His direct object is the establishment of an absolute Tyranny
July 5, 2018 9:19 AM   Subscribe

A day after the 242nd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the former American colonies of the British Empire now see its executive branch headed by a figure reminiscent of the king they overthrew. And the British aren't looking forward to his approaching visit, either.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. Trump has recently:

• obstructed the Administration of Justice (Pruitt Directly Asked Trump to Replace Sessions with Him—CNN; A Statement by the President—@realDonaldTrump via @RealPressSecBot)

• made Judges dependent on his Will alone (How Trump Will Make His Supreme Court Pick—Axios; Trump’s Supreme Court Pageant Could Come Down to Looks—NYMag)

• erected a multitude of New Offices (Behind Trump’s Plan to Overhaul the Government—NYTimes; President Trump Touts Space Force at Military Independence Day Picnic—Breitbart [Archive.is])

• affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power (Trump Warns NATO Allies to Spend More on Defense, or Else—NYTimes; Planning for Trump’s Military Parade Finally Begins—NY Post)

• combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution (Senate Panel Agrees With Intel Community That Putin Was Trying To Help Trump—CNN; Trump Plans One-On-One Meeting With Putin—CNN; Is Trump Handing Putin a Victory in Syria?—Washington Post)

• cut off our Trade with all parts of the world (The US-China Trade War Is about to Get Real—CNN Money; EU Says Trump Car Tariffs 'Will Put a Tax on the US people'—Guardian; Trump Says He Won’t Sign Any NAFTA Deal Until After Midterms—Washington Post; Trump: WTO Needs to Change Ways or US Will Do 'Something'—AP)

• transported us beyond Seas (Thousands Across U.S. Join 'Keep Families Together' March to Protest Family Separation—NBC News; New Trump Admin Order For Separated Parents: Leave U.S. With Kids Or Without Them—NBC News)

• excited domestic insurrections amongst us (Maxine Waters Receives 'Very Serious' Death Threat On Same Day As Capital Gazette Shootings—the Independent UK; He is a Member of a Violent White Supremacist Group; So Why is He Working for a Defense Contractor with a Security Clearance?—PBS)

Today is the 532nd day of the Trump administration (Trump has spent 165 of them at a Trump property and 122 at a Trump golf club).

Hat tip to kirkaracha for the theme of this FPP.

Please consider MeFi chat for hot-takes and live-blogging breaking news, the current 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.
posted by Doktor Zed (2540 comments total) 165 users marked this as a favorite
 
The Lord Mayor of Sheffield is especially not looking forward to his visit, as per this tweet.
posted by Dysk at 9:25 AM on July 5, 2018 [26 favorites]


Let us also not forget to enjoy the annual tweeting of the declaration by npr and the wild-eyed frothing responses from magamorons who don't know what it is and only know that it makes them ANGEREY.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:30 AM on July 5, 2018 [44 favorites]


Seriously, Britain, it won't hurt this citizen of the US' feelings if you just tell Air Force One there's no where to land the plane.
posted by Atreides at 9:31 AM on July 5, 2018 [14 favorites]


In light of Trump's UK visit, may be worthwhile viewing the 2011 scathing documentary about his Scottish golf course, "You've Been Trumped."
Trailer.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:32 AM on July 5, 2018 [6 favorites]


Probably a stupid question but.. why isn't putting children in cages and camps separate from their parents (with the girls possibly sold or god knows what) not a human rights violation? When will trump and his ilk get sent to the hague?
posted by driedmango at 9:33 AM on July 5, 2018 [44 favorites]


The Lord Mayor of Sheffield is especially not looking forward to his visit, as per this tweet.

Is "wasteman" a britishism for "garbage human" or am i right in thinking that sanitation workers are being unfairly slandered in the comparison to trump (after all Gargabemen/women/sanitation workers do really useful things in society while trump is a cancerous wart on our ass).
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 9:35 AM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


A "wasteman" is equivalent to "man-child," and is derived from the habit of wasting one's time. It's not related to waste management.
posted by explosion at 9:38 AM on July 5, 2018 [56 favorites]


Very much appreciate this Declaration of Independence- focused post. It really is illuminating, seeing it all laid out like this.
posted by corb at 9:39 AM on July 5, 2018 [28 favorites]


CNBC. No separated immigrant children reunited with parents yet as deadline looms: Trump health chief Alex Azar

He said HHS is working "overtime" to confirm that the people who purportedly are parents of those children actually are their parents, and is also checking to see if any parents have a background that make them dangerous to receive a child.


"We're doing the best we can: nothing."
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:40 AM on July 5, 2018 [27 favorites]


"We're doing the best we can do: nothing."

Instead - and ominously - they're looking at how to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans.

I fully expect this to eventually be deployed against political opponents if they are successful.
posted by ryanshepard at 9:43 AM on July 5, 2018 [54 favorites]


Political Wire: Li Jiang, who owns a flag-making company in China, told NPR that he’s been contracted to manufacture flags for President Trump’s 2020 election bid.
posted by Gelatin at 9:45 AM on July 5, 2018 [11 favorites]


Political Wire: Li Jiang, who owns a flag-making company in China, told NPR that he’s been contracted to manufacture flags for President Trump’s 2020 election bid.

A perfect metaphor for this entire administration.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 9:47 AM on July 5, 2018 [43 favorites]


@LisaDNews: NEW - THE SMALLEST KIDS.At last an answer. HHS says about 100 children under the age of 5, in its custody right now, were separated from parents.
posted by zachlipton at 9:47 AM on July 5, 2018 [13 favorites]


Is "wasteman" a britishism for "garbage human"

Yes.
posted by Dysk at 9:47 AM on July 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


This tweet regarding Trump's reading and writing habits and accompanying response is pretty hilarious.
posted by TedW at 9:49 AM on July 5, 2018 [41 favorites]


(We traditionally call sanitation workers binmen here)
posted by Dysk at 9:51 AM on July 5, 2018 [6 favorites]


Hanitty blames Maxine Waters for the newspaper shooting. Of course he does. I'd say what an absolute asshole he is, but I'm sure there are several book length papers on the subject already.
posted by triage_lazarus at 9:52 AM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


Is "wasteman" a britishism for "garbage human" or am i right in thinking that sanitation workers are being unfairly slandered in the comparison to trump (after all Gargabemen/women/sanitation workers do really useful things in society while trump is a cancerous wart on our ass).

The old British slang for a sanitation worker is "dustman," as in one who empties the dustbins. A wasteman is merely a waste of oxygen.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:52 AM on July 5, 2018 [9 favorites]


Political Wire: Li Jiang, who owns a flag-making company in China, told NPR that he’s been contracted to manufacture flags for President Trump’s 2020 election bid.
Do they expect to get paid?
posted by MtDewd at 9:55 AM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]



Political Wire: Li Jiang, who owns a flag-making company in China, told NPR that he’s been contracted to manufacture flags for President Trump’s 2020 election bid.

A perfect metaphor for this entire administration.


The "lol American flags are manufactured in China!" stories always get written anytime a "USA decides it's bad to purchase Chinese products." situation arises.
posted by sideshow at 9:55 AM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Just saw on MSNBC that the White House is formally announcing its hire of Bill Shine as deputy chief of staff for communications, and also adviser to the president. Because "LOL nothing matters" is the Constitution now.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:05 AM on July 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


The "lol American flags are manufactured in China!" stories always get written anytime a "USA decides it's bad to purchase Chinese products." situation arises.

It's not about "lol China" though. It's about how Trump purports to be on the side of the American worker, how he purports to be about America First™ and the second he can save a buck he throws all that under the bus. It's like how the heartland bemoans the death of American manufacturing and want those jobs back but will hoard up $2 t-shirts and $300 60-inch 4K displays at Walmart at the first opportunity.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 10:06 AM on July 5, 2018 [34 favorites]


It's extraordinary that the president of the United States could hire someone like this,” said one senior Fox News executive. “This is someone who is highly knowledgeable of women being cycled through for horrible and degrading behavior by someone who was an absolute monster.”
posted by zachlipton at 10:07 AM on July 5, 2018 [45 favorites]


DSA meeting update:

As mentioned in the last thread, I went to the NYC DSA subchapter debate on whether or not to endorse Cynthia Nixon for Governor.

There were 68 people there. I counted 12 women.

For the debate itself, we were split into 7 groups, each with a facilitator, who then reported back all of our group Pros and Cons to the entire meeting. This process seemed to involve some filtering. (Several of the arguments I made did not make it to the group presentation stage, in particular the argument that a Cynthia Nixon endorsement, combined with AOC and Julia Salazar's campaign, might make the organization more friendly to women, and noting that there seemed to be a dramatic gender disparity.) We then broke back into our original groups to rebut the Pros and Cons etc etc.

I've been trying to figure out how best to present this, so I think I'll just state what my experience was. My group had two women in our group of 8-10 (we lost two dudes halfway through); myself and the facilitator, who seemed to feel somewhat constrained by her role, based on her disclosures.

The most popular arguments in this little group seemed to be "she doesn't identify as a socialist," "we wouldn't own her the way we own Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez," "she's a celebrity," "anyone who understands history couldn't support her" (from a college student), "I don't want to support the Democratic Party" (in the same breath with which they valorized Bernie's candidacy), "we're not an electoral organization" (again this seems...inconsistent?), and then any number of rationalizations for "I don't like her" that turned out to be, at best, ill-informed on her actual statements and policies. I was the only person who brought up the impending repeal of Roe v. Wade and Cuomo's role in making sure NYS doesn't have state level abortion access legislation. Only two people brought up her actual policies, all of which are priorities for the DSA. There were at least three people in our little group -- all men -- who explicitly made the argument that "principles" were more important than "politics," in response to the argument that "this is a current emergency." They also all favored sitting things out, except where Bernie was concerned.

Hmmm. Ok. But then the facilitators stood up to present their group's arguments. 5/7 used some variation on "we wouldn't have enough power over her" or "we wouldn't be able to control her." These are direct quotes. I wrote them down at the time. "Power" and "control" came up repeatedly. When we broke back into our groups, I said, "That was incredibly creepy, and it was not language that anyone would use about a male candidate. It's also not something that ever happens, ever, so what the fuck?" The only person to agree with me in our little group was the female facilitator.

I honestly...cannot describe how weird that was. Writing it down doesn't seem to do it justice. But after like the fourth dude to get up and earnestly talk about needing to control a woman candidate for Governor, the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. There was something about the repetition and the total lack of awareness that was genuinely disturbing, especially since it seemed to originate organically in all these different groups. None of these people thought twice about that sentiment. Nothing about it seemed unusual to them, such that they stood up and repeated it, earnestly, many times.

In general the focus for most people seemed to be on, for lack of a better phrase, ideological purity. They certainly dwarfed practical considerations. I do not know if this would have been the case with a male candidate with the same policy positions. They also seemed to believe that they "owned" AOC, even though according to the woman who actually worked on the ground the NYC DSA was only responsible for 20% of AOC's ground game.

It wasn't a great first experience. There is a feminist working group. I plan to ask them many questions.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:08 AM on July 5, 2018 [248 favorites]


News from Hel:

Finnish media remains excited about the impending summit between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Helsinki, with Helsingin Sanomat publishing no fewer than four articles on preparations for the meeting.

They include news that Finland is considering extra checks on travellers from the Schengen area around the summit, the relatively chilled attitude of local police (who say it's 'business as usual'), and the story as reported by Yle on Wednesday that there will be at least four protests during the summit.

In addition, the opening of media accreditation brought the admission from the authorities that Finlandia Hall will be the media centre for the summit, with more than a thousand journalists expected to arrive in the Finnish capital for the occasion.
via
posted by infini at 10:10 AM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


You've Been Trumped was followed up by You've Been Trumped Too. That poor woman didn't have running water for over 6 years.
posted by brujita at 10:11 AM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


> Li Jiang, who owns a flag-making company in China, told NPR that he’s been contracted to manufacture flags for President Trump’s 2020 election bid.
Do they expect to get paid?


They expect to get paid in business opportunities and reduced tariffs, not cash. Trump doesn't pay for anything with his own money if he can avoid it.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:12 AM on July 5, 2018 [5 favorites]


I honestly...cannot describe how weird that was. Writing it down doesn't seem to do it justice. But after like the fourth dude to get up and earnestly talk about needing to control a woman candidate for Governor, the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. There was something about the repetition and the total lack of awareness that was genuinely disturbing, especially since it seemed to originate organically in all these different groups. None of these people thought twice about that sentiment. Nothing about it seemed unusual to them, such that they stood up and repeated it, earnestly, many times.

Ugh. That sure is phony tough-talkin' marxist-bro-y, and I hope that you can totally shine in the feminist caucus and be part of a big change.

Have they mentioned to AOC that the DSA "owns" her? I sure hope they don't, because if that starts getting bruited about, she'll really be pushed to distance herself from them.

Also, frankly, "will we 'own' this candidate and be able to control them like some kind of McCarthyite fantasy, if not let's not bother" is not actual crafty strategizing.
posted by Frowner at 10:20 AM on July 5, 2018 [43 favorites]


Very much appreciate this Declaration of Independence- focused post. It really is illuminating, seeing it all laid out like this.

Thank you. With my brain melting in this record-setting heat wave—Thanks to Trump, U.S. Will Not Meet Paris Climate Goals (Atlantic)—I don't think I did the topic justice, though. For instance, I couldn't decide if Sessions's recision of two dozen DoJ guidelines counted as "refused his Assent to Laws" or not. I do think that his rescinding the guidelines over the "Audit of Compliance Monitoring Systems" was underreported when it fits in with the Trump administration's general aversion to documenting their in-house vandalism.

P.S. Is anyone interested in composing a DSA FPP for the Blue so people can participate in an in-depth discussion about it? Cheers,
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:24 AM on July 5, 2018 [16 favorites]


I joined the Twin Cities DSA yesterday mostly because I want to help pull MN politics to the left as the looming election here has me worried. Seriously, the thought of another Pawlenty term gives me nightmares. I have always identified as a socialist mostly because I grew up in Europe and saw what works and doesn't work under a couple of those systems. I don't care about Bernie, I'm all about the future.
posted by misterpatrick at 10:25 AM on July 5, 2018 [7 favorites]


NGL, there was a lot more crying than usual during last night's screening of 1776.

P.S. Why is autocorrect trying to change "1776" to "1775?!?"
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:25 AM on July 5, 2018 [9 favorites]


There was also the guy who suggested that we offer her a conditional endorsement, "if she publicly identifies as a socialist." He seemed nice. He listened when I talked, and was friendly. But he also did not see why it was weird, counterproductive, and problematic to demand that the only credible lefty but female candidate for Governor bend the knee to the a party with 40,000 members nationwide.

There were four people in my little group who seemed to care at all about strategy -- me, the facilitator, a knowledgeable and nice academic dude, and the nice guy who nevertheless wanted the conditional endorsement. Everyone else...not so much.

Honestly, if this is representative of the DSA, AOC probably should distance herself from them. It does seem like the best way to change it is to flood the place with women, but that becomes sort of a chicken and the egg problem.

My biggest concern at this point is that the DSA is culturally resistant to seeing that they have a problem, and that the problem is them. Without that, it doesn't get fixed. And even then it will require a lot of emotional labor at a time when we're all exhausted. So that's...not great.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:29 AM on July 5, 2018 [69 favorites]


That all sounds very discouraging schadenfrau. Maybe it's a problem with that specific chapter? Does anyone else have better experiences to report? I am now depressed.
posted by Justinian at 10:31 AM on July 5, 2018 [12 favorites]


Daily Beast, Inside the Online Campaign to Whitewash the History of Donald Trump’s Russian Business Associates
A mystery client has been paying bloggers in India and Indonesia to write articles distancing President Donald Trump from the legal travails of a mob-linked former business associate.

Spokespeople for online reputation management companies in the two countries confirmed that they had been paid to write articles attempting to whitewash Trump’s ties to Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who, with former Russian trade minister Tevfik Arif, collaborated with the Trump Organization on numerous real estate deals from New York to the former Soviet Union.

The campaign appears designed to influence Google search results pertaining to Trump’s relationship with Sater, Arif, and the Bayrock Group, a New York real estate firm that collaborated with Trump on a series of real estate deals, and recruited Russian investors for potential Trump deals in Moscow.
posted by zachlipton at 10:32 AM on July 5, 2018 [27 favorites]


There weren't as many ahem, problems in the Working Families Party about endorsing Cynthia Nixon.
posted by Harry Caul at 10:34 AM on July 5, 2018 [10 favorites]


It's not about "lol China" though. It's about how Trump purports to be on the side of the American worker, how he purports to be about America First™ and the second he can save a buck he throws all that under the bus.

The second paragraph of these stories always contains a sentence along the lines of "Mr/Rep/Senator So-and-So implored everyone to buy American, but ironically American flags are made in China...". The whole reason these articles get written is your "he says he believes one thing, but Chinese American flags prove the other" is the entire reason these articles have been trotted out for the last 3-4 decades.
posted by sideshow at 10:34 AM on July 5, 2018


@johnmyers: Just in: California's main "sanctuary" law, limiting local law enforcement help on immigration issues, upheld by federal judge. Law allowing access to detention centers also upheld. Law fining employers who give workplace access gets partial rebuke.

DOJ [mostly] loses again. Here's the court order, US v. California.
posted by zachlipton at 10:35 AM on July 5, 2018 [28 favorites]


The NYC DSA is now at something around 3500 members, over 400 added in the week after AOC's win (if I'm remembering correctly).

I can understand how this is depressing, but it's...I mean it's not great, and it's worse than I was expecting based on accounts here on the blue. But it's also just what happens when you have a group with that kind of gender disparity. I don't think it would be super surprising for many women.

The solution is more women. If we're being honest, what I am most apprehensive about is engaging with the women who have been active in that environment. My experience has been -- and this is not going to be a popular characterization, but I'm kind of past caring -- is that these women are often a political subspecies of The Cool Girl. The type to make the Hillary jokes first, you know? in terms of emotional labor and overall grief, those are the encounters I dread the most.

I'm hoping I'm wrong. My facilitator seemed pretty cool, if also somewhat resigned. I'm going to try to meet her for coffee.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:37 AM on July 5, 2018 [59 favorites]


I've gotten the go-ahead from the admins of the little-used (and maybe little-known?) PoliticsFilter Slack to set up a DSAFilter channel. I'll look through the last few politics threads to send specific invitations to recent inductees, but I'd say anybody interested should feel free to follow the invitation link from my link. I'm hoping this will be a good way for us to swap organizing ideas, gripe/strategize about our own local chapters, and offer unaffiliated-but-interested mefites a peek into the DSA-verse.
posted by contraption at 10:37 AM on July 5, 2018 [7 favorites]


Is it possible to use Slack without, y'know, joining Slack?
posted by adamgreenfield at 10:40 AM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]




Schumer apparently had a call with Trump where he encouraged him to nominate Merrick Garland, for the sake of unifying the nation. [real]
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 10:43 AM on July 5, 2018 [58 favorites]




adamgreenfield: you do have to register an account tied to your email address. Are you avoiding the use of Slack for political reasons, or just wanting to avoid login bloat?
posted by contraption at 10:46 AM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Schumer apparently had a call with Trump where he encouraged him to nominate Merrick Garland, for the sake of unifying the nation. [real]

Chuck Schumer, via Matt Bors: "we have a real shot after the 100 years of darkness"
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:47 AM on July 5, 2018 [11 favorites]


> The Lord Mayor of Sheffield is especially not looking forward to his visit, as per this tweet.

Holy shit, I assumed he was just some colourful local capital-C Character, but no...he's the real, actual Mayor. I hope he's as amazing as this tweet and the accompanying story make him sound.

Also, Brit slang is the best slang and I'm going to start using "wasteman."
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:47 AM on July 5, 2018 [13 favorites]


My biggest concern at this point is that the DSA is culturally resistant to seeing that they have a problem, and that the problem is them. Without that, it doesn't get fixed. And even then it will require a lot of emotional labor at a time when we're all exhausted. So that's...not great.

Yeah. I'm willing to stick with DSA because I think once they get past Bernie (and BernieBro's), they'll be something really special. But I also know that's going to take a fuckton of work on my part and I just....ugh.

(I didn't have that exact experience with my local DSA chapter, but a similar one that left a very nasty taste in my mouth. I am...not sure I'm looking forward to Seattle DSA, but this is a fight I'm willing to put time and energy into.)
posted by kalimac at 10:48 AM on July 5, 2018 [7 favorites]


I'm in the UK but used to talk with people from the US back in the day when the internet was young and the term "pantywaste" was a popular euphemism among them. I assume it's changed from that, but means the same thing.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 10:49 AM on July 5, 2018


*twitch*

One of my arguments for endorsing Nixon is that if the DSA’s ground game in NYC — where Zephyr Teachout was and Nixon now is weakest (apparently!) — can help bring Nixon up from 26% to 45% or something, that is the kind of big fucking deal that can scare the shit out of Chuck Schumer and every other NYS politician. And pull them all leftward.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:50 AM on July 5, 2018 [40 favorites]


Schumer apparently had a call with Trump where he encouraged him to nominate Merrick Garland, for the sake of unifying the nation. [real]

I've already seen some "can you believe these Democrats?" style takes on this bit of news. As others have pointed out in previous threads, the options available to Democrats to stop or change Trump's nominations are extremely limited. One way to have an effect is to talk to their more right-leaning party members and their Republican colleagues and try to convince them not to vote for a conservative activist judge. The other way is to try to convince Trump not to nominate such a judge. I'm not sure why anyone would be against someone trying to go for one of the above options, even if the chances of success are extraordinarily low. Besides, Trump has shown in the past that he can change his mind and reverse his position on a whim and often just does whatever the last person to talk to him tells him to do.

