. And because of that, his generation of Democratic politicians have that experience of life, it's formed their minds. And that is OK, they have achieved great things, including ACA. They have tried a lot, and fought hard. But their experience and the resulting mindset is also why I consistently advocate here against even the best of boomer candidates for the presidency. There are options they cannot see. With Clinton vs Sanders there was no other choice. But now there can be.
posted by mumimor at 3:08 AM on January 8, 2019 [76 favorites]


party of substantive structural programs and social reforms to a party of symbolic moral and intellectual victories

eeeee I don't know what the symbolic moral and intellectual victories are supposed to be that we should not feel so keen about or am I taking an uncharitable reading of that?
posted by angrycat at 3:22 AM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]


The GOP's frustration with AOC is hilarious. She's just using their own rhetorical tactics against them. Unfortunately those rhetorical tactics amount to glibness and hand-waving, which is like empowering if you agree with her I guess, but is not very comforting from a governance point of view.

"The facts may be wrong, but the morals are right" is peak truthiness and not an acceptable answer.
posted by Anonymous at 3:28 AM on January 8, 2019


*cough*

Investors, policymakers and even farmers are being deprived of key economic data as the partial US government shutdown moves into its third week.
[...]
The shutdown is impeding the production of numbers about the US economy at a time when the Federal Reserve has said policy would be particularly “data dependent”. Grain exports have become impossible to verify as the farm belt is desperate to assess China’s soyabean purchases.

On Tuesday, the Census Bureau was scheduled to release November data on international trade in goods and services. The previous month’s report showed a US trade deficit at the widest level in a decade. FT, reading wall, how to unpaywall

It gets uglier,

farmers seeking compensation under federal crop insurance schemes needed the official crop production data to calculate payouts.

“It impacts farmers’ planting intentions if they don’t get paid on time,” she says.
posted by infini at 3:52 AM on January 8, 2019 [31 favorites]


Still no multi-polar team work. Y'all still want to be the boss of the rest of the world. Or is that some code for white supremacy that I am unable to pick up as a woc?

TH: But before Pearl Harbor, of course, FDR had a great deal of trouble generating support for entering the war. He did what he could, for example, with lend-lease for the U.K. Now we have a president who’s kind of the opposite, who disparages alliances and commitments. Do you think that the American people are still engaged with the world? Or do you think that Trump’s election showed the isolationist mind-set of the populace?

RD: We think today’s position is quite different from the World War II situation or the Cold War competition. We think the general population is committed to the idea of U.S. primacy; that the U.S. should be the leader of the free world; that it should be engaged with the world. We don’t see strong trends toward isolationism.

But there’s less clarity about why we’re committed to that role. It’s pretty obvious if you’re being attacked or if you think, as in the Cold War, that there’s a risk that our opponents will come and take over America and impose totalitarian rule. Nobody really thinks that China or Russia will take over the U.S. The article has some links to some papers worthy of note Pity about that terrified headline though
posted by infini at 4:03 AM on January 8, 2019 [4 favorites]


These numbers make it very clear that the perception of China as the “factory of the world,” flooding global markets with cheap goods, is badly out of date. ~ SLYNT, American Companies Need Chinese Consumers
posted by infini at 4:17 AM on January 8, 2019 [3 favorites]


eeeee I don't know what the symbolic moral and intellectual victories are supposed to be that we should not feel so keen about or am I taking an uncharitable reading of that?

Not sure what the tweet author meant but I think generally people in that milieu mean things like the house Dems singing "hey hey goodbye" at the Republicans, which was funny to watch and amusing and everything but didn't put food on the table. Maybe I'm being too charitable from my end, though!
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 4:22 AM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]


I don't understand what the White House is doing. Trump keeps ratcheting up the stakes on the shutdown. If Trump and Graham keep insisting that he has to win the wall funding fight in order to govern effectively in 2019 and 2020, then he's handing the democrats a cudgel. It's 2019 and there's a presidential election coming up in 2020. That means there would only be a year to build support in the american public for an impeachment. Trump is telling the democrats that they don't have to do the difficult work of presenting the facts supporting impeachment to the general public. If we believe Trump, all the democrats have to do is win a fight against his unpopular wall. Trump has already lied about the existence of the wall, the structure of the wall, and the necessity for the wall so people may think he'll be able to lie about winning the wall fight if he is defeated. However, a wall is, despite what some Trump's supporters say, is a physical thing, not a metaphor. If Trump doesn't build a wall, it's easy to show his base that there is no wall.

Suppose, in the best case for Trump, the democrats give Trump his 5 billion. Trump can celebrate having stared down congress but come 2020 there will only be a small portion of his stupid wall built and he will have spent 5 billion. How will that look to his base?
posted by rdr at 4:25 AM on January 8, 2019 [8 favorites]


The trouble with "Sandy": Trump fans love their con man, but think lefties are fake (Amanda Marcotte, Salon)
Note that there's no way to win this game. No matter what approach one takes to a childhood nickname — losing it or keeping it — the right will hold it out as "proof" that a Democrat is an imposter. That's because these trolls are operating from a foreordained conclusion, which is all Democrats or liberals or progressives are a pack of phonies. All evidence, no matter how trivial silly, is reverse-engineered to fit this conclusion.
posted by ZeusHumms at 4:26 AM on January 8, 2019 [21 favorites]


Unfortunately those rhetorical tactics amount to glibness and hand-waving, which is like empowering if you agree with her I guess, but is not very comforting from a governance point of view.

I don't really understand the danger here. She tried to illustrate that the cost of Medicare for all, while large, is fundable. She compared it to money the Pentagon has "lost" as a way to show that these are numbers we are already dealing with in the federal government. This is a valid point. If we are okay with $21 trillion of unaccounted for military spending, why not put in $32 trillion to give everyone healthcare?

She was wrong about some of the details (17 years vs 10 years), and she admitted that. She never said that this money was literally available to pay for healthcare.

I agree with her assessment that she got some facts wrong, but the moral argument is still valid. If we are okay with losing trillions in the Pentagon, we should be okay with spending a comparable sum on healthcare. This is nothing like what Trump, Fox News, etc do.
posted by snofoam at 4:28 AM on January 8, 2019 [78 favorites]


“There are a heck of a lot of U.S. companies that have sales in China that are going to be watching their earnings being downgraded next year until we get a deal with China.”

I work for one. We got utterly roasted just before Christmas when we announced we weren’t going to absorb the tariff costs on our products anymore, and that if it wasn’t for the tariffs our new release (also announced just before the holidays) would have been cheaper.

I think I see a recession coming due to the tariffs, and... well, that post yesterday about keeping your job after 50 keeps giving me anxiety attacks.
posted by mephron at 4:36 AM on January 8, 2019 [24 favorites]


I don't understand what the White House is doing.

Trump believes forcing a drastic reckoning by executive action may be necessary given the Democratic resistance and the wall’s symbolic power for his core voters, officials said.

There it is, he believes he can't give in and must show that he's still the racist shitstain they voted for. That's the only strategy. The Wall isn't a policy, it's a political symbol of commitment to white supremacy. Trump knows it. His voters know it. The only people who don't are news media executives. The only plan is to not give in, and look like he's "fighting" because he felt like he was losing FOX News.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:37 AM on January 8, 2019 [25 favorites]


Fox News’ Chris Wallace fact-checks Sarah Sanders [in an interview] on terrorists and the wall: ‘They’re not coming across the southern border!’ (David Edwards, Alternet)

‘The Vesuvius of B.S.’: Conservative pundit humiliates Corey Lewandowski to his face [on MSNBC's "Hardball"] over absurd Trump talking points (Matthew Chapman, Alternet)
posted by ZeusHumms at 4:41 AM on January 8, 2019 [20 favorites]


When Mueller Issues a Report, Trump May Try to Suppress Some of It (Chris Strohm & Shannon Pettypiece, Bloomberg)
Mueller may submit his findings on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign to the Justice Department as early as February, according to one U.S. official. After that, things could get messy.

Democrats who now control the House have said they’ll demand that the department hand over the report -- and that they intend to make it public. The White House may counter by asserting executive privilege to prevent key findings from being turned over, according to people familiar with internal deliberations.

Under the federal regulation that authorizes special counsels, Mueller is required only to submit his report to department leaders. There’s no mandate that any part of Mueller’s findings be provided to Congress or the public.
...

It’s possible that Mueller has anticipated that White House lawyers will try to suppress his findings and has moved -- or will move in coming weeks -- to outflank their efforts, this official said. Mueller could do so by having a grand jury make a presentment, which is a public report without a criminal charge, the official said. Mueller also could seek to indict Trump, although the Justice Department has a standing policy that a president can’t be indicted while in office.

Trump’s lawyers also have a backup plan in case Mueller’s report ultimately is made public and is damning for the president: They’ve been working for months on their own report to counter any findings that paint Trump in a negative light, as they echo Trump’s frequent assertions that there was “no collusion” and no laws were broken.
...

Lawmakers, too, have options they could exercise. If Mueller’s findings aren’t made public, they could call him to testify before Congress, where he’d be pressed to disclose what he discovered.
posted by ZeusHumms at 4:52 AM on January 8, 2019 [14 favorites]


(I also noted with curiosity something I'd somehow missed, that “perjury trap” appears prominently as a talking point from Democrats in that era. Which must be one reason it's been used with such gusto by Nationalist propaganda channels.)

That's because a perjury trap actually is a real thing, and it happens much the way it did with Clinton -- the prosecutor doesn't have evidence of a crime, but of non criminal behavior the subject doesn't want to admit to, so gets them to lie about that.

Asking questions directly relevant to criminal matters and having the defendant lie is not a perjury trap. Unfortunately, the so-called "liberal media" doesn't respond to the Republican use of the term by noting that it's both a tacit admission of guilt and an overt admission that Trump's a liar.
posted by Gelatin at 5:01 AM on January 8, 2019 [51 favorites]


There it is, he believes he can't give in and must show that he's still the racist shitstain they voted for. That's the only strategy. The Wall isn't a policy, it's a political symbol of commitment to white supremacy.

And he needs to do this because he knows shit will meet fan soon with Mueller and House investigations and the only hope he has of surviving is maintaining his core racist base to discourage Senate Rs from doing the manifestly right thing and convicting upon impeachment.
posted by chris24 at 5:05 AM on January 8, 2019 [6 favorites]


Or even people who recognize politics as the primary method by which we solve societal problems as opposed to a game of optics and grift to enrich aligned think tanks and consultancies

That sentence neatly summarizes my frustration with NPR, in that their political reporters constantly treat politics as a game of optics even when their own reporting regularly documents societal problems.
posted by Gelatin at 5:16 AM on January 8, 2019 [33 favorites]


You just have to go back to "[h]e’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting." Doing Wall is a zero-sum punitive act -- especially in its "Mexico will pay" formulation -- and it's only a political victory if somebody is seen to be hurt by it, ideally the right people in the eyes of his supporters.

In other news, Manafort's lawyers apparently missed a filing deadline to respond to assertions that he lied to prosecutors and breached his plea deal.
posted by holgate at 5:19 AM on January 8, 2019 [24 favorites]


That's because a perjury trap actually is a real thing, and it happens much the way it did with Clinton -- the prosecutor doesn't have evidence of a crime, but of non criminal behavior the subject doesn't want to admit to, so gets them to lie about that.

Rereading bits of "Citizen Cohn", it appears that this "We don't have charges, so let's find some perjury" was started by McCarthy/Cohen in the 50's.
posted by mikelieman at 5:25 AM on January 8, 2019 [14 favorites]


I didn't see this editorial (NYT) linked above. I like the title: Borderline Insanity.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:26 AM on January 8, 2019 [4 favorites]


I find a conviction by the Senate far-fetched. More likely to me is that Trump will be blackmailed, bribed, or encouraged by campaign heavyweights to step back in 2020 in favor of a Pence run.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 5:29 AM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


They're not going to run Pence if they get Trump to stand back (which he'll couch as "you fuckers don't deserve me, I'm out"). If the GOP manages to regain some control over the candidacy they're going to run someone with more evil charisma than Pence, who has all of the baggage and none of the "achievements" of the Trump administration.

I think Trump's going to run and quit halfway through the campaign, for what it's worth. He can't NOT compete, for his ego, but that same ego is also legitimately afraid of losing.

In the meantime, Trump's going to try to ram that border wall through because there is NOTHING else that will give him his base numbers and the Fox News praise he needs. He's in withdrawal and it's going to get fucking ugly.
posted by lydhre at 5:37 AM on January 8, 2019 [6 favorites]


Just a reminder, the same networks that just now agreed to carry Trump's partisan ranting about his stupid fucking wall refused to give Obama airtime to talk about immigration. They told Obama it was "too political" and would violate their sacred vows of neutrality to give him airtime.

The media is blatantly and obviously on Team Trump.
posted by sotonohito at 6:16 AM on January 8, 2019 [113 favorites]


Unfortunately those rhetorical tactics amount to glibness and hand-waving, which is like empowering if you agree with her I guess, but is not very comforting from a governance point of view.

Yeah, I’m a little concerned by how tempted folks are being by basically “my job as a politician is to be charismatic and talk about popular ideas” rather than “my job as a politician is to find out what ideas can be implemented and make it actually happen.” It’s understandable because there haven’t been a lot of big ideas on offer for a while, but I think Trump - and the shutdown - is showing kind of why that tack doesn’t work very well. Like - I hate him and everything he stands for, but his voters apparently want him to make big stances over this bullshit nonsense, right? But it turns out the shutdown has a ton of unintended consequences. His people wanted the national parks kept open, but now people are dying and the parks are being trashed, because how you implement things matters. Reading boring government impact studies matters.

It’s not enough to like the big ideas - you also need policy wonks figuring out how to make them happen safely and well. And I am concerned that in their “throw the bums out” fervor, it seems to be less on offer in the year and time we need it most.
posted by corb at 6:21 AM on January 8, 2019 [8 favorites]


Suppose, in the best case for Trump, the democrats give Trump his 5 billion. Trump can celebrate having stared down congress but come 2020 there will only be a small portion of his stupid wall built and he will have spent 5 billion. How will that look to his base?

I think Trump's plan at this point is to declare a national emergency and to try to use the defense budget/military to build the wall, and many in his base will applaud this effort. I think tonight might represent a particularly long fissure opening up in the base of our democracy.
posted by tarshish bound at 6:30 AM on January 8, 2019 [4 favorites]


It's gotten to the point that those who try to defend Trump's absurd pronouncements, like Pence and Sanders have tried to do recently, suddenly have realized that Trump is so addicted to exaggerating everything that the motherforker can't even tell the truth without lying.
posted by pjsky at 6:32 AM on January 8, 2019 [4 favorites]


"The facts may be wrong, but the morals are right" is peak truthiness and not an acceptable answer.

This literally the same criticism Cilizza made and rightfully got dragged for.

AOC isn't an idiot, and she's not just throwing out pie in the sky ideas, a lot of the stuff she's talking about has either been done before or requires that, say, Chuck Schumer not listen to Joe Manchin more than Elizabeth Warren.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:32 AM on January 8, 2019 [47 favorites]


She compared it to money the Pentagon has "lost" as a way to show that these are numbers we are already dealing with in the federal government. This is a valid point. If we are okay with $21 trillion of unaccounted for military spending, why not put in $32 trillion to give everyone healthcare?

She was wrong about some of the details (17 years vs 10 years), and she admitted that.

It wasn't just the details that were wrong, it was a complete mischaracterization of that $21 trillion figure. That number does not describe how much money the Pentagon lost, it describes the total amount of unauditable transactions. Which is mostly made up of interdepartmental transfers that were not sufficiently documented.

The entire defense spending over that 17 year period was less than $9 trillion, so to claim that there is anything like a pool of $21 trillion dollars that could be used for healthcare is wildly inaccurate.
posted by parallellines at 6:33 AM on January 8, 2019 [11 favorites]


The politicians can be separate from the policy wonks. Someone who dreams big about health care and civil rights, and then listens to experts and advisors is the model. Trump doesn't do the second part, and that's one reason he's so awful. Let's not denigrate congresspeople who are rightly creating a discussion about societal priorities, just because they also aren't CPAs or whatever.
posted by dbx at 6:35 AM on January 8, 2019 [41 favorites]


I still think the administration doesn't get how very tenuous their hold on any sort of real power to compel individual action is. We already see TSA agents on sick-out, with the reward of pay gone and the demands of duty looking pretty flimsy given how unseriously folks at the top take their duty. That feels like just the tip of the iceberg. Take, for instance, the promise that business is normal at the IRS and that refunds will go out as usual. Ignoring the murky appropriations question of whether there's the funding to pay for the refunds, there's the much more substantive question of who's going to do it anyways: processing tax reports is an extremely labor-intensive job, and how are you going to do that when your labor force stops showing up? I have a feeling that when push comes to shove, an awful lot of the IRS's employees are going to come down with non-specific but debilitating illnesses.

I feel like I'm often repeating myself, but if you don't have an answer to "What are you going to do about it?" then you don't have power over someone. Republicans have used that to their benefit flaunting norms and toothless rules, but they're going to learn quickly that their own power is no less illusory.
posted by jackbishop at 6:35 AM on January 8, 2019 [14 favorites]


Mod note: A few deleted. Folks, please drop the AOC arguing back and forth, and chatty one-liners, and extended speculation about what maybe Trump will do and try to stick to actual news. Please remember that the reason for these threads is for people to be able to read them to get updates about what is happening now with the administration, and stuffing it full of non-news and debates about how bad dems are doesn't help keep the channel clear for that purpose.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:45 AM on January 8, 2019 [48 favorites]


Ann Coulter Calls Trump Border Visit This Week ‘Beyond Moronic’ (Nicole Lafond, TPM)
Ann Coulter — a longtime supporter of the President who has recently started unloading on him over his handling of border wall funding demands — didn’t mince her words on Monday when she called his planned border visit on Thursday “beyond moronic.”

“Trump GOING TO THE BORDER is beyond moronic,” she said in a series of tweets Monday afternoon when the visit was announced. “Does he need to meet with a cancer patient before deciding to fund cancer research?”
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:47 AM on January 8, 2019 [3 favorites]


Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday denounced comments by a senior American official urging protection for Kurdish allies as "seriously mistaken". (al-jazeerra)

There's going to be genocide.
posted by adept256 at 6:52 AM on January 8, 2019 [43 favorites]


Quick aside from the fire. Sometime in the last week Trump mentioned that the shutdown was a strike. Some here thought he was copping to a lockout, but a different perspective:. His Toadies may already be seeing more widespread blue-outs that aren't being reported in the news as yet.
posted by Slackermagee at 7:19 AM on January 8, 2019 [4 favorites]


Pelosi and Schumer Demand Equal Air Time After Trump’s Address Tuesday
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are demanding equal airtime to address the government shutdown and the President’s demands for a border wall following his national primetime address from the Oval Office Tuesday evening.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:20 AM on January 8, 2019 [17 favorites]


Pelosi and Schumer Demand Equal Air Time After Trump’s Address Tuesday

Good on them for reminding loyal Americans and the television networks that Trump's address is a political statement, not a function of governance good or otherwise.
posted by Gelatin at 7:31 AM on January 8, 2019 [28 favorites]


"The facts may be wrong, but the morals are right" is peak truthiness and not an acceptable answer.

I just do not understand this attitude: all kinds of politicians have had the facts wrong (mostly intentionally) for at least decades now, and also had the morals mostly wrong. I think that elected officials declaring and staking out morally good, inclusive and service-oriented policy proposals is a HUGE improvement, even if we don't yet know how to implement them.

You don't figure out how to go to the moon, and then decide to go. You decide that the moon is where you're aiming, and then get to work on implementation. The goal itself is the motivation for the truly difficult, detailed and sometimes-never-ending work of actually making it real. So many smart people are listening to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and responding with some version of "yeah, but is it realistic?" or "how will you pay for it?" or "how would you get the votes for that?" as if any idealism must have the details worked out first. This is absurd to me.

Human beings are emotional, feeling creatures more fundamentally than we are thinking ones, and we must be inspired by goals worth working toward, to get through the hard work, drudgery, frustration, complication, fatigue, etc. of the work itself, the kind of work necessary to make those goals real. That so many seem to have forgotten this is a true failure of imagination: an inability to conceive a reality where no one in the U.S. goes hungry or cannot access treatment for illness, or etc. Practical, boring, real change starts with imagination and inspiration, it starts with deciding where we're going, even if not knowing exactly how we're going to get there yet.

And though it is upsetting to recognize, I also think that Donald Trump understands this very well. He's nothing but a screaming maw of feelings and emotional need, so it's native for him, but still. He gets this, and I expect that's the tune he'll be playing during tonight's TV address: he will tell us that we should be scared, and that he has no choice but to act in the ways available to him, to fight the horrible thing that we should be afraid of. However we react collectively, with fear or with cynicism, really matters. As much as I hate to think it, allowing a president to declare an obviously false national emergency with no concerted, sustained, multi-faceted response to fight back, would be a genuine tipping point, and not a good one.
posted by LooseFilter at 7:39 AM on January 8, 2019 [105 favorites]


Pelosi and Schumer in statement: “Now that the television networks have decided to air the president’s address, which if his past statements are any indication will be full of malice and misinformation, Democrats must immediately be given equal airtime.”

Adam Parkhimenko lists the networks’ phone numbers so you can tell them you agree:

CNN: (404) 827-1500
ABC: (800) 230-0229
NBC: (212) 664-4444
FOX: (888) 369-4762
CBS: (212) 975-3247
PBS: (703) 739-5000
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:45 AM on January 8, 2019 [24 favorites]


Trump’s lawyers also have a backup plan in case Mueller’s report ultimately is made public and is damning for the president: They’ve been working for months on their own report to counter any findings that paint Trump in a negative light, as they echo Trump’s frequent assertions that there was “no collusion” and no laws were broken.

This is that thing Rudy's been working on, where the number of pages in it keeps going up & down as he writes it. I'm sure it will save the day.
posted by scalefree at 7:45 AM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]


Ben Rhodes:
With all due respect to factcheckers, who do important work, that’s no antidote to giving Trump a prime time platform to spew lies about a manufactured crisis to tens of millions of Americans.

Damn truth.
posted by Dashy at 7:48 AM on January 8, 2019 [110 favorites]


"The facts may be wrong, but the morals are right" is peak truthiness and not an acceptable answer.
I just do not understand this attitude

Fascism is not a factual failure but a moral failure. It's a fact that if you put all immigrants in camps, you won't have to see them any more. It's a fact that maintaining the luxury and extravagance of our upper classes would require allowing billions of climate refugees to die. It's a fact that if we crush sovereign states abroad we will have more resources to extract. Arguing against fascism entirely with facts and logic doesn't work, because cold logic is for evil robots.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:48 AM on January 8, 2019 [57 favorites]


WaPo Breaking News on Natalia Veselnitskaya: Russian Lawyer at Trump Tower Meeting Charged in Separate Case
A Russian lawyer whose role at a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower has come under scrutiny from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was charged Tuesday in a separate case with obstructing justice in a money-laundering investigation.[…]

[T]he charges unsealed Tuesday say she made a “misleading declaration” to the court in a civil case.

Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. and others at Trump Tower in Manhattan on June 9, 2016, represented Prevezon Holdings in a civil case in which the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan sought millions of dollars in forfeiture from the company and others. The department had alleged in a civil complaint that a Russian criminal organization ran an elaborate tax refund scheme, stealing the identities of targeted companies and filing sham lawsuits to incur fake losses for refund purposes.

Those involved made about $230 million in tax refunds, prosecutors said, and filtered the money through shell companies and eventually into Prevezon, a Cyprus-based real estate corporation. Prevezon, prosecutors said, laundered the funds into real estate, including by investing in high end commercial property and luxury apartments in Manhattan.

The parent company of the victim firms hired attorneys to investigate after learning of the sham lawsuits, including Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, and they uncovered the fraud scheme, in which Russian government officials were complicit, prosecutors said.
itshappening.gif
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:52 AM on January 8, 2019 [55 favorites]


I just do not understand this attitude: all kinds of politicians have had the facts wrong (mostly intentionally) for at least decades now, and also had the morals mostly wrong. I think that elected officials declaring and staking out morally good, inclusive and service-oriented policy proposals is a HUGE improvement, even if we don't yet know how to implement them.

AOC is *not wrong* that no one ever asks if we can afford military spending, nor that we waste millions if not billions of dollars. Her citation is incorrect on the details -- as one would be if one was recalling something one had read a while ago, with no bad faith implied -- but it is actually true that the Pentagon money pool is so vast that millions go unaccounted for.

AOC was not making a bad argument in bad faith. She was making a good argument in good faith. That she is being criticized by a media that never calls the Republicans out for bad faith arguments -- like pretending to be concerned about deficits only when Democrats are in power -- is ridiculous. AOC needs to be more sure of her facts, but her argument is basically sound. Which is why she's getting attacked, of course.
posted by Gelatin at 8:07 AM on January 8, 2019 [98 favorites]


Arguing against fascism entirely with facts and logic doesn't work, because cold logic is for evil robots.

While I completely agree, it may be clarifying to mention that "I just do not understand" was used as polite-ish euphemism-speak for "I do not see an understandable, valid reason for holding this view, and must unfortunately conclude that your view is mistaken/wrong/stupid/evil, and that you do not have any good reason for having it; and also may have thus unfortunately inferred some unflattering things about your person, as well, as a result." Kind of like saying "well, bless your heart," instead of "well, you're a moron and that was a terrible decision, so have fun with those consequences" or something. More polite, and definitely more pithy, but sometimes maybe not entirely clear as text [QED].

That she is being criticized by a media that never calls the Republicans out for bad faith arguments -- like pretending to be concerned about deficits only when Democrats are in power -- is ridiculous. AOC needs to be more sure of her facts, but her argument is basically sound.

I'm not sure why this comment is phrased as disagreement with mine--I agree with this. The rest of my comment is support for what she's doing.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:11 AM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


"He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting"

Who would Jesus hurt?
posted by M-x shell at 8:15 AM on January 8, 2019 [82 favorites]


Focusing on the risk of facism may be the way through this consitutional crisis, according to Jennifer Rubin (Wapo):
Indeed, a power grab to supplant Congress might be just the thing to push Republicans in the Senate over the edge and to convince even normally sympathetic House Republicans that Trump has gone too far.

Democrats, instead of inveighing against the immoral wall, would be smart to inveigh against a “tyrant," a “gross violation of his oath of office,” a “unconstitutional power grab” and whatever other phrases are likely to set off alarm bells among conservatives who know only too well a Republican’s phony border crisis today can become a Democrat’s phony environmental or health crisis tomorrow. We really do reach a potential unraveling of our constitutional system of checks and balances.
posted by Little Dawn at 8:19 AM on January 8, 2019 [18 favorites]


Stephen Colbertt twit:

My network will be carrying Trump’s Wall speech live.

So at 9pm Tuesday, tune into CBS to See B.S.
posted by growabrain at 8:22 AM on January 8, 2019 [55 favorites]


JUST IN: Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer will deliver a response to President Trump’s 9:00 p.m. E.T. address Tuesday evening following the conclusion of his remarks. Networks carrying Trump will air.

as reported on twitter via AP's Darlene Superville.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 8:23 AM on January 8, 2019 [31 favorites]


Fascism is not a factual failure but a moral failure. It's a fact that if you put all immigrants in camps, you won't have to see them any more. It's a fact that maintaining the luxury and extravagance of our upper classes would require allowing billions of climate refugees to die. It's a fact that if we crush sovereign states abroad we will have more resources to extract. Arguing against fascism entirely with facts and logic doesn't work, because cold logic is for evil robots

Fascism isn't a state of failure (or success), it's a technique. Though they can be evidence, all of the things you mention are not how you know you are in a fascist state. You know you're in a fascist state when those things are used as threats against the ingroup that they can be converted into members of the outgroup.

Trump was the expression of collective desire for a leader just like him, which manifests as votes, yes, but also as political capital. Unfortunately, once he's sworn in, he can do whatever he wants, spending that political capital as he sees fit. Doubly unfortunately, as a President who has his own ideas about what he is leading, he can now generate his own political capital merely by redefining the ingroups and outgroups.

The media helps push this model of thought by inventing and producing candidates as opposition leaders and trying to extrapolate a political grouping upon the population, which is backwards from how Trump ascended (people-driven, not leader-driven). Right now this is most apparent in AOC's publicity over the past month, feeding the media's need to write about horserace drama and whether they can identify someone to compete with Trump while also not focusing at all on why Trump would ever be opposed.

I feel like the phrase "raw exercise of power" doesn't get used enough, but that's the lever by which fascism is imposed on a population (which they want). Climate refugees, immigrant jails, and stomping foreigners is not the point. The point is to establish and preserve absolute power in service of comforting and placating the ingroup. The result is pain, the rationale is safety/prosperity/etc. (Maslow, probably), and the method is fascism. We have only just begun to see the results of the face-eating leopards.
posted by rhizome at 8:25 AM on January 8, 2019 [14 favorites]


Mod note: Reiterating taz: Enough on general AOC stuff, and general fascism/political philosophy stuff; folks can make a separate thread if they want to pursue that in more depth.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:27 AM on January 8, 2019 [16 favorites]


Indeed, a power grab to supplant Congress might be just the thing to push Republicans in the Senate over the edge and to convince even normally sympathetic House Republicans that Trump has gone too far.

Rubin reminding us that a stopped clock is still mostly wrong.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:27 AM on January 8, 2019 [5 favorites]


Rep. Jim McGovern (D):
Trump kept his promise to run our government like he ran his companies
posted by growabrain at 8:30 AM on January 8, 2019 [50 favorites]


He's nothing but a screaming maw of feelings and emotional need

Politico has a report about what has been happening in the White House lately:
... a president who demands constant praise has a diminishing number of public defenders these days. The result is a manic, one-man public-relations effort to sell the shutdown that has left some White House officials scrambling to catch up. Trump has griped to associates that he hasn’t seen enough administration officials on the airwaves defending him during the shutdown fight, according to three people close to the president. He is also angry that he didn’t get more backup for his mid-December decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria.
This part seems a bit eerie, in a 'frantic attempt to placate a mad king' kind of way:
Aides continue to show Trump television clips featuring outside advisers offering praise on cable news shows.
posted by Little Dawn at 8:39 AM on January 8, 2019 [30 favorites]


I'm a little bothered by this take that there is no border crisis. Border crisis due to climate disaster will be define the coming era, even if it is exaggerated at the moment for political gain. The question is will we re-distribute our wealth to refugees fleeing climate disaster or will we commit genocide. It is a crisis and the response should be let them in.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 8:41 AM on January 8, 2019 [12 favorites]


RE: Who has the contracts for the border wall, here's a recount of the $1.6B that congress has already allocated.
posted by msbutah at 8:42 AM on January 8, 2019 [6 favorites]


Politico has a report about what has been happening in the White House lately:

Same article we've seen for 2 years. Trump presidency eternal Mad Libs:

"a president who demands constant praise has a diminishing number of public defenders these days. The result is a manic, one-man public-relations effort to sell [stupid shit] that has left some White House officials scrambling to catch up. Trump has griped to associates that he hasn’t seen enough administration officials on the airwaves defending him during [self-created crisis], according to three people close to the president. He is also angry that he didn’t get more backup for [some other stupid shit]."
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:44 AM on January 8, 2019 [27 favorites]


Trump’s government was a very bleak workplace for many. Then it shut down.
posted by jet_pack_in_a_can at 8:48 AM on January 8, 2019 [7 favorites]


And one question: do we know the name of the real estate company that Prevezon was involved in?

That's Prevezon itself, so Denys and Pyotr Katsyv. Pyotr Katsyv is a former regional transportation minister and current VP of Russian Railways whose son's transportation company became remarkably successful.
posted by holgate at 8:58 AM on January 8, 2019 [6 favorites]


Just a quick clarificaiton: Sexpot Treasury Secretary Steve-o Mnuchin lifted sanctions against Paul Manafort's loan shark Oleg Deripaska about three weeks ago.*

This is not the same Russian Oligarch who kept landing his private jet next to Trump's during the campaign, and who laundered millions through Trump's Palm Springs shack. That would be Rybolovlev. Just to clarify. They're easy to get mixed up.

*Technically, agreed to lift sanctions against his aluminum business, with the understanding that Capn' D sell some of that stock so he doesn't get SO flagrantly rich off it right away. Congress could have blocked it but they were busy not working.
posted by petebest at 9:00 AM on January 8, 2019 [19 favorites]


The United States could easily accept many more refugees and immigrants than it currently does; this could be done easily and safely and would not constitute a crisis, even if immigration surged.

This. The climate crisis has nothing to do with the border and is a 110% ankling of climate rhetoric to connect them.

I wouldn't be surprised if the US could absorb every refugee who wants to come to the US in a 500 mile swath down from the Dakotas.
posted by rhizome at 9:02 AM on January 8, 2019 [8 favorites]


JUST IN: Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer will deliver a response to President Trump’s 9:00 p.m. E.T. address Tuesday evening following the conclusion of his remarks. Networks carrying Trump will air.

as reported on twitter via AP's Darlene Superville.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:23 AM on January 9 [7 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]

Good. Live fact-checker chyrons as he speaks would be nice, but I'm glad he doesn't get to hijack the airwaves without getting swiftly told to stfu by some adults.
posted by saysthis at 9:03 AM on January 8, 2019 [3 favorites]


I live an hour from the border and go south often for hiking or kayaking. There's tons of Border Patrol out here, and checkpoints on the roads. But what I don't see anymore like I used to are the buses going out of the nearby BP facility. I see one once in a while. I used to see them all the time. Those buses are used to transport people back to the border for deportation. They've got wire mesh and bars on the windows, as well as armed guards on board. They just don't have that many to transport anymore. There's no crisis on the border. This is just Trump trying to win on the border wall at any cost. If there were no shutdown fight, he wouldn't be trying to pull the national emergency stunt. But he tried the shutdown, he miscalculated badly, he's losing there, and he's determined to win something, anything.
posted by azpenguin at 9:04 AM on January 8, 2019 [51 favorites]


This. The climate crisis has nothing to do with the border and is a 110% ankling of climate rhetoric to connect them.

And also: if you were a world leader and thought the climate crisis could eventually lead to a refugee problem, you should be out there preventing the climate crisis ASAP.
posted by mumimor at 9:12 AM on January 8, 2019 [25 favorites]


Does he think there is a border crisis because he has seen pictures of the children's internment camps?
posted by DesbaratsDays at 9:16 AM on January 8, 2019 [7 favorites]


Does he think there is a border crisis because he has seen pictures of the children's internment camps?

He thinks there's a "border crisis" because he sees hispanic people. That's it. His voters think the same way. There will continue to be a "border crisis" as long as there is a hispanic population, just as there will continue to be a need for "tough on crime" and "law and order" as long as there are black people.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:20 AM on January 8, 2019 [92 favorites]


During the election and in the months after the presidential inauguration, interest in the Dunning-Kruger effect surged. Google searches for “dunning kruger” peaked in May 2017, according to Google Trends, and has remained high since then. Attention spent on the Dunning-Kruger Effect Wikipedia entry has skyrocketed since late 2015.

Is our populaces learning?
posted by petebest at 9:22 AM on January 8, 2019 [13 favorites]


That's Prevezon itself

And by extension Africa Israel Investments(Bottom of page 4), which sold Kushner Co the space it bought in the old NYTimes building.
posted by Roger_Mexico at 9:35 AM on January 8, 2019 [7 favorites]


Why Mike Pence Couldn’t End the Shutdown (Elaina Plott, The Atlantic)
The vice president has led negotiations to reopen the government. But even after the White House’s state-of-emergency threat, he doesn’t appear to have the authority to do much about it.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:38 AM on January 8, 2019 [3 favorites]


CBS: U.S. Envoy Working on Qatar Dispute Resigns From State Department
Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine Corps general and former head of U.S. Central Command who has been working as an envoy for the Trump administration to resolve a dispute with Qatar, has resigned from his position with the State Department.[…]

A senior State Department official described Zinni's departure as a "soft resignation."

Zinni had originally agreed to work as a special adviser to the secretary of state on Middle East issues at the request of then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — both of whom have since left the administration in the wake of significant policy differences with Mr. Trump.
Boy, Mike Pompeo's Middle East tour is off to a great start.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:04 AM on January 8, 2019 [12 favorites]


Thanks Doktor Zed, I called each of those network numbers.
My plan was to ask if the network would air a Democratic response to candidate, I say candidate as he declared his candidacy for 2020 as soon as he took office, Trump’s campaign speech tonight.
Networks Airing Trump Border Speech 20190108
CNN: (404) 827-1500 menu run around and a hang up.
ABC: (800) 230-0229 menu runaround I hung up.
NBC: (212) 664-4444 person transferred me to voicemail, left my message.
FOX: (888) 369-4762 menu left voicemail.
CBS: (212) 975-3247 menu, need a mailbox number. I hung up.
PBS: (703) 739-5000 a live person answered, she (I didn’t get her name) assured me there will be a Democratic responce aired after Trump’s speech.
posted by Gadgetenvy at 10:05 AM on January 8, 2019 [36 favorites]


Just got back from a London production of Macbeth. This speech from near the end of the play talking about the tyrant's coming downfall, struck me as appropriate for what (I hope) Trump's 2019 is going to be like:

Now does he feel his secret murders sticking on his hands.
Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach.
Those he commands move only in command, nothing in love.
Now does he feel his title hang loose about him,
like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.
posted by Paul Slade at 10:14 AM on January 8, 2019 [73 favorites]


Trump Invites TV Representatives to Lunch Ahead of His Prime-Time Speech [NYT]

No need to waste a click - the headline is the whole thing. The only other info is that Trump staffers say he is writing his speech himself, and supposedly some of them 'privately' fear their shutdown messaging is failing. So, claims from anonymous people in a White House occupied by known and obsessive liars.
posted by Emmy Rae at 10:19 AM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]


For those of you who miss the old Jon Stewart / Steven Colbert 1-2 punch during the worst presidential administration in American history G-Dub years (g-ddammit), Seth Meyers' "A Closer Look" recaps all the press conference shutdown nuttiness in fun-sized studio-laughter skewers. And that was from friggin yesterday.
posted by petebest at 10:27 AM on January 8, 2019 [13 favorites]


Manafort's lawyer made a redacted filing today... that was easily unredacted.

How do they keep doing this?
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:35 AM on January 8, 2019 [25 favorites]


How do they keep doing this?

Because they can't send documents to Rick Gates to convert to PDF anymore.
posted by Freon at 10:37 AM on January 8, 2019 [73 favorites]


Another shutdown story. My husband's job is somewhat cobbled together: he works for an organization that gets funding from the state government, local governments, and various federal grants. So, in any given week, he's spending 10 hours helping a town with their emergency management plan, another 20 hours he's doing economic development for the region, etc.

His organization got a grant from the Economic Development Agency which was supposed to start at the beginning of this fiscal year; part of that grant was going to take up a not insignificant chunk of his hours. Various things had delayed them getting the money, and they were finally going to get it and get moving and then the shutdown happened.

He's on partial parental leave right now anyway but there's still the looming question of where part of his salary is going to come from if this grant doesn't come through when he gets back to full time. Because he's on parental leave. Because we have a newborn. So, consistency in pay would be great right about now.
posted by damayanti at 10:42 AM on January 8, 2019 [26 favorites]


Manafort's lawyer made a redacted filing today... that was easily unredacted.

Wow, I assumed this required some sort of fancy computing. Nope, it required copying and pasting the text from the PDF. They "redacted" portions by changing the background color of the text.
posted by diogenes at 10:44 AM on January 8, 2019 [49 favorites]


Now does he feel his title hang loose about him,
like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.

Dunno about the rest but that definitely captures Trump's typically frowsy raiment.
posted by notyou at 10:48 AM on January 8, 2019 [17 favorites]


The actual contents of that unredaction seems to be rather dramatic importance.

@jonswaine [Guardian]: NEW: Paul Manafort's attorneys failed to properly redact their filing. They reveal that Mueller alleges Manafort "lied about sharing polling data with Mr. Kilimnik related to the 2016 presidential campaign". Konstantin Kilimnik has alleged ties to Russian intelligence

Here's the filing. The relevant bit is on page 6 if you swap to the "text" tab to see the unredacted text, in which Manafort's lawyers argue that he simply forgot about doing that but didn't intentionally lie to Mueller's team.

There's a full thread unredacting the black bars.
posted by zachlipton at 10:49 AM on January 8, 2019 [32 favorites]


Seth Meyers' "A Closer Look" recaps all the press conference shutdown nuttiness

"He sounds like your coworker telling you about a dream he had." (There were generals and a big room and ...)

This is both hilarious, and a very incisive observation about Trump's rambling incoherence and narcissistic mind.
posted by NorthernLite at 10:59 AM on January 8, 2019 [15 favorites]


In actual good news, Corey Stewart is leaving politics in a fit of pique [WaPo].
posted by aspersioncast at 11:14 AM on January 8, 2019 [16 favorites]


On one hand I don't want to watch Trump on TV tonight because I don't want to give the man my attention and because it's a stupid stupid thing that he gets the air time, but on the other hand I want to be informed and I've found that press coverage of his speeches doesn't show all the details I find fascinating. Please advise.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:17 AM on January 8, 2019 [6 favorites]


Read a text recap is usually how I handle it. Then you can get the meat of his authoritarian ramblings without the blood pressure inducing hand gestures and half sentence mumblings. Hopefully a document that's been marked up to point out inaccuracies and flat out lies.
posted by msbutah at 11:19 AM on January 8, 2019 [27 favorites]


@Popehat tweeted today that the best way to do this would be a MST3K riff on Trump's speech, and it strikes me that this might be a good exercise in stoicism, in the classical sense, you know, like Kent in the stocks insulting Regan and Goneril.
posted by angrycat at 11:20 AM on January 8, 2019 [21 favorites]


I rely on this very thread for sanity preserving recaps!
posted by TheCoug at 11:21 AM on January 8, 2019 [30 favorites]


Please advise.

Read Daniel Dale's real time play-by-play on Twitter. He'll do some on the spot fact checking as well.
posted by notyou at 11:21 AM on January 8, 2019 [26 favorites]


I told the Manafort lawyers they should have used Pig-Latin.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:22 AM on January 8, 2019 [4 favorites]


I'm not sure why this comment is phrased as disagreement with mine--I agree with this. The rest of my comment is support for what she's doing.
posted by LooseFilter at 11:11 AM on January 8 [1 favorite +] [!]

Not disagreeing with you, but with the so-called fact checkers like Chait who are pooh-poohing AOC for getting the specifics of a detail wrong while having an essentially correct point.

"He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting"

Who would Jesus hurt?

Moneylenders.
posted by Gelatin at 11:24 AM on January 8, 2019 [28 favorites]


Vanity Fair's Gabriel Sherman has another insider report from Trumpland: “There Is No Endgame”: White House Aides Fear Trump Has Turned The Border Wall Into His Alamo—“The president put himself in a box” as Trump tries to fight his way out, his new chief of staff already eyes the exits, and Giuliani worries about Mueller’s possibly “horrific” report.
Inside the West Wing, Trump has told aides he’s prepared to stake his presidency on making a last stand. “He has convinced himself he can’t win re-election in 2020 unless he gets a lot of the wall built. It’s fundamental to his id,” a former West Wing official said. “The problem is, the Democrats know that.”

Trump’s aides fear he has given himself no way out. “The president put himself in a box,” the former official in touch with the White House told me. “The problem is there’s no endgame. Right now the White House is at a seven on the panic scale. If this thing goes on past the State of the Union they’re going to be at an 11.” Another prominent Republican close to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell described Trump’s handling of the shutdown as “total fucking chaos.”

Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, installed in the job just before Christmas, may already be looking at escape routes. Unlike his long-suffering predecessor, John Kelly, Mulvaney has indicated he’s prepared to walk away if things go south with the president. “Mick has both eyes open,” said a person who spoke with Mulvaney recently. “So far, Trump has been more DIY than ever before. It’s a continuation of where things left off with Kelly. Mulvaney is not going to stick around and get ground up.” Before Christmas, Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told people that Mulvaney wouldn’t last long, according to a person who spoke with Lewandowski. Last night, The New York Times reported Mulvaney is interested in becoming president of the University of South Carolina.[…]

The shutdown has pushed the Russia investigation out of the news cycle. But Trumpworld knows it hasn’t gone away. Rudy Giuliani recently told a friend that he expects Mueller’s report to be “horrific,” a person briefed on the conversation said (Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment). “You’re already hearing people speculate Trump could do a deal and resign.”
This matches details in Politico's article Trump Wages Intense But Lonely Campaign For His Border Wall, which was mentioned above. The main difference is that it's Bill Shine's turn in the barrel.
“I have never had so much support, as I have in the last week, over my stance for border security, for border control and for, frankly, the wall or the barrier,” he told reporters. “I have never had this much support.”

Privately, however, he was thinking something different. “He’s sitting there going, ‘Why the f--- isn’t there anybody saying good stuff about me? Why is there nobody on TV that’s defending me?” said a former senior administration official.

The president has expressed increasing frustration with his press shop that he doesn't see more of his defenders on television — a recurrent issue about which Trump has brooded in the past. Some of that frustration has focused on White House communications director Bill Shine, a former Fox News executive who joined the White House in July on the recommendation of his friend and longtime Fox News host Sean Hannity. Hannity touted Shine to Trump as an antidote to the torrent of negative media coverage the president receives, according to two sources familiar with the conversations, and suffered from an outsized expectation on the part of the president that Shine could stem the tide.

“He thought that as part of bringing Bill Shine in that he would get better coverage — that he would be able to solve some of these dilemmas,” said a Republican close to the White House. “Bill is working hard, but he is not a miracle worker. He’s been working to solve some of that but it’s a constant battle.”
Although we've seen these kinds of reports from Trumpland since the beginning, it's important to consider how much has changed and what's in store for 2019. While the odious John Kelly by all accounts struggled to impose a semblance of order in the West Wing, the sycophantic Mulvaney has simply let chaos loose, and Bill Shine, though Trump enjoys his boorish company, can't perform the reassuring emotional labor that Trump relied on from Hope Hicks. And then there's the unavoidable fact that the Democrats hold political power again…

For all the "increasingly isolated" clichés of 2017-18, in 2019 Trump looks like he's genuinely being cut off politically.
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:25 AM on January 8, 2019 [26 favorites]


> Maybe if he makes enough of an ass of himself without any coddling day care attendants, more people might see him for what he is

I don't see how he can be any worse than what he's already shown us. He's not a subtle man. His supporters don't care.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:27 AM on January 8, 2019 [39 favorites]


There is a writer named Trudy, @thetrudz on twitter, who takes the view "consumption is not activism". She usually talks about it in response to watching or not watching various scripted TV shows, but I think it applies here as well. I don't watch or listen to this man out of self-preservation. But he was installed in the White House and affects our lives so if you feel the need to watch, do it.
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:28 AM on January 8, 2019 [12 favorites]


Donald Trump Runs Apocalyptic Border Wall Ads As Networks Clear Time For Speech (Lisa de Moraes, Deadline: Hollywood)
Trump’s southern border apocalypse ad ran Tuesday morning on CNN, as the cable news network Trump has called "The Enemy of the People" discussed Trump’s credibility crisis in his primetime address:
Drugs, terrorists, violent criminals, and child traffickers trying to enter our country though our southern border.

But Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi care more about the radical left than keeping us safe.

The consequences? Drug deaths, violent murder, gang violence.

We must not allow it!

Every country defends their borders. President Trump wants to defend ours.

The Democrats must stop playing politics and support real border security

“I’m Donald Trump and I approved this message,” Trump said, as the ad wrapped while the words: “Paid for by Donald J. Trump for President. Approved by Donald Trump” played on screen.
posted by ZeusHumms at 11:28 AM on January 8, 2019 [16 favorites]


would just like to reiterate something I posted very late and possibly overlooked in the last thread: The best thing the networks could do (short of ignoring Trump's request completely): Let the Democrats go *first* and get the facts out there before Trump spews disinformation (aka lies).

Studies have shown that trying to correct his lies with the truth just doesn't work, and may reinforce the lie. There's the added benefit of watching Team Trump trying to call an audible on the Dems' statement and failing beautifully.
posted by martin q blank at 11:30 AM on January 8, 2019 [32 favorites]


I'm not sure how much clearer the line can be that tonight is a CAMPAIGN speech and should NOT be aired based on that ad which is labeled "Paid for by Donald J. Trump for President. Approved by Donald Trump." You don't run ads like that except as a candidate.

Also yes, I'd support democrats going first.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 11:32 AM on January 8, 2019 [37 favorites]


The main difference is that it's Bill Shine's turn in the barrel.

Can we maybe not use this phrase, which literally comes from a "joke" that combines both gay panic and forced sodomy?
posted by tocts at 11:33 AM on January 8, 2019 [27 favorites]


The networks still are hoping that he's suddenly start acting presidential, because that's all they know.
posted by Melismata at 11:34 AM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


"The facts may be wrong, but the morals are right" is peak truthiness and not an acceptable answer.

Let's not miss the fact that Republican reaction is a backhanded example of sealioning. She got some facts wrong but not to the degree that it detracts from the main point of the argument. Something something take it seriously but not literally.

If I told you that drunk driving was a bad thing because 11,000 people are killed each year, the fact that it's actually 10,497 people per year is not relevant to the discussion. Facts wrong, morals right.

"Don't poke yourself in the eye with a sharp stick. You did that one time and it sucked."
"I've poked my eye plenty of times, but never with a sharp stick. So, fuck you, you damn socialist."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:36 AM on January 8, 2019 [22 favorites]


They don't want presidential, they want Trump Clicks.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:36 AM on January 8, 2019 [17 favorites]


If Pelosi's response to Trump is anything more than "The articles of impeachment will pass the house tomorrow at 11am" she's saying too much.
posted by PenDevil at 11:38 AM on January 8, 2019 [12 favorites]


The main difference is that it's Bill Shine's turn in the barrel.

Can we maybe not use this phrase, which literally comes from a "joke" that combines both gay panic and forced sodomy?

I did not know that. Please tell me that "shooting fish in a barrel" doesn't have the same origins.
posted by diogenes at 11:44 AM on January 8, 2019 [14 favorites]


Trump’s southern border apocalypse ad ran Tuesday morning on CNN

*tilt*

Why the hell didn't CNN refuse to run the ad? They're his avowed enemy, FFS!
posted by ZenMasterThis at 11:45 AM on January 8, 2019 [13 favorites]


Shooting fish in a barrel is probably one of the few idioms that doesn't have a shitty origin.
posted by cmfletcher at 11:47 AM on January 8, 2019 [6 favorites]


Why the hell didn't CNN refuse to run the ad? He's their avowed enemy
Well he's the enemy of Acosta and some others, but old pals with Zucker. They've made a lot of money working with each other over the years.
posted by Harry Caul at 11:48 AM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


[TPM]
I’ve always resisted comparisons between Hitler and Trump and between Trump’s election and the onset of fascism. Trump is not plotting genocide. The geopolitics are entirely different. But as I was recently reading Volker Ullrich’s terrific biography of Hitler (Hitler: The Ascent, 1889-1939), I was reminded of a certain similarity between the men, and it’s relevant to the current battle over the border wall.

To justify his political and racial views, and to win support for controversial domestic and foreign initiatives, Hitler simply made things up. He insisted that Jews shirked service in World War I and in 1937, as Stalin was killing off the last Jews who had been in leadership, he insisted that “more than 80 percent of the leading positions” were occupied by Jews. To win support for his invasion of Czechoslovakia, Hitler had the Nazi-controlled press fabricate stories about government atrocities against Sudeten Germans.
posted by growabrain at 11:49 AM on January 8, 2019 [39 favorites]


On one hand I don't want to watch Trump on TV tonight because I don't want to give the man my attention and because it's a stupid stupid thing that he gets the air time, but on the other hand I want to be informed and I've found that press coverage of his speeches doesn't show all the details I find fascinating. Please advise.

Treat it like a solar eclipse and avoid looking directly at it..
posted by srboisvert at 11:56 AM on January 8, 2019 [38 favorites]


Reps. Jackie Speier (CA-14) and Jared Huffman (CA-1) are delivering National Park trash to its source - the White House. They are putting it in big "Trump Trash" barrels and will take it to Washington to dump at the White House.

Speier: "It is a stunt!" Speier admitted when asked about the trash protest. "We're doing a stunt to equal President Trump's stunt." And Huffman: "I'll tell you what's not a stunt," Huffman added, according to KQED. "It's the diapers and the coffee cups and the burrito wrappers and the trash that's piling up in Park Service facilities all over this country because of what President Trump has done. His actions have real-world consequences."

Elections, consequences, etc. These are not my Reps but they are from the Bay Area and I'm proud of them anyway!
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 12:08 PM on January 8, 2019 [95 favorites]


Trump is not plotting genocide.

It's not clear Hitler was originally plotting genocide either. The nominal plan, originally, was just to deport the Jews to Madagascar. That turned out to be a lot harder than it sounded, so they were rounded up in camps, and keeping people alive in camps is also a lot harder than it sounds.

To quote from Timothy Snyder's Black Earth:
"Any such mass deportation would have required the cooperation of the colonial powers, the British and the French [...] In simple logistical terms the idea also seemed to make no sense. How could Poland arrange a deportation of millions of Jews while the country was mobilized for war? [...] They [Polish leaders] could not grasp a special feature of Nazi thought: the aim to do something difficult, or even impossible, in the secret knowledge that failure would prepare the way to do something more radical. [...] For the Nazis "Madagascar" was not simply a place, but a label, a bookmark in a burning book. It was synonymous with a Final Solution; or, in Himmler's words, with ""the complete extirpation of the concept of Jews." For the Poles, Madagascar was an actual island in the actual Indian Ocean, and actual possession of the actual French empire, an actual site of an actual exploratory mission [...] Polish leaders did not grasp that for the Nazis the issue was not the feasibility of one deportation plan, but the creation of general conditions un which Jews could be destroyed on way or another. Given their own obsession with the idea of statehood, Poles could not see that a bloody whirlwind of improvisation was coming.
In simple logistical terms the idea also seemed to make no sense... failure would prepare the way to do something more radical... bloody whirlwind of improvisation

Sounds kinda familiar. It's enough to give a person chills.

(Snyder also says that in the early parts of the war, in eastern Europe, Jews were not killed in camps so much as they were just killed by their neighbors who 1) offered them as a sort of sacrifice to appease the occupying German army 2) scapegoated them for crimes that happened under previous, Soviet occupation 3) wanted their stuff. Again, those killings did not have to be planned by Hitler -- he just created the conditions that allowed them to happen. Makes Trump's inability to plan less comforting.)
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:09 PM on January 8, 2019 [112 favorites]


I'm a little bothered by this take that there is no border crisis. Border crisis due to climate disaster will be define the coming era, even if it is exaggerated at the moment for political gain.

Climate-change-precipitated migration is a real concern but is not, and this is the crucial bit, actually currently a crisis on any border of the United States: there is no border crisis. Period. There may be a migration crisis later, but there isn't one on the southern United States border now. There are a lot of things that might be emergencies at some later date, and to say they aren't emergencies now is not to say that they could not be so later.

Climate changes refugees in the United States will likely be internal rather than external. Mexico already understands how to live in an arid environment. The southwestern US on the hand is only recently massively overpopulated and living on borrowed water. As in every zombie show ever the real problem is already inside the compound.
posted by srboisvert at 12:13 PM on January 8, 2019 [23 favorites]


Manafort's lawyer made a redacted filing today... that was easily unredacted.

Apparently the office is so strapped for income that they can't afford Acrobat Pro and went with using black highlighting in Word before converting to PDF. They used PDFium to make the PDF - as far as I can sort out, that's an open-source browser attachment. (Can't be sure; I can't get to the site right now.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:15 PM on January 8, 2019 [12 favorites]


This makes total sense when you consider that part of what got Manafort indicted in the first place was his inability to convert a file between PDF and Word formats.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:16 PM on January 8, 2019 [30 favorites]


I haven't tuned into TV news for awhile, but tell me: have any Dem-aligned groups actually aired all the various "I, Donald Trump, take 100% responsibility for this horrible shutdown" clips that people kept crowing were such ripe fodder for attack ads? (And if not, why not?)
posted by Rhaomi at 12:19 PM on January 8, 2019 [10 favorites]


@jonswaine [Guardian]: NEW: Paul Manafort's attorneys failed to properly redact their filing. They reveal that Mueller alleges Manafort "lied about sharing polling data with Mr. Kilimnik related to the 2016 presidential campaign". Konstantin Kilimnik has alleged ties to Russian intelligence

This is the evidence of collusion. Full stop. "Polling data" is how the Russians targeted their disinformation to individual voters down to the precinct level. Russian intelligence was coordinating directly with the Trump campaign. Call John Oliver, because this is the smoking gun still in the hand of the suspect on video.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:19 PM on January 8, 2019 [106 favorites]


It occurs to me that he could simply go on TV and say he won't let the shutdown continue because it hurts employees, services, etc., but he's not giving up on the wall and he's instructing [blah] to do [whatever] thing short of a shutdown, essentially kicking the can down the road but still having it both ways. As long as he makes enough racist noise, his racist base will stick with him. A national emergency order buys him mostly grief and probably doesn't work and is basically stupid. So yeah, I think there are still outcomes short of national emergency bullshit.

Which is to say, this is me starting to think the national emergency thing feels a little more plausible, because it's the dumber and less productive thing for him to do.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 12:21 PM on January 8, 2019 [15 favorites]


This is the evidence of collusion. Full stop. "Polling data" is how the Russians targeted their disinformation to individual voters down to the precinct level.

My guess is that Mueller has avoided revealing this knowledge publicly to let other subjects of investigation think they can safely lie about it...?
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 12:27 PM on January 8, 2019 [11 favorites]


Remember how the mystery company fighting a grand jury subpoena went to the Supreme Court for a stay and there were concerns Chief Justice Roberts was going to get involved? The Supreme Court turned them down, and the stay has been vacated.
posted by zachlipton at 12:28 PM on January 8, 2019 [32 favorites]


In other good SCOTUS news, the court has rejected the GOP-led Virginia House of Delegates' request to stay a court decision that the current state legislative map is a racial gerrymander, meaning a new map will be in place for the 2019 election (remember, we in the Old Dominion reject your puny mortal concept of holding elections in even years). The old, gerrymandered maps still only gave the GOP a 51-49 advantage in the House after the 2017 wave election, so hold on to your butts for this year.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:32 PM on January 8, 2019 [45 favorites]


Interesting twitter thread by @HoarseWisperer speculating on why the Veselnitskaya indictment was made public when the chances that she'll ever answer to it are slim. Briefly, a public indictment might suggest that airing the case against Veselnitskaya may be useful in making a broader case for collusion. (I see no evidence that the Hoarse Whisperer is more than just another thoughtful person, so take it for what it's worth.)

Which is to say, this is me starting to think the national emergency thing feels a little more plausible, because it's the dumber and less productive thing for him to do.

Trump's razor agrees with you!
posted by octobersurprise at 12:46 PM on January 8, 2019 [5 favorites]


Soak the rich - Did 1999 Trump propose a one-time tax of 14.25% that would raise $5.7 trillion and wipe out the debt?
posted by growabrain at 1:01 PM on January 8, 2019 [8 favorites]


(I see no evidence that the Hoarse Whisperer is more than just another thoughtful person, so take it for what it's worth.)

About that...
2018’s worst account award goes to [Twitter thread]
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:08 PM on January 8, 2019 [8 favorites]


Re: Watching Trump tonight
I plan to record (Tape it is how I actually say it, I am old.) and chase play it. I can nope out for a while if I have to. I do want to see the Democrats response, though.
posted by Gadgetenvy at 1:12 PM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]


If the House impeaches him, do the articles of impeachment just sit there, active, waiting for the Senate to take them up until they expire at the end of this Congress? Because it occurs to me that there are probably some powerful Republicans who aren't quite sure of their exposure in the Mueller probe. And now that collusion is all but confirmed, and the money laundering through the NRA is out in the open, if he declares a state of emergency to build his wall, impeaching him immediately could...work?

Like if it sits there, putting pressure on all those vulnerable Republican senators, as more and more details inevitably leak out, as more pressure builds, etc. The best shot of getting rid of him is if we manage to cleave Republican interests from his, in a very personal sense. And the sword of Damocles hanging over you is a lot of pressure.

And then, of course, we insist they're prosecuted anyway. But still.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:17 PM on January 8, 2019 [4 favorites]


zachlipton: Remember how the mystery company fighting a grand jury subpoena went to the Supreme Court for a stay and there were concerns Chief Justice Roberts was going to get involved? The Supreme Court turned them down, and the stay has been vacated.

I want to flag this - this is a much bigger deal than whatever bullshit Trump is going to spew on the TV later this evening. Now the mystery company - with enough clout to clear the entire floor of the Federal Court while its case was being heard - will be revealed.

Is it Rosneft? Is it the Qataris, who were paying off boy wonder Jared? Is the Aramco and the Saudis, or the prince of Abu Dhabi, who were possibly laundering 300 million dollars to the Russians through Salvator Mundi? The range of possibilities is endless, and some of them are real doozies.
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:18 PM on January 8, 2019 [45 favorites]


I want to flag this - this is a much bigger deal than whatever bullshit Trump is going to spew on the TV later this evening. Now the mystery company - with enough clout to clear the entire floor of the Appeals Court while its appeal was being heard - will be revealed.

We still don't know who the mystery financial institution is, but they filed in the Supreme Court again on Monday with a cert petition this time, also basically completely redacted. The Supreme Court is not a fan of conducting its business in secret, so I doubt that will go great.

Meanwhile, speaking of not going great, remember how Judge Friedrich told Concord Management and Consulting's lawyers yesterday to, literally, "knock it off" with the unprofessional filings and antics? The message didn't take, as they've filed a new document containing such gems as "when the word 'Judge' appears before a person's name, this political adornment suggests to the public that there is now some higher level of wisdom than among the mere mortal lawyers in the case." Which strikes me as an unwise thing to say to a federal judge that has just told you to stop making an ass of yourself, but troll lawyers for troll companies are going to troll.
posted by zachlipton at 1:25 PM on January 8, 2019 [58 favorites]


I don't think the company will be revealed to the public, it will have to disclose whatever Mueller wants to the SC investigation...we're still probably not going to know that this is really about for a while.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:32 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


Adam Schiff's twits:
1.
If Harry Truman couldn't nationalize the steel industry during wartime, President Trump certainly doesn't have the power to declare a nonexistent emergency and build a multi-billion dollar wall on the border.
That's a complete nonstarter.
2.
I’ve been on the Intelligence Committee for over 10 years.
On terrorism and other threats, I’ve received more briefings from FBI, CIA, and DHS than I could count.
How many times have any of them said we need a wall across the southern border?
Zero.
posted by growabrain at 1:43 PM on January 8, 2019 [81 favorites]


Rosie M. Banks: "Reps. Jackie Speier (CA-14) and Jared Huffman (CA-1) are delivering National Park trash to its source - the White House. They are putting it in big "Trump Trash" barrels and will take it to Washington to dump at the White House. "

On behalf of the people of DC, please do not use your legislative budget to exacerbate a public health hazard in my city. We are already bearing the brunt of this crisis, we do not have a voice in Congress, and Trump is not going to care one way or the other.

Incidentally, DC is covered with federally-owned properties. Because we have the money to do so (and presumably because our leaders are more concerned with the health of our residents than they are with political stunts), DC's been paying out-of-pocket to collect trash in federally-managed public spaces.

Any photos you see of trash piling up around the National Mall are exaggerated -- I pass through the area daily, and if anything, DC's been doing a better job at picking up the trash than I'm accustomed to seeing from the Park Service (which is staggeringly inept at running urban parks, but that's a topic for another day).

The effects of the shutdown should be made visible, but we shouldn't be putting people (and the environment) at risk (like San Francisco and the CA congressional delegation are doing).
posted by schmod at 1:45 PM on January 8, 2019 [32 favorites]


@ForecasterEnten [click for graph]: "Majority of Democrats Identify as Liberal for First Time" per Gallup... Talk about a trendline...

The effects of the shutdown should be made visible, but we shouldn't be putting people (and the environment) at risk (like San Francisco and the CA congressional delegation are doing).

The thing about stunts is that you can have all the trash in boxes and dispose of it appropriately after the photo-op is done. I don't think Speier is planning on actually littering in DC with the trash she just personally cleaned up in California.
posted by zachlipton at 1:53 PM on January 8, 2019 [32 favorites]


Bernie Sanders is delivering his own response [Twitter] to Trump after Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer do theirs. He did this for SOTU as well.
posted by Emmy Rae at 1:56 PM on January 8, 2019 [3 favorites]


@StormyDaniels: If you're looking for anything even remotely worth watching tonight at 9pm EST, I will be folding laundry in my underwear for 8 minutes on Instagram live. (link)
posted by scaryblackdeath at 2:02 PM on January 8, 2019 [133 favorites]


> @StormyDaniels: If you're looking for anything even remotely worth watching tonight at 9pm EST, I will be folding laundry in my underwear for 8 minutes on Instagram live.

Oh 2019, you've outdone yourself already.

This is ... this is horrifying and amazing at the same time. If a time-traveler had told 2015-me that in 4 years, "adult actress folding laundry in her underwear" would be counter-programming for a Presidential address ...
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:08 PM on January 8, 2019 [91 favorites]


Reps. Jackie Speier (CA-14) and Jared Huffman (CA-1) are delivering National Park trash to its source - the White House. They are putting it in big "Trump Trash" barrels and will take it to Washington to dump at the White House. "

Sadly, Jared Huffman is CA-2. I live in CA-1 and our rep is Doug LaMalfa, a hateful lying demon in a human suit. Maybe they can put him in a Trump Trash barrel and dump him on the White House lawn instead.

Also I agree that this is a useless stunt. ESPECIALLY if they're collecting the trash in California and then transporting it 3,000 miles just to be spiteful. Let's fix one ecological disaster and then add to a few more!!

Clean up the trash in California's National Parks, Monuments, and other sites and dispose of it, and then maybe consider cleaning up trash in National Parks in DC (or even in adjacent states!) to take to Trump if you really feel the need.
posted by elsietheeel at 2:11 PM on January 8, 2019 [6 favorites]


Or maybe take up a collection in Florida and drive it to Mara Lago. don't do this
posted by ZeusHumms at 2:13 PM on January 8, 2019 [7 favorites]


Reuters: A growing number of Americans blame Trump for shutdown: Reuters-Ipsos poll
The national opinion poll, which ran from Jan. 1 to Jan. 7, found that 51 percent of adults believe Trump “deserves most of the blame” for the shutdown, which entered its 18th day on Tuesday. That is up 4 percentage points from a similar poll that ran from Dec. 21 to 25.

Another 32 percent blame congressional Democrats for the shutdown and 7 percent blame congressional Republicans, according to the poll. Those percentages are mostly unchanged from the previous poll.
posted by Doktor Zed at 2:16 PM on January 8, 2019 [17 favorites]


Political stunts, such as the ones being undertaken by Jackie Speier and Jared Huffman are not about the trash, or the transporting of the trash or the cleaning of the trash. Rosa Parks wasn't tired, Dr. King did not need to particularly cross the Edmund Pettis bridge. Our HIV-infected ashes didn't need to be on the White House lawn and the freeway shutdowns around police brutality were not helpful for commuting traffic. The point of them is not the thing itself, it is to get publicity. To show in terms people can understand how angry we are.

Publicity stunts are necessary trouble.

Also, I'm back.
posted by Sophie1 at 2:18 PM on January 8, 2019 [172 favorites]


Bravo, Sophie1 and good to see you back. :)
posted by yoga at 2:27 PM on January 8, 2019 [9 favorites]


Seth Abramson (who has grown on me) has a good summary of where we're at:

I hope *everyone* understands that when Trump's Campaign Manager secretly gave campaign data to the Kremlin, that information almost *certainly* did not sit on someone's desk, but was used to enhance, improve, and extend the Kremlin's infiltration of the 2016 election. #Collusion
posted by diogenes at 2:29 PM on January 8, 2019 [46 favorites]


....that information almost *certainly* did not sit on someone's desk, but was used to enhance, improve, and extend the Kremlin's infiltration of the 2016 election.

Maggie Haberman on the 9th November 2016: And a detail that got cut from our final days story the other day - Manafort sent at least one memo advising Trump to focus on Wi and MI
posted by PenDevil at 2:32 PM on January 8, 2019 [43 favorites]


If a time-traveler had told 2015-me that in 4 years, "adult actress folding laundry in her underwear" would be counter-programming for a Presidential address ...

Life turned into a Warren Ellis comic so gradually, I barely even noticed.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:39 PM on January 8, 2019 [67 favorites]



@Alyssa_Milano:
17. When I filed the FOIA I didn’t know what I’d find. I hoped I would find answers. And to a certain extent, I guess I did. I found my worst nightmares realized...CHILDREN are being physically, mentally and sexually abused in our custody in the name of US Immigration.
posted by Mitheral at 2:39 PM on January 8, 2019 [55 favorites]


that information almost *certainly* did not sit on someone's desk, but was used to enhance, improve, and extend the Kremlin's infiltration of the 2016 election

For what it's worth, Manafort's spokesman claims that Manafort gave campaign data to the Russian spy in January 2017 and not during the campaign.
posted by diogenes at 2:45 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Couple things removed, let's maybe give a pass to pullquoting opinion stuff that's being shitty about making its arguments.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:15 PM on January 8, 2019 [5 favorites]


Thank the gods my therapist got back from vacation this week. Boy, did I ever have a “welcome home” hour for them today.

I can’t bring myself to watch I-1 tonight. I just can’t do that to myself. It’s gonna be a hide-in-bed-and-binge-netflix night.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:17 PM on January 8, 2019 [7 favorites]


Senators Harris, Hirano, or Duckworth would be so much better. Both in terms of their wit and incisiveness as well as being better representatives of the current party makeup. Have them provide the 2NC speech with the specific attacks to Donald's 1AC. I agree with Pelosi representing the House and delivering the stock 1NC speech. She can frame and is the lead Democrat at the national level.

Then unleash the "kids" on social media to provide appropriate meme-able quoting.

[edited to sub 'meme-able quoting' for 'clowning' which better captures my thoughts.]
posted by Fezboy! at 3:19 PM on January 8, 2019 [3 favorites]


Senators Harris, Hirano, or Duckworth would be so much better. Both in terms of their wit and incisiveness as well as being better representatives of the current party makeup.

One also has to wonder if sending a B-team to give the rebuttle might be taken as an insult by I-1. Sort of a “Sorry, but you aren’t worthy of the first team, Don” message. :D
posted by Thorzdad at 3:41 PM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]


I can’t bring myself to watch I-1 tonight.

I don’t know how anyone does it ever. The sound of his voice is viscerally repellant to me, and I find it nearly impossible to restrain my anger and disgust, even for seconds at a time. I can read his transcripts or secondhand reporting, but I cannot listen to that man.
posted by Brak at 3:43 PM on January 8, 2019 [111 favorites]


I can’t bring myself to watch I-1 tonight. I just can’t do that to myself. It’s gonna be a hide-in-bed-and-binge-netflix night.

I completely respect the instinct and feelings on this, but also want to note that the Washington Post Fact Checker has an idea in Your fact-checking cheat sheet for Trump's immigration address that might be helpful for those trying to watch:
You could use these claims to create your own form of bingo. If you are tempted to create a drinking game, however, we recommend you water down the drinks.
posted by Little Dawn at 3:46 PM on January 8, 2019 [11 favorites]


Senate floor watch:

@CraigCaplan: 56-44: Senate blocks Middle East policy bill. 60 votes were needed to advance it. 4 Democrats Jones, Manchin, Menendez and Sinema voted Yes. McConnell voted No to allow for 2nd vote to take place. Majority of Democrats voted No to protest inaction on bills to fund & reopen gov't. Filibuster continues on Middle East policy bill after first Senate roll call vote of 116th Congress. McConnell filed cloture again to advance the bill setting up another procedural vote later this week. 60 votes will again be needed.

@ezralevin [Indivisible]: HOLY CRAP WE WON. We needed 41 votes and we got 'em. Senate Dems fight back - refusing to proceed with business as usual until McConnell brings up a budget. Big props to @VanHollenForMD for kicking it off, and @SenSchumer for bringing the caucus together. KEEP IT UP DEMS!
posted by zachlipton at 3:46 PM on January 8, 2019 [104 favorites]


I think there can be no reasonable doubt that Manafort's lawyers, who are sophisticated enough to know how to redact properly and do so on a regular basis in other cases, deliberately screwed up these redactions for the purpose of alerting Manafort's co-conspirators

I hope the Judge's clerks are right now working on contempt charges for disclosing redacted information in a court filing.
posted by mikelieman at 3:48 PM on January 8, 2019 [28 favorites]


4 Democrats Jones, Manchin, Menendez and Sinema voted Yes.

I mean I’m glad that Sinema won a seat in red-purple Arizona but hoooboy do I want to know what happened to the Occupy Wallstreet radical to turn her into the bluest dog democrat you ever did see.
posted by dis_integration at 3:58 PM on January 8, 2019 [14 favorites]


I'm going to watch the damn thing, and make a drinking game out of it: if he says terrorist(s), MS-13, rapist(s), or ISIS, drink. If he goes off script and talks about the Russia probe drink twice. If he declares a national emergency drink your whole drink.If he mentions the fake news media, drink two more times. If he declares martial law in the border states drink your whole bottle then resist harder. If he resigns go to the street and share your bottle with the people.

Now we just need rules for the Chuck and Nancy portion. Ideas?
posted by vrakatar at 3:59 PM on January 8, 2019 [4 favorites]


there can be no reasonable doubt that Manafort's lawyers . . . deliberately screwed up these redactions for the purpose of alerting Manafort's co-conspirators

Eh, Occam probably applies here - can't Manafort's lawyers actually just talk to Trump's lawyers?
posted by aspersioncast at 4:00 PM on January 8, 2019 [6 favorites]


Now we just need rules for the Chuck and Nancy portion. Ideas?

Every time they stress that "improved border security" is indeed an important priority you have to finish the bottle of tequila and throw it at your television.
posted by contraption at 4:02 PM on January 8, 2019 [54 favorites]


And have been. They had some kind of joint defense agreement thing until fairly recently.

They’re just stupid.
posted by schadenfrau at 4:04 PM on January 8, 2019


Oh, I forgot: if he has a meltdown and starts dropping f-bombs and screaming and has to be pulled off camera, drink half your bottle and take a half hit of acid.
posted by vrakatar at 4:07 PM on January 8, 2019 [16 favorites]


This is ... this is horrifying and amazing at the same time. If a time-traveler had told 2015-me that in 4 years, "adult actress folding laundry in her underwear" would be counter-programming for a Presidential address ...

Daniels is really good at this, though

When I say this, I mean trolling the Orange One, not folding laundry
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:11 PM on January 8, 2019 [15 favorites]


“I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

A reminder why, to certain people, hurting (certain) people = "good things".
posted by gtrwolf at 4:16 PM on January 8, 2019 [11 favorites]


Remind me, there's a MeFi chat or something where I can kibitz along? I can't bring myself to lend my viewing stats to that monster (and much as I hate Instagram I may just tune in to Stormy to get her numbers up). Would love to go through it with MeFi folks and the Mods may blow a gasket if we livestream it here...
posted by Sublimity at 4:18 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


Round one of this game is played with White Russians, amirite? What's for round two?
posted by skippyhacker at 4:20 PM on January 8, 2019 [4 favorites]


I'm going to watch the damn thing, and make a drinking game out of it: if he says terrorist(s), MS-13, rapist(s), or ISIS, drink. If he goes off script and talks about the Russia probe drink twice. If he declares a national emergency drink your whole drink.If he mentions the fake news media, drink two more times. If he declares martial law in the border states drink your whole bottle then resist harder. If he resigns go to the street and share your bottle with the people.

Now we just need rules for the Chuck and Nancy portion. Ideas?
posted by vrakatar at 7:59 AM on January 9 [1 favorite +] [!]

I'm already drunk. My idea is get drunk. It supports the economomicomy, and if you watch drunk on half speed he sounds drunk!
posted by saysthis at 4:21 PM on January 8, 2019 [21 favorites]


Vox: What’s actually happening at the US-Mexico border, explained. Beyond rhetoric and rebuttals, here’s what you need to know.
By Dara Lind

President Trump wants you, and everyone else in America, to believe that the US-Mexico border isn’t just in trouble but in crisis.

The fundamental premise of the government shutdown is that the US-Mexico border is so dangerous to human life that it is worth shutting down whole swaths of the federal government, forcing 800,000 federal employees to miss paychecks, in order to address it.
posted by bluesky43 at 4:22 PM on January 8, 2019 [11 favorites]


Oh, I forgot: if he has a meltdown and starts dropping f-bombs and screaming and has to be pulled off camera, drink half your bottle and take a half hit of acid.

Wait, I was supposed to do that after he started?
posted by zombieflanders at 4:23 PM on January 8, 2019 [17 favorites]


What's for round two?

I know I said tequila but Robitussin is probably the better choice.
posted by contraption at 4:24 PM on January 8, 2019 [5 favorites]


You can drink anything you want or what you have, White Russians are a fine choice for round one, clearly, and I suggest champagne, cuba libres, dark and stormy danielses, or any fine american whiskey for round two. But any potent potable will do.
posted by vrakatar at 4:25 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


Is anyone live-blogging Stormy Daniels? Because that would make a more interesting read.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 4:28 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


CNN is also doing the pre-speech fact checking: The border wall and the cascade of false claims as Trump makes his case for a crisis - CNNPolitics
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:31 PM on January 8, 2019


I, for one, am excited to see what she does with a fitted sheet.
posted by wabbittwax at 4:31 PM on January 8, 2019 [68 favorites]


Mod note: So I know we have that goofy pre-very-stupid-thing energy going but just as I'm gonna ask folks to aim to reel in the liveblogging during the actual stuff, I'm gonna ask y'all to go ahead and reel in the pre-gaming a bit too. I heartily advocate filling the next hour and a half, if not also the time after that, doing something other than sitting in this thread killing time.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:32 PM on January 8, 2019 [20 favorites]


What I find perplexing is why Individual-One waited until he lost control of the entire government to go after one of his signature campaign promises. I've been looking for an analysis on this, but nada.
posted by bluesky43 at 4:33 PM on January 8, 2019 [4 favorites]


What I find perplexing is why Individual-One waited until he lost control of the entire government to go after one of his signature campaign promises.

He thinks he can reset his presidency now using the Democratic Congress as a foil. He might be right.
posted by gerryblog at 4:34 PM on January 8, 2019 [6 favorites]


In the spirit of not just killing time in here, one good thing to do would be to reach out to your local activist connections and see who's organizing the protest if in fact tonight does bring a bullshit invocation of presidential emergency powers. If nobody is, that means you're it!
posted by contraption at 4:35 PM on January 8, 2019 [9 favorites]


Maybe but his base would be a lot happier - or so it seems - if he had gotten this done already. I mean there are lots of issues he could use a democratic house as a foil for.
posted by bluesky43 at 4:36 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


@frankthorp NBC News

NEW: Sen @lisamurkowski is calling for the rest of the government to be re-opened while negotiations continue on the border wall: "We don't need to hold up these six other departments at the same time that we are resolving these very important security issues."
posted by bluesky43 at 4:39 PM on January 8, 2019 [15 favorites]


Maybe but his base would be a lot happier - or so it seems - if he had gotten this done already. I mean there are lots of issues he could use a democratic house as a foil for.

Respecting the no-jibber-jabber rules, I'll just say that I don't think his base actually cares about policy or about results, by and large. They just hate Democrats.
posted by gerryblog at 4:43 PM on January 8, 2019 [12 favorites]


He thinks he can reset his presidency now using the Democratic Congress as a foil. He might be right.

Might've worked if he hadn't pissed off the military. As it stands, declaring an emergency to pull money away from other parts of the defense budget isn't going to re-invigorate his dwindling base; it'll further alienate the ones who are already wavering.
Trump has another problem: If he tries to divert $5 billion from the defense budget, he might see massive resistance and more resignations from top military officials. Trump, you should remember, is looking to abscond with precious resources dedicated to national security. His military will object; Democrats (and maybe some Republicans) will rightly claim that he is not fulfilling his obligations as commander in chief.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:48 PM on January 8, 2019 [9 favorites]


I am declaring a state of emergency (Alexandra Petri, WaPo)
There are two types of crisis. One type of crisis — for the want of any verb more suitable — exists, can be measured and produces an impact on people’s lives whether they turn on their televisions that day or not. It is observable, produces tangible effects and is, for lack of a better word, real. The other one, not to put too fine a point on it — isn’t.

But the good news, as the nation may learn tonight when the president addresses us, is that — thanks to Fox News, Facebook and the tireless efforts of the highest office in the land — this second is the kind we have to worry about now, more often than in the past, where (with periodic exceptions; there was a brief spell, for instance, during which you could will weapons of mass destruction into being if you just closed your eyes and thought about them hard enough) real crises were the only type available.

Now, presented with hard evidence that one crisis — climate change, or the murder of a journalist — is happening, you have a new option, which is to say, “No, I don’t like this. This didn’t happen. Instead, I’d prefer for something else to be happening.” And then it just … can happen! Or, at least, be televised.

But the trouble with manufactured crises is that real people keep getting caught in them. In the course of fighting off imaginary phantoms, we have condemned real children to die, or put them in cages. As we close the government that we may better fight our imaginary foe, millions of real people are facing eviction and hunger and the loss of their paychecks.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:15 PM on January 8, 2019 [35 favorites]


The Trump White House’s team-building retreat (Alexandra Petri, WaPo)
Day 1, Morning

“This is the conch,” Mick Mulvaney says. “Whoever has the conch has the floor! This is going to be fun, guys. We’re going to bond.”

Everyone claps and nods. Someone shoves Rick Perry, and his glasses fall off, but he picks them up before they break.

“We’re going to start with some simple games and activities,” Mulvaney says, waving the conch. “First, a quick ice-breaking round of two truths and a lie.”

Murmurs begin in the crowd of staffers. “Great,” Sarah Sanders says. “Just one question: What is a truth?”

By the time Mulvaney manages to explain what a truth is to the baffled assembly, the sun hangs low in the west, and they are running late for the ropes course.

Day 1, Afternoon

Mulvaney attempts to explain the concept of trust falls, but everyone greets with uproarious laughter his suggestion that they would voluntarily fall into the arms of anyone else present. Finally, to demonstrate, he forces Ben Carson to fall backward, but no one makes any effort to catch him. He lands on Perry, dislodging his glasses. They break. Everyone laughs.

Day 1, Evening

Perry’s broken glasses are seized and used to make fire. As a trust-building exercise, everyone begins pelting one another with small rocks.

“I have the conch,” Mulvaney says timidly at one point, but a laughing Steven Mnuchin launches a smooth, flat stone that just misses him, and he decides to say nothing further.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:22 PM on January 8, 2019 [52 favorites]


It's special election season again!

ELECTION RESULT

Dem HOLD in Virginia Senate 33:
Boysko [D] 69.8%
May [R] 30.1%
Margin changes compared to previous races:

vs 2016 presidential result margin: Dem improvement of about 8 points.
vs 20152 SD-33 result margin: Dem improvement of about 26 points.

GOP lead in the Virginia Senate remains 21-19.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:38 PM on January 8, 2019 [41 favorites]


HuffPo:
Hundreds of thousands of federal employees have been furloughed or are working without pay as the government shutdown continues into a third week.

But another group of workers also has been hit hard: government contractors. And unlike those employed directly by the government who likely will get back pay for this period, contractors in past shutdowns have not.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a freshman Democrat from Massachusetts, wants to change that. Pressley introduced legislation on Tuesday to ensure back pay for government contractors ― from food workers and janitors to security services ― who depend on federal funds for their wages. Since the shutdown, many have been furloughed or have received “stop work” orders, putting them out of work, and without pay, until the government is running again.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:44 PM on January 8, 2019 [33 favorites]


The Hill: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced Tuesday that the city will begin guaranteeing health care to residents, regardless of their immigration status or their ability to pay.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:47 PM on January 8, 2019 [78 favorites]


NYT squeaking in a few minutes before the speech with a major detail on Manafort. Manafort Accused of Sharing Trump Campaign Data With Russian Associate
The document gave no indication of whether Mr. Trump was aware of the data transfer or how Mr. Kilimnik might have used the information. But from March to August 2016, when Mr. Manafort worked for the Trump campaign, Russia was engaged in a full-fledged operation using social media, stolen emails and other tactics to boost Mr. Trump, attack Mrs. Clinton and play on divisive issues such as race, guns and immigration. Polling data could conceivably have helped Russia hone those messages and target audiences to help swing votes to Mr. Trump.

Both Mr. Manafort and Rick Gates, the deputy campaign manager, transferred the data to Mr. Kilimnik in the spring of 2016 as Mr. Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination, according to a person knowledgeable about the situation. Most of the data was public, but some of it was developed by a private polling firm working for the campaign, according to the person.

Mr. Manafort asked that Mr. Kilimnik pass the data to Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to the Kremlin and who has claimed that Mr. Manafort owed him money from a failed business venture, the person said. It is unclear whether Mr. Manafort was acting at the campaign’s behest or independently, trying to gain favor with someone to whom he was deeply in debt.
The charitable explanation is that Manafort could have given the polling data to Deripaska to impress him and show that the work on the Trump campaign was paying off (potentially leading to future sanctions relief). The less charitable explanation is that it's straight-up collusion to assist Russia's targeting efforts during the election.
posted by zachlipton at 5:58 PM on January 8, 2019 [12 favorites]


Kevin McCarthy on CSPAN just now, reminding us that Trump's been working day in and day out during the shutdown to bring both sides together. Also, there's a crisis on our southern border.
posted by Rykey at 6:01 PM on January 8, 2019


Mod note: So, folks, gearing up for this address and the responses: let's avoid livebloggy single-sentence responses, contextless "whats!", etc. Pertinent links and summing stuff up in digest comments is gonna be a lot more readable. There is Chat as an alternative more chatty option.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:02 PM on January 8, 2019 [5 favorites]


The Hill: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced Tuesday that the city will begin guaranteeing health care to residents, regardless of their immigration status or their ability to pay.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:47 AM on January 9 [9 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]

NYC Mayor Guarantees Comprehensive Health Care for All in Historic Surprise Announcement
It's not health insurance, his spokesman clarified after the surprise announcement on MSNBC Tuesday morning.

"This is the city paying for direct comprehensive care (not just ERs) for people who can't afford it, or can't get comprehensive Medicaid — including 300,000 undocumented New Yorkers," spokesman Eric Phillips tweeted.
Holy shit. I was considering going for Australian citizenship but like...American can have me back if this is how we roll. And this is NYC!
posted by saysthis at 6:04 PM on January 8, 2019 [54 favorites]


Ha! Just checked in on Ms. Daniels. She’s got “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” as her soundtrack while she folds some very small clothes.
posted by wabbittwax at 6:04 PM on January 8, 2019 [41 favorites]


Watching the address. Six minutes in, for all the hype, it's shockingly low energy. You can tell a) he didn't write this speech (too many concrete-sounding statistics, too on-topic) and b) he's reading off a teleprompter with no enthusiasm whatsoever. He sounds bored as hell by his own speech.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 6:09 PM on January 8, 2019 [8 favorites]


Miller wrote this speech, no question.
posted by exlotuseater at 6:11 PM on January 8, 2019 [10 favorites]


Stormy Daniels is indeed folding laundry in her underwear to the sweet tunes of Don't Back Down by Tom Petty on Instagram. It is glorious.
posted by Sophie1 at 6:11 PM on January 8, 2019 [46 favorites]


Trump is taking the tone of daddy, “Don’t make me turn this car around!”
He didn’t say anything new. Read from the promter, no ad-lib, and no emergency declaration.
posted by Gadgetenvy at 6:11 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


There was no news whatsoever, just a retread of the same rants on immigration he's been giving since he walked down that escalator and a demand that Congress pass a bill and we should all call Congress and tell them to secure the border. No emergency declaration or really anything new, just the usual stuff about needing a wall (which he says will pay for itself, but not that Mexico will pay for it).

@ErikWemple: Looks like the White House secured major network TV time for an address that repeats all of the president's arguments on immigration, only, this time, through a TelePrompTer.

Also, the production values were terrible, with the shot weirdly framed and his face out of focus as he leaned forward and squinted to read the prompter and the sniffles becoming increasingly loud toward the end.
posted by zachlipton at 6:12 PM on January 8, 2019 [32 favorites]


Maggie Haberman, NYT: I see the president’s face but I hear Stephen Miller’s voice.
posted by waitingtoderail at 6:13 PM on January 8, 2019 [15 favorites]


TIL that the steel slats were "at the request of Democrats".
posted by triggerfinger at 6:13 PM on January 8, 2019 [3 favorites]


Oh, yeah, and many lies about the number of people coming over the border.
posted by Gadgetenvy at 6:13 PM on January 8, 2019


As President Trump speaks from the Oval Office, photos of his mother (who immigrated from Scotland) and father (whose family immigrated from Germany) are in the background.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:13 PM on January 8, 2019 [49 favorites]


Surprisingly short. Nothing new. This changes nothing and lets the Dems hit a tee ball. Hopefully they don’t whiff it.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:13 PM on January 8, 2019 [5 favorites]


Yeah, the bulk of the structure and pacing and vocabulary are conspicuously non-Trumpian; he snuck in little flourishes and perked up a little when he was describing horrible crimes, but overall seemed to stay really close to a script he didn't seem to care much about and had to slow down a few times to hit the start of a new line or point.

It's exactly the pile of racist fearmongering you'd expect, but much more a hand up his ass than his rally improv.
posted by cortex at 6:13 PM on January 8, 2019 [13 favorites]


Once again Trump under delivers.
posted by notyou at 6:14 PM on January 8, 2019 [8 favorites]


The networks got played.
posted by waitingtoderail at 6:15 PM on January 8, 2019 [55 favorites]


As villainous ransom notes go, he's no Lex Luthor.
posted by Freon at 6:15 PM on January 8, 2019 [13 favorites]


He sounds bored as hell by his own speech.

Oh well, since this is DJT, then it probably means the whole thing was just a misdirection from the real heinous republican crime-fest that's happening simultaneously that we will only find out about on thursday. And then he'll throw another temper tantrum. I mean, this season is getting pretty predictable when it comes down to it and I would switch it off if the stakes weren't so. damn. high.
posted by sexyrobot at 6:15 PM on January 8, 2019 [8 favorites]


He actually stated multiple times that there is a crisis of "illegal aliens" murdering American citizens. He used baby words like "right and wrong." He also looked...squinty. More than usual.
posted by agregoli at 6:16 PM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]


The redoubtable Daniel Dale is live-blogging/fact-checking Trump's speech:
—Most of the heroin Trump is talking about comes through legal ports of entry, not through unwalled areas.
—Trump has never personally presented detailed data about how many children are being fraudulently used for border-crossing purposes, merely implying it's common. The evidence suggests it's a small minority of the families who cross.
—Democrats have not made a "request" for a steel barrier, as far as anyone knows. They don't want any of this.
—The new trade deal hasn't been ratified by Congress. Even if it is, eventually, possible benefits to U.S. businesses are not a funding stream that pays for an infrastructure project.
—Democrats have repeatedly shown they're willing to fund various border security measures, just not A Wall.
—Trump is implicitly referring to the Obamas again. They have some fencing at their house, but it is not surrounded by a giant wall. (It is obviously protected by the Secret Service as well.)
—This is Trump's go-to Big Speech thing: graphic descriptions of murders committed by illegal immigrants. We saw it in his RNC acceptance speech, among other places.
—This is the same Trump content as always, just in his President Voice.
For all the hype his first Oval Office received, Trump whiffed it. We'll see how his visit to the Mexican border on Thursday plays (if he still goes).
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:17 PM on January 8, 2019 [27 favorites]


If you read to the veeeerrry bottom of this NYT piece on Trump vs Bolton regarding Syria, there’s this beautiful gem.

Really reassuring that one of the most powerful nations on earth is being led by a man who brain must be about 40% amyloid plaques by now.
Despite being a contemporary of Mr. Trump’s, however, Mr. Bolton is not a member of his inner circle. He does not have the same relationship with Mr. Trump that he had with Mr. Bush. Sometimes, with aides, the president refers to him as “Mike Bolton.”
posted by chappell, ambrose at 6:20 PM on January 8, 2019 [36 favorites]


deliberately screwed up these redactions for the purpose of alerting Manafort's co-conspirators (e.g. Individual 1) to the highly confidential aspects of Mueller's investigation that will help those co-conspirators to concoct their cover stories.

I talked to a career litigator today, and he said there was very, very little chance of that, especially given how Manafort's legal team is composed of veteran, serious lawyers who worked in fairly fancy lawyer jobs for the government, then went to well-known, well-connected DC shops, including one with a heavy emphasis ondealing with the government.

In his opinion, this was a fuckup by somebody's paralegal or assistant, and that person is going to be losing his or her job, if they haven't already. Because this is the kind of thing that every litigator has nightmares about, and why standard lawyer practice in dealing with redacted court documents is to print it out either as a PDF, or to print it out and then manually scan it in, or to fucking run a metadata scrubber. Or do all three in an overflow of paranoia. I know people who got screamed at, like, full on backed into a corner of their office and screamed at for accidentally forgetting to redact something in, like, Schedule 4 of Exhibit "J" to a rando-ass corporate bankruptcy filing in Delaware.

So uh. In describing what the judge was going to do to the lawyers for Manafort, my litigator friend was like, "He's going to crack open their chests and eat their hearts. And that's before Mueller starts telling how much this fucks with the rest of the investigation."
posted by joyceanmachine at 6:20 PM on January 8, 2019 [95 favorites]


Essentially this is just a sideshow. Wait until he jumps on Twitter to start ranting. That’ll be his “speech.” Tonight there was a TelePrompTer telling him what to say, having been decided by people who were probably vetting what was and wasn’t legally possible. Reports have come out saying that people in the White House were pretty much giving up on the state of emergency because it wouldn’t fly legally, which is probably why this was much more restrained, much more scaremongering.

When he’s alone with Twitter, he’ll go off the rails. With no one to talk him down, he’ll start ranting, the gore-stories will end up being inflated (the city of Houston, gone, destroyed by MS 13 gangs!), and he’ll try to declare the state of emergency via Twitter.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:22 PM on January 8, 2019 [8 favorites]


I know we're not supposed to do hot takes but "The symbol of America should be the Statue of Liberty, not a 30-foot wall."

GOD-DAYUM
posted by nushustu at 6:22 PM on January 8, 2019 [86 favorites]


At least we're not hearing that Trump has finally turned a corner and started acting presidential just because he managed to successfully read words off a teleprompter.
posted by xammerboy at 6:24 PM on January 8, 2019 [12 favorites]


Chuck and Nancy's joint appearance, summarized: Nice try, stop being a lying racist and open the government. Period. (Thank god.)
posted by Rykey at 6:26 PM on January 8, 2019 [56 favorites]


I watched the address and response on PBS, nice to see the entire group covering the event are women. Trump will never know, but I find it nice.
posted by Gadgetenvy at 6:28 PM on January 8, 2019 [18 favorites]


That was pretty much his last card to play and it won't change the trajectory of this which is against him and moving increasingly so.

As much as I hate that the networks aired a racist campaign ad, watching his silver bullet fail is almost worth it. He's finished on this. It will drive him nuts when it doesn't change the conversation and will hate that everyone will say he was low energy.
posted by chris24 at 6:29 PM on January 8, 2019 [23 favorites]


Pelosi and Shumer didn't exactly knock my socks off. I guess they said the right things, but I wouldn't mind a little more passion. They are completely uninspiring.
posted by diogenes at 6:32 PM on January 8, 2019 [7 favorites]


Political stunts, such as the ones being undertaken by Jackie Speier and Jared Huffman are not about the trash, or the transporting of the trash or the cleaning of the trash. Rosa Parks wasn't tired, Dr. King did not need to particularly cross the Edmund Pettis bridge. Our HIV-infected ashes didn't need to be on the White House lawn and the freeway shutdowns around police brutality were not helpful for commuting traffic. The point of them is not the thing itself, it is to get publicity. To show in terms people can understand how angry we are.
Publicity stunts are necessary trouble.

Rosa Parks and Dr. King didn't contribute to and then spread a public health crisis, nor did the ashes of HIV+ people (ashes are not "infected" with HIV) or freeway shutdowns.

I understand the need for publicity and necessary trouble, but transporting garbage across the country (I have to assume they're flying it--which I guess we can add to Speier and Huffman's carbon footprint) is horrible for the environment, especially when the same point can be made with trash from NPS sites in the vicinity of DC.

Besides, the GOP could give a shit about California's garbage or the ecological disaster being caused by the shutdown. I get that they're trying to bring awareness to the situation in their districts, but parks all over California (including ones in GOP-controlled districts) and the country are suffering, and I think that there are better, less environmentally harmful ways to approach it, which would still get the publicity, anger, and trouble needed to raise awareness and get their point across.
posted by elsietheeel at 6:38 PM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]


For what it's worth, I found this thing on Vox that I don't think anyone put here, and it seems to have some substantial benchmarks:

Here’s the offer Trump is making to Democrats to end the shutdown
Trump wants $800 million to improve care for families at the border — and $5.7 billion for the wall.
...
the content of the offer is more serious than anything the administration committed to in writing during the last immigration fight with Congress in early 2018.
...
Namely, here’s what the administration says it can do with the money it wants:

$211 million to hire 750 more US Border Patrol agents
$675 million for screening technology at ports of entry (official border crossings)
$571 million to hire 200 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and support staff, responsible for immigration enforcement in the interior and for immigrant detention
$4.2 billion to expand immigrant detention capacity to a record 52,000 beds (some of which are likely to be in family detention facilities)
$563 million to hire 75 more immigration judges and attendant staff, to address the immigration-court backlog
...
That $5.7 billion, according to the new letter, would be able to build 234 new miles of border barriers, which would all be steel bollards instead of any concrete wall. (The $1.6 billion, by contrast, was appropriated to build 65 miles; how much barriers cost per mile depends a lot on terrain and what’s already there.)

I would guess whatever meeting they have tomorrow will use these numbers as a starting point.
posted by saysthis at 6:42 PM on January 8, 2019 [5 favorites]


@NYTnickc: Less than 30 minutes after his address, the Trump campaign is fundraising off the address. Campaign accounts sends out second donation text of the night, with link to donation page saying “We need to raise $500,000 in one day.”

Always be grifting. Alternatively, they're fundraising off something they almost declared a national emergency for.
posted by zachlipton at 6:44 PM on January 8, 2019 [15 favorites]


I suspect we’ll find out there were multiple speeches written and he backed down from more forceful versions at the last minute.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:44 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


Namely, here’s what the administration says it can do with the money it wants:

Am I missing something? None of those items are a wall.
posted by diogenes at 6:47 PM on January 8, 2019 [4 favorites]


His speech was weak and full of lies; Nancy and Chuck replied with several serious burns and facts and reason. I don’t see why he even bothered. And I’m really glad the Dems spoke last.
posted by valkane at 6:47 PM on January 8, 2019 [16 favorites]


Pelosi and Shumer didn't exactly knock my socks off. I guess they said the right things, but I wouldn't mind a little more passion. They are completely uninspiring.

I thought their choice to speak in measured tones was both deliberate and super fucking wise, personally. There was still moral urgency there. They just sounded grounded and reasonable. Trump sure sounded bored reading Stephen Miller’s racist book report, though.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:48 PM on January 8, 2019 [57 favorites]


nushutsu: I know we're not supposed to do hot takes but "The symbol of America should be the Statue of Liberty, not a 30-foot wall."

GOD-DAYUM

Of possible interest
posted by tzikeh at 6:49 PM on January 8, 2019 [18 favorites]


Am I missing something? None of those items are a wall.

They want all of it. $5.7B for the wall plus the other stuff. They're making a bunch of new demands in addition to the wall. But some of the other stuff was already in the Senate bill to fund the government in the first place (for instance, the $4.2B for immigration detention is just an increase from the $3.7B the Senate already voted for last month).
posted by zachlipton at 6:51 PM on January 8, 2019 [3 favorites]


The Feds Didn’t Pay Their $5 Million Water Bill. Can D.C. Shut Off Water To The White House?
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 6:51 PM on January 8, 2019 [50 favorites]


No, since DC is the Feds.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:54 PM on January 8, 2019


NYT, Peter Baker, Trump Appeals to Nation for Wall: ‘This Is a Choice Between Right and Wrong’
Yet privately, Mr. Trump dismissed his own new strategy as pointless. In an off-the-record lunch with television anchors hours before the address, he made clear in blunt terms that he was not inclined to give the speech or go to Texas, but was talked into it by advisers, according to two people briefed on the discussion who asked not to be identified sharing details.

“It’s not going to change a damn thing, but I’m still doing it,” Mr. Trump said of the trip to the border, according to one of the people, who was in the room. The border trip was just a photo opportunity, he said. “But,” he added, gesturing at his communications aides, Bill Shine, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway, “these people behind you say it’s worth it.”
First, it's 2019 and we're still having goddamn off the record lunches with the President like we've learned absolutely nothing? Second, maybe the fact that even the person giving the speech thinks it's a pointless waste of time should inform network decisions to give him free prime time air, since that admission suggests he won't have anything useful to say. Third, why does he even say stuff like this?
posted by zachlipton at 6:58 PM on January 8, 2019 [38 favorites]


Dan Pfeiffer: FWIW: the Obama speech that the networks refused to air in 2014 was 100x more newsy that what Trump just said.

Utterly indefensible from our collaborator media. Trump says jump and they say "yes and what else can we do help you get reelected?"
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:58 PM on January 8, 2019 [70 favorites]


What I find perplexing is why Individual-One waited until he lost control of the entire government to go after one of his signature campaign promises.

Ezra Klein:
If Donald Trump wanted the wall, he'd have negotiated away something of value to get it. Or at least tried to do so.

He doesn't want the wall. He wants the fight over the wall. He wants to be seen going to war over the wall. That's what tonight is about.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:02 PM on January 8, 2019 [99 favorites]


Yet privately, Mr. Trump dismissed his own new strategy as pointless. In an off-the-record lunch with television anchors hours before the address, he made clear in blunt terms...

Am I missing the "off the record" part?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:02 PM on January 8, 2019 [4 favorites]


Public officials should never, ever be allowed to go "off the record" unless (maybe) they're whistle blowing on someone else in government.
posted by maxwelton at 7:04 PM on January 8, 2019 [13 favorites]


Am I missing the "off the record" part?

The news anchors probably agreed to his comments being off-the-record. But anyone else who overheard what he said (servers, passers-by, whomever) are not bound by that agreement and could pass them along to reporters, who are likewise not bound by the agreement.
posted by Justinian at 7:05 PM on January 8, 2019 [5 favorites]


Am I missing the "off the record" part?

The original report said "an unnamed US President close to the administration".
posted by uosuaq at 7:06 PM on January 8, 2019 [74 favorites]


Namely, here’s what the administration says it can do with the money it wants:

Am I missing something? None of those items are a wall.
posted by diogenes at 10:47 AM on January 9 [+] [!]

It's the itemized list PLUS the wall. There's a chart, but the text doesn't explain that well.

Yes, he also wants $4.2 billion for immigrant prisons. To be built by...by...the skin puppets of Lovecraftian horrors, as per the usual with this administration (ok I admit it the Lovecraftian stuff is pure speculation but Juan Sanchez of Southwest Key Programs gets $1.5 million per year of $458 million from the Trump administration to creatively fund the sexual and physical abuse of migrant children hundreds of times so)
posted by saysthis at 7:06 PM on January 8, 2019 [9 favorites]


It’s so interesting hearing all the journalists say “Wall” and not “the wall”.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 7:07 PM on January 8, 2019 [8 favorites]


Chuck Todd provided NBC's commentary and also referred to the off the record meeting saying that his impression was that Trump's main audience was "wobbly" congressional republican who believe that Trump has mismanaged the messaging on the shutdown and wall, and Chuck didn't hear anything that would reassure that group.
posted by peeedro at 7:07 PM on January 8, 2019


NYT, Peter Baker, Trump Appeals to Nation for Wall: ‘This Is a Choice Between Right and Wrong’

The speech was designed to fire up Rs and change the conversation. Well...
"Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who is chairwoman of the Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, expressed frustration with the shutdown and 'how useless it is'."
When Trump has lost the West Virginia R senator...
posted by chris24 at 7:08 PM on January 8, 2019 [24 favorites]


But anyone else who overheard what he said (servers, passers-by, whomever) are not bound by that agreement and could pass them along to reporters, who are likewise not bound by the agreement.

Possible it’s Trump himself eager to deflect blame from tonight’s flop.
posted by notyou at 7:11 PM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]


Rosa Parks and Dr. King didn't contribute to and then spread a public health crisis

Garbage Transport is pretty routine. Even long distance garbage transport. Every day. This is a very weird argument to have.
posted by srboisvert at 7:12 PM on January 8, 2019 [24 favorites]


Bernie Sanders' response to Trump's address

I thought it was pretty good. He called out Trump's constant lying, argued against this manufactured border crisis, and pointed out that our real emergencies include the government shutdown, lack of access to healthcare, rising wealth disparity, and climate change.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 7:13 PM on January 8, 2019 [20 favorites]


Mod note: Let's let the whole trash stunt: good or bad? thing drop now.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:25 PM on January 8, 2019 [14 favorites]


@NYTnickc: Less than 30 minutes after his address, the Trump campaign is fundraising off the address. Campaign accounts sends out second donation text of the night, with link to donation page saying “We need to raise $500,000 in one day.”

Always be grifting. Alternatively, they're fundraising off something they almost declared a national emergency for.

And thus probably the real reason (along with power and ego of course) that Trump is so eager to pander to his base (whether it's the Wall or whatever else pushes the buttons and opens the purse strings), come hell or high water.
posted by gtrwolf at 7:26 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


Despite being a contemporary of Mr. Trump’s, however, Mr. Bolton is not a member of his inner circle. He does not have the same relationship with Mr. Trump that he had with Mr. Bush. Sometimes, with aides, the president refers to him as “Mike Bolton.”

well he looks just like him, easy mistake
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:27 PM on January 8, 2019 [8 favorites]


Bernie Sanders' response to Trump's address

I liked it because he listed actual specific bad things that are happening to Americans, and explicitly blamed Trump for rejecting what Congress unanimously approved. He laid out the how and why of Trump's responsibility for the shutdown. Schumer and Pelosi, bless their hearts, did not, despite the fact that they had equal airtime, and Bernie Sanders only has Youtube.

I'm with the Dems and will devote the effort time and money that I have to the cause, but Sanders gave the speech I wish we could have seen on network TV. I only say that because the man put the blame squarely where it belongs. I wish party leadership had the same chutzpah.

Now I'm going away because I've spammed this thread enough for one day.
posted by saysthis at 7:28 PM on January 8, 2019 [14 favorites]


Pelosi and Shumer didn't exactly knock my socks off. I guess they said the right things, but I wouldn't mind a little more passion. They are completely uninspiring.

They were believable, and that's all that matters. Trump wants immigration to be the discussion forever. I thought they did a pretty good job of making clear this is a made up issue.
posted by xammerboy at 7:29 PM on January 8, 2019 [10 favorites]


In an off-the-record lunch with television anchors hours before the address, he made clear in blunt terms that he was not inclined to give the speech or go to Texas, but was talked into it by advisers, according to two people briefed on the discussion who asked not to be identified sharing details.

“It’s not going to change a damn thing, but I’m still doing it,” Mr. Trump said of the trip to the border, according to one of the people, who was in the room. The border trip was just a photo opportunity, he said. “But,” he added, gesturing at his communications aides, Bill Shine, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway, “these people behind you say it’s worth it.”

This gave me a little flush of warmth, to recall that Trump is likely at least as miserable in private as he acts in public. It kills me, because "degenerate fake billionaire wants to quit being president, but can't" is a story I would love to see on any channel but the news.

If a time-traveler had told 2015-me that in 4 years, "adult actress folding laundry in her underwear" would be counter-programming for a Presidential address ...

Life turned into a Warren Ellis comic so gradually, I barely even noticed.

It's Blade Runner year, Akira year, Running Man year and Zardoz year, and my level of fashion has not kept pace with the level of dystopia rising around me. I always expected to at least look a lot cooler if things ever got this bad.
posted by EatTheWeek at 7:34 PM on January 8, 2019 [118 favorites]


It's Blade Runner year, Akira year, Running Man year and Zardoz year, and my level of fashion has not kept pace with the level of dystopia rising around me. I always expected to at least look a lot cooler if things ever got this bad.

This is an FPP waiting to happen.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:36 PM on January 8, 2019 [94 favorites]


Politico: House GOP Support For Shutdown Eroding | Hardball | MSNBC - YouTube

Basically two old white guys yelling, but worth the five minutes.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:48 PM on January 8, 2019 [5 favorites]


In his opinion, this [failed Manafort redaction] was a fuckup by somebody's paralegal or assistant, and that person is going to be losing his or her job, if they haven't already.... [that's] why standard lawyer practice in dealing with redacted court documents is to print it out either as a PDF, or to print it out and then manually scan it in, or to fucking run a metadata scrubber.

Why not a screen shot of the blacked out Word document, or a mosaic of screen shots if necessary? Then reassemble the PNG files into a PDF. I'm no security expert but it seems simple, safe, no extra software needed...
posted by msalt at 7:48 PM on January 8, 2019 [3 favorites]


> It's Blade Runner year, Akira year, Running Man year and Zardoz year, and my level of fashion has not kept pace with the level of dystopia rising around me. I always expected to at least look a lot cooler if things ever got this bad.

This is an FPP waiting to happen.
Pre-corrective for a potential FPP: Zardoz is set in 2293.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 7:59 PM on January 8, 2019 [16 favorites]


Well...2020 is Soylent Green year...so maybe the primaries will feature actual cannibalism.
posted by sexyrobot at 8:05 PM on January 8, 2019 [9 favorites]


Trump tried to play a normal president on television. The result was very strange.
Watching Trump’s flat delivery of sentiments that he can’t possibly believe was the inverse of comforting. Instead, the address had the queasy effect of a serial killer’s mask in a horror movie: It was a failed attempt to look normal that concealed something even more terrifying underneath.

In the second half of the address, that mask dropped away and Trump regained some of his animation as he described terrible crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. The whole performance is a testament to why it’s unwise to hope that Trump grows into his office and that he learns how to play a normal president. If he did, he’d be much more effective at advancing his agenda, and people on both sides of the border would be in much greater peril.
- Alyssa Rosenberg (WaPo)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 8:07 PM on January 8, 2019 [18 favorites]


Wait, so he chickened out at the last minute? No National Emergency? No dictatorial power-grab?

CR is all but done, now. There will be a line item about studying the feasibility of a wall, maybe a few mill or so, most of it returned to the treasury at the end of the fiscal year.

The Donald Chickened Out. And now his party will abandon him.

Nice.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:18 PM on January 8, 2019 [15 favorites]


James Poniewozik, Who Paid for the Prime-Time Wall Debate? The American Viewer
What there was not, after two days of media drama, was a convincing argument for why this needed to be a prime-time event at all. There was no news. There was no new argument. There was just a wall of sound, and the American viewing audience paid for it.

Nor was there much compelling television, unless you’re an avid maker of internet memes. This was not a friendly setting for either party.
...
Assessing whether a source is credible isn’t bias. It’s not political. It’s journalism. In this case, the networks had more evidence than Charlie Brown did about Lucy and her football. (This comparison may be unfair to Charlie Brown, who did not act out of fear that the football would tweet mean things about him.)
posted by zachlipton at 8:18 PM on January 8, 2019 [15 favorites]


The Donald Chickened Out. And now his party will abandon him

I dunno, Trump has said he can wait years for this. So.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:23 PM on January 8, 2019


It was good to hear from the president (Alexandra Petri, WaPo)
Here is a terrifying farrago of semi-facts strung together from misleading Fox News clips and things misheard in dreams. The only solution to any of these problems is to build the wall, though it has no logical connection to anything mentioned. It will solve everything. This administration is determined to do its best to undermine everything that might make someone want to come to this country. We will build a wall. We will stop the national prosperity that is drawing people to this country. We will make this place as awful as possible and as terrifying as possible. Fill it with fear and horror. Then people will turn around. Then maybe we will not even need the wall.

If you are opposed to the building of this particular wall, you oppose walls in general. How do your houses stand? What do you hang pictures on? Into what kind of socket do you plug your electronics? If walls are so evil, what about the success of “Wall-E”? What about “Wonderwall,” a so-called popular song by the so-called band Oasis? What about that Robert Frost poem, which I’ve definitely read and am not just alluding to because it has a wall in the title? Are we just going to tear down EVERY wall, like some kind of Gorbachev run amok? Because that’s not an America I want to live in. What’s next, DOORS? WINDOWS? […]

Drugs are coming over the border to behead your family. I say this with no great relish. Everything bad you have ever heard is true, but it is much worse than that. A cloud of locusts is coming to devour everything you love. It is even worse than that. I am not even able to say how bad it is, because it is terrifying. Blood. Horror. Missing limbs. No, never mind, I will say it. I will continue to say it.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:37 PM on January 8, 2019 [43 favorites]


Basically two old white guys yelling, but worth the five minutes.

I just watched that and can't really tell what was worth it. It's not as if Kasich is wrong exactly (except at one point he claimed democrats were far left, which definitely pinged my NOPE reaction), but it just sounded like the usual hardball quasi-yelling outrage mush. Did I miss some gem in there? I might've started to defocus my eyes about a minute into it.
posted by axiom at 8:42 PM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]


Again, this really isn't about Trump. McConnell is the one with the power here. Trump may not even actually veto a budget bill, put a shiny pen in his hand and he'll sign whatever the fuck you put in front of him and call it a Wall. But McConnell is more scared of fracturing his caucus and losing the 2020 majority that anything else, including the lives of every federal worker, which he'd trade outright in a heartbeat for an assurance of keeping his Senate majority to obstruct a Democratic President and House after 2020. McConnell needs every last white supremacist vote as much or more than Trump does, and he knows he has nothing to inspire them to turnout for him like they will for Trump.

McConnell is pure evil. Heartless. Soulless. Maybe the single most evil person to have been born in America in a century. But he's also the most successful and strategic political figure of the modern era. The single thing that he actually cares about, the one thing that he lives for, is amassing and retaining more power at any cost. Not using it, amassing it and keeping it. He won't do a single thing that could split the party and make it one iota more likely of losing another Senate seat in 2020. That's all he's weighting, whether passing a budget and/or overriding a Trump veto will cost him more base voters and make it more likely that he loses more than Susan Collins and Cory Gardner's seats, which he's probably already written off. The only thing that will stop the shutdown is when McConnell's Senate math flips, when there's enough pain broadly that he's more worried about dragging down his safe seats than defending his tossups.

We're not even to the point where McConnell is even negotiating, because he doesn't have to yet. He's literally stonewalling silently at the table. He's got Trump's idiocy to hide behind, and public opinion hasn't flipped hard enough to change his math.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:45 PM on January 8, 2019 [98 favorites]


Why not a screen shot of the blacked out Word document, or a mosaic of screen shots if necessary? Then reassemble the PNG files into a PDF. I'm no security expert but it seems simple, safe, no extra software needed...

Acrobat Pro, which will redact and remove metadata, is $15/month. Any company too stingy for that, and too clueless to understand why it'd be better to use it for your legal documents where redaction is crucially important, is too stingy to pay an office clerk to play with screencaps and too clueless to realize there are other ways to make PDFs that actually hide the text you need hidden.

The standard not-tech-savvy solution is "print it out and then scan it." (Ten years ago, this took tech skills; now, every large printer/copier includes scanning ability.) If they're too lazy for that, they're definitely too lazy to patch screenshots together.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:50 PM on January 8, 2019 [26 favorites]


put a shiny pen in his hand and he'll sign whatever the fuck you put in front of him and call it a Wall

Can we convince the House to rename the healthcare funding portion of the budget, "The Wall of American Resistance to disease?"
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:53 PM on January 8, 2019 [13 favorites]


McConnell is pure evil. Heartless. Soulless. Maybe the single most evil person to have been born in America in a century. But he's also the most successful and strategic political figure of the modern era.

McConnell : USA : : Beria : USSR
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:55 PM on January 8, 2019 [7 favorites]


President Donald Trump lost the backing of the American People, and the mainstream Republican base, in a simple, short speech. Invective against "Democrats" and "Radical Left" are useless to people who remember the Clinton and Obama prosperity, and hapless and hopeless talking points to succinctly counterpoint whatever is left of the Regan Revolution. Oh yes, let us remember Oliver North, that traitorous scumbag. He's now in the employ of Putin himself, as a "pundit" in defense of "2nd Amendment Rights" which means Russia wants our children to gun each other down with infantry weapons.

Take a step back and let that soak in. Russia wants our children to gun each other down with infantry weapons. It's an actual goal for them, while also garnering cash for votes in terms of false liberty.

The NRA exists and thrives on actual, no-kidding treason and the murder of children in service of their foreign masters. Those at the top are rich as Croesus from foreign money, and enemies of democracy, alll!

Republicans, he was never of you. Democrats, FIGHT! Fight with all of your will and mien! This is the final hour, stand up and be counted!
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:02 PM on January 8, 2019 [26 favorites]


The Corrupting Falsehoods of Trump’s Oval Office Speech (Eric Lach | The New Yorker)
In the ten or so minutes that he spent giving an address from the Oval Office on Tuesday, President Trump ran through a litany of talking points, some deceptive, some contradictory, some vacuous, some diversionary. He did not have a single argument for why he decided, last month, to shut down the government over border-wall money. So, instead, he offered Americans their pick.

... Trump also made uncharacteristic appeals to empathy, saying that he was determined to end “the cycle of human suffering” at the border. But he has spent too many years demagoguing about migrants to claim to care for them now. And indeed, even after making this assertion, he went on to discuss how “day after day, precious lives are cut short by those who have violated our borders.” He described crimes—stabbings, rapes, and beatings—in gory detail, adding, “How much more American blood must we shed before Congress does its job?” In the lead-up to the speech, the media’s fact-checkers had pledged to hold the President accountable for his falsehoods, to not let him command the airwaves unchecked. But dehumanizing migrants is dangerous in ways that fact-checking can’t counteract.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 9:03 PM on January 8, 2019 [24 favorites]


When Trump has lost the West Virginia R senator...

Don't worry, he's still got Joe Manchin.
posted by mightygodking at 9:07 PM on January 8, 2019 [13 favorites]


I promised to go away but one more, because would you look at this?

Trump won the night. Schumer and Pelosi lost. (Wapo, Marc A. Thiessen -- this fuckin guy)
He was, in short, presidential.

Democrats insisted on equal time, which is highly unusual for presidential addresses other than the State of the Union. It was a mistake. In contrast to Trump, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) came across as small and intransigent.

While Trump spoke calmly and rationally from behind the Resolute Desk, the Democratic leaders accused him of “pounding the table” and having a “temper tantrum.” While Trump told human stories, they complained about process.
Presidential!
posted by saysthis at 9:12 PM on January 8, 2019 [3 favorites]


I just watched that and can't really tell what was worth it. It's not as if Kasich is wrong exactly ...

Eh, worth hearing a Republican say what he said. However inartfully.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:18 PM on January 8, 2019


Trump won the night. Schumer and Pelosi lost.

I don't know why the Post gives column space to Thiessen and Hugh Hewitt. I don't even bother to hate-read their drivel any more.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:18 PM on January 8, 2019 [30 favorites]


Wow, I guess I jinxed it when I said at least the media wasn't saying he was presidential...

Another shutdown story. A friend is president of an organization that provides housing to those that need it. Their government funding isn't coming in because of the shutdown, so they're employees can't be paid. This means people will be put out on the street.
posted by xammerboy at 9:36 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


EatTheWeak: It's Blade Runner year, Akira year, Running Man year

ZeusHumms: This is an FPP waiting to happen.

Akira / Blade Runner 2019 FPP, posted January 1, 2019, so it's still open for commenting.


Meanwhile, Court: Politicians who block citizens on social media violate 1st Amendment -- 4th Circuit: County official's Facebook page is a public forum, must accept all. (Cyrus Farivar for Ars Technica, Jan. 7, 2019)
A federal appeals court in Virginia ruled unanimously Monday that a county official who blocked a citizen from accessing her official Facebook page is in violation of the First Amendment.

The case—which was heard before the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals—found that Phyllis Randall, the chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, improperly blocked a man named Brian Davison on Facebook for 12 hours back in February 2016.

During one town hall meeting involving Randall, Davison had suggested that some financial improprieties were afoot. Within hours, Davison left a lengthy Facebook post on Randall's page, and she banned him. The next day, she reversed course and unbanned him, but his post remained deleted.

Not long after, Davison sued, alleging violations of his constitutional rights, and he eventually won at trial. The county chair then appealed to the 4th Circuit, which ultimately ruled that Randall's Facebook page "bear[s] the hallmarks of a public forum," where public speech—however undesirable—cannot be discriminated against.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:37 PM on January 8, 2019 [22 favorites]


And in other news from earlier today: House Democrats Pledge Passage Of Expanded Gun Background Checks Bill (NPR, Jan. 8, 2019)
The new House Democratic majority is promising to do something the party avoided when it last controlled the levers of power in Washington: pass gun legislation enhancing background check requirements for all gun purchases.

"You look at those years, 2009, 2010, when you had Barack Obama in the White House, 60 Democratic votes in the Senate, a big Democratic majority in the House, and not only did nothing happen, but it wasn't even on the table," said Peter Ambler, executive director of Giffords, the gun violence prevention advocacy organization founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz. "We had collectively, politically as a country said, 'We're not going to address this. The opposition is just too powerful.' "

Tuesday, on the eighth anniversary of the 2011 Tucson shooting that gravely injured Giffords and left six people dead, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced gun legislation to extend existing background check requirements to almost all gun sales and most gun transfers, including Internet sales, at gun shows and person-to-person transactions, with certain exemptions for immediate family.

The bill is co-sponsored by Reps. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., and Peter King, R-N.Y., and includes four additional original GOP co-sponsors: Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Fred Upton of Michigan, Chris Smith of New Jersey and Brian Mast of Florida.
...
After a press conference with Pelosi and other House Democratic supporters, Giffords accompanied Thompson to the House floor to officially introduce the legislation. Democratic aides tell NPR top leaders intend to move the bill to the floor quickly.

The National Rifle Association, a powerful gun rights advocacy group, opposes the Thompson-King legislation.

"So-called universal background checks will never be universal because criminals do not comply with the law," said NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker. "Instead of looking for effective solutions that will deal with root cause of violent crime and save lives, anti-gun politicians would rather score political points and push ineffective legislation that doesn't stop criminals from committing crimes."
Huh, so the NRA isn't dead yet. I thought they were nearing bankruptcy. Oh look, their pending doom was overstated: The NRA’s financial weakness, explained (The Associated Press, December 14, 2018)
The financial struggles have even led the organization itself to warn that it could possibly collapse in court filings.

Despite this drama, however, the organization has a robust revenue stream due to a large member base, loyal contributors and the revenue it still gets from ads that run in its print publications and commercials that air on its video channel, NRA TV – even amid a successful boycott led by gun control advocates.

That means cutting back on spending can work wonders. Early signs, such as reduced election spending and job cuts, indicate such parsimony is getting underway.

Though it owes more money to others than it has freely available to pay them back, the NRA isn’t in immediate danger.

Much of what the NRA owes won’t come due for a while. Its two prominent liabilities are services it owes to members who have prepaid their dues for multiple years and what it owes its retirees – its pension fund is underfunded by $49.7 million.
It's in trouble, but it's more of a long-term viability issue rather than fatally wounded and bleeding out type of injury.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:46 PM on January 8, 2019 [14 favorites]


Print and scan leaves the pdf unsearchable. Just use the correct digital tools for the digital job.
posted by M-x shell at 9:51 PM on January 8, 2019 [7 favorites]


Donald Trump Was Just Handed a Chance to Supercharge Voter Suppression in 2020 (Richard L. Hasen, Slate)
In a short unpublished opinion so far garnering only slight media attention, the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit decided on Monday what may be one of the most consequential cases poised to affect the 2020 elections. The circuit upheld a district court decision ending a court order in effect since 1982 barring the Republican National Committee from engaging in “ballot security” measures designed to intimidate minority voters from voting at the polls. With Trump having taken over the RNC for the 2020 elections and with this consent decree no longer standing in his way, we should be concerned about a new wave of voter suppression coming from the Republican Party during the upcoming election.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:52 PM on January 8, 2019 [29 favorites]


The AP takes an early lead in the "worst tweet of 2019" category with:
AP FACT CHECK: Democrats put the blame for the shutdown on Trump. But it takes two to tango. Trump's demand for $5.7 billion for his border wall is one reason for the budget impasse. The Democrats refusal to approve the money is another.
The replies are not, shall we say, sympathetic to their analysis.
posted by Justinian at 10:01 PM on January 8, 2019 [83 favorites]


I don’t understand how Trump controlling the RNC even works. Are they just straight up not having fair elections anymore? There can’t be any serious primary challengers to him.
posted by gucci mane at 10:40 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


I'm really angry about his characterization of the border communities.

El Paso is, and continues to be, the safest city in America to live in. I'd immediately move if this city wasn't the best place to raise my kids. Even my friends from Oakland are considering moving here because it's safe and beautiful and cheap to live.

I'm just gonna tell all y'all: I live less than a mile from the border. There's no crisis except the one in Tornillo.
posted by blessedlyndie at 10:58 PM on January 8, 2019 [89 favorites]


The replies are not, shall we say, sympathetic to their analysis.

It was such a tee-up for victim blaming analogy replies (which were bountifully delivered on cue) that I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone in AP social media must have been trolling. This timeline isn’t that stupid...is it?
posted by Brak at 11:18 PM on January 8, 2019 [7 favorites]


When I watched Trump's speech tonight, it reminded me of a hostage video, where the hostage has to read the speech written for them.
posted by Little Dawn at 11:39 PM on January 8, 2019 [11 favorites]


(Wapo, Marc A. Thiessen -- this fuckin guy)
He was, in short, presidential.

Democrats insisted on equal time, which is highly unusual for presidential addresses other than the State of the Union. It was a mistake. In contrast to Trump, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) came across as small and intransigent.

While Trump spoke calmly and rationally from behind the Resolute Desk, the Democratic leaders accused him of “pounding the table” and having a “temper tantrum.” While Trump told human stories, they complained about process.

Let us pause for a moment and try to understand just how desperate someone would need to be for something resembling success/attention to author this drivel.
posted by skyscraper at 12:28 AM on January 9, 2019 [30 favorites]


"Instead of looking for effective solutions that will deal with root cause of violent crime and save lives..."

Research about which the NRA has pushed to not fund, and even explicitly deny funding to, by their wholly-owned Congressional members. When do we get to tell these people they don't get to have it both ways?
posted by mephron at 1:06 AM on January 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


The AP needs to be raked over the coals for that both sides ism "fact check". Regardless of any opinions the objective verifiable documented fact, FACT, is that a Republican majority Senate and a Republican majority house of reps passed a continuing resolution that met the Republican presidents stated requirements, and they did so with the entirety of their party expecting it to be done and overwith. Their confidence was so high that they congratulated themselves and each other as they en masse started leaving DC to go home for the holidays.

But one man, the only man capable of doing so, upended the desires and expecations of his entire Party establishment, against every verbal assurance he'd given them, and for reasons nobody has been able to explain, single handedly caused the shutdown of the federal government.

These are the objective facts.

One man, the chief executive, the only real power of one of the three branches of the government, defied the unanimous vote of his own party, in the very last hour of that Partys complete control of the entire power of the second of three branches of government for the forseeable future.

That is your objective fact.

This government shutdown is wholly the result of the decision of one person and him alone. Donald Trump caused this shutdown. Had he not wielded his power, the actions of the Republicans in the Senate and the Republicans in the House would have permitted our government to continue to operate.

Congressional democrats, with zero power, we're completely incapable of either causing or preventing the shutdown.

Congressional republicans, with all of the power of their branch of government, approved legislation to keep government open. They unanimously voted to fund our government as their last planned legislative activity before formally ending their session, knowing that their lock on governmental power would be weakened. They didn't cause this shutdown.

Donald Trump caused this shutdown. Nobody else. Just him.

Thats your fact.

Everything else is a distortion of objective truth.

Any fact check from any media organization purporting to use the word "fact" in good faith must state clearly: Donald Trump single handedly caused this shutdown.

Stories that hide this bold plain simple objective well documented fact, through any means whatsoever, is lying to the American people just like Donald Trump does.

Any so-called fact checking that blames anyone or anything other than that one specific individual, Donald Trump, for causing* this shutdown is complicit with the Trump Administration and their systematic program of intentional and targeted disinformation. Such obvious and intentional distortion of simple, objective truth, isnt just an affront to journalistic integrity, it is nothing short of an active endorsement of and contribution to this Administration's obvious core mission to destroy the role of truth, facts, and objective reality itself in the governance of our country.

If you tell me anything besides the very simple "Trump did this. Nobody else," then you are lying.

And you know it.

This administration is hell bent on eroding truth itself. It's the only agenda item they consistenly pursue, and they do it relentlessly. Instead of aiding and abetting this administration by not only airing their lies unchallenged, but creating your own lies, in obvious contradiction to simple objective documented facts, you should be trying to bring to light this inarticulated shadow agenda, and particularly who is this agenda serving.

Media outlets blatantly lying, to help build a bigger veil of lies. Who's agenda are they serving?

Why is objective truth a problem?

This is inexcusable.

*Trump bears sole responsibility for causing the shutdown, but it's continuation since then is the responsibility of trump, mcconnell, and whichever nation-free billionaires each of them serves.
posted by yesster at 2:26 AM on January 9, 2019 [93 favorites]


Why is objective truth a problem?

It IS objectively true that Democrats could end the shutdown by caving to Trump's demands. They shouldn't, but they could. The AP and other journalists get enough "fake news!" accusations from Trump. We don't need to echo that kind of rhetoric.
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:31 AM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


And... the outgoing Republican House did pass a spending bill with wall funding in it. It probably could have got 51 votes in the Republican Senate. But Democrats would have filibustered. Even last year when the shutdown started, we had SOME power. If not for the threat of filibuster, Republican majorities likely would have given Trump his wall, and the government would have remained open.
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:40 AM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


It was such a tee-up for victim blaming analogy replies (which were bountifully delivered on cue) that I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone in AP social media must have been trolling. This timeline isn’t that stupid...is it?

The timeline is certainly stupider than we can imagine, but I tend to agree. I also think it was a case of trolling, but hamstrung by "too smart for your own good" and "didn't read the room right".

Because context is crucial, I think it's good to read the article referenced in the tweet
the AP was enumerating the issues that Individual-1 brought up. After a fine of debunking DJT's claims that his wall would stop drug trafficking, they turned to WALL MONEY: (emphasis mine)
WALL MONEY

TRUMP: “Democrats will not fund border security.”

THE FACTS: That’s not true. They just won’t fund it the way he wants. They have refused his demand for $5.7 billion to build part of a steel wall across the U.S.-Mexico border

Democrats passed legislation the day they took control of the House that offered $1.3 billion for border security, including physical barriers and technology along the U.S. southern border.

Senate Democrats have approved similar funding year after year.

Democrats have also supported broader fence-building as part of deals that also had a path to legal status for millions of immigrants living in the country illegally.

In 2013, Senate Democrats voted for a failed immigration bill that provided roughly $46 billion for a number of border security measures — including new fencing — but that legislation would have created a pathway to citizenship for some of the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

The 2013 Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act had money to double the number of miles of fencing, to 700 miles (1,126 km), as well as for more border patrol agents. It also had a mandatory employment verification system to ensure all U.S. employees are authorized to work in the country. In exchange, however, the bill allowed immigrants living in the country illegally to apply for a provisional legal status if they paid a $500 fine and had no felony convictions.

As well many Democrats voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which has resulted in the construction of about 650 miles (1,050 kilometers) of border barrier. But that legislation didn’t authorize the kind of wall Trump has long been advocating since he launched his campaign.
Which is a wonderful takedown, leading with the bit about "just not the way he wanted". Now feeling quite confident in their material, the author goes for a real dose of snark.
THE DEMS

HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI: “The fact is: President Trump has chosen to hold hostage critical services for the health, safety and well-being of the American people and withhold the paychecks of 800,000 innocent workers across the nation - many of them veterans.” — response to Trump’s remarks.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, Senate Democratic leader: “The president of the United States - having failed to get Mexico to pay for his ineffective, unnecessary border wall, and unable to convince the Congress or the American people to foot the bill - has shut down the government.” — response to Trump.

THE FACTS: That’s one way to look at it. But it takes two sides to shut down the government. Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for his border wall is one reason for the budget impasse. The refusal of Democrats to approve the money is another.
In context, the humor is obvious. The punchline is THE FACTS:, which is why there isn't the comprehensive facts as seen in the prior section.

Going through AP's feed, it appears that their social media team did a post for EACH of the items debunked, and the snarky one got fed into the blender. Out of context, the tweet for this one got the rightful response, "What the fuck is wrong with you, AP?"

It certainly energized the discussion of whom exactly is responsible for the situation, so even with the failed social media post / author being too smart for their own good / editor not even thinking about this scenario trolling fail, it still may be a net positive.
posted by mikelieman at 3:52 AM on January 9, 2019 [21 favorites]


I want to make it clear that I still hold Trump responsible for the shut down. I mean, if a kidnapper demands ransom money, it may be true that the family of the hostage could get them released by paying the ransom. But if the family doesn't pay and the kidnapper kills the hostage, the family isn't equally responsible for that killing just because they could have stopped it and didn't. Still, though, if I were such a family member I would struggle to believe I wasn't responsible at all.

But there are good reasons we don't negotiate with hostage takers and terrorists. If we give in to Trump's demand here, he'll use this tactic every time he wants something, and federal workers and the people who depend on them will be in much greater jeopardy. This needs to not work.

But I still don't think it's fair to attack the press for pointing out the obvious truth that we COULD pay the ransom.
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:15 AM on January 9, 2019 [9 favorites]


Rust Moranis: McConnell : USA : : Beria : USSR

This is... not a good comparison. As bad as you've got it in the US, McConnell isn't known for raping hundreds of young women and burying the ones who refuse in his backyard with the tacit approval of the rest of the government, nor for sending thousands of his political enemies to the Gulag.
posted by clawsoon at 4:15 AM on January 9, 2019 [21 favorites]


ABC News: Rosenstein expected to depart DOJ in coming weeks once new attorney general confirmed

“Rosenstein apparently had long been thinking he would serve about two years, and there was no indication that he was being forced out at this moment by the president.”
posted by C'est la D.C. at 4:21 AM on January 9, 2019 [14 favorites]


But I still don't think it's fair to attack the press for pointing out the obvious truth that we COULD pay the ransom.

He COULD have been more obedient to the officer who shot him. She COULD have worn a less attractive dress. It's indefensible to blame the victim in 2019. And it's too late in the game for AP to snarkily troll without making it a hell of a lot more obvious, so I'm not buying that one either. Let them come out and admit they're standing with us; we're way past deriving sustenance via mild amusement.

Anyway, any word on total viewership of the speech? I hope at least that the networks suffered for their cave.
posted by xigxag at 4:40 AM on January 9, 2019 [27 favorites]


THE FACTS: That’s one way to look at it. But it takes two sides to shut down the government. Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for his border wall is one reason for the budget impasse. The refusal of Democrats to approve the money is another.

This is pretty obviously untrue in even embarrassingly recent history. The republicans when in control of both houses and the white house came to the brink of a shutdown at least twice already during Trump's term all on their own.

Does the AP have a short-term memory deficit?
posted by srboisvert at 5:14 AM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


If not for the threat of filibuster, Republican majorities likely would have given Trump his wall, and the government would have remained open.

Rs could've built the wall with 50 votes in the Senate in either of the reconciliation bills they brought forward, but instead focused them on trying to repeal Obamacare and for tax cuts. Because even Rs don't want to build the fucking wall.
posted by chris24 at 5:14 AM on January 9, 2019 [27 favorites]


chris24: Because even Rs don't want to build the fucking wall.

Is building the wall the new anti-abortion for Republicans? I.e., do many of them see it as a fundraising cash cow for as many decades as it doesn't get built?
posted by clawsoon at 5:25 AM on January 9, 2019 [17 favorites]


Even in context, there is nothing at all obviously witty or snarky or sarcastic or anything remotely approaching humor in that fact check paragraph from the AP. I don't think it's just my innately poor ability to detect such things either.

For this subject, with this President, in the context of his Administration's tireless devotion to broad systematic disinformation, while the very existence of democracy in the U.S. is at stake, a responsible media company should be much more overtly mature and sober. "Both side-ism" is itself such a wicked evil rhetorical strategy, only used in ignorance or bad faith, that it cannot function as the crux of any attempt at humor.

Tongue in cheek both side-ism is still both side-ism.

If you are right that this was attempted humor, then there's still a reckoning required. The subject matter deserves sober maturity. Fascists / fascist wannabes (is there a useful difference) have infiltrated our government and are using all the tools at their disposal to destroy my country in any and every way they can. So, to see a major media outlet both side-ing, embracing and using one of the favorite tools of these fascist infiltrators, while in a purported fact check of the fascist in chief is extremely troubling.

Even after multiple re-readings, I still can't detect any attempt at humor there. It is still stark and disconcerting.

The rest of that AP piece is pretty solid. Great work in fact. Most of what I've seen from other sources is still stuck in horceracing everything, so this is better.

But holy crap that paragraph is just indefensible.

Yes, I will stop now. Puppy and kitten videos are all I can handle for the rest of this day.
posted by yesster at 5:31 AM on January 9, 2019 [17 favorites]


On the, um, lighter side of things: BuzzFeed News - A gambling site is paying out thousands of dollars to people who correctly bet that President Donald Trump would tell more than 3.5 lies in his Oval Office address on Tuesday. Wherein a gambling website set their odds based mostly on, "Well, he's only got 8 minutes, how many lies can he tell?"

And then . . . oops.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:33 AM on January 9, 2019 [74 favorites]


Even in context, there is nothing at all obviously witty or snarky or sarcastic or anything remotely approaching humor in that fact check paragraph from the AP. I don't think it's just my innately poor ability to detect such things either.

I'm already seeing it reposted in various forums by Trump supporters. So, if it really is meant as sarcasm or something, it's a huge fail.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:35 AM on January 9, 2019 [11 favorites]


I suspect we’ll find out there were multiple speeches written and he backed down from more forceful versions at the last minute.

I'm feeling very relieved that he backed down from claiming emergency powers. The prospect of going on tv to issue a declaration that he's just going to give himself kinglike authority to do as he pleases, and Congress can suck it, is about as compelling a concept as is possible for this guy to fit in his head all at once. That he opted not to go through with it means somebody was able to convince him that he wouldn't be able to do it and hold onto power, I can't think of any other explanation. These 8 minutes of blathering look like strong evidence that Trump feels hemmed in and unable to act on his most authoritarian impulses.
posted by contraption at 5:49 AM on January 9, 2019 [37 favorites]


Guardian: Joshua Tree National Park Announces Closure After Trees Destroyed Amid Shutdown—Maintenance and sanitation problems also reported 18 days after government shutdown furloughed the vast majority of park staff

“While the vast majority of those who visit Joshua Tree do so in a responsible manner, there have been incidents of new roads being created by motorists and the destruction of Joshua trees in recent days that have precipitated the closure,” spokesman George Land said in a news release.
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:04 AM on January 9, 2019 [16 favorites]


"So-called universal background checks will never be universal because criminals do not comply with the law," said NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker.

Great! How many mass shootings were committed by petty criminals?
posted by notsnot at 6:21 AM on January 9, 2019 [23 favorites]


Trump heading to the Hill for support from Republicans. Maybe this will be over soon, as they say, with a whimper. < WaPost

'House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) are holding an event with furloughed federal workers, and lawmakers from the Washington area will highlight the negative impact of the shutdown with union leaders.
Trump, meanwhile, is heading to Capitol Hill at lunchtime to shore up support among Senate Republicans and then will host an afternoon meeting at the White House with congressional leaders from both parties for their first face-to-face talks since last week.'
posted by Harry Caul at 6:21 AM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


...there have been incidents of new roads being created by motorists and the destruction of Joshua trees in recent days that have precipitated the closure...

Sadly, those intent on wrecking a place like Joshua Tree probably see the closure as merely something else to ignore because gov'mint.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:22 AM on January 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


That he opted not to go through with it means somebody was able to convince him that he wouldn't be able to do it and hold onto power

Honestly, I think it was the Manafort unredaction that did it. I mean, that was the whole smocking gun part, right? I think he knows his goose is cooked. Also, is there any chance that not-Manafort was responsible for the unredaction? The court? Mueller? The court acting on Mueller's suggestion? Because if so, that was a really smart move.
posted by sexyrobot at 6:23 AM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


A gambling site is paying out thousands of dollars to people who correctly bet that President Donald Trump would tell more than 3.5 lies in his Oval Office address on Tuesday.

Usually that means a roughly equivalent number incorrectly bet. Serves them right.

[National Parks] spokesman George Land

Lazy writers.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:24 AM on January 9, 2019 [19 favorites]


Trump heading to the Hill for support from Republicans.

Has Trump ever lowered himself to actually go to the Hill? My impression has been that he only meets the little people on his turf.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:25 AM on January 9, 2019


Buzzfeed (linked by soundguy99): A gambling site is paying out thousands of dollars to people who correctly bet that President Donald Trump would tell more than 3.5 lies in his Oval Office address on Tuesday.

ChurchHatesTucker: Usually that means a roughly equivalent number incorrectly bet. Serves them right.

It doesn't look like it this time? In general, the house does always win by establishing proper odds, but the story is how this time they lost (on balance) by setting their ceiling too low. A bit like a carnival misjudging the fairgoers' throwing accuracy and promising a prize if you hit an "impossible" three or more targets in a row, but with lies-per-minute.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 6:35 AM on January 9, 2019 [8 favorites]


Trump’s Oval Office Address Was Classic Stephen Miller (McKay Coppins, The Atlantic)
While it’s impossible to say just how much of the address he wrote, all of the tics and tropes of Millerian rhetoric were on display. The scary immigrants (“vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs”). The gory anecdotes (a veteran “beaten to death with a hammer by an illegal alien”). The decidedly un-Trumpian flourishes (“a crisis of the heart, and a crisis of the soul.”)

In setting the stage for Trump’s prime-time address, White House officials had insisted that the president was making a good-faith effort to win over skeptics of his border-wall proposal and get the government reopened. But the speech he ended up giving was not calibrated for persuasion. It was, by and large, dark, divisive, and shot through with the kind of calculated provocation that rallies the president’s fans and riles his enemies. It was, in other words, classic Stephen Miller.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:44 AM on January 9, 2019 [23 favorites]


IANADoctor. Or a drug expert. But as a photographer I will say that it's not normal for someone's eyes to be that dilated in front of the lights needed for broadcast.

Mikel Jollett
Adderall is an amphetamine which makes your pupils dilate. This is a person sitting in front of bright TV lights whose pupils should be contracted.
Side effects of Adderall addiction include aggression, memory loss, mania, impulsivity and disorientation.
PIC
posted by chris24 at 6:49 AM on January 9, 2019 [70 favorites]


This is a person sitting in front of bright TV lights whose pupils should be contracted.

This seemed like something ripe for fake news and photoshop, so I checked. Here’s a link to CSPAN’s recording of the speech. If you skip to 6:59 and zoom in, you can confirm the blown pupils for yourself.

Though in the president’s defence, it doesn’t need to be Adderall abuse. Maybe he dropped a tab of acid a couple of hours before the speech?
posted by chappell, ambrose at 7:06 AM on January 9, 2019 [21 favorites]


Literally everyone with drug experience has been saying, since at least the primaries, that the man is an obvious speed freak. It's really, really, really obvious.

Otoh it's just one of many things that are really, really obvious which nonetheless our media is incapable of acknowledging. Like somehow the man has made "the emperor has no clothes" wildly insufficient. It's more like the emperor's on bath salts.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:10 AM on January 9, 2019 [55 favorites]


Mod note: Couple deleted. Let's leave it there on drug speculation unless there's some concrete info.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:12 AM on January 9, 2019 [17 favorites]


@costareports: Major question facing WH today isn’t “will Dems buckle?” but “will Republicans hold?” Unlike Russia probe or Kavanaugh nom, this wall fight has been less emotionally charged for GOP base, with POTUS seen by many on right as correct but cornered — and not a victim.

Robert Costa has a pretty good bead on Republican congressional sentiment. Judging by his twitter feed, last night did not exactly go well in terms of support for the wall.
posted by zabuni at 7:29 AM on January 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


ABC News (linked by C'est la D.C.): Rosenstein expected to depart DOJ in coming weeks once new attorney general confirmed

As part of this, he's now transferred his authority over the Mueller investigation to Matt Whitaker, who is not limited by any recusal. This is rather not good.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 7:33 AM on January 9, 2019 [9 favorites]


Diplomats slog away without pay as Pompeo visits Middle East - Bloomberg

I've worked with FSOs in the past, they're throughly professional but it's a hard job even when you are being paid. Doubly so for the Secretary's advance teams (almost all career civil servants BTW) - they work a ton of overtime, never see family, travel almost constantly - it's brutal. Now they're being asked to do it for free.

I'm one of those Feds now working unpaid (the joys of being an essential employee) and just got my last paycheck for a while apparently, fortunately I have a healthy emergency fund and can ride it out for a while but suffice to say I'm not at all happy about it. I can't even imagine what it's like for those who aren't so fortunate.
posted by photo guy at 7:36 AM on January 9, 2019 [28 favorites]


We're friends with a family in our neighborhood, both the husband AND wife are federal employees.

They told me on Sunday that they both go to work and sit at their desks all day and wonder about how long their savings are going to last. There's no permission or funding to do any of the field work they're tasked to do. They're just sitting there.

They're optimistic, but I can see the touch of fear/sadness/anger in their eyes. This sucks.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:42 AM on January 9, 2019 [46 favorites]


The inimitable S. Kendzior (Globe&Mail): Forget the wall. Trump is the national security crisis.

[...] Poor me, Mr. Trump similarly implored in his address to the nation Tuesday night: it was an eight-minute teleprompter speech filled with lies about the danger of Central American migrants and threats to let a national security crisis he created continue unless Democrats bow to his ever-changing will.
The speech was akin to a hostage video, and American viewers were his captive audience. We watched because the stakes felt too high to turn away. We watched because Mr. Trump has taunted us with talk of declaring a “national emergency” – an act which gives him the power to do things like kill the internet, freeze bank accounts, and turn military troops into a domestic police force. We watched because Mr. Trump has long applauded death through his praise of dictators and criminals. We watched because the path to American autocracy was laid out upon his election, and we wanted to know which victims were next.[...]
posted by progosk at 7:55 AM on January 9, 2019 [23 favorites]


Wow, what a damp squib of a nothingburger. I hope Stormy Daniels folding laundry was more entertaining than this low-energy reheated-leftovers of a campaign speech.

Meanwhile, it looks like the hostage taker has been at it again this morning. I-1's tweet according to the Guardian, deleted or edited since then?
Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forrest fires that, with proper Forrest Management, would never happen. Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!
It's like Forrest Gump has been setting the fires, and California hasn't deported him yet.
posted by RedOrGreen at 7:59 AM on January 9, 2019 [22 favorites]


And, also hers: I've said this before, but it bears repeating: media acquiesence to Trump is not about ratings. Spy, mafia, and sex crime stories sell -- and they killed Trump stories on those topics for years. Standing up to Trump also sells, and most won't do it. The motive is something else.
posted by progosk at 8:00 AM on January 9, 2019 [45 favorites]


The argument that the media is pro-Trump purely because of ratings has always seemed weak to me. Sure, ratings are doubtless a component of the media's endless promotion of Trump, but that explanation is insufficient to explain what we're seeing.

I'm pretty sure that at least at the upper echelons the owners and managers of the media are basically as terrified of leftists gaining power as the most MAGA Hat wearing Trumper out there. Possibly for different reasons, but they are united in their fear and hatred of the left. And Trump is the anti-leftist they want to be in power.

Some of the bosses may feel a bit dirty supporting Trump and try to find all manner of excuses to justify it, or explain it away as not really being supportive of Trump. But in the end they support Trump because they want the least leftist person they can get in the White House.

The CEO's and owners and board members and whatnot of NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, etc all have one thing in common: they're rich. And rich people do not want leftism to rise, because then they'd be less rich.

That's why the media obsesses over every stumble and misstatement by AOC while basically ignoring the tsunami of outright lies from Trump. They want her to fail and him to keep passing those sweet tax cuts for billionaires.
posted by sotonohito at 8:08 AM on January 9, 2019 [68 favorites]


Did he really tweet that with that spelling? Forrest? Like Nathan Bedford Forrest? The dog whistles are sirens at this point.

In this very one case I can see it as an actual accident.

I'm a very good speller and I frequently put two Rs in forest. And I have family up my mom's side named Forest and I play Magic: the Gathering(where in one of the basic cards in the game is "Forest").

And while it could easily have been one of his advisors, Trump himself isn't smart enough to plug NBF here.
posted by Twain Device at 8:11 AM on January 9, 2019 [5 favorites]


Sean Hannity issues dire warning: If taxes are raised, "rich people are not going to remodel their homes" (Video w/Transcript, MediaMatters Staff)

Not surprisingly, Hannity has a whole chain of statements about what rich people won't or can't do if taxes are raised.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:12 AM on January 9, 2019 [12 favorites]


I'm pretty sure that at least at the upper echelons the owners and managers of the media are basically as terrified of leftists gaining power as the most MAGA Hat wearing Trumper out there. Possibly for different reasons, but they are united in their fear and hatred of the left. And Trump is the anti-leftist they want to be in power.

It's practically a law of physics that capital will always choose fascism over socialism if given the choice.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:17 AM on January 9, 2019 [39 favorites]


Robert Costa has a pretty good bead on Republican congressional sentiment.

The flipside to the GOP advantage in the Senate is that many of those large low-population states between the Mississippi and the coast have a large federal overlay. (Even if it's often begrudging.) Whether it's USDA or NPS or BLM or Indian Affairs or any other shuttered agency, you may see some movement from unexpected places.
posted by holgate at 8:17 AM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


It's practically a law of physics that capital will always choose fascism over socialism if given the choice.
Fascism is capitalism in decay
posted by contraption at 8:29 AM on January 9, 2019 [17 favorites]


Democrats Start Investigative Gears, but Slowly
Democrats, transitioning into the House majority, have quietly sent dozens of letters in recent weeks seeking documents and testimony from President Trump’s businesses, his campaign and his administration, setting the table for investigations that could reach the center of his presidency.
...
But Democrats, after slamming House Republicans for their inadequate inquiry, do not plan to reopen a full-scale Russian interference investigation. They have also chosen to hold off on an immediate request for Mr. Trump’s tax returns.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:29 AM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


Daily Beast has an update on a case that might have fallen off the megathread radar: Trump Campaign Consultants Cambridge Analytica Found Guilty of Breaking Data Laws—The British analytics company employed by the Trump campaign has been fined for refusing to disclose to an American voter how much data they held on him and how they used it.
Cambridge Analytica has been found guilty of breaking data laws after refusing to disclose how much information it holds on an American professor, where it got the data, and—perhaps most importantly—how it used it and who it gave it to.

The British analytics firm, which was hired by the Trump campaign, has been accused of misusing the Facebook data of almost 100 million Americans while working to elect President Trump.

Prof. David Carroll, at the Parsons School of Design in New York, filed a formal request to see what data was held on him after reading about Cambridge Analytica’s role in the 2016 presidential election. Under British data laws, companies are required to disclose what they hold on any individual who makes such a request.

SCL Elections, a parent company of Cambridge Analytica, confirmed it did have data on Carroll, including detailed metrics on his political views, specifically how he was likely to vote and which hot-button issues like gun rights or immigration would motivate him.
The actual penalties are minor, but at least the verdict sets a precedent:
In court Wednesday, the administrators of SCL Elections, which declared bankruptcy in May last year, finally admitted that it had broken the law. The last-minute guilty plea came on the day the trial was scheduled to begin.

The judge ruled the company had shown a “willful disregard” for the enforcement of data laws, but sentenced the company to pay less than $20,000—even with the addition of some of the costs, the penalty was around $26,000.

There was no suggestion the administrators will now grant Carroll’s request for access to the full data on him. That information is held on computers seized from Cambridge Analytica by the ICO, and stores around 700 terabytes of data, which the court was told equated to around 81 billion pages of information.
This is just one piece of the Trump-Russia scandal, but this outcome now definitively links links the Trump campaign to privacy data abuse by Cambridge Analytica through Steve Bannon.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:36 AM on January 9, 2019 [31 favorites]


Hey, it occurred to me, now that the right target for pressure are the Republicans in the Senate: Mitch McConnell knew about the Russia treason all along. He aided and abetted it during the 2016 election. And it's likely that he's implicated in some of the illegal money laundering type stuff, or at least knows who in his caucus is. (Lindsey Graham. Tom Cotton. Probably more.)

This seems like a pretty big cudgel, no?

Christ why do I still believe in things
posted by schadenfrau at 8:37 AM on January 9, 2019 [48 favorites]


Regarding media deference to Trump, I think Alexandra Erin's recurrent point that few phenomena in the social/political sphere have One True Cause is apropos. Trump drives ratings, plus the top brass definitely leans conservative/reactionary/plutocratic, plus national conservatism has worked the refs for so very long.

(If we're specifically asking why the networks declined to air Obama's 2014 speech about DACA, in contrast to the new norm of automatic free airtime, I suspect ratings-plus-ref-working is more key, and also force of habit created by the confluence of all the factors. If they wanted to not air the thing, they'd need to "explain" what changed when nothing in particular has. But when it comes to the specific issue of immigration, moguls tend to prefer the neoliberal exploit-the-migrants approach to the fascist keep-them-out one, unless they do actually feel it's better to invest in fascism now.)
posted by InTheYear2017 at 8:37 AM on January 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


Any word on total viewership?

TV Ratings: Democrats' Response to Trump Speech Outdraws President in Early Numbers
posted by msalt at 8:39 AM on January 9, 2019 [43 favorites]


It looks like Trump's speech didn't convince key members of the audience:
There’s growing concern about the toll the shutdown is taking on everyday Americans, including disruptions in payments to farmers and trouble for home buyers who are seeking government-backed mortgage loans — “serious stuff,” according to Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, urged colleagues to approve spending bills that would reopen various agencies, “so that whether it’s the Department of the Interior or it is the IRS, those folks can get back to work. I’d like to see that.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called the standoff “completely unnecessary and contrived. People expect their government to work. ... This obviously is not working.”

[...] Like other Republicans, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said she wants border security. But she said there was “no way” the shutdown fight would drag on for years as Trump warned last week.

I think certainly I have expressed more than a few times the frustrations with a government shutdown and how useless it is,” Capito said Tuesday. “That pressure is going to build.”
posted by Little Dawn at 8:45 AM on January 9, 2019 [28 favorites]


Ruminations on RICO and Asset Forfeiture in the Trump Business Empire (Martin J. Sheil, Just Security via Slate)
Trump-related investigations appear to be suitable for consolidation into one RICO investigation that could ultimately seize Trump assets and cast the president as the kingpin at the head of a criminal organization.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:50 AM on January 9, 2019 [30 favorites]


More from Lawfare on the Veselnitskaya obstruction indictment. Also of note, the 20 Pine Street building used to launder money stolen from the Russian treasury is right across the street from.... The Trump Building!!’ (40 Wall Street).
posted by Roger_Mexico at 9:13 AM on January 9, 2019 [21 favorites]


There’s growing concern about the toll the shutdown is taking on everyday Americans, including disruptions in payments to farmers

I wonder if this is in relation to SNAP benefits. A lot of people don't realize that SNAP/food stamps are basically a direct payment to farmers (y'know because of the relationship between farming and food) and reducing those benefits (or cancelling them all together, or stopping them in a shutdown) is directly harmful to farmers, big and small alike.
posted by sexyrobot at 9:14 AM on January 9, 2019 [9 favorites]


SNAP has enough money in its emergency fund to continue making payments to beneficiaries through the end of February.
posted by notyou at 9:29 AM on January 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


  • TPM: The ‘Collusion’ Debate Ended Last Night
  • WaPo: The new Russia revelations are more consequential than Trump’s newsless immigration speech
  • David Burbach: What possible value would a Russian industrial oligarch find in U.S. political campaign polling data? Give me a reason other than, passing it on for the Russian election interference op? Deripaska himself would have more use for Arby's BBQ sauce recipe.
  • David Measer: THREAD: I'm just an advertising guy, but thought I'd put a marketing lens on the news of Manafort sharing "polling data" with a Russian operative...

    • posted by peeedro at 9:31 AM on January 9, 2019 [60 favorites]


    I'd further theorize that since so much of farming involves futures contracts and options the financial markets will account for the effects of not funding SNAP in their pricing models today and it will therefore affect those markets immediately.
    posted by VTX at 9:34 AM on January 9, 2019 [1 favorite]




    sexyrobot: "I wonder if this is in relation to SNAP benefits."

    No. More directly in this case as direct to farmer payments for things like insurance and compensation for the Trump Trade War aren't happening or aren't being processed before deadlines.
    posted by Mitheral at 9:37 AM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    and then they're fucking with the giants. Perdue. Tyson. Corporations whose concerns are represented to a greater degree in congress than the individual citizen
    posted by angrycat at 9:44 AM on January 9, 2019 [9 favorites]


    It's been suggested the polling data was needed so the Russians would know what states to focus their efforts on, but... couldn't Manafort have simply told them? I would be interested in what that information included, and more theories on how it could have been used.
    posted by xammerboy at 9:45 AM on January 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


    and then they're fucking with the giants.

    Yes, they are, the military industrial complex is starting to make nervous noises about the shutdown: Government shutdown starting to burn aerospace and defense firms (WaPo). Concerns over contracts with DoD, NASA, FAA, NOAA, and export control paperwork slowdowns.
    posted by peeedro at 9:47 AM on January 9, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Internal polling data is vastly more detailed than "WISCONSIN: Trump 44%, Clinton 45% (+/- 2.3)." There would be hyper-granular measurements of voter engagement, issue preferences, message testing, etc, etc.
    posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:48 AM on January 9, 2019 [40 favorites]


    Thanks. So it was basically a blueprint for pushing Americans over the edge, so to speak.
    posted by xammerboy at 9:52 AM on January 9, 2019 [10 favorites]


    ALSO, it's important to note, that data is not just to sort of thing that's useful in helping get a candidate elected (which is why campaigns gather it!) but also impossible for Russia to get on its own. Mounting a social media campaign is one thing, but they'd never have been able to commission an entire polling operation without it becoming blatantly obvious what was going on.
    posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:54 AM on January 9, 2019 [32 favorites]


    Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish: Internal polling data is vastly more detailed than "WISCONSIN: Trump 44%, Clinton 45% (+/- 2.3)." There would be hyper-granular measurements of voter engagement, issue preferences, message testing, etc, etc.

    Doktor Zed: Cambridge Analytica has been found guilty of breaking data laws after refusing to disclose how much information it holds on an American professor, where it got the data, and—perhaps most importantly—how it used it and who it gave it to.

    The British analytics firm, which was hired by the Trump campaign, has been accused of misusing the Facebook data of almost 100 million Americans while working to elect President Trump.
    ...
    SCL Elections, a parent company of Cambridge Analytica, confirmed it did have data on Carroll, including detailed metrics on his political views, specifically how he was likely to vote and which hot-button issues like gun rights or immigration would motivate him.

    Hyper-granular indeed.
    posted by filthy light thief at 9:54 AM on January 9, 2019 [20 favorites]


    Manafort and his crew wouldn't necessarily have had the number-crunching chops to find actionable advice in the data -- and they probably didn't have the polling data the Russians had stolen from the DNC with which to further number-crunch and cross-reference.
    posted by notyou at 9:55 AM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


    I guess my point was that cutting SNAP programs, while appealing to racists, has an adverse affect (in addition to other farm cuts, also the 'trade war') on farmers who make up a large part of the republican base (god knows why), essentially shooting themselves in the foot.
    posted by sexyrobot at 9:57 AM on January 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


    It's been suggested the polling data was needed so the Russians would know what states to focus their efforts on, but... couldn't Manafort have simply told them?

    Even if the information were that simple, Trump's team of failsons would never just pass it along if they could turn it into a big, overcomplicated tsimmes of pseudo-spycraft, because they think they're the coolest, smartest guys around. "Say the secret password* to the man with the red carnation at exactly 3:33pm to receive the envelope." The very notion would give them a tingle in their collective shorts.

    *"covfefe"
    posted by Faint of Butt at 9:59 AM on January 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


    The first time I got to directly look at the data in VAN (the main Democratic polling/voter database), I was astonished by the quantity and granularity of the data in it. Which I was allowed to casually look at. Because I was grabbing coffee with a friend who was working on a county-level campaign, and he wanted to show off the software he was working with.

    My immediate first thought was the incalculable amount of damage that could be done if this data were to fall into the wrong hands.

    This was in 2010. As far as I can guess, there's even more data now, it's all still in one place, and the access-controls remain virtually nonexistent.
    posted by schmod at 9:59 AM on January 9, 2019 [53 favorites]


    tl;dr; I'm fairly confident that we now know how much damage could be done.
    posted by schmod at 10:01 AM on January 9, 2019 [40 favorites]


    So it was basically a blueprint for pushing Americans over the edge, so to speak.

    In a way. Remember, no one, not even Trump's people, really thought he was going to win. The numbers weren't backing it up. What getting the polling data would help with is focusing efforts in various areas that, taken together, would affect the electoral college in Trump's favor, while not being so obvious a push as to raise flags and invite increased spending for Clinton.
    posted by Thorzdad at 10:04 AM on January 9, 2019 [11 favorites]


    This was in 2010. As far as I can guess, there's even more data now, it's all still in one place, and the access-controls remain virtually nonexistent.

    I used VAN to help with county-level races in 2018, and this is still largely true. It's a paradox though. If you make it harder for your enemies to access the data, you make it harder for your allies to leverage it.
    posted by diogenes at 10:06 AM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    I guess my point was that cutting SNAP programs, while appealing to racists, has an adverse affect (in addition to other farm cuts, also the 'trade war') on farmers who make up a large part of the republican base (god knows why), essentially shooting themselves in the foot.

    Actual farmers, people whose livelihood is dependent on farming and not just people who call themselves farmers because they have a big yard, make up less than 2% of the US population. They're a single-digit percentage of the GOP's total vote. Pissing off farmers won't hurt the GOP if they're also thrilling racists.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 10:07 AM on January 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


    'I'm Scared': TSA Families Fear Bills Due, Lost Security (NPR, Jan. 9, 2019)
    Jacinda says she has "no idea" what her family will do if the government shutdown continues through January. Her husband's last paycheck was Dec. 28 and, like many federal workers, he's unlikely to get his next one at the end of this week. He may not get the one after that, due at the end of January, either.

    "Our rent is due, the electric bill is due, our cell phones are now past due," she says.

    Her husband is a TSA officer in Portland, Ore., but he's not speaking publicly because the Transportation Security Administration forbids personnel to do so.

    "We are a paycheck-to-paycheck family," Jacinda, 36, says. We're not using her last name because she fears he could be fired.

    Jacinda says she has paid some of her rent — less than half — so she can save what she can for food and gas. After all, she says, "my husband has to drive to work every day."

    The government shutdown is increasingly straining employees who are essential to keeping the nation's aviation system safe and running. Many at the TSA, like Jacinda's family, don't have savings to fall back on and wonder how they'll make ends meet if they don't get paychecks or backpay soon.

    Jacinda, who wrote into NPR, says the shutdown is putting a lot of pressure on her family. Her husband has to go to work and he's not getting a paycheck, "which is ridiculous," she says. Even more ridiculous, Jacinda says, is that he came home the other day with instructions on how to file for unemployment while he's still working 40 hours a week.
    Transportation Safety Administration Staff fear loss of Security: happy 2019.

    If these personal tales of woe don't get the attention of decision-makers, maybe this will: A Warning About U.S. Credit Rating Could Signal Higher Interest Rates (NPR, Jan. 9, 2019, with the more informative page title "Shutdown Impact: U.S. Credit Rating Warning Could Signal Higher Rates")
    A major credit rating agency is warning that it will reconsider the nation's AAA rating if the partial U.S. government shutdown continues into March and raises doubts about the ability of Congress to lift the debt ceiling.

    A downgrade of the nation's pristine credit rating could lead to higher borrowing costs for the U.S. Treasury, companies and consumers.

    A number of government agencies have not been funded since Dec. 21 amid President Trump's insistence that Congress provide $5.7 billion for a wall along the border with Mexico.

    With a total debt of nearly $22 trillion and rising, the government's borrowing limit must be periodically raised by Congress.

    Fitch, one of three major credit rating agencies, warned Wednesday that uncertainty created by the 2 1/2-week shutdown could lead to doubts about whether lawmakers will be able to agree on raising the debt ceiling.

    "If this shutdown continues to March 1 and the debt ceiling becomes a problem several months later, we may need to start thinking about the policy framework, the inability to pass a budget ... and whether all of that is consistent with triple-A," James McCormack, Fitch's global head of sovereign ratings, said in London, according to Reuters. "From a rating point of view it is the debt ceiling that is problematic," he added.
    Cool, cool, we have until March 1 to really worry. Hey, that's when SNAP funds could run out, too!

    Except if airports are shut down because TSA employees stop showing up to voluntarily do their jobs,and if major road repairs and construction halt because there's no Federal transportation funds, things will be bleak much sooner. Highway and transit projects grind to a halt as the shutdown continues (Ashley Halsey III for Washington Post, January 8, 2019)
    Highway construction projects across the country have been jeopardized by the federal shutdown as state officials hesitate to authorize projects planned for 2019 without the assurance of federal funding.

    “If this continues to drag on it will have real impacts, not only on a state’s ability to build new projects but also on their ability to operate the system that they currently have,” said Jim Tymon, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. “Eventually it’s going to have an impact on operations and maintenance.”

    The percentage of federal funding that states rely on varies from one jurisdiction to the next, with states such as Montana and New Mexico getting more than 85 percent of their funding from Washington, while states such as New Jersey and Texas get a third or less of their outlay from the federal government.
    FYI, a big part of why western states get a higher percentage of Federal funding is due to the fact that they have more untaxed, Federal lands, and thus a smaller tax base to rely upon, so the Feds request a lower state funding match to Fed funds.
    posted by filthy light thief at 10:08 AM on January 9, 2019 [16 favorites]


    House Democrats to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. It'll be nice to see Uday (or is he Qusay?) under oath and ready to be thrown in the slam for perjury if he lies.
    posted by sotonohito at 10:10 AM on January 9, 2019 [67 favorites]


    Why Federal Workers Still Have to Show Up Even If They’re Not Being Paid (Russell Berman, The Atlantic) or "Why Unpaid Federal Workers Don't Strike in a Shutdown"
    Since the enactment of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, federal employees have been legally prohibited from striking. That law was intended to prevent public-sector workers from leveraging a work stoppage that could cripple the U.S. government or major industries in negotiations for better pay, working conditions, and benefits. But it likely did not envision a scenario where the government would require its employees to work without paying them, as is the case now.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 10:13 AM on January 9, 2019 [23 favorites]


    And another reminder that Trump is hurting the future of the United States: Canada Says, ‘Give Me Your MBAs, Your Entrepreneurs’ -- Foreign talent helps power the nation’s economic boom. (Natalie Wong, Theophilos Argitis, Natalie Obiko Pearson, and Erik Hertzberg for Bloomberg, Jan. 2, 2019)
    Ayesha Chokhani, who grew up in Kolkata, has no love of the cold. Yet when she went to study for her master’s degree, the 29-year-old student chose the University of Toronto, where winter temperatures can fall well below freezing.

    Chokhani had her pick of elite schools. She turned down Cornell and Duke in the U.S. Her reasons were clear: The anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Trump administration made her nervous. And Canada had an additional draw: She can stay up to three years after she graduates and doesn’t need a job offer to apply for a work permit. “I wanted to be sure that wherever I go to study, I have the opportunity to stay and work for a bit,” she says.

    In August, there were about 570,000 international students in Canada, a 60 percent jump from three years ago. That surge is helping power the biggest increase in international immigration in more than a century. The country took in 425,000 people in the 12 months through September, boosting population growth to a three-decade high of 1.4 percent, the fastest pace in the Group of Seven club of industrialized nations.
    The article also notes that "International applications to U.S. business schools dropped about 11 percent in 2018, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council in Reston, Va." but doesn't give a figure for the number of student visas were rejected under the Trump administration.

    There are also graphs of population declines in annual average population growth in Canada, U.K., U.S., France, Germany, Italy and Japan. So welcoming international students into the U.S. seems like a good way to boost the population with skilled, motivated people, even if they're not planning on making this their long-term home (though I wonder how many who initially say that find themselves staying after they get settled).
    posted by filthy light thief at 10:17 AM on January 9, 2019 [23 favorites]


    > Since the enactment of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, federal employees have been legally prohibited from striking. ... But it likely did not envision a scenario where the government would require its employees to work without paying them, as is the case now.

    Yeah, this seems ridiculous on its face. An employee signs a contract to work for pay, and there is no way a law can simply *require* them to work indefinitely without pay. My first thought was that there's no way the Federal Courts could have agreed to that interpretation, but here's the article:
    Faced with a potentially indefinite shutdown, the unions have turned to the courts for relief. The American Federation of Government Employees has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration alleging that by requiring employees to work without pay, the government is in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, a 1938 law that mandates a minimum wage and overtime pay both to public- and private-sector workers. Another federal labor group, the National Treasury Employees Union, has filed a similar suit.
    [...]
    Despite taking the government to court, neither union is encouraging its members to take part in any kind of work stoppage. “We encourage everyone who is being told to come to work to go to work,” Simon told me. “We are never going to advocate for something that’s illegal.”
    It looks like we've never had a shutdown long enough - yet - to actually test the proposition that some workers can be required legally to work without pay, indefinitely.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 10:19 AM on January 9, 2019 [14 favorites]


    As far as I can guess, there's even more data now, it's all still in one place, and the access-controls remain virtually nonexistent.

    And buckle up, because it's not going to get better anytime soon. There's almost a throw-away line in this piece here about people using cellular network data to track folks but it gets to the core of that problem and what we're talking about here:

    Frederike Kaltheuner, data exploitation programme lead at campaign group Privacy International, told Motherboard in a phone call that “it’s part of a bigger problem; the US has a completely unregulated data ecosystem.”

    Whenever I think about all this data warehousing and the inevitable breaches I remember something Bruce Schneier said in one of his monthly newsletters about companies who don't build in the cost of security to their data storage and other systems: they don't and won't until such a time as it's cheaper to prevent issues than it is to just oh-well and give everyone a year of credit monitoring. And it's cheaper because our legal landscape is that you don't own facts about yourself so you can't do much to sue and our legal system hasn't made the violations expensive either.

    I'm sort of ambivalent about this because in some ways the fact (hah) that facts can't be owned is a good thing. The NFL can't make it an intellectual property violation for you to report on a game score or describe a play. Engineering facts arrived at by research can't be suppressed. Well, without obnoxious gyrations anyway; Public Resource wages a lonely war against the way building codes and legal citations have been handed over to the control of corporations and you must pay them to look at them even though you're legally obligated to live with their confines. But the landscape of legal ownership of facts is how they're able to fight this fight at all. On the other hand, knowledge about us is worth money and has multitudes of ways to hurt us so why shouldn't we have some say about it?

    Anyway, Schneier has contrasted this to the way the US handles liability for fraudulent credit card use. You have legal protections and the credit card companies are on the hook for pretty much anything over $50 so they're hyper vigilant about policing use they might not get to pass on to you. They've succeeded in sleazily passing risk on to retailers with the chip card system but they still will turn off your ability to charge - in a highly reversible way so you can get back on the spend wagon - if their data mining leads them to believe there might be charges happening they won't get paid for.

    Compare that to the way the credit reporting agencies desperately avoid allowing you to just shut off quick credit checks via privacy holds. They know it's never going to be their expense when someone digs around in your shit so why should they do anything to stop or slow it down? Their emphasis is on making things better for their real masters, the people who pay them to learn stuff about you. You, the focus of that data? As the saying goes, you're the product not the customer.
    posted by phearlez at 10:20 AM on January 9, 2019 [23 favorites]


    Thorzdad: "What getting the polling data would help with is focusing efforts in various areas that, taken together, would affect the electoral college in Trump's favor, while not being so obvious a push as to raise flags and invite increased spending for Clinton."

    It also probably exposed a number of hyper-local, hot-button issues that were potentially exploitable.

    Back in 2012, the Romney campaign ran a bizarre local ad campaign in Loudoun County, VA, pitching the idea that Romney had a plan to fight Lyme disease.

    The campaign was, of course, total bullshit. Romney never had a secret plan to fight Lyme disease, and I honestly doubt that the issue ever even entered his mind over the course of his campaign.

    But it was also an incredibly savvy strategy. Lyme disease was, at that time, the bogeyman of this particular pocket of affluent, white suburbia. People cared about it a lot. If you wanted to tip the scales on a handful of purple-red counties, this is exactly the kind of campaign that gets your voters out to the polls by convincing the swing voters that your candidate cares about a hyper-personal and hyper-local issue.

    It's also the sort of campaign that requires tons and tons of data to work. You need to know what your voters care about, how much they care about it, and whether or not it's likely to tip the scales in your favor.

    It's also the kind of campaign that seems like it could be responsible for tipping a number of counties in the midwest at the very last minute.

    In Romney's case, the gamble didn't pay off, and he lost Loudoun county. It's not difficult to imagine, however, how similar hyper-local campaigns could have successfully tipped the balance elsewhere. Scarier still, in the era of Facebook (and particularly illegal Facebook agit-prop), most of these campaigns flew well below the radar.
    posted by schmod at 10:21 AM on January 9, 2019 [57 favorites]


    "the [VAN] access-controls remain virtually nonexistent."

    That's not true. While you can look up any individual person on your browser, they have to be in the campaign you are working on, and campaign workers certainly can't download any significant portion of the database without triggering alarms.
    posted by M-x shell at 10:23 AM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


    The Fact-Checkers Are Tools [Hmm Daily]:
    Since Trump only spoke for nine minutes, and the lies were the usual old ones, the fact-checkers needed to justify their night somehow. So they turned their attention to the Democratic response. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, had said, “No president should pound the table and demand he gets his way or else the government shuts down, hurting millions of Americans who are treated as leverage.”

    The New York Times flagged that claim as suspect. “This needs context,” it wrote, in the bold type it uses for verdicts on factualness.

    What the Times‘ fact-inspection shop objected to was the mention of “millions of Americans”:

    An estimated 800,000 federal workers are furloughed or working without pay due to the shutdown. While millions of Americans are not being directly harmed, there is a multiplier effect when considering family members. This also spills into the broader economy.

    The premise—coming from the bureau at the Times that covers the operations of the federal government—was that the only people affected by the government shutdown are the people who have government jobs. The sole function of the federal government, as the Times sees it, is to give out paychecks to federal government workers.

    Meanwhile, here’s some context: 1,150 federal rent-subsidy contracts with landlords who provide poor people’s housing have already expired with no money to renew them, with another thousand on their way to expiring, in a program that serves 1.2 million people. The federal food-stamp program, which serves 38 million people, is due to run out of funding before the end of February. Funding for other USDA food benefits has already been cut off, with state and local governments stuck covering the shortfall. The Bureau of Indian Affairs can’t pay for basic services on tribal land—as the Times itself reported.

    [...]

    Third-party fact-checking, as the establishment press does it, is the opposite of providing context. It is a process of breaking things apart—like Schumer’s completely accurate and lucid statement, or like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s criticism of the fact-checking process itself—till they lose their meaning. It purports to be an endpoint or resolution, but the fact-checks become more facts, hastily and indifferently reported ones, to be fed back into the news cycle and misused or misrepresented. Everybody gets Pinocchios; nothing gets to be real."
    posted by Atom Eyes at 10:24 AM on January 9, 2019 [53 favorites]


    WaPo, With inspectors furloughed, reduced FDA inspections ‘put our food supply at risk’
    The furloughing of hundreds of Food and Drug Administration inspectors has sharply reduced inspections of the nation’s food supply — one of many repercussions of the partial government shutdown that make Americans potentially less safe.

    The agency, which oversees 80 percent of the food supply, has suspended all routine inspections of domestic food-processing facilities, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in an interview. He said he’s working on a plan to bring back inspectors as early as next week to resume inspections of high-risk facilities, which handle foods such as soft cheese or seafood, or have a history of problems.
    ...
    DHS’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office is two-thirds empty. The DHS shutdown guide states that only 65 of the 204 employees of the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office will remain on the job during a funding shortfall. The rest go home.
    Some sad news for Giant Meteor 2020 supporters though: JPL's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, which is in charge of keeping track of asteroids that might crash into our planet, has funding for a few more months.
    posted by zachlipton at 10:27 AM on January 9, 2019 [18 favorites]


    So, most Americans blame Trump for the shutdown, and that view is growing. Surveys show blame for Trump around 47-50% (growing 4% since the start of the shutdown), versus around 33% for congressional Democrats (down since the start).

    But, among Trump voters, 70-80% blame congressional Democrats. Since those are the only True American's in Trump's world, that's all that matters.

    I find this view incredibly frustrating, especially given that most American's didn't vote for Trump by a wide margin.

    Another example: we can't eliminate the Electoral College, because, otherwise, "New York and California" would decide all presidential elections. Never mind that the current system give such deference to states with smaller populations that it overrode the desire of all Americans. They then turn themselves in circles about the Founder's Intent, ignoring that it was all a way to placate slave states.

    In sum, I really struggle to understand how Trump voters can't see that, in order to make sure they have a voice, they expect such disproportionate weight as to override the desire of the majority. Much less, how do they justify it in a logically consistent fashion.
    posted by MrGuilt at 10:30 AM on January 9, 2019 [12 favorites]


    @KagroX finally someone has adopted your How to read Trump rule! https://twitter.com/capehartj/status/1083062687062470658
    Someone tell this guy that they're stealing our bit stealing Devonian and Joey Michael's bit.
    posted by phearlez at 10:33 AM on January 9, 2019 [10 favorites]


    WaPo, Already reeling from tariff war, some farmers aren’t receiving government support checks amid shutdown
    The Trump administration had promised to help farmers like Boyd, those who suffered as a result of the international trade war after Chinese purchases of soybeans — once 60 percent of the market — plummeted to next to nothing. With farmers on the edge of ruin, the U.S. government offered $12 billion in support since September, checks that had become a lifeline.

    But with the government shutdown moving into its third week, Boyd was left waiting for his support check to arrive. Other farmers who still must have their crop totals approved by the government to receive aid were left with no way to apply for it.
    ...
    At the farm office here, about 15 miles from the North Carolina border, Boyd, 53, a fourth-generation farmer, saw that the lights were on inside. He rattled the door. Nothing. A note outside told the story: The office was closed due to a lapse in federal government funding.

    “This shutdown is affecting small people like myself, but if it continues, America is going to feel the impact everywhere — grocery stores, small businesses,” Boyd fumed, angry about the “fiasco” he feels Trump has created. “Right now, I need seed and diesel fuel; I do not need a damn wall. That does not help me in my farming operation.”
    So the administration is demanding $5B in wall funding, but that's holding up $12B in money we're supposed to pay to soybean farmers to try to make up for the fact that the trade war evaporated demand for their product.
    posted by zachlipton at 10:38 AM on January 9, 2019 [42 favorites]


    How Trump Officials Abuse Cost-Benefit Analysis to Attack Regulations (Dan Farber, Washington Monthly)

    The secret: selectively ignore benefits until the costs outweigh the remaining benefits.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 10:40 AM on January 9, 2019 [8 favorites]


    > A gambling site is paying out thousands of dollars to people who correctly bet that President Donald Trump would tell more than 3.5 lies in his Oval Office address on Tuesday.

    I am not a gambling man by nature, and when I do gamble I generally lose, but if I had been aware of this exciting investment opportunity yesterday I would have pounded a hole in the table in a rush to lay my cash on the over.
    posted by The Card Cheat at 10:41 AM on January 9, 2019 [69 favorites]


    Trump and basically everyone in his orbit has *no clue* what a paycheck-to-paycheck normal fucking life is like.

    He was asked about that in a QnA session after a bill signing today, his response was that he hears over social media that he's doing the right thing from people who are missing a paycheck, essentially: the lurkers support me in email.

    The best part was when ABC's Jonathan Karl asked why he doesn't sign the other bills that would open the government while border security funding was debated, Trump's response was to mockingly ask Karl SEVEN times "You think I should do that?" then he finished with, "If you would do that, you should never be in this position because you'd never get anything done." It was bad dialog from a gangster film.
    posted by peeedro at 10:45 AM on January 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


    "the [VAN] access-controls remain virtually nonexistent."

    That's not true.

    The controls may be in the system, but... um... my access level was upgraded in 2014 because I was moving around a few different campaigns in the last few weeks, and you probably know what didn't happen next. Last year, I was telling my candidate and her campaign manager about features that they didn't have access to.
    posted by Etrigan at 10:47 AM on January 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Some interesting new information about the new AG nominee:

    @StevenTDennis:
    Trump’s AG pick tells Graham he won’t end Mueller probe, doesn’t think it’s a witch hunt and will err on the side of transparency when Mueller issues his report

    William Barr and Robert Mueller have been friends for decades; Their wives attend Bible study together; Mueller has attended Barr’s daughters’ weddings, per Lindsey Graham after his conversation with Barr. Barr’s hearings are next week; Graham wants him confirmed quickly; Barr to meet with Feinstein.

    Barr did meanwhile stand by his memo warning against obstruction of justice charges for firing a political appointee; Graham said he shares Barr’s concerns
    Do we think Trump had any idea that Barr and Mueller were close when he nominated him? I can't imagine he'll be happy to hear this.
    posted by zachlipton at 10:51 AM on January 9, 2019 [52 favorites]


    You've likely heard about the gofundme site for money for The Wall. You may not have heard about the gofundme site for money for ladders to go over The Wall.

    A Purple Heart recipient and University of Arizona alum made headlines earlier this week by launching a GoFundMe page to raise $1 billion for President Trump's wall on the Mexican border.

    in response, an activist group has created a separate GoFundMe in order to build ladders to climb the border wall.

    The fundraiser was created by the appropriately-named Charlotte Clymer, a U.S. Army veteran who works for Human Rights Campaign. As of Saturday afternoon, the GoFundMe had raised just over $127,000 of its $100 million goal. And rather than actual ladders, Clymer said all funds will actually go to the Texas-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services.
    posted by bluesky43 at 10:52 AM on January 9, 2019 [27 favorites]


    The controls may be in the system, but... um... my access level was upgraded in 2014 because I was moving around a few different campaigns in the last few weeks, and you probably know what didn't happen next. Last year, I was telling my candidate and her campaign manager about features that they didn't have access to.

    So there are access controls. You have good access because you are trusted. But just try to download, say, all the data in your state, or just one county. I believe that would not work even for you.
    posted by M-x shell at 10:52 AM on January 9, 2019


    It looks like we've never had a shutdown long enough - yet - to actually test the proposition that some workers can be required legally to work without pay, indefinitely.

    That's correct. And honestly, government shutdowns are--look, the shutdowns in the 80s and 90s? With one exception, all of them were on the order of one or two days, possibly including a weekend. In that single exception, December '96 to January '97, only about 285,000 workers were actually impacted over a 21-day period. That's a lot of people, but compare it to the recent spate of shutdowns.

    In 2013, we had 2.1 million workers affected by shutdown for 16 days with 800,000 workers on unpaid leave and another 1.3 million people expected to report to work without known dates of pay. (I had friends who were furloughed, personally, and that plus the sequester shook my confidence in funding for science on a level I can't properly elucidate.)

    This shutdown has affected 800,000 workers total, of which we have 420,000 workers expected to report without pay and the remaining balance on furlough. And we are on day 18--so far the second-longest shutdown in US History, assuming it ends today. I would characterize the 2013 shutdown as worse, but then that shutdown was happening under a President who was taking the conflict and its impact on workers seriously and its impact was hitting Congressional officials as well through their staffers, creating more incentive to come to an agreement. We have no way of knowing how long this one will stretch out, and there has certainly never been one as bad since 2013.

    Buckle up, kids. This is going to be one hell of a bumpy ride, and 2013 will be reminding federal workers and lawyers about exactly how bad this could be. One shutdown of this magnitude is enough to write off shakily as a once-in-a-lifetime thing, maybe--but this is the second shutdown this year and the third in recent memory. I imagine support for clarity on this matter is likely to be very, very strong among federal union employees, and I would expect that wildcat strikes in violation of Taft-Hartley will become increasingly appealing as this drags on.

    (Personally, I think Taft-Hartley is one of the worst laws ever passed in American history, but... well, I don't write the lawbooks, and there's not enough popular outrage at it right now. There should be more.)
    posted by sciatrix at 10:52 AM on January 9, 2019 [39 favorites]


    Mr. Manafort asked that Mr. Kilimnik pass the data to Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to the Kremlin and who has claimed that Mr. Manafort owed him money from a failed business venture, the person said.

    The Times is correcting this:

    @amyfiscus: We have corrected this article to say that Manafort, via Gates, directed Kilimnik to make sure polling data got to Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, not Deripaska. I am deleting my earlier tweet to limit recirculation.

    It's still not really clear why Manafort would be handing US polling data to these two oligarchs instead:
    Both Mr. Manafort and Rick Gates, the deputy campaign manager, transferred the data to Mr. Kilimnik in the spring of 2016 as Mr. Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination, according to a person knowledgeable about the situation. Most of the data was public, but some of it was developed by a private polling firm working for the campaign, according to the person.

    Mr. Manafort asked Mr. Gates to tell Mr. Kilimnik to pass the data to two Ukrainian oligarchs, Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, the person said. The oligarchs, neither of whom responded to requests for comment, had financed Russian-aligned Ukrainian political parties that had hired Mr. Manafort as a political consultant.

    Why Mr. Manafort wanted them to see American polling data is unclear. He might have hoped that any proof that he was managing a winning candidate would help him collect money he claimed to be owed for his work on behalf of the Ukrainian parties.
    posted by zachlipton at 10:56 AM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Another example: we can't eliminate the Electoral College, because, otherwise, "New York and California" would decide all presidential elections.

    Actually, "Texas and California" would decide the elections. Both of those states have more people than New York. You know what other state has more people than New York? Florida (according to recent census estimates.) NY is #4 now. Now, as to the breakdown of how those states would vote? I am too lazy to do the research, but the popular vote is a hell of a lot more interesting than NY and CA getting to decide for everyone.
    posted by nushustu at 10:59 AM on January 9, 2019 [9 favorites]


    But the assumption is that NYC and Cali's coastal megacities would swing the vote, which is... mmmmmmmm.

    I think the panic is largely that urban people would decide the election and leave rural people behind, which is a fairly reasonable panic: there are way more urban people, even in states people popularly imagine as more rural. Which is politically convenient to imagine being true of Texas, despite the existence of five of the largest fifteen US cities within Texas' borders. Because those cities have been historically relatively conservative as compared to other very large cities, the political imagination tends to undermine their urbanicity. But that has been changing on the ground in Texas.
    posted by sciatrix at 11:07 AM on January 9, 2019 [19 favorites]


    ...and we all know what "urban" is code for...
    posted by schmod at 11:07 AM on January 9, 2019 [55 favorites]


    Another example: we can't eliminate the Electoral College, because, otherwise, "New York and California" would decide all presidential elections.

    Actually, "Texas and California"

    Do you mean the people who live there would decide the election? Eliminating the electoral college prevents those states from deciding the election! Instead, those states influence the results by precisely the number of people in each who vote one way or another. So, Democrats in Texas and Republicans in New York would actually have a chance to influence the result.
    posted by M-x shell at 11:08 AM on January 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


    This shutdown has affected 800,000 workers total,

    No, it has affected 800,000 federal workers. Don't forget contractors, who do not receive back pay for this time as federal workers will. Senators who represent the DC area are working on a bill about it, though (there is a House version, as noted by Chrysostom above).
    posted by everybody had matching towels at 11:09 AM on January 9, 2019 [28 favorites]


    By the way, I oppose eliminating the EC, I just want to reform the ratio of EC votes per voter to be more equal across the board. The EC actually prevents nationwide recounts, which would be a disaster. Imagine Florida 2000 but everywhere? I can't.
    posted by M-x shell at 11:10 AM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Oh, thank you for that correction. I hadn't even paused to think about contractors; I'm more sensitive to knockdown effects on recipients of federal funds and state employees, because that's my industry. And I should have thought about it, because I've got a friend who's going into work as a federal contractor right now and going "wellp, what the hell do I do now?" at the moment.

    Do you know what the relative numbers of federal contractors are today versus in '97, by chance? I'm really curious, because I suspect (without evidence beyond educated guesswork) that the extended privatization of government is more likely to have set in now and resulted in more federal contractors today being affected than in decades past.
    posted by sciatrix at 11:11 AM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


    M-x shell: actually I live in Texas, so I'm not knocking it. I just get anxious when people talk like NY and CA are the two big, heavily populated places in the US because as sciatrix pointed out, 4 of the 11 most populous cities in the US are in Texas, 5 of the top 15. There are A LOT of people in Texas cities. Not as many as NYC or LA or Chicago, but still. A LOT.
    posted by nushustu at 11:14 AM on January 9, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Now, as to the breakdown of how those states would vote? I am too lazy to do the research, but the popular vote is a hell of a lot more interesting than NY and CA getting to decide for everyone.

    I've checked this in the past because of this silly talking point. Adding up the states from most populous to least, you reach 50% of the population after 10 states.

    I think the panic is largely that urban people would decide the election and leave rural people behind, which is a fairly reasonable panic: there are way more urban people, even in states people popularly imagine as more rural.

    I've also checked this. Adding up the top 300 municipalities doesn't break 50% of the U.S. population, and I'm too lazy to get a longer list.
    posted by a snickering nuthatch at 11:14 AM on January 9, 2019 [12 favorites]


    I think the panic is largely that urban people would decide the election and leave rural people behind, which is a fairly reasonable panic: there are way more urban people, even in states people popularly imagine as more rural.

    Kansas is 75% urban, Ohio's 78%, Pennsylvania 79%, Texas 85%, Utah and Arizona 91%. "Urban" in the conservative vocabulary has nothing to do with cities or population density: it's entirely a racial and cultural signifier.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 11:15 AM on January 9, 2019 [85 favorites]


    sciatrix When I've spoken with pro-Electoral College people who argue that the views, or rights, or whatevers of rural people must be protected by giving them an outsize say in politics, I've asked why exactly they think that the only minority who deserves this extra voice is rural?

    There's no history, either in America or worldwide, of city dwellers viciously passing anti-rural legislation that shows a need to protect people who are a minority based purely on their zip code. There is, however, a long history in America of white people viciously passing anti-black people laws. So I ask if they'd agree that to protect the voice, rights, whatever term they used, of black people we should give them all ten votes to balance the numeric advantage white people have.

    So far every person I've asked that question has either insulted me, gish galloped, changed the topic, invoked worship of the Founders, or told me that rural/urban is a fundamentally different issue than black/white but has been unable to explain why.

    Obviously they prefer the current setup because they know Republican voters are outnumbered by Democratic voters and they want to keep their unjust and unfair grip on power. But of course they never want to admit that.
    posted by sotonohito at 11:18 AM on January 9, 2019 [83 favorites]


    I suspect (without evidence beyond educated guesswork) that the extended privatization of government is more likely to have set in now and resulted in more federal contractors today being affected than in decades past.

    Anecdotally, that would be correct. My kind of role, my industry, is one of those that would have been a federal job 20+ years ago. There are so many industries like mine - you might be surprised what kind of federal work is done by contractors. It's not just janitorial and admin (as often highlighted during shutdowns), and it's not just Big Defense (as many people tend to think of when they think of government contractors).
    posted by everybody had matching towels at 11:19 AM on January 9, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Mod note: Maybe the Electoral College thing should get its own thread if people want to pursue it further
    posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:20 AM on January 9, 2019 [15 favorites]


    Yes, they are, the military industrial complex is starting to make nervous noises about the shutdown: Government shutdown starting to burn aerospace and defense firms (WaPo). Concerns over contracts with DoD, NASA, FAA, NOAA, and export control paperwork slowdowns.

    Duffelblog: Border Wall to be constructed out of unfinished Coast Guard cutters
    “Shut your mouth!” the president said, pointing at a reporter. “They can’t get here on boats. You think those rapists and murders can afford a yacht?”
    (/fake)
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:22 AM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Why Mr. Manafort wanted them to see American polling data is unclear. He might have hoped that any proof that he was managing a winning candidate would help him collect money he claimed to be owed for his work on behalf of the Ukrainian parties.

    Of course, absent collusion, that would be a non sequiter, because why else should he expect the Kremlin, supporter of his Ukrainian campaign, to also be pleased with him for helping out some American from Queens?
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 11:22 AM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Trump executive order seeks increased logging on federal lands [Brett French, Billings Gazette 1/8/2019]:
    After failing to receive broader authority to log national forests through the 2018 farm bill, President Donald Trump issued an executive order [Federal Register disclaimer*] Monday to boost the cut on Forest Service and Department of Interior lands.

    [*"During the funding lapse, Federalregister.gov is not being supported. If data feeds are not available from GPO, FederalRegister.gov will not be updated, so please use the official edition of the Federal Register on Govinfo (https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/fr). If there is a technical issue with the Public Inspection List, you can view the documents on public inspection at our office in Washington, DC or on archives.gov."]

    “To protect communities and watersheds, to better prevent catastrophic wildfires, and to improve the health of America's forests, rangelands, and other Federal lands,” Trump ordered the secretaries of Interior and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to identify a multitude of logging projects.

    The order also urges “developing and using new categorical exclusions” to speed projects along and avoid delays while also reducing the time required to comply with “obligations under the Endangered Species Act.”

    Although executive orders carry the force of law, Congress has the power to overturn them or deny funding.

    ...

    Under Trump’s latest order, the acting secretary of Interior — Ryan Zinke stepped down as the agency’s leader at the beginning of the year — is ordered to identify 750,000 acres of DOI lands to reduce fuel loading; 500,000 acres to protect water quality and mitigate severe flooding and erosion risk from forest fires; and to treat 750,000 acres of land for native and invasive species.

    Interior also must offer 600 million board feet of timber to reduce wildfire threats and improve forest health. To accommodate the logging, Interior is ordered to maintain public roads.

    ...

    Likewise, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue is ordered to identify 3.5 million acres of land for fuels reduction; 2.2 million acres for water quality and erosion; and treat 750,000 acres for native and invasive species.

    Trump also ordered the secretaries to identify by March 31 salvage logging projects where forests have been burned or killed by insect infestations.
    Responses for/against in the article.
    posted by cenoxo at 11:24 AM on January 9, 2019 [13 favorites]


    you might be surprised what kind of federal work is done by contractors.

    I have some idea, although not as much as I'd like! For other people who are curious, here are the federal agencies awarding contract work by total budget as of last year. Homeland Security is in first place, but not by much: NASA award nearly as much money to federal contractors. The State Department, Dept of Justice, Dept of Transportation, and USDA are also big contributors, and the FDA is listed along with the EPA. The biggest recipients of that money are also listed.
    posted by sciatrix at 11:34 AM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    There are so many industries like mine - you might be surprised what kind of federal work is done by contractors. It's not just janitorial and admin (as often highlighted during shutdowns), and it's not just Big Defense (as many people tend to think of when they think of government contractors).

    YEP.

    Pretty much any IT system supporting a program, from surveys of small tribes to grants in the hundreds of billions of dollars, was designed and is maintained by contractors. In my office (which is an IT shop within a division of a Cabinet-level departed), there are less than a dozen federal staff but about eighty contractors. Some of the contractors are former feds who lost their jobs and/or benefits, thanks to the decades' worth of sabotage of conservatives and libertarians who have vilified the idea of any service to one's country outside of the military.

    And apologies in advance for the rant, but it used to be that a job in the government came with excellent opportunities to find education, have great health care, and know that your years of civil service would be rewarded with decent support in your retired life. Nowadays, though, while you can still have pride in that service, just about the only major benefit to being a federal worker is the job security, and even that seems to be not long for this world. More and more, a job in the government has meant indifference, disdain, hate, or even violence. Witness the Bundy standoff and subsequent armed takeover of Malheur by armed bigots and thugs, who even here were given the benefit of the doubt by some despite their obviously violent aims.

    Anyway, this isn't in any way meant to denigrate the massive amount of work that contractors are now responsible for, because for many people, that's just about the only way to be involved in government work. And as we can see, a lot of that work is a thankless job that lives or dies based on the vagaries some of worst people in this country and their enablers.
    posted by zombieflanders at 11:44 AM on January 9, 2019 [59 favorites]


    The Exceptions to the Rulers (Adam Serwer, The Atlantic)
    "When people of color enter elite spaces, they’re often attacked as undeserving charlatans. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is no different."

    The focus on undeserving minorities receiving unearned benefits at white expense is not an incidental element of modern Republican politics; it is crucial to the GOP’s electoral strategy of dividing working-class voters along racial lines.
    ...
    Obama became the living, breathing symbol of the narrative that undeserving people of color were being elevated even as hardworking white people were being left behind. In a country where most wealthy CEOs, legislators, governors, presidents, justices, and judges are white Christian men, Republicans believe whites and Christians face more discrimination than anyone else.

    What this narrative is meant to obscure is the reality that American policy making has not created some nightmare inversion of power between white people and ethnic minorities, but a landscape of harrowing inequality where people are forced to beg strangers for money on the internet to pay their medical bills. Upward mobility is stagnant; those who are born rich, die rich, and those who are born poor, die poor. Real wages have risen painfully slowly for decades; housing, particularly in urban centers, is unaffordable; and young people are saddled with skyrocketing student debt for educations that did not provide the opportunities they were supposed to.

    These trends are even more pronounced for people of color, who have historically been excluded from government efforts to help Americans build wealth. The entirety of the Republican Party’s response to this situation during its two years of unified control of the federal government was a failed effort to slash health-care coverage for millions and a successful effort to cut taxes on the wealthy. The GOP needs a different story to tell about what’s wrong with the country, and the one about people of color living lavishly at the expense of white people who work hard and play by the rules is an old classic.
    …

    The unworthy, in this case, are not the legislators and their wealthy benefactors who have worked tirelessly for decades to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few, at the expense of American welfare and democracy. Rather, they are marginalized communities and their white liberal allies, who maintain a corrupt spoils system for black and brown people at the expense of hardworking white Americans. As long as rank-and-file Republicans are focused on these supposed villains, they won’t realize who is being conned, and who is trying to con them. And it isn’t Ocasio-Cortez.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 11:59 AM on January 9, 2019 [56 favorites]


    Politico: New Pentagon Chief Under Scrutiny Over Perceived Boeing Bias—Concerns about Patrick Shanahan’s Boeing ties have re-emerged since President Donald Trump said he may be running the Pentagon ‘for a long time.’
    Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan’s private remarks during his 18 months at the Pentagon have spurred accusations that he is boosting his former employer Boeing, people who have witnessed the exchanges told POLITICO — fueling questions about whether he harbors an unfair bias against other big military contractors.

    Shanahan, who spent 31 years at Boeing before joining the Pentagon in mid-2017, has signed an ethics agreement recusing him from weighing in on matters involving the mammoth defense contractor. But that hasn’t stopped him from praising Boeing and trashing competitors such as Lockheed Martin during internal meetings, two former government officials who have heard him make the accusations told POLITICO.
    Shanahan's shit-talking Boening's competitors and boosting his former employer may not have direct influence on Pentagon spending, but he definitely violating the spirit of his ethics recusal.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 12:10 PM on January 9, 2019 [16 favorites]


    he hears over social media that he's doing the right thing from people who are missing a paycheck, essentially: the lurkers support me in email.

    So, he's directly being led by bots. Which means Russia. I actually don't think he's making this up right here. I think he's literally scrolling through Twitter mentions all day. (also who the fuck pronounces 'patriot' like that...what the goddamn fuck. pay-try-oughts??1!)
    posted by odinsdream at 10:51 AM on January 9 [10 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]
    I get between 2 and 10 emails a day from RNC/TFP/ETC that all feed into identical "ADD MY NAME" click counters. They promise to "show Trump" the list of supporters for a given policy, which I interpret to mean that however many million clicks (bots/rubes) added themselves to a given bullshit policy/issue/agenda is flashed before him at some point in support of staying whatever crazy course they've chosen.

    The constant barrage from the right via email is bad enough, but it's compounded by a nearly identical operation run on the left by MoveOn/Our Revolution/Onward Together/DNC/ETC. The data that this generates must be significant, but it's also every last bit of it pointing directly at monetary contributions. Politics is a gaping maw of money-sucking—right and left just the un-hinged sides of the jaw—and nothing else will change about the system before that does.
    posted by carsonb at 12:11 PM on January 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


    US orders [wildlife] refuges to staff for hunters despite shutdown (Ellen Knickmeyer, AP)
    The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is directing dozens of wildlife refuges to return staffers to work to make sure hunters and others have access despite the government shutdown, according to an email obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 12:15 PM on January 9, 2019 [19 favorites]


    House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler is not fucking around: Acting AG Whitaker must appear before @HouseJudiciary. Despite claims otherwise, @TheJusticeDept Office of Legal Counsel has twice determined that DOJ officials must provide testimony at hearings, even during a funding lapse. Read my letter requiring his testimony by Jan. 29th:

    twitter link to the letter.
    posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:20 PM on January 9, 2019 [43 favorites]


    I think we’ll eventually learn that Manafort’s data and Cambridge Analytica’s stolen data was fed to the Russians for a literally individualized set of social media interventions- not just ads, but comments, replies, emails and DMs focused on key swing voters.

    It’s where we are inevitably heading unless serious privacy laws with teeth are passed. Also, kill Facebook.(Remember Zuckerberg talking about running for president? Shudder)
    posted by msalt at 12:21 PM on January 9, 2019 [29 favorites]


    ABC News: Rosenstein expected to depart DOJ in coming weeks once new attorney general confirmed

    Update: @KenDilanianNBC: News: A source close to Rod Rosenstein told @PeteWilliamsNBC today that Rosenstein plans to stay until Mueller submits his report -- further evidence that Mueller is close to wrapping up.

    I've heard that claim every couple weeks for the past year, though sourcing it to someone close to Rosenstein instead of Giuliani is a new twist.
    posted by zachlipton at 12:23 PM on January 9, 2019 [25 favorites]


    > sciatrix's Bloomberg link: Shutdown Threatens $200 Million a Day in Federal Contracts

    Purely a personal opinion, but the Trump Shutdown is not "leverage", it's a protection racket. After decades of dealing with — and learning from — the Mafia and Russian oligarchs, apparently The Donald can't be the Artful Dodger Dealer unless he thinks his offers can't be refused. It's time for a bipartisan Congress to give him an unmistakable NO, before he's encouraged to use this blackjack again.
    posted by cenoxo at 12:26 PM on January 9, 2019 [25 favorites]


    Meanwhile, in Canada... the newly formed "People's Party," which may describe themselves as populist, libertarian, or just plain freedom-lovin' depending on the day (but consistently anti-immigrant--er, excuse me, anti-multiculturalism), has unveiled its first electoral candidates, which include a wild-eyed anti-LGBT activist who calls gender fluidity "the greatest and most insidious assault against our children that this nation has ever seen."

    The party's leader (whose Twitter account I will not link to) was a close runner-up in the recent Conservative party elections who has tacked hard-right since then. When not railing against 'political correctness,' he can be found spreading conspiracy theories about the one world government, talking about the "need" to reduce family reunification policies, and advocating for the deregulation of everything from the Canada Post to the telecom industry. In other words, a mix of red meat for the masses and graft for the rich.

    It remains to be seen if any of this will resonate with the electorate in Canada, but the same forces at work in the US are working hard elsewhere too.
    posted by duffell at 12:39 PM on January 9, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Meanwhile, Obama is just his usual self
    posted by growabrain at 12:40 PM on January 9, 2019 [25 favorites]


    @realDonaldTrump: Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time. I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve Border Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier? Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye, nothing else works!

    @LisaDNews: SCHUMER: The president slammed the table, asked Speaker Pelosi if she would support his wall and when she said no, he walked out and said "we have nothing to talk about".

    @kylegriffin1: Chuck Schumer, coming out of the W.H. meeting, said that Trump "just got up and walked out" after about 30 minutes. "Again we saw a temper tantrum because he couldn't get his way."

    @stevenportnoy: PELOSI, after 3rd Sit Room mtg, tells reporters Trump thinks "maybe [federal workers] can just ask their father for more money. They can't."

    @SimonMaloy: feel like we have to keep reminding ourselves that there is no "dealing" or "negotiating" happening -- it's just Trump saying "give me what I want" and cajoling congressional Republicans to not break ranks

    I really think the only way this ends is if Senate Republicans look at the mounting shutdown damage (the Coast Guard just suggested that people try having garage sales) and insist on voting for the same spending bill they all passed unanimously in December. Or Trump declares an emergency and who knows what happens then.

    McConnell apparently no-showed the GOP press conference again; he really wants no part in any of this.
    posted by zachlipton at 12:41 PM on January 9, 2019 [93 favorites]


    Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time

    I know this is the very pettiest of all things to be upset about, but his first-naming people he is not on good terms with just to diminish them the slightest bit in other people's eyes is so childish and destructive when they are negotiating over actual lives.
    posted by corb at 12:46 PM on January 9, 2019 [53 favorites]


    .@RepPressley "I rise today in opposition to the occupant of the White House…I see right through you and so do the American people."

    Rep. Pressley's first speech on the floor of the House.
    posted by bluesky43 at 12:48 PM on January 9, 2019 [87 favorites]


    To be clear, assuming Democrats stay firm, any possible shutdown ending comes down to the Senate and/or the executive branch, right? There's no significant role for House Republicans in terms of likelihood they would filibuster or otherwise obstruct the Democratic majority there?
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 12:48 PM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    I think we’ll eventually learn that Manafort’s data and Cambridge Analytica’s stolen data was fed to the Russians for a literally individualized set of social media interventions- not just ads, but comments, replies, emails and DMs focused on key swing voters.

    I think we'll eventually learn that Russian online active-measures analytics along with data from hacked documents were fed back to the campaign, probably with plausible deniability. We know that the Guccifer 2.0 persona shared DCCC documents and turnout models with operatives. We also know very little about the US persons who interacted with Internet Research Agency people on the ground. I very much want to know the details and provenance of Parscale's FB Custom Audience / Lookalike Audience datasets, and I suspect Mueller does too.
    posted by holgate at 12:49 PM on January 9, 2019 [14 favorites]


    @stevenportnoy: PELOSI, after 3rd Sit Room mtg, tells reporters Trump thinks "maybe [federal workers] can just ask their father for more money. They can't."

    Hahahaha oh man I do not envy Pelosi having to hang out in Trump's head like that, but at least she's doing something fun with the place
    posted by schadenfrau at 12:50 PM on January 9, 2019 [110 favorites]


    I really think the only way this ends is if Senate Republicans look at the mounting shutdown damage (the Coast Guard just suggested that people try having garage sales) and insist on voting for the same spending bill they all passed unanimously in December. Or Trump declares an emergency and who knows what happens then.

    Well, i can think of another way, but it probably won't happen (yet)

    It starts with "I" and ends in "mpeachment and removal from office".
    posted by ArgentCorvid at 12:52 PM on January 9, 2019 [14 favorites]


    McConnell apparently no-showed the GOP press conference again; he really wants no part in any of this.

    He seems to act in the belief that he can't lose if he never shows up. Can't blow up the Death Star if it's not there.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 12:54 PM on January 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


    So far he’s right. There’s no one who’s paid attention at all for the last two years who doesn’t know that if McConnell allowed the Senate to pass the thing they already passed and sent it to Trump with a message, Trump would sign. He’d find some torturous, addle-brained but emotionally resonant excuse to claim it as a win, and he’d sign. He’s more easy to manipulate than a goddamn toddler.

    McConnell single handedly has the power to stop the shut down, and everyone knows it, but for some reason they’re not saying it.
    posted by schadenfrau at 12:58 PM on January 9, 2019 [71 favorites]


    ArgentCorvid: Well, i can think of another way, but it probably won't happen (yet)

    It starts with "I" and ends in "mpeachment and removal from office".

    Both conviction and veto-override (on a spending bill) require the same number of Senators. Yet the latter is vastly more likely to happen than the former, partly because a lot more primary-voting Americans are loyal to Trump than they are to the The Wall as anything more than a symbol.

    There are face-saving ways for red-state senators to say "I know this looks anti-Trump but actually it isn't because blah blah" (the most obvious being "Democrats wouldn't budge and we're giving in to their demand for no wall because in the end we wanted the government to stay open", but they'd probably prefer to be less blatant about capitulation). But no equivalent is available for a vote to convict, so the latter requires really major (though not impossible) changes to the landscape, something serious enough to in some way negate the cult.
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 1:03 PM on January 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


    "They should come back to the table,” Pence says after a meeting with top Democrats in which Trump literally walked away from the table
    posted by zombieflanders at 1:06 PM on January 9, 2019 [74 favorites]


    NYT, Tom Steyer, Billionaire Impeachment Activist, Won’t Run Against Trump
    Tom Steyer, the California billionaire who has crusaded for President Trump’s impeachment, said on Wednesday that he would not join the pack of Democrats running for president in 2020 and would instead redouble his efforts to topple Mr. Trump before the election.

    Mr. Steyer’s decision came as a surprise even to some of his political confidants. He had made deliberate preparations in recent months to seek the White House, running television ads in the early primary states, recruiting potential staff members and even designating a campaign manager for a possible run.

    But Mr. Steyer began informing aides early this week that he would not be a candidate after all, after concluding that he could have a greater political impact through his impeachment activism, several advisers to Mr. Steyer said. Mr. Steyer intends to spend at least $40 million on impeachment efforts in the coming year — money that might otherwise have been directed toward a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
    I like the guy a lot, though I can think of some better uses for $40 million, but I can't say I'm not relieved he's not running.
    posted by zachlipton at 1:06 PM on January 9, 2019 [48 favorites]


    Trump blames California for wildfires and claims he will withhold FEMA aid for victims (Vox)
    President Donald Trump lashed out at the state of California again on Wednesday, this time blaming forest managers for recent wildfire tragedies, including the Camp Fire, which resulted in 86 deaths.

    In a tweet, he also said he had ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to withhold funding from the state “[u]nless they get their act together.”
    Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen. Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2019
    ...
    The tweet also blames the state of California for poorly managing its forests. Yet this is based on a major misunderstanding: The federal government owns and manages 57 percent of the state’s 33 million acres of forest land, while the state manages only about 3 percent.

    And as of October 2018, the US Forest Service had only been able to reduce fire risk with prescribed burns and thinning on 235,000 acres in California, leaving millions of acres untended. The majority of the burned area in 2018 was on federal land, and the Camp Fire, the state’s deadliest and most destructive fire on record, was likely ignited by power lines on federal land.
    ...
    It’s notable that US Forest Service is part of the US Department of Agriculture, which is currently shut down. The forest service in recent years has spent more than half its budget fighting fires, leaving little leftover for fire prevention and forest management. The Trump administration has proposed cutting the forest service’s budget, including zeroing out critical fire research programs.

    Also, it’s bizarre, and cruel, to link FEMA aid with federal forest management. Trump has already issued a disaster declaration for the 2018 wildfires in California, and FEMA is managing relief operations for the thousands of people left homeless, providing emergency housing, food, and water.
    They're looking for more hostages, and this time, I think it's notable that it's a traditionally "vulnerable" group like women, immigrants, or people of color, or the sick, or the poor, it's Americans who happen to live in a liberal state. Added to the paychecks of federal employees which are now hostage, this feels like a real escalation. A lot more people are gonna get hurt if Republicans are allowed to stay in power.

    I'm looking for Democrats who are willing to say that deliberate cruelty, rather than Russian shenanigans, is the reason to impeach.

    McConnell single handedly has the power to stop the shut down, and everyone knows it, but for some reason they’re not saying it.
    posted by schadenfrau at 4:58 AM on January 10 [+] [!]

    I think the guns for him come out after the first missed paychecks on Friday. I hope Democrats have the foresight to make the coming pain stick to him.
    posted by saysthis at 1:07 PM on January 9, 2019 [47 favorites]


    > (the Coast Guard just suggested that people try having garage sales)

    People are mocking this advice, but I am here to tell you that I have made *tens* of dollars from a single garage sale.
    posted by The Card Cheat at 1:08 PM on January 9, 2019 [76 favorites]


    InTheYear2017 You are correct. It's 100% with the Senate and/or President at this point.

    Unlike in the Senate where the minority has significant power, in the House the minority party has essentially no power at all. They can complain, but other than that the Republicans can't stop the Democrats from passing bills with no wall funding.
    posted by sotonohito at 1:10 PM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


    The tweet also blames the state of California for poorly managing its forests. Yet this is based on a major misunderstanding: The federal government owns and manages 57 percent of the state’s 33 million acres of forest land, while the state manages only about 3 percent.

    This is not based on a misunderstanding. "Poor forest management" means "not selling off all federal forest land for lumber." They don't hide it: ask a conservative about their forest management solutions for fires and the first thing they'll say (couched in dishonest analyses) will be "sell the trees." Institutional media can not and will not grasp the Trump GOP's use of language.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 1:16 PM on January 9, 2019 [48 favorites]


    McConnell single handedly has the power to stop the shut down, and everyone knows it, but for some reason they’re not saying it.

    Bernie Sanders said it in his response last night:

    On January 3rd, 2019, on their first day in the majority, the Democrats in the House passed legislation to re-open the government. This was exactly the same bill unanimously passed by the Senate.

    Tonight, I urge Senate Majority Leader McConnell to allow that bill to come to the floor to get a vote. This is the same bill that he supported when it was unanimously passed in the Senate.

    Senator McConnell: let’s vote to end this shutdown now in a bipartisan way.
    posted by duoshao at 1:16 PM on January 9, 2019 [31 favorites]


    Should we start calling McConnell's offices? 202-224-2541
    posted by yoga at 1:18 PM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    They're looking for more hostages, and this time... it's Americans who happen to live in a liberal state.

    But, according to NPR, largely in pro-Trump counties
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:18 PM on January 9, 2019 [3 favorites]


    I think McConnell is doing that thing that Comey did when he tried to blend in with the drapes. Maybe he told Trump that he (McConnell) has the power of invisibility. So Trump thinks McConnell is doing a Pence, sitting alongside Trump silently during these meetings with S&P.
    posted by angrycat at 1:21 PM on January 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


    > I think McConnell is doing that thing that Comey did when he tried to blend in with the drapes.

    Who knows, maybe McConnell is just holding out so that Trump can have the biggest Government shutdown ever. That shuldn't take much longer - the record holder is the 1995-96 shutdown lasting 21 days (but affecting many fewer people - see sciatrix's comment above), and we're already at 18d 16h 29m per the Washington Post homepage.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 1:28 PM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


    [He's] not just saying "give me what I want." He's saying "give me what I want or I'll keep hurting people you care about."

    Sam Stein, per source familiar:
    Schumer: you’re using people as leverage. why won’t you open the government and stop hurting people?
    POTUS: because then you won’t give me what I want.
    posted by holgate at 1:33 PM on January 9, 2019 [73 favorites]


    McConnell’s non-action is a real puzzler. If he was truly on-board with the $5-billion for a wall, I think we’d see him taking biger shots at the dems.

    I have to think he’s either genuinely scared of Trump and his base, orrrrr he’s so pissed at Trump for reneging on the original, unanimous funding bill that he’s just sitting back and letting I-1 dig a big ol’ hole for himself that he can’t escape, and then McConnell will swoop in like a vulture, gather a veto-proof pile of votes, and send the original bill to Trump. And then quietly feast on Trump’s humiliated bones.
    posted by Thorzdad at 1:39 PM on January 9, 2019 [18 favorites]


    George Packer. The Atlantic. The Suicide of a Great Democracy
    A shutdown looks like the beginning of the end that Lincoln always knew was possible.

    A constant theme runs throughout Lincoln’s writings, from his years as a young Illinois politician to the last great speeches of his life: the supreme value of self-government. Everything depended on this idea, “our ancient faith,” which itself was “absolutely and eternally right.” But its endurance was never guaranteed. From the start of his career, Lincoln foresaw how American democracy might end—not through foreign conquest, but by our own fading attachment to its institutions. “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher,” he said in 1838. “As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
    ...
    It makes sense that Donald Trump is indifferent to the paralysis of the government he leads, and that he welcomes a shutdown of months or even years. If shutdowns become routine, if politicians view the government in which they serve as a disposable tool, if we’re no longer capable of governing ourselves, this only reflects Trump’s contemptuous attitude toward democracy itself. Shuttered museums, federal workers who can’t pay their bills, national parks with stinking toilets: This is what Trump thinks of American republicanism. This is what the suicide of a great democracy looks like.
    posted by bluesky43 at 1:40 PM on January 9, 2019 [85 favorites]


    It's been suggested the polling data was needed so the Russians would know what states to focus their efforts on, but... couldn't Manafort have simply told them? I would be interested in what that information included, and more theories on how it could have been used.

    posted by xammerboy at 9:45 AM on January 9 [2 favorites +] [!]

    Pretty sure Manafort had neither the tools nor the intelligence to properly analyze the data to identify specific subtargets in specific states, which I believe Cambridge Analytica or some other agency produced for the Russians. Those data were then used to target individuals in swing precincts in swing states, resulting in that narrow margin of victory for Trump.
    posted by Mental Wimp at 1:42 PM on January 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


    McConnell’s non-action is a real puzzler. If he was truly on-board with the $5-billion for a wall, I think we’d see him taking biger shots at the dems.
    I think he's hoping that he can somehow avoid paying any sort of political price for the whole mess if he stays out of it and lets the media depict it as a fight between congressional Democrats and Trump. He isn't thinking about anything other than the politics of the thing, but that's because he's fundamentally morally bankrupt.
    posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:43 PM on January 9, 2019 [40 favorites]


    For my money, McConnell knows any pro-wall coalition in the Senate is fragile and doesn't want to push his caucus to do more than stay resolutely silent. He knows that if the Senate overrides a veto it could piss Trump off to the point where he'll stop blindly signing off on Republican policies he doesn't personally care about, and is banking on either POTUS himself or the Dems to blink and just leave the broader GOP of it.
    posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:44 PM on January 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


    In the wake of Pelosi & Schumer's statement, there's noise about how they're misrepresenting him because he didn't just walk out, no, he offered them candy before leaving. A variety of candy. And then said bye-bye.

    Which is just... I mean, if that happened, Pelosi & Schumer basically did him a favor by leaving that out of their statements. It's distracting, it's pointless, and oh yeah it makes him look fucking bizarre -- except Trump's own people are trying to use his bizarre bullshit in his defense. I'm gonna go bang my head into my desk for a while now.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 1:45 PM on January 9, 2019 [28 favorites]


    AP FACT CHECK: Democrats put the blame for walking away from the table on Trump, who walked away from the table. But it takes two to tango. Why didn't Democrats chase him, bringing the table along with?
    posted by zombieflanders at 1:48 PM on January 9, 2019 [110 favorites]


    WSJ, Trump Walks Out of Border Talks, Calls Them ‘Total Waste of Time’
    The collapse of the negotiations came on the 19th day of the partial government shutdown, which is days from becoming the longest in history. The president earlier in the day said he would declare a national emergency to pay for a border wall “if I can’t make a deal with people that are unreasonable.”
    That's, er, by definition not an emergency if you can wait around before you do it, but do go on:
    As a possible way out of the shutdown, Mr. Trump’s advisers in recent weeks have suggested that the president could declare a national emergency to fund the border wall and agree to sign a spending bill without such a provision. While the declaration would likely be swiftly held up in litigation, Mr. Trump would be able to tell supporters he did everything he could to build the wall, one of his top campaign pledges in 2016.
    I fear this is where we're headed (even though it's unclear how the timing would work since you can't just get an injunction overnight). He's realized that "SEE YOU IN COURT" works for him, and looking like he's fighting for the wall in some arena or another is more important than actually getting it. The key thing here is that the wall is a political outcome, not a policy outcome. We know this because Trump has not actually done offered in negotiations that would help him achieve the policy goal of building a wall; he's just demanded it over and over in various venues ranging from Twitter to prime time TV to the Situation Room. If a wall was his preferred policy outcome, he'd be offering trades on Dreamers and other things that Democrats want in order to get them to support what he wants. But the only thing he actually wants is the political outcome of "Trump is seen to be boldly fighting for the wall against the evil liberals" (and Democrats want the political outcome of "stop the wall"), so he's not offering anything that would actually make a wall closer to reality.

    Since he's entirely uninterested in the wall as policy, the only thing he wants is a political offramp for this that allows him to not be seen as losing, and I'm not sure what that's going to be if not an emergency declaration, unless perhaps Senate Republicans force his hand first.
    posted by zachlipton at 1:48 PM on January 9, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Coast Guard families told they can have garage sales to cope with government shutdown
    ‘Bankruptcy is a last option,’ the service said in a tip sheet published on a service website.
    Employees of the U.S. Coast Guard who are facing a long U.S. government shutdown just received a suggestion: To get by without pay, consider holding a garage sale, babysitting, dog-walking or serving as a “mystery shopper.”

    The suggestions were part of a five-page tip sheet published by the Coast Guard Support Program, an employee-assistance arm of the service often known as CG SUPRT. It is designated to offer Coast Guard members help with mental-health issues or other concerns about their lives, including financial wellness.

    “Bankruptcy is a last option,” the document said.
    posted by scalefree at 1:49 PM on January 9, 2019 [21 favorites]


    "They should come back to the table,” Pence says after a meeting with top Democrats in which Trump literally walked away from the table

    They're still there, right? Like, they're going to hang out at the negotiating table, chatting about their grandkids and single-payer and trump's mental condition and the plight of the American worker until the president* comes back? In front of the cameras? Yes?
    posted by tivalasvegas at 1:50 PM on January 9, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Sure, who's going to hire them to babysit? Everyone else around them who is also out of work and can't pay and needs money?
    posted by jenfullmoon at 1:54 PM on January 9, 2019 [9 favorites]


    From the sad Lincoln story linked above:

    It was as if Washington had been stricken by a grotesque illness

    No "as if" about it, friend. Though I understand the failure to process events while you're in the middle of them.
    posted by Quindar Beep at 1:55 PM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


    McConnell is staying out of it because Republican voters support Trump's position. At the risk of being a broken record on Senate Republicans: McConnell only cares about what gets him and his caucus re-elected. Full stop. And his consideration for re-election is Republican electorate opinion, statistically. Full stop. Until he gets polling that says the he or a significant subset of his caucus is in trouble for their views, he's not going to move.

    McConnell only cares about one thing: staying in power. That's it. Not his responsibilities to his constituents, or as a steward/protector of the Constitution. None of it. He wants nothing more than to stay in power. He has no moral compass, no ethics, no other rules by which he abides.

    Mitch McConnell is very, very easy to understand. His lens is laser-focused. If it doesn't involve his retention or expansion of power, he ain't interested. Full stop.
    posted by Brak at 1:55 PM on January 9, 2019 [61 favorites]


    McConnell’s non-action is a real puzzler.

    He's scared of losing his seat in the Senate -- not his Majority Leader seat, mind you -- to a degree he hasn't been in a long time, and he's hoping no one notices that he should be standing between a lot of furloughed voters and a Republican President.
    posted by Etrigan at 1:57 PM on January 9, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw Mueller probe, leaving DOJ after investigation wraps up (Pete Williams & Alan Smith, NBC News)
    Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had been overseeing the special counsel investigation, plans to step down after Robert Mueller finishes his work, according to administration officials familiar with his thinking.

    A source close to Rosenstein said he intends to stay on until Mueller's investigative and prosecutorial work is done. The source said that would mean Rosenstein would remain until early March. Several legal sources have said they expect the Mueller team to conclude its work by mid-to-late February, although they said that timeline could change based on unforeseen investigative developments.

    The source said once Mueller's work is done, the special counsel's report to the Justice Department would follow a few weeks later, and Rosenstein would likely be gone by then.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 1:57 PM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    He's scared of losing his seat in the Senate -- not his Majority Leader seat, mind you -- to a degree he hasn't been in a long time, and he's hoping no one notices that he should be standing between a lot of furloughed voters and a Republican President.

    Then the Democrats should be going after McConnell (and Individual-1). Tie them up together with a big red bow.
    posted by bluesky43 at 1:58 PM on January 9, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Coast Guard families told they can have garage sales to cope with government shutdown
    ‘Bankruptcy is a last option,’ the service said in a tip sheet published on a service website.

    A quick reminder from our previous shutdown shitshows: being a military service, Coast Guard personnel cannot quit and find new jobs. That would be a tall order for most federal employees regardless, and I'm not saying it's a simple solution. The Coast Guard isn't a civilian job, though. It's military, subject to the UCMJ, and therefore walking out even if it's because you're not getting paid has other labels like "unauthorized absence" and "AWOL" and "desertion."

    Military exceptionalism is gross and we shouldn't act like The Troops are somehow more important than other federal employees. They are not. But for what it's worth, there's "I can't leave because I need my job," and then there's "I will literally go to jail if I don't keep showing up for work."
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 2:04 PM on January 9, 2019 [105 favorites]


    Not to abuse edit windows: all that said, I can't imagine shit like this is going to help service retention at all when people's enlistments do expire naturally. But then I'm still trying to wrap my head around how anyone stays in any of the services with this dumpster fire in the White House.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 2:06 PM on January 9, 2019 [11 favorites]


    The source said once Mueller's work is done, the special counsel's report to the Justice Department would follow a few weeks later, and Rosenstein would likely be gone by then.

    I suspect Rosenstein will need to be interviewed as a witness to finalize the obstruction case, and he can't be in a supervisory position at that point. Though the proposed timing (leaving before the report is submitted) makes it seem like Rosenstein is confident that Barr (or Whitaker) won't be able to block the report or any prosecutions at that point.
    posted by stopgap at 2:07 PM on January 9, 2019 [10 favorites]


    That's, er, by definition not an emergency if you can wait around before you do it

    Trump just undermined his own border-wall ‘national emergency’ (WaPo):
    Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said that he has the “absolute right” to declare an emergency. Then he was asked what would make him take such an action. “My threshold will be if I can’t make a deal with people that are unreasonable” on the partial government shutdown, he said. He added at another point of the negotiations: “Otherwise we’ll go about it in a different manner,” but “I don’t think we’ll have to do that.”

    Importantly, this is the first time Trump has explicitly said the national emergency declaration is his backup plan. It has been clear that it was a conveniently timed alternative that could be invoked in the absence of a deal to fund the wall and end the shutdown. But the White House could have argued that it was still deliberating about the legality of such a move — or even that it was still considering whether it was appropriate. Here is the president acknowledging that such a declaration is basically a strategic option.
    posted by peeedro at 2:07 PM on January 9, 2019 [16 favorites]


    I've been thinking about the parallels between the Roman Republic and its transition to Empire with the current situation -- nothing serious, I just play with historical parallels a lot to see if I can come up with fun, inobvious ways to extrapolate the future for my side gig writing SF RPG materials.

    But guys, perils of analogy aside, not paying the troops was a really bad idea at the time and seems like it would be no better now.
    posted by Quindar Beep at 2:10 PM on January 9, 2019 [57 favorites]


    Since the DoD is fully funded, most of the troops are being paid. It's only the Coast Guard that is unappropriated right now since they are structured under the Department of Homeland Security.
    posted by parallellines at 2:22 PM on January 9, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Uh, what the what now???

    Mercury News, Planning to fly? You may need a passport beginning Jan. 22 — thanks to government shutdown
    Planning to fly in the coming weeks? You may need a passport beginning Jan. 22.

    That’s right. Even though we were all told the federal REAL ID cards wouldn’t be required until October 2020 — when plane passengers will need to present either a REAL ID or a passport — that deadline may be pushed up to just 13 days from now if the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) doesn’t certify California’s REAL IDs as compliant with federal regulations or issue an extension.
    ...
    “Unfortunately, due to a lack of response on the part of the federal government with the ongoing shutdown there has been no final confirmation,” he said. “The department, along with the governor’s office liaison in Washington D.C. continues to work to get formal notification that the state has been deemed compliant.”
    I have to hope that someone will wake up and provide the certification despite the shutdown, since many travelers simply do not have another form of accepted ID, but here we are.
    posted by zachlipton at 2:26 PM on January 9, 2019 [19 favorites]


    I have to hope that someone will wake up and provide the certification despite the shutdown, since many travelers simply do not have another form of accepted ID, but here we are.

    "UPDATE, 2:29 p.m.: The DMV announced Thursday afternoon that California now has until April 1, 2019, to become certified as compliant with the federal government’s REAL ID requirements. "
    posted by jedicus at 2:33 PM on January 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


    REAL ID is another one of those bullshirt PATRIOT ACT-era laws that was pushed off for years and years, but never eliminated. I decided to get one when my license expired for various reasons, but you need at least 3-4 papers proving your identity, citizenship and proof of residence (and an expired drivers license can't be one of them). I think it's going to be a shirtshow in 2020, and it's defiantly going to be shirtshow if the requirement is implemented now (which I guess it isn't).

    Still, down with REAL ID!
    posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 2:36 PM on January 9, 2019 [22 favorites]


    WaPo. Shutdown impasse: 8 House Republicans break with Trump on shutdown strategy, back Democrats’ plan to reopen Treasury without new border wall funds

    House Democrats passed a bill that would reopen the Treasury Department and ensure that the Internal Revenue Service would remain funded as tax season kicks off and millions of taxpayers begin to file their returns.

    Eight House Republicans voted in favor of the bill, defying the president’s pleas for unity. But the measure has no path to passage, as Trump has said he opposes any legislation that does not include funding for the border wall.
    posted by bluesky43 at 2:40 PM on January 9, 2019 [19 favorites]


    AP FACT CHECK: Democrats put the blame for the shutdown on Trump. But it takes two to tango. Trump's demand for $5.7 billion for his border wall is one reason for the budget impasse. The Democrats refusal to approve the money is another.

    Kate Aronoff (Intercept)
    AP FACT CHECK: Leia put the blame for the destruction of Alderaan on Darth Vader. But it takes two to tango. Vader shooting a powerful superlaser at the planet is one reason it was destroyed. Leia's refusal to tell him where the Rebel base was is another.
    posted by chris24 at 2:49 PM on January 9, 2019 [100 favorites]


    Leia's refusal to tell him where the Rebel base was is another.

    She actually did give a location, and then shortly after Tarkin and Vader destroyed Alderan anyway, as destroying Alderan would be a greater demonstration to the rebel’s as to what heppens if they don’t fall in line.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    posted by kabong the wiser at 3:03 PM on January 9, 2019 [29 favorites]


    this is the first time Trump has explicitly said the national emergency declaration is his backup plan... ...the White House could have argued that it was still deliberating about the legality of such a move

    I think his legal team is still deliberating the legality but it looks like Trump would just as soon take the same approach to the muslim ban (act now, court battles later), and because of how that went last time around, his lawyers are having him lay some groundwork first this time.

    So the speech was to reframe the debate away from refugees and toward "humanitarian crisis" to use as defense for the inevitable lawsuits that come up against the national emergency declaration.

    Which is all the more reason to call Senators and put maximum pressure on the senate to end the shutdown before we have to test the legality of his national emergency.
    posted by p3t3 at 3:27 PM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Dude is just free range hallucinating. I suspect a recent viewing of one of the Road Warrior films may be responsible for this one.

    @thedailybeast WATCH: Trump argues that we need a border wall to stop migrants just driving right across in their "unbelievable vehicles... stronger, bigger, and faster vehicles than our police have, than ICE has"
    posted by scalefree at 3:27 PM on January 9, 2019 [51 favorites]


    I look forward to his denunciation of that high school kid with the shaved head who wants to kidnap people's wives to come for your guns, and his claims that no one has given us as much water as him, no one.
    posted by schadenfrau at 3:30 PM on January 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Andrew Cuomo just had a semi-impromptu gaggle with reporters.
    It started with an aide asking us to move back a few steps to give him room.
    “I’ll bring you all up on charges under the Me Too movement,” Cuomo said.

    Not to be outdone, this is what his little brother Chris got up to yesterday:

    Chris Cuomo confirms that he attended White House lunch for journalists today on immigration: "The content was off the record, but I will tell you he's much more compelling making his case in person than he was on tel-e-prompter."
    posted by Atom Eyes at 3:34 PM on January 9, 2019 [5 favorites]


    you need at least 3-4 papers proving your identity, citizenship and proof of residence (and an expired drivers license can't be one of them).

    I got a REAL ID last fall. It took a birth certificate (proof of citizenship), a paystub printed from my online pay statement (proof of SS number), and my voter ID postcard (proof of residence). The latter isn't listed specifically on the DMV's checklist (it falls under "A document issued [by] a U.S. government agency") but is listed in the other places that give examples of usable documents.

    The process was nerve-wracking because I knew if something went wrong, it might be a huge hassle to deal with, but it went smooth and easy.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:38 PM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


    It occurs to me that "longest shutdown in history" is something Individual-1 must anticipate with real excitement. He won't necessarily brag about it out loud, but inwardly it will be a "Nobody else ever did it!" point of pride, and might even shift his frame of mind to "Yes, mission accomplished, I showed them all." Regardless, one can guarantee he won't budge until Saturday at the earliest.
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 3:39 PM on January 9, 2019 [24 favorites]


    He won't necessarily brag about it out loud, but inwardly it will be a "Nobody else ever did it!" point of pride

    Like how he once said Trump Tower was the tallest building in Manhattan after 9/11?
    posted by ZeusHumms at 3:48 PM on January 9, 2019 [13 favorites]


    It occurs to me that "longest shutdown in history" is something Individual-1 must anticipate with real excitement.

    Solution: Quit calling it a shutdown and call it "government failure." Have the media report on this as "the second-longest failure of the US government in history."

    Reporters need to ask him which aspect of his government failure was most unexpected for him, or how much the failure and lack of staff is impacting security on the border, or why he's failed to restore services to the people who need them.

    Use the word "fail" a whole lot. Have headlines saying, "Trump's Failure" - failure to act, failure to provide for the nation, failure to pay workers, failure to lead.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:54 PM on January 9, 2019 [91 favorites]


    The WaPo's Jim Rieger, from Trump's presser this afternoon (/w video):
    TRUMP: I have the absolute right to do national emergency if I want.

    REPORTER: What’s your threshold for when you might make that decision?

    TRUMP: My threshold will be if I can’t make a deal with people that are unreasonable.
    @realDonaldTrump, later that afternoon: "Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time. I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve Border Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier? Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye, nothing else works!"

    Buzzfeed's Lissandra Villa: "I have CONFIRMED that Trump said “bye bye” and in fact offered Butterfingers, M&Ms, and Baby Ruths. “We think skittles too,” per source, who added Trump “constantly spoke over Pelosi.”"

    Trump has an idiosyncratic definition of "unreasonable".
    posted by Doktor Zed at 3:55 PM on January 9, 2019 [31 favorites]


    It's been awhile since I've seen one of those "Proof we're living in a simulation" posts, but this one's a doozy:

    @_AlexHirsch:
    What the fresh hell. This is REAL. Filmed in 1958- about a conman who grifts a small town of suckers into building a wall. History not subtle enough for you? GUESS THE GRIFTER'S NAME
    (And watch until the end)
    posted by Atom Eyes at 4:02 PM on January 9, 2019 [98 favorites]


    Metafilter: She actually did give a location, and then shortly after Tarkin and Vader destroyed Alderan anyway, as destroying Alderan would be a greater demonstration to the rebels as to what heppens if they don’t fall in line.
    posted by Barack Spinoza at 4:03 PM on January 9, 2019 [14 favorites]


    My threshold will be if I can’t make a deal with people that are unreasonable.

    I assume this will be Exhibit A in any future constitutional crisis-related litigation?
    posted by schadenfrau at 4:04 PM on January 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


    As an aside...Anyone else think it’s odd that Pence has suddenly been let out of cold storage to get involved in this kerfuffle? They even let him speak to people and stuff!
    posted by Thorzdad at 4:20 PM on January 9, 2019 [5 favorites]


    That 1958 TV episode is real, according to Snopes. Extraordinary.
    posted by young_simba at 4:21 PM on January 9, 2019 [40 favorites]


    It's small beans but the Baltimore Sun points out that one of the few details in Trump's oval office address was false: Trump mentioned MS-13 members stabbing a 16-year-old girl in Maryland. That's not quite what happened. There have been MS-13 related stabbings, but none that fit Trump's (or Stephen Miller's) description.

    The local tv news reports that the White House has clarified that they were talking about an incident where a 16-year-old boy was stabbed, the WaPo describes the incident as: "Ten MS-13 members attacked a gang rival in these woods in February, hitting him in the back of the head with a baseball bat before stabbing him three times in the stomach, according to police." I can't find any follow-up reporting on the incident, so Trump's other claim in this case that the attackers "arrived in the United States as unaccompanied minors" remains, well, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
    posted by peeedro at 4:24 PM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    @_AlexHirsch:
    What the fresh hell. This is REAL. Filmed in 1958- about a conman who grifts a small town of suckers into building a wall. History not subtle enough for you? GUESS THE GRIFTER'S NAME
    (And watch until the end)

    There's always a tweet entire god damn movie created by a large group of unionized workers.
    posted by rhizome at 4:24 PM on January 9, 2019 [37 favorites]


    The two Trumps even talk the same way:
    Trump: I am the only one. Trust me. I can build a wall around your homes that nothing will penetrate.

    Townperson: What do we do? How can we save ourselves?

    Trump: You ask how do you build that wall. You ask, and I’m here to tell you.
    posted by Joe in Australia at 4:36 PM on January 9, 2019 [31 favorites]


    It's been awhile since I've seen one of those "Proof we're living in a simulation" posts, but this one's a doozy:

    @_AlexHirsch:
    What the fresh hell. This is REAL. Filmed in 1958- about a conman who grifts a small town of suckers into building a wall. History not subtle enough for you? GUESS THE GRIFTER'S NAME
    I doubt the name's a coincidence or a sign we're living in a simulation. Fred Trump was investigated by the Senate for profiteering in 1954 - I don't know much about Trump family history or political culture at the time but it's not beyond belief that the Trumps were already a watchword for greedy, unethical fear-mongering back in the 1950s.

    I also don't know the history of walls as a political macguffin but given that they're, well, walls, I suspect it's very old.

    As the Faulkner quote goes: the past isn't over, it isn't even past.
    posted by galaxy rise at 4:38 PM on January 9, 2019 [40 favorites]


    That 1958 TV episode is real, according to Snopes. Extraordinary.

    It's real and it's on Youtube in all it's glory.
    posted by waitingtoderail at 4:39 PM on January 9, 2019 [31 favorites]


    My threshold will be if I can’t make a deal with people that are unreasonable.

    I just had a terrible thought - like, does he think it’s like negotiating with unions, where he can just implement the last best offer because he’s in charge and folks have no other choice? Like does he understand that if there’s an impasse here he doesn’t just get to unilaterally win?
    posted by corb at 4:57 PM on January 9, 2019


    Has history proven otherwise yet?

    I mean, he has a hostage. People are being hurt by this. So if he reasons that (a) whoever blinks first loses, (b) if people are being hurt, eventually the Dems will blink simply to put people back to work, and (c) the Republicans in Congress will do absolutely nothing to stop him, he will keep that hostage.

    I have no reason to believe that (a), (b) or (c) have changed recently.
    posted by delfin at 5:05 PM on January 9, 2019


    does he understand

    No.
    posted by schadenfrau at 5:11 PM on January 9, 2019 [37 favorites]


    "Again we saw a temper tantrum because he couldn't get his way."

    I know to do so is probably a federal crime, but I would really like someone to surreptitiously record (and leak) a meeting where I-1 is screaming and cursing and ranting. As I understand it, that’s pretty much all of his White House meetings.
    posted by Thorzdad at 5:14 PM on January 9, 2019 [10 favorites]


    I know to do so is probably a federal crime, but I would really like someone to surreptitiously record (and leak) a meeting where I-1 is screaming and cursing and ranting. As I understand it, that’s pretty much all of his White House meetings.
    Out of curiosity, why would this be a federal crime? As far as I understand, Washington, D.C. is a one-party consent state for recording. Is there some other law that applies here?
    posted by Juffo-Wup at 5:18 PM on January 9, 2019 [3 favorites]


    I thought 'I should call McCaskill's office and see if she's going to say something publicly about the shutdown'
    ☹☹☹
    posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:22 PM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Out of curiosity, why would this be a federal crime?

    Probably something about state secrets or espionage or things along those lines. We are talking about secretly recording the president in the White House, after all.
    posted by Thorzdad at 5:27 PM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Fact-checking the mob song from ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (Alexandra Petri, WaPo)
    An angry mob, having learned that a Beast lives near their village in rural France, 18th century

    GASTON AND VILLAGERS: We’re not safe until he’s dead.

    First off, there are many ways to die that are not directly related to beast attacks! (See chart.) But it is an observed fact that rates of beast attacks approach zero as the number of beasts approaches zero. So there is a factual basis for this approach.

    He’ll come stalking us at night. Set to sacrifice our children to his monstrous appetite.

    Although the Beast has not been spotted “stalking” anyone around the village, he is more nocturnally and crepuscularly active than diurnally. There are no recorded instances of him sacrificing children to his monstrous appetite, however, making this claim somewhat direr than the situation warrants.

    He’ll wreak havoc on our village if we let him wander free! So it’s time to take some action, boys! It’s time to follow me.

    This is a prescriptive rather than a descriptive statement. There are many times when taking action could be appropriate. However, based on the Beast’s habits, night would be a more appropriate time than otherwise to make an attack on his redoubt, thus making this not entirely incorrect.
    posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:27 PM on January 9, 2019 [37 favorites]


    CNN: Law Firm That Represented Russian Interests Part of Mystery Mueller Subpoena Case
    One law firm involved in a foreign government-owned company's challenge of a mysterious grand jury subpoena related to the Robert Mueller investigation is Alston & Bird, CNN has learned, a firm that has previously represented Russian interests, including working for a Russian oligarch and a contractor of the Russian government.[…]

    Attorneys involved in the case include DC-based white-collar lawyer Ted Kang and Brian Boone, a North Carolina-based appellate attorney. It is not clear whether they represent the company, the country's regulators or another interested party.[…]

    Alston & Bird's history of working for Russians dates back to the early 2000s.

    The Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a business contact of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort whom Mueller's team has sought information about, paid Alston & Bird $300,000 upfront in 2003 to help him reinstate his US visa, according to public lobbying disclosure filings. Over the next few years, Deripaska paid the firm another $270,000 for their work, the filings say. Around that time, Deripaska gave Manafort a $10 million loan, which the FBI cited in a 2017 search warrant on Manafort.[…]

    It has also done work for global public relations firm Ketchum Inc., which hired it to "provide advisory services to Ketchum, Inc. for the Russian Federation." This included gathering information on contemporary US-Russia relations and monitoring "legislative developments in the Congress in similar issue areas," according to filings from 2014.
    Reuters's Lawrence Hurley also reports: "Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has filed a motion to unseal the mystery grand jury subpoena case. The filing itself appears to be sealed"
    posted by Doktor Zed at 5:28 PM on January 9, 2019 [3 favorites]


    NPR had a good story on the costs to government research of the shutdown.
    posted by acrasis at 5:30 PM on January 9, 2019 [3 favorites]


    NPR had a good story on the costs to government research of the shutdown.

    I'm expecting walking papers next week at my research institution. Guess I'll see if I can start picking up some consulting work...
    posted by cowcowgrasstree at 5:38 PM on January 9, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Where are the subpoena cannons? I was told there would be cannons.

    As long as the shutdown goes on, subpoenas and the such are probably a bad idea.
    posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 5:59 PM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


    House Democrats force GOP to vote on protecting Obamacare (CNN)
    The House voted Wednesday on a resolution affirming the chamber's authority to defend the Affordable Care Act in federal court.

    The move was designed by newly empowered Democrats to put Republicans on the record voting for or against protecting Obamacare and its safeguards for those with pre-existing conditions. The GOP has for years fought against the law, with House Republicans voting in 2017 for repeal.

    Wednesday's vote was 235 to 192, with three Republicans supporting the measure.
    posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:09 PM on January 9, 2019 [37 favorites]


    Mod note: A few comments removed, let's not get into the whole "an interruption of pay is slavery" thing, however fucked up the interruption-of-pay situation itself may be.
    posted by cortex (staff) at 6:11 PM on January 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


    It makes sense that Donald Trump is indifferent to the paralysis of the government he leads, and that he welcomes a shutdown of months or even years. If shutdowns become routine, if politicians view the government in which they serve as a disposable tool, if we’re no longer capable of governing ourselves, this only reflects Trump’s contemptuous attitude toward democracy itself. Shuttered museums, federal workers who can’t pay their bills, national parks with stinking toilets: This is what Trump thinks of American republicanism. This is what the suicide of a great democracy looks like.

    Trump's contempt for federal civil service and his mission to make it an unbearable ordeal are not deviations from the Republican norm. His actions are entirely in line with Ronald Reagan's smirking hatred of civilian government workers. (Military, of course, gets an exemption.) A month into the Trump administration, Steve Bannon openly stated that Trump's goal was "deconstructing the administrative state." The chaos that has been sowed throughout various federal agencies, the appointment of toadies who openly despise their subordinates and oppose the missions of the agencies they run, the loss of institutional knowledge, the erosion of benefits, the dwindling respect for federal agencies both internationally and among talented young Americans -- this is what conservatives have wanted for the last four decades. In this, at least, Trump is not an aberration.
    posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 6:11 PM on January 9, 2019 [81 favorites]


    Does the shutdown mean that every contract made with the US government has an implicit clause saying "we might not pay you, let alone be responsible for any losses, if it turns out that no funds are appropriated for this"? Because that isn't just destructive of any sort of good government, but seems inconsistent with e.g. the 14th Amendment. Surely if there's a contract there's a debt?

    Also, the knowledge that the US government can just say LOL WE DON'T ACTUALLY NEED TO PAY YOU to people who can't legally quit their jobs must be pretty terrifying to people who are considering enlistment. I'm sure they will get paid, eventually, but still.
    posted by Joe in Australia at 6:25 PM on January 9, 2019 [5 favorites]


    A month into the Trump administration, Steve Bannon openly stated that Trump's goal was "deconstructing the administrative state."

    Source for the quote?
    posted by bluesky43 at 6:28 PM on January 9, 2019


    Bannon vows a daily fight for ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’
    posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 6:33 PM on January 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Stephen Bannon: Core of Trump's Platform Is "Deconstruction of the Administrative State"
    posted by kirkaracha at 6:34 PM on January 9, 2019 [5 favorites]


    And here's what it means to the Supreme Court, where there's a building conservative attack on Chevron v. NRDC, the foundation of modern administrative law. It's not just Bannon, this is a real conservative movement to repeal most of the federal government's ability to regulate, well, anything.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 6:37 PM on January 9, 2019 [43 favorites]


    Bannon on deconstruction of the administrative state: "But the third, this regulation. Every business leader we've had in is saying not just taxes, but it is -- it is also the regulation. I think the consistent, if you look at these Cabinet appointees, they were selected for a reason and that is the deconstruction, the way the progressive left runs, is if they can't get it passed, they're just gonna put in some sort of regulation in -- in an agency.

    That's all gonna be deconstructed and I think that that's why this regulatory thing is so important."

    /I think the quote provides some context for what the phrase means...
    posted by bluesky43 at 6:39 PM on January 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


    I think the consistent, if you look at these Cabinet appointees, they were selected for a reason and that is the deconstruction

    I...am not sure he's using a common definition of "deconstructed." Even so, if he's talking about appointees having multiple...let's say "influences," and that they're appointed for only one ( or some) of them, that wouldn't seem to satisfy deconstruction as a method for extracting more meaning. What Bannon could be saying is that the diversity of voices in the cabinet has been intentionally reduced.

    That's all gonna be deconstructed and I think that that's why this regulatory thing is so important."

    If this is about Democrats regulating instead of passing laws, isn't regulation enacted by law itself? How that might be "deconstructed" remains to be seen, but perhaps related to the diversity reduction above maybe he's saying Democrats will be criticized though a subset of traits.

    rhizome's rating: four question marks.
    posted by rhizome at 6:52 PM on January 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Speak of the Devil: Steve Bannon Angled for a Job Lobbying on Behalf of E-Cigarette Giant Juul (Betsy Woodruff and Asawin Suebsaeng, Daily Beast)
    Juul Labs, which hawks flavored e-cigarettes that teens love, recently drew a controversial suitor: ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

    The offer came during a meeting on Oct. 10 of last year, where Nick Muzin, a former staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), met with Tevi Troy, vice president of public policy at Juul. At the meeting, Muzin pitched Troy on the lobbying services of his firm, Stonington Global. Muzin also brought up Bannon, saying the former White House strategist would help with his company’s lobbying work for the vape company, according to communications by a person with direct knowledge of the pitch, which The Daily Beast reviewed.

    Muzin’s pitch also highlighted the fact that one of his fellow Stonington lobbyists, James Frinzi, previously worked for Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) —one of the Senate’s most outspoken critics of the e-cigarette industry. The message was clear: Frinzi’s access to Murkowski could have big payoffs.
    posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:53 PM on January 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Don’t give up. Don’t allow it to happen. If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it, go over it, go around it, but get to the other side of that wall - Donald J. Trump, 2004
    posted by waitingtoderail at 6:54 PM on January 9, 2019 [43 favorites]


    My sense is that Bannon thinks "deconstruction of the administrative state" sounds super radical. It sounds like fancy political theory speech but I'm not sure it means anything more than the getting rid of regulations, the age old Republican saw horse. Like reneging on a treaty restores our sovereignty? puh-leeze.
    posted by bluesky43 at 6:56 PM on January 9, 2019 [19 favorites]


    The Worst Wing, Orange is the new black, Three Men and a Manbaby and other #WhiteHouseSitcoms
    posted by growabrain at 6:59 PM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Jeff Bezos is getting a divorce. Who cares, right? Except the National Enquirer, which held Trump's secrets and helped him win, says it "tracked Jeff Bezos & his mistress "across five states and 40,000 miles" in "four-month investigation".

    Jake Tapper: Big investment of money, time, and energy to dig up dirt on someone a) who’s seldom mentioned in celebrity mags,
    b) whose face is unknown to millions, BUT
    c) who just happens to own the Washington Post and is often attacked by POTUS because of its coverage.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 7:00 PM on January 9, 2019 [88 favorites]


    @amyklobuchar
    I tried (as did Blumenthal) to get meeting w/AG nominee Barr and was told he couldn’t meet until AFTER the hearing. The reason given? The shutdown. Yet shutdown didn’t stop him from other mtgs. This is a 1st for me w/any nominee as a member of judiciary. #Uncool #BadSign

    11:01 PM - 9 Jan 2019
    posted by bluesky43 at 7:06 PM on January 9, 2019 [59 favorites]


    NBC Boston reports a group of neighborhood dog owners in Boston's Charlestown neighborhood are now removing the trash from the Bunker Hill Monument on a daily basis.
    posted by adamg at 7:18 PM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Don’t give up. Don’t allow it to happen. If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it, go over it, go around it, but get to the other side of that wall

    Video.
    posted by kirkaracha at 7:39 PM on January 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Surely if there's a contract there's a debt?

    That's what I was told when I mentioned that breach of contract might cause some contractors to sue. There are supposedly multiple statutes appended to contracts that say basically 'No funding, no payment, sorry'
    posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:46 PM on January 9, 2019


    It’s been a while since I bid on government contract jobs, but as part of the bidding process there was disclosure that projects had to be funded before approval. That said, I don’t remember verbiage that addressed a shutdown, because who could possible have foreseen that the Republicans would continuously hold the nation hostage.
    posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:55 PM on January 9, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Jebus! If someone as "healthy" as Donnie J can get up, around, over, or through any wall, there's not a lot of point to walls in general.
    posted by sexyrobot at 8:11 PM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


    I tried (as did Blumenthal) to get meeting w/AG nominee Barr and was told he couldn’t meet until AFTER the hearing. The reason given? The shutdown. Yet shutdown didn’t stop him from other mtgs. This is a 1st for me w/any nominee as a member of judiciary. #Uncool #BadSign

    @matthewamiller Somehow he found time to meet with Graham and Grassley today. I guess the shutdown wasn’t an issue for meeting with Republicans.
    posted by scalefree at 8:22 PM on January 9, 2019 [29 favorites]


    My sense is that Bannon thinks "deconstruction of the administrative state" sounds super radical.

    If you replace "deconstruction" with the word "destruction" it all makes sense.
    posted by Mental Wimp at 8:22 PM on January 9, 2019 [8 favorites]


    So I'm guessing that whole "Barr & Mueller best friends" thing isn't something we should count on.
    posted by scalefree at 8:23 PM on January 9, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Contractors are issued a stop work order and cannot bill hours or costs to the contract during the shutdown.
    posted by InfidelZombie at 8:25 PM on January 9, 2019


    Contractors are issued a stop work order and cannot bill hours or costs to the contract during the shutdown.

    Unless granted an exception. We can't get approval or feedback or talk to anyone furloughed but we're still working.
    posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:54 PM on January 9, 2019


    But we also only have a few already planned sprints in the hopper so, if this goes say til March, not sure what we'll be doing.
    posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:55 PM on January 9, 2019


    Contractors are issued a stop work order and cannot bill hours or costs to the contract during the shutdown.

    Yeah, it really depends on the contract. I was an in-house contractor during a shutdown in the 90s, and all my federal coworkers went home and I stayed in the office. Doing nothing, because everyone I needed to work with was gone. And there was no internet, so I have no idea what I wasted my time on...

    But apparently my office right now is empty of both civilians (except for a couple of people funded with multi-year money, which didn't expire) and contractors.

    I have a couple of projects I'm running as the PM, with outside consultants preparing reports, and one of them may be in trouble because the period of performance expired today and there is no contracting officer available to extent the contract period. I'm really not sure what's going to happen with that...

    Anyway, in conclusion, federal contracting during a shutdown is a land of contrasts.
    posted by suelac at 9:10 PM on January 9, 2019 [12 favorites]


    But we also only have a few already planned sprints in the hopper so, if this goes say til March, not sure what we'll be doing.


    Tech debt?
    posted by awfurby at 9:17 PM on January 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


    The New York Times and AP bungled their fact checks of Trump’s speech — badly (Aaron Rupar, Vox)
    Fact-checkers wandered into false equivalency territory Tuesday night after President Trump’s Oval Office address on immigration and Democrats’ response to it.

    The Associated Press was clobbered on Twitter after it anointed the Democratic claim that Trump was at fault for the shutdown “false,” saying that the Democrats are at fault too. As the AP put it on Twitter: it takes “two to tango.”

    The New York Times, meanwhile, attempted to fact-check a “should” claim made by Democrat Chuck Schumer — the kind of statement that doesn’t really lend itself to a fact check at all.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 9:38 PM on January 9, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Atom Eyes: "The premise—coming from the bureau at the Times that covers the operations of the federal government—was that the only people affected by the government shutdown are the people who have government jobs. The sole function of the federal government, as the Times sees it, is to give out paychecks to federal government workers.

    Meanwhile, here’s some context: 1,150 federal rent-subsidy contracts with landlords who provide poor people’s housing have already expired with no money to renew them, with another thousand on their way to expiring, in a program that serves 1.2 million people.    "

    Besides which I'd bet on average at least one person is dependant on each of the people not receiving a cheque. Spouse, child, parent, etc.
    posted by Mitheral at 9:38 PM on January 9, 2019 [13 favorites]


    . . .and the small businesses where these people spend their money
    posted by yesster at 9:48 PM on January 9, 2019 [10 favorites]


    So when will Fox News finally let Donald Trump's shutdown end? (Amanda Marcotte, Salon)
    Trump's only real goal in this shutdown fight is to save face. That has been well-established. He's not sincerely worried about breaking a campaign promise, since that's largely what he has done since taking office. He's repeatedly indicated that he'd be satisfied with a solution where he simply tells his followers he won and tweets out a bunch of photos of existing fencing while pretending that he built it. He has no compunction about flatly declaring victory even in the face of obvious defeat, because he knows his base voters — the only ones he cares about — will happily go along with any lie he tells, out of loyalty to him and their own unwillingness to admit they were wrong.

    But there's a problem, which started well before the shutdown. So far, Fox News simply won't let Trump go down the "pretend you won and move on" route. The network, which Trump watches loyally and regards as a more important adviser than anyone on his actual White House own staff, has stuck to the false and racist claim that the U.S. is being invaded and only a wall will suffice to stop the problem. Fox hosts have also consistently minimized the impact of the government shutdown. And any time Trump gives even a whiff of softening his stance on this issue, the Fox talking heads, knowing that Trump is watching, will turn up the pressure, hinting that they will go after him hard if he backs down.
    ...

    Since the wall is already semi-fake, why not just fake it altogether?

    One possible answer is that the shutdown and the wall debate have done a bang-up job at shoving another big story off the front page, which is that the walls continue to close in on Trump when it comes to his massive corruption and likely criminal activity. As Salon's Heather Digby Parton writes, Tuesday was "a blockbuster day in the Russia investigation," and was only overshadowed by all the chatter about the shutdown and the border wall.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 9:56 PM on January 9, 2019 [14 favorites]


    Yeah, if you burn down the house, no one complains about the broken toilet.
    posted by valkane at 10:00 PM on January 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Gail Collins goes where Metafilter fears to tread.
    posted by xigxag at 10:27 PM on January 9, 2019 [8 favorites]


    > Contractors are issued a stop work order and cannot bill hours or costs to the contract during the shutdown.

    FFRDC employee here. Yeah, what suelac said.

    Our primary federal sponsor is .mil instead of .gov, so everyone is still coming to work during the shutdown. However, many of our larger work plans are with civilian agencies where many of the .gov employees are furloughed. The funds for those work plans are disbursed annually well ahead of time based on agreements sometimes many years in the making, so the funding for my work (about 2/3 funded by civilian and 1/3 funded by military) is basically guaranteed unless the shutdown extends late into the spring. Of course, the people I would normally be sending release notes, status updates, etc. to are furloughed, and the "essential" govvies I rely on to install my software are at best overworked and at worst looking wistfully at the many "come make three times your current GS salary" billboards in the DC area.

    I'll be *fine*, for some value of *fine*. But the stability of government work is the one thing our government partners actually have over us, and Individual One is squandering that for a few feet of fencing.

    The machinery of the (military|civilian) industrial complex will keep operating during the shutdown, only far less efficiently, and with far less information about what the government really wants.
    posted by tonycpsu at 10:40 PM on January 9, 2019 [12 favorites]


    I'm sorry if I have not read every comment in this as-usual catch all thread, but why are right-thinking people not out in the streets protesting this nonsense? I know most of you are fortunate enough to have jobs, but isn't it our duty to the people who aren't getting checks from the gov (especially for those still working) to be out in the streets. making our voices heard (and hey that goes for both sides, right?). Saturday and Sunday should see some sort of public sacrifice along these lines assuming nothing changes. Are there any multi-city protests efforts being talked about?

    If not, why the hell not?
    posted by BigBrooklyn at 10:41 PM on January 9, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Gail Collins:
    There’s no way to be cheery about the government shutdown. This is really terrible. Some of those suffering most are smaller government contractors, whose businesses could very well fail while they wait to be paid for work they’ve already done. (Stiffing contractors is possibly the only area of his job in which our president has a lot of pregovernment experience.)
    True dat.
    posted by flabdablet at 10:42 PM on January 9, 2019 [24 favorites]


    why are right-thinking people not out in the streets protesting this nonsense?

    Because nearly two years have passed of a demented psychopath occupying the job of president while everybody on that beat pretends that he's normal. And because political labour is as hard as emotional labour, especially when the mechanisms for change are so attenuated and ultimately anti-democratic. ("You look so tired, unhappy / Bring down the government.") Being out in the streets of wherever you are if it's not DC counts for fuck-all right now in terms of political labour compared to, say, dumping a bag of trash in the lobby of the Old Post Office hotel or sitting in at the top of the tower. And if anyone's up for that, organise it.
    posted by holgate at 11:01 PM on January 9, 2019 [20 favorites]


    I have mentioned this before but I also work for a federal contractor. The work for my contract was funded through Jan. 11th so I've been getting paid to "work" from home*. Realistically, as others have mentioned, my work depends on the government employees and resources (like the computers with all the data on them that have been turned off). There's a company wide conference call on Friday to discuss what our options are should the government not reopen on Monday. So, I have been working and getting paid for the last three weeks, but that all changes for me on Monday.

    As for protests, I know there is a protest near the white house on Thursday (today), around noon, sponsored by the AFL-CIO. And, if I am not getting paid on Monday I will be spending the week protesting and/or going through the congressional phone book making my ire known. I suspect, or at least hope, as more contract funding runs out, protests will continue to grow, which will hopefully put pressure on congress to end this dumb shit.

    *The real motherfucker is that my previous contractor's contract expired early December, so I've only been with this company for a month as of today and have no saved up vacation time to use.
    posted by runcibleshaw at 11:02 PM on January 9, 2019 [8 favorites]


    If not, why the hell not?
    posted by BigBrooklyn at 2:41 PM on January 10 [1 favorite +] [!]

    Good question. Really good question. There are laws against "essential personnel" striking in some cases, but certainly not all, and general fears about lost paychecks in others.

    But I say, I as an expat contractor for mostly the entertainment industry in places far poorer and used to unreliable pay than the US, y'all just wait. Wait until the money doesn't come through. Friday is federal paycheck day, and nobody signed up for this. I know how I get when I don't get paid, and I've raised some holy hell that got me paid, and I'm even used to going without paychecks for months.

    We've all witnessed the lull in these threads after Christmas last year. It's markedly less noisy. The economy is scared. Everybody is scared. Why is there no organized protest yet? Critical mass ain't felt the pain yet. But now we're about to see what 800,000 pissed off federal employees and their constituents do.

    Shit is about to get real. 2018 was bumpy, but 2019...strap in, game on.
    posted by saysthis at 11:04 PM on January 9, 2019 [10 favorites]


    One possible answer is that the shutdown and the wall debate have done a bang-up job at shoving another big story off the front page, which is that the walls continue to close in on Trump when it comes to his massive corruption and likely criminal activity.

    When dictators are caught doing something horribly wrong they very predictably do big, dumb, dangerous things to distract the people and try to fix it. Trump's shut down, or something like it, was predictable - almost inevitable. I would not be surprised if he tries to manufacture another, even bigger, crisis.
    posted by xammerboy at 11:12 PM on January 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Trump's team had over 100 contacts with Russian-linked officials, report shows
    Members of President Donald Trump's campaign and transition team had more than 100 contacts with Russian-linked officials, according to a new report.

    The milestone illustrates the deep ties between members of Trump's circle and the Kremlin. The findings, tracked by the Center for American Progress and its Moscow Project, come amid reports that special counsel Robert Mueller is nearing the conclusion of the two-year investigation into Russian collusion in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by the president.
    COLLUSYOURDADDY
    posted by kirkaracha at 11:16 PM on January 9, 2019 [57 favorites]


    As for protests, I know there is a protest near the white house on Thursday (today), around noon, sponsored by the AFL-CIO.

    I'm serious here: protesting near the White House doesn't mean shit to the person squatting in it. Protesting in and around the hotel up the road with his name slapped on it -- and I mean seriously protesting, as in making it shitty for the people busily emolumenting -- will have more impact.
    posted by holgate at 11:22 PM on January 9, 2019 [36 favorites]


    Let me be clear with my intention inre protests. If you are a federal worker/contractor/public servant impacted by this shutdown, I'm not saying that you should be the ones protesting. It should be up to the rest of us mooks to demonstrate to our "leaders" via the media outlets that we actually give a shit. Its my sincerest hopes you guys have the ability and wherewithal to spend this forced downtime in a productive and comforting manner. Not that you aren't welcome to join a protest of course, but please, you guys probably deserve a break.

    To holgate's point, sending a message to Trump is absolutely useless. He doesn't care, and will never care. The point here is to help drive the narrative home - that the shutdown is not supported by the majority of the American people. If the media captures people mad as hell on the streets, there will be less wiggle room for the press to start to move accountability back onto democrats, immigrants or other non-Trump parties. If this happens, you know that garbage outlets like WaPo will head there sooner or later.

    We owe this to our government servants who are currently sol without pay, we owe it to our immigrant and refugee populations who are being needlessly demonized, we owe it to the people who are working against Trump daily, but who need an expression of public support to make it actually mean something.

    If anyone is interested in hanging out along these lines somewhere relevant in downtown SF this weekend, message me privately.
    posted by BigBrooklyn at 11:27 PM on January 9, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Takeaways from Sam Harris' podcast with Renée DiResta about Russia’s “Internet Research Agency”:

    1. We should not call it a "disinformation" campaign. The point was to further polarize existing factions of Americans, often by amplifying factual information or commonly held beliefs or opinions.

    2. Russians would infiltrate existing social media groups. They would start by emphasizing identity-base pride, and then slowly suggest the identity was not compatible with voting for Clinton or America in general.

    3. They worked all sides, infiltrating groups of all kinds: black and blue lives matter, intersectionalist groups, Bernie supporters, etc.

    4. Their posts weren't easily identifiable as foreign. Most were indistinguishable from other member posts. They were often disarmingly funny. Often the messages poked fun at the idea that a Russian campaign existed.

    5. They recruited individuals, reaching out to group members to post ads or engage in activities. They would organize protests, and then organize the counter protests. They targeted specific people they could unwittingly convert into assets to do their bidding.
    posted by xammerboy at 11:36 PM on January 9, 2019 [42 favorites]


    Are people already missing pay? I’ve seen this about TSA employees as well and I’m so confused.

    AFAIK, I keep hearing that Jan 11 date as the first missed pay period. If you assume pay is every two weeks, maybe that three weeks is a slight exaggeration, but with the holidays, who knows.
    posted by BigBrooklyn at 11:38 PM on January 9, 2019


    Are we really arguing over the exact best place to protest? Wow.
    posted by runcibleshaw at 12:03 AM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


    AFAIK, I keep hearing that Jan 11 date as the first missed pay period. If you assume pay is every two weeks, maybe that three weeks is a slight exaggeration, but with the holidays, who knows.
    posted by BigBrooklyn at 3:38 PM on January 10 [+] [!]

    That's what I keep hearing, but also, I keep seeing articles like this where it's like...it's on.

    We're at this point where it's time for if you are in any way supportive of organized labor and rights against the government (or whatever employer you have) deciding it's ok to not pay you, you need to stand up. I'm agitating because if the expectation that payment is prompt goes away, I suffer. My reference point vanishes. So this is my last post of the day here, but I'll be damned if I let it not be said that the government not paying people is a major break, and that something needs to be done by the Affected, and that I'll be donating to whatever effective labor body is set up.

    If you're not getting paid, make sure nobody gets the business. I'll be damned if I wasn't an expat. I would be among you printing fliers and spray-painting the houses of Pinkerton agents. STRIKE ALREADY!!!!
    posted by saysthis at 12:11 AM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


    90% of the replies were other govt workers and some people who said they were also HUD and that it was not possible someone from HUD hadn’t been paid in that long, linking to the pay calendar showing a last pay date of Dec 28. And also saying the first missed pay will be Jan 11.

    Paychecks should have gone out on Dec 28th, yes. The phrasing of that tweet was odd ("“My family is hurting now that I’m three weeks without a paycheck”) and I'd say the charitable interpretation is "I have missed three weeks of work and don't expect to get paid for them", since there's no legal requirement to give backpay to furloughed workers (although most people are assuming that it will be done anyway).
    posted by the agents of KAOS at 12:30 AM on January 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Top Bernie Sanders 2016 adviser accused of forcibly kissing subordinate

    “Becker, now 50 years old, told the 20-something woman that he had always wanted to have sex with her and made a reference to riding his “pole,” according to the woman and three other people who witnessed what happened or were told about it shortly afterward by people who did. Later in the night, Becker approached the woman and abruptly grabbed her wrists. Then he moved his hands to her head and forcibly kissed her, putting his tongue in her mouth as he held her, the woman and other sources said.

    The woman did not formally report the incident at the time because the campaign was over. But over the past several months, Becker, who is not on Sanders’ payroll, has been calling potential staffers and traveling to early primary states to prepare for another presidential run—activities that Sanders’ top aides did not endorse, but did not disavow, either.”
    posted by msalt at 1:47 AM on January 10, 2019 [19 favorites]


    So now Trump has a real crisis on his tiny hands. A threat from a fellow NATO member, no less.
    (If it wasn't so terrible, the threat in itself would an almost Monty Python level of absurd: if you say we are massacring Kurds, we will massacre Kurds, boo).

    Turkey says it will launch Syria offensive if US delays pullout
    Turkey will launch an offensive against Syrian Kurdish forces if the US delays the withdrawal of its troops from the war-torn country, the foreign minister has said.

    “If the [pullout] is put off with ridiculous excuses like Turks are massacring Kurds, which do not reflect the reality, we will implement this decision,” Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told NTV television.
    posted by mumimor at 3:02 AM on January 10, 2019 [19 favorites]


    apparently as per twitterdom when Trump said bye-bye to Pelosi and Schumer he did some sort of jazz hands or whatever open palms on either side of his face means.

    What I want to know is if he waved with those tiny little hands next to his face while saying "Bye-bye" Hooo boy.
    posted by angrycat at 4:14 AM on January 10, 2019 [12 favorites]


    So, here's my morning coffee thought this morning: Trump is laying the groundwork for the National Emergency notion, and stoking the shutdown impasse, because deploying a National Emergency when things are really really broken and most everyone is panicked and suffering is the one single thing that he can do that will knock the Mueller report off of the front pages, when it finally hits within the next month.
    posted by Sublimity at 4:38 AM on January 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


    They worked all sides, infiltrating groups of all kinds

    If this is the pattern then you would assume they infiltrated more than one campaign, too.
    posted by schadenfrau at 4:41 AM on January 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


    I think it's possible a few people have gone three weeks without pay, there are the occasional time sheet hickups (supervisor/timekeeper on vacation, timesheet corrections, change in direct deposit, something that needs manual input) usually this would get fixed but with the shutdown that started on 12/22 it's conceivable those things were never processed.

    Also note that the pay period ended on 12/23 so the paycheck on the 28th was one day smaller than it should have been for most employees.
    posted by AlexiaSky at 4:45 AM on January 10, 2019


    So, here's my morning coffee thought this morning: Trump is laying the groundwork...

    No way. Trump might cause ridiculous chaos on a whim, but he does not lay groundwork for anything. Those-who-would-manipulate-him have to allow that he'll blow up something for no reason at random times.

    I will grant him that he's very astute at reading the tenor of his immediate environment for how much attention he's getting, and to some extent, what kind of attention. But that's it.

    All our colluding Republican friends and their "well-meaning" WH staff are well and truly treed by this narcissistic animal now.
    posted by petebest at 5:09 AM on January 10, 2019 [37 favorites]


    Trump may not lay groundwork, but he does seem to need to work himself up to doing some things. We saw that pattern with him firing people. For weeks before he actually did it he'd badmouth them, assure everyone that he was totally not thinking of firing them, and then finally fire them via Twitter when they were out of town.

    Maybe actually declaring a national emergency is something he has a similar emotional difficulty just doing and needs to work himself up for as well?
    posted by sotonohito at 5:16 AM on January 10, 2019 [8 favorites]


    He’s a coward, that’s all.

    God, all this energy expended trying to understand a simple, hollow, narcissist. There’s nothing there to understand. You’d think we were all traumatized children trying desperately to find some sort of sense in an abusive tyrant we can’t defend against.

    I’ve been wondering, though, if spreading awareness of how this sort of abusive control works — like, it’s in memes now, you don’t have to read Foucault to learn about the internal policeman or whatever — will slowly neuter this form of authoritarianism. Until another form can rise, obviously, but still.
    posted by schadenfrau at 5:22 AM on January 10, 2019 [78 favorites]


    At this point I'd like to see "why aren't you all out protesting" go the way of re-litigating the 2016 primary in these threads. We've covered this.

    1. When we do protest at historic levels, much of the press declines to take us seriously
    2. Republicans and their dear leader DON'T CARE what we think
    3. most of us are trying to build power to fight Trump etc, such as
    4. how we just worked our asses off to get the blue wave that took the House and changed legislative bodies and governorships across the country
    5. this is a huge country so making an impressive showing of concerned citizen is more challenging than in many other places
    6. this has been going on for 2 years, and we have no idea when it will end

    Every day is an emergency. Every day feels like we should flood the streets. People still need to live and survive so we try to find a balance and direct our energy in ways that matter.

    I'll be at the Women's March on January 19, hopefully with a kickass sign and a warm coat. But I'll do a lot of stuff you will not see before and after that.
    posted by Emmy Rae at 5:24 AM on January 10, 2019 [145 favorites]


    If you're talking full-scale unrest, that happens only when people think there isn't any other option. Because it's bloody and violent. Most people have been through shutdowns that didn't affect them too badly. They're hoping to ride it out.

    Massive protests could still be on the horizon but everyone is basically holding their breath and hoping for a solution.
    posted by emjaybee at 5:34 AM on January 10, 2019 [8 favorites]


    In Overton Window news, the guys over at National Review can't stop talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's 70% top marginal tax rate proposal. My favourite one so far is Kevin's pedantic correction to the effect that AOC isn't being nearly as aggressive in her proposal as the pre-1980 tax codes actually were:
    Representative Ocasio-Cortez has spoken about introducing a 70 percent bracket on incomes of $10 million and up. In 1980, the top rate of 70 percent kicked in at $107,000, or about $360,000 in current dollars. A 70 percent tax that applies at $360,000 is an entirely different thing from a 70 percent tax that applies at $10 million.
    Indeed it is. I bet it would raise a lot more money to fund social programs, too. Thanks for bringing that up, NRO!
    posted by clawsoon at 5:37 AM on January 10, 2019 [79 favorites]


    How to deal with a narcissist
    posted by eustatic at 5:48 AM on January 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


    @joshtpm:
    Means pretty clearly that Bill Barr is cued up to be a constitution breaker on Trump's behalf.
    He’s referring to Barr’s refusal to meet with Senate Dems prior to his confirmation shindig. Here’s the linked TPM article.