(edited to make complete sentences)
posted by runcibleshaw at 10:51 AM on July 5, 2018 [23 favorites]


driedmango Probably a stupid question but.. why isn't putting children in cages and camps separate from their parents (with the girls possibly sold or god knows what) not a human rights violation? When will trump and his ilk get sent to the hague?

Not a stupid question, just one with a depressing answer.

The simple answer is that of course it's a human rights violation, but the only possible penalty is to impeach Trump, and that is never going to happen.

The question about the Hague has an even worse answer: Never and under no circumstances.

The USA actually has a law, the "American Service-Members Protection Act" which mandates the USA invade the Hague to liberate any US official or soldier who is brought up on charges at the International Criminal Court.

The first step in getting Trump formally charged with crimes against humanity at the Hague would be repealing that law, which is also never going to happen. The US is apparently terrified of the ICC (perhaps justifiably so).
posted by sotonohito at 10:51 AM on July 5, 2018 [62 favorites]


That's a really shitty-sounding experience, schadenfrau, and I hope the chapter gets their shit together.
posted by contraption at 10:52 AM on July 5, 2018 [5 favorites]


It’s my birthday today. For my wish, I’d like all the children let out of the cages, please.
posted by EarBucket at 10:53 AM on July 5, 2018 [58 favorites]


Holy shit, I assumed he was just some colourful local capital-C Character, but no...he's the real, actual Mayor.

Magid Magid is awesome, but fwiw the Lord Mayor is not the actual mayor. It's a ceremonial role awarded to a different person each year.
posted by theodolite at 10:54 AM on July 5, 2018 [10 favorites]


It wasn't a great first experience. There is a feminist working group. I plan to ask them many questions.

Maybe you should take your concerns up above the chapter level? IIRC there are people who coordinate various regions and they might want to have a talk to the chapter leadership about things.

In my very short DSA experience it seemed like we had few who were really hanging on to Bernie (even in spring 2017), but certainly a couple of people that I'd have to categorize as unhelpful revolutionary Marxist types; when deciding on priorities for the chapter one of them kept insisting that expropriating a local billionaire should be one of them.
posted by Foosnark at 10:56 AM on July 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


Holy shit, I assumed he was just some colourful local capital-C Character, but no...he's the real, actual Mayor. I hope he's as amazing as this tweet and the accompanying story make him sound.

A recent client (now friendly acquaintance) grew up with him. Said he was really cool and deserved the win, when I sent him the message of congrats after the win went big on my twitter TL.
posted by infini at 10:56 AM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


White supremacist* with top-level security clearance (Ali Winston and A.C. Thompson, Frontline / ProPublica)

I know, it could be anyone, right? Did anyone guess Ivanka? Okay, well, the article's not about her:

Ultimately, ProPublica and FRONTLINE determined the man in the violent footage was [Michael] Miselis, a 29-year-old pursuing a Ph.D. in UCLA’s aerospace engineering program. Miselis was identified using video footage and social media posts, and reporters confirmed his identity in an encounter with him outside his home. In interviews, a number of California law enforcement officials said Miselis was a member of RAM.

In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Miselis works as a systems engineer for Northrop Grumman, the giant defense contractor with a plant in Redondo Beach, California.

When approached by ProPublica and FRONTLINE in front of his home in Lawndale, a small city south of Los Angeles, Miselis said he “didn’t know anything” about what happened in Charlottesville.

“I think you got the wrong guy,” he said before driving off in his car.

[...] Northrop Grumman did not respond to several requests for comment. However, interviews with current and former Northrop employees, as well as an internal email, make clear the company knows of Miselis’ actions in Charlottesville and involvement with RAM. Miselis informed his superiors about his contact with reporters from ProPublica and FRONTLINE, as is required by any individual who holds a higher-level security clearance, the people said.


Tsk tsk. Giving defense contractors a bad name.

* Just say Nazi.
posted by petebest at 10:57 AM on July 5, 2018 [23 favorites]


sotonohito, thank you for answering my question. That is indeed a very very depressing answer.
posted by driedmango at 10:58 AM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


Is it possible to use Slack without, y'know, joining Slack?

No, or at least, not the free version. (I think paid versions can have guests.) Using Slack isn't like Yahoochat or AOL chat; each "team" involves a separate account, with potentially a different username and avatar pic, even if they're tied to the same email address. It may be annoying to sign up, but at least it's easy to compartmentalize.


posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:59 AM on July 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


schadenfrau, thank you so much for posting your experience. That's really troubling. I'm certain that I want no part of a group interested in "controlling," "owning," "holding power," or whatever over anyone- much less, a woman of color. Whether that's the spirit they intended it in or it was them posturing to feel like self-important mafia dons or little Putins, they HAVE to realize how that sounds. It's toxic as utter fuck and it's a bad look for anyone. I don't want to be associated with it.

Quickly as it came, I'm canceling next month's membership payment. Total membership time of about two hours. I think for most MeFites, it goes without saying, but for the times we live in, it bears repeating: think about the people and groups you identify with. The beliefs you hold are held by other people, and you can associate and organize with them without being a part of their machine.

What's coming may signal a new paradigm in the United States progressive political landscape, and, as with all things new, methods of doing and philosophies that were once open to experimentation quickly become fixed. Habits become precedent. We cannot allow ourselves to compromise our moral ideals and create a new rich white boys club with a different flag. I wouldn't want the people you are describing anywhere within 100 miles of the levers of power. That's the kind of culture they will bring and because they are doing "good work" otherwise, they will be excused for it. "Of course there's no problem here, everyone's happy and liberal!"

I'm not saying let perfect be the enemy of good. We've seen where that got us. If there's no VIABLE third-party leftist candidate and you MUST pick between the capitalist establishment Democrat and the "moderate" conservative, for the love of God, vote Democratic. But don't for a second compromise the fight against sexism, racism, and fascism. We need to have the best interests of humanity in our hearts above all else. I believe in a progressive movement that has the strength and balance to handle both things at once.
posted by Krazor at 10:59 AM on July 5, 2018 [20 favorites]


The US is apparently terrified of the ICC (perhaps justifiably so).
On 17 July 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted by a vote of 120 to 7, with 21 countries abstaining. The seven countries that voted against the treaty were China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, the United States, and Yemen
The Rome Statute "established four core international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression."
posted by kirkaracha at 11:02 AM on July 5, 2018 [27 favorites]


Probably a stupid question but.. why isn't putting children in cages and camps separate from their parents (with the girls possibly sold or god knows what) not a human rights violation? When will trump and his ilk get sent to the hague?

Along with sotonohito's excellent summary, that'll happen right after a number of prominent Western nations all agree that the cost of doing nothing to stop it is higher than the cost of a furious rage-monkey and his captive Congress declaring those nations enemies of his state and doing everything in their power to harm them economically.

i.e. on the 33rd of some arbitrary month.
posted by delfin at 11:02 AM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


Schadenfrau, that sounds pretty bad. There is probably a vicious circle with the bro-ish DSA chapters, where there are far more women than men so it cultivates a misogynist atmosphere, which reduces women's participation, which makes the chapter even more male-heavy...but of course it's on the men, not the women, to make their chapters a more welcoming space. Maybe the solution for now is more feminist working groups?

There were at least three people in our little group -- all men -- who explicitly made the argument that "principles" were more important than "politics," in response to the argument that "this is a current emergency."

I've wondered lately how much yakking on about "ethics" and "principles" are anti-feminist dogwhistles. (Not actual ethics and principles as concepts, but as constant talking points.) After all, GamerGate had "ethics in gaming journalism" as its catchphrase, though we know it wasn't about that at all. I hate feeling that a perfectly decent word has been ruined.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 11:04 AM on July 5, 2018 [21 favorites]


Electronic Frontier Foundation on Slack from earlier this year
posted by XMLicious at 11:06 AM on July 5, 2018 [5 favorites]


Vox, Dara Lind, The Trump administration just admitted it doesn’t know how many kids are still separated from their parents
With a court-imposed deadline looming for the government to reunite families separated at the US-Mexico border under President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told reporters on Thursday it doesn’t know exactly how many of the children in its care were separated from parents under the policy.

The administration has a list of nearly 3,000 children who might have been separated. But it is still trying to figure out exactly which ones had parents taken away.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar said on a press call his department is working through each individual case file of the 11,800 “unaccompanied alien children,” who are now in the care of HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), to see which ones were separated from parents at the border by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials.

Most unaccompanied alien minors who are undocumented immigrants happen to be children (mostly teenagers) who came to the US without a parent or guardian. Azar said, however, there were thousands of case files that indicate a child might have been separated from their parents. He was unwilling to give a specific number but said there were “fewer than 3,000” such children.

Azar said his department has not yet reunited any children with their parents in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, despite the fact that a federal judge last week ruled that all children under the age of 5 must be reunited with their parents by July 14 and all other kids must be reunited by July 26.

The reason, according to Azar, is that HHS needs to spend as much time as possible vetting parents to make sure they are who they say they are and that it would be safe to release a child to them. (For example, Azar said HHS staff have identified two cases of parents with criminal histories that included rape, kidnapping, or cruelty to children.)

But it’s also clear that — despite previous claims from DHS and HHS that they had a plan in place to reunite families — the Trump administration didn’t officially note which families had been split up to begin with, and is now scrambling at the deadline to bring them together.
Chuck E. Cheese's has a better process to reunite kids and parents than the US government. And if you read on, it seems DOJ radically misrepresented the situation to the court.
posted by zachlipton at 11:07 AM on July 5, 2018 [48 favorites]


HHS staff have identified two cases of parents with criminal histories that included rape, kidnapping, or cruelty to children.

I've identified thousands in DC alone.
posted by Rust Moranis at 11:11 AM on July 5, 2018 [13 favorites]


Chuck E. Cheese's has a better process to reunite kids and parents than the US government. And if you read on, it seems DOJ radically misrepresented the situation to the court.

Fuck it. Close DisneyWorld for a week. Send the staff out to collect the kids. They'll get it done.
posted by ocschwar at 11:12 AM on July 5, 2018 [60 favorites]


I was listening to some professional mouth user, a conservative, talking about the Ocasio-Cortez upset in the primaries. He was saying that this was like the tea-party split, between moderates and the far-left. The dems could end up with something like the freedom caucus, which would be a disaster. Utter bullshit, of course. It's relies on the common delusion that the dems are just the mirror-universe version of the GOP. What is revealing in this line of reasoning is the implicit acknowledgement that the tea-party, the freedom caucus and factionalism is a disaster for the GOP and they know it.

The danger is that some dems may accept this argument, and move to distance themselves from Super Scary Socialism and make it all come true. Please guys (it will be guys), when you have a rock-star politician like Alexandria on your team, don't push back, lean in.
posted by adept256 at 11:15 AM on July 5, 2018 [17 favorites]


But don't for a second compromise the fight against sexism, racism, and fascism

I agree with you, but let me give the counter argument (and probably I should have put this in my original account—I was more focused on not yelling, tbh).

While none of these guys even thought about abortion access until I mentioned it, they all immediately started snapping their fingers. I bet they mostly identify as feminists, and as anti-racists. I bet if you asked them their policy positions, they’d all be the right ones (even if they’d be willing to sacrifice the “identity stuff” for “class consciousness” or whatever).

My point is that these are, for the most part, the most reachable men. They want to be the good guys, but they are not self-aware, and they’re not going to become self-aware on their own. Like yes, that is their responsibility, but it’s generally not how it works in actual life.

And, in addition, the work the DSA is doing is the work we need — community building, mutual aid. This is the stuff we need if we’re going to resist the massive fucking power of the state under GOP control.

Now, I do not know how the DSA thinks it’s going to do these things without women, and it is also not clear to me that the DSA is united in that focus. But it’s still important.

Corb mentioned “entryism” in the last thread. I think it will be easier to invade the DSA with a bunch of politically activated women and change it from within than it will be to run a parallel organization. Splitting resources seems counterproductive, anyway. And just as it’s easier to stage a lefty coup of the Democratic Party and turn it back to something FDR would recognize, I think it may be easier to turn the DSA into what it purports to be.

It does require us to show up and fight the bullshit, though, and it is exhausting. So. I don’t have a good solution for that. I just think it will be more exhausting to start a competing group.

Anyway. I’m going to try to work on these people. I don’t know if I’ll be successful, or how long I’ll have the spoons for it. I do know it will be easier if I have allies.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:17 AM on July 5, 2018 [120 favorites]


The danger is that some dems may accept this argument, and move to distance themselves from Super Scary Socialism and make it all come true. Please guys (it will be guys), when you have a rock-star politician like Alexandria on your team, don't push back, lean in.

I'd say there is zero chance of this happening, because of the entrenched, powerful and fundamentally conservative financial interests that Dem leadership like Schumer and Pelosi represent.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:18 AM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


The dems could end up with something like the freedom caucus, which would be a disaster.

The Dems had a Freedom Caucus. They were called Blue Dog Democrats. They voted against the ACA and still got their asses kicked out of Congress in the Tea Party wave. Some because the electorate preferred full flavored Racism to Diet Racism and others because they were actually in liberal seats and their voters kicked their asses for it.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 11:20 AM on July 5, 2018 [13 favorites]


CNN's Kevin Liptak @Kevinliptakcnn reports on how the Trump administration is setting up expectations for the Helsinki summit:
Why does Trump want to meet Putin one-on-one, without aides? Here's an explanation from a senior administration official:

"This really is a first opportunity for the (them) to sit down, and to begin that very important dialogue, much the way we saw President Reagan do it with Mikhail Gorbachev or Margaret Thatcher and and Mikhail Gorbachev. The President has determined that now is the time for direct communication between himself and President Putin, and that it is in the interest of the United States, in the interest of Russia, in the interest of peace and security around the world, and that's the way he's proceeding." [sic throughout—rough transcript]
Ominous as this is, Putin is clearly no Gorbachev. If anything, the comparison to a world leader who oversaw the disintegration of his country and its global influence fits Trump better.

P.S. If someone could please compose a DSA FPP, that would be a great service to the topic. (I would myself, but obviously I've hit my allotment for today.)
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:21 AM on July 5, 2018 [10 favorites]


Huh? The Blue Dogs were conservative Democrats. They were not at all analogous to the Tea Party or the Freedom Caucus except in terms of being a pain in the ass.

The Democrats have not had an analog to either the Tea Party or the Freedom Caucus — a large minority that pulls the party towards an extreme, rather than the middle — in my lifetime.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:22 AM on July 5, 2018 [11 favorites]


@KlasfeldReports The third and final document of declarations (of the recently released batch) in the Trump family separation lawsuit in the Western District of Washington.

165 pages.
posted by scalefree at 11:27 AM on July 5, 2018 [8 favorites]


If you're left-wing and in the DC area, please come have a coffee with me on Sunday. Nothing beats face-to-face solidarity.

That all sounds very discouraging schadenfrau. Maybe it's a problem with that specific chapter? Does anyone else have better experiences to report? I am now depressed.

Unfortunately, my experience has been pretty similar to schadenfrau's, and I think it's a problem with the party rather than any specific chapter. The perception that the DSA is for "Bernie Bros," with all the white male centering that that entails, is very accurate and widespread (it's why none of my politically active friends are interested in joining).

On the other hand, I am not ready to give up on the DSA yet. An explicitly progressive organization with a high profile is a great thing. So I dunno.

It keeps ending up that the action I get involved in -- the campaigns I volunteer for, the direct action I think is important, the protests I go to and why I go to them and who I think the audience for them is is, the policy and even values that I think are most essential -- my actual political participation, in other words, is all taking place outside of my association with the DSA rather than in conjunction with it. And my involvement with the DSA therefore gets squeezed out so that I'm barely involved at all. But there's not some other party to fill the void, I just end up seeking out these campaigns on my own, going on my own or with ad hoc groups to these protests, writing my own letters to the governor, etc. In other words, I'm torn. There needs to be a place for real progressives in a supposedly progressive party, but I am (and probably everyone else is) too busy with other political action to spend my time worrying about the DSA's issues. Just not sure where to go from here. Which is the point of the above coffee klatch, which I earnestly hope that other people join me for.
posted by rue72 at 11:27 AM on July 5, 2018 [20 favorites]


The Blue Dogs pulled in the opposite direction, but the analogy (where it applies) is that they were a distinct minority group within a majority that could prevent the majority from passing bills, should they decide to vote collectively with the other side. Like, for instance, the Blue Dogs' obstructionism in the face of potentially meaningful health care reform.
posted by delfin at 11:28 AM on July 5, 2018 [10 favorites]


Putting them all together in one comment. Declarations filed in the lawsuit in the Western District of Washington over the policy splitting up asylum-seeking immigrant families. Set one, 322 pages. Set two, 423 pages. Set three, 165 pages. Many thanks to @KlasfeldReports for bringing to light this archive of darkness done in our names.
posted by scalefree at 11:37 AM on July 5, 2018 [23 favorites]


Is there any data on the demographics of DSA members? And/or official party surveys of members' views on various issues? Obviously this is tricky if their membership has increased substantially in just the last few weeks, but I myself would be interested to see even slightly older survey data. The nice thing about the primaries, for better or for worse, is that they gave us a huge amount of survey data on Sanders supporters (though not specifically on the "party members"), so we have a decent benchmark to compare against, anyway.
posted by chortly at 11:42 AM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


Mod note: Folks, it seems like there's a lot of discussion to be had about the DSA that is rather taking over this more general one. If someone wants to make a new thread, that'd be great, but let this thread move on from it. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 11:46 AM on July 5, 2018 [38 favorites]


[sorry, just saw the note, I'll save that thought]
posted by aspersioncast at 11:55 AM on July 5, 2018


What is revealing in this line of reasoning is the implicit acknowledgement that the tea-party, the freedom caucus and factionalism is a disaster for the GOP and they know it.

The danger is that some dems may accept this argument, and move to distance themselves from Super Scary Socialism and make it all come true. Please guys (it will be guys), when you have a rock-star politician like Alexandria on your team, don't push back, lean in.


Expect to see more of this kind of coordinated messaging, as Russian bots and others try to disrupt Dem unity and focus come November. I find myself constantly pushing back on the "Dems in disarray" message when it pops up on my FB feed, with "it's big tent - plenty of room for both."
posted by jetsetsc at 12:00 PM on July 5, 2018 [13 favorites]


To touch on a comment from the previous post:
"If we take our balls and go home because someone isn't socialist enough or too milquetoast then we lose. Those levers of power? They're not about having reliable votes for our pie in the sky legislation. It's about being in control of committees. It's about being in control of floor votes in Congress. It's about being in control of nomination processes of judges and cabinet secretaries.... There are so many things we stand to benefit from even if we elect imperfect candidates who won't vote with Democratic Socialists 100% of the time."

I agree with this 100%. Obviously blindly voting for whoever is on "your team" is part of what has led to the rise of Trump, but America is really at a crisis point right now. In order to change that, we must have non-Republicans in office. Vote your heart in the primary, but for the next few election cycles, we do not have the luxury of voting for anyone other than Notta Fascist (D) in the general election-- every general election*. Once we have Democrats in power, once we have put a brake on the runaway train that the Republicans are trying to drive off a cliff, then we can call/write/fax/tweet/primary them on every issue, but we must get them into office before we can do that.

Because, as a Democrat living in a red state, here's the thing: when I call my senator, when I ask him to support something antithetical to his party's platform, he can ignore me with impunity. There is nothing he can do that would induce me to vote for him, and he knows that, and he doesn't care, because obviously he got elected just fine without me. But that milquetoast, mainstream Dem? He needs my vote. He can't afford not to listen.

*To clarify: voting for the left-most realistic candidate for the office. If you live in someplace that routinely elects DSA/Green/Other Leftish Third Party candidates, then by all means, vote for them for local positions! We need these candidates on school boards and city councils and state legislatures and Congress. Hell, we need them for the Senate, if your state can swing that! But what we don't need is for these candidates to split the general left into factions, because the deck is already stacked against us.
posted by Daughter of Time at 12:18 PM on July 5, 2018 [38 favorites]


Schumer trying to persuade Trump to nominate Garland is the right idea, but wrong approach.

Obama needs to address the nation with an apology for the 2016 non-confirmation. "I thought I could do it, but I just couldn't," he laments, then stares into the camera: "My failure has made me bitter, and today there is no name I despise more than 'Merrick Garland'. If he somehow achieved the seat, I'd be inconsolable. I would actually cry, like a pathetic baby. Like a dog.

"Fortunately, that's just hypothetical, because I doubt anyone could do it. Yes, Bush tried it, and Clinton before him, but making Merrick Garland a Supreme Court Justice is probably impossible."
posted by InTheYear2017 at 12:26 PM on July 5, 2018 [104 favorites]


At this point, I would hope Garland would decline.
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:32 PM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


I've wondered lately how much yakking on about "ethics" and "principles" are anti-feminist dogwhistles. (Not actual ethics and principles as concepts, but as constant talking points.)

Ah, good old "retreat into abstraction" to hide the handwaving and shittiness. Almost always indicates a bad faith argument, effectively countered by Feynman's Brick.
posted by BS Artisan at 12:34 PM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


He needs my vote. He can't afford not to listen.

Leftists have been fed this bullshit line for decades. It's not true even if you'd like to believe it.
posted by TypographicalError at 12:34 PM on July 5, 2018 [7 favorites]


Once we have Democrats in power, once we have put a brake on the runaway train that the Republicans are trying to drive off a cliff, then we can call/write/fax/tweet/primary them on every issue, but we must get them into office before we can do that.

This has been the Democratic talking point whenever a Republican is in power for the last several decades, and it's still a losing message, regardless of how bad the current president is. It ensures that the Democrats will always be the party of controlled opposition. It is never going to drive turnout.
posted by dilaudid at 12:35 PM on July 5, 2018 [8 favorites]


So, on hiz Trumpness’ UK visit...is there to be a meeting with the Queen? While I’m no monarchist, the idea of the Queen shaking hands with Cheeto makes chunky bits well-up in my throat.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:35 PM on July 5, 2018 [6 favorites]


While I’m no monarchist, the idea of the Queen shaking hands with Cheeto makes chunky bits well-up in my throat.

Whereas my vision is for the Queen to make things well up in his throat, probably with a corgi to the Oh Dear I'm So Sorry I Thought He'd Been Trained Out Of Biting Theres.
posted by mephron at 12:39 PM on July 5, 2018 [10 favorites]


Trump actually announced something in a tweet:
I have accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Within the Agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this. The Senate confirmed Deputy at EPA, Andrew Wheeler, will..
...on Monday assume duties as the acting Administrator of the EPA. I have no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda. We have made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA is very bright!
posted by Brainy at 12:40 PM on July 5, 2018 [40 favorites]


I think there's a strong argument that it's far more likely for socialists to gain power in this climate of angry opposition than it would be under a milquetoast centrist democratic government. All that was solid has melted into air thanks to Trump, and it's currently possible for the left to make huge gains by rallying around a strong, appealing, fierce ideological program.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 12:40 PM on July 5, 2018 [13 favorites]


Scott Pruitt: Too Corrupt for the Trump Administration. That's quite a towering achievement. I hope his hands aren't too moist to open the door on his way out.
posted by FelliniBlank at 12:42 PM on July 5, 2018 [52 favorites]


So, folks that know this better than I do: does this remove Pruitt as a pre-confirmed option to replace Sessions? Or does having been Senate-confirmed persist, despite resigning in disgrace from your first confirmed Cabinet role?
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 12:44 PM on July 5, 2018 [10 favorites]


Wheeler is a former coal lobbyist.
posted by zarq at 12:45 PM on July 5, 2018 [11 favorites]


I have accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Was Trump trying to head off this latest Pruitt revelation? NYT: E.P.A. Aide Questioned Deleting Sensitive Meeting Details. Then She Was Fired.
"Last summer one of his senior schedulers, Madeline G. Morris, was fired by Mr. Pruitt’s former deputy chief of staff, Kevin Chmielewski, who said he let her go because she was questioning the practice of retroactively deleting meetings from the calendar. [...] Ms. Morris, who started work as Mr. Pruitt’s scheduler in June 2017, confirmed Wednesday that she was fired after she raised objections about the deletions, which she believed were illegal, although she said that Mr. Chmielewski did not tell her his reasons for firing her. One case involved the deletion of several of Mr. Pruitt’s meetings during a spring 2017 trip to Rome, including one with a controversial cardinal then under investigation for sexual assault."

Meanwhile, Giuliani surprises no-one in blowing another of his predicted deadlines: Despite July 4 expectation, Giuliani says no decision on cooperation with Mueller (CBS).
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:45 PM on July 5, 2018 [14 favorites]


> Pruitt has "resigned".

So that sets the outer bound of the level of petty corruption, grift, and bad news headlines that, however reluctantly, the Trump administration will not be able to tolerate. Good to know that this is how far we've fallen.

In any other administration, Wilbur Ross "forgetting" to sell his investments and "accidentally" making a multi-million dollar profit (previous thread) would be a 5-alarm scandal with hearings and resignations. Here it barely moved the needle against the level set by Pruitt.
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:46 PM on July 5, 2018 [40 favorites]


I think there's a strong argument that it's far more likely for socialists to gain power in this climate of angry opposition than it would be under a milquetoast centrist democratic government. All that was solid has melted into air thanks to Trump, and it's currently possible for the left to make huge gains by rallying around a strong, appealing, fierce ideological program.

The thing is, it's an utterly irrelevant part of the discussion in aggregate. There's a committee of establishment Democrats at each county level who put their thumbs on the scale but the voters ultimately decide who they want to endorse for the general election. Every district will put forward its own candidate from the primary. If you can run a firebrand like AOC and win, great. Use that. If you're going to war with noted piece of Senate furniture, Bill Nelson, as your general then go show up for him just because OH GOD RICK SCOTT IN THE SENATE need I say more? The important thing is showing up for whoever it is even if they aren't perfect [insert ideology here] and even if they don't make you feel excited like you've just drunk a bottle of extract of Tony Robbins.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 12:48 PM on July 5, 2018 [11 favorites]


Wheeler is a former coal lobbyist but also a former Senate staffer, so he gets the Comity Confirmation. So does Susan Parker Bodine, currently EPA's head of enforcement, if they choose to go that route.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:48 PM on July 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


When I did a DuckDuckGo search for "Andrew Wheeler epa" the top result title shown – on the EPA site! – was "coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler". At least it's honest.
posted by hijinx at 12:52 PM on July 5, 2018 [9 favorites]


I have accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

I do wonder whether Pruitt knew about his resignation prior to this tweet.
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:54 PM on July 5, 2018 [37 favorites]


So, folks that know this better than I do: does this remove Pruitt as a pre-confirmed option to replace Sessions? Or does having been Senate-confirmed persist, despite resigning in disgrace from your first confirmed Cabinet role?

If he’s out of the cabinet he’s no longer an “Officer of the United States” under the Vacancies Reform Act, and no longer eligible to be an acting officer anywhere else either.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:54 PM on July 5, 2018 [33 favorites]


Schumer trying to persuade Trump to nominate Garland is the right idea, but wrong approach.

Yeah, essentially this. I don’t think it’s a bad idea for Schumer to try to convince Trump of a new Supreme Court pick, it makes perfect sense, but I don’t know how you think he’s possibly going to convince Trump to try Merrick Garland. He’d have more luck looking at the court cases that Hillary Clinton lost while a practicing attorney, and suggesting those judges as a bipartisan pick, because they ruled against Hillary. He isn’t driven by statesmanship, but only by petty spite, and the sooner leaders realize that, the better.
posted by corb at 12:55 PM on July 5, 2018 [11 favorites]


(I'm looking for links to throw together a post about the DSA, but I also know that as someone who has been to a grand total of 1.5 DSA events, I might not be the best person to do this. If anyone has any links they want to send me, please do; if there's no post I'll go with what I got tomorrow, assuming life does not interfere.

In the meantime I've made an IRL post for those of us interested in going to a NYC DSA event together.)
posted by schadenfrau at 12:56 PM on July 5, 2018 [10 favorites]


So that sets the outer bound of the level of petty corruption, grift, and bad news headlines

The last one. Only the last one, and only because of the sheer number of headlines. Wilbur Ross has almost certainly made eight figures via insider trading while Secretary of Commerce, but he's still in the Cabinet because it was only one story. But Pruitt just kept getting new stories about different venalities.
posted by Etrigan at 12:59 PM on July 5, 2018 [9 favorites]


I do wonder whether Pruitt knew about his resignation prior to this tweet.

If ever there were someone who deserved to be stranded out in East Jesus Nowhere and have to pay his own airfare back, it would be Scott Pruitt. I wouldn't like to be the security person who had to frisk him on his way out of the EPA building, either. "No, you can't take the stapler OR your soundproof booth."
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:00 PM on July 5, 2018 [33 favorites]


Wheeler's another one of Inhofe's creatures. He'll likely prove worse than Pruitt, in terms of environmental impact, because he'll prioritize deregulation over minting challenge coins, cadging free mattresses, or hunting up sinecures for a spouse.
posted by Iridic at 1:01 PM on July 5, 2018 [19 favorites]


So that sets the outer bound of the level of petty corruption, grift, and bad news headlines that, however reluctantly, the Trump administration will not be able to tolerate.

SCOTUSblog: Life would be complete if Scott Pruitt resigned to make himself available to be appointed to the Supreme Court.

After all, he's already been confirmed once . . .
posted by gladly at 1:01 PM on July 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


Not particularly substantive 45 news but I'll take it anyway: Looks like Sacha Baron Cohen is doing something nefarious with Trump University.

"...Cohen teased an upcoming project with the words, “Sacha Graduates Soon” followed by the Trump University logo. So far, there are no further details on the project, except that Cohen will be back “as you’ve never seen him before.” "
posted by Capt. Renault at 1:02 PM on July 5, 2018 [8 favorites]


@costareports: SCOTUS news: Sen. Rand Paul and his top adviser Doug Stafford have signed a statement urging POTUS to pick Sen. Lee. Former Sen. DeMint has signed the letter as well, among other conservatives, coordinated in part by FreedomWorks. Wash Post obtained the statement, which has not yet been released publicly, this afternoon. Signatures still being collected by conservative organizers... notable to see Paul on it, since he spoke w/ POTUS earlier this week. He has concerns about Kavanaugh, per associates

Not really confident there's anything substantive that comes out of this unless Paul really is going to derail the nomination instead of just making noise about it, but watching the right tear themselves into knots over Kavanaugh is fascinating.
posted by zachlipton at 1:06 PM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


Okay, but you know that motherfucker stuffed his pockets with office supplies before he walked out the door.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 1:06 PM on July 5, 2018 [19 favorites]


The silver lining on Wheeler would be that he's dealt with EPA in a non-adversarial capacity before, and is less likely to want to burn it to the ground. AFAICT he's at the midpoint on that spectrum between Pruitt at the Burn Everything end and Bodine at the Preserve EPA As An Institution But Deregulate Everything side, otherwise known as the Christine Todd Whitman Special.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:06 PM on July 5, 2018 [5 favorites]


So does Coal Lobbyist Wheeler get the tactical pants now?

Also, and people I can't stress this enough - Scott Pants is out. Everyone gets cake! Have some for America!

And to "Pastries in Poughkeepsie", yes, Ding Dongs / Ring Dings will do in a pinch.
posted by petebest at 1:07 PM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]




Oh boy, Pruitt's resignation letter (via Twitter), and it's a doozy [real]
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:08 PM on July 5, 2018 [40 favorites]


I will accept a Pruitt resignation for my birthday, sure.
posted by EarBucket at 1:12 PM on July 5, 2018 [35 favorites]


Scott Pants is out.

I prefer "Scotty Both-Hands", esp. because Joe "Joey Pants" Pantoliano deserves better than having that asshole steal his name.
posted by Etrigan at 1:13 PM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


"my desire to service you" is the most accurate part of that letter . . .
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 1:14 PM on July 5, 2018 [64 favorites]


NSFL tag on that resignation letter please. He stops just short of saying he’s praying to Trump the God-Emperor personally.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:15 PM on July 5, 2018 [13 favorites]


"Your courage, steadfastness and resolute commitment [...] is in fact occurring at an unprecedented pace [...]"

"However, the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented [...]"


Scott Pruitt's career in politics died as it lived: with astounding ineptitude.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:15 PM on July 5, 2018 [40 favorites]


From the letter:

I believe you are serving today as President because of god's providence.

Just to alight upon the theme of the post, he's not the fucken king.
posted by adept256 at 1:15 PM on July 5, 2018 [18 favorites]


Pruitt's resignation letter (via Twitter)

Dude, I *just ate*.
posted by uosuaq at 1:15 PM on July 5, 2018 [27 favorites]


sorry, misread "my desire in service to you" - i guess my prior comment should read WOULD BE the most accurate part of the letter.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 1:15 PM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


Excerpt from Pruitt's letter:

"My desire in service to you has always been to bless you as you make important decisions for the American people. I believe you are serving as President today because of God's providence. I believe that same providence brought me into your service."

I know it's hot outside, but please, whatever you do:
Do NOT accept Kool Aid from this man!
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:16 PM on July 5, 2018 [15 favorites]


It's some Juche bullshit
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:16 PM on July 5, 2018 [17 favorites]


The way the evangelicals are fawning over Trump, it's starting to make me think maybe Trump really is the anti-Christ and his private meetings with Putin are to give Putin orders, not the other way around. I mean, if you were the anti-Christ, wouldn't you mask your strength until the time was right?
posted by M-x shell at 1:17 PM on July 5, 2018 [14 favorites]


I believe God put me in this job. Also, I quit.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 1:17 PM on July 5, 2018 [166 favorites]


Sen. Rand Paul and his top adviser Doug Stafford have signed a statement urging POTUS to pick Sen. Lee.

I mean I like Senator Lee and all, and I appreciate his hatred for Trump’s venality, but man, GOP, you really want to be replacing senators in Blue Wave Season? Like, how’d that work out for you last time?
posted by corb at 1:19 PM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


Even with everything - siren-bewailed dinner drives, corrupt-as-fuck practices, unethical, immoral, insipid actions - he lasted 16 months.
posted by petebest at 1:19 PM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


Im sure mitt has some kids who would run, no?
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 1:20 PM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


Daily Beast: The Brits Told Us the Russians Were Hacking Our Election—To the British eavesdroppers who uncovered Russia’s hack of Democratic headquarters, it looked like Watergate all over again. But no one in the U.S. seemed to care. (From The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age by David E. Sanger. ) While mega-thread readers won't find anything surprising in this article, it does explicitly say that GCHQ identified the GRU hacking the DNC in April 2016.

Likewise, this overview article from Vox doesn't break any new ground, but it's useful to read an aggregate of what we know (which is only a fraction, of course, of what Mueller does): Why Trump’s inauguration money is a major part of Mueller’s Russia investigation—Russia-tied donations and oligarch connections have drawn Mueller’s interest.

Wilbur Ross has almost certainly made eight figures via insider trading while Secretary of Commerce, but he's still in the Cabinet because it was only one story.

Now that Pruitt's gone, Ross is the #1 most obviously corrupt member of the Trump cabinet (his undisclosed Invesco stock trade is a headache that isn't going away, for example).
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:20 PM on July 5, 2018 [38 favorites]


Now that Pruitt's gone, Ross is the #1 most obviously corrupt member of the Trump cabinet

Devos gets the silver and Zinke gets the bronze.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:25 PM on July 5, 2018 [11 favorites]


If he’s out of the cabinet he’s no longer an “Officer of the United States” under the Vacancies Reform Act, and no longer eligible to be an acting officer anywhere else either.

Don't jinx it! He's resigning effective July 6. I for one, plan to hold my breath for the rest of today, unless someone can remind me of the canonical mefi turning and spitting ritual...
posted by mabelstreet at 1:29 PM on July 5, 2018 [5 favorites]


Live your life with the confidence of a comically corrupt Trump official who believed spending thousands of dollars on tactical pants and silence cones was all part of God's manifested will.
posted by 0xFCAF at 1:30 PM on July 5, 2018 [20 favorites]


Now that Pruitt's gone, Ross is the #1 most obviously corrupt member of the Trump cabinet

Devos gets the silver


Devos isn't corrupt -- as the daughter of a billionaire and the wife of a billionaire, she doesn't really know what money is. On the "hates their own agency" vs. "stealing every dime" spectrum, she's way over on the left, Ross is way over on the right, and Pruitt was right in the middle.
posted by Etrigan at 1:30 PM on July 5, 2018 [8 favorites]


> On the "hates their own agency" vs. "stealing every dime" spectrum, she's way over on the left, Ross is way over on the right, and Pruitt was right in the middle.

So Pruitt was the GoldiLockean conservative ideal of sabotage and grift? (sorry...)
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:31 PM on July 5, 2018 [5 favorites]




Pruitt occupied every spot on that spectrum simultaneously. I assume it's some kind of quantum thing.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:32 PM on July 5, 2018 [12 favorites]


"My desire in service to you has always been to bless you as you make important decisions for the American people. I believe you are serving as President today because of God's providence. I believe that same providence brought me into your service."

"I have the honor to be
Your Obdt. St
S. Pruitt"
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 1:32 PM on July 5, 2018 [19 favorites]


"However, the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented [...]"

So nobody in Oklahoma ever tried to hold him to account?

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
posted by ocschwar at 1:33 PM on July 5, 2018 [5 favorites]


"The President who plays king won’t conquer the bedrock values this nation was founded on."

right-right...I mean, Yup-Yup.
posted by clavdivs at 1:34 PM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


I believe you are serving today as President because of God's providence.

Well, it wasn't the will of the people, that's for sure.
posted by Capt. Renault at 1:36 PM on July 5, 2018 [81 favorites]


No one but Trump knows the inside of his own mind, but the person who always seems to come closest is Twitter's Alexandra Erin: So, here's the thing. Bad press is not necessarily a negative to Trump. The *right* kind of bad press will endear a person to him and help fuel his rage.

Pruitt's problem was that his graft stories made him look weak.


...

Trump doesn't care that Pruitt had aides run personal errands for him -- "that makes him smart" -- but the nature of the errands: a used mattress. Favorite lotion. Securing a cushy sinecure for his wife.

Trump is the man who bragged about not giving his beloved first wife jewelry because he didn't want her to own any "negotiable assets". The idea of doubling your fortune by having your wife bring in as much money as you make would strike him as something very much like cuckoldry.

Yes, it seems absurd, and most of the media talking heads are going to consider more mundane explanations, but it sounds about right to me. Particularly the point that Trump enjoys being angry (though like his love of praise, it's non-sustainable and he'll always need to chase a bigger fix).

Maybe Donald had no problem specifically with Pruitt enriching his wife or buying lotion or whatever. But I do think that Pruitt's occupational position would paradoxically be safer if he'd been willing to take even bigger legal risks. Just literally rob a bank without wearing a mask -- he'd go to jail, Trump would insist on still not letting him go, the story among the alt-right would be all about "balls" and lib-triggering.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 1:38 PM on July 5, 2018 [21 favorites]


Ha, Twitterfolk are now referring to Pruitt as "Ofdonald" based on the letter.
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:38 PM on July 5, 2018 [106 favorites]


I don’t think it’s a bad idea for Schumer to try to convince Trump of a new Supreme Court pick, it makes perfect sense, but I don’t know how you think he’s possibly going to convince Trump to try Merrick Garland.

"Obama couldn't make it happen."
posted by jason_steakums at 1:40 PM on July 5, 2018 [11 favorites]


> Now that Pruitt's gone, Ross is the #1 most obviously corrupt member of the Trump cabinet

Devos gets the silver and Zinke gets the bronze.


Everybody underestimates Ben Carson (and his family).
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:42 PM on July 5, 2018 [16 favorites]


Political Wire: Li Jiang, who owns a flag-making company in China, told NPR that he’s been contracted to manufacture flags for President Trump’s 2020 election bid.

Quick, someone tell Sen Susan Collins (R-Concerned) who was so proud of the passage of her All-American Flag Act* last week in the midst of the Keep Families Together protests.

*The All-American Flag Act" would require the government to buy flags that are made in the U.S. and with materials that are 100% American.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 1:44 PM on July 5, 2018 [10 favorites]


@maggieNYT: NEWS - @LannyDavis, the Clinton-era White House official, tells me he's been retained by @MichaelCohen212 as he prepares for a potential legal onslaught from prosecutors and a potential PR onslaught from Trump associates.

[Stupidity intensifies.]

Some backstory on why Davis sucks, from Jon Lovett back in 2012.
posted by zachlipton at 1:44 PM on July 5, 2018 [10 favorites]


My suburb has the biggest 4th of July parade in the area, so lots of politicians march in it. The Dems went by and it was fine. Then the GOP contingent came by with their swag. They offered some to Micro McGee, and he shouted, "NO!" and they tried to persuade him, "Are you sure you don't want some candy?" and he said "NO!" louder and crossed his arms over his chest and leaned away from them. Meanwhile, Mini McGee had taken a sticker and stuck it on himself because he loves stickers, but when he heard his brother shouting, looked down at his sticker, realized it was for Republicans, and ripped it off, visibly upset, shouting, "NO! IT'S BAD!" and crumpled it up and threw it at the walkers.

My kids know we're Democrats, but we try to be relatively circumspect in talking about Republicans (as they have Republican relatives, and my husband has GOP colleagues and bosses (especially when he was at the state), and you never know what their friends' parents believe). So we try to explain positive reasons for why we vote for Democrats and support Democratic policies, and explain that some political questions are hard questions without easy answers and it's okay for people to disagree about them. We have also banned TV and radio news because we don't want them exposed at this age to Nazis holding rallies and the president assaulting women and all the other assorted appallingness of this administration.

Anyway, this is 100% about Trump. They loathe Trump, they think he's the worst guy in America, they automatically oppose everything he does. And they have figured out that Republicans support Trump. And now they want nothing to do with Republicans, and are starting to hate Republicans too, for supporting Trump. They are 7 and 9. If I were a Republican concerned about the long-term survival of the party, that'd scare me, that I was losing (white, male) voters probably for life before they're 10 years old.