    Kinda hoping he’s called this one wrong, because I got nothin’.
    posted by schadenfrau at 6:12 AM on January 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


    From The Hill:

    Texas county GOP set to vote this week to remove leader because he is Muslim
    Republican Dorrie O’Brien is leading a group of colleagues in an attempt to unseat Shahid Shafi, a trauma surgeon in Forth Worth, the largest city in Tarrant County.

    “We don’t think he’s suitable as a practicing Muslim to be vice chair because he’d be the representative for ALL Republicans in Tarrant County, and not ALL Republicans in Tarrant County think Islam is safe or acceptable in the U.S.,” O’Brien wrote in a Facebook post.
    posted by jgirl at 6:37 AM on January 10, 2019 [32 favorites]


    . . .and the small businesses where these people spend their money

    Speaking as a small business owner right outside DC, who has had virtually no customers this week? YEAH.

    I even started offering a discount to federal employees until the shutdown ends.
    posted by nonasuch at 6:40 AM on January 10, 2019 [29 favorites]


    “We don’t think he’s suitable as a practicing Muslim to be vice chair because he’d be the representative for ALL Republicans in Tarrant County, and not ALL Republicans in Tarrant County think Islam is safe or acceptable in the U.S.,” O’Brien wrote in a Facebook post.

    This ain’t a theocracy, Dorrie O’Brien.
    posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:41 AM on January 10, 2019 [44 favorites]


    By the way, I oppose eliminating the EC, I just want to reform the ratio of EC votes per voter to be more equal across the board.

    I've mentioned it before, but updating the century-old Apportionment Act of 1911, which restricts the number of representatives to 435, should be a top priority the next time Democrats have power to do so. More representatives would certainly benefit Democrats, who after all represent more people, and it would also increase the Electoral College in ways that would generally benefit blue states (and Texas and Florida).
    posted by Gelatin at 6:43 AM on January 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


    One of the things I like to do is think up what kind of explanations explain the details we know that might still result in "good" outcomes (for varying levels of what we Mefites would consider "good") to see how ridiculous those explanations are.

    The only thing that comes to mind RE: Barr's refusal to meet with Sen. Klobluchar is that maybe he has a similar attitude to Mueller and will absolutely support the investigation but has to appear to be on Trump's side at least until he gets confirmed. Other than Whitaker, most of the DoJ folks who have gotten involved with the investigation affirm that the investigation should keep moving forward at least once they've seen the evidence or, I assume, been briefed by Mueller and his team.

    Based on what we've seen from Barr, I wouldn't bet on this explanation but I still think there is a decent chance that Barr will be on Muller's side once he gets confirmed. It doesn't look good but I haven't lost all hope.
    posted by VTX at 6:51 AM on January 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Daniel Dale: Trump's fuller quote on Mexico paying: "Obviously I never said this, and I never meant, they're going to write out a check. I said they're going to pay for it. They are. They are paying for it with the incredible deal we made with the...USMCA deal. It's a trade deal.

    So... is Canada paying for the wall too?
    posted by PenDevil at 7:02 AM on January 10, 2019 [20 favorites]


    Anyone claiming Trump is too stupid, too narcissistic, or too lazy to be "laying the groundwork" for anything nefarious -- I invite you to read Fintan O'Toole's very well reasoned opinion piece for the Irish Times.

    Trial runs for fascism are in full flow
    Babies in cages were no ‘mistake’ by Trump but test-marketing for barbarism

    PDF version

    It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as an ignoramus, not least because he is. But he has an acute understanding of one thing: test marketing. He created himself in the gossip pages of the New York tabloids, where celebrity is manufactured by planting outrageous stories that you can later confirm or deny depending on how they go down. And he recreated himself in reality TV where the storylines can be adjusted according to the ratings. Put something out there, pull it back, adjust, go again.

    Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.
    posted by pjsky at 7:03 AM on January 10, 2019 [71 favorites]


    Just now:

    “The buck stops with everybody.” - Trump

    [real] ... one for the history books.
    posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:10 AM on January 10, 2019 [51 favorites]


    maybe he has a similar attitude to Mueller and will absolutely support the investigation but has to appear to be on Trump's side at least until he gets confirmed.

    I keep telling myself this for every not-obviously-horrible nominee. I haven't been (entirely) right yet. They all cave to Trumpism to some degree.
    posted by Etrigan at 7:11 AM on January 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Regarding protests:

    You need a permit to stage a protest. Permits aren't being granted in DC right now because of the shutdown (the parks service people who would be granting them are furloughed). This is also a problem for big, long-term protests like the Women's March, which never received its permit for its annual protest on the 19th. Meanwhile, however, police are not furloughed, so "unlawful" protests would/could be broken up aggressively.

    Obviously people who work for the government can't really risk getting arrested or getting a record, and they could even plausibly get fired just for appearing at a protest "as" federal workers because of the Hatch Act. So they're going to be extra cautious. And these are people who already wanted to work for the feds anyway, they're generally pretty cautious as a group.

    AFL-CIO is holding today's big rally at their HQ, since that doesn't require a permit. Their HQ is very close to the White House and Lafayette Square (like literally across the street), which is why the rally is described as being "near the White House."

    I think people are also underestimating how fundamentally a shutdown changes the atmosphere in DC. It's a half-dead town filling up with trash (literally). Locally, there's no missing the impact.
    posted by rue72 at 7:12 AM on January 10, 2019 [55 favorites]


    Just now:

    “The buck stops with everybody.” - Trump

    Link? The Googles haven't caught up to this one yet, apparently.
    posted by Rykey at 7:25 AM on January 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


    The Daily Beast's Sam Stein highlights some choice Trump quotes en route to AF1:
    Favorite Trump quotes from just note

    “I didn’t pound the table. I didn’t pound the table.”

    "I don't have temper tantrums."

    “I’ll probably will do it, maybe definitely.”

    "The buck stops with everybody"

    "I'm a professional at technology"
    Vox's Aaron Rupar has the video:
    TRUMP: "The buck stops with everybody."

    "The Democrats don't care about crime. They've been taken over by a group of young people that frankly, in some cases, I think they're crazy."
    posted by Doktor Zed at 7:29 AM on January 10, 2019 [45 favorites]


    They all cave to Trumpism to some degree.
    That's the thing, it's Trump's superpower. Anyone who attempts to engage with him is soiled.
    posted by mumimor at 7:31 AM on January 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Vox's Aaron Rupar has the video: TRUMP: "The buck stops with everybody."

    Just to add/give credit, it was NBC White House Correspondent Kristen Welker who asked question (which was drowned out by noise, maybe helicopter rotors?):
    ‏
    When I asked @POTUS if the buck stops with him he tells me: “The buck stops with everyone.”

    posted by bluecore at 7:34 AM on January 10, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Regarding protests:

    The Hatch Act does not prohibit most federal employees from attending and being active at rallies and political meetings.

    However, federal employees in some agencies are further restricted:

    "the Federal Election Commission;
    the Election Assistance Commission;
    the Federal Bureau of Investigation;
    the Secret Service;
    the Central Intelligence Agency;
    the National Security Council;
    the National Security Agency;
    the Defense Intelligence Agency;
    the Merit Systems Protection Board;
    the Office of Special Counsel;
    the Office of Criminal Investigation of the Internal Revenue Service;
    the Office of Investigative Programs of the United States Custom Service;
    the Office of Law Enforcement of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms;
    the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency;
    the Office of the Director of National Intelligence;
    the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice;
    and the National Security Division of the Department of Justice

    The heightened restrictions also apply to employees holding certain designated positions, including the following:
    career appointees in an Senior Executive Service position; administrative law judges; contract appeals board members; and administrative appeals judges."
    posted by jilloftrades at 7:37 AM on January 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


    I am a Canadian, and I am watching all of this with horror and fascination.

    At this point, I am working on the pessmistic assumption that the President will never give in. He seems to see negotiation as a test of willpower, and he seems also to be completely indifferent to the struggles of the people who are being harmed by the shutdown, as he seemingly cares about nobody other than himself. And the Democrats can't give in. If they do, the President will try the tactic again and again.

    If the President was the only problem, this would be solvable - the House would pass legislation to reopen the government, the Senate would swiftly confirm it, and Congress would override the president's inevitable veto. But the Republicans prioritize party loyalty over actually governing, so they will do nothing.

    Again, I am possibly being overly pessimistic, but I am wondering whether the Republican Senate and the Republican President would be recalcitrant enough to block all legislation coming out of the Democratic House until 2020. Even before the last Presidential election, the Republicans violated historical norms by blocking Obama's Supreme Court nominee, and there's nothing in the rules (that I know of) to stop them from dragging their feet and simply blockading everything.

    Am I being too pessimistic? I am not knowledgeable about the details of American government - is there anything that municipal and state governments can do to mitigate the problems resulting from an indefinite government shutdown? Could they behave as though some natural disaster had befallen Washington, DC, and rendered the federal government structure inoperative?

    I guess it all depends on what Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and the people on "Fox and Friends" decide to do - they seem to be running the government, after all.
    posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 7:39 AM on January 10, 2019 [20 favorites]


    “I didn’t pound the table. I didn’t pound the table.”

    Repeating the lie to reinforce it is a classic tell of a bad liar (which he is, because he never learned how to be better at it, because he never had to).
    posted by Etrigan at 7:42 AM on January 10, 2019 [35 favorites]


    Trump's fuller quote on Mexico paying: "Obviously I never said this, and I never meant, they're going to write out a check. I said they're going to pay for it. They are. They are paying for it with the incredible deal we made with the...USMCA deal. It's a trade deal.

    Which, even if true (heh), still wouldn't answer the question: Why do Americans still need to pay anything?
    posted by Rykey at 7:42 AM on January 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


    cjelli: "He's a very bad liar, considering how much practice he gets."

    He's "wealthy" enough that in the past he rarely, if ever, got called out on it. You need constructive feeback of some sort to get better at a task and the Cheeto isn't going to provide that to himself.
    posted by Mitheral at 7:53 AM on January 10, 2019 [8 favorites]


    He still never gets called out on it. The media fact-checks him, sometimes, but they still air him unedited and give him every illusion that whatever he says should be taken on authority.
    posted by Autumnheart at 7:56 AM on January 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


    to paraphrase an old saying, if the buck stops with everyone, it stops with no one

    we're approaching peak nihilism
    posted by pyramid termite at 7:58 AM on January 10, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Anyone claiming Trump is too stupid, too narcissistic, or too lazy to be "laying the groundwork" for anything nefarious -- I invite you to read Fintan O'Toole's very well reasoned opinion piece for the Irish Times.

    No. It's actually worse than this.

    I agree that this is test marketing. But it's not Trump who's the architect of anything. He really is a ridiculous and empty as he appears. It's the people who are drawn to Trump because of his base who are test marketing genocidal fascism. It's Stephen Miller and the rest.

    And they are not stupid, hollow voids like Trump. In some cases they are smart enough and competent enough to get things done with sufficient access to power and political capital. Which is much, much worse. Because they're not going away. They will latch on to the next white male supremacist authoritarian who, it should be said, will almost have to be smarter, more competent, and more effective than the current demented moron.
    posted by schadenfrau at 8:01 AM on January 10, 2019 [57 favorites]


    I mentioned this NPR story on Trump threatening to withhold FEMA funds from California yesterday, but the transcript is now up.
    And, you know, I think there would also be a pretty big political fallout if this were to happen. It's worth noting that two of the hardest-hit counties from California's wildfires voted solidly for Trump in 2016, including the county that I'm talking to you from.
    That's Butte county, which went for Trump by about 3%.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:02 AM on January 10, 2019 [13 favorites]


    They will latch on to the next white male supremacist authoritarian who, it should be said, will almost have to be smarter, more competent, and more effective than the current demented moron.

    Tom Cotton.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 8:03 AM on January 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Tom Cotton.

    Yuuuup. Which is why we gotta get him with the Russia stuff.

    I mean, for justice, too. But also for "oh fuck that's the next Big Bad" reasons.
    posted by schadenfrau at 8:06 AM on January 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


    They will latch on to the next white male supremacist authoritarian who, it should be said, will almost have to be smarter, more competent, and more effective than the current demented moron.

    This has been my fear since GW Bush. It's the Millers and Cheneys of the world that are the real threats, but if the GOP ever managed to elect a competent fascist President, it would take the threat up to a whole new level. The Dems need to build political and structural bulwarks against that inevitability, and not just tune their efforts towards Trump.
    posted by jetsetsc at 8:07 AM on January 10, 2019 [20 favorites]


    Hermeowne Grangepurr: REAL ID is another one of those bullshirt PATRIOT ACT-era laws that was pushed off for years and years, but never eliminated.
    ...
    I think it's going to be a shirtshow in 2020, and it's defiantly going to be shirtshow if the requirement is implemented now (which I guess it isn't).

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on December 20, 2013 a phased enforcement plan for the REAL ID Act (the Act), as passed by Congress, that will implement the Act in a measured, fair, and responsible way. The following is a list of the current status of each state/territory. -- CA, OR, MT, OK, MO, IL, KY, PA, NJ, RI, ME, AK, GU, AS, MP, and VI all have extensions (and there are more details on some states, like the fact that Federal agencies and nuclear power plants may not accept for official purposes driver’s licenses and state IDs from Missouri).

    All other states are already REAL ID compliant, meaning you need to bring in all the required documentation to renew your ID.


    scalefree: @thedailybeast WATCH: Trump argues that we need a border wall to stop migrants just driving right across in their "unbelievable vehicles... stronger, bigger, and faster vehicles than our police have, than ICE has"

    Maybe he fell asleep watching Mad Max? I can see how Fury Road would give him nightmares. He's a plastic chest-plate away from being a half-decent cosplayer for Immortan Joe as it is, and the idea of a woman defying him is already a trigger for him.


    In other news, it sounds like there are some soon-to-be former AT&T workers who could join federal employees in strikes: Report: AT&T plans layoffs despite claiming tax cut would create 7,000 jobs -- AT&T memo says company needs to be "faster, leaner, and more agile." (Jon Brodkin for Ars Technica, Jan. 9, 2019)
    AT&T is reportedly planning a significant round of layoffs, despite receiving a large tax break and various regulatory favors such as the repeal of net neutrality rules.

    Motherboard reported the pending layoffs yesterday, saying it obtained the information from AT&T internal documents and an anonymous AT&T source.
    The Motherboard article is titled "AT&T Preps for New Layoffs Despite Billions in Tax Breaks and Regulatory Favors," noting that Internal documents obtained by Motherboard show that the company is preparing for layoffs—megamergers, deregulation, and tax breaks aren’t providing the public benefits AT&T promised.

    AT&T isn't ready to make this kind of statement publicly.
    When contacted by Ars, AT&T said, "We are hiring to meet the needs of the growth areas of our business. In fact, we hired more than 20,000 new employees last year and more than 17,000 the year before. In cases where we do have to adjust our workforce, we take steps to lessen the effect on employees."
    Tell me more about "lessening the effect on employees," won't you?
    posted by filthy light thief at 8:07 AM on January 10, 2019 [21 favorites]


    Which, even if true (heh), still wouldn't answer the question: Why do Americans still need to pay anything?

    And even if we were getting billions from Mexico from the new NAFTA, claiming that that means "Mexico" is paying for "the wall" is like saying your employer is paying for your vacation via your year-end bonus, so none of that spending counts.
    posted by BungaDunga at 8:09 AM on January 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


    For those playing the "There's Always A Tweet" game: https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/398887965302091776
    posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:10 AM on January 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


    The Motherboard article is titled "AT&T Preps for New Layoffs Despite Billions in Tax Breaks and Regulatory Favors," noting that Internal documents obtained by Motherboard show that the company is preparing for layoffs—megamergers, deregulation, and tax breaks aren’t providing the public benefits AT&T promised.

    At some point people are finally going to truly, truly understand that when a company is doing well, it will lay people off just as much as it would if it were doing poorly. The point of layoffs is to improve profit margin. It isn't to employ people. That's just something they say so that they get what they want.
    posted by Autumnheart at 8:13 AM on January 10, 2019 [49 favorites]


    In Cairo, Pompeo Slams Obama's Mideast Policies, Says Era Of 'American Shame Is Over' (NPR, January 10, 2019)
    "America is a force for good in the Middle East. Period," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday in Cairo, in an expansive speech in which the top U.S. diplomat excoriated the Obama administration's Middle East policies and accused it of making crucial errors that worsened a string of crises in the region.

    "The age of self-inflicted American shame is over, and so are the policies that produced so much needless suffering," Pompeo said.

    The U.S. State Department had billed the speech at the American University in Cairo as the most complete remarks yet on U.S. priorities in the Mideast by Pompeo, who is on an eight-day tour of the region. But it was most notable for the determined attacks on the previous U.S. administration.

    Nearly 10 years ago, then-President Barack Obama delivered a landmark address at Cairo University in which he said he had come to Egypt seeking "a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world."

    Pompeo repudiated those words, saying, "Now comes the real 'new beginning.' "
    "We're radicalizing Muslims AND Christians, all over the world!" /fake
    posted by filthy light thief at 8:28 AM on January 10, 2019 [13 favorites]


    NBC: House Democrats Investigate HUD's 'Failure' To Act as Shutdown Threatens Affordable Housing—One HUD employee said the agency took "a shrug of the shoulders kind of approach" to protecting low-income Americans from the shutdown.
    House Democrats are using their new oversight authority to investigate the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s management of the shutdown, as questions mount about HUD's failure to renew low-income housing contracts for more than 1,000 properties across the country.

    “HUD knew for months about this impending deadline to renew the contracts, but for some reason they failed to take proper action in advance of the shutdown,” said Rep. David Price, D-N.C., the incoming chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee on transportation and housing, in a statement.

    “I am seeking detailed explanations from HUD officials about this failure and how they will mitigate the consequences, and I will call a hearing if necessary."

    HUD told NBC News on Monday that about 1,150 contracts under a Section 8 program known as Project-Based Rental Assistance had lapsed. The program subsidizes rent and utilities for 1.2 million households, including families with young children, the elderly and the disabled.
    NBC: House Democrats Now Asking Questions about Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin—Mnuchin will give the House a classified briefing Thursday, after a request from the Democratic chairs of the main House investigative panels.
    Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has agreed to deliver a classified briefing to U.S. House lawmakers on Thursday on his recent decision to lift sanctions on companies linked to a Russian oligarch and Vladimir Putin ally, marking the start of an aggressive new focus on Mnuchin by newly empowered House Democrats, according to two top Democratic aides.

    Mnuchin, who served as the Trump campaign's national finance chairman in 2016 before being confirmed to President Donald Trump's cabinet, has largely escaped investigative scrutiny.

    But because of his role in the campaign — and, most recently, the Dec. 19 announcement easing sanctions on companies aligned with Oleg Deripaska, the Putin ally with ties to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort — House Democrats believe Mnuchin should be a focus of and source of information for several planned investigations both related and unrelated to the Russia probe, according to the aides. These include examinations of Trump's finances and the business practices of the Trump Organization.

    The Thursday briefing comes in response to a letter sent Tuesday to Mnuchin by the new chairpersons of the seven major House investigative committees, asking him to provide answers on the Treasury Department's decision to lift the sanctions, which was announced as lawmakers left town for the holidays.
    Accountability is coming to Capitol Hill, after a long absence.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 8:30 AM on January 10, 2019 [47 favorites]


    @thedailybeast WATCH: Trump argues that we need a border wall to stop migrants just driving right across in their "unbelievable vehicles... stronger, bigger, and faster vehicles than our police have, than ICE has"

    Maybe he fell asleep watching Mad Max?

    I'm thinking Fast & Furious (aka Furious 4), a portion of which takes place on the U.S.-Mexico border.
    posted by zakur at 8:30 AM on January 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


    @atrupar, 7:12 AM - 10 Jan 2019
    REPORTER: Mr President, there are pictures this morning showing steel barrier wall being sawed right through. What good is it?

    TRUMP: "Well, that's a wall that was designed by previous administrations. There is nothing that can't be penetrated, but you fix it."
    “While it is true that previous administrations used this design, the prototype was built during his administration.”
    posted by kirkaracha at 8:32 AM on January 10, 2019 [15 favorites]


    Says Era Of 'American Shame Is Over'


    Only to the degree that these clowns have no sense of shame.
    posted by darkstar at 8:32 AM on January 10, 2019 [40 favorites]


    "The age of self-inflicted American shame is over, and so are the policies that produced so much needless suffering," Pompeo said.

    So... We produced a lot of needless suffering, and we're not ashamed of that?
    posted by OnceUponATime at 8:34 AM on January 10, 2019 [14 favorites]


    Michael Beschloss: Harry Truman at his Oval Office desk.
    posted by young_simba at 8:38 AM on January 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


    > Pompeo repudiated those words, saying, "Now comes the real 'new beginning.' "

    That's incredibly ominous.
    posted by MysticMCJ at 8:39 AM on January 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


    I think he means we suffered needlessly by being ashamed.
    posted by agregoli at 8:39 AM on January 10, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Trump argues that we need a border wall to stop migrants just driving right across in their "unbelievable vehicles... stronger, bigger, and faster vehicles than our police have, than ICE has"

    I'll knock it off with the hot takes (after this one, natch), but... wouldn't any entity with better vehicles than the police and ICE have at least marginally-competent wall-scaling / tunnel-digging technology?

    I'm not sure what hurts my brain more: that some of Trump's base believe his bullshit, or that some of them know it's bullshit and still like to hear it.
    posted by Rykey at 8:40 AM on January 10, 2019 [11 favorites]


    And even if we were getting billions from Mexico from the new NAFTA, claiming that that means "Mexico" is paying for "the wall" is like saying your employer is paying for your vacation via your year-end bonus, so none of that spending counts.

    Well we've decided that the health care provided to you as part of your compensation is subject to their personal whims about ladybits, why not credit them for that too?
    posted by phearlez at 9:02 AM on January 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


    It's a waste of energy to debate and discuss the actual weaknesses of specific models of the wall. To do so is to continue to act as if they want an actual solution to an actual problem, which is to treat the base as rational actors and the administration as good-faith actors. They want a white-nationalist monument, and if some immigrants get stabbed by the spikes atop the steel flats then that's a bonus, but mostly they want a grand and permanent symbol of STAY OUT, WHITE ONLY.

    Think about the idiot analogy they constantly give of "well your house has walls and a door, why shouldn't the country." Conservatives know that their own houses aren't impenetrable. That's why they're also obsessed with the idea of shooting people who break in to their houses. Tell them "well here's all the weaknesses of your wall, surely loads of people would get through" and they'll respond, in so many words, with "just kill those ones." And that's where all arguments about immigration control end with them.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 9:06 AM on January 10, 2019 [61 favorites]


    I want the ghost of Harry Truman to not only haunt the White House, but also Blunt and Hawley's offices.
    posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:08 AM on January 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


    rue72: "It's a half-dead town filling up with trash (literally). "

    People need to stop saying this. The DC government is footing the bill for garbage pickup, and things generally look about as clean as they usually do.

    The same isn't true elsewhere, and we obviously need to re-open the government, but the narrative that DC cannot take care of itself needs to stop.
    posted by schmod at 9:18 AM on January 10, 2019 [31 favorites]


    I mentioned this NPR story on Trump threatening to withhold FEMA funds from California yesterday, but the transcript is now up.
    And, you know, I think there would also be a pretty big political fallout if this were to happen. It's worth noting that two of the hardest-hit counties from California's wildfires voted solidly for Trump in 2016, including the county that I'm talking to you from.
    That's Butte county, which went for Trump by about 3%.

    Yeahbut the students and professors at Chico State skew the countywide results pretty heavily. Shasta County, where the Carr Fire threatened to torch half of Redding this summer, went 65.6 percent Trump. Neighboring counties were all very solidly Trump:
    Butte: Trump 48.0
    Tehama: Trump 65.5
    Plumas: Trump 57.5
    Lassen: Trump 72.7
    Glenn: Trump 61.7
    Yuba: Trump 58.5
    Colusa: Trump 53.9
    tl;dr: Forget it Jake, it's Trumptown.
    posted by notyou at 9:23 AM on January 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


    I really don't understand how Trump thinks that tweeting this video of Obama talking about "dropping the politics" to end a humanitarian crisis, is going to help him? I mean it's obviously super out of context and just reminds people what a sane President looks like.

    There's a claim that at the time Trump replied to that speech with a tweet worrying about presidential overreach through executive orders. I can't verify that but of course he would...
    posted by cirhosis at 9:27 AM on January 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Trump will lost California in 2016 and will again in 2020. Maybe it will have an effect on him in the primary, but it's pretty clear that he's just written off California, and doesn't really care about the counties that voted for him, because they can't push him over the top in the general.
    posted by mach at 9:27 AM on January 10, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Pompeo's a bona fide rapture-ready megachurch evangelical, and therefore the ideal person to tell the people of the Middle East (especially Coptic Christians) how things should be.
    posted by holgate at 9:30 AM on January 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


    it's pretty clear that he's just written off California, and doesn't really care about the counties that voted for him, because they can't push him over the top in the general.

    The question is, would Trumpists such as these actually mind that he has forsaken them, or are they so committed to their team having a chance to own some libs that they would literally die in flame?

    I think I…don't wanna know the answer
    posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 9:34 AM on January 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Trump will lost California in 2016 and will again in 2020. Maybe it will have an effect on him in the primary, but it's pretty clear that he's just written off California, and doesn't really care about the counties that voted for him, because they can't push him over the top in the general.

    No argument there. Many Trump supporters in Shasta County are proud that their county went so hard for Trump. Losing those folks won't hurt Trump in 2020. They'll stay home, and that'll hurt local down ticket races.
    posted by notyou at 9:37 AM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


    cirhosis: I really don't understand how Trump thinks that tweeting this video of Obama talking about "dropping the politics" to end a humanitarian crisis, is going to help him?

    It's not the bit about "dropping politics", it's that Obama said what have become the new magic words in the national conversation: "humanitarian crisis on the border". The idea here is that it's a brilliant "gotcha", because lately just about everyone outside the cult has been saying "Um, there's no crisis at the border", and thus no urgent need for a wall.

    In reality, of course, this isn't a case of the libs hipocritically changing their collective mind or whatever, because Obama was referring to a crisis experienced by migrants, not perpetrated by them.
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 9:37 AM on January 10, 2019 [35 favorites]


    OK, I'm trying to watch this Netflix documentary on Trump (and I'm really slow because I can only take about 5 or 6 minutes of him at a time). But I've reached to a segment where he is debating Ruth Messinger on local TV, I think during the 80's. And there you can see his method and manner all fully developed. He is a bit more subdued at that point, but the lying, the insults and the sexism is all there and frankly quite shocking even now when we know him. And also the media both-side-ism.
    posted by mumimor at 9:39 AM on January 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


    The question is, would Trumpists such as these actually mind that he has forsaken them, or are they so committed to their team having a chance to own some libs that they would literally die in flame?

    I don't think so? I have family in and around Redding and I watched Carr Fire developments pretty closely on Twitter. At first there was confidence that Trump would act fast to direct resources to Shasta County, because the county was so solidly Trump. They're his people! When Trump failed to make it a priority those confident tweets turned to disappointment.

    I don't expect those folks to become Democrats. I expect them to become disaffected.
    posted by notyou at 9:46 AM on January 10, 2019 [12 favorites]


    NBC: A Beefed-Up White House Legal Team Prepares Aggressive Defense Of Trump’s Executive Privilege As Investigations Loom Large
    A beefed-up White House legal team is gearing up to prevent President Trump’s confidential discussions with top advisers from being disclosed to House Democratic investigators and revealed in the special counsel’s long-awaited report, setting the stage for a potential clash between the branches of government.

    The strategy to strongly assert the president’s executive privilege on both fronts is being developed under newly arrived White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who has hired 17 lawyers in recent weeks to help in the effort.

    He is coordinating with White House lawyer Emmet Flood, who is leading the response to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on his now-20-month-long investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Flood is based in White House Counsel’s Office but reports directly to Trump.[…]

    In preparation for the looming legal battles, Cipollone has been beefing up the White House Counsel’s Office, which was down to fewer than 20 lawyers late last year, compared with 40 to 50 in past administrations. Four of the five deputies under previous White House counsel Donald McGahn had left the office, The Washington Post reported last year.

    Since his arrival in December, Cipollone has increased the staff to roughly 35 lawyers and aims to bolster the ranks to 40 in the coming weeks, administration officials said. He also hired three deputies, all with extensive experience in past Republican White Houses and the Justice Department.
    While the lawyers and former colleagues the WaPo interviews all make bipartisan/conciliatory sounds, Cipollone's actions show he's ready to go to the mattresses for Trump to defend "executive privilege" against House Democrats and Mueller.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 9:49 AM on January 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


    @b_fung: If a picture says a thousand words, the Instagram photos of these zero-dollar paychecks are going to hit like a college textbook

    Politico, Air traffic controllers, working without pay, ramp up shutdown pressure
    Pay stubs reading a net pay of zero dollars were distributed Thursday morning, including one for a controller at a major air traffic control hub outside of Washington, D.C. shared with POLITICO.

    Controllers and other aviation industry workers are planning to rally outside the Capitol building Thursday afternoon to call for the shutdown to be halted. They will be joined by several members of Congress from both parties and representatives of the airline industry, among others.
    posted by zachlipton at 9:52 AM on January 10, 2019 [44 favorites]


    [Al Jazeera] In Cairo, Pompeo delivers Trump's vision: Confrontation with Iran

    Pompeo's speech in Cairo was about as good as one might suspect:

    The US "will use diplomacy and work with our partners to expel every last Iranian boot" from Syria and will bolster efforts "to bring peace and stability to the long-suffering Syrian people," he said.
    ...
    Al Jazeera's senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said that Pompeo's speech failed to resonate with the Arab audience.

    His speech which began with "America is a force of good in the Middle East" marks a departure from Obama who started his humble speech with an apology, Bishara said.

    "I think that's an arrogant approach to the Middle East telling its people who suffered millions of casualties since America's wars in 1980. Last year alone 40,000 people were killed in Afghanistan, a war that has gone on now for 17, 18 years," Bishara said.

    "That does not strike people in the Middle East as a humble and engaging approach."

    Half a line on Yemen. No mention of Palestinians.
    posted by stonepharisee at 9:53 AM on January 10, 2019 [14 favorites]


    "I have the absolute right to declare a national emergency," Trump said after stating, correctly, that other presidents have used it, some fairly often. "I haven't done it yet. I may do it. If this doesn't work out, probably I will do it. I would almost say definitely," the President said.

    Yesterday I was talking to a co-worker I know reasonably well, and when she told me she and her husband were thinking about taking a short trip to the United States in about a month I gently suggested that maybe it's not the *best* time to be traveling to the U.S. if you don't have to because, well, you know. And her exact words were "Why? What's going on?"
    posted by The Card Cheat at 9:54 AM on January 10, 2019 [31 favorites]


    "If this doesn't work out, probably I will do it."

    Nothing says "real emergency" like telling us it's your backup strategy.
    posted by diogenes at 9:57 AM on January 10, 2019 [55 favorites]


    Navarro files nails during border wall debate.
    posted by Capt. Renault at 9:58 AM on January 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Trump want's an emergency? It's time to stop fucking around, and pull out all the stops for a General Strike. Really show him what a shutdown looks like.
    posted by mikelieman at 10:03 AM on January 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


    > Navarro files nails during border wall debate.
    "You can do your nails, Ana - you know who can't do their nails? Those people who've been killed by illegal immigrants."
    A few of my brain cells just shriveled up and died from exposure to that bit of smarmy bullshit.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 10:06 AM on January 10, 2019 [14 favorites]


    [Al Jazeera] In Cairo, Pompeo delivers Trump's vision: Confrontation with Iran

    Reminder: simulations of US war with Iran generally end catastrophically and feature 20 thousand US citizens drowning in the strait of hormuz in a few hours, likely followed by regional nuclear war and the death of a hundred million or so people. Those simulations assume competent and rational leadership, of course.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 10:07 AM on January 10, 2019 [23 favorites]


    [Wapo]
    Pelosi gets a delivery of 10,000 roses, thanks to a DailyKos fundraiser
    posted by growabrain at 10:09 AM on January 10, 2019 [22 favorites]


    Trump's closing line in E1 of that Netflix show I'm watching:
    I'll wait for bad times. I'll wait for bad times and then I'll get what I want.
    posted by mumimor at 10:10 AM on January 10, 2019 [12 favorites]


    It got less press for obviously convenient reasons, but a study not funded by the Koch Brothers and worked on by a team of economists also released last year found even larger savings from switching to Medicare-For-All
    posted by The Whelk at 10:11 AM on January 10, 2019 [27 favorites]


    Moulitsas chalked up the flower drive’s success to people’s desire for a rare sweet gesture in an often-negative political landscape. “People wanted to do something nice for once,” he said.

    I mean ... sure?
    posted by petebest at 10:13 AM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Furloughed federal workers protesting now, outside the WH. < Youtube live.
    posted by Harry Caul at 10:13 AM on January 10, 2019 [34 favorites]


    Babies in cages were no ‘mistake’ by Trump but test-marketing for barbarism

    I just want to remind people we know for a fact this is the case. Stephen Miller wrote about creating detention centers to make immigration less desirable and frightening. The horrible conditions were part of a plan, not an accident. Bannon openly talked about tearing the existing government apart as being his philosophy. Trump may play it by ear, but his underlings have blueprints they're working from.
    posted by xammerboy at 10:21 AM on January 10, 2019 [93 favorites]


    Just called my Representative and Senators to say this:
    I support 0 dollars allocated to build a racist border wall. I am watching honest, hardworking people protesting in front of the White House right now, and I demand that the government be reopened without any wall funding. I find holding these people hostage for Trumps fever-dream of a wall to be outrageous and unacceptable.

    [For a bonus round, which got a laugh out of the staffers for my deep blue Congress Peeps] You can quote me verbatim on this one, but: Impeach [and Convict] the Motherfucker Already.
    Pay the workers, furlough Trump, indeed.
    posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 10:42 AM on January 10, 2019 [48 favorites]


    Controllers and other aviation industry workers are planning to rally outside the Capitol building Thursday afternoon to call for the shutdown to be halted

    I am old enough to remember what Reagan did to the air traffic controllers. It would be a strange thing indeed if this new generation somehow defeated the latest Republican president.
    posted by gwint at 10:54 AM on January 10, 2019 [21 favorites]


    > Reminder: simulations of US war with Iran generally end catastrophically and feature 20 thousand US citizens drowning in the strait of hormuz in a few hours, likely followed by regional nuclear war and the death of a hundred million or so people.

    Yes, yes...but what is all of this when weighed against the possibility of the Republican Avatar suffering significant legal consequences for his actions?
    posted by The Card Cheat at 10:54 AM on January 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Quartermaster Clerk: One BOOK, "Swedish-made penis Enlarger Pumps And Me: (This Sort of Thing Is My Bag Baby)", by Austin Powers.

    @JuddLegum Trump TODAY on Mexico paying for a wall: "I never said this and I never meant they're going to write out a check."

    Trump campaign website, AUGUST 2016: "It's an easy decision for Mexico: make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion..."
    [image: Trump campaign website]
    posted by scalefree at 10:57 AM on January 10, 2019 [39 favorites]


    @costareports: Sen Collins tells me that the deal in the works for a bipartisan immigration deal to end the shutdown is now all but dead... shutdown continues
    posted by zabuni at 11:11 AM on January 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


    The question is, would Trumpists such as these actually mind that he has forsaken them, or are they so committed to their team having a chance to own some libs that they would literally die in flame?

    They're not going to see it that way.

    Nobody on the progressive/liberal side is saying, "here's the plan to prevent California from burning" or even "here' the plan to reduce wildfires to the kind of problem they were 20-30 years ago," because it's not possible. There's some measure of, "here's how much more we want to spend in firefighters, on fire prevention, on making communities more resistant to fire, on getting people to move away from the places we can't protect." But they're not promising, "vote for me and you will be safe from fire."

    Trumpy the Wallmeister is saying, "clean up the forest floor and you will be safe from fire." It doesn't matter that it's a blatant lie - he is promising results! The liberals aren't promising results! And if they burn anyway, that's because the liberals failed to do the cleanup he said was necessary!
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:17 AM on January 10, 2019 [15 favorites]


    intransigence? warmest regards? C'mon, who wrote that?
    posted by Harry Caul at 11:18 AM on January 10, 2019 [23 favorites]


    Trumpy the Wallmeister is saying, "clean up the forest floor and you will be safe from fire."

    True, but what he’s actually doing is stuppping forestry officials from doing their jobs because of the shutdown. Government Shutdown Having Major Impact On Wildfire Prevention Efforts In California, Officials Say
    The shutdown has more or less stopped wildfire-prevention activities such as forest thinning and prescribed burns — that’s where fires are lit on purpose as a management tool — on federal land in California, even though weather conditions in a lot of the country are ideal for practices like prescribed burns, according to Quinn-Davidson.
    It doesn’t even feel like California has a fire season anymore, but to the extent that there’s a time when we have fires, it’s coming in a few months. Losing this prevention time could cost lives.
    posted by zachlipton at 11:29 AM on January 10, 2019 [23 favorites]


    "America is a force for good in the Middle East. Period," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday in Cairo, in an expansive speech in which the top U.S. diplomat excoriated the Obama administration's Middle East policies and accused it of making crucial errors that worsened a string of crises in the region.

    You use that "Period." as a emphatic authoritarian cancellation of further discussion and debate. So this is a conservative politician going into a university setting and declaring a topic settled and off-limits. Sure sounds a lot like the "political correctness" and "safe space" complaints conservatives are always going on about..
    posted by srboisvert at 11:42 AM on January 10, 2019 [21 favorites]


    It's going to be a fair challenge to design any steel wall that can't be cut through with an angle grinder.
    posted by bonehead at 11:45 AM on January 10, 2019 [10 favorites]


    "America is a force for good in the Middle East. Period," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday in Cairo

    Generally the kind of assertion you don't have to make if it's true.
    posted by Rykey at 11:56 AM on January 10, 2019 [25 favorites]


    intransigence? warmest regards? C'mon, who wrote that?

    The Trump or Not Bot computes there's only a 32% chance "warmest regards and apologies to the @WEF" was written by Trump himself.

    Compare that to the 99% probability of Trumpian authorship of this: "There is GREAT unity with the Republicans in the House and Senate, despite the Fake News Media working in overdrive to make the story look otherwise. The Opposition Party & the Dems know we must have Strong Border Security, but don’t want to give “Trump” another one of many wins!" Ditto the "I said bye-bye, nothing else works!" tweet. Trump's comms team still doesn't have his "voice" down pat.

    Meanwhile, the NYT's Maggie Haberman reports on more discontent with Bill Shine: Trump Thinks He’s His Own Best Messenger. Where Does That Leave Bill Shine?
    An alumnus of Fox News, where he was known as a protector of the network’s chairman, Roger E. Ailes, Mr. Shine has confined his White House role mainly to stagecraft, people who have worked with him say, and Mr. Trump, who chafes against being managed, has openly expressed skepticism about what he has done.

    Once he was back in Washington, Mr. Shine was among the aides pushing Mr. Trump to deliver Tuesday’s prime-time Oval Office speech and make a visit to the border on Thursday. And it was Mr. Shine who was among the unnamed targets of the president when Mr. Trump criticized those plans at a lunch with broadcasters before his speech.[…]

    The criticism was nothing surprising given Mr. Trump’s habit of quickly turning on his staff, and his recent habit of asking people whether Mr. Shine has been “good” for him since arriving last summer had a familiar ring.[…]

    A longtime associate of Mr. Ailes, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Trump thought he was “getting Roger,” who built Fox with a keen eye for aggressive political strategy, in his hire. But Mr. Shine, according to his critics, has shown little understanding of the conservative media beyond the cable news ecosystem and his former network — the one place where the president does not need much assistance, and where Mr. Shine has few remaining admirers.[…]

    Mr. Shine, for his part, has told several colleagues he is used “to working for crazy bosses,” a reference to his time at Fox that made its way back to the network, where officials were displeased.[…]

    But two senior administration officials said that Mr. Shine’s new colleagues, who expected him to come in with a degree of Ailes genius, have not been impressed by what they considered timeworn suggestions, such as the president not tweeting so much.[…]

    The shutdown has highlighted the inner workings of a strategy-challenged White House, where one official described Mr. Shine as a bridge between the bifurcated communications and press teams. He is one of four assistants to the president — an official distinction — who focus on communications. They often do not work in concert, according to several White House officials.
    As usual, one must read between the lines of this palace intrigue account to discern the subtext: Team Trump is losing confidence in their messaging at a time of crisis, and the knives are coming out again.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 12:04 PM on January 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Short Twitter thread documenting the progression of Buckey Wolfe's YouTube likes. Buckey Wolfe became a QAnon true believer, and last week he killed his brother with a sword.

    The progression is what you'd expect. From fitness videos to videos making fun of "SJWs" to white nationalism, Alex Jones, and QAnon.

    Buckey Wolfe is obviously unwell. (Not just because he killed his brother with a sword; he also told 911 that God was a lizard before he did it. ) But in previous eras he would have been privately unwell. Now YouTube preys on that vulnerability to maximize engagement, even when it turns people like Buckey Wolfe into far more monstrous versions of themselves.

    Without YouTube's radicalizing algorithms we wouldn't have the alt-right. We wouldn't have Alex Jones. We wouldn't have Donald fucking Trump.
    posted by schadenfrau at 12:05 PM on January 10, 2019 [59 favorites]


    Without YouTube's radicalizing algorithms we wouldn't have the alt-right. We wouldn't have Alex Jones. We wouldn't have Donald fucking Trump.

    Sorry, but that's too facile. To paraphrase Chris Rock, "what social media platform was Hitler using?"

    Not saying YouTube is without blame, but we need to be looking at far more than that to explain where we're at.
    posted by Room 101 at 12:10 PM on January 10, 2019 [24 favorites]


    It's going to be a fair challenge to design any steel wall that can't be cut through with an angle grinder.

    Scrap steel slats go for about $80-$160/ton in Texas recycling centers. Just saying.
    posted by lostburner at 12:13 PM on January 10, 2019 [13 favorites]


    But in previous eras he would have been privately unwell. Now YouTube preys on that vulnerability to maximize engagement, even when it turns people like Buckey Wolfe into far more monstrous versions of themselves.

    Worse: social media lets these people to find each other, just as it does the out-and-out Nazis. There's a massive QAnon community now, whereas five or ten years ago there were a hundred tiny unconnected paranoid subcultures and millions of the solitarily mentally ill.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 12:13 PM on January 10, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Alex Jones has been spewing his crazy since the Oklahoma City bombing. Talk radio and call-in shows were the Wingnut Social Media of the before-times, and I'm sure it radicalized people.

    YouTube is on another level entirely, but it's definitely not the first.
    posted by BungaDunga at 12:16 PM on January 10, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Sorry, but that's too facile. To paraphrase Chris Rock, "what social media platform was Hitler using?"

    In the Nazis own opinion? Radio.

    Also the Great Depression and hyperinflation. The barrier to fascism is perhaps lower when people are burning money for fuel.
    posted by schadenfrau at 12:17 PM on January 10, 2019 [51 favorites]


    (Slate's podcast on Ruby Ridge and the militia movement was enlightening. They were alt-right before the alt-right.)
    posted by BungaDunga at 12:17 PM on January 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


    "what social media platform was Hitler using?"

    One that removed the barriers between speaker and audience? One that ingrained a sense of commonality and shared communication whether it actually did so or not? One that moved, almost instantaneously, at the speed of radio? One that he put a "chief of staff" in charge of because it was clearly integral to his overall plans?

    And that was all before the Mtv Video Games.
    posted by petebest at 12:18 PM on January 10, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Here's the complete document still on Trump's campaign website detailing the entire process of exactly how Mexico would pay for the Wall.

    Pay for the Wall [PDF]
    Introduction: The provision of the Patriot Act, Section 326 -the"know your customer" provision, compelling financial institutions to demand identity documents before opening accounts or conducting financial transactions is a fundamental element of the outline below. That section authorized the executive branch to issue detailed regulations on the subject, found at 31 CFR 130.120-121. It's an easy decision for Mexico: make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion to ensure that $24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year.
    [...]
    posted by scalefree at 12:21 PM on January 10, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Yeah, talk radio has been radicalizing people since its inception. I think there is a weird virus/immune response dynamic that happens with the advent of new media, and maybe even with new distribution methods.

    At first the general public has no defenses, and there isn't much need for them, because new thing is great! And then some people figure out how to use the new thing to advance their own agenda, whether it's getting rich or getting powerful, and the general public is so unsophisticated that it has no defenses against these new techniques. So they fall for them, hard. Eventually that ends in ruin of various guises, and the general public becomes wise to those first gen techniques, and now only the most vulnerable are susceptible to them. So the predators adapt and come up with something new.

    I'm sure other people have thought about this a lot harder and probably have written books about it, but the bare outlines seem pretty clear to me. The combination of the internet and social media has given rise to a fundamentally new media, and we're seeing what happens in the absence of an effective first generation immune response.

    IMO an effective immune response will include regulation.
    posted by schadenfrau at 12:23 PM on January 10, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Lindsey Graham just said he sees no pathway forward for reopening the government. Said his ideas didn’t get traction (DACA fix for wall etc), and said he’s planning to go to the gym.
    — @StevenTDennis
    Womp Womp.

    Sorry, but that's too facile. To paraphrase Chris Rock, "what social media platform was Hitler using?"

    I suggest that, in turn, is too glib. Hitler, a broken narcissist, was radicalized in the years following WWI and in turn radicalized a nation with the power of radio. (I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here.) It might be facile to blame "the alt-right" entirely on YouTube algorithms, but it seems fairly indisputable that intentionally designed to do so or not, YouTube has provided the opportunities for too many people to find the communities they seek to vent their rage.
    posted by octobersurprise at 12:26 PM on January 10, 2019 [23 favorites]


    Lindsey Graham just said he sees no pathway forward for reopening the government. Said his ideas didn’t get traction (DACA fix for wall etc), and said he’s planning to go to the gym.

    The Senate gym is still open.

    That is obscene.

    I don't think legislators should go unpaid while this shutdown is going on. AOC is wrong about it, and she's the perfect example of why she's wrong. Her ability to represent her constituents' interests would be compromised if she had to surf couches during the shutdown. BUT... all the amenities should shut down. No gym. No congressional subway system. No drivers. No cafeteria. No coffee. Coffee is for openers.
    posted by ocschwar at 12:32 PM on January 10, 2019 [100 favorites]


    I think there is a weird virus/immune response dynamic that happens with the advent of new media, and maybe even with new distribution methods.

    This is gincart theory in a nutshell, a novel supernatural stimulus (like say super cheap gin replacing small beer as a daily drink) can get its hooks into a population but the next generation that grows up with it considers it “normal” and it has less potency.
    posted by The Whelk at 12:37 PM on January 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Mod note: We have at this point firmly established the youtube-radio connection and it's kind of a derail to start with, so let's let it go. Thanks.
    posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 12:37 PM on January 10, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Lindsey Graham just said he sees no pathway forward for reopening the government.

    Other than the obvious one, namely overriding Trump's veto. You're a senator, Lindsey!
    posted by BungaDunga at 12:37 PM on January 10, 2019 [38 favorites]


    Dallas Morning News: Trump Threatens to Build Border Wall By Invoking Emergency Power, But McAllen Briefing Focuses On Ports of Entry
    President Donald Trump visited McAllen on Thursday to dramatize his demands for a border wall, saying that it would be "very surprising" if he doesn't declare a national emergency in order to move ahead with the project by tapping into the Defense Department budget.

    But at a briefing in McAllen, customs and Border Patrol officials agents showed the president heroin, cash and weapons seized at ports of entry -- seeming to reinforce the argument of critics who assert that unfenced sections of the border aren't the main problem, as Trump insists.[…]

    A Border Patrol agent showed the president a large clear bag of U.S. currency that she said contained $362,000, traced to the home of a smuggler after a Border Patrol agent at the Weslaco crossing became suspicious.

    "Wow, that's something," Trump said. "The dogs are incredible, aren't they?"

    Trump didn't seem to notice that the examples of border problems he was shown didn't involve gaps between existing barrier segments.

    "We don't want to have openings" in the wall, he said, arguing that with an expanded wall, "You'll see the crime rate in this country coming way down."[…]

    On Thursday, at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Trump reiterated his dubious assertion that Mexico will pay for the wall through an improved North American trade deal. He also asserted that whatever U.S. taxpayers spend will be vastly outweighed by savings as illicit drugs are kept out of the country.

    "When I say Mexico's going to pay for the wall...I didn't say they're going to write me a check for 10 billion or 20 billion." But he said, "If Congress approves this trade bill, they'll pay for the wall many times over."
    Elsewhere in McAllen, USA Today reports: As Trump Visits Border, McAllen Residents Ask: What Crisis?
    posted by Doktor Zed at 12:41 PM on January 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


    All the Republicans want very badly for a decision to be made, but for them to not have had any part in making it.
    posted by Autumnheart at 12:42 PM on January 10, 2019 [22 favorites]


    Michael Cohen will testify before the House Oversight Committee on February 7th.

    Popcorn futures spiked on the news.
    posted by zachlipton at 12:43 PM on January 10, 2019 [45 favorites]


    "When I say Mexico's going to pay for the wall...I didn't say they're going to write me a check for 10 billion or 20 billion."

    Pay For The Wall
    It's an easy decision for Mexico: make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion to ensure that $24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year.
    posted by scalefree at 12:51 PM on January 10, 2019 [14 favorites]


    "When I say Mexico's going to pay for the wall...I didn't say they're going to write me a check for 10 billion or 20 billion." But he said, "If Congress approves this trade bill, they'll pay for the wall many times over."

    The fact that he did say Mexico could make a "one-time payment" aside, is this Trump's setup to end the shutdown while saving face? This reads to me that if the trade bill is approved then the wall is paid for and he would declare victory and end the shutdown. Where in the process is the trade bill?
    posted by mikepop at 12:57 PM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


    New Yorker, Isaac Chotiner, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Takes the Democrats Back to the Future: An Interview with the Historian Rick Perlstein. It's really more about the Democratic Party as a group "who built their political identities around a neurotic response to trauma" (Reagan-Gingrich-Bush) and moving past that, with a heavy dose of history.

    I don't have a quote to highlight, but well worth the read.
    posted by zachlipton at 12:59 PM on January 10, 2019 [26 favorites]


    Speaking of AOC, she has a new Instagram page that’s officially for herself as a congressperson, because House rules say that she can’t post videos in her office on her personal account.
    posted by gucci mane at 1:04 PM on January 10, 2019 [8 favorites]


    @passantino: WH pool report from the border: "Sean Hannity has special access here. He huddled with Bill Shine and Secretary Nielsen and is following along on Trump’s tour, only standing with the staff and federal officials as opposed to the press corps."

    I see we're not even pretending that Hannity isn't White House staff anymore.
    posted by zachlipton at 1:10 PM on January 10, 2019 [79 favorites]


    Hey, anyone remember how Hannity was Michael Cohen's other client
    posted by theodolite at 1:17 PM on January 10, 2019 [111 favorites]


    CNN: Exclusive: Robert Mueller Met with Trump's Pollster
    Special counsel Robert Mueller sought information directly last year from one of Donald Trump's campaign pollsters who is also a former business associate of Paul Manafort's.

    Mueller's team met with pollster Tony Fabrizio in February 2018, an interview that has not been previously reported and takes on new significance after Manafort's attorneys revealed Tuesday that Mueller's team is still interested in how Manafort shared polling data with his Russian intelligence-linked colleague.

    CNN journalists observed Fabrizio leaving the special counsel's office on the first of February last year and have since confirmed he was meeting with Mueller's team. At the time, the special counsel had been digging into Manafort's finances and political work ahead of his trial.[…]

    Fabrizio's involvement with Mueller is intriguing because he's one of the few people in Manafort's orbit with knowledge of the inner-workings of the Trump campaign as well as Manafort's Eastern European connections.[…]

    A source familiar with the special counsel's interest said Fabrizio's interview included questions about his polling work for Manafort in Ukraine rather than his internal Trump campaign polling. It is not clear what other topics were broached in the interview or whether it solely focused on Fabrizio's knowledge of Manafort's business dealings.
    Coincidentally, when Fabrizio was working with Manafort on Ukrainian business in 2013, Konstantin Kilimnik was setting up Manafort's Kiev operation.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 1:24 PM on January 10, 2019 [12 favorites]


    It's really more about the Democratic Party as a group "who built their political identities around a neurotic response to trauma" (Reagan-Gingrich-Bush) and moving past that

    And it's about time. Many Democrats, Republicans, and journalists internalized the notion that Republican policies are popular because Reagan was popular, and so they all assumed that Democrats should naturally incline toward Republican preferences, even when not only did Democrats often successfully oppose Reagan on policy grounds, but he also even reversed himself on issues like tax cuts(!).

    Unfortunately, that perception has severely distorted both politics and reporting on politics, even as Republican policies have become increasingly unpopular, to the point that they have to work overtime to hide their shameful priorities.
    posted by Gelatin at 1:25 PM on January 10, 2019 [20 favorites]


    because House rules say that she can’t post videos in her office on her personal account

    How is this not a single 1st Amendment lawsuit away from being declared unconstitutional?
    posted by reductiondesign at 1:30 PM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


    I just got off the phone with my father. He is an old man (mid 70's). I would describe his political outlook as a compassionate libertarian. He's skeptical of government in general but can be convinced of its utility when put in practical terms, like, "children will starve if X program is cut." Today we spoke about the current shutdown and two heartening things happened.

    One, I convinced him that he should call his two senators (1 D, 1 R) and tell them to pressure McConnell to let a funding bill come to the floor. I gave him a short two sentence script to read to the staffer he talks to. Warmed my little heart.

    Two, I finally figured out what's so insane about this shutdown over the wall (besides everything). As has been discussed in this thread earlier, the wall was never meant to be a real thing. It was a mnemonic for Trump about border security that his advisors let him latch onto because his crowds loved it and therefore Trump loved it. But, it's just that: a mnemonic.

    It's as if Trump promised increased funding for NASA but during his rallies he used the "my very excellent mother just served us nine pizzas" (RIP Pluto) mnemonic and is now demanding $5 billion for everyone's mothers to have nine pizzas. Then those around Trump keep coming up with explanations for how the pizzas and the mothers are obviously analogies for space exploration. Except, every time they ask Trump about it he's describing the toppings on the pizza (very artistic pepperoni). Anyway, I thought that analogy really crystallized the insanity of this whole situation for me.

    Please delete if too much of a derail.
    posted by runcibleshaw at 1:30 PM on January 10, 2019 [44 favorites]


    How is this not a single 1st Amendment lawsuit away from being declared unconstitutional?

    I believe there are federal guidelines about using your government position to enrich yourself personally, and they consider followers on social media to be a form of enrichment. Nikki Haley had to purge all her Twitter followers when she resigned as UN ambassador as well.
    posted by PenDevil at 1:35 PM on January 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Then Trump should have been forced to nuke his personal Twitter spew and had it all on the POTUS45 feed so we could just be made nauseous by one instead of two barrels of vomit.
    posted by mephron at 1:40 PM on January 10, 2019 [20 favorites]


    ocschwar: "I don't think legislators should go unpaid while this shutdown is going on. AOC is wrong about it, and she's the perfect example of why she's wrong. Her ability to represent her constituents' interests would be compromised if she had to surf couches during the shutdown. BUT... all the amenities should shut down. No gym. No congressional subway system. No drivers. No cafeteria. No coffee. Coffee is for openers."

    The Gym is more or less entirely operated with membership fees, and the cafeterias are privately-operated by a variety of companies who pay rent to lease those spaces (at least one of which is a minority-owned small-business).

    The subway isn't an "amenity" as much as it's a mechanism to ensure that the Members of Congress don't spend their entire day walking across the Capitol complex. [Think of the Congressional subways as horizontal elevators], because that's more or less how they operate.

    As a former Congressional employee (contractor), I feel fairly comfortable saying that the Capitol complex is extremely light on amenities compared to the average corporate office building. Almost everything in the Capitol exists solely to help Congress do its job. There really isn't a whole lot of fluff. [I also wasn't allowed to use the gym, and I'm still a little bitter about that -- the contractor/employee dynamic in the government sucks, creating a class of haves and have-nots that coincidentally seems to be divided along boomer/millennial lines, but that's a rant for another day]

    I guess you could send the Library of Congress's staff home, and furlough the Architect of the Capitol's non-essential maintenance staff, but given that government shutdowns are already pointless and harmful, I'm not really going to argue in favor of expanding their scope (particularly in a way that will primarily harm a group of already-underpaid workers)
    posted by schmod at 1:41 PM on January 10, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Adam Johnson tweet: guys it’s over shut it all down

    Linking to (don't click without brain bleach handy):

    Joe Lieberman for Fox Business News: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn't the future of the Democratic Party.

    For a rookie, Ocasio-Cortez sure seems to be making the right enemies. I'm more impressed at every turn!
    posted by RedOrGreen at 1:42 PM on January 10, 2019 [82 favorites]


    How is this not a single 1st Amendment lawsuit away from being declared unconstitutional?

    time/place/manner restrictions on speech can totally be legal; this is not restricting what congresspeople say, but what venues they use to say it. also it's just a rule, there's almost certainly no actual legal repercussions for violating it.

    Also it sounds more like this is done out of an abundance of caution than anything:
    The Members’ Congressional Handbook doesn’t explicitly say that lawmakers are required to make new accounts, but in most cases it’s easier to separate their government resources and personal ones in order to avoid ethics violations. The rules do prohibit lawmakers from using any of their newfound government resources to maintain their personal accounts, whether that be their new staff or office funds.
    posted by BungaDunga at 1:43 PM on January 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


    NBC News, Trump could take billions from disaster areas to fund wall
    President Donald Trump has been briefed on a plan that would use the Army Corps of Engineers and a portion of $13.9 billion of Army Corps funding to build 315 miles of barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the briefing.

    The money was set aside to fund projects all over the country including storm-damaged areas of Puerto Rico through fiscal year 2020, but the checks have not been written yet and, under an emergency declaration, the president could take the money from these civil works projects and use it to build the border wall, said officials familiar with the briefing and two congressional sources.
    ...
    Under the proposal, the officials said, Trump could dip into the $2.4 billion allocated to projects in California, including flood prevention and protection projects along the Yuba River Basin and the Folsom Dam, as well as the $2.5 billion set aside for reconstruction projects in Puerto Rico, which is still recovering from Hurricane Maria.
    The members of Congress who appropriated that money for those purposes, Republicans included, are going to be utterly furious if it's redirected, though the question, as always, is whether they actually do anything with their rage.
    posted by zachlipton at 1:55 PM on January 10, 2019 [37 favorites]


    Of course he'll take money from Puerto Rico to do this. Of course.
    posted by clawsoon at 1:57 PM on January 10, 2019 [55 favorites]


    Atlantic's Natasha Bertrand: FBI Agents Say the Shutdown Is a Threat to National Security—Nearly 5,000 FBI special agents, intelligence analysts, attorneys, and professional staff have been furloughed.
    “I’m not going to try to candy-coat it,” Tom O’Connor, a special agent and president of the FBI Agents Association, told me this week. “We really feel that the financial insecurities we are facing right now equate to a national-security issue.”[…]

    Morale at the FBI had already been steadily declining for months before the government shut down on December 22, according to current and recently departed agents who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity to discuss their feelings candidly. President Trump’s open warfare on the bureau has made agents’ jobs more difficult, they say, as trust in the FBI wanes among people who identify as Republicans and right-leaning independents. “Part of it is Trump’s constant attacks,” said one agent who left late last year. “Bigger than that, though, is that it seems like a portion of the population believes him. Which makes their jobs harder to do.”

    Another agent who left the bureau last year told me that certain leads that might be politically controversial were sometimes tabled indefinitely because they were not seen as worth incurring the wrath of the Trump White House. […] The withering morale and possibility of having to work without pay has made it increasingly difficult to recruit new agents, the agents said.[…]

    If the issue does not get resolved within the next few weeks, however, agents in various field offices may stage a callout—a coordinated sick day to protest the shutdown. […] A coordinated “sick-out” would be one way of protesting the current conditions, since the Taft-Hartley Act, enacted in 1947, prohibits public employees from overtly striking. Federal-employee unions may also find recourse in the courts—some have already filed lawsuits arguing that requiring employees to work without pay violates the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

    For now, the FBI Agents Association is simply pressuring elected officials. In a petition sent to the White House, the vice president’s office, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and other House and Senate leaders on Thursday, the agents association warned of the effects of the ongoing shutdown on the bureau’s work.
    Here's the FBI Agents Association's petition, in which they "urge expediency before financial insecurity compromises national security."
    posted by Doktor Zed at 1:57 PM on January 10, 2019 [30 favorites]


    I see we're not even pretending that Hannity isn't White House staff anymore.

    Seems more like it’s the other way around — the president is Fox News staff.
    posted by Celsius1414 at 1:59 PM on January 10, 2019 [42 favorites]


    All the Republicans want very badly for a decision to be made, but for them to not have had any part in making it.

    Perhaps we just need a bit of nucleation. Once I was boiling water for spaghetti and I put too much oil in the water. I guess it made a floating layer about 1/8" thick. That oil inhibited the formation of steam bubbles. When I went to stir it a little while later, the entire pot of water seemed to boil all at once. Breaking the oil layer allowed all the superheated water to boil at once. I was lucky I didn't scald my face.

    The Republican senators are the water and Trump is the oil. It's possible we just need one or two senators to break and then the pot will boil over.
    posted by M-x shell at 2:09 PM on January 10, 2019 [37 favorites]


    Sure, but we've been waiting for just one or two senators to break for over two years now.

    I'm not sure it's a matter of breaking. Honestly, I think most of them are broken, and that's the problem. Mitch McConnell is pushing around a big squad of universally broken senators--and he's happy to let Trump take all the attention and heat off of himself.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 2:18 PM on January 10, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Bernie Sanders Apologizes Again to Women Who Were Mistreated in 2016 Campaign [NYTimes]

    “It appears that as part of our campaign, there were some women who were harassed and mistreated — I thank them from the bottom of my heart for speaking out,” Mr. Sanders said during a scheduled news conference on Thursday about prescription drugs. “What they experienced was absolutely unacceptable and certainly not what a progressive campaign or any campaign should be about.”

    “When we talk about — and I do all the time — ending sexism and all forms of discrimination, those beliefs cannot just be words. They must be based in day-to-day reality and the work we do, and that was clearly not the case in the 2016 campaign,” he added. [...]

    In a statement posted on Twitter shortly after Thursday’s news conference, Mr. Sanders said: “Clearly we need a cultural revolution in this country to change workplace attitudes and behavior. I intend in every way to be actively involved in that process.”

    I certainly don't speak for all women or even any woman but my own self, but a man saying "I intend in every way to be actively involved in that process." is just way too aggressive for me.

    "I will do whatever I can to be a positive part of that process."
    "I will listen to marginalized people and join them in making change."
    "I commit to pushing for that revolution right alongside you."
    etc. Any of these would have been better.
    posted by Emmy Rae at 2:19 PM on January 10, 2019 [14 favorites]


    Rep. Veronica Escobar: The Gov’t Is Shutdown Because Trump Is Afraid Of Fox | Velshi & Ruhle | MSNBC - YouTube (4:00)

    Ticks off a few good points.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:21 PM on January 10, 2019 [15 favorites]


    It's possible we just need one or two senators to break and then the pot will boil over.

    Sure, but we've been waiting for just one or two senators to break for over two years now. I'm not sure it's a matter of breaking. Honestly, I think most of them are broken, and that's the problem.

    We waited for the frogs to jump out and now there's just a boiling pot of soupe a la nazi with the occasional surfacing frog bone.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 2:23 PM on January 10, 2019 [14 favorites]


    "I intend in every way to be actively involved in that process." is just way too aggressive for me.

    I'd be happier if it said, or even implied, that what that meant was, "I will be taking direct action against men who harass, mistreat, and discriminate against women" rather than "I will publicly state that I find this kind of behavior deplorable."
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 2:25 PM on January 10, 2019 [14 favorites]


    The House just voted to fund and reopen USDA. Joni Ernst held a call earlier today trying to split the difference, but we'll see how her constituents handle that.
    posted by holgate at 2:27 PM on January 10, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Rep. Veronica Escobar: The Gov’t Is Shutdown Because Trump Is Afraid Of Fox | Velshi & Ruhle |

    Oh, that's Pelosi's-condo-in-Trump's-head good.

    Sidenote: Velshi and Ruhle are my favorite odd couple. They both get these intense, terrier-like looks on their faces when they've cornered someone. I like it.
    posted by schadenfrau at 2:29 PM on January 10, 2019 [12 favorites]


    On a related note, Giulianna Di Lauro Velez, I Was Sexually Harassed on Bernie Sanders’s 2016 Campaign. I Will Not Be Weaponized or Dismissed.
    Accusations of sexual misconduct during a political campaign should not be weaponized to serve a political agenda. Nor should claims be ignored to protect a beloved candidate — doing so only adds to the cycle of shame and punishment that makes sexism so hard to tackle.
    posted by zachlipton at 2:30 PM on January 10, 2019 [29 favorites]


    I see we're not even pretending that Hannity isn't White House staff anymore.
    posted by zachlipton

    I was listening the the first episode of a podcast called The Dollop, which had been recorded at the time of the Clive Bundy armed insurrection. In it, the host talks about how Hannity is cheering these guys on, boosting their signal as they were standing on overpasses with assault rifles. He attacked the anti gun kids. He’s talked about ruby ridge like those morons were heroes. And so, it occurs to me, is Hannity actively working to undermine America? I mean, like a whole lot of this right wing talk radio stuff gets broad play specifically because of Hannity. He’s Alex Jones without the Ritalin.
    posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 2:33 PM on January 10, 2019 [23 favorites]


    It’s Time for a ‘Green New Deal’ (Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) via Politico, January 10, 2019)
    As the 116th Congress convenes, one essential legislative proposal it should move on quickly is to throw in the trash the 44 separate energy tax breaks, anchored by advantages for big oil companies that get billions of dollars in beneficial tax treatment.

    The dirty relics of the past century should be replaced with just three new energy tax incentives: one for clean energy, one for clean transportation fuel and one for energy efficiency. Under this new system, benefits would be received only if carbon emissions are decreased or eliminated. The cleaner it is, the greater the benefit. These reforms will not only set off a wave of investment and innovation in clean and renewable energy, they will also cut subsidies and save Americans money.

    Research by economists from across the spectrum shows that nothing drives behavior in the American marketplace like the right incentives — which millions of American now say should help green, not dirty, energy. Rewarding investment based on carbon emissions ensures a transition away from fossil fuels and provides flexibility for new technologies to enter the market. The result? Cleaner energy, lower electricity bills and more clean energy jobs across the country.
    Sounds good to me.
    posted by filthy light thief at 2:57 PM on January 10, 2019 [58 favorites]


    Unpaid federal workers file lawsuit contending that being forced to work without pay is unconstitutional involuntary servitude in violation of the 13th Amendment, inter alia.
    posted by exogenous at 2:57 PM on January 10, 2019 [67 favorites]


    Daniel Dale, once again showing how it's done:

    Trump lies his way through a visit to Mexican border
    posted by The Card Cheat at 3:12 PM on January 10, 2019 [34 favorites]


    A BBC radio news item today started "President Trump has falsely claimed..." - I forget what, because everything, but those were the first five words of the headline.
    posted by Devonian at 3:18 PM on January 10, 2019 [20 favorites]


    Giulianna Di Lauro Velez, I Was Sexually Harassed on Bernie Sanders’s 2016 Campaign. I Will Not Be Weaponized or Dismissed.

    On Reddit's /r/politics, this article was immediately downvoted into oblivion, along with any other story remotely seen as harmful to Sanders' electoral prospects (unlike pretty much any other candidate). Given the well-documented intervention of Russian troll-farms to signal boost his campaign in 2016, it's a very disturbing phenomenon.

    Especially since this article is not anti-Sanders.
    posted by msalt at 3:29 PM on January 10, 2019 [21 favorites]


    Axios: Senate approves backpay for federal workers after shutdown ends

    So that happened.
    posted by saysthis at 3:30 PM on January 10, 2019 [39 favorites]


    Axios: Senate approves backpay for federal workers after shutdown ends

    So that happened.

    Does anyone know if that bill covers federal contractors? Asking for a friend.
    posted by runcibleshaw at 3:39 PM on January 10, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Given the well-documented intervention of Russian troll-farms to signal boost his campaign in 2016, it's a very disturbing phenomenon.

    I remember reading /r/politics in early 2016 and being absolutely struck by the volume and intensity of Sanders support (in the form of posts, comments, upvotes, trolling, etc) and how incredibly rapidly it all vanished once Clinton secured the nomination.

    It was very strange. I attributed it to some weird Reddit-specific social contagion at the time.
    posted by prize bull octorok at 3:42 PM on January 10, 2019 [16 favorites]


    TRUMP: "The buck stops with everybody."

    ME: ... 'else'
    posted by ZeusHumms at 3:48 PM on January 10, 2019 [11 favorites]


    I remember reading /r/politics in early 2016 and being absolutely struck by the volume and intensity of Sanders support (in the form of posts, comments, upvotes, trolling, etc) and how incredibly rapidly it all vanished once Clinton secured the nomination.

    ...Isn't the simplest explanation that online Sanders support (including its toxic aspect) vanished because Clinton secured the nomination? Wouldn't it have been much more indicative of troll-farm chaos-fomenting interference if it hadn't vanished?
    posted by Rust Moranis at 3:49 PM on January 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


    I seem to recall Reddit updating their front page algorithm around the same time to prevent r/trump from constantly gaming it, so I kind of assumed that the Sanders posts became less visible from that point forward for similar reasons. This is personal impression, I could be very easily disproved.
    posted by Think_Long at 3:54 PM on January 10, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Mueller's team met with pollster Tony Fabrizio in February 2018, an interview that has not been previously reported

    A reminder that Mueller's team Does. Not. Leak. And his bulletin board/string/photo mashup has more people and more connections than any of us has ever imagined. I remain hopeful that Mueller's going for an indictment. IF he doesn't have one under seal already.
    posted by mikelieman at 3:56 PM on January 10, 2019 [15 favorites]


    ...Isn't the simplest explanation that online Sanders support (including its toxic aspect) vanished because Clinton secured the nomination? Wouldn't it have been much more indicative of troll-farm chaos-fomenting interference if it hadn't vanished?

    I have the same recollection of odd behavior as prize bull octorok, and the specific nature of the oddity argues against this theory.

    When Bernie was still running, any topic favorable to Bernie or opposed to Hillary would get a very consistent number of upvotes (around 5,000) as a baseline. Opposing topics would be voted down in similar amounts. But if you went into the comments to discuss it, there were few pro-Bernie people; Clinton supporters were a clear majority. It really looked like bot-driven voting.

    And this effect vanished instantly on the night he conceded, which seems unlikely from real invidividual Sanders supporters. It wasn't necessarily all Russian trolls; Sanders paid a HUGE percentage of campaign expenses ($28 million in 2016) to Revolution Messaging, the spun-off social media operation from the Obama campaigns, and they may have been engaged in bot behavior too.

    (FYI, Beto O'Rourke's senate campaign hired Revolution Messaging to the tune of $5 million in 2018 alone.)
    posted by msalt at 4:10 PM on January 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


    That Daniel Dale article The Card Cheat linked is great.

    In McAllen, Trump derided critics who dismiss walls as outdated and ineffective. He said some old technology, like the wheel, is timeless.

    “A wheel is older than a wall,” he said. He repeated it a few seconds later: “The wheel is older than the wall. Do you know that?”

    Defensive walls predate wheels by thousands of years. (Jericho’s famous wall existed around 8,000 BC; the wheel is thought to have been invented around 3,500 BC.)


    Jericho. Heh.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:13 PM on January 10, 2019 [56 favorites]


    So now Lindsey Graham is telling Trump to declare an emergency.
    posted by diogenes at 4:16 PM on January 10, 2019 [4 favorites]


    The wheel-vs-wall debate has come up in studies of ancient tech before. Walls are about as old as humanity; it takes no special technical skills to figure out "put something solid between us and the wind," and then it gets adapted to whatever dangers are coming from a known direction. Wheels don't become useful for more than novelty toys until you have flat roads.

    Someone needs to tell the trumpists - or rather, the media that reports on them - that nobody is saying walls are useless, just that a wall isn't the tool to fix this problem, even if this problem actually existed.

    Maybe tell the trumpists that roads are even older than walls and that all we need to prevent illegal immigration is enough roads going out of the country.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:23 PM on January 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


    ..Isn't the simplest explanation that online Sanders support (including its toxic aspect) vanished because Clinton secured the nomination? Wouldn't it have been much more indicative of troll-farm chaos-fomenting interference if it hadn't vanished?

    It didn't vanish, it just morphed into dead-enders posting that if they could vote for Bernie they'd vote for Stein instead of Clinton. Or just not vote in protest.
    posted by nathan_teske at 4:24 PM on January 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Prediction: A significant fraction of Senate Republicans will abandon the President before or during Cohen's House testimony in February. Cohen will testify under oath about various specific felonies committed by the President. The President's removal from office will begin to appear inevitable, and Republican politicians will stop defending him, instead prioritizing the defense of the Vice President as the President's legal successor, notwithstanding his role as the head of a Presidential Transition Team that was colluding with Russian Intelligence.
    posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:25 PM on January 10, 2019 [34 favorites]


    My Reddit recollection was that the pro-Sanders stuff dropped off, but mostly because it seemed to switch to anti-Clinton stuff.
    posted by schadenfrau at 4:26 PM on January 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


    While we’re reminiscing on the good ole days,in the mid-00’s Digg (and then Reddit) both had a huge boner for anything involving Vladimir Putin acting “manly”. All photos of him shirtless, in camo fatigues, walking through ice cold water, followed by hundreds of comments about him wrestling bears.

    Oh yeah, and there was that fervent support for a real independent, no nonsense politician named Ron Paul, whose son is now gung ho about how great Russia and Putin are.

    The Russian government’s media propaganda campaign has probably been going on for much longer than the Bernie Sanders campaign. I’m sure a lot of the drop off for Bernie support was typical stuff after he lost the nomination and the field was narrowed to Hillary and Donald, but it also could have been that the Russian trolls switched over to using their Black Lives Matter accounts and creating fake protests and counter-protests in order to cause violence and further polarize the nation.
    posted by gucci mane at 4:35 PM on January 10, 2019 [32 favorites]


    I want whatever EMRJKC94 is dabbing.
    posted by Thorzdad at 4:37 PM on January 10, 2019 [8 favorites]


    So now Lindsey Graham is telling Trump to declare an emergency.

    He tweeted, "I hope it works." But does he mean the wall or the emergency declaration? Unclear.

    CNN's Kaitlan Collins: White House lawyers are prepping the legal justification for a national emergency declaration. This has included advising aides to ramp up "crisis" talk. Lawyers suggest the more times they say it, the more often they can point to it in a legal defense filing, per @Kevinliptakcnn

    So the White House legal strategy is to get the word "crisis" to be said a lot to justify an emergency declaration. That's not how any of this works.
    posted by peeedro at 4:41 PM on January 10, 2019 [10 favorites]


    In the other thread we were talking about what was going on in 2014 on social media, and I threw in some links about what Russia was doing in 2014 on social media.
    posted by OnceUponATime at 4:41 PM on January 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


    I mean, let the heavens fall. I want to know about all of it. I want to know about the Pauls, I want to know about Lindsey Graham’s abrupt change of heart, I want to know about Tom Cotton’s NRA connection — oh fuck, the NRA, then too! — I want to know about Jill Stein’s fun little junkets to Moscow where she was photographed with I think at least one current indictee? Am I remembering that right? And I want to know what Tad Devine from the Sanders campaign told Mueller about both 2016 and his years working with Manafort in Ukraine.

    I want to know about Russia’s involvement in fucking Brexit. I want to know about what they’re doing in Germany and France, not to mention Georgia, Ukraine, and like a million other former Soviet states.

    Seriously, let the heavens fall, but we gotta find out what Putin has done, who he’s corrupted, and what he’s doing now.

    And then we gotta figure out what to do about it.
    posted by schadenfrau at 4:42 PM on January 10, 2019 [79 favorites]


    I want to know about Jill Stein’s fun little junkets to Moscow where she was photographed with I think at least one current indictee? Am I remembering that right?

    Same table as Flynn and Putin
    posted by Rust Moranis at 4:44 PM on January 10, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Cash. Stein isn't any different...
    posted by Windopaene at 4:45 PM on January 10, 2019


    It didn't vanish, it just morphed into dead-enders posting that if they could vote for Bernie they'd vote for Stein instead of Clinton. Or just not vote in protest.

    My Reddit recollection was that the pro-Sanders stuff dropped off, but mostly because it seemed to switch to anti-Clinton stuff.

    I know there is no shortage of live, human, sincere Bernie stans.

    It really did seem like there was a high volume of organized activity that just stopped like somebody'd thrown a switch, though. The sudden implosion of the very active and organized Sanders For President subreddit seems like a good example. I dunno, it's hard to quantify the weirdness in retrospect, but you could sort of see the pro-Clinton energy morph and disperse in organic ways after Nov 8 and this felt very different.
    posted by prize bull octorok at 4:48 PM on January 10, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Also, given things like the 2020 primaries and now Lindsey Graham suddenly calling for Trump to declare an emergency to build the wall, these questions have some fucking urgency to them. An authoritarian constitutional crisis is exactly the kind of escalating chaos that Putin has been after since 2016.
    posted by schadenfrau at 5:52 PM on January 10, 2019 [14 favorites]


    AP: As Trump visits border, Texas landowners prepare wall fight
    The government sued the local Roman Catholic diocese late last year to gain access for its surveyors at the site of La Lomita chapel, which opened in 1865 and was an important site for missionaries who traveled the Rio Grande Valley by horseback.

    It remains an epicenter of the Rio Grande Valley’s Catholic community, hosting weddings and funerals, as well as an annual Palm Sunday procession that draws 2,000 people.

    The chapel is a short distance from the Rio Grande. It falls directly into the area where CBP wants to build its “enforcement zone.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:56 PM on January 10, 2019 [15 favorites]


    > in the mid-00’s Digg (and then Reddit) both had a huge boner for anything involving Vladimir Putin acting “manly”.... and there was that fervent support for a real independent, no nonsense politician named Ron Paul, whose son is now gung ho about how great Russia and Putin are.

    Bill Browder, Sergei Magnitsky's colleague, was refused entry to Russia in 2005. His book Red Notice (great for lite background on the Magnitsky Act and Russian klepto-plutocracy) claims it was because Putin wasn't really anti-corruption as he'd acted since 2000, but he wanted to pick oligarchs & have them remain loyal to him. [Chapter 18] The prosecution of Khodorkovsky [CEO of the Yukos oil company] was used to get the other oligarchs in line. Putin's breaking point might have been when Khodorkovsky "sent millions of dollars to the opposition parties for the upcoming parliamentary elections." Active measures for me, but not for thee...
    posted by ASCII Costanza head at 6:04 PM on January 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


    WaPo op-ed, Erica Newland, I worked in the Justice Department. I hope its lawyers won’t give Trump an alibi.
    But when I was at OLC, I saw again and again how the decision to trust the president failed the office’s attorneys, the Justice Department and the American people. The failure took different forms. Sometimes, we just wouldn’t look that closely at the claims the president was making about the state of the world. When we did look closely, we could give only nudges. For example, if I identified a claim by the president that was provably false, I would ask the White House to supply a fig leaf of supporting evidence. Or if the White House’s justification for taking an action reeked of unconstitutional animus, I would suggest a less pungent framing or better tailoring of the actions described in the order.

    I often wondered, though, whether my attempts to remove the most basic inaccuracies from the face of a presidential order meant that I was myself failing to carry out my oath to protect and defend the Constitution. After all, the president had already submitted, through his early drafts or via Twitter, his reasons for issuing a particular order. I sometimes felt that, rather than engaging in professionally responsible advocacy, my OLC colleagues and I were using the law to legitimize lies.

    I felt more than a twinge of recognition this month when reading a New Yorker article about Trump and the reality-TV show “The Apprentice.” Jonathan Braun, an editor on “The Apprentice,” described how editors would “reverse engineer” episodes after Trump made impulsive decisions about firing a contestant. The article described editors “scouring hundreds of hours of footage . . . in an attempt to assemble an artificial version of history in which Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip decision made sense.” Like a staff member at “The Apprentice,” I occasionally caught myself fashioning a pretext, building an alibi.

    Eventually, I decided that the responsibilities entailed in my oath were incompatible with the expectations of my job. If my former colleagues at OLC, and throughout the Justice Department, are now working on the possible declaration of a national emergency, I dearly hope they are as meticulous in their review of the president’s justifications as they are in their review of the actions he plans to take. And I hope, more than anything else, that they are asking themselves whether they, too, are just fashioning a pretext, building an alibi
    Newland received an award from DOJ last year for her work vetting Trump's executive orders, but declined to show up to accept it. I'm not really sure why it took a graduate of Yale Law over a year and a half to realize her job was to legitimize the President's lies "sometimes," yet that appears to be the case.
    posted by zachlipton at 6:15 PM on January 10, 2019 [48 favorites]


    Tech debt?

    Well we operate under Scaled Agile and after two 2 weeks sprints we do Innovation and Planning for future sprints. In an ideal world we'd have all of our PIs planned out and have work to do, but unreviewable. As it is we've only a couple of sprints planned and approved well before a shutdown was even thought of. At a certain point we'll run out of work and probably before that reach a point where we need PO feedback.

    My fear is we do a lot of work and then the shutdown ends and none of what we worked on is what the PO really wanted etc and we re-do all that work and never get to the cool things we had planned to do.
    posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:38 PM on January 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


    I'm not really sure why it took a graduate of Yale Law over a year and a half to realize her job was to legitimize the President's lies "sometimes," yet that appears to be the case.

    I'm not sure why either, especially with statements like this:

    For example, if I identified a claim by the president that was provably false, I would ask the White House to supply a fig leaf of supporting evidence.

    I know I'm heading into #notalllawyers territory, but this is one of the reasons I could never become a lawyer. I have the cognitive temperament to likely be proficient in/excel at the ways in which lawyers need to think and act to best advocate for their clients. But the majority of my experience with lawyers in the context of legal disputes has been that it's more important to "win" than to do the right thing. I don't really have the stomach for that.

    I find this particularly troubling in the context of lawyers whose jobs get really close to the rule of law itself, as in this case. It's like John Yoo and the torture memos. I mean, come on. You know that the pretzel that you're twisting the Constitution into isn't for a just or moral cause—in fact quite the opposite. But it's your job to "win", so that's what you do. (I'm definitely not suggesting that all lawyers have the vanishing moral compass that John Yoo has.)

    As you say, Newland is a smart—or at least very well-educated—lawyer. And yet something so seemingly black and white, from a moral, ethical standpoint, took ages to become apparent to her. Why is that? I at least find it easier to understand with people who never demonstrate a moral compass at all. But if you have one, how does it take you that long to find it?
    posted by Brak at 6:45 PM on January 10, 2019 [12 favorites]


    ...the area where CBP wants to build its “enforcement zone".

    Well, the good news is that we've got royalty-free, off-the-shelf plans to use. The bad news is that we have to keep the EZ closed more than 41 years. Time will tell!
    posted by cenoxo at 7:03 PM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Doug Sovern is an excellent reporter for KCBS radio in the San Francisco Bay Area. He dropped a simple and not entirely unexpected story yesterday: Kamala Harris is getting ready to announce her candidacy at an event probably around MLK day in Oakland, though it's not yet final.

    After publishing that, he checks in a day later: I am kind of stunned by the level of vitriol in the emails and tweets I’m getting in response to my story about @KamalaHarris running for president. I didn’t realize the depth of some people’s irrational hatred for her. Underscores how tough it will be for a woman of color to run

    He makes it clear that the emails are personal, not attacking her policies or record and describes it as "These emails go way beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. Truly odious."

    As an example: And I didn’t realize there was an anti-@KamalaHarris birther brigade, since her parents (from Jamaica and India) were both in Berkeley as international students. Harris was born in Oakland, California, USA, making her an American citizen by birth.

    It just never stops. The hate doesn't even wait for her to announce she's running.
    posted by zachlipton at 7:06 PM on January 10, 2019 [109 favorites]


    mephron: "Then Trump should have been forced to nuke his personal Twitter spew and had it all on the POTUS45 feed so we could just be made nauseous by one instead of two barrels of vomit."

    He should of but that sort of petty ethics violation is barely worth noticing.
    posted by Mitheral at 7:45 PM on January 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Trump’s advisers push for emergency declaration — while assuming it’ll be stopped in court (Dara Lind, Vox)

    Emergency declaration as get out of jail free card. Except they don't quite work like that.
    Lawsuits don’t come out of nowhere — and they’re rarely ready to go the minute a policy is enacted

    ... Both making policies and suing over them takes time.

    Trump can’t simply say the words “emergency declaration” and trigger a lawsuit. He has to declare which of the 100-plus emergency powers given to the president he’s invoking — not just because that’s how the law works, but because he has to identify which pools of emergency money he wants to raid to pay for the wall. (Not that it’s clear there’s even enough money in any of the applicable funds to get to $5.7 billion.)
    ...

    If you fight a court case, you cannot guarantee you will lose

    By treating an emergency declaration as a way to reopen the government, rather than as an actual policy that will be in effect barring a judicial injunction, the Trump administration risks the worst of both worlds: a policy they carelessly slapped together that they and everyone else then have to live with for a very long time.
    ...

    If the administration actually thinks it is both constitutional and a good idea on the merits to declare a national emergency over Democrats’ unwillingness to pay billions of dollars for a border barrier, that possibility won’t worry them.

    But if they see the emergency declaration as a politically convenient tactic with no legal or policy consequences, they really, really shouldn’t issue one. Because you shouldn’t issue a policy if you aren’t 100 percent comfortable with its consequences.
    This is a very, very dark comedy, with all too real consequences.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 8:56 PM on January 10, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Trump’s Hannity interview reveals a president out of touch with reality (Matthew Yglesias, Vox)
    Even when faced with some of the most egregious softball questions of all time, Trump is barely coherent — unable to describe in any detail what exactly it is that he wants, unable to cite any specific legal authority for a potential emergency declaration option, and unable to describe what such an operation would actually let him achieve.
    ...

    The man whose whims plunged the nation into a massive crisis that has air traffic controllers working without pay, FBI agents worried that ongoing investigations will have to be dropped, Joshua Tree National Park irreparably damaged, and food inspections curtailed seems to have no idea why.
    ...

    [This] is the crux of the matter. He doesn’t consider this issue very important. It’s not important enough for him to offer Democrats anything of substance in a legislative swap, and it’s not important enough for him to have bothered to learn anything about the issue or even develop a specific proposal. He is imposing huge costs on a huge number of people, but he personally is suffering nothing more than the indignity of hanging out in the White House.

    And he’s so unselfconscious that he actually threw himself a pity party in the midst of all the problems he’s causing. There’s no apology here for the inconvenience followed by an explanation of why he’s doing it. Because he’s not sorry. He wants us to feel sorry for him. And that in some ways is the most disturbing thing of all.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 9:07 PM on January 10, 2019 [54 favorites]


    ... he has to identify which pools of emergency money he wants to raid to pay for the wall ...

    I really wish "wall" in this context would always come with an adjective like "imaginary", "rhetorical", "impossible", or "insane". Because, we have to always keep in mind that any border wall that Trump has actually talked about in real terms is impossible OR that to make it possible would require a plunge into total authoritarianism. Please, stop talking about it like it's a normal thing.
    posted by runcibleshaw at 9:15 PM on January 10, 2019 [12 favorites]


    As an example: And I didn’t realize there was an anti-@KamalaHarris birther brigade, since her parents (from Jamaica and India) were both in Berkeley as international students. Harris was born in Oakland, California, USA, making her an American citizen by birth.

    While I am sure there are KH birthers, this smells like Russian trolls amplifying existing signal again.
    posted by benzenedream at 9:18 PM on January 10, 2019 [48 favorites]


    Trump White House urging allies to prepare for possible RBG departure (Eliana Johnson & Gabby Orr, Politico)
    After an ailing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg missed oral arguments, the Trump team began early groundwork for another potential confirmation battle.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 9:20 PM on January 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Meanwhile Mitch McConnell could end this madness in an afternoon.

    (The WH leaked today that they were gearing up for RBG’s replacement. The leak was probably intended for McConnell and those in the GOP who might pressure him to break with the President over the shutdown: nice SCOTUS majority you’re about to have; shame if something were to happen to it.)
    posted by notyou at 9:24 PM on January 10, 2019 [14 favorites]


    In retrospect, it's probably a good thing that George III didn't realise that he could get away with taxing the American colonies by prepending the words “Because it's an emergency, I hereby ....”
    posted by Joe in Australia at 9:24 PM on January 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


    ...something so seemingly black and white, from a moral, ethical standpoint, took ages to become apparent to her. Why is that?

    from a moral/ethical standpoint all these OLC lawyers pursued careers in the office of legal counsel of the department of justice of the united states of america. i imagine the moral calculus is different than that to which, say, i -- who learned he could not work in the defense/intelligence realm because of the crazy jingoism of every executive encountered as contractor, and, later, in law school, that he could never serve a government that creates unpersons and then tortures them -- might refer in my conscientious evaluations of things. OLC doesn't seem like the kind of place one thrives if, instead of coming up with persuasive interpretations of authorities to justify x, one instead regularly offers persuasive argument that x is impermissible.

    don't get me wrong. i'm not saying one cannot be righteous and work in government -- some of my best friends are prosecutors and civil service attorneys!* fine people. moral people -- just not this one. better stated: it is not that i'm too moral to serve the government, but that the government, by disobeying its founding documents and principles, ceased to be an entity eligible to be such an employer/client. ymmv.

    what lawyers do, other than joust for wins, depends a lot on what field they enter and what position they attain.

    yoo, bybee, gonzales -- i've already forgotten some of the names i meant to add and curse when i started writing this -- never forget! (also: the droning? the presumptive "combatant" status for male adults in the blast zone? fuck that, mr. holder). and all their staffs (staves?) and associates. their mentors and proteges. who sit on corporate boards, foundation boards of directors with them. who chair their university departments. who maintain their malauthority. never forget.

    * not really.
    posted by 20 year lurk at 9:27 PM on January 10, 2019 [13 favorites]


    "If the administration actually thinks it is both constitutional and--"

    lemme stop you right there.
    posted by 20 year lurk at 9:35 PM on January 10, 2019 [11 favorites]


    There is one person in the government who is keeping the government closed and it's not Trump. It's Mitch McConnell. He could open it tomorrow, but he refuses. Call your Senators.
    posted by runcibleshaw at 9:46 PM on January 10, 2019 [53 favorites]


    [This] is the crux of the matter. He doesn’t consider this issue very important. It’s not important enough for him to offer Democrats anything of substance in a legislative swap, and it’s not important enough for him to have bothered to learn anything about the issue or even develop a specific proposal.

    See, it's shit like this that makes you realize that Yglesias has spent way too much time on the political beat and has lost all his perspective - he's still interpreting this as if Trump was even a little bit a "normal" politician who would even recognize the idea of a "legislative swap."

    No. He won't consider a legislative swap because he has no fucking idea how any of this works. He's spent his entire life where people jump when he says "frog", and he genuinely for real doesn't understand why that doesn't happen now. And it's up to those peons to come up with the details about "how high", he never has to bother with the actual practical details. The Wall is important to Trump because 1) he thinks it would actually work because he's an ignoramus and 2) he got goaded into it by people he thinks speak for his supporters. You can't gauge Trump's motivations by the standards of people who might have even a vague idea of how government works.

    McConnell doesn't think the Wall is important, which is why he was perfectly willing to let previous bills through the Senate regardless of how much funding the wall got. And why he's perfectly willing to just sit on his hands now that Trump blew that up and wait to see if anyone blinks or comes up with a fake out.
    posted by soundguy99 at 9:56 PM on January 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Is it possible to impeach Mitch McConnell?
    posted by sexyrobot at 11:18 PM on January 10, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Can the Senate Majority Leader use his authority to block an impeachment trial?
    posted by scalefree at 11:50 PM on January 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Twitter thread on Trump's wall, analyzed by someone who actually knows his stuff (TL;DR: it won't work, will be way more expensive than claimed, and it will be a disaster in many and varied ways):
    From Amy Patrick, an engineer, Wall Expert. I’m a licensed structural and civil engineer with a MS in structural engineering from the top program in the nation and over a decade of experience on high-performance projects...

    ...and particularly of cleaning up design disasters where the factors weren’t properly accounted for, and I’m an adjunct professor of structural analysis and design at UH-Downtown.

    I have previously been deposed as an expert witness in matters regarding proper construction of walls and the various factors associated therein, and my testimony has passed Daubert....

    Am I a wall expert? I am. I am literally a court-accepted expert on walls....

    Structurally and civil engineering-wise, the border wall is not a feasible project. Trump did not hire engineers to design the thing. He solicited bids from contractors, not engineers....

    This means it’s not been designed by professionals. It’s a disaster of numerous types waiting to happen. What disasters?...

    Off the top of my head... 1) It will mess with our ability to drain land in flash flooding. Anything impeding the ability of water to get where it needs to go (doesn’t matter if there are holes in the wall or whatever) is going to dramatically increase the risk of flooding...

    2) Messes with all kind of stuff ecologically. For all other projects, we have to do an Environmental Site Assessment, which is arduous. They’re either planning to circumvent all this,...

    ...or they haven’t accounted for it yet, because that’s part of the design process, and this thing hasn’t been designed.

    3) The prototypes they came up with are nearly impossible to build or don’t actually do the job. This article explains more: https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.engineering.com/amp/17599.html … And so on....

    The estimates provided for the cost are arrived at unreasonably. You can look for yourself at the two-year-old estimate that you see everyone citing. http://fronterasdesk.org/sites/default/files/field/docs/2016/07/Bernstein-%20The%20Trump%20Wall.pdf …

    It does not account for rework, complexities beyond the prototype design, factors to prevent flood and environmental hazard creation, engineering redesign...

    It’s going to be higher than $50bn. The contractors will hit the government with near CONSTANT change orders. “Cost overrun” will be the name of the game. It will not be completed in Trump’s lifetime....

    I’m a structural forensicist, which means I’m called in when things go wrong. This is a project that WILL go wrong....

    When projects go wrong, the original estimates are just *obliterated*....

    And when that happens, good luck getting it fixed, because there aren’t that many forensicists out there to right the ship, particularly not that are willing to work on a border wall project—

    .. a large quotient of us are immigrants, and besides, we can’t afford to bid on jobs that are this political. We’re small firms, and we’re already busy, and we don’t gamble our reputations on political footballs....

    So you’d end up with a revolving door of contractors making a giant, uncoordinated muddle of things, and it’d generally be a mess. Good money after bad. The GAO agrees with me....

    And it won’t be effective. I could, right now, purchase a 32 foot extension ladder and weld a cheap custom saddle for the top of the proposed wall so that I can get over it...

    I don’t know who they talked to about the wall design and its efficacy, but it sure as heck wasn’t anybody with any engineering imagination.

    Another thing: we are not far from the day where inexpensive drones will be able to pick up and carry someone. This will happen in the next ten years, and it’s folly to think that the coyotes who ferry people over the border won’t purchase or create them.

    They’re low enough, quiet enough, and small enough to quickly zip people over any wall we could build undetected with our current monitoring setup.

    Let’s have border security, by all means, but let’s be smart about it. It’s not effective. It’s NOT cheap. The returns will be diminishing as technology advances, too. This is a ridiculous idea that will never be successfully executed and, would be a monumental waste of money.
    Why is no one asking for expert testimony on huge projects like that anymore? Why isn't the opposition using those facts to fight it? At least start calling it "Trump's Folly" or something, make clear that it is a stupid stupid stupid idea.
    posted by PontifexPrimus at 12:59 AM on January 11, 2019 [124 favorites]


    Why is no one asking for expert testimony on huge projects like that anymore? Why isn't the opposition using those facts to fight it? At least start calling it "Trump's Folly" or something, make clear that it is a stupid stupid stupid idea.
    In this case, it's because no one, not Trump, not his Trumpists, not the Fox News commenters want the wall for efficiency or anything remotely similar to usefulness. It's a symbolic wall. It's a monument to racism. It's a poke in the eyes of all liberals.
    I really like the twitter thread, because I like that type of thinking. But it is speaking into a void. Facts have no place in this discussion, neither structural facts nor demographic facts nor any other type of facts.
    This is a game of chicken, holding millions of Americans as hostages, between Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell. From the ledgers, the D side is screaming FACTS, FACTS!! and the R side is screaming LIES, LIES!! (and we know they are lies). Nothing matters. Just keep reminding ourselves that Nancy is in a shiny new electric train and Mitch is in a cheesy old vintage car.
    posted by mumimor at 1:56 AM on January 11, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Heading to War.
    Evangelicals, Chesnut said, “now see the United States locked into a holy war against the forces of evil who they see as embodied by Iran”.
    Brought to Jesus’: the evangelical grip on the Trump administration
    posted by adamvasco at 2:37 AM on January 11, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Brought to Jesus’: the evangelical grip on the Trump administration
    After reading that, I'm even more scared of President Pence. Trump at least is a coward and procrastinator.
    posted by mumimor at 3:07 AM on January 11, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Sorry if this has been discussed before and I've missed it: have there been proposals over the years to change the appropriations process such that government shutdowns are no longer a possible outcome? Is anyone talking now about trying to do that when this is all over? (And what would be possible mechanisms to take shutdowns off the table - is it something Congress would even be able to do, or is it all in the hands of the AG and their reading of the Antideficiency Act?)
    posted by trig at 4:00 AM on January 11, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Trig: It's known as the Gephardt rule.
    posted by waitingtoderail at 4:30 AM on January 11, 2019 [5 favorites]


    no one, not Trump, not his Trumpists, not the Fox News commenters want the wall for efficiency or anything remotely similar to usefulness. It's a symbolic wall. It's a monument to racism.

    Can we please not ever forget this? It is not about "border security". Don't play their game.

    It is about making America white again. It's starting with undocumented immigrants, DREAMers and refugees. The next step is ending immigration from non-European countries. Then the fascists will come for US citizens who are brown, black, Jewish, leftist, LGBTQ, and so on.

    That is what Wall is. I'd say that's all Wall means except that it's also a nice opportunity for side griftage. But that's not its main function. Its main function is to open up the psychological space that lets our country deport or kill people like me, a gay brown leftist immigrant.
    posted by tivalasvegas at 4:48 AM on January 11, 2019 [94 favorites]


    > "And what would be possible mechanisms to take shutdowns off the table"

    The two traditional methods are:

    1) Automatic raising of the debt ceiling whenever required (easy to institute in the U.S.) and/or
    2) Dissolution of government followed by immediate new elections in the event of a complete inability to pass funding bills (nearly impossible to institute in the U.S.)
    posted by kyrademon at 4:52 AM on January 11, 2019 [8 favorites]


    CNN's Kaitlan Collins: White House lawyers are prepping the legal justification for a national emergency declaration. This has included advising aides to ramp up "crisis" talk. Lawyers suggest the more times they say it, the more often they can point to it in a legal defense filing, per @Kevinliptakcnn

    So the White House legal strategy is to get the word "crisis" to be said a lot to justify an emergency declaration. That's not how any of this works.

    Not only that, but Trump has already spoken in public about how the emergency declaration is a fallback strategy to get what he wants. And courts have shown an admirable proclivity for slapping down Trump's lawyers' arguments by citing things Trump himself has said that contradict them ("travel restrictions are not a Muslim ban" being a particular hit).
    posted by Gelatin at 5:03 AM on January 11, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Is it possible to impeach Mitch McConnell?

    It's happened before, but probably not. The very first impeachment in the United States was of Sen. William Blount of Tennessee, for plotting with Britain to invade (Spanish) Florida and Louisiana. The House impeached him in 1798, but the Senate had already expelled him (which required the same 2/3 margin), and they dismissed the impeachment, arguing that Blount wasn't subject to impeachment. It appears unclear whether no Senator could be impeached, or if it was moot because he was already out.
    posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:33 AM on January 11, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Per the US Constitution **ANY** government official can be impeached. So yes, McConnell could be impeached.

    Per the current political reality of it requiring 67 votes to remove someone from office and removal from office therefore requiring 18 Republicans to vote for removal, it'll never happen. But yes, it's theoretically possible.
    posted by sotonohito at 5:51 AM on January 11, 2019 [5 favorites]


    "But a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential discussions, questioned the legality of using Army Corps funding, saying it would be subject to restrictions under the Stafford Act, which governs disaster relief. The official said the process was as much a political exercise intended to threaten projects Democrats valued as a pragmatic one." (NYT)

    Greg Sargent (WaPo)
    ...We now have a senior administration official *admitting* that Trump's plan to tap disaster funding for his wall is partly *intended* to pressure Democrats by holding disaster victims hostage.

    ---

    Which is why we can't give in. He only knows hostage taking, how to hurt people. If he thinks he won doing it, it will only get worse.
    posted by chris24 at 6:06 AM on January 11, 2019 [79 favorites]


    I dunno, I still think the "emergency declaration" is mostly some staffer's (and/or R Congresscritters') scheme to end the shutdown while allowing Trump to delcare victory and save face. The fact that the declaration or the money will be blocked by the courts is a problem for later, in the immediate present Trump can crow about how he was strong and decisive and solved the wall problem without caving to Pelosi and Schumer and so he'll sign whatever funding bill McConnell sticks in front of him.
    posted by soundguy99 at 6:27 AM on January 11, 2019 [1 favorite]


    This is probably impossible, but could the individual states "hire" the furloughed federal workers, or those forced to work without pay, on contract, or offer interest-free loans to them until or if the federal government finally reopens again?

    The only leverage that the president has is that people will suffer until he gets what he wants. If the suffering can be eliminated, there will be no incentive to cave in.
    posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 6:34 AM on January 11, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Every day part of me is sort of shocked that there isn't some secret trap door in the WH that opens in moments of extreme crisis and sucks all of those fuckers down into Hell. Part of me, even though I'm not comfortable with this idea, believes that this is the greatest country in the world, a beacon of freedom and opposition to tyranny. That nobody had some secret plan to dispose of an evil motherfucker brought into office who has the power to blow up the whole motherfucking planet, is just on some level deeply weird to me.

    I mean, part of it is that I smoke a lot of weed, but there is also something deeply surreal about Trump after eight years of Obama.
    posted by angrycat at 6:42 AM on January 11, 2019 [63 favorites]


    ...I still think the "emergency declaration" is mostly some staffer's (and/or R Congresscritters') scheme to end the shutdown while allowing Trump to delcare victory and save face. The fact that the declaration or the money will be blocked by the courts is a problem for later...

    That assumes, of course, that he doesn't then hold the jobs hostage unless the courts relent and allow the wall money to flow. Hell, the guy is so nasty, even if he gets every penny of his precious wall money, I would put it past him to say "Y'know what? The country got along just fine without these agencies getting in the way. Real American freedom. So, we're not gonna call them back. There's too many of 'em anyway. So many you can't believe."
    posted by Thorzdad at 6:43 AM on January 11, 2019 [9 favorites]


    I still think the "emergency declaration" is mostly some staffer's (and/or R Congresscritters') scheme to end the shutdown while allowing Trump to delcare victory and save face.

    Maybe, but I also feel like anybody who can get away with all the other obviously-disprovable lies Trump constantly spews—not the least of which is that large sections of the wall are already being built—would just tell his base, "I'm signing the bill to open the government, but don't worry, we are absolutely still building the wall, it's actually practically done already." That's pretty much what SHS did say, a few weeks back when she announced that the administration would find alternative funding for the wall (before the FOX News-inspired reversal).

    I think Trump's just an empty vessel of stupidity and ineptitude, blindly stumbling around inside Miller's and Bannon's trial balloons for implementing fascism. He gets to smash all his toys and burn the garage down, and they get the green light for their ghoulish experiments.
    posted by Rykey at 6:46 AM on January 11, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Fair point, Thorzdad, although if it is the kind of plan I suspect, part of that is to get funding bills signed in the time between the emergency declaration and whatever court decision happens - IANAL but I think it would take at least a couple of weeks to get a case up and running and in front of a judge.
    posted by soundguy99 at 6:52 AM on January 11, 2019


    > "And what would be possible mechanisms to take shutdowns off the table"

    The two traditional methods are:

    1) Automatic raising of the debt ceiling whenever required (easy to institute in the U.S.) and/or
    2) Dissolution of government followed by immediate new elections in the event of a complete inability to pass funding bills (nearly impossible to institute in the U.S.)

    A shutdown is a lack of appropriations, which is a separate issue from Treasury being unable to issue bonds because of the debt ceiling. The Gephart rule refers to the debt ceiling, and specifies that the ceiling is automatically raised when funds are appropriated, removing the hostage point of a separate vote on raising the ceiling.

    That's not what we have now, where Congress cannot appropriate funds in the first place due to Trump's veto threat and Mitch McConnell's reelection. To really solve the shutdown problem, you'd need to attach continuing resolution language to every appropriations bill, such that when that fiscal year ended without a new appropriation, it continued at the old level. This is how sane countries like Belgium operate without a government for years...everything just keeps going until a new bill is passed.

    But no Republican would agree to that, they can only govern by hostage taking or having a bare majority overriding the concerns of the minority party. They are incapable of ever making policy in good faith, and would never agree to give up the only leverage they have, hurting Americans.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 6:58 AM on January 11, 2019 [14 favorites]


    I don't even care whose idea it is to use an emergency declaration. I don't care whether it's going to work or not, whether it's to save face or not, whether it's McConnell's out or not.

    It is terrifying that this is being contemplated with a straight face. There is no emergency. THERE IS NO EMERGENCY. If he is allowed to even attempt to declare an emergency we are well on our fucking way to full on authoritarianism and nothing will stop him from trying to push this further. Not Congress, not the courts, not his yes-men.

    If he can pull this trick even once he's going to do it again the next time he's cornered. National emergency declared to police voting lines, for example, is all too possible and should make us shit our pants. It doesn't matter if it stands in court, the mere idea that he could TRY is the problem.
    posted by lydhre at 7:02 AM on January 11, 2019 [112 favorites]


    NBC: Pelosi Blasts Treasury Secretary Mnuchin After Briefing For 'Wasting' Lawmakers' Time—Pelosi called it one "one of the worst classified briefings we've received from the Trump administration," despite "stiff competition"
    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin of "wasting the time" of lawmakers after a classified briefing Thursday in which he was supposed to shed light on the Trump administration's decision to lift sanctions on companies linked to a Russian oligarch.[…]

    "The secretary barely testified," Pelosi told reporters afterwards. "He answered some questions, but he didn’t give testimony. They had an intelligence briefing, which I won’t go into, and then they read a document that was unclassified, wasting the time of members of Congress."[…]

    Mnuchin had been called to answer questions about his Dec. 19 announcement that the administration was easing sanctions on companies tied to Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who also has ties to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

    The Treasury Department's notification triggered a statute that gives Congress just 30 days to try to reverse the decision by passing a joint resolution of disapproval. Schumer filed such a motion on Friday, but it's unlikely to succeed in the Republican-run Senate.
    Ways & Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal has now requested an extension of the 30-day review period, the timing of which seems suspicious: “As my colleagues and I indicated in our January 8 letter to you, your notification to Congress was delivered just prior to an adjournment for an extended recess and during which time a government shutdown ensued. These factors frustrate our ability to complete our review of this matter within the 30-day period provided in CAATSA [Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act].”
    posted by Doktor Zed at 7:12 AM on January 11, 2019 [21 favorites]


    The Democrats, at every opportunity, need to push the message that THERE IS NO EMERGENCY. Start every press conference with it, every speech on the floor of the senate should open with that line. Push the message that there is no emergency, it's made up. Keep hammering it until Trump gets the message that his lie has no power.
    posted by jazon at 7:13 AM on January 11, 2019 [35 favorites]


    Border Patrol Agent Pleads Not Guilty To Killing 4 Sex Workers (NPR, January 11, 2019)
    Juan David Ortiz, a U.S. Border Patrol Agent pleaded not guilty Thursday to capital murder in the deaths of four women, The Associated Press reports. His "killing spree" might have continued, prosecutors say, had they not caught a "lucky break" when a fifth kidnapped woman escaped and contacted authorities.

    Ortiz thought it was his duty to clean up the streets of Laredo, a border town in Southwest Texas. So he began picking up alleged sex workers, driving them to remote areas, and then shooting them in the head, prosecutors say.
    'Whatever It Took': Republican Mark Harris' Path To The Election That Won't End (NPR, January 11, 2019) -- The candidate at the center of the disputed congressional election in North Carolina is a pastor who worked hard to break into politics. Now, state investigators are probing his campaign's tactics.
    One of the early [2018 midterm election] stops on his way included a stage in Charleston, S.C., in June 2015. Then a pastor a First Baptist Church in Charlotte, Harris spoke at an event aimed at encouraging religious leaders to run for office.

    He sang the first two verses of "This Little Light of Mine," admonishing the crowd of Christian leaders to sing along louder.

    "This is why the liberals are kicking our tails!" he growled with a smile.

    At the time, Harris had just run and lost in the 2014 primary race for a U.S. Senate seat.

    "I had recognized the emergency ... And I was willing to do whatever it took to be the man that God would use," Harris said in his speech. "And sacrifice whatever needed to be sacrificed."

    Now, North Carolina authorities are investigating just what exactly the Harris campaign was willing to do to win an election.

    Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in the unofficial tally for the 9th Congressional District seat.

    But the state's board of elections is investigating potential election fraud there, focused specifically on the actions of a political operative who spoke with Harris frequently.
    Just another two men, reshaping the world in their views, by any means necessary, believing that their cause was just and right.

    Maybe, just maybe, if you need to resort to killing people and literally stealing votes, your causes aren't actually just and right. Perhaps you're on the wrong side of things, and you are instead the villain in these stories.
    posted by filthy light thief at 7:18 AM on January 11, 2019 [55 favorites]


    When is McConnell up for election next time? Wouldn't this be a good time for Kentucky Democrats to place the responsibility for all of this on his shoulders? And also find a good challenger. You don't know if you can win if you don't try...
    posted by mumimor at 7:21 AM on January 11, 2019 [5 favorites]


    The emergency declaration is a pretty clear constitutional problem - the 'power of the purse' is one of the essential powers Congress, explicitly as a check on the executive. It's pretty quick for the courts to produce injunctions, too... So I guess or would like like Trump declaring the emergency, signing legislation without the wall, and then getting blocked on the wall by the courts.
    posted by kaibutsu at 7:23 AM on January 11, 2019 [5 favorites]


    T.D. Strange: A shutdown is a lack of appropriations, which is a separate issue from Treasury being unable to issue bonds because of the debt ceiling. The Gephart rule refers to the debt ceiling, and specifies that the ceiling is automatically raised when funds are appropriated, removing the hostage point of a separate vote on raising the ceiling.

    Yes. They're easily mixed up, but debt-ceiling breaches (which have never happened except perhaps once by mistake, but we've gotten really close many times) and government shutdowns (which happen with increasing frequency) are distinct forms of dysfunction, both basically unique to the USA. (E.g the Wikipedia page "Government shutdown" redirects to "Government shutdowns in the United States", while the article for "Debt limit" is a paragraph explaining that Poland is the only other country that has one).

    The debt ceiling is even more pointless (and terrifying) than this shit we're going through now... it started with a peculiar arrangement to fund American entry into World War I, whereby Congress said "Fund the war as much as you like however you like but don't ever borrow more than $X" instead of "Let's borrow $X and spend $Y". It's self-inflicted, like if you forced yourself to never borrow a dollar, even just to eat, as soon as your credit-card limit was reached (a degree of zeal that even your credit card company doesn't match, and which would also make you unappealing to other companies, because at any time you could suddenly become totally fiscally irrational in your avoidance of new debt).

    All democracies have to come up with a way to fund (or not fund) government any time the different parts of the system disagree with themselves. But they don't have to cap borrowing; if debt becomes a serious issue, as la Greece, then the place to address that is spending and taxation, not a "motivational" life hack in the form of a ticking time bomb.
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 7:26 AM on January 11, 2019 [7 favorites]


    When is McConnell up for election next time?

    2020, which is why he's being especially craven now.
    posted by NoxAeternum at 7:28 AM on January 11, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Wouldn't this be a good time for Kentucky Democrats to place the responsibility for all of this on his shoulders?

    If you think Kentucky Democrats are capable of getting any message out about anything...you're wrong. Either someone outside the traditional loser state party like Amy McGrath or radio person Matt Jones will be the nominee...or Mitch will win reelection running against the same losing, aimless, messageless campaign the same group of Frankfort consultants have run for the last 4 cycles. It's best not to expect anything of KY Democrats, because they're not really a party interested in winning as long as everyone gets paid to lose.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 7:32 AM on January 11, 2019 [23 favorites]


    Border Patrol Agent Pleads Not Guilty To Killing 4 Sex Workers (NPR, January 11, 2019)


    Because I think a lot of people missed it due to the Nov/Dec 2016 publication date, I'm going to drop Shane Bauer's report on his time undercover in a threeper militia participating in "ops" along the border.

    I only came across this piece because I'm reading Bauer's book on going undercover in an for-profit prison in Louisiana (it is...hard to read) and while there's been a few things that have seemed...clumsily sensationalized? (Like dude do not cite Zimbardo's prison experiment in 2018, please, especially not as an explanatory frame for when you stopped feeling like a journalist and, for a moment, "felt" like a guard) there's no real way to sensationalize the stuff he recorded.

    And the stuff he recorded is as terrifying as you'd dread it would be. Those threepers? Besides the open racism, open anti-semitism, and even more open misogyny, the real draw seemed to be a hobby that gave them a sense of meaning for their already pronounced desire to hurt people. And they had that in common with the several CBP agents that they befriended and coordinated with.

    The people who have signed up to become CBP or ICE agents are people who want an excuse to hunt brown people, to hurt people with impunity, to bully and degrade others whenever they can with the authority of the state at their back.

    They are there for the cruelty.

    I don't know how you deal with that, as a society, but we're going to have to figure it out soon.
    posted by schadenfrau at 7:33 AM on January 11, 2019 [57 favorites]


    I dunno, I still think the "emergency declaration" is mostly some staffer's (and/or R Congresscritters') scheme to end the shutdown while allowing Trump to delcare victory and save face.

    Remember a few hundred Scaramuccis ago when Trump kept saying he declared the opioid crisis a national emergency without actually doing so?
    posted by Gelatin at 7:36 AM on January 11, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Axios (linked by saysthis): Senate approves backpay for federal workers after shutdown ends

    This maddens me because there's almost no daylight between that (if it passes the House) and just not having a shutdown, except for the interim suffering.

    A lot of people have talked about the ways Trump has been, and perhaps still could be, satisfied with a "wall" that is more abstract than real, a "wall" that is totally going to be built any day now, etc. But perhaps it's a better strategy to apply that to the concept of "shutdown". Congress should just pass legislation declaring that all payments and government functions resume, but the government remains "shut down", yes sirree, one big shutdown as far as the eye can see, just the most tremendous shutdown ever.
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 7:36 AM on January 11, 2019 [6 favorites]


    How Mitch McConnell Is Working Behind the Scenes to End the Shutdown [autoplaying video] (Philip Elliott, Time)

    In case anyone was worried that no one was pro McConnell.

    Mitch McConnell is Keeping the Senate Out of the Shutdown Fight. It's a Hypocritical Abdication of Congressional Responsibility (Peter Suderman, Reason)
    Five years ago, McConnell declared the need to restore the Senate. Instead, he's broken it further.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 7:38 AM on January 11, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Documents Show NRA and Republican Candidates Coordinated Ads in Key Senate Races – Mother Jones
    Although federal law prohibits such coordination, it’s rarely enforced as a practical matter. The FEC, which oversees elections, has been deadlocked along partisan lines for a decade. (FEC enforcement matters are confidential until resolved; it’s unclear if the NRA has formally responded to the complaints.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:46 AM on January 11, 2019 [50 favorites]


    They are there for the cruelty.

    I don't know how you deal with that, as a society, but we're going to have to figure it out soon


    It's a few years old, but this essay by China Mieville makes some good points on that subject.
    posted by JohnFromGR at 7:51 AM on January 11, 2019 [14 favorites]


    We need demonstrations and protests directed directly against McConnell, making it clear that he can end the shutdown and making the Senate liable. Is this happening yet? If not let's start one.
    posted by benzenedream at 7:55 AM on January 11, 2019 [12 favorites]


    I was thinking more along the lines of a few thousand furloughed employees at his office, reminding news that Congress and the Senate together can override vetos.
    posted by benzenedream at 8:01 AM on January 11, 2019 [4 favorites]


    > Documents Show NRA and Republican Candidates Coordinated Ads in Key Senate Races

    As you listen to the sound of crickets, just imagine this headline: "Documents show Planned Parenthood and Democratic Candidates Coordinated Ads in Key Senate Races". Consider the howls of righteous anger from the media and the Republican push to immediately outlaw Planned Parenthood and the calls for Obama's resignation since he's the head of the party, even if he didn't do anything wrong here. Imagine Tucker and Hannity calling for armed marches in the streets, because such an abuse of our democratic norms cannot stand unchecked.

    Then savor the quiet soothing sound of crickets.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 8:06 AM on January 11, 2019 [35 favorites]


    I was thinking more along the lines of a few thousand furloughed employees at his office...

    Or, y'know, surrounding the White House?
    posted by Thorzdad at 8:06 AM on January 11, 2019


    I guess my Kentucky bourbon boycott suggestion was too one-linery, but I do really think it could be an effective campaign. We can all switch to Shutdown Scotch for the duration.
    posted by contraption at 8:09 AM on January 11, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Re: McConnell and 2020 - I don’t know Kentucky from the ground but it strikes me as the kind of place that would totally love a politician who knew that the electorate had basic needs that weren’t being met by the Fed Gov but could be. The National Dem Party should intercede and find that candidate if the State level won’t. McC is Gingrich-level destructive.
    posted by From Bklyn at 8:10 AM on January 11, 2019 [15 favorites]


    Protesting at the White House is fine, but at this point it's pretty clear: Trump is an idiot and he doesn't care. He's hurting his own party and putting the GOP in a bind. The best way to stop the shutdown is for protests at McConnell's office, and the offices of other Republican senators. ESPECIALLY the ones in blue states who are up for re-election next year.

    What needs to happen is for McConnell et al to break with Trump. For real. There isn't a way for them to "win" here. They are going to have to either lose with Trump or lose w/ America.
    posted by nushustu at 8:11 AM on January 11, 2019 [14 favorites]


    We need demonstrations and protests directed directly against McConnell, making it clear that he can end the shutdown and making the Senate liable. Is this happening yet? If not let's start one.

    Can we all boycott bourbon or something? I don't know what else comes from Kentucky specifically. Maybe everybody steal a handle of Jim Beam and pour it into Boston Harbor?
    posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 8:11 AM on January 11, 2019 [2 favorites]


    I get this creeping suspicion that McConnell doesn't want to have to override Trump's Veto. He knows that it will set off Trump against him. Hell at this point I'm willing to bet Trump doesn't even know his veto can be overriden and McConnell wants to keep it that way.
    posted by Twain Device at 8:14 AM on January 11, 2019 [7 favorites]


    CNN: Trump-Appointed Judge Upholds Mueller's Indictment Against Russian Troll Farm
    In a 32-page opinion, Judge Dabney Friedrich rejected efforts by Concord Management and Consulting to dismiss the indictment, which accused the Russian company of conspiring to defraud the US government. Mueller's team says the company was involved in a well-funded "troll farm" that pumped out political propaganda to millions of Americans throughout the 2016 presidential campaign.

    It was the second time that Friedrich, a Trump appointee, sided with Mueller and let the case proceed. Earlier this year, she rebuffed Concord's arguments that there were constitutional problems with Mueller's appointment and authority. Thursday's ruling centered more on the merits of the indictment.[…]

    But in upholding the indictment, Friedrich wrote that "the key question" was not whether Concord violated the underlying US laws that regulate foreign agents and political spending. Instead, she said the threshold to indict Concord on the conspiracy charge was whether the company's actions were "deceptive and intended to frustrate the lawful government functions" of the relevant agencies.

    Friedrich concluded that Mueller's team showed "plenty" of evidence that Concord tried to deceive US government agencies, bolstering the decision to indict the Russian firm. She cited parts of the indictment that accused Concord employees of lying to the State Department on visa applications and using virtual private networks to hide the fact that their social media posts originated from Russia.
    On a separate note, Bill Browder checked on the Magnitsky Act updates earlier this week: "Every year in December the US State Dept and Treasury issue a new list of Russians sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act. When I checked on the delay yesterday I learned that the people making the Magnitsky designations were all restricted by the US government shutdown."
    posted by Doktor Zed at 8:20 AM on January 11, 2019 [32 favorites]


    I'll do it if I have to I guess but god damn if I have to watch this all unfold without my Bulleit and Knob Creek I am gonna fucking lose it people.
    posted by mrjohnmuller at 8:21 AM on January 11, 2019 [38 favorites]


    Here's another way out. All it would take is for a majority of Senate Republicans to find their consciences and spines (I know, I know), call a meeting of the Republican Caucus, and tell McConnell to end his blockade or they replace him as Senate majority leader.

    I know he has never been seriously challenged (if at all) and that traditionally the Senate picks the leadership at the start of the session (this time they voted in after elections in November). But according to political scientists Larry Sabato (every political reporter's favorite academic) and John Fortier of conservative AEI, there's nothing that prevents a party from calling a vote at any time. At last count there were at least six Republican Senators who want to start moving appropriations bills. That's nowhere near enough, but it's a start. So there is a mechanism -- if, as noted, the Republicans give a damn and can find their backbones.
    posted by martin q blank at 8:24 AM on January 11, 2019 [10 favorites]


    AOC (Responding to Exasperated Democrats try to rein in Ocasio-Cortez): To quote Alan Moore: “None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with YOU. You're locked up in here with ME.” 🤣

    [real]
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:35 AM on January 11, 2019 [168 favorites]


    I found this list of McConnell's 25 biggest donors. Boycotts of these people would be effective, I think.

    How does Amway (I just saw the name "Devos" on that list) have grift money anyway? Who's buying Amway? Home Depot's former chairman (who lives in Atlanta) is right in there too. And the f**kin Adelsons, who own the Sands in Vegas, gave the dude $20 million. So there's some easy boycotts.

    And then there's One Nation, who gave him $11 million. Hoo boy, "One Nation is a dark money group run by Karl Rove's top operatives who run Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads...Steven Law, former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), is the president and CEO of One Nation, the same role he has with McConnell's Senate Leadership Fund as well as Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads...The Guardian reported in August, 2016 that Adelson had given $10 million to the dark money group."

    McConnell is in power because gambling.
    posted by saysthis at 8:38 AM on January 11, 2019 [40 favorites]


    Exasperated Democrats try to rein in Ocasio-Cortez

    They're afraid because she's already being effective and only gaining influence. Her goal isn't to elect more bad Democrats, it's to elect more better ones. Be better, or be replaced by someone better.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 8:46 AM on January 11, 2019 [71 favorites]


    How does Amway (I just saw the name "Devos" on that list) have grift money anyway? Who's buying Amway?

    Amway (and its sister companies) reported sales of $8.6 billion-with-a-B in 2017, more than a quarter of which came out of China.
    posted by Etrigan at 8:47 AM on January 11, 2019 [12 favorites]


    There is no emergency. THERE IS NO EMERGENCY.

    Thing is, we're already on record as saying there's an "actual humanitarian crisis," with respect to immigration, specifically Obama said this back in 2014 and the Fox machine has been all over it. And to now say, well, crisis clearly isn't "emergency", and immigration isn't border, it sounds like so much mincing words to low-information citizens.

    Pretending for a moment that Trump is a legitimate president, unfortunately he's within his right to declare an emergency on the criteria he judges appropriate. If he were anyone but a loon who should have been 25th-amendment impeached two years ago, this would be uncontroversial. That notwithstanding, a declaration of emergency doesn't mean he has unlimited powers, and if/when it comes to that, Congress needs to push back fully. By all rights, an illegitimate declaration of an emergency for the purpose of abusing the separation of powers and budgetary process should itself be grounds for impeachment.
    posted by xigxag at 8:48 AM on January 11, 2019 [6 favorites]


    How does Amway (I just saw the name "Devos" on that list) have grift money anyway?
    ADA, Mich., (Feb. 12, 2018) – Amway has announced sales of $8.6 billion USD for the year ending Dec. 31, 2017. The company achieved sales gain in several key markets, including South Korea, Thailand and India. Total sales in the second half of 2017 grew by 3 percent, compared to same period of the previous year, led by China and the United States. The company forecasts year-over-year sales growth in 2018.
    posted by notyou at 8:51 AM on January 11, 2019 [1 favorite]


    And to now say, well, crisis clearly isn't "emergency", and immigration isn't border, it sounds like so much mincing words to low-information citizens.

    That isn't what Democrats are saying at all. They are saying that the idea of murderous hordes about to storm across the border is bullshit.
    posted by diogenes at 8:54 AM on January 11, 2019 [14 favorites]


    McConnell is in power because gambling.

    Which is an industry with a natural affinity for money laundering.
    posted by Uncle Ira at 8:54 AM on January 11, 2019 [11 favorites]


    (Of note: Amway's biggest sales in its booming overseas markets come from nutritional products -- powders, supplements, etc, which benefit from the US' reputation as the world's unrivaled producer of safe, wholesome food products, for which we can thank parts of the "Administrative State".)
    posted by notyou at 8:55 AM on January 11, 2019 [9 favorites]


    From Wikipedia, 2020 United States Senate elections, which effectively lists the 33 incumbent Senators running for reelection.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 8:56 AM on January 11, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Thing is, we're already on record as saying there's an "actual humanitarian crisis," with respect to immigration, specifically Obama said this back in 2014 and the Fox machine has been all over it. And to now say, well, crisis clearly isn't "emergency", and immigration isn't border, it sounds like so much mincing words to low-information citizens.

    That's nonsense. The "actual humanitarian crisis" is the condition of the people stopped at the border wanting access to the United States because of their lived experiences in the countries they are attempting to leave. Trump's emergency is STOPPING these people rather than helping them.

    Now, the fact that the Fox News folks will believe anything they want to believe and look for the gotcha at every possible opportunity at the expense of things like reality is a problem, but it's not our problem because short of shutting down Fox News in toto there is nothing we can do about them.

    Trump can't be allowed to manufacture an emergency where there is none, which is precisely what Fox News is trying to do.
    posted by lydhre at 8:58 AM on January 11, 2019 [16 favorites]


    The Exceptions to the Rulers: When people of color enter elite spaces, they’re often attacked as undeserving charlatans. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is no different.
    In America, when people of color succeed despite the limits placed on them, and use their newfound status to indict the system for holding others back, they are held up as proof that the limits do not exist, they are denounced as ingrates, or they are pilloried as frauds incapable of the successes attributed to them. The exception is if they present their success as evidence that the structural barriers are not as great as they seem, and that in truth the only thing that holds back marginalized communities is their own lack of ability or motivation. If they affirm the righteousness of the class and caste system that they defied to succeed, they are hailed as heroes by the same people who would otherwise have denounced them as frauds.

    The election of the most diverse Congress in history, and the presence of outspoken women of color in a chamber that has been dominated by white men for most of its existence, was bound to provoke these responses. When people of color enter elite spaces, they make those with unearned advantages conscious of how they’ve been favored by the system. That poses a choice to those whose access to such cloistered communities is unquestioned: They can recognize that others might also succeed given the right circumstances, or they can defend the inequities of that system in an effort to preserve their self-image, attacking the new entrant as a charlatan or the group they belong to as backwards.
    @AdamSerwer (the author of that piece): In light of this morning’s reporting on AOC I just want to emphasize that the observations in these two graphs are not limited to one party or the other. People experience this from white liberals too.
    posted by zombieflanders at 9:06 AM on January 11, 2019 [44 favorites]


    Trump’s Typos Reveal His Lack of Fitness for the Presidency (John McWhorter, The Atlantic)
    They suggest not just inadequate manners or polish, but inadequate thought.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 9:08 AM on January 11, 2019 [17 favorites]


    [probably getting into derail territory] By my understanding Amway, being a multilevel marketing company, is making money oversees via the large untapped populations of China and India filling out the lower tiers of its pyramid. My understanding comes from The Dream podcast, which details the impact of these scams on individuals, and also how these companies, Amway in particular, have evaded regulators.
    posted by antinomia at 9:09 AM on January 11, 2019 [13 favorites]


    They are there for the cruelty.
    I don't know how you deal with that, as a society, but we're going to have to figure it out soon.

    1) Surveillance. Require body cams; require the footage to be reviewed weekly; anyone whose cam was "nonfunctional" spends a day in the office doing maintenance tasks so they can better understand how to properly use their equipment. They also need to re-take the basic training course on using the camera--oh, and they lose their gun until they've completed it. Hammer it through that all your actions on the job will be recorded.

    2) Since their salaries are paid for by the government, the camera footage is public domain. After a 90-day period for review, so they're not releasing recent crime footage under investigation, release the documents to the public.

    3) Write up ethics and behavior standards based on those required by medical personnel.

    4) Enforce them. We need legislatures and governing bodies willing to say, "none of that boys-will-be-boys bullshit; these are not boys; grown adults should know how to keep their tempers in check." No internal investigations; refer all potential crimes to the courts. We need prosecutions for rape and sexual assault, prosecutions for battery, prosecutions for extortion. And we need even charges being brought against someone to be an instant firing offense - if your actions were sketchy enough that a DA though it was reasonable to bring charges, you're not a good representative for the department.

    ...Not gonna happen, is it? Damn.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:10 AM on January 11, 2019 [26 favorites]


    Over 80 government websites are down after TLS certificates expired and there's nobody on hand to renew them.
    posted by clawsoon at 9:13 AM on January 11, 2019 [49 favorites]


    Trump’s Typos Reveal His Lack of Fitness for the Presidency (John McWhorter, The Atlantic)

    Looks like we're going to have to add another axis to the political compass chart:
    Descriptivist >> Prescriptivist
    posted by Atom Eyes at 9:16 AM on January 11, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Eric Zorn about Trump's ‘Wheels Older Than Walls’ claim
    posted by growabrain at 9:17 AM on January 11, 2019


    Over 80 government websites are down after TLS certificates expired and there's nobody on hand to renew them.

    This primarily affects secure connections (HTTPS). This opens such sites to potential vandalism. (One rogue thought: this could include restoration of previously deleted content.)
    posted by ZeusHumms at 9:19 AM on January 11, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Trump’s Typos Reveal His Lack of Fitness for the Presidency

    Finally, concrete evidence of his lack of fitness...
    posted by uosuaq at 9:24 AM on January 11, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Hmmm...that zdnet story states the NASA site is down, but I was just on the NASA site (via https) and it's running same as always.

    (oh, and don't read the comments, unless you want to experience just how deluded Trump's supporters are.)
    posted by Thorzdad at 9:26 AM on January 11, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Also it should be to their eternal shame that none of the Democrats quoted in that Politico piece about AOC said something like "I refuse to answer this bullshit question when the 3rd most senior Republican is a disciple of David Duke and there is a proud white supremacist literally right over there."

    Then again, it's a great example of what the real priorities of the party are, which we can point to when they completely fuck up 2020.
    posted by zombieflanders at 9:27 AM on January 11, 2019 [48 favorites]


    >This primarily affects secure connections (HTTPS). This opens such sites to potential vandalism.

    HTTPS/TLS isn't about protecting servers from attack, it's about certifying that you're connecting to who you think you are (to prevent man in the middle attacks) and providing a public key for encrypting web traffic.

    On preview: Thorzdad, I think this is mostly affecting the government portals where forms are submitted for grants, audits, etc. not the usual publicly facing websites which are just glorified billboards.
    posted by Freon at 9:29 AM on January 11, 2019 [10 favorites]


    From Wikipedia, 2020 United States Senate elections, which effectively lists the 33 incumbent Senators running for reelection.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 8:56 AM on January 11 [1 favorite +] [!]
    And the sooner they can feel the heat of a serious challenge, the sooner their minds will open to the problems of the Trump presidency. As long as they are more afraid of a Tea Party primary challenge than a Democratic opponent at the election, they are going to protect Trump.
    posted by mumimor at 9:30 AM on January 11, 2019 [1 favorite]


    zombieflanders - It might be worth considering that any Democrat who /did/ say "I refuse to answer this bullshit question" etc might simply have not been included in the article. Don't give up hope for 2020 quite yet. ;)
    posted by ZakDaddy at 9:31 AM on January 11, 2019 [12 favorites]


    @AOC: To quote Alan Moore: “None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with YOU. You're locked up in here with ME.”

    There are layers of "they don't know what they're up against" here.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:35 AM on January 11, 2019 [91 favorites]


    ErisLordFreedom: "Since their salaries are paid for by the government, the camera footage is public domain. After a 90-day period for review, so they're not releasing recent crime footage under investigation, release the documents to the public."

    This is going to greatly disproportionately effect disadvantaged populations to their detriment by making every interaction with police permanently public. If you are say a sex worker who has been raped, beaten, kidnapped by a client you have the choice of making that event and the nature of your work permanently public domain or just not reporting.
    posted by Mitheral at 9:41 AM on January 11, 2019 [20 favorites]


    [Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-HI] blasts McConnell’s explanation for blocking funding bills: ‘One of the lamest excuses I’ve heard’ (John Bowden, The Hill)
    posted by ZeusHumms at 9:44 AM on January 11, 2019 [28 favorites]


    About yesterday's Beto-goes-to-the-dentist foofaraw:

    How Twitter works: Beto didn’t “live stream his teeth-cleaning.” He’s been interviewing people in El Paso about life on the border. Including his dental assistant. It wasn’t live. There was a split second selfie shot of him with his mouth open that was screengrabbed by a reporter

    But who cares? Serious people re-tweeted it as a bizarre Black Mirror moment anyway. Was it a little weird? Yeah. Just another reminder for all candidates that reality in politics is created on Twitter with little regard for context. [@PeterHamby]
    posted by Atom Eyes at 9:46 AM on January 11, 2019 [29 favorites]


    Gillibrand Hires New Aides, Signaling Presidential Run Is Imminent (Alexander Burns, NYT)
    Taking the step of actually retaining new staff — rather than merely conducting interviews or planning out staff recruitment — indicates that Ms. Gillibrand is probably in the very last stages of preparing for the 2020 race. Once politicians raise or spend more than $5,000 on their candidacy, they have just 15 days to file paperwork forming a campaign with the Federal Election Commission.
    Hopefully this won't be affected by the Trump/McConnell Shutdown.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 9:54 AM on January 11, 2019 [3 favorites]


    NYT: Farm Country Stood by Trump. But the Shutdown Is Pushing It to Breaking Point.
    Farm country has stood by President Trump, even as farmers have strained under two years of slumping incomes and billions in losses from his trade wars. But as the government shutdown now drags into a third week, some farmers say the loss of crucial loans, payments and other services has pushed them — and their support — to a breaking point. [Some, but not all:] “I may lose the farm, but I strongly feel we need some border security,” Mr. Nunnery said.
    WaPo: House breaks for weekend, all but ensuring longest shutdown in U.S. history
    About 800,000 workers missed a paycheck Friday as the impasse between Trump and Democrats stretched into its 21st day. Without a dramatic turn of events, the shutdown would become one for the record books at midnight. As of late Friday morning, there were no signs of serious negotiations underway. Trump took to Twitter [to blame “The Democrats, Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy”].
    WaPo shutdown clock: 20 days 13 hours and counting.

    (Oh, and an image of pay stubs with $0.00 going to air traffic controllers.)
    posted by RedOrGreen at 10:23 AM on January 11, 2019 [16 favorites]


    There Are Good Ways To Spend $5 Billion On Border Security - The Atlantic
    Fixing the asylum system, upgrading ports of entry, and tightening security checkpoints might do more to advance Trump’s goals than a wall.

    OK,"Trump's goals" may be a stretch.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:26 AM on January 11, 2019 [13 favorites]


    The number of different Democrats in that Politico article blithely attacking AOC because Democrats aren't supposed to attack other Democrats is ... well, I guess I'll go with amusing.
    posted by chortly at 10:31 AM on January 11, 2019 [18 favorites]


    chortly: The number of different Democrats in that Politico article blithely attacking AOC because Democrats aren't supposed to attack other Democrats is ... well, I guess I'll go with amusing.

    I can't even think of a single Democrat AOC has "attacked". Maybe what's-his-name that was looking to oust Pelosi? Plus, obviously, Joe Crowley, insofar as running against him must have required opposition.

    In parallel with the notion of "Real Americans", it's fairly common all around to assume only the centrists are "true" elected Democrats, even as that becomes plain mathematically false. This perception leads to routine liberal/lefty read all disappointments wrought by blue dogs as "the Democrats" capitulating, and it also causes those blue dogs to treat anyone to their left as the actual bringers of division. But in reality, even as she sits decidedly on its left wing, AOC is closer to the party center than, say, Joe Lieberman.