Also I sternly rebuked Mini McGee for throwing things at people, because civility, but honestly I'm pretty freaking proud.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:46 PM on July 5, 2018 [162 favorites]


I'll always wonder what Pruitt's job interview was like:

"I'm *extremely* corrupt. I believe my corruption skill set is a perfect fit for your team, and that I can contribute by setting the pace for corruption within your administration. I can hit the ground running and be proactive in my corruption on day one. That said, I am always looking to further my corruption skills and am excited by the prospect of learning more about corruption from you and your team."
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:46 PM on July 5, 2018 [23 favorites]


Everybody underestimates Ben Carson (and his family).

Carson might actually be unaware that he is part of a scam. His entire candidacy run was probably little more than mail fraud committed by his campaign manager funnelling money to consultants.
posted by PenDevil at 1:49 PM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


I reiterate: Everybody underestimates Ben Carson.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:52 PM on July 5, 2018 [7 favorites]


Ha, Twitterfolk are now referring to Pruitt as "Ofdonald" based on the letter.

"Under His Hair."
posted by scalefree at 1:52 PM on July 5, 2018 [28 favorites]


Pruitt is likely resigning in part because he was losing Republican support over his "pleases nobody" flips and flops onbiofuels policy, not just because of the scandals.
posted by kewb at 1:52 PM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Carson might actually be unaware that he is part of a scam.

I strongly disagree. That Atlantic headline sounds like an attempt to avoid a defamation suit rather than a substantive point.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:53 PM on July 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


The people who pushed Pruitt for EPA chief were mainly going from a "trigger the libs" perspective -- who better to run the EPA than the guy who sues EPA all the time, right????

I doubt there was more to it than that, plus a good word from Jim Inhofe. The corruption was likely an unexpected bonus.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:54 PM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


"I'm *extremely* corrupt. I believe my corruption skill set is a perfect fit for your team, and that I can contribute by setting the pace for corruption within your administration."
posted by The Card Cheat

#eponysterical
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:56 PM on July 5, 2018 [13 favorites]


As Trump celebrates reductions in legal immigration and is working toward more, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Wants To Hire 40 More Foreign Workers. His business is petitioning the government he runs for the visas, which would total 240 since he launched his campaign.
posted by zachlipton at 1:58 PM on July 5, 2018 [41 favorites]


"NO! IT'S BAD!"

I'm with you, kid.
posted by emjaybee at 1:59 PM on July 5, 2018 [17 favorites]


Trump ordered the Border Patrol to hire more agents, but instead, it’s losing them

A Government Accountability Office report last week found that attrition has outstripped improvements in recruiting and hiring. In the first half of 2018, the Border Patrol hired nearly double the number of agents it brought on over the same period in 2017. [...] But it wasn’t enough to keep up with departures. In 2017, the Border Patrol posted a net loss of nearly 400 agents. That left staffing at almost 7,000 below Trump’s target.

Despite scraping the bottom of the thug barrel they're still coming up short. Incivility and social ostracism works.
posted by Rust Moranis at 2:00 PM on July 5, 2018 [92 favorites]


Despite scraping the bottom of the thug barrel they're still coming up short. Incivility and social ostracism works.

And how! Does it make me a bad person that I'm genuinely happy that the social pressure on Pruitt ended up being the reason cited for his resignation? I know there are probably other forthcoming corruption-related factors, but just to see it in print... it's a rush!
posted by Krazor at 2:03 PM on July 5, 2018 [22 favorites]


Unscientific Pruitt: Eight ways the EPA administrator suppressed science.
Blocking science in the name of transparency

Firing academic science advisors

Misrepresenting climate change science

Ignoring science to reduce protections for waterways

EPA brain drain

EPA’s website goes light on science

Dirty power plants

Budget cuts to tribes
posted by scalefree at 2:05 PM on July 5, 2018 [15 favorites]


In a thematic parallel to this FPP, Fox and Friends sent a reporter to Colonial Williamsburg to have a Thomas Jefferson interpreter perform a reading of the Declaration of Independence. He chose to excerpt the sections that are valid criticisms of Donald Trump. Video from Fox, coverage at the WaPo: ‘Fox & Friends’ gets punked by ‘Thomas Jefferson’.
posted by peeedro at 2:20 PM on July 5, 2018 [68 favorites]


Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has released a statement on Pruitt's resignation. It reads as follows:

"Good."
posted by kelborel at 2:25 PM on July 5, 2018 [66 favorites]


Sen. Durbin:
Remember Brian Benczkowski? He represented Russia’s Alfa Bank and was a top staffer to then-Senator Sessions. Senate Republicans plan to vote next week to confirm him to head the DOJ Criminal Division. Heading the DOJ Criminal Division is a critically important job. This person will supervise over 600 federal prosecutors handling thousands of cases and investigations, and will oversee sensitive matters such as the criminal investigation of Michael Cohen. Benczkowski has no prosecutorial experience. He showed poor judgment by choosing to represent Alfa Bank while he was seeking a DOJ job despite reports that Alfa was under criminal investigation. And he won’t commit to recuse himself from Russia-related matters if confirmed. Why does President Trump want Brian Benczkowski for this important job? Why not find an attorney who has actual prosecutorial experience and who is free and clear from Russian connections? And we still don’t know the full story behind Alfa Bank and what they did in 2016. In May I joined my Senate Judiciary Democratic colleagues in calling for Benczkowski’s nomination to be withdrawn. See our letter here: https://twitter.com/SenatorDurbin/status/1014886391073902593/photo/1 Watch this vote next week. Republicans will try to confirm Benczkowski while attention is focused on SCOTUS. This could be a pivotal moment in the Russia investigation.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:28 PM on July 5, 2018 [61 favorites]


New Yorker, Jonathan Blitzer, Parents Are Struggling to Reclaim Their Children from the Office of Refugee Resettlement
Last week, after spending a month in a federal prison, a Honduran woman named Rosalinda Hernández finally received some good news: the government was ready to release her. In May, she and her nine-year-old son had crossed the U.S. border, seeking asylum. Under the Trump Administration’s zero-tolerance policy, she had been arrested and charged with entering the country illegally, while her son was sent to a children’s shelter in the Midwest. Now, however, the government was no longer prosecuting families for illegal entry, and the charges against her were being dropped. Hernández was sent by bus to a migrant shelter in downtown El Paso. “I only spoke to my son twice while I was a prisoner,” Hernández told me. “Now we talk on the phone every afternoon.” At the end of each conversation, she said, he asks when they’ll see each other. She tells him, “This month, in July, for sure.”

A few days ago, Hernández learned that it will be several more weeks, at least, before the government can return her son. In order to regain custody of their children, immigrants like Hernández need to collect documents that prove their fitness as parents and submit their fingerprints—and the fingerprinting alone takes about twenty days to process. “Making the decision to seek asylum and leave everything behind often means that parents don’t have certain documents,” Linda Corchado, Hernández’s immigration lawyer, told me. “And those documents are required just to begin the conversation with the government.” Hernández’s family in Honduras has been frantically sending Corchado documents. “I’ve been getting photographs, transcripts from the boy’s third grade class, vaccination records, even a letter from his school teacher,” Corchado said.

But the government also needs information that Hernández doesn’t have: an address, a full criminal background check on every other adult who might live in the same household as her child, and proof of income. Having just left federal prison, Hernández is effectively homeless. She told me, “Once I realized what was happening, I said, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to do?’"
...
While Corchado gathered documents, Hernández called her sister, who lives in New York, to ask if she could use her home address. “My sister wanted to help, but she got scared that the government will come after her,” Hernández said. “She’s undocumented.” Under past Administrations, O.R.R. reassured parents and family sponsors that it would never scrutinize their immigration status. But, based on a new memorandum of agreement, signed in April, O.R.R. is now required to share the information it compiles on sponsors with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Now case managers tell parents and potential sponsors that, if they submit personal information for vetting purposes, it could lead to deportation. Hernández told me, “When I heard that, it changed everything. It’s not just me who’s at risk here.” (Some names in this article have been changed.)

Hernández and her sister decided to ask a friend who is a legal permanent resident if she could serve as a sponsor, but the woman’s husband got nervous when he heard that the government would have to fingerprint him. “He said to me, ‘What does this all have to do with your kid?’ ” Hernández told me. “I don’t have anyone now,” she said. “Everyone’s scared. They all have doubts. It’s just me, and I can’t get my son.”
posted by zachlipton at 2:31 PM on July 5, 2018 [51 favorites]


A Government Accountability Office report last week found that attrition has outstripped improvements in recruiting and hiring. In the first half of 2018, the Border Patrol hired nearly double the number of agents it brought on over the same period in 2017. [...] But it wasn’t enough to keep up with departures. In 2017, the Border Patrol posted a net loss of nearly 400 agents. That left staffing at almost 7,000 below Trump’s target.

Despite scraping the bottom of the thug barrel they're still coming up short. Incivility and social ostracism works.


Incivility and social ostracism was how most societies handled things for most of human history. And it seems to have worked. Honestly, it's much cheaper and more effective than many other forms of punishment. (I think prison was mostly used to keep people from running away before their trials, until relatively recently. Can a history expert weigh in?)

In addition to being increasingly socially unacceptable, there are just fewer young people, especially young white people, to fill more physical jobs. Middle-aged people make better keyboard warriors than real-life ones. More white people are dying than being born in the majority of states. Already, in my area, I can see that a majority of demanding physical labor jobs are being filled by immigrants - the native-born white population is getting old and creaky for not-desk jobs. Another way we are short-changing our future by not encouraging immigration.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 2:33 PM on July 5, 2018 [12 favorites]


With more entirely predictable news, the Financial Times reports: Fed Minutes Flag Rising Fears Over Tariffs—Some businesses say they have ‘scaled back or postponed’ spending
According to minutes of the Fed’s June meeting, some business indicated they had already “scaled back or postponed” plans for capital spending due to “uncertainty over trade policy”, while a larger group voiced concern about the impact of trade restrictions on future investment.[...]

Fed officials also discussed the trade tensions stirred by President Donald Trump in their May meeting, but the minutes of that gathering said they viewed the range of possible trade impacts as “particularly wide”.

The concerns documented in the June meeting appeared more pronounced and the minutes put a greater emphasis on potential negative effects.[...]

Officials also highlighted the importance of monitoring the slope of the yield curve, which measures the difference between short-dated and long-dated treasury yields. A flat or inverted yield curve has traditionally been seen as a warning sign for recession and market players have been watching the flattening curve with alarm.

The difference between two-year treasury yields and 10-year yields fell to 28 basis points on Thursday, the lowest level since July 2007.

“A number of participants thought it would be important to continue to monitor the slope of the yield curve, given the historical regularity that an inverted yield curve has indicated an increased risk of recession in the United States,” the minutes said.
While there's a lot of short-term positive news in June's Fed minutes, which Fox and the GOP will naturally spin, the medium- to long-term indicators are decidedly negative.
posted by Doktor Zed at 2:39 PM on July 5, 2018 [13 favorites]


The not-so-subtle thing that's going on with Pruitt's "providence": It's a direct Hitler rip-off ("die Vorsehung" with a rolling r).
posted by Namlit at 2:43 PM on July 5, 2018 [8 favorites]


Point — @christinawilkie: NEWS: Trump on Rep. Jim Jordan allegations: “I don’t believe them at all. I believe him. Jim is one of the most outstanding people I’ve met since I’ve been in Washington. I believe him 100 percent. No question in my mind. I believe Jim 100 percent. He’s an outstanding man.”

Counterpoint — NBC News, Fourth Ohio State wrestler says Rep. Jim Jordan knew about sexual abuse when he was coach:
A fourth former Ohio State University wrestler came forward Thursday to contradict Rep. Jim Jordan’s claim that he had no idea the wrestling team doctor was molesting athletes.

The wrestler, Shawn Dailey, said he was groped half a dozen times by Dr. Richard Strauss in the mid-1990s, when Jordan was the assistant wrestling coach. Dailey said he was too embarrassed to report the abuse directly to Jordan at the time, but he said Jordan took part in conversations where Strauss' abuse of many other team members came up.

"I participated with Jimmy [Jordan] and the other wrestlers in locker-room talk about Strauss. We all did," Dailey, 43, told NBC News. "It was very common knowledge in the locker room that if you went to Dr. Strauss for anything, you would have to pull your pants down.”
So, um, this actually was locker room talk? *hits head on desk repeatedly*
posted by zachlipton at 2:46 PM on July 5, 2018 [58 favorites]


So anyway one of my state-politics-dorks friends is spending the summer (or fall too? I dunno) in DC and just noted that "I seriously just accidentally cut off Jeff Flake at the dry cleaners. He was annoyed but ultimately did little to stop me."
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:48 PM on July 5, 2018 [52 favorites]


Eyebrows, I can just hear you giving a lecture about good behavior and the American way, then saying, “Look, it’s awfully hot, and heat makes everybody cranky. Why don’t we all go get some ice cream?”
posted by Countess Elena at 2:57 PM on July 5, 2018 [11 favorites]


unless someone can remind me of the canonical mefi turning and spitting ritual...

IT DOESN'T WORK
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:02 PM on July 5, 2018 [63 favorites]


He was annoyed but ultimately did little to stop me.

Damn, man. Jeff Flake stays on brand even at the dry cleaners.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 3:03 PM on July 5, 2018 [90 favorites]






Republicans will absolutely lose their shit if you don't stand for the anthem, because to them that disrespects The Troops, but when we're talking about the actual troops? Fuck those guys, apparently.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 3:34 PM on July 5, 2018 [73 favorites]


WaPo :. "Sen. Jon Tester takes out newspaper ads welcoming Trump to Montana ahead of a hostile visit"

This is like rolling over and showing your belly to the sadistic predator who’s already got a taste of your blood.
posted by schadenfrau at 3:37 PM on July 5, 2018 [6 favorites]


Wow, we're not even willing to do "service guarantees citizenship!" anymore - we're basically beyond parody.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 3:39 PM on July 5, 2018 [49 favorites]


My guess is that Tester is more making a point to voters in Montana than anything. He's considered one of the more vulnerable Senate Dems, so I'm chalking it up to "wanting to be re-elected" rather than meek surrender. Just like Nancy Pelosi saying "Say you're against me if it's necessary to be elected."

Kamala Harris (CA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) can say "Fuck you, Trump" and get kudos from their voters - red state Dems have to tread more carefully.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 3:44 PM on July 5, 2018 [11 favorites]


Tester was polling +8 like 10 days ago and he's not one of the ones I'm worried about betraying us on the SCOTUS pick or egregiously out of line like a Manchin or Donnelly, he's maintaining a Trump score of -49. Even I'm going to cut him some slack here with Trump-curious campaign shenanigans. In my mind he's our best Red State Dem by a mile and has been there for us on almost everything.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:44 PM on July 5, 2018 [23 favorites]


This is like rolling over and showing your belly to the sadistic predator who’s already got a taste of your blood.

How so? Like it or not, this is a state that went well over the MoE for him, so I can see the logic of putting out an ad that's meant to remind people of the work he's done regarding the VA.

Also, I've seen those ads attacking Tester over Jackson, and they're....delusional. To put it mildly.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:45 PM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Trump is now using his campaign rally to praise "Admiral/Doctor" Ronnie Jackson, who he says he feels guilty about. He says Jackson "actually said I was healthy" and is "a great family man." He claims to have some kind of new report exonerating Jackson. He actually manages to kind of connect this to why he's there, blaming Tester for saying negative things about Jackson.

We've moved on to claiming that Hillary Clinton "gets special treatment under the Justice Department" and the crowd chanting "lock her up." It is now July 2018.
posted by zachlipton at 3:46 PM on July 5, 2018 [15 favorites]


I'm a middle-aged lady who last had a foreign language class 35 years ago, and being from the south all I remember of that was classmates probably causing the Spanish teacher to want to stick pencils through her eardrums with all the "Well, O-lah, y'all!!" going on. I didn't do more than the bare minimum to meet requirements because I have a terrible fear of public humiliation and our classes were oddly focused on numbers and I can't count decently in English.

For some reason, I have lately become obsessed with trying again to learn Spanish. Whenever I get particularly heartbroken or infuriated, I open my Duolingo app and do another lesson. I'm still basically at the "El gato come manzanas” level but it somehow comforts me. I know I'm not going down to the border to do translation or anything anytime soon, but I want to be able to greet the Hispanic families I see with a smile and just a word or two in their native language. I know this is...what? Naive? Silly? I just feel so helpless and at least learning something is a use of my time that is slightly less pointless than the team ranting that I am doing with my friends and family.
posted by thebrokedown at 3:48 PM on July 5, 2018 [75 favorites]


“A number of participants thought it would be important to continue to monitor the slope of the yield curve, given the historical regularity that an inverted yield curve has indicated an increased risk of recession in the United States,” the minutes said.

Ah yes. Bankers monitor the curve while the rest of ride it all the way down.
posted by srboisvert at 3:50 PM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


Really letting his Klan flag fly in Great Falls.

"Did you see that clown on the statue of liberty yesterday? Why didn't they just put down nets and then wait until, you know..." (audience laughs)

20 minutes later: "I called Maxine Waters a low-IQ individual. I believe hers is in the mid 60s." (more laughter)
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:01 PM on July 5, 2018 [15 favorites]


red state Dems have to tread more carefully

Oh I agree. I really don’t give a shit what Tester has to do to get re-elected as long as we keep the seat blue. My point is that if his goal is to appeal to Trumpers, this is the exact wrong thing to do. “Thank you” after being attacked? It’s like chumming the water.
posted by schadenfrau at 4:03 PM on July 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


Russians Will Target Liberals on Social Media for the Midterm Elections

by Nancy LeTourneau, Washington Monthly
"Although Russia did target the left in 2016, there are reasons to believe that the left will be the target in 2018—meaning, the primary target. This doesn’t mean we won’t see a repeat of 2016 tactics targeting Trump supporters and right-wing voters, but rather that these tactics may be used as a supplement to those aimed at left-leaning voters. Thus, the “WalkAway Campaign” should serve as a warning to Democratic voters, who need to be prepared not to walk into the traps that are being and will be set."
Caroline O., Arc Digital blogger: "Pro-Trump & Russian-Linked Twitter Accounts Are Posing As Ex-Democrats In New Astroturfed Movement":
"Astroturfed social media campaigns like the “WalkAway Movement” aim to create manufactured consensus, or the illusion of popularity, so that an idea or position without much public support appears more popular and mainstream than it actually is.

Below, I present the anatomy of this astroturfed movement, starting with its origins and moving on to its artificial sources of amplification, the shaping of its narrative, and the boost it got from far-right and Russian media platforms including Breitbart and RT. I also discuss the potential functions of a psychological operation such as this one, as well as the lessons—and warnings—it offers as we head into the 2018 midterms and beyond."
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:03 PM on July 5, 2018 [52 favorites]


Did you see that clown on the statue of liberty yesterday?

Yes, what a clown, sitting beside a plaque stating
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
and protesting the separation of mothers and infants on the basis of national origin.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:04 PM on July 5, 2018 [55 favorites]


He is now doing an extended riff about throwing a 23andme test at "Pocahontas," but "gently, very gently, because this is the MeToo generation."

Aaaand I'm going outside.
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:05 PM on July 5, 2018 [15 favorites]


Trump is now explaining that if he debates Elizabeth Warren, he will get one of the DNA testing kits they advertise on TV and will try to make her take one: "but we have to do it gently because we're in the me too generation so we have to be very gentle, and we will very gently take that kit and we will gently toss it hoping it doesn't hit her and hit her arm" and offer her $2M "if you take the test and it shows that you're an Indian." He also "apologized" to Pocahontas, "the real one."

Also, and I believe this has something to do with his crowd sizes but I have no idea: "I have broken more Elton John records...I don't have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ.... This is the only musical [instrument]: the mouth. And the brain, attached to the mouth...the brain is much more important."
posted by zachlipton at 4:06 PM on July 5, 2018 [22 favorites]


Wow, we're not even willing to do "service guarantees citizenship!" anymore - we're basically beyond parody.

Oh I guarantee you none of the people being discharged are white. It will remain a path to citizenship for the right (white) people.

The worst part is that I assume it's because us armed forces are going to be asked to kill nonwhite immigrants and they don't trust anyone other than white people to do it.
posted by poffin boffin at 4:06 PM on July 5, 2018 [18 favorites]


immigrants like Hernández need to collect documents that prove their fitness as parents

Is just chilling.
posted by Sphinx at 4:06 PM on July 5, 2018 [28 favorites]


Trump is at his most repulsive tonight. As ever, the Toronto Star's Daniel Dale is live-tweeting his speech, in all its foulness:
Trump says he will apologize to the real Pocahontas, but "to the fake Pocahontas, I won't apologize."

He begins a story: "Let's say I'm debating Pocahontas, right..."

Trump says if he's debating Warren, he is going to buy an ancestry kit, and - "very carefully...because we're the Me Too generation..." - "we will say I will give you a million dollars to your favourite charity...if you take the test."
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:06 PM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


immigrants like Hernández need to collect documents that prove their fitness as parents

I'm a parent. I'm not sure I have any documents proving I'm fit to be a parent. I just ... reproduced.