    (I guess Republicans have a similar thing going on, and it ties in with the way we use "establishment". The four or five remaining moderate Republicans can dismiss Individual-1 as non-representative and it doesn't seem as weird as it should because he's "anti-establishment" regardless of the office he holds.)
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 10:45 AM on January 11, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Fixing the asylum system, upgrading ports of entry, and tightening security checkpoints might do more to advance Trump’s goals than a wall.

    Doing that would help ensure the asylum process for Central American refugees operates smoothly, efficiently, and humanely.

    Stephen Miller, Trump, and a good part of the Republican base don't want the asylum process for people south of the border to work at all, they haven't exactly been subtle about it, and it's maddening that anyone in the media still pretends -- as NPR did this morning* -- that it's all just a dispute about policy details.

    *NPR let the Republican congressperson they interviewed claim that Trump was willing to compromise, without asking him exactly how. Feh.
    posted by Gelatin at 10:54 AM on January 11, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Justice Democrats, which in 2018 backed AOC & Ayanna Pressley, launches their next primary target: Henry Cuellar, a fake Democrat.
    posted by growabrain at 10:55 AM on January 11, 2019 [15 favorites]


    Attacking her for backing primary challengers is fundamentally anti-democratic. Primaries are literally how democracy works. No elected official is entitled to their seat, or to run unopposed for reelection. The party institution shutting out criticism and undermining progressive candidates for decades is how we got to this point in the first place. Defend your record to the voters. Make the case for your reelection. If you can't do that against someone the voters prefer better, you don't deserve to represent them in the general election.

    Democrats cannot be scared of the democratic process when Republicans are trying to end democracy itself. If your argument is that Republicans are undermining democracy through gerrymandering and voter suppression...you can't then turn around and sabotage primary elections on your side.

    We should want as many good Democrats running as possible, in every election, for every seat. Show how democracy can work if you want to preserve it. Or else stop pretending that that's what you want, and admit you too only want to keep yourself and your own cronies in power.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 10:56 AM on January 11, 2019 [52 favorites]


    Also: Trump Made $35M in 2018 Selling Real Estate - Forbes
    posted by growabrain at 11:01 AM on January 11, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Also: Trump Made $35M in 2018 Selling Real Estate - Forbes

    And how do we know that amount represents fair market value? Buying his real estate at inflated prices is an easy way to pay a de facto bribe.
    posted by Gelatin at 11:10 AM on January 11, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Democrats cannot be scared of the democratic process when Republicans are trying to end democracy itself. If your argument is that Republicans are undermining democracy through gerrymandering and voter suppression...you can't then turn around and sabotage primary elections on your side.

    I expect this attitude is the flip side of the phenomenon I mentioned before -- a product of the Democrats' defensive crouch in response to Reagan's personal popularity and genial bad faith. Many Democratic politicians of that era seem to believe that milquetoast Republican Lite (unfortunately validating Republican frames and undermining themselves) is what the voters want, while Democratic constituencies -- the working people of this nation -- are desperate for someone to really stand up for them.
    posted by Gelatin at 11:15 AM on January 11, 2019 [15 favorites]


    @ElizLanders reports that Rick Scott called Trump to see if like his state was going to be fucked over by some deprivation of disaster funding and felt super reassured by his talk with Trump. Let's see if this shitty thing really happens Trump carves out exemptions for states that matter to him, i.e., not Puerto Rico and California.
    posted by angrycat at 11:16 AM on January 11, 2019 [13 favorites]


    In parallel with the notion of "Real Americans", it's fairly common all around to assume only the centrists are "true" elected Democrats

    Henry Cueller, a fake Democrat


    Uh huh.

    I suppose I’ll read up thread to see how I’m about to get flamed, but the Politico article was fairly unremarkable to me. AOC has amassed a lot of power, and she’s using it. It frankly annoys me to see people claiming she’s not wielding it, and wielding it deliberately, up to and including attacking or threatening “fake” Democrats, and it kinda smells of sexism.

    And when you amass power quickly and decide to start wielding it, people object. It’s like a basic law of humanity.

    Some of those objections are valid for some issues, some are not, some are purely sour grapes, some are legitimate concerns which may or may not pan out. They’re not a monolith. And while I’m equally fine with (or rather: equally annoyed by) both methods of attack — advocating organized primary attacks, packaging little warning shots for a Politico hack to write up — I’m pretty tired of the disingenuousness of claiming to be offended by one form and not the other. They’re both warfare; one isn’t morally better than the other, there’s just the side you like. Under normal circumstances I would say this is fine, but...

    While the comparisons to the Freedom Caucus are inevitable, they worry me because the situations are not remotely analogous. The Freedom Caucus yanked the whole GOP to the right by holding a hard line, and attacking more moderate Republicans until they were driven from the party. I get that that’s what a lot of people want on the left right now, and in a perfect world, that’s actually what I would want to. But we don’t even live in 2010. We live in a goddamn fucking timeline where Donald Trump is President and working on attaining authoritarian Nazi dictator status partially because the left was divided. (Oh god don’t @ me; there were lots of other reasons too, all of which, including this one, I categorize as “necessary but not sufficient.”)

    So THIS is the emergency. We don’t have any margin for error. There are literal Christian Dominionists who have been planning this fascist shit for forty years, they are in all levels of the government and the fucking military, and they are THIS CLOSE to getting everything they want just before the Senate becomes a permanent structural road block to any possible Democratic or left wing government. So drawing parallels to the tactics that worked during relative peace time as a roadmap for how we should address our current circumstances worries me very fucking much.

    And I’m not a tactician but I feel like some things are pretty widely understood for the past several thousand years? (Happy to be corrected; it would help my blood pressure.) like: You kill the enemy in front of you, with the help of other enemies if you need it, and then once he’s (METAPHORICALLY, secret service, metaphorically) dead (or at least contained) you move on to the next enemy, which might have been the guy who just helped you kill the first guy.

    So. Anyway. I worry about the infighting getting out of hand and making it difficult for the left to unite to against the Nazis, but I also don’t think we’re there yet. The Politico article seems like an entirely predictable and frankly kinda meh volley in the kind of skirmishes that happen when power shifts. But the overall trajectory...

    I worry.
    posted by schadenfrau at 11:23 AM on January 11, 2019 [31 favorites]


    Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) sums up how Trump got us this point:
    Trump airlines? Shut down.
    Trump casinos? Shut down.
    Trump steaks? Shut down.
    Trump university? Shut down.
    Trump magazine? Shut down.

    @realDonaldTrump kept his promise to run our government like he ran his companies: shut down, w/ unpaid workers & blaming everyone but himself
    The Trump Foundation ought to count for this list, too.

    Speaking of Trump foundations, Forbes reports: New Filings Show Donations To Eric Trump’s Foundation Plunged Amid Scandal "Eric Trump’s old foundation took in roughly $900,000 in 2017, its lowest total since 2010, according to a tax return obtained by Forbes. […] The new tax return and an audit statement, both filed in November but never previously reported, make it clear that the Eric Trump Foundation underwent an extreme makeover in 2017, the same year Forbes published an expose into the charity, prompting an investigation by the New York state attorney general."
    posted by Doktor Zed at 11:30 AM on January 11, 2019 [57 favorites]


    Is this still peacetime? It's not open warfare, but it is not normal. Very not normal.
    posted by stonepharisee at 11:34 AM on January 11, 2019


    Also, to continue my “why won’t you fools just WORK TOGETHER” rant...

    The Kentucky Democratic Party has pretty clearly shown itself not to be up to the task of taking down Mitch McConnell, so that seems like the perfect fucking opportunity to let the new left wing run wild.

    I would fucking love to see AOC and the establishment work together to run someone against McConnell. Omg LOVE. Pull a fucking Beto, scare him left, and build the state infrastructure into something fierce.
    posted by schadenfrau at 11:39 AM on January 11, 2019 [30 favorites]


    Mod note: Reload and move on, folks.
    posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 11:49 AM on January 11, 2019 [7 favorites]


    ZeusHumms: Trump White House urging allies to prepare for possible RBG departure (Eliana Johnson & Gabby Orr, Politico)

    Justice Ginsburg Has No Remaining Signs Of Cancer, Will Return To Supreme Court (NPR, January 11, 2019)
    Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has no remaining signs of cancer after her surgery last month, requires no additional treatment, but will miss oral arguments at the court next week to rest, the Supreme Court said Friday.

    While odds for a recovery from the surgery she had are good, they go way up if the subsequent pathology report shows no cancer in the lymph nodes. On Friday, the court released a written statement saying there is no additional evidence of cancer.

    "Her recovery from surgery is on track," court spokeswoman Kathleen L. Arberg said of the 85-year-old justice. "Post-surgery evaluation indicates no evidence of remaining disease, and no further treatment is required."

    As she has with cases already this year, Ginsburg will continue to participate in the cases from home on the basis of the briefs and transcripts, the court said.

    This is the third time Ginsburg has had cancer. Ginsburg fans can rest a bit easier with the news. Doctors say that her odds of long-term survival are in the neighborhood of 80 percent.
    That's the entire NPR article. (Sorry, NPR.)

    And, emphasis mine, because RBG 4 EVA!
    posted by filthy light thief at 11:51 AM on January 11, 2019 [74 favorites]


    James Fallows, Let Them Eat Vacation Days, quoting the chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, Kevin Hassett on PBS:
    A huge share of government workers were going to take vacation days, say between Christmas and New Year’s.

    And then we have a shutdown, and so they can’t go to work. So then they have the vacation, but they don’t have to use their vacation days. And then they come back, and they get their back pay.

    Then in some sense they’re better off.
    It's, uh, not New Year's anymore, and as for the whole better off thing: WaPo, ‘We all have bills. We all have to eat.’ For furloughed federal workers, the first missed paychecks ratchet up anxiety.

    Miami Herald, As shutdown keeps TSA screeners home, Miami’s airport is closing off a terminal
    With more federal security screeners refusing to work without pay, Miami International Airport plans to cut off access to one of its terminals over the weekend in order to send TSA workers to busier checkpoints, a spokesman said Thursday night.

    Closing of the security checkpoint at Terminal G is set to begin at 1 p.m. Saturday, in what would be the 22nd day of a partial shutdown of the federal government. Federal screeners are calling in sick at double the normal rate for Miami, and TSA managers aren’t confident they will have enough workers to operate all 11 checkpoints at normal hours throughout the airport, said MIA spokesman Greg Chin.
    posted by zachlipton at 12:02 PM on January 11, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Also not good, Tensions rise in federal prisons during shutdown as weary guards go without pay and work double shifts (WaPo):
    Even though these employees are supposed to work, union officials at 10 prisons reached by The Washington Post, including Lee, say the number of employees who are not showing up for work has at least doubled since the shutdown began.

    As a result, those showing up are routinely working double shifts, correctional officers and other prison staff members say. Secretaries, janitors and teachers are filling in for absent officers. At at least one prison — Hazelton Federal Correctional Complex in West Virginia — the number of assaults on officers has increased since the shutdown, according to a union official there.
    posted by peeedro at 12:06 PM on January 11, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Well, and with the fda no longer inspecting food, we’re about to see some serious work outages as food poisoning becomes a significant problem.
    posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 12:08 PM on January 11, 2019 [11 favorites]


    I'm a furloughed government employee who lives in suburban Maryland. I went to the grocery store today, like many others, to beat the bad weather forecast for this weekend. There were some interesting things I noticed, such as empty shelves on the pasta aisle. I flex every other Friday, and it's not unusual for me to run by the store to grab one thing or another, and today felt different. Lots of scant cart-loads, mine included. Lots of tired- and anxious-looking people. I realize that nobody on the Republican side of the Senate cares about us because we live in a blue state, but people are hurting, and it's only going to get worse. The only thing like a silver lining I can to all of this is that, just maybe, there's an opportunity here for blue-collar and white-collar workers to finally come together to fight in unity for better working and living conditions.
    posted by wintermind at 12:14 PM on January 11, 2019 [66 favorites]


    Here's another possible push for 2019 legislation: end Direct-To-Consumer medical marketing, possibly under the auspices of decreasing the cost of health care. Big Pharma shells out $20B each year to schmooze docs, $6B on drug ads -- Persuading doctors and direct-to-consumer ads land 1-2 punch for knockout sales. (Beth Mole for Ars Technica, Jan. 11, 2019)
    Of the nearly $30 billion that health companies now spend on medical marketing each year, around 68 percent (or about $20 billion) goes to persuading doctors and other medical professionals—not consumers—of the benefits of prescription drugs. That’s according to an in-depth analysis published in JAMA this week. The study broke down exactly how health companies convinced us to spend enormous sums on our care between 1997 and 2016. In that time, health companies went from spending $17.7 billion to $29.9 billion on medical marketing. Meanwhile, US healthcare spending hit $3.3 trillion, or 17.8 percent of the GDP, in 2016.

    The finding that pharmaceutical companies spend most of their marketing oomph on charming doctors isn’t surprising, though. In 1997, a whopping 88 percent ($15.6 billion of their total $17.7 billion) of medical marketing went to swaying doctors, according to the analysis. And the way in which drug companies woo doctors hasn’t changed much either. They largely do so by sending sales representatives to doctors’ offices for face-to-face visits, providing free drug samples and other swag, offering payments for speeches, food and beverages, travel, and hosting disease “education.”

    What’s new—and why this is now a shadier situation—is the explosion of direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing that couples with those efforts for a one-two marketing punch. DTC advertising more than quadrupled in the timeframe of the analysis. That is, money spent on DTC—mostly TV commercials and glossy magazine ads—went from $2.1 billion in 1997 to $9.6 billion in 2016. And of that $9.6 billion, about $6 billion was for marketing prescription drugs, the analysis found.

    That boom in DTC ads “increases the need for clinicians to help patients understand product claims, medical need, cost, and nonmedical alternatives,” according to health policy experts Selena Ortiz, of Pennsylvania State University, and Meredith Rosenthal, of Harvard. In an accompanying editorial in JAMA, the pair notes that this increased reliance on doctors can be fraught with pitfalls because doctors can be biased and misled by marketing just like consumers, earlier research found. This “suggests that professionals may need further education or support to serve as the arbiter of deceptive marketing,” they write.
    Direct link to the Journal of the American Medical Association article, titled Medical Marketing in the United States, 1997-2016 (Lisa M. Schwartz, MD, MS; Steven Woloshin, MD, MS; January 1/8, 2019)

    The United States is one of three countries that allows all Direct-To-Consumer pharma marketing, along with New Zealand and Hong Kong. Brazil allows DTC for non-prescription medication, with limitations on messaging. Advertisements for prescription medications can only appear in scientific, medical, or health professional journals.


    Gelatin: Remember a few hundred Scaramuccis ago when Trump kept saying he declared the opioid crisis a national emergency without actually doing so?

    Oh, they're still on it. Why, on March 1, 2018, The White House touted that President Donald J. Trump is Combatting the Opioid Crisis ... with another meeting. Sorry, a summit, "to discuss the Administration-wide efforts to combat the opioid crisis."

    And on Sept. 19, 2018, Alex Azar is Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, published an Op Ed in USA Today, proclaiming: Trump administration making progress in fight against opioid epidemic -- Our comprehensive strategy for the opioid crisis, grounded in the best science and evidence we have, is starting to show results. It's mostly hand-wavey "we're doing better!" statements, with a few linked references scattered about to bolster the story, like this:
    Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its annual survey of Americans’ drug use and mental health. For the second year in a row, the number of Americans misusing legal or illegal opioids dropped. Even more encouraging, the number of Americans initiating heroin use (PDF) dropped by around half from 2016 to 2017.
    That link appears to be a 53 page PPT slide deck as a PDF - lots of bullet points, no paragraphs of text with additional details and context, but still a nice stat to be able to present.

    (And HHS Secretary Azar is an American politician, lawyer, pharmaceutical lobbyist and former drug company executive, FWIW)

    Maybe Trump already considered the ending Opioid Epidemic "Mission Accomplished" with those decreases?
    posted by filthy light thief at 12:16 PM on January 11, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Remember that border wall GoFundMe? A bunch of stuff has come out about the guy's history, he's been changing the campaign's language about refunding money, changed the campaign to say he's started a non-profit to build the wall itself (featuring border member Sara Carter, Sean Hannity's favorite reporter), and now GoFundMe is straight up refunding the entire $20 million, automatically, to all ~330,000 people, because the campaign broke its promise to give the money back if they didn't reach their goal.

    @bri_sacks:
    Me: so, you’re automatically refunding $20 million?

    .@gofundme: yes.
    Apparently, people will have the option to opt-in to having it redirected to to this new non-profit instead, an organization featuring the likes of David Clarke and Erik Prince and Kris Kobach.
    posted by zachlipton at 12:17 PM on January 11, 2019 [45 favorites]


    Exclusive: Trump team should be allowed to ‘correct’ final Mueller report, says Giuliani
    Rudy Giuliani says President Trump’s legal team should be allowed to “correct” special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report before Congress or the American people get the chance to read it.

    The claim, made in a telephone interview with The Hill on Thursday evening, goes further than the president’s legal advisers have ever gone before in arguing they have a right to review the conclusions of Mueller’s probe, which is now in its 20th month.

    “As a matter of fairness, they should show it to you — so we can correct it if they’re wrong,” said the former New York City mayor, who is a member of Trump's personal legal team. “They’re not God, after all. They could be wrong.”
    It's only fair.
    posted by scalefree at 12:22 PM on January 11, 2019 [19 favorites]


    @ZekeJMiller: Trump via @dsupervilleap: TRUMP: “This is where I ask the Democrats to come back to Washington and vote for money for the all the barrier. I don’t care what they name it. They can name it peaches"

    [real] He really thinks the only sticking point here is wall/barrier/concrete/steel/peaches nomenclature.

    @costareports: "What we're not looking to do right now is national emergency," Trump said Friday afternoon, surrounded by law enforcement officials at a WH roundtable. “I’m not going to do it so fast.”
    posted by zachlipton at 12:27 PM on January 11, 2019 [17 favorites]


    @costareports: "What we're not looking to do right now is national emergency," Trump said Friday afternoon, surrounded by law enforcement officials at a WH roundtable. “I’m not going to do it so fast.”

    Doesn't that concede the point that the "emergency" is a purely political tactic? If the emergency were real, why would he wait to declare it?
    posted by scarylarry at 12:31 PM on January 11, 2019 [37 favorites]


    Which is why we can't give in. [Trump] only knows hostage taking, how to hurt people. If he thinks he won doing it, it will only get worse.

    Trump also knows what happens when the hostages get away from a hostage taker -- the hostage taker gets shot.
    posted by msalt at 12:32 PM on January 11, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Whatever happened to the move to effectively end the electoral college by having a majority of states pledge their EVs to the candidate with the majority of votes? That seems like a very practical way to break the electoral and constitutional logjam in this country.
    posted by msalt at 12:37 PM on January 11, 2019 [4 favorites]


    why would he wait to declare it?

    Melanie Zanona and Sarah Ferris, Politico: "Freedom Caucus members tell Trump to back off wall emergency"
    "“I do see the potential for national emergencies being used for every single thing that we face in the future where we can’t reach an agreement. That’s the slippery slope that I’m concerned about,” Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a top Trump ally, told POLITICO on Thursday. “The administration is well aware of the ability to use national emergency [powers] and the reluctance to do so from House members.”

    “And yet, I think the president would find broad support if it’s determined that ultimately he has to do it,” Meadows added.

    In a tweet Friday morning, Meadows wrote that if Democrats don’t compromise on the wall, Trump should exhaust all options before an emergency declaration, but then should feel free to do so.
    ...
    Freedom Caucus member Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) urged Trump to make the emergency declaration in an op-ed in the Daily Caller, while Rep. Mark Green, a freshman and newly minted Freedom Caucus member, is also girding for action on securing the border.
    ...
    “I do think it’s an emergency, and if the president declares that, then we’ll go from there. But I think the best approach is legislatively,” Rep. Jim Jordan, another one of the group’s leaders, said in a Facebook live video with supporters Thursday."
    Seems like a more accurate headline would be "Freedom Caucus members tell Trump to drag the shut down out a little longer before declaring an emergency."
    posted by OnceUponATime at 12:39 PM on January 11, 2019 [21 favorites]


    “It appears that as part of our campaign, there were some women who were harassed and mistreated — I thank them from the bottom of my heart for speaking out,” Mr. Sanders said during a scheduled news conference on Thursday about prescription drugs. “What they experienced was absolutely unacceptable and certainly not what a progressive campaign or any campaign should be about.”

    Dude it's hard work to make a passive voice that passive, and that matters.

    It appears that men on my campaign DID harass and mistreat women. Men DOING these things to women is unacceptable.
    posted by nakedmolerats at 12:41 PM on January 11, 2019 [60 favorites]


    Whatever happened to the move to effectively end the electoral college by having a majority of states pledge their EVs to the candidate with the majority of votes?

    You can follow this effort via https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/: "It has been enacted into law in 12 states with 172 electoral votes (CA, CT, DC, HI, IL, MA, MD, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA)"
    posted by OnceUponATime at 12:41 PM on January 11, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Whatever happened to the move to effectively end the electoral college by having a majority of states pledge their EVs to the candidate with the majority of votes?

    Colorado Could Join Effort To Sideline The Electoral College
    posted by The Tensor at 12:42 PM on January 11, 2019 [15 favorites]


    Whatever happened to the move to effectively end the electoral college by having a majority of states pledge their EVs to the candidate with the majority of votes? That seems like a very practical way to break the electoral and constitutional logjam in this country.

    Isn't that how the electoral college already works? I thought splitting them is more in line with breaking up the EC?
    posted by JenMarie at 12:42 PM on January 11, 2019


    (never mind, I think I misunderstood the comment)
    posted by JenMarie at 12:43 PM on January 11, 2019


    Current status of National Popular Vote initiative
    posted by mcstayinskool at 12:43 PM on January 11, 2019 [1 favorite]


    "states pledge their EVs to the candidate with the majority of votes?"

    Isn't that how the electoral college already works?

    Right now they mostly pledge their votes to whoever wins a statewide majority. The idea with this is for most states to pledge their votes to whoever wins a nationwide popular majority.
    posted by OnceUponATime at 12:44 PM on January 11, 2019 [5 favorites]


    OnceUponATime: Seems like a more accurate headline would be "Freedom Caucus members tell Trump to drag the shut down out a little longer before declaring an emergency."

    In other words, manufacture an emergency. It won't be one of border security, but of the ability for the Federal government, and everything it touches, to keep working.

    Wait until lack of FDA oversight leads to new, major illnesses. Wait until airports are shut down because there aren't enough DHS staff to administer the security theater apparatus. Wait until there are mountains of trash and fires and deaths and other catastrophes in our National Parks.

    Just wait, and we'll have our emergencies.
    posted by filthy light thief at 12:47 PM on January 11, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Whatever happened to the move to effectively end the electoral college by having a majority of states pledge their EVs to the candidate with the majority of votes? That seems like a very practical way to break the electoral and constitutional logjam in this country.

    It will never happen. Red states won't pass it because they know that the current composition of the electoral college is the only way to elect Republican presidents anymore, and battleground states won't pass it because they would lose their influence as battleground states (also, for the purposes of passing the compact, battleground states are de facto red states because they're all gerrymandered). Together, those states hold a majority of electoral votes, so the compact will never get a majority, so it will never take effect.
    posted by J.K. Seazer at 12:51 PM on January 11, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Miami International Airport plans to cut off access to one of its terminals over the weekend ...

    Note that's 12 gates, about 1/10th their total.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:55 PM on January 11, 2019 [5 favorites]


    I don't think I've seen it here, but 820 of the Southern border's ~2000 miles – 41% – is repped by one Texas congressman. One Republican congressman. Will Hurd.

    He opposes the wall.
    posted by chris24 at 12:58 PM on January 11, 2019 [87 favorites]


    Further, every single U.S. representative (I think it's 9) with southern borders on their district boundary oppose the wall.
    posted by mcstayinskool at 1:00 PM on January 11, 2019 [43 favorites]


    It will never happen. Red states won't pass it because [reasons...]

    It has passed at least one house of the legislature in Arizona, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Michigan and North Carolina. I also think you're confusing the cynicism of Republican leaders with the views of actual voters. Anti-gerrymandering laws passed in some surprising places in November. People are sick of the gridlock and fighting, and very few people are willing to publicly advocate electing presidents who got a minority of votes.
    posted by msalt at 1:01 PM on January 11, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Some folks were asking whether there was any kind of "rapid response" protest being planned if Trump were to declare a state of emergency.

    A lot of the people who would be involved in planning such a thing are already working on planning the annual Women's Marches all over the country. Some have suggested we ought to bring a bunch of signs and chants relating to the "state of emergency" to those events, if Trump declares one before then. It's hard to plan two big protests back to back, and one of them would have to be on short notice, so it's easier just to adapt the one that's already being planned!

    On the other hand, if Trump has not declared a state of emergency by then, and the shut down is still going on, we can of course bring "End this shut down" signs instead. :-(

    (Note that local Women's March groups have been distancing themselves a bit from the national leadership lately. If you have issues with the national leadership, maybe double check what your local leadership has said about them before deciding to boycott the local marches.)
    posted by OnceUponATime at 1:03 PM on January 11, 2019 [12 favorites]


    The interstate compact is definitely more practical than a constitutional amendment would be. But the obstacles are still very significant. One difference from gerrymandering is that if you're a resident of a swing state, your vote against gerrymandering is a vote to increase your own power, but a vote for an interstate compact would be a vote to decrease your own (however marginal) power.

    It's not impossible for solid states to unify against the swing states on this, but that case (or the case of swing states making the difference) would require a significant number of people to either put principle over party, or to be mistaken about their party's national popularity. 2016 probably increased both the number of opponents and supporters of the EC, because it made the reality of who benefits even clearer.
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 1:17 PM on January 11, 2019 [4 favorites]


    This is kind of out of nowhere, but in a way I am grateful for the 2020 primary starting up.

    - we get to talk about/hear about interesting, worthwhile candidates who will present policy ideas worth hearing
    - the field shaping up so far is heavily female (Warren, Harris, Gillibrand)
    - every little bit of Trump nonsense doesn't have to be the main thing in the news, because the press loves a horse race - much as I wish they didn't
    - the Democratic candidates will (hopefully?!) spend a lot of time attacking Trump and his accomplices, forcing the media to talk about those lines of attack rather than Dems consistently having to defend themselves from Trump attacks
    - the new language controversy is "impeach the motherfucker" which is much more elegant, defensible and fun to say than "grab em by the pussy"

    I know we're going to hear a million more sexist and racist things, but if the next year is 50% news about women in power making the case for giving them more power + new House members like AOC announcing and defending their beautifully liberal ideas, that's something to look forward to.
    posted by Emmy Rae at 1:50 PM on January 11, 2019 [54 favorites]


    I don't think I've seen it here, but 820 of the Southern border's ~2000 miles – 41% – is repped by one Texas congressman. One Republican congressman. Will Hurd.

    He opposes the wall.

    Pfft, like it matters - the wall is something that is done unto those communities, not something they get to decide on. Raul Grijalva represents like 75% of the AZ border (including most of the parts that would be seriously fucked up by a barrier, for cultural or ecological reasons) and he obviously doesn't support it. Put the two together and we have a majority! Which is not even to mention Beto in El Paso.
    posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 1:57 PM on January 11, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Kate Smith for CBS news: "Every congressperson along southern border opposes border wall funding" (warning, autoplay video)
    Nine congressional representatives serve the districts that line the 2,000-mile southern border. They are men, women, freshman politicians and Washington veterans. The Democrats among them span liberal ideologies, while one of them is a Republican.

    But they all have one thing in common: each is against President Donald Trump's border wall.

    Last week, the House of Representatives passed a multi-bill package that provided funding for federal agencies and reinstated Department of Homeland Security appropriations without offering any new border wall funding. All nine of the politicians serving in districts along the border voted in favor of the bills, which were an effective rebuke of the Trump administration's request for $5.7 billion in border wall funding.
    Includes quotes from a bunch of them saying that the wall is a stupid idea.
    posted by OnceUponATime at 2:02 PM on January 11, 2019 [37 favorites]


    Before you dump all your bourbon down the drain in defiance of Mitch -- you may want to keep it, because you may need it... Did you know that according to Raw Story the Financial Times is reporting about the new head of the World Bank and that--

    Since the former World Bank President Jim Yong Kim abruptly resigned, President Donald Trump will now have the opportunity to appoint a new person to the role.
    Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump is being considered for the role. Her role in the White House has been under scrutiny since she took office as the president’s advisor.
    A new president selected by Trump could change The World Bank’s priorities.
    “A World Bank president chosen by the Trump administration could, in particular, try to limit its financing of projects intended to tackle climate change, as well as any work that is seen as supporting the building of Chinese infrastructure,” the report said.
    It also revealed that people are “worried” about the new transition of power.
    “I think frankly right now people in the bank are worried about how do we protect the institution,” former senior World Bank official told the Financial Times.
    Other considerations to fulfill the role include former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and Mark Green, the head of the US Agency for International Development.
    .
    posted by pjsky at 2:03 PM on January 11, 2019 [29 favorites]


    So, did you all hear about the cryptocurrency launched by Pablo Escobar's brother which you can buy for $0.25 per coin now that'll be worth $1 in June that'll be used to fund the impeachment of Donald Trump?

    Instead of turtles on top of turtles, it's a world of grifters on top of grifters.
    posted by clawsoon at 2:08 PM on January 11, 2019 [6 favorites]


    House Democrats are forming a new oversight subcommittee to investigate Trump (Alex Ward, Vox)
    The new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), told the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser on Friday of his plan to reestablish an oversight and investigations subcommittee that the previous Republican chair disbanded six years ago. Three people in Congress I spoke to confirmed the move, which will officially be announced in the coming days.

    That means one of Capitol Hill’s most important bodies will spend at least the next two years looking to see if Trump’s foreign connections have affected his policy decisions. Democrats will also use the new subcommittee to oversee the State Department’s day-to-day functions and ensure that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other leaders are following the rules.

    While there are other existing committees that will be looking into various aspects of the president’s actions, this may be the only new subcommittee established in this new Congress with the express aim of digging into Trump’s background — which means it’s sure to garner a lot of attention.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 2:15 PM on January 11, 2019 [37 favorites]


    Politico, Trump wants to bypass Congress on Medicaid plan
    The Trump administration is quietly devising a plan bypassing Congress to give block grants to states for Medicaid, achieving a longstanding conservative dream of reining in spending on the health care safety net for the poor.

    Three administration sources say the Trump administration is drawing up guidelines on what could be a major overhaul of Medicaid in some states. Instead of the traditional open-ended entitlement, states would get spending limits, along with more flexibility to run the low-income health program that serves nearly 75 million Americans, from poor children, to disabled people, to impoverished seniors in nursing homes.

    Capping spending could mean fewer low-income people getting covered, or state-designated cutbacks in health benefits — although proponents of block grants argue that states would be able to spend the money smarter with fewer federal strings attached.
    It's far from clear that this is anything resembling legal, and court challenges are inevitable.
    posted by zachlipton at 2:22 PM on January 11, 2019 [16 favorites]


    > It's far from clear that this is anything resembling legal, and court challenges are inevitable.

    It's like these people don't understand the first thing about a democratic system of governance. It's obvious - again and again and again - that co-equal branches of government, separation of powers, the Articles in the Constitution, how government works - this administration has a poorer conception of any of this stuff than a high school student.

    I find it particularly satisfying that this the administration supported by people who fetishize the Constitution. Just like the supposed fetishizers of the idea of the United States flying the Confederate flag, it's a perfect summation of their ignorance, hypocrisy, and gall.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 2:29 PM on January 11, 2019 [15 favorites]


    WaPo, ‘Could you make these guys essential?’: Mortgage industry gets shutdown relief after appeal to senior Treasury officials
    After an intense lobbying campaign by the mortgage industry, the Treasury Department this week restarted a program that had been sidelined by the partial government shutdown, allowing hundreds of Internal Revenue Service clerks to collect paychecks as they process forms vital to the lending industry.

    The hasty intervention to restore the IRS’s income verification service by drawing on revenue from fees — even as 800,000 federal employees across the country are going without their salaries — has intensified questions about the Trump administration’s un­or­tho­dox efforts to bring certain government functions back online to contain the shutdown’s impacts.

    Critics, including many former IRS officials, described the move as an act of favoritism to ease the burden on a powerful industry. “It seems crazy to me that a powerful bank or lobby gets to bring their people back to do their work,” said Marvin Friedlander, who served as a senior IRS official in the mid-2000s. “How about the normal slob who can’t even pay his rent?”
    posted by zachlipton at 2:42 PM on January 11, 2019 [39 favorites]


    seems like Trump may quite enjoy the shutdown, since it apparently lets him hand out exceptions to industries he likes
    posted by BungaDunga at 2:57 PM on January 11, 2019 [25 favorites]


    I'm a little concerned about my apparently endless capacity for hatred.
    posted by kirkaracha at 3:05 PM on January 11, 2019 [106 favorites]


    ‘Could you make these guys essential?’: Mortgage industry gets shutdown relief after appeal to senior Treasury officials

    This sort of piecemeal approach to government funding is what Illinois lived through when the former Republican governor had a similar temper tantrum. In the end most government workers got regular paychecks and got to work, the lack of budget lasted for two years and it bankrupted many of the small private social service providers. It went so far as Illinois almost getting booted from the national lotteries because they were not paying winners.

    It shrinks the pool of the harmed but it makes the harm to that shrunken pool much worse because it can be tolerated by the general public for far longer.
    posted by srboisvert at 3:37 PM on January 11, 2019 [24 favorites]


    Der Spiegel, Konstantin von Hammerstein (again, the writers are playing games with us with these names), Trump's Ambassador Finds Few Friends in Germany: Since arriving in Berlin as U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell has flouted diplomatic conventions and attempted to interfere in domestic politics. He has since become politically isolated in the German capital.
    Because the ambassador was unwilling to grant an interview, DER SPIEGEL focused its reporting on conversations with more than 30 sources who have come into contact with Grenell. These include numerous American and German diplomats, cabinet members, lawmakers, high-ranking officials, lobbyists and think tank experts. They were all willing to speak openly but did not want to be quoted by name.

    Almost all of these sources paint an unflattering portrait of the ambassador, one remarkably similar to Donald Trump, the man who sent him to Berlin. A majority of them describe Grenell as a vain, narcissistic person who dishes out aggressively, but can barely handle criticism. His brash demeanor, some claim, hides a deep insecurity, and they say he thirsts for the approval of others. After one of his appearances, we were told, he asked almost shyly how he had done.

    They also say Grenell knows little about Germany and Europe, that he ignores most of the dossiers his colleagues at the embassy write for him, and that his knowledge of the subject matter is superficial. "Ric only scratches the surface," said one person who regularly interacts with him.
    ...
    Reaching Trump requires appearing on Fox News, and Grenell seems to use every opportunity to go on one of its shows. Sometimes he appears from Berlin, commenting on the political situation in Germany and Europe like a foreign correspondent, and sometimes he is in Washington, fawning over his president.

    "I saw him up close today," he said after the chancellor's visit to the White House in late April. Grenell closed his eyes, apparently moved, then looked at the blonde host. "He is a master negotiator," he said, "watching him up close today for me just really solidified why I early on wanted to support Donald Trump."
    If you read on, he tries to get the German Defense Minister fired and replaced with his friend, and mostly the only politicians who will talk to him are the right-wing AfD and a bunch of Islamophobes.
    posted by zachlipton at 3:53 PM on January 11, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Not sure where to put this, but it popped up in my Digg feed...

    Phoenix New Times: Howard Buffett's Border War: A Billionaire's Son Is Spending Millions in Cochise County
    Over the past several years, 64-year-old Howard Buffett — using wealth supplied by his father ­— has been waging his own border war in Cochise County. This has included the arming of a private volunteer group, importing privately employed enforcement personnel, and funding the chemical defoliation of a substantial portion of the county’s border with Mexico.

    Buffett has also purchased the loyalty of — and influence over ­— the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO). He has done this through a steady stream of gifts and grants totaling tens of millions of dollars, used to buy guns, vehicles, surveillance equipment, helicopters, and other toys.

    For his part in this relationship, Buffett has gained legitimacy and support — under the color of law — ­for his border war.

    Buffett describes his activities on the border using the language of humanitarianism and concern for the “rule of law.” But closer inspection shows he is using the same dog-eared playbook, and walking in the same well-worn circles, as infamous border warriors and vigilantes who have preceded him along southeastern Arizona’s border with Mexico.
    Includes a picture of Howard Buffett and two other vigilantes flashing no-shit-for-real gang signs while holding pistols, the Cochise County Sheriff's Office handing out AR-15's for protection against "wild animals", and a sekrit ranch that borders Mexico purchased precisely for the purpose of being patrolled by "enthusiastic rag-tag vigilantes" (their words).

    There is a crisis at the border, but it's rich white psychopaths purchasing police departments to enact a stupid real life version of Surviving the Game or Desierto.
    posted by saysthis at 4:01 PM on January 11, 2019 [29 favorites]


    Tulsi Gabbard says she will run for president in 2020

    I have concerns.

    She seems really receptive to lobbying by foreign dictators, just like Trump. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please read this...

    She's pretty Trumpy in general.

    "In 2015, Gabbard was among a minority of Democrats who voted for additional restrictions on refugees entering the US from Syria and Iraq. She has also previously expressed “skepticism” that the Assad regime is behind chemical weapons attacks in Syria, and aligned herself with nationalist figures such as Narendra Modi of India.

    Breaking with most Democrats, Gabbard has embraced the use of the phrase “radical Islam” – a phrase which to many Muslims has evolved into a dog whistle on the right intended to indict the entire Islamic faith. Gabbard has said she is mindful that most Muslims are not extremists, but joined Republicans in criticizing Clinton and Barack Obama for not employing the phrase, stating: “It’s important that you identify your enemy”."

    "When Steve Bannon called and asked her to meet with Trump, at Trump Tower, she accepted. (The Hill reported that Bannon “loves Tulsi Gabbard,” and that he viewed her as someone who “gets the foreign policy stuff, the Islamic terrorism stuff.”)
    ...
    "In her first political incarnation, Gabbard balanced liberal environmentalism with a pronounced conservative streak. In 2003, she voted against a bill to oblige hospitals to “provide emergency contraception immediately” to survivors of sexual assault, because it did not contain a “conscience clause,” to allow providers with a religious objection to opt out. She supported government surveillance efforts, warning that the “demand for unfettered civil liberties” could make the nation vulnerable to terrorists. And she joined her father’s battle against what she called “homosexual extremists.” In 1998, Mike Gabbard had successfully pushed for an amendment to the Hawaii State Constitution, to permit the legislature to ban same-sex marriage, which it did. Six years later, Tulsi Gabbard led a protest against a bill that would have legalized civil unions for same-sex couples. That same year, in the Hawaii State House, she delivered a long, fierce speech against a proposed resolution meant to target anti-gay bullying in public schools. She objected to the idea of students being taught that homosexuality is “normal and natural,” and worried that passing the resolution would have the effect of “inviting homosexual-advocacy organizations into our schools to promote their agenda to our vulnerable youth.”"
    posted by OnceUponATime at 4:02 PM on January 11, 2019 [42 favorites]


    She's my rep. Not only would I not vote for her in a primary, I keep hoping she'll get a credible primary challenger for her house seat. Our senate team is fantastic. Tulsi? Not so much. Fortunately, I don't think her campaign will go far, for a variety of reasons.
    posted by DebetEsse at 4:11 PM on January 11, 2019 [34 favorites]


    With Gabbard and Ojeda now having tossed their hats into the ring might it not be easier going forward to list the Democrats who aren't running for President?

    Get enough Democrats in the field combined with proportional allotment of delegates and maybe we'll finally have that long held dream of the political pundit class; a true brokered convention! Revenge of the Superdelegates!
    posted by Justinian at 4:27 PM on January 11, 2019 [3 favorites]


    I think it's probably time for me to take a break from the politics threads for a bit. You all have been my lifeline to following this shit show as it unfolds, and along with my eternal gratitude, I will say I've little doubt I can quit you forever. But with the shutdown I've found that my increasing frustration and anger is difficult to keep in check, to the point that it's coming out in my comments, which on re-read are often coming across to me as borderline fight-y with other MeFites. And that is absolutely neither my intention nor my desire. I truly appreciate each and every one of you; there's no other group I'd rather be bunkered down with in these uncertain times.

    At the moment, I think I may be in need of less politics, more walks.

    Take care of yourselves! I will be back when I can be more constructive.
    posted by Brak at 4:37 PM on January 11, 2019 [75 favorites]


    Guardian: Trump backs away from declaring national emergency to fund border wall
    “We want Congress to do its job,” the president said Friday during a roundtable on border security at the White House. “What we’re not looking to do right now is national emergency.”

    Trump’s comments came amid reports that he was consulting White House attorneys and allies about declaring a national emergency, and using presidential powers to take unilateral action to construct the wall over the objections of Congress. He had earlier claimed that his lawyers told him the action would withstand legal scrutiny “100%”.
    posted by Freelance Demiurge at 4:43 PM on January 11, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Breaking with most Democrats, Gabbard has embraced the use of the phrase “radical Islam” – a phrase which to many Muslims has evolved into a dog whistle on the right intended to indict the entire Islamic faith. Gabbard has said she is mindful that most Muslims are not extremists

    Years ago I'd have thought nothing of using the phrase "radical Islam" and might have thought Obama's choice was weird... until I had my realization that some people don't have an analytical relationship with language, and adjectives may function to characterize entire nouns by association for them rather than functioning to increase specificity and limit scope to a subcategory.

    The same people who get really cranky about "toxic masculinity" are enthusiastic about using "radical Islam."
    posted by wildblueyonder at 5:19 PM on January 11, 2019 [56 favorites]


    NBC: Senate Intel Committee Grilling Ex-Trump Campaign Members In Russia Probe—Investigators asked former Trump aide Sam Nunberg about the president's business dealings and how he formulated his policies toward Moscow.
    Sam Nunberg, who worked for Trump and his campaign in 2015, said he was questioned in a closed-door session on Capitol Hill about Trump's trip to Moscow in 2013, his company's interest in building a tower there and specific relationships between past members of the campaign and foreign actors who may have worked with Russia.

    "They are doing an exhaustive investigation," Nunberg told NBC News after his interview, which he said appeared to be "narrowly focused on collusion."[…]

    Investigators went through a "check list" of questions, Nunberg said, including whether he had been aware of any conversations or relationships during his time with Trump regarding Russian banks, Russian oligarchs or business dealings with Russia.

    Nunberg, who sat with committee staff for four and half hours, said he was asked repeatedly about how Trump formulated his policy positions regarding Russia. Trump has voiced support for numerous foreign policy positions beneficial to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Nunberg said he told the committee that Trump, as a candidate, said "he would take the position that he was happy Russia was in Syria."[…]

    Also of interest to investigators, Nunberg said, was the campaign's relationship with the National Rifle Association and efforts by a Russian national to get a meeting with Trump through the NRA. Nunberg says he told investigators Friday that he was aware of efforts by Maria Butina, who pleaded guilty last month to conspiring with a Russian official to interfere in American politics, to seek a meeting with Trump, using the NRA as a conduit.

    Investigators also peppered Nunberg with questions which suggested to him that they were trying to pin down specific relationships among members of Trump's campaign and organization and outside actors, including Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
    Nunberg told NBC, putting it mildly, "If I were the White House, I would be concerned."
    posted by Doktor Zed at 5:21 PM on January 11, 2019 [28 favorites]


    The Atlantic: Jamal Khashoggi and the Decline of ‘America’s Moral Voice’
    With each speech, more than a dozen members of Congress heaped deservedly kind words upon Khashoggi, praised the enduring tenets of press freedom, condemned efforts to stymie voices like Khashoggi’s, and demanded that Congress act. In what way? For the most part, they did not say.


    Tom Malinowski, the freshman congressman from New Jersey, had something to say.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:22 PM on January 11, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Happy Friday! NYT, F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia
    In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

    The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.
    ...
    Agents and senior F.B.I. officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. But the president’s activities before and after Mr. Comey’s firing in May 2017, particularly two instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said.

    The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, took over the inquiry into Mr. Trump when he was appointed, days after F.B.I. officials opened it. That inquiry is part of Mr. Mueller’s broader examination of how Russian operatives interfered in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates conspired with them. It is unclear whether Mr. Mueller is still pursuing the counterintelligence matter, and some former law enforcement officials outside the investigation have questioned whether agents overstepped in opening it.

    The criminal and counterintelligence elements were coupled together into one investigation, former law enforcement officials said in interviews in recent weeks, because if Mr. Trump had ousted the head of the F.B.I. to impede or even end the Russia investigation, that was both a possible crime and a national security concern. The F.B.I.’s counterintelligence division handles national security matters.
    posted by zachlipton at 5:22 PM on January 11, 2019 [55 favorites]


    “What we’re not looking to do right now is national emergency.”

    This whole “doing national emergency” phrasing that’s been popping up all week is completely fucking bizarre, correct? I keep seeing these quotes in the media with no acknowledgement of just how off-kilter it sounds, and I feel like I’m being gaslit about the very foundations of the English language.
    posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 5:30 PM on January 11, 2019 [73 favorites]


    An evangelical group is trying to strip LGBTQ protections from an anti-lynching bill (P.R. Lockhart, Vox)
    The Liberty Counsel claims federal apologies for lynching are being used to ”push unrelated political agendas.”

    Congress is finally close to passing a bill that makes lynching a hate crime — but an evangelical group is trying to remove any reference to LGBTQ communities from the legislation.

    When the Senate unanimously passed the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act in December, it marked an important step in a roughly century-long effort to outlaw the practice at the federal level. But before the House begins considering its version of the legislation, the Liberty Counsel, an evangelical litigation group, is calling for the bill to be stripped of language that refers to gender identity or sexual orientation.

    In an interview this week with Christian news outlet OneNewsNow, Liberty Counsel chair Mat Staver argued that references to sexual orientation and gender identity in the bill would make it easier for the government to pass additional protections for LGBTQ people.
    Seems like a cynical play for building momentum.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 5:31 PM on January 11, 2019 [18 favorites]


    A video editor at Q13 Seattle, a Fox-affiliated station, Got Fired for Doing this to Trump's Face on Live TV during the "speech". Q13's news director, Erica Hill, said that the goofy-ass clip "does not meet our editorial standards" and began looking into how the thing actually made it on the air. "We regret if it is seen as portraying the President in a negative light," Hill said.
    posted by growabrain at 5:36 PM on January 11, 2019 [20 favorites]


    NYT: No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials.

    Uhh, what? Is the bar now Trump literally getting directly on the phone with someone at the Kremlin and jotting down notes in gold Sharpie?
    posted by contraption at 5:37 PM on January 11, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Agents and senior F.B.I. officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude.

    Wait a sec, there was no open investigation? Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia
    posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:40 PM on January 11, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Wall is good, we need wall for safe. If we don't build wall, we must be doing national emergency.
    posted by contraption at 5:42 PM on January 11, 2019 [26 favorites]


    This whole “doing national emergency” phrasing that’s been popping up all week is completely fucking bizarre, correct?

    Yup, same thing with "the Wall," which is now just called "Wall." As in "We need Wall."

    How shall Trump fill final places?/How shall Trump complete Wall?
    posted by kirkaracha at 5:44 PM on January 11, 2019 [11 favorites]


    LA Times: Americans who fought alongside the Kurds in Syria feel betrayed by Trump
    posted by jgirl at 5:45 PM on January 11, 2019 [13 favorites]


    I keep seeing these quotes in the media with no acknowledgement of just how off-kilter it sounds, and I feel like I’m being gaslit about the very foundations of the English language.

    If the media doesn't call it "the Peaches" everywhere from this point forward, they're not doing it right. Look at the success Republicans had in renaming ACA. This could be over tomorrow (well, Monday)
    posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:50 PM on January 11, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Lawfare, Wittes, What if the Obstruction Was the Collusion? On the New York’s Times’s Latest Bombshell, with some backstory here. There's a lot in here, and the quotes below give the gist, but most broadly, the point is that the entire thing has always been the Russia investigation, not a separate obstruction investigation; if you go around telling Russian officials "I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job...I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off," that's inherently a counterintelligence matter. This isn't new, of course, and it's really recasting what we know in a slightly different light, though I'm not really sure to what end.
    The analysis that follows is lengthy and takes a number of twists and turns before laying out what I think is the significance of the whole thing. Here’s the bottom line: I believe that between today’s New York Times story and some other earlier material I have been sifting through and thinking about, we might be in a position to revisit the relationship between the “collusion” and obstruction components of the Mueller investigation. Specifically, I now believe they are far more integrated with one another than I previously understood.
    ...
    It was about Russia. Full stop. It was always about Russia. And it still is about Russia.

    The best way to understand this probe is as an umbrella Russia-related national security investigation in which the bureau opened subsidiary files, some with a counterintelligence focus and some with a criminal focus, on individuals who proved to have substantial “links” to the broader Russian activity.
    ...
    The facts actually got worse over the next few days. Because even as the bureau was beginning its obstruction inquiry, Trump boasted about his action to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, saying he had relieved pressure on himself by taking it.
    ...
    Would not a sequence of overt interferences in the investigation by Trump himself, culminating in the decapitation of the investigation’s leadership and boasted about both on national television and—later—in an Oval Office meeting to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and flagged in a draft letter to Comey as specifically connected to the Russia probe, raise all kinds of red flags within the parameters of the existing investigation the FBI was already conducting? This was, after all, one heck of “link” between an “individual[] associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government”!

    The reporting Schmidt shared with me about Baker’s testimony suggests rather strongly that the FBI did not think of the Comey firing simply as a possible obstruction of justice. Officials thought of it, rather, in the context of the underlying counterintelligence purpose of the Russia investigation. At one point, Baker was asked whether firing Director Comey added to the threat to national security the FBI was confronting.

    “Yes,” Baker responds.
    posted by zachlipton at 5:57 PM on January 11, 2019 [52 favorites]


    You make a mobster head of the country, sure the FBI's gonna get some heat.
    posted by Devonian at 6:12 PM on January 11, 2019 [33 favorites]


    Joe Lieberman Doesn't Get Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez | The Mary Sue
    Lieberman went on Fox Business of all networks to tell host Neil Cavuto that he hopes she’s not the future of the Democratic Party.

    “With all respect, I certainly hope she’s not the future and I don’t believe she is,” he said. “She’s gotten a lot of attention because she’s different. She’s controversial,” Lieberman continued. “But if you look at the majority of new Democrats in the House, they tend to be, I say, center-left, if they are not left-left. And that is because they had to be center-left to win some of those competitive swing districts that they took from Republicans.”


    Thing is, he's not wrong on the second part, but that doesn't necessarily support the first part.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:41 PM on January 11, 2019 [1 favorite]


    I can't think of very many people whose opinions on the future of the Democratic Party are as irrelevant as Joe Lieberman's.
    posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:54 PM on January 11, 2019 [89 favorites]


    Border Patrol union deletes 2012 anti-border wall web page that argued walls waste taxpayer money / Boing Boing
    VICE's Motherboard reports that the deleted web page was originally posted in 2012. It carried an argument against walls like the one Trump's pushing today, and said border barriers don’t tackle migration's root causes, and may encourage more migrants to enter the U.S. through visa overstay
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:59 PM on January 11, 2019 [26 favorites]


    Ocasio-Cortez responds to Lieberman’s criticism: ”New Party, who dis?”
    posted by tau_ceti at 7:02 PM on January 11, 2019 [98 favorites]


    As is typical for me, there is nothing I can say about Joe Lieberman that would not require my switching over to the Fucking Fuck thread, so I shall refrain for now.

    The statement that "center-left Democrats can win in some districts where left-left Democrats currently cannot" is not, in and of itself, false. Not without a massive and incredibly unlikely sea change in America's demographics and news sources, anyway. But the corollary is that left-left Democrats CAN win in many districts where center-left Democrats currently reside, and with savvy politicking, in some districts currenly colored purplish-red.
    posted by delfin at 7:05 PM on January 11, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Thanks to her savvy use of technology, Ocasio-Cortez is probably the most effective politician in US History at getting their message out there at this stage in their political career, no? She just got elected to Congress last week and she (along with her policies!) already gets more press coverage than any other Democrat. I have very little doubt she could win the Democratic primary in 2020 if she were eligible to run; I don’t think you can understate how much she is the future.
    posted by BeginAgain at 7:10 PM on January 11, 2019 [25 favorites]


    I want that too but do not misunderstand how hard the right wing will push back. This is only the beginning.
    posted by sjswitzer at 7:16 PM on January 11, 2019 [2 favorites]


    I want that too but do not misunderstand how hard the right wing will push back. This is only the beginning.
    They will push back, but it doesn't work with her the way it worked before.
    posted by mumimor at 7:26 PM on January 11, 2019 [11 favorites]


    So here's the thing... the people who have had the keys to the kingdom, and who have paid for them, are never going to just hand them over. That is just never going to happen.

    Buckle up.
    posted by sjswitzer at 7:26 PM on January 11, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Still...I've never seen one person win the internet twice in one day. Hats off to AOC.
    posted by uosuaq at 7:30 PM on January 11, 2019 [45 favorites]


    Luppe B. Luppen/@nycsouthpaw offers a remedial thread about Trump's legal jeopardy regarding the numerous revelations of the Russia scandal:
    For my sins, I was listening to a slate podcast today and I heard David Plotz ask: “There’s nothing that we’ve heard that draws in the President ... there’s not an implication that Manafort and the president are acting in concert here, is there?”

    Plotz was asking, ofc, about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort sharing poll data with suspected GRU agent Konstantin Kilimnik. And Emily Bazelon answered “no” — there’s nothing to tie the president to his campaign manager sharing his campaign’s data with a Russian cut-out.

    And after I finished banging my head against my desk, it occurred to me that it might be useful to go over a few concepts from agency law that could aid public discussion of this matter.

    The translation of the latin principle at the heart of agency law, respondeat superior, is “let the master answer.” It reflects centuries of legal tradition that a person is responsible for the acts of a person he employs if those acts are taken in the course of the employment.

    Of course, the mere fact that Paul Manafort was Trump’s chief lieutenant in the campaign, empowered by him to make all sorts of decisions including wrt the use of internal polling data, doesn’t end the inquiry about Trump’s responsibility for what Manafort did.

    But the fact that one man employed the other, with express notice of Manafort’s past work and on terms that obviously called his motives and incentives into question, clear “draws in” Trump and creates “implications.”
    The exchange between Plotz and Bazelon is emblematic of an broader obtuseness—from Manafort to Cohen to Flynn to Papadopoulos to Stone to Don Jr to Page. Their entanglements with Russians and Russian cut-outs are treated as isolated happenstances. Yet they all worked for Trump.

    And they’ve all lied for Trump, concealing their secret entanglements as long as they could. Trump is the one, apropos tonight’s news, who ties the whole room together. Yet the great and the good of our media ecosystem still talk about him like he probably wasn’t involved.
    The refusal of highly intelligent people in the mainstream media to see what is in front of their noses is endlessly exasperating.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 7:36 PM on January 11, 2019 [73 favorites]


    I have a feeling that the NYT FBI story coming down the pike is what motivated Trump's "eh, maybe a wall someday..." statement. If control over the news cycle is going to be fought over, the NYT seems to have taken some back from Trump himself today.
    posted by rhizome at 8:00 PM on January 11, 2019


    And after I finished banging my head against my desk

    I started banging my head on my desk right at the beginning when Plotz asked why Democrats are refusing to negotiate with Trump. Why don't they just give him his wall? I sometimes get the feeling with him that he's neither researched nor thought for longer than a minute regarding any topic he talks to. Then at the end he asked whether or not it was okay to talk about how Ocasio's "exceptional beauty" was partly responsible for her popularity. Really!?

    But it's heartening to see that even Plotz gets why Ocasio is important. She's driving the national discussion at a time when traditionally to do that you need to be running for president. She's proving that our mental model of what the public wants and is ready to consider is way off base, which means all options are on the table. She's improving our national discourse, and I'm grateful for that.

    As bad as things are, I am ever so grateful that people seem aware, and there is a new willingness for change.
    posted by xammerboy at 8:09 PM on January 11, 2019 [6 favorites]


    NYT/Wittes: The Russian government interfered with the 2016 election. Trump's actions have helped them get away with it. The investigation into the danger to national security has uncovered crimes and produced obstruction (=collusion)...but the big question the F.B.I. is asking not whether the president is a Russian government asset, but how much of one. Yes?

    Lester Freamon voice: Allllll the pieces matter.
    posted by MonkeyToes at 8:10 PM on January 11, 2019 [28 favorites]


    “Radial Islam” is definitely dog-whistling and has the same inaccurate, ugly cadence that “Democrat Party” imbues, but what’s wrong with “radical Islamic terrorism” as a phrase? It’s more drawn out, more precise. Of course, the real accurate term should be “violent Salafism”, which seems to be the sect that comprises the majority of Islamic terrorrism, but that would offend our Wahhabi allies in the good ol’ KSA.
    posted by Apocryphon at 8:13 PM on January 11, 2019 [5 favorites]


    OK, so, back when marriage equality was first on it's way to being the law of the land in Hawaii - and while Tulsi's father, Mike Gabbard, was leading the fight against marriage equality - many of my friends went to protest in favor of marriage equality. To a person, they report to me that the whole Gabbard clan - including Tulsi - would show up and scream anti-Gay invective at them, their faces twisted with hate. Rep. Gabbard claims she's changed, but in light of her father's history of changing political parties (and occasionally positions) to get re-elected and her own evolving history of positions, I believe she's a Mitt Romney, an Aaron Burr, a person who will say whatever needs to be said for a little power. My friends who saw her protesting call her The Manchurian Candidate and have for years.

    So, Kamala Harris? In a heartbeat. Kristin Gillabrand? Mais oui. Elizabeth Warren? I'm on board. Mazie Hirono? Oh hell yes Mazie, I'd quit my job and work for her campaign. I've never been so proud to cast as a vote as for Mazie this year.

    If somehow Gabbard gets the nomination, I'd of course vote for her over Trump or Pence or any Republican. I'll even keep my mouth shut and bite my tongue so hard it bleeds during the campaign. There is no way I'd vote for her in a primary.

    But seriously, Mazie, call me. I love you.
    posted by Joey Michaels at 8:21 PM on January 11, 2019 [69 favorites]


    Gabbard is a fucking snake. In any sense except for the fact that she has a D next to her name she's essentially a Reagan Republican.
    posted by codacorolla at 8:28 PM on January 11, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Hirono is not a natural born citizen.
    posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:43 PM on January 11, 2019 [1 favorite]


    The refusal of highly intelligent people in the mainstream media to see what is in front of their noses is endlessly exasperating.

    They see it. They are ... encouraged ... to not report it that way. And that's not going to change. We're not going to see any epiphanies or change of narrative any more than we already have. The NYT and WaPo and (JFC) NPR are baked into an institutional support of Those In Power that will not yield.

    2020 is a test of how much the voters can disregard the corporate media. We faceplanted on the last one.

    Those news organizations can be dismantled, lose power, accidentally report the right thing, or undergo any number of other helpful changes, but they will not Protect truth in any meaningful way or Expose anyone that would do a damned thing. They will not be allowed to do it. Obviously we'd support any win we can get, but corporate news is rigged to only support moneyed interests and that means Trump, big oil, offshore shell companies, weapons manufacturers - the usual lot. As always. Rigged today, rigged tomorrow, rigged forever. Just ask Rupert.
    posted by petebest at 8:48 PM on January 11, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Tulsi Gabbard says she will run for president in 2020

    I have concerns.

    My friend who follows politics, but not to the level of megathread or knowing every Representative in the House like an insane person texted me the Gabbard announcement story and said: "Who the fuck is this? She sounds like a Republican".

    I said, "She's basically the Democratic version of Dana Rohrabacher, except Assad pays her, not Putin."
    posted by T.D. Strange at 8:56 PM on January 11, 2019 [32 favorites]


    Thanks to her savvy use of technology, Ocasio-Cortez is probably the most effective politician in US History at getting their message out there at this stage in their political career, no?

    I’m admittedly not on Twitter these days, but I only really know of AOC from these Mega Threads. Every other experience seems to be the result of right wing media complaining about her, but in my mind that gets filed away with Antifa, George Soros, and all the other boogeymen (boogeypeople?) that only seem to exist to get Fox News to go into hysterics.

    I’m not saying she isn’t doing and won’t do great things, but I’d hold off on carving her space into Mount Rushmore a bit.
    posted by sideshow at 9:10 PM on January 11, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Ocasio-Cortez responds to Lieberman’s criticism: ”New Party, who dis?”

    I predict (and hope to god) that in 5 years people will be amazed that sane people thought Trump was good at Twitter.
    posted by msalt at 9:16 PM on January 11, 2019 [38 favorites]


    My new theory is that Broad City are AOC's social media team. No joke.
    posted by unknowncommand at 9:24 PM on January 11, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Also, Tulsi Gabbard is a bizarre BIZARRE non-starter. Sure, debate it. But also end it.
    posted by unknowncommand at 9:26 PM on January 11, 2019 [6 favorites]


    I can't remember if I saw this sentiment here or on the Twitter, but the thing with AOC is that she's never known Republicans to be anything other than cartoonishly evil idiots and she treats them as such. A lot of the D establishment still needs to learn this lesson.
    posted by chris24 at 9:26 PM on January 11, 2019 [140 favorites]


    fluttering hellfire: Hirono is not a natural born citizen.

    She might be because he meaning of "natural born citizen" has never been decided by a court. It could be plausibly interpreted as "citizen at birth", which (having an American mother) she was. As far as I know, that is is also the only possible claim Ted Cruz has on eligibility. (Also, with that interpretation, even anti-Obama birtherism is neutralized because they generally don't dispute the identity of his mother... though there's a whole tortured probably-wrong argument I've seen that at 17 she would have been too young to confer citizenship-at-birth on him.)

    sideshow: I’m not saying she isn’t doing and won’t do great things, but I’d hold off on carving her space into Mount Rushmore a bit.

    Well, I wouldn't worry about her holding any human beings as property anytime soon, so by all means let's replace one of the heads with hers! But seriously, I agree. Actually, I suspect the biggest threat to AOC's political future isn't rightwing pushback, but rather the inevitable process whereby doing actual stuff means involvement in the political sausage-making... and thereby becoming ~~tainted forever~~

    Seriously, I can imagine large portions of her own DSA-and-co supporters turning on her like that. Pretty much the only other timeline I can imagine is one where she mostly stays out of the process Bernie-style, and/or she manages to transform the entire party single-handedly into socialists, thus avoiding the need to compromise with any non-socialist Dems. In short, given how incredibly high the expectations are, we can anticipate a lot of talk in two or four years about how "disappointing" she became. (But I'd be happy for this expectation of dashed expectations to be dashed.)
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 9:27 PM on January 11, 2019 [15 favorites]


    I can't remember if I saw this sentiment here or on the Twitter, but the thing with AOC is that she's never known Republicans to be anything other than cartoonishly evil idiots and she treats them as such.

    This is so fucking on the nose. AOC is younger than me (I am 33). Here is my entire timeline of Republicanism experienced as an old millennial:

    -Impeaching Clinton while turning out to also be stepping out on their own marriages
    -Stealing the 2000 election
    -Uh, 9/11
    -Axis of Evil/They Hate Our Freedoms/They Will Welcome Us as Liberators
    -George Bush Hates Black People (sidebar: I miss the old Kanye)
    -Uh, 2008 housing crisis
    -OBAMA IS A KENYAN MOLE!!!!!!
    -I Can See Russia From Alaska
    -Literally ending any hope of climate change legislation or like, even acknowledging its reality
    -Stealing a Supreme Court justice from Obama
    -Uh, Donald Trump
    -Kavanaugh

    So yeah - this is your regular reminder that everyone who is in even minimal touch with reality who was born after 1980 literally has no idea what a sane Republican government looks like because none of us have any living political memory of it. Republicans are so fucking cartoonishly evil it's impossible to imagine they ever could have been sane, and when people insist Once Upon A Time There Were Fine Republicans I have to wonder if they are just closing their eyes to the things that they didn't want to see that they can no longer hide.
    posted by mostly vowels at 9:42 PM on January 11, 2019 [186 favorites]


    Also of interest to investigators, Nunberg said, was the campaign's relationship with the National Rifle Association and efforts by a Russian national to get a meeting with Trump through the NRA. Nunberg says he told investigators Friday that he was aware of efforts by Maria Butina, who pleaded guilty last month to conspiring with a Russian official to interfere in American politics, to seek a meeting with Trump, using the NRA as a conduit.

    That Maria Butina deal is important, and normally it would be huge. But I really can't say that her trying to reach Trump or the campaign is any bigger deal. She was reaching out to all the Rs. Meanwhile, Putin has no problem reaching out to Trump any time he wants; Butina wouldn't be part of that. I think she was just part of the background espionage and destabilization that's going on all the time and happened to get involved. I seriously doubt that she was even the main contact for those Rs. More like an advance team. Of course I want her story told and NRA and all the Rs exposed. But I don't see her as part of the collusion story.
    posted by M-x shell at 9:46 PM on January 11, 2019 [3 favorites]


    The NRA dumped buckets of money at Blunt v Kander. Blunt was front and center at the inauguration. He's dirty.
    posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:51 PM on January 11, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Seriously, I can imagine large portions of her own DSA-and-co supporters turning on her like that.

    This is already happening in spades on leftist Twitter, people fall all over themselves to declare that "AOC is not a socialist" whenever she comes up. As far as I can tell this because in their experience a real socialist would never sully herself by getting anywhere the point of having actual political power to wield.
    posted by contraption at 9:52 PM on January 11, 2019 [32 favorites]


    I can't remember if I saw this sentiment here or on the Twitter, but the thing with AOC is that she's never known Republicans to be anything other than cartoonishly evil idiots and she treats them as such. A lot of the D establishment still needs to learn this lesson.
    posted by chris24 at 1:26 PM on January 12 [5 favorites +] [!]

    So yeah - this is your regular reminder that everyone who is in even minimal touch with reality who was born after 1980 literally has no idea what a sane Republican government looks like because none of us have any living political memory of it. Republicans are so fucking cartoonishly evil it's impossible to imagine they ever could have been sane, and when people insist Once Upon A Time There Were Fine Republicans I have to wonder if they are just closing their eyes to the things that they didn't want to see that they can no longer hide.
    posted by mostly vowels at 1:42 PM on January 12 [4 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]

    Weren't they that since basically the Bull Moose Party days? Joe McCarthy anyone? Teapot Dome? Great Depression? The KKK in its heyday? War on Drugs? Watergate? Anybody? They're the party of Skeksis and have been since your great-grandparents were bright-eyed young people full of life and potential. People who work for them and vote for them know what they're doing.
    posted by saysthis at 10:04 PM on January 11, 2019 [14 favorites]


    The thing about the FBI investigation that's interesting to me is that they straight up suspect Trump may be a Russian agent, that is, taking marching orders from Russia itself. And... after thinking about it... Yeah, that's likely. I can totally see Russia approaching him, telling him to run, telling him what his platform should be, etc. all for a hotel in Moscow in return.

    My biggest hope is that Mueller lays out his case against Trump so clearly that no one can deny it. I am furious at what Russia's done, and want to see the full fury of the American people unleashed on Putin.
    posted by xammerboy at 10:08 PM on January 11, 2019 [15 favorites]


    The refusal of highly intelligent people in the mainstream media to see what is in front of their noses is endlessly exasperating.

    With today's NYT article, and with a lot of developments recently, I am getting the feeling that we are finally accelerating a little toward getting the rest of the country outside of Megathreadopolis a lot closer to the truth. At the same time, while we Megathreadopolitans are frustrated with the speed that this has gone, I wonder if some person or group in our political and journalistic elite has somehow been purposely rationing the flow of new information -- always something new but never all at once. And if that is true I wonder if that is because they believe if they released the firehose torrent of information all at once the people just couldn't take it. They suppose, and might be right, that it takes time for people to get acclimated to each new level of malfeasance, so it comes out in baby steps. They might even think that's the best way to assure we eventually actually get all the way to the bottom of things as a nation, step by step, to minimize or hopefully even forestall the counter-reaction. I dunno, just wondering. If I was one of the writers I might write it that way.
    posted by M-x shell at 10:12 PM on January 11, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Anyone remember when the New York Times reported the FBI had investigated Trump and found no Russian ties in 2016?
    posted by xammerboy at 10:26 PM on January 11, 2019 [22 favorites]


    “Radial Islam” is definitely dog-whistling

    If only people knew radial Islam is super cool.
    posted by wildblueyonder at 11:46 PM on January 11, 2019 [27 favorites]


    A) did the Times really publish that at 8 pm on a Friday?

    B) I don't get it? the only thing that's news to me is a more explicit accounting of the FBI internal process:

    1- there was a counterintelligence op during/after the election, but it didn't yet involve Trump

    2- people were concerned about his actions but also concerned about the serious and sensitive nature of investigating the president

    3- but when he fired Comey, they saw that as him interfering in the counterintelligence op and therefore hurting national security, and it overpowered their objections and they started investigating him

    4- that counterintelligence op was folded into the Mueller probe and that's the last anyone has seen of it?

    And this is based on congressional testimony from October. Testimony from 3 months ago about events 18 months ago. Yet the headline, "working on Russia's interests", is strong language and not exactly justified by the text? IMO.
    posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 12:04 AM on January 12, 2019 [5 favorites]


    @xammerboy

    I have my doubts that he is wittingly doing so, mostly because the guy is so mentally compromised that I can't imagine he is capable of a deception of that magnitude. The guy is so close to full-blown dementia, if not already ensconced in it, that he can't remember John Bolton's name. He's cooked.

    This is part of what scares me about the prospect of any kind of prosecution of collusion: will he remember, or be able to demonstrate sufficient understanding such that he can be effectively held accountable? I fear that a doddering simpleton like him, subject to real and incontrovertible accusations, will play surprisingly sympathetically on television.
    posted by constantinescharity at 12:07 AM on January 12, 2019 [4 favorites]


    My biggest hope is that Mueller lays out his case against Trump so clearly that no one can deny it.

    And in the form of a federal criminal indictment. That removes the politics from it, and treats it as a law enforcement issue.
    posted by mikelieman at 12:22 AM on January 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson has been spouting populist rhetoric that sounds like Bernie Sanders on wealth inequality and its causes. I thought I was having a stroke when I found myself agreeing with his criticism of conservative economic policy here (fear not; he wanders back to his comfort zone halfway through when he switches to anti-feminism bullshit).

    What does it mean? I think it's safe to say Tucker Carlson has not suddenly become woke. I think he's ramping up for a presidential run using a polished version of Trump's fake populism, which is terrifying considering he's much smarter, much more conniving, and much better spoken than Trump.
    posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 12:24 AM on January 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


    This is part of what scares me about the prospect of any kind of prosecution of collusion: will he remember, or be able to demonstrate sufficient understanding such that he can be effectively held accountable? I fear that a doddering simpleton like him, subject to real and incontrovertible accusations, will play surprisingly sympathetically on television.
    posted by constantinescharity at 4:07 PM on January 12 [+] [!]

    That would totally make everyone close to him ninety million times more complicit and I'm totally fine with that.
    posted by saysthis at 12:27 AM on January 12, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Well, if I may post mefi’s own Zompist here Two Years Of GOP Rule

    The scariest part of Trump as CANDIDATE was the economic populism stuff, because both thr left and the right tap into the ides that something has gone VERY WRONG with society and it’s just not working for people anymore. The scariest people at the RNC were the neonazis and white nationalists who said, well, yeah he’s not an ideal figurehead but we can use him to get our ideas and policy into the mainstream.

    Now, Trump’s not smart enough to keep on that Red/Brown, Strasserite, NazBol, Socialism But Only For White People stuff that a lot of his former handlers really cared about cause he doesn’t care about anything other then himself - but the worry is someone who can do the right wing populist shit , which is growing across the world, in a way that’s not from a demented diaper-wearing idiot.

    Like even know you see online campaigns to recruit like, young, leftist minded people to these ethnic-nationalist arguments which boil down to the white workers shouldn’t be an underclass not there shouldn’t be an underclass, period.

    The Nazis got a head start in radicalizing people, we need an equal force in indenitfyung enemies and providing solutions and new dreams for the future on the left. We need access to that libidinal force that shuts a new world is possible.
    posted by The Whelk at 12:57 AM on January 12, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson has been spouting populist rhetoric that sounds like Bernie Sanders on wealth inequality and its causes.

    Fuck Tucker Carlson. He has been openly spouting alt-right and white nationalist rhetoric, and coddling that faction's leaders, for years. The only reason he's making this move is that he stepped over the line when he said on his show that immigration "makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided."

    He has lost at least half of his advertisers since then, and if we focus, it can be more. Did I mention fuck Tucker Carlson? Cause fuck Tucker Carlson.
    posted by msalt at 1:26 AM on January 12, 2019 [77 favorites]


    Outing myself as having had to look it up: AOC's latest dis (literally, heh!), explained.
    posted by progosk at 3:48 AM on January 12, 2019 [20 favorites]


    4- that counterintelligence op was folded into the Mueller probe and that's the last anyone has seen of it?

    Pretty standard for anything the SCO deals with; things get public again only in so far (and especially only when) Mueller considers it apt to do so.

    And for a bit of levity: when I read Mueller filing another case under seal, I pictured a group of seals, each sitting on a pile of papers already, and Bob coming along holding a hefty binder. "Can you folks take care of another one?" and all they all go *seal of approval*.
    posted by Stoneshop at 4:01 AM on January 12, 2019 [25 favorites]


    My biggest hope is that Mueller lays out his case against Trump so clearly that no one can deny it. I am furious at what Russia's done, and want to see the full fury of the American people unleashed on Putin.

    So, if it weren't for the whole world-ending nuclear weapons thing, it seems like what Russia has done would totally be considered an act of war. But truth is (as we've seen with Ukraine), there's very little we can do to hurt Russia besides the long-term drip drip drip of sanctions (and that never seemed to have much of an effect). As someone who lived through the Cold War the first time around, it's hard to see escalating tensions with Russia as a good thing in any respect. So how do we protect ourselves from Putin's machinations? I really don't know.
    posted by rikschell at 4:59 AM on January 12, 2019 [13 favorites]


    She might be because he meaning of "natural born citizen" has never been decided by a court. It could be plausibly interpreted as "citizen at birth", which (having an American mother) she was. As far as I know, that is is also the only possible claim Ted Cruz has on eligibility.

    John McCain was born to American parents in the Panama Canal Zone and his citizenship claim was purely through his parents (being born in the Panama Canal Zone, on a Navy base or otherwise, did not confer US citizenship). Wikipedia led me to this article about the Senate declaring him a "natural born" citizen in 2008 as I guess this issue fluttered up as cover that the whole "Obama isn't a citizen" thing wasn't just racism. For whatever that random article Wikipedia cited is worth, no one seriously thought McCain's eligibility was in doubt.
    posted by hoyland at 5:06 AM on January 12, 2019 [12 favorites]


    What does it mean? I think it's safe to say Tucker Carlson has not suddenly become woke. I think he's ramping up for a presidential run using a polished version of Trump's fake populism, which is terrifying considering he's much smarter, much more conniving, and much better spoken than Trump.

    Carlson? running? But he's such a total moron and simpleton???! Oh yeah Trump is president, nevermind.

    If he runs I hope we can get John Stewart to run just so he can own him again in the debates.
    posted by WaterAndPixels at 5:38 AM on January 12, 2019 [8 favorites]


    So how do we protect ourselves from Putin's machinations?
    Stop Citizens United, remove dark money contributions, move to a national popular vote instead of the electoral college, dismantle the two party system rules, actually enforce voter's rights and federal oversight of state elections, etc. Just don't be such an easy rube of a target, in essence.
    posted by Harry Caul at 5:44 AM on January 12, 2019 [33 favorites]


    The only reason he's making this move is that he stepped over the line when he said on his show that immigration "makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided."

    No. It's not a desperation ploy, and it's not an accident. It's the "roll out the socialism" phase of the national socialist plan.

    It's because they are actual, literal nazis, and this was always the plan.
    posted by schadenfrau at 5:52 AM on January 12, 2019 [17 favorites]


    progosk: "Outing myself as having had to look it up: AOC's latest dis (literally, heh!), explained."

    Thank you, I didn't get it either. I guess that I haven't had a phone that didn't automatically sync contacts from gmail in a decade or so.
    posted by octothorpe at 6:15 AM on January 12, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Harry, a fair number of those points would require a constitutional rewrite, which is potentially opening the door to some very bad things if the wrong people do the rewriting. Racism and slavery were baked into our founding principles more than equality and freedom were, and that’s hard to fix when the deck is stacked with unequal representation (ec, senate, etc) to the benefit of the regressives.
    posted by rikschell at 6:19 AM on January 12, 2019


    I can't remember if I saw this sentiment here or on the Twitter, but the thing with AOC is that she's never known Republicans to be anything other than cartoonishly evil idiots and she treats them as such. A lot of the D establishment still needs to learn this lesson.
    This should also tell you something about under-30 Republicans.
    posted by schmod at 6:51 AM on January 12, 2019 [113 favorites]


    “We want Congress to do its job,” the president said Friday during a roundtable on border security at the White House. “What we’re not looking to do right now is national emergency.”

    Interesting phrasing there, Mr. President. Because congress could do its job by passing a budget -- which Mitch McConnell is preventing -- and then overriding your veto, which Republicans would probably prevent. But it'd make who's to blame for the shutdown all the more obvious, and it'd gall Trump tat he isn't actually relevant to the process.

    This morning NPR went on at great length about how the record-length shutdown is the result of a dispute between Trump and Democrats -- precisely the framing Trump wants. Mitch McConnell's name was not mentioned, nor was the fact that the 33% support for Trump's border wall tracks pretty closely with his core base.
    posted by Gelatin at 6:59 AM on January 12, 2019 [15 favorites]


    So say there are charges brought against Trump. Could he be found mentally unfit for court?
    posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:09 AM on January 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson has been spouting populist rhetoric that sounds like Bernie Sanders on wealth inequality and its causes.

    I think the key to this whole bit of Carlson's is the last few sentences:
    "Libertarians are sure to call any deviation from market fundamentalism a form of socialism.

    That’s a lie. Socialism is a disaster. It doesn’t work. It’s what we should be working desperately to avoid. But socialism is exactly what we’re going to get, and very soon unless a group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that protects normal people. "
    He's only questioning free-market capitalism as a way to fear-monger about socialism. "If we don't reinstall just enough regulation and policies to keep white males (especially rural and/or blue collar ones) dominating the culture, then pretty soon socialism is gonna look like the best option to a lot of people."

    For all that this piece was supposedly a response to Romney's recent Trump-skeptical op-ed, really all Carlson is putting forward (besides the sexism & dog-whistle racism) is the idea that we need to return to more-or-less 80's economic policies. And we should only do that because if we don't - socialism. So, not really all that radical a position to take (although you wouldn't know that from some of the panicked screeching coming from certain conservative publications.)
    posted by soundguy99 at 7:11 AM on January 12, 2019 [6 favorites]


    This should also tell you something about under-30 Republicans.
    posted by schmod


    The thing is, like I spend a lot of time around teenagers, and I don’t know any that identify as Republicans. I mean, some of them are moronic edgelords, who like to troll me with MAGA hats, but when actually getting them to elucidate what they really want for the future, it aligns pretty closely to the DSA.

    And because I spent my youth protesting, and because I’m still a black clad, nonconformist who regularly takes on the school board and the high school management when they get stupid, I’ve been able to convince a couple that their energies are better spent trying to reach a goal, like destroying the capitalist paradigm that entrenches a ruling class, rather than giving in to ironic nihilism.

    I’ve met kids who are true believers on the left. Even here, in the buckle of the Bible Belt, I don’t know any kids who are true believers on the right. Costumed and playing a part, yes. Living with Teahadist parents and mimicking their environment, absolutely. Firm and strong beliefs on issues where I disagree, like abortion, but they seem to believe, as I do, that it should be a personal choice and not a government mandate, common.

    To be fair, I’m not the adult who would find myself in a group of young Republicans unless I’m being held for ransom, but my son is in rotc, and I’d expect that group to be amongst the most conservative, and I’ve been surprised at how common progressive values are to that group of teens.
    posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:13 AM on January 12, 2019 [46 favorites]


    I don't really want to continue this derail much further, but I doubt there are many adult Republicans who are true-believers in their party. They are, however, true believers in themselves (and other fairly odious things).

    The Republican party is the perfect cover for those beliefs. It's the party of self-centered opportunism. Whenever somebody comes close to calling it out, they start shouting about abortion and immigration -- their entire platform was built as a distraction.

    This was true of the College Republican assholes I knew 10 years ago. It's true of almost every Republican holding office. It's absolutely true of the President.

    [I'll gladly give a pass to anybody who's under 18 and still figuring things out, and didn't intend to include literal children in my original comment.]
    posted by schmod at 7:22 AM on January 12, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Mod note: Let's leave it there on the psychology of Republicanism; we've just been down this topic so many times.
    posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:24 AM on January 12, 2019 [8 favorites]


    The Questions Are Not What Did The President Know And When Did He Know it? The Question Is What, If Anything, Would The President Be Doing Differently If We Knew For Certain That He Was A Russian Asset Or Agent?

    Spoiler: the answer is nothing.
    posted by octothorpe at 7:31 AM on January 12, 2019 [47 favorites]


    I have noticed something in the primary discussion (someone's comment about Tulsi Gabbard made this click for me) as I'm trying to parse out good faith concerns about the likely Democratic contenders vs people who just want to shut a candidate down.

    When Tulsi Gabbard's name came up, people were ready with lists of problems with her as a candidate. A clear historical record of bad behavior. By contrast, people who just don't like Kamala Harris (for totally non sexist/racist reasons I am sure) will just say one VERY specific thing that may or may not be misrepresented. "Well as AG she brought a lawsuit regarding this issue, that's unforgivable, case closed." Kirsten Gillibrand obviously killed Al Franken and tore his balls off to wear as earrings or something. I mean, there are very real concerns about Elizabeth Warren's understanding of the problems with her DNA video, but people will respond to her name by pointing out that she used to be a Republican, as though that's the biggest road block to putting her in office. And some of that stuff, obviously, is worth exploring. But rarely is it a recent, truly discrediting action - it is more likely something the candidate may have to explain or apologize for.

    My point is not that if you have one criticism of these women it is not legitimate, or that they have nothing in their histories to answer for as potential candidates. It's just a tool that sometimes helps me articulate if someone is speaking from a place of "bring this person down no matter what" vs "I have some concerns about this candidate."
    posted by Emmy Rae at 7:39 AM on January 12, 2019 [45 favorites]


    Trump White House urging allies to prepare for possible RBG departure (Eliana Johnson & Gabby Orr, Politico)

    In case you had any doubts where the Trump administration gets its news, Searching for news on RBG? YouTube offered conspiracy theories about the Supreme Court justice instead. (WaPo):
    Conspiracy theories about the health of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have dominated YouTube this week, illustrating how the world’s most popular video site is failing to prevent its algorithm from helping popularize viral hoaxes and misinformation.
    ...
    The roots of the latest Ginsburg conspiracy are with QAnon, which centers on cryptic messages posted on anonymous online forums. Some QAnon posts cast doubt on the Supreme Court justice’s health and the treatment doctors provided her. Followers of “Q” then posted videos on YouTube that explicitly cited the hoax or read its text to viewers in full.
    posted by peeedro at 7:41 AM on January 12, 2019 [12 favorites]


    :> "In an interview this week with Christian news outlet OneNewsNow, Liberty Counsel chair Mat Staver argued that references to sexual orientation and gender identity in the bill would make it easier for the government to pass additional protections for LGBTQ people."

    OMG! If we protect these people now, it will be easier to protect these people later.

    rikschell: "Racism and slavery were baked into our founding principles more than equality and freedom were, and that’s hard to fix when the deck is stacked with unequal representation (ec, senate, etc) to the benefit of the regressives."

    America is proud of having the oldest constitution (for however that is defined). But it is a real problem. And while it has been patched in the past to paper over the most egregious of errors that chance for that going forward seems very slim. I think serious change will only happen if the modern day robber barons are once again in fear of loosing their heads.
    posted by Mitheral at 7:48 AM on January 12, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Re-post & a reminder from last February - New Rule: Trump's Wall of Lies

    Bill Maher laid into Trump supporters who bought into the president’s promises to build a wall along the Mexican border, and offered them some small solace since it hasn’t happened never will.

    Just admit you got conned when you actually thought that Blob the Builder was gonna to erect the eighth wonder of the world for free and Mexico was going to pick up the check. We’ve all been there, you bought weed in the park and when you got home it was pine needles and oregano.

    A wall represents an impregnable barrier that keeps out not just Mexicans, but everything that makes them feel antsy about the old America that’s slipping away.

    The Wall is like one of those prescriptions for drugs that block the causes of your discomfort. Yes, now there’s Mexigone. Mexigone has been clinically proven to reduce the pain caused by foreigners entering the country illegally. Mexigone works with your natural gullibility to construct a wall that keeps immigrants from ‘shithole countries’ out, and good paying jobs in. So you can get back to cleaning your guns and sending out Facebook memes of Hillary getting hit with a golf ball.

    The wall was always just an applause line that got out of hand. Even Trump knows that it’s bullshit.

    But that’s OK, because everything that wall represents — the bigotry, the racism, the ignorance, the paranoia — is already in your heart. The wall has been inside you the whole time....

    Every time you vote you vote for a child molester because the other choice is a Democrat, the wall is there. Every time you feel rage because a voice recording says ‘For Spanish press 2’, the wall is there. It’s there whenever you begin a Facebook post with ‘I’m not a racist, but.’ It’s there every time a unisex bathroom makes you hold it ’til you get home. It’s there when snow makes you deny global warming. And it’s there at the ball game when two gays on the kiss cam make you throw up in your mouth. Every time you use air quotes when you say the word ‘college,’ the wall is there. It’s there when you use ‘Jew’ as a verb. And it’s there every time you’re Tucker Carlson. See, even without it… you’re still the grumpy asshole that ruins Thanksgiving.
    posted by growabrain at 7:56 AM on January 12, 2019 [49 favorites]


    I flagged your comment as excellent, Emmy Rae. I notice that people who are critical of Beto O'Rourke cite his voting record, which, I think, is fair game. But when it comes to Harris and Gillibrand, especially (who have progressive voting records!) they yammer on about how "She's a COP!" or "Waah waah Al Franken!" Because neither woman did anything wrong. Gillibrand, in particular, may have contributed to an unpopular decision, but since when is "unpopular" the same as "needs to be apologized for?"

    I am convinced that at least some of the vague, nebulous, or ridiculous anti-candidate chatter ("she's a cop!" "Al Franken!") is pushed by bots and trolls. I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it turns out that in 2016 there were bots and trolls everywhere. I'd be shocked if they weren't gearing up for a fresh assault.
    posted by Rosie M. Banks at 8:00 AM on January 12, 2019 [36 favorites]


    This interview with Adam Goldman, the reporter on the Times story does a lot to explain what’s different about this story from all the others. But it also tells us the FBI codename for the investigation, which I imagine we’ll see in a lot of book titles. Crossfire Hurricane
    posted by Brainy at 8:57 AM on January 12, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Air traffic control union is suing the administration for working without pay. Air traffic controllers are under the FAA which is under UsDoT, headed by Elaine Chao, who is Mrs. Mitch McConnell.

    Chao's agency is being punished but McConnell is all in on keeping the govt shutdown. WTF.
    posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:08 AM on January 12, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Washington Monthly: The Intelligence Community Has Long Suspected Trump of Being Under Russian Influence
    There’s a decent chance, when all the dust has settled from the doomed presidency of Donald Trump and the historians are picking over the ashes, that tonight’s Lawfare piece by Benjamin Wittes will be seen as an important document that emerged at a crucial turning point. Certainly, the New York Times article on which it is based will be a key reference point.

    I find this frustrating.

    It’s frustrating because Wittes’s piece is essentially a giant mea culpa– on behalf of himself and on behalf of the media in general. It’s at once a recognition and an apology for having gone about the analysis of the Russia investigation the wrong way from the beginning. Its basic insight is that the Russia investigation has never really been bifurcated into collusion and obstruction of justice components, but has all along been primarily a counterintelligence investigation with criminal components. To go just a bit deeper, Wittes seems to be realizing for the first time that Trump’s efforts to obstruct the investigation may be little more than an element of the underlying problem, which is that Trump has been working on the behalf of Russian interests all along. For this reason, his obstruction is just as much about protecting Russia as it is about protecting himself. Or, in other words, the Obstruction Was the Collusion.
    posted by octothorpe at 9:10 AM on January 12, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Harry, a fair number of those points would require a constitutional rewrite, which is potentially opening the door to some very bad things if the wrong people do the rewriting.

    This was referring to...

    "Stop Citizens United, remove dark money contributions, move to a national popular vote instead of the electoral college, dismantle the two party system rules, actually enforce voter's rights and federal oversight of state elections, etc."

    I'd just like to point out that none of these things requires a constitutional re-write.

    Stop Citizens United - This could be overturned by a future Supreme Court decision without a constitutional amendment, which would require that we elect presidents and senators who choose justices who interpret the constitution differently. But I just want to point out that what Citizens United actually says is that anyone can spend as much as they want producing ads (or movies or books or whatever) promoting a candidate, as long as they don't coordinate with that candidate. But even before that you could produce promoting all of a candidate's talking points, as long as you didn't actually mention the candidate or coordinate with them (this was called "soft money.")

    remove dark money contributions - Since people could recognize the talking points, it was still possible to buy influence with soft-money. I think what would really help is actually enforcing the laws against coordination and requiring people who spend money on these ads to identify themselves more clearly, including donors to dark money groups. This would very much mitigate the damage of Citizens United, and address some of the campaign finance problems that predate it. There's nothing unconstitutional about enforcing laws that are already on the books.

    move to a national popular vote instead of the electoral college - as mentioned already in this thread, this just requires more state legislatures to pass the National Popular Vote Compact.

    dismantle the two party system rules - These are a consequence of our single-member districts and first-past-the-post voting system. We could fix this with the Fair Representation Act and state level reforms. Multimember districts with ranked choice voting would destroy the two party system and end gerrymandering too.

    actually enforce voter's rights and federal oversight of state elections - again, it's not unconstitutional to enforce laws already on the books.
    posted by OnceUponATime at 9:16 AM on January 12, 2019 [23 favorites]


    To go just a bit deeper, Wittes seems to be realizing for the first time that Trump’s efforts to obstruct the investigation may be little more than an element of the underlying problem, which is that Trump has been working on the behalf of Russian interests all along.

    I'm not sure that's fair. You'd have to be pretty dense to not see the underlying problem. I think he and Lawfare have been focusing on what could be proven in court based on the publicly available evidence, and the obstruction piece is unassailable.

    That said, I haven't read the Wittes article. If he really is just now realizing that Trump is obstructing justice because he's working on the behalf of Russia interests, then I'm done with reading anything he writes because that would mean he's an idiot. (I guess I'll go RTFA now.)
    posted by diogenes at 9:23 AM on January 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


    OK, I read (or maybe scanned) the article. This take is just wrong:

    Wittes seems to be realizing for the first time that Trump’s efforts to obstruct the investigation may be little more than an element of the underlying problem, which is that Trump has been working on the behalf of Russian interests all along.

    Wittes isn't describing what he recently realized about Trump. He's describing what he recently learned about the initial nature of the FBI investigation.
    posted by diogenes at 9:31 AM on January 12, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Tulsi Gabbard has a fresh army of supporters with newly-created Twitter accounts and stock photo profile pictures, all very concerned about Syria.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 9:37 AM on January 12, 2019 [61 favorites]


    So this thread by The Hoarse Whisperer on the NYT story about the counterintelligence investigation is pretty enlightening.

    Mueller didn’t just inherit ONE investigation focused on what happened before.

    He also inherited a second which was actively tracking Trump’s actions AS THEY WERE UNFOLDING.

    Basically, because this is also a counterintelligence investigation, the FBI gets immediate access to all the NSA's information, as well as information from allies tracking Russia. So while the White House isn't doing readouts of Trump's calls with Putin, the Dutch or the Germans might be listening in, and they are providing that data to Mueller. And not months later, but as they get it, because it's an active counter-intelligence operation.

    There's also a good chance McGahn has been cooperating for far longer than anyone suspected.

    Individual-1 should be crapping his pants.
    posted by suelac at 9:46 AM on January 12, 2019 [63 favorites]


    I am convinced that at least some of the vague, nebulous, or ridiculous anti-candidate chatter ("she's a cop!" "Al Franken!") is pushed by bots and trolls. I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it turns out that in 2016 there were bots and trolls everywhere. I'd be shocked if they weren't gearing up for a fresh assault.

    They don't have to even be actual bots. These days there are people who have seen the role bots played and now deliberately act like bots. It's pretty much a non-stop crossfire hurricane sharknado gate out there now.
    posted by srboisvert at 9:51 AM on January 12, 2019 [23 favorites]


    He also inherited a second which was actively tracking Trump’s actions AS THEY WERE UNFOLDING.

    This puts Lisa Page asking that if Trump would ever become president, Peter Strzok reportedly replied, “No. No he won't. We'll stop it.” in a whole new light. They KNEW he was compromised.
    posted by mikelieman at 9:54 AM on January 12, 2019 [30 favorites]


    Turns out R. Kelly lives in, yes, Trump Tower (in Chicago).
    posted by The Card Cheat at 9:55 AM on January 12, 2019 [8 favorites]


    This puts Lisa Page asking that if Trump would ever become president, Peter Strzok reportedly replied, “No. No he won't. We'll stop it.” in a whole new light. They KNEW he was compromised.
    But they didn't stop him. Maybe because of that NY FBI stunt that Comey miserably failed to handle. Somehow I think there is a spotlight on Giuliani here as well. (Ages ago someone had a quote that someone is investigating the NY FBI, I don't remember who it was or which of the endless threads, sorry).
    posted by mumimor at 9:59 AM on January 12, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Not to abuse the edit window, this also explains why Trump was so triggered during the debates when Clinton called him Putin's puppet. SHE KNEW he was compromised by Russia, but couldn't blow the investigation.
    posted by mikelieman at 9:59 AM on January 12, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Tulsi Gabbard has a fresh army of supporters with newly-created Twitter accounts and stock photo profile pictures, all very concerned about Syria.

    Hey so can we get rid of all the foreign agents in government?

    Individual-1 should be crapping his pants

    So should Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, IMO, and since they’re not gibbering morons incapable of understanding reality, I assume they are. Which I am enjoying very much.
    posted by schadenfrau at 10:07 AM on January 12, 2019 [16 favorites]


    They certainly aren’t acting like they’re worried (in public, anyway).
    posted by The Card Cheat at 10:12 AM on January 12, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Well, Paul Ryan got the hell out of Dodge as soon as he could. I interpret that as pretty worried.
    posted by wabbittwax at 10:29 AM on January 12, 2019 [12 favorites]


    I’m increasingly convinced that one of the single greatest contributions any individual or group of individuals could make to the world would be to develop some kind of tool capable of crippling and destroying Twitter bot farms. This is a global problem for which we desperately need a countermeasure. I don’t know how that could be done, or even if it could, but it’s something I think about a lot.
    posted by lazaruslong at 10:35 AM on January 12, 2019 [26 favorites]


    Individual-1 should be crapping his pants.

    To go by @realDonaldTrump's Twitter tirade this morning, Individual-1 definitely sounds as though he's crapping his pants. The opening sounds like a sub-literate letter to the New York Post: "Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin’ James Comey, a total sleaze!" The rest of this rant about the "Witch Hunt" covers the "Crooked Hillary investigation", Comey as a "Crooked Cop", "Bob Mueller, & the 13 Angry Democrats - leaking machines who have NO interest in going after the Real Collusion (and much more) by Crooked Hillary Clinton", and the "disgraced and/or fired and caught in the act" Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, & more. The conclusion is pure Pravada by way of Queens: "I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations with Russia again!" The consciousness of guilt here is unmistakeable, conveyed in language befitting an organized crime hanger-on.

    Meanwhile, the Democrats' House investigations are ramping up:

    NYer: The International Crisis of Donald Trump—While Washington melts down over the government shutdown, the worst-case scenario for the President’s foreign policy has actually happened. Rep. Elliot Engel, as the new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is assembling a subcommittee to investigate Trump's meeting with Putin in Helsinki, his Singapore summit with Kim Jong-un, his relations with Saudi Arabia over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and his chaotic Syria policy, among other topics.

    The Daily Beast's Betsy Woodruff: Senate Democrats Call For DOJ Ethics Probe After Whitaker Non-Recusal—Senate Democrats sent the letter just days before Attorney General nominee William Barr's confirmation hearing.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 10:37 AM on January 12, 2019 [37 favorites]


    So, Julian Castro is officially running and 538 already has a thinkpiece out on his chances.

    The Democratic primary is going to feel like Black Friday at the mall, at this rate: many theoretically cool options, lots of elbows and screaming.
    posted by lydhre at 10:49 AM on January 12, 2019 [30 favorites]


    I guess it will still take "regular" Americans a while before they can grok that the "PRESIDENT IS A RUSSIAN SPY".

    It will help when the media will start calling it what it is
    posted by growabrain at 10:50 AM on January 12, 2019 [18 favorites]


    The Democratic primary is going to feel like Black Friday at the mall, at this rate: many theoretically cool options, lots of elbows and screaming.

    Oh God. I once had to explain Black Friday to a recent immigrant, and she straight up did not believe me.

    "People camp out all night in the cold, and then, when the doors are unlocked, they rush the store in a mad stampede that sometimes results in grievous injury or death. Because of sales."

    She thought I was just making fun of America. Like for real thought I was very funny. So that was sad for two reasons.

    ANYWAY. Yes, that sounds exactly right, it's going to be an absurd, dangerous fiasco. But maybe we'll get a pause on a few announcements; they're each going to want the spotlight when they do it. Regardless...

    It has begun.
    posted by schadenfrau at 10:57 AM on January 12, 2019 [15 favorites]


    Mod note: Just a heads up, there's a Metatalk coming tomorrow on how we're aiming to handle the super-early stuff about Democratic primary candidates.
    posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:00 AM on January 12, 2019 [38 favorites]


    Somehow I think there is a spotlight on Giuliani here as well. (Ages ago someone had a quote that someone is investigating the NY FBI, I don't remember who it was or which of the endless threads, sorry).

    I have posted some links about this before. Comey said in his congressional testimony, before he got fired, that the FBI was investigating this story. But that'snot Giuliani's only possible involvement.
    posted by OnceUponATime at 11:23 AM on January 12, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Who is @HoarseWhisperer and why should I believe them when they say that Mueller and the FBI may have had NSA access and live intel from other countries?
    posted by gucci mane at 11:40 AM on January 12, 2019 [5 favorites]


    [Saturday morning twits}

    TPM - October 19th, 2016

    Malcolm Nance - Donald Trump Is 'Neck-Deep' In Russian Treason

    Tony Schwartz - Eleven tweets by Trump so far today and it isn't even noon EST. Number of Trump tweets is always in direct proportion to level of rage, desperation & weakness he is feeling
    posted by growabrain at 11:59 AM on January 12, 2019 [41 favorites]


    It's not a bad thing to have a deep bench instead of One True Candidate guys, primaries are ok if exhausting. I'm glad we're going to figure out how to talk about them apart from Trash Fire Update threads.

    I'm pretty excited about this new FBI development y'all, if only because "Trump is actively a Russian asset" is easier to understand than "Trump's team did some sketchy campaign and firing shenanigans" for your average voter.
    posted by emjaybee at 12:02 PM on January 12, 2019 [31 favorites]


    suelac: "So this thread by The Hoarse Whisperer on the NYT story about the counterintelligence investigation is pretty enlightening.
    "

    Holy Crap. Nice plot twist here:
    On his way out the door, we all were wallowing in our winter of discontent, Obama signed an executive order...

    It went largely uncovered but I noted it at the time. It was like when you’re watching Law & Order and they zoom in on a paperweight in Minute 5 of the show...
    You just know that paperweight is gonna come back into play around Minute 55.

    Foreshadowing! Pretext! Other words meaning “that’s gonna matter!”

    Anyway, the point is... Obama signed an EO as a parting shot one week before leaving office.
    The order revised the rules around intelligence sharing among our intel community.

    Specifically, it made the firehose of raw intelligence collected by the NSA directly accessible to the FBI and CIA.

    Instead of having to ask for intel and getting what they filtered down...
    The FBI and CIA could directly access the unfiltered “SigInt” or signals intelligence.

    Intercepted phone calls, emails, raw intel from human sources.

    Everything our vast intelligence vacuum hoovers up, available directly... but only for counterintel and foreign intel purposes.
    The NSA can sit on virtually every communication into and out of the U.S. that takes place over networks.
    No wonder the Cheeto is going ballistic.
    posted by Mitheral at 12:48 PM on January 12, 2019 [75 favorites]


    Okay, that answers my question! How the hell did I miss that?!
    posted by gucci mane at 1:09 PM on January 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


    My point is not that if you have one criticism of these women it is not legitimate, or that they have nothing in their histories to answer for as potential candidates. It's just a tool that sometimes helps me articulate if someone is speaking from a place of "bring this person down no matter what" vs "I have some concerns about this candidate."

    Yes! That! There's an article that's been making the rounds recently—someone tried to post it as an FPP last night—that should really serve as the textbook "how we're not going to talk about the primaries" example. The article exists entirely to say that the nominee must be their candidate (someone who has not announced a run and it's not 100% clear that they're running). But what's notable about it is how it addresses everyone but their chosen candidate. In this article:

    Everyone with concerns is a "bad-faith liberal." Another candidate lacks "good sense" and is called by a diminutive nickname in a parenthetical. One potential opponent is dismissed in two sentences as a "cop" (at least with a couple examples) and another is deemed hysterical because he called for an independent Russia investigation after Comey was fired. Selecting another candidate will mean Nazis will take over the country once their term is over. The article uses the phrase "shitty neoliberal hack." No acknowledgement is made of the existence of race except to scoff at "identity politics."

    My point really isn't that this random article is wrong; it doesn't really matter who these phrases are even applied to. It's that this the start of a canonical list of how not to talk about candidates if everyone to the left of Joe Manchin is going to not kill each other by next summer. Every candidate has some baggage, and different people will see that as anything from a dealbreaker to a nothingburger, but as a heuristic, we'll all be a lot saner if we: don't declare our candidate to be the only one true candidate; and don't do drive-by one sentence dismissals of other candidates to make our points.
    posted by zachlipton at 1:13 PM on January 12, 2019 [30 favorites]


    Link (reddit thread)

    This is the publicly available information, put together with citations by A Person On The Internet. I think we should expect more from the Mueller investigation. It's interesting that a lot of this is sourced from NYT or wire agencies, but we won't see anything like this from any of the corporate news outlets. That's on purpose. Apologies for the length, it's just a lot of criming to get through just to put some context around it that extends beyond 2015.

    Some of it is familar to these threads, some perhaps less so. I've bolded a few things that were of interest for various reasons such as recently noted here, recent events, or a key piece of the Collusiongate.
    • Trump was first compromised by the Russians back in the 80s in the days of the Soviet Union. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money and it continued for decades. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.
    • In 1984, David Bogatin — a Russian mobster, convicted gasoline bootlegger, and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)
    • Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.
    • Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.
    • Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years, that many of them have owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties, that they were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel. (Mogilevich's role today is unclear).
    • One of the most important things that is often overlooked is that the Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. that is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.
    • From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."
    • So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower.
    • According to a Bloomberg investigation (March 16, 2017) into Trump World Tower, which broke ground in 1998, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”
    • Here is the most prominent example: In July 2008, the height of the recession, Donald Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.
    • As an example of the Russian mob operating out of Trump Tower, in 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. In addition to card games, they operated illegal gambling websites, ran a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
    • It has been widely known for decades that Russia often used videotaped "honey traps" to compromise influential visitors. General Oleg Kalugin, former head of counterintelligence for the KGB, told Craig Unger (Author, "House of Trump, House of Putin") they probably did this with Trump during his visit to Russia in 1987--long before the events in the Steele dossier. "I can't tell what is inside Trump's mind, but everyone who traveled to Russia knew this."
    • Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive under his tenure in the Southern District and Mayor. And now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties tot he Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.
    • A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnel got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. The big white shoe law firms--Jones Day, for example-- represent powerful Russian oligarchs who have billions and billions of dollars. Much of this is legal even though it appears to have compromised huge parts of the GOP. Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay.
    • At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."
    • Eric Trump told James Dodson, a golf reporter, in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
    • Trump's first wife, Ivana, was under surveillance by the STB, the Czech secret police, and they reported to the KGB. Ivana got out of Communist Czechoslovakia in the 70s which was not easy to do.
    • Regarding the Steele dossier, while not everything in the dossier has been corroborated, some of it has and none of it has been disproven. Christopher Steele has a terrific reputation in the intelligence world. For reference, Jeb Bush's opposition research included paying a US based intelligence firm (GPS Fusion), who reached out to Steele. This same intelligence firm was later hired by Clinton during her campaign. All of this was above-board and verifiable.
    • At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
    • We don't know who may be prosecuted with Deutsche Bank, but Russian money laundering is a huge part of this and how they compromised Trump. Trump was $4 billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out. They own him.
    posted by petebest at 1:19 PM on January 12, 2019 [326 favorites]


    petebest, that is a great roundup! For interested readers, Josh Marshall (TPM) has been on this beat for a long time.
    posted by sjswitzer at 1:47 PM on January 12, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Thank you, petebest, flagged as fantastic comment. I'm going to print that off and give it to everyone I know to read, both those who who don't support flaming shitstick and republicanism to reinforce their understanding and to dear once-intelligent family members who've now disgraced themselves as sub-neanderthal. (You do what you can, one by one, and sorry not sorry for getting a bit carried away.)
    posted by blue shadows at 1:50 PM on January 12, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Very interesting Pete Best, but every time it says Russian born that should say Soviet born. And his trips in the 80s were to the Soviet Union, something much more sketchy in the Cold War days.
    posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:52 PM on January 12, 2019 [15 favorites]


    The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnell got millions from Leonard Blavatnik.

    I hope McConnell ends up in jail too, along with his cronies like Graham. Traitors, traitors all the way down. Also - is there an original source for the McConnell connection?
    posted by bluesky43 at 1:54 PM on January 12, 2019 [15 favorites]


    From the Dallas News. re: McConnell and Blavatnik.
    posted by bluesky43 at 1:56 PM on January 12, 2019 [10 favorites]


    More from the Dallas News linked above. Wow, this has been known since 2016 - it feels new, and frightenly familiar at the same time.

    During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard "Len" Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik's holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.

    Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham at $800,000, Ohio Governor John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.


    posted by bluesky43 at 2:00 PM on January 12, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Access Industries? I mean, the writers... are they even trying?
    posted by sjswitzer at 2:05 PM on January 12, 2019 [18 favorites]


    I'm wondering who leaked the FBI story and why now. Anyone seen informed speculation on that?
    posted by hoist with his own pet aardvark at 2:06 PM on January 12, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Something irks me about the framing of most reporting on Blavatnik: every article leads with him as an "oligarch" or "Ukranian-born", but tends to footnote the fact that he's an American (and British) citizen. I think it's pretty damned critical to understanding how this whole racket works.
    posted by Room 101 at 2:07 PM on January 12, 2019 [9 favorites]


    The International Crisis of Donald Trump. NewYorker, Susan Glasser. 1.11.2019

    On Wednesday morning, Eliot Engel, the Democratic congressman from New York who has just taken over the chairmanship of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sank into an oversized leather chair in his office and told me that his first act as chairman will be to create a new subcommittee devoted to investigating President Trump.
    ...

    No matter who holds the gavel, the investigation is certain to start with the question of what, exactly, Trump agreed to in his private meeting with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, last summer. “It’s been many months since Helsinki, and we still don’t know what Putin and Trump talked about,” Engel said. He also pledged to look at “the business interests of the President” and the extent to which Trump’s financial dealings with places such as Russia and the Middle East have “affected what he’s done in foreign policy.” That will be a big departure for a committee that typically examines policies, not people, and Engel will have to hold off other House committee chairs eager to encroach on what Engel views as Foreign Affairs’ turf. (Democratic sentiment on the Hill is such that “many other committees would love to poach some of our jurisdiction,” he told me.) But a probe of Trump, Inc., given the President’s tendency to conflate his personal interests with the national interest, now seems indispensable to the foreign-policy concerns of the day, whether it’s explaining Trump’s otherwise hard-to-fathom pro-Russia tilt or shedding light on his family’s pursuit of business deals with Middle Eastern figures who are also key to Trump’s geopolitical priorities

    IMHO McConnell should also be included in an investigation.
    posted by bluesky43 at 2:07 PM on January 12, 2019 [23 favorites]


    A bullet point to add to petebest's list:

    - The Deutsche Bank officer who facilitated the laundering of Russian money through Donald Trump was the son of Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy, in apparent perfect health, resigned his position on the Supreme Court, allowing Trump to hand-pick his replacement.

    Snopes Link.
    posted by yesster at 2:08 PM on January 12, 2019 [68 favorites]


    Something irks me about the framing of most reporting on Blavatnik: every article leads with him as an "oligarch" or "Ukranian-born", but tends to footnote the fact that he's an American (and British) citizen. I think it's pretty damned critical to understanding how this whole racket works.
    posted by Room 101 at 2:07 PM

    Agreed! I was surprised to see that addendum to his status without any comment - I mean, why does this guy have US citizenship? I would not be surprised if there was a lot more to that story.
    posted by bluesky43 at 2:10 PM on January 12, 2019 [3 favorites]


    I’m increasingly convinced that one of the single greatest contributions any individual or group of individuals could make to the world would be to develop some kind of tool capable of crippling and destroying Twitter bot farms.

    Don't forget the YouTube recommendation engine.
    posted by gwint at 2:11 PM on January 12, 2019 [21 favorites]


    As the Shutdown Drags On, the Trump-Russia Story Is Back at Center Stage
    New Yorker, John Cassidy

    ...from Trump’s narrow perspective, the shutdown had been successful. For three whole weeks, it had dominated the news, pushing aside stories about the President’s other troubles, such as the Robert Mueller investigation, the testimony of Michael Cohen, and the difficulty he was having finding people to accept senior jobs in his Administration.

    ...those troubles returned to the top of the news agenda. The Times published a lengthy story that ran under the headline “F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia.”

    the past forty-eight hours have demonstrated that, whatever happens in the next week or two regarding the government shutdown and the fight over the border wall, the White House cannot escape the Trump-Russia investigation. Until it is finally resolved one way or another, everything else is a sideshow.
    posted by bluesky43 at 2:18 PM on January 12, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Let's also not forget, this treasonous occupation of the Presidency, and the complicity (at a minimum) of the GOP, is only ONE front of the bigger war.

    Corrupt billionaires, who owe no allegiance to any nation, are waging war on democracy itself, at every opportunity.

    Every news story about the "internal" politics of every country on earth must be viewed through that lens.

    I can't find any comfort in any of our institutions. We're at war.
    posted by yesster at 2:31 PM on January 12, 2019 [53 favorites]


    Something irks me about the framing of most reporting on Blavatnik: every article leads with him as an "oligarch" or "Ukranian-born", but tends to footnote the fact that he's an American (and British) citizen.

    Immigrants are the problem after all?
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:34 PM on January 12, 2019 [3 favorites]


    the White House cannot escape the Trump-Russia investigation. Until it is finally resolved one way or another, everything else is a sideshow.

    May 19, 2017 - Trump Told Russians That Firing ‘Nut Job’ Comey Eased Pressure From Investigation

    It puts a smile on my face, to know that Trump is -- to recycle an analogy -- trying to find his way out of the jungle without a map, and he's being staked by US Marine, and former Director of the FBI, Robert S. Mueller III
    posted by mikelieman at 2:39 PM on January 12, 2019 [23 favorites]


    Let's also not forget, this treasonous occupation of the Presidency, and the complicity (at a minimum) of the GOP, is only ONE front of the bigger war.

    Corrupt billionaires, who owe no allegiance to any nation, are waging war on democracy itself, at every opportunity.

    That's one hazard of ascribing full agency to Putin whenever administration and GOP connections to Russian oligarchs are revealed. Ongoing machinations of our own right-wing elite will inevitably include them since the US ultra-rich and Russian oligarchs are all part of the same vile terminal-capitalist organism. We should be careful not to let the spectacle of current and future Trump-Putin and GOP-Putin revelations eclipse the broader and older systemic corruption of international capital.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 2:49 PM on January 12, 2019 [34 favorites]


    WaPo, Gerg Miller, Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration
    President Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, current and former U.S. officials said.

    Trump did so after a meeting with Putin in 2017 in Hamburg that was also attended by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. U.S. officials learned of Trump’s actions when a White House adviser and a senior State Department official sought information from the interpreter beyond a readout shared by Tillerson.

    The constraints that Trump imposed are part of a broader pattern by the president of shielding his communications with Putin from public scrutiny and preventing even high-ranking officials in his own administration from fully knowing what he has told one of the United States’ main adversaries.
    ...
    “We were frustrated because we didn’t get a readout,” a former senior administration official said. “The State Department and [National Security Council] were never comfortable” with Trump’s interactions with Putin, the official said. “God only knows what they were going to talk about or agree to.”
    ...
    U.S. intelligence agencies have been reluctant to call attention to such [intelligence] reports during Trump’s presidency because they have at times included comments by foreign officials disparaging the president or his advisers, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, a former senior administration official said.

    “There was more of a reticence in the intelligence community going after those kinds of communications and reporting them,” said a former administration official who worked in the White House. “The feedback tended not to be positive.”
    posted by zachlipton at 3:28 PM on January 12, 2019 [74 favorites]


    There was talk previously here on whether it was even possible to subpoena the interpreter(s), did that ever resolve?
    posted by Rumple at 3:34 PM on January 12, 2019 [3 favorites]


    This "reticence" and "reluctance" of the intelligence community needs to be a top investigative priority, entirely separate from the Trump-Russia topic.
    posted by yesster at 3:37 PM on January 12, 2019 [18 favorites]


    I didn't quote one of the most alarming parts of that article because I thought it had been previously reported, but I think it's actually new, so here it is:
    Tillerson’s account is at odds with the only detail that other administration officials were able to get from the interpreter, officials said. Though the interpreter refused to discuss the meeting, officials said, he conceded that Putin had denied any Russian involvement in the U.S. election and that Trump responded by saying, “I believe you.”
    This isn't really a surprise, since Trump had a press conference in Helsinki where he said much the same thing, but I think it's the first time we're learning it also happened during the Hamburg meeting.
    posted by zachlipton at 3:42 PM on January 12, 2019 [18 favorites]


    I don't know whether to attribute the sudden resurgence of Scoop O' Clock to the departure of Kelly and Mattis, or if it's because we hit the point of $0.00 government pay stubs, or if it's something else, but I feel like the timing here is somehow significant. Like maybe people on the inside either feel like they don't have to watch their backs as carefully right now, or maybe they're desperate because the walls are closing in re: shutdown and all the rest.

    This definitely isn't the first time we've seen big stories drop in quick succession. If anything, it feels like a throwback to an earlier time in this centuries-long dumpster fire. And I don't reach for "surely this" anymore regardless. But it feels like, I dunno, something.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 3:51 PM on January 12, 2019 [31 favorites]


    Questions following the NYT story:

    1. Who was the person who gave the FBI a copy of the 'Fire Comey' draft letter right after it was written?
    Trump drafted a highly self-incriminating letter, but McGahn convinced him not to send it. The FBI had a copy of the letter before Mueller was even hired. Was it McGahn, or Rosenstein, or someone else? Only a small circle of Trump’s top people would have even known at the time that the letter existed.

    2. Could there have been a FISA warrant against Trump? They had them against Manafort and Carter Page during the election. Trump spent the past few months trying to make a scandal out of the FISA warrant against Carter Page. This has never made sense, as Page was a low level Trump campaign adviser, and Trump couldn’t care less about him. Why has Trump tried so hard to use the Page case to convince the public that FISA warrants are inherently abusive?
    posted by growabrain at 3:51 PM on January 12, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Like maybe people on the inside either feel like they don't have to watch their backs as carefully right now, or maybe they're desperate because the walls are closing in re: shutdown and all the rest.

    I think the shutdown, the growing number of “actings” running the administration, on top of the ongoing Trumpocalypse have brought into sharper relief the danger Trump represents to a variety of interests and these leaks are meant to inform and encourage actors that can persuade McConnell and others to break with Trump to start persuading, and soon.
    posted by notyou at 4:19 PM on January 12, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Probably has to do with the Dems taking the House. Things got pretty weird around midterms and then all hell broke loose once they were actually due to be seated at the New Year.
    posted by rue72 at 4:32 PM on January 12, 2019 [12 favorites]


    WaPo, Gerg Miller, Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration

    Good grief, the details are worse when examined further:
    U.S. officials said there is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years. […] Because of the absence of any reliable record of Trump’s conversations with Putin, officials at times have had to rely on reports by U.S. intelligence agencies tracking the reaction in the Kremlin.
    Meanwhile, Lawfare's Susan Hennessey schools @HoarseWisperer about intelligence procedures:
    Anyway, the point is... Obama signed an EO as a parting shot one week before leaving office.
    The order revised the rules around intelligence sharing among our intel community.

    Specifically, it made the firehose of raw intelligence collected by the NSA directly accessible to the FBI and CIA.

    This thread is being shared widely. It really misunderstands EO 12333 and the 2017 changes to the procedures. Those changes had been in the works for over 8 years. They honestly have nothing whatsoever to do with this.

    People asking for more, here is what I said about it at the time. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/obama-expanding-nsa-powers/513041/ … Plus a deep dive on Lawfare E.O. 12333 Raw SIGINT Availability Procedures: A Quick and Dirty Summary

    It's hard to debunk a claim like this because one just basically has nothing to do with the other. The procedures changes were important to nat sec law nerds, but for highly technical reasons regarding which agency applies minimization. They wouldn't affect what the FBI did here. […]

    What is wrong is to think the accurate information reported in the Times was a last ditch effort to empower the FBI against Trump. It was a years-long effort and the actual changes have no bearing at all on how the FBI would have conducted the investigation described.
    (In any case, Mueller has the receipts, though in a less dramatic manner.)
    posted by Doktor Zed at 4:35 PM on January 12, 2019 [22 favorites]


    I am also trying not to “surely this,” but...

    There are obviously people looking at how vulnerable the shitdown* has made both Trump and the GOP, and they’re pressing the advantage by leaking the really big, obviously-impeachable-treason or 25th amendment stuff.

    He’s wounded, and there are people out there who want him gone, and the knives are coming out.

    I feel a little better about the country right now. Not a lot. A teensy tiny little bit. But still: better.

    And if he continues to fuck this up to the point where he’s hurting Republicans more than helping them, we really might get rid of him. So. Fuck it. Turn the pressure up. Beat the drum. Blitz the motherfucker.

    *typo and it stays
    posted by schadenfrau at 4:37 PM on January 12, 2019 [51 favorites]


    Why is all of this suddenly coming out now?
    posted by gucci mane at 4:53 PM on January 12, 2019 [3 favorites]


    If any of us knew the answer we'd be working for, like, the NSA and not posting on Metafilter.

    My guess is a combination of many factors. Post-election, post-holidays, Mueller probe reportedly coming to a head, Trump acting more and more irrationally, and so on.
    posted by Justinian at 4:58 PM on January 12, 2019 [15 favorites]


    My guess is a combination of many factors. Post-election, post-holidays, Mueller probe reportedly coming to a head, Trump acting more and more irrationally, and so on.

    People who are staff at various levels are probably asking themselves "Would I rather be remembered as a Daniel Ellsberg or a Plumber?"
    posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:00 PM on January 12, 2019 [10 favorites]


    [WaPo / Scary]
    Why is Congress so dumb?, by Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.)
    Lawmakers dumped their in-house experts. Now lobbyists do the thinking for them.
    posted by growabrain at 5:05 PM on January 12, 2019 [21 favorites]


    WaPo: ‘In the White House Waiting’: Inside Trump’s Defiance On the Longest Shutdown Ever
    When President Trump made a rare journey to the Capitol last week, he was expected to strategize about how to end the government shutdown he instigated. Instead, he spent the first 20-odd minutes delivering a monologue about “winning.”

    “We’re winning” on North Korea, the president told Republican senators Wednesday at a closed-door luncheon. “We’re winning” on Syria and “we’re winning” on the trade war with China, too. And, Trump concluded, they could win on immigration if Republicans stuck together through what is now the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history, according to officials who attended the presidential pep talk.

    The problem was that Trump offered no path to victory — other than brinkmanship.[…]

    In the weeks leading up to December’s deadline to fund the government, Trump was warned repeatedly about the dangers of a shutdown but still opted to proceed, according to officials with knowledge of the conversations.

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told the president that he had no leverage and that, without a clear strategy, he would be “boxed in a canyon.” He tried to make the case to Trump that even if Pelosi and Schumer were interested in cutting a deal with him, they would be constrained from compromising because of internal Democratic Party pressures to oppose Trump’s wall, these officials said.[…]

    Trump’s advisers are scrambling to build an exit ramp while also bracing for the shutdown to last weeks longer. Current and former aides said there is little strategy in the White House; people are frustrated and, in the words of one, “freaking out.”[…]

    Trump has exhibited more determination than calculation. Over the holidays, he inhabited the White House largely alone, tweeting out his demands and grievances. Several senior West Wing officials described the building as a “ghost town” or a “no man’s land.”

    Only after Christmas did administration officials begin realizing the full scale of the logistical problems a prolonged shutdown would cause. Aides said Trump has been largely uninterested in the minutiae of managing government agencies and services.
    The amount of leaks in this article from the Trump White House and Capitol Hill Republicans underscores how badly Trump has painted himself into a corner.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 5:08 PM on January 12, 2019 [37 favorites]


    So we've been told the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation, but not what happened next: is that investigation (which became one part of the larger Mueller investigation) still ongoing or has it concluded, and if it concluded were its results damning for Trump or not? It occurs to me that if that investigation concluded without finding bad behavior on Trump's part (unlikely a priori of course), it would be in no one's interest to leak just the fact that the investigation was begun. A pro-Trump leaker might leak the full story including that the investigation ended up exonerating Trump; an anti-Trump leaker wouldn't leak at all knowing that their leak could be, um, trumped by someone on the other side leaking the result. If this is right, we can conclude that either the investigation is still ongoing, or that it concluded with unfavorable results for Trump (or, less likely, that the leaker doesn't know the results of the investigation but decided to leak it anyway).
    posted by hoist with his own pet aardvark at 5:28 PM on January 12, 2019 [3 favorites]


    The WaPo confirms the NYT's FBI scoop: FBI’s Investigation of Trump Included a Counterintelligence Inquiry
    The FBI investigation into President Trump that was opened almost immediately after he fired then-Director James B. Comey also included a counterintelligence component to determine if the president was seeking to help Russia, and if so, why, according to people familiar with the matter.

    The decision by then-acting FBI director Andrew McCabe to open an investigation of a sitting president was a momentous step, but it came after Trump had cited the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election in his decision to fire Comey, these people said.[…]

    Counterintelligence investigations are different from criminal probes, in that their chief purpose is to understand what a foreign adversary like Russia is trying to do to influence American society or counteract U.S. policies, and if any Americans are assisting in those efforts, either knowingly or unwittingly.

    In the case of the investigation into Trump, the FBI’s decision to open a file on the president so quickly after Comey’s firing in May 2017 was a source of concern for some officials at the Justice Department because the FBI acted without first consulting leadership at the department. But those worries were allayed when, days later, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was appointed to oversee the Russia probe, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

    At the time the FBI began directly investigating Trump, it wanted to understand if he was attempting to obstruct justice by firing Comey and understand the reasons for his behavior, which also included comments in an NBC interview two days after Comey’s dismissal.

    In that interview, Trump said, “When I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.’ ”

    In addition to that statement, top bureau officials were also concerned about a draft letter to Comey that Trump had wanted to deliver but never did — with a belligerent and defensive tone — that made repeated references to Comey’s private statements to Trump that he wasn’t personally under investigation in the Russia probe, according to people familiar with the matter.

    “The FBI sees [these actions] and it has two jobs: It needs to try to figure out why the person is behaving that way — that’s the counterintelligence part — and it needs to suss out whether that behavior is criminal in nature,” one official said. “It is hard to overstate how devastated the leadership of the bureau was when Comey was fired — not because they loved him, although many in the FBI did love him — but because it completely broke so many norms and appeared to be a move that had nothing to do with Comey and everything to do with the president’s own interests.”

    The official said that the counterintelligence and criminal inquiries were always linked.
    HPSCI member Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) tells the WaPo, “A lot of the behavior which has sent people to jail — largely about lying about Russia — occurred before the firing of Comey. So if the FBI had concerns that the president was wittingly or unwittingly acting in the Russians’ interests as late as the firing of Jim Comey, that’s a pretty scary thought — especially since we don’t know what else they [the investigators] know.”
    posted by Doktor Zed at 5:31 PM on January 12, 2019 [20 favorites]


    Ben Wittes: An important reminder to all left- and center-left folks who have fallen in love in recent years with counterintelligence: Doing counterintelligence well requires counterintelligence authorities. Please don't forget that when all this is over.

    Matt Yglesais: This would be more persuasive if not for the fact that the leakiness of some arm of the FBI + catastrophically poor judgment on the part of FBI senior leadership are directly responsible for Trump’s accession to power.

    nycwouthpaw: One way of looking at it. Another is that *this* happened after a massive 15y expansion of US surveillance and security powers, which utterly failed to stop it. And asking the people to sacrifice more of their privacy and liberty after a security state failure is the oldest of authoritarian impulses. It may be that FBI didn’t have the statutory tools to investigate Trump-Russia effectively, but that’s hardly established by the evidence we have. What we read in yesterday’s reports is they lacked the determination to even open an investigation into Trump (until Comey’s firing). And we know that US political leadership, hindered by Senator McConnell’s objections, could not coalesce around a clear public repudiation of Russia’s interference before the election. That’s a problem, but not one that more intrusive surveillance authorities can solve.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 5:39 PM on January 12, 2019 [92 favorites]


    Doing counterintelligence well requires counterintelligence authorities. Please don't forget that when all this is over.

    Yo hold up MC Tick Tock, you're saying that the three-letter-agencies' work vis-a-vis Predisent Trump-nee-obviously-compromised-candidate was counterintelligence done well?? Well what's it like when they suck at it?

    As T.D.Strange points out, they've had full-body scanners, literally and metaphorically speaking, for over a decade now and Captain Hate isn't exactly a crypto-comms genius.
    posted by petebest at 5:53 PM on January 12, 2019 [22 favorites]


    There's no way in hell that the 17 different intelligence agencies of the U.S. government hasn't had knowledge of Trump's connections to Russia for decades.

    That's impossible.

    Which is what I was getting at in my earlier comment. "Reticence" and "Reluctance."

    Why did our best and brightest, our smartest and most informed, the only public servants trusted with the mandate and requisite powers to monitor this kind of activity, observe all of this behavior and do NOTHING?
    posted by yesster at 6:05 PM on January 12, 2019 [56 favorites]


    In the case of the FBI generally and Comey specifically, it was because they hated Clinton. Period. They hated her and wanted her to lose more than they valued their intelligence mission to protect America. There's no legal system that can overcome when the people implementing it have a clear preference for, or vendetta against, one of the candidates, and put that preference above both law and mission. And that's what happened in 2016.

    It wasn't until he took office that they started to realize what having a traitor as president really meant in practice. Until that point, blind hatred of Clinton won out over everything else.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 6:08 PM on January 12, 2019 [61 favorites]


    Trump tells @JudgeJeanine that he hasn’t left the White House in months.
    posted by waitingtoderail at 6:18 PM on January 12, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Susan Simpson: Jeanine Pirro just asked Trump if he had ever worked on behalf of Russia... and Trump's response did not include a "no."

    Maggie Haberman: "I think it is a great insult...it is a very horrible thing they said," Trump said, still refusing to answer the question as to whether he is working on behalf of Russia's interests.
    posted by pjenks at 6:21 PM on January 12, 2019 [24 favorites]


    An important reminder to all left- and center-left folks who have fallen in love in recent years with counterintelligence: Doing counterintelligence well requires counterintelligence authorities. Please don't forget that when all this is over.

    Yeah, I think this is important to keep in mind. And the fact that the major news stations/sites are probably not so much interested in truth and justice as much as clicks and view.
    When this is over and a relatively sane person is back in the White House they'll probably be cooking up new cultural divisions and speculative scandals to get people pissed off and glued to their screens.
    posted by Liquidwolf at 6:23 PM on January 12, 2019 [3 favorites]


    So... the Sunday morning shows should be interesting tomorrow.
    posted by Rykey at 6:37 PM on January 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


    So... the Sunday morning shows should be interesting tomorrow.

    I'll believe that when I see it.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:40 PM on January 12, 2019 [20 favorites]


    Marcy Wheeler: Let's just imagine, for the moment, that Trump got himself badly compromised and can't find a way out. He fears what Putin has more than what Mueller has (which is NOT a pee tape).

    LAWFARE’S THEORY OF L’AFFAIRE RUSSE MISSES THE KOMPROMAT FOR THE PEE GLEE
    People are looking in the entirely wrong place for the kompromat that Putin has on Trump, and missing all the evidence of it right in front of their faces.

    Vladimir Putin obtained receipts at each stage of this romance of Trump’s willing engagement in a conspiracy with Russians for help getting elected. Putin knows what each of those receipts mean. Mueller has provided hints, most obviously in that GRU indictment, that he knows what some of them are.

    But Mueller’s not telling whether he has obtained the actual receipts.

    And that’s the kompromat. Trump knows that if Mueller can present those receipts, he’s sunk, unless he so discredits the Mueller investigation before that time as to convince voters not to give Democrats a majority in Congress, and convince Congress not to oust him as the sell-out to the country those receipts show him to be. He also knows that, on the off-chance Mueller hasn’t figured this all out yet, Putin can at any time make those receipts plain. Therein lies Trump’s uncertainty: It’s not that he has any doubt what Putin has on him. It’s that he’s not sure which path before him — placating Putin, even if it provides more evidence he’s paying off his campaign debt, or trying to end the Mueller inquiry before repaying that campaign debt, at the risk of Putin losing patience with him — holds more risk.

    Trump knows he’s screwed. He’s just not sure whether Putin or Mueller presents the bigger threat.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 6:42 PM on January 12, 2019 [29 favorites]


    I watched the whole call in, it was a sputtering mess. Even judge whatsherface looked nervous at times. And he threatened more "names" are coming, like straight out q things? and kept asserting his admin is so very great and accomplishing so many great things even tho his enemies are so powerful and everywhere. Just bonkers.
    posted by vrakatar at 6:44 PM on January 12, 2019 [14 favorites]


    I've always understood that the evidence of the money laundering and potential collusion with the campaign were the real leverage that Putin had on Trump but that doesn't mean there isn't also some kind of pee tape.

    There's a non-zero chance Putin wanted something like that because Trump is too dumb to fully understand the implications of every thing else.

    I'm not really invested in the idea but I won't be disappointed if it's real.
    posted by VTX at 6:54 PM on January 12, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Maggie Haberman, NYT: "Just reiterating the president is calling into a friend's TV show to say prosecutors should look into someone because he has a personal battle with the person's son-in-law."
    posted by exlotuseater at 6:57 PM on January 12, 2019 [44 favorites]


    Isn't that a fairly clear bit of witness tampering? Cohen is about to testify.
    posted by Justinian at 6:59 PM on January 12, 2019 [10 favorites]


    [WaPo / Scary]
    Why is Congress so dumb?, by Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.)
    Lawmakers dumped their in-house experts. Now lobbyists do the thinking for them.
    posted by growabrain at 5:05 PM on January 12 [9 favorites +] [!]

    The sign that we can talk about this openly now is great. if only we could have this discussion about state legislatures and ALEC...
    posted by eustatic at 7:32 PM on January 12, 2019 [14 favorites]


    Trump tells @JudgeJeanine that he hasn’t left the White House in months.

    He means he hasn't had a golf vacation in months
    posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:53 PM on January 12, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Thursday marks Trump's longest presidential stretch away from golf - CNNPolitics
    In his first two years in office, Trump easily surpassed President Barack Obama's golf outings over the same time period. By CNN's record keeping, Trump has spent 166 days at a golf club and 212 days at a Trump property. By comparison, it took Obama until the end of his first term to even hit 100 rounds of golf, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who keeps detailed statistics of presidencies
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:13 PM on January 12, 2019 [16 favorites]


    The reason the counterintelligence apparatus largely sat by was because they were stuck between their mandate to investigate possible foreign agents and their mandate to stay the hell out of politics. If the situation was as clear before the inauguration as it became later, I'd say Obama or someone or multiple someones in his administration have some 'splaining to do.

    It's clearly a goddamned minefield given how bad it looks to have law enforcement directly intervening in an election. Coming out and saying "Trump is a Russian agent" goes far beyond even what Comey did re: Clinton.

    I'm in no way defending (given present evidence) the way it was/is being handled, but I certainly recognize the very thorny questions such an investigation brings up.
    posted by wierdo at 8:17 PM on January 12, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Medieval things still work fine! (Alexandra Petri, WaPo)
    Medieval things are just as good as what we have in the present. Walls are medieval? Well, so are wheels! So, for that matter, is the Malleus Maleficarum, but I have yet to hear of a BETTER or more comprehensive manual for identifying whether someone is a witch! So is feudalism, and are you going to tell me with a straight face that we have come up with BETTER ways of apportioning land and resources since then? Medieval Times were bad? Would we voluntarily go to a restaurant whose theme was Bad Times? Nay, say I!

    What other source of malady is there but an imbalance in the four humors? And how better to draw out the humors than by bleeding? What better means of classifying the human soul than into the four humors — melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine or choleric? We are all bilious and have been bilious for hundreds of years.

    Has a better mode of apportioning land and power than feudalism been invented? I’m waiting! […]

    You don’t like serfdom? Well, resistance is feudal.
    posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:37 PM on January 12, 2019 [41 favorites]


    So I made it through about 3 minutes of his call in to Fox. Lies and nonsense rambling aside, it's kind of amazing that he uses his own obstruction of justice as "evidence" of his innocence.

    He tries to write off the legitimacy of the FBI investigation by saying it was the work of people like Comey, McCabe, Strozk, etc. all of whom have been fired by now. As if to imply that their firing was both unrelated to the investigation and also indicative of their job performance. But if you look at the fact that all of them were fired by Trump, Sessions, etc. and with the purpose of obstruction as he himself has stated, then all the firings are just more evidence of guilt than of innocence.

    The fact that we even have to point shit like this out is crazy-making.
    posted by p3t3 at 9:13 PM on January 12, 2019 [22 favorites]


    I'm a subscriber to Marcy Wheeler's theory that "the fact of being compromised is the kompromat" not least because it's defined in silhouette by all the lies upon lies upon lies, and now by the double underline of subterfuge.

    The head of state, while on state business with a foreign power, hides that business from everyone but himself, to the point that the only way to reverse-engineer what was discussed it by snooping on that foreign power. That's prima facie impeachable. The not-so-slow demolition of the machinery of government is impeachable. And yet that somehow remains unthinkable from those who deign to define the thinkable. I am so fucking done with Maggie "speed dial" Haberman coyly waving in the general direction of all the shit she considered herself above reporting for the past three years.
    posted by holgate at 9:23 PM on January 12, 2019 [66 favorites]


    Tornillo: detention site for migrant children to close amid safety fears
    Officials issued warning over health concerns and lack of staffer background checks at Texas facility that housed thousands
    posted by XMLicious at 9:23 PM on January 12, 2019 [41 favorites]


    I'm not surprised she looked nervous, it must be terrifying to interview Trump as a supporter of his. You know that if he screws up and says something incriminating his fans will turn on you instantly.
    posted by the agents of KAOS at 9:31 PM on January 12, 2019 [7 favorites]


    I think she’s more worried that he’ll say something that will end the grift gravy train.

    Ann Coulter showed that one can break with Trump as long as one does so from within the accepted “griftcourse”.
    posted by notyou at 9:51 PM on January 12, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Every Other Journalist in America: Holy shit, I got Trump to straight up admit Putin helped him get elected and he does whatever Putin tells him. I'm a hero! My career is made! I'm gonna be famous!

    Any Journalist on Fox News: Holy shit, I got Trump to straight up admit Putin helped him get elected and he does whatever Putin tells him and I wasn't even trying. My career is ruined! Everything is ruined!
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:57 PM on January 12, 2019 [78 favorites]


    Only a small circle of Trump’s top people would have even known at the time that the letter existed.

    ...Plus whatever secretary/intern flunkie typed and printed it. Or, if they managed that themselves, whatever janitor empties the trash in the printer room where they threw out the first three drafts, or the six copies they shared around for people to mark up with comments, because none of them knows how to operate Word's "track changes" feature.

    These are not careful people. Not even paranoid, because in order to be really paranoid, they have to believe that they could be held accountable for their actions. They have some vague sense of hiding data from "the wrong people," but that's based on convenience, not any awareness that they might actually be committing crimes that could send them to prison.