Oh shit.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:07 PM on July 5, 2018 [8 favorites]


Mod note: We probably don't need to liveblog the portions of Trump's bullshit that consist of basically just showing his ass in his usual fashion. If he says something genuinely remarkable, note it up, but otherwise let's just skip to a digest of anything actually worth digesting.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:07 PM on July 5, 2018 [25 favorites]


I know I'm not going down to the border to do translation or anything anytime soon, but I want to be able to greet the Hispanic families I see with a smile and just a word or two in their native language.

You'd have better luck with an indigenous language like nahuatl or mixtec or kiche actually.
posted by poffin boffin at 4:11 PM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


immigrants like Hernández need to collect documents that prove their fitness as parents
You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog, or drive a car. Hell, you need a license to catch a fish! But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father.
Keanu Reeves in Parenthood
posted by kirkaracha at 4:13 PM on July 5, 2018 [6 favorites]


I want to share a word from one of my pastors, a brilliant, wonderful, queer Latina Baptist... she and her wife (who pastor our church together) visited a detention facility along the US-Mexico border last week. On Sunday she delivered a sermon about nationalism, walls, "restoring national greatness," the myths of our history... and quite a lot more. Sharing it here in case anyone needs it. (If you're so inclined, you can listen to the whole thing here.)
When our policies become efficient but inhumane, the walls must come down. When our courtrooms become sanitized to the cries of the brokenhearted, our walls must come down. When our public servants are required to recite propaganda instead of create real hope for the vulnerable, the walls must come down.

Right now, children and families, men and women who have journeyed thousands of miles for months at a time--a sacred journey--in hopes of a better life for their children, are locked in cages because the State is masquerading weakness and fear with strength and courage.

Right now an attorney is sitting with a five year old child, who every so often draws stick figures of gang members who threatened to hurt her family, and every so often the shape of ice cream cones she'd like to eat, while that attorney prepares her to represent herself before a judge and armed officers, alone, without her parents, in federal immigration court.

Right now, those of us who feel compassion for migrants are still hesitant to say things like "Abolish ICE" because we've been shaped to believe that this is a complicated set of geopolitical dynamics, and countries do need safe borders, and we'd hate to sound dramatic and unreasoned and unwilling to approach this issue with an even hand--you know, the kind of stuff that folks not sitting in cages get to say over coffee while they "process all this."
posted by duffell at 4:15 PM on July 5, 2018 [35 favorites]


So, there is one thing that is worth noting - the rally is in Great Falls, not Billings. Billings would be the logical location - it's the biggest city in the state, it's the conservative hub, it has the best venues in terms of capacity. But, it's also the home district of Russ Fagg - the man Rosendale had to beat to get the nod, and whose campaign latched the "outsider" albatross around his neck. Which makes me wonder if there's still some residual bad feelings.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:16 PM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


"I have broken more Elton John records...I don't have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ...."

Jesus Fred Christ Trump, he is unable to recall the word "piano". His speech is repulsive enough as it is, but here he's actually losing control. The man is cognitively impaired, and we're watching him decompensating on live TV.

Oh, and he's flaunting his collusion with the Kremlin: “Trump mocks his critics for saying "'President Putin is KGB' and this and that. You know what? Putin's fine."”

This may be the first time he's been so brazen about it (Dale comments, “To recap: In rapid succession, Trump said Americans don't benefit much from protecting Europe from Russia, said Americans are "schmucks" for paying for NATO, and said, "Putin is fine."”).
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:18 PM on July 5, 2018 [34 favorites]


they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father.

If that's how you think you're becoming a parent, then you're doing it wrong.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:19 PM on July 5, 2018 [8 favorites]


Dale comments, “To recap: In rapid succession, Trump said Americans don't benefit much from protecting Europe from Russia, said Americans are "schmucks" for paying for NATO, and said, "Putin is fine."”
Can I make a rule that people whose surrogates talk about (((New York money))) don't get to use Yiddish slang?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:21 PM on July 5, 2018 [16 favorites]


So, Don Jr opened for the President in Montana -- I don't recall that happening previously.

That clown is actually going to run for office soon, isn't he?
posted by notyou at 4:23 PM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


The lady who asked Pruitt to resign at lunch the other day.

@KristinMinkDC:
Hey @realDonaldTrump where are you going to lunch tomorrow?
posted by chris24 at 4:25 PM on July 5, 2018 [106 favorites]


That clown is actually going to run for office soon, isn't he?

He lives in NY. He'd be crushed.
posted by chris24 at 4:26 PM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


literally physically crushed, i will hire the crane crew myself, using union labor for irony purposes
posted by poffin boffin at 4:29 PM on July 5, 2018 [49 favorites]


@CGasparino [Fox Business] :Just heard @POTUS at this rally complaining about the use of anonymous sources. For the record he was one of mine over the years.[...]I'm ok w @POTUS personally always got along w him but this anonymous source schtick is complete BS he knows it

Any reporter who has spoken to him off the record needs to do this. The press pool gave him a half hour, mainly off the record, on Air Force One today. There is zero news value in giving a notorious liar anonymity so he can turn around and attack the very reporters he talks to.
posted by zachlipton at 4:34 PM on July 5, 2018 [70 favorites]


He lives in NY. He'd be crushed.

From your lips to poffin boffin's ear.

HRC lived in Illinois, Massachusetts, Arkansas, D.C. (and elsewhere?), before finally settling in New York and the Senate seat there. Don Jr could conceivably try the same.
posted by notyou at 4:36 PM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


That clown is actually going to run for office soon, isn't he?

That was the gist of his puff-profile in GQ last month—the dubiously titled The Real Story of Donald Trump Jr. —which concludes, "There's little doubt that as a political creature, Don has grown more sure-footed. Once reportedly derided by Trump campaign staffers as 'Fredo,' the Corleone child who can't seem to do anything right except endanger his family legacy, Don has now become one of Trump's most useful spokesmen. [...] And in the coming months, he'll be making a big push to campaign for Republicans ahead of this year's midterms—firing up his father's base."

(For some comic relief after raising that prospect, here's Mashable—the Internet mercilessly mocks a photo of the Trump boys and it is deeply satisfying.)
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:38 PM on July 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


Anyone want to volunteer to make twitter less nasty? Amnesty international is doing a thing. Please consider stepping up if you’re a cis white dude as it involves reading a bunch of hateful shit.

Also right on to those of you learning Spanish, one of the most powerful acts of solidarity with a marginalized group is to meet them where they are, and I can’t think of a stronger way to do that then learning their language and going outside your own comfort zone.
posted by supercrayon at 4:39 PM on July 5, 2018 [22 favorites]


Regarding that Tester add, it seems like a Trump troll to me. He thanks Trump for signing legislation Tester wrote or sponsored.
posted by feste at 4:41 PM on July 5, 2018 [8 favorites]


The Providence Journal reports:
Facing a hailstorm of criticism, state Democratic Party Chairman Joseph McNamara on Thursday morning rescinded his party’s endorsement of a Trump-voting ex-Republican male over a female progressive legislator in a Providence House race.

He also rescinded the party’s endorsement of a former state senator - with a history that includes a conviction for vehicular homicide - over a female political newcomer competing for the Democratic nod for an open Senate seat ...
posted by adamg at 4:50 PM on July 5, 2018 [40 favorites]


Trump ordered the Border Patrol to hire more agents, but instead, it’s losing them

i live in Tucson and I was reading some job web sites - the Border Patrol and Lyft both seem really desperate right now. I'll pass on both.
posted by Squeak Attack at 4:58 PM on July 5, 2018 [9 favorites]


In any other administration, Wilbur Ross "forgetting" to sell his investments and "accidentally" making a multi-million dollar profit (previous thread) would be a 5-alarm scandal with hearings and resignations. Here it barely moved the needle against the level set by Pruitt.

Can we please go after Trump and his family for the laws we know he's broken? The illegal tax evasion loophole? Robbing his own charity? Real estate fraud? How can Democrats ask people to fight every step of the way when they can't even hold the president and his circle accountable when they flagrantly break the law? You want to give Trump a wake up call? Make him pay his taxes. Send his kids to jail. Just like we would to anyone else with the same evidence for the same crimes. Just like other reputable countries do with their leadership all the time. Seriously, where is the investigation? What is the hold up? Who do we call or write to?
posted by xammerboy at 4:58 PM on July 5, 2018 [40 favorites]


What is the hold up? Who do we call or write to?

Jeff Sessions is Attorney General. It's really hard to charge federal cabinet members with state crimes. Insider trading is federal. You're not going to get actual prosecutions without political victory. They have immunity by poltiical complicity, we don't live in a country of laws anymore under Republican control. That's just a fact. Ezra Klein talked about this today with Lawfare's Susan Hennessey.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:11 PM on July 5, 2018 [29 favorites]


Small Town Socialist reporting in: I attended my first DSA meeting on Monday in Knoxville, TN. I rough-counted the crowd, we had about 60 people in attendance and just under half were women. Monday was chapter officer elections, and I noted that both the outgoing and incoming chairs are women. The evening's topic was presented by a guest speaker from a community organizing group. The guest speaker was a black man, but the club attendees were all white (which is not great but also not surprising, given Knoxville's racial makeup.) I learned that Knox DSA had enough participants to both staff a table and march in the Pride parade.

It's not perfect (way too white, for starters) but overall I felt welcome and heard.
posted by workerant at 5:16 PM on July 5, 2018 [30 favorites]


xammerboy: "Can we please go after Trump and his family for the laws we know he's broken? The illegal tax evasion loophole? Robbing his own charity? Real estate fraud? How can Democrats ask people to fight every step of the way when they can't even hold the president and his circle accountable when they flagrantly break the law? "

I believe the Democrats WILL as soon as they CAN - but they have to retake the majority first. They can't do anything while the Republicans hold the majority in both houses.
posted by kristi at 5:17 PM on July 5, 2018 [5 favorites]


Wow, we're not even willing to do "service guarantees citizenship!" anymore

On reading the article, it looks like they’re slow walking this. It’s happening to people who have agreed to join, but have not actually yet gone to basic training and become soldiers. I am betting that this may be the actual wedge that they want to use to try to take on soldiers, but it is important to be correct in our statements about what is actually happening right now.

That said, seriously, we all aren’t stupid, we see the writing on the wall. They’re going to come for us all. We always knew they would.
posted by corb at 5:21 PM on July 5, 2018 [31 favorites]


I believe the Democrats WILL as soon as they CAN - but they have to retake the majority first. They can't do anything while the Republicans hold the majority in both houses.

Even when the Democrats retake Congress, they can't actually prosecute anything they find through Congressional committee. Congress has subpoena power, but not prosecution power, ultimately the remedy for contempt of Congress still runs through DOJ through a referral to the US Attorney for DC. Referrals for other crimes would similarly have to go through DOJ. They'll have much more power than now, but not necessarily enough to bring actual charges if norms keep breaking down at the current rate. We'll still be relying on Rod Rosenstein or some other Trump appointee to bring actual charges.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:24 PM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


The U.S. labor shortage is reaching a critical point

What is this coming crisis?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that April closed with 6.7 million job openings. May ended with just over 6 million people the BLS classifies as unemployed, continuing a trend this year that has seen openings eclipse the labor pool for the first time. At some point that gap will have to close. Economists expect that employers are going to have to start doing more to entice workers, likely through pay raises, training and other incentives.
Oh. That.
posted by scalefree at 5:29 PM on July 5, 2018 [42 favorites]


I believe the Democrats WILL as soon as they CAN

This wouldn’t have the ability to do this immediately, but I also don’t think we should treat it as a sure thing. If / when the left regains control of the executive and legislative branches, there’s going to be a whole bunch of really uncomfortable things that we will have to pressure them to do. They will not want to investigate and prosecute all the corruption; they will not want to impeach judges or pack courts or go after big banks or private prisons. We will have to make them. Because I honestly don’t think we can take another hit to our collective sense of justice. When no one trusts the laws or the state at all, for anything, society well and truly falls apart.

We can’t let them get away with it anymore. Any of it. The bill is going to have to come due and it is going to be ducking huge.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:31 PM on July 5, 2018 [39 favorites]


... the Border Patrol and Lyft both seem really desperate right now. I'll pass on both.

Dude ... think of the synergies ...
posted by ZenMasterThis at 5:32 PM on July 5, 2018 [7 favorites]


And they’re not gonna want to do it for understandable reasons. Everyone will be exhausted by then, and some people will just want it all to stop, and some people will swear they’ll rise up in open crazy person revolt if we prosecute their heroes or come for their guns.

I still think we have to do it.

This is in the best possible timeline, obviously.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:36 PM on July 5, 2018 [13 favorites]


Absolutely. "Look forward, not backwards" played a LARGE role in getting us here today, we can't allow Democrats to look away again. Prosecutions are non-negotiable.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:42 PM on July 5, 2018 [47 favorites]


Power to the people, right on:

Senate Hopeful Beto O’Rourke Plays Pot Anthems With Willie Nelson, Margo Price
(Sam Sodomsky | Pitchfork)

“The Democrat running against Ted Cruz was previously in a band with At the Drive-In’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala.”
posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:47 PM on July 5, 2018 [19 favorites]


The ancient Romans engaged in a practice called "augury", the interpretation of omens revealed in the movements of birds. From this practice we get English words such as augur, auspex/auspices, and auspicious/inauspicious.

I'm not especially into trying to predict the future via birds but if I were, I feel as though yesterday would have given me some cause for concern. I awoke, having difficulty breathing, discovering that the CPAP machine which I had been using was no longer fuctioning for the reason that all electrical service had been interrupted. It turns out the reason for the electrical outage was that an eagle had bridged two electrical transmission lines with spectacular albeit disastrous results for the eagle and also an outage for local electric customers.

I'm not sure what it means to have been woken from a sound sleep on the anniversary of our country's independence by the indirect results of the incineration of our national symbol but it definitely seems no stranger or more foreboding than many of the other things that have taken place this year..
posted by Nerd of the North at 5:47 PM on July 5, 2018 [84 favorites]


The third stage is “bargaining”: Jennifer Rubin in WaPo suggests How to fix the Supreme Court without packing it

With a heavy dose of “both sides,” don't you know.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:54 PM on July 5, 2018 [8 favorites]


“The Democrat running against Ted Cruz was previously in a band with At the Drive-In’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala.”

It was a very bad band.
posted by scalefree at 5:57 PM on July 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


Well, there goes Scott Pruitt.

Like CNN says, the amazing thing isn't that he's gone, it's that he lasted so long.

I figure it's kinda like Reagan and Meese, Trump is going senile and he thought of Pruitt as one of his people so he didn't want him to go.

Also, where was he going to find someone else as Captain Planet villain level anti-environmental to fill the post?
posted by sotonohito at 5:58 PM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Richard Spencer barred from Europe

Nationalism is a double edge sword but I doubt the punchable nazi learnt that.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 6:04 PM on July 5, 2018 [53 favorites]


Joe in AustraliaThe third stage is “bargaining”: Jennifer Rubin in WaPo suggests How to fix the Supreme Court without packing it

Yeah, I'd say it sounds like bargaining. Along with a dose of fantasy. The structure of the Senate and EC makes it more likely than not that going forward the Republicans will have either the Presidency, or the Senate, or both. Why would they contemplate, even for a moment, giving up their power to have nine Liberty U alumni sitting on the Court?

The idea of Collins and Murkowski using their position to extract future promises of good behavior (a return to a 60 vote minimum, a 90 day vote or auto-appointment) is fantasy on two levels. First in imagining that either Collins or Murkowski would even contemplate doing that, and second that McConnell's promise to give them that in exchange for appointing a 30 year old Roy Moore to the Court is worth anything at all.

The Republicans see a great opportunity to own the US government forever, and they're taking it. The idea that they'd give that up is simply unrealistic.
posted by sotonohito at 6:06 PM on July 5, 2018 [8 favorites]


Forgive my ignorance, but these Metafilter threads are the first time I've heard the American Service-Members Protection Act discussed by people who seem actually informed. It's legislation just for show, right? I don't see how the United States are going to ever going to enforce such a law. Would military action against the Hague not be an explicit Article 5 trigger compelling all other NATO states to come to the defence of the Netherlands against the US?
posted by MarchHare at 6:07 PM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


It's legislation just for show, right?

No American has been brought to the Hague even though many of them deserve it.

Would military action against the Hague not be an explicit Article 5 trigger compelling all other NATO states to come to the defence of the Netherlands against the US?

It would be the start of World War III.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 6:10 PM on July 5, 2018 [8 favorites]


I’d say “that is not a thing that anybody wants”, but, well, this lot.
posted by Artw at 6:11 PM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


The USA actually has a law, the "American Service-Members Protection Act" which mandates the USA invade the Hague to liberate any US official or soldier who is brought up on charges at the International Criminal Court.

It should be noted that the law does not require the President to do this, simply authorizes them to do so. So the law needn't be repealed first, but you do need a Democratic president. (But honestly that's the bare minimum you need for this magical scenario to occur anyway, so...)
posted by ragtag at 6:20 PM on July 5, 2018 [5 favorites]


A law which required the President to take any particular military action would be blatantly unconstitutional anyway would it not? Congress could declare war and send funds for the war effort but they couldn't actually direct it to be fought.
posted by Justinian at 6:29 PM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


The White House @WhiteHouse
Alexander Hamilton: "There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes the human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism."


I have a Hamilton quote in response to them:
The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 6:39 PM on July 5, 2018 [60 favorites]


It never ceases to amaze me how many of our founding fathers explicitly warned of a man like Trump.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 6:39 PM on July 5, 2018 [97 favorites]


If I remember my American history textbook correctly, the President can only go to war with the express consent of Congress. Or if he calls it a 'police action.' Or if he doesn't tell anyone about it. No wait. That was America: The Book. But still.
posted by MarchHare at 6:42 PM on July 5, 2018 [10 favorites]


Economists expect that employers are going to have to start doing more to entice fuck over workers

as Atrios frequently reminds us, wages will never go up.
posted by j_curiouser at 6:43 PM on July 5, 2018 [16 favorites]


It never ceases to amaze me how many of our founding fathers explicitly warned of a man like Trump.

And before them, the Greeks.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:02 PM on July 5, 2018 [6 favorites]


these Metafilter threads are the first time I've heard the American Service-Members Protection Act discussed by people who seem actually informed. It's legislation just for show, right?

Despite being largely a symbolic Act, I do think that it serves as more than just a show. I imagine a U.S. President could also use it as legal cover for an action less outright unthinkable than an actual invasion of the Hague (it authorizes "all means necessary and appropriate"). For example, a U.S. President could reference this law as legitimizing their use of the U.S. Armed Forces to forcibly divert a foreign plane (as "statutory authorization" under the War Powers Resolution) to recover a U.S. official being transported to the Hague, as, in theory, one of the enabling clauses in the War Powers Resolution must be met before the President can order the U.S. Armed Forces into action. However, as hinted to by MarchHare, in the past Congress hasn't done much more than complain about previous potential violations of the WPR, so I doubt the repeal of this Act would actually do much to restrain a U.S. President intent on using the U.S. Armed Forces to retrieve a U.S. official from the custody of the Hague.
posted by RichardP at 7:16 PM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Got Kleenex? No? Go get some

reunion

n = 1. We have a long damn way to go.
posted by Dashy at 7:18 PM on July 5, 2018 [17 favorites]


And before them, the Greeks.

Although not technically Greeks, the Spartans made their Ephori account for their actions at the end of their terms...
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 7:20 PM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Although not technically Greeks, the Spartans made their Ephori account for their actions at the end of their terms...

Maybe we just move past all the Slave owners and xenophobes of history?
posted by Artw at 7:26 PM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


NYT, Caitlin Dickerson, Trump Administration in Chaotic Scramble to Reunify Migrant Families
In interviews with federal employees, immigration lawyers and shelter operators, those closest to the process raised questions about the initial assertions that federal authorities could account for the locations of both parents and children after they were separated.

In fact, the Health and Human Services agency charged with overseeing the care of migrant children, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, established such procedures, which included identification bracelets, the issuance of registration numbers and careful logs to keep the records of parents and children linked.

But those precautions were undermined in some cases by the other federal agency that has initial custody of apprehended migrants in the first 72 hours after they cross the border — Customs and Border Protection. In hundreds of cases, Customs agents deleted the initial records in which parents and children were listed together as a family with a “family identification number,” according to two officials at the Department of Homeland Security, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the process.

As a result, the parents and children appeared in federal computers to have no connection to one another.

“That was the big problem. We weren’t able to see that information,” said one of the officials, who is directly involved in the reunification process.

Officials cautioned that this was not a deliberate attempt to obfuscate, but a belief that it made more sense to track cases separately once a group of migrants was no longer in custody as a family unit, these sources said.
...
The announcement Thursday that DNA testing would be used to help confirm family units drew some opposition from immigrant advocates, who said that the records could be used to track undocumented immigrants indefinitely.
it's abundantly clear that there was never the slightest effort by those doing the separating to ensure these kids would ever be returned to their parents. Oh, and if they do return your kids, they might randomly strand you in a randomly chosen location:
But no pathway was in place as of Thursday for what will happen after the reunifications, for families released from immigration custody on bond or other conditions. Some parents and children will presumably have been moved several states away from their extended families or support networks, the officials said. They may not have the money for transportation back to their families, or even food.
posted by zachlipton at 7:47 PM on July 5, 2018 [36 favorites]


Officials cautioned that this was not a deliberate attempt to obfuscate

Mmhm.

Some parents and children will presumably have been moved several states away from their extended families or support networks, the officials said. They may not have the money for transportation back to their families, or even food.


OK, so how can private citizens help here? I've got a car and several classes of child safety seats, I've got money, I've got google maps and weekends off. You need put up in a motel for a day or two and then driven to your family in Indiana? I'm your woman. Or, like, I can throw dollars at whoever is doing this on a more full-time basis. If we can move rescue dogs across the country with volunteer networks, we can reunite babies with their abuelas.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:55 PM on July 5, 2018 [81 favorites]


Officials cautioned that this was not a deliberate attempt to obfuscate

The trials should decide that.
posted by Artw at 8:00 PM on July 5, 2018 [83 favorites]


I'm in the UK but used to talk with people from the US back in the day when the internet was young and the term "pantywaste" was a popular euphemism among them. I assume it's changed from that, but means the same thing.

This was many hours ago, but since no one else called it out, I have to be a bit pedantic. The term is properly spelled "pantywaist" and refers to the old-fashioned term for an item of clothing, the item we now call "panties." So calling someone (in use, always a male someone) a pantywaist is implying they are lesser due to association with a feminine item of clothing. In other words it's an antiquated sexist and transphobic slur like so many others that insulted men by questioning their sexuality and gender.

So best left several decades in the past.
posted by threeturtles at 8:01 PM on July 5, 2018 [52 favorites]


Judy Woodruff is reporting a 14 month old was returned with lice but without having been bathed.

Body lice spread typhus. Typhus is what killed Anne Frank.
posted by Dashy at 8:02 PM on July 5, 2018 [42 favorites]


The announcement Thursday that DNA testing would be used to help confirm family units drew some opposition from immigrant advocates, who said that the records could be used to track undocumented immigrants indefinitely.

I've been hoping that some kindhearted STEM folks could come up with a similarity hash for genetic material and obtain values for these hashes for parents and kids. That way, the database could answer questions about the most-likely relatives without even storing the DNA itself. There's probably a reason this wouldn't work or would still be vulnerable security-wise but I would love to hear from some bio people and security people to find out what those problems might be.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:15 PM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


Senator Warren burns Trump in reply to his attack on her at tonight's rally in Montana, in true Warren style.

@elizabethforma Hey, @realDonaldTrump: While you obsess over my genes, your Admin is conducting DNA tests on little kids because you ripped them from their mamas & you are too incompetent to reunite them in time to meet a court order. Maybe you should focus on fixing the lives you're destroying.
posted by scalefree at 8:38 PM on July 5, 2018 [118 favorites]


Rust Moranis: "20 minutes later: "[Trump at Rally]: I called Maxine Waters a low-IQ individual. I believe hers is in the mid 60s." (more laughter)"

$diety on a rubber crutch I hate this blatant ignorance. A person with a 60 IQ has the cognitive function of a 8 year old. I don't know why but obvious ignorance like this is really one of my Cheeto related pet peeves.

Squeak Attack: "i live in Tucson and I was reading some job web sites - the Border Patrol and Lyft both seem really desperate right now. I'll pass on both."

If I was unemployed in Tucson (and American, I'd guess they are sticklers about that) I'd be so tempted to join up; do really well in all the training; and then proceed to Gilligan it Up to the best of my ability while maintaining plausible deniability.
posted by Mitheral at 8:50 PM on July 5, 2018 [14 favorites]


Kinda encouraging that nobody wants to take the shitty, soul destroying jobs the government is offering at the border though, isn’t it?
posted by notyou at 9:10 PM on July 5, 2018 [16 favorites]


One of my very favorite people in the world is a US Navy veteran who answered the call when the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters were threatened, and he overwintered with the Standing Rock Sioux. Wednesday, and again today, he was arrested outside the ICE facility in Philadelphia. He's out of jail (again) and in good health and good spirits. His arrest photo even made the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer on Independence Day.

Someday I hope to inspire my friends as they inspire me.
posted by workerant at 9:18 PM on July 5, 2018 [44 favorites]


A person with a 60 IQ has the cognitive function of a 8 year old. I don't know why but obvious ignorance like this is really one of my Cheeto related pet peeves.

It's not ignorance. He knows what that means and he wants very very badly to call her the ableist R word, but has apparently been warned against it so strongly and so many times that it's somehow sunk in. The gross people laughing know exactly what he means, what he'd rather be saying, and they think it's great.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:18 PM on July 5, 2018 [52 favorites]


i live in Tucson and I was reading some job web sites - the Border Patrol and Lyft both seem really desperate right now. I'll pass on both.

Get any of that rain today? It was glorious for the 2 minutes it was going. Now my swamp cooler is like "lol fuck y'all."

BP has been advertising for a long time here; there's always openings. I think the Trump admin is hurting recruitment because people who are not total monsters are looking at the BP right now and thinking "do I really want to be associated with this?"
posted by azpenguin at 9:25 PM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


@JenniferJJacobs:
TARIFFS ON CHINA GOODS WILL GO FORWARD JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT TONIGHT, Trump told us on AF1, as the world braces for trade war.

PREPARED TO ESCALATE: Another $16 billion of tariffs on Chinese goods could follow in *two weeks,* Trump said.

He said the admin has another $200 billion in tariffs on China imports ready to go, and then another $300 billion.

The final total could eventually reach $550 billion.
Fun fact: $550B is more than all the goods we imported from China last year were worth.

Synthesizer manufacturers Moog have warned that they may need to move production overseas. They assemble their products in the US, and say they even work to source circuit boards from US suppliers, but most of the raw electronic components come from Chinese manufacturers, which the tariffs will target. Others in the electronics industry have also warned of the same effects: raw components are subject to the tariffs, while finished goods are not (there's a large constituency who will revolt if smartphones get more expensive overnight, but few care about capacitor costs). This provides an incentive to offshore, since you're taxed if you do the high value final assembly work in the US, but not if you just have the entire thing made in China.
posted by zachlipton at 9:31 PM on July 5, 2018 [39 favorites]


Chosun Ilbo, Pompeo Brings 'Rocket Man' CD for Kim Jong-un
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left for North Korea on Thursday for denuclearization talks and brought two gifts for leader Kim Jong-un.

One is a letter from U.S. President Donald Trump and the other an Elton John CD with his song "Rocket Man."

Sources in Washington said the gifts reflect Trump's expectations that Kim will follow through on the pledges in an agreement the two signed at their summit.

One diplomatic source in Washington said, "The 'Rocket Man' CD was the subject of discussion during Trump's lunch with Kim. Kim mentioned that Trump referred to him as 'rocket man' when tensions ran high last year" after a series of nuclear tests and missile launches by the North. "Trump then asked Kim if he knew the song and Kim said no."

Trump remembered the conversation and told Pompeo to take a CD with the song for Kim. He reportedly wrote a message on it and signed it.
Second Elton John story today. Dumbest fucking timeline.
posted by zachlipton at 10:01 PM on July 5, 2018 [46 favorites]


Based on that exchange I don’t think the President has ever heard Rocket Man, either.
posted by notyou at 10:05 PM on July 5, 2018 [23 favorites]


It's amazing what I encounter on my evening walk. Usually it's something nice, like eagles, or ravens, or mink, or (rarely) otters. Lately it's been tens of thousands of adorable tiny jellyfish that have recently hatched (if that's the right word for what jellyfish do) in the harbor. On one memorable occasion, it was a humpback whale that swam along beside me as I walked atop the cruise ship dock in the evening after the ships are gone. Anyway, there's always something worth leaving the house for, but from day to day you never know what it's going to be.

Tonight's surprise was Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and his security detail. I encountered them walking through a local tourist area after hours, and after I figured out exactly who it was, from a respectful and non-threatening distance I made eye contact and stated "Mr. Secretary you are not welcome here." His security asked me to repeat myself, and so I said "I said that he is not welcome in Ketchikan." His security insisted that "This is America, he is welcome anywhere." The secretary himself appeared to ignore me, walked to a waiting car, and rode off.

I can't say I feel as though I accomplished much but it was pretty satisfying emotionally.
posted by Nerd of the North at 11:05 PM on July 5, 2018 [177 favorites]


You know Kim will have an interpreter explain the song to him: "Trump believes you to be a lonely drug using astronaut..."
posted by xammerboy at 11:31 PM on July 5, 2018 [11 favorites]


The fact the Pruitt’s replacement is just as bad as he is, and probably even more so, underscores the point that Pruitt’s scandalous corruption was just a distraction.

This is surely analogous to his materialistic boss’s main strategy. Trump is probably conducting his politics in a way that will enrich him in a massive way. People claimed that he was not really a billionaire before he ran - now he will show them.

When they were ousted, Gaddafi and Mubarak had HUNDREDS of billions each in personal wealth. Putin is also supposed to be the richest person in the world today. Trump’s goal is surely to beat him in his own game. He is looking at the “big” picture. He already passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut that benefits his opaque bisnesses. The many scandals are mere distractions.
posted by growabrain at 1:48 AM on July 6, 2018 [8 favorites]


Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact it's cold as hell
And there's no one there to raise them if you did
And all this science I don't understand
It's just my job five days a week

A rocket man, a rocket man
posted by stonepharisee at 1:58 AM on July 6, 2018 [6 favorites]


>> Political Wire: Li Jiang, who owns a flag-making company in China, told NPR that he’s been contracted to manufacture flags for President Trump’s 2020 election bid.

>> As Trump celebrates reductions in legal immigration and is working toward more, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Wants To Hire 40 More Foreign Workers.


a trumpist's guide to threading the needle of hypocrisy:
(a) if you're rich and white, cheating means you're smart and tough. otherwise, cheating means you're stealing from good decent folk.
(b) you can keep making cheap stuff for me to buy at walmart, just like always*. you can pick my crops. you can work in my kitchens. but only if we both remember that my boot is on your neck, every minute of every day. and only if you stay invisible.

*terms and conditions may apply as of 6 Jul 2018
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 2:54 AM on July 6, 2018 [20 favorites]


Native American water protector becomes first to be sentenced to time in federal prison for DAPL protests
The Water Protector Legal Collective explains that many of the defendants facing charges in relation to the events at Standing Rock take plea deals because a trial will mean facing a hostile jury pool. A defense-commissioned study last year by the National Jury Project found the a whopping 77 percent of potential jurors in Morton County and 85 percent in Burleigh County had already decided that the Standing Rock defendants were guilty. A motion for a change a venue for the defendants was denied.
posted by adamvasco at 3:10 AM on July 6, 2018 [20 favorites]


The 4th of July Democracy Now! episode began with James Earl Jones reading Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the American Slave Is Your 4th of July?”(full show, alt link, .torrent) during a series of readings from Voices of a People’s History of the United States, an anthology compiled by Howard Zinn in 2004.

Most of the rest of the episode is a really great, wide-ranging interview with James Forman Jr., current Yale Law professor, former clerk for SCOTUS Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Pulitzer winner for Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America published in 2017, and son of James Forman Sr. and Constancia Romilly who met while activists with SNCC during the 1960s alongside John Lewis and other titans of that era's Civil Rights movement.
posted by XMLicious at 3:15 AM on July 6, 2018 [15 favorites]


Based on that exchange I don’t think the President has ever heard Rocket Man, either.

He’s seen the bit in The Rock where Nicolas Cage uses it as a punchline before killing a Black guy, and that’s good enough for him.
posted by Etrigan at 3:52 AM on July 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


otherwise, cheating means you're stealing from good decent folk.

So this is the interesting thing about Trump's brand of authoritarian ressentiment. Unlike the classic twentieth century manifestations of fascism, with their shadow theater in which the Great Man mobilized all the forces of the state and nation in theoretic service to the forgotten Little Man, Trump doesn't actually care about "good decent folk" at all.

He rarely bothers to pay any more than the briefest lip service to the common people. At most, he'll celebrate them in their Deplorable aspect. But he doesn't easily mingle with them, he takes no joy or comfort in them, and he often forgets or simply doesn't bother to disguise the fact that he sanitizes his hands immediately after contact with them.

What this implies to me is that his racism is purer still. It's another example of his saying the quiet parts out loud, without even the figleaf of concern for the Little Guy that animate the twentieth-century fascisms: from his perspective, the problem with black and brown immigrants isn't that they're stealing from good upstanding whitefolk, it's that they're black and brown. And though it's very occasionally present in his rhetoric, from the escalator speech onward, he doesn't even dwell overlong on the They're Raping Our Women trope.

Trump is just a straight-up hater of people on the basis of their difference from him, and doesn't make more than the slightest pretense otherwise.
posted by adamgreenfield at 3:55 AM on July 6, 2018 [25 favorites]


WaPo: Republican candidates in key Senate races struggle with Trump tariffs
For now, Republican challengers in a handful of heartland states argue that President Trump deserves room to negotiate in his bid to yield better deals for American businesses and consumers alike. But retaliatory tariffs that countries like Canada and China are aiming squarely at Trump’s base will test their solidarity with the president in a very competitive midterm election year.

Nowhere is the squeeze between Trump and his trade policies more evident than in North Dakota, where Trump is trying to oust incumbent Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp. “We're not starting a trade war, but we'll finish it,” Trump said last week at a rally in Fargo, as Heitkamp’s Republican challenger, Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), looked on. The next day, in a local television interview, Cramer said that “people are with [Trump] and they want a better deal.” And while Cramer said he’s told the president that farmers need to see results soon, the GOP lawmaker also predicted that “you’re going to see some victories along the way that will continue to make this the right thing.”

North Dakota farmers may see it differently. The Trump administration on Friday is set to slap another $34 billion in duties on Chinese imports; Beijing says it will respond in kind, leveling the same amount in countervailing fees on U.S. goods including soybeans, North Dakota’s top export to the country. The state ships $28 million worth of the product to China annually, according to a report out this week from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — and China consumes roughly a third of American-produced soybeans, a fact growers point to in raising alarms about the tariffs.
this trade war might be the only thing on earth that might actually make the trumpists turn on trump. not even overwhelming evidence of corruption from mueller's report is going to sway the converted, because that has long since turned into another case of "whose story do you really WANT to believe," which has always been trump's most powerful weapon. american democracy's best hope right now is not robert mueller. it's (1) farmers and upper middle class suburbanites going bankrupt before November 6th, 2018, and (2) Democrats knocking on doors before November 6th, 2018.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 4:00 AM on July 6, 2018 [15 favorites]


Trump 'angry baby' blimp gets green light to fly over London during president's visit
The six-metre balloon depicting Mr Trump as a nappy-clad orange baby will take flight from Parliament Square Gardens on 13 July.

posted by octothorpe at 4:21 AM on July 6, 2018 [24 favorites]


Trump 'angry baby' blimp gets green light to fly over London during president's visit

Yeah, AFAIC this is as effective a response to cruelty and oppression as levitating the Pentagon. Trump himself will assuredly never see the thing, and even if he does he's psychically incapable of being insulted or upbraided by it, or in fact relating it to himself in any way.

You want to amuse yourself with absurdist gestures like this, fine. But people are literally dying in the camps, still, and too many families have been ripped apart irreparably, and when children are reunited with their parents at all, they're being handed back unbathed and covered in lice. Tell me what an angry baby balloon does about any of that, FFS.
posted by adamgreenfield at 4:30 AM on July 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


I wasn't really expecting a giant baby blimp to effect policy changes, Adam.
posted by octothorpe at 4:40 AM on July 6, 2018 [105 favorites]


Vocal, obvious, and widely reported opposition to Trump and all he stands for is a good thing™. The non-US media will not downplay or both-sides things.
posted by stonepharisee at 4:47 AM on July 6, 2018 [49 favorites]


The Daily Stormer TOTALLY doesn’t want anyone to shoot journalists, wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more - good price on the stochastic terrorism of the right.
posted by Artw at 4:51 AM on July 6, 2018 [7 favorites]


We got all kinds of dissent. Country and Western!
posted by petebest at 5:04 AM on July 6, 2018 [30 favorites]


This was many hours ago, but since no one else called it out, I have to be a bit pedantic.

Thanks for the correction.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 5:11 AM on July 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


It never ceases to amaze me how many of our founding fathers explicitly warned of a man like Trump.

Which is another reason the Electoral College has to go. Not only did it allow the past two Republican presidents to be installed over the express votes of the majority (with a tip-in by a partisan Supreme Court in Bush's case), but it also failed in the express purpose for which is was designed. It's worse than useless.
posted by Gelatin at 5:13 AM on July 6, 2018 [52 favorites]


I'm finding it jarring that pro-fascist guests on talk shows are using phrases like "pro-MS-13" without being challenged on it as a manifestly racist epithet. I was initially trying to draw a parallel with Judenfreund but that doesn't contain the same synecdoche where a particular organization stands in for the implicitly subhuman group. And of course no one actually calls themselves "pro-MS-13" whereas in Nazi Germany there were at least some people who embraced Judenfreund, I think?

Google results I don't want to click on seem to indicate that the RNC has been airing ads in the last month or so using the term.
posted by XMLicious at 5:25 AM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


it also failed in the express purpose for which is was designed. It's worse than useless.

The problem is state laws that mandate that the electoral college just vote for the winners of the vote or it won’t count. I think we would have seen enough faithless electors to throw it to the House at least otherwise.
posted by corb at 5:28 AM on July 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


The gerrymandered to-hell-and-back House?
posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:37 AM on July 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


Second Elton John story today. Dumbest fucking timeline.

It's the same story. Trump asks Pompeo to take the Elton John CD to Kim. Then he realizes that the CD (and by extension, Elton John) was enormously popular, so at the rally he assures himself aloud that he is yet more popular.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 5:39 AM on July 6, 2018 [20 favorites]


it also failed in the express purpose for which is was designed. It's worse than useless.

The electoral college was explicitly designed to give outsized power to white landowners and slaveowners.
At the Philadelphia convention, the visionary Pennsylvanian James Wilson proposed direct national election of the president. But the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a system would prove unacceptable to the South: “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.” In other words, in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.
It's still functioning exactly as designed, by explicitly granting disproportionate power to white, rural voters, descending from slaveowners. Our entire system of government was designed from the beginning to give the appearance of democracy, but rigged in favor of white supremacy.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:42 AM on July 6, 2018 [95 favorites]


Schadenfrau : My biggest concern at this point is that the DSA is culturally resistant to seeing that they have a problem, and that the problem is them. Without that, it doesn't get fixed. And even then it will require a lot of emotional labor at a time when we're all exhausted. So that's...not great.

In y'day's email.
Nominations for national board (NPC) vacancies

2018 National Political Committee Application
Any DSA member in good standing is eligible for election as an NPC Member. Any member may nominate their/him/herself for such positions ...
The deadline for submission of nominations for the NPC shall be the end of Tuesday, July 10, 2018.
I *was* going to nominate MeFi's Own The Whelk, but I think you're more in touch with this showstopping issue.

If nominated, would you accept? If elected, would you serve?
posted by mikelieman at 5:44 AM on July 6, 2018 [16 favorites]


I just listened to a bunch of the recorded conference calls while I was out for a walk and I think in one of them it was stated that the NPC is mandated to have 50/50 gender membership and ¼ PoC?
posted by XMLicious at 5:49 AM on July 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


Bloomberg: Putin Is Preparing a Deal Trump Can Tout After Summit
Kremlin officials are in intense negotiations with their counterparts in Washington to strike at least one deal they hope will let President Donald Trump tout his summit with Vladimir Putin as a triumph that justifies steps to repair relations.

At the top of the list for the July 16 meeting in Helsinki, Finland, is Iran’s role in Syria, an issue that Moscow is simultaneously negotiating with Tehran, a senior Russian official said on condition of anonymity because he’s not authorized to comment on the record.

Putin has agreed in principle to U.S. and Israeli demands that Iranian-backed forces in southern Syria be kept away from Israel’s border, replaced with troops loyal to the government in Damascus, two Kremlin advisers said.

After studying Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, during which he announced a surprise halt to U.S. military exercises with South Korea, Putin decided he needs to negotiate with the billionaire personally, the senior official said, without elaborating. The two leaders may meet without aides, as Trump and Kim did in Singapore, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.[...]

Still, there are major questions about Putin’s ability to enforce any agreement involving Iran’s actions in Syria, even if he offers to deploy troops to stabilize the border areas in question. This in turn is fueling concerns in Washington and among U.S. allies in Europe that Trump may proclaim the Helsinki meeting a breakthrough without extracting any real concessions.
The fix is in. The only question is what Putin's getting in return.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:57 AM on July 6, 2018 [13 favorites]


It'll take some time, but I believe that trump and all his cohorts will be rooming at the Hague.
posted by james33 at 6:00 AM on July 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


I just listened to a bunch of the recorded conference calls while I was out for a walk and I think in one of them it was stated that the NPC is mandated to have 50/50 gender membership and ¼ PoC?

That is correct. I took the time to read the constitution and by-laws when I signed up. ( Which says much about me... )

Another reason for my changing my prospective nominee from The Whelk. EVERY organization needs More Women Leading, just on general principle.
posted by mikelieman at 6:06 AM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


The problem is state laws that mandate that the electoral college just vote for the winners of the vote or it won’t count. I think we would have seen enough faithless electors to throw it to the House at least otherwise.