    None of them think they've done anything prison-worthy, so they're not likely to be circumspect about who sees what they're doing. And they all want kompromat on each other - so each of them is keeping a copy of whatever the other guy said that might get that guy in trouble. At which point, the letter becomes known to each of their secretaries/docs managers, who I'm certain are people of tremendous ethical focus and unwavering loyalty.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:24 PM on January 12, 2019 [15 favorites]


    If you need another reason to not vote for Tulsi Gabbard - she bought cryptocoins at the top of the market.
    posted by PenDevil at 10:51 PM on January 12, 2019 [11 favorites]


    I listened to the Fox call, and what I marvel at is that he sounds SO ANGRY. He actually sounds like he's on some version of speed, but whatever's going on, I hear on public transportation insane angry phone calls where I fear for the people in that person's life, and it's like that, only he's our President. Ha. ha.
    posted by angrycat at 10:53 PM on January 12, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Who was the person who gave the FBI a copy of the 'Fire Comey' draft letter right after it was written?

    It's gotta be Rosenstein, right? The "what am I going to do, wear a wire?" Rosenstein. All evidence points him to being pretty shaken by the events surrounding the firing, I can't see him sitting on that draft and not sharing it with the FBI.
    posted by BungaDunga at 10:56 PM on January 12, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Over the holidays, [Trump] inhabited the White House largely alone, tweeting out his demands and grievances. Several senior West Wing officials described the building as a “ghost town” or a “no man’s land.”

    One might almost say that he is isolated. Increasingly so!
    posted by Joe in Australia at 12:36 AM on January 13, 2019 [41 favorites]


    My guess is a combination of many factors. Post-election, post-holidays, Mueller probe reportedly coming to a head, Trump acting more and more irrationally, and so on.

    Nope. Last Monday was my birthday, and I'm getting my wish.

    You are all welcome!

    (Yes, there was cake)
    posted by mikelieman at 1:18 AM on January 13, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Asked by Pirro if he'd ever worked on behalf of Russia, Trump did not directly answer the question. Instead, he said, "I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked. I think it's the most insulting article I've ever had written. And if you read the article, you'd see that they found absolutely nothing."
    Umm, in Trump's world he had the stories by the NYT and Post written? (And apparently findings not being known are the same as finding nothing)
    posted by wierdo at 2:44 AM on January 13, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Slowly, muscles are starting to be flexed.

    [Reuters] Schumer to force vote on U.S. decision to lift sanctions on Russia firms

    U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on Saturday he will force a vote soon on a resolution to disapprove the Trump administration’s decision to relax sanctions on three Russian companies connected to oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

    But it takes time.

    Passage of the resolution of disapproval of Treasury’s decision would require the approval of both the Democratic-majority house and the Senate, led by Trump’s fellow Republicans who are unlikely to break with his policy.
    posted by stonepharisee at 3:30 AM on January 13, 2019 [13 favorites]


    That's a weird assertion given that the bill that gave congress the explicit power to review Trump's behavior on Russia sanctions passed the senate 98-2 over White House objections back in July 2018.
    posted by rdr at 3:49 AM on January 13, 2019 [10 favorites]


    The clip I saw of Pirro asking Trump if he was working for Russia was all I watched of the nonsense last night, but from that clip I didn't detect any nervousness on Pirro's part. She basically chuckled while asking that question, as if she knew it were an absurd thing to ask her friend, but it was on the paper in front of her so those were her lines to say. Where in the interview does she seem nervous? (Not defending her—just curious.)
    posted by emelenjr at 4:43 AM on January 13, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Yes, I saw the interview as an attempt to damage control by reframing all the issues as "the Democrat's fault" or "a witch hunt". She was chuckling along going directly at each point, making it look like it's just obvious that these things are fake. And then she was also pushing for an emergency declaration. It was spooky.
    posted by mumimor at 5:44 AM on January 13, 2019 [5 favorites]


    I would think it a matter of due diligence for US intelligence agencies to at least review the career of any candidate for national office. These are the most likely targets of foreign interference, so of course the FBI and CIA look at them. But, of course, Trump's cronies assumed they'd be immune from scrutiny, so...
    posted by SPrintF at 6:34 AM on January 13, 2019 [6 favorites]


    ABC/WaPo has a new poll (PDF): Trump, GOP Blamed For Shutdown; No Crisis Seen But Fewer Oppose Wall
    Fifty-three percent in the national survey said that Trump and the GOP are mainly responsible for the shutdown, while 29 percent blamed congressional Democrats, nearly a 2-1 margin against the president and his party. Thirteen percent said both equally are at fault.[…]

    A wide majority of Americans rejected the claim at the heart of Trump’s address to the nation last week: Just 24 percent thought that the immigration situation at the border is at a crisis level. Even among supporters of a border wall, a less-than-overwhelming 46 percent see a crisis, along with just 9 percent of wall opponents. Still, about half in both groups said it’s a serious problem, though not a crisis (48 percent of wall supporters, 47 percent of wall opponents).

    As noted, while more still oppose rather than back a wall, support has increased to 42 percent, up from 34 percent a year ago and a previous high of 37 percent in 2017. Opposition, 54 percent, is down from 63 percent a year ago and a previous low of 60 percent two years ago.

    These shifts have occurred chiefly among Republicans, whose support for the wall has gained 16 percentage points versus one year ago: +10 points among conservatives and +11 among [independents].
    Headlines are portraying this as a setback for Trump and the GOP, but as long as their partisans are increasingly backing the Wall, they'll probably look at this as a break-even.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 7:12 AM on January 13, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Donald Trump bears most blame for shutdown, according to new CNN poll - CNNPolitics
    Negotiations between the President and congressional leaders have stalled as neither side seems willing to budge on funding for a wall along the border with Mexico. That proposal remains deeply unpopular with the public, according to the poll. Overall, 56% oppose a wall, 39% favor it. That's almost exactly the same as in December. And less than half view the situation at the border as a crisis (45% say it's a crisis, 52% that it is not)
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:41 AM on January 13, 2019 [5 favorites]


    I would think it a matter of due diligence for US intelligence agencies to at least review the career of any candidate for national office.

    I don’t have a good answer for this, but given our intelligence agencies’ long history of subverting the democracies of other nations to prevent leftist candidates being elected (and the FBI’s war against domestic leftists) this notion is not entirely unproblematic.
    posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:44 AM on January 13, 2019 [42 favorites]


    I would think it a matter of due diligence for US intelligence agencies to at least review the career of any candidate for national office.

    And then there's the part where the employee manual does not cover "Holy shit, this presidential candidate is compromised to hell and back by Russia!"

    Rewatch the Clinton/Trump debates. She knew 100% when she called him Putin's puppet, but since at that time it's based on a counter-intel investigation, she couldn't spring the whole thing. Classic Triggered Trump: "No puppet. No puppet. YOU'RE THE PUPPET"

    He basically verbalized his thought process. Deny and Deny until something to accuse comes along.

    I would suggest that a comprehensive health screening, including a psych eval be done by real doctors, as opposed to Dr. Feelgood might be something to add for candidates.
    posted by mikelieman at 7:54 AM on January 13, 2019 [17 favorites]


    a comprehensive health screening, including a psych eval

    Don’t forget the tox screen.
    posted by 1970s Antihero at 8:02 AM on January 13, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Yeah, we’re going to need a giant fucking commission to determine all the ways 2016 was allowed to happen, including the total failure of the intelligence agencies to do their supposed job: protect the country from foreign adversaries. They literally could not have failed more completely than they did in 2016. Allowing a literal foreign agent to run for and be elected President without sounding every possible alarm is like the platonic fucking ideal of counterintelligence failure.

    I am not one of the lefties who categorically dismisses the intelligence agencies or the military. I’ve always thought intelligence agencies are necessary, in the sense that there is a job that needs doing and they’re the ones who are supposed to do it, even while I’ve been angry and scared and disgusted at their actual track records.

    But this? Motherfucker are you serious?

    This is a catastrophic failure of a number of institutions, including the three letter agencies, and we’re going to need a full accounting of that failure before we decide how to clean house and rebuild.

    And I say this knowing full well that the buck on this likely stops with Obama.
    posted by schadenfrau at 8:03 AM on January 13, 2019 [73 favorites]


    I don’t have a good answer for this, but given our intelligence agencies’ long history of subverting the democracies of other nations to prevent leftist candidates being elected (and the FBI’s war against domestic leftists) this notion is not entirely unproblematic.

    The intelligence agencies are not off the hook for Trump. As was pointed out, Trump rose to power despite (or because of, we may someday learn) their investigative and operative powers. I think it's important to be able to frame their role here in light of 9/11, even where it's not brought into the discussions directly.

    This is to say, we don't know that the IAs didn't review Trump's career. Some corners are raising the likelihood that the IAs have known about Trump and Russia since the 80s, and yet here we are, though the US might not be in this condition if white-collar crime had ever been prosecuted with deterrent vigor.
    posted by rhizome at 8:04 AM on January 13, 2019 [8 favorites]


    For the record: if it’s true that the intelligence agencies knew Donald Trump was a Russian agent for the last thirty years, the time to disclose that information publicly was during the goddamn primaries. There is just...no fucking excuse. Literal foreign agent! Without the apparently moderating influence of Angela Lansbury!
    posted by schadenfrau at 8:06 AM on January 13, 2019 [35 favorites]


    Unless we eventually learn that there were factions within factions within the IC who saw in him the opportunity to push through agendas and actions long awaited, particularly on race, domestically, and globally.
    posted by infini at 8:15 AM on January 13, 2019 [6 favorites]


    The reason the counterintelligence apparatus largely sat by was because they were stuck between their mandate to investigate possible foreign agents and their mandate to stay the hell out of politics. If the situation was as clear before the inauguration as it became later, I'd say Obama or someone or multiple someones in his administration have some 'splaining to do.

    This is your occasional reminder that Obama and Biden had their intelligence people brief Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan on Russia's efforts to interfere with the 2016 election, and according to Biden, McConnell told Obama that not only would he deny knowing what he'd just been told, but that he would accuse Obama of partisan efforts to spoil the election if Obama went public.

    Which is as close to a perfect example of an act of treason before two witnesses as I can think of.
    posted by Gelatin at 8:29 AM on January 13, 2019 [131 favorites]


    Yeah in that account Obama was trying to get the Republicans to...sign a letter condemning Russian interference.

    That’s a far cry from “hey this clown is a literal Russian asset.”
    posted by schadenfrau at 8:35 AM on January 13, 2019 [3 favorites]


    For the record: if it’s true that the intelligence agencies knew Donald Trump was a Russian agent for the last thirty years, the time to disclose that information publicly was during the goddamn primaries. There is just...no fucking excuse.

    The intelligence community is deathly allergic to embarrassment. We're probably never going to know this for a fact, but: say intelligence agencies had at one time (or continuously for decades) used Trump for their own purposes as their own useful idiot. Say that due to their own incompetence or neglect they allowed him to get out of control and be turned by Putin into his own idiot and used for his purposes. What do you do when he runs for and wins the presidency, if coming out with the truth means admitting that you fucked up so grandly that nothing might ever recover?

    Intelligence agencies have shown throughout modern US history a willingness to go to any lengths to avoid embarrassing themselves. Given their track record I don't think they're above letting the country permanently turn into Hell if the alternative is revealing that this is their fault and that their institution has no right to exist.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 8:37 AM on January 13, 2019 [14 favorites]


    Yeah in that account Obama was trying to get the Republicans to...sign a letter condemning Russian interference.

    Yes, based on what Biden was willing to say in public in July of last year, anyway. And McConnell wouldn't even go that far. At the very least, he placed party power over national security; at worst, he actively conspired with the Russians to get Trump elected.
    posted by Gelatin at 8:38 AM on January 13, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Polling... The news seems to be that 46% believe there is a crisis at the border and 53% don’t. The job of journalism is to report whether or not there IS a crisis at the border. How can people be informed and have reality based opinions if we can’t learn what’s going on?
    posted by njohnson23 at 8:40 AM on January 13, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Oh McConnell is a traitor who deserves to be tried and sentenced as a traitor, full stop. But that wasn’t the only point of failure, and while it was necessary for the ensuing catastrophuck, it was not sufficient.

    There’s also no date attached. If the Obama administration knew how compromised Trump was and only brought it up once he’d won the nomination, they’d already shit the bed rather dramatically. And then it appears they folded to McConnell’s obviously terrible hand — literally the executive had the ability to disclose whatever they want; McConnell could claim they never said anything but there are ducking records — they gambled on letting it ride and making it Clinton’s problem because they didn’t want to deal with the resultant conflict.

    And now here we are.
    posted by schadenfrau at 8:43 AM on January 13, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Which, also: Obama extended the surveillance state. He fucking expanded the intelligence agency powers. And then utterly failed to use them appropriately.

    I know we all miss him, but I don’t think his legacy on this is gonna be good.
    posted by schadenfrau at 8:45 AM on January 13, 2019 [37 favorites]


    Polling... The news seems to be that 46% believe there is a crisis at the border and 53% don’t. The job of journalism is to report whether or not there IS a crisis at the border. How can people be informed and have reality based opinions if we can’t learn what’s going on?

    But surely there is a crisis at the border, and that crisis is refugee seekers being rounded up, separated from their children, and herded into concentration camps. If that's not a crisis, what is?
    posted by Faint of Butt at 8:45 AM on January 13, 2019 [14 favorites]


    the total failure of the intelligence agencies to do their supposed job: protect the country from foreign adversaries.

    I think that's letting the rest of the citizenry off the hook. The constitutional provisions to ward off foreign influence were not meant to be window-dressing. They persist in the standards for receiving a security clearance. They've metastasised into the fear of a more diverse nation overthrowing "Western civilisation" as expressed by people who have contributed nothing to civilisation but like being white. But millions of people wanted to elect* a bigoted crook and it's hard to say that any intervention during the campaign would have changed that.

    (* Given the brief paragraphs at the end of the GRU indictment, I would be shocked but not surprised if Mueller can prove active interference in electoral systems themselves. If so, all bets are off.)
    posted by holgate at 8:51 AM on January 13, 2019 [4 favorites]


    We should probably stop this now. But: the thing was that everyone, everyone thought Hilary would win until election night. So the people in charge on every level acted according to that, and for some that meant not going public about what they knew about Trump for very different reasons. For others it meant going on and on about her emails. Some people were actively engaged in getting Trump elected in spite of the odds and what then followed, but it was probably a minority, both in the intel communities and at the political level. Who were on what side of that line apart from the obvious? I don't know entirely, and I really hope Mueller sees it as part of his job to find out.
    posted by mumimor at 8:51 AM on January 13, 2019 [10 favorites]


    In fairness to the XYZ agencies, when you find a foreign intelligence operation going on in your country, sometimes you just stop it, but other times, you let them think they are undetected so you can learn more about their operations, goals, personnel, domestic supporters, etc. It's part of the game. You can always roll them up later, or so you think, and usually you do, but sometimes it gets away from you. I suspect this is what happened with Trump.
    posted by M-x shell at 9:01 AM on January 13, 2019 [8 favorites]


    We should probably stop this now. But: the thing was that everyone, everyone thought Hilary would win until election night.

    This is how the Intelligence Agencies are let off the hook. Trump should have already been political nuclear waste, but he wasn't, for Some Reason. I'm inclined to assign at least part of the blame to reticence to meddle in politics, but not all of it.

    other times, you let them think they are undetected so you can learn more about their operations, goals, personnel, domestic supporters, etc. It's part of the game. You can always roll them up later, or so you think, and usually you do, but sometimes it gets away from you.

    This too is unnecessarily charitable.

    I don't want this to turn into a Relitigating The Primaries deletionfest. For me, the agencies have to redeem themselves in helping to right the ship, since they did not do anything about those assholes who smuggled a bunch of anchors on board and are dropping them all off the starboard gunwale. This is a significant aspect of my personal truth and reconciliation process headcanon, but these agencies' fundamental inability to accept blame for anything is going to be a problem. Heck, we already see one of their cheerleaders calling for expanded powers.
    posted by rhizome at 9:12 AM on January 13, 2019 [8 favorites]


    The thing people seem to be skipping is that Trump isn't the only one who is beholden due to Kompromat. Remember Trump was a real estate developer and played around with Russian mobsters and politicians in a pragmatic non-partisan way.

    Trump himself had kompromat on others. He had a lot of kompromat on Attorneys General who should have prosecuted him but instead accepted campaign donations. He had kompromat on city officials who approved his projects. He had favors owed. It isn't a coincidence there are pictures of him with Bill and Hillary.

    And that's just the obvious plain view stuff. Then there is the less visible stuff. Do you think the Russian mob in the U.S. doesn't have dirt on people?

    The only reason Obama wasn't tied up in any of this is probably the same reason Obama came out of Chicago relatively clean: racism. The corrupt democrats in Chicago were so racist they kept him on the outside of their corruption network. Once he made it to the national stage he wasn't compromised in the same way almost all other politicians are. He owed nowhere near the same level of favors. But despite not being entangled himself he had to be acutely aware that the people all around him, people ostensibly on his team, were.

    I fully expect the Muller web to snag a lot Republican politicians at all levels but I also expect it will trip up some Democratic Party politicians as well.

    There is an intelligence failure but the bigger failure is political and at the political level there is no appetite for pursuing rich people who write big checks to politicians. Hell we don't even bother to try and collect the taxes that they owe under the extremely light tax regime they have bought with their donations.
    posted by srboisvert at 9:21 AM on January 13, 2019 [44 favorites]


    Trump should've been nuclear waste purely from his shitty business record but he re-wrote his own history with The Apprentice and NY media decided it would be better business to go along then remind everyone that he's been up to his neck with assorted criminal organisations (including Deutsche Bank) since the late 90's.
    posted by PenDevil at 9:24 AM on January 13, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Ya I think it is important when looking back and ask why the alphabit soup/Obama/Hillary/anyone didn't do something to remember that no one, including the clown himself, thought he was going to win. And saying something was going to produce a shit storm of epic proportions.

    I mean the mind boggles at the reaction when the government announces that the new GOP candidate for President is an active Russian Agent. And the Cheeto isn't someone who is just going to go away quietly once exposed.
    posted by Mitheral at 9:33 AM on January 13, 2019 [6 favorites]


    The only reason Obama wasn't tied up in any of this is probably the same reason Obama came out of Chicago relatively clean: racism. The corrupt democrats in Chicago were so racist they kept him on the outside of their corruption network.
    That is really not how Chicago works. Obama came out of the anti-machine tradition, which has always existed in Chicago. But there are plenty of corrupt black and other POC politicians in Chicago.
    posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:34 AM on January 13, 2019 [55 favorites]


    so basically we have a corrupt republican administration because a democratic administration failed to call them out before the election?

    this is awful
    posted by pyramid termite at 9:35 AM on January 13, 2019 [7 favorites]


    there is no appetite for pursuing rich people who write big checks to politicians.

    then what is that grumbling sound, I had assumed it was my increasingly ferocious appetite?

    Seriously: a giant, big ass commission, and a new department specifically to root out corruption

    and a pony
    posted by schadenfrau at 9:36 AM on January 13, 2019 [16 favorites]


    I also think Obama was simply not corrupt. I'm starting to view corruption as a habit that's addictive. In Chicago today, Pritzker's new blind trust has been found to not be so blind, and he's decided to double the salary of his staff out of his own pocket. While neither action is illegal or corrupt, it's not hard see how they could lead to corrupt practices.

    I'll never forget when a Times reporter said in an interview that he 100% knew Trump had engaged in illegal activity simply because he got rich off New York real estate. If you're rich and you're American, you're corrupt. It's just how you've done things, and you no longer think twice about it. Hell, cheating is your patriotic duty.
    posted by xammerboy at 9:43 AM on January 13, 2019 [32 favorites]


    Ya I think it is important when looking back and ask why the alphabet soup/Obama/Hillary/anyone didn't do something to remember that no one, including the clown himself, thought he was going to win.

    "Nobody thought he was going to win" isn't strictly true and provides excuses for incredible, unimaginable incompetence at the highest levels. Many of his supporters thought he would win, of course, but realistically anxious people also thought there was a very real chance that he'd pull it out, because that's what the data indicated. Like, I couldn't eat solid food for days before the election because I knew there was a significant chance he would win. I didn't know he'd win or lose, but I wasn't at all surprised that he won. I'm not Nostradamus: I just understood that a 25% chance of something happening means 25% and not 0%. If nobody at the top understood that, then the head of the fish had already rotted away to nothing before the first 2016 vote was cast.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 9:46 AM on January 13, 2019 [14 favorites]


    so basically we have a corrupt republican administration because a democratic administration failed to call them out before the election?

    If Obama had forcefully called them out, we don’t know how it would have turned out. Trump may still have won if McConnel had contested and Trump was then able to whine about how he was a victim. It’s not like there wasn’t already a preponderance of evidence available on how corrupt Trump was for anyone who cared to look.
    posted by C'est la D.C. at 9:46 AM on January 13, 2019 [10 favorites]


    If you haven't looked at the egregiously damning timeline of Trump and Russia - with special guest role by America's Mayor Rudy "So American" Giuilani! - refresh and then consider this is the candidate that steamrolled over all other awful GOP candidates (GOP - sit back down, this is your mess).

    By the time that insufferably clangorous RNC nomination sharted all over everyone, the people in the vast - vast! - intelligence community whose sole purpose it is to keep this country free of enemies foreign or domestic should have been blowing shit up - metaphorically.

    The suspicions and straight-up ground truths we knew about Trump back in Ye Olde Campaigne Threaddes have ALL been verified. So maybe we're the super geniuses here and all that billions in tech that allows them to check the temperatures of suspects' keesters is utterly useless for stopping, y'know, a demented sociopath from destroying our government from within and rolling over for North Korea and Russia.

    This is not a narrative that's out of bounds, although we all huddle in here as if it were - this is the actual no-foolin-wow scenario and what's being done about it? Mueller Claus is going to save us? Not bloody likely. (Although, Dear Mueller Claus, I have always believed in you and would like a pony and a race car for my brother kthx petebest.)
    posted by petebest at 9:49 AM on January 13, 2019 [23 favorites]


    I feel like we're racing a little ahead of the facts. A lot of the kompromat is still hypothetical and conjecture. It's quite plausible that Trump doesn't even fucking know he's compromised - he might well see his Russian relationships as mutually beneficial business arrangements, like, they've been scratching each other's backs for forty years, and that would be just as bad. In some ways, worse.

    And as far as I can tell, the case (as publicly known) is still missing any concrete action aside from firing Comey
    posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 9:54 AM on January 13, 2019 [2 favorites]


    resulting legacy being the most inconsequential two-term presidency in American history.

    [citation needed]
    posted by C'est la D.C. at 9:55 AM on January 13, 2019 [14 favorites]


    It's quite plausible that Trump doesn't even fucking know he's compromised

    I agree he's an idiot, so we may be using different definitions for "compromised" but even this latest sudden-and-'unprompted' support for the 1979 Russian invasion of Afghanistan is pretty a pretty foul stench for him not to be aware of his dirtiness.

    He knows he's cheated on hundreds of millions in taxes. He knows the Russian oligarchy owns his money. He knows he's using a compromised cell phone on purpose. He knows he fired Comey to stop "the Russia thing". If he can't piece all that together his mental condition is worse than we thought and we think it's really, really bad.
    posted by petebest at 9:59 AM on January 13, 2019 [17 favorites]


    so basically we have a corrupt republican administration because [...]

    ... the Democrats allowed Ford to get away with pardoning Nixon, and then Reagan got elected.

    [not to relitigate the 1970's or anything]
    posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 10:00 AM on January 13, 2019 [46 favorites]


    Like if we jettison Trump's Mirror and Trump's Razor and say, hey, what if he called up the NSA, FBI, and whoever else might know anything and ask them: Am I Dirty? Am I working for the Russian interests? Why would anyone think that? Y'know. Get to the bottom of it quick.

    I will not be placing legal tender on the wager of that happening though. But here's the extra point kick: if we accept as given that Trump is aware he's been bought and paid for and he really wants Putin to like him (???) then how much longer can we allow this shitheel to wreck the western alliance, seat batshit federal judges for life and sign nature-killing executive orders? Another couple of years? Maybe the New York Times has someone they'd like to give an insightful Op-Ed to that could sort this right out?* David Duke perhaps?

    *since this was all obvious in 2016 the continued utter faceplanting of corporate media to summon even modest narrative cohesion around this is pathetic. They've spent three weeks wondering aloud if the obvious non-emergency "at the border" could in fact be an emergency? That's where we are there.
    posted by petebest at 10:10 AM on January 13, 2019 [3 favorites]


    "Nobody thought he was going to win" isn't strictly true

    And even if it were, I don't give a shit. When the stakes involve electing a clown puppet foreign agent to the fucking Presidency, "maybe we do nothing and it turns out ok" is not fucking acceptable.
    posted by schadenfrau at 10:13 AM on January 13, 2019 [42 favorites]


    This thread is a firehose, and I've not read every post -- but the NYT and the Post were both covering the FBI's investigation of Trump back in May of 2018. I remember the name Crossfire Hurricane -- it's kind of hard to forget. So the story isn't new, it's just resurfacing.
    posted by jrochest at 10:16 AM on January 13, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Along those lines, I'd say the country needs to know what the intelligence community knows about every other compromised politician, regardless of party, right now.

    Like...it's an emergency. If there's reason to believe Mitch McConnell is compromised by Russia, we need to fucking know.

    The worst has happened. The time for hedging bets, if it ever existed (it did not), is long since past.

    Especially because now it seems like the major barrier is that the people who would be in charge of declassifying this stuff are the people who are implicated in it. So. We need the House Dems to do this shit. Like, now.
    posted by schadenfrau at 10:19 AM on January 13, 2019 [19 favorites]


    This isn't going to get fixed with political approval from Republicans. It ONLY gets solved with criminal indictments and actual hard jail time against everyone involved, by a Democratic president that will not acquiesce to "look forward, not backward". Look fucking backward, and prosecute everyone, after we win. That ranged from Trump, to McConnell, to everyone at the NRA, if the evidence shows they knew.

    Followed by the most severe sanctions imposed on Russia that have ever been imposed on any country in modern history, commiserate with a response to an act of war. Because that's that it was. I'm talking complete and total travel ban for all individuals with a Russian visa stamp, complete cessation of all trade with Russia and corresponding sanctions on any nation that doesn't follow suit, arrest warrants and travel bans for every Russian oligarch, and completely removing Russian access from the US banking system and internet, for every Russian citizen.

    Nothing short will suffice, and anything less will ensure it happens again.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 10:24 AM on January 13, 2019 [41 favorites]


    So. We need the House Dems to do this shit. Like, now.

    Oh yeah, the writers need to bring this full circle with a House committee focusing on activities that are, let's say, un-American.

    In a callback to Roy-fucking-Cohen, it must be called the House Un-American Activities Committee 2.0.
    posted by mikelieman at 10:28 AM on January 13, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Not to abuse the edit window, but with the callback to Roy Cohen, this is truly the worst possible universe.

    With that said, this fiasco begins with the leadership of the GOP at the time of the nominations for either negligently failing to vet Trump OR for intentionally allowing it knowing he was compromised. So they're the first ones before HUAC2
    posted by mikelieman at 10:33 AM on January 13, 2019 [6 favorites]


    With that said, this fiasco begins with the leadership of the GOP at the time of the nominations for either negligently failing to vet Trump OR for intentionally allowing it knowing he was compromised. So they're the first ones before HUAC2
    Good point!
    And maybe also an indication that other Republicans were already compromised.
    posted by mumimor at 10:39 AM on January 13, 2019 [8 favorites]


    A lot of the kompromat is still hypothetical and conjecture.

    Since we have proof Trump was soliciting business in Russia (including sucking up to Putin) during the campaign, viz. the signed letter of intent for the Trump Tower Moscow, while lying repeatedly to the American people about not having any business interests in Russia, we now know Putin had a piece of kompromat hanging over Trump's head since 2015-16. And the circumstantial evidence surrounding Trump's business affairs suggests that this is only the tip of an iceberg of corruption (to say nothing of the potential for blackmailing someone with a lengthy record of marital infidelity and alleged sexual assault like Trump).

    And as far as I can tell, the case (as publicly known) is still missing any concrete action aside from firing Comey

    And forcing out or firing, under various pretexts, FBI and DoJ officials who were either working on the Trump-Russia probe or involved in adjacent investigations: Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Sally Yates, Bruce Ohr, James Baker, Rachel Brand, and Preet Bharara. Not to mention all Trump's favorable political positions toward Russia that certainly look like the quid half of quid pro quo.

    The dam that Trump and his allies in the media and political establishment have been shoring up against his scandals and corruption is going to burst sooner rather than later with all the pressure that's been building since the election. Michael Cohen's upcoming testimony on Capitol Hill could be the final crack in it.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 10:51 AM on January 13, 2019 [17 favorites]


    I sure as hell can't blame PoC or religious minorities or non-cis-het people, already bearing the brunt of and exhausted from all our forms of misanthropy and who were facing immediate further consequences from a Trump victory, for not thinking about the unthinkable in the run-up to Election Day. Or anyone else during 11/9 and its near aftermath, for that matter.

    But we're a week away from entering the third year of the Trump administration and the post-everything era and we need to stop framing choices and actions and inactions taken in expectation of a Clinton victory back in 2016 as a consequence of some sort of exonerating or redeeming optimism or as forgivable mistakes we all ought to empathize with.

    No, it was a case of gambling with the whole world's future that there was room for maneuvering in the sliver between that victory and the expected 49.9% of the American political system supporting incipient fascism, or people gambling that they could save on the costs of committing to contingency planning.
    posted by XMLicious at 10:54 AM on January 13, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Mod note: 2016 is over, folks, and the rehash needs to be over too.
    posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 11:04 AM on January 13, 2019 [16 favorites]


    I found the thread below Daniel Dale's tweet on the, "I haven't actually left the White House in months," quip to make some interesting points.

    My sense is the quote shows how Trump perceives not having spent the holidays at Mar A Lago. It's not factual in any remote sense, but the "impressionist thinking" idea does seem to nail what's going on—and that's terrifying.
    posted by bcd at 11:24 AM on January 13, 2019 [14 favorites]


    I'm talking complete and total travel ban for all individuals with a Russian visa stamp, complete cessation of all trade with Russia and corresponding sanctions on any nation that doesn't follow suit,

    Let's not do the second part. "You're either with us or you're against us" has always been a stupid FP that demonstrates no respect for other nations' sovereignty. If you want international sanctions then lobby for them and try to persuade other countries. Don't threaten like a bully.
    posted by srboisvert at 11:52 AM on January 13, 2019 [12 favorites]


    I found the thread below Daniel Dale's tweet on the, "I haven't actually left the White House in months," quip to make some interesting points.


    It is still weird and interesting to me that the best reporter at covering Trump's endless lying is Canadian.
    posted by srboisvert at 11:55 AM on January 13, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Mod note: Apropos of a few mod notes in the last couple weeks, I've just put up a MetaTalk post about keeping US primaries discussion manageable. We will probably be referring back to that post a lot in the next year and change; if you participate in these threads it's something I'd really appreciate you giving a read.
    posted by cortex (staff) at 11:57 AM on January 13, 2019 [28 favorites]


    It is still weird and interesting to me that the best reporter at covering Trump's endless lying is Canadian.

    The Rob Ford beat was damn good practice for the Trump gig.
    posted by bcd at 12:00 PM on January 13, 2019 [43 favorites]


    I'm talking complete and total travel ban for all individuals with a Russian visa stamp, complete cessation of all trade with Russia and corresponding sanctions on any nation that doesn't follow suit, arrest warrants and travel bans for every Russian oligarch, and completely removing Russian access from the US banking system and internet, for every Russian citizen.

    Really? What about the LGBT people in Russia (and Chechnya) who are trying to find a way out of the country so they aren't literally murdered? Should the US just never accept any of these people as refugees? What about liberal opponents of the current government there, and journalists, whose lives may also be at risk -- should they also be forced to stay?
    posted by threementholsandafuneral at 12:04 PM on January 13, 2019 [33 favorites]


    I remember the name Crossfire Hurricane -- it's kind of hard to forget. So the story isn't new, it's just resurfacing.

    This New Yorker interview with author of the recent NYT article about Crossfire Hurricane helps explain what's different.

    In short, we only recently learned that the investigation was a counterintelligence operation from the very start.
    posted by diogenes at 12:24 PM on January 13, 2019 [11 favorites]


    If you want international sanctions then lobby for them and try to persuade other countries. Don't threaten like a bully.

    The United States has warned German companies involved in the Russian-led Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that they could face sanctions if they stick with the project.
    U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell addressed the issue in a letter sent to several companies, the U.S. Embassy said on Sunday.

    “The letter reminds that any company operating in the Russian energy export pipeline sector is in danger under CAATSA of U.S. sanctions,”

    Germany and European allies accuse Washington of using its Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) to meddle in their foreign and energy policies.

    And, from Friday:

    Trump's Ambassador Finds Few Friends in Germany
    Since arriving in Berlin as U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell has flouted diplomatic conventions and attempted to interfere in domestic politics. He has since become politically isolated in the German capital.
    posted by infini at 12:44 PM on January 13, 2019 [5 favorites]


    I'm confused, Crossfire Hurricane (investigation coded '105##### something-something according to Greg Miller) was Strzok's investigation, started in July 2016, to investigate the reports from an Australian ambassador Alexander Downer, about his interactions with Papadopoulos. Are people conflating the counterintelligence operation post-Comey firing with this?
    posted by Harry Caul at 12:44 PM on January 13, 2019 [1 favorite]


    A Republican Congressman’s Racism Is Finally Catching Up With Him (Pema Levy, Mother Jones)
    GOP leaders have condemned [Rep. Steve King's] latest remarks about white nationalism, and a few are calling for a primary challenge.
    However, no one of consequence seems to be calling for him to resign, partly reflecting his influence in the Republican Party in the Iowa caucuses.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 12:47 PM on January 13, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Media Matters: Rep. Rashida Tlaib cursing got 5 times more coverage on cable news than Rep. Steve King embracing white supremacy
    [...] The discrepancy was the most glaring on Fox News, which devoted 52 minutes of coverage to Tlaib’s cursing and just 42 seconds to King’s comments about white supremacy. That’s over 74 times more coverage of Tlaib. Fox’s sole segment about King was framed as “Republican Congressman Steve King is fighting back against a New York Times article.”
    posted by Joe in Australia at 12:49 PM on January 13, 2019 [87 favorites]


    bcd: I found the thread below Daniel Dale's tweet on the, "I haven't actually left the White House in months," quip to make some interesting points.

    My sense is the quote shows how Trump perceives not having spent the holidays at Mar A Lago. It's not factual in any remote sense, but the "impressionist thinking" idea does seem to nail what's going on—and that's terrifying.

    If Trump had been speaking to an actual reporter rather than Jeanine Pirro, there'd be a temptation to respond "You were in Texas two days ago" or "What about Texas?" Some people, e.g at the NYT, have done the equivalent direct-contradiction-with-facts in their interviews.

    But taking his likely dementia-adjacent symptoms into account, it would probably be best to ask "Were you in Texas recently?" or something even less leading, with the implication that you, the reporter, are unsure of the right answer, and are hoping he can refresh your memory. They should ask questions that do have a should-be-obvious answer, but are so open-ended that he can't be sure. I've mentioned this before, but with regard to factual what-are-the-branches-of-government type things, but maybe stuff about his family members, birthday, etc would be even stronger.

    Of course his getting that wrong wouldn't magically shut up his apologists, but it sure would make their lives a bit more difficult.
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 1:04 PM on January 13, 2019 [9 favorites]


    So here's my theory of the FBI counterintelligence investigation leak: it's Mueller moving to ensure his report gets published.

    Who would have been in a position to leak this story? An investigation into whether the President is a foreign agent is bound to be as top secret as it gets, so only the people at the FBI who were directly involved would know of it, plus whoever in the intelligence bureaucracy they had to interact with for oversight. That investigation got folded into Mueller, so presumably most of the people who knew about it are now working for him. Note that the NYT story is presented very much from an FBI's-eye view.

    What is the effect of leaking this? Well, "Is the President of the United States a Russian agent" is not a question that can be left to hang. It needs a definite, public answer. That answer will be in the Mueller report. But we're told that the report will be done any day now, so why leak this now rather than just wait? Only if you think the report, or that part of it, may not be made public. If the report's answer to the question above is yes, the rest of the report may not even matter; but even if it's no, it's going to be very hard to publish just that part and redact the rest. So this leak has made it substantially more likely that we're going to see the full report. It also says to Whitaker et al., "You're going to quash the report? Go ahead; we'll just leak the worst parts, then." (I know, Mueller runs a tight ship and all that. But that's a strategy, not a principle. When it benefits him, he'll leak, and this is the endgame so he has nothing to lose.)

    So I think what this leak tells us is: the Mueller report is basically done and there's a fight going on at DOJ about whether it gets published; the report discusses whether Donald Trump is a Russian agent and is generally bad enough for Trump that his people are trying to suppress it; and Mueller has just taken a major step to make sure they can't.
    posted by hoist with his own pet aardvark at 1:14 PM on January 13, 2019 [25 favorites]


    Are people conflating the counterintelligence operation post-Comey firing with this?

    I think it's correct to conflate the two. If I'm understanding things correctly, the Comey firing triggered a new "aspect" of the Strzok investigation. Originally, it was believed that the new aspect was a criminal investigation into obstruction. Now we know it was a counterintelligence operation based on the belief that Trump was working for Russia.

    It does get confusing though. It seems like the pre-Comey-firing investigation was already a counterintelligence operation looking at the Trump campaign. Maybe the distinction is the extent that the new investigation was looking into Trump himself being compromised and actively working in Russia's interest.
    posted by diogenes at 1:14 PM on January 13, 2019 [4 favorites]


    If Trump had been speaking to an actual reporter rather than Jeanine Pirro, there'd be a temptation to respond "You were in Texas two days ago"

    Does Trump ever appear on shows where he might get asked questions like this? I have the impression his managers are increasingly reluctant to allow him on air without some way of editing his remarks for coherence. In fact, I don't know when was the last time we saw him having a casual conversation.
    posted by Joe in Australia at 1:23 PM on January 13, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Does Trump ever appear on shows where he might get asked questions like this?

    They stopped letting him off the leash when he incriminated himself with Lester Holt. Which was... a very long time ago.
    posted by Justinian at 1:27 PM on January 13, 2019 [11 favorites]


    From Newsweek: Mueller Draft Report Says Trump 'Helped Putin Destabilize the United States', Watergate Journalist Says.
    Legendary journalist Carl Bernstein has said that he’s been told that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report will show how President Donald Trump helped Russia “destabilize the United States.”
    welp
    posted by Justinian at 1:56 PM on January 13, 2019 [78 favorites]


    If Trump had been speaking to an actual reporter rather than Jeanine Pirro, there'd be a temptation to respond "You were in Texas two days ago"

    Someone quick on their feet might've said, "I'm so sorry to hear that... and you need to do something about the impostor who was caught on camera in Texas the day before yesterday!"

    (Can we get a compilation video of the "impostor" appearances over the last 2-3 months?)
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:56 PM on January 13, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Legendary journalist Carl Bernstein has said that he’s been told that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report will show how President Donald Trump helped Russia “destabilize the United States.”

    This is...light treason? Or regular treason?

    Incredibly, I'm being serious here. It sounds like the President is about to be accused of treason, with evidence.
    posted by schadenfrau at 2:00 PM on January 13, 2019 [47 favorites]


    Colloquially it's treason, yes, but I believe the general interpretation of Article III is that the enemy a traitor colludes with must be a country (or non-state actor these days?) with which the United States is in open armed conflict. So a cold war doesn't count. People convicted of treason (in America) have been giving aid and comfort to Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Confederacy, and various armed rebellions.
    posted by Justinian at 2:04 PM on January 13, 2019 [5 favorites]


    If not treason, would this qualify as espionage? The Rosenbergs were given the chair for colluding with Russia during the Cold War.
    posted by Freon at 2:08 PM on January 13, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Sarah Sanders (personal account) on 29 Oct 2016: Imagine if a REPUBLICAN presidential candidate came under FBI investigation as votes were being cast

    ...it's easy if you try....
    posted by PenDevil at 2:08 PM on January 13, 2019 [42 favorites]


    The r/politics thread seems to agree with the treason diagnosis (TRE45ON), which I mention as a likely indicator of where public opinion is headed. Jesus.

    People convicted of treason (in America) have been giving aid and comfort to Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Confederacy, and various armed rebellions

    Haven't some of them just been anarchists?

    And I think there is considerable question about what "armed conflict" means now. Like cyberwarfare is still warfare. And it is difficult for me to believe that if, say, an American helped an enemy with the initial attack which became the justification for declaring war they wouldn't be guilty of treason just because they did it BEFORE the bombs hit Pearl Harbor.

    None of this is a surprise, but it's somehow still shocking. Fuck, the next two years are going to be really, really rough.
    posted by schadenfrau at 2:08 PM on January 13, 2019 [9 favorites]


    On the bright side this is a chance to tie white supremacism and treason together and fire them both into the sun
    posted by benzenedream at 2:21 PM on January 13, 2019 [38 favorites]


    From Newsweek: Mueller Draft Report Says Trump 'Helped Putin Destabilize the United States', Watergate Journalist Says.

    n.b. Newsweek is recapping what Bernstein said on CNN's Reliable Sources, and they're making it sound more sensational (but only somewhat). Bernstein is only drawing inferences from what he's been told by defense lawyers, including those who are part of Trump's joint defense agreement (and they all believe Trump's been lying about Russia at every turn). He does not claim to have sources from the Office of the Special Counsel, and it sounds like he has few, if any, from the DoJ.

    Bernstein told Brian Stelter, “This is about the most serious counterintelligence people we have in the U.S. government saying, ‘Oh, my God, the president’s words and actions lead us to conclude that somehow he has become a witting, unwitting, or half-witting pawn, certainly in some regards, to Vladimir Putin.'[…]

    “Look, Trump keeps going back to the idea we need better relations are Russia. Could be. He could well be right. But from a point of view of strength, and what everybody can see, is that he has not, he has not acted with Russia from the United States having a strength advantage with Russia. Rather, he done what appears to be Putin’s goals. He has helped Putin destabilize the United States and interfere in the election, no matter whether it was purposeful or not.

    “And that is part of what the draft of Mueller’s report, I’m told, is to be about. What is hand in glove is both the coverup and the possibility… likelihood… we know there's been collusion. We know there has been collusion by Flynn. We know there has been collusion of some sort by Manafort. The question is, yes, what did the president know and when did he know it? But also, it could be unwitting or half-witting. That's what we're going to find out, but the idea that this is just benign behavior and conduct… there is nothing benign about what the consequences of this have been.”

    In short, Bernstein does not claim to know that there's a smoking gun, and as far as cable news goes, he's being comparatively circumspect about his claims.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 2:22 PM on January 13, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Also, if they do have a smoking treason gun on 45, there is literally no way they don't have it on about a dozen other people. At least. More, probably. Not all of them named Trump.

    We really might be looking at a situation where the entire leadership of one of the major political parties is implicated in or guilty of treason.

    We should start gearing up for that now.
    posted by schadenfrau at 2:25 PM on January 13, 2019 [19 favorites]


    The r/politics thread seems to agree with the treason diagnosis (TRE45ON), which I mention as a likely indicator of where public opinion is headed

    r/politics leans waaaaaaaaaaay left, so i wouldn't read much into it as an actual reflection of mainstream opinion
    posted by OHenryPacey at 2:29 PM on January 13, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Destabilize the United States, that explains the trade war.
    posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:29 PM on January 13, 2019 [6 favorites]


    schadenfrau: "We really might be looking at a situation where the entire leadership of one of the major political parties is implicated in or guilty of treason. "

    I just keep thinking about how one of the core components of the Qanon conspiracy theory is the idea that Trump is on the verge of enacting "The Storm" -- a sweeping mass arrest of dozens of top Democrats for treason, satanism, kiddy-diddling, etc. Assuming Trump's Mirror holds true, I can't begin to imagine the psychic break if the real thing happens in reverse. (And maybe that's the point?)
    posted by Rhaomi at 2:34 PM on January 13, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Я признаю это. Я марионетка.
    posted by kirkaracha at 2:34 PM on January 13, 2019 [24 favorites]


    r/politics leans waaaaaaaaaaay left, so i wouldn't read much into it as an actual reflection of mainstream opinion

    Oh yeah, I should have been more clear. I meant that r/politics seems to have become a bellwether, where the next topics of conversation bubble up and where we see the next Overton shifts. No idea if that's true, it's just been my general impression (once they removed a bunch of the bots, anyway).
    posted by schadenfrau at 2:37 PM on January 13, 2019 [5 favorites]


    It would be super fun, but y'all should give up any hope of seeing Trump tried for formal, legal treason. Something fewer than 50 people have ever even been *tried* for treason against the US, and AFAICT all but one involved actual, real, no-shit shooting wars or rebellions (the exception being a guy convicted for something related to a miners' strike in the 20s, and whose appeals never got finished because he skipped on bail).
    posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:41 PM on January 13, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Isolated incident or shutdown blowback at the TSA?
    CNN: Passenger carries firearm through TSA screening at Atlanta onto Delta flight
    posted by Rykey at 2:51 PM on January 13, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Really?

    Yes, really.

    Asylum claims can be still processed normally, but the default should be complete and total isolation and zero interaction with the US system for all Russians until the actions of their government change and reparations are made. No trade, no travel, no movement of money or people to or from, seizing all US based assets we can. Ejecting all their diplomats and arresting all known agents in the country.

    We should be treating Russia as a declared enemy state we're prevented from declaring war on only because of nuclear weapons. We're already back in the cold war, and they're winning decisively because we didn't fight back at all, and our president is helping them. It's a matter of democracy continuing to exist or not, and demands an absolutely unprecedented response, or it WILL keep happening, and we WILL lose. Russia and the Republican party are committed to overthrowing not just American democracy, but the idea of democracy in all parts of the world.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 2:57 PM on January 13, 2019 [16 favorites]


    I have noticed that when these minor leaks do escape the Mueller investigation, they seem to coincide with particularly odious behavior on the part of I-1. I think he might be trying to signal to Trump that he needs to step down. Treason? During a shutdown and wall showdown? Yeah. Translation: Get the fuck out of office... NOW.
    posted by sexyrobot at 3:00 PM on January 13, 2019 [1 favorite]


    In the spirit of attempting to discuss the primaries constructively, as per today's MetaTalk, I went to see Kamala Harris's book tour last night. First, a couple of links that frame my thinking:

    NYT, Astead W. Herndon, Kamala Harris Is Hard to Define Politically. Maybe That’s the Point.

    Herndon saved the more to-the-point message for Twitter: "She's my first choice to be my first choice." Spoke to several voters who said they ~want~ to vote for Sen. Harris, but they wonder if in a primary focused on big ideas whether she would be bold enough. Her strategists think being fluid is an advantage. Coming from Warren world, it's noticable how little Harris talks about big societal restructuring, and more about representation and restoring dignity to presidential office. Is that bc she hasn't announced? Or will that be Harris 2020? Something to watch

    Atlantic, Hannah Giorgis, Kamala Harris’s Political Memoir Is an Uneasy Fit for the Digital Era, which looks at the contrast between how Harris talks about her prosecutorial record and her prosecutorial record.

    At the outset, she was just fun. It was the friendliest of friendly paying hometown crowds in San Francisco—Harris was interviewed by the Mayor, who she is close to—and it was nice to see her in a more conversational setting than, say, her razor sharp committee hearing persona.

    There were a couple nascent campaign bits coming into existence. She had a riff on working with Rand Paul to help eliminate cash bail (in reality, the bill is a fairly modest grant program that provides funds to states who are experimenting with alternatives to bail) that had a clearly pre-worked line quoting Paul to head off the "how can a Californian speak to the whole country" argument: "Kamala, Appalachia loves this, because we have so much more in common." Given the friendly setting, there was no questioning of her record, but she had a line I think we'll be hearing a bunch when it comes to her contentious history on criminal justice reform: "one prayer is that I be judged on a body of work and not just any one decision."

    The sense I'm getting, as Herndon notes, is that she's shaping up to have a bit of an enigma campaign that I dubbed the Obama 2008 playbook but with "Fight" replacing "Hope." There's a bit of a deliberate vagueness, a foundation built more on aphorisms than broad societal vision, with the hope that people will project what they want onto her, as opposed to the more deliberate attempts to label themselves taken by some other candidates. And that's absolutely a strategy, but it surprised me a little that she repudiated that entire concept when she responded to a softball about advice for young politicians: "like my mother would say, don’t let anyone tell you who you are; you tell them who you are." Because the campaign she seems to be setting up is looking more like the opposite of that.

    And it's an interesting tactic, because some of the positions she's taken are a lot more substantial than she lets on with her rhetoric. She straight-up calls for marijuana legalization and for an end to cash bail. Her "Rent Relief Act" has some real economic and implementation problems, but the idea that the government should simply give you cash if your rent is more than 30% of your income is pretty darn bold. She barely mentioned it, almost as an afterthought, and I realized it was striking that I, as her constituent who follows politics fairly closely. entirely forgot she even had that plan. Same for her LIFT Act, which goes entirely unmentioned and nobody knows it exists. It isn't what I'd dream up (under it, you get nothing if you're not working), but it's one of the closest proposals to a small UBI that's out there. This stuff may not be exactly DSA-approved, and my wonky side wants to poke all sorts of holes in it, but "the government should give 80 million people hundreds of dollars a month" is also not the kind of bland centrism that Harris often gets tarred with, and it's the sort of policy that would drive entire news cycles if Ocasio-Cortez tweeted it.

    A lot of that is on her, and seems to be how she wants it. Harris talks a lot about public service and fighting and representation, but at least at this stage of the game, doesn't want to touch the broad rhetoric to match some of these policy positions. She's not framing these policies in the broad frame of structural change to the social contract, while other candidates start with the framing and drill down to the policies from there. But setting aside the practicality and effectiveness of these policies, setting aside questions about sincerity, for a second, there's a refreshing simplicity to this approach too. The rent is too damn high? Here's a credit to help pay it. Wages aren't rising in real terms? Here's some money. People are sitting in jail for months because of weed? Let's not do that anymore.

    Beneath the aphorisms, it really does seem like there's something resembling a broader vision there, but Harris has been remarkably reluctant to talk about it. I'm not sure how much that's who she really is vs an attempt to carve out space on the ideological spectrum (or, for that matter, whether she'll have a substantially different tone perhaps after MLK day), but I fear that letting others define her may not prove to be a strategic advantage in a crowded field. Perhaps there's some wisdom to her mother's advice?
    posted by zachlipton at 3:01 PM on January 13, 2019 [75 favorites]


    Sadly, neither Trump nor any of the people around him speak "government," so they literally can't understand the message.
    posted by wierdo at 3:02 PM on January 13, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Isolated incident or shutdown blowback at the TSA?

    Neither. The TSA screening is a farcical bit of security. They catch perhaps 5% of dangerous contraband. The reason planes don't get hijacked or blow up isn't because of TSA screening but because the number of people who want to hijack or blow up planes is so miniscule. Well, and because post 9/11 you can't hijack planes in America successfully because the passengers know they have no choice but to resist or die.

    The single piece of effective security introduced post 9/11 were locked, reinforced cockpit doors. The rest is theater.
    posted by Justinian at 3:02 PM on January 13, 2019 [82 favorites]


    "The perception that this might have occurred as a result of the partial government shutdown would be false," TSA said. "The national unscheduled absence rate of TSA staff on Thursday, January 3, 2019, was 4.8% compared to 6.3% last year, Thursday, January 4, 2018. So in fact, the national call out rate was higher a year ago than this year on that date."

    I notice they don't mention how many of those absences were in the Atlanta airport involved. The issue isn't, "how many agents were on duty without pay on that day." The relevant question is, "was the airport understaffed?" It really doesn't matter how many agents are on duty in JFK and SFO if people are smuggling guns from ATL.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:02 PM on January 13, 2019 [1 favorite]


    In what kinda seems almost like a public service, TPM has put together a Trump/Russia “collusion” video explainer. It’s only 1:40.

    I think it’s meant to be shared widely.

    ETA: and flagged as fantastic, Zach. Damn.
    posted by schadenfrau at 3:06 PM on January 13, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Re: K. Harris and rent: I've said it before and I'll say it again until it sinks in: Rent control and minimum wage need to be tied together like conjoined twins. (I showed restraint by not using the clappy hands). 1 month rent (on approx 400sq ft)=1 week minimum wage. If the landlords don't like it they can lobby for higher minimum wage. (Also a reasonable concession might be 'anything above the 6th floor is a 'luxury apartment', charge what you like)
    posted by sexyrobot at 3:17 PM on January 13, 2019 [17 favorites]


    I can't begin to imagine the psychic break if the real thing happens in reverse.

    No psychic break; they would just add that to the conspiracy.
    posted by ZenMasterThis at 3:19 PM on January 13, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Yeah, honestly the QAnon people would be thrilled; it would be like Christmas to them.
    posted by schadenfrau at 3:22 PM on January 13, 2019 [1 favorite]


    How legit is that Newsweek story? I don’t want to pop champagne too early.
    posted by gucci mane at 3:33 PM on January 13, 2019


    Newsweek ain’t what it used to be; it’s a sensationalist rag these days.
    posted by Melismata at 3:40 PM on January 13, 2019 [8 favorites]


    All I can say about the Newsweek article is literally nobody on the Politics Twitter I follow has even mentioned it.
    posted by chris24 at 3:44 PM on January 13, 2019 [2 favorites]


    It’s Carl Bernstein, not Newsweek reporting. It’s not clear to me if he’s reporting or just directly relating what his sources in the intelligence community are telling him, but he’s not the only one. Mark Warner.
    posted by schadenfrau at 3:45 PM on January 13, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Axios, Swan, Trump dressed down Mulvaney in front of congressional leaders
    President Trump chastised his new chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, over his handling of shutdown talks, creating an awkward scene in front of congressional leaders of both parties, according to two sources who were present.

    Behind the scenes: The encounter came near the end of a meeting in the White House Situation Room on Jan. 4, these sources said. Trump had spent the meeting restating his demand for $5.7 billion for his wall. (Vice President Pence, at Trump's behest, had previously asked the Democrats for just $2.5 billion.)

    Mulvaney inserted himself into the conversation and tried to negotiate a compromise sum of money, according to the sources in the room. Mulvaney said "that if Dems weren't OK with $5.7 [billion] and the president wasn't OK with $1.3 [the Democratic offer] ... he was trying to say we should find a middle ground," one of the sources said, paraphrasing Mulvaney's remarks.
    "Trump cut him off ... 'You just fucked it all up, Mick,'" the source recalled Trump saying. "It was kind of weird."
    ...
    Between the lines: A fourth source, who was not in the room but has observed Mulvaney and Trump's interactions during previous congressional talks, told me Trump has long been irritated that Mulvaney's initial 2019 budget only requested $1.6 billion for the wall. Democrats relish pointing this out, asking the White House why they're not happy getting the money they originally asked for.

    The answer: Trump signed off on that budget, but as we've previously reported, Trump privately asked, in a 2018 meeting attended by Mulvaney, "Who asked for $1.6 billion?"
    I wonder if Mulvaney is eyeing that University of South Carolina President job a little more closely.
    posted by zachlipton at 3:48 PM on January 13, 2019 [28 favorites]


    It seems like Trump literally doesn't understand how good faith negotiation works. Since he's spent his entire life ignoring whatever he's agreed to, he doesn't grasp that other people don't work that way.

    Whatever he agrees to do, he will not do, and he expects the same of the other side, so a deal is literally impossible. They are not speaking the same language and Trump is not negotiating in good faith. Acting as if there is a possibility of negotiation is what Mulvaney fucked up (in Trump's mind). And now he's got someone to blame.

    Given a day or two for his mind to rewrite history such that he can make it Mulvaney's fault entirely and he might actually start negotiating for real since he's off the hook for the mistakes now.
    posted by wierdo at 3:57 PM on January 13, 2019 [18 favorites]


    More Axios: Mass confusion on how to end the shutdown
    Senior administration officials have discussed inviting rank-and-file Democrats to the White House, hoping they may be willing to negotiate over funding for a barrier, according to two sources privy to the private discussions. They're planning to target freshman Democratic House members from districts Trump won in 2016.

    Republican officials involved conceded to me that it's a stretch to imagine the White House can break Nancy Pelosi's strong command of her caucus. But administration officials tell me they're going to try.
    That makes no sense at all. The reps that just won campaigning against the wall are their targets to get them to support the wall?

    @ThePlumLineGS: Do they ... do they ... understand that Democrats won these Trump districts (which are largely suburban and well educated) in large part because voters were alienated by Trump's closing hate message?
    posted by zachlipton at 4:16 PM on January 13, 2019 [55 favorites]


    he might actually start negotiating for real

    This will never, ever happen with Trump, for the reason you cited in your comment:

    he's spent his entire life ignoring whatever he's agreed to
    posted by Rykey at 4:18 PM on January 13, 2019 [4 favorites]


    That shitfuck Mulvaney shouldn't be a candidate for any job, let alone a public university presidency.
    posted by yesster at 4:18 PM on January 13, 2019 [20 favorites]


    The question is, yes, what did the president know and when did he know it? But also, it could be unwitting or half-witting

    halfwitting. heh.

    it was always going to come down to mens rea, a particularly vexing set of questions in the case of president khorrorshow.
    posted by 20 year lurk at 4:19 PM on January 13, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Congrats Mick, you are 2019's Meredith!
    posted by cmfletcher at 4:22 PM on January 13, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Senior administration officials have discussed inviting rank-and-file Democrats to the White House, hoping they may be willing to negotiate over funding for a barrier, according to two sources privy to the private discussions. They're planning to target freshman Democratic House members from districts Trump won in 2016.

    I'm not familiar with Washington protocol, but given that those same freshman Dems will know what the meeting's about, and why they were invited... Seems like a good enough reason to decline the invitation, no?
    posted by Rykey at 4:24 PM on January 13, 2019


    If Trump wants his 5.7 billion, all he has to do is open it up to corporate sponsorship.

    50-foot-high BUDWEISER and WELLS FARGO and COORS logos stretching across thousands of miles of American territory, like Hell's own billboards? I'm amazed it hasn't happened already.
    posted by delfin at 5:09 PM on January 13, 2019 [20 favorites]


    Seems like a good enough reason to decline the invitation, no?


    Absolutely. It’s like in Ides of March, when Giamatti’s character tells Ryan Gosling: “It didn’t matter if you took the deal or not. The moment you agreed to meet with me, I won.”

    When you consider that Trump is incapable of good faith negotiation, and the only thing that happens when people try to work with him is that they get wraithed, there’s absolutely no reason in the world for a freshman Dem to want to attend a White House meeting.
    posted by darkstar at 5:19 PM on January 13, 2019 [14 favorites]


    Are the invitations being extended with the expectation that they’ll be refused, feeding the “Democrats are unwilling to negotiate” narrative? Surely nobody around the President thinks this could be successful.
    posted by wintermind at 5:22 PM on January 13, 2019 [2 favorites]


    there’s absolutely no reason in the world for a freshman Dem to want to attend a White House meeting

    Except, of course, for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tell him to his face, "Not. One. Dime!"
    posted by SPrintF at 5:24 PM on January 13, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Isolated incident or shutdown blowback at the TSA?
    CNN: Passenger carries firearm through TSA screening at Atlanta onto Delta flight
    -- posted by Rykey at 5:51 PM on January 13

    Disturbingly, it's neither:

    Per the TSA (June 6, 2018) - Transportation Security Administration officers working at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) security checkpoints discovered 30 firearms in May, the most ever at an airport in a single month.

    ATL held the previous record of 27, found in September 2016.

    From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Nov. 14, 2018) - More guns have been seized at Hartsfield-Jackson International’s security checkpoints in 2018 than at any other airport in the nation, setting a record even before the year is out.

    The Atlanta airport has held the No. 1 spot in the nation for guns uncovered at checkpoints for the last two years.

    A total of 293 firearms have been found in carry-on bags and as improperly packed or undeclared guns in checked luggage so far this year. On average, 80 to 90 percent of them are loaded, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

    Lastly, at Japan Today (Jan. 12, 2019) -
    An American woman who was found to be in possession of a pistol and bullets on a flight from Atlanta to Narita airport near Tokyo last week was denied entry to Japan, airport sources said Friday.

    The woman, believed to be in her 30s, told Delta Air Lines crew during the flight that she had mistakenly brought the handgun and ammunition with her onto the plane, despite passing through security inspection at the southern U.S. airport, the sources said.

    [...] The case follows an earlier one at Narita in which an American co-pilot was found to be in possession of live bullets during a security inspection before departing the Japanese airport on Dec. 14, the sources said. The American Airlines pilot, who said the bullets were in his luggage by mistake, left the ammunition with airport staff and worked as scheduled, they said.

    Describing both cases as "serious incidents," the Japanese transport ministry asked U.S. transportation security authorities on Jan. 4 to take necessary preventive measures.
    Emphasis is mine. We're only learning about the Jan. 3rd passenger incident because it happened on the heels of the Dec. 14th pilot incident, and Japan would very much like us to knock it off already. As would I:
    The Atlanta-Constitution Journal (April 11, 2017) - Delta Air Lines has changed its policy for guns in checked bags.

    The Atlanta-based airline has a new requirement that guns checked as baggage be picked up at the baggage service office upon arrival.

    News of the change comes in the wake of the shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport in January. A Marietta woman was killed in the airport shooting.

    The incident also highlighted the fact that passengers can legally pack guns in checked baggage — and access them after claiming their bags.

    The FBI said Esteban Santiago flew on a one-way ticket from Alaska to Fort Lauderdale with a gun and ammunition in a case in checked luggage, according to the Associated Press. Authorities say he picked up the case, loaded the gun in a bathroom and came out firing at travelers.
    posted by Iris Gambol at 5:38 PM on January 13, 2019 [11 favorites]


    NBC: Democrats Warn Trump Not To 'Intimidate' Michael Cohen From Testifying—Trump said Saturday that Cohen should 'give information maybe on his father-in-law."
    Three top Democrats issued a warning to President Donald Trump on Sunday, saying he cannot "discourage, intimidate, or otherwise pressure" witnesses in response to his Saturday comments about his former attorney Michael Cohen.

    "The integrity of our process to serve as an independent check on the Executive Branch must be respected by everyone, including the President," Democratic chairmen Elijah Cummings, Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler of the House Oversight, Intelligence, and Judiciary Committees said in a joint statement.

    "Our nation’s laws prohibit efforts to discourage, intimidate, or otherwise pressure a witness not to provide testimony to Congress. The President should make no statement or take any action to obstruct Congress’ independent oversight and investigative efforts, including by seeking to discourage any witness from testifying in response to a duly authorized request from Congress."

    The congressmen were responding to comments Trump made Saturday to Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in response to news of Cohen's upcoming open testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

    Trump told Pirro that Cohen "should give information maybe on his father-in-law, because that’s the one that people want to look at."

    "Because where does that money — that’s the money in the family. And I guess he didn’t want to talk about his father — he’s trying to get his sentence reduced," Trump added. "So, it’s pretty sad. You know, it’s weak and it’s very sad to watch a thing like that. I couldn’t care less."
    Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, introduced him to Trump. The Ukrainian-born Shusterman, who pleaded guilty in 1993 to money-laundering-related charges, is believed to have been a conduit between Trump and Russian investors.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 5:40 PM on January 13, 2019 [31 favorites]


    Congrats Mick, you are 2019's Meredith!

    I -- I hadn't thought about her for months and I'm suddenly rather concerned for her well-being.

    Where have you gone, our dear Meredith? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you....
    posted by tivalasvegas at 5:47 PM on January 13, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Senior administration officials have discussed inviting rank-and-file Democrats to the White House, hoping they may be willing to negotiate over funding for a barrier, according to two sources privy to the private discussions. They're planning to target freshman Democratic House members from districts Trump won in 2016.

    I'm trying and failing to imagine a universe where funding for The Wall is passed out of the house without Pelosi's say-so. There is literally no chance that the first funding bill out of the newly Democratic house is passed by Democratic defectors and Republican votes. There is no universe where that happens.
    posted by BungaDunga at 5:50 PM on January 13, 2019 [6 favorites]


    she had mistakenly brought the handgun and ammunition with her onto the plane, despite passing through security inspection

    Trump literally named another conduit between his people and Russian contacts

    Oh god we are such a clown country
    posted by schadenfrau at 6:05 PM on January 13, 2019 [47 favorites]


    ’Big Brother’ reveals its newest celebrity cast, including Anthony Scaramucci and Kato Kaelin
    posted by MrVisible at 6:15 PM on January 13, 2019 [10 favorites]


    OPM has declared the gov't shut down tomorrow.

    That may seem self-evident, but a lot of contractors, associations, etc. rely on OPM to determine snow days et al. (DC just got 10 inches of snow, which is massive for them.)
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:42 PM on January 13, 2019 [3 favorites]


    ’Big Brother’ reveals its newest celebrity cast, including Anthony Scaramucci and Kato Kaelin

    [real]
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:46 PM on January 13, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Daily Beast, Betsy Woodruff, Kremlin Blessed Russia’s NRA Operation, U.S. Intel Report Says
    The Kremlin has long denied that it had anything to do with the infiltration of the NRA and the broader American conservative movement. A U.S. intelligence report reviewed by The Daily Beast tells a different story.

    Alexander Torshin, the Russian central bank official who spent years aggressively courting NRA leaders, briefed the Kremlin on his efforts and recommended they participate, according to the report. Its existence and contents have not previously been reported.

    While there has been speculation that Torshin and his protege, Maria Butina, had the Kremlin’s blessing to woo the NRA—and federal prosecutors have vaguely asserted that she acted “on behalf of the Russian federation”—no one in the White House or the U.S. intelligence community has publicly stated as much. Senior Russian government officials, for their part, have strenuously distanced themselves from Butina’s courtship of the NRA, which she did at Torshin’s direction.

    The report, on the other hand, notes that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was fine with Torshin’s courtship of the NRA because the relationships would be valuable if a Republican won the White House in 2016.

    “This reporting indicates that Alexander Torshin was working with the blessing of the Kremlin, at a minimum,” one European intelligence official told The Daily Beast. The official added that this reporting is consistent with his group’s understanding of how the Kremlin operates. “The NRA is quite powerful, so when you look to influence U.S. politics, you should consider them as a convenient target,” the official added.
    So this seems rather collusiony, and the report is from last year. Just how much collusion do we have documented and sitting in classified files somewhere?
    posted by zachlipton at 6:47 PM on January 13, 2019 [31 favorites]


    Politico, Judge freezes Trump administration contraception rule
    A federal judge in California blocked a Trump administration rule on contraception just hours before it was to go into effect Monday. It would have allowed virtually any employer to refuse to cover workers' birth control by citing religious or moral objections.

    U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam, Jr. ruled the policy would cause harm to the Democratic states suing over the rules, and he issued an order staying the rules from going into effect while the lawsuit proceeds. His temporary block is limited to just the 13 states plus the District of Columbia involved in the lawsuit. However it’s possible that a court in Pennsylvania, considering a similar request for an injunction, could issue a broader national order.

    The new rules mark the Trump administration's second attempt to narrow the Obamacare-related requirement that employers must provide FDA-approved contraception in the employee health plan at no cost.
    posted by zachlipton at 6:51 PM on January 13, 2019 [44 favorites]


    They're planning to target freshman Democratic House members from districts Trump won in 2016.

    This is insane. Freshman Democrats who ran and won in districts Trump won in 2016 won in 2018 because they ran against Trump. They are EAGER to dunk on Trump in their first terms.
    posted by notyou at 7:17 PM on January 13, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Federal worker forced to ration insulin because of government shutdown
    “I can’t afford to go to the ER. I can’t afford anything. I just went to bed and hoped I’d wake up,” Mallory Lorge said about her blood sugar going high.

    "It is more devastating than many of us realized": Congressional delegation visits Puerto Rico

    Houston airport closes TSA security checkpoint due to staffing shortage at screening

    This is never gonna end is it
    posted by The Whelk at 7:24 PM on January 13, 2019 [56 favorites]


    Yes, he knows that he's compromised. And he knows that his eldest failson and son-in-law are compromised by the campaign onwards, and that his only daughter (excl. Tiffany) is compromised by earlier foreign deals that won't survive any kind of scrutiny. This was (retroactively) evident from the bullshit explanation for Flynn's firing, and then the attempts to stop Comey from looking too hard at the real reason why Flynn was fired, why he lied to the FBI, and what he did during the transition.
    posted by holgate at 7:26 PM on January 13, 2019 [5 favorites]


    The FBI said Esteban Santiago flew on a one-way ticket from Alaska to Fort Lauderdale with a gun and ammunition in a case in checked luggage, according to the Associated Press. Authorities say he picked up the case, loaded the gun in a bathroom and came out firing at travelers.

    I don't view this incident as a screening failure. No weapons were used on airplanes. That's the goal of the screening. The guy could have flown to Florida with no luggage, bought a gun, and brought it back to the baggage claim area, which lies outside of the security zone. So it's just another "normal" shooting to me. The fact it happened at an airport is a red herring. He could have gone anywhere.
    posted by M-x shell at 7:46 PM on January 13, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Trump told Pirro that Cohen "should give information maybe on his father-in-law, because that’s the one that people want to look at."

    He's talking like some cheap thug and using Fox as a relay. If I understand that correctly, he's basically warning Cohen (and Cohen's father-in-law) that if Trump goes down, everybody goes down. It sickens me that nobody has the guts to ask Trump what he means when he says things like this.
    posted by Joe in Australia at 8:05 PM on January 13, 2019 [19 favorites]


    It's not that nobody has the guts, it's that Trump only goes to interviews with people he knows won't ask him tough questions! If he sat for a real interview they'd follow up.
    posted by Justinian at 8:12 PM on January 13, 2019 [10 favorites]


    This Trump tweet...
    “Russia, Iran and Syria have been the biggest beneficiaries of the long term US policy of destroying ISIS in Syria – natural enemies. We also benefit but it is now time to bring our troops back home. Stop the ENDLESS WARS!”
    ...is quoted in The Guardian and it's not even explicit here, but it just reminded me of how much this small, stupid man is a one-trick pony, his Mystical Art Of The Deal consisting in every single situation of simply threatening to renege upon something previously handshaken-upon and partially-implemented.

    "Maybe I won't after all. What's it worth, tee-hee?" [fake/paraphrase]
    posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 8:25 PM on January 13, 2019 [10 favorites]


    This is never gonna end is it

    It's reaching the point where it becomes headline news in local media, and however denuded those sources have become, that may make a difference for people who think "federal workers" are liberals who live in DC.

    Tomorrow looks like it will be another interesting day...

    The trip to New Orleans for the American Farm Bureau convention -- a 45-minute speech that takes up most of the day's activity -- may not go smoothly given that USDA is shuttered, China isn't buying soy or pork, and farms run on immigrant labour. The evening reception for the Clemson Tigers also seems... ill-advised. Let's see who shows up from the squad, and let's hope that upstate SC media asks afterward whether they were compelled to do so.
    posted by holgate at 8:25 PM on January 13, 2019 [7 favorites]


    His whole "business acumen" is a variation of the J. Paul Getty line: "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."

    Trump used his daddy's money and connections to get a $100 million from folks, and then said fuck you, try to get it once he ran the business into the ground.
    posted by chris24 at 8:38 PM on January 13, 2019 [19 favorites]


    By the time that insufferably clangorous RNC nomination sharted all over everyone, the people in the vast - vast! - intelligence community whose sole purpose it is to keep this country free of enemies foreign or domestic should have been blowing shit up - metaphorically.

    It's important to keep in mind that the IC is part of the Executive and doesn't have some intervention powers distinct from those of the President and his staff. They did what they are supposed to do, which is report their findings to POTUS who is charged with executive action based on the intelligence they produce. He may ask them to do something to respond, but I for one do not want them making decisions on their own about interfering in electoral politics. These are the same guys who have made mischief all over the world when they were given their heads.
    posted by Mental Wimp at 8:39 PM on January 13, 2019 [12 favorites]


    They did what they are supposed to do, which is report their findings to POTUS who is charged with executive action based on the intelligence they produce.

    Some day, DV, we'll get a "what did they know and when did they know it " analysis of this. It's very possible - even probable - that they were in possession of smoking guns, but hadn't had the time or circumstantial information to put everything together. So we don't even know what they reported, let alone how much weight they placed on it. But, in the last six months we've seen a bunch of revelations that imply a change in attitude towards protecting secrets. For instance, the news that Khashoggi's murder and events surrounding it were recorded, and thst Saudi diplomatic baggage had been searched. Obama may have been told "everything", but only in an elided form, to protect intelligence sources. And if he consequently judged the accusations of Russian collusion to be informed opinion rather than verifiable fact, I imagine he'd have been exactly as cautious as he appeared to be.
    posted by Joe in Australia at 9:15 PM on January 13, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Trump wants credit for staying at the White House over weekends while the shutdown drags on (Amanda Sakuma, Vox)
    Trump is blaming Democrats for being away on “vacation” while he sits alone in the Oval Office.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 9:30 PM on January 13, 2019 [7 favorites]


    A hypothetical Unfucking Fuck Commission, drilling down fully and responsibly to rootiest causes of the global meltdown of enlightenment principles (US version or any other), would have to conclude that Gödel's incompleteness theorems apply to law just as well as mathematics. Simply as a logical matter, no consistent system of law can be generated, applied, and sustained except that there be individuals empowered to operate it who are not subject fully to it. As such, the idea that nobody is above the law is not merely aspirational; it is unachievable.

    Still, I've got to believe that much better recipes are possible than the "regular order" of good ol' boys' clubs, gentlemen's agreements, and the like. Maybe we need a bit more Gowachin in our philosophy.

    I wouldn't trust us with a Bureau of Sabotage yet, though.
    posted by perspicio at 9:42 PM on January 13, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Thread: FDA shutdown update
    posted by The Whelk at 10:08 PM on January 13, 2019 [3 favorites]


    The Atlantic has a series out today of 50 articles that "analyze 50 of the most improbable, norm-bending, and destructive incidents of this presidency to date". It's called, simply, Unthinkable,.
    posted by saysthis at 10:09 PM on January 13, 2019 [50 favorites]


    I think it is going to be up to the public to demand [prosecution of] other people [besides Trump]who may be under investigation.

    Isn't this precisely Mueller's job? He may be constrained by policy (not law) from indicting a sitting President, but nothing stops him from indicting or pleading out Bannon, Sessions, Tillerson, Pence, Scaramucci, Zinke, Don McGahn, Ivanka, Don Jr. or Eric Trump.

    He just got six more months to indict people. Does anyone really think the president would hold tough if all of the above were indicted and six of them plead guilty, with cooperation?
    posted by msalt at 10:41 PM on January 13, 2019 [5 favorites]


    I started reading that Atlantic list above and got to #46 about the Boy Scouts jamboree. This part stood out to me:

    He is the only American president never to have devoted even a single day to the service of his country—in uniform or in public office—before ascending to the chief magistracy.

    Trump obviously couldn’t give two shits about the country. I don’t expect any or everybody to do “service of the country” in the form of military service or scouts or anything, but I do expect the fucking president to have done something.
    posted by gucci mane at 11:01 PM on January 13, 2019 [39 favorites]


    Re twitter:

    In case you are not aware twitter is incredibly user unfriendly to people without accounts. It blocks loading (as "rate limited") has fullscreen ads, and makes it pretty impossible to navigate.

    If I can even load the tweet is pretty questionable. And it's more than three tweets I have to deal with the stupud fullscreen ad/login, and if if links anywhere else on twitter do the whole thing again. Please label tweets and provide another source if possible.
    posted by AlexiaSky at 3:21 AM on January 14, 2019 [90 favorites]


    A hypothetical Unfucking Fuck Commission, drilling down fully and responsibly to rootiest causes of the global meltdown of enlightenment principles (US version or any other), would have to conclude that Gödel's incompleteness theorems apply to law just as well as mathematics. Simply as a logical matter, no consistent system of law can be generated, applied, and sustained except that there be individuals empowered to operate it who are not subject fully to it. As such, the idea that nobody is above the law is not merely aspirational; it is unachievable.

    This has long been a topic in political philosophy, especially the study of sovereignty and the person of the sovereign, the power that makes law but is not subject to it. Giorgio Agamben had a series of books about it something like twenty years ago, beginning before and extending through Bush 43's presidency. And he was quite explicit in drawing on a centuries, even millennia-long tradition in philosophy.
    posted by kewb at 3:54 AM on January 14, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Right now Newt Gingrich is on NPR talking about how great shutdowns are and how they are just part of the system here that people, especially the federal employees getting screwed, need to expect. He is clearly quite proud of his role in making shutdowns a routine occurrence in our government. He then went on to whine about the liberal media and how unfair they are for making him out to be a crybaby. Assuming there are still historians around in another century, they will not be kind to Newt and his role in our trainwreck of a political system.
    posted by TedW at 3:54 AM on January 14, 2019 [26 favorites]


    Report about Fox News coverage on TVs in my mostly white, mostly 50+ gym here in Va-10:

    Today at 6am the major news networks had a "BREAKING NEWS" chyron and were talking about the weekend Russian bombshells and what they meant for the country. Fox News, on the other hand, had the chyron "DEMS IN PUERTO RICO."

    Bonus: The next time I looked up, it was a commercial break on Fox. Cue a promo for tonight's Hannity show: "AMERICA NEEDS THE SHUTDOWN" and "WE NEED THE WALL" before they even identified it as a promo for a show.
    posted by ImproviseOrDie at 4:29 AM on January 14, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Simply as a logical matter, no consistent system of law can be generated, applied, and sustained except that there be individuals empowered to operate it who are not subject fully to it.

    That's a very bold claim, and one which I'm not the least bit inclined to take seriously without a rigorous proof.
    posted by flabdablet at 4:56 AM on January 14, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Since we have proof Trump was soliciting business in Russia (including sucking up to Putin) during the campaign, viz. the signed letter of intent for the Trump Tower Moscow, while lying repeatedly to the American people about not having any business interests in Russia, we now know Putin had a piece of kompromat hanging over Trump's head since 2015-16.

    Fairly frequently we say things in these megathreads that need to be repeated by Democrats every time they speak to the media, which just loves to play he-said-she-said and pretend they don't know what they know. This fact (flagged as fantastic, by the way) is one of them, along with the fact that Team Trump didn't deny the letter, just defended it.

    And we're a bunch of random people on the Internet. One wonders what the so-called professional message managers in the Democratic Party do with their time, because if it isn't hanging out in the megathreads, they're wasting our money.
    posted by Gelatin at 4:58 AM on January 14, 2019 [21 favorites]


    Simply as a logical matter, no consistent system of law can be generated, applied, and sustained except that there be individuals empowered to operate it who are not subject fully to it.

    Fortunately sustained consistent logic-like laws are not what exist. A legal system is built to be flexible, to adapt, to learn, to improve. There can be no final state of a collection of laws, as it's an ongoing contingent historical record of social agreements. There are principles that hopefully guide the writing of law, and it's interpretation, but do not bound it.
    posted by Harry Caul at 5:07 AM on January 14, 2019 [15 favorites]


    Federal worker forced to ration insulin because of government shutdown
    “I can’t afford to go to the ER. I can’t afford anything. I just went to bed and hoped I’d wake up,” Mallory Lorge said about her blood sugar going high.

    And remember insulin prices have skyrocketed because of ....drumroll.... lack of regulation, price obfuscation and patent shenanigans. All routine symptoms of the American health care industries' human resource extraction maximization methodologies.
    posted by srboisvert at 5:24 AM on January 14, 2019 [56 favorites]


    I think the fuller context is needed for my response:

    Gödel's incompleteness theorems apply to law just as well as mathematics. Simply as a logical matter, no consistent system of law can be generated, applied, and sustained except that there be individuals empowered to operate it who are not subject fully to it. As such, the idea that nobody is above the law is not merely aspirational; it is unachievable.

    of which the hypothesis is, "no consistent system of law can be generated, applied, and sustained except that there be individuals empowered to operate it who are not subject fully to it"

    I'm not sold on this hypothesis either, but I also don't care if the IDEAL that "nobody is above the law" is aspirational, yet unachievable. It's the morally correct baseline goal to set and strive for.
    We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
    It's right there in the introduction to the documentation. There's always room for improvement. A goal like "nobody is above the law" always keeps you moving towards it, even if you don't get there
    posted by mikelieman at 5:36 AM on January 14, 2019 [6 favorites]


    The trip to New Orleans for the American Farm Bureau convention -- a 45-minute speech that takes up most of the day's activity -- may not go smoothly given that USDA is shuttered, China isn't buying soy or pork, and farms run on immigrant labour.

    Not to mention that @realDonaldTrump thought he was going to TN (in a now-deleted tweet): "Getting ready to address the Farm Convention today in Nashville, Tennessee. Love our farmers, love Tennessee - a great combination! See you in a little while."

    For the past twelve hours, Trump has been on a tear on Twitter. Yesterday evening, he repeatedly attacked Elizabeth Warren ("often referred to by me as Pocahontas") over the "beer catastrophe", mocked "Jeff Bozo" over the exposé by the National Enquirer ("far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post"), and referred to a white nationalist column by Pat Buchanan while hyping his "Border Crisis". This morning, he's been watching/tweeting Fox & Friends non-stop (Dems in Puerto Rico for Shutdown, gas prices, heroin deaths and cross-border drug smuggling) and retweeting Geraldo Rivera about Russian collusion.

    His New Orleans event could be a shitshow at this rate.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 5:42 AM on January 14, 2019 [19 favorites]


    50-foot-high BUDWEISER and WELLS FARGO and COORS logos stretching across thousands of miles of American territory, like Hell's own billboards? I'm amazed it hasn't happened already.

    Wells Fargo isn't going to want a name on a wall since they have a wee bit of history of trade with Mexico. Like almost $400 billion dollars of Narco money laundering.
    posted by srboisvert at 5:42 AM on January 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


    He then went on to whine [to NPR] about the liberal media and how unfair they are for making him out to be a crybaby. Assuming there are still historians around in another century, they will not be kind to Newt and his role in our trainwreck of a political system.

    The fact that politicians go on what they claim is the "liberal media" and complain about the "liberal media" proves that the "liberal media" does not exist. Fox is what a real propaganda network looks like, and it does not book guests who will point out how worthless their reporting is.

    It's a sad indictment about the failure of the media, and how effectively the Republicans have worked the refs, that we have to wait for historians to be unkind to Newt because NPR et al are too cowardly to call him out on his bad faith and dishonesty.
    posted by Gelatin at 5:45 AM on January 14, 2019 [63 favorites]


    The federal goverment expects health insurance to be maintained for federal employees during the shutdown (atleast according to NPR

    It appears the answer for contractors is case by case? Or up to the very wonderful insurance companies.

    Of course all copays still apply.
    posted by AlexiaSky at 5:46 AM on January 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


    CNN has a scoop on FBI discussions about Trump-Russia in the wake of Comey's firing: Transcripts Detail How FBI Debated Whether Trump Was 'Following Directions' of Russia
    In the chaotic aftermath at the FBI following Director James Comey's firing, a half-dozen senior FBI officials huddled to set in motion the momentous move to open an investigation into President Donald Trump that included trying to understand why he was acting in ways that seemed to benefit Russia.

    They debated a range of possibilities, according to portions of transcripts of two FBI officials' closed-door congressional interviews obtained by CNN. On one end was the idea that Trump fired Comey at the behest of Russia. On the other was the possibility that Trump didn't have an improper relationship with the Kremlin and was acting within the bounds of his executive authority, the transcripts show.[…]

    In his congressional testimony, [then-FBI general counsel James] Baker said that he did not discuss with Comey the possibility that Russia had influenced his firing. But Baker met with a group of roughly a half-dozen officials, including McCabe and possibly Strzok and Page, to discuss it.

    "Not only would it be an issue of obstructing an investigation, but the obstruction itself would hurt our ability to figure out what the Russians had done, and that is what would be the threat to national security," Baker told lawmakers, according to an excerpt from the transcript first reported by the Times and confirmed by CNN.

    Baker said the notion that Trump was acting at the behest of Russia was "discussed as a theoretical possibility."

    "I'm speaking theoretically. If the President of the United States fired Jim Comey at the behest of the Russian government, that would be unlawful and unconstitutional," Baker said.
    As for Crossfire Hurricane, shortly after Comey's firing, Strzok texted Page: "We need to open the case we've been waiting on now while Andy is acting [FBI Director]".

    Meanwhile, @realDonaldTrump just tweeted, "The Fake News gets crazier and more dishonest every single day. Amazing to watch as certain people covering me, and the tremendous success of this administration, have truly gone MAD! Their Fake reporting creates anger and disunity. Take two weeks off and come back rested. Chill!"
    posted by Doktor Zed at 6:10 AM on January 14, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Federal worker forced to ration insulin because of government shutdown
    “I can’t afford to go to the ER. I can’t afford anything. I just went to bed and hoped I’d wake up,” Mallory Lorge said about her blood sugar going high.

    And here I didn't think I could be angrier

    Decent people are horrified by this person's situation. Others take pride in it. The cruelty is the point.
    posted by Gelatin at 6:19 AM on January 14, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Er, people are already taking two weeks off, Donnie.
    posted by Melismata at 6:19 AM on January 14, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Nate Silver, 538: Why Kamala And Beto May Have More Upside Than Joe And Bernie [Warning: Auto-playing ABC News]
    Despite the title, the article looks at 10 potential primary candidates, focusing primarily on the candidate's potential coalitions of voters.

    I'm amused that Nate's seen fit to classify me as a "Millennial Friend" – an older urban Democrat who votes like a millennial – but, yeah, it fits. The usual caveats about his "Hispanic/Asian" category not being a coherent faction or block apply. It's basically catch-all category of Democrats who aren't millennials and don't fit in one of the other categories.

    Nate's "Party Loyalists" category seems to basically consist of older white Democrats who live the suburbs and have traditional ideas about gender roles – the kind of people who dominate DailyKos.
    posted by nangar at 6:24 AM on January 14, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Gelatin: Fairly frequently we say things in these megathreads that need to be repeated by Democrats every time they speak to the media, which just loves to play he-said-she-said and pretend they don't know what they know. This fact (flagged as fantastic, by the way) is one of them, along with the fact that Team Trump didn't deny the letter, just defended it.

    And we're a bunch of random people on the Internet. One wonders what the so-called professional message managers in the Democratic Party do with their time, because if it isn't hanging out in the megathreads, they're wasting our money.

    The actual ability of Democratic messagers to "get out a message" is at best one order of magnitude higher than that of random people on the Internet. Paid advertising exists (my media diet happens to exclude them so I don't know what ads from Democrats look like nowadays), but aside from that and bot farms (which are obviously sketchy to say the least), messages only reach people that seek them out. That's the impetus for the success of celebrity news, and only a few politicians achieve celebrity status (the obvious ones at this time being AOC and Individual-1). Seeking out non-celeb political content is left to the nerds like us.

    I've mused that at least a couple Dems should try a little vulgarity to attract attention. As such I'm not displeased about Rashida Tlaib saying "impeach this motherfucker" (putting aside the wisdom of impeachment in itself). But I'm also shifting from that when I see the success of people like AOC who can accomplish the notoriety thing simply by speaking plain hard truths.

    Regardless, to reiterate themes I've touched on before... Americans of liberal/left persuasions have these intersecting-yet-conflicting tendencies to fixate on heroes that can save the Democratic party and the country by extension... and then subconsciously disqualify them from "counting" as real Democrats. If my fave is not problematic, well, then s/he must be ineffectual or marginal within the party.

    In truth, Individual-1's unpopularity has remained enormous from day one, and most messaging has been solid at keeping it that way. What rankles us all is the sheer fact that he retains his base plus the 10+% of people who stay disengaged from politics and "support" him out of inertia, and their disproportionate hold on government. But poll after poll shows that Americans, by clear majority, are against the wall, think Trump is deeply untrustworthy, that he probably has an arrangement with Putin, etc.
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 6:30 AM on January 14, 2019 [7 favorites]


    AP reports from inside the Trump White House: Trump’s Weekend: New Russia Questions, Shutdown Irritants
    Trump surprised his aides by deciding, with just a few hours’ notice, to call in to Jeanine Pirro’s show on Fox News on Saturday night to push back against coverage of his presidency on multiple fronts, particularly published reports about his approach toward Russia.

    Even then, the president avoided directly answering when Pirro asked whether he currently is or has ever worked for Russia.[…]

    White House aides expressed regret that the president did not more clearly and forcefully deny being a Russian agent when asked by the usually friendly Fox News host, according to three White House aides and Republicans close to the White House. The three spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private conversations.[…]

    Trump has expressed bafflement that he is not getting more credit for largely staying put during the shutdown. Aides acknowledge that the West Wing mishandled the first few days of the shutdown, when Trump remained out of sight, and are now trying to use the trappings of his office, with an Oval Office speech, a visit to the Texas border and the president’s frequent tweets about waiting in the White House for Democrats to act.
    The AP's Jonathan Lemire (who co-wrote this article) reports just now: "Trump to reporters on White House South Lawn: “I never worked for Russia”"
    posted by Doktor Zed at 6:34 AM on January 14, 2019 [7 favorites]


    I just heard on NPR: "The other night the president was asked during a news interview whether or not he is a Russian agent. He refused to answer the question."

    Trump wasn't seriously asked this question. He didn't refuse to answer. But I'm pleased nevertheless, because it gets to the heart of the matter. Regardless of whether or not Trump is truly compromised in the traditional sense, is he so enamored of Russia he won't even deny being their agent out of fear it might displease them?

    On preview: will “I never worked for Russia” be 2019's "I am not a crook"?
    posted by xammerboy at 6:54 AM on January 14, 2019 [20 favorites]


    His New Orleans event could be a shitshow at this rate.

    I suspect it'll just be more of the same. Captain Hate is a one-trick-pony, and that trick is "Campaign Rally", where all he gives is the same schtick and all he gets is positive feedback from the Trump Identity Extremists.
    posted by mikelieman at 6:55 AM on January 14, 2019 [7 favorites]


    The actual ability of Democratic messagers to "get out a message" is at best one order of magnitude higher than that of random people on the Internet.

    The problem is that it seems to be at least two orders of magnitude lower than the ability of movement conservative messengers to get their messages out. We know what the conservative messages are -- taxes bad, liberals bad, business good, etc. Do we know what the equivalent Democratic messages are? Because it seems that conservatives have been more successful at defining perceptions of the Democratic message than Democrats have.
    posted by Gelatin at 7:01 AM on January 14, 2019 [1 favorite]



    Nate Silver, 538: Why Kamala And Beto May Have More Upside Than Joe And Bernie [Warning: Auto-playing ABC News]

    I really wish this type of gamification would stop. It's weirdly Lacanian, like we're all calculating candidacies as some performance for the Big Other, Those Other Voting Blocks Out There. We're not supposed to actually think "hey, what are the trade offs about candidate's actual policies", which is what we ought to be thinking in the primaries, we're supposed to think about electability based on Those Other People Out There. Everyone is supposed to think about Those Other Voters Out There rather than their actual beliefs and preferences.

    It puts the reader in a weird position - like, those other people are really hard-core committed because they're millenials, or Black, or party loyalists or whatever, but the reader is invited to game things out according to which voting block is the most powerful. Your theoretical millenial voter is just going, of course, to pull the lever a certain way - but you, reader, are at one remove and can game things out. Except that to other readers, you are the predictable voting block. It's just this weird, self-alienating myth-making. "Everyone but me votes because of their pre-set commitments; I vote because of muh intellectual freedoms" - it's like a kinder version of that xkcd Sheeple cartoon.

    I mean, this is the time to talk about people's actual voting histories and their actual likely allies in the government and - most importantly - their actual commitment to restoring what Trump has broken. (I'm terrified of the idea of electing someone who has a lot of big business connections who will just...ignore the damage to the EPA, NIH, etc because that's good for polluters and private corporations.)

    It's just going to be absolutely poisonous if we spent the primary season talking about some vague "electibility" rather than the actual candidates' actual beliefs and actions. This is when we have to hash all that stuff out.

    This is especially true because this primary is going to be a huge giant primary - it's going to be far, far more representative than they usually are, and that means that the results are far, far more likely to mirror the wishes of the average voter.So now is the time to talk about content, not voting blocks.
    posted by Frowner at 7:06 AM on January 14, 2019 [95 favorites]


    Subpoena the Interpreter (David Frum, The Atlantic)
    There are real costs to such a move—but the public needs to know what was said between Trump and Putin.
    House Democrats Analyze Subpoenaing Trump’s Interpreters in Putin Meetings (Daniel Politi, Slate)
    … A piece in the Washington Post saying that Trump has gone to “extraordinary lengths” to hide details of his talks with Putin from members of his own administration “has changed the calculus” and “raises a new host of questions,” a senior Democratic aide told ABC News. “We’re looking into the legal implications of that, and we’ll discuss our options. Our lawyers are sitting down with intel committee lawyers to hash it out.”

    The aide warned any action wouldn’t be imminent and if they do decide to issue subpoenas it would likely be weeks away.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 7:08 AM on January 14, 2019 [23 favorites]


    Subpoena the Interpreter

    Given what the interpreter already said, I don't think there's anything to be gained there. It sounds like Trump was getting what he wanted to hear rather than marching orders.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:21 AM on January 14, 2019 [3 favorites]


    I highly doubt that what Putin was saying to Trump was anything other than Wormtongue-style flattery and vague suggestions. There was no "The eagle flies at midnight. The bear is eating the porridge. This message will self-destruct." Trump is far too stupid to actually know he's acting as a foreign agent here. He's so blatantly easy to manipulate, why would anyone risk incrimination when you clearly don't have to in order to get what you want out of him.
    posted by soren_lorensen at 7:25 AM on January 14, 2019 [21 favorites]


    I know it's not that simple, but good lord the whole Russian/Trump collusion thing seems like the easiest crime in the world to solve. I've made this joke here before, but here's a (SFW) visual representation of the trail of evidence.
    posted by The Card Cheat at 7:26 AM on January 14, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Frowner: This is especially true because this primary is going to be a huge giant primary - it's going to be far, far more representative than they usually are, and that means that the results are far, far more likely to mirror the wishes of the average voter.

    I faved this comment because of the really good point about the implications of thinking in terms of electability, but I wish I shared optimism about this specifically. Under the primary system both parties use, the candidates with the best outlook are not the most popular, representative or "electable", but rather the "loneliest" ones. If we want not-boring-centrist to win, it's possible we should actually hope for more boring-centrist candidates and fewer exciting-progressive-representative ones, so that the former group splits all their votes while the latter's are consolidated.

    That said, sheer numbers do affect the outcome's probability, so as long as the dropping-out happens in a helpful order (namely all the not-great candidates quitting first), we'll be fine.
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 7:33 AM on January 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


    After a weekend of explosive revelations, how much more is Trump hiding? (Heather Digby Parton, Salon)
    "A president under FBI investigation, who has concealed evidence of his meetings with Putin. What's coming next?"

    The lede in Peter Baker's story in the Sunday New York Times [Trump Confronts the Prospect of a ‘Nonstop Political War’ for Survival] was one I don't think anyone ever expected to see:
    So it has come to this: The president of the United States was asked over the weekend whether he is a Russian agent. And he refused to answer.
    That comment specifically refers to a question posed to the president by Fox News' Jeanine Pirro in reference to the big Times story on Friday reporting that in the wake of the firing of James Comey in May 2017, and Trump's suspicious behavior surrounding that event, the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into the president himself. We don't know whether that probe is still active, but one can safely assume that it was folded into special counsel Robert Mueller's portfolio along with a number of other investigations that had been opened into Russian spying, sabotage and cyber-propaganda over the course of the presidential campaign.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 7:34 AM on January 14, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Given what the interpreter already said, I don't think there's anything to be gained there.

    The interpreter refused to discuss the meeting, and the one thing she "conceded" was at odds with Tillerson's account.
    posted by diogenes at 7:35 AM on January 14, 2019 [11 favorites]


    filthy light thief: ... on Sept. 19, 2018, Alex Azar is Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, published an Op Ed in USA Today, proclaiming: Trump administration making progress in fight against opioid epidemic -- Our comprehensive strategy for the opioid crisis, grounded in the best science and evidence we have, is starting to show results.

    Counterpoint: Americans Are Now More Likely To Die Of An Opioid Overdose Than On The Road (NPR, January 14, 2019)
    For the first time in U.S. history, a leading cause of deaths, vehicle crashes, has been surpassed in likelihood by opioid overdoses, according to a new report on preventable deaths from the National Safety Council.

    Americans now have a 1 in 96 chance of dying from an opioid overdose, according to the council's analysis of 2017 data on accidental death. The probability of dying in a motor vehicle crash is 1 in 103.

    "The nation's opioid crisis is fueling the Council's grim probabilities, and that crisis is worsening with an influx of illicit fentanyl," the council said in a statement released Monday.

    Fentanyl is now the drug most often responsible for drug overdose deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported (via NPR) in December. And that may only be a partial view of the problem: Opioid-related overdoses have also been under-counted (via NPR) by as much as 35 percent, according to a study published last year in the journal Addiction.

    The council has recommended tackling the epidemic by increasing pain management training for opioid prescribers, making the potentially-lifesaving drug naloxone more widely available and expanding access to addiction treatment.

    While the leading causes of death in the U.S. are heart disease (1 in 6 chance) and cancer (1 in 7), the rising overdose numbers are part of distressing trend the non-profit has tracked: The lifetime odds of an American dying from a preventable, unintentional injury have gone up over the past 15 years.
    2019 may be the year for things to change, but not because of the Trump administration: Opioid-Makers Face Wave of Lawsuits in 2019 (NPR, December 31, 2018)
    The next 12 months might just redefine the way America thinks about and responds to the opioid epidemic that now claims more than 40,000 lives each year. The nation's biggest drugmakers and distributors face a wave of civil lawsuits that could total tens of billions of dollars in damages.

    Thousands of state and local governments, including cities and tribal governments, are demanding that companies like Purdue Pharma, Walmart and Rite-Aid compensate them for the costs of responding to the crisis. They're also pushing companies to reveal far more internal documents, detailing what they knew about the risks of prescription pain medications.

    "Our next battle is to get the documents that are being produced made available to the public instead of everything being filed under confidentiality agreements so we can get the facts out," said Joe Rice, an attorney representing local governments suing the drug industry.
    Emphasis mine -- this is not the use of Home Rule and States Rights I was hoping for, but if this changes industry practices and brings in money to support local treatments, the path doesn't matter as much as the outcome
    posted by filthy light thief at 7:37 AM on January 14, 2019 [12 favorites]


    I agree that Putin wasn't talking to him in that sort of stereotypical encoded message. Because that doesn't happen, as a general rule. The interpreter can easily concede what she did because it was an easy thing to concede of little consequence, but there was more said than just that one thing.

    If what was said was a bunch of flattery, then it is of no consequence - but that could have easily been done publicly. "Vague suggestions" would have some value.

    In general, two world leaders do not make time to meet in private for things of little consequence. But hey, let's turn one of the authoritarian favorites back towards those in power - If he's done nothing wrong, then he has nothing to fear by this.
    posted by MysticMCJ at 7:39 AM on January 14, 2019 [9 favorites]


    > His New Orleans event could be a shitshow at this rate.

    I suspect it'll just be more of the same.

    I keep thinking that whenever Trump goes on an extended Twitter rampage, it'll turn into a public meltdown. Somehow, it never quite does, perhaps because Trump's Twitter rants have a cathartic element or perhaps because they make his in-person rants look more stable by comparison.

    Still, it sounds as though he was rattled when he took questions for ten minutes on the White House lawn this morning, en route to Louisiana.

    WaPo's Josh Dawsey reports: “Trump tells gathered reporters on South Lawn that he isn't familiar with Steve King's white supremacy comments, that Comey was a "bad cop" and a "dirty cop" and that he rejected Lindsey Graham's suggestion that he temporarily reopen the government. "I did reject it," he says.” .

    ABC Politics (w/ video): “"I never worked for Russia," President Trump says in response to a NYT report that the FBI opened a probe. "Not only did I never work for Russia, I think it's a disgrace that you even asked that question because it's a whole big, fat hoax," he adds” https://abcn.ws/2FxWXvo

    @TPM: “Trump Goes off on Comey: "He’s a bad cop, a dirty cop"” http://bit.ly/2Fy0hH1

    Here's the extended rant, via Rawstory: “So the people doing that investigation were people that have been caught that are known scoundrels there. You could say they are dirty cops. I’ll tell you what. It is so unfair what’s happened to the FBI in terms of the men and women working in the rank and file of the FBI. I know many of them. These are great people. They are so embarrassed by their leadership. […] The whole thing is a hoax. It is a big hoax and it is very bad for our country. What happened with the FBI, I have done a great service for our country when I fired James Comey, because he was a bad cop and he was a dirty cop. He lied. He really lied.”

    Update, from ABC's Jordyn Phelps: "President Trump boarded AF1 half an hour ago but we still haven’t left the ground. White House has yet to offer an explanation to the press pool."
    posted by Doktor Zed at 7:41 AM on January 14, 2019 [20 favorites]


    VTX: Based on what we've seen from Barr, I wouldn't bet on this explanation but I still think there is a decent chance that Barr will be on Muller's side once he gets confirmed. It doesn't look good but I haven't lost all hope.

    Even if he doesn't impede Mueller, he's not the guy we want as AG:

    William Barr Supported Pardons In An Earlier D.C. 'Witch Hunt': Iran-Contra (NPR, January 14, 2019)
    This won't be the first time that William Barr, President Trump's nominee to become attorney general, will be involved with what's been called a "witch hunt."

    Barr, who is scheduled to go before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday for his confirmation hearings, ran the Justice Department once before, under President George H.W. Bush.

    Back then, the all-consuming, years-long scandal was called Iran-Contra. On Dec. 24, 1992, it ended when Bush pardoned six people who had been caught up in it.

    "The Constitution is quite clear on the powers of the president and sometimes the president has to make a very difficult call," Bush said then. "That's what I've done."

    Then-Attorney General Barr supported the president's decision in the Iran-Contra case, which gave clemency to people who had been officials in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, including former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. He had been set to go on trial to face charges about lying to Congress.

    To the man who led the Iran-Contra investigation, however, the pardons represented a miscarriage of justice.

    "It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office, deliberately abusing the public trust without consequences," said Lawrence Walsh, the independent prosecutor in the case, at the time of the pardons.

    Barr said later that he believed Bush had made the right decision and that he felt people in the case had been treated unfairly.
    Emphasis mine -- history looks set to repeat itself, except people have learned from history, and Mueller's team is working with different jurisdictions to prevent pardons from being the magical "get out of jail free" cards that they were in the Iran-Contra affair (Wikipedia), which ended with a fizzle:
    The affair was investigated by the U.S. Congress and by the three-person, Reagan-appointed Tower Commission. Neither investigation found evidence that President Reagan himself knew of the extent of the multiple programs. In the end, fourteen administration officials were indicted, including then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Eleven convictions resulted, some of which were vacated on appeal. The rest of those indicted or convicted were all pardoned in the final days of the presidency of George H. W. Bush, who had been Vice President at the time of the affair.
    ...
    George H. W. Bush's denial
    During his election campaign in 1988, Vice President Bush denied any knowledge of the Iran–Contra affair by saying he was "out of the loop". Though his diaries included that he was "one of the few people that know fully the details", he repeatedly refused to discuss the incident and won the election.

    A book published in 2008 by Israeli journalist and terrorism expert Ronen Bergman asserts that Bush was also personally and secretly briefed on the affair by Amiram Nir, a counterterrorism adviser to the then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, when Bush was on a visit to Israel. "Nir could have incriminated the incoming President. The fact that Nir was killed in a mysterious chartered airplane crash in Mexico in December 1988 has given rise to numerous conspiracy theories", writes Bergman.
    Nothing is new, under the sun.
    posted by filthy light thief at 7:48 AM on January 14, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Mueller should be allowed to finish report, AG nominee William Barr says - CNNPolitics
    "I believe it is in the best interest of everyone -- the President, Congress, and, most importantly, the American people -- that this matter be resolved by allowing the special counsel to complete his work," he will say. "The country needs a credible resolution of these issues. If confirmed, I will not permit partisan politics, personal interests, or any other improper consideration to interfere with this or any other investigation.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:50 AM on January 14, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Senior administration officials have discussed inviting rank-and-file Democrats to the White House, hoping they may be willing to negotiate over funding for a barrier, according to two sources privy to the private discussions.

    More of this bullshit from Trump this morning, which Daniel Dale examines:
    Trump says many of the Democrats in Congress are "calling" him and saying "we agree with you" on the shutdown.

    Like many of the suspiciously-helpful-to-Trump phone calls Trump describes, there is little chance this is not a lie.

    Trump also lied that Democrats "all raised their hand" to vote for a wall "three years ago" and "five years ago." Some but not all congressional Democrats voted for fencing -- the Secure Fence Act -- 13 years ago.
    Dale should be teaching a masterclass to US journalists on how to call out Trump's lies.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 7:50 AM on January 14, 2019 [66 favorites]


    Trump also lied that Democrats "all raised their hand" to vote for a wall "three years ago" and "five years ago." Some but not all congressional Democrats voted for fencing -- the Secure Fence Act -- 13 years ago.

    Bernie Bernstein/@Flame_CJ: "He’s probably also referencing the 2013 comprehensive immigration bill that was passed by Senate, which included significant border security funding."

    Maybe, but with Trump's notorious lack of attention to details in addition to his mendacity, who knows?
    posted by Doktor Zed at 8:00 AM on January 14, 2019


    "President Trump boarded AF1 half an hour ago but we still haven’t left the ground. White House has yet to offer an explanation to the press pool."

    AP's Jonathan Lemire: "After 40 minute delay, AF1 now rolling to leave for Louisiana"

    Air traffic control issues during the shutdown notwithstanding, I wonder if there was another reason why Team Trump didn't want to take off yet, such as a forthcoming news scoop that would necessitate cancelling the New Orleans trip.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 8:05 AM on January 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


    I believe that AF1 flies out of Andrews Air Force base, and its tower is staffed by Air Force personnel. There is no chance that the delay is ATC-related.
    posted by wintermind at 8:20 AM on January 14, 2019 [10 favorites]


    LAUSD teachers on strike for the first time in 30 years. < LATimes
    posted by Harry Caul at 8:28 AM on January 14, 2019 [24 favorites]


    Denver teachers are on the bubble of a strike as well.
    posted by hijinx at 8:29 AM on January 14, 2019 [16 favorites]


    President Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, current and former U.S. officials said.

    Trump did so after a meeting with Putin in 2017 in Hamburg that was also attended by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

    Carnegie Endowment VP Andrew S. Weiss examines the crucial July 7-11 timeline after this new revelation in a thread pulling together Trump's first face-to-face meetings with Putin (one public, the other semi-private), the NYT's scoop about the Trump Tower meeting with the now-indicted Natalya Veselnitskaya, and Trump's misleading statement on behalf of Don Jr. about the meeting that he dictated returning on AF1:
    Has anyone noticed the very disturbing overlap between Trump’s insistence on preventing his own staff from learning about discussions with Putin at the Hamburg G20 meeting in July 2017 and how he handled initial revelations about the infamous Trump Tower meeting?[…]

    All of this begs the question: What did Trump and Putin actually discuss at that impromptu one-on-one dinner meeting at the Hamburg G20 on July 7, 2017?

    Moreover, why did they huddle together by themselves within hours of the White House learning that the at-that-point-still-secret Trump Tower meeting between Trump, Jr. and the Russians was about to become public?

    Put another way, shortly after the New York Times reached out to the White House to ask about a secret meeting with the Russians, Trump himself sought a secret meeting with the Russians.
    The whole timeline in the thread is worth revisiting, particularly since keeping these details in focus together is difficult when mainstream journalism's breaking news rarely connects the dots.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 8:37 AM on January 14, 2019 [38 favorites]


    Given what the interpreter already said, I don't think there's anything to be gained there.

    Maybe not with regard to that conversation per se, but I think there's lots to gain in sending the message that citizens of a democracy won't stand for that kind of opaque, self-serving bullshit from our presidents.
    posted by Rykey at 8:42 AM on January 14, 2019 [20 favorites]


    Reuters’s Jeff Mason clears up Trump’s flight delay: “Explanation for AF1 sitting on the tarmac after having started to taxi: “Air Force One experienced a slight delay prior to take-off this morning so that the crew could reset an indicator light. Today’s trip to New Orleans will continue as scheduled," says @hogangidley45”

    (Sorry about highlighting this non-story earlier—I’m feeling a bit punchy after this weekend’s scoops.)
    posted by Doktor Zed at 8:51 AM on January 14, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Mod note: We do not need to spend comments interrogating every single thing That Dumbass does, people.
    posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 8:58 AM on January 14, 2019 [21 favorites]


    Not sure how truthful this following story is, as it's a post on Daily Kos, but it highlights something I haven't seen a lot of: explorations of influences on Mitch McConnell.

    McConnell and the Agents of Power and Influence (Mopshell, Daily Kos)
    Some have posited that he’s carrying Trump’s water because he’s in Trump’s pocket. Some say he’s worried about his upcoming 2020 re-election so he’s pandering to Trump’s base. Some suggest he’s protecting the GOP because he’s a hardcore republican. The media line seems to be that he’s a “wily old fox.”

    But none of these really take full account of McConnell’s need to succeed, driven by weak-kneed cowardice and inadequacy. Yet it is these personality traits which greased the wheels of his rise to senate tyrant because it is these personality traits which make him the perfect mark for agents of power and influence.
    These agents would include American billionaires, Russian elites, and Chinese elites.
    It’s little wonder then that he’s blocked every bipartisan bill to protect the Special Counsel’s investigation. Even when the latest bill was strongly and vociferously supported by members of his own caucus, he refused to allow it to come to the floor for a vote. It’s hardly surprising when you realise how enmeshed he is in corruption. He must be terrified of being caught — so the last person he’d want to protect is Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

    This also explains why he was so aggressively opposed to President Obama going public with warnings regarding Russia’s attack on American democracy in 2016. If prior to that meeting he was blissfully unaware that USIC was onto the Russians, the suddenness of that unwelcome knowledge, and the realisation of his own jeopardy, must have come as one helluva shock. He wasn’t protecting his party or the GOP presidential nominee when he refused his consent, he was desperate to protect himself.

    And that brings us back to why McConnell is perpetuating this shutdown. Some of those pulling his strings may also be involved at some level with Trump’s perfidy. If protecting himself means sticking with Trump then McConnell’s heightened sense of self preservation is going to kick in hard.

    But it’s likely to be more complicated than that. For all his posturing, McConnell’s inadequacy renders him weak and his weakness is exacerbated by fear. Running home to Kentucky rather than confronting the expanding disaster in DC is both a physical as well as symbolic attempt to hide from it all.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 9:06 AM on January 14, 2019 [41 favorites]


    [new fpp specifically devoted to the public education strikes]
    posted by sciatrix at 9:08 AM on January 14, 2019 [27 favorites]


    Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland Have Arrived (Nick Martin, Splinter News)
    With … a wide array of issues to tackle, and with little support coming from the White House or the Department of the Interior, it’s fortunate that a pair of Democrats as distinctive as the new Native congresswomen are the first to emerge. Haaland and Davids come from different generations, from different states, from different life experiences, from different tribes, from different views of what a government should look like. The steps they’ll take to represent their people, let alone their own districts, are going to be just as unique as Indian Country itself.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 9:45 AM on January 14, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Not sure how truthful this following story is, as it's a post on Daily Kos, but it highlights something I haven't seen a lot of: explorations of influences on Mitch McConnell.

    McConnell and the Agents of Power and Influence (Mopshell, Daily Kos)

    That is super interesting. If it has anything to it, it points to a way to challenge him in 2020. Come on KY mefites, you are all smarter and sweeter than old turtle.
    posted by mumimor at 10:05 AM on January 14, 2019 [5 favorites]


    McConnell and the Agents of Power and Influence (Mopshell, Daily Kos)

    This complements the WaPo's Greg Sargent's writings today about McConnell:
    In light of blockbuster revelations about Trump and Russia, it's time to intensify scrutiny of McConnell's role:

    * Refused united front against Russian interference

    * Scuttled efforts to protect Mueller

    * Won't hold votes to reopen govt

    Two other questions raised in this piece:

    1) Would McConnell's Senate vote to reverse a national emergency, if Trump declares one to build the wall?

    2) Was McConnell briefed by intel about separate investigation into whether Trump acted in Russian interests?
    He lays out his case in this WaPo opinion piece: Trump Is Doing Immense Damage. He Has a Hidden Helper. For instance, "On the shutdown front, McConnell continues to refuse votes on bills reopening the government that have already passed the House. McConnell claims there’s no point, because Trump wouldn’t sign them. But this actively shields Trump from having to veto bills funding the government, which would make it much harder for him to keep holding out. Worse, McConnell privately told Trump in December he has no leverage and no endgame here, meaning McConnell knows full well that not forcing Trump’s hand leaves us adrift with no exit in sight."

    McConnell has long drawn the ire of megathread regulars, but Sargent points out how much of a pass he receives in mainstream media and the general public alike.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 10:12 AM on January 14, 2019 [85 favorites]


    I've said it many times: McConnell is dirty in this. So is Ryan. So Is Pence.
    posted by azpenguin at 10:33 AM on January 14, 2019 [55 favorites]


    How McConnell and Chao used political power to make their family rich (Larry Gelten, NYPost) (2018)
    In 2004, current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, current US Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, had an average net worth of $3.1 million. Ten years later, that number had increased to somewhere between $9.2 million and $36.5 million.

    One source of the windfall, according to [the book "Secret Empires"] from Peter Schweizer, was a 2008 gift from Chao’s father, James Chao [a shipping magnate], for somewhere between $5 million and $25 million. But this gift could be seen as more than just a gift. It may have been acquired, according to Schweizer, thanks to the couple’s fealty to China, the source of the Chao family fortune. And that fealty may have occurred at the expense of the nation they had pledged to serve.

    …

    While politicians and their spouses are often subject to rigid regulations on what gifts they can accept and what sort of business they can conduct, others around them — like their friends or children have no such obstacles. So while a politician could theoretically wind up in prison for accepting $10,000 for doling out favors, establishing overseas connections that could land your children multi-million-dollar deals is harder to detect, and often legal.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 10:35 AM on January 14, 2019 [15 favorites]


    Trump’s Nominee to Replace Kavanaugh Questioned Date Rape, Discrimination, and Climate Change (Stephanie Mencimer, Mother Jones)
    Neomi Rao, whom President Donald Trump nominated to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the federal bench and who’s reportedly on the president’s Supreme Court shortlist, wrote in the 1990s that victims of date rape were partly responsible if they’d been drinking. In a series of controversial articles for Yale campus papers, she also suggested that climate change wasn’t real and argued that sexual and racial oppression were “myths.
    posted by gladly at 10:36 AM on January 14, 2019 [22 favorites]


    I highly doubt that what Putin was saying to Trump was anything other than Wormtongue-style flattery and vague suggestions. There was no "The eagle flies at midnight. The bear is eating the porridge.

    I doubt we'll ever get the truth, but for my money Trump made a bunch of over the top promises he's in no position to deliver including lifting sanctions, increasing trade, ending investigations, installing a gold statue of Putin in the oval office, etc. I'm not being snarky. This is 100% what I would expect him to do, and if the story is told it will be damning.
    posted by xammerboy at 10:54 AM on January 14, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Let's check in on that Farm Bureau speech:

    @igorbobic: "This is a man who's totally brilliant -- I don't know if you know what this means. Oxford, he went to Oxford. You have to be very, very smart to go to Oxford,” Trump says of @SenJohnKennedy
    in New Orleans

    @DavidNakamura: Trump to farmers convention: "I don't know if you know what this means -- Oxford. I'm very much into the world of schools."

    Starting off by indicating that farmers don't know what Oxford means, good start.

    @DavidNakamura: Trump: "I built a lot of wall." References a photo he posted to his Instagram last week. Yet DHS told reporters last month no new sections of wall have been built since Trump took office.

    ----

    WaPo, Dave Weigel, Democratic delegation’s trip to Puerto Rico becomes a target for Trump, in which Trump attacks Democrats for going to Puerto Rico despite his interest in the recovery effort ending when he threw paper towels at the hurricane victims (and yes, wouldn't you want to see Hamilton with the original cast too?)
    posted by zachlipton at 11:10 AM on January 14, 2019 [17 favorites]


    "On the shutdown front, McConnell continues to refuse votes on bills reopening the government that have already passed the House. McConnell claims there’s no point, because Trump wouldn’t sign them. But this actively shields Trump from having to veto bills funding the government, which would make it much harder for him to keep holding out.

    Not to mention, the House and Senate could override a Trump veto if they wanted. Which of course would truly let Republicans own the blame for the shutdown.

    McConnell has avoided scrutiny for his role in the shutdown -- the so-called "liberal media" loves to portray it as a showdown between Trump and house Democrats -- for far too long. Far to long, at least, for that oversight to be mere incompetence.
    posted by Gelatin at 11:15 AM on January 14, 2019 [48 favorites]


    You have to be very, very smart to go to Oxford

    True. Bill Clinton went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship.
    posted by kirkaracha at 11:19 AM on January 14, 2019 [34 favorites]


    Subpoena the Interpreter (David Frum, The Atlantic) …

    There have been some surprisingly thoughtful responses from professional interpreters over in the r/politics thread on this article that I found quite enlightening. To wit: most interpreters will remember almost nothing of conversations they interpret due to the cognitive load of simultaneous real-time translation. That issue is not something which I'd thought of before reading their responses.

    Regardless of the wisdom or lack thereof involved in issuing a subpoena, I thought is was the rest of the Atlantic's article that represented a significant shift in the conversation. This is a very dangerous moment for Herr Twitler, as the narrative appears to be slipping out of his control. The Atlantic is now casually questioning whether or not he's a Russian asset, and it's not even the lede.

    Add in The Hill's article showing Clinton now having the confidence to speak out directly on the matter, and though I doubt he's smart enough to realize it, this is very much beginning to look like it may be a narrative tipping point in the media at large. May take a while, but every article casually assuming or asking whether he's a foreign agent or not has got to have his handlers sweating.
    posted by los pantalones del muerte at 11:24 AM on January 14, 2019 [22 favorites]


    a relative who is one of my personal Trump Tipping Point plumb bobs was all "wow this guy turned out to be a real mess, huh? Too bad I couldn't talk you out of voting for him, ha ha" last night so yeah, maybe #itshappening
    posted by prize bull octorok at 11:30 AM on January 14, 2019 [26 favorites]


    The transition from “I haven’t had any business in Russia” to “I haven’t worked for Russia” should be noted. Just waiting for the “I never married Russia” and “I wasn’t ever in Russia” follow-ups.
    posted by valkane at 11:36 AM on January 14, 2019 [14 favorites]


    Daniel Dale is live-blogging/fact-checking Trump's New Orleans event:
    —Trump asks everyone to sit down rather than stand. He explains that this way they can give him standing ovations when they want, whereas if they're already standing, the media will say he didn't get any standing ovations. "It's probably better for me," he says.
    —Trump repeats his tape-over-their-mouths story about human trafficking, then says he doesn't talk about how they're renovating border barriers. He talks about this incessantly.*
    —Trump is telling his regular rambling lies. He boasts about how he was the one who finally got the Veterans Choice program passed. It was passed under Obama. Trump signed a law that changes the program.
    —Trump says one of the members of the media back there said he has actually delivered on more promises than he promised. He started saying that himself, then started attributing it to unnamed people, then started attributing it to someone in the media.
    —Trump tells his usual lies about how terrorist Sayfullo Saipov brought in 22 people through chain migration (even his aides won't defend this one) and that other countries deliberately give the U.S. bad people through the diversity visa lottery (individuals enter themselves).
    —Trump is lying about his border trip. He was told two people from Pakistan were apprehended the day prior. He just said, stumbling over the lie, "Three were from Pakistan. Four were from another Mideast, two Mideast, countries." There was no other even close-to-Mideast country.
    —Trump lies, "We have virtually eliminated the estate tax." He merely raised the threshold at which it has to be paid, didn't eliminate it. As always, he also misleadingly suggests the estate tax was a particular burden for family farmers, almost none of whom paid it.
    —Trump on NAFTA: "I saw what was going on in Canada, the way you were treated: horrible." U.S. farmers overwhelmingly like NAFTA. Some U.S. dairy farmers were unhappy with Canada's protectionist dairy system, which is not representative of Canada's overall agricultural policy.
    —Tears Alert! Trump says that when he signed his Waters of the US order: "I had ranchers, farmers and some homebuilders behind me. And these are tough people, they were strong, tough men and women. And half of them were crying...One guy, I don't think he cried in his whole life.."
    —Trump added a Sir for good measure. Tears Stories and Sir Stories are regular partners.
    There's more to come, of course, but I want to stop here just to emphasize how many substantial lies and misrepresentations Trump has told in less than half an hour. The WaPo tracked Trump making an average of 15 "false claims" a day last year, worse than either 2016 or 2017. Although this year won't have all the opportunities for lying on the campaign trail that Trump indulged in during the mid-terms, Trump lies most often when he's under pressure—which will happen a lot more in the coming months.

    * Seriously, Trump is weirdly fixated on the tape-over-their-mouths human trafficking story, e.g. "Human trafficking is a horrible thing...They just make a left into the U.S. & they come in & they have women tied up. They have tape over their mouths. Electrical tape. Usually blue tape, as they call it. It is powerful stuff." (CBS w/video).
    posted by Doktor Zed at 11:40 AM on January 14, 2019 [33 favorites]


    There have been some surprisingly thoughtful responses from professional interpreters over in the r/politics thread on this article that I found quite enlightening. To wit: most interpreters will remember almost nothing of conversations they interpret due to the cognitive load of simultaneous real-time translation. That issue is not something which I'd thought of before reading their responses.

    I agree; I used to photograph sports for my college paper and afterward would remember little of the actual games, though technically i saw the whole thing. So I can see how that lack of specific recall could occur.

    But an interpreter would likely remember if Trump demanded any copies of notes, or that the interpreter not take any.
    posted by Gelatin at 11:42 AM on January 14, 2019 [5 favorites]


    It doesn't surprise me that Trump knows all about which institutions are the most prestigious, schools included. All the things he respects and aspires to are markers of prestige, not markers of accomplishment.
    posted by Autumnheart at 11:44 AM on January 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Large protest in New Orleans for Trump’s speech including a statue of him dressed as Napoleon riding a nuclear bomb
    posted by The Whelk at 11:46 AM on January 14, 2019 [27 favorites]


    The Farm Bureau conference seems like a weird place to give the usual Trump stump speech. It doesn’t really advance his side in the shutdown struggle.

    It does get him in front of a friendly crowd and on TV, and so advances his only real priority, which is getting himself some attention.
    posted by notyou at 11:48 AM on January 14, 2019 [2 favorites]


    @pdmcleod:
    There was a very weird moment in Trump’s speech today where he mocked undocumented immigrants who actually showed up to their immigration court hearings.

    He falsely claimed that only two percent of immigrants show up to their court hearings. Actually, a majority do. But then he goes: “those people you almost don’t want because they cannot be very smart.. those two percent are not going to make America great again, I tell ya."

    So the Obama administration had set up this program, the Family Case Management Program, that worked with asylum seekers, provided them some legal representation. It worked great. Attendance at court hearings hit high-90s percent levels. The Trump admin quickly dismantled it. So when you look at the issue of undocumented immigrants not showing up for court hearings — the Trump administration quickly moved to exacerbate this issue and now the president is *openly mocking* people who do show up for their hearings.

    So, uh, I guess that’s Trump’s message to undocumented immigrants: only an idiot would go through the legal system properly.
    posted by zachlipton at 11:50 AM on January 14, 2019 [89 favorites]


    a relative who is one of my personal Trump Tipping Point plumb bobs was all "wow this guy turned out to be a real mess, huh? Too bad I couldn't talk you out of voting for him, ha ha"

    I think Trump has done for his political capital what he does for regular capital -- leverage it to the hilt. If he loses, oh, 10-15% of his base, the whole thing may just collapse. At least, that's my hope right now.
    posted by condour75 at 11:50 AM on January 14, 2019 [14 favorites]


    prize bull octorok: a relative who is one of my personal Trump Tipping Point plumb bobs was all "wow this guy turned out to be a real mess, huh? Too bad I couldn't talk you out of voting for him, ha ha" last night so yeah, maybe #itshappening

    To elaborate, by "Trump Tipping Point", do you mean this person voted for Trump and is now essentially denying that?
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 11:54 AM on January 14, 2019


    I guess that’s Trump’s message to undocumented immigrants: only an idiot would go through the legal system properly.

    That's his message to everybody.

    That's why he thinks Giuliani is the only prosecutor who isn't a "bad cop". The Giuliani I became aware of when he almost singlehandedly destroyed the market for bonds that aren't 'investment grade' (Junk) in order to screw over the most successful broker who was based in Los Angeles, not New York.

    I think he has solidly crossed the line from "constantly lying" to "living in a self-created fantasy world". Of course he doesn't believe he ever "worked for Russia"; they were working for HIM.
    posted by oneswellfoop at 11:58 AM on January 14, 2019 [10 favorites]


    While trump is spinning pure bs about 2% of immigrants showing up for court cases, heres a real 2% to ponder:


    Greg Sargent
    ‏@ThePlumLineGS

    Also from Quinnipiac:

    Did Trump's recent televised address to the nation change your mind about building a wall along the border with Mexico, or not?

    Yes: 2% (not a typo)

    No: 89%
    posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:58 AM on January 14, 2019 [42 favorites]


    To elaborate, by "Trump Tipping Point", do you mean this person voted for Trump and is now essentially denying that?

    it was more of a self-deprecating joke than a denial, but you have the basic idea
    posted by prize bull octorok at 12:02 PM on January 14, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Doktor Zed: Daniel Dale is live-blogging/fact-checking Trump's New Orleans event

    Can we crowdfund a baby Trump blimp with a dynamic sign that reads out Daniel Dale's live fact-checking at Trump presentations? Or if that's too much of a security concern, perhaps a bunch of hidden LED projectors, say 5 to 10 in the crowd, maybe even mounted from inside a MAGA hat, to project the same corrections on a wall or surface near Trump?

    Because these tweets aren't landing where they matter: the audience lapping up these lies.

    I guess the alternative is the old fashioned heckling. Maybe squads of people to protect a particularly loud individual?, so they can at least shout back a few times, then when that person gets kicked out, another person takes their place, with their own defense squad?

    Yeah, all wishful thinking, but Trump's blatant, repeated, and dangerous lies physically disgust me. He's the fooking President of the United States, and he's trying to stroke his own fragile ego by lying and putting others down, including those who come to this country seeking refuge and opportunities, and those trying to make this country and world a little better. Or who are just calling him on his lies, even if they aren't yet calling them lies.
    posted by filthy light thief at 12:04 PM on January 14, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Did Trump's recent televised address to the nation change your mind about building a wall along the border with Mexico, or not?

    Yes: 2% (not a typo)

    Hopefully those 2% were previously for it.
    posted by mazola at 12:06 PM on January 14, 2019 [14 favorites]


    @willsommer: Right-wing activist Laura Loomer, last seen chaining herself to Twitter HQ, has jumped the fence at Nancy Pelosi's Napa home and set up a tent protesting immigration. Now she's chanting "Nancy, Nancy!" Laura Loomer has walked off the stream, on her way to Pelosi's house. One of her crew is claiming that it's legal to jump the fence because there were no "no trespassing" signs. I don't know about that!

    Wait. I was told that the country needs a wall on the border because rich people have fences at home, and now Loomer is demonstrating that fences are actually not some impenetrable force field?
    posted by zachlipton at 12:08 PM on January 14, 2019 [65 favorites]


    Loomer is an attentionvore seeking rapidly depleating stocks.
    posted by The Whelk at 12:11 PM on January 14, 2019 [14 favorites]


    My new favorite comment about the wall on twitter is "What if Mexico builds stairs on their side of the wall?"
    posted by yoga at 12:15 PM on January 14, 2019 [35 favorites]


    The real answer to that question is that, since a lot of the wall will have to be set back quite a bit from the notional border, the land right next to The Wall will probably mostly be bits of America that we're just arbitrarily blocking off, and Mexico can't build stuff there.
    posted by BungaDunga at 12:31 PM on January 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


    McConnell claims there’s no point, because Trump wouldn’t sign them.

    Besides what was mentioned upthread: another reason this is a BS claim is, if McConnell really opposed Trump's shutdown, as majority leader he could oversee the overriding of Trump's veto. When he really wants something done, McConnell gives zero shits about the obstacles in his way. Even if he failed at overriding a veto, it would send a strong message—an altogether different message than "Gee golly, it's simply impossible to do the thing I'm fully empowered to do if I wanted to."
    posted by Rykey at 12:57 PM on January 14, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Trump is trying to tweet his way out of the shutdown (Emily Stewart, Vox)

    A less click-baity way to put this is to say "bluff" or "bluster" or "B.S." his way out. Regardless, whatever he's doing is not working.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 12:57 PM on January 14, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Today Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller published an anonymous op-ed by "a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose career would be jeopardized by its disclosure": I’m a Senior Trump Official, And I Hope a Long Shutdown Smokes Out the Resistance
    As one of the senior officials working without a paycheck, a few words of advice for the president’s next move at shuttered government agencies: lock the doors, sell the furniture, and cut them down.

    Federal employees are starting to feel the strain of the shutdown. I am one of them. But for the sake of our nation, I hope it lasts a very long time, till the government is changed and can never return to its previous form.[…]

    Saboteurs peddling opinion as research, tasking their staff on pet projects or pitching wasteful grants to their friends. Most of my career colleagues actively work against the president’s agenda. This means I typically spend about 15 percent of my time on the president’s agenda and 85 percent of my time trying to stop sabotage, and we have no power to get rid of them. Until the shutdown.

    Due to the lack of funding, many federal agencies are now operating more effectively from the top down on a fraction of their workforce, with only select essential personnel serving national security tasks. One might think this is how government should function[….]

    Ideally, continue a resolution to pay the essential employees only, if they are truly working on national security. Furloughed employees should find other work, never return and not be paid.[…]

    A referendum to end government plunder must happen. Wasteful government agencies are fighting for relevance but they will lose. Now is the time to deliver historic change by cutting them down forever.
    This is why Sarah Kendzior has been in full-on Cassandra mode since the shutdown began:
    Pay attention to the long-term, cumulative damage of the shutdown, including the effect on the census.

    The Trump admin has long sought to manipulate the census in an effort to reallocate resources and annihilate rights. This isn't just a shutdown -- it's a hostile restructuring.

    I warned from the start that this was a deliberate plan. There are some things we may be able to recover: voter rights, jobs. There are others we may lose forever -- like some of our national parks.

    And most importantly, we lose lives. The admin kills, the shutdown accelerates.

    The scope of loss from the shutdown is staggering. Already we lost FDA inspection; FBI and TSA protection from terrorism and violent crime; food stamps for needy families; paychecks for desperate workers; the national parks system...

    It's unsustainable and that's the point.
    And what she wrote about the 2013 shutdown for al-Jazeera is worth revisiting: "The government shutdown only formalises the dysfunction that has been hurting ordinary Americans for decades. It is not a political shutdown but a social breakdown. "
    posted by Doktor Zed at 1:14 PM on January 14, 2019 [66 favorites]


    Talking Points Memo: On Shutdown: ‘We Do Not Want Most Employees To Return’
    An unnamed “senior official in the Trump administration” wrote in an anonymous Daily Caller op-ed Monday that the record-breaking 24-day partial government shutdown “is an opportunity to strip wasteful government agencies for good.”

    posted by happyroach at 1:21 PM on January 14, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Maybe this is obvious to everyone here, but I don't hear it mentioned too often. It seems like small-government R's would love a permanent shutdown, where only "essential" federal employees work. Isn't that their fantasy for what government is?
    posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 1:36 PM on January 14, 2019 [12 favorites]


    I’ve been telling my friends that this was exactly what the shutdown is designed to do. None of them believed me.
    posted by Thorzdad at 1:37 PM on January 14, 2019 [38 favorites]


    McConnell rebukes Rep. King for racial remarks as House Democrats ponder sanctions
    “I have no tolerance for such positions and those who espouse these views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms,” McConnell said in a written statement to The Washington Post. “Rep. King’s statements are unwelcome and unworthy of his elected position. If he doesn’t understand why ‘white supremacy’ is offensive, he should find another line of work.”
    Meanwhile, Democrats rushed to file resolutions to censure or reprimand King today.

    But, @daveweigel: I actually think that Democrats gave up a good political argument by turning the Steve King news cycle into “censure Steve King.” The point of the story that started this: *King was the chief House advocate for a wall.*

    I'd add that King was also a national Co-Chair for Ted Cruz's 2016 Presidential campaign. This guy is central to the Republican party.
    posted by zachlipton at 1:38 PM on January 14, 2019 [25 favorites]


    I know some tea-party folk who have been itching for such a shutdown for at least five years so yeah. :(
    posted by mazola at 1:38 PM on January 14, 2019 [2 favorites]


    An unnamed “senior official in the Trump administration” wrote in an anonymous Daily Caller op-ed Monday that the record-breaking 24-day partial government shutdown “is an opportunity to strip wasteful government agencies for good.”

    Oft evil will shall evil mar, as the fellow says. I am not 100% certain that, eg, being unable to issue tax refunds or make the planes fly is going to work as well for the GOP as they think. As I understand it, tax refunds can't go out right now, and people do love their tax refunds. Also, the longer this goes on, the longer the knock-on effects of all those paycheck-less people continue - the longer relatives and friends are being asked for loans, the longer that spending at restaurants and local businesses falls, etc.
    posted by Frowner at 1:39 PM on January 14, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Do they have an explanation on what else to do with the US population, currently now at 325 million I think?
    posted by Melismata at 1:40 PM on January 14, 2019


    In health care news potentially of interest to Kentuckians, Rand Paul is headed to Ontario for a hernia operation at the Shouldice clinic:

    While Shouldice Hernia Hospital is privately owned — like many Canadian hospitals — it receives a majority of its funding from the Ontario government and accepts the Ontario’s Hospital Insurance Plan.

    The hospital's website outlines payments it accepts, including cash, check or credit card for those patients, like Paul, who are not covered by Ontario's insurance plan or a provincial health insurance plan.

    Kelsey Cooper, a spokeswoman for Paul, said the hospital is privately owned and people come from around the globe for their services.

    “This is more fake news on a story that has been terribly reported from day one — this is a private, world renowned hospital separate from any system and people come from around the world to pay cash for their services,” Cooper said in an email to the Courier Journal.

    Paul often argues for private market solutions to American's health care woes.

    In Canada, medical care is publicly funded and universally provided through the country's Provincial Ministry of Health, and everyone receives the same base level of care.

    Paul has called universal health care and nationalized options "slavery."

    The "the country's Provincial Ministry of Health" is a puzzling line, but hey - US media gonna US media.

    Anyway, I have friends who've been to Shouldice for hernia operations, and they're good at what they do - and the treatment was covered because they are "enslaved" by our universal single-payer health coverage.

    But, as I've said before, everyone's a libertarian until they need to call 911.
    posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:42 PM on January 14, 2019 [51 favorites]


    Does Rand Paul think there's something wrong with the medical care available in the United States?
    posted by Faint of Butt at 1:44 PM on January 14, 2019 [5 favorites]


    As I understand it, tax refunds can't go out right now, and people do love their tax refunds

    They've exempted those by fiat; they can keep doing this with bits of the government that they think their constituents like, and dare the Democrats to sue. Who is going to sue to demand the government not send out tax refunds? Nobody.
    posted by BungaDunga at 1:44 PM on January 14, 2019 [10 favorites]


    WHat can we do to put pressure on McConnell?
    posted by yoga at 1:46 PM on January 14, 2019 [8 favorites]


    It seems like small-government R's would love a permanent shutdown, where only "essential" federal employees work.

    Once you get beyond full-on libertarians like Justin Amash and unelected shits like Grover Norquist, you'll have Rs who will argue that the federal employees in their state or district are more essential than others. The senators for Wyoming or Idaho might gut-believe ideologically that their states should be a free-for-all, but right now they're bottle-fed by the federal government and the revenue from National Parks.

    Sarah Kendzior has earned the right to be full-on Cassandra here, and even if you take her current warnings with a pinch of salt, her long-standing citation of I-1's 2014 fantasy of economic riots feels on the mark: "When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you’ll have a [chuckles], you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.”
    posted by holgate at 1:51 PM on January 14, 2019 [11 favorites]


    It seems like small-government R's would love a permanent shutdown, where only "essential" federal employees work.

    Seems like effectively laying off 8x the amount of voters as your last dude's vote win, and 2000X the dude before that, is an incredibly terrible politically strategy.

    Not that Team Trump thinks that far ahead, but when you win an election by 100k people in three states, telling 800k workers they need new careers would prob end the GOP in national politics.
    posted by sideshow at 1:52 PM on January 14, 2019 [7 favorites]


    zachlipton: McConnell rebukes Rep. King for racial remarks as House Democrats ponder sanctions

    See also: GOP Mulls Action Against Rep. Steve King For Racially Charged Comments (NPR, January 14, 2019)
    'House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy promises "action will be taken" against Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King for his latest offering in a well-documented history of making racially charged or racially insensitive remarks.

    "I'm having a serious conversation with Congressman Steve King on his future and role in this Republican Party," McCarthy told CBS's Face the Nation. The two lawmakers are expected to meet privately on Monday. "I will not stand back as a leader of this party, believing in this nation that all are created equal, that that stands or continues to stand and have any role with us."

    There are few options for punishment in the House: stripping King's committee assignments, censuring him on the House floor and expulsion.

    One Democrat, Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, announced Monday he will introduce a resolution to formally censure King. In a statement, he chastised Republicans for tolerating King's series of controversial comments. "Republicans, in the interest of political expediency, sought his endorsement, ignored his racist remarks, and continued to elevate him to positions of influence," Rush said, "Only now that his behavior is well known to those outside the beltway and tainted him politically, do they vigorously denounce him."
    Emphasis mine -- there's the 4th option that Kevin McCarthy opted for: A Really Serious Talk, Man to Man.

    According to Wikipedia, because censure is not specifically mentioned as the accepted form of reprimand, many censure actions against members of Congress may be listed officially as rebuke, condemnation, or denouncement. So we're back to 3 forms of punishment, with a censure being akin to a Stern Talking-To.

    Stern Talks, the Thoughts and Prayers of those Very Concerned about Racist Remarks.
    posted by filthy light thief at 1:52 PM on January 14, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Every year a random number of government employees get to fill out a survey about how happy and fulfilled we are, and whether we feel what we do is valuable. We are also asked if we think anyone pays attention to our responses in the survey. I cannot imagine what the survey responses are going to look like next fall.
    posted by acrasis at 1:54 PM on January 14, 2019 [10 favorites]


    And also see also Adam Serwer, What’s the Difference Between Steve King and Donald Trump?
    Hardly. While it is heartening to see that King’s antics have finally drawn a unified response of condemnation from the right, the reactions seem to miss the obvious point that there is little daylight between Steve King and the president of the United States, Donald Trump. (Neither National Review’s editorial nor Scott’s op-ed even mention the president’s name.)

    But don’t take my word for it. In 2014, as Trump was mulling a run for president, he made an appearance in Iowa with King, calling him “special guy, a smart person, with really the right views on almost everything,” and noting that their views on the issues were so similar that “we don’t even have to compare notes.”
    posted by zachlipton at 1:55 PM on January 14, 2019 [28 favorites]


    Not that Team Trump thinks that far ahead, but when you win an election by 100k people in three states, telling 800k workers they need new careers would prob end the GOP in national politics.

    Thing is, if they actually succeed in killing-off most of federal government, it will be nigh-on impossible for any Democratic majority to rebuild it to any effective degree. To reinstate the eliminated agencies and services, as well as bring the merely wounded agencies back up to effective levels would require some substantial spending, and probably tax hikes.

    I would bet anything that the consevative thinktanks already have the scripts written for the adverts they’ll blanket the nation with, pummeling dems with such classics as “tax and spend” should they even try to bring government back.
    posted by Thorzdad at 2:03 PM on January 14, 2019 [12 favorites]


    the agents of KAOS: What’s going to stop them? A fence?

    The law. Any notion whereby "Mexico" would/could build stairs implies (as with "Mexico pays for the way") the government, not individual arbitrary Mexican people (some of whom can and do sometimes cross existing fences by various officially-unlawful means).

    I can't imagine why the United Mexican States would want to interfere with a wall. If they did, it would majorly violate international sovereignty, precisely because "their side" of the wall wouldn't be their side at all. A wall doesn't redefine the border. And sovereignty is, of course, also why the USA can't build on "their side", or even "along" the actual border.
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 2:04 PM on January 14, 2019


    In health care news potentially of interest to Kentuckians, Rand Paul is headed to Ontario for a hernia operation at the Shouldice clinic

    Given that he is passing his hernia off as a complication of his tussle with his neighbor it is kind of funny that Athletic Pubalgia is usually as a result of a sudden change of direction...like say going abroad to get healthcare from socialist trained doctors in a socialist bogeyman country when it is your own health on the line after an entire lifetime of vilifying pretty much everything Canada stands for. It's positively Randian.

    I also hope he pays the extra fee for a private recovery room for the sake the Canadians getting treatment there at the same time.
    posted by srboisvert at 2:06 PM on January 14, 2019 [10 favorites]


    It seems like small-government R's would love a permanent shutdown, where only "essential" federal employees work. Isn't that their fantasy for what government is?

    The "essential" employees are still not receiving a paycheck, so this fantasy government would have to rely on an entirely volunteer workforce. Once again, we give conservatives way too much credit by declaring that this is a 4D chess move. The only reason the current shutdown is sustainable even in the short term is because many departments have already received full FY2019 funding and past shutdowns have been short and followed by full backpay. It's not a master plan by Republicans, it's a system breaking down and being temporarily held together by the good will of federal employees.
    posted by parallellines at 2:13 PM on January 14, 2019 [35 favorites]


    WaPo
    Trump invokes one of the worst Native American massacres to mock Elizabeth Warren

    One hundred years after U.S. soldiers killed and maimed hundreds of Sioux men, women and children at the Wounded Knee massacre, Congress formally apologized in 1990 by expressing its “deep regret on behalf of the United States.”

    On Sunday night, President Trump used that same massacre as a punchline in his latest broadside against Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the Democratic presidential hopeful whom he regularly calls “Pocahontas” in jeering reference to her claims of American Indian heritage.

    If Elizabeth Warren, often referred to by me as Pocahontas, did this commercial from Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen, with her husband dressed in full Indian garb, it would have been a smash! pic.twitter.com/D5KWr8EPan

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2019
    posted by bluesky43 at 2:17 PM on January 14, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Up above, someone cited the New Yorker feature on Tulsi Gabbard, which is very good. There are some parts of it worth unpacking.

    1. Calling her a "Hindu-American" is weird because she is not ethnically Indian at all. Her father is Samoan and her mother is white.
    2. Also, the "Hindu" part refers not to any kind of traditional Hinduism, but to membership in the Hare Krishna spinoff "the Science of Identity Foundation," led by American Chris Butler.
    3. So, calling her a "Hindu-American" is equivalent to referring to Mitt Romney's ethnicity as "Christian-American" because he is Mormon. It makes no sense.
    4. She told the New Yorker that “I’ve had many different spiritual teachers, and continue to,” and denied that any one teacher was more important than any other. But that is contradicted pretty dramatically by this remarkable video from 2015, in which she declares Butler to be her "guru dev."
    posted by msalt at 2:30 PM on January 14, 2019 [12 favorites]


    I recommend absolutely not policing the boundaries of hinduism.
    posted by stonepharisee at 2:39 PM on January 14, 2019 [21 favorites]


    I would like to know what Hindu's who are ethnically Indian think of Gabbard however.
    posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:42 PM on January 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Hinduism is complex. Don't, please don't, confuse it with any account of Indian ethnicity.
    posted by stonepharisee at 2:44 PM on January 14, 2019 [13 favorites]


    @kaitlancollins:
    Due to the government shutdown, President Trump is personally paying for the meals that will be provided to the Clemson team during their celebration tonight, CNN has learned. Trump said he's serving "McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King's with some pizza." [WH statement attached]

    The White House is currently operating with a thinned-out staff caused by the government shutdown and inclement weather in DC. Much of the Executive Residence staff, ordinarily responsible for catering this stuff, are either furloughed or at home because of the snow closure.
    posted by zachlipton at 2:49 PM on January 14, 2019 [8 favorites]


    In health care news potentially of interest to Kentuckians, Rand Paul is headed to Ontario for a hernia operation at the Shouldice clinic

    This Canadian isn't particularly concerned by Paul's hypocrisy in this matter, but i do love it that we have a bold, new counterpoint to the staid old arguments that a) our system doesn't deliver good care without the financial incentive for innovation, and b) there are hordes of us fleeing to the States to jump the line, if only we can afford to. (Sure, there are queue-jumpers, but it's not a huge phenomenon, and hey, good for them if that's what they want.)

    But now: "Hey, your Senator came to Canada for health care! A Senator, who has coverage as good as anyone, he came to *us*!"

    That's pretty sweet.
    posted by Capt. Renault at 2:52 PM on January 14, 2019 [36 favorites]


    We interrupt this continuing crisis for an announcement: UNC Chancellor Folt announces resignation, orders Confederate monument to be removed from the campus intact.
    posted by octobersurprise at 2:55 PM on January 14, 2019 [30 favorites]


    “Enjoy this garbage food, courtesy of your garbage President.”
    posted by The Card Cheat at 3:20 PM on January 14, 2019 [44 favorites]


    POTUS with “great American food” for Clemson Tigers visiting WH.
    posted by waitingtoderail at 3:22 PM on January 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Wow. I mean, I like drive-thru food as much as the next person I guess, but I'd consider it an insult coming from the President of the United States as some kind of congratulations. I can grok Trump's evildoing and his incompetence, but why, WHY is he so goddamned WEIRD?
    posted by Rykey at 3:25 PM on January 14, 2019 [39 favorites]


    The sad thing is that Trump honestly thinks Wendy's, BK, and McDonald's are indeed "great American food". 50-1 says the pizza is from Pizza Hut or Dominoes.
    posted by Justinian at 3:26 PM on January 14, 2019 [8 favorites]


    WSJ: Ivanka Trump to Help Select Nominee for World Bank President—Selection of bank’s president is shaping up as a test for Trump administration’s international clout
    Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s daughter and senior White House adviser, will help Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney lead the process of selecting the next World Bank president.

    Ms. Trump isn’t a candidate for the position but will “help manage the U.S. nomination process as she’s worked closely with the World Bank’s leadership for the past two years,” according a White House representative.

    The selection is shaping up as a test of the Trump administration’s international clout. The World Bank president has always been an American, but this outcome isn’t guaranteed. The abrupt resignation of the bank’s president Jim Yong Kim has created an opportunity for countries seeking a non-American to lead the World Bank.[…]

    Washington faces a potentially tricky balancing act in making its appointment. The World Bank’s board of directors has said a candidate must be committed to multilateralism, while some Trump administration officials have been critical of multilateral institutions like the World Bank, which is the leading international development finance institution.
    I pity the WSJ reporters who have to cover this farce for Murdoch with a straight face, but that last paragraph is masterpiece of understatement.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 3:28 PM on January 14, 2019 [12 favorites]


    50-1 says the pizza is from Pizza Hut or Dominoes

    You Win.
    posted by waitingtoderail at 3:29 PM on January 14, 2019 [8 favorites]


    The spread for Clemson and the "great American food, I love American stuff" talk is red meat for the part of his base that still shows up to rallies and gets into fights on Facebook for him. Look, the guy in the White House thinks the low-quality food you bring home for your family at the end of a day at your shitty low-paying job is good enough to be served to the best college athletes in the country! He's not some elitist who would serve them frou-frou catered food. He's just regular frugal folk, that's the image they're trying to project with this.
    posted by palomar at 3:36 PM on January 14, 2019 [17 favorites]


    It's possible that he's just weird and dumb but another hypothesis is it's performative in the same way that people burning their Nikes is demonstrating their tribal loyalty.

    "I LOVE this 'great America food' just like all the other REAL Americans. None of that fancy sushi or avocado toast crap that the libs eat. I eat REAL food like a REAL man!"

    And his followers will swear up and down that anything that seems even remotely fancy tastes like crap while their McDonald's burger is the very height of epicurean delight and will likewise assume that anyone who likes that fancy junk is faking liking it to fit in with the libs and demonstrate that they're better than "real" Americans.

    And, of course, sometimes I like fast basic food from McDonalds and sometimes I like fancy stuff and I don't really judge people who do or don't like things different than me.
    posted by VTX at 3:42 PM on January 14, 2019 [10 favorites]


    50-1 says the pizza is from Pizza Hut or Dominoes

    You Win.

    At the risk of a Pizza related derail i need to remind everyone that (at least while they were sponsors of the Apprentice series on NBC) Trumps allegiance in the pizza world was to inFamous Famiglia.

    Never missing an opporuntity to post this all time classic Daily Show bit from when Trump took Sarah Palin to Familigia.
    posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 3:43 PM on January 14, 2019 [19 favorites]


    A. Trump’s crappy merchandise was, for decades, almost 100% sourced from China. In no sense can he claim to be a champion of American goods.

    B. Every burger on that table, if it sat there for more than ten minutes, is cold, dammit. COLD.

    C. Lighting candles and arranging the packets of ketchup and mayo neatly on the table still does not make this right.
    posted by darkstar at 3:44 PM on January 14, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Cold McDonald's in a mostly empty White House. It's like the TV trope of the divorced dad serving his kids cheap takeout at his crappy apartment.
    posted by jedicus at 3:45 PM on January 14, 2019 [81 favorites]


    Mod note: Let's call it enough on the fast food thing, unless there's some noteworthy development.
    posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 3:45 PM on January 14, 2019 [11 favorites]


    WaPo: Judge Blocks Trump Effort to Roll Back Birth Control Mandate Nationwide
    A pair of federal judges stepped in at the last moment to pause Trump administration rules that would restrict the ability of some women to get birth control at no charge because their employers object on religious or moral grounds.

    A Pennsylvania district court judge issued a nationwide injunction Monday afternoon, just as the new policy was slated to take effect. That ruling came less than 24 hours after a California district court judge issued a more limited stay in 13 Democratic states and the District of Columbia, while challenges are being argued.

    The back-to-back court rulings represent the second time the same judges have issued preliminary injunctions, halting Trump administration rules while lawsuits against the revised policies play out.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 3:48 PM on January 14, 2019 [22 favorites]


    Call me crazy, but, to me? it does not seem like brilliant strategy to demonstrate directly and immediately how terrible you are at governing when a report detailing all the many, many impeachable treasons you’ve been doing is about to drop. Especially not when some of your party’s very vulnerable purple state senators are up for re-election in 2020, and other GOP senators are implicated in all the treasoning.

    This is terrible, but IMO the GOP’s position gets weaker every day. The Dems gets stronger.
    posted by schadenfrau at 4:09 PM on January 14, 2019 [8 favorites]


    NYT (Sydney Ember and Katie Benner): Senator Bernie Sanders, accelerating his efforts to contain the damage from reports of sexism and harassment during his 2016 presidential campaign, plans to meet on Wednesday with a group of former staff members seeking assurances of better practices if he runs again in 2020.
    posted by msalt at 4:24 PM on January 14, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Hinduism is complex. Don't, please don't, confuse it with any account of Indian ethnicity.

    That's exactly the point that the New Yorker was making -- pushing back against Gabbard supporters who are pitching her as "the first Hindu-American politician," whatever that would mean. Apparently because Nikki Haley identifies as a Christian?
    posted by msalt at 4:27 PM on January 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


    “Hindu-American” is a nonsense descriptor read as being a description of race because since when did anyone hyphenate religion anyway? Nobody talks about JFK the Catholic-American.
    posted by the agents of KAOS at 4:33 PM on January 14, 2019 [26 favorites]


    (There's a separate thread about the Polish mayor's assassination; better to take that over there)
    posted by LobsterMitten at 4:35 PM on January 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Apparently because Nikki Haley identifies as a Christian?
    Nikki Haley is Christian. She was raised in a Sikh family. Truly: Indian and Hindu are not the same thing.

    (Bobby Jindal is also Christian, but he actually was raised Hindu.)

    There have to be Hindu politicians, but maybe not ones on the national stage.
    posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:42 PM on January 14, 2019 [9 favorites]


    delfin: "If Trump wants his 5.7 billion, all he has to do is open it up to corporate sponsorship.

    50-foot-high BUDWEISER and WELLS FARGO and COORS logos stretching across thousands of miles of American territory, like Hell's own billboards? I'm amazed it hasn't happened already.    "

    Highway billboard advertising is cheap and gets a heck of alot more exposure
    posted by Mitheral at 4:42 PM on January 14, 2019 [3 favorites]


    @AlexNBCNews: NEW: Iowa GOP Rep @SteveKingIA has been removed from all committee assignments by GOP Steering Committee per member on committee. He will be on Republican without committees assignment.

    So they'll do this and continue to pretend they haven't been ignoring him saying the same stuff for years while insisting the rot goes absolutely no deeper than this one individual.
    posted by zachlipton at 4:45 PM on January 14, 2019 [25 favorites]


    since when did anyone hyphenate religion anyway

    Yeah, that just seems weird. People do it for race to distinguish between nationality and racial/ethnic groups (Indian can describe either a nationality or an ethnic group, Indian-American vs Indian is clearer). But "Hindu" does not describe a nationality, only a religion, hyphenating makes no sense.
    posted by thefoxgod at 4:53 PM on January 14, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Here's an article on Hindu and Buddhist members of Congress. There are two Hindu congresspeople, both Democrats: Ro Khanna, of California, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, of Illinois. There are other Indian-American congresspeople who don't identify as Hindu specifically: Pramila Jayapal (OR) is unaffiliated and Ami Bera (CA) is Unitarian Universalist.

    Democrats, in general, have been upping their diversity game tremendously, and especially since the last midterms. Naturally, the Republicans are solidly white and Christian.
    posted by Rosie M. Banks at 4:54 PM on January 14, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Doing some web searching, it looks like the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) launched a campaign in December to encourage people to publicly declare themselves as "Hindu-American." Fox and the Intercept, among others, use it to describe Gabbard.

    Wikipedia says that HAF is an advocacy group for the 2 million US Hindus, founded in 2003 by Mehir Meghani, but that it has been criticized for "links to Hindu nationalist organizations, namely the Vishva Hindu Parishad America (VHPA) and Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), the overseas wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh." They note the BJP used to have an essay by Meghani ("Hindutva: The Great Nationalist Ideology") on its website.
    posted by msalt at 4:55 PM on January 14, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Pramila Jayapal (OR)

    Washington.
    posted by palomar at 4:59 PM on January 14, 2019 [6 favorites]


    House Republican leaders move to strip Rep. Steve King of his committee assignments over comments about white nationalism - The Washington Post
    “We will not be seating Steve King on any committees in the 116th Congress,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said after a GOP Steering Committee meeting Monday night. The decision was unanimous. It must be ratified by all House Republicans.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:08 PM on January 14, 2019 [9 favorites]


    CNN: Barr Sent or Discussed Controversial Memo with Trump Lawyers
    Attorney General nominee William Barr shared a controversial memo last year with nearly all of President Donald Trump's lawyers concluding that an aspect of special counsel Robert Mueller's case could be "fatally misconceived," Barr acknowledged Monday.

    Barr's 19-page memo -- which concluded that Trump's publicly reported interactions with ex-FBI Director James Comey could not constitute obstruction of justice -- was addressed to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Assistant Attorney General Steve Engel and released as a part of Barr's Senate questionnaire last month. But it was previously unclear who else had seen it.

    In a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsay Graham Monday night, Barr said that he had sent it to White House special counsel Emmet Flood, Solicitor General Noel Francisco, and his former Justice Department colleague Pat Cipollone who is now White House counsel. He also discussed the issues raised in the memo with Trump lawyers Marty and Jane Raskin and Jay Sekulow. In addition he sent a copy, or had a conversation about the contents of the memo with Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Jared Kushner.
    In his prepared testimony, Barr explained, "I distributed [the memo] broadly so that other lawyers would have the benefit of my views." You know, if other lawyers would have the benefit of my views should they hear of a job opening in the Trump cabinet. {wink}
    posted by Doktor Zed at 5:13 PM on January 14, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Hey it's scoop-o-clock! Daily Beast, Mueller Probes an Event With Nunes, Flynn, and Foreign Officials at Trump’s D.C. Hotel
    The Special Counsel’s Office and federal prosecutors in Manhattan are scrutinizing a meeting involving former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, one-time National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and dozens of foreign officials, according to three sources familiar with the investigations.

    The breakfast event, which was first reported by The Daily Sabah, a pro-government Turkish paper, took place at 8:30 a.m. at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 18, 2017—days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. About 60 people were invited, including diplomats from governments around the world, according to those same sources.

    The breakfast has come under scrutiny by federal prosecutors in Manhattan as part of their probe into whether the Trump inaugural committee misspent funds and if donors tried to buy influence in the White House. The existence of that probe was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The Special Counsel’s Office is also looking at the breakfast as part of its investigation into whether foreigners contributed money to the Trump inaugural fund and PAC by possibly using American intermediaries, as first reported by The New York Times. Robert Mueller’s team has asked Flynn about the event, according to two sources familiar with the Special Counsel’s Office questioning.
    Which includes a little tidbit in which Trump asks about Flynn:
    During the presidential transition, Trump quizzed close advisers on if they thought installing Flynn would be “too risky,” given that Trump had heard that the retired Army lieutenant general had a reputation for being a “cowboy” and a “wild man,” according to two people with direct knowledge of these conversations.

    “Will he be a problem, do you think?” one of these sources recalled Trump asking during the transition.
    In other Mueller news, CNN, Trump's lawyers rebuffed request for Mueller interview in recent weeks
    President Donald Trump's team rebuffed special counsel Robert Mueller's request in recent weeks for an in-person session with Trump to ask follow-up questions.
    The request was made after Trump's team submitted written answers to a limited number of questions from Mueller's team focusing on before Trump was in office.

    As the Mueller investigation winds down, an interview with the President remains an outstanding issue even as Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani said an interview would happen "over my dead body." One source familiar with the matter summed it up by saying, "Mueller is not satisfied."

    People familiar with the talks describe the two sides as at loggerheads, with no meaningful discussion about the issue in about five weeks.And the Trump team appears to have hardened its position. It's told the Mueller team that prosecutors have no cause to seek follow-up questions in person after the President's team submitted written responses to questions before Thanksgiving.
    Why yes, my horribly broken brain does have a little chorus singing "He will never be satisfied" about Mueller; how did you guess?
    posted by zachlipton at 5:14 PM on January 14, 2019 [29 favorites]


    For those interested as I was, King lists his committee assignments (presumably from last year) as:

    Committee on Agriculture
    — Subcommittee on Nutrition
    — Subcommittee on Livestock and Foreign Agriculture

    Committee on Small Business
    — Subcommittee on Agriculture, Energy & Trade
    — Subcommittee on Contracting & Workforce

    Committee on the Judiciary
    — Chairman of Subcommittee on the Constitution & Civil Justice
    — Subcommittee on Immigration & Border Security


    So it looks like Iowa will be losing some of its clout on the Ag-related committees. Aside from that, it’s ridiculous that White Supremacist Steve King was Chairman of Subcommittee on the Constitution & Civil Justice, and also on the Subcommittee on Immigration & Border Security.

    Good riddance!
    posted by darkstar at 5:14 PM on January 14, 2019 [40 favorites]


    If King tries to fight this, I look forward to the inevitable party infighting. Trump may come out in his defense. Hitching the party even closer to it's racist base.
    posted by downtohisturtles at 5:22 PM on January 14, 2019 [2 favorites]


    As the Mueller investigation winds down, an interview with the President remains an outstanding issue even as Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani said an interview would happen "over my dead body." One source familiar with the matter summed it up by saying, "Mueller is not satisfied."

    Emphasis added, because CNN's reporting information from anonymous sources *cough*Rudy Giuliani*cough* carelessly passes along their version of how the Mueller probe is proceeding.

    The idea that it's "winding down" is transparent bullshit since last week Mueller requested the grand jury to be extended for up to six more months (CBS).
    posted by Doktor Zed at 5:26 PM on January 14, 2019 [22 favorites]


    last week Mueller requested the grand jury to be extended for up to six more months (CBS).

    That's the minimum amount of time it could be extended. It doesn't actually need to go that long.
    posted by waitingtoderail at 5:30 PM on January 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Loofy Leftist Report: BUILD, the base building, Extremly Offline magazine/organizing group within the DSA released a report on how local chapters operate and thier focuses, from average chapter size to percentage of chapters that do break light work (25%) or that there’s an equal focus on elections and healthcare.
    posted by The Whelk at 5:42 PM on January 14, 2019 [6 favorites]


    It's amazing how Steve King is being punished so severely just because he read the Republican national party platform out loud.
    posted by delfin at 5:45 PM on January 14, 2019 [44 favorites]


    That's the minimum amount of time it could be extended.

    CBS: "It is unclear how much time Mueller specifically requested."

    CNN: “Under federal rules, the court is able to extend a grand jury's term for up to six months if it is "in the public interest."”

    Six months is the maximum extension, and that's what Mueller received. That sounds like the Special Counsel probe wants as much time as they can get, not less.

    Only Rudy Giuliani would take that as a sign of Mueller "winding down", but he's been complaining for ages Mueller needs to finish up ASAP. Meanwhile, Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, and Don Jr. have all been saying they expect to be indicted soon, so it's not as though Team Trump is in agreement about how long the grand jury will go on.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 5:54 PM on January 14, 2019 [7 favorites]


    To me the big issue isn't whether or not Mueller is close to at least some conclusions. It's that characterizing that as "winding down" seems like accepting TrumpCo's formulation. He's not winding down quietly which to me is the implication, he's possibly getting ready to issue a report about the crimes he has found.

    He's winding down in the same way that World War 2 was winding down in July 1945. True so far as it goes but early August wasn't exactly anticlimactic or quiet.
    posted by Justinian at 6:01 PM on January 14, 2019 [11 favorites]


    I should say "possibly", of course. Maybe he really will come back with "nothing to see here, citizen, move along" but I don't think that's the way any of us would bet.
    posted by Justinian at 6:02 PM on January 14, 2019 [2 favorites]


    In every way, this is such a reality show of a presidency.

    What's that quote about how if you put enough reality into TV, don't be surprised when that TV leaks back into reality?

    (Serious question, can't seem to find the quote on google)
    posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 6:28 PM on January 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Just a reminder, that, as the GOP wrings its hands over whether or not to strip Steve King of his committee assignments, literally every single GOP-led congress in the past has voted to strip Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) of her ability to vote on procedural issues and amendments, literally every time they've had the opportunity to do so; largely due to the fact that she represents a majority-black constituency.

    Racism is their formula. It's cute that they're pretending otherwise.
    posted by schmod at 6:30 PM on January 14, 2019 [72 favorites]


    Exactly how much of a punishment is it to lose a committee seat while your caucus is in the minority? Were any of King's seats ever likely to provide him any particular influence or leverage for the next 2 years?
    posted by wildblueyonder at 6:42 PM on January 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Vanity Fair: You’ll Never Believe It, but the Shutdown Is Making Trump Unpopular

    I have a feeling he's gonna fold, and it's not gonna be pretty when he does.  The polling on it seems to indicate support among his core demographic is softening over this, and that's all the leverage over the GOP he has left.   Boy howdy is the Twitterhea from him gonna be ugly if he does, a real Twitter tantrum. Combine a public loss of face like this with the narrative shifting under his feet to casually describing him as a Putin's tool, and it's just possible we may yet see the GOP wall of Solidarity in inaction begin to crack.   It'll be real interesting to see/read his reaction if Congress gets their act together and begins passing necessary legislation over threatened vetoes. 
    posted by los pantalones del muerte at 6:51 PM on January 14, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Does Steve King miss out on $$ by being kicked off committees?
    posted by awfurby at 6:56 PM on January 14, 2019 [3 favorites]


    W. Kamau Bell [twitter]
    White House Staffer, choking through tears - "I... guess... we could... use the... Lincoln gravy boats... for the... Mc... the McNug... the McNugget sauces."
    posted by growabrain at 7:01 PM on January 14, 2019 [67 favorites]


    It really is not-joking very weird how quickly they've turned on him. He's been virulently, openly racist for his entire political career. Something's up.

    He used to be a despicable racist without getting a lot of national media attention; now he is becoming a well-known despicable racist. So he's got to go, under the Republican rules of "plausible (to some people) deniability of explicit racism." That's all it is. I wouldn't look for some greater come-to-Jesus moment or other turning point among the party more broadly.
    posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 7:09 PM on January 14, 2019 [24 favorites]


    What’s the Difference Between Steve King and Donald Trump?
    While it is heartening to see that King’s antics have finally drawn a unified response of condemnation from the right, the reactions seem to miss the obvious point that there is little daylight between Steve King and the president of the United States, Donald Trump. (Neither National Review’s editorial nor Scott’s op-ed even mention the president’s name.)

    But don’t take my word for it. In 2014, as Trump was mulling a run for president, he made an appearance in Iowa with King, calling him “special guy, a smart person, with really the right views on almost everything,” and noting that their views on the issues were so similar that “we don’t even have to compare notes.”
    ...
    As if to remind the world of his similarity to King, on Sunday night, Trump tweeted a column from Pat Buchanan arguing that the president should seize executive power and build the wall without approval from Congress, warning that unless he does so, “the United States, as we have known it, is going to cease to exist.” Such a barrier is made necessary, Buchanan argues, because of the increasing diversity of the United States, which he portrays in apocalyptic terms. “The more multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual America becomes—the less it looks like Ronald Reagan’s America—the more dependably Democratic it will become,” he argues in the same column. “The Democratic Party is hostile to white men, because the smaller the share of the U.S. population that white men become, the sooner that Democrats inherit the national estate.”
    posted by kirkaracha at 7:24 PM on January 14, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Reuters, President Trump can't stop U.S. coal plants from retiring
    More U.S. coal-fired power plants were shut in President Donald Trump’s first two years than were retired in the whole of Barack Obama’s first term, despite the Republican’s efforts to prop up the industry to keep a campaign promise to coal-mining states.
    The economics just aren't there for coal anymore, and that will continue no matter how many miners Trump trots out at rallies. But I feel like this also says something about the futility of the fact checking enterprise. No matter how many times you read that coal is still dying, Trump's boasts are pervasive, and it still feels like there's a coal resurgence. The actual people in the coal industry may know the truth, but it doesn't matter—Arby's employs more people than the coal industry. Coal has always been a symbol for Trump, and he's successfully given the impression that he's succeeding, even if the actual facts say otherwise.
    posted by zachlipton at 7:32 PM on January 14, 2019 [19 favorites]


    AOC is of course right on top of it.
    posted by contraption at 7:50 PM on January 14, 2019 [33 favorites]


    Ari Berman, The Law That Just Passed In New York Is A Huge Win For Voting Rights, headed to Cuomo's desk are measures for early voting for all and preregistration for 16 and 17-year-olds. This also sets up the future steps of Election Day registration and "no excuse" absentee voting, which will have to be approved by voters. It would bring New York from some of the worst voting laws in the country to some of the best.

    ----

    Richard Hasen, The House Democrats’ Colossal Election Reform Bill Could Save American Democracy. Read all about HR 1 and it's glorious proposals for voting rights, voting security, campaign finance, and more. It, of course, will go nowhere in the Senate. I'd also note here that Elizabeth Warren's campaign used one of their first email blasts after she announced to call for DC statehood.

    ----

    WaPo, Conservative writer Jerome Corsi says Mueller has summoned his stepson to testify before grand jury
    In Monday’s interview, Corsi said that Mueller’s investigators appeared focused on text messages he and Stettner [the stepson] exchanged in which Stettner said that a computer that had sat on Corsi’s desk had been “scrubbed,” an apparent reference to the deletion.

    Corsi said the messages were innocuous — that he had not been using the computer and Stettner asked permission to take it to repurpose for his mother’s business, where he also works.
    ...
    The subpoena to Stettner indicates that a grand jury that’s hearing evidence in the special counsel investigation is apparently scheduled to convene with new witnesses for the first time in several weeks.

    It is also a sign that Mueller continues to dig into communications involving Corsi and Stone, a Republican operative who has been friends with Trump for 30 years and informally advised his 2016 campaign.
    ----

    NYT, At Trump’s Inauguration, $10,000 for Makeup and Lots of Room Service, in which the Times finally gets a hold of documents showing where the money went.
    Private donors put up $107 million to usher Donald J. Trump into office in style two years ago, and it is now clear just how enthusiastically his inaugural committee went to town with it.

    There was $10,000 for makeup for 20 aides at an evening inaugural event. There was another $30,000 in per diem payments to dozens of contract staff members, in addition to their fully covered hotel rooms, room service orders, plane tickets and taxi rides, including some to drop off laundry.

    The bill from the Trump International Hotel was more than $1.5 million. And there was a documentary, overseen by a close friend of Melania Trump’s, that was ultimately abandoned.
    ...
    The investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan was prompted at least partly by a recording that Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, made of a conversation he had with a central figure in the inaugural planning, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, shortly after Mrs. Trump ended Ms. Winston Wolkoff’s role as an unpaid adviser to the first lady. Ms. Winston Wolkoff was dismissed after initial reports about the amount of money taken in by the entity she formed to help produce the inaugural.
    ...
    He also said staff members stayed at the Trump International Hotel “at the explicit direction” of inaugural committee officials. A former official of the inaugural committee denied that the WIS employees were required to stay at the Trump hotel.
    A lot of the money was just plain wasted:
    But millions were written off in lost revenue. That included $6.4 million for blocks of hotel rooms booked for guests who ended up arranging their own accommodations. The Republican National Committee booked the excess hotel rooms before the inaugural staff was even formed, but the committee had to pony up when only half as many rooms were used as the party organization had expected.

    Another $1.2 million in revenue that the committee expected to recoup for a media center never materialized.
    ...
    Among the payments was more than $2 million spent on the firm of the Trump campaign official Brad Parscale for online advertisements to drum up inaugural crowds.
    posted by zachlipton at 7:53 PM on January 14, 2019 [51 favorites]


    Exactly how much of a punishment is it to lose a committee seat while your caucus is in the minority? Were any of King's seats ever likely to provide him any particular influence or leverage for the next 2 years?

    It's legitimately a big deal. Committee is where little things like depreciation of farm equipment or funding for corn subsidies get decided, and that stuff flies under the radar because who the fuck wants to read about depreciating farm equipment unless you're a farmer in Iowa who needs to buy a new $400k combine harvester this year? But that stuff really matters to people, losing a position on the Ag committee seriously reduces his ability to respond to his home state constituents.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 8:04 PM on January 14, 2019 [27 favorites]


    Also pretending to just now notice Steve King is a Nazi is pretty hilarious given the parade of Republican presidential pretenders kissing his ring in 2008, 2012 and 2016.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 8:05 PM on January 14, 2019 [34 favorites]


    One thing that seems to be left out of a bunch of the reporting on "Republicans something something Steve King" is this part (quoting a Politico article)
    "House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Sunday that “action will be taken” in response to recent racist comments by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) that have provoked bipartisan outrage.

    “I have a scheduled meeting with him on Monday, and I will tell you this: I’ve watched on the other side that they do not take action when their members say something like this,” McCarthy told host Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” (bolding mine)
    So, yeah, they might be feeling some kind of pressure to "do something", but they're still taking false-equivalency pot shots at the Democrats while they do. This is no sea change in the Republican party, it's just scrambling to minimize a burst of bad press.
    posted by soundguy99 at 8:18 PM on January 14, 2019 [23 favorites]


    Aside from that, it’s ridiculous that White Supremacist Steve King was Chairman of Subcommittee on the Constitution & Civil Justice, and also on the Subcommittee on Immigration & Border Security.

    Iowa has four representatives. Three of them are now Democrats, and one of them is Steve KKKing. I think it's fucking telling that Serious Wonk Paul Ryan gave zero shits about KKKing's radicalization from bog-standard GOP racist into outright white nationalist, and it's also a reminder that Iowa and New Hampshire have a toxic influence on American politics.
    posted by holgate at 8:26 PM on January 14, 2019 [14 favorites]


    NYT: Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia
    Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.

    Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

    In the days around a tumultuous NATO summit meeting last summer, they said, Mr. Trump told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.

    At the time, Mr. Trump’s national security team, including Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, scrambled to keep American strategy on track without mention of a withdrawal that would drastically reduce Washington’s influence in Europe and could embolden Russia for decades.
    The article presents a grim account of Trump’s disruptive behavior at last summer’s annual gathering of NATO leaders, with new details about his clashes with Angela Merkel and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Putin must have been delighted when he learned about this at the Helsinki summit immediately following.

    The next NATO meeting could be even grimmer. When Mattis presented his resignation, he had hoped to draw it out until the end of next month so he could attend the NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels. With ASecDef Shanahan now going instead, who knows what policy instructions Trump will give his cipher to spring on our allies there.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 8:44 PM on January 14, 2019 [23 favorites]


    " I’ve watched on the other side that they do not take action when their members say something like this,”

    Ah... when was the most recent Democratic statement that white nationalism and white supremacy were inoffensive terms? I assume they exist - the "Southern Strategy" involved pulling racists in the South away from the Democratic party, so there were probably a number of very solidly racist Democratic Representatives. But even those might've shied away from directly saying they support white supremacy.

    Although what I suspect McCarthy means is, "the Democrats don't censure their people when they say gauche and foolish things that offend Republicans," not, "Democrats welcome open racism and Nazi sympathizers in Congress."
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:52 PM on January 14, 2019 [14 favorites]


    It really is not-joking very weird how quickly they've turned on him. He's been virulently, openly racist for his entire political career. Something's up.

    They know they have huge looming problems with race, at least insofar as it's bad PR for anyone who swallows the racism for tax cuts, etc. In the last year, they've seen corporate donors come under attack for donating to the shittiest and most plainly racist of the GOP, to the point where the donations stopped. They want to head this off -- and they can't go after Trump, because they're terrified of angering his hardcore followers, which is obviously most Republican voters.

    Steve King is hardly any different from Trump, sure. He only made the mistake of speaking the quiet part out loud. He has one key difference, though: he's much easier to throw under the bus as a show for headlines and cheap talking points. So under the bus he goes.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:54 PM on January 14, 2019 [15 favorites]


    NYT: Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia

    At the outset of this shitshow, my biggest fear was that we'd see Putin roll in on a NATO ally before Republicans finally did anything about Trump. Lately I'm more worried that we'll see Putin roll in on a NATO ally and Republicans still won't do anything.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:00 PM on January 14, 2019 [15 favorites]


    Didn't the GOP after one of the Obama victories do a big postmortem of "why we lost" that included a bunch of frank discussion about how changing demographics meant that they could no longer rely on the white racist vote overtaking other votes? They then ignored this postmortem and... relied on the white racist vote to get Trump elected, but the postmortem's findings still stand. Soon demographics are going to override gerrymandering. At least SOME Republicans have realized this. That's what the sudden turn on Steve King is, the few R's that actual have brains are getting antsy.
    posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:04 PM on January 14, 2019 [6 favorites]


    The Oregonian had an interesting piece run today: Congressional Republicans also caught by Russia, so protect Trump: Ex-GOP White House lawyer

    From the article:
    Intel. 101:
    Whose job is it to detect and to remove a Russian mole?
    The F.B.I.
    Who is paranoid about the F.B.I.?
    A Russian mole.

    — Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) January 14, 2019
    Is this a nutty anti-Trump conspiracy theory on par with nutty far-right conspiracy theories about 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (see: Pizzagate)?
    Richard Painter, University of Minnesota law professor and former chief ethics counsel for President George W. Bush's White House, and psychologist Leanne Watt argue that it's not a conspiracy theory at all.


    It's nice to see a newspaper addressing the suspiciously abrupt about-faces performed by Graham, McConnell, Nunes, and others, and they even invoke Occam's Razor to point out that it's not crazy, just the simplest solution to an inherently crazy situation.  It's not every day you see a newspaper give a quick primer on the Law of Parsimony.   I'm just left wondering why it's only smaller papers asking the good questions.   I hope this gets picked up at large.

    And related, though not part of the article itself, there are still an awful lot of sealed indictments a new AG stooge can't stop from being unsealed without court intervention.  I wonder how many pieces will be in place before they try to fire Mueller, and if that list of indictments is the lever he's using to coax them to behave for now.
    posted by los pantalones del muerte at 9:07 PM on January 14, 2019 [33 favorites]


    > Not that Team Trump thinks that far ahead, but when you win an election by 100k people in three states, telling 800k workers they need new careers would prob end the GOP in national politics.

    I very strongly felt that the November 2018 election represented the high water mark of Trumpism. As the numbers finalized between then and the end of the year into the biggest Blue electoral wave we've seen in a very long time, I've only become more convinced.

    Trumpism is very, very much on the decline. What we are witnessing now are the death throes.

    My basic reasoning is this: Trump's whole shtick is to make the case that Republicans have been far too moderate and temporizing. If only the party would cast that off and go full extremist in every possible way, they might lose some voters in the center but they will more than make up for that by growing the base in both numbers and enthusiasm.

    When Trump won the 2016 election, he became convinced this was true--a winning formula. Since then, he has acted accordingly.

    I--and probably most of us here on the mega-threads--felt pretty strongly that this was an incorrect analysis. Acting the part of an extremist asshole does in fact win Trump some increased fervor from his base, but reality is that he loses more than he gains and it is very likely that the losses will mount over time. At best, it's a short term strategy.

    But: We've all seen the turn the country has taken. The culture has indeed shifted in a noticeable way towards Trumpism. Maybe the country as a whole really is right on the verge of flaming racist asshole territory and we're always just one populist leader away from turning that direction at any given time.

    But the November 2016 election proved exactly the opposite: Trumpism isn't just bringing out an equal and opposite reaction, but a greater than equal opposite reaction.

    Trumpism is digging a hole for the Republican Party, and the harder they lean into Trumpism, the bigger, deeper, and darker the hole becomes.

    Prior to the November 2016 election, it was debatable whether Trump was digging the Republican Party into a hole.

    But after the election, it is undeniable.

    Here is my point: If you wanted to maximize the Republican Party's electoral chances in 2020, after the 2018 election you would have made some major changes in message, tone, and direction.

    And if you wanted to annihilate the Republican Party's chances in 2020, you would have done exactly what Trump has done since the election.

    TLDR: If the goal is winning future elections for the Republican Party, they're pursuing the absolutely worst possible strategy right now.

    It absolutely guarantees that the electoral dial for 2020 starts where it was in 2018 and only moves further leftward from there.

    We all wonder what it would take for the Republican Party to really truly implode. The direction the Republicans are taking right now makes implosion a very real possibility in 2020.

    We'll see . . .
    posted by flug at 9:18 PM on January 14, 2019 [29 favorites]


    So, yeah, they might be feeling some kind of pressure to "do something", but they're still taking false-equivalency pot shots at the Democrats while they do. This is no sea change in the Republican party, it's just scrambling to minimize a burst of bad press.

    I think it may be all about Russia and Trump ran out of news cycle-stealing rants. Instead of doing something about the shutdown, which is also intended to keep Russia out of the news, they do something about a "woo, boy he sure went off and did what he always does!" Steve King problem.

    It's all to run interference.
    posted by rhizome at 9:23 PM on January 14, 2019 [6 favorites]


    but I'm having trouble coming up with a plausible explanation.

    His brain doesn’t work and we’re all trapped inside it. That’s it.
    posted by The Whelk at 9:26 PM on January 14, 2019 [25 favorites]


    Didn't the GOP after one of the Obama victories do a big postmortem of "why we lost" that included a bunch of frank discussion about how changing demographics meant that they could no longer rely on the white racist vote overtaking other votes? They then ignored this postmortem and... relied on the white racist vote to get Trump elected, but the postmortem's findings still stand. Soon demographics are going to override gerrymandering. At least SOME Republicans have realized this. That's what the sudden turn on Steve King is, the few R's that actual have brains are getting antsy.

    That would be the RNC's "2012 autopsy" -- 6 Big Takeaways From The RNC’s Incredible 2012 Autopsy (Benjy Sarlin for Talking Points Memo, March 18, 2013)
    President Obama’s campaign staff boasted throughout the 2012 race that the GOP’s dismissal of minority concerns, intolerance towards gays, celebration of wealth, and fetishism of Ronald Reagan would doom them in November. Today the RNC released their official response: “You were right.”If you watched the Republican primaries and Mitt Romney’s general election campaign last year, the findings from the RNC’s study on why they lost the election are stunning. They’re the kinds of things that would have gotten you thrown out of the room in a GOP debate. They don’t come lightly either: The report was based on interviews with over 2,600 people as well as individual focus groups and polls with demographics like Hispanic voters and former Republicans. It was authored by Henry Barbour, Sally Bradshaw, Ari Fleischer, Zori Fonalledas, and Glenn McCall.

    1. Pass Immigration Reform Yesterday
    2. Listen To Minorities
    3. Gays Aren’t Going Away
    4. Epistemic Closure Is Real
    There’s been a long running debate on the intellectual right about whether the GOP suffers from “epistemic closure,” a condition in which conservatives block out all dissenting voices until eventually their own arguments sound nonsensical to anyone who doesn’t already agree with them. The RNC report concludes this is a real and growing problem.
    5. Look To The States -- The RNC report makes a careful distinction between federal Republicans — bad! — and state Republicans — good!
    6. Stop Being The Rich Guys -- Less than year after nominating a millionaire investor who proclaimed that “corporations are people,” the RNC is concerned that the party has become too closely tied with wealthy interests.
    Missing: listen to and support women in our party. You can see in the representation roundup that there are a LOT of diverse Democratic women representing their states and communities, and the New York Times piece makes it all the more clear:
    Recent gains in women’s representation have been unevenly split across the political aisle. While in the 1980s, Democrats and Republicans had roughly the same number of women serving, about 80 percent of the women in Congress now are Democrats.
    Emphasis mine: Democrats are literally the Faces of America. The GOP is the party of Old, Wealthier White Men.

    I really wish the GOP suddenly woke up to the lessons stated in the 2012 autopsy, but I seriously doubt it. They still hold the White House and the Senate, and with their control over the House, they stacked the deck in the Supreme Court, so it seems like ignoring those particular take-aways about how to make their party more relevant hasn't harmed them yet. Sure, you could say that they're in decline, but they still have a lot of power, even if they're squandering it on petty tirades (that are resulting in the broad undermining of America).

    It'll be a while before the parasite that is the GOP destroys enough of its party foundation real harm, particularly as they undermine democracy, which in turn bolsters their stranglehold on certain states. If HR 1 (C-SPAN clip) actually makes it out of the House and actually makes it through the Senate, then I'll hear how the GOP is really in trouble.
    posted by filthy light thief at 9:37 PM on January 14, 2019 [20 favorites]


    CNN’s Zachary Cohen reports on a new North Korean development:
    A letter has been delivered from President Trump to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a source familiar with the ongoing talks between the US and NK tells @willripleyCNN .

    Source adds Pompeo’s counterpart Kim Yong Chol could visit Washington as soon as this week.

    Reminder: @kylieatwood and I recently wrote about how some in admin think Kim is sending letters to keep Trump enthusiastic about their relationship and provide a buffer for when Pompeo and others say NK is failing to follow through on its commitments. https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/03/politics/us-scouting-sites-north-korea-summit/index.html
    posted by Doktor Zed at 9:46 PM on January 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Another detail from the NATO article:
    Mr. Trump’s skepticism of NATO appears to be a core belief, administration officials said, akin to his desire to expropriate Iraq’s oil. While officials have explained multiple times why the United States cannot take Iraq’s oil, Mr. Trump returns to the issue every few months.
    He has brain worms. NATO, sure, whatever, that's tremendously awful but still wanting to take Iraq's oil is so deep into Man Yells At Cloud territory that it somehow feels worse.
    posted by BungaDunga at 9:58 PM on January 14, 2019 [59 favorites]


    There was $10,000 for makeup for 20 aides at an evening inaugural event

    This is a really bad number to lead with.

    Before she joined the corporate side of make up, my wife did exactly this kind of event (except not quite an event at this level), and her day rate was $800. This was for stuff in town where she went home at night. And mostly just for powder so people didn't look so shiny/sweaty under the lights.

    So, if 20 people needed actual makeup and they are getting flown in and put up and fed, $10k is more than reasonable.
    posted by sideshow at 10:06 PM on January 14, 2019 [32 favorites]


    @ComdtUSCG [the Commandant of the US Coast Guard]: I recognize that there is anxiety & uncertainty about the status of your pay this evening. Your senior leadership team continues to work on your behalf. We will provide an additional update by 1200 EST. Continue standing the watch--I am proud of your unwavering devotion to duty.

    Amazing how quickly "support the troops" disappears when their pay can be held hostage to demand a wall instead.
    posted by zachlipton at 10:13 PM on January 14, 2019 [35 favorites]


    Mr. Trump’s skepticism of NATO appears to be a core belief, administration officials said,

    Core beliefs, does he really have them? Besides "compromise is for losers" and "because I said so?" I can just see little Donny Trump, complaining about NATO during Current Events in fifth grade.

    No, "administration officials" are some strategic bastards, not sure if as high as Miller et al, but certainly someone enforcing a message by putting words in Trump's historical mouth.
    posted by rhizome at 10:20 PM on January 14, 2019 [2 favorites]


    As the Mueller investigation winds down, an interview with the President remains an outstanding issue … People familiar with the talks describe the two sides as at loggerheads, with no meaningful discussion about the issue in about five weeks.

    It just occurred to me that Rod Rosenstein and Mueller might be playing a clever two-man game, a sort of political pick-and-roll. There are indications that Rosenstein might still sort-of-kind-of be supervising Mueller. And Trump clearly wants each of them gone.

    Rosenstein has declared he's going to go, just as soon as Mueller's done. (This buys him time.) Mueller says he's finishing up his report, not too much left to do -- but the loosey-goosey negotiations over Trump testifying have to get resolved first. Mueller apparently sort-of implied that written answers might be enough, he'd have to see what Trump said to be sure, and now he's saying "Yeah no I need a live interview."

    The concessions make it hard to fire either -- Rosenstein already set plans for quitting, FFS, and Mueller kind of almost did -- but knowing that Trump won't agree to a live interview lets them play it out as long as they like.
    posted by msalt at 10:50 PM on January 14, 2019 [9 favorites]


    I keep picturing Nunes turning into Scabbers to sneak into meetings of questionable legality.
    posted by skyscraper at 11:46 PM on January 14, 2019 [14 favorites]


    The Trump International Hotel was paid more than $1.5 million for services including the use of a ballroom, an “annex” and a space called the townhouse, according to records and people familiar with the payments.

    While two other hotels, the Willard and the Fairmont, collected as much or more, Mr. Trump’s hotel was also favored by vendors who billed their expenses directly to the committee.

    Who cares about the $10k makeup bill that every story is using as the headline Trump laundered $1.5 million from his own inauguration fund out In the open
    posted by benzenedream at 12:20 AM on January 15, 2019 [68 favorites]


    The inauguration was also used to pay of Mark Burnett.
    posted by PenDevil at 12:25 AM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Who cares about the $10k makeup bill that every story is using as the headline Trump laundered $1.5 million from his own inauguration fund out In the open

    All of these emoluments are gone, burnt money. Like those couple months rent that went to your old housemate's Pokemon habit. This is the cash price we are paying the longer he's in office. Sure, we can try to claw it back afterwards but the actual money will be long gone. Heck, maybe Trump'll declare personal bankruptcy on his deathbed just because he could, and because it would mean that he dies 100% clean.

    tl;dr: I don't need to read any more about the money he's crookedly sucking in. It's just part of the landscape now.
    posted by rhizome at 12:36 AM on January 15, 2019 [4 favorites]


    But who (if anyone) got their money's worth? Might as well go after them too, for offering bribes.
    posted by porpoise at 12:51 AM on January 15, 2019 [1 favorite]


    I rarely would quote a twitter thread in total, but it is insane to see it written out:
    Imagine you are a FBI Agent working Russian counterintelligence in 2016 and you witness the following:

    * you witnessed Russian hackers targeting a wide swath of Americans including the DNC, DCCC, former Secretary of State & a Presidential candidates staff
    * someone previously targeted by Russian Intelligence joins the Trump campaign and then appears on a stage in Moscow supporting Russia policy and speaking negatively of US policy
    * A Presidential candidate hires a new campaign manager whose not been in the business in the states for years, but has been seen pushing a Russian agenda in Ukraine and has Russian intel contacts
    * an Australian official contacts you and says the Russians have stolen emails of a Presidential candidate & may want to give them to the candidate’s competitor
    * a Russian lawyer & others tied to Russian government visit a Presidential candidate’s son in the candidate’s building in NYC
    * Candidate Trump stands on a stage and calls out Russia and asks about emails from his competitor, says they will be rewarded if they have them and release them
    * website that’s released sensitive & classified documents from US for years, helped deliver a US insider to The Kremlin, begins publishing document & emails during Dem convention, content you know was stolen by Russia. Site administrator once hosted a TV show on Russia State TV
    * A strange, unexpected policy change occurs at RNC convention, the change is a less supportive position toward Ukraine and is advantageous to Russia
    * candidate’s campaign manager goes on CNN and asserts a false terrorist attack in Turkey, one tied to and advanced by Russian propaganda
    * during this time, you watch a campaign associate tweet with a Russian account that’s pointing people to stolen documents from the opposing campaign. The campaign associate predicts something will happen to the opposing campaign manager- his emails are later released
    * as Election Day approaches, Presidential candidate makes allegation, without evidence, voter Fraud & Election Rigging, Russia propaganda echoes this, social media accounts associated Kremlin do the same, at same time, you watch Russian Hackers hit state election infrastructure
    * After election, current President issues sanctions against Russia, but the incoming National Security advisor makes calls to Russian officials from 3rd country, when approached for clarification post inauguration, the advisor lies about contents of phone call w/Russian officials
    * During summer fall leading into the election, you receive raw intelligence from highly reliable source whose proven invaluable on other investigations. source provides intelligence on Russia’s efforts to support a presidential candidate, the info is consistent with other info
    * Before inauguration your bosses, your leaders from all intelligence agencies brief president elect on classified info showing Russia influenced the election on behalf of President elect. President elect rejects intelligence from all your superiors and suggests Russia innocent
    * From the summer of 2015 all the way through the election and after inauguration, you watch as the candidate, president elect and now president offers overt effusive support for Vladimir Putin who you know has been helping the President get elected.
    * Shortly after inauguration, your new commander-in-chief spouts false information about Polish aggression toward Belarus. This is not supported by the Intelligence community you are in, and the only source for this viewpoint is Russian propaganda
    * After firing of National Security Advisor that lies to you agencies investigators, the President corners your boss 1-1 asks him to go easy on National Security Advisor who lies about his conversation with Russians
    * During this period, the President inexplicably and repeatedly asks your boss if he’s under investigation with regards to Russia, despite your boss and other intel heads going out of their way to brief the President about Kremlin efforts to potentially compromise & manipulate him
    * While Congressional committees investigate Russian interference, the President fires your boss for his handling of an email investigation into the President’s opponent, an investigation that helped elevate the President rather than hurt him
    * You later find out a draft memo from President to your boss regarding his firing cited the Russia investigation
    * The President then goes on national television and in an interview says he fired your boss because of the Russia investigation
    * A week after firing your boss, the President invites Russian leaders into the Oval Office, Russian photographers capture the moment, but US media is not allowed to observe. President then brags to Russian leaders about firing your boss
    * Sometime during the spring, if you’re not already aware, you read a news story alleging the President’s son-in-law may have sought a way to communicate with Russia via a back channel not monitored by you and your colleagues
    * During summer, you watch the President attend NATO summit and shove Montenegro PM, in an Interview claim Montenegro is aggressive, might start a war. This mirrors Russian propaganda & you know Russia backed covert operation destabilize Montenegrin election
    * For next year, either you, your colleagues and your organization, FBI, are discredited by President. He mixes true and false information in public disclosures which you are not allowed to respond to. If you do respond, your accused of leaking and could be fired or even jailed
    * Documents & information from confidential sources you’ve pledged to protect, are selectively leaked into public through those who are supposed to provide government oversight. These inappropriate disclosures make your job as an investigator nearly impossible & hurts your sources
    * At some point during the summer or before, you learn that the President’s son was receiving & responding to direct messages from website that was releasing emails stolen from the President’s opponent by Russia
    1st two years President’s term, you watch him take a negative, adversarial stance toward NATO and particularly Germany. This strains your relationship with your most valuable intel partners, your Counterterrorism agent colleagues depend on them & they help fight war on terror
    * Over next 2 years, President aggressively seeks meetings with Putin who helped elect him. Need for meetings is not clear. one President meets in private with Putin for 2 hours without witnesses but translator. To this day, you, your bosses don’t really know what was discussed
    * President emerges from private meeting with Putin and on world stage in Helsinki accepts and validates Russian denials about election interference & rejects years of your teams intel work. This badly damages your reputation and partner trust with your organization
    * Separately, your President publicly discusses a Russian proposed partnership on cyber security, this insane concept is mind boggling to you as an investigator as you’ve just spent years tracking these same Russians who just attacked your country
    * Even further, your President publicly mentions a possible exchange where Russian investigators might interview and interrogate you and other Americans about their attack on you and America. A crazy, frightening and bizarre threat to you as a civil servant.
    * Throughout your investigation into Russian interference, you watch as your President’s attacks on the Special Counsel, Justice Department & FBI are amplified and spread in America by the very Russian troll social media accounts and state sponsored propaganda you are investigating
    * Throughout the Special Counsel indictments, hearings and trials, you watch the President and his legal team publicly interject, discredit witnesses and discuss pardons, all subverting the rule of law and justice which you’ve dedicated your life to protect and defend
    * You either know or learn a parallel investigation shows Russians representing a bogus Russian gun rights movement penetrated the political party hosting members who’ve tried to discredit you - you recognize this as a TEXTBOOK espionage/influence op you learned at FBI academy
    * After two years, the Attorney General over you, who appropriately recused himself from Russia investigation, is fired for seemingly no clear reason after taking public lashings from the President
    * Your AG is replaced by an acting AG whose unqualified for position, has limited experience justify such high level appointment, you’ve watched him on TV discrediting your agency and your team’s investigation despite seeing none of evidence or knowing anything Russian influence
    * The same month, the President’s personal lawyer pleads guilty in federal court and says he continued negotiations throughout almost the entire Presidential campaign for a Tower in Moscow. This is in opposition to President’s public denials.
    * You read public reporting that the best apartment in the Moscow Tower project pursued by the President’s business was offered to Russia’s President Putin, the same Putin your President always sides with over you and your agency, the Putin who helped your President win
    * You either knew or learned through a redaction error that the President’s campaign manager was alleged to have lied about providing polling data to a Russian whom he owed money, via a former Russian GRU contact
    It would be dereliction of duty not to have a CI investigation.
    posted by jaduncan at 3:48 AM on January 15, 2019 [199 favorites]


    Mod note: Leaving this for this one time, but yes: normally, please do not quote long twitter threads (or articles) in their entirety.
    posted by taz (staff) at 4:34 AM on January 15, 2019 [20 favorites]


    This pretty much is a ‘walks like a duck’ moment. In the intelligence world the saying is ‘There are no coincidences’
    posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:07 AM on January 15, 2019 [12 favorites]


    16 crazed tweets/retweets from Donny in the last hour and 15 minutes, which I'm pretty sure is a record. He's spinning out.

    Including retweeting the Daily Caller article that we should just get rid of all the government jobs/employees affected by the shutdown.
    posted by chris24 at 5:23 AM on January 15, 2019 [18 favorites]


    The thing about the GOP autopsy is that it's a top-down analysis. Their base is still their base, and primaries from the right will keep them from being anything but the party of angry white men until the whole thing collapses. The real take-away from that document was: none of these things can happen, so we have to double-down on dirty tricks.
    posted by rikschell at 5:26 AM on January 15, 2019 [15 favorites]


    On the inaugural committee: it's not just that the funds were blatantly laundered to the Family Business and its cronies, it's that various sketchy foreign types used straw buyers to obtain tickets to inaugural events. (Sam Patten has already pled guilty to running a straw-buyer scheme in exchange for cooperation with Mueller, which shows that the inauguration is an area of interest.)

    All of this happened under the stewardship of Tom Barrack, the man whose promise of funding persuaded GSA to hand over the keys to the Old Post Office, but who then withdrew that funding.
    posted by holgate at 5:33 AM on January 15, 2019 [11 favorites]


    When you lay it out the way the thread jaduncan quoted and pull that together with the fishy Congressional about faces and Rand Paul's sudden departure I feel like there is finally a compelling narrative rather than a bunch of disparate facts spread across years of news reporting that require thought and synthesis to fully appreciate.

    Hopefully, that will serve to make it politically untenable to allow the traitors to skate as we have in the past. Somewhat disconcertingly, the years of red baiting may make it more likely these fucks see consequences rather than pardons since we are talking a Russian state led by a guy who desperately misses the USSR. Not so much because he cares about the communism stuff, it was just that much easier to be far more repressive than he can be today. This is still Putin restrained. Had he not gotten caught, I can only imagine how much more shit he'd be pulling since Trump wouldn't be so transparent a puppet.

    We can still recover our international stature, but only if we actually deal with this very literal attack on our democracy. Not by shooting people, but by prosecuting those responsible, those who aided and abetted, and those who chose to lie and obstruct rather than report being blackmailed. That, and confiscate the fucking proceeds. If we can seize $5000 from a guy driving to buy a car for no reason beyond him having that much cash we can certainly seize any proceeds of the conspiracy and any bank accounts that sourced illicit donations, etc. With any luck, that would include the NRA's bank accounts.

    (And remember, whether or not Trump knew all the details is irrelevant. He knew of at least part and acted in furtherance of the conspiracy by his own admission, so whatever is sitting in his or the Trump Org's accounts are fair game, too. We can use his money to pay to support asylum seekers, women's shelters, and other such things)
    posted by wierdo at 5:34 AM on January 15, 2019 [25 favorites]


    Brexit, Barr and Deripaska sanctions today. It's gonna be a busy one.
    posted by Harry Caul at 5:41 AM on January 15, 2019 [7 favorites]


    McCaskill has been hired by NBC/MSNBC news as a commentator.
    posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:41 AM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Regarding the Coast Guard-- we just got word from our neighbors that the dad did not get his latest CG pension payment, so the shutdown is not only effecting current members who are forced to work, but retired members counting on their pensions. This is a pretty traditional conservative military family. Let's just say they're not blaming the Democrats for this mess.
    posted by gwint at 5:53 AM on January 15, 2019 [74 favorites]


    Shuttered IRS Is Sending Automated Warnings of Asset Seizures, With Nobody to Call to Stop Them
    posted by Thorzdad at 5:54 AM on January 15, 2019 [18 favorites]


    The Guardian. Chris Christie accuses Jared Kushner of political 'hit job' in explosive new book

    Chris Christie, who was ousted as chairman of Donald Trump’s White House transition team in 2016, has written a blistering attack on Jared Kushner, whom he accuses of having carried out a political “hit job” on him as an act of revenge for prosecuting his father, Charles Kushner, a decade ago.
    ...
    It has its lighter moments. At his first meeting with Trump in 2002, at a dinner in the Trump International Hotel and Tower, in New York, Trump ordered his food for him. He chose scallops, to which Christie is allergic, and lamb which he has always detested. Christie recalls wondering whether Trump took him to be “one of his chicks”.

    At another dinner three years later Trump told the obese Christie he had to lose weight. Addressing him like one of the contestants in Miss Universe, the beauty contest organisation that he owned, Trump said “you gotta look better to be able to win” in politics.

    Trump returned to the theme of girth during the 2016 presidential campaign, exhorting Christie to wear a longer tie as it would make him look thinner.
    posted by bluesky43 at 6:19 AM on January 15, 2019 [9 favorites]


    ...exhorting Christie to wear a longer tie as it would make him look thinner.

    Aha!
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:22 AM on January 15, 2019 [105 favorites]


    Yesterday Alexandra Erin wrote a good explainer of the Trump Organization's structure and finances, summarized here on Thread reader. Choice excerpts:
    What an accomplishment! 500 businesses! It dilutes his bankruptcies, in their thinking, into an insignificant fraction of an amazing whole.

    Buuuut in point of fact the reason he has so many businesses is because that's how he covers for his failures and insulates himself from the fallout, and it -- MORE THAN RUSSIA -- is the reason he can never release his taxes.
    ...

    Some people see a bowl of candy and only take one if invited. Some people just take one because it's there, it's obviously for taking. Some people take two. Some people take a handful. And then there's the sort of person where as soon as they gets it in their head that the candy is free for the taking, they would take all of it.

    Lots of people make a shell company to move liabilities around or hide income. Some people will make two, or a few. When Trump realized that you can just make a new company and no one will stop you, he tipped the whole bowl of candy into his pocket and lever looked back.

    ...

    Say he opens up Trumper-Mifflin Paper Co to get into the paper business. Trumper-Mifflin needs some assets to secure a loan. So he assigns some of his real estate assets to it. It's either something that Everybody Knows belongs to Trump and thus the Trump Organization, or if they check it's got his name on it. So on the understanding that Trumper-Mifflin owns these assets, he gets some credit. Meanwhile, those buildings do not actually belong to Trumper-Mifflin, they belong to some other business entity held by Trump. Or they belong to someone else entirely, who licensed Trump's famous and successful name and paid him for the privilege.

    posted by InTheYear2017 at 6:25 AM on January 15, 2019 [21 favorites]


    Snoop Dogg Issues An Order To All Federal Employees Suffering Under Donald Trump

    All you people from the federal government that are not getting paid right now, ain’t no fucking way in the world y’all can vote for Donald Trump when he come back up again. If y’all do vote for him, y’all some stupid motherfuckers. I’m saying that to y’all early.

    Profanity can be cathartic and we need all the experts we can get, so thanks Snoop. I liked 'impeach the motherfucker'. It's fun to say. I think endorsing a pedophile to the US Senate with open heart and full throat is profane, but people have different standards.
    posted by adept256 at 6:29 AM on January 15, 2019 [61 favorites]


    As MeFi alum Elizabeth Spiers has repeatedly said, Crown Prince Jared is a) not smart; b) incredibly bad at predicting the impact of political decisions. "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
    posted by holgate at 6:35 AM on January 15, 2019 [29 favorites]


    16 crazed tweets/retweets from Donny in the last hour and 15 minutes, which I'm pretty sure is a record.

    @realDonaldTrump racked up a few more tweets/retweets this morning. He snarked about Pelosi getting paid during the shutdown and regurgitated a couple of supportively incendiary clips from Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton. You can see the narcissistic injury on full display as he retweets encouragement from such rabid right mouthpieces as Charlie Kirk, Mollie Hemingway, Paris Dennard, Paul Sperry, and, of course, Don Jr. He knows he's taking the blame for the shutdown, losing approval from everybody except his MAGA-faithful, and facing renewed scrutiny on past scandals, but he has no plan to extricate himself from the mess he's created.

    He started out with a tweet about how "the rank and file of the FBI" are "disgusted with what they are learning about Lyin’ James Comey and the so-called “leaders” of the FBI" despite the Atlantic and NYT reporting how morale is plummeting at the bureau between the aftershocks of his firing Comey and the current shutdown.

    Even weirder was his tweet about last night's White House food court for Clemson, in which he boasted about serving "massive amounts of Fast Food (I paid)" and inflated the number of hamburgers from yesterday's 300 to 1,000. He also misspelled it "hamberders"—and that tweet is still up.

    Meanwhile, the WaPo reports the Dem leadership is in good spirits, despite the paralyzed shutdown negotiations:
    White House officials said Monday that the president would invite some House Democrats to meet with him this week to discuss border security, in an attempt to see if any Democrats would be willing to work directly with him.

    But Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) joked in a closed-door meeting of top House Democrats on Monday that they were fine with Trump’s invites and did not expect their members to break away, according to an aide who was present.

    Pelosi told Hoyer: “They can see what we’ve been dealing with. And they’ll want to make a citizen’s arrest,” according to the aide, who described a private discussion on the condition of anonymity.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 6:37 AM on January 15, 2019 [28 favorites]


    Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia

    Who could have predicted that?
    "Well, that's because [Putin would] rather have a puppet as president of the United States."

    "No puppet. No puppet. You're the puppet. No, you're the puppet."

    "It's pretty clear you won't admit the Russians have engaged in cyber attacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do and that you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race."
    posted by kirkaracha at 6:46 AM on January 15, 2019 [76 favorites]


    @DanClarkReports. Reporter for @NYLawJournal.

    BREAKING: A federal judge has ordered that the Trump Administration NOT add a question about citizenship to the 2020 U.S. Census
    posted by bluesky43 at 6:46 AM on January 15, 2019 [119 favorites]


    The indomitable S. Kendzior on the latest episode of the Rick Smith Show; live-tweeted thread with choice quotes from the interview.
    posted by progosk at 6:49 AM on January 15, 2019 [5 favorites]


    The indomitable S. Kendzior on the latest episode of the Rick Smith Show; live-tweeted thread with choice quotes from the interview.

    What she says in there about a global network of top-level corruption is… something I've been thinking about a lot. How the hell does THAT get reformed.
    posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 6:55 AM on January 15, 2019 [9 favorites]


    The William Barr hearing has begun. Barr opened by introducing his family and negging his daughter for failing organic chemistry.
    posted by theodolite at 6:58 AM on January 15, 2019 [8 favorites]


    C-SPAN radio also has the Barr hearing.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:05 AM on January 15, 2019 [1 favorite]


    He's not wrong. It is a joke.

    @RogueUSMint
    LISTEN CLOSELY: "I thought it was a joke," says Clemson athlete upon learning the White House was serving him Wendy's.
    VIDEO
    posted by chris24 at 7:25 AM on January 15, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Some hero registered hamberder.com this morning and redirected it to the Michelin Guide website. *slow clap gif*
    posted by schoolgirl report at 7:29 AM on January 15, 2019 [47 favorites]


    BungaDunga: still wanting to take Iraq's oil is so deep into Man Yells At Cloud territory that it somehow feels worse.

    And to top it all off, we don't really need Iran's oil. Sure, we're still net-importers of oil, but from 2005 to 2015, the United States’ reliance on petroleum imports fell from 60% to 25% of total consumption, while exports increased by over 300% (American Geo Sciences.org). In the near-term, Goldman Slashes Oil Forecasts as New Supply Seen Plentiful (Dan Murtaugh for Bloomberg, January 6, 2019), and looking ahead, concerns of "peak oil" have mostly evaporated (Michael Lynch for Fobes, June 29, 2018), with some forecasts excluding "unconventional" oil because it's hard to measure or was hard to access.


    In other news: 'Barely Treading Water': Why The Shutdown Disproportionately Affects Black Americans (NPR, January 14, 2019)
    As the government shutdown enters its fourth week — becoming the longest in United States history — federal workers around the country are struggling to make ends meet. But according to Jamiles Lartey, a reporter with The Guardian, the shutdown is having a disproportionate effect on black workers and their families.

    African-Americans make up a higher percentage of federal workers than they do of the non-government workforce. That's in part because, for generations, government work has provided good wages and job security to African-Americans who faced more overt discrimination in the private sector.
    I can't imagine this was part of Trump's plan, but I also imagine that news like this is making a number of deplorable racists quite happy.

    At least, until the "trickle down" effect of so many programs faltering or failing all-together, as they lack funding and oversight.
    posted by filthy light thief at 7:31 AM on January 15, 2019 [35 favorites]


    WaPo: The Shutdown Is Giving Some Trump Advisers What They’ve Long Wanted: A Smaller Government
    Those encouraging a hard line include acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and acting White House budget director Russell T. Vought, as well as leaders of the House Freedom Caucus, whose members have taken on an influential role with the White House.

    Mulvaney and Vought have taken steps to blunt some of the shutdown’s most unpopular effects, calling back furloughed employees to process tax refunds, collect trash in national parks and ensure food stamps will continue to be issued.

    But Mulvaney is not rattled by the fallout and instead has been focused on protecting Trump from criticism, according to two administration officials who were not authorized to speak publicly.[…]

    “These are small-government guys, not wall guys,” one former White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private exchanges, said of Meadows and Jordan.[…]

    Former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon called shutdowns “blunt-force measures that certainly show what’s essential and what’s not.”
    Meanwhile, Trump is oblivious to the self-inflicted political wounds he's made among his supporters in the government:
    Trump has been unfazed about leaving so much of the government dormant. On Monday his standoff with congressional Democrats, already the longest shutdown on record, dragged into its 24th day.

    He has received scattered briefings on how the shuttered agencies are coping, according to two senior administration officials. He has shown fleeting interest in the minutiae as Vought has outlined which services are being affected.[…]

    The prolonged shutdown is eroding morale in corners of the workforce where Trump has long enjoyed deep support, including airport baggage screeners, who have been calling in sick in a job action to protest working without pay, and Border Patrol agents, whose jobs are stressful to begin with.
    As always, people who thought they could partner with Trump or use him to further their own ends are learning that everything he touches turns to shit.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 7:49 AM on January 15, 2019 [16 favorites]


    judge furman's opinion on NY v department of commerce, fyi.

    still don't understand how a news organization can fail to provide a link to the document on which they report.
    posted by 20 year lurk at 7:49 AM on January 15, 2019 [14 favorites]


    Pelosi learned the art of “no” from working with Bush. Trump is a whole new test. (Ella Nilsen, Vox)
    “She is not there to simply follow the dictates of any other branch.”

    Donald Trump would do well to examine how Nancy Pelosi worked with the last Republican president.
    …
    Admitting his party had taken a “thumping” in the 2006 midterms, Bush pledged to work with Pelosi. And he did; in 2007 and 2008, they partnered on a fiscal stimulus bill and a large energy bill that raised fuel efficiency standards, among other things.

    “We had good lines of communication, we had regular meetings down at the White House,” remembered John Lawrence, Pelosi’s chief of staff from 2005 to 2011.

    Pelosi is an old-school politician who sees the role of House speaker as standing up for the institution, ensuring it fulfills its constitutional responsibilities, and making deals on bills. Even with a powerful position in the majority, she has had to compromise with the Senate and the White House; for example, agreeing to cut a public option from the final version of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. But she still has a strong record working with both Democratic and Republican presidents.

    “She makes it very clear going into negotiations with the executive branch that she is not there to simply follow the dictates of any other branch,” Lawrence told me recently.
    Trump says he makes deals; Pelosi actually makes deals.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 8:16 AM on January 15, 2019 [49 favorites]


    Former OMB lawyer Sam Berger in the WaPo: Trump is ignoring the law to keep the shutdown from causing him political pain.
    posted by peeedro at 8:20 AM on January 15, 2019 [20 favorites]


    The Guardian. Chris Christie accuses Jared Kushner of political 'hit job' in explosive new book

    This makes me wonder, given Christie's federal prosecutor experience, if Christie went to Mueller on day 1 and just unloaded everything he knows about OmniGate on background, without being asked.
    posted by mikelieman at 8:20 AM on January 15, 2019 [9 favorites]


    BREAKING: A federal judge has ordered that the Trump Administration NOT add a question about citizenship to the 2020 U.S. Census

    The judge seems to have called out the administration's obviously bad faith justficiations ("pretextrual") as part of the reason it ruled against the Trump Administration.

    Too bad SCOTUS finally looked the other way on the Muslim ban.
    posted by Gelatin at 8:25 AM on January 15, 2019 [5 favorites]


    I'm calling my Senators to object to the confirmation of William Barr with the following script:
    I fully expect the Senator to vote against the confirmation of William Barr to the post of Attorney General.

    First, Barr encouraged and participated in the pardoning of the Iran-Contra traitors. Second, Barr initiated the farcical Whitewater investigation in the final months of the 1992 presidential election.

    In other words, William Barr is exactly the kind of Attorney General we do NOT need right now, as he is a man who will use the power of the office to protect criminal occupants of the White House and their henchmen and interfere in elections for political gain.
    posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 8:34 AM on January 15, 2019 [34 favorites]


    From @ZeroBlogThirty: What's happening to Coastguardsmen is bullshit. No other way to put it.
    I am in recruiting and one of our kids at the end of boot camp reached out to his recruiter here to say "Hi, my unit does not have any room in government housing for me, since I will not be getting a paycheck and they can not authorize me BAH [Basic Allowance for Housing], they are not allowing me to report as I will be homeless. The training center has asked me to BUY MY OWN ticket back home (across the country) and have me work out of the recruiting office and live at home again."

    We are living in crazy down. FURTHERMORE, since MEPS [recruit processing] is funded by DoD, we are STILL shipping people to boot camp to not receive pay!!
    I'm...hoping this has already been corrected, and/or that some journalist somewhere picks up on it to confirm, because holy shit.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:44 AM on January 15, 2019 [73 favorites]


    Trump suddenly decides there might not be a national emergency at the border after all (Emily Stewart, Vox)
    After days of stoking fears about a “crisis” to get his border wall built, Trump has changed his mind.
    I wonder what was said on Fox News this morning to change his mind.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 8:50 AM on January 15, 2019 [8 favorites]


    From Crooks and Liars, and other outlets: 'Lock Him Up!' Protesters Greet Trump Ahead Of His Speech In New Orleans

    I've long wondered if that stupid chant would ever come back to haunt him. It always seemed so short-sighted in my eyes—I thought it was obviously a bad idea since it was trivial to weaponize it against him in the future, but Little Donny Two-Scoops never was the brightest bulb in the box.

    *nelson laugh*
    posted by los pantalones del muerte at 8:51 AM on January 15, 2019 [20 favorites]


    I wrote a long comment about how I thought Donnie was going to lose this shutdown fight soon, but I guess it was too much get-your-own-blog material? The one point worth making, though: I think this shutdown ends as soon as "essential" employees start calling in sick (or get a court order allowing the the right not to work without pay), because right now this fantasy of small government is free-riding on their goodwill.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 8:52 AM on January 15, 2019 [14 favorites]


    The Atlantic's Natasha Bertrand picks up on a significant response from Barr at today's hearings:
    Barr on recusal: "I will seek the advice [of ethics officials], but under the regulations, I make the decision as head of the agency as to my own recusal...At the end of the day, I would make a decision in good faith based on the laws and the facts that are evident at that time."

    This is the Whitaker precedent--he sought ethics officials' advice but ultimately didn't follow it. (they advised him to recuse.) And it's what Senate Dems were afraid of.
    Buzzfeed's Zoe Tillman has also been live-blogging the Barr hearings. Here are some highlights so far:
    —Graham begins by asking Barr is he's familiar with the NYT story saying the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Trump. Barr says yes. Graham asks if Barr will look into whether this happened. Barr says yes. Has Barr ever heard of such a thing before? Barr says no
    —Graham reads some of the Peter Strzok/Lisa Page texts criticizing Trump and about stopping him from being elected, and asks what Barr's reaction was to them. Barr says he was "shocked." Graham asks if he'll look into what happened in 2016, and Barr says yes
    —Graham asks Barr if he believes Mueller is "fair-minded" and Barr says "absolutely." Would he be involved in a witch hunt, Graham asks. Barr: "I don’t believe Mr. Mueller would be involved in a witch hunt."
    —Feinstein is up. She asks a series of quick questions about Mueller: Barr says 1) he'll ensure scope of probe is maintained (as set by charter + regulations) 2) will commit to providing Mueller with resources/time needed 3) ensure Mueller isn't terminated without good cause
    —Feinstein asks if Barr received any nonpublic information about Mueller's probe. Barr says he "doesn't recall" getting any confidential info about the investigation
    —Feinstein asks if Barr talked about the Mueller investigation with Trump or anyone else in the White House. Barr says yes, but not in "any particular substance." Barr offers to go into detail, but Feinstein says not now because she's out of time (she says she may come back to it)
    Graham's now called a half-hour recess.

    TNR has a checklist to watch for with the Barr hearings: Five Dealbreakers for Confirming Trump’s Next Attorney General—If Bill Barr can’t answer “yes” to these few simple questions, the Senate should reject him.
    #1: Will you give Mueller all the independence he needs to complete his investigation, and protect the inquiry from interference by the White House
    #2: If the president directs you to open a criminal investigation into his political opponents, will you refuse?
    #3: Will you also rebuff Trump if he directs you to violate federal law or the Constitution?
    #4: Will you release Mueller’s report to the public if he writes one, and give him final authority over any redactions from it?
    #5: Will you forbid federal law-enforcement officials from taking any public steps, in the 90 days leading up to the 2020 election, that could affect its outcome?
    posted by Doktor Zed at 8:53 AM on January 15, 2019 [21 favorites]


    and what will they do if Barr makes promises he doesn't keep? Nothing.

    In other news, a women in my chorus works for a local food bank: she says they're getting a lot of requests from unusual sources as a result of the shutdown. I'm in the Bay Area, where the enlisted military (such as Coast Guard) get nearly as much in housing allowance as they do in their pay, but they are of course still expected to risk their lives in service to a President who considers their service laughable.
    posted by suelac at 8:57 AM on January 15, 2019 [9 favorites]


    CNN's Marshall Cohen: "BREAKING: Mueller is not ready to move onto sentencing for Rick Gates, who is perhaps the most valuable cooperator in the investigation. They jointly asked the judge for another two-month delay because Gates “continues to cooperate with respect to several ongoing investigations”" (pic)

    Doesn't sound like the SCO is winding down, does it?
    posted by Doktor Zed at 8:58 AM on January 15, 2019 [57 favorites]


    ZeusHumms: Donald Trump would do well to examine how Nancy Pelosi worked with the last Republican president.

    Lemme stop you there, because I think I see a fatal flaw in your statement.

    ZeusHumms: Trump says he makes deals; Pelosi actually makes deals.

    Trump, via a ghostwriter, wrote that he made deals. Then he was able to leverage his outsized celebrity status to star in a TV show where he was edited to look like he made deals.

    Take away his father's money, his ghostwriter, his tabloid press coverage, and his TV show, he's a small-time con-man who says a lot of things that aren't true. Sorry, too wordy - he's a small-time con who lies all the time.



    peeedro: Former OMB lawyer Sam Berger in the WaPo: Trump is ignoring the law to keep the shutdown from causing him political pain.
    As public pressure intensified, Interior decided to divert user fees to pay for park services. The National Parks Conservation Association has suggested that using these fees for operating expenses is illegal, and the group has requested that the department’s inspector general investigate. Even if it’s legal, this fee diversion uses funds earmarked for long-term maintenance projects to reduce the short-term political fallout from the shutdown. And the damage to the parks from Trump’s cavalier policy has already been done.

    This is the same strategy Trump has been applying to the entire government: putting forward patchwork solutions for his own benefit, regardless of long-term consequences or legal requirements.
    Emphasis mine -- I'm not sure if his disregard to even mid-range and near-term consequences is because he's so narcissistic that he doesn't physically feel in danger, or because he realizes he won't be in charge much longer, or because he doesn't think it's that bad from his isolated and insulated view of the world, but I realize trying to understand him doesn't matter. Responding to his threats and actions does.


    scaryblackdeath: We are living in crazy down. FURTHERMORE, since MEPS [recruit processing] is funded by DoD, we are STILL shipping people to boot camp to not receive pay!!

    Emphasis mine, because THIS seems like a message that would echo with his base. When military recruits say they're not getting paid, it's not "making the government smaller," it's undermining our military capacity and might.


    ZeusHumms on January 13: However, no one of consequence seems to be calling for [Steve King] to resign, partly reflecting his influence in the Republican Party in the Iowa caucuses.

    Top House Republican Leader Calls On Rep. Steve King To Resign (NPR, January 15, 2019)
    The highest ranking female House Republican called on Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King to resign from Congress over his recent comments to The New York Times on white supremacy and white nationalism.

    "We do not support it or agree with it, and as I said I think he should find another line of work," House GOP Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., told reporters Tuesday morning.

    Cheney was one of the first House Republicans to criticize King and characterize his words as "racist" [Twitter] following a Times story last week in which he was quoted questioning why the term white supremacy had become offensive.

    King has denied all allegations of racism, and said he was misquoted. Unmoved by his defense, House Republicans acted swiftly on Monday to strip him of his committee assignments on the Agriculture, Judiciary and Small Business panels in the new Congress. King denounced that move as a "political decision."

    Further punishment awaits King this week. Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., introduced a resolution of disapproval to specifically rebuke King for his comments, and more broadly condemn ideologies that fuel white supremacy and white nationalism. Democrats want to move swiftly to hold the vote Tuesday, which is Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.

    Other House Democrats, including Reps. Tim Ryan of Ohio and Bobby Rush of Illinois, are making a push to censure King — a more formal punishment which requires a lawmaker to stand in the well of the House chamber to face his colleagues for the rebuke.
    That's the full story from NPR at this time (sorry, it was pretty concise).
    posted by filthy light thief at 9:06 AM on January 15, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Pelosi told Hoyer: “They can see what we’ve been dealing with. And they’ll want to make a citizen’s arrest,”

    This is what I thought about new Dem congressfolk visiting him. Not that they'd consider being his secret agents, but that it'd be a great opportunity to figure out exactly how unhinged he is, how sanitized the public reports are. They need some direct exposure to get over their qualms about ignoring the president's wishes entirely as they create new legislation.

    The natural inclination is to work towards bipartisan legislation; they need motivation to say, "nope; we're writing laws that help people, and we're going to ignore any suggestions that aren't in line with that goal, even if we can't immediately see how they're harmful."

    The prolonged shutdown is eroding morale in corners of the workforce where Trump has long enjoyed deep support

    Dammit, I want them to quit calling it a shutdown and call it a government failure. "Trump is responsible for the longest failure of the US government in history." "Trump's failure to lead - failure to pay the Coast Guard - is putting our borders at risk." "Trump: Deadbeat President Who Fails To Pay Employees (subtitle:He really is treating the government like a business - like one of his failed businesses.)" "The Failing Trump Presidency Is Costing America Billions." And so on.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:20 AM on January 15, 2019 [18 favorites]


    I wouldn't call it a "government failure." That language plays right into the hands of the people who are trying to abolish as much of the government as possible. Call it a shutdown. Make sure everyone knows who shut it down.
    posted by azpenguin at 9:37 AM on January 15, 2019 [34 favorites]


    I think this shutdown ends as soon as "essential" employees start calling in sick

    They’ve been calling in sick since December, if you count the TSA and air traffic controllers. Houston airport closed a TSA checkpoint because they don’t have enough staff.
    posted by the agents of KAOS at 9:38 AM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    CNN's Marshall Cohen: "BREAKING: Mueller is not ready to move onto sentencing for Rick Gates, who is perhaps the most valuable cooperator in the investigation. They jointly asked the judge for another two-month delay because Gates “continues to cooperate with respect to several ongoing investigations”" (pic)

    Doesn't sound like the SCO is winding down, does it?

    On the other hand it is starting to feel like the defense strategy is just to keep coming up with new crimes that need investigation so the investigation never ends. It's like the end of a football game where the team that is behind with the ball and no time left on the clock just keeps making lateral passes and running in circles in the hope that something miraculous will happen before the game if officially over.
    posted by srboisvert at 9:40 AM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    GOP congressman Thomas Massie says he won't vote to censure Steve King because King's comments were to the New York Times, fake news [real]
    posted by T.D. Strange at 9:41 AM on January 15, 2019 [25 favorites]


    Politics USA's Sarah Reese Jones reports on Trump's lunch with members of Congress about the shutdown and border security/the Wall:
    From Sarah Sanders, "Today, the President offered both Democrats & Republicans the chance to meet for lunch at the WH. Unfortunately, no Dems will attend."

    Yesterday, Trump said many Dems were saying "'We agree with you.' Many of them are calling, and many of them are breaking"
    Pic of SHS statement, with a list of GOP attendees (no indication of who among the Dems was originally invited).
    posted by Doktor Zed at 9:43 AM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    And Yasha Mounk continues to show a lack of understanding with his complaint over the criticism of the Clemson fast food banquet:
    But what has a depressingly large number of American journalists been focusing on for the past twenty-four hours? Donald Trump’s choice to serve fast food—“McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King with some pizza,” as he put it—to the Clemson football team. “Trump Treating Champion Clemson to Finest Fast-Food Dinner,” New York magazine headlined. “ ‘We have everything that I like’: Trump serves fast-food feast for Clemson’s White House visit,” the Washington Post announced. Political Twitter was even more obsessed: At one point, #WhiteHouseDinners, Big Macs, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s were all trending.

    All of this would be a bit of silly fun if it had taken place during the languid summer months of a placid presidency. It is completely inexcusable at a moment when the country is engulfed in a deep political crisis. But as a political scientist, I do recognize one unintended benefit to the media’s collective loss of mind: It is a great illustration of what scholars of populism do—and just as importantly, what they don’t—mean when they warn about Trump’s assault on democratic norms.
    His line about serving an elite college team fast food being potentially "silly fun" if there wasn't a crisis illustrates how badly he doesn't get how insulting the act is.
    posted by NoxAeternum at 9:59 AM on January 15, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Pelosi learned the art of “no” from working with Bush. Trump is a whole new test. (Ella Nilsen, Vox)

    Seconding the VOX article linked to above. There is some super interesting history of what happened during the Bush/Obama transition and the efforts from keeping us from a global financial collapse. It confirmed to me - once again - that Nancy Pelosi is a master at finding common ground but also not someone who is going to be pushed around by someone not willing to find common ground. This doesn't bode well for ending the shutdown because Individual -1 is going to see compromise as 'weak' but it gives me a lot of confidence in Pelosi's priorities and her abilities.
    posted by bluesky43 at 10:01 AM on January 15, 2019 [7 favorites]


    I bet the Wendy's Twitter account has an AMAZING roast for this situation, but probably can't use it without touching off a constitutional crisis.
    posted by Autumnheart at 10:01 AM on January 15, 2019 [55 favorites]


    HuffPo. NBC News Tells Staffers Not To Directly Call Steve King’s Racist Remarks Racist
    “It is ok to attribute to others as in ‘what many are calling racist,’” an email from the standards department reads in part.

    NBC News’ standards department sent an email to staffers Tuesday telling them not to directly refer to Rep. Steve King’s recent comments about white supremacy as “racist.”

    “Be careful to avoid characterizing [King’s] remarks as racist,” reads the email, which two NBC News staffers shared with HuffPost. “It is ok to attribute to others as in ‘what many are calling racist’ or something like that.”

    The email was sent to staffers by Susan Sullivan, a senior employee in the standards division at NBC News. In a news organization, the standards department offers guidance and issues rules about what is legally and ethically appropriate to report, and about how certain topics should be covered.

    /what is wrong with the media?
    posted by bluesky43 at 10:03 AM on January 15, 2019 [63 favorites]


    This doesn't bode well for ending the shutdown because Individual -1 is going to see compromise as 'weak'

    Which is why the shutdown ends through unrelenting pressure and media attention on McConnell, not the White House. The veto gets overridden if the vote goes to the Senate floor.
    posted by mcstayinskool at 10:04 AM on January 15, 2019 [23 favorites]


    They’ve been calling in sick since December, if you count the TSA and air traffic controllers.

    The TSA is mostly security theater; it doesn't prevent planes from functioning. (Lack of TSA personnel may compromise safety, but Trump and Senate Republicans don't give a damn about the safety of non-millionaires.) Enough air traffic controllers being out may start affecting businesses enough that they start calling Mitch, and that would help.

    There is, unfortunately, almost no aspect of "government not functioning" that doesn't hurt the poor and oppressed more than it hurts rich people, which is why they're content for it to continue until they get permission to hurt the specific poor and oppressed people they hate most. However, if the IRS can't process returns, that's going to get noticed soon.

    I like the shut off the water idea, but agree that it's not likely to happen. The two things most likely to end this are (1) someone finds leverage that works on Mitch, or (2) Trump's conveniences are seriously impaired - and that's a low, low bar to slide under, because his idea of a comfortable life involves endless TV, internet access, and fast food. (But if the wifi goes down and they can't get a repair guy because they're furloughed and can't call an outsider because they need a gov't clearance etc., things will move quickly.)

    "Today, the President offered both Democrats & Republicans the chance to meet for lunch at the WH. Unfortunately, no Dems will attend."

    I wonder if the Dems replied with, "sorry, I have better food at home. I don't even let my kids eat junk food."
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:04 AM on January 15, 2019 [8 favorites]


    His line about serving an elite college team fast food being potentially "silly fun" if there wasn't a crisis illustrates how badly he doesn't get how insulting the act is.

    I read that line as being about the media coverage of the occasion rather than the occasion itself.
    posted by Etrigan at 10:05 AM on January 15, 2019 [5 favorites]


    According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

    The shutdown should not affect the arrival of the jobs report on February 1st.

    "Federal government employees who are working, but who will not be paid until funding is made available, are included in employment counts.

    Furloughed federal employees who are not working and who do not receive pay for the entire pay period are not included in employment count."

    So, federal workers with no work and no pay (furloughed): not unemployed.

    (Federal workers do seem to be applying for unemployment)

    Federal workers who work without pay: are employed.

    This should help minimize impact on the unemployment statistics.
    posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:08 AM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    what is wrong with the media?

    White fragility; it's worse to call someone a racist than it is for them to actually do/say racist things, because if there's one thing that American anti-racism has been successful at it's been in making (most) white people think "racist=bad person" is axiomatic.
    posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 10:14 AM on January 15, 2019 [36 favorites]


    filthy light thief: Emphasis mine, because THIS seems like a message that would echo with his base. When military recruits say they're not getting paid, it's not "making the government smaller," it's undermining our military capacity and might.

    One word they can use as a counter-argument: "sacrifice".

    I'm not entirely joking. The right-wing worship of the military has always been, under the surface, simple dehumanization, like ancient Egypt "worshipping" cats by buring them alive with their owners. Veterans Day is celebrated in the hope there may be many more veterans to come. Every day the troops make selfless sacrifices... all give some, some give all... and there is no way we can ever repay them. Certainly not with mere dollars. (A single tear rolls down my cheek...)
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 10:15 AM on January 15, 2019 [8 favorites]


    And Yasha Mounk continues to show a lack of understanding with his complaint over the criticism of the Clemson fast food banquet:

    Slate is sending mixed messages.
    posted by Faint of Butt at 10:15 AM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    But what has a depressingly large number of American journalists been focusing on for the past twenty-four hours? Donald Trump’s choice to serve fast food—“McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King with some pizza,” as he put it—to the Clemson football team.

    Let's keep this fact in the forefront. The reason they got takeout is because the White House Chefs are FURLOUGHED!
    posted by mikelieman at 10:15 AM on January 15, 2019 [11 favorites]


    I read that line as being about the media coverage of the occasion rather than the occasion itself.

    It still shows his lack of awareness. There is no way that the sports media covers the White House feeding the college football national champions fast food as anything but an insult. And that's not because they're "snobby elitists", but because the act is insulting.
    posted by NoxAeternum at 10:20 AM on January 15, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Which is why the shutdown ends through unrelenting pressure and media attention on McConnell, not the White House. The veto gets overridden if the vote goes to the Senate floor.

    This Is Mitch McConnell’s Shutdown (Grace Gedye, Washington Monthly)
    By framing the government shutdown as a duel between Trump and Pelosi, news organizations are ignoring one of the biggest agents of the impasse.
    …

    It is, after all, a useful frame, partially because it’s compatible with the broader story of House Democrats’ newfound ability to hold the president accountable, and partially because Trump preemptively took credit for closing the government. More than anything, it’s uncomplicated and dramatic.

    But that narrative lets a critical player responsible for the shutdown fade into the background—exactly where he wants to be.
    …

    ... McConnell is also being politically shrewd. By not calling for a vote to reopen the government, he is shielding himself and other Republicans from having to go on the record as either breaking with the president (...) or voting to keep the government closed (...). The strategy has also been remarkably effective at insulating Republican senators from any blame for the shutdown.
    …

    McConnell’s point that a funding bill without wall money “would not have a real chance of passing this chamber” banks on people forgetting—and the media not emphasizing—an embarrassing contradiction. Just days before the government ultimately shutdown, the Senate passed a short-term funding bill without any money for a southern border wall, which would have kept the government open until February 8
    …

    But since Congress is the ultimate arbiter of whether the government is funded, there was never a way for Trump to maintain a shutdown without McConnell’s complicity. If the Senate leader had used his negotiation skills, supported purple-state Republicans, and worked proactively with Senate Democrats, the government could be open right now.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 10:21 AM on January 15, 2019 [60 favorites]


    There is no way that the sports media covers the White House feeding the college football national champions fast food as anything but an insult.

    He cited "a depressingly large number of American journalists", New York magazine, the Washington Post, and "Political Twitter" -- he was decrying the fact that this is a thing that non-sports media is covering.

    I'm not usually a "No! This is a distraction! Follow the real story!" type, and I don't agree with Mounk's thesis, but he does state it pretty clearly:
    all the attention being lavished on it is liable to distract voters from the assault Trump is currently waging on vastly more important norms.
    posted by Etrigan at 10:28 AM on January 15, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Of course tons of people latched on to the fast food story. It's easy to grasp, it exemplifies the administration, and it somewhat obtusely highlights the shutdown - and as others have pointed out, it's rather insulting. It's also, by its nature, rather easy to laugh about - so it becomes a collective form of venting.

    Also, you will notice if you look closely that MANY (yes, not all, but many) of these articles are being written by people who otherwise do not write about politics. Many of them are sports writers. They are not taking front page headlines, they are not "taking away resources" from reporting on what is going on. Many of these are people who would normally not write about politics writing in a space where politics is not often covered. There have certainly been failures of the media in reporting much of what has happened with this administration, but this isn't really one of them.

    Besides, you have to take the absurdity and humor where you can when it's otherwise a never-ending deluge of horrible things... It's much easier to have a sense of levity about the buffet of cold burgers because it's not locking up children, nor is it making government employees work for no pay, leaving them selling off good and asking favors of friends / family to get by, nor is it the never-ending depths of omnigate, or any other of the too many horrible things to enumerate here.

    Much like it is possible to pay attention to more than one thing going on at a time, it's also possible to laugh about something and also see the reality of it at the same time.
    posted by MysticMCJ at 10:36 AM on January 15, 2019 [40 favorites]


    Zoe Tillman has breaking news about the Federal unions' lawsuit over unpaid work during the shutdown:
    NOW: A federal judge in DC has *denied* motions for temporary restraining orders in litigation over the government shutdown. Federal workers had sought immediate orders to either enable them to get paid for working now, or give them a choice about whether to work without pay

    Judge Richard Leon said he empathized with federal workers, but said the court wasn't just another source of leverage in a "squabble" between the other branches of government. The shutdown is a "political problem," Leon said

    Leon said there were varying likelihoods of success on the merits that deserved full briefing, and that the public interest (a factor in TRO analysis) weighed against immediate action now -- at best, he said, a TRO would cause "chaos and confusion," and could put lives at risk

    The legal fight over the shutdown is not over, today's ruling was just on motions for temporary restraining orders, where the bar is very high to clear. The judge set an expedited schedule for briefing on motions for preliminary injunctions, with arguments set for Jan. 31
    Leon is a Dubya appointee, for those keeping score.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 10:40 AM on January 15, 2019 [6 favorites]


    It's not a fucking 'political problem' when people who are working are not getting paid by their employer. WTF.
    posted by lydhre at 10:44 AM on January 15, 2019 [37 favorites]


    @BurgerKing

    due to a large order placed yesterday, we're all out of hamberders.
    just serving hamburgers today.

    12:33 PM - 15 Jan 2019

    /not fake
    posted by bluesky43 at 10:45 AM on January 15, 2019 [110 favorites]


    Pictures From Trump’s Fast-Food Feast, Ranked by Sadness
    The feast, as it were, was the ultimate expression of Trump’s time in Washington, and of the ongoing government shutdown, which put the White House kitchen out of commission, hence the fast food feast. As the Washington Post reported, one Clemson player could at one point be overheard saying, “I thought it was a joke.” Here’s a ranking, from “a little depressing” to “extremely sad,” of the most epic emotional meal in modern political history.
    posted by kirkaracha at 10:46 AM on January 15, 2019 [15 favorites]


    Some of the comments and links above have reminded us all of the fact that the RNC was hacked as well as the DNC, and that we still haven't heard anything about it. Specifically, we haven't heard of one single Republican politician or party functionary who has reported to the authorities about being blackmailed. Not one. Yet they act as if they are compromised.
    Is there a possibility that one or several Republicans actually have reported and are now cooperating with the intelligence community / the special council? Or do we have to believe that they are all acting on the behalf of a foreign power? What about those Republicans who have retired unexpectedly?
    If they are all compromised, the Mueller investigation has a formidable task: persuading all of America that one of two (relevant) parties is corrupt. I can see why this takes time, and why they must get everyone convicted before they can move on to each next level. I can also see why all of the Republicans are clinging to the raft of lies with their nails. They have no other choice. It's impossible to see how this can end well. Not only for the Republicans, but for the USA. Even if the crooks are all caught and sent to jail, there has to be a giant reimagining of the Nation, at the scale of the Civil War.
    posted by mumimor at 10:50 AM on January 15, 2019 [37 favorites]


    > It's not a fucking 'political problem' when people who are working are not getting paid by their employer.

    Yeah, and it's a Dubya appointee, but I do sympathize with his position that an immediate restraining order would 'cause "chaos and confusion," and could put lives at risk'. Note that the argument in the lawsuit is a subtler one than just "Pay me"...

    WaPo: ‘The essence of involuntary servitude’: Federal unions sue the Trump administration to get paid for shutdown work
    The lawsuit before Leon argues that forcing certain employees to work without pay violates the law establishing that federal agencies cannot spend money that has not been authorized by Congress — the union argues that by promising pay later, [the Federal government] is spending money that Congress hasn’t yet appropriated.
    So that's a bit of a Constitutional question.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 10:50 AM on January 15, 2019 [13 favorites]


    The judge did seem to lay out several avenues from which the issue could be effectively addressed with a better shot at success.
    posted by Autumnheart at 10:56 AM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    The judge set an expedited schedule for briefing on motions for preliminary injunctions, with arguments set for Jan. 31

    Well shit. Another paycheck.

    He could have simply made the 31st a deadline and kicked it back to the other branches to sort out post haste.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:59 AM on January 15, 2019


    Politicio. Dems spurn Trump on shutdown talks
    Moderate House Democrats feared the White House was simply trying to divide the party.

    House Democrats refused to participate in a Tuesday afternoon meeting with President Donald Trump, dashing the White House’s unlikely hopes of reaching a grand bargain with moderates to reopen the government and secure money for border security.

    Tuesday’s meeting will instead include eight Republicans and no Democrats, the White House said. White House aides had reached out to several centrist Democratic lawmakers in hopes of dividing the caucus and going around House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who have strongly objected to Trump’s demand for more than $5 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
    posted by bluesky43 at 11:02 AM on January 15, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Why do congress people suck so hard at questioning people that come before them?
    posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:03 AM on January 15, 2019 [17 favorites]


    @ComdtUSCG: Today you will not be receiving your regularly scheduled paycheck. To the best of my knowledge, this marks the first time in our Nation’s history that servicemembers in a U.S. Armed Force have not been paid during a lapse in appropriations.

    It links to a letter that says people aren't getting paid and that the Red Cross will be distributing donated relief funds like this is a natural disaster or something.
    posted by zachlipton at 11:04 AM on January 15, 2019 [59 favorites]


    What could possibly be in the RNC emails that is so compromising that the entire party is screwed? There was hardly anything in the DNC emails (not that social security numbers and cell phone numbers is “hardly anything”), to the point where they had to manually go in and excise certain emails from the Wikileaks release in order to make certain email chains look bad, when they were in fact normal.
    posted by gucci mane at 11:05 AM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    While not quite up to I can haz cheeseburger standard, the fastfood has gone quietly memefied, sometimes, in strange directions.
    posted by infini at 11:08 AM on January 15, 2019 [40 favorites]


    What could possibly be in the RNC emails that is so compromising that the entire party is screwed? There was hardly anything in the DNC emails (not that social security numbers and cell phone numbers is “hardly anything”), to the point where they had to manually go in and excise certain emails from the Wikileaks release in order to make certain email chains look bad, when they were in fact normal.

    Certain borderline emails from the DNC were cherry-picked and twisted to look like a conspiracy to rig the primaries, with major political damage as a result. We know that Republicans used the NRA to funnel Russian money into the campaign, that GOP operatives like Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi were shipping info back and forth to Assange, that GOP politicians at all levels were engaged in voter suppression with a public fig leaf about "voter fraud," that RNC chairman Elliot Broidy was working with Michael Cohen to cover up sex scandals, that Lindsey Graham is widely rumored to be closeted, that Rand Paul does weird stuff like worship "Aqua Buddha," etc.

    And those are just publicly reported facts. I would be stunned if there wasn't at least one blockbuster scandal in every 100 RNC emails. Also, individual politicians were targeted too.
    posted by msalt at 11:17 AM on January 15, 2019 [18 favorites]


    What could possibly be in the RNC emails that is so compromising that the entire party is screwed?

    This dovetails into something else I've been thinking about, Schrodinger's Kompromat. They all know they're dirty. They know Russia has some of the dirt on them. They don't know WHAT dirt Russia may have on them, so they are compliant/complicit/conspiring without hesitation due to the fear of what Russia may have on them.

    At this point, a hotel suite with Hostesses for legislators at some NRA events seems almost a given.
    posted by mikelieman at 11:19 AM on January 15, 2019 [27 favorites]


    What could possibly be in the RNC emails that is so compromising that the entire party is screwed?

    Doesn't have to be the entire party.

    The Japanese have a saying: if you would kill the king, first shoot his horse. (I.e., take out his immediate support.)
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:19 AM on January 15, 2019 [28 favorites]


    What could possibly be in the RNC emails that is so compromising that the entire party is screwed?

    when I had to go into my loudly Republican ex-boss's computer to fix something it was pretty evident that he spent a good portion of his day emailing porn to his buddies so that's kind of where my thoughts are at
    posted by prize bull octorok at 11:21 AM on January 15, 2019 [47 favorites]


    @ComdtUSCG: Today you will not be receiving your regularly scheduled paycheck. To the best of my knowledge, this marks the first time in our Nation’s history that servicemembers in a U.S. Armed Force have not been paid during a lapse in appropriations.

    They say "don't read the comments," but what I really appreciate in the responses following that tweet is the number of people calling out Mitch McConnell specifically and noting the point that budget bills have already passed Congress, even with the House changing hands.

    In other news, I'm supposed to make my 4th quarter estimated tax payment for 2018 today. Pretty sure it's entirely one big overpayment. Normally I'd just send it all in on general principle just to be safe, but I'm looking at this shutdown and not really believing the whole "don't worry, refunds will happen" thing. Think I'm gonna play this one much more carefully than I usually would.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:26 AM on January 15, 2019 [15 favorites]


    HuffPo. NBC News Tells Staffers Not To Directly Call Steve King’s Racist Remarks Racist

    Update: NBC News standards gave this one another try and came up with a better answer: "it is fair to characterize King's comments as 'racist,' and point out that he has a history of racist comments, and the context can be shared that others hold that view as well."
    posted by zachlipton at 11:34 AM on January 15, 2019 [29 favorites]


    Maybe “possibly” wasn’t the best word to use, since all those things are possible. It just seems a little too on the nose for me that the DNC emails seemed pretty tame, whereas the RNC emails have the complete details of all their evil schemes. I was under the impression that the GRU hacked the DNC emails and then released them as a way to further the whole “Hillary’s emails” story by association, since the media was so caught up on it for no reason at all. The DNC being hacked and emails being released, right after Trump called for “Hillary’s emails” to be found by Russia and released, created that association in advance, and fit in line with the entire plot of “sowing discord and distrust in democratic systems”.
    posted by gucci mane at 11:36 AM on January 15, 2019 [1 favorite]


    bluesky43: HuffPo. NBC News Tells Staffers Not To Directly Call Steve King’s Racist Remarks Racist “It is ok to attribute to others as in ‘what many are calling racist,’” an email from the standards department reads in part. NBC News’ standards department sent an email to staffers Tuesday telling them not to directly refer to Rep. Steve King’s recent comments about white supremacy as “racist.” “Be careful to avoid characterizing [King’s] remarks as racist,” reads the email, which two NBC News staffers shared with HuffPost. “It is ok to attribute to others as in ‘what many are calling racist’ or something like that.”

    NPR seemed to be reading from this playbook (linking to my prior comment), given how they quoted GOP Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.:
    Cheney was one of the first House Republicans to criticize King and characterize his words as "racist" [Twitter] following a Times story last week in which he was quoted questioning why the term white supremacy had become offensive.
    Update: NBC News standards gave this one another try and came up with a better answer: "it is fair to characterize King's comments as 'racist,' and point out that he has a history of racist comments, and the context can be shared that others hold that view as well."

    Then why includes the quotes around 'racist'?

    Proposed headline: Steve King said another racist thing, but some GOP finally respond
    posted by filthy light thief at 11:40 AM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Brexit deal defeated by 432 votes to 202, "the biggest government defeat in history".
    posted by mikepop at 11:46 AM on January 15, 2019 [37 favorites]


    (Brexit thread over here)
    posted by LobsterMitten at 11:47 AM on January 15, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Although now that I re-read the GRU indictments it does show that they had donor information, so that could very well be the issue with the RNC emails. On top of that:
    Theft of DCCC and DNC Documents
    27. The Conspirators searched for and identified computers within the DCCC and DNC networks that stored information related to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. For example, on or about April 15, 2016, the Conspirators searched one hacked DCCC computer for terms that included “hillary,” “cruz,” and “trump.” The Conspirators also copied select DCCC folders, including “Benghazi Investigations.” The Conspirators targeted computers containing information such as opposition research and field operation plans for the 2016 elections.
    They were also helping the Republicans by not releasing their oppo and field op plans.
    posted by gucci mane at 11:49 AM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    The entire exchange that just happened between Barr and Sen. Booker (some video) on mass incarceration is striking, but this stands out:

    @chrisgeidner: Shocking: "Overall," Barr says, he stands by the idea that the criminal justice system treats black and white people similarly.

    He acknowledged that there might still be "some racism remaining" in the system, but that it's fair "overall."
    posted by zachlipton at 11:49 AM on January 15, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Ajit Pai gives carriers free pass on privacy violations during FCC shutdown -- Pai's staff to Congress: Carriers selling customer location data is no big deal. (Jon Brodkin for Ars Technica, Jan. 15, 2019)
    Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai refused a Democratic lawmaker's request to immediately address a privacy scandal involving wireless carriers, saying that it can wait until after the government shutdown is over.

    A Motherboard investigation published last week found that T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are still selling [Ars Technica] their mobile customers' real-time location information to third-party data brokers, despite promises [Ars Technica] in June 2018 to stop the controversial practice.

    House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) asked Pai [energycommerce.house.gov] for an "emergency briefing" to explain why the FCC "has yet to end wireless carriers' unauthorized disclosure of consumers' real-time location data," and for an update on "what actions the FCC has taken to address this issue to date."

    Pai's FCC could take action, despite the 2017 repeal [Ars Technica] of the commission's broadband privacy rules. Phone carriers are legally required to protect "Customer Proprietary Network Information [CPNI]," and the FCC's definition of CPNI includes location data [law.cornell.edu, Code of Federal Regulations].

    "An emergency briefing is necessary in the interest of public safety and national security, and therefore cannot wait until President Trump decides to reopen the government," Pallone wrote to Pai, noting that "[b]ad actors can use location information to track individuals' physical movements without their knowledge or consent."

    “Not a threat to safety,” according to FCC
    Pai did not agree with Pallone, it turns out.

    "Today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai refused to brief Energy and Commerce Committee staff on the real-time tracking of cell phone location[s]," Pallone said in a statement yesterday [energycommerce.house.gov]. "In a phone conversation today, his staff asserted that these egregious actions are not a threat to the safety of human life or property that the FCC will address during the Trump shutdown."
    Trump shutdown? Ohohoho! Well played, Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (And this is filed under "PAI BEING PAI" -- because, yeah, pretty much.)
    posted by filthy light thief at 11:51 AM on January 15, 2019 [14 favorites]


    Maybe “possibly” wasn’t the best word to use, since all those things are possible. It just seems a little too on the nose for me that the DNC emails seemed pretty tame, whereas the RNC emails have the complete details of all their evil schemes.

    Except the GOP, partially through the RNC (where various Russia-implicated people held official positions), has been systematically compromised by a foreign power via a combination of stick (kompromat) and carrot (bribery)?

    My guess is it's all the criming that's on there. Like...probably a lot of criming.
    posted by schadenfrau at 11:55 AM on January 15, 2019 [16 favorites]


    The DNC is full of ambitious people who are willing to "cut corners" and may be willing to break actual laws to achieve their goals, but are very cagey about that and would like to keep the rule-breaking, and awareness of it, to a minimum. Their scoundrels and rat-bastards are working from the premise, "we may need to bypass a few rules to Do The Right Thing, but then we'll re-establish the proper rule of order."

    The RNC is full of people who think it's not actually illegal if they're doing it, because the laws don't apply to people like them. The revel in the ability to flaunt their privilege, even if it's only to the other people on the email chain. And many of them have broken tons of laws for no reason other than personal gain or direct spite, so the compromising data runs deeply through everything they do.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:12 PM on January 15, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Forgot to post this when it went up: News You May Have Missed for 13 January
    posted by joannemerriam at 12:16 PM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    I don't understand why people are having so much trouble with Hindu-American. Would you find Muslim-American strange? I hear that all the time.

    And as an Indian woman of half Hindu and half Christian ancestry, please please stop conflating Indian and Hindu. Those are two separate things, much as the Hindutva faction in India would like you to think they're the exact same thing. There are Muslims who are Indian (lots and lots of them). There are Christians who are Indian. There are lots of and lots of Hindus who are not Indian (see Nepalis, Bangladeshis, Indonesians etc.).

    I can understand why Hindu-American might sound weird, when we don't call Christian Americans Christian-Americans. Still the fact is that Christians are still the large majority of the US so that is the default assumption. Jewish-American seems pretty common to me, as is Muslim-American, so why not Hindu-American?

    I'd like people to separate the issue of whether she's allowed to call herself a Hindu because she's not of Indian ancestry (she absolutely is) from other reasons you might dislike her candidacy.
    posted by peacheater at 12:25 PM on January 15, 2019 [29 favorites]


    Hundreds of Hondurans have set off on a new migrant caravan towards the United States.

    An estimated 500 left early on Tuesday from the bus terminal in the crime-ridden Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. Another group of about 300 set off a few hours later.
    posted by infini at 12:25 PM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    That will no doubt make Trump go on the attack about the wall again, and put Dems on the defensive, as though the country needs to be defended against 500 Honduran refugees.
    posted by Autumnheart at 12:30 PM on January 15, 2019 [5 favorites]


    lydhre It's not a fucking 'political problem' when people who are working are not getting paid by their employer. WTF.

    When their employer is the US government, it's rather difficult to separate politics from it though. And, ultimately it is a political problem. The US government is, regrettably, designed in such a way that if the political leaders can't agree on a budget then the government stops being paid. That's a pretty huge political problem, and we really need to restructure the government to make sure it can never happen again.

    Also? This is what people mean when they say "the personal is political". Comfortable white people in America have been pretending that politics is this weird, basically separate and unnecessary, thing. That's the sign of a government working well for those people. But people for whom the government is not working so well do not have the luxury of pretending that the political is not also personal.

    I have some hope that this will be a long term very bad thing for the Republicans as it's causing upset and harm to a lot of people.

    I'll quote fictional terrorist/feedom fighter Quellcrist Falconer here, because she's relevant:
    The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.
    The political has just become personal in a sudden and harsh way to a lot of comfortable white Americans for the first time in their lives. Not the government workers, they already know, but the people affected by the shutdown in airplane lines, and so on.
    posted by sotonohito at 12:38 PM on January 15, 2019 [31 favorites]


    A new caravan might tip Trump towards declaring an emergency. At this point, if that's what it takes to get the government re-opened (and we can take it to court), I'd settle for that. (I'd even settle for the Democrats caving on the $5 billion for the wall, except for the precedent it would set.)
    posted by uosuaq at 12:41 PM on January 15, 2019 [1 favorite]


    in strange directions.

    I general, I'm all set with the fastfood story, but damn that AI image really captures the zeitgeist.
    posted by diogenes at 12:43 PM on January 15, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Ben Sasse just asked Barr if he would look into the Jeffrey Epstein plea deal matter, and . . Barr surmised he may have to recuse himself from such matters. Yikes.
    posted by Harry Caul at 12:46 PM on January 15, 2019 [63 favorites]


    Because Republicans have future QAnon grist like this:

    Politico: Ex-FBI general counsel faced criminal leak probe


    The revelation’s timing suggests that Republicans are seeking to undercut Baker’s credibility following a bombshell report in the New York Times.

    In a letter to U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut, House Oversight Ranking Republican Jim Jordan and Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadow requested more information on the probe. The Trump allies’ letter quoted from unreleased transcripts of a closed-door deposition last October, where Bakers’ lawyer barred him from answering questions about interactions with reporters, citing the investigation.
    ...
    In their letter Tuesday, Republicans did not specifically accuse Baker of being the source of the leak to the New York Times last weekend, but they certainly hinted at that. However, Ben Wittes, a close friend of Baker’s quoted in the story, pushed back on that notion in his own op-ed.

    “To be very clear, I did not receive information about this from Baker. I received it from the New York Times only,” he wrote. “And while I don’t know who gave it to Schmidt, Adam Goldman and Nicholas Fandos, who share the byline on the story, I am very confident it was not Baker or anyone associated with him.”
    ...
    The GOP letter — which came without any sign-off from House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) — marks the first of what will likely be many counter-attacks by Hill Republicans intended to protect the president. House Democrats have vowed to investigate Trump and Russia’s interference in the election as well as any obstruction of justice from the president. Jordan and Meadows, Trump confidants, are expected to aggressively push back and be Trump’s first line of defense.
    posted by saysthis at 12:50 PM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    peacheater: I don't understand why people are having so much trouble with Hindu-American. Would you find Muslim-American strange? I hear that all the time.

    The main reason "Hindu-American" looks odd to some people is the hyphen, which, by parallel to similar words, implies "Hindu" to be an ethnicity, which in turn implies the conflation with "Indian" descent that you brought up. That's one possible reason people jumped into the irrelevant question of Gabbard's heritage.

    The only really common word I know and use that designates both a religion and an ethnicity is "Jewish", and the two meanings aren't identical. For instance, one could argue that it's correct to say that Ivanka Trump is a "Jewish American" but not a "Jewish-American".

    I'm not familiar with usage of "Muslim-American", and I could be totally off base.
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 12:56 PM on January 15, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Mod note: One deleted; we're not going over the 2016 primaries again; also unless there's some new info about the DNC hack or the likely RNC hack, let's call it enough on the "what was in those emails" stuff.
    posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:03 PM on January 15, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Typically it's uncommon to see -American appended to a religious designation, since the -American suffix tends to refer to ethnicity and religions aren't usually dependent on ethnicity.

    Then again, the whole ethnicity-American designation tends to be used incorrectly anyway (e.g. referring to black people as "African-American" even if they're from Jamaica, Ireland, or are actually citizens of other nations establishing residency in the US). Maybe we should do away with it.
    posted by Autumnheart at 1:04 PM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Did.... he give a REASON why he'd have to recuse himself from the matter of investigating a pedophilia crime ring??

    "I have to recuse myself from Kirkland(sp?) and Ellis matters"
    posted by Harry Caul at 1:06 PM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Trump - McDonald's Commercial (2002)
    posted by kirkaracha at 1:06 PM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    @jendlouhyhc [Bloomberg]:
    Trump's Interior Dept is bringing furloughed employees back on the job to prepare sales of offshore #oil drilling rights, arguing that failing to hold the auctions would have a negative impact on the federal treasury & investment in the Gulf of Mexico.

    Employees also are on call to help process permits authorizing seismic surveys hunting for oil in the Atlantic and develop a new 5-year program for selling drilling rights in U.S. coastal waters, according to a newly revised contingency plan. These workers aren't alone. The Trump administration has just ordered thousands of furloughed employees back to work without pay to inspect planes, issue tax refunds, monitor food safety & facilitate sales of offshore oil drilling rights.
    The definition of "essential" is looking increasingly like "whoever we need to loot the country." And the crazy thing is that, as much as they think they're mitigating the shutdown's impact by calling these people back to work, they don't seem to realize that making them all work without pay is itself the biggest impact of the shutdown, and it's utterly unsustainable.
    posted by zachlipton at 1:06 PM on January 15, 2019 [71 favorites]


    Did.... he give a REASON why he'd have to recuse himself from the matter of investigating a pedophilia crime ring??

    In a more sane world, any judge might recuse himself from a case in which he personally knows or has business connections with the accused or the accuser(s). Recusal (again, in normal setting) wouldn't imply, "I might be actually involved in some level of the crimes here," just "there's a connection that might make people think I could be biased."

    "We used to hang out at the same parties sometimes" would definitely be enough to recuse - if, of course, the judge actually cared about justice and the public faith in the justice system. The potential of the appearance of bias is often enough to set off a recusal. It's not even, "I have a connection to someone involved;" it can be "I attended the same fraternity" or "my spouse's brother owns shares in the accused's company."
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:13 PM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Did.... he give a REASON why he'd have to recuse himself from the matter of investigating a pedophilia crime ring??

    "I have to recuse myself from Kirkland(sp?) and Ellis matters"

    This should be on-face disqualifying. The firm did $3.1 BILLION dollars in global business last year and the would-be top Law Enforcement Official of the United States will pre emptively not be willing/able to deal with any of it?
    posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 1:23 PM on January 15, 2019 [21 favorites]


    The white supremacist who hounded a black state legislator out of office is getting away with it:
    A man who harassed Vermont’s only black legislator until she resigned from office will not face any charges, Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan announced in a press conference Monday.

    Kiah Morris, a statehouse representative from the town of Bennington, had reported that for the past two years, she had received harassing messages online and found swastikas carved onto trees near her property. The harassment left her and her husband in a constant state of anxiety, she said, and she would report unknown vehicles or people loitering outside her home to authorities out of fear. She also believed break-ins into her car and home were racially motivated. But after a months-long investigation, the attorney general’s office concluded that the main perpetrator of the harassment, an avowed white nationalist named Max Misch, could not be prosecuted because investigators could not link him to the burglaries—and his speech was protected by the First Amendment.
    This is revolting.
    posted by NoxAeternum at 1:31 PM on January 15, 2019 [98 favorites]


    @jimsciutto

    Breaking: In rebuke to Trump administration on Russia, Senate Democrats & more than 10 Republicans voted to advance a measure to block Treasury from relaxing sanctions on three Russian companies with ties to Kremlin ally Oleg Deripaska.

    5:55 PM - 15 Jan 2019
    posted by bluesky43 at 2:03 PM on January 15, 2019 [59 favorites]


    . . discussing the fact that our Treasury has been compromised, literally, by Russian agents.
    Great Buzzfeed expose from a little while ago> by Cormier and Leopold there's a LOT of scary stuff in this story.
    posted by Harry Caul at 2:17 PM on January 15, 2019 [14 favorites]


    WSJ: Mueller Probe Likely to Restrict Michael Cohen’s Testimony—Trump’s former lawyer may be barred from discussing matters related to talks with the special counsel and Manhattan federal prosecutors
    While Mr. Cohen’s testimony may be restricted, he is expected to give an explosive recounting of his experience working for Mr. Trump. His testimony is expected to focus on his life story, examining how he went from serving as one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal aides for more than a decade to publicly breaking with him last year and implicating him in two federal crimes.

    “He’s going to tell the story of what it’s like to work for a madman, and why he did it for so long,” said the person close to Mr. Cohen. “He’s going to say things that will give you chills.”[…]

    The House Oversight Committee is still in the process of consulting with Mr. Mueller and New York federal prosecutors on the terms of Mr. Cohen’s testimony, according to a Democratic aide on the committee. The panel also previously expressed interest in Mr. Trump’s failure to report in a 2017 financial disclosure form his debt to Mr. Cohen, whom he reimbursed for a $130,000 payment Mr. Cohen made to a former adult film star in October 2016.
    These restrictions notwithstanding, Cohen has plenty of dirt on Donald for the Committee to turn over. Mark your calendars…
    posted by Doktor Zed at 2:25 PM on January 15, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Willy Staley, All the President’s Memes, in which we're reminded that the wall was just some stuff Trump kept saying because people liked it at rallies, and we've been stuck with it ever since just like a meme:
    This incentive structure, in which an easily distracted person says a bunch of stuff he kind of means to an assembled audience, slowly learning what generates a reaction and what doesn’t, is familiar: It’s like posting online. This is the process that nudged the wall ever closer to reality, despite the fact that it was only ever supposed to be a metaphor, a shorthand, a catchphrase. It is an idea with no real owner or creator, passed from person to person, from lectern to grandstand to TV and Twitter and back again, copying itself and growing and mutating until it became big, beautiful and tipped with spikes forged from American steel. The border wall is, in the truest sense, a meme: an idea that persists not because it will benefit us but simply because it thrives in our environment. It was so effective at doing whatever it did that it couldn’t be contained, spilling out of the president’s brain and spreading throughout our entire body politic, cooling and hardening like bacon grease, until it finally brought everything to a standstill. And I hate to admit it, but that is a little funny.
    It's really not.
    posted by zachlipton at 2:27 PM on January 15, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Holy...

    The lede of that article cited by odinsdream and Harry Caul:
    US Treasury Department officials used a Gmail back channel with the Russian government as the Kremlin sought sensitive financial information on its enemies in America and across the globe, according to documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News.
    It gets...weirder? From there? It was all reported to supervisors in July and August of 2016 by people who worried about it for the exact reasons you should be worried about it -- attachments sent to unsecured accounts on Treasury servers from the Russians -- and then...nothing happened. And the only reason I can think to do that is that shutting it down would have exposed some other part of the counterintelligence stuff that was going on then.

    Or maybe that's just wildly optimistic and it's exactly as stupid as it looks.

    ETA: I posted that before I finished the article. No, it's all terrible, optimism is a lie. Uh, feel free to go ahead and delete this, I guess
    posted by schadenfrau at 2:31 PM on January 15, 2019 [23 favorites]


    The Times just released Bill Barr's full email to them from November 2017:
    There is nothing inherently wrong with the President calling for an investigation. Although an investigation shouldn't be launched just because a President wants it, the ultimate question is whether the matter warrants investigation, and I have long believed that the predicate for investigating the uranium deal, as well as the foundation, is far stronger than any basis for investigating so-called "collusion." Likewise, the basis for investigating various "national security" activities carried out during the election, as Senator Grassley has been attempting to do. To the extent that it is not perusing these matters, the Department is abdicating its responsibility.
    This man cannot become the Attorney General.
    posted by zachlipton at 2:32 PM on January 15, 2019 [50 favorites]


    I get why we are all calling for him not to be AG but the reality is the guy is going to be Attorney General. The GOP have 53 Senators until at least 2020.
    posted by Justinian at 2:34 PM on January 15, 2019 [21 favorites]


    Jewish-American seems pretty common to me, as is Muslim-American, so why not Hindu-American?

    Never heard Muslim-American before. Jewish-American to me actually reinforces the point about Hindu-American being weird, as it is usually meant to mean "Jewish as an ethnicity" rather than "Jewish as a religion". Atheists can be Jewish-Americans. As InTheYear2017 says, Ivanka is Jewish but not Jewish-American.

    Muslim-American has no clear ethnic meaning, there is no "Muslim" ethnic group and Muslims are from very diverse ethnic background (the most populous Muslim country is Indonesia, yet when people say "Muslim-Americans" I think the average person pictures someone from the Middle East, not a Southeast Asian). [Edit: Southeast Asian not Pacific Islander]
    posted by thefoxgod at 2:51 PM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    @costareports: Couple senior Republican lawmakers tell me the only way this breaks open is if TSA employees stay home and Americans get furious about their flights. That’s the only out, they say. And they’re close to the WH.

    Or, you know, they could just vote to fund the government like they did in December, but sure, let's put it all on the TSA workers instead of Congress, that's very responsible.

    NYT, Shutdown Prompts Hunger Strike at Manhattan Jail as Family Visits Are Canceled
    The government shutdown is causing turmoil at the high-security federal jail in Manhattan, where some prisoners went on a hunger strike on Monday after family visits were canceled for a second week because of staffing shortages, defense lawyers said.

    The jail, known as the Metropolitan Correctional Center or M.C.C., is one of the most important detention centers in the federal prison system, housing about 800 detainees. At times the inmates have included accused terrorists, prominent white-collar criminals and organized crime figures like the Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo. Still, the majority are anonymous defendants awaiting trial in obscure cases.
    ...
    The shutdown has also affected the dispensing of medication to some prisoners in the jail. Last week, a prosecutor said at a federal court hearing in Manhattan that his office had been “informed — we don’t have any reason to dispute this — that because of the shutdown, there are issues with prescribing medication.”

    The federal Bureau of Prisons did not respond to an email seeking comment about the conditions at the M.C.C.

    Beyond prisoners’ social visits, the shutdown is affecting how criminal justice is administered in the federal courts in New York. For instance, lawyers have been prevented from visiting their clients at a federal jail in Brooklyn. On Monday, a Bureau of Prisons lawyer, Adam Johnson, emailed defense lawyers to say that “due to staff shortages,” lawyers would not be able to visit their clients at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, which holds about 1,600 detainees. “We regret the inconvenience and will notify you immediately once visiting resumes,” Mr. Johnson wrote.
    posted by zachlipton at 2:56 PM on January 15, 2019 [24 favorites]


    Mueller releases filing on why Manafort broke plea agreement
    posted by jasondigitized at 2:56 PM on January 15, 2019 [20 favorites]


    the filing is heavily redacted but I have a feeling that those involved in various meetings and money schemes would know who they are. Also imaging myself as a member of the Mueller team, I can only imagine feeling rage at these traitorous conniving bozos while at the same time exhilarated at the thought of nailing them all to the wall.
    posted by bluesky43 at 3:06 PM on January 15, 2019 [9 favorites]


    TONIGHT: @SenGillibrand stops by @colbertlateshow to announce that she is forming an exploratory committee to run for President of the United States
    posted by bluesky43 at 3:21 PM on January 15, 2019 [15 favorites]


    Mueller releases filing on why Manafort broke plea agreement

    HOW, not why. (I had to check - was Mueller speculating on why Manafort broke the agreement? But no; Mueller is just explaining what Manafort did.)

    The redaction Mad Libs players are going to have a field day trying to find the words that fit in all those little black boxes.
    when asked about the payment: (1) on September 20, 2018, he said it was repayment of a loan from Manafort to [xx] which Manafort instructed [xx] to pay [xxxx] because Manafort owed [xxxx] money for its [xxxxxx] (2) on October 1, 2018, he said it was money [xxxx] was paying on Manafort's behalf because Manafort had given [xxxx] work in the past...
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:39 PM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    There is, unfortunately, almost no aspect of "government not functioning" that doesn't hurt the poor and oppressed more than it hurts rich people, which is why they're content for it to continue until they get permission to hurt the specific poor and oppressed people they hate most. However, if the IRS can't process returns, that's going to get noticed soon.

    IRS recalls 36,000 more workers to process tax refunds -- without pay.

    It's like I said about the 2013 shutdown, employees are only furloughed to the extent it won't affect the rich and upper middle class. This gamesmanship with who is "essential" happened in 2013 under Obama too, but more to preserve basic functions while keeping the impact in the news by letting it be felt. This administration has the complete opposite motivation. They have no incentive to let the rich feel any pain, and every incentive to argue the shutdown can continue indefinitely. And they really, sincerely, hate the existence of every federal employee, and sincerely want to see every one bankrupted. Republicans want to destroy the government, and especially the people that make up the federal workforce. The point of the shutdown is the shutdown, they've wanted this for a long time.

    I'm not sure how this ends without either a major disruption to air travel, an airplane crash, or a major food illness outbreak. Something dramatic will have to happen to get the public to call out for a restoration of basic services, because federal employees starving and getting evicted won't move the dial at all, that's their intention.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 3:41 PM on January 15, 2019 [41 favorites]


    I was surprised that Kristen Gillibrand didn't vote on the motion to proceed with S.J.Res.2 (the resolution disapproving Trump lifting Deripaska-related sanctions), especially when Republican senators like Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Ben Sasse, Marco Rubio, and (wait for it) Tom Cotton voted with the Democrats.

    Is there a story there, or was she just busy getting ready for Colbert?
    posted by box at 3:46 PM on January 15, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Lynne Cheney's urging King to resign, as are some other reps, as is freshman Utah senator Mitt Romney?

    Des Moines Register: Two Republicans, state Sen. Randy Feenstra of Hull and businessman Bret Richards of Irwin, have said they plan to run in the GOP primary... If King steps aside, it would be up to Governor Reynolds to schedule a special election for the seat.

    The Sioux City Journal: Feenstra, a third-term senator who serves as an assistant majority leader in the Senate and also chairs the chamber's powerful Ways and Means Committee, said the GOP is in danger of losing Iowa's most Republican congressional district if King is the nominee in 2020. In November, King edged Democrat J.D. Scholten by 3 percent, the closest call in his eight campaigns for re-election.

    Also from the Register: Feenstra, who chairs the Iowa Senate’s tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, gained prominence last year as an architect of the $2 billion tax cut.

    Feenstra's coming out of the state senate, like King did, and he turned 50 yesterday.

    No Republican is suddenly having a long-overdue crisis of conscience. King won in November with 50.3% of the vote. They're finally turning on racist Steve King because they want to secure that seat (the only Republican seat in Iowa's House delegation) with someone promising greater voter appeal.
    posted by Iris Gambol at 3:56 PM on January 15, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Is there a story there, or was she just busy getting ready for Colbert?

    Colbert tapes at four or so. Looks like the vote was at the same time.
    posted by orange ball at 4:07 PM on January 15, 2019 [1 favorite]


    A new caravan might tip Trump towards declaring an emergency. At this point, if that's what it takes to get the government re-opened (and we can take it to court), I'd settle for that.

    I would not settle for Trump becoming ever more emboldened to subvert our democratic system of government, whether or not he is constrained by the courts from carrying out his most Fascist impulses. Every injury to the Constitution and democratic norms has grave, long-lasting consequences.
    posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:14 PM on January 15, 2019 [13 favorites]


    I'm with Horace; autocrats create crises in order to assume more power to deal with the very crises they create. Trump wants you to grow so tired of it all that you're willing to let him do whatever he wants just to make it all stop. Don't give in to that impulse.
    posted by Justinian at 4:20 PM on January 15, 2019 [56 favorites]


    A new caravan might tip Trump towards declaring an emergency. At this point, if that's what it takes to get the government re-opened (and we can take it to court), I'd settle for that.

    "What it takes" would therefore be a giant racist monument, massive and permanent environmental damage, a complete waste of a far more than $5 billion before this shit is over with, and the capitulation of all meaningful resistance in the face of an administration that clearly wants to do much worse.

    No. Absolutely not. I want the government reopened, too, but all of this is fucking insane.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 4:21 PM on January 15, 2019 [46 favorites]


    Looks like Sherrod Brown is getting in today. So that's two major players in the last few hours.

    Guess it's officially primary season, god help us all.
    posted by Justinian at 4:28 PM on January 15, 2019 [8 favorites]


    I haven’t seen this posted and it is exciting

    Majority of Americans support a 70% marginal tax rate.

    Ooh
    Ooooh
    NOW DO CORPORATE
    posted by schadenfrau at 4:36 PM on January 15, 2019 [90 favorites]


    Two policy-focused overviews of what the Gillibrand campaign will be about.

    Vox, Kirsten Gillibrand announces a 2020 presidential exploratory committee
    WaPo, Kirsten Gillibrand’s 2020 policy agenda: Universal paid family leave, publicly funded elections, improving gender and racial equality
    posted by zachlipton at 4:36 PM on January 15, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Rule of law, including all property law, and a functional currency system, are all dependent upon having a functional government.

    Wealth is not self-sustaining. The protections of a strong government are pre-requisite for wealth itself to exist (which is the best argument for steep progressive taxation).

    What I'm getting at, it takes a very short-sighted billionaire to engage in the dismantling and/or demolition of government.

    Baffling.
    posted by yesster at 4:39 PM on January 15, 2019 [15 favorites]


    it takes a very short-sighted billionaire to engage in the dismantling and/or demolition of government.

    Not if there's another jurisdiction where you can offload the money. I suppose the irony of Putin's active measures (with the complicity of oligarchs as feudal lords) might be that former safe havens for appropriated wealth become considerably less safe. That said, billionaires tend to live in places that rely on government doing a lot of shit to keep things running.
    posted by holgate at 4:48 PM on January 15, 2019 [7 favorites]


    What I'm getting at, it takes a very short-sighted billionaire to engage in the dismantling and/or demolition of government.

    Baffling.

    Billionaires are mostly pretty dumb, genuinely believe in their own inherent superiority, and take the current state of affairs (wrt rule of law, currency etc.) as more or less immutable facts of nature. So yeah, they're short-sighted. The ones that are actually good at anything are only good at finding new ways to exploit people for short-term profit, and at outmaneuvering their peers within the confines of a particular contrived game. Capital isn't a conspiracy in that way; they're beneficiaries of a system they didn't create, not knowing puppeteers.
    posted by contraption at 4:48 PM on January 15, 2019 [12 favorites]


    It's like the way Fox News ate Republican politics: at first it was just propaganda pitched to the rubes by self-aware manipulators, but then the rubes bought in big, elected other rubes, and now the whole party is just true believers in what was originally conceived as racist fearmongering to get votes.
    posted by contraption at 4:52 PM on January 15, 2019 [28 favorites]


    The Baffler, Alex Pareene, Consolation Prizes: The right’s bid to short-circuit inequality with cheap gizmos.
    Conservatives seem to have noticed that their primary argument—why do you feel so poor when you have such a large TV?—has had trouble making inroads among people who actually experience life in the United States and who don’t work within the think tank–lobbying firm–Council of Economic Advisers circuit. They’ve noticed, too, that while TVs, for example, are quite cheap, things essential to live—and things essential to “get ahead” in the United States—are only becoming more expensive.