No, as Barack Spinoza pointed out, the problem was that, as in 2000, the Republicans were going to put a Republican into office no matter what. Throwing the election into the House would have resulted in the same outcome. Republican politicians are afraid of Democratic voters, but they're even more afraid of Republican ones.
posted by Gelatin at 6:13 AM on July 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


VA-07: Brat Moves from Lean Republican to Toss Up (David Wasserman | Cook Political Report)
In 2014, economics professor Dave Brat turned the political world upside-down when he upset House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the GOP primary by taking a hard line on illegal immigration. But four years later, he's at risk of getting swept out by a Democratic wave in a rapidly moderating district anchored by the professional Richmond suburbs. After courts redrew the 7th CD in 2016, President Trump took just 50 percent here, down from Mitt Romney's 56 percent in 2012.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:29 AM on July 6, 2018 [22 favorites]


Most Americans oppose key parts of Trump immigration plans, including wall, limits on citizens bringing family to U.S., poll says (WaPo)
Americans overwhelmingly oppose the Trump administration’s now-rescinded policy of separating immigrant children from their parents, and smaller majorities also disagree with the president’s call to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and to restrict legal immigration by limiting citizens from bringing parents and siblings to this country, according to a new Washington Post-Schar School poll.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:05 AM on July 6, 2018 [17 favorites]


Trump: "Y'know what, Putin is fine. He's fine. We're all fine, we're all people."

This is what he said. He said this.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:07 AM on July 6, 2018 [25 favorites]


Hey mikelieman! Thank you—I’m honored, and I just sent you a memail message. Shorter version: yup I’d roll my sleeves up and get all officially pitbull-y, but I am very conscious of my newbie status and general lack of familiarity with the organization, which I don’t think is a minor issue — like being a pitbull is super useful when it’s targeted because you know what to target, but when it’s not...it can be sort of destructive. I’m thinking I’m going to be doing this anyway. The Whelk has done a lot and seems super plugged in, and I’d actually love to talk to him about this stuff.

Ok wait I’m gonna send another memail
posted by schadenfrau at 7:09 AM on July 6, 2018 [24 favorites]


This Ought to Run in Campaign Ads from Now Through Eternity. Attention Optics Police: a crew of Republican senators spent the Fourth of July in...Moscow.
posted by scalefree at 7:10 AM on July 6, 2018 [33 favorites]


VA-07: Brat Moves from Lean Republican to Toss Up

Brat was the test case for the anti-immigration message that is now Trump's signature issue. It played to the base, but seems to be shriveling in light of its real effects.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:15 AM on July 6, 2018 [11 favorites]


He is an entirely engineered republican creature I feared might be some kind of Dead Zone presidential candidate someday. Of course, we ended up with worse in the form of Trump, but if he shrivels up and does as a consequence that’ll be a good thing.
posted by Artw at 7:19 AM on July 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


Eric Levitz, New York: Ocasio-Cortez’s Socialism Can Work in the Midwest — With a Rebrand
Certain aspects of Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign were tailored to an electorate of working-class Bronxites, and young, highly educated gentrifiers (who are, for the moment, one of the core constituencies for far-left politics in the U.S.). Democratic candidates in heavily white, rural swing districts probably wouldn’t benefit by adopting the slogans “abolish ICE” and “democratic socialism.” Those phrases are radical, by design; their purpose is to galvanize activist energy — and expand the boundaries of political possibility — by articulating a vision of transformative change. And they’ve proven quite effective at serving those functions.

But they aren’t optimal slogans for the Democratic Party in heavily white, nonurban swing districts — and were never meant to be. [...]

And yet, if some of the signifiers of Ocasio-Cortez’s politics are too “far left for the Midwest,” there’s little reason to believe that the substance of her politics is. Republicans might have the upper hand in a fight over abstractions like “socialism” or the “abolition of internal immigration enforcement.” But it’s far from clear that Democrats would lose an argument over the virtues of Ocasio-Cortez’s policy platform — even before a “Midwest” audience. [...]

The palatability of Ocasio-Cortez’s policy platform reflects two important realities: Actually existing “democratic socialism” — which is to say, the brand championed by its most prominent proponents in elected office — is almost indistinguishable from left-liberalism; and left-liberal policies are already quite popular in the United States. [...]

If all Americans voted for the party whose positions on economic policy best matched their own stated preferences, then the Republican Party would not be competitive in national elections. The GOP’s strength derives entirely from the considerable appeal of white identity politics with constituencies that happen to wield disproportionate power over our political system. [...]

Thus, the key for Democrats — especially in the Midwest, where a lot of economically liberal, culturally conservative white voters live — is to increase the salience of class identity in American elections. [...]

Transporting this model from the Bronx to Macomb County would certainly require switching up the details. But there’s little reason to think that a customized version of Ocasio-Cortez’s class-centric, social-democratic politics can’t thrive in the Rust Belt.

All of which is to say: Tammy Duckworth should embrace “socialism with Midwestern characteristics.”
posted by tonycpsu at 7:20 AM on July 6, 2018 [37 favorites]


All of which is to say: Tammy Duckworth should embrace “socialism with Midwestern characteristics.”

Like being an FDR-style New Deal Democrat.
posted by Gelatin at 7:22 AM on July 6, 2018 [25 favorites]


ocschwar: Fuck it. Close DisneyWorld for a week. Send the staff out to collect the kids. They'll get it done.

Then we'll get coverage of "both sides" with clueless people who rant to TV cameras that their vacation was ruined, just like when Patricia Okoumou climbed the Statue of Liberty (yes, that was really what a nationally syndicated station chose to go with to bring "balance" to the story of a woman who was making a political statement about the incarceration of child migrants and refugee seekers, who have been forcibly taken from their parents).

In other news, China Says U.S. Has Begun 'Largest Trade War' In History, Retaliates With Tariffs (NPR, July 6, 2018)
As the day dawned across the U.S. on Friday, a new economic reality dawned with it: The tariffs long threatened against billions of dollars in Chinese goods took effect just at midnight ET while many Americans were sleeping — but Beijing was ready immediately with a wake-up call of its own.

The new trade regulations imposed by the Trump administration, which levy a 25 percent tariff on $34 billion worth of Chinese imports to the U.S., have "violated [World Trade Organization] rules and launched the largest trade war in economic history to date," China's Ministry of Commerce declared in a statement Friday.

Chinese authorities quickly retaliated with equivalent tariffs on $34 billion worth of imported U.S. goods — previously promised as ranging from vehicles to soybeans, beef and other agricultural products.

The rapid tit for tat follows weeks of anxious anticipation over the "trade remedies" President Trump vowed last month to implement. At the time he announced the tariffs, back in mid-June, Trump said the current U.S.-China economic relationship had grown to be "no longer sustainable."

"Trade between our nations," he explained, "has been very unfair, for a very long time."
Yes, it's so unfair that the U.S. and Europe are sending back empty shipping containers, sometimes who freighters full of 'em (NYT, 2006, and likely moreso now that China has refused to take the world's refuse [previously]), because we're happy to offshore not only the work, but also environmental impacts, so much so that China’s pollution clean-up is driving up prices for shoppers (South China Morning Post, 20 Nov. 2017). Not to mention abhorrent record on human rights (Human Rights Watch World Report 2017, China).

I can't help but think that if we (as shoppers, myself included, and as governments) cared more about the full costs of low-cost Chinese goods, instead of the bottom dollar, we wouldn't have gotten so far into this "unfair" situation.

Also, if it's so unfair Donny, why aren't you buying your 2020 campaign flags from a US company?
posted by filthy light thief at 7:26 AM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


Lotta fellows would learn something about the Midwest - like our history of labor organizing, the actual political dynamics of the cities here, the actual racial make-up - before exercising their jaws about our politics and how we're too stupid for the ideas that work on the coasts. The coasts were the ones who were cool with crucifying mankind upon a cross of gold, regardless of what it did to the farmers - I wouldn't be talking about how dumb and folksy we are here if I were them.
posted by Frowner at 7:28 AM on July 6, 2018 [66 favorites]


I do know that one of the biggest flag makers in the US is closed now - my mother-in-law lived near it, and the factory closed down and is now being made into condos. It used to be on Bloomfield Avenue in Verona, NJ, and now it's gone. I wonder if there's any flag makers in the US anymore that's not going to make terrible ones.

What do I know? I'm just an American white male who is in debt past his eyeballs, with a wife who's American-born but of Puerto Rican parents, and who I regularly wake up terrified about from dreams of ICE deporting her, a woman born in Manhattan, into a country she knows nothing of, and wondering what I would do if the worst happened.
posted by mephron at 7:30 AM on July 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


Can we really fucking please stop equating "Midwest" and "rural?" Tammy Duckworth represents Chicago, you guys. Chicago is in the Midwest. Keith Ellison got elected in the Midwest. We're really not all Evangelical Christian farmers.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:30 AM on July 6, 2018 [85 favorites]


> Can we really fucking please stop equating "Midwest" and "rural?" Tammy Duckworth represents Chicago, you guys. Chicago is in the Midwest. Keith Ellison got elected in the Midwest. We're really not all Evangelical Christian farmers.

Duckworth's argument was about winning in the Midwest generally, though:

“I think it's the future of the party in the Bronx, where she is,” Duckworth said.

“I think that you can’t win the White House without the Midwest and I don’t think you can go too far to the left and still win the Midwest,” Duckworth said during the interview.

posted by tonycpsu at 7:32 AM on July 6, 2018 [4 favorites]


Even the damn farmers aren't all evangelical Christian farmers, for pete's sake.

Conservatives in the midwest are pretty much like conservatives on the coasts - white, relatively well-off, isolated, older.
posted by Frowner at 7:33 AM on July 6, 2018 [13 favorites]


Okay but there's no Midwest House or Senate seats. There's different states (many of which are dominated population-wise by their cities) and different Congressional districts. No one is electing a single person to represent The Entire Midwest.

Pittsburgh is either Midwest or Appalachia depending on who you ask. It is far from rural or conservative. Pittsburgh is arguably the birthplace of the American labor movement. We just elected 2 DSA candidates to the State House.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:37 AM on July 6, 2018 [16 favorites]




Another reason for my changing my prospective nominee from The Whelk. EVERY organization needs More Women Leading, just on general principle.

I think this is too zero sum. The point is cooperation and solidarity. I think both would be good in leadership roles, and I also think that the valorization of leadership over and above the work/brilliance of the rank and file is arguably a bit antithetical to socialist and feminist values.
posted by rue72 at 7:44 AM on July 6, 2018 [4 favorites]


> Okay but there's no Midwest House or Senate seats. There's different states (many of which are dominated population-wise by their cities) and different Congressional districts. No one is electing a single person to represent The Entire Midwest.

I think that's a caricature of the piece, which is merely arguing that progressives take AOC's ideals and emphasize different portions of it when trying to win in some US house districts. Electing Summer Lee and Sara Innamorato in relatively low-turnout state assembly races where the incumbents were far out of step with their electorate is one thing -- doing it in higher turnout US house races in much redder districts is another. The point of the article is that progressive policies can win with just a little tweaking of the message -- an idea that I don't think should be controversial.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:45 AM on July 6, 2018 [5 favorites]


I can't help but think that if we (as shoppers, myself included, and as governments) cared more about the full costs of low-cost Chinese goods, instead of the bottom dollar, we wouldn't have gotten so far into this "unfair" situation.

I don’t think there was any way around globalization but I think the time to act to protect US markets from practically slave labor imports was 40 years ago. It would have been up to Carter or Reagan to put forward a cost of living tariff on cheap imported goods to ensure America workers weren’t priced out of their own market.

But that’s not how it went. The capitalists of America knew they could benefit from the double prongs of offshoring production to either make cheaper products or increase profits while at the same time hiding the effect of flattening real wages that they had started to push. It was probably greatly helped along with the massive expansion of access to consumer credit allowing the middle class to buoy themselves on revolving lines of credit. Especially in the ‘90s as Chinese goods started to creep up in cost with their burgeoning middle class demanding higher wages.

Now a pair of quality American boots costs $350. We haven’t had real pay rises in 40 years so they’re now entirely out of reach for the middle class. So we’re bascially in a catch 22.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 7:53 AM on July 6, 2018 [39 favorites]


I don’t think there was any way around globalization but I think the time to act to protect US markets from practically slave labor imports was 40 years ago.

that's the one thing that's been bugging me about trump's promises to change things - they're based on what a lot of working class people wanted in the 70s - the time to save manufacturing jobs, balance trade and insist our allies pay for more of their defense was way back then - (although it's debatable whether much of this would have worked)

it's been said that a lot of people would like to go back to the world of the 50s, but i think what we've been missing is they're trying to do it by relitigating the debates of the 70s

that's not going to work either - and for awhile, i was thinking that trump was just mouthing words and didn't really believe any of this - all i know is the horse is gone, the barn's burned down, and people are standing around with any key they can find wondering where the lock is

we seriously need politics that's based on current events
posted by pyramid termite at 8:03 AM on July 6, 2018 [25 favorites]


EVERY organization needs More Women Leading, just on general principle.
Iceland agrees. < Where to Invade Next excerpt, youtube
posted by Harry Caul at 8:04 AM on July 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


Now a pair of quality American boots costs $350. We haven’t had real pay rises in 40 years so they’re now entirely out of reach for the middle class. So we’re bascially in a catch 22.

Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
A really good pair of leather boots, the sort that would last years and years, cost fifty dollars. This was beyond his pocket and the most he could hope for was an affordable pair of boots costing ten dollars, which might with luck last a year or so before he would need to resort to makeshift cardboard insoles so as to prolong the moment of shelling out another ten dollars.
posted by mikelieman at 8:05 AM on July 6, 2018 [20 favorites]


Not to abuse the edit window, that's $70 in terms of a $350 boot, and yeah, the hypothesis is sustained.
posted by mikelieman at 8:06 AM on July 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


Tammy Duckworth represents Chicago, you guys.

That only makes it more indefensible that she feels the path to victory is engaging in ritual hippy-punching. She could win on the exact same platform as AOC by running up numbers in Chicago. She could win easily by coopting some of the Democratic Socialist framing. She should be expected to support almost the same policy proposals as AOC put forth. There's no reason for her to gratuitously lash out at the progressive left. There's no reason the progressive left should be expected to lie down and take it anymore. Demand elected Democrats stop hippy punching to appease Republicans. Period.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:06 AM on July 6, 2018 [52 favorites]


But that’s not how it went. The capitalists of America knew they could benefit from the double prongs of offshoring production to either make cheaper products or increase profits while at the same time hiding the effect of flattening real wages that they had started to push. It was probably greatly helped along with the massive expansion of access to consumer credit allowing the middle class to buoy themselves on revolving lines of credit. Especially in the ‘90s as Chinese goods started to creep up in cost with their burgeoning middle class demanding higher wages.

I just started reading Dean Baker's book on this (Rigged (it's free!)), and the fundamental mechanism seems to have been a switch from a system that featured international capital flowing into improving economies to support local growth and development to a system that featured international capital flowing into economies to support the development of export industries and the accumulation (by the locals) of foreign reserve currency. The inflection point seems to have been the collapse of the Asian Tigers and the subsequent bailout and austerity.

Fascinating, especially in that it suggests a way out that doesn't involve a choice between trade wars or hyper-exploitation.
posted by notyou at 8:15 AM on July 6, 2018 [13 favorites]


Not to abuse the edit window, that's $70 in terms of a $350 boot, and yeah, the hypothesis is sustained.

The thing is, the real wages of all Americans was climbing up until about 1980. After that it flattened out and we've been able to afford what we can only by falling prices and cheap credit. If the wages trajectory had continued along with productivity gains the middle class would be able to comfortably afford a $350 pair of boots by now.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 8:15 AM on July 6, 2018 [15 favorites]


There's no reason for her to gratuitously lash out at the progressive left.
Or to conflate "The Midwest" with white conservative voters. They're never going to like us; they're never going to vote for us; they're never going to give up an ideology that treats everyone else as an American with an asterisk, at best, while they represent real America, the Heartland.
posted by This time is different. at 8:17 AM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


Like being an FDR-style New Deal Democrat.

We need A Fair Deal.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:25 AM on July 6, 2018 [14 favorites]


Or to conflate "The Midwest" with white conservative voters. They're never going to like us; they're never going to vote for us;

When you write off an entire region, forever - what are you offering that’s better than civil war? People talk about “hippie punching” but “ha-ha, rednecks” is equally terrible. Are you seriously saying your ideology and positions have nothing of benefit to offer to multiple entire states? If not, why not?

If what you mean “us” is “the Democrats”, then they absolutely have a lot to offer if they’re willing to stop looking for corporate donations and to take a hard line on unions. Not just the Sanders plan - but giving the NLRB /real teeth/. Fully staffing the agencies that investigate firings and violations of labor law so that people don’t have to wait months for a toothless response. Make Bosses Afraid Again. Don’t worry so much about whether or not people are forced to pay union dues. The guy on the factory floor gives zero fucks on whether or not people are able to exist without paying union dues. He wants to know he’s not going to be laid off on a whim. He wants full time hours. And if you can’t offer that as a competing vision, why not?
posted by corb at 8:26 AM on July 6, 2018 [14 favorites]


As someone in a service industry, I really wish folks would stop fetishizing manufacturing. It is not the only (or even the main) way to add value to an economy. Besides, as manufacturing continues to automate, the number of jobs created by it (in any country) will continue to fall.
posted by obliquity of the ecliptic at 8:27 AM on July 6, 2018 [46 favorites]


> As someone in a service industry, I really wish folks would stop fetishizing manufacturing. It is not the only (or even the main) way to add value to an economy. Besides, as manufacturing continues to automate, the number of jobs created by it (in any country) will continue to fall.

Ugh, this! Here in Pittsburgh, it's so gross how people with an agenda use the decline of the steel industry to tug on the heartstrings of citizens. Like this:
“Transparency is an important value, but like other important values in our legal system, in our government, it's not totally absolute,” he said. Janocsko also suggested that O’Brien should sanction the OOR by ordering it to redo its reviews of whether the Amazon documents should be made public.

Janocsko also said the government needed to keep the bid secret because Amazon coming to the Pittsburgh could be the biggest investment since Andrew Carnegie’s steel mills and that the region desperately needed investment. He said O’Brien knew that, as he used to be a steelworker.

“I'm an old steelworker. You are, too. And I think we're ones of the very few who lived through the collapse of the manufacturing and steel industry in this area,” Janocsko said. “To construe the Right-to-Know Law in this instance, at this particular point in time, is to essentially sabotage any realistic proposal we could have of achieving a groundbreaking private investment in our economy.
I can only assume that "groundbreaking private investment in our economy" is a transcription error from the original "budget-breaking public investment in Amazon", and that Mr. Janocsko needs to account for both the good and the bad of the steel industry here.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:32 AM on July 6, 2018 [12 favorites]


Wow, we're not even willing to do "service guarantees citizenship!" anymore - we're basically beyond parody.

Speaking of the directorial efforts of Mr V, I popped in the original Robocop bluray to test something the other day and left it on for a while, just past the ED-209... let's say "failed demo," since that's the level of concern the big bosses show for how it turns out.

Anyway, leading up to that, Dick opens his presentation with
Take a close look at the track record of this company. And you'll see that we have dabbled in markets traditionally regarded as non-profit. Hospitals. Prisons. Space exploration. I say good business is where you find it.
Beyond parody indeed.
posted by phearlez at 8:32 AM on July 6, 2018 [21 favorites]


The guy on the factory floor gives zero fucks on whether or not people are able to exist without paying union dues.

that's not true - it might not be the biggest issue of all time, but it is important to the people on the factory floor, at least where i work
posted by pyramid termite at 8:33 AM on July 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


Demand elected Democrats stop hippy punching to appease Republicans. Period.

Hippy punching and appeasing Republicans only serves to reinforce Republican frames (just as Republican voter suppression reinforces the frame that their agenda isn't popular). How has hippy punching and appeasing Republicans worked for Congressional Democrats in this century? I don't see a Democratic majority -- and if we get one, it'll be explicitly because of a rejection of Republicans and their terrible values.
posted by Gelatin at 8:33 AM on July 6, 2018 [8 favorites]


> Don’t worry so much about whether or not people are forced to pay union dues. The guy on the factory floor gives zero fucks on whether or not people are able to exist without paying union dues. He wants to know he’s not going to be laid off on a whim. He wants full time hours. And if you can’t offer that as a competing vision, why not?

There is no existing entity better capable of ensuring that guy's livelihood right now than labor unions that require union dues to function. Make all the arguments you want about the stronger unions that could come if we just walked away from existing ones and instead had their members engage in direct action to build a better labor movement from their ashes, but at least be honest about the real harm to real people that this will cause.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:41 AM on July 6, 2018 [14 favorites]


The thing is, the real wages of all Americans was climbing up until about 1980. After that it flattened out and we've been able to afford what we can only by falling prices and cheap credit. If the wages trajectory had continued along with productivity gains the middle class would be able to comfortably afford a $350 pair of boots by now.