    The American Enterprise Institute even produced a chart illustrating the problem. It shows the prices of things like new cars, clothing, toys, and TVs staying steady or dramatically falling relative to the inflation rate, while food, housing, child care, and—especially—medical care skyrocket in price. If you want an explanation of why non-wealthy Americans feel so stretched thin even in a time of supposed abundance, there it is. They can afford to get their kids toys but not bachelor’s degrees.
    ...
    Indeed, you can see a whole generation of misguided economic policy in the economics profession’s failure to account for the social and psychological context of consumer spending. People don’t necessarily revolt when things are bad, but they might when things aren’t getting better, or are getting demonstrably worse. That failure—the presumption that people would settle for LCD TVs as a new generation of robber barons shot cars into space because they couldn’t figure out what else to do with the staggering amount of money they have—has been a hugely consequential one.
    posted by zachlipton at 5:11 PM on January 15, 2019 [83 favorites]


    NYMag: Pentagon Extends Troop Border Deployment As Trump Warns of ‘Big New Caravan’
    In a statement Monday, the Pentagon said acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan approved a request from the Department of Homeland Security to keep active-duty troops at the border through September 30, 2019. The troops were initially scheduled to come home on December 15. The deployment was previously extended through the end of this month at the request of DHS.[…]

    The Pentagon said the military mission will transition in 2019, as troops move away from “hardening ports of entry” and toward more “mobile surveillance and detection, as well as concertina wire emplacement between ports of entry.”[…]

    The cost of this effort isn’t entirely clear. Defense officials told CNN that the deployment would cost $132 million through the end of January. The National Guard is also deployed to the border. That mission is estimated to cost $308 million by the time it ends in September.
    At one point in @realDonaldTrump's Twitter rampage this morning, he ranted about the "big new Caravan is heading up to our Southern Border from Honduras" and how "Only a Wall will work. Only a Wall, or Steel Barrier, will keep our Country safe!"
    posted by Doktor Zed at 5:17 PM on January 15, 2019 [4 favorites]


    While the AEI chart is useful, the guy behind it (Mark Perry) seems VERY high on his own supply. Like, come on dude, regulatory capture by the government is what explains health care costs and textbook prices?
    posted by Slackermagee at 5:20 PM on January 15, 2019 [4 favorites]


    NYMag: Pentagon Extends Troop Border Deployment As Trump Warns of ‘Big New Caravan’

    Didn’t it turn out that they Astro-turfed the October surprise caravan by impersonating an activist on Facebook? Did I hallucinate that?

    Is there any reason to think they’re not, you know, doing it again? Aaaaannnnd fuck everything that has led me to ask that question.
    posted by schadenfrau at 5:21 PM on January 15, 2019 [20 favorites]


    According to Corey Lewandowski, Trump's go-to McDonald’s order is two Big Macs, two Filet-o-Fishes, and a chocolate milkshake. That's 2,630 calories, although Lewandowski says it's less because he removes the buns. These guys tried the meal. "Headed into the fourth quarter with one sandwich remaining, Sam and I had been visibly shaken by the Hamburglar."

    I thought Filet-o-Fishes (Filets-o-Fish?) were over-represented in the White House/White Castle dinner.
    posted by kirkaracha at 5:23 PM on January 15, 2019 [7 favorites]


    It shows the prices of things like new cars, clothing, toys, and TVs staying steady or dramatically falling relative to the inflation rate, while food, housing, child care, and—especially—medical care skyrocket in price.

    Circuses are cheap, but bread is costing more and more.
    posted by Faint of Butt at 5:28 PM on January 15, 2019 [59 favorites]


    Does anyone have any numbers on how much Interest the Feds are making from people who are paying their taxes every payday, but that money not actually going any where?
    posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 5:34 PM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    The Alex Pareene article linked above is amazingly perceptive. This below resonated pretty deeply with me along with the analysis that Americans are being sold mediocrity. I have a food processor that is 30 years old (!) and I know that when it dies, the next one I buy will last two years. This and the consumer society is killing us. No wonder something like the Konmari method is such a sensation - we're all drowning in our old stuff that we don't know what to do with when we buy our new stuff.

    They’ve noticed, too, that while TVs, for example, are quite cheap, things essential to live—and things essential to “get ahead” in the United States—are only becoming more expensive.
    posted by bluesky43 at 5:40 PM on January 15, 2019 [23 favorites]


    I really think the cheap TV's/expensive healthcare thing is an example of Baumol's cost disease, and a natural consequence of increasing automation.

    In fact I think this kind of mathematical effect is the cause of a lot of our problems, more than can be blamed on human villainy.

    Automation is destroying jobs. It is emptying out rural areas. Mines are automated, factories are automated, combines do the work of dozens of people on farms.

    And stuff that can't be automated gets more and more expensive compared to all the cheap stuff that is made in those factories and grown on those farms.

    Wages are high enough to buy a big Mac or a used car, but stuff that can't be automated gets more and more expensive in comparison and wages don't keep up. Health care. Education. Childcare. Pensions - you can't automate work that has already been done.

    We all have houses full of crap but pretty soon only billionaires will be able to afford to see a doctor.

    Right now neither party has a solution to this problem. But the Democrats at least sort of recognize that it is a problem. And they want to get the money to help people pay for that stuff from the only people who have a lot of money these days... The corporations who own those automated factories, who are making record profits because they don't have to pay employees.

    Republicans are like "oh, blame the immigrants, blame Muslims" whatever. It's the robots that are taking our (rural) jobs. And we can't turn back the clock. It's not going to work. Technology is not going back to the 50s and neither is society.
    posted by OnceUponATime at 6:29 PM on January 15, 2019 [76 favorites]


    NYT, Shutdown’s Economic Damage Starts to Pile Up, Threatening an End to Growth
    The partial government shutdown is inflicting far greater damage on the United States economy than previously estimated, the White House acknowledged on Tuesday, as President Trump’s economists doubled projections of how much economic growth is being lost each week the standoff with Democrats continues.

    The revised estimates from the Council of Economic Advisers show that the shutdown, now in its fourth week, is beginning to have real economic consequences. The analysis, and other projections from outside the White House, suggests that the shutdown has already weighed significantly on growth and could ultimately push the United States economy into a contraction.
    ...
    Mr. Hassett said on Tuesday that the administration now calculates that the shutdown reduces quarterly economic growth by 0.13 percentage points for every week that it lasts — the cumulative effect of lost work from contractors and furloughed federal employees who are not getting paid and who are investing and spending less as a result. That means that the economy has already lost nearly half a percentage point of growth from the four-week shutdown. (Last year, economic growth for the first quarter totaled 2.2 percent.)
    These are the administraiton's own estimates.

    I've never understood why Republicans have a seemingly endless pool of money to run ads for Supreme Court nominees and to stoke gay panics, but for something like this, where "Republicans are about to cause another goddamn recession because of this nonsense" ought to be packaged up into a 30 second spot and blasted onto every screen in the country, Democrats have nothing remotely equivalent.
    posted by zachlipton at 6:30 PM on January 15, 2019 [68 favorites]


    The American Enterprise Institute even produced a chart illustrating the problem. It shows the prices of things like new cars, clothing, toys, and TVs staying steady or dramatically falling relative to the inflation rate, while food, housing, child care, and—especially—medical care skyrocket in price.

    Wasn't this Warren's jam, like 10 years ago? I'm not surprised AEI doesn't have ideas. but
    posted by eustatic at 6:56 PM on January 15, 2019


    Des Moines Register: Gov. Kim Reynolds to propose constitutional amendment lifting felon voting ban in Constitution of the State

    IA is one of the only remaining states that requires action by the governor to restore voting rights of felons. More from HuffPo.
    posted by Chrysostom at 6:57 PM on January 15, 2019 [31 favorites]


    I’d like a series of ads saying “Mitch McConnell, you are perpetuating this shutdown and causing a recession.” Where can I donate to get that on the airwaves?

    In the meantime, I’m just gonna call my newest senator and remind her if she ever does want to be elected in this state (I live in AZ, she was appointed after losing the election for our other senate seat) she should tell Mitch to stop the shutdown.
    posted by nat at 7:10 PM on January 15, 2019 [18 favorites]


    I'm glad she's trying to get a constitutional amendment, but Governor Reynolds could enfranchise all those people by executive order, which is how they were disenfranchised in the first place. The Iowa constitution says that infamous criminals can't vote, and the governor gets to decide what constitutes an infamous criminal. She could say that only people convicted of treason and capital murder are infamous criminals, and then she could still propose a constitutional amendment that would take away the infamous criminal provision. It takes several years to get a constitutional amendment, and some people are saying that this is basically a delaying tactic.

    The other thing to know about Kim Reynolds is that twenty years ago, she was twice convicted of drunk driving. She was allowed to plead down to a misdemeanor, because nice white ladies don't go to prison in Iowa, but if she had been convicted of second offense OWI, she would have lost the right to vote under the rules currently in place. She's an alcoholic and is now in recovery, which is great, but she is taking advantage of a second chance that a lot of Iowans don't get. (We have some of the worst racial sentencing disparities in the country.) It would be pretty grotesque if she supported felon disenfranchisement, although to be fair, she's an Iowa Republican, so I expect grotesque.
    posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:12 PM on January 15, 2019 [24 favorites]


    Totally agree that Reynolds should be taking direct action in the meantime to re-enfranchise folks.

    Still, it seems like a positive move.
    posted by Chrysostom at 7:38 PM on January 15, 2019 [1 favorite]


    [twitter]
    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explaining Economics 101 to Scott Walker
    ‏
    posted by growabrain at 7:43 PM on January 15, 2019 [54 favorites]


    ErisLordFreedom: "(Lack of TSA personnel may compromise safety, but Trump and Senate Republicans don't give a damn about the safety of non-millionaires.)"

    Agree on the theatre part but in theory millionaires are exactly the people the TSA serves by preventing thousands of pounds of jet fuel from blowing up skyscrapers.

    Ray Walston, Luck Dragon: "Why do congress people suck so hard at questioning people that come before them?"

    Probably for the same reason I suck as a house painter; it's not really in my wheel house. Politicians are good at getting elected and to a lesser degree shepherding legislation. There is no requirement that they have experience at investigation/interrogation or really any chance for them to practice day to day.

    prize bull octorok: "when I had to go into my loudly Republican ex-boss's computer to fix something it was pretty evident that he spent a good portion of his day emailing porn to his buddies so that's kind of where my thoughts are at"

    Minus the live boy/dead girl bit Republicans don't really care about porn or "morality" issues. Look what a squeeker the Moore election was when it should have been a slam dunk.
    posted by Mitheral at 7:47 PM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    More AOC news: Ocasio-Cortez reportedly set to join Financial Services Committee

    AOC: Personally, I’m looking forward to digging into the student loan crisis, examining for-profit prisons/ICE detention, and exploring the development of public & postal banking. To start.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 7:51 PM on January 15, 2019 [110 favorites]


    Trump’s Fox advisers keep telling him that he’s winning the shutdown, which is why it won't end any time soon (Matt Gertz, Media Matters)
    posted by ZeusHumms at 8:00 PM on January 15, 2019 [5 favorites]


    The dubious splendor of a thousand hamburgers (Alexandra Petri, WaPo)
    Here is your reward, you the sportsmen! If you conduct yourself in such a manner that you obtain a glorious victory, you will go unto the White House, where you will be presented with a feast fit for the president himself: some formerly warm hamburgers suppurating in their cardboard boxes on a table, some french fries under a heat lamp in little White House cups, and at least one Domino’s pizza. Are you delighted by this? You ought to be! The president is! […]

    This is the frustration of Trump. He is given access to the best of everything and he wants McDonald’s. He is given access to the best information and he watches Fox News. It is not the thing itself, but the suspicion that he thinks this is as good as it gets, despite all suggestions to the contrary.

    Is this really all he thinks is on top of the mountain? It would be one thing if he were doing this as a deliberate insult. But he seems so proud of the three hundred — or is it one thousand? — hamburgers.
    posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:02 PM on January 15, 2019 [35 favorites]


    Trump - McDonald's Commercial (2002)

    posted by kirkaracha at 1:06 PM on January 15 [3 favorites +] [!]

    Remind me, is Trump the orange one or the purple one?
    posted by Mental Wimp at 8:04 PM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    You have to feel a bit for the staff responsible for the buffet layout. People are mocking the crap out of the hamburgers on silver trays and fries in PotUS cups but the people putting it together were stuck between a rock and a hard place (and probably not getting paid). Go with the full silver treatment and get mocked. Go with, I don't know, plastic folding tables and trays and get mocked for not upholding the decorum of the dining room. I'm not sure there is anyway to make the food look good.
    posted by Mitheral at 8:18 PM on January 15, 2019 [37 favorites]


    Danforth (Toronto) killer [cbc.ca] "...newly released details from court documents reveal a startling amount of ammunition was found in the apartment of gunman Faisal Hussain, along with a number of DVDs by the American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

    ...Those were The Road to Tyranny, Terror Storm and American Dictators.

    "His anti-establishment conspiracies were picked up by extremists of all stripes," said Amarnath Amarasingam, senior research fellow at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue."
    posted by porpoise at 8:27 PM on January 15, 2019 [4 favorites]


    @schadenfrau I too remember a story about how somebody that nobody knew began posting about a caravan, and how Pueblo Sin Fronteras wasn’t involved this time around, and that they didn’t know who had organized it. I can’t find it through a google search, probably because it was a Twitter thread somewhere (🙄).
    posted by gucci mane at 8:28 PM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    There was a weird purity -- the purity of the malign -- to that buffet. Nobody gets a better Filet o'Fish than anyone else.

    Anyway, AOC having Maxine Waters as a kind of committee mentor is a very good thing. Rep Waters started on a committee in 1990 that nobody wanted to serve on (in the wake of the Savings & Loan crisis) and worked her way up to a point where she could tell her caucus the story behind the story. I don't doubt Ocasio-Cortez's capabilities or work ethic, but this is a committee where the details matter.
    posted by holgate at 8:35 PM on January 15, 2019 [27 favorites]


    It's like the way Fox News ate Republican politics: at first it was just propaganda pitched to the rubes by self-aware manipulators, but then the rubes bought in big, elected other rubes, and now the whole party is just true believers in what was originally conceived as racist fearmongering to get votes.

    My theory is that Trump is that ultimate rube, the candidate who actually believed all the bullshit sincerely. Now he's surrounded by professional bullshitters, which is why he believes the last person who talks to him before he makes any decision.
    posted by msalt at 8:52 PM on January 15, 2019 [6 favorites]


    So I don't want to get into AOC hagiography, deserving though she is of compliments. However, she just said a thing, and it's one I haven't seen mentioned here, and it's an important thing because it lines up a patriarchal threat against the wall, makes it kneel on the ground, and puts a bullet in its head. This is how the f**k it's done.

    WaPo: Transcript: Ocasio-Cortez says the conservative right is ‘losing the war’
    This is one of the first times in American history where almost anybody can see themselves in a current, sitting member of Congress, and I think that is a fundamental threat to the GOP.

    The Post: Why would they see you personally as a threat?

    Ocasio-Cortez: Because I fight back. I don’t know what they say, but I think they are attracted to conflict. They need a foil. I don’t think they see that they’re losing the war. They’re making all these battles, but they’re losing the war. Because they’re playing old-school politics, like, “Oh, I’m sorry, you think that faking a nude photo is going to take a woman down in 2019? Think again, brother.”

    The Post: How did you feel when that hit yesterday?

    Ocasio-Cortez: I was surprised and I was annoyed because it was a new tack. They’ve been for a very long time focusing on taking quotes out of context or manipulating them or making it seem as though I said things that I didn’t say. This was different in that it was an outright fraudulent thing. You can tell that they’re getting into hysterics because now you’re getting into my actual body, which is definitely crossing a level, definitely crossing a line.

    I also think it’s encouraging because this is my sixth day in Congress and they’re out of all their artillery. The nude is supposed to be like the bazooka. You know, like, “We’re going to take her down.” Dude, you’re all out of bullets, you’re all out of bombs, you’re all out of all this stuff. What have you got left? I’m six days into the term, and you already used all your ammo.
    Context on "the nude photo" that happened 6 days ago.

    Inside Edition: Fake Nude Photo of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Actually Shows Sydney Leathers
    Ocasio-Cortez fired back, saying it wasn’t an apology and said the website was “targeting” her.

    a) this is not an apology
    b) you’ve been posting hysteric, misrepresentative articles about me nonstop - many within 24h.

    The @DailyCaller, funded by @TuckerCarlson (at @FoxNews), has a well-documented relationship with white supremacy.

    Unsurprising they’re targeting me. https://t.co/LcQuQYWdqk

    — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 10, 2019
    The woman in the bathing photo scandal is actually Sydney Leathers, from the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal.
    (Also, not to make this about Tucker Carlson, but if you needed another reason to hate Tucker Carlson, there you go.) Bazookas bounce off her people. Bazookas.
    posted by saysthis at 8:59 PM on January 15, 2019 [92 favorites]


    It's amazing what a dedicated progressive advocate can say when they don't have to think-tank or focus-group their message before uttering it.
    posted by yesster at 9:04 PM on January 15, 2019 [84 favorites]


    Rachel Maddow: “After some risky initial investments, what Vladimir Putin has gained is an American President who is willing to do backflips on command. I mean, seriously! What more could he possibly be asked to do?! Other than shut down the U.S. governm...”
    posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:12 PM on January 15, 2019 [14 favorites]


    I too remember a story about how somebody that nobody knew began posting about a caravan, and how Pueblo Sin Fronteras wasn’t involved this time around, and that they didn’t know who had organized it. I can’t find it through a google search, probably because it was a Twitter thread somewhere (🙄).

    Here's the Buzzfeed report on that.
    posted by OnceUponATime at 9:18 PM on January 15, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Yeah, this latest caravan seem sketchy. I don’t doubt there are migrants, but I have serious doubts about whomever rounded up those hundred people in Guatemala and sent them north.
    posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:22 PM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Thanks!

    As for the AOC nude photo, isn’t there some sort of law against that? I know people have gone after people for releasing actual nude photos, but what about faking one?
    posted by gucci mane at 9:22 PM on January 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


    New Democrat Coalition member Kathleen Rice recommended not keeping Pelosi as Speaker. Rice's bid for membership in the House Judiciary Committee just fell short by 6 votes as Pelosi's recommended slate of freshman members joined instead.
    posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:23 PM on January 15, 2019 [26 favorites]


    You’ll be relieved to learn that the ravages of the government shutdown have not yet afflicted the Incoming Constituent Inquiry staffers working for my Republican U.S. Senator Joni Ernst. The gentleman receiving my call initially considered my question of whether he was getting a paycheck to be his own personal business, asking “Come on, what have you really got for me?” I told him that what I did not have was a paycheck, but what I did have was a Federal tax obligation that was paying his wages, and I expressed a certain degree of disagreement that the question of whether he was receiving a paycheck from my lack-of-paycheck to be a personal matter.

    After we established that he was indeed being paid, I asked whether Senator Ernst had issued any statements about the longest government shutdown in history. I was informed that she had not.

    Yeah.

    I asked whether the Senator had issued any statements about whether FDA food inspections were, in fact, essential, and that their elimination was a bad thing. She had not. I asked whether the Senator had issued any statements about whether FAA airplane inspections were, in fact, essential, and that their elimination was a bad thing. She had not. I asked whether the Senator had issued any statements about whether the FAA program ensuring that airplanes landed on the correct runway, and not a taxiway, were, in fact, essential, and that their elimination was a bad thing. She had not.

    I expressed my relief that the staffer in question would be able to enjoy his paycheck without being concerned for his family’s well-being, and my concern that all the aforementioned workers would be prohibited from earning a living, while many others would be compelled to work without paychecks. The staffer responded forcefully by saying that the reason he deserved a paycheck was that he had served his country for many years, in the military. I said that I thanked him for his service, and I believed he deserved compensation and benefits for that service, but that he had probably already received his paychecks for that service. If he examined his most recent paycheck, he would see that it was not paying him for his service in the military, rather, it was paying him for his service to a Republican Senator who appeared to be largely silent except in support of an American President who was himself a servant of the Russian President. I told him, thank you for your service to the United States, and no thank you, for your service to the Russian Federation. There was a long sigh before he hung up on me.
    posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:26 PM on January 15, 2019 [174 favorites]


    Mod note: Comment removed; let's give the "Hindu-American" parsing etc. a rest, please.
    posted by cortex (staff) at 9:29 PM on January 15, 2019 [8 favorites]


    As for the AOC nude photo, isn’t there some sort of law against that? I know people have gone after people for releasing actual nude photos, but what about faking one?

    Lawfare seems to believe that faked nudes can be addressed with defamation and "right of publicity" claims. EFF mentions those remedies and many more.
    posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:30 PM on January 15, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Virginia Could Soon Place the Equal Rights Amendment in the U.S. Constitution
    For those of us who came of age at a time when the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment seemed as inevitable as it was overdue, the ERA’s sudden revival in the Trump era has been a marvelous development. Today the Virginia Senate ratified the amendment, which means the Old Dominion is halfway through the process of becoming the crucial 38th state — three-fourths of the 50 states — to get onboard since Congress passed the ERA in 1972.
    posted by homunculus at 9:36 PM on January 15, 2019 [27 favorites]


    Note that five states have rescinded their ratifications, which may or may not be legally meaningful.

    If VA passes it, then the courts get to argue over whether the deadline placed on it was valid. (And whether or not the votes to rescind carry any weight.) If not, then WE HAVE ERA. If so, we get... more wrangling, and no doubt attempts to re-establish most of the initial votes.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:44 PM on January 15, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Virginia Could Soon Place the Equal Rights Amendment in the U.S. Constitution

    Legit, but some things:

    Wikipedia
    Five state legislatures (Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee, and South Dakota) voted to revoke their ERA ratifications. Four claim to have rescinded their ratifications before the original March 22, 1979 ratification deadline, while the South Dakota legislature did so by voting to sunset its ratification as of that original deadline. However, it remains a legal question as to whether a state can revoke its ratification of a federal constitutional amendment.

    Also Wikipedia
    Illinois state lawmakers ratified the ERA on May 30, 2018, with a 72-45 vote in the Illinois House following a 43-12 vote in the Illinois Senate in April 2018.[119][120]

    An effort to ratify the ERA in the Virginia General Assembly in 2018 failed to reach the floor of either the House or Senate.[121][122][123] In 2019, a Virginia Senate committee voted to send the ERA to the floor of the Senate. On January 15th, the Virginia State Senate voted 26-14 to send the amendment to the Virginia House.[124]

    Personally I agree so hard with the amendment but the things. Further agitation is needed. May the successful protesters annoy the shit out of some retrograde men, rather than this be passed by a female judiciary in retrospect.
    posted by saysthis at 9:47 PM on January 15, 2019 [4 favorites]


    You know those political quizzes that supposedly tell you where you are on a political axis? Well here's the one that really matters: Vermin Supreme's: What Pony Will You Get?
    posted by homunculus at 9:50 PM on January 15, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Seriously, Trump is weirdly fixated on the tape-over-their-mouths human trafficking story

    Daniel Dale consults with experts to show what human trafficking is really like.
    posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:52 PM on January 15, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Each time EMJRKC '94 posts about calling his or her reps, I want to pitch a TV series about it: one U.S. citizen, delivering dead-pan editorials and interrogating staff with a rapier, bone-dry wit: said citizen goes on to report these interactions on a funky little blog and hijinks happen and the world is never the same.
    posted by angrycat at 9:55 PM on January 15, 2019 [68 favorites]


    I told him, thank you for your service to the United States, and no thank you, for your service to the Russian Federation. There was a long sigh before he hung up on me.

    I wish I were as quick witted in speech as I can be in text, because this is the Lord's Work. Everyone who chooses to work for a Republican richly deserves that work to be as painful as possible. Social shunning is our weapon. These are all bad people, and they should never be allowed to forget it. Not even the guy who chooses to man the phones.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 10:01 PM on January 15, 2019 [58 favorites]


    It's not so much that I wish to punish people for working for Republicans; it's just that I want them to realize that they should stop doing it, and they should not go on to become Republican politicians themselves.
    posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:03 PM on January 15, 2019 [60 favorites]


    With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the right-wing media playbook doesn't work (Parker Molloy, Media Matters)
    "Right-wing media are obsessed with insulting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and she's playing them like a fiddle"
    It's a long overview of how and why the media has covered her since the primaries.
    ... Right-wing writer Matt Walsh wrote that Ocasio-Cortez “is a star today in part because of the Right’s weird fixation on her.”

    We have seen this scenario play out before in the way liberals elevate conservative figures they disagree with and mock.
    ...

    There’s little doubt that the attacks against Ocasio-Cortez will continue, and there’s even less worry that she won’t be up for the task for fighting back. But she almost certainly wouldn’t be sitting down for a widely watched interview on 60 Minutes had she not been intentionally elevated early on by conservative media. Instead, a socialist star was born, leaving right-wing news outlets with a tough decision to make about how they cover her going forward -- one they may soon regret.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 10:19 PM on January 15, 2019 [18 favorites]


    EMJRKC '94 may want to remind Ernst's staffers that the most recent Iowa federal elections rewarded the Republicans with nothing more than the narrow re-election of Steve KKKing, so there's that, and their resumes are a depreciating asset.
    posted by holgate at 10:20 PM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    I think a newly introduced Equal Rights Amendment would be an excellent idea. Last time around, the biggest argument (championed by Phyllis Schlafly) was that men and women would be forced to use the same bathroom, and women would be drafted into the military. Horrors!

    When the ERA was introduced in 1971, married women did not have the legal right to get credit cards without their husband's permission (that came in 1974), and female senators were required to wear skirts.

    I welcome and encourage Republican efforts to oppose equal rights for women. Let's start fresh.
    posted by msalt at 11:11 PM on January 15, 2019 [24 favorites]


    If you were wondering what Fox News has to say about all this: Fox legal analyst Gregg Jarrett wants to abolish the FBI
    posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:19 PM on January 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Monopoly Man: How an elaborate act of protest stole the show on Capitol Hill. Meet the person behind the monocle, the suit and the many fake mustaches.
    posted by homunculus at 11:27 PM on January 15, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Rebecca Solnit: Standing Rock inspired Ocasio-Cortez to run. That's the power of protest. Press on for what you believe in – a young woman’s election to Congress shows climate activism can have unforeseen results
    posted by homunculus at 11:32 PM on January 15, 2019 [61 favorites]


    If my experiences in food service including fancy banquets is any guide the staff probably doesn't give a fuck about anything except getting paid.

    The White House staff in this case are dedicated to the institution and to fine work, and I think they do give a fuck about more than getting paid. I've never met one who was not proud of their work and where they work.
    posted by jgirl at 5:14 AM on January 16, 2019 [16 favorites]


    First tweet of the day:
    There are now 77 major or significant Walls built around the world, with 45 countries planning or building Walls. Over 800 miles of Walls have been built in Europe since only 2015. They have all been recognized as close to 100% successful. Stop the crime at our Southern Border!
    Trump's a pro wrestling fan, kind of, so maybe it's appropriate that I am reminded of David Shoemaker's eulogy for Andre the Giant:
    When Hulk Hogan and André the Giant met in what is still considered the biggest wrestling match of all time, exaggeration was in the air. According to various contemporary reports, there were 95,000 people on hand at WrestleMania III to see the 7-foot-5, 525-pound André square off against the goldenboy Hulk Hogan, who stood 6-foot-8 and weighed 320 pounds and whose biceps measured 24 inches around. Probably the only number in that last sentence that's unimpeachable is the III.
    posted by box at 5:21 AM on January 16, 2019 [23 favorites]


    I think a newly introduced Equal Rights Amendment would be an excellent idea. Last time around, the biggest argument (championed by Phyllis Schlafly) was that men and women would be forced to use the same bathroom, and women would be drafted into the military. Horrors!

    ummmmmm

    abortion. it would be about abortion rights.
    posted by schadenfrau at 5:41 AM on January 16, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Yeah, talking about 'Walls' in Europe is going to go about as well as expected given how awe inspiring and amazing it was even to 5 year old me to see that fucking evil thing torn down in 1990.
    posted by lydhre at 5:45 AM on January 16, 2019 [46 favorites]


    New Democrat Coalition member Kathleen Rice recommended not keeping Pelosi as Speaker. Rice's bid for membership in the House Judiciary Committee just fell short by 6 votes as Pelosi's recommended slate of freshman members joined instead.

    Come at the queen, you best not miss, I guess.
    posted by longtime_lurker at 5:49 AM on January 16, 2019 [41 favorites]


    There are now 77 major or significant Walls built around the world, with 45 countries planning or building Walls. Over 800 miles of Walls have been built in Europe since only 2015.

    HAHA single payer health care works great in other countries too.
    posted by bluesky43 at 6:10 AM on January 16, 2019 [56 favorites]


    From Jeff Jacoby, whom I remember from college and never thought I would hold any of his work up as worthy of examination:

    President Trump’s shameful idea of honor
    “I find China, frankly, in many ways, to be far more honorable than Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy. I really do,” he said. “I think that China is actually much easier to deal with than the opposition party.”

    [...]

    Whatever else might be said about Pelosi and Schumer, they are elected public officials who took an oath of loyalty to the Constitution. They are no paragons of virtue and nobility, but when it comes to honor they are probably no better or worse than most politicians who spend decades in Washington.

    The dictators who rule China, on the other hand, are among the cruelest, bloodiest monsters on earth.

    [...]

    Pelosi and Schumer are not mass murderers or pitiless enemies of the United States. China’s rulers are. It is a stain on America’s reputation that it elected a president who professes to see more honor in our enemies than in the leaders of the US Congress.
    posted by jgirl at 6:14 AM on January 16, 2019 [56 favorites]


    The American Enterprise Institute even produced a chart illustrating the problem. It shows the prices of things like new cars, clothing, toys, and TVs staying steady or dramatically falling relative to the inflation rate, while food, housing, child care, and—especially—medical care skyrocket in price.

    This is of course the AEI scoring on itself. The first category of items are importable goods. The second are not. This results in form of cost disease that is an entirely predictable feature of capitalism. So a small-c conservative think tank is pointing out that the logical consequences of their own positions may cause social unrest and revolution. How delightfully marxist!
    posted by srboisvert at 6:23 AM on January 16, 2019 [27 favorites]


    Trump's idea of honor is a willingness to do what Trump wants you to do. Of course, the irony is that it's extremely easy to make him think what you want is what he wants.
    posted by The Card Cheat at 6:26 AM on January 16, 2019 [5 favorites]


    The GOP rejects Steve King – not racism
    “These are not the first time we have heard these comments,” McCarthy told reporters. “That is not the party of Lincoln, and it is definitely not America. All people are created equal in America, and we want to take a very strong stance about that.”

    McCarthy gets this much right — it’s not the first time King has made disgusting comments about people of color, or defended racists. But he’s underselling Republican complicity. This is what the GOP has cultivated for the past 50 years, as the party of Lincoln metastasized into white supremacy and xenophobia, which begat King.

    And Donald Trump.

    So why now? At the very least, King’s mess is a convenient distraction for a party bearing the brunt of the blame for Trump’s shutdown. Plus, it allows the GOP to seem capable of making sound decisions for the country, and they get to claim that there’s “no place in the Republican Party, the Congress, or the country for an ideology of racial supremacy of any kind.”

    [...]

    They’ve certainly said nothing about the president’s latest Twitter attack on Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

    [...]

    In his statement, King says McCarthy’s decision “ignores the truth.” Here’s the real truth — marginalizing King is like isolating a mutant cell but leaving the rest of the tumor intact. Like Trump, King is a monster fed and unleashed by the GOP, and they can’t fully disavow what he represents without dismantling the racist machine that spawned him.
    posted by jgirl at 6:27 AM on January 16, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Pelosi's letter to Trump 'suggesting' that the SOU be not delivered to the shutdown is awesome. It foregrounds 1) national security concerns and 2) the fact that people addressing those national security concerns have not been paid.

    I think that Woodward reported recently that Trump fears assassination. I wonder if the letter is pushing on that button too.
    posted by angrycat at 6:54 AM on January 16, 2019 [16 favorites]


    The Supreme Court Just Handed a Big, Unanimous Victory to Workers. Wait, What? (Mark Joseph Stern, Slate)
    On Tuesday, the Supreme Court handed a victory to American workers, ruling unanimously that independent contractors who work in transportation may not be forced into mandatory arbitration. (Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who joined the bench after argument, did not participate.) The decision is a remarkable win for labor rights from a court that typically favors corporate interests over working people. And it will allow hundreds of thousands of contractors to vindicate their rights in court, collectively, rather than in costly and unjust arbitration.
    The reason why:
    Tuesday’s decision marks the triumph of the Gorsuch brief—a highly technical argument designed to nab the justice’s vote by fixating on the text of a statute and its meaning at the time of passage. Gorsuch appears to draw heavily from two sources: the brief by Public Justice, which represents Oliveira, and an amicus brief filed by the Constitutional Accountability Center, a progressive originalist law firm. These briefs dwell on the dictionaries that Gorsuch cites and even dive into the etymology of the word employment, from its Latin roots to its evolution through French and Anglo-Norman usage in the Middle Ages.
    The statute in this case being the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 6:55 AM on January 16, 2019 [30 favorites]


    Pelosi's letter to Trump 'suggesting' that the SOU be not delivered

    In point of fact, Pelosi is not really "suggesting" that. She is telling him that he is no longer invited to the Capitol to address a joint session of Congress on the previously-agreed-to date. The "suggesting" part is her telling him that he can either submit a letter or ask politely for some other date after the shutdown has been resolved.
    posted by Etrigan at 6:57 AM on January 16, 2019 [74 favorites]


    T-Mobile announced a merger needing Trump administration approval. The next day, 9 executives had reservations at Trump’s hotel. (WaPo)
    The VIP Arrivals lists obtained by The Post — in which Trump hotel executives alerted their staff to foreign officials, corporate executives, long-term guests, Trump family friends and big spenders — provide an inside look at some of the hotel’s customers. The Post obtained lists for about a dozen days in 2018.

    Those lists showed 38 nights of hotel stays by the T-Mobile executives; because The Post’s data is incomplete, the number could be higher.
    Someone at the Trump Hotel is leaking the VIP arrivals list to Fahrenthold, which is awesome.
    posted by peeedro at 7:06 AM on January 16, 2019 [73 favorites]


    Oh Great, All the Shutdown Needs to End Is for Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi to Cave [or] No Movement (Jim Newell, Slate)
    Donald Trump will not pick off a meaningful number of House Democrats, if any, from Nancy Pelosi’s clutch. Democrats do not want to reward Trump’s hostage-taking, they don’t feel that they need to make the first move when Republicans are taking the blame for the shutdown, they trust Pelosi’s skill set, and the border wall is still unpopular. And Republicans aren’t moving because they are scared of Trump’s Twitter feed.

    No one is breaking at either of these pressure points right now. Vulnerable House Democrats are sticking by Pelosi, and vulnerable Senate Republicans are sticking by McConnell, who is sticking by Trump. They’re all stuck.
    Senate Republicans would especially be vulnerable, because they're needed to both pass legislation and override vetos.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 7:07 AM on January 16, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Pelosi's letter to Trump 'suggesting' that the SOU be not delivered to the shutdown is awesome. It foregrounds 1) national security concerns and 2) the fact that people addressing those national security concerns have not been paid.

    And at the same time, it pushes all of Trump's buttons. Not only it is a Democrat telling him what to do, it is a woman. Not only is it a woman, it is the woman most of his follows consider to be the worst current woman in power. And the things she is taking away from him are essentially his favorite things: a big rally speech, applause, forcing Democrats to listen to him in person and being on TV.

    The only way this letter could have been better is if Maxine Waters personally handed it to him.
    posted by mikepop at 7:08 AM on January 16, 2019 [133 favorites]


    U.S. confirms American troops killed in blast claimed by Islamic State in Syria - The Washington Post
    BEIRUT — The Islamic State asserted responsibility Wednesday for a suicide blast in the U.S.-patrolled city of Manbij in Syria, the first such attack since President Trump said American forces would withdraw from the country because the militant group has been largely defeated.
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:29 AM on January 16, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Democrats do not want to reward Trump’s hostage-taking, they don’t feel that they need to make the first move when Republicans are taking the blame for the shutdown, they trust Pelosi’s skill set, and the border wall is still unpopular. And Republicans aren’t moving because they are scared of Trump’s Twitter feed.

    One of these things is not like the other. It's good to see someone in the media point out the disparity, even if it is just Slate.
    posted by Gelatin at 7:30 AM on January 16, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Fake (but believable) Washington Post being distributed in the area around the White House declaring that 45 has resigned. SLTwitter.
    posted by Sophie1 at 7:41 AM on January 16, 2019 [14 favorites]


    About that SCOTUS ruling: it won't protect most contractors, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
    The FAA generally obligates courts to enforce arbitration clauses. But it expressly excludes “contracts of employment of … workers engaged in … interstate commerce,” such as “seamen” and “railroad employees.” Everyone agrees that truckers qualify for this exception. New Prime, however, asserted that truckers who work as contractors do not have “contracts of employment” and thus do not qualify. And by classifying so many workers as contractors, the company believed it had worked around the FAA’s exemption.
    Gorsuch's counterpoint: that when the law was created in 1925, "employment" did not mean "people classified by current US business law as employees and not contractors"; it meant "people who work for you."

    Next move: getting the courts to rule that work-from-home online employment that involve communication across state lines is covered by the same logic. Possibly, getting it to apply to anyone working through a staffing agency outside of their state of actual employment.

    Also from the Slate article:
    Ginsburg [wrote] a brief concurrence noting that Congress can “design legislation to govern changing times and circumstances,” using words whose meaning may “enlarge or contract [in] scope” as society progresses. Ginsburg is likely laying the groundwork for upcoming disputes—most obviously, the question of whether the phrase discrimination because of sex should be read to protect LGBTQ employees.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 7:51 AM on January 16, 2019 [15 favorites]


    Nick Kokonas, coowner of Alinea (3 Michelin stars) : "I could care less about college football. But I'm personally inviting the Clemson Tigers team and coaches to Chicago to experience what an actual celebration dinner should be."
    posted by JoeZydeco at 7:59 AM on January 16, 2019 [101 favorites]


    Fake (but believable) Washington Post being distributed in the area around the White House declaring that 45 has resigned. SLTwitter.

    Now that's a terrific protest, show people the near-future that we can have by creating a fictional artifact from that still-possible timeline. Really effective. The (I assume) intentional and most subtle troll, to me: all three visible bylines are women's names.
    posted by LooseFilter at 8:06 AM on January 16, 2019 [34 favorites]


    Anyone remember the Iraq War Ends hoaxtivism of 2008?
    posted by theodolite at 8:11 AM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Pelosi's letter to Trump 'suggesting' that the SOU be not delivered to the shutdown is awesome. It foregrounds 1) national security concerns and 2) the fact that people addressing those national security concerns have not been paid.

    Yeah, and she's not asking. She's making very clear the power she has by uninviting Individual-1. Pelosi is a boss.
    posted by bluesky43 at 8:29 AM on January 16, 2019 [49 favorites]


    And Republicans aren’t moving because they are scared of Trump’s Twitter feed.

    I've asked this before, and I don't think anyone has ever been able to answer it, so I'll ask again: what is so fucking scary to a duly elected politician about 45's Twitter feed? Yeah, he'll tweet something mean about you, BFD. Worst case scenario, he'll make up a grade-school level nickname for you -- ooh, scary! He's been doing that all along and it hasn't budged his approval rating in any meaningful way. More notable, despite the constant tweeting about "the caravan" closing in upon us, which was meant to gin up fear and get Repubs to the polls, Dems still took the House back, adding a representative who's a DSA member, no less. I don't see how his tweets still have any special power, except to insult people. And if you can't take insults, what the fuck are you doing in politics in the first place?
    posted by holborne at 8:33 AM on January 16, 2019 [22 favorites]


    Vox. Mueller’s heavily redacted new filing about Paul Manafort, decoded

    That sea of redactions makes the public version of Mueller’s filing quite difficult to read and understand. But a close reading of it, when considered alongside existing reporting and previous filings in the case, gives us some insight into what Manafort is in trouble for purportedly lying about — topics involving his ties to a Russian associate, as well as financial matters and his contacts with the Trump administration.

    The apparent allegations include:

    Mention of a shady financial arrangement from a pro-Trump Super PAC that was later involved in helping pay a debt for Manafort
    Lots involving Konstantin Kilimnik, including meetings, discussions of a pro-Russia “peace plan” for Ukraine, certain work Manafort did involving Kilimnik in 2018, and sharing of presidential campaign-related polling data in 2016
    Something involving another Justice Department investigation, related partly to an event that took place before Manafort left the Trump campaign
    Manafort saying he was using intermediaries, including one person in particular, to get Trump administration jobs for people
    posted by bluesky43 at 8:34 AM on January 16, 2019 [14 favorites]


    what is so fucking scary to a duly elected politician about 45's Twitter feed?

    Many people credit Trump's Twitter feed for Mark Sanford getting primaried out of Congress.
    posted by darkstar at 8:36 AM on January 16, 2019 [9 favorites]


    And it wasn't because Sanford is an asshole?
    posted by Melismata at 8:38 AM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


    I'd wager not, it's not like Congress is now an asshole-free zone.
    posted by palomar at 8:40 AM on January 16, 2019 [16 favorites]


    what is so fucking scary to a duly elected politician about 45's Twitter feed?

    "Trump's twitter feed" is a metonym for "Trump publicly speaking against you in ways that make anglo racists less enthusiastic about voting for you, and/or actively supporting a primary opponent."
    posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:42 AM on January 16, 2019 [26 favorites]


    Many people credit Trump's Twitter feed for Mark Sanford getting primaried out of Congress.

    And it wasn't because Sanford is an asshole?

    Sanford is an asshole, but he was well-known to the voters of SC-1 as an asshole when they elected him six times, half of those after he had a political scandal that most people would never have recovered from. I was one of the people who said, when Trump first teed off on Sanford, that Donnie Tinyhands didn't have the reach to take down Mark Sanford on the Carolina coastline. I was wrong.

    On the other hand, Trump getting Sanford primaried out probably also handed SC-1 to a Democrat, so the Twitter knife cut both ways.
    posted by Etrigan at 8:43 AM on January 16, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Pelosi's letter to Trump signs off with "Thank you for your attention to this matter," which I'm reading in the classic "have a nice day" voice service workers have used with bothersome members of the public ever since passive-aggressive sarcasm was invented.
    posted by The Card Cheat at 8:45 AM on January 16, 2019 [57 favorites]


    On the other hand, Trump getting Sanford primaried out probably also handed SC-1 to a Democrat, so the Twitter knife cut both ways.

    Almost certainly. SC-1 was the perfect example of the GOP following Trump into ruin. It's a pity that the Republicans haven't applied this to future scenarios.
    posted by Lord Chancellor at 8:46 AM on January 16, 2019 [6 favorites]


    The fake WaPo newspaper is a delight:
    Organizers also cited a guerrilla action guide that was slipped into The Washington Post the week before the 2019 Women’s Marches. The guide drew on writings and strategies from past nonviolent resistance movements, encouraging organizers around the country to focus on Trump’s active and tacit supporters rather than Trump himself.

    Other sections encouraged people who had already marched and rallied to consider using tactics like sit-ins and blockades to escalate pressure. Some of the highest-profile disruptions were creative spinoffs of the approaches recommended in the two playbooks. For instance, photos from all 17 Trump-owned golf courses — including those in Ireland, Dubai, and Scotland — went viral on March 18; the word “RESIGN” had been etched into their golf greens. The culprits, who were never identified, posted an anonymous communique explaining that they had used white vinegar, a natural and fast-acting grass killer.
    It also has pictures of women in quinceañera dresses protesting government offices by creating a "wall of floof."
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:46 AM on January 16, 2019 [42 favorites]


    The fake WaPo newspaper is a delight:

    Link goes directly to a PDF.
    (And it is a delight.)
    posted by Too-Ticky at 8:58 AM on January 16, 2019


    Now that's a terrific protest, show people the near-future that we can have by creating a fictional artifact from that still-possible timeline.

    The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.
    posted by octobersurprise at 9:27 AM on January 16, 2019 [14 favorites]


    Chrome flagged the link as a possible phishing attempt, and it's not a Washington Post domain (my-washingonpost.com).
    posted by kirkaracha at 9:33 AM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Right, because it’s not a real Washington Post. It was created by anti-Trump activists. I don think it’s a phishing risk. Presumably Chrome can’t tell the difference between phishing and satire.
    posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:38 AM on January 16, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Presumably Chrome can’t tell the difference between phishing and satire.

    In fairness, a "my-[wellknownwebaddress].com" link is pretty classic phishing.
    posted by Etrigan at 9:44 AM on January 16, 2019 [16 favorites]


    [twitter]
    Rep. Jackie Speier is trying to get Trump to end the shutdown in a roundabout way
    posted by growabrain at 9:53 AM on January 16, 2019 [4 favorites]


    TPM is suggesting that Code Pink is behind the Washington Post hoax.
    posted by msalt at 9:59 AM on January 16, 2019


    PDF from that link is 404, if you click past phishing warning.
    posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:59 AM on January 16, 2019


    PDF from that link is 404, if you click past phishing warning.

    Damn. Must have been the quickest cease and desist letter in history.
    posted by holborne at 10:04 AM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Ann Coulter: Trump ‘Is Dead In The Water If He Doesn’t Build That Wall’ (Kate Riga, TPM)

    This was from an interview that aired Tuesday on Vice News.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 10:07 AM on January 16, 2019 [4 favorites]


    'You didn't get fired’: Christie offers new evidence Trump avoids confrontation (Martin Pengelly, The Guardian)
    According to Christie, [in early 2017] Donald Trump tried, not for the first time, to persuade the governor to become his labor secretary. Then talk turned to Christie’s firing as Trump’s transition chairman in November 2016.

    “Chris,” Trump said, “you didn’t get fired. You got made part of a larger team.”

    Christie gives his side of the conversation in his new book, Let Me Finish, .... He says he bristled at Trump’s claim, then rebuked the president.

    I’m a big boy who understands how the way this business works … don’t ever, ever tell me again that I wasn’t fired

    Christie was fired, by then senior aide Steve Bannon in his office at Trump Tower. Christie depicts the scene in withering detail, saying Bannon blamed the move on Jared Kushner, “the kid”.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 10:16 AM on January 16, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Ann Coulter: Trump ‘Is Dead In The Water If He Doesn’t Build That Wall’ (Kate Riga, TPM)

    That just incentivizes the Democrats to dig in, right? I mean, if Trump has to have the wall to be a political force, then withholding the wall gives the Democrats tons of leverage. Let's talk real bargain here. Trump wants his wall? Fine. Amnesty for illegal aliens and a path to citizenship, reform of the immigration system with large increases in how many immigrants can come here legally, and something sensible as a kicker, ... I don't know, ... Medicare for all? The Democrats can gain an even better position by clearly laying out an exchange that the Republicans definitely won't take (or that if they took it, would be an amazing gain for ordinary people at the expense of the donor class) and then when Trump still doesn't get his wall, it's much clearer why not.
    posted by Jonathan Livengood at 10:26 AM on January 16, 2019 [26 favorites]


    Looks like a fake paper was put out by the yes men.
    posted by frecklefaerie at 10:31 AM on January 16, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Pence declares 'ISIS has been defeated' on the same day as deadly Syria attack (CNN)

    “Pence made no mention of the attack and did not offer condolences. His press secretary Alyssa Farah tweeted Wednesday morning that he had been briefed and that he and President Donald Trump were "monitoring the situation."”

    What a wanker.
    posted by valkane at 10:38 AM on January 16, 2019 [44 favorites]


    @JaxAlemany: Just spoke with @RepGonzalez about the Problem Solver's Caucus meeting w Trump. He said Trumps opposed to re-opening the government without a guarantee that he'll end up w a physical barrier at the end of negotiations. He described it as positive and constructive meeting but...Trump "definitely has a very serious misconception of the border & a very flawed idea of it. He mentioned, "I don’t even know why we have ports of entry. You can just drive down the border & turn left into the US"...I think he’s convinced himself that that’s what the border is."

    Has Trump ever actually seen a port of entry?

    ----

    The Onion (a satirical publication), Chuck Schumer Honestly Pretty Amazed He Hasn’t Caved Yet
    posted by zachlipton at 10:42 AM on January 16, 2019 [48 favorites]


    Karen Pence to teach at school that bans LGBTQ employees, students.
    posted by peeedro at 10:45 AM on January 16, 2019 [15 favorites]


    There was all the previous discussion about whether the coverage of the Clemson fast-food dinner / national humiliation at the White House was a distraction from the main story, or instead, coverage of the omnishambles in new venues (the sports pages) and therefore a net benefit. I tend to think that the new audience reached outweighs the distraction aspect, so along those lines:

    The T-Mobile bribery scandal is making news in the tech press.
    WaPo: T-Mobile announced a merger needing Trump administration approval. The next day, 9 executives had reservations at Trump’s hotel.
    The visits highlight how countries, interest groups and companies with interests before the Trump administration have patronized the president's private businesses. ... “This isn’t justice with a blindfold on, right? It creates a fundamental corruption in the way that the work of the American people is done.”
    John Gruber, Daring Fireball: This is such outrageous bullshit — so blatantly, patently unethical — that it’s hard to believe Republicans just accept this. The hypocrisy could not be thicker. [...] When posed with such a blatant conflict of interest, a situation that is clearly a form of de facto bribery, no one should be asking, “Well, is this president a Democrat or a Republican?”

    Currently the top story on Techmeme, with a ton of coverage in other tech media.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 10:51 AM on January 16, 2019 [49 favorites]


    zachlipton: They’ve noticed, too, that while TVs, for example, are quite cheap, things essential to live—and things essential to “get ahead” in the United States—are only becoming more expensive. The American Enterprise Institute even produced a chart illustrating the problem.

    OnceUponATime: I really think the cheap TV's/expensive healthcare thing is an example of Baumol's cost disease, and a natural consequence of increasing automation.

    Thank you both for this! I've been annoyed at the blanket "GDP is up! Market is up! Interest rates are down!" statements spouted as equivalents for "everything is great!, when health care and education costs are WAAY up, housing prices outpace wage inflation (in certain markets -- aggregating those as national figures is VERY misleading), yet toys, gadgets and technology products are so cheap (yet, new tech is even shinier than it was 10 years ago!)!


    lydhre: Yeah, talking about 'Walls' in Europe is going to go about as well as expected given how awe inspiring and amazing it was even to 5 year old me to see that fucking evil thing torn down in 1990.

    Not to mention Saint Ronnie's memorable (or formerly notable?) quote: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! [Wikipedia]

    (Trump's tale of great walls also brings to mind Björk in Dancer in the Dark: "All walls are great if the roof doesn't fall.")

    jgirl: President Trump’s shameful idea of honor
    “I find China, frankly, in many ways, to be far more honorable than Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy. I really do,” he said. “I think that China is actually much easier to deal with than the opposition party.”
    I don't think he's really talking about honor here. He wants an "opponent" who will praise him, spar with him, then give him something, even if it's accolades. Also, it's best if that "opponent" is a man, because women are icky (or whatever twisted logic lives in Trump's head).

    odinsdream: Full text of Pelosi's letter to Trump.

    That link is to the New York Times. NPR has it, too, without a limit on page views.


    frecklefaerie: Looks like a fake paper was put out by the yes men.

    NPR has a short interview with one of the people behind the paper:
    "This paper is a dream, it's not a deception," said anti-Trump organizer L.A. Kauffman [personal site] in an interview with NPR. She said she created the fake paper in collaboration with author Onnesha Roychoudhuri [personal site] and the activist pranksters known as the Yes Men.

    "It's a vision of a women-led popular uprising that drives Trump from office by May 1st," Kauffman told NPR, noting that the paper, as well as the online stories, all bear that date.
    As noted, the PDF is offline, but Archive caught it! Sadly, it doesn't include a special pull-out section titled "Bye-bye: A Guide To Bringing Him Down", which was included in the physical copies handed out.
    posted by filthy light thief at 10:53 AM on January 16, 2019 [16 favorites]


    "I don’t even know why we have ports of entry. You can just drive down the border & turn left into the US"

    You know what else you could do? Ride a weather balloon into the upper atmosphere and jump out over the United States with a parachute, like so! Better upgrade to a dome to be really safe.
    posted by The Card Cheat at 10:54 AM on January 16, 2019 [6 favorites]


    And Wired has a bold reactionary piece: Anti-Trump Activists Defend Fake-Washington Post Stunt, as if it needed defending.
    But for some, the trick backfired, appearing to be just another example of fake news in an era already dominated by it. Charges of fake news have also been used by governments to undermine legitimate media outlets. President Trump himself has repeatedly referred to the Post, and other American news organizations, as fake news.
    ...
    There is, of course, an important line between satire and outright propaganda, and satire has always played an important role in political discourse. But in a world in which information is all filtered through the same channels, it can become increasingly tricky to stay on the right side of that line.
    So let's kill satire in the name of being safe from fake news. Oh wait, we still have fake news, but lose the humor and optimism found in works like this.
    posted by filthy light thief at 10:57 AM on January 16, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Honduran Caravan Crosses Guatemala, Traveling Toward U.S. (NPR, January 16, 2019)
    Hundreds of Honduran migrants have crossed the Guatemalan border as they travel in the direction of the United States.

    The group that reached Guatemala on Tuesday is the first wave of a caravan that could consist of thousands. It's the first national border crossed by the migrants on their journey that started Monday night.

    Some migrants told reporters they were looking for new opportunities in the U.S. Some said they were fleeing violence. But no matter their reason for seeking a new life, they have already become symbols in the ongoing battle between President Trump and congressional Democrats over border security as the government shutdown enters its 26th day. Trump seized on news of the caravan as another reason to fund his proposed border wall.
    [Emphasis mine]

    NPR includes a photo of some of the migrants, and guess what -- they look far from dangerous. Looking at the picture, the first thing I think is not "border security!" It's "what are you fleeing that you're willing to risk yourself and your family on a gamble on getting into the U.S.?"

    But I'm not a racist fearmonger.
    posted by filthy light thief at 11:01 AM on January 16, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Karen Pence to teach at school that bans LGBTQ employees, students.

    Beyond the homophobia, the "moral" standards that constitute "bona fide occupational qualifications for employees" at this school would directly exclude the President of the United States.
    posted by zachlipton at 11:03 AM on January 16, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Where do i donate to support unpaid TSA agents going to the border to ensure the safety of honduran migrants (from ICE agents)?
    posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:04 AM on January 16, 2019 [4 favorites]


    As noted, the PDF is offline,

    No, it isn't, you can grab it from the yes men:
    https://democracyawakensinaction.com/static/img/unpresidented-washington-post.pdf

    but Archive caught it! Sadly, it doesn't include a special pull-out section titled "Bye-bye: A Guide To Bringing Him Down", which was included in the physical copies handed out.

    the action guide is right here:
    https://democracyawakensinaction.com/static/img/unpresidented-action-guide.pdf
    posted by Don Pepino at 11:05 AM on January 16, 2019 [22 favorites]


    Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, or breath: EPA at a 30-year low for referring pollution cases for criminal prosecution -- No, polluters aren't growing a conscience. Group says enforcement is understaffed. (Megan Geuss for Ars Technica, Jan. 15, 2019)
    Polluters likely had a good year in 2018. According to numbers from advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the number of criminal pollution cases that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) referred to the Department of Justice for potential prosecution was lower in 2018 than it had been in 30 years.

    That's probably not because industry in America is becoming more environmentally conscious. PEER suggests (PEER.org) the reason for the low number of referrals is that the EPA is only employing between 130 and 140 special agents in the agency's Criminal Investigation Division, less than the minimum 200 agents specified by the US Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 (EPA.gov).

    The EPA only referred 166 cases to the Justice Department in 2018. According to numbers from the Associated Press (AP news.com), referrals peaked in 1998, with 592 cases referred for prosecution. Throughout the George W. Bush presidency, referrals ranged somewhere between 300 and 450. Referrals dipped during the Obama presidency to a range between 200 and just over 400. Referrals have been on a downward trend since 2012.

    Convictions on pollution-related grounds were also at a record low. Only 62 polluters were convicted in 2018, the lowest since 1992. Convictions numbers tend to follow referrals numbers.
    posted by filthy light thief at 11:05 AM on January 16, 2019 [11 favorites]


    David Frum: As she walked from the cameras, Pelosi just off-handedly gave Trump *permission* to give SOTU from the Oval Office. Which makes that obvious alternative also a demeaning exit for the president ...
    posted by zabuni at 11:10 AM on January 16, 2019 [90 favorites]


    In response to Trump continuing to act like a wall could stop a caravan of refugees seeking asylum, I just want to quickly note this consitutional law point from a November 2018 article in the Guardian:
    The president issued a proclamation on 9 November declaring that anyone who crossed the southern border between official ports of entry would be ineligible for asylum. As the first of several caravans of migrants arrived at the US-Mexico border, Donald Trump said a ban was necessary to stop a national security threat.

    But in his ruling on Monday, the US district judge Jon Tigar said legislation was clear that any foreigner arriving in the US, whether or not at a designated port of arrival, could apply for asylum. He also said the administration misused its authority to issue emergency regulations and waive a 30-day waiting period to consider comments on the policy change.

    “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” said Tigar, a nominee of the previous president, Barack Obama.
    A wall will not stop the availability of ports of entry as places to claim asylum.
    posted by Little Dawn at 11:13 AM on January 16, 2019 [14 favorites]


    Wow, Pelosi just punched him right in the Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
    posted by Horkus at 11:15 AM on January 16, 2019 [52 favorites]


    David Frum: As she walked from the cameras, Pelosi just off-handedly gave Trump *permission* to give SOTU from the Oval Office. Which makes that obvious alternative also a demeaning exit for the president ...

    [itsatrap.jpeg]

    First of all, Trump would hate not having the audience and the applause. As we saw from his recent prime-time address, his delivery is lackluster when he's just struggling to read from a Teleprompter into a camera. More, in stark contrast to every SotU in recent memory, he's look isolated and alone. Plus he'd look humiliated for appearing to accept permission he doesn't actually need. Trump would be a fool to take that option.

    I hope he does.
    posted by Gelatin at 11:17 AM on January 16, 2019 [41 favorites]


    Consider that disaster of an Oval Office address the Sniff-fest was, then scale it up to a SoTU address. It would be a fantastic mistake for him to do that. Fingers crossed!
    posted by mcstayinskool at 11:18 AM on January 16, 2019 [12 favorites]


    I suspect Trump will gather as large a crowd of yes-men as he can, and then give a campaign rally disguised as a SotU. Beginning with everybody sitting of course, so they can give him a standing ovation.
    posted by happyroach at 11:31 AM on January 16, 2019 [9 favorites]


    NYT: Democrats Fall Short in Effort to Rebuke Administration on Russia Sanctions
    Senate Republicans on Wednesday narrowly staved off an effort by Democrats to deal the Trump administration’s Russia sanctions policy an embarrassing rebuke. Eleven Republicans joined Democrats in a vote to enforce sanctions against the corporate empire of [Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska,] an influential ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but the effort fell three votes short of the 60-vote threshold required to advance the measure.
    Who are these eleven Republicans feeling the heat?
    The Republican Senators who voted with Democrats were John Boozman of Arkansas; Susan Collins of Maine; Tom Cotton of Arkansas; Steve Daines of Montana; Cory Gardner of Colorado; Josh Hawley of Missouri; John Kennedy of Louisiana; Martha McSally of Arizona; Jerry Moran of Kansas; Marco Rubio of Florida, and Ben Sasse of Nebraska
    Interesting - not all the ones I'd have predicted. A mixture of principled stands (Sasse?), opportunism (Rubio?), and possibly, fear of the coming blue wave (McSally, Collins, Gardner? Moran?).

    Notice, no sign of Meatloaf Mitt on this list.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 11:41 AM on January 16, 2019 [10 favorites]


    I heard this story last night, and I'm hoping NPR will air more air air more stories like it.
    Traveling, Courage And Acts Of Kindness: A Human Story Of Illegal Border Crossing

    It's commentary, not a news item, so I'm not sure if it's been "storified" in the retelling, but white america needs to hear more commentaries and stories like it.
    posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 11:44 AM on January 16, 2019 [9 favorites]


    I'd bet that Trump would give the SOtU at one of his rallies, which should be interesting.
    posted by ZeusHumms at 11:46 AM on January 16, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Daily Beast: Rick Gates Tells Mueller About Trump Team’s Dealings With Israeli Intelligence Firm—Psy Group delivered plans for ‘social media manipulation’ in 2016 and the special counsel is digging in as part of his probe into Mideast influence.
    Rick Gates, the former campaign aide to Donald Trump, is cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into whether individuals from the Middle East worked with the Trump campaign to influence the election, according to two individuals with first-hand knowledge of the investigation.

    Gates has answered questions specifically about Psy Group, an Israeli firm that ex-employees say drew up social media manipulation plans to help the Trump campaign, according to sources familiar with the questions. Mueller’s team also asked Gates about interactions with Psy Group’s owner, Joel Zamel, and Lebanese-American businessman George Nader, who worked as an emissary for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the sources said.

    On Tuesday, Mueller’s team said that Gates was cooperating with “several ongoing investigations” in asking a federal judge to delay his sentencing for financial crimes he pleaded guilty to committing with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. One of the ongoing investigations is into possible Middle Eastern election influence, three people with knowledge of the probe told The Daily Beast.[…]

    Mueller asked Gates whether the Trump campaign approached Psy Group, or whether Psy Group, through intermediaries like Birnbaum, approached representatives of the Trump team, according to two sources familiar with Gates’ cooperation.[…]

    Mueller’s team is still actively looking at Zamel’s interactions with the Trump team beyond Psy Group, according to sources familiar with Gates’ cooperation.[…]

    The special counsel’s office is also probing a payment made from Zamel to Nader for $2 million after the election. Mueller has questioned multiple witnesses, including Gates, about that payment, according to three sources with knowledge of his team’s questioning.
    No wonder Mueller wants to hold off on Gates’s sentencing (also, doesn’t it seem like the article makes it seem as though in addition to Gates’s lawyers, the DoJ is awfully leaky just when the Barr’s nomination hearings are under way?).
    posted by Doktor Zed at 11:56 AM on January 16, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Daily Beast: Rick Gates Tells Mueller About Trump Team’s Dealings With Israeli Intelligence Firm—Psy Group delivered plans for ‘social media manipulation’ in 2016 and the special counsel is digging in as part of his probe into Mideast influence.

    So is it just becoming routine that GOP candidates for POTUS try to work with foreign governments to get elected, regardless of whether they are US allies or not? Do they think that they won't be discovered because *foreign*? Or is it just that Trump is so corrupt that just one foreign collaborator, a la Nixon with Vietnam or Reagan with Iran, is not quite enough? Or is the Trump orbit so well known as a corrupt organization that foreign intelligence services know they would be an easy mark?

    So many questions, so few answers. Please hurry, Mr. Mueller. We can't wait.
    posted by Mental Wimp at 12:02 PM on January 16, 2019 [8 favorites]


    > Pelosi just punched him right in the Oppositional Defiant Disorder

    Please don't. ODD, like so many mental issues, doesn't need more stigma.
    posted by The corpse in the library at 12:05 PM on January 16, 2019 [11 favorites]


    @AOC Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
    I want to be very clear about how successful the work of grassroots organizers and activists have been in helping Progressives secure appointments to the powerful Financial Services Committee.

    It starts, as w/ many amazing developments, w/ everyday people paying attention.

    /This is a fantastic twitter thread from AOC outlining how grassroots democracy helped in the FSC membership appts.
    posted by bluesky43 at 12:07 PM on January 16, 2019 [63 favorites]


    On Tuesday, Mueller’s team said that Gates was cooperating with “several ongoing investigations”

    I bet he is! That article implicates that Flynn, Nunes, Nader and two 'Trump insiders' had meetings that included possible quid pro quo for regime change in Iran, AND apparently Gen Al-Assiri was there. Good God. Kashoggi murder, election meddling, bribery, collusion, etc. Special Counsel investigation is going to be huge by the time this is done.
    posted by Harry Caul at 12:10 PM on January 16, 2019 [15 favorites]


    I've asked this before, and I don't think anyone has ever been able to answer it, so I'll ask again: what is so fucking scary to a duly elected politician about 45's Twitter feed?

    I would assume that I-1 also has access to the emails and whatever else the Russians got from the RNC in 2016. While it was kind of a nothingburger from the DNC emails, I'm sure the RNC ones are just packed full of juicy closet skeletons, with y'know republicans just being republican.
    posted by sexyrobot at 12:22 PM on January 16, 2019 [5 favorites]


    @joshjame
    “He seems to be running away from us,” - @AOC, as she heads to the Republican cloakroom on the Senate floor looking for Mitch McConnell
    posted by Rust Moranis at 12:25 PM on January 16, 2019 [57 favorites]


    > Pelosi just punched him right in the Oppositional Defiant Disorder

    Please don't. ODD, like so many mental issues, doesn't need more stigma.
    I hear you.

    Lest it seem that I was being glib or dismissive about ODD, I understand exactly the anguish a sufferer feels when they are told, by a person they are in conflict with, to do exactly the thing they wanted to do anyway.

    Because, it me.

    I was just kind of fantasizing that Trump was getting a taste of that particular frustration.
    posted by Horkus at 12:32 PM on January 16, 2019 [21 favorites]


    Two powerful political songs/videos have been released in the last few days:

    Gary Clark Jr: This Land

    The Killers: Land Of The Free (video directed by Spike Lee.)

    I don't get excited about new music very often, but these are brilliant. Via @VerminSupreme and @HoarseWisperer respectively.
    posted by homunculus at 12:33 PM on January 16, 2019 [26 favorites]


    @AOC and her colleagues are fearless. Apparently they are now camped out in front of the cloakroom waiting.
    posted by bluesky43 at 12:33 PM on January 16, 2019 [66 favorites]


    She grows more delightful by the day.
    posted by schadenfrau at 12:36 PM on January 16, 2019 [62 favorites]


    ABC: Senators Nearing Subpoena For Michael Cohen, Trump’s Former Attorney, In Probe of Russian Election Interference—Cohen was sentenced to nearly three years in prison in December. "Asked Wednesday whether it is fair to say the Senate Intelligence Committee is moving closer to issuing a subpoena to Cohen after trying for some time to get him to agree to testify, the panel’s chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., told ABC News, “Fair.”"

    CNN: Whitaker Agrees to Testify Before House Judiciary Committee "Nadler last week threatened to issue a subpoena to Whitaker for his testimony if he did not agree to appear in January, but the committee and Justice Department agreed he would voluntarily appear on February 8, Nadler said in a letter sent to Whitaker Tuesday." (n.b. Cohen's appearance before the House Oversight Committee is scheduled for the day before.)
    posted by Doktor Zed at 12:39 PM on January 16, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Can someone please explain the appeal of AOC? What distinguishes her as being a Rep that we need to focus on and get updates about daily? I see a lot of AOC news in the megathreads and I don't get it. I get talking about Pelosi or McConnell, but AOC is one junior/freshman congresswoman among a multitude of junior/freshman congresswomen. Why are we liveblogging her movements?
    posted by all about eevee at 12:41 PM on January 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


    She's really progressive, assertive, and good at working the media. Also, the right-wing media want her to be a boogeywoman so they give her attention, and she uses that attention effectively (which gives us more to talk about).
    posted by a snickering nuthatch at 12:44 PM on January 16, 2019 [89 favorites]


    She stands apart from other members of congress for several reasons, the biggest of which include:
    - She identifies as a socialist and speaks very effectively on leftist policy ideas that few-to-no other representatives are.
    - She is the most prominent member of a growing left coalition in the Democratic Party.
    - She comes from the working class, which is exceedingly rare in congress.
    - She is in her 20's, which is exceedingly rare in congress.
    - She is extremely good at social media and a very savvy political operator.
    posted by One Second Before Awakening at 12:44 PM on January 16, 2019 [97 favorites]


    we're desperate for heroes and she's doing a pretty good job so far.
    posted by prize bull octorok at 12:44 PM on January 16, 2019 [128 favorites]


    Because the GOP hates her ?
    posted by Pendragon at 12:44 PM on January 16, 2019 [4 favorites]


    @AOC and her colleagues are fearless. Apparently they are now camped out in front of the cloakroom waiting.
    posted by bluesky43 at 2:33 PM on January 16

    She grows more delightful by the day.
    posted by schadenfrau at 2:36 PM on January 16
    I have that feeling. That this is how things start. We just needed someone to show us what is possible.
    posted by Horkus at 12:45 PM on January 16, 2019 [16 favorites]


    all about eevee, I can't speak for others, but I'm happy that she's taking the fight to the enemy. That's rare enough that it's exciting, regardless of her length of service in the House. I don't know how much she's going to accomplish, but the effort's notable in and of itself.
    posted by wintermind at 12:45 PM on January 16, 2019 [22 favorites]


    When have other MoCs hunted down a Turtle?
    posted by Dashy at 12:46 PM on January 16, 2019 [13 favorites]


    An interesting Paul Krugman twitter take on AOC, much of which I agree with, especially the part about willing to advocate for causes no one else will advocate for
    posted by bluesky43 at 12:47 PM on January 16, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Can someone please explain the appeal of AOC?

    Some of it is gotten into in this slate article, if a bit sideways from your question: "All Sizzle but No Steak"
    The trouble with that kind of projection, for anyone who’s watched her, is that this just isn’t quite true. No matter how hard the right tries to make this case, Ocasio-Cortez simply isn’t a wacky Palin figure for the other side. Gifted though she may be at putting together a polished look while, like Palin, being so expressive and animated that still photos of her are easy to caricature, Ocasio-Cortez is effective and focused in ways that Palin never was. She’s fun-loving and vivacious when that’s appropriate, but she also speaks in ways that are—or at least feel—unvarnished and pained and sincere.
    I agree that she is getting what might be more than her "fair" share of attention in a just and perfect world. At the same time, she has very skillfully leveraged that attention toward getting things done. So in addition to the dynamic described in the article I link, I think that on the left there is a certain amount of admiration at watching somebody who is (surprisingly?) good at what they are doing, and who is using that talent in ways that advance progressive causes.
    posted by gauche at 12:50 PM on January 16, 2019 [17 favorites]


    That article implicates that Flynn, Nunes, Nader and two 'Trump insiders' had meetings that included possible quid pro quo for regime change in Iran, AND apparently Gen Al-Assiri was there.

    I haven't had the energy to dive into the tea leaves around the Middle East piece of of Trump's treason, but we're probably going to find that it's just as bad as the Russian piece, and that's saying something. (This isn't an original idea. Seth Abramson has been banging this drum for a while. I suspect he's right though.)
    posted by diogenes at 12:51 PM on January 16, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Her instagram is the center of her social media presence, to be sure.

    I still remember that night last summer when whatever we were watching on the DVR ended and our cable box reverted to NY-1 where they hadnt yet called the race but were showing initial returns indicating she was likely to beat joe crowley. i think my wife would say that my reaction time from couch to running around our living room has only been rivaled during World Series wins.
    posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:51 PM on January 16, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Reuters news agency reported that al-Shabaab had made a statement blaming the attack on Donald Trump, which said: “The Mujahideen [holy warriors] carried out this operation …[as] a response to the witless remarks of US president, Donald Trump, and his declaration of Al-Quds [Jerusalem] as the capital of Israel.”

    Yesterday, an office and hotel complex in Nairobi, Kenya, was attacked by a suicide bomber followed by gunmen. 21 innocent people died. Quote from the FT. Reuters unpaywalled report.

    I'm off to the fucketity fuck thread. Yesterday was not a fun day as the tweets started with the first explosion in my timeline. I've been to that complex to visit friends at their offices.
    posted by infini at 12:53 PM on January 16, 2019 [27 favorites]


    Help me understand: If Cohen has already been sentenced, why does the Senate Intelligence Committee want him to testify with them?
    posted by yoga at 12:54 PM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


    xammerboy: I just heard on NPR: "The other night the president was asked during a news interview whether or not he is a Russian agent. He refused to answer the question."
    ...
    On preview: will “I never worked for Russia” be 2019's "I am not a crook"?

    I thought that "I never worked for Russia" is a weird, somewhat specific (yet also vague) phrase. Do you mean you weren't directly paid by the Russian government? Sure, I guess. Or you never worked towards Russia's goals? Because this is demonstrably false, not that Trump cares about truth. But on this topic, Wired comes in with a hot take: Trump Must Be a Russian Agent; the Alternative Is Too Awful (Garrett M. Graff for Wired, Jan. 16, 2019)
    IT WOULD BE rather embarrassing for Donald Trump at this point if Robert Mueller were to declare that the president isn’t an agent of Russian intelligence.

    THE PATTERN OF his pro-Putin, pro-Russia, anti-FBI, anti-intelligence community actions are so one-sided, and the lies and obfuscation surrounding every single Russian meeting and conversation so consistent that if this president isn’t actually hiding a massive conspiracy, it means the alternative is worse: America elected a chief executive so oblivious to geopolitics, so self-centered and personally insecure, so naturally predisposed to undermine democratic institutions and coddle authoritarians, and so terrible a manager and leader that he cluelessly surrounded himself with crooks, grifters, and agents of foreign powers that he’s compromised the national security of the US government and undermined 75 years of critical foreign alliances, just to satiate his own ego.
    I don't think "embarrassing" is the right word there, Garrett. Perhaps "astonishing," or simply "shocking." We wouldn't say "aw gee, sorry Donny, we had you all wrong!" He's still a monstrous individual who has done immense damage to the US and democracy at home and abroad.


    Jpfed: [AOC is] really progressive, assertive, and good at working the media. Also, the right-wing media want her to be a boogeywoman so they give her attention, and she uses that attention effectively (which gives us more to talk about).

    So, she's the Anti-Trump, who is regressive, defensive, but understands the media well enough to keep getting coverage. He's the left-wing boogeyman for reasons noted above and ad nauseam (and the President), so we give him attention, and he uses that attention effectively (to rally his base, boost his ego, increase his grifting, etc.), which gives us more to talk about.
    posted by filthy light thief at 12:54 PM on January 16, 2019 [13 favorites]


    @BySteveReilly: New: @USGSA inspector general's review of the Trump DC hotel lease finds GSA "ignored the Constitution" in approving the lease. GSA lawyers "agreed there was a possible violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause but decided not to address the issue."

    Here's the IG report. @nycsouthpaw notes that the IG's historical research on George Washington's property transactions (exploring historical precedent for emoluments) rather blows away DOJ's citation of a Mount Vernon listicle in a court filing last month.
    posted by zachlipton at 12:56 PM on January 16, 2019 [34 favorites]


    I realize I am in the minority, but I personally find AOC to be just "okay". I am no more excited about her than I am about, say, Sheldon Whitehouse. But I felt the same way about Obama between 2004-2007, so I guess it isn't surprising that I feel the way I do.
    posted by all about eevee at 12:56 PM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


    @AOC and her colleagues are fearless.

    At last. Democrats have been acting like they were afraid of Republicans since Reagan's time at least, and the so-called "liberal media" certainly picked up on those cues. It's delightful seeing young Democrats in government who, as someone mentioned upthread, grew up seeing how phony and principle-free Republicans are and had the appropriate amount of naked contempt for them accordingly.
    posted by Gelatin at 12:58 PM on January 16, 2019 [65 favorites]


    I'd bet that Trump would give the SOtU at one of his rallies, which should be interesting.

    i assume that if he pulls that, Pelosi is free to claim that it was not an address to Congress in compliance with Article II, Section 3 of the constitution, and therefore doesn’t discharge the POTUS’s duty. And that he’s free to try again under terms that the entire joint Congress will accept, as stated previously.
    posted by murphy slaw at 1:01 PM on January 16, 2019 [39 favorites]


    Pelosi is free to claim that it was not an address to Congress in compliance with Article II, Section 3 of the constitution, and therefore doesn’t discharge the POTUS’s duty. And that he’s free to try again under terms that the entire joint Congress will accept, as stated previously.

    Even if there weren't Constitutional issues, the idea a nonstarter on its face. A SOTU rally would be 1000x more of a security problem than if it was held in Congress.

    all about evee: And that's fine.
    posted by rhizome at 1:04 PM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


    If Cohen has already been sentenced, why does the Senate Intelligence Committee want him to testify with them?

    To figure out what the the president knew and when he knew it.
    posted by diogenes at 1:09 PM on January 16, 2019 [14 favorites]


    I realize I am in the minority, but I personally find AOC to be just "okay".

    I am with you. I think she's got great ideas, I think she's doing an amazing job of shaping conversations around those policies, I love how she speaks about them and I love that aforementioned fearlessness and how unashamed she is to be exactly who she is. But I'm put off by the factual errors combined with that insistence that those errors don't matter if you're "morally right". I hope that she gets good mentoring and I hope she will get more hardcore with policy development as she gains experience rather than turning into some other Dem politicians who I will not name who are more concerned with rhetoric and handwaving than actual viable proposals. If that happens I will join the superfan brigade. But for now I am more circumspect.
    posted by Anonymous at 1:11 PM on January 16, 2019


    Also Congress has a subpoena power that is totally independent of the justice department or judiciary. The Senate would be free to call Cohen to testify even if he had been acquitted.
    posted by murphy slaw at 1:12 PM on January 16, 2019 [10 favorites]


    I totally get the impulse to guard against the perils of misplaced optimism when assessing the early returns on AOC's tenure. She will make mistakes, as other charismatic Democrats have done in the past, and she'll learn from them. We have no idea what she'll be in ten years time, and frankly I don't care, because we're not electing her to anything else right now. The party needs someone with her combination of being right on the issues, right on the strategy, and right on the presentation. If we decide to marginalize her or cut her down because she hasn't "earned it", who knows how long we'll have to wait for another politician who checks all of those boxes?

    I think we should just let her do her thing while pushing her to do better. She can draw a lot of the enemy fire (I legit thought this headline was real when a colleague sent it to me) while creating ideological space for more "traditional" progressives and centrists to come along.

    I see literally no downside here as long as we restrain our hero worship. After seeing the mixed results of the Obama years, I think we can do that.
    posted by tonycpsu at 1:19 PM on January 16, 2019 [38 favorites]


    who are more concerned with rhetoric and handwaving than actual viable proposals

    This is my only reservation as well, but I file it under “being 29.” And I haven’t been paying SUPER close attention, but my sense has been that she’s admitted when she’s been wrong, which is...an improvement over those other politicians, IMO.

    Basically my feeling is that she’s politically brilliant, and she’s not a grifter, and she’s not a narcissist. It takes time and work to become adept at policy, and she’s one of the only politicians that I can actually see doing that work. And right now she doesn’t need to be a policy wiz, and she doesn’t need to know all the parliamentary tricks, because the party has old hands at that who are hopefully gonna teach her (if she doesn’t antagonize them). So she’s free to keep doing what she’s currently brilliant at. Which I love.
    posted by schadenfrau at 1:23 PM on January 16, 2019 [14 favorites]


    To put it bluntly, I've been waiting for a long time for an elected Democrat who's not afraid to get in the face of Tea Party chuds and yell ASSHOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLEEEE! when they're openly being assholes.

    AOC is a big step in that direction.
    posted by delfin at 1:23 PM on January 16, 2019 [103 favorites]


    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a social media star, to school House Democrats on Twitter use (Eliza Collins, USA Today):
    The House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee is hosting a session Thursday morning with Ocasio-Cortez of New York (@AOC – 2.42 million followers) and Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut (@jahimes – 76,500 followers) "on the most effective ways to engage constituents on Twitter and the importance of digital storytelling."
    Let's hope what AOC and Himes know can be taught.
    posted by gladly at 1:25 PM on January 16, 2019 [38 favorites]


    i assume that if he pulls that, Pelosi is free to claim that it was not an address to Congress in compliance with Article II, Section 3 of the constitution, and therefore doesn’t discharge the POTUS’s duty.

    Article II, Section 3 is not specific about how often the SotU must be delivered (just the vague "from time to time;" annually, excluding the first year of a new president's administration, has been tradition, but a POTUS could probably do it either more or less frequently within constitutional bounds); nor about the format it takes (for many years it was a written document sent to Congress rather than a speech). It's not too absurd to think that a SotU where Congress was not physically present would suffice, as long as Congress watched on TV, or a transcript was sent to Congress afterward, or any of a number of methods of transmitting it to Congress were used.
    posted by DevilsAdvocate at 1:25 PM on January 16, 2019


    Nobody's putting a gun to anyone's head and demanding they either praise or condemn AOC. I think folks need to not let Republican freakouts over her infect their perspective. Let her do her job, and let her actual constituents decide if she's doing it well.

    I personally pray for many more enthusiastic and energetic Democrats of color who will make the Republicans lose their shit.
    posted by emjaybee at 1:32 PM on January 16, 2019 [51 favorites]


    AOC is getting relatively the same kind of "overhyped/undeserved" attention/criticism that Obama did back in 07 because she is young, relatively inexperienced, a POC, and attractive. The fact that she's a woman, though, adds a crappy extra lens of "how dare this woman ascend before she's paid her dues."

    She's also the closest Congressperson (AFAIK?) in age to any of the very key young-20s voting bloc. If there are complaints that the Democratic party loses because we're not messaging to young voters effectively..... she's literally the subject matter expert.
    posted by nakedmolerats at 1:33 PM on January 16, 2019 [26 favorites]


    Mod note: Probably better to take the AOC stuff into its own thread, at this point, if folks want to continue.
    posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:34 PM on January 16, 2019 [28 favorites]


    Yahoo News, Nick Turse, Despite denials, documents reveal U.S. training UAE forces for combat in Yemen
    When the Pentagon announced last November that it was ceasing aerial refueling of Saudi-led coalition aircraft operating in Yemen, the move appeared to be a major step back from U.S. support for the war there. But newly obtained documents reveal that the United States has also been training coalition military personnel from the United Arab Emirates for the air war in Yemen.

    The documents underscore the continuing frustrations for critics of the war, including those in Congress, over the lack of transparency around U.S. military support for a war that has killed thousands of civilians and pushed the country to the brink of famine.

    The United States is “not a participant in the civil war in Yemen nor are we supporting one side or the other,” Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said last month, echoing a long-held position in the Pentagon.

    But official Air Force documents obtained by Yahoo News show that the U.S. military has been even more deeply involved in that war than previously indicated. Despite unambiguous claims by the U.S. military to the contrary, the United States has trained members of the Saudi-led coalition, specifically, according to the files, “for combat operations in Yemen.”
    ...
    Despite those documents, the Pentagon continues to insist that the training is not part of the Yemen war. The United States has not, said Lt. Col. Earl Brown, a Central Command spokesperson, “conducted exercises with members of the [Saudi-led coalition] to prepare for combat operations in Yemen.” When asked for clarification, Lt. Col. Josh Jacques, also from CENTCOM, repeated the denial. “As we said before in our statement, we do not conduct exercises with members of the [Saudi-led coalition] to prepare for combat operations in Yemen,” he told Yahoo News.
    @chrislhayes: Mattis' Pentagon just straight up lied to the American people about US involvement in the bombing of Yemen.
    posted by zachlipton at 1:41 PM on January 16, 2019 [58 favorites]


    The judge seems to have called out the administration's obviously bad faith justficiations

    this is just what judge furman does, in addition to finding several other faults each independently sufficient to find a violation of the administrative procedures act. having finally made it through the sdny census case opinion, it is breathtaking. not at liberty just now to attempt to summarize or cherrypick pithy verbiage, but here's a taste:
    [T]he Court’s conclusion that Secretary Ross made the decision to add a citizenship question well before he received DOJ’s request and for reasons unrelated to the VRA, provides yet one more independent basis for vacating and setting aside his decision. As discussed above, that conclusion is supported by evidence in the Administrative Record alone, including evidence that Secretary Ross had made the decision to add the citizenship question well before DOJ requested its addition in December 2017, the absence of any mention, at all, of VRA enforcement in the discussions of adding the question that preceded the Gary Letter; unsuccessful attempts by Commerce Department staff to shop around for a request by another agency regarding citizenship data; and Secretary Ross’s personal outreach to Attorney General Sessions, followed by the Gary Letter; not to mention the conspicuous procedural irregularities that accompanied the decision to add the question. When one considers evidence outside the Administrative Record, as the Court may do for this purpose, the conclusion is inescapable. That record includes the testimony from Comstock all but admitting that Secretary Ross had made up his mind to add the citizenship question in the spring of 2017; testimony that senior aides to Secretary Ross had no idea why he decided to add the question; a near admission from Comstock that he went searching for a request from other agencies because the Commerce Department “would need to clear certain legal thresholds” to add the citizenship question that it otherwise would not be able to, and that it was his role to “find the best rationale” to support the addition of the question; and testimony from AAAG Gore that conversations between DOJ and the Commerce Department about adding a citizenship question were not initiated by DOJ.... (pp 246-247, internal citations omitted).
    also
    [T]he Court can — and, in light of all the evidence in the record, does — infer from the various ways in which Secretary Ross and his aides acted like people with something to hide that they did have something to hide. (at 248, emphasis in original).
    related, pursuant to upthread speculation concerning government attorneys' putative moral compasses, para 178 at p. 99 provides a datapoint:
    [N]otwithstanding his otherwise self-serving testimony,[Commerce Department Deputy Chief of Staff & Director of Policy, Earl] Comstock conceded in his deposition testimony that he did not believe that Secretary Ross’s unstated reasons to add a citizenship question in early 2017 would “clear [the] legal thresholds” set by OMB and federal law. Indeed, he admitted that he viewed his job as finding a “legal rationale” to support the Secretary’s request (and then finding an agency to make the ask) and that he did not “need to know what” the Secretary’s actual “rationale might be, because it may or may not be one that is . . . legally-valid.” That testimony constitutes a near confession that the VRA rationale was a post hoc concoction to justify a decision made for other reasons — that is, that Comstock felt the need to launder the request through another agency (internal citations omitted, emphasis mine).
    posted by 20 year lurk at 1:48 PM on January 16, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Outside of the President and courts-martial, i.e. the chain of command, do civilians have any separate recourse for misbehavior by members of the military? Lying would at least seem to contravene the principles of the military, honor, and all of the other traits we're supposed to respect the military for.
    posted by rhizome at 1:50 PM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Heh. According to this report in Blavity, TSA Agents Have Been Playing Dirty Versions of Rap Songs At JFK Airport Because That's Just Where They're At Right Now.
    Multiple passengers boarding flights at JFK Airport have tweeted about hearing uncensored versions of rap music over the loudspeakers, including Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode” and Kanye West’s “Lift Yourself.” ... According to Business Insider, TSA agents control which music is played in specific terminals, and it’s clear somebody was making the best out of an unpaid situation.
    posted by TwoStride at 2:09 PM on January 16, 2019 [77 favorites]


    On the State of the Union address: for over 100 years (between Jefferson and Wilson) Presidents literally just sent a letter to Congress. It only became a live speech once they realized it was a media opportunity.
    posted by Huffy Puffy at 2:15 PM on January 16, 2019 [12 favorites]


    And once radio and then t.v. were widely available?
    posted by xammerboy at 2:21 PM on January 16, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Outside of the President and courts-martial, i.e. the chain of command, do civilians have any separate recourse for misbehavior by members of the military?

    There's a thing that happens after a member of Congress gets a call from a constituent saying, "The Army is mistreating my son!", and that member of Congress decides to ask the Army whether they are, in fact, mistreating Mrs. Arbuthnot's son. It is, naturally, called a Congressional, and it immediately becomes the top priority of everyone who has ever met Private Arbuthnot. Private Arbuthnot's chain of command up to about his battalion commander (a lieutenant colonel who has spent 20-25 years of their life leading soldiers and has reached what most officers consider the pinnacle of a career of service; anything beyond that is gravy) will spend the entirety of their day figuring out why Private Arbuthnot is telling his mother these things, and what must be done to satisfy Mrs. Arbuthnot's Congressperson that no, in fact, the Army is not mistreating Private Arbuthnot.

    Why are "Congressionals" such a big deal? Because, in the large sense, Congress controls the purse strings, and can make any individual commander's life difficult by making his entire chain of command's lives difficult. But more precisely -- and this is a dirty little secret that not even senior officers will admit to themselves, because to speak it lends it power -- the United States Senate must sign off on every officer promotion list for every officer over O2, which is to say, every officer who's been in the military for more than four years. And if some Senator remembers that one time that Captain Shmedlap did not respond sufficiently to a Congressional request for information about poor Private Arbuthnot, well, Captain Shmedlap might not become Major Shmedlap. And everyone around Captain Shmedlap who was hoping to make Major might also not get promoted, because the Senate tends to reject entire lists rather than particular people.

    So... yes, the people in uniform who lied to the American public -- which, by necessity, includes the American Congress -- do have recourse. The question is whether that recourse carries the political will necessary to do something about it.
    posted by Etrigan at 2:32 PM on January 16, 2019 [67 favorites]


    The SOTU has morphed over time as the media landscape has changed so I think the Congress should be perfectly satisfied to have the President deliver his report via whatever channel he prefers, which in this case: improperly threaded tweets.
    posted by notyou at 2:32 PM on January 16, 2019 [33 favorites]


    Prominent conservative and Never-Trump Republican, Tom Nichols, writing in prominent domestic newspaper regularly shoved under hotel room doors, USA Today: "All signs point the same way: Vladimir Putin has compromising information on Donald Trump"
    ... it seems at this point beyond argument that the president personally fears Russian President Vladimir Putin for reasons that can only suggest the existence of compromising information.

    ... it is exhausting but nonetheless necessary to point out again the titanic hypocrisy of the Republican Party and of Trump’s apologists in the conservative media. If President Barack Obama had shredded his notes of a meeting with the Iranian president, or if Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager were sitting in jail for lying about meeting a Chinese business associate — and alleged intelligence officer — to share polling data, that alone would have been enough for the GOP to impeach everyone from the president to the White House chef.
    Nothing new here for thread regulars in terms of news, but consider the reach - it's a very different crowd who will see this, compared to NYT and WaPo readers.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 2:35 PM on January 16, 2019 [82 favorites]


    It is, naturally, called a Congressional, and it immediately becomes the top priority of everyone who has ever met Private Arbuthnot.

    This happened in a unit I was in once and I would like to 100% confirm every word Etrigan is saying. Now whether junior congresspeople /know/ they can do this or not, I can’t tell you, but it’s definitely a power they possess.
    posted by corb at 2:41 PM on January 16, 2019 [16 favorites]


    filthy light thief: "Not to mention Saint Ronnie's memorable (or formerly notable?) quote: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! [Wikipedia]
    "

    See if I had millions of dollars I'd be getting this plenty of airtime.

    >: "Mattis' Pentagon just straight up lied to the American people about US involvement in the bombing of Yemen."

    Did they call it operation Air America?
    posted by Mitheral at 3:10 PM on January 16, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Federal Watchdog Finds Government Ignored Emoluments Clause With Trump Hotel
    "The GSA Office of General Counsel recognized that the President's business interest in the lease raised issues under the U.S. Constitution that might cause a breach of the lease, yet chose not to address those issues," said Inspector General Carol F. Ochoa. "As a result, GSA foreclosed an opportunity for an early resolution of these issues and instead certified compliance with a lease that is under a constitutional cloud."
    They granted him the lease, ignoring the constitutional provisions that expressly forbade them from doing so, and no one noticed for two years?
    posted by xammerboy at 3:40 PM on January 16, 2019 [26 favorites]


    WaPo, Top HUD official’s departure follows disagreements over housing policy and Puerto Rico disaster funds
    A top Department of Housing and Urban Development official is leaving the agency Thursday following disagreements with other members of the Trump administration over housing policy and the White House’s attempt to block disaster-recovery money for Puerto Rico, according to five people with direct knowledge of the situation.

    Deputy Secretary Pam Patenaude, second-in-command at the agency helmed by Ben Carson and widely regarded as HUD’s most capable political leader, is said to have grown frustrated by what a former HUD employee described as a “Sisyphean undertaking.”
    ...
    Patenaude had palm-size cards made listing the classes protected from housing discrimination — factoring race, color, religion, national origin, gender, disability and familial status — and distributed them widely. One agency official said Patenaude hoped the effort would help allay concerns of career employees and advocates that Carson’s team does not care about civil rights.

    Last fall, Patenaude expressed concern over the Trump administration’s intervention in disaster-recovery money that Congress had appropriated for Puerto Rico and states hit by hurricanes.

    President Trump in late September grew incensed after hearing, erroneously, that Puerto Rico was using the emergency money to pay off its debt, according to two people with direct knowledge of Trump’s thinking.

    Trump told then-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and then-Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney that he did not want a single dollar going to Puerto Rico, because he thought the island was misusing the money and taking advantage of the government, according to a person with direct knowledge of the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal deliberations. Instead, he wanted more of the money to go to Texas and Florida, the person said.

    “POTUS was not consolable about this,” the person said.
    posted by zachlipton at 3:48 PM on January 16, 2019 [33 favorites]


    Atlanta Man Arrested for Alleged White House Terror Plot
    Federal authorities arrested an Atlanta man Wednesday for allegedly plotting to destroy the White House and other D.C. landmarks, including a synagogue and the Washington Monument, prosecutors say. Hasher Jallal Taheb, 21, was arrested in Gwinnett County and appeared briefly in court Wednesday. According to the criminal complaint, a community member contacted law enforcement in March 2018 and warned that Taheb had been radicalized. Taheb put his car up for sale that August and was approached by an FBI informant who had reached out to show interest. Taheb then allegedly told the informant he was selling his car to fund “hijra,” or a trip to ISIS territory, and that he wanted to attack the White House and Statue of Liberty. According to NBC4, Taheb also had a “hand-drawn diagram of the ground floor of the West Wing” and planned to attack the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial with explosives and weapons. Prosecutors also said Taheb spoke of wanting to travel to Islamic State territory. He had reportedly obtained weapons and explosives from the undercover FBI agent just before his arrest, though federal authorities had already rendered the weapons inert. In a statement, U.S. Attorney Byung Pak said that threats have been “neutralized,” and no threats were directed at Georgia or the upcoming Super Bowl festivities in the state. Pak also told reporters the suspect had planned to use a homemade explosive and an anti-tank rocket to attack the White House, according to CNN.
    posted by scalefree at 3:54 PM on January 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Nothing new here for thread regulars in terms of news, but consider the reach - it's a very different crowd who will see this, compared to NYT and WaPo readers.

    Do Republican voters even listen to people like Tom Nichols anymore? Ana Navarro? Rick Wilson? Any of the "prominent" Republicans who have generally opposed this administration?

    I occasionally see them on Twitter, and when I look at the responses it's basically all Dem-minded folks agreeing, or the infrequent Republican who's come to realize their party is garbage. But I don't see actual, y'know, Republicans. And then when someone like Tom Nichols talks about anything other than Trump I'm left with yet another guy putting real effort into living up to cranky smug white male boomer stereotypes.

    At this point it really seems like Republican voters have completely tuned out any criticism or dissent from within the party. The moment they break from Trump, their old audience doesn't listen or care what they have to say anymore. I would love to be wrong about this.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 3:55 PM on January 16, 2019 [9 favorites]


    I was at an endlessly long meeting today, so I'm late to the game, but I really need to express my feelings:
    #1: Nancy Pelosi can burn with the heat of a thousand suns, and I want to be like her when I grow up (and she actually reminds me a bit of my gran, so there's a chance...)
    #2: AOC will become like Pelosi when she gets older, I'm sure, and anyway she is just fine like she is now.
    posted by mumimor at 4:01 PM on January 16, 2019 [28 favorites]


    haven't finished reading OIG report, but the lease was granted in 2013.
    at that time:
    There also was no discussion on the OGC OPO team about Section 37.19’s impact if Trump became President, in view of his earlier presidential bids. Terry, however, told us that he was aware of Trump’s earlier interest in the presidency but it was not a consideration during lease negotiations because at the time Terry thought a Trump presidency unlikely.
    after the election, the general services admin's office of general counsel decided that emoluments issues were too broad for GSA's purview by December 2016, but more suited to the DOJ OLC. GSA shrugged.
    GSA did opine that there was no breach of the lease provision appearing to bar ownership stake by elected officials, and certified that decision by March 2017.
    this document, issued two years later, is a review of GSA's management and administration of the lease, prompted by public and private complaints to GSA.
    posted by 20 year lurk at 4:02 PM on January 16, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Tuesday’s decision marks the triumph of the Gorsuch brief—a highly technical argument designed to nab the justice’s vote by fixating on the text of a statute and its meaning at the time of passage. Gorsuch appears to draw heavily from two sources: the brief by Public Justice, which represents Oliveira, and an amicus brief filed by the Constitutional Accountability Center, a progressive originalist law firm. These briefs dwell on the dictionaries that Gorsuch cites and even dive into the etymology of the word employment, from its Latin roots to its evolution through French and Anglo-Norman usage in the Middle Ages.

    You know what would be pretty incredible? Progressive lawyers turning arch-conservative pick Gorsuch into a liberal(ish) vote through manipulating his slavish devotion to arcane citation in his favorite contemporaneous 17th and 18th century dictionaries. If all you really have to do to win Gorsuch over is recite the magic words in his preferred order like he's a particularly thick substitute Defense Against the Dark Arts professor...that'd be a promising development.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 4:10 PM on January 16, 2019 [63 favorites]


    Do Republican voters even listen to people like Tom Nichols anymore? Ana Navarro? Rick Wilson? Any of the "prominent" Republicans who have generally opposed this administration?

    Only 19% of Americans are Republicans (vs. 31% Democrats and 50% independents).

    Some "independents" and even Democrats vote regularly for conservatives, but I think that 19% is a good approximation of the "Never Not Trump" vote. The rest of Americans will at least consider not voting for a bad Republican, in various overlapping coalitions, so yes I think this matters a lot. And being a communist stooge is a pretty damn good wedge issue with conservatives.

    Some of them realistically will never vote Democratic, or not for a (woman - POC - gay), but sitting out the election is a very good outcome too.
    posted by msalt at 4:13 PM on January 16, 2019 [15 favorites]


    They granted him the lease, ignoring the constitutional provisions that expressly forbade them from doing so, and no one noticed for two years?

    It's not that no one noticed, but no one who had an interest in stopping corruption had access to the information.

    One of the (many many) sets of investigations the new congress should do, is look into who's been covering for the swamp team. Find out who buried the reports, who stamped "okay" on something that would not have been okay during Obama's terms, who told the underlings not to include that chart in their final writeup.

    And send them to prison. Or, since Congress can't do that directly, send off a nice stack of evidence and hearing transcripts to whatever courts can prosecute them. I want 2019 to be the year we start treating white collar crime as a potential lifetime-in-prison offense. Tie it to felony murder: if someone died as a result of not having the money that was embezzled, or because the safety regulations weren't being enforced, prosecute for murder, not for "failure to follow procedures" or whatever they're doing now.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:36 PM on January 16, 2019 [45 favorites]


    this is just what judge furman does, in addition to finding several other faults each independently sufficient to find a violation of the administrative procedures act. having finally made it through the sdny census case opinion, it is breathtaking. not at liberty just now to attempt to summarize or cherrypick pithy verbiage, but here's a taste:

    The Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in 18-CV-2921 (JMF) and 18-CV-5025 (JMF) (Consolidated) run 277 pages, and I'm 63 pages in and riveted.

    It's a clear deconstruction of the bad-faith acts that define the Trump Administration, down to what appears to be multiple counts of perjury by the Secretary of Commerce and recommended reading for those who need a ray of sunshine reminding them that the wheels of justice do grind slowly, but very, very fine.
    posted by mikelieman at 4:45 PM on January 16, 2019 [25 favorites]


    I was at an endlessly long meeting today, so I'm late to the game, but I really need to express my feelings:
    #1: Nancy Pelosi can burn with the heat of a thousand suns, and I want to be like her when I grow up (and she actually reminds me a bit of my gran, so there's a chance...)
    #2: AOC will become like Pelosi when she gets older, I'm sure, and anyway she is just fine like she is now.
    posted by mumimor at 4:01 PM on January 16

    mumimor, you and me both. if I could like this a million times I would.
    posted by bluesky43 at 4:59 PM on January 16, 2019 [9 favorites]


    WaPo's Philip Rucker has duelling insider accounts from Capitol Hill and the Trump White House: ‘She Wields the Knife’: Pelosi moves to belittle and undercut Trump in shutdown fight
    House Democrats on Wednesday were making plans to undermine President Trump at his Jan. 29 “State of the Union” address. Just past 8:30 a.m., the leadership’s communications arm sent an email to lawmakers urging them to bring furloughed federal workers or other “message-related” guests to the nationally-televised event.

    Unknown to most of her caucus, however, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had decided on a more confrontational approach.

    Addressing a closed-door meeting of House Democrats, the speaker read a letter she had just sent to Trump asking him to either postpone the speech until the federal government reopens or deliver the text in writing, citing security concerns.

    Surprised Democratic lawmakers cheered their leader’s rationale: If the government stayed shut down, Pelosi would deprive Trump of the spotlight he craved. To a president especially sensitive to acts of disrespect — and one with a hearty appetite for pomp and circumstance — the so-called unvitation was not merely a power play. It was a calculated personal slight.

    In the two weeks since she reclaimed the speaker’s gavel, Pelosi has moved aggressively to leverage her decades of congressional experience to needle, belittle and undercut Trump with swipes at his competence and even his masculinity.[…]

    Josh Holmes, an adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), called Pelosi “a total fighter.”

    “She understands political leverage. She wields the knife,” Holmes said.[…]

    Pelosi’s strategy for dealing with Trump was born of exasperation, advisers said. She has been deliberately trying to get under his skin and “to talk to him in a way he understands,” according to one person familiar with her views.[…]

    “She’s had so much experience and has been attacked so much that she’s secure,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a longtime Democratic strategist. “She is a woman of power who knows how to use it and is not at all cowed by what [Trump’s] reaction is to her. It’s not a concern. That frees her to take actions that others might be afraid to do.”
    Meanwhile, Team Trump is trying to put a brave face on their predicament:
    Trump was largely indifferent to Pelosi’s letter Wednesday, according to two people familiar with Trump’s remarks about the issue, who requested anonymity to speak about internal discussions. Trump and the White House decided not to respond because it was unclear whether Pelosi was actually canceling the event or just making a political statement, both of these people said.[…]

    Trump is a proud counterpuncher, but when it comes to Pelosi, he has pulled back on his jabs. That is deliberate, aides and advisers said, because the president believes she would help protect him from impeachment and because he considers her more reasonable than other Democrats.

    Privately, one adviser said, Trump has complained about the quotes he reads from Pelosi about him in newspapers, but has said he is impressed by her political savvy.

    “He says Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy, not Cryin’ Chuck and Nasty Nancy or whatever,” said this adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s views, referring to Trump’s Twitter mentions of Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).
    In Trump's limited dominated-or-be-dominated worldview, showing this kind of deference—as opposed to, say, his scurrilous attacks on Hilary Clinton—suggests he believes he's in the weaker position.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 5:41 PM on January 16, 2019 [59 favorites]


    We interrupt this politics megathread for a message from... Cardi B? (link to Instagram video, contains some strong language).

    Rush transcript follows (all errors mine):
    Hey y'all. I just wanna remind y'all because it's been a little over three weeks, ok. Trump is now ordering -- as in [summoning] -- federal government workers to go back to work without getting paid. Now, I don't wanna hear y'all motherfuckers talking about "oh, but Obama shut down the government for 17 days." Yeah bitch! For healthcare! So your grandma could check her blood pressure and you bitches could go check y'all pussies at the gynecologist with no motherfucking problem. Now I know a lot of y'all don't care because y'all don't work for the government or you probably don't even have a job but this shit is really fucking serious, bro. This shit is crazy. Our country is in a hellhole right now all for a fucking wall. We really need to take this serious. I feel like we need to take some action. I don't know what type of action, bitch, because this is not what I do. But bitch I'm scared. This is crazy and I really feel bad for these people that gotta go to fucking work to not get motherfucking paid.
    I don't know what the significance or impact of Cardi B weighing in on the shutdown like this might be, but I would say that it is 100% in line with her public-facing personality to be truly and personally offended by the idea of people doing (never mind being forced to do) any kind of work for no pay.

    We now return to your regularly scheduled politics megathread.
    posted by mhum at 6:02 PM on January 16, 2019 [86 favorites]


    Giuliani Rumored to Be ‘Very Worried’ About Mueller Report, ‘Hates’ Working for Trump Now

    Ole Rudy 9-11 is worried? Normally I'd snark a nelson laugh here and call it a day, but this time I'll stick to an old fashioned GOOD.  He should be worried.  He knew just what scum he was crawling into bed with when he signed up for this gig.  He's ridden the coattails of a fame due solely to being in office during a terrorist attack for nearly 20(!) years now, constantly stoking the embers of fear. The sooner he's off the national stage, the better.
    posted by los pantalones del muerte at 6:11 PM on January 16, 2019 [61 favorites]


    Speaking of Rudy...

    @toddzwillich:
    Rudy Giuliani, on CNN: "I never said there was no collusion between people in the campaign" and Russians.

    And on Trump, "He said *he* didn't (collude with Russians.) He didn't say nobody."

    Rudy said this when Chris Cuomo confronted him with the Special Counsel’s claim that Manafort shared campaign polling data with Konstantin Kalimnik.
    These denials are starting to get awfully limited and specific.
    posted by zachlipton at 6:20 PM on January 16, 2019 [85 favorites]


    Here's the Rudy story from Vanity Fair's Gabriel Sherman, who also has insider reports about the shutdown from Trumpland: “Rudy Hates The Job”: Trump’s Multi-Front War Is Taking Its Toll—The shutdown is festering, his approval rating is dropping, Giuliani is worrying, and escape routes are closing.
    According to a source, Giuliani recently told a close associate that he’s “very worried about the report.” The mounting pressure has also strained Giuliani’s relationship with Trump. “Rudy hates the job,” a Republican briefed on Giuliani’s thinking told me. “Trump is very hard to deal with.” (Giuliani didn’t return a call seeking comment.)[…]

    Complicating matters is the shutdown, which has consumed Trump’s attention. A prominent Republican close to the White House told me that Trump is essentially winging it when it comes to shutdown talks with Democrats. “People are looking around asking, ‘What’s the play call?’” the Republican said. “He’s calling plays from the line of scrimmage.” “This was not played well. He’s in a pickle now, and I don’t see a way out.”[…]

    “Trump puts everyone in a box, and then blames them for putting him there,” a former West Wing official told me. A fourth Republican close to the White House said Trump is thinking of continuing the shutdown through the State of the Union, so he can use the prime-time speech to argue for his wall. But Nancy Pelosi has now asked him to postpone his speech, or deliver it in writing, because of shutdown-related security concerns.
    If Sherman's source was accurate about Trump's strategy for his SOTU address, then Pelosi checked him like a grandmaster.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 6:20 PM on January 16, 2019 [28 favorites]


    They're getting close to "Yes collusion".

    Before this is over, Republicans will be defending collusion as fact, and necessary to defeat Clinton, who of course would've been worse. Their base is there already, and where the base goes, all the rest will follow.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 6:25 PM on January 16, 2019 [27 favorites]


    Vanity Fair is doing a pretty good job covering this mess.

    Nancy Pelosi Pulls Rank, Suspends Trump’s State of the Union

    They've noticed, and a few others are beginning to as well, that this letter essentially calls it off, and there's little Individual 1 can do about it. He's on the hook constitutionally to report to Congress; they're under no obligation to provide him a platform to do it.
    posted by los pantalones del muerte at 6:26 PM on January 16, 2019 [21 favorites]


    The Findings of Fact etc. that mikelieman mentioned is indeed fascinating reading (if you like reading legal rulings); for those who don't, the core pieces are (bolding added):
    First, the Court holds that most, if not all, of Plaintiffs have standing to bring their claims. Specifically, they have proved by a preponderance of the evidence that they will be harmed in various ways as a result of the addition of a citizenship question on the census and that a favorable ruling here will redress those harms.

    Second, the Court concludes on the merits that Secretary Ross violated the APA in multiple independent ways. Most blatantly, Secretary Ross ignored, and violated, a statute that requires him, in circumstances like those here, to collect data through the acquisition and use of “administrative records” instead of through “direct inquiries” on a survey such as the census. Additionally, Secretary Ross’s decision to add a citizenship question was “arbitrary and capricious” on its own terms....

    Third, on the merits of the constitutional claim, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs did not carry their burden of proving that Secretary Ross was motivated by invidious discrimination and thus that he violated the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause. In particular, although the Court finds that Secretary Ross’s decision was pretextual, it is unable to find, on the record before it, that the decision was a pretext for impermissible discrimination. To be fair to Plaintiffs, it is impossible to know if they could have carried their burden to prove such discriminatory intent had they been allowed to depose Secretary Ross.... But this Court’s order authorizing such a deposition was stayed by the Supreme Court pending its further review....

    CONCLUSION: the Court vacates Secretary Ross’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census questionnaire, enjoins Defendants from implementing Secretary Ross’s March, 26, 2018 decision or from adding a question to the 2020 census questionnaire without curing the legal defects identified in this Opinion
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 6:31 PM on January 16, 2019 [22 favorites]


    Rudy is probably implicated via his coordination with the NY FBI office's anti-Clinton wing.
    posted by benzenedream at 6:32 PM on January 16, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Pelosi must know that stripping the pageantry from the State of the Union not only blunts Trump’s messaging around the border wall and visibly ups the stakes in the government shutdown, but robs the president of the chance to star in the sort of elaborate televised extravaganza he loves best.

    Pelosi is a boss.
    posted by bluesky43 at 6:32 PM on January 16, 2019 [21 favorites]


    Rudy is probably implicated via his coordination with the NY FBI office's anti-Clinton wing.

    Much, much, much more than that.

    If we start looking into the Russian mob in NYC going back to the nineties Rudy is fucked. And if we do a general anti-corruption investigation of New York law enforcement, organized crime, and real estate developers he is infinitely fucked.

    He didn’t start being a corrupt, sociopathic grifter when he started working for Trump. He’s been Rudy all along.
    posted by schadenfrau at 6:38 PM on January 16, 2019 [53 favorites]


    I know listening to Rudy is useless, but I can't stop.

    @mkraju: “If the collusion happened, it happened a long time ago. It’s either provable or it’s not. It’s not provable because it never happened ... There’s no chance it happened with the president of the United States,” Rudy Giuliani said. “I have no idea what other people were doing.”

    We're just going straight from "it never happened" to "it never happened with him specifically" to "if it happened, it happened a long time ago." I'm sure that will be the new GOP talking point soon enough. They'll be all: why are you bringing this up; collusion is old news?
    posted by zachlipton at 6:46 PM on January 16, 2019 [19 favorites]


    ABC: Michael Cohen fears Trump rhetoric could put his family at risk: Sources
    Michael Cohen is having reservations about his highly anticipated public appearance before Congress next month, fearing that President Donald Trump’s frequent diatribes against him could put his family in danger, according to sources close to Cohen.

    While his testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform appears to be on track to occur as scheduled on Feb. 7, it is now less certain than it initially appeared that Cohen – Trump’s former attorney and fixer – will sit before lawmakers, those sources told ABC News.

    As the president continues to engage in what Cohen sees as reckless and unsubstantiated claims he believes are intended to intimidate him, Cohen has expressed to friends his concern that Trump’s heated rhetoric on television and Twitter could incite an unstable person to target him or his family.

    Cohen has become so worried that he is now questioning whether a public hearing is in his best interest, sources said, and people close to him have advised him to reconsider.
    Trump’s public attacks are clearly witness intimidation. How will he be investigated for that on top of everything else?
    posted by Doktor Zed at 6:48 PM on January 16, 2019 [25 favorites]


    In Trump's limited dominated-or-be-dominated worldview, showing this kind of deference—as opposed to, say, his scurrilous attacks on Hilary Clinton—suggests he believes he's in the weaker position.

    He's also never donated to Pelosi, aside from donations to the general Dem House fund. Manafort was right about one thing -- Trump is particularly dismissive of people he's paid. (Trump has contributed to a lot of Schumer campaigns.)
    posted by grandiloquiet at 6:48 PM on January 16, 2019 [6 favorites]


    His answer seems like gibberish. What collusion happened a long time ago? He can't mean Trump because he says it never happened in the next sentence. But Manafort has been shown to be working with the FSB during the campaign. So he can't mean Manafort? What the hell is he on about?
    posted by Justinian at 6:49 PM on January 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


    To a president especially sensitive to acts of disrespect — and one with a hearty appetite for pomp and circumstance — the so-called unvitation was not merely a power play. It was a calculated personal slight.

    In the two weeks since she reclaimed the speaker’s gavel, Pelosi has moved aggressively to leverage her decades of congressional experience to needle, belittle and undercut Trump with swipes at his competence and even his masculinity.

    And the medusa's small heart grew three sizes that day.

    I have been hoping that Pelosi would play trump like a fiddle, and she is. We started to see signs of this when she and Schumer manipulated Trump into owning the shutdown. This is more of the same, and it's amazing. She's been biding her time like a patient predator. Now she's striking.

    I also think Pelosi is being strategic in how she chooses her actions to get media coverage like this. She doesn't just want to take down Trump, she wants 'Pelosi Takes Down Trump' to be the headline. A big symbolic frou frou like the State of the Union is exactly the kind of event the media gets itself into a lather over even though it has little practical effect. She's using the media's obsession with ceremonial events to make this a big deal.
    posted by medusa at 6:52 PM on January 16, 2019 [43 favorites]


    Haven't seen this mentioned but the OIG report contains a letter sent to the OIG by a guy in the GSA in Appendix B that basically says:
    The screwup was mostly people in the previous administration, your report says no one pressured anyone to approve it, the report said it was possible the lease violated the constitution but didn't prove it, and the DOJ is right now arguing that the Old Post Office lease isn't a violation of the constitution. We'll try to not use the same wording as that lease in the future kthxbye.
    posted by Green With You at 6:53 PM on January 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Nothing I've seen says the lease itself is a problem, am I misinformed? The Constitutional problem is Trump not divesting.
    posted by rhizome at 6:57 PM on January 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


    There’s no chance it happened with the president of the United States

    The allegation is that it happened with a presidential candidate, no?
    posted by kirkaracha at 7:07 PM on January 16, 2019 [10 favorites]


    We interrupt this politics megathread for a message from... Cardi B? (link to Instagram video, contains some strong language).

    Sens. Schatz, Murphy, and Schumer, or their Twitter personas, engage in a colloquy on whether to retweet the Cardi B video.
    posted by zachlipton at 7:19 PM on January 16, 2019 [21 favorites]


    If we start looking into the Russian mob in NYC going back to the nineties Rudy is fucked

    It would in the future—looking back—possibly be the happiest period of my life if pulling at these threads began unraveling the past 30 years of conservative economic and social fuckery.  I have little doubt nearly all of the leaders are tainted through and through.  I also have little faith that this will, or even could happen, but any sunshine scattering these roaches is a welcome thing.

    Between stuff like the Mueller indictments hinting at an absolutely massive web of corruption being rooted out, and the exhilarating lurch to the left of many Democratic candidates—most especially the younger ones—I'm holding my breath that we're seeing the first ripples of a big shift in American politics that will restore a genuine left and right system as opposed to the far right/center right hot mess we've been stuck with for decades.  It's happened before, just not in our lifetimes.

    Of course, 30 years of cynical SSDD politics also leaves me convinced it can never actually happen, so I have no idea what to feel any more.
    posted by los pantalones del muerte at 7:28 PM on January 16, 2019 [42 favorites]


    His answer seems like gibberish. What collusion happened a long time ago?

    I think Rudy means two years or longer ago, before Trump became President. The new information gleaned from the indictments suggests Russia was in talks with Manafort before Trump's campaign even started regarding "political synergies". At this point, I wouldn't be surprised to learn if Trump's birtherism and subsequent presidential runs were at Russia's behest.
    posted by xammerboy at 7:30 PM on January 16, 2019 [6 favorites]


    I'm not sure I'd go with "the collusion was only to get Trump elected and happened before he was President, he hasn't colluded while actually President" is the defense I'd go with but hey Rudy's gotta Rudy.
    posted by Justinian at 7:37 PM on January 16, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Tonight on Tucker Carlson: What does racism look like?
    posted by growabrain at 7:39 PM on January 16, 2019 [6 favorites]


    It looks like you, Tucker. It looks like you.
    posted by soundguy99 at 7:53 PM on January 16, 2019 [60 favorites]


    Ann Coulter: Trump ‘Is Dead In The Water If He Doesn’t Build That Wall’

    The question every Democrat should be asking is, "Really? Then why the hell didn't the Great Dealmaker manage to get his wall approved when he had both houses of Congress?" I mean, shit, apparently this is some kind of national emergency! *Surely* a dealmaker of his caliber could have dredged up enough support from his own bicameral majority to do something about this terrible emergency!
    posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 7:53 PM on January 16, 2019 [47 favorites]


    WaPo: Pentagon seeks to expand scope and sophistication of U.S. missile defenses
    The Trump administration is seeking to expand the scope and sophistication of American missile defenses on a scale not seen since President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” initiative in a new strategy that President Trump plans to roll out personally on Thursday alongside military leaders at the Pentagon.
    posted by saysthis at 7:55 PM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Manu Raju: "Rudy Giuliani to @ChrisCuomo: “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign. I have not. I said the president of the United States,” adding that Trump “didn’t commit a crime.”"

    Rep. Ted Lieu:
    Changing stories of @realDonaldTrump team:

    -No contacts with Russia
    -Some contacts but only about adoption
    -Lots of contacts but no crimes
    -Crimes, but no collusion
    -Collusion, but Trump didn't know

    Based on this progression, the next defense is "it's technically not treason."
    posted by Doktor Zed at 8:02 PM on January 16, 2019 [86 favorites]


    Based on this progression, the next defense is "it's technically not treason."

    Tom Toles did a cartoon (which doesn't seem to be anywhere online) like that back in 1987, set at "The Richard M. Nixon Amusement Theme Park." It showed Ronald Reagan on roller skates going down a long ski jump (Nixon’s nose); as he progressed downhill, he went over a series of statements: "I Didn't Know... I Didn't Do It... I Didn't Break Any Law... The Law Didn't Apply To Me... I Am Not A Crook... [and finally] I Will Finish My Term."
    posted by LeLiLo at 8:39 PM on January 16, 2019 [10 favorites]


    All of my temporarily festering grievances of the past 24 hours of this shitfest just evaporated in the face of what Giuliani just did.

    Holy crap.
    posted by yesster at 8:41 PM on January 16, 2019 [5 favorites]


    I wondered about Pelosi's offhand comment concerning the SOTU that “He can make it from the Oval Office if he wants."   Why she tossed that out there seemed odd, but a comment elsewhere noted it's extra clever to throw that in there as a dismissive aside because he almost certainly would have done that himself and thought himself extra clever, but anything he now opts to do was first suggested by her.

    The really crazy bit, which to me feels absolutely bonkers, but given how far off the rails reality has slid these past two years…is that if they're all compromised—and it increasingly feels likely—we could end up with President Pelosi for a year or two.

    Reality is fuckin' whacked, y'all.
    posted by los pantalones del muerte at 8:45 PM on January 16, 2019 [32 favorites]


    it's extra clever to throw that in there as a dismissive aside because he almost certainly would have done that himself and thought himself extra clever

    Hah, no way. Trump is nothing without an audience, he simply can't operate that way. Speeching the SOTU is a formality, the real requirement is submitting it to Congress in some permanent form. If he can't use it to insult people to their faces he might as well stay home.
    posted by rhizome at 8:50 PM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Yoni Applebaum, in The Atlantic, making the case for impeachment.

    Interestingly, he notes that the impeachment process itself is valuable, even if the GOP in the Senate don't vote to convict: Nixon was driven out of office because the House impeachment proceedings revealed the tapes of Nixon conspiring to shut down the Watergate investigation.
    And what if the Senate does not convict Trump? The fifth benefit of impeachment is that, even when it fails to remove a president, it severely damages his political prospects. Johnson, abandoned by Republicans and rejected by Democrats, did not run for a second term. Nixon resigned, and Gerald Ford, his successor, lost his bid for reelection. Clinton weathered the process and finished out his second term, but despite his personal popularity, he left an electorate hungering for change. “Many, including Al Gore, think that the impeachment cost Gore the election,” Paul Rosenzweig, a former senior member of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s team, told me. “So it has consequences and resonates outside the narrow four corners of impeachment.” If Congress were to impeach Trump, whatever short-term surge he might enjoy as supporters rallied to his defense, his long-term political fate would likely be sealed.
    It's worth reading the entire thing.
    posted by suelac at 9:01 PM on January 16, 2019 [18 favorites]


    NYMag’s Yashar Ali has a theory about Guiliani’s off-the-rails interview: “This is always how Rudy gets ahead of news. He goes on cable tv, does a wild interview, and shares stuff that appears to be gaffe when it’s not. He did the same thing with the Stormy Daniels payments last year. It’s all intentional.”

    If he’s right, Rudy isn’t reacting to all the incriminating details in Mueller’s filing for Manafort’s sentencing; he’s trying to move the goalposts in anticipation of something worse from the SCO (or the press). Something interesting could drop between now and Grand Jury Friday.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 9:01 PM on January 16, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Giluliani, unprovoked, just shortened a multitude of future court proceedings by effectively conceding substantial stipulations of fact.

    The Best People
    posted by yesster at 9:02 PM on January 16, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Interestingly, he notes that the impeachment process itself is valuable.

    1000x yes. Look what the Benghazi and Email server hearings did to Clinton. If it created a shadow of a doubt in 1% of voters, it could have swung the election. Given the amount of dirt that's being pulled out on Trump, it's totally worth it, though I'd still wait for the Mueller report before starting the process.
    posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:06 PM on January 16, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Federal employee payment news:

    * Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) introduced a bill to require federal agencies to work directly with companies that contract to them to provide back pay for the employees caught up in the shutdown. Contractors are currently up a creek.

    * Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA) have introduced bills to prohibit landlords and creditors from taking action against federal workers or contractors who are hurt by the shutdown and cannot pay rent or repay loans.

    * The bill already passed that guaranteed federal employees their back pay? Apparently it makes it so they don't have to pass one of these back pay bills every shutdown, it just happens automatically.
    posted by Chrysostom at 9:08 PM on January 16, 2019 [31 favorites]


    so far giuliani’s tactic of “getting out in front of the news” appears to be a surefire method to repeatedly get run over by the news
    posted by murphy slaw at 9:11 PM on January 16, 2019 [24 favorites]


    los pantalones del muerte: "
    The really crazy bit, which to me feels absolutely bonkers, but given how far off the rails reality has slid these past two years…is that if they're all compromised—and it increasingly feels likely—we could end up with President Pelosi for a year or two.    "

    I thought this really unlikely but if The Cheeto or Pence are impeached a new VP has to be approved by both houses and it's hard to imagine Pelosi giving up a shot at the presidency.
    posted by Mitheral at 9:14 PM on January 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Federal employee payment news:

    I know there are real people who would benefit greatly from these bills, but I feel it's a moral hazard. I'm already coming to the conclusion that we are living Grover Norquist's wet dream and this is what it looks like when the baby is drowned, so if the reaction is to piecemeal a financial bridge for some squeaky wheels while the shutdown drags on for everybody else, well, I'm not a fan. This will only mean that a future shutdown will only affect those who the system didn't give a shit about this time around.
    posted by rhizome at 9:17 PM on January 16, 2019 [21 favorites]


    Selective relief to the systematic pain is the whole point of corruption.
    posted by yesster at 9:20 PM on January 16, 2019 [61 favorites]


    I should say: ...and there may not be a future shutdown if this is what the future of the US government is going to be, just a straight cutoff. Think about it: this may not end, and the government is just going to have to be built back up from scratch.
    posted by rhizome at 9:21 PM on January 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


    The Senate, by which I mean Mr Mitchie, will fight like hell to dodge any activity that might have the result of removing both Trump and Pence from office, including reviewing an impeachment already voted on by the house. (Can the Senate just ignore an impeachment? Who knows? Why, that might just take the courts a couple of years to figure out!)

    However, "criminal indictments in a couple of states" isn't under control of the Senate. While I think Cheeto Voldemort is in it for the long haul - he doesn't have the imagination to skip town and find a new exit plan - the Gileadist might well head for home and try to keep a low profile in order to avoid prison time if he thinks that's on the table. And the current House is not going to approve any new VP candidate that Trump would be willing to work with. (They might suggest Merrick Garland for the job.)
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:25 PM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


    The Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in 18-CV-2921 (JMF) and 18-CV-5025 (JMF) (Consolidated) run 277 pages, and I'm 63 pages in and riveted.


    God DAMN, it sure is riveting. I was going to skim it and got hooked. It's straight-up confirmation of the plain-as-day corruption in this administration and the great lengths they go to to conceal all the scheming, including bald-faced lying in court when the evidence is right there. I mean, we knew that, but JFC. Read it if you haven't.
    posted by ctmf at 9:40 PM on January 16, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Even with the bill, how long are federal workers supposed to show up without getting paid, even if they will eventually get paid when the shutdown ends, given that the shutdown does not appear to have a visible end.

    This is insane. How many of us could afford to go to work, pay childcare, travel costs like gas and tolls, feed our families and keep a roof without getting paid for a month. And these “essential” jobs have been expanded to include really low paid workers like abattoir inspectors and tsa agents. These folks make lesss than $40k a year, they can’t afford to subsidize Donny from Queens temper tantrum.

    At some point, demanding that these workers continue without pay with significant penalties for not showing up, becomes akin to indentured servitude.
    posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 10:53 PM on January 16, 2019 [43 favorites]


    At some point, demanding that these workers continue without pay with significant penalties for not showing up, becomes akin to indentured servitude.

    There are several lawsuits claiming exactly that. They even pointed out that P45 said this could take "months or years," and that it's entirely unreasonable (and illegal) to make people work for months or years without pay.

    (The shutdown lasts until Mitch stops it or the President is directly, personally inconvenienced by it. The Senate is the more likely breakpoint, and Mitch isn't going to face real pressure until there are airline shutdowns that cause irate donors to call him.)
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:15 PM on January 16, 2019 [13 favorites]


    the impeachment process itself is valuable.

    Absolutely, and I'm 100% confident that Pelosi will get Trump impeached. But whether he can be convicted in the Senate will drive the schedule. As long as she thinks the Senate will acquit him -- which is literally a verdict of "Not Guilty" - she should (and will) postpone impeachment until the last possible second, ideally about a month before the 2020 election so that the Senate won't even have time to vote against conviction.

    As soon as she can count the votes though -- and nobody counts votes better -- she'll move to impeach ASAP. (Unless she can figure a way to get Pence and Trump out simultaneously that is slower.)

    It's important to remember that there is no DOJ policy against indicting a sitting VICE president; this happened with Spiro Agnew in fact. So this is a card that Mueller can play.
    posted by msalt at 11:35 PM on January 16, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Trump's shutdown nightmare: A choice between the economy and the wall (CNN)

    Sen. John Kennedy, who flew on Air Force One with the President on Monday, said Trump is adamant that he's not budging. "He is a carnivore -- and on this one he believes he is right," the Louisiana Republican said.

    White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders tried Wednesday to squash a growing narrative that the shutdown could put a dent in the Trump economy.

    "We are focused on the long-term economic goals of the administration," Sanders said. "We have an incredibly strong economy, thanks to the President. We look forward to reopening the government, continuing to build on what we've done the last two years."

    Meanwhile, reality could not be reached for a comment.
    posted by valkane at 1:07 AM on January 17, 2019 [23 favorites]


    Trump Told New York Times Reporter That Russia Was ‘Falsely Accused of Election Interference’
    President Donald Trump reportedly does not believe the Russian Federation actually interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

    According to a New York Times report published late Tuesday, President Trump spoke with a reporter with the outlet on July 8, 2017 and insisted that Russia was “falsely accused” of meddling in the 2016 election contest. [...]

    Trump’s opinion that the Russian government was falsely implicated in the 2016 election interference scandal was apparently buoyed by conversations he had with Putin over the course of the Hamburg G20 summit. The 45th’s president takeaway from those talks was reportedly that American intelligence wouldn’t have caught on to official Russian involvement if such interference had actually occurred–due to Russia’s rumored expertise with hacking.

    “He said that he raised the election hacking three times and that Mr. Putin denied involvement,” the Times report continues. “But he said Mr. Putin also told him that ‘if we did, we wouldn’t have gotten caught because we’re professionals.’ Mr. Trump said: ‘I thought that was a good point because they are some of the best in the world’ at hacking.”
    I think that's a new level, even for Mango Unchained: "They didn't do it, and if they did, we wouldn't find evidence, so if we do find evidence it was them that only proves they didn't do it!"
    posted by PontifexPrimus at 2:14 AM on January 17, 2019 [48 favorites]


    I apologise if it's becoming a habit, but S. Kendzior and A. Chalupa offer such clarity that every new episode of their Gaslit Nation podcast merits focussed attention. In their latest, The Comey Effect, there's:

    - as per previous thoughts (they quote D. Drezner and parts of Kendzior's own book) on the 2013 government shutdown, reasoning that this shutdown is intentional, a play for social breakdown, and is shaping up to be the actual endgame of the GOP-enabled Trump kleptocracy;

    - given what is known about Trump spending time dedicated to Fox, Twitter and other media distraction ops (vis. surreal fast-food photo-op), a question: who's doing the actual running of the country - to which they float&discuss the chilling answer: Jared & Ivanka;

    - re-reading Comey in the least gaslit perspective possible, recasts both him and Ben tick-tick Wittes as figures worthy of steelier skepticism and much closer inspection;

    and I'm only about a third of the way in...
    posted by progosk at 2:45 AM on January 17, 2019 [8 favorites]


    "It's a witch hunt!" says man in pointy hat, clutching black cat, as he whizzes past at ten thousand feet on broomstick...
    posted by Devonian at 3:37 AM on January 17, 2019 [8 favorites]


    WSJ: Michael Cohen hired an IT firm to rig early CNBC, Drudge polls in favor of Trump. The contractor says he got much less than the $50,000 promised.
    In early 2015, a man who runs a small technology company showed up at Trump Tower to collect $50,000 for having helped Michael Cohen, then Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, try to rig online polls in his boss’s favor before the presidential campaign.

    In his Trump Organization office, Mr. Cohen surprised the man, John Gauger, by giving him a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter, Mr. Gauger said.
    I don't have a WSJ login, but there's more there.

    Also, in that Giuliani interview, I don't think I've seen this quoted yet:
    There is not a single bit of evidence the president of the United States committed the only crime you can commit here: conspiring with the Russians to hack the DNC.
    So he's now collapsing the goalposts and melting them down to make challenge coins.
    posted by pjenks at 4:06 AM on January 17, 2019 [55 favorites]


    Guiliani, having been a former prosecutor, is well aware that there are many other ways in which the publicly known facts could implicate Trump in criminal acts. Bribery is a good start.

    I'm beginning to think that there really is something to this "prion disease" joke. It seems like a large fraction of those who come in contact with Trump lose their critical thinking skills within a few months. If the CDC weren't shut down, I'd be agitating for a quarantine pending investigation.

    More seriously, a better explanation for reasonably intelligent people acting like morons is that they're in over their head and are being blackmailed. Criminals, as Rudy used to say, are dumb. He just didn't realize that he'd get just as dumb once he started committing felonies. Stress is a bitch that way, it makes people stupid.
    posted by wierdo at 4:18 AM on January 17, 2019 [25 favorites]


    Why aren't people calling the workers in trump's shutdown who forced to go back to work without pay, "forced laborers"?
    posted by lalochezia at 5:06 AM on January 17, 2019 [11 favorites]


    the only crime you can commit here

    This is not an entirely new strategy, but it is interesting that they are doubling down on it: find some crime that Trump is technically not guilty of, and insist that that crime is the only legitimate object of the investigation
    posted by thelonius at 5:12 AM on January 17, 2019 [6 favorites]


    find some crime that Trump is technically not guilty of

    What are they going for there? Degree-of-difficulty points?
    posted by flabdablet at 5:15 AM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Has Trump attacked NPR yet?
    Poll: Trump Approval Down, Slips With Base.

    While the longest government shutdown in U.S. history continues, President Trump's approval rating is down, and there are cracks showing with his base.

    A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds Trump's approval rating down and his disapproval rating up from a month ago. He currently stands at 39 percent approve, 53 disapprove — a 7-point net change from December when his rating was 42 percent approve, 49 percent disapprove.

    And the movement has come from within key portions of his base. He is:
    • Down significantly among suburban men, a net-positive approval rating of 51-to-39 percent to a net-negative of 42 percent approve, 48 percent disapprove. That's a net change of down 18 percentage points;
    • Down a net of 13 points among white evangelicals, from 73-to-17 percent approve to 66-to-23 percent approve;
    • Down a net of 10 points among Republicans, from 90-to-7 percent approve to 83-to-10 percent;
    • Down marginally among white men without a college degree, from 56-to-34 percent approve to 50-to-35 percent approve, a net change downward of 7 points.
    It’s taken ... all this ... to get there, but it’s starting to look like Trump’s Base may have finally figured out they don’t actually like “winning”.
    posted by notyou at 5:50 AM on January 17, 2019 [28 favorites]


    Has Trump attacked NPR yet?
    I doubt Trump even knows of NPR's existence.
    posted by Harry Caul at 5:54 AM on January 17, 2019 [14 favorites]


    There's a number of very bad Washington Traditions that Trump is shredding, or are being destroyed because of him, and while that certainly doesn't justify or excuse the rest of his Presidency, we really ought to see if we can keep some of them dead.

    The White House Correspondent's dinner is the absolute worst and most revolting bit of self congratulatory back patting and represents the very worst in the way of stenography as journalism and access above real reporting in America. Purely by accident and out of bad motives, Trump did a great thing by skipping it and all future President should follow suit. Ideally the entire dinner would be ended, but at the very least no one from the White House should ever attend.

    And ending the tradition of giving the President a huge political ad in the guise of informing Congress about the state of the union is also a good thing. The Constitutional requirement is a bizarre artifact of the past, it really should be eliminated but isn't worth the fuss and bother of pushing through a Constitutional amendment, so let's just revert it to the old style of the President issuing a written statement to Congress and have done.

    The televised State of the Union address is nothing but an opportunity for the President to praise himself and his Party, bring up a bunch of sympathetic people who love him, and get in some jabs at the other Party. It's worthless and should be eliminated as the waste of time and exercise in publicly supported partisanship it is.

    In exchange, we should steal a tradition from the UK and have regularly scheduled, monthly by preference, Question Time for any Congressperson who wants to ask uncomfortable questions of the parties in power, on the record and under oath. That'd be something truly useful and worth having, while the State of the Union Address is just pointless showmanship.

    Let's use the dumpster fire of the Trump administration to get some useful stuff done if we can.
    posted by sotonohito at 6:21 AM on January 17, 2019 [63 favorites]


    Nobody's putting a gun to anyone's head and demanding they either praise or condemn AOC. I think folks need to not let Republican freakouts over her infect their perspective. Let her do her job, and let her actual constituents decide if she's doing it well.

    We, and Democrats generally, and the journalists who cover them, would do well to remember that Republican freakouts are never, ever, ever made in good faith. What actual principles have Republicans demonstrated that make them creditable for criticizing anyone else? They tolerated Rep. Steve King's racism until it became a political liability. They tolerated Trump's, and not just Trump's, multiple affairs -- the representatives who impeached Clinton were carrying on affairs of their own at the time, for goodness' sakes.

    Recall that AOC first came to our notice when the Democrats of her district replaced a long serving but less liberal Democrat with her. Republicans are running to the fainting couch over AOC's socialism not because it's a terrible idea but because she's ruining their decades of work to have not even Democrats be able to discuss more liberal policy options, and it turns out that those policies, unlike the Republicans', are popular.
    posted by Gelatin at 6:25 AM on January 17, 2019 [83 favorites]


    Maybe these are people upset he just hasn’t effectively harmed many minority groups lately. I am not joking.

    This checks out on Trump Regrets (Twitter), which tracks Trump voters who, uh, regret their vote for Trump. The majority of the stuff retweeted there is people who are shocked (shocked!) to learn that Trump is decidedly un-presidential, ignorant, and dishonest. But then there are the people who regret their vote because he hasn't yet cut off all non-white immigration, hasn't closed the mosques, hasn't jailed Obama, etc. Either way, it's an interesting cross-section of the wide range of Trump's dissatisfied voters (who use Twitter, anyhow), and for some of them, the cruelty is definitely the point.

    /anecdata
    posted by Rykey at 6:25 AM on January 17, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Per WSJ tweet: "Michael Cohen hired an IT firm to rig early CNBC, Drudge polls in favor of Trump. The contractor says he got much less than the $50,000 promised."

    50k to find digital footprints of cabana-boy shenanigans, plus a tiny helping of "game the polls." Nice work if you can get it, I guess...
    posted by MonkeyToes at 6:36 AM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


    and the IT firm was led by the CIO of Falwell Jr.'s Liberty University. This is my surprised face :-|
    posted by mcstayinskool at 6:40 AM on January 17, 2019 [21 favorites]


    WSJ: Michael Cohen hired an IT firm to rig early CNBC, Drudge polls in favor of Trump. The contractor says he got much less than the $50,000 promised.

    Jim Sciutto (CNN)
    Breaking: In CNN Exclusive, Cohen confirms WSJ story and directly implicates the President: “What I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of Donald J. Trump. I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it”

    ---

    So yet again, the "rigged polls" bullshit was all projection.
    posted by chris24 at 6:49 AM on January 17, 2019 [74 favorites]


    Online "polls" are as useful as this deed to the Brooklyn Bridge I can sell you. That news orgs report on them is just another shameful add it to the pile.
    posted by OnTheLastCastle at 6:57 AM on January 17, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Before this is over, Republicans will be defending collusion as fact, and necessary to defeat Clinton, who of course would've been worse. Their base is there already, and where the base goes, all the rest will follow.

    This is your occasional reminder that 20 short years ago, nearly all Americans agreed that torture was a moral monstrosity that only America's most scurrilous enemies did, until George W. Bush's administration's incompetence and cowardice led them to torture prisoners, after which Republicans, faced with sticking to principles or defending their president, wholeheartedly embraced the practice.

    Of torture, that is. We are not obligated to listen to them complain about anything we do. They don't have the moral standing to be taken seriously.
    posted by Gelatin at 6:58 AM on January 17, 2019 [77 favorites]


    He didn't.

    From the WSJ story:

    "Prosecutors wrote in a charging document that when Mr. Cohen asked Trump Organization executives for a $130,000 reimbursement for a hush payment he made to Stephanie Clifford, the porn actress known as Stormy Daniels, he also scrawled a handwritten note asking for $50,000 he said he spent on “tech services” to aid Mr. Trump’s campaign. Prosecutors didn’t name the company providing those services, but people familiar with the matter say it was RedFinch."

    There was speculation when this was first revealed that Cohen had used to it pay Russian hackers as per the Steele dossier (still a confusing allegation to me, since we know the Russian hackers were GRU agents paid by the GRU.) Now we know that it was really for.
    posted by OnceUponATime at 7:05 AM on January 17, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Bloomberg. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is the Darling of the Left, Nightmare of the Right (note, this is less about AOC and more about how in American history, radical ideas are what have pushed the needle on major changes in the political landscape, not intended to be another AOC bandwagon post).

    What Ocasio-Cortez understands is that getting an idea talked about, even unfavorably, is a necessary, if insufficient, step on the path to adoption. (President Trump also gets this.) “It’s the easiest thing to say, ‘No, we can’t change anything,’ ” says Eric Foner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who recently retired from Columbia University. “Most of the big ideas in American history started among radical groups who were told, ‘No, you’re never going to be able to achieve that.’ ” Foner sees parallels between the strategies of today’s left-leaning Democrats and the radical Republicans who fought slavery before the Civil War, “which was put out an agenda, be aware that you can’t just accomplish it all at once, obviously, but change the political discourse by pushing your agenda
    posted by bluesky43 at 7:11 AM on January 17, 2019 [27 favorites]


    I for one am massively enjoying the up-to-11 burner setting on the #wheresmitch twits out there.
    He’s not in the cloak room
    He’s not in the Capitol
    He’s not in the Russel building
    He’s not on the floor of the Senate

    And 800,000 people still don’t have their paychecks - so #WheresMitch?

    and

    We went to his office, he wasn’t there. We went to the Senate floor, and he wasn’t there. Tomorrow he’s heading out of town on an “issues retreat” with his @SenateGOP colleagues. There’s no more urgent issue than calling for a vote in the senate to #EndTheShutdown #WheresMitch
    posted by yoga at 7:12 AM on January 17, 2019 [59 favorites]


    Because I have WSJ access at work I would like to share a few other juicy details from that article...
    Mr. Gauger owns RedFinch Solutions LLC and is chief information officer at Liberty University in Virginia, where Jerry Falwell Jr., an evangelical leader and fervent Trump supporter, is president.
    ...
    The connection between Messrs. Trump and Cohen and Liberty University dates at least to 2012, when Mr. Falwell invited Mr. Trump to give a speech and Mr. Cohen accompanied him. Soon after, Mr. Gauger was introduced to Mr. Cohen, helped him set up an Instagram account and gave him his cellphone number should he need more assistance, he said.

    Over the next several years, Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Gauger for help with services intended to elevate positive content in internet-search results for himself and for friends, Mr. Gauger said. While he didn’t pay for most of what Mr. Gauger did, Mr. Cohen often promised to connect RedFinch with executives at Mr. Trump’s hotel and golf-course businesses, though he never did, Mr. Gauger said.

    In January 2014, Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Gauger to help Mr. Trump score well in a CNBC online poll to identify the country’s top business leaders by writing a computer script to repeatedly vote for him. Mr. Gauger was unable to get Mr. Trump into the top 100 candidates. In February 2015, as Mr. Trump prepared to enter the presidential race, Mr. Cohen asked him to do the same for a Drudge Report poll of potential Republican candidates, Mr. Gauger said. Mr. Trump ranked fifth, with about 24,000 votes, or 5% of the total."
    And these bits:
    In his Trump Organization office, Mr. Cohen surprised the man, John Gauger, by giving him a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter, Mr. Gauger said.
    ...
    After making the cash payment at Trump Tower, Mr. Cohen kept saying he would pay the balance of the $50,000 but never did, Mr. Gauger said. Mr. Cohen also promised to get RedFinch work for Mr. Trump’s campaign. He set up two phone calls for Mr. Gauger with campaign officials, who didn’t hire him, he said.
    And best of alll...
    During the presidential race, Mr. Cohen also asked Mr. Gauger to create a Twitter account called @WomenForCohen. The account, created in May 2016 and run by a female friend of Mr. Gauger, described Mr. Cohen as a “sex symbol,” praised his looks and character, and promoted his appearances and statements boosting Mr. Trump’s candidacy.
    ....
    Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Gauger to create the @WomenForCohen account, still active in 2019, to elevate his profile. The account’s profile says it is run by “Women who love and support Michael Cohen. Strong, pit bull, sex symbol, no nonsense, business oriented and ready to make a difference!”
    posted by OnceUponATime at 7:14 AM on January 17, 2019 [61 favorites]


    Mr. Gauger owns RedFinch Solutions LLC and is chief information officer at Liberty University in Virginia,

    What the ever-loving shit is this person doing in this CIO role if he's got time to run these outside shenanigans? I have spent a little less than half my career in university IT operations and I have never seen someone at the upper levels who could fap about for half their workweek (at minimum) on other random crap. It's a damned miracle when they have fewer than 20 hours worth of meetings, either individual or regular committee sessions, scheduled in a week. Yet more evidence that LU is more grift operation than anything else.
    posted by phearlez at 7:22 AM on January 17, 2019 [40 favorites]


    Louie Gohmert says Steve King raised a fair question; Erin Mansfield, Tyler Morning Telegraph

    It's not really a surprise when Gohmert Gohmerts, and I harbor no delusions that the voters in this otherwise lovely part of the country will turn on him, but ... maybe this?
    posted by mcdoublewide at 7:28 AM on January 17, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Gauger to help Mr. Trump score well in a CNBC online poll...by writing a computer script to repeatedly vote for him. Mr. Gauger was unable to get Mr. Trump into the top 100 candidates. In February 2015...Mr. Cohen asked him to do the same for a Drudge Report poll of potential Republican candidates. Mr. Trump ranked fifth, with about 24,000 votes, or 5% of the total.

    "Hey, get me that guy who got us in the top 200 on the phone to rig another poll!"

    Honestly, I wonder if he actually did nothing and just let the polls play out. Pretty easy way to make $12K!
    posted by mikepop at 7:35 AM on January 17, 2019 [13 favorites]


    There was speculation when this was first revealed that Cohen had used to it pay Russian hackers as per the Steele dossier (still a confusing allegation to me, since we know the Russian hackers were GRU agents paid by the GRU.) Now we know that it was really for.

    Cohen probably had to pay cutouts for Russian hackers.
    posted by diogenes at 7:35 AM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


    So far it seems like Michael Cohen has only publicly admitted to stuff he has been caught dead to rights on (the Stormy Daniels payoff, this weird $50k for tech services), but the astounding Micheal Cohen operational details those episodes have revealed (forex from Stormy Daniels that he habitually taped all his convos, and learning here he paid a tech vendor with a sack of cash and a signed boxing glove(!!!)) sorta indicate there is a lot more to Michael Cohen than meets the eye. And I hope we get to see more of it soon.
    posted by notyou at 7:40 AM on January 17, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Doktor Zed: Trump is a proud counterpuncher, but when it comes to Pelosi, he has pulled back on his jabs. That is deliberate, aides and advisers said, because the president believes she would help protect him from impeachment and because he considers her more reasonable than other Democrats.

    Well played, Pelosi, well played. I look forward to Donny's "Et tu, Nancy?" moment.

    Anyway.

    Shutdown Will Be Worse For Economy Than First Thought, White House Says (NPR, January 16, 2019)
    The partial government shutdown is inflicting far greater damage on the U.S. economy than the Trump administration previously estimated, the White House acknowledged.

    President Trump's economists have now doubled projections of how much economic growth is being lost each week.

    They originally estimated the partial shutdown would subtract 0.1 percentage point from economic growth every two weeks. Now, they see that loss happening every week the shutdown lasts, according to a CNBC report citing an unnamed official.

    The economy grew at a 2.8 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to an estimate by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

    The partial shutdown — the longest in U.S. history — is in its fourth week.

    On Tuesday, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett acknowledged that the partial shutdown's economic effects are a "little bit worse" than the administration first thought.
    Emphasis mine, because that's bold of an economist to say that when something is twice as bad as projected, it's only "a little bit worse" than previously expected.
    posted by filthy light thief at 7:43 AM on January 17, 2019 [25 favorites]


    > because the president believes she would help protect him from impeachment and because he considers her more reasonable than other Democrats.

    Well played, Pelosi, well played. I look forward to Donny's "Et tu, Nancy?" moment.

    I'd argue he's not entirely wrong. On some level Trump senses that Pelosi is an Operator and that there's a path you could walk where she'd take something like impeachment off the table to get what she wants in the larger picture. I say that with respect for Pelosi's skills and with a belief that it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable, based on the near endless discussions we've had here in the past about the reality of impeachment in the House and removal in the Senate blah blah blah.

    What is sort of boggling about this, though, is any belief he might have that he can actually make a deal like that. He's accurately sussed her out, but is completely lacking awareness of himself. He doesn't have enough he can or is willing to give her to meet any such "price." It's art of the deal Dunning-Kruger. He doesn't know how outclassed he is.
    posted by phearlez at 8:17 AM on January 17, 2019 [16 favorites]


    I'd probably get looked at funny going to my credit union and expecting to just take 13k IN CASH out.

    Partly because you'd be causing them to fill out paperwork. Which, again, tells you a lot about what you need to know about this sort of thing.
    posted by phearlez at 8:21 AM on January 17, 2019 [10 favorites]


    It's not normal for A LAWYER to have this much cash just, lying around.

    I don't know about New York State, but my jurisdiction specifically prohibits lawyers from handling much cash, out of concern for money laundering. I think the threshold is $2K? Above that, and there are lots of reporting requirements which are simply too much bother. "Come back with a bank draft or certified cheque."
    posted by Capt. Renault at 8:22 AM on January 17, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Well played, Pelosi, well played. I look forward to Donny's "Et tu, Nancy?" moment.

    I'd argue he's not entirely wrong. On some level Trump senses that Pelosi is an Operator and that there's a path you could walk where she'd take something like impeachment off the table to get what she wants in the larger picture.

    Sorry, just picking myself up off the floor after entertaining an endgame where dumb old donny proves himself even fuckign dumber than we all already think he is by getting tricked into this deal. . . like why would you negotiate in good faith if you were Nancy here. Is he gonna contest an impeachment on the basis of "she promised me she wouldnt!"
    posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 8:24 AM on January 17, 2019 [11 favorites]


    It's not normal for A LAWYER to have this much cash just, lying around.

    In Breaking Bad, Saul Goodman keeps stacks of cash hidden behind a wall in his office.

    Or were you referring to lawyers that don't work for organized crime?
    posted by duoshao at 8:34 AM on January 17, 2019 [21 favorites]


    > This is insane. How many of us could afford to go to work, pay childcare, travel costs like gas and tolls, feed our families and keep a roof without getting paid for a month.

    My school district sent out an e-mail this morning reminding people that "households of furloughed employees may be eligible for free or reduced-price school meal benefits."
    posted by The corpse in the library at 8:48 AM on January 17, 2019 [9 favorites]


    getting an idea talked about, even unfavorably, is a necessary, if insufficient, step on the path to adoption

    In the mid-to-late 80s, even the hardcore activists didn't think same-sex marriage was going to happen in our lifetime. It was one of those vague utopian scifi concepts, along with wrist phones and going shopping by pushing a few buttons.

    Keep pushing the concepts of "Medicare for all," "free college education," and "zero carbon emissions." We won't actually know if they're viable until everyone thinks they might be, and starts discussing which parts can work. Right now, we're still at the stage where the majority of the population thinks they're so impossible that they won't even discuss what parts we can do.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:49 AM on January 17, 2019 [93 favorites]


    I'd probably get looked at funny going to my credit union and expecting to just take 13k IN CASH out.

    I was transferring some cash between accounts, asked the bank for a money order thing-y for a sum above but on the order of 13k. They wanted some ridiculous sum for it. So, I asked how much time they needed to give it to me in cash (banks here typically ask for 24 hours notice for large cash sums). They gave the the money order for free :)

    That is how much they hate large sums of cash, they gave me a service for free. Canadian banks really really hate that.
    posted by Bovine Love at 8:51 AM on January 17, 2019 [26 favorites]


    More evidence that Pelosi is boss: Trump lashes out at Schumer: So funny to watch him 'groveling'.
    posted by Slothrup at 8:51 AM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Schoolyard Bully tactic no 3. : got punched? step back, pick on the next kid.
    posted by Harry Caul at 8:54 AM on January 17, 2019 [28 favorites]


    I'm beginning to think that there really is something to this "prion disease" joke. It seems like a large fraction of those who come in contact with Trump lose their critical thinking skills within a few months.

    One's critical thinking skills shut down when the interpretation of evidence is predetermined, the evidence notwithstanding. None of the Republican policies work as advertised, and many are unpopular, and so Republicans and their so-called "think tanks" start with their preferred outcome and work backwards. The result, naturally, won't stand up to critical thinking.

    For the media, the predetermined paradigm is "both sides are equal," so they can't critically evaluate the vast and growing amount of evidence to the contrary. They're unable to apply critical thinking (for example, "Yo say you're sure Trump is willing to compromise? Exactly how?") to the claims of Republicans and their apologists, by design.

    Liberals and Democrats in general prefer to determine policy on a more rational basis, and set their policy according to what the evidence suggests. Look at market-based solutions like cap-and-trade -- it might not be the Democrats' first choice, but it works, so they embrace it; on the other hand, adopting it is seen as a "win" for the Democrats, so Republicans oppose it even though it was basically their idea. See also: Obamacare.
    posted by Gelatin at 8:59 AM on January 17, 2019 [22 favorites]


    That is how much they hate large sums of cash

    As someone who was once responsible for keeping the cash stocked in a bank branch - there's just not that much cash in the branch at one time. That amount could be knocking out in the neighborhood of 10% of what they had on hand, and there's usually one shipment a week.
    posted by waitingtoderail at 9:16 AM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


    NBC: Thousands more migrant kids separated from parents under Trump than previously reported :

    Thousands more immigrant children were separated from their parents under the Trump administration than previously reported and whether they have been reunified is unknown, according to a report released Thursday by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services.

    The report found a spike in immigrant family separations beginning in the summer of 2017, a year prior to the "zero tolerance" policy that prosecuted immigrant parents who crossed the border illegally while holding their children separately in HHS custody. The families separated under zero tolerance were represented in a class action lawsuit, where a federal judge ordered that the government reunify them.

    However, the government had no such order to reunify children separated prior to "zero tolerance." Some may have been released to family or nonrelative sponsors, but it is not known how many have been reunified.

    HHS officials did not keep track of whether children they were releasing from their custody had been separated from their parents at the border or whether they crossed the border without a parent.

    "We don’t have any information on those children who were released prior to the court order," an official from the HHS Office of Inspector General told reporters on a call Thursday.

    The officials said they based their estimate of "thousands" of separated children on interviews with HHS staff, but they were not able to provide a more specific number.

    "Thousands of children may have been separated during an influx that began in 2017, before the accounting required by the Court, and HHS has faced challenges in identifying separated children," the report said.
    posted by Emmy Rae at 9:16 AM on January 17, 2019 [41 favorites]


    It's also worth noting how often Donald Trump personally tweeted about how well he was doing in that kind of poll, citing them as 'proof' he won the primary debates, comments that were then laundered into Actual News Items by the conservative press.

    ...which the so-called "liberal media" dutifully picked up, because as Fox News/NPR correspondent Mara Liasson said, "it's out there." It boggles the mind that as late as 2016, after failing so spectacularly over the election of George W. Bush and the second Iraq War, the national political press still allows itself to be bamboozled by pretending outlets like the Drudge Report, Fox News, and conservative columnists from the WaPo to the NYT to especially the Wall Street Journal have any integrity or credibility.

    If I had stayed in journalism long enough to be a managing editor, one of my reporters reading the Drudge Report would be a firing offense, as evidence of hopeless incompetence.
    posted by Gelatin at 9:19 AM on January 17, 2019 [12 favorites]


    FCC asks court for delay in case that could restore net neutrality rules -- FCC asks court to delay oral arguments, citing government shutdown. (Jon Brodkin for Ars Technica, Jan. 16, 2018)
    The Federal Communications Commission yesterday asked judges to delay oral arguments in a court case that could restore Obama-era net neutrality rules.

    Oral arguments are scheduled for February 1 at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which will rule on a challenge to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's repeal of net neutrality rules. The court confirmed this week on its website that its schedule "will not be affected, at least initially, by the partial shutdown of the federal government" that began on December 22, 2018. The court has enough funding to operate for now and said that "[o]ral arguments on the calendar for the month of January and February will go on as scheduled."

    But the FCC, which is partially shut down, filed a motion yesterday asking the court to postpone oral arguments in the net neutrality case.

    "The Commission recognizes that the Court has indicated that arguments in February will proceed as scheduled," the FCC said in its filing [PDF]. "However, due to the recent lapse in funding for the FCC and the relevant component of the Department of Justice, the Commission believes that, in an abundance of caution, it should move for an extension to ensure that attorneys may fully prepare for argument."

    The FCC cited guidance from the Department of Justice, which "instructs government attorneys to request that active [civil] cases be postponed until funding is available." But the FCC said its attorneys will prepare for the oral arguments if they must take place on February 1.

    "The Commission respectfully requests prompt resolution of its motion so that it may fully prepare for argument in the event that the Court intends to hear the argument as scheduled on February 1, 2019," the FCC filing said.

    Broadband industry trade groups that pushed for the net neutrality repeal did not oppose the FCC's motion to delay oral arguments.

    Case too important for delay, trade group says

    The FCC motion for a delay was opposed by Incompas, an industry group that is one of the petitioners seeking reversal of the FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules.

    "[T]here is a need for a timely decision in this important matter," Incompas wrote in a court filing [PDF] today. "Due to the FCC's misguided and unlawful repeal of the network neutrality rules, consumers are at risk of substantial harm from Internet Service Providers ('ISPs'), which may now interfere with access to lawful Internet content without the restraint of the net neutrality rules. The repeal of the rules also threatens edge providers, as they are facing the risk of blocking, throttling, and other practices by ISPs, which may have services competing with edge provider services."

    Incompas pointed to legal precedents from a previous government shutdown in which court cases continued. During the October 2013 shutdown that lasted 17 days, "the court received Government motions to stay oral argument in at least sixteen cases," the Incompas filing said. "Every one of these motions was denied; and every time, the Government then participated in oral argument."
    It will be interesting to see if this precedent stands.
    posted by filthy light thief at 9:33 AM on January 17, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Some may have been released to family or nonrelative sponsors, but it is not known how many have been reunified.

    HHS officials did not keep track of whether children they were releasing from their custody had been separated from their parents at the border or whether they crossed the border without a parent.

    Forced disappearances. Investigation of and justice for the GOP's crimes against humanity must be a top priority for any future Democratic administration if they're to be considered a legitimate government. Looking "forward, not backward" would be tantamount to complicity.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 9:33 AM on January 17, 2019 [48 favorites]


    In the mid-to-late 80s, even the hardcore activists didn't think same-sex marriage was going to happen in our lifetime. It was one of those vague utopian scifi concepts, along with wrist phones and going shopping by pushing a few buttons.

    It's worth noting that Reagan started the wealth disparity train rolling with his tax cuts -- after that, the american worker's salary, blue or white collar, basically saw no gain at all for the vast amounts of increasing productivity in the US economy -- but no one in the national media talked about it until Occupy Wall Street. Whatever their movement's actual goals may have been, they succeeded in moving the Overton window and getting their agenda into the national conversation.

    Cohen reportedly handed this dude a Walmart bag with 12-13k in cash.

    Sufferin' catfish, not even a briefcase. These people have no class at all.
    posted by Gelatin at 9:37 AM on January 17, 2019 [23 favorites]


    Mod note: ALERT ALERT we are trying a thing. There is now a Hyucking Hyuck thread for y'all to joke, riff, and workshop your best Twitter material in. Please go check it out!
    posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:38 AM on January 17, 2019 [78 favorites]


    WaPo's Aaron Blake counts ten times that Rudy Giuliani contradicted Trump team’s past collusion denials, e.g.

    —Hope Hicks: “It never happened. There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.” (11/16)
    —Sarah Sanders: “This is a non-story because, to the best of our knowledge, no contacts took place.” (2/17)
    —Donald Trump Jr.: “Did I meet with people that were Russian? I’m sure, I’m sure I did. . . . But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly none that I was representing the campaign in any way, shape or form.” (3/17)
    —Donald Trump: “There is no collusion, and even if there was, it’s not a crime.” (12/17)

    WaPo's Philip Rucker: “Just in statement from Rudy Giuliani: "I represent only President Trump not the Trump campaign. There was no collusion by President Trump in any way, shape or form. Likewise, I have no knowledge of any collusion by any of the thousands of people who worked on the campaign."” (pic w/full statement)
    posted by Doktor Zed at 9:45 AM on January 17, 2019 [14 favorites]


    @StevenTDennis: Total jailbreak on House Deripaska vote. Vast majority of Republicans voting with Democrats and against Trump administration. Free vote because Senate effort to keep sanctions already blocked by 42 senators. Final vote was 362-53! Who says you can't get a veto-proof majority for something Trump doesn't want?

    It's a meaningless vote, since the Senate already blocked it, but wow that's still a commanding majority.

    Also, five-term Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA) is resigning. He was a Trump campaign co-chair in PA and just won re-election in November. He had been nominated for Drug Czar, but withdrew his name after it turned out he changed the standard for combating opioid abuse to benefit drug companies.

    It sure feels like Republicans are seeing the writing on the wall.
    posted by zachlipton at 9:49 AM on January 17, 2019 [67 favorites]


    Keep pushing the concepts of "Medicare for all," "free college education," and "zero carbon emissions." We won't actually know if they're viable until everyone thinks they might be, and starts discussing which parts can work.

    So much this. You have to aim for the moon, decide we're going, and then start figuring out how it can be done. Our world is created from our imaginations, good or bad, every single day. Once a person understands what the reality of something like 'Medicare for all' would be, and how it can impact their life so positively, day-to-day, their imagination is engaged and now maybe they're thinking 'that would be great, can we make that happen?'* You don't change someone's politics first, a person's politics change when the goals they want change--politics is the means, not the end; it's the hammer you use to build a house, but it's not the house. Persuade someone's imagination first, and then you simply have to convince them that your means is the most effective.

    The Republican party has understood this much better for decades now, but has chosen to incite fear and anger in people's imaginations instead of anything genuinely humanistic. Artists know how to do this well, maybe Democrats need to start hiring writers and painters and songwriters and designers, and stop hiring so many data-crunchers and poll-testers, because the scientifique approach they've been trying since Reagan is just not working.

    *(I've even opened the minds of a few hardcore Trump-y Republicans by asking them to consider how amazing it would be for employers if they didn't have to worry or think about the provision and expense of healthcare for any employees--like, imagine a world where employers are only responsible for jobs and direct compensation for work. Sometimes they really consider it and are all 'that would be pretty nice, actually' and I'm all 'HA, gotcha'.)
    posted by LooseFilter at 9:54 AM on January 17, 2019 [74 favorites]


    Short update from Arizona: Voters will decide in a special election in 2020 who will serve the remainder of John McCain's term. (Republican Martha McSally is currently appointed to the seat; McCain died after the deadline for a special election in 2018.) 314 Action, a group that helps scientists run for office, is attempting to draft Mark Kelly to run. Kelly is a former astronaut, former Navy pilot, and husband of Gabby Giffords. The Latino Victory Fund is attempting to draft Ruben Gallego (AZ-07) to run. Gallego is a two-term House rep and once founded a group with the goal of recalling Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Grant Woods, a former Republican Arizona Attorney General and former chief of staff for McCain is also considering running as a Democrat.
    posted by compartment at 9:59 AM on January 17, 2019 [21 favorites]


    Gallego is my congressman and I’d be thrilled to call him my senator.
    posted by Superplin at 10:18 AM on January 17, 2019 [8 favorites]


    CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr: “Today at Pentagon in front of top commanders Trump blamed what he called Democratic "fringe" and "radical" left. and Speaker Pelosi for not acting on his border plans. Entire room stayed silent and did not applaud partisan remarks.”

    She reports further CNN: Trump Is Fraying Nerves Inside the Pentagon
    Two years into his presidency, Donald Trump is fueling unprecedented uncertainty and anxiety inside the Pentagon. In private conversations over the past month, many of them unsolicited, more than a dozen key military officers, enlisted personnel and senior civilians have expressed worry and concern to CNN. None of the officials have spoken publicly about this, as military law prohibits active-duty personnel from criticizing a sitting president.

    It's not just Trump's unpredictable decision making that has officials on edge, it's also his penchant for politicizing the military— something that's come into focus in recent months as he's struggled to fulfill his campaign promise to crack down on immigration and build a border wall. His decision to draw down troops in Syria and his claims that ISIS is defeated have also rankled military commanders who felt it wasn't well thought out.

    Some of the highest-ranking officers say there is a new atmosphere of unease inside the Pentagon, particularly among some of the most senior ranks, over the President's inclination to use the military to achieve certain partisan policy objectives. Behind the scenes officials are trying to keep it all at bay. "The amount of time we have to spend making sure our statements and what we say is apolitical is astronomically higher than ever before," one senior military officer told CNN.
    MEGATHREAD NOTE: A new draft for the next USPolitics FPP is ready on the MeFi wiki for people to contribute/collaborate.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 10:25 AM on January 17, 2019 [38 favorites]


    Add “right wing homeschool movement” to the list of things the Russian government has probably infiltrated.

    Thinkprogress: The latest in Russian infiltration: America’s right wing homeschooling movement.

    Um. It’s beginning to look a lot like many acts of aggressive espionage / sabotage adding up to actual, you know, acts of war.
    posted by schadenfrau at 10:30 AM on January 17, 2019 [73 favorites]


    None of the officials have spoken publicly about this, as military law prohibits active-duty personnel from criticizing a sitting president.
    Ahem. No, it fucking doesn't, CNN and/or Barbara Starr. Military law prohibits active-duty officers from speaking contemptuously about a sitting president, and specifically allows for polite disagreement with and criticism of a sitting president and/or that president's policies and statements. None of the officials have spoken publicly about this because, to coin a phrase, they're all essentially good Germans.
    posted by Etrigan at 10:31 AM on January 17, 2019 [52 favorites]


    "Likewise, I have no knowledge of any collusion by any of the thousands of people who worked on the campaign."

    Follow-up: does that apply to all of the 30+ people with which he has joint defense agreements (that is, information sharing arrangements between lawyers) including Manafort and Corsi? Because it seems like Manafort's lawyers admitted it in their non-redacted redactions, and that seems like the sort of information that would be shared...

    The fact that I-1 and Manafort are still in a JDA after a guilty plea and (allegedly broken) cooperation agreement is bizarre enough. Gates was never in a JDA; Flynn withdrew from his.
    posted by holgate at 10:56 AM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Persuade someone's imagination first, and then you simply have to convince them that your means is the most effective.

    "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
    posted by archimago at 11:00 AM on January 17, 2019 [59 favorites]


    Manu Raju via Twitter: Just asked Pelosi if she's simply trying to deny Trump a platform after DHS said it could secure SOTU, and she said: "I'm not denying him a platform at all...Let's pay the employees. Maybe he thinks it's OK not to pay people who do work. I don't, and my caucus doesn't either." [link includes video, about 1 minute]

    Gosh, I could swear I heard something about Trump constantly not paying people for work during the election. Maybe it was sandwiched between stories about emails? Maybe it was an ad between email stories? I dunno. Seems like a thing that should've gotten more attention, maybe. Big if true.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:05 AM on January 17, 2019 [59 favorites]


    schadenfrau Yeah, we're definitely into Cold War 2.0 territory here, with Russia having decided to go pretty darn aggressive on the infiltration, espionage, subversion, and corruption approach. There's probably as much a desire to see how much they can get away with before they hit serious repercussions as much as there is a desire to really influence things.

    Assuming we get a non-traitor into the Presidency in 2020, they're going to have their work cut out for them. Clearly the US has to do **SOMETHING**, but equally clearly the presence of all those old Soviet nukes makes any sort of direct confrontation difficult.

    We're also constrained by the fact that Russia's main export is gas, and Europe is in no position to put any real sanctions on Russian gas sales because Europe is fairly dependent on that imported gas. So we're limited to sanctions that hurt the ability of the Russian aristocracy to spend their money foreign goods and services, which might be effective if implemented severely enough, but it's kind of indirect.

    But yes, we're definitely in something, I don't know if "war" is really the right term, but we're in some sort of hostile relationship with Russia that involves them trying to cause harm to us. And by "us" I mean "all of Western Europe and America".

    What happens next is mostly going to depend on other nations Russia has targeted with less success than they targeted the US and UK. Germany and France might be able to do something. But until 2020 the US is, at best, going to do nothing good and will likely do things that benefit Russia.
    posted by sotonohito at 11:09 AM on January 17, 2019 [7 favorites]


    following congressional action on the house floor today is proving . . . entertaining:

    Jamie Dupree:

    WOW. Hoyer confirms that a GOP lawmaker today yelled at California Democrat Tony Cardenas, "Go back to Puerto Rico!"

    Rep Cardenas (born in Los Angeles) is responding now on the floor.


    And just before that, some parliamentary procedure funsies aka Republicans know neither how to govern nor be the opposition, apparently - basically they failed to call for a recorded vote on the CR and then didnt have standing to object when they wanted that choice revisited.
    posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:10 AM on January 17, 2019 [49 favorites]


    The only debatable point over Cold War 2.0 is when it started and whether the previous Cold War ever really ended or just had a lull. It's something for nitpicking, hardly not useful in the threads here, but we are absolutely in a Cold War with Russia. I'm not as worried about a nuclear confrontation, because we've been down that road a long time and we know how to handle it as long as we have rational people in charge--which we don't now, obviously.

    What scares me is the number of people who are in denial over this Cold War, or who will continue to deny it because it's scary. Worst of all is the number of people in America who are totally fine with rolling over for Russia as long as it serves their racism.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:13 AM on January 17, 2019 [29 favorites]


    From the same feed that Exceptional_Hubris just posted:

    President Trump cancels Pelosi overseas CODEL
    posted by Autumnheart at 11:16 AM on January 17, 2019 [12 favorites]


    -- Louie Gohmert says Steve King raised a fair question [defending white nationalism]
    -- a GOP lawmaker today yelled at California Democrat Tony Cardenas, "Go back to Puerto Rico!"

    Since everyone piled on Steve King (finally), can Democrats do anything to strip Gohmert and the unnamed GOP lawmaker of their committee assignments too? Or do Republicans have the exclusive power to name minority members of committees?
    posted by msalt at 11:25 AM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


    In rebuke to Trump administration, more than 130 Republicans break ranks to oppose Treasury plan to lift sanctions against Putin ally

    This scene from the first Superman movie sprang to mind when I saw the headline—and I bet a good number you of know which one I linked without even clicking on it. A boy can dream. Though seriously, such a big break within their ranks, even with a 'safe' vote, is pretty impressive.
    posted by los pantalones del muerte at 11:25 AM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Your service to your country will not keep you safe, because ICE is just that racist, and the local police aren't much better: ICE Tried To Deport This U.S. Citizen And Marine Veteran (NPR, January 17, 2019)
    Jilmar Ramos-Gomez served in the Marines and saw combat in Afghanistan. Born in Grand Rapids, Mich., he is a U.S. citizen.

    But last month, federal immigration authorities took him into custody to face possible deportation.

    Attorneys and immigration advocates in West Michigan are now demanding to know why, and how, that happened.
    ...
    Back in November, he was arrested by Grand Rapids police for trespassing onto the helipad area on the roof of a local hospital. He pleaded guilty to that charge, and a local judge ordered him released.

    But instead of releasing him, the Kent County jail turned him over to the custody of ICE. The county did that based on a request from ICE, which claimed Ramos-Gomez was in the country illegally.

    Kessler is the one who called ICE to tell the agency it had a citizen, a Marine war veteran, locked up in its jail. He says he suspects Ramos-Gomez had told people all along he was a citizen. The Kent County jail confirms Ramos-Gomez told staff there he was born in the U.S.

    "They seemed shocked when I called and sent these documents, that what he was saying was true," [Richard Kessler, the attourney hired by Ramos-Gomez's mother] says of the response from ICE officials.

    A spokesperson for ICE did not reply to a request for comment.
    Also noted in the article: his mother says he is currently getting treatment for his mental health issues — including PTSD — which she says he has been coping with since returning home from Afghanistan.
    posted by filthy light thief at 11:27 AM on January 17, 2019 [52 favorites]


    Or do Republicans have the exclusive power to name minority members of committees?

    I believe committee assignments are determined by party leadership. The Rs would have to do something about Louie.
    posted by Thorzdad at 11:28 AM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Honestly, if Gohmert is _on_ any committees, they should already be embarrassed. The man has the intellectual capacity of a turnip.

    It speaks volumes that he's guest-hosted in place of Sean Hannity on certain occasions.
    posted by delfin at 11:31 AM on January 17, 2019 [11 favorites]


    From the same feed that Exceptional_Hubris just posted:

    President Trump cancels Pelosi overseas CODEL

    For those of you wondering, Can he just do that?, you already know the answer. He can do things to make it difficult for her to, say, visit U.S. military or diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan, because he "owns" those, but he ain't the viceroy of fucking Brussels.
    posted by Etrigan at 11:32 AM on January 17, 2019 [10 favorites]


    They do use Air Force aircraft (at least for the Afghanistan leg) as well.

    Speaker Pelosi's net worth is somewhere around $100M. She certainly has plentiful options of getting around this obstruction . . . and i CANNOT wait to hear her response.
    posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:34 AM on January 17, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Well, how about the Malignant Mango pay for all his golf outings and trips to palm beach, then? He’s a “billionaire”, he can find a way. Edit to say, not meant as a snark at Exceptional.
    posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 11:38 AM on January 17, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Besides being unannounced, they were going to leave at 3:30pm. He waited until the last minute to mention he was taking away their plane.
    posted by zachlipton at 11:39 AM on January 17, 2019 [36 favorites]


    Worst of all is the number of people in America who are totally fine with rolling over for Russia as long as it serves their racism.

    I've been thinking about "what do we do about Russia." The problem with the "act of war" rhetoric is that it suggests a military response, which I think is a bad idea. But I really am worried that they will succeed at crippling us as a country and undermining our democracy.

    Seems to me that the obvious answer (beyond all the democracy-protecting stuff like paper ballots and scheduled audits, the National Popular Vote Compact and ideally, campaign finance reform, and ideally, multi-member districts with ranked choice voting) is to regulate social media. That's how they got in, after all.

    In the meantime, I still think all of us internet addicted news freaks should consider ourselves part of the volunteer internet army. We outnumber the trolls, and if we adopt some of their tactics (only spreading real news instead of fake) we can wash out their effect. Read the comments! Add your own (especially when you see something that doesn't have many comments yet), like/upvote your own comments, and get your friends to do the same. Consider it a duty. Do it even if you don't feel like it. Copy and paste comments you've made before (you can store them in a notepad file.) Post a lot of stuff on social media. Engage with people who comment on it, because that pushes it in front of more eyes. It's a dreary duty, but hey, it beats joining the actual army. Ask not what your country can do for you, etc.
    posted by OnceUponATime at 11:40 AM on January 17, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Former Bush official Richard Painter: "Substantial chance" Trump is being blackmailed by Putin (Chauncey DeVega, Salon)
    "Scholar and former White House lawyer says the framers of the Constitution saw the Trump threat coming"
    posted by ZeusHumms at 11:52 AM on January 17, 2019 [30 favorites]


    Pardon my ignorance but WTF is CODEL?
    posted by yoga at 12:02 PM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


    I had to look it up too: "Abbreviation of congressional delegation., government-paid trips abroad, designed to give lawmakers first-hand knowledge of matters relevant to their legislation."
    posted by ook at 12:04 PM on January 17, 2019 [22 favorites]


    Wisconsin lame duck voting laws violate 2016 court order, federal judge rules.
    posted by a snickering nuthatch at 12:14 PM on January 17, 2019 [64 favorites]


    Honestly, if Gohmert is _on_ any committees, they should already be embarrassed.

    There are a lot of reasons House Republicans should be embarrassed, of course. One is that Gohmert is apparently on the Natural Resources and Judiciary committees. (Not sure if this is updated for the new Congress.)
    posted by msalt at 12:33 PM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


    House Republicans really don’t want to look like they voted to reopen the government (Ella Nilsen, Vox)
    "House Republicans accidentally appeared to allow a vote to reopen the government without objecting. They were not happy."
    posted by ZeusHumms at 12:39 PM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


    @Drew_Hammill [Pelosi's Deputy Chief of Staff]:
    The CODEL to Afghanistan included a required stop in Brussels for pilot rest. In Brussels, the delegation was scheduled to meet with top NATO commanders, U.S. military leaders and key allies–to affirm the United States’ ironclad commitment to the NATO alliance. This weekend visit to Afghanistan did not include a stop in Egypt.

    The purpose of the trip was to express appreciation & thanks to our men & women in uniform for their service & dedication, & to obtain critical national security & intelligence briefings from those on the front lines. The President traveled to Iraq during the Trump Shutdown as did a Republican CODEL led by Rep. Zeldin.
    Also, fun fact: @frankthorp: Sen Graham left for a CODEL to Turkey last night, but flew commercially, his office says.

    For his part, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy seems to not understand Hawaii is a state or that Pelosi wasn't Speaker at the time:
    McCarthy to us a few minutes ago: The Speaker of the House should not leave the country during a shutdown.

    Reporters: but the president left the country during the shutdown - he went to Iraq.

    McCarthy: and where was Nancy Pelosi then (Hawaii)...?

    Me. So ...? ??
    @matthewamiller: I keep thinking about this point @maggieNYT made yesterday. Trump spent 24 hours searching for something he could take from Pelosi, and could only land on something she won’t bat an eye over losing.

    @maggieNYT: She doesn’t need him. And that is the biggest position of strength anyone ever has with him.

    @gtconway3d [George Conway]: No one needs him. It’s just that some people haven’t figured it out yet.
    posted by zachlipton at 12:40 PM on January 17, 2019 [86 favorites]


    @gtconway3d [George Conway]: No one needs him. It’s just that some people haven’t figured it out yet.

    The media loves to frame the shutdown as Trump vs The Democrats, When Oh When Will They Find Common Ground?, but the truth -- which Mitch McConnell has had the devil's luck in the media not noticing -- is that no one needs the president to open the government. The Senate recently passed a spending bill unanimously, which is a veto-proof majority. If two-thirds the House and Senate voted to pass spending bills, they would be passed, Trump notwithstanding (and that presumes he has the guts to veto one). The Democrats would vote for such a bill, so the shutdown is entirely on the Republicans.
    posted by Gelatin at 12:47 PM on January 17, 2019 [40 favorites]


    Talking Points Memo, Exclusive: Trump’s Companies Boosted Foreign Worker Visa Use To 10-Year High
    President Trump may have ratcheted up his anti-immigration efforts in recent months, but his family companies appear to be using foreign workers at a higher rate than ever before.

    The Trump Organization requested and received at least 192 visas for foreign workers in 2018, according to Department of Labor data. That number appears to be the highest for the company going back to at least 2008 and likely much earlier, based on public records.

    The nearly two decades’ worth of data were pulled together by the Democratic research group American Bridge and shared with TPM, which then reviewed the raw Labor Department information files.Those visas were almost entirely for the type of low-skilled foreign workers that Trump has claimed drive down American wages. Cooks, servers, housekeepers and farmworkers make up a large chunk of the Trump Organization’s requests, most of them making between $10 and $15 hourly.

    In 2018, the various Trump properties received 163 H2B visas for non-agricultural temporary workers and 29 H2A visas for agricultural temporary workers.
    posted by zachlipton at 12:50 PM on January 17, 2019 [21 favorites]


    I don't think people are appreciating how much farther we can go into an outright hostile-to-Dems government.

    "The President can adjourn Congress indefinitely based on Article II, sec. 3 which provides that 'in Case of Disagreement between them [the houses of Congress], with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he [the President] may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.'" is an assertion I'm seeing float around the fevered fringes recently. Who can say how seriously this is being taken by any one that matters—I think the chances that it's taken seriously by anyone are extremely slim, but it's an idea that's out there.
    posted by octobersurprise at 12:55 PM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Let's hope nobody tells Fox News.
    posted by Autumnheart at 12:57 PM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Hoyer confirms that a GOP lawmaker today yelled at California Democrat Tony Cardenas, "Go back to Puerto Rico!"

    It was Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), a member of leadership no less. He's now claiming that he was not directing his remark at anyone in particular, but was just doing more complaining about the Democrats who went to Puerto Rico on a delegation to discuss hurricane recovery last weekend:
    "Simply not true," Smith told The Hill. "Was speaking to all the Democrats who were down vacationing in Puerto Rico last weekend during the shutdown, not any individual member."
    posted by zachlipton at 12:58 PM on January 17, 2019 [8 favorites]


    @gtconway3d [George Conway]: No one needs him. It’s just that some people haven’t figured it out yet.

    I think the problem is that the idea that Republicans need Trump and his base is a thin fiction to deflect from the real, awful truth that they want Trump. I don't think they really need him all that much, if the party ditched the magahats they'd pick up suburban votes and anyways most of the people who grumble would come back to the only game in town for achieving right wing political power in the US and pull the lever for the R's. I really don't believe the idea that he commands their base so fully that they have no choice. If anything he limits their base. They want him there, which is worse.
    posted by jason_steakums at 1:15 PM on January 17, 2019 [15 favorites]


    #lifeduringshutdown Space science postdocs are running gofundmes.
    posted by octobersurprise at 1:17 PM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


    zachlipton: "Simply not true," Smith told The Hill. "Was speaking to all the Democrats who were down vacationing in Puerto Rico last weekend during the shutdown, not any individual member."

    "Vacation"? After Pam Patenaude, HUD’s deputy secretary since 2017, resigned over how Trump wanted to shaft Puerto Rico again? And it's still unclear whether the process for the disbursement of the first $ 1,500 million in funds from the community development program to address [Hurricane Maria damages] (CDBG-DR) was on track (Google translate; original article).

    Yeah, that's the way to address concerns that you're a racist asshole.
    posted by filthy light thief at 1:19 PM on January 17, 2019 [37 favorites]


    Slate, Mark Joseph Stern, So, I Got an Email From Matthew Whitaker’s Wife, in which WTF is happening?
    posted by zachlipton at 1:23 PM on January 17, 2019 [17 favorites]


    @realDonaldTrump announces that Because of the Democrats intransigence on Border Security and the great importance of Safety for our Nation, I am respectfully cancelling my very important trip to Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum.

    NBC's David Gura, two hours ago: "If President Trump has postponed Speaker Pelosi's trip to a war zone, surely Secretary Mnuchin's delegation to the World Economic Forum won't leave for Davos. Right?"

    An hour ago: "UPDATE: A White House official tells @NBCNews Secretary Mnuchin will lead a delegation to Davos, as planned."
    posted by Doktor Zed at 1:25 PM on January 17, 2019 [33 favorites]


    "Vacation"? After Pam Patenaude, HUD’s deputy secretary since 2017, resigned over how Trump wanted to shaft Puerto Rico again? And it's still unclear whether the process for the disbursement of the first $ 1,500 million in funds from the community development program to address [Hurricane Maria damages] (CDBG-DR) was on track (Google translate; original article).

    The contempt for Democrats, the bad faith, is part of the performance, and a fairly telling signal -- as if one couldn't just presume so -- that his explanation is hogwash.
    posted by Gelatin at 1:25 PM on January 17, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Seems to me that the obvious answer (beyond all the democracy-protecting stuff like paper ballots and scheduled audits, the National Popular Vote Compact and ideally, campaign finance reform, and ideally, multi-member districts with ranked choice voting) is to regulate social media. That's how they got in, after all.

    This is not how they got in. They got in through international money laundering and feckless election law oversight.

    America as a liberal nation shouldn't fear ideas. But it is entirely reasonable to fear the flood of foreign money that has crashed into the electoral system via FEC dysfunction, Citizen United "see no evil" policy on dark money and sheer high level corporate election advertising malfeasance (see Mark "rubles are fine for buying election ads" Zuckerberg). They were probably not even the first. There was a lot of speculation that China was funneling cash into the US election system via Sheldon Adelson and his macau casinos well before this.

    Social media is just the modern day media. The only regulation it really needs is the honest and systematic enforcement of existing laws.
    posted by srboisvert at 1:28 PM on January 17, 2019 [38 favorites]


    Oh wow, that e-mail is REALLY embarrassing for Marci Whitaker. I assume she already wishes she hadn't sent it.
    posted by all about eevee at 1:30 PM on January 17, 2019 [8 favorites]


    odinsdream: Trump's letter is childish, illogical, ridiculous, not something he has control of, and most importantly an opening slavo in actually just not even fucking pretending we have a structure of government. It's authoritarian through and through, and I don't think people are appreciating how much farther we can go into an outright hostile-to-Dems government.

    From earlier in this thread, jgirl had a quote from Trump: “I find China, frankly, in many ways, to be far more honorable than Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy. I really do,” he said. “I think that China is actually much easier to deal with than the opposition party.”

    Maybe I'm overthinking this, but calling the Dems "the opposition party" makes it pretty clear that being hostile to Dems is his general MO for every interaction. Back to the broadly discussed/acknowledged idea (Duck Duck Go search for "trump zero sum") that Trump only sees winners and losers, in that extreme view, there are no "political partners" from the other party (even though he'll then say Pelosi is possibly someone who can save him from impeachment [linking back in this thread]).

    And the GOP have been at war with the Dems since Newt championed the idea in the 1990s (Wikipedia). One name: Merrick Garland. Trump just made it all the more overt, and childish.

    If you haven't seen his petty as fook letter, NPR has it embedded -- and it actually sounds like Trump wrote it, or someone wrote it in his voice: "In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate."
    posted by filthy light thief at 1:31 PM on January 17, 2019 [7 favorites]


    He's so busy with this he hasn't bothered to send any acknowledgements of condolence or condemnation for the attack on Kenyan soil made in his name. The United States might be shut down but surely they can pull their heads out of their asses long enough to act like a state.
    posted by infini at 1:40 PM on January 17, 2019 [13 favorites]


    CNN's Kaitlan Collins has more on the CONDEL fiasco: "WH officials, including Mulvaney, began discussing canceling Pelosi’s trip this a.m., two people said. They felt caught off guard by her letter and POTUS has been frustrated by coverage, asking why it looked like Dems had upper hand. Aides agreed this was the perfect response."

    Politico's Eliana Johnson adds: "Re: Pelosi letter, fmr WH aide telling me right now it's an example of the sort of thing aides have labored to talk him out of in the past, sometimes successfully, sometimes not..."

    Mulvaney seems desperate to please his boss during the shutdown crisis—Maggie Haberman reports in the NYT that Trump told him, "We are getting crushed! Why can’t we get a deal?" Mulvaney's also opened up West Wing access to Trump and is allying himself with Javanka, so we can expect more brilliant ideas like this one to come.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 1:45 PM on January 17, 2019 [13 favorites]



    "Oh wow, that e-mail is REALLY embarrassing for Marci Whitaker"

    Particularly:
    PS this is my work email and phone. Please do not use it in any ill manner. I like my job and I need to continue to earn a living, particularly in light of this shutdown. Thanks!

    Matthew's net worth is around $18 million...
    posted by speug at 1:45 PM on January 17, 2019 [37 favorites]


    Trump: “I find China, frankly, in many ways, to be far more honorable than Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy. I really do,”

    Meanwhile, China is demonstrating in real time to Canadians abroad how thin the velvet on the the iron really is, and how fundamentally arbitrary their whole despotic regime really is. An explainer so far.

    It should be further noted that this entire affair was instigated by the Trump government.
    posted by bonehead at 1:45 PM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Mod note: Regulation of social media is a good topic for a separate thread, not this one. Thanks.
    posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 1:46 PM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


    If you haven't seen his petty as fook letter, NPR has it embedded -- and it actually sounds like Trump wrote it, or someone wrote it in his voice

    The capitalization craziness is also pure Trump -- Shutdown, Southern Border, Strong Border Security, etc. If "prerogative" weren't spelled correctly, I might even have thought he typed it. I would bet that no one reviewed this, or they were too chicken to make changes.
    posted by gladly at 1:50 PM on January 17, 2019


    Aides agreed this was the perfect response.

    You can overanalyse this and say that after two years in a feedback loop of Coulter, Fox & Friends and @MAgAbud3123, with the core staff reduced to lackeys, fuckwits and family members (but I repeat myself) that yes, this would seem like the perfect response.

    But that wastes more mental energy than it took those people to decide this was the perfect response. This is acting-out at the adult daycare by malevolent fools.
    posted by holgate at 1:52 PM on January 17, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Yeah, Trump's letter to Pelosi is just about at the "I am rubber, you are glue" level of sophistication.
    posted by Sublimity at 1:57 PM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Meanwhile, Melania took a presidential jet to Mar-a-Lago this afternoon…

    Politico Playbook's Jake Sherman:
    I am listening to air traffic control

    EXEC1F appears to be headed to Palm Beach. ATC just said they will have to do some serious vectoring to get the plane in line with the rest of the Palm Beach traffic.

    EXEC1F is typically the callsign for a plane with the first lady on it.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 2:27 PM on January 17, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Air Force One costs $206,337 an hour to operate, and the D.C. to Palm Beach flight takes about two hours. That's $824,000 for Mango Moll to fly back and forth.
    posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 2:33 PM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Air Force One costs $206,337 an hour to operate, and the D.C. to Palm Beach flight takes about two hours. That's $824,000 for Mango Moll to fly back and forth.

    I expect with EXEC in the callsign, it's a Gulfstream, so only 75k/hour.
    posted by mikelieman at 2:40 PM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


    It’s very unlikely that the First Lady is traveling on a VC-25 by herself. She’s probably on a much smaller, cheaper to operate aircraft like one of the Air Force’s many Gulfstream 5s that’s been modified for VIP transport.
    posted by zrail at 2:42 PM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


    The capitalization craziness is also pure Trump -- Shutdown, Southern Border, Strong Border Security, etc

    I don't think we know that, and if the capitalization of nouns is intended to convey "German," I'd ascribe that to Stephen Miller, and Miller is young enough to be able to fuck up syntax on purpose like any other extremely-online millenial.
    posted by rhizome at 2:44 PM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Yay, the story is building!   Mitch McConnell is the problem.  So nice to see publications finally beginning to point out the fucking obvious.

    The Turtle is the weak spot. Once he's forced into action, Donny's power evaporates.
    posted by los pantalones del muerte at 2:49 PM on January 17, 2019 [50 favorites]


    CMS issues the proposed Payment Notice for the 2020 coverage year

    Yeah that's a bunch of gibberish. The Kaiser Family Foundation's [which is a non-profit independent from Kaiser Permanente-the-health-plan-the-hospitals-and-the-medical-groups] Larry Levitt breaks it down:
    One change the Trump administration is inviting comment on could eliminate automatic renewal of ACA marketplace coverage and premium subsidies. This year 1.8 million people were automatically re-enrolled in states using the federal marketplace. [ed: closer to 2.4 million including the state marketplaces]

    Another change the Trump administration is inviting comment on could eliminate "silver loading," where insurers increased premiums for silver plans to offset the termination of cost-sharing subsidy payments to those insurers by the administration. Prohibiting "silver loading" of premiums in the ACA marketplace would lower government costs, but it would increase out-of-pocket premiums for many subsidized enrollees and also increase premiums for middle-class consumers not eligible for subsidies.

    The Trump administration says it would support appropriation of funding for ACA cost-sharing payments. The termination of these payments by the administration in late 2017 led to higher premiums, and ultimately higher government costs for premium subsidies.
    ...
    A technical change proposed by the Trump administration would result in maximum consumer out-of-pocket costs in all private insurance plans going up to $8,200 per person in 2020 instead of $8,000. To be clear, either amount is out of reach for many people.
    So a flip-flop on the cost-sharing reduction payments they've been refusing to pay and more sabotage of the ACA.
    posted by zachlipton at 2:49 PM on January 17, 2019 [9 favorites]


    So, I Got an Email From Matthew Whitaker’s Wife

    Wow. Okay it's a window into how-could-anyone-still-support-Trump. Tl;dr: OMG you hate Trump gah i get it what-everrrr but Matt's like, super sweet okay and he's not going to do anything but serve his country for a year or whatever. Also, everything's crazy.

    Ex.:
    Are you hoping that all future appointees’ qualifications are to have sat at a desk and pushed paper around for 30 years? ... Matt is a really good person and is only serving his country. He’s also going to be back in the private sector at some point. It is a small comfort to me that the people who will want to work with him in the future are, let’s hope, really unlikely readers of Slate and similar publications. I happen to like things about Slate and I’m also not a fire-breathing Republican dragon, so it does distress me somewhat to read these things.

    ... It was well-documented that Matt is a capable and affable person. He was at the right hand of Sessions for over a year. But sure, imply that he got the current appointment because of something he said over a year prior before he worked for anyone. The particularly on television part – LOL. What does that even mean? Nothing, that’s what. It does sound really suspicious if you put it that way AND when you ignore that he simply was well-liked and competent. ... Who could have imagined this turn of events? No one. Not us, that is for sure. The idea that it was some calculated plan is silly. Work through that sequence maybe, and see if it seems plausible.

    Over a year, you say? That doesn't seem plausible, no.
    posted by petebest at 2:51 PM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Mitch McConnell is the problem. So nice to see publications finally beginning to point out the fucking obvious. The Turtle is the weak spot. Once he's forced into action, Donny's power evaporates.

    Can anyone in Kentucky speak to whether McConnell is under any pressure there to end the shutdown, or receiving any blame? I know he's up for re-election in 2020.
    posted by msalt at 2:57 PM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


    It’s very unlikely that the First Lady is traveling on a VC-25 by herself. She’s probably on a much smaller, cheaper to operate aircraft like one of the Air Force’s many Gulfstream 5s that’s been modified for VIP transport.

    She's flying on a B752.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 3:04 PM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Can anyone in Kentucky speak to whether McConnell is under any pressure there to end the shutdown, or receiving any blame?

    Not really. There's just now, after a month, starting to be stories like this popping up in Kentucky papers. But there's no credible Democratic frontrunner out hitting him on this, and no real KY Democratic party to speak of, as I've said before, so there's no messaging against him. It's limited to whatever pressure the press can muster up, which is limited to begin with, and doesn't reach very far outside of Lexington and Louisville. Mitch is entirely unresponsive to his home state, and has been his entire career. He doesn't win elections in Kentucky by being popular, everyone already hates him. He wins by raising an absolute ocean of dirty money, and playing up every single FOX News culture war item he can, and if he's at all worried, by throwing some pork to KY farmers, but only as an absolute last resort. Kentucky can't really help here, at least not until he has an actual opponent, and let's be honest, probably not then either.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 3:07 PM on January 17, 2019 [18 favorites]


    > Mitch is entirely unresponsive to his home state, and has been his entire career. He doesn't win elections in Kentucky by being popular, everyone already hates him.

    Hell of a democracy you've got there. What do you call it?
    posted by The Card Cheat at 3:11 PM on January 17, 2019 [17 favorites]


    @jdawsey1: Just in from White House: “President Trump has canceled his Delegation’s trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.”

    I guess they realized how stupid this looks. Melania's still flying around though.
    posted by zachlipton at 3:14 PM on January 17, 2019 [12 favorites]


    Well. Since Pelosi's schedule has changed I hope she shows up for the Women's March.
    posted by fluffy battle kitten at 3:19 PM on January 17, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Mod note: A few things removed; let's take Twitter/Dorsey stuff to that thread and maybe let the What's Melania Flying thread drop at this point, and just generally try to do not so much with the reflexive chatter-for-chatter's-sake.
    posted by cortex (staff) at 3:21 PM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


    What's going on with the Women's March? DNC pulled out (Jackie Kucinich, Daily Beast):
    The Democratic National Committee has become the latest group to remove its name from the list of sponsors of the Women’s March less than 24 hours after one of the March’s leaders refused to denounce Louis Farrakhan during a nationally televised interview.
    I actually received a Women's March email (screenshot) 2 days ago seemingly with the sole purpose of attempting to address the anti-Semitism concerns that keep coming up. Excerpts from the email:
    We’re writing today to tell you why we’re marching as proud Jewish women on Saturday and why we want YOU to join the #WomensWave!
    We’re marching because we take anti-semitism very seriously. It cannot be condoned, equivocated or excused. We know better than most how dangerous it is, and the ways it is used to put Jews at risk, undermine our movements, and drive wedges between communities. We’re marching because, as Jewish women of color and as a transgender Jewish woman, we are committed to addressing anti-Black racism and transphobia in Jewish communities and beyond. We believe in the power, importance, and potential of this intersectional, women-led opposition movement. We are excited to have been welcomed into this historic coalition as Jewish leaders.
    Bolding is mine; seems a little weird for that line to be in this email but maybe it's just me.
    posted by cybertaur1 at 3:40 PM on January 17, 2019 [13 favorites]


    > Before this is over, Republicans will be defending collusion as fact, and necessary to defeat Clinton

    And now, thanks to an "activist" ostensibly trying to show the dangers of dark money by using some to run an Internet Research Agency style disinfo campaign against Roy Moore, they can apply both-side-ism "the democrat party does it too!" Original NYTimes story, On the Media with an interview w/ the guy. He thinks what he did is unethical, but legal, but the Alabama AG has asked federal election regulators to investigate reports of online fakery in the 2017 Alabama Senate race
    posted by ASCII Costanza head at 3:52 PM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


    I can't figure out from just browsing through census data for Kentucky that McConnell isn't vulnerable to an AOC style candidate.

    An "AOC style" campaign would be the hard thing. Louisville has a DSA chapter, but it's not like the entire state of Kentucky has a huge base of engaged leftists in the kind of density AOC had on her team to cover her little slice of Brooklyn and Queens.

    It'd be pretty fucking sweet to see Mitch replaced by a minority, woman socialist, but it will take a ton of movement-building to pull off.
    posted by contraption at 3:56 PM on January 17, 2019 [10 favorites]


    I suspect that Mitch might be vulnerable to a youngish handsome evangelical of the baseball-cap wearin' truck-drivin' variety - for one thing KY farmers are getting totally hosed by the shutdown.
    posted by aspersioncast at 3:56 PM on January 17, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Interesting piece in today's Washington Post Opinions section:
    House Democrats won’t come to the table and negotiate to reopen government, but they’ve been hard at work angling for more control over what you can say about them and how they get reelected. They’re trying to clothe this power grab with cliches about “restoring democracy” and doing it “For the People,” but their proposal is simply a naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party.
    The author? Mitch McConnell.
    posted by Atom Eyes at 3:58 PM on January 17, 2019 [46 favorites]


    McConnell's Mirror, ladies and gentlemen.
    posted by wabbittwax at 4:03 PM on January 17, 2019 [29 favorites]


    I suspect that Mitch might be vulnerable to a youngish handsome evangelical of the baseball-cap wearin' truck-drivin' variety - for one thing KY farmers are getting totally hosed by the shutdown.

    Any athletes around for a Jim Bunning type candidacy? Dave Cowens? Goose Givens? Wes Unseld?
    posted by msalt at 4:05 PM on January 17, 2019


    their proposal is simply a naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party.

    That is, the only party that's interested in the legislative and executive branches being selected according to the preferences of the majority of the citizenry.

    (I'd like to read the article but it's behind WaPo's paywall, and isn't at archive.org yet.)
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:07 PM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


    And now, thanks to an "activist" ostensibly trying to show the dangers of dark money by using some to run an Internet Research Agency style disinfo campaign against Roy Moore, they can apply both-side-ism "the democrat party does it too!"

    I feel like that's a dangerous conversation for them to start having. If they want to argue that what Osborne et al. did in Alabama was in any way effective, then they have a lot more to answer for in terms of foreign agents doing it with a lot more support and funding. Maybe there's a way someone more creative than me could spin the "we allied with Russia to keep Americans from taking over the US government" line, but I don't see it working well for them.
    posted by Avelwood at 4:08 PM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


    What is it about plane travel these days? Kasich was asked to move to premium from first class & took my seat instead. I volunteered to take a later flight instead of fighting. (my hero julie klasner)
    posted by armacy at 4:10 PM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Try this Twitter link for the McConnell op-ed
    posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:10 PM on January 17, 2019


    I suspect that Mitch might be vulnerable to a youngish handsome evangelical of the baseball-cap wearin' truck-drivin' variety - for one thing KY farmers are getting totally hosed by the shutdown.

    Any athletes around for a Jim Bunning type candidacy? Dave Cowens? Goose Givens? Wes Unseld?

    Would you settle for a sports radio host?
    posted by T.D. Strange at 4:17 PM on January 17, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Also, I love AOC, but she didn't win a general election against a real Republican opponent. She caught an absentee incumbent in one of the safest blue districts in the country napping and overlooking his actual constituents. You can't really overstate the difference between solid blue multicultural Queens, and lily white FOX News loving rural Kentucky. A Sherrod Brown type working class blue collar Democrat is a much better bet to maybe win back Kentucky than Actual Socialism.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 4:31 PM on January 17, 2019 [39 favorites]


    Ian Bremmer: @Aeromexico wins Troll of the Month award. Hands down. (Twitter video)
    posted by young_simba at 4:46 PM on January 17, 2019 [68 favorites]


    Ian Bremmer: @Aeromexico wins Troll of the Month award. Hands down.

    This is brilliant and well worth watching. My favorite part was the look on the people's faces when they found out their percentage hispanic DNA.
    posted by bluesky43 at 4:56 PM on January 17, 2019 [20 favorites]


    WaPo: “The four words of unredacted text suggest that in February 2018 — four months after Manafort was first charged with crimes related to his work as a political consultant in Ukraine — he still appears to have been working on a peace initiative for Ukraine, a topic of intense interest to Russia.”

    “And it suggests he was doing so in concert with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian employee of his consulting firm who is alleged to have ties to Russian intelligence…

    That's a mere 34 muccis ago. Ol' Paulie seems to feel pretty teflon.
    posted by petebest at 4:56 PM on January 17, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Also, I love AOC, but she didn't win a general election against a real Republican opponent. She caught an absentee incumbent in one of the safest blue districts in the country napping and overlooking his actual constituents. You can't really overstate the difference between solid blue multicultural Queens, and lily white FOX News loving rural Kentucky. A Sherrod Brown type working class blue collar Democrat is a much better bet to maybe win back Kentucky than Actual Socialism.

    I think AOC-style more in terms of shoe-leather, micro-supported, knock every door, DIY, rather than necessarily her politics. Judging from what's said about the local party, it would have to be DIY.
    posted by jetsetsc at 5:40 PM on January 17, 2019 [27 favorites]


    Would you settle for a sports radio host?

    Matt Jones looks great! And probably more realistic than Will Oldham.
    posted by msalt at 5:44 PM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


    NBC News, Trump admin weighed targeting migrant families, speeding up deportation of children
    Trump administration officials weighed speeding up the deportation of migrant children by denying them their legal right to asylum hearings after separating them from their parents, according to comments on a late 2017 draft of what became the administration's family separation policy obtained by NBC News.

    The draft also shows officials wanted to specifically target parents in migrant families for increased prosecutions, contradicting the administration's previous statements. In June, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the administration did "not have a policy of separating families at the border" but was simply enforcing existing law.

    The authors noted that the "increase in prosecutions would be reported by the media and it would have a substantial deterrent effect."

    The draft plan was provided to NBC News by the office of Sen. Jeff Merkley, D.-Ore., which says it was leaked by a government whistleblower.
    posted by zachlipton at 5:46 PM on January 17, 2019 [53 favorites]


    shoe-leather, micro-supported, knock every door, DIY,

    That I agree with. The reason I've linked the Politico piece on Matt Jones (the KY Sports Radio host guy) a few times now is he is one of the few people in Kentucky that could generate unconventional appeal and run an outside campaign. That's what it would take to knock of McConnell, because any decent candidate is going to have to run against both McConnell and FOX News, as well as the entrenched culture of good ole boy losers that make up the rump KY Democrats. Amy McGrath might be another person that could. That's probably the universe of candidates that can even potentially beat McConnell, any other Kentucky Democrat cannot. They will run the same losing campaign as always, which will lose again, as designed.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 5:47 PM on January 17, 2019 [11 favorites]


    I love the AeroMexico ad. But it does pose the question, where is the reaction from American airlines? Aren't they being screwed by TSA and ATC running skeleton crews? Or any other business for that matter. Food isn't being inspected, can a restaurant even legally operate? Who pays if someone gets sick? There are problems selling real estate, you need the government to sign off on all sorts of things. That's food, shelter and travel.

    I see that businesses don't want to be seen as 'political' and choosing a side. But the pragmatism of capitalism has a cruel logic, they'll do anything for survival. That includes turning on Trump when the numbers turn red.

    Do you know what's disappointing? It's easier to ignore the bully when they're not eating your face, and I think that's why businesses don't stand up to Trump. It's disappointing because I expect Americans, of all people, to stand up to bullies. Isn't that why you budget so much for weapons?
    posted by adept256 at 5:49 PM on January 17, 2019 [8 favorites]


    I think AOC-style more in terms of shoe-leather, micro-supported, knock every door, DIY, rather than necessarily her politics. Judging from what's said about the local party, it would have to be DIY.

    DIY may be her politics. It certainly beats "Wait for someone else to do it".

    See Also: Gillibrand's Off The Sidelines...
    posted by mikelieman at 5:51 PM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


    I know Amy McGrath lost her House race but maybe she could fail up and beat McConnell for the Senate.
    posted by M-x shell at 5:54 PM on January 17, 2019 [11 favorites]


    But it does pose the question, where is the reaction from American airlines?

    Airlines have been complaining. [As have unions for pilots, flight attendants, etc]
    posted by thefoxgod at 6:00 PM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


    A rhetorical question. I really want to know what happens to the food though. Does it go to landfill (who pays for the loss of profit), or do they sell it (who covers the liability of poisoning). It explodes my brain in the same way that anti-vaxxers do. Food needs to be inspected! We figured this out over many plagues! They'll fund the military, that's a given, but I don't expect the USMC to defend the Pax Romaina.
    posted by adept256 at 6:14 PM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


    The gullibility of people like the homeschoolers is astounding to me. Engaging in the slightest bit of critical thinking would raise the question of why an authoritarian government and those connected with it were apparently advocating for homeschooling when it is clearly against their interests.

    I guess Donny Little Find isn't the only one who responds to transparently bullshit flattery. Even after the past couple of years, I am still surprised at how deep the Russian influence on the US right wingers goes.

    And for Putin, pretending to be a cryptofascist ultra right winger is no different to pretending to be a committed Communist. Either is just a means to an end, and since flattery works so well, why not align with the apparently ascendant far right by adopting more and more of their dream policies.

    Hm, adoption. Where have I heard that word before? It doesn't always refer to children, you know..
    posted by wierdo at 6:15 PM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Something I don't understand; why haven't the Democrats started their oversight yet? The shutdown? That can't be allowed to be a reason or it incentivizes Trump to keep it shut down indefinitely.

    For example the family separation policy. The new documents are damned explosive. Why haven't the Democrats "invited" (with subpoena threat) Nielsen to come testify about them? What are they waiting for? This is why we elected them... get moving!

    Is there something I'm missing?
    posted by Justinian at 6:20 PM on January 17, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Something I don't understand; why haven't the Democrats started their oversight yet?

    Or they have and this is the level it's gonna be. Some people I think were expecting 9am-5pm sessions M-F but I don't think that was ever the plan
    posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:32 PM on January 17, 2019


    Something I don't understand; why haven't the Democrats started their oversight yet?

    You're really not going to like the answer: Incoming Democratic tax chairman won't make quick grab for Trump's returns
    “He wants to lay out a case about why presidents should be disclosing their tax returns before he formally forces him to do it,” said Dan Rubin, a Neal spokesperson.
    ...
    The timing is tricky for Neal, though, because going to war with the administration over the issue threatens their chances of working together on other, substantial tax issues.
    At least in the case of Trump's tax returns...it's because the corporate Democrat in charge of the Ways and Means Committee wants to work with Trump for more tax cuts instead.

    The Democrats’ Richie Neal Problem
    Neal is Exhibit A. He is certainly not a corporate centrist because of his district. The Massachsetts first district, in the western part of the commonwealth, takes in some of the most progressive areas of a progressive state including the Berkshires and the Pioneer Valley.

    It was reconfigured after the 2010 Census, when Massachsetts lost one seat. Previously, much of the old district was represented either of two great progressives, John Olver, now retired, and Jim McGovern, the new chair of the House Rules committee, who holds an adjoining seat.

    Progressive Punch measures voting records since 1993 (most of Neal’s tenure) and shows Neal’s “progressive voting record” at 151st among all current members of Congress (there were 201 Democrats in the last Congress.) Overall, Progressive Punch gave Neal a “C.”

    His record has won financial support from the PACs of leading beneficiaries of tax avoidance like General Electric, Caterpillar, and Tyco, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Neal’s fundraising pattern is similarly worrisome for progressives who have thrilled to the rise of Democrats funded by small dollar donors. Neal’s top common contributor in the 2017-2018 cycle was “Votesane PAC,” whice is headedlargely by veteran Republicans lobbyists and influence peddlers. In the last cycle, Votesane was “the biggest donor for the embattled Republican incumbents.”

    Overall, from 2017-18 Neal’s campaign committee received less than $25,000 from small dollar donors while raising more than $850,000 from “Finance/Insurance/Real Estate” (excluding health insurance).
    This shit is why we have to primary Democrats, AOC is right. We're going to remember what the reality of the Democratic Party as it actually exists holding power is...versus what we imagined fighting back against Trump would look like, and what the #resistance campaign message was.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 6:32 PM on January 17, 2019 [40 favorites]


    If you need any more evidence that it's not about the actual wall for them, a Los Angeles Unified employee was caught on video yelling "Build the wall!" out her car window at teachers (and her co-workers!) who are on strike to fight for reduced class sizes and salary increases.
    posted by bluecore at 6:42 PM on January 17, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Something I don't understand; why haven't the Democrats started their oversight yet?

    Agreed they should be ripping things open, but there's also a non-zero chance a special council or state DA have the tax returns and want to keep slow-rolling that particular one for maximum booyah.

    Or so a fanciful person may dream.
    posted by petebest at 6:46 PM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Is there something I'm missing?

    They’ve been in office for TWO WEEKS.

    For fuck’s sake. The government isn’t even operating and you’re wondering why Democrats haven’t tackled impeachment, the border crisis, and Trump’s tax returns? Do people just have no concept of how much time any of this stuff takes? House Democrats can’t even count on being able to get to the office, much less have the staff to start digging into these issues, unless you want to encourage even more federal employees to work even longer hours without pay.

    The government is shut down. And even when it isn’t, it takes longer than two weeks for shit to happen. It takes that long for people to get their damn phone line and email access set up.
    posted by Autumnheart at 6:48 PM on January 17, 2019 [98 favorites]


    Something I don't understand; why haven't the Democrats started their oversight yet?

    In addition to delays by holdover conservative/corporate Democrats, the new congress has been seated for two whole weeks. While they did have time to do some planning, there's a huge swarm of freshmen congressfolks who are, among other details, still learning the building layout.

    And the shutdown means that every time they call another federal agency or department, they have to deal with either "nobody's here until the government is working again" or "hi; I'm Random Staffer on the skeleton crew; I normally work in data management but today I'm on the front desk. Plz tell me what records you want and I'll try to figure out what wing of the building those are in."

    The new Dems have something like three hundred projects to work on: a new spending bill, fixing the ACA, investigating emoluments, tax dodges, and outright treason, each of their committee's projects, figuring out which of the Mango's exec orders violate the Constitution by overriding Congress's powers, which don't but could be fixed by Congress passing laws, and deciding how to react to whatever the new day's Tweetstorm Of Horrors brings.

    From the article: [Neal] wants to ... build a case with the public about why Trump ought to voluntarily release his tax filings, before tapping an obscure law that allows the heads of Congress’ tax committees to examine anyone’s returns.
    Pulling the legal trigger may not come until February at the earliest.

    Two more weeks. Unless anyone thinks that the president's tax records are going to persuade the Senate to impeach immediately, I'm not in a hurry on this one - and I'd love to see some groundwork for convincing the non-27%ers that presidents should release their tax records, so there'll be broad support for changing the law and making those records automatically public.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 6:52 PM on January 17, 2019 [23 favorites]


    No, just why they haven't subpoenaed the tax returns, something that could've been drafted and filed in an hour on Day 1, that they had two years to "build a case for". And many of them ran explicitly on.

    And most of the government is operating fine, including Congressional staff. Only about 1/4 is shutdown, which yes, is awful, but has no effect on Congress' ability to do oversight if they want, all their people are getting paid like its any other day.

    And the shutdown means that every time they call another federal agency or department, they have to deal with either "nobody's here until the government is working again" or "hi; I'm Random Staffer on the skeleton crew; I normally work in data management but today I'm on the front desk. Plz tell me what records you want and I'll try to figure out what wing of the building those are in."

    1/4 of agencies. 2.2 million people work for the federal government, 400k or so are not on the job (and another 400k or so are working without pay).
    posted by T.D. Strange at 6:57 PM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


    Seems like Schiff is just getting the ball rolling. He certainly has a lot of plans, and the committee hasn't even had its first meeting yet.
    posted by thefoxgod at 7:01 PM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


    It doesn’t matter how many people are currently working in the government. It takes longer than two weeks to set an agenda and find the staff necessary to execute on it, especially when a significant number of your leadership is new. I would consider that a basic level of understanding by anyone who’s ever held a job.
    posted by Autumnheart at 7:06 PM on January 17, 2019 [10 favorites]


    believing nevertheless that presidential candidates shall disclose their taxes before elections, but having read a lot (tho by no means most) of the documentary evidence in the manafort trial, i remain dubious as to the probative and tactical value of proposed publication of the president's tax returns at this point. some commentator somewhere (prob NPR) recently fretted that the president "thinks impressionistically," but a damning case against such international grifting structuring & laundering white-collar fraudsters as manafort requires finest-grained pointillist painting, in which a tax filing or set thereof would represent one dot.
    posted by 20 year lurk at 7:08 PM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Mod note: Folks, we're not gonna get anything accomplished by hollering into the void or at each other about whether and how congress is Doing The Thing, other than hollering. Please rein that in and consider hollering at your congresspeople directly if that energy needs to go somewhere.
    posted by cortex (staff) at 7:17 PM on January 17, 2019 [25 favorites]


    Buzzfeed: President Trump Directed His Attorney To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project
    President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.

    Trump also supported a plan, set up by Cohen, to visit Russia during the presidential campaign, in order to personally meet President Vladimir Putin and jump-start the tower negotiations. “Make it happen,” the sources said Trump told Cohen.

    And even as Trump told the public he had no business deals with Russia, the sources said Trump and his children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., received regular, detailed updates about the real estate development from Cohen, whom they put in charge of the project.

    ...

    This revelation is not the first evidence to suggest the president may have attempted to obstruct the FBI and special counsel investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

    But Cohen's testimony marks a significant new frontier: It is the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia.
    posted by theodolite at 7:24 PM on January 17, 2019 [81 favorites]


    We knew it, but we didn't know it: I-1 instructed Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow tower deal, and Cohen was briefing the family about it and encouraged to travel to Russia to pursue it.

    (What Leopold doesn't mention: Cohen's planned trip to St Petersburg was cancelled straight after the DNC hack/leak became public.)
    posted by holgate at 7:24 PM on January 17, 2019 [13 favorites]


    For what it's worth, Trump's full returns would provide quite a bit of insight, at least for those familiar with their interpretation. And probably some very embarrassing figures along with (circumstantial) evidence of malfeasance likely contained within.

    One need only look to the reporting on tiny hands Trump's early business life to see how having threads to pull at helps unravel the bluster and lies. That whole thing got off the ground thanks to partial leaks of years old returns.
    posted by wierdo at 7:25 PM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


    The Aeromexico ad is satire. It came from reddit. From whence it spawned before that, I dunno. But it’s been around for a while.
    posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:25 PM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


    That’s a real ad, Ogilvy made it for Aeromexico. Just because it’s what I’d consider a stunt/getting-some-award-noms ad doesn’t mean it’s fake.
    posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 7:49 PM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Suborning perjury is impeachable under the Bill Barr theory of presidential obstruction of justice.

    And yet the Leopold / Cormier article leaves a gap. Something happened to cancel that trip. It was probably the news about the DNC hack.

    It rejigs the timeline. Junior was being briefed on the Moscow Project when Rob Goldstone emailed him on June 3rd 2016 to arrange the Vesilnitskaya meeting as "part of Russia and its government’s support." The Tower meeting was on June 9th. Cohen was set to go to St Petersburg on June 16th. On June 14th the DNC acknowledged a hack that was claimed by Guccifer 2.0. Cohen's trip was cancelled. Sergei Millian did show up and was photographed with Deripaska.

    That's to say: the Family Business thought they were getting a fancy Moscow tower, and the Russians made clear that what was on offer was the presidency.
    posted by holgate at 7:55 PM on January 17, 2019 [37 favorites]


    I just came here to say: THIS IS IT. IT'S HAPPENING.

    There's a mountain of evidence, including witnesses. Ivanka and Don Jr. were in on it. Trump betrayed his country for a hotel.
    posted by xammerboy at 8:00 PM on January 17, 2019 [51 favorites]


    He thought he was getting a skyscraper (more residential than hotel), Russia offered him a lot more than that, and he took the offer.
    posted by holgate at 8:02 PM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


    The subtlest shade of all in that Aeromexico ad was when they put up the map to show where they had done their interviews, the bold, block-letter "USA" logo north of the border was stamped right in the middle of... New Mexico.
    posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 8:05 PM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


    It is the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia.

    This seems bad.
    posted by Barack Spinoza at 8:05 PM on January 17, 2019 [16 favorites]


    For what it's worth, Trump's full returns would provide quite a bit of insight, at least for those familiar with their interpretation. And probably some very embarrassing figures along with (circumstantial) evidence of malfeasance likely contained within.

    It's been years since I did actual tax prep work and not just supported the servers running UltraTax like now, but IIRC, loans are booked as income and interest paid on loans is deductible, so all of the liabilities to, say, banks owned by Russian mobsters, should appear somewhere.

    AND if there are loans that aren't reported, well, that's another thing the forensic accountants are quite familiar with.
    posted by mikelieman at 8:05 PM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


    The Fake Washington Post Wasn’t Fake News: It was parody. And it’s essential to understand the difference—especially now.
    posted by homunculus at 8:09 PM on January 17, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Personally, holgate, I'm still not convinced *anyone* thought Trump was going to win. But I believe the Russians wanted him to do as well as possible so that he could spend the next 4-8 years shouting "RIGGED!" and get Americans to doubt their own system of government. (Which...well...kudos, Putin. Kudos.)
    posted by uosuaq at 8:10 PM on January 17, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Why would we assume Trumps tax returns aren't just pure fiction, or at least full of intentional or unintentional gaping errors and omissions? Dude has a very hard time telling the truth, and hires incompetent people. I would not expect him to accurately claim all the shit he's up to his eyeballs in.
    posted by jetsetsc at 8:11 PM on January 17, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Buzzfeed: President Trump Directed His Attorney To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project

    Journo-Twitter is exploding over Buzzfeed's scoop:

    The Daily Beast's Justin Miller: “"If a President...suborns perjury, or induces a witness to change testimony, or commits any act deliberately impairing the integrity of available evidence, then he, like anyone else, commits the crime of obstruction." — William Barr”

    ACLU's Brian Tashman: "Lindsey Graham specifically asked William Barr if it would be obstruction of justice if “the president tried to coach somebody not to testify or to testify falsely” or “tried to conceal evidence.” Barr said yes it would be obstruction."

    Adam Serwer: “If the story is correct, Trump told everyone Russia was innocent of a cyber attack on the opposition party while pursuing financial gain in Moscow, lied about it, and then personally directed his attorney to lie about it too. That’s not just collusion. That is conspiracy.”

    NYT's Binyamin Appelbaum: “If this is true, it seems like a pretty straightforward crime. And then the only question left would be whether this is still a nation of laws.”

    MSNBC's Chris Hayes: “If I were Trump, Ivanka or Don Jr, this would make my blood run cold[…].”

    Philip Rucker: "Just in, Rudy Giuliani’s response to Buzzfeed story: “If you believe Cohen I can get you a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge.”" To which CNN contributor Garrett Graff responds, “"Except Buzzfeed article makes clear that Special Counsel had corroborating evidence *first*, then asked Cohen...."”

    Natasha Bertrand: “Mueller has receipts... "The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Org and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents."”

    Emphasis added, because Mueller knows everything.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 8:13 PM on January 17, 2019 [98 favorites]


    It's not really the first example of suborning perjury. We know with decent certainty that Flynn's lies to the FBI were directed by I-1. We also know with decent certainty that the statement about Junior in the Tower with the Russian Lawyer was a lie dictated by I-1, probably with help from Putin, though lying to the press isn't perjury.

    I do think that Junior is fucked.
    posted by holgate at 8:17 PM on January 17, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Why would we assume Trumps tax returns aren't just pure fiction, or at least full of intentional or unintentional gaping errors and omissions?

    I'll settle for felony tax evasion. Lying on your returns is a crime normal people go to jail for, every single day.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 8:17 PM on January 17, 2019 [30 favorites]


    > “Mueller has receipts... "The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Org and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents."”

    Between this scoop and Rudy blubbering about light treason on TV this morning, it feels like Friday is going to be a big Special Counsel day.

    It's also the start of a three day weekend with the East coast hunkering down for a snowstorm, which feels mighty appropriate.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 8:17 PM on January 17, 2019 [7 favorites]


    uosuaq: I think it was a carefully-hedged bet where Russia could take a win regardless of the outcome. Again, the kompromat is that I-1 was willing to compromise himself.

    Maybe the Senate will not vote to remove. But each senator should be made to vote for a republic or a king.
    posted by holgate at 8:24 PM on January 17, 2019 [28 favorites]


    It's not really the first example of suborning perjury. We know with decent certainty that Flynn's lies to the FBI were directed by I-1. We also know with decent certainty that the statement about Junior in the Tower with the Russian Lawyer was a lie

    There are two federal officer witnesses this time! Multiple other witnesses! Trump ORDERED his lawyer to lie! There's documentation! This is sounds like a lot more than decent certainty!
    posted by xammerboy at 8:24 PM on January 17, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Didn't the Dems get a significant if insufficient number of GOP Senators to join them in trying to force a budget vote? I think there is a tipping point but like trying to call a bubble at it's peak you can't really tell where it is until you pass it.

    I'm all out of surely this's but this does look exceptionally bad and it's hitting primary members of the crime family.

    T.D. Strange: "Lying on your returns is a crime normal people go to jail for, every single day."

    And famously Capone.

    Doktor Zed: "Natasha Bertrand: “Mueller has receipts... "The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Org and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents."”"

    Geez _everyone_ knows since The Wire that you don't take notes about a criminal conspiracy.
    posted by Mitheral at 8:26 PM on January 17, 2019 [18 favorites]


    This is the evidence I was dreaming of. This is the story of lines crossed so clearly I really don't think even Republican Senators could vote against impeachment. At the very same time Trump was being asked about his Russia connections and told Russia may be interfering with the election, to tell the FBI about any Russia connections, he was setting up a personal business deal with Putin himself, lying about it, and ordering his lawyer and others to lie about it. If even one Republican senator backs Trump I'll be shocked.
    posted by xammerboy at 8:32 PM on January 17, 2019 [12 favorites]


    @ChrisMurphyCT: Listen, if Mueller does have multiple sources confirming Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress, then we need to know this ASAP. Mueller shouldn't end his inquiry, but it's about time for him to show Congress his cards before it's too late for us to act.

    Yep. There needs to be an immediate path to action on this, and I don't know what that looks like. We can't have "oh the President told his lawyer to lie to Congress" be a plotline that lingers for six months. This feels like it should be an inflection point, but events need to happen to actually make it one.
    posted by zachlipton at 8:38 PM on January 17, 2019 [38 favorites]


    Personally, I think the Mueller report is beside the point now. What should happen is that congress should march these sources in front of congress tomorrow and sort through the evidence on national television and immediately vote to impeach. If Buzzfeed's article is correct, and it really looks like it's backed up by a ton of evidence, then our President has just been proven a criminal.
    posted by xammerboy at 8:38 PM on January 17, 2019 [23 favorites]


    Just in, Rudy Giuliani’s response to Buzzfeed story: “If you believe Cohen I can get you a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge.”" To which CNN contributor Garrett Graff responds, “"Except Buzzfeed article makes clear that Special Counsel had corroborating evidence *first*, then asked Cohen...."”

    Cohen habitually recorded his convos on his smartphone. We already heard the one in which Cohen and Trump discuss the crimes they will break while paying off Stormy Daniels.
    posted by notyou at 8:38 PM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Starting to feel like our dude is just going to keep the government closed until the coppers take him down
    posted by theodolite at 8:40 PM on January 17, 2019 [51 favorites]


    @realDonaldTrump, just when the Buzzfeed story broke: “Gregg Jarrett: “Mueller’s prosecutors knew the “Dossier” was the product of bias and deception.” It was a Fake, just like so much news coverage in our Country. Nothing but a Witch Hunt, from beginning to end!”

    Buckle up, folks—from here on out, it’s going to be turbulent.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 8:40 PM on January 17, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Yeah, there's a pretty good chance that Cohen taped the whole thing, in which case I really don't know what happens next. I guess we'll find out if Trump really could shoot a man on 5th Avenue and get away with it.
    posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:43 PM on January 17, 2019 [11 favorites]


    bluesky43: brilliant and well worth watching. My favorite part was the look on the people's faces when they found out their percentage hispanic DNA.

    Aero Mexico's DNA Discount ad went viral, and for some pretty positive trolling, all things considered. They went to Wharton, Texas and asked people if they wanted to travel to Mexico. Nope. Do you like tequila? Yes. Do you like burritos? Yes. Would you travel to Mexico? No. Then they give DNA test and offer a percent discount based on what percent Mexican those white-looking folks are.

    Interviewer: you're 20% Mexican. Surly guy: shut up! Interviewer: we'll give you a 20% discount on a flight. Surly guy: OK then! [paraphrasing ;)]

    In other news: State Department Brings Employees Back To Work Despite Shutdown (NPR, January 17, 2019)
    The State Department on Thursday ordered employees to return to work next week, despite the partial government shutdown, saying it would figure out how to cover the next paycheck.

    In a note posted on its website and emailed to staff, the department said it "is taking steps to make additional funds available to pay employee salaries."

    If the shutdown continues beyond the next pay period, State Department officials say they will have to work with Congress to reprogram funds in order to cover salaries.

    The partial shutdown that began Dec. 22 caused the furloughs of 23 percent of State Department employees overseas and 40 percent of the domestic employees. Overall, there are 75,000 employees of the State Department, including nearly 50,000 local hires, most of whom are covered by local labor laws and have been receiving pay. Consular services have remained open, funded by passport and visa fees.
    We'll, uh, figure something out. Trust us. But you gotta get back to work.
    posted by filthy light thief at 8:52 PM on January 17, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Yeah, there's a pretty good chance that Cohen taped the whole thing,

    The Buzzfeed article mentions emails, too. Mueller has 2 work products from the SCI. There's the report. And there's the indictments he made along the way.

    I think we all agree that everyone who has lived OmniGate via the never-ending-catchall-threads is familiar with the relevant evidence at this point, and sees no way anyone acting in good-faith could oppose impeachment.

    Work product 1, the report is useless. If Republicans act in bad-faith (IF? HA!) WHEN they act in bad-faith, like Mitch not letting votes happen, nothing will move them.

    So work product 2. I know that institutions will not save us, but it's all I got left is to believe that one of the indictments under seal is for I-1.

    odinsdream: I've constantly maintained that he will not leave office without being literally dragged out. You'll see this play out, now. People need to be ready for a physical stand off.

    Yeah, this will be "What does the Marine Guard and Secret Service do when the US Marshals show up with a an arrest warrant?" kind of Constitutional Crisis.
    posted by mikelieman at 8:53 PM on January 17, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Rep. Adam Schiff: “The allegation that the President of the United States may have suborned perjury before our committee in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date. We will do what’s necessary to find out if it’s true.”

    NBC’s Katy Tur: "Lanny Davis issues what I read as a non denial denial on the Buzzfeed story: “Out of respect for Mr. Mueller’s and the Office of Special Counsel’s investigation, Mr. Cohen declined to respond to the questions asked by the reporters and so do I.”"

    Buzzfeed’s Chris Geidner: "Rudy Giuliani's phone is turned off currently. FYI."
    posted by Doktor Zed at 8:56 PM on January 17, 2019 [63 favorites]


    Well, we have proof of collusion, and now we have proof of obstruction. And it’s pretty hard to see how Congress could justify lying to Congress.
    posted by Capt. Renault at 8:57 PM on January 17, 2019 [8 favorites]


    bluesky43 on Jan. 15: @DanClarkReports. Reporter for @NYLawJournal -- BREAKING: A federal judge has ordered that the Trump Administration NOT add a question about citizenship to the 2020 U.S. Census

    NPR, January 17, 2019: Trump Administration Appeals Ruling Blocking Citizenship Question On 2020 Census
    The Trump administration is appealing a federal judge's ruling that blocks plans to add a controversial citizenship question to the 2020 census.

    The Justice Department filed a court notice Thursday that says the administration is asking the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the first major court decision about the question. That ruling came out of two of the multiple lawsuits by more than two dozen states, cities and other groups that want the question removed.
    ...
    The administration was expected to appeal Furman's ruling, and the legal battle appears to be headed ultimately to the Supreme Court. The Justice Department's notice of appeal, however, does not specify the grounds on which the administration is basing its appeal to the 2nd Circuit.
    Tweet and photo of the filing embedded in the NPR article, also available directly via Hansi Lo Wang's tweet.
    posted by filthy light thief at 8:59 PM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Are there more Barr hearings? Because if so they're going to be lit.
    posted by BungaDunga at 9:03 PM on January 17, 2019 [14 favorites]


    Possibly William Barr may be having second thoughts about the job offer.
    posted by notyou at 9:05 PM on January 17, 2019 [22 favorites]


    If even one Republican senator backs Trump I'll be shocked.

    I would be shocked if even half of them don't back him.
    posted by the agents of KAOS at 9:33 PM on January 17, 2019 [22 favorites]


    Trump's kids are definitely going to prison... Buzzfeed
    Ivanka Trump was slated to manage a spa at the tower and personally recommended an architect. She also instructed Cohen to speak with a Russian athlete who offered “synergy on a government level” to get the Moscow project off the ground, in another aspect of the deal first revealed by BuzzFeed News that later was affirmed by the special counsel’s sentencing memo.

    Donald Trump Jr., meanwhile, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 7, 2017, that he was only “peripherally aware” of the plan to build a tower in Moscow. “Most of my knowledge has been gained since as it relates to hearing about it over the last few weeks.”
    posted by xammerboy at 9:45 PM on January 17, 2019 [20 favorites]


    >>The Justice Department's notice of appeal, however, does not specify the grounds on which the administration is basing its appeal to the 2nd Circuit.

    Is this normal? Don't you have to say..... Something??

    Technically, no; you can just file an appeal and say, "this ruling was wrong; plz review and correct." Normally, courts throw that kind of thing out, unless the ruling was horrifically biased in some very obvious way. (If the initial ruling said, "this court rules for the plaintiffs because the defendants are ugly and stupid," a higher court might not care if the reason for the appeal was spelled out.) But in this case, the explanation on the ruling was nicely detailed and grounded in law, and included the side note specific bias had not been proven, and this might've been because a higher court blocked the attempt to get a deposition.

    I suppose maybe they can file an appeal with details to be added later? *looks at article* Oh wait - they haven't filed any appeal statements, just a notice of appeal - it's a form, and "reason for appeal" isn't even on the form. It's just notifying the court that an appeal claim is on its way.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:50 PM on January 17, 2019 [8 favorites]


    We've discussed the pardon options before - sure, I-1 can pardon people, but if they're pardoned, they lose 5th amendment immunity - they can no longer refuse to testify. Or they get contempt of court. Which could be pardoned - but that's putting an awful lot of trust in I-1's ability to pay attention and willingness to make public declarations of assistance. He can't pardon for crimes that haven't happened yet, so each new contempt-of-court charge would need to be pardoned separately.

    He might be more willing to be generous with the pardons for his own family. But who wants to bet that instead, he declares that Junior was always a bit dense and getting into trouble he couldn't handle and asking for a bailout, and Jared was a damn snake taking advantage of his family's friendly nature? And would Ivanka risk the courts overturning a contempt-of-court pardon (they waffled about it for Arpaio, and that one wasn't directly tied to his own dealings), or would she work towards cutting a deal?

    The whole mess has been damned quite about Pence; I'm looking forward to his indictment and subsequent cooperation with the court to get himself out of there with as much intact as he can manage. I want him out of politics; I don't care if he actually goes to prison; I bet he'd be willing to sing to stay out of a cage.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:02 PM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


    I don't think the sealed indictments will be for Trump. If Mueller is following DOJ guidelines not to indict the pres, then presumably that applies to all indictments, including sealed ones.

    And as long as I'm making stuff up: one of the sealed indictments is for Pence, and Mueller is waiting for the Republicans to hitch everything to him before Mueller takes him down.
    posted by ryanrs at 10:10 PM on January 17, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Or they get contempt of court. Which could be pardoned

    Really? I thought contempt of court was an administrative action or something, not a crime. Or am I mis-remembering the finer points here?
    posted by mark k at 10:17 PM on January 17, 2019


    Contempt of court can be treated as a civil or criminal violation. In most cases, it's dealt with as "hand over X or you'll get contempt of court charges, which will be in addition to the judge ruling against you since you haven't provided the info that's been demanded." In some cases, it's "stop doing X or you're going to spend time in jail." It's used for everything from "stop stalling and answer the damn question" to "stop making faces at the witness."

    It's a crime where the judge decides whether it happened - no other witnesses are needed, no filing of charges, no jury decisions. It is subject to appeal, but judges are loathe to overturn contempt charges; they tend to assume the ruling judge was just trying to keep the cases moving as they should.

    (IIRC, Abby Hoffman earned over 4 years prison time for contempt of court in the Chicago 8 7 trials. However, I believe that was overturned on appeal.)
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:31 PM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Your Regular PSA: Every time something breaks regarding Cohen's cooperation, remember to say out loud, "Thank you, Stormy Daniels."
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:54 PM on January 17, 2019 [103 favorites]


    the only question left would be whether this is still a nation of laws.

    This is a matter of keen interest to a lot of us. We need 13 defections, right?
    posted by corb at 10:59 PM on January 17, 2019 [6 favorites]


    This is a matter of keen interest to a lot of us. We need 13 defections, right?

    In the Senate? 2/3 is 67 & the current split is 53/(45+2=47) so we need 20 R's to jump across the aisle & vote to convict.
    posted by scalefree at 11:09 PM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


    @lbarronlopez: Rep. Steve Scalise blames Nancy Pelosi for lack of diversity in House GOP conference at E-PAC launch: "I’ve noticed that when female members run on Republican side Nancy Pelosi will spend a lot more money in many cases twice as much more to defeat Republican female candidates." "We need to do a better job of recruiting to make sure we recruit really good female candidates," @SteveScalise said, "[But] when female candidates run as Republicans, Nancy Pelosi does not want our party to look diverse.”

    It's always a woman's fault somehow.
    posted by zachlipton at 11:17 PM on January 17, 2019 [43 favorites]


    LA Times: Gov. Gavin Newsom offers unemployment benefits to TSA workers, defying Trump administration
    In a public display of defiance, Gov. Gavin Newsom encouraged Transportation Security Administration employees to apply for unemployment insurance through the state after the Trump administration warned California that the workers are ineligible for the benefits during the federal shutdown.

    “The good news is, we’re going to do it and shame on them,” Newsom said to TSA workers gathered at a hastily planned event at Sacramento International Airport on Thursday. “They are, in essence, threatening us for doing what we’re doing.”
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:19 PM on January 17, 2019 [20 favorites]


    > Trump's kids are definitely going to prison...

    Unless they move to Russia when things start really heating up.

    Serious question: Is there anywhere else they could move? Somehow I don't feel Russia is ideal from their point of view, I mean, even the Russians prefer Florida.
    posted by mumimor at 11:34 PM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Israel seems like a logical choice. For Jared and Ivanka, I mean. Junior, any country in Africa with big game hunting and no extradition.
    posted by TWinbrook8 at 11:36 PM on January 17, 2019


    Yep. There needs to be an immediate path to action on this, and I don't know what that looks like. We can't have "oh the President told his lawyer to lie to Congress" be a plotline that lingers for six months. This feels like it should be an inflection point, but events need to happen to actually make it one.

    No fear:

    Lawmakers Vow To Investigate Evidence That Trump Told His Lawyer To Lie To Congress
    The House Intelligence Committee will investigate the revelation that President Donald Trump ordered his longtime personal attorney to lie to Congress about a potentially lucrative real estate project in Moscow.

    On Thursday, BuzzFeed News reported that in 2017, Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about when negotiations to build a Trump Tower in the Russian capital ended and to obscure then-candidate Trump’s involvement in the discussions surrounding the project.

    “The allegation that the President of the United States may have suborned perjury before our committee in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date,” committee chairman Adam Schiff said in a statement. “We will do what’s necessary to find out if it’s true.”
    Where it goes from there depends on what's actually proven.
    posted by scalefree at 12:00 AM on January 18, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Trumpspawn are worthless to Russia if they flee US and live in Russia, particularly since they'd be stripped of whatever wealth they really do have behind all of their lies about it. It's not like they have any real job skills, and their PR value as treasonous criminals on the run from Uncle Sam is pretty limited. What would Putin want with them? They'd be like a deadbeat uncle crashing on your couch, generally farting up the place and making it impossible to have your friends over.
    posted by yesster at 12:03 AM on January 18, 2019 [7 favorites]


    As it dawns on Trump that this really is serious, and as he watches his supporters turn, and all of his future possibilities are only different flavors of abject failure, the narcissistic injury will render him incapable of restraint. He is going to hurt everybody he possibly can, relentlessly.

    He will be especially vicious toward every powerful Republican, elected or not, who's secrets he knows or suspects. Unable to stop himself even if he wanted, his tweetstorm will be all knives aimed at the Republicans. In self-defense and outright retaliation, many of those who get stabbed will start using their own knives that they've so carefully been sharpening their entire careers.

    The Republican Party is quite likely going to self-destruct spectacularly and gloriously. I can hardly wait.
    posted by yesster at 12:59 AM on January 18, 2019 [44 favorites]


    This nagging voice in my head keeps reminding me that Donald Trump, during his campaign, made two specific huge predictions that are quite likely to come true:

    1. "I'm going to have the best ratings." Yes, but not job approval ratings, which have never really mattered to him, but the television viewership ratings, which he has always cared about most deeply. The upcoming proceedings will be for-real "must see TV."

    2. "I'm going to drain the swamp." Yep, the effluent of his ouster will absolutely have a cleansing effect on entrenched powerful Republican operatives and organizations.

    Trump's inadvertent yet devastatingly accurate prescience is probably the most amazing, unexpected turn of events in this whole historic drama. A Cassandra for an era of absurdity.
    posted by yesster at 2:06 AM on January 18, 2019 [12 favorites]


    And as long as I'm making stuff up: one of the sealed indictments is for Pence, and Mueller is waiting for the Republicans to hitch everything to him before Mueller takes him down.

    For the sake of realism in your fantasy fiction it is important to remember that Mueller is a lifelong Republican. He will not have taking down the Republican party as a goal. He might end up doing it inadvertently by following the law and laying out their perfidy but he certainly will not do it with the strategic intention of helping the Democratic party.
    posted by srboisvert at 2:09 AM on January 18, 2019 [20 favorites]


    Sen. Amy Klobuchar: “You wrote... a president persuading a person to commit perjury would be obstruction. Is that right?”

    William Barr: “Yes.”

    That was two days ago at the confirmation hearing. I wonder if Amy knew what was coming today?
    posted by adept256 at 3:53 AM on January 18, 2019 [64 favorites]


    For the sake of realism in your fantasy fiction it is important to remember that Mueller is a lifelong Republican.

    Maybe, just maybe, he no longer recognises the current republican party as the one he's supported in the past and wants to see the malignancy of the last decades or so gone as much as the rest of us. But he's tasked with building an unassailable trail of the corruption before speaking out.

    For him, the whole thing might be a metaphorical version of Defending Your Life and he's sick of them.
    posted by michswiss at 3:54 AM on January 18, 2019 [9 favorites]


    Trump is just the fruiting body. The Republican lawmakers won’t turn on him until they get "looking forward, not back" assurances.
    posted by bonobothegreat at 4:09 AM on January 18, 2019 [8 favorites]


    WaPo: March for Life and Women’s March bring protesters — and traffic challenges-- this weekend

    No quote. Just. This news cycle. With the Cohen thing. And this. March for Life AND Women's March. Mercy me.
    posted by saysthis at 4:10 AM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


    @ChrisMurphyCT: Listen, if Mueller does have multiple sources confirming Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress, then we need to know this ASAP. Mueller shouldn't end his inquiry, but it's about time for him to show Congress his cards before it's too late for us to act.

    Seems to me that's exactly what is happening. Look at the sourcing on the Buzzfeed story...
    according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.
    [...]
    Now the two sources have told BuzzFeed News that Cohen also told the special counsel that...
    [...]
    The special counsel’s office learned [...] Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.
    [...]
    the law enforcement sources familiar with his testimony to the special counsel said
    [...]
    Federal agents looking into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election also tried [...] the sources said.
    [...]
    Donald Trump Jr., meanwhile, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 7, 2017, that [...] The two law enforcement sources disputed this characterization
    Mueller's team doesn't leak... by accident. There were some very deliberate leaks (pre-Mueller) from law enforcement when Michael Flynn was still in office and lying about his interactions with the Russian ambassador. Because Michael Flynn was a clear and present threat who had to be removed, and the only way to achieve that after Trump ignored their warnings was to let the American people know WHY he had to be removed so that we could put pressure on our representatives, who put pressure on Trump.

    We keep hearing these rumors that the Mueller bombshell is about to drop. Rosenstein said he would retire in February... after the report is done.

    TWO SOURCES. I think this is a deliberate leak. People are more likely to believe things they have heard more than once. Get everyone talking about this, and then the Mueller report, when it comes out, comes as confirmation. Drop some hints to Republican senators about how bad this is going to be so they realize they need to flee the sinking ship. I dunno, I'm not quite sure what the strategic reason is. But if "law enforcement sources" are leaking this now, I think we're near the endgame.
    posted by OnceUponATime at 4:14 AM on January 18, 2019 [36 favorites]


    adept256: "That was two days ago at the confirmation hearing. I wonder if Amy knew what was coming today?"

    I don't think anyone paying the least amount of attention needed a crystal ball to bet that the Cheeto suborned perjury, tapered with witnesses and generally committed any he act he could, legal or otherwise, in an attempt to cover his ass.
    posted by Mitheral at 4:33 AM on January 18, 2019 [14 favorites]


    I preemptively made a thread about the Women's March and March for Life. It deserves its own space anyway. So...FWIW.
    posted by saysthis at 5:10 AM on January 18, 2019 [24 favorites]


    Rep. Steve Scalise blames Nancy Pelosi for lack of diversity in House GOP conference at E-PAC launch: "I’ve noticed that when female members run on Republican side Nancy Pelosi will spend a lot more money in many cases twice as much more to defeat Republican female candidates."

    I know I don't have to entertain this kind of fractally bad faith, but I decided to look into this just out of curiosity. It turns out that it's kinda hard to have a lot of female representatives if only 52 of your candidates for representative are women. Even then, only 13, or 25%, of those candidates won election, compared to the 186 out of 347 (53%) male Republican candidates who won election. In addition, 13% of Republican candidates for representative were women, but of the 43 GOP-held seats lost to the Democrats, 13, or 30%, of the Republican candidates for those seats were women. There have been studies suggesting that Republican women are at a disadvantage in elections when compared to Republican men, but this election seems to have been unusually bad [PDF] for them.
    posted by J.K. Seazer at 5:22 AM on January 18, 2019 [20 favorites]


    And the districts where a Republican woman can win a primary (especially a younger woman) are more likely to be competitive and/or in expensive media markets than the ones held by men.
    posted by holgate at 5:36 AM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


    At this rate we might not need Mueller's report at all, given how well these clowns are doing at incriminating themselves and their friends.

    Don't get me wrong, I will savor that report with bourbon and nibbles, but I am still amazed that this continues on despite all the idiocy.
    posted by lydhre at 5:54 AM on January 18, 2019 [4 favorites]


    At this rate we might not need Mueller's report at all, given how well these clowns are doing at incriminating themselves and their friends.

    Maybe not to convict, but posterity and the world need to know. Like, when it comes out, it should be etched on a stone obelisk and erected on the White House lawn. We have to convict them and put them in jail, but we also have to live with ourselves after that.
    posted by saysthis at 6:02 AM on January 18, 2019 [10 favorites]


    DC Catholic Charities pays bills for furloughed workers
    So many people showed up, the charity ran out of cash within the first half hour.

    [...]“I normally donate to the United Way and to now be on the receiving end was a little bit embarrassing and unsettling,” [a furloughed State Department worker] said. “I have to many bills outstanding that are due in a couple of week and any help is so gratefully received because we didn't ask for this but we're trying to do the best we can."
    Alabama church hands out $16,500 worth of groceries to families on furlough
    First Baptist Church of Huntsville is in a community where 40,000 federal workers and contractors live, in the Alabama town where NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center is located. Roughly 6,000 NASA staff have been sent home without pay during the ongoing partial government shutdown.
    posted by jgirl at 6:04 AM on January 18, 2019 [23 favorites]


    Roughly 6,000 NASA staff have been sent home without pay during the ongoing partial government shutdown.
    I always was a bit amazed at those surveys saying how no one in America has more than two hundred dollars in the bank or whatever, but hearing that Many Thousands Of Engineers With Steady Government Jobs are among that number really blows me away. *sigh*
    posted by wenestvedt at 6:20 AM on January 18, 2019 [17 favorites]


    Rep. Steve Scalise blames Nancy Pelosi for lack of diversity in House GOP conference at E-PAC launch: "I’ve noticed that when female members run on Republican side Nancy Pelosi will spend a lot more money in many cases twice as much more to defeat Republican female candidates."

    This is just fractally stupid. As Scalise should well know, the DCCC (not Pelosi) handles the vast majority of financial support for House candidates. Its total spending for the 2018 cycle: $291,338,123. Her campaign fund's contribution to the DCCC: $2,500,000, or < 1%.

    Her PAC to the Future leadership fund spent $1.1 million on the 2018 cycle, giving to more than 70 candidates, in increments of either $5K or $10K. PAC to the Future sent $16,346 to the DCCC in the 2018 cycle. (All numbers from opensecrets.org.)

    "We need to do a better job of recruiting to make sure we recruit really good female candidates," @SteveScalise said, "[But] when female candidates run as Republicans, Nancy Pelosi does not want our party to look diverse.”

    So Pelosi has power over GOP voters, even in primaries? She's even more awesome than I realized!
    posted by GrammarMoses at 6:22 AM on January 18, 2019 [37 favorites]


    Roughly 6,000 NASA staff have been sent home without pay during the ongoing partial government shutdown.

    Where is that from? Because, that number seems extremely low unless it's only counting civil servants.
    posted by runcibleshaw at 6:33 AM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Scalise first ran for office after being hand-picked by the Louisiana Republicans - his district comprises the same hyper-conservative New Orleans suburbs that brought us Bobby Jindal.

    He is a bigot and a homophobe, who has proven incapable of understanding the bitter irony of his distinction of being one of the only prominent Republicans since Reagan to be targeted with the gun violence his positions have helped exacerbate. It really is a shame that anyone listens to him about anything.
    posted by aspersioncast at 6:44 AM on January 18, 2019 [14 favorites]


    runcibleshaw, I don't know many people work for NASA, but I believe that the agency uses lots of contractors.
    posted by wintermind at 6:51 AM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Pelosi's Chief-of-Staff Drew Hammill via twitter just now:

    After President Trump revoked the use of military aircraft to travel to Afghanistan, the delegation was prepared to fly commercially to proceed with this vital trip to meet with our commanders and troops on the front lines.

    In the middle of the night, State Dept's Diplomatic Security Service provided an updated threat assessment detailing that the President announcing this sensitive travel had significantly increased danger to the delegation & to troops, security, & other officials supporting trip.

    This morning, we learned that the Administration had leaked the commercial travel plans as well.

    In light of the grave threats caused by the President’s action, the delegation has decided to postpone the trip so as not to further endanger our troops and security personnel, or the other travelers on the flights.
    posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 6:54 AM on January 18, 2019 [127 favorites]


    Been making the rounds for me this morning: As shutdown drags on, scientists scramble to keep insects, plants and microbes alive
    Essential staff can go in to water plants and feed insects, she said, but they cannot collect data on experiments that were in progress when the shutdown hit. Maness doesn’t know exactly which projects have been affected, but many are time-sensitive.
    We've already had a bunch of cancellations of meetings; I was supposed to be at one last week. There are indeed a couple of on-going pieces of work that I'm personally quite concerned for as well that the Park Service was running.
    posted by bonehead at 6:58 AM on January 18, 2019 [25 favorites]


    Why am I unshocked that the "administration" leaked it all so they can't go or will be instantly killed. It's downright Xanatos Gambit of them.
    posted by jenfullmoon at 7:00 AM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


    About the Aeromexico ad:

    1) Mexicans are a diverse mix of people with ancestry from Spain, indigenous groups in Mexico, West Africa, Asia, other parts of Europe, and various admixtures of people with ancestry from these and other regions. Anglo-Americans like to think of Mexicans or Hispanics as if they were a race, but you can't give people a DNA test to check for someone's 'blood quantum' or percentage of Mexican ancestry anymore than you could do the same determine someone's percentage of US ancestry. (We're not the only nation of immigrants, folks.)

    2) To do a DNA test, you have to take samples, send them to a lab and wait to get the results back. There is no instant DNA test you can administer and get results from in the course of an interview the way they're pretending to do here.

    Hopefully some of the reporters who posted articles pointing and laughing at how the 'dumb rednecks' in this video reacted to finding out their 'percentage of Mexican DNA' will get an earful from Hispanic people they know about the absurdity of 'Mexican DNA' and start to realize they've been played. Maybe then some of them will start to think about the assumptions they've been making about race and ethnicity, and maybe learn something about the history of Mexico and the US, and how genetic testing works. I think that's the idea.

    People who write for news media have a lot of influence, and getting even a few of them to think about their assumptions and misconceptions is a good thing.
    posted by nangar at 7:03 AM on January 18, 2019 [26 favorites]


    Sen. Amy Klobuchar: “You wrote... a president persuading a person to commit perjury would be obstruction. Is that right?”

    Prosecutors don't ask a question unless they already know the answer. Senator Klobuchar is a former prosecutor.
    posted by kirkaracha at 7:10 AM on January 18, 2019 [71 favorites]


    If you needed even more US-Russia drama, here you go: The longstanding NASA-Russian partnership in space may be unraveling -- Russia is less and less a space super power. (Eric Berger for Ars Technica, Jan. 18, 2019)
    After an American Apollo and Soviet Soyuz spacecraft docked in orbit during the height of the Cold War, in 1975, the two leading space powers gradually worked more and more together on civil space activities. Over time, they forged a successful and, among astronauts and engineers at least, even a comfortable bond. But of late, that bond is fraying, and long-term it may unravel entirely.

    The most immediate issue involves Dmitry Rogozin, appointed to lead the Russian space corporation Roscosmos in May 2018. Overtly political, Rogozin shares Vladimir Putin's antipathy toward the West. Following the Crimean crisis in 2014, Rogozin was one of seven Russian officials sanctioned by the Obama administration. In response, he taunted NASA, which relied then (and still does) on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to reach the International Space Station.

    "After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest to the USA to bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline,” Rogozin, then a deputy prime minister of Russia over defense and space, tweeted in Russian at the time.

    When NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine visited Russia and Kazakhstan last year, he reciprocated with an invitation for Rogozin to visit the United States and lecture at Bridenstine's alma mater, Rice University in Houston. But because of Rogozin's controversial past, and the existing sanctions, several US Senators vocally opposed his visit. This forced NASA to indefinitely delay the visit earlier this month.

    This week saw an attempt at fence-mending. Bridenstine and Rogozin held a teleconference to discuss cooperation on the ISS program and other projects. It is not clear how well the call went, as NASA is shut down, and the agency did not release details. According to one source familiar with White House space policy, despite some bluster from Russia, there have been no immediate repercussions to the US-Russian space relationship due to the withdrawal of the invitation. However, this kerfuffle is sure to have bruised some egos on the Russian side.

    And relations were already a bit uneasy after unfortunate Russian insinuations about sabotage by NASA astronauts on the space station late last year. This baseless charge left doubts in the minds of both NASA and Russia's space leaders about the relationship.

    But these are just the most visible problems. There are more serious, underlying tensions. These stem from NASA's fear of a systematic decline in the quality of Russian hardware and practices, such as what may have actually occurred with the Soyuz leak and, separately, a Soyuz rocket failure last year. Put simply, Russia's human space program appears to be a fading force. And as Russia's prominence in space declines over time, there is the question of what role it is reasonable to expect the country to play in US spaceflight activities after the end of the ISS program sometime during the 2020s.
    And it goes on ....


    Emmy Rae: NBC: Thousands more migrant kids separated from parents under Trump than previously reported

    How the Feds Failed to Track Thousands of Separated Children (Issie Lapowsky for Wired, Jan. 17, 2019)
    THEY KEPT THE kids in cages. And Excel spreadsheets. And more than 60 other government files and databases that made it nearly impossible to track the thousands of children who have been separated from their parents by the Trump administration while trying to enter the United States.

    This is according to a new report released Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Inspector General, which finds that, since 2017, the Trump administration has separated thousands more children from their parents than it previously disclosed and that it tracked these kids in ad hoc, disparate databases, including Excel spreadsheets and Microsoft Sharepoint accounts, further complicating the already tortured process of figuring out where those children are today.
    I'm no lawyer, but that sounds like criminal intent to do harm to children through the failure to accurately track them.

    Meanwhile, back with Space Farce: Trump's Missile Defense Plan Creates More Problems Than It Solves (Lily Hay Newman for Wired, Jan. 18, 2019)
    THE THREAT OF a nuclear missile strike on United States soil has felt more tangible over the past few years, thanks to North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile testing and oscillating relationships between the two countries. Against that backdrop, President Donald Trump announced plans on Thursday for the next generation of missile defense on land, sea—and in space.

    The Missile Defense Review describes creating capabilities to stop an array of long-range missiles, including those that are hypersonic, or travel faster than the speed of sound. The assessment also discusses more radical ideas, like capabilities that could neutralize a missile anywhere in the world during its initial ascent, space-based tracking and interception technologies, and even high-energy lasers mounted on "airborne platforms."

    Anywhere, Any Time, Any Place
    And while Trump described a comprehensive, airtight vision of missile defense in his remarks, analysts say the administration's actual report is more of a survey of all possible avenues, from realistic, incremental next steps to unlikely moonshots.
    ...
    Though analysts agreed that the combined cost of all the ideas described in the report would be astronomical, Laura Grego, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, suggested that a ballpark would be $1 trillion. "It would be technically unachievable, and economically ruinous if you tried," she told reporters on Thursday.

    Defense systems also cost more to establish than offensive improvements; analysts noted on Thursday that the Trump administration's report could spark an escalation with countries like China and Russia.
    I'll end with this pullquote from that article: "If you liked the President’s border wall, wait until you see the space wall." -- Joe Cirincione, Ploughshares Fund
    posted by filthy light thief at 7:27 AM on January 18, 2019 [23 favorites]


    For another dose of White House inflicted misery around the world: Palestinian School And Sewage Projects Unfinished As U.S. Cuts Final Bit Of Aid (NPR, January 17, 2019)
    The White House has blocked an emergency effort to finish major U.S.-funded school, water and sewage projects in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to documents reviewed by NPR.

    It is the latest of a series of moves by the Trump administration to shut down U.S. aid to Palestinians, which is scheduled to end Feb 1.

    In the West Bank, a nearly complete multimillion-dollar sewage network in Jericho will have to be buried under asphalt and abandoned, and a $1.4 million school facility under construction in the Bethlehem area will be left behind, according to a recent document from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

    Anera, the U.S.-funded aid group carrying out the school project, recently received notification from the U.S. government that it may have to tear down the school, said Sean Carroll, the head of Anera.
    If they're not grifting, the Trump administration is causing misery for people they deem "others." (That is, if they can't grift and inflict suffering.)
    posted by filthy light thief at 7:31 AM on January 18, 2019 [19 favorites]


    I don't know many people work for NASA, but I believe that the agency uses lots of contractors.

    FWIW I know two, and I don't exactly travel in those (space!) circles. One is very furloughed right now. He's probably fine though, and pretty sanguine about the whole thing.

    They do use contractors, but I don't believe it's on the level of NIH or DHS for instance.
    posted by aspersioncast at 7:37 AM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


    It seems the trump administration committed (another) serious crime leaking the delegation’s travel plans. Any legal scholars taking a crack at that?

    At the very least it would seem that our dear Nancy has struck a nerve by taking away Trump toy (SOtU).
    posted by VTX at 7:41 AM on January 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Mueller's team doesn't leak... by accident.

    FWIW Josh Marshall's guess--which seems plausible to me--is that these came from the NY office, not Mueller's team.

    I am enjoying the fact that Buzzfeed got the scoop. The Post has two bits on it on their web "front page" but the Times just has AP and Reuters write ups at the moment, buried deep.
    posted by mark k at 7:51 AM on January 18, 2019 [16 favorites]


    At the very least it would seem that our dear Nancy has struck a nerve by taking away Trump toy (SOtU).
    posted by VTX at 11:41 PM on January 18 [1 favorite +] [!]

    To which he responded by trying to get her blown up. And then trying to get her and hundreds of innocents blown up. They had to cancel the trip to spare the lives of hundreds of innocent humans who otherwise Trump would have callously let die if Nancy flew out on a mission to end a war.

    Did y'all catch the gravity of that? He needs to go to jail NOW.
    posted by saysthis at 8:07 AM on January 18, 2019 [88 favorites]


    >>it tracked these kids in ad hoc, disparate databases, including Excel spreadsheets and Microsoft Sharepoint accounts, further complicating the already tortured process of figuring out where those children are today.
    I'm no lawyer, but that sounds like criminal intent to do harm to children through the failure to accurately track them.

    I work in records management. My ongoing despair is trying to convince whatever department I'm working for/with at the moment, that you need a database, you need a coder to design a custom UI and you need a ton of spreadsheets that are managed by a database expert, and that person is not me; I'm who you want to wrangle the UI and add new spreadsheets and send notes to your coder to update the structure to focus on the details that are important today without losing the previous data.

    I assure you that there is some contractor, likely a woman, who could, if given the access she used to have, track down the majority of those children. Some would be out of her reach - because after she was laid off last year "for budget reasons," most of the departments she worked with stopped updating the spreadsheets she'd carefully created, and ignored the instruction sheets she'd written, complete with screencaps, about How To Enter Info So You Can Find It Later. (They also ignored the caveat, "if you are too busy for this, then please please please just drop a PDF of the intake sheet into the Intake_Sheets folder on SharePoint so someone can add the info later.")

    It would take a very sympathetic court to find that "business as usual" involved criminal intent. We'd have better results pestering Google for access to Google Sheets that the various staffers used when they found Excel was "too complicated" to update.
    posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:10 AM on January 18, 2019 [49 favorites]


    > This morning, we learned that the Administration had leaked the commercial travel plans [of the congressional delegation to Afghanistan] as well.

    It's been pointed out that collusion with Russia is not treason, because the US is not at war with Russia.

    Can someone please explain to me how THIS isn't treason? It seems pretty clearly "giving aid and comfort" to enemy combatants in a conflict zone.
    posted by Westringia F. at 8:19 AM on January 18, 2019 [19 favorites]


    Because the legal language surrounding war has been relentlessly perverted over the past couple decades to quasi-justify permanent war against vaguely defined hostile entities.

    So yeah, linguistically I-1 is obviously guilty of several counts of treason in varying flavours and shades, but wether he will face any legal repercussions for that will be determined by the extent to which any of these already severely eroded laws and norms still hold force and effect.
    posted by mrjohnmuller at 8:30 AM on January 18, 2019 [4 favorites]


    CNN: Supreme Court to discuss Mueller-related mystery case behind closed doors Friday

    This is a continuation of the case that involves an "unnamed foreign government-owned corporation"
    posted by anastasiav at 8:31 AM on January 18, 2019 [10 favorites]


    The D.C. metro is losing $400k in revenue for every weekday of the government shutdown
    posted by T.D. Strange at 8:33 AM on January 18, 2019 [15 favorites]


    So yeah, linguistically I-1 is obviously guilty of several counts of treason

    I'm sorry and I know this is probably pointless to do here and it's the last I'll do of it, but no, he's guilty of directly endangering the life of a senior US government official. Just now he is guilty of that. He wasn't ever before. Maybe a rank and file spy got that treatment from a Cheney once. Not the Speaker of the House from the sitting President.

    In a time of so many norms violated and lines crossed, I hope THIS ONE gets noted when it's time for sentencing. This is a pretty big deal.

    Going away now.
    posted by saysthis at 8:36 AM on January 18, 2019 [41 favorites]


    ErisLordFreedom I'm with you on the difficulty of trying to convince people that they need a database, but I still think there should be a case for criminal negligence against the people at the top. Not so much the individual stormtroopers who carried out the immoral and evil orders, but surely people in high up positions at ICE should be on the hook for this.

    The fact that they gave the orders to separate all those families but gave no orders or budget to adequately track the kids should be criminally liable shouldn't it?
    posted by sotonohito at 8:36 AM on January 18, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Rep. Steve Scalise blames Nancy Pelosi for lack of diversity in House GOP conference at E-PAC launch: "I’ve noticed that when female members run on Republican side Nancy Pelosi will spend a lot more money in many cases twice as much more to defeat Republican female candidates."

    I know I don't have to entertain this kind of fractally bad faith, but I decided to look into this just out of curiosity. It turns out that it's kinda hard to have a lot of female representatives if only 52 of your candidates for representative are women.

    It would have been nice if the reporter did that minimum amount of fact-checking before giving Scalise a megaphone for his lies under their own byline.

    The media really needs to stop rewarding Republicans for lying, and refusing to publish or air those lies would be a big step.
    posted by Gelatin at 8:53 AM on January 18, 2019 [27 favorites]


    runcibleshaw, I don't know many people work for NASA, but I believe that the agency uses lots of contractors.

    Oh no, I know. I am one of those contractors. Approximately 10,000 people work at the one NASA facility where I also work. Although it is the largest. I guess if I re-read that claim I wouldn't count as NASA staff who aren't getting paid because I'm a contractor and am still getting paid. Although, because I can't do or document any actual work, because I don't have access to NASA facilities or government employees, I'm now "borrowing" paid time off that I'll be working off for the rest of the year.

    Anyway, that just seemed like a really weird way to slice it to me since way more people than that are unable to work at just one NASA center (even if many of them are still technically collecting pay).
    posted by runcibleshaw at 8:53 AM on January 18, 2019 [4 favorites]


    @realDonaldTrump
    Border rancher: “We’ve found prayer rugs out here. It’s unreal.” Washington Examiner People coming across the Southern Border from many countries, some of which would be a big surprise.

    If "we're finding prayer rugs in the desert" is familiar it's because it's a recycling of baseless 14 year old accusations from neo-nazi ex-congressman Tom Tancredo. The Examiner story is entirely based on an interview with a QAnoner rancher (the use of OTM for "Other Than Mexican" is a tell) whose evidence consists of unreliable-narrator heresay including reference to "those Czechoslovakians they caught over on our neighbor’s just last summer." Apparently the caravan has access to an eastern-bloc commie time machine.

    All the old ridiculous wingnut batshittery is heaving up from the grave as a revenants. One crazy asshole repeats something she saw in a forwarded email 10 years ago to an Examiner reporter and it goes straight to the oval office for re-dissemination to the hordes of swine, greedy for their slop. A sixty-million-strong political human centipede.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 8:54 AM on January 18, 2019 [73 favorites]


    Pelosi is asked if she thinks Trump was retaliating re: travel plans. A brilliant response.
    posted by young_simba at 9:09 AM on January 18, 2019 [62 favorites]


    Anyway, that just seemed like a really weird way to slice it to me since way more people than that are unable to work at just one NASA center

    I took the original article as saying that 6,000 NASA employees are furloughed just at the Huntsville, AL NASA center since it was referring to their situation specifically.

    original article: "First Baptist Church of Huntsville is in a community where 40,000 federal workers and contractors live, in the Alabama town where NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center is located. Roughly 6,000 NASA staff have been sent home without pay during the ongoing partial government shutdown. "
    posted by history_denier at 9:10 AM on January 18, 2019 [5 favorites]


    It's been pointed out that collusion with Russia is not treason, because the US is not at war with Russia.

    Can someone please explain to me how THIS isn't treason? It seems pretty clearly "giving aid and comfort" to enemy combatants in a conflict zone.

    I think there's a case for Trump giving “expert advice or assistance” in violation of 18 U.S. Code § 2339A - Providing material support to terrorists
    posted by mikelieman at 9:12 AM on January 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


    This morning, we learned that the administration had leaked the commercial travel plans as well.

    does this refer to a particular act? if it referred to yesterday's letter, it would have been known before this morning. i see no corroboration (nor any interest in the claim) in wapo story, and a brief and much regretted scan of president khorrorshow's twitter timeline does not indicate that commercial travel plans were "leaked" there.

    is there any reporting about where/to whom said travel plans were improperly disclosed?
    posted by 20 year lurk at 9:13 AM on January 18, 2019 [3 favorites]



    The D.C. metro is losing $400k in revenue for every weekday of the government shutdown

    And Channel 4 news is losing morning viewers while gaining mid-day viewers.
    posted by jgirl at 9:15 AM on January 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Lawfare piece on the BuzzFeed article on Trump suborning perjury to Congress. Good analysis.
    posted by suelac at 9:19 AM on January 18, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Pelosi's Chief-of-Staff Drew Hammill via twitter just now:

    ...This morning, we learned that the Administration had leaked the commercial travel plans as well.

    In light of the grave threats caused by the President’s action, the delegation has decided to postpone the trip so as not to further endanger our troops and security personnel, or the other travelers on the flights.

    This morning NPR was too busy yukking it up over what Mara Liasson predictably called Trump's "tit for tat" to give much time to the idea that the President impulsively compromised a sensitive security matter. Again.
    posted by Gelatin at 9:21 AM on January 18, 2019 [31 favorites]


    I am puzzled as to why, as of 12:17 p.m., more than 14 hours after BuzzFeed’s story broke, the New York Times doesn’t have a word about it. I’ve looked at the home page a bunch of times, the Politics page, and the U.S. section, and ... nothing. The story is news even if you’re skeptical about its credibility, because of the response to it. Am I missing something?
    posted by young_simba at 9:22 AM on January 18, 2019 [20 favorites]


    The story is news even if you’re skeptical about its credibility, because of the response to it

    I can report that Fox News was discussing the Cohen story this morning, in case that helps calibrate your expectations.
    posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:25 AM on January 18, 2019 [3 favorites]


    I pay attention daily and still can’t wrap my head around what’s happening- I mean, you just can’t, you have to get on with your day and pay rent. But the level of horror is staggering.

    They: Spread a conspiracy theory that led to targeting of opposition leaders and random civilians during an election. Repeated the exact same conspiracy theory while memorializing the victims. Used the military to influence an election. (Holy shit) Upon losing, spread a new conspiracy theory trying to cast doubt on the simple act of counting absentees (and “normal” Republicans like Rubio did this too) (while one of their party members in actuality engaged in fraud in NC!) Inviting violent gang members in NYC to play reenact a political assassination. Self-dealing in the GA election. State leaders in lame duck in MI WI NC WV FL trying to strip power from the new duly elected leaders or block winning voter referendums.
    Shut down the federal government rather than share power with the newly elected opposition. Compromised security plans for the Speaker in retaliation for her flexing power.

    Adam Serwer was a prophet when he wrote Welcome to the Second Redemption
    posted by cricketcello at 9:26 AM on January 18, 2019 [24 favorites]


    News organizations will often respect another outlet's exclusive for a certain amount of time, though they might say "Buzzfeed reports [x] but we are unable to independently confirm" if a story is big enough. My guess is that the NYTimes is trying to confirm the details with their own reporting and is waiting to put out their own confirmation story with a "first reported by Buzzfeed" qualifier. This depends on either the Times having access to a source willing to leak the same information to them, or their ability to add some significant new details from a different source that builds on Buzzfeed's story.

    Cable outlets (while employing some real journalists) will jump on any new story to talk about on TV since they are largely in the filling-airtime-as-entertainment-to-sell-ads business.
    posted by stopgap at 9:30 AM on January 18, 2019 [12 favorites]


    is there any reporting about where/to whom said travel plans were improperly disclosed?

    I'm curious about this too. Pelosi's spokesman definitely implied that he's talking about more than just Trump's offhanded "feel free to fly commercial" in his letter. It sounds like they actually made plans to fly commercial, and then details of those plans were leaked, but I haven't seen that reported explicitly.
    posted by diogenes at 9:30 AM on January 18, 2019 [5 favorites]


    CNN’s reporting on the Buzzfeed story as possibly the ‘smoking gun’ in the Russia investigation.   If it is, there is the distinct possibility—and if you need anymore proof that we’ve experienced some sort of reality dysfunction, that we’ve suffered some sort of quantum split from the proper timeline back in 2016, this is it—that we may owe the continued existence of our democracy to…Buzzfeed.

    I can’t believe I just wrote that.  I feel lightheaded just thinking it.  Let that roll around your mind a moment.  Savor it like some sort of fine chocolate:  Buzzfeed, Savior of Democracy.

    With apologies to David Sedaris, perhaps I should be grateful.  Maybe it’s a sign of hope for our common future, that the new media will step up to the plate, that the new can shoulder the burden from the old, shine a light on the darkness, expose the roaches and watch them scurry for cover.  Perhaps I should have a little faith that we might just get through this, remind myself that humanity's faced worse challenges than a petulant old crook with creepy hair who is clearly in a terminal cognitive decline.  We'll pull through, I must remind myself of this.

    Buzzfeed though…that’s fucked up.
    posted by los pantalones del muerte at 9:43 AM on January 18, 2019 [28 favorites]


    Via Trump Admin Leaked Pelosi’s Commercial Travel Plans, House Speaker Aide Says – Mother Jones
    The White House denied leaking details of Pelosi’s trip, calling the claim an “offensive, flat out lie.”
    posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:48 AM on January 18, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Whenever I read the news that's been coming out since November 6, I just think back to that night, and how it would have been different had we known then what we know now. It's pretty clear that almost none of what we have learned since the mid-terms was unknown to prosecutors at that time. And while it may seem that Trumpists are impervious to logic, getting conservative-leaning independents to stay at home would have likely gotten Dems at least three additional Senate seats. And also Florida and Georgia would have elected their first black governors there since Reconstruction.

    It's sickening how much marginal voters are dependent on the timing of an event--Trump's approval rating fell about 2 percentage points after Manafort was sentenced in August. If the election had been held then, it's likely Democrats would have done much better. And Manafort's tax fraud, embezzlement and money laundering are hardly even that bad compared to what else we already knew about Trump, but marginal voters saw it on the news every day in August, so we got a swoon in GOP support then and then a prompt recovery. So now the GOP will have those three additional senate seats until 2024, just because a trial happened in August instead of October. The vote for removal of President Trump in the Senate may only get 19 GOP votes, and all because of the timing of some dumb news cycle. It's easy to imagine, say, a dozen additional trials that could potentially happen because of Trump's associates' various crimes, and it's just so awful to think that five years later we might not get socialized medicine or whatever passed because a couple more Republican senators were elected because, for instance, Ivanka Trump's perjury trial concluded in August of 2020 instead of October of 2020.

    Impeachment is obviously a political process, and by sitting out October I think SDNY and the SCO might have made a mistake that they don't even realize the implications of. What if we had known that Trump had suborned perjury regarding Trump Tower Moscow on October 15? Why is telling voters the president's crimes within a month of an election considered such a violation of democratic norms?
    posted by Luminiferous Ether at 9:48 AM on January 18, 2019 [14 favorites]


    As the philosopher Nigel Tufnel once put it:

    You know where you stand in a hell hole
    Folks lend a hand in a hell hole

    (edited to add: In honor of the title of the new thread but placed here because it is better to not already stuff the new thread with such comments.)
    posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:50 AM on January 18, 2019 [5 favorites]


    It sounds like they actually made plans to fly commercial, and then details of those plans were leaked, but I haven't seen that reported explicitly.

    Pelosi’s aide, Hammill, tweeted that multiple WH sources shared the info with hill reporters.
    posted by notyou at 9:50 AM on January 18, 2019 [6 favorites]


    --------------------------------

    ----> NEW THREAD ----->

    --------------------------------
    posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:52 AM on January 18, 2019 [6 favorites]


    young_simba: Pelosi is asked if she thinks Trump was retaliating re: travel plans. A brilliant response.

    Tweet text: Pelosi mischievously addresses question of if Trump grounded her flight as revenge [video clip] -- synopsis:
    Reporter: do you think the president was retaliating when he canceled your trip? Pelosi: "I don't think he'd be that petty, do you?"
    posted by filthy light thief at 9:55 AM on January 18, 2019 [36 favorites]


    cricketcello, could you spell a few of these out? I pay attention daily too, and these points don't ring a bell:

    - Spread a conspiracy theory that led to targeting of opposition leaders and random civilians during an election.
    - Repeated the exact same conspiracy theory while memorializing the victims.
    - Used the military to influence an election.
    - Inviting violent gang members in NYC to play reenact a political assassination.
    posted by lostburner at 9:58 AM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


    At first I read the text and thought "way to project." Upon watching the video, yeah -- she had a bit of a mischievous smile, and that was definitely a cheeky reply.

    Also a bit cheeky: NPR's write-up on this general brouhaha, which notes that "As speaker, Pelosi is the second in line to succeed the president, and travels with a security team and usually on planes provided by the military."

    Emphasis mine -- it's factual, but this would normally feel like a slightly odd inclusion. Now that it's 2019 and "impeachment" is mentioned so casually and widely, it's not that odd.

    Anyway, onto the new thread, and once more into the fray.
    posted by filthy light thief at 10:06 AM on January 18, 2019 [7 favorites]


    1 “migrant caravan funded by Soros” smear likely radicalized the Florida MAGA bomber and Tree of Life shooter. If I recall correctly, Trump talked about the caravan or Soros in the White House the Friday before the shooting

    2 Mike Pence attended a midterm rally in Michigan. It made headlines mainly because he brought on a Jews for Jesus guy to memorialize the victims. I watched the full hour on Cspan online and Pence repeated the scaremongering about the caravan being mysteriously funded (and an audience member audibly shouted “Soros!” to which Pence did not react)

    3 deploying troops to the border in response to the alleged threat of the caravan, in order to make headlines and influence voters ahead of the election
    (I hate even calling it the caravan even though it should be a neutral word, hate using their framing)

    4 Republican Party of Manhattan invited Gavin Mcinnes and the proud boys to give a talk
    Kindof a weird minor detail but notable in the context of other political violence happening:
    “On McInnes' Instagram page, he said he would be re-enacting Otoya Yamaguchi's assassination of the head of the Japanese Socialist Party using a samurai sword at the event.”
    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/proud-boys-nypd-response-alleged-assault-gavin-mcinnes-metropolitan-republican-club-manhattan/


    ( Sorry for posting in a closed thread)
    posted by cricketcello at 10:16 AM on January 18, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Thanks. The migrant caravan nonsense slipped my mind—there has been a lot lately.
    posted by lostburner at 10:24 AM on January 18, 2019


    It's been pointed out that collusion with Russia is not treason, because the US is not at war with Russia.

    The last declaration of war was 1942. The United States doesn't even bother with that anymore.
    posted by srboisvert at 11:32 AM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


    🥛🍪🍪
    posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 11:37 AM on January 18, 2019 [9 favorites]


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