It can't be said enough -- and among Democratic politicians, it isn't being said enough -- that since 1980 all the productivity gains went straight into the pockets of the wealthy, who were taxed less and less on their gains.
posted by Gelatin at 8:42 AM on July 6, 2018 [58 favorites]


So, this is weird, and I'm just kinda leaving it here as a public record, but I've just had my passport renewal rejected. Apparently, because I got e divorce 30 years ago. Also, I can't renew my driver's license for the same reason. I have to gather birth certificate, marriage licenses, certified copies of my divorce, social security card, and a partridge in a pear tree and schlep around various government offices, none closer than an hour away, to put my papers in order.

Y'all, I was born here, and I'm wondering if I should hire an attorney to sort this out. Pro tip, ladies, do not ever change your name to your husband's name. The current system is nightmarish if you ever change husbands. But if it's this difficult for an American born in America to navigate our government's hellscape, can you imagine how difficult it must be for everyone who wants to join us?

Edit to ask, what specialty of attorney would be the right one to call?
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:46 AM on July 6, 2018 [85 favorites]


The guy on the factory

I would ask folks to remember that women hold blue collar jobs, women join and lead unions, women need higher wages, women are family breadwinners, and women vote.

Edited to add: NB folks as well. You can just as easily say the person on the factory floor.
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:49 AM on July 6, 2018 [28 favorites]


zachlipton: New Yorker, Jonathan Blitzer, Parents Are Struggling to Reclaim Their Children from the Office of Refugee Resettlement

I've watched a number of early 1990s era Unsolved Mysteries episodes (they're streaming on Amazon via Prime membership blah blah), and there are a number of stories of siblings separated under various circumstances, from orphan trains to later foster programs, and I had a sudden image of this sort of story becoming common again in 5-10 years.

In other news, Trump's Top 2 Supreme Court Picks Reflect Warring Republican Factions (NPR, July 6, 2018)
The internal White House debate over who should replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court reflects the broader political split within the Republican Party — and the mistrust that is nursed by outside-the-Beltway social conservatives about the more establishment and business-oriented wing of the party.

So it is perhaps no surprise that a quintessentially Washingtonian fight has erupted between the supporters of the two leading candidates for the Supreme Court nomination, Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

While Barrett's supporters portray Kavanaugh as insufficiently conservative, Kavanaugh's supporters portray Barrett as insufficiently experienced — a judge whose conservative credentials are not yet clear in her opinions.

In truth, both are very conservative legal believers who would undoubtedly push the Supreme Court far to the right of where it was during Kennedy's more centrist conservative time on the Supreme Court.
Emphasis mine, because this cannot be forgotten in the horse race coverage of "warring GOP factions."
posted by filthy light thief at 8:52 AM on July 6, 2018 [12 favorites]


[The electoral college is] still functioning exactly as designed, by explicitly granting disproportionate power to white, rural voters, descending from slaveowners.

Much as I oppose the electoral college, I don't think this claim is borne out by the data. We can identify the votes which have the most decisive power in a presidential election by looking at the states (or in some cases congressional districts) where the difference between the two leading candidates was smallest.

In 2016, the most powerful votes were in Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In 2012, the most powerful votes, by far, were in Florida.
In 2008, the most powerful votes were in Missouri and North Carolina.

Now, let's look at the most rural states. In 2010, the top 10 most rural states were Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, Mississippi, Montana, Arkansas, South Dakota, Kentucky, Alabama and North Dakota. You have to go all the way to #11, New Hampshire, before you find a state whose voters have been powerful in a recent election.

The present-day electoral college doesn't significantly privilege rural voters. It privileges an essentially random group of voters. It should be abolished not because it has present-day racist or anti-urban effects, but because it is dumb as hell.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:54 AM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


Now, as a citizen of Iowa, I can tell you that the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary most certainly privilege white, rural voters over urban residents, and their early dates should be abolished in favor of a rotating schedule of primaries.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:56 AM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


As a citizen of Missouri, I'm used to being shit on for being midwestern. You're not arguing anything here that local leftists haven't already heard since...idk, Bush I for me I guess. Thanks! Have a good weekend!
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:59 AM on July 6, 2018 [6 favorites]


Or to conflate "The Midwest" with white conservative voters. They're never going to like us; they're never going to vote for us;

When you write off an entire region, forever - what are you offering that’s better than civil war? People talk about “hippie punching” but “ha-ha, rednecks” is equally terrible. Are you seriously saying your ideology and positions have nothing of benefit to offer to multiple entire states? If not, why not?


I think the issue is not a region, it's a specific type of voter. The white conservative voter who thinks that gays are destroying the country, immigrants are evil rapists, and big government is an abomination (unless it's telling women what to do with their dirty, dirty bodies.)

Those voters will not vote for someone who is pro-choice, they will not support a candidate that even gestures toward some idea of amnesty, and god forbid you say something positive about brown people or the gays. They will never bend. They haven't in 40 years and really, all of our (liberal left Democratic) outreach and hands offered across the aisle has only emboldened them to stick to their dying ideals even harder.

The Midwest is more than these people. The South is more than these people. And if we focus on the folks who are not these staunch ideologues who are terrified of losing their seat at the all-white table, we might be okay. But the bigger focus has to be motivating those who are like us that don't vote either because they have been actively disenfranchised or because they are unaware/unmotivated. By November, there shouldn't be a single pale blue voter that isn't registered. Stop chasing the racists and start focusing on our people that want a place to live that loves them back.
posted by teleri025 at 9:01 AM on July 6, 2018 [41 favorites]


In 2016, the most powerful votes were in Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In 2012, the most powerful votes, by far, were in Florida.
In 2008, the most powerful votes were in Missouri and North Carolina.


These states were only so powerful because of the huge chunk of more lightly populated red states in the South and West. Your analogy forgets the enormous weight that's already on the scale before New Hampshire arrives. Rural voters have enormous sway. It's far from random.
posted by dragstroke at 9:04 AM on July 6, 2018 [14 favorites]


So, this is weird, and I'm just kinda leaving it here as a public record, but I've just had my passport renewal rejected. Apparently, because I got e divorce 30 years ago.

This is commonplace as Real ID has been going into effect.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:06 AM on July 6, 2018 [11 favorites]


Seriously, I am always told I am living in "The Midwest" but I live in Chicago, which, may I remind you, is the third largest city in the country. I'm not sure why we are always passed over as mattering or influencing "The Midwest" but there are a LOT of dedicated and passionate people on the Left here who are trying to influence the current political scene.
posted by agregoli at 9:06 AM on July 6, 2018 [11 favorites]


The present-day electoral college doesn't significantly privilege rural voters.

Florida, Michigan etc are only the deciding most important incremental voters in those elections because rural voters are privileged and put Rs in a position to win those "deciding" states and win the electoral college. That those states aren't the supposedly deciding swing state doesn't mean they're not privileged and don't build up the base of EC votes that allow Rs to squeak by in elections where they lose the PV.
posted by chris24 at 9:07 AM on July 6, 2018 [5 favorites]


> "Much as I oppose the electoral college, I don't think this claim is borne out by the data. We can identify the votes which have the most decisive power in a presidential election by looking at the states (or in some cases congressional districts) where the difference between the two leading candidates was smallest."

If every voter in every state had a proportionally equal amount of power in the electoral college, this would be true.

It is not.

You are only looking at the power of an individual voter to affect the electoral votes of their state. You are not looking at how many electoral votes each state gets.
posted by kyrademon at 9:08 AM on July 6, 2018 [11 favorites]


The present-day electoral college doesn't significantly privilege rural voters. It privileges an essentially random group of voters. It should be abolished not because it has present-day racist or anti-urban effects, but because it is dumb as hell.
...
You are only looking at the power of an individual voter to affect the electoral votes of their state. You are not looking at how many electoral votes each state gets.

In particular, for the 25 most populous states, the electors-per-voter is about 0.67 times the electors-per-voter of the 25 least populous states.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:15 AM on July 6, 2018 [15 favorites]


It's true that small states (and DC!) get a disproportionate number of electoral votes, and small states tend to be more rural. But it seems to me that this bias is of tiny significance compared to the increased power of votes in states where the election will be closely run. There is a reason presidential candidates go to Miami, Florida and not to Cheyenne, Wyoming.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:16 AM on July 6, 2018


When you write off an entire region, forever - what are you offering that’s better than civil war?

I think you've pretty much misread me entirely because of the exact thing I'm complaining about: the conflation of "The Midwest" with white conservative voters. The "they" in "they're never going to vote for us" are white conservative voters. When people say leftist policies need to be tweaked or triangulated or rephrased or whatever to appeal to people in The Midwest, they *never* mean the majority of Midwesterners who live in large cities; they mean white conservative voters. The changes that are supposed to make leftist policies more palatable to them are always some kind of downplaying of identity politics or whatever boogieman phrase stands in for the way those policies are connected to a program of eroding Real Americans' treasured central status in the American cultural narrative. I mean, just think about it: what changes are being proposed to appeal to "The Midwest," and why *those* changes? I notice that no one ever says, "This won't play in the Midwest unless we commit to a more leftist economic policy."

So yeah, I'm writing off white conservative voters forever, yes. I think that's offering a pretty fair assessment of the likelihood that they will start voting for Democrats, much less socialists.

People talk about “hippie punching” but “ha-ha, rednecks” is equally terrible. Are you seriously saying your ideology and positions have nothing of benefit to offer to multiple entire states? If not, why not?

There's no "ha-ha rednecks" here. I'm taking the entirely reasonable position that leftist politics will never draw meaningful numbers of white conservative voters. (I include self-styled 'independents' who we know from voting habits are anything but.) We will never be able to offer real Americans in the Heartland what conservative politics offers them: a social structure that puts their identity at the ideological center of the American experience. We can tweak or rephrase or triangulate or whatever, but we cannot give them what they want (and get from Trump) so long as we insist on a conception of America that does not privilege them over the rest of us.

If what you mean “us” is “the Democrats”, then they absolutely have a lot to offer if they’re willing to stop looking for corporate donations and to take a hard line on unions. . . . The guy on the factory floor gives zero fucks on whether or not people are able to exist without paying union dues. He wants to know he’s not going to be laid off on a whim. He wants full time hours. And if you can’t offer that as a competing vision, why not?

The "us" is all of us who aren't Real Americans in one way or another. Too brown, too queer, too liberal; not manly enough, not Christian enough, not racist enough. The left has a lot to offer white conservative voters, just not what they want.
posted by This time is different. at 9:18 AM on July 6, 2018 [43 favorites]


I mean, ffs, they literally call themselves "real Americans."
posted by This time is different. at 9:19 AM on July 6, 2018 [19 favorites]


As a citizen of Missouri, I'm used to being shit on for being midwestern. You're not arguing anything here that local leftists haven't already heard since...idk, Bush I for me I guess. Thanks! Have a good weekend!

Indeed -- when I lived in Florida I never saw any sort of labor union action happening. In St. Louis, in any given month there are strikes, negotiations, billboards shaming particular businesses, etc.

The people of MIssouri and the legislators of Missouri for years have been fighting over "right-to-work" laws and there's an important proposition on the upcoming ballot. I have not seen anything yet supporting right-to-work, while there are "No on A" and "Right To Work is Wrong For Missouri" yard signs and bumper stickers everywhere.

OTOH: I also never saw anti-abortion billboards anywhere in the South, but they are all over Missouri. This is probably why Claire McCaskill has turned anti-choice (along with being anti-immigrant and pro-big business... I really hope Angelica Earl can kick her ass in the primary but I'm not holding my breath).
posted by Foosnark at 9:25 AM on July 6, 2018 [5 favorites]




If what you mean “us” is “the Democrats”, then they absolutely have a lot to offer if they’re willing to stop looking for corporate donations and to take a hard line on unions. Not just the Sanders plan - but giving the NLRB /real teeth/. Fully staffing the agencies that investigate firings and violations of labor law so that people don’t have to wait months for a toothless response. Make Bosses Afraid Again. Don’t worry so much about whether or not people are forced to pay union dues. The guy on the factory floor gives zero fucks on whether or not people are able to exist without paying union dues. He wants to know he’s not going to be laid off on a whim. He wants full time hours. And if you can’t offer that as a competing vision, why not?

"take a hard line on unions" and "Make Bosses Afraid Again" are pretty much mutually exclusive. The way to fight corporate power is to support the re-invigoration of labor as a political and practical force in America in and out of the workplace. Democratic abandonment of the labor movement over the course of 40 years and particularly since the 90s lost those voters to Trump.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:33 AM on July 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


EPA blocks warnings on cancer-causing chemical: Burying the formaldehyde study is part of an effort by Pruitt and aides to undermine EPA's research program, current and former officials tell POLITICO.
The Trump administration is suppressing an Environmental Protection Agency report that warns that most Americans inhale enough formaldehyde vapor in the course of daily life to put them at risk of developing leukemia and other ailments, a current and a former agency official told POLITICO.

The warnings are contained in a draft health assessment EPA scientists completed just before Donald Trump became president, according to the officials. They said top advisers to departing Administrator Scott Pruitt are delaying its release as part of a campaign to undermine the agency’s independent research into the health risks of toxic chemicals.
posted by homunculus at 9:36 AM on July 6, 2018 [35 favorites]


Trump has presented judge Sabraw with a request of an extension on reuniting the kids and their parents.

I think the judge should order that any parent who has still not seen his child by the deadline should just get an automatic green card. The only way to make this sting Trump and his fan base.
posted by ocschwar at 9:38 AM on July 6, 2018 [44 favorites]


In particular, for the 25 most populous states, the electors-per-voter is about 0.67 times the electors-per-voter of the 25 least populous states.

The United States of Wyoming and the Dakotas.

(waves to MeFites in all three places)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 9:42 AM on July 6, 2018


Trump 'angry baby' blimp gets green light to fly over London during president's visit

AP: Trump’s UK Trip Includes Palace Pomp, Aims to Avoid Protests
Prime Minister Theresa May’s office said Friday that Trump will arrive July 12 after attending a NATO summit in Brussels. That evening he will attend a black-tie dinner with business leaders at Blenheim Palace, a grand country house near Oxford that was the birthplace of Winston Churchill. He will be greeted with military pomp, including a welcome by bands of the Irish, Scots and Welsh Guards. The Royal Regiment of Scotland — homeland of the president’s mother — will pipe him out at the end of the dinner. The next day, Trump and May will visit an unspecified defense site before holding talks at Chequers, the prime minister’s country retreat 40 miles (65 kms) from the capital. Later Friday the president will travel to Windsor Castle, west of London, for an audience with Queen Elizabeth II.

The itinerary will keep the president away from London on Friday, where protesters plan to march and to fly a blimp depicting Trump as a screaming orange baby over Parliament.

The president will spend Thursday night at U.S. Ambassador Robert “Woody” Johnson’s London residence but will otherwise steer clear of the city.[...] “The president is not avoiding anything,” the ambassador said. “The president is merely trying to get as impactful a trip as he can get in a 24-hour period.”[...]

Trump and his wife Melania plan to spend the weekend privately in Scotland, where the president owns two golf courses, before traveling to Helsinki, Finland, for a July 16 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s trip is classed as an official visit, rather than the full-scale state visit, hosted by the queen, for which May invited Trump soon after his January 2017 inauguration. London and Washington say the state visit is still due to happen at some point.
I'd like to highlight Trump's full itinerary because it holds such enormous potential to go pear-shaped.

Trump will be facing his deep international unpopularity—and by a population whose language he can understand, no less. He'll be doing so following a NATO summit that, I predict, will go about as well as the G-7 one in Canada since he'll be tempted to indulge in similarly grotesque misbehavior in order to ingratiate himself with Putin. On top of that, Trump's narcissism has already been injured by the downgrade of his visit from "full state" to merely "official", and he'll likely strike out at the most convenient target, which will probably by Theresa May (if she's still PM).
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:44 AM on July 6, 2018 [6 favorites]


Mod note: Folks, the flyover country conversation is one we've had a lot. Let's drop it here. If there isn't new stuff to talk about, may I direct your attention to the rest of the site?
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:44 AM on July 6, 2018 [13 favorites]


Electoral-votes-per-capita would be a very important problem if electoral votes were awarded proportionally. But generally, they aren't. It's winner-take-all. So the effective power of a Wyoming voter picking a candidate is infinitesimal compared to their counterpart in Florida, despite Florida having fewer electoral-votes-per-capita.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:48 AM on July 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


New stuff to talk about:

John Kelly, Scott Pruitt, and the Epic Turnover of the Trump Administration

What does the endless death watch for the President’s chief of staff tell us about the worst-run White House of modern times?

(Susan B. Glasser | The New Yorker)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 9:49 AM on July 6, 2018 [5 favorites]


Wheeler is expected to pick up where Pruitt left off at EPA — only without the controversy that plagued him (WaPo)

Andrew Wheeler, who has served as deputy administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, spent a decade lobbying for just the sort of companies the agency regulates. His record suggests his views are similar to President Trump’s.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 9:53 AM on July 6, 2018 [10 favorites]


The Jim Jordan Matter (Josh Marshall | TPM)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 9:57 AM on July 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


Courthouse News has an update from Mueller vs. Manafort: DC Circuit Urged to Keep Manafort Behind Bars
In a July 5 appeal brief, defense attorney Kevin Downing said that the June 15 detention against Manafort imperils his ability to prepare for two upcoming criminal trials.

Downing said Manafort “is now housed in solitary confinement because the facility cannot otherwise guarantee his safety.” For 23 hours per day, minus attorney visits, Manafort is locked in his cell.

Assistant special counsel Scott Meisler meanwhile wasted little time to counter that claim.

“The district court has taken steps to minimize the impact on Manafort’s ability to prepare for his upcoming trials; the government has offered to do the same; and Manafort has not sought any relief from the district court or the government, including the Bureau of Prisons, with respect to any confinement conditions,” the reply filed on July 5 says.
Meanwhile, independent Russian analyst Julia Davis @JuliaDavisNews picked up this remarkable Kremlin-approved statement:
#Russia's state TV:
Chairman of Foreign Affairs Comm Konstantin Kosachev says that Trump is convinced that Mueller can't catch him — only #Manafort.
Therefore, the "red lines" in dealing with Russia that were there at the start of his presidency are no longer holding him back.
Source: 60 минут. Противники или соперники: чем закончились переговоры с сенаторами США? [60 Minutes. Opponents or rivals: how did the negotiations with the US senators end?]
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:57 AM on July 6, 2018 [10 favorites]




ocschwar: I think the judge should order that any parent who has still not seen his child by the deadline should just get an automatic green card. The only way to make this sting Trump and his fan base.

It's also very much the only decent thing to do, in itself. Both to facilitate reunification (it's hard for child and parent to freely find one another if both are at constant risk of getting deported) and as simple compensation for heinous treatment.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 9:58 AM on July 6, 2018 [16 favorites]


Trump country hit hard by Chinese tariffs (Catherine Boudreau | Politico)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 10:04 AM on July 6, 2018 [13 favorites]


@Ocasio2018, 2:52 PM - 29 Jun 2018
Some folks are saying I won for “demographic” reasons.

1st of all, that’s false. We won w/voters of all kinds.

2nd, here’s my 1st pair of campaign shoes. I knocked doors until rainwater came through my soles.

Respect the hustle. We won bc we out-worked the competition. Period.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:06 AM on July 6, 2018 [75 favorites]


One thing that happened recently that got little attention was a new policy change from USCIS: they'll now issue a Notice to Appear (in immigration court) whenever someone is denied an immigration benefit and so is out of status.

Immigration lawyer Hassan Ahmad has a terrifying thread that walks through the implications of automatically putting everyone in removal proceedings the minute they become out of status, noting the 700,000 case backlog in immigration court already:
1. Jack, a foreign student, files for an extension. He's always been in status. Changes address, informs USCIS; acknowledged. USCIS sends request for evidence to old address anyway. Extension of status denied for failure to respond. Jack is put in removal proceedings.

2. Maria, here on a fiancee visa, files for a green card. Her US citizen husband has a good job. Before the interview, Maria is diagnosed with breast cancer. Officer finds out and denies Maria's green card, saying she's likely to become a public charge. Maria is put in removal.

3. Sam is a software engineer. He has a green card pending from his employer. Employer gets bought out by another company. USCIS denies the petition, saying insufficient proof the new employer can continue the sponsorship. Sam is put in removal.
posted by zachlipton at 10:12 AM on July 6, 2018 [49 favorites]


Tim Kaine on Twitter:

> Pompeo Brings 'Rocket Man' CD for Kim Jong-un http://dlvr.it/QZcQsm

And Kim Jong Un sends back a copy of Green Day’s “American Idiot.”
posted by porn in the woods at 10:12 AM on July 6, 2018 [35 favorites]


One thing that happened recently that got little attention was a new policy change from USCIS: they'll now issue a Notice to Appear (in immigration court) whenever someone is denied an immigration benefit and so is out of status.

Well my pants are suitably shat. I’d go for citizenship to rid myself of this draconian nightmare but apparently these fascist fucks are planning to strip me of that if they find some i that isn’t dotted or t that isn’t crossed that they don’t like.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 10:15 AM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


Well my pants are suitably shat. I’d go for citizenship to rid myself of this draconian nightmare but apparently these fascist fucks are planning to strip me of that if they find some i that isn’t dotted or t that isn’t crossed that they don’t like.

I let $OTHER_COUNTRY's citizenship lapse when I got naturalized because I don't believe in half measures. (Plus $OTHER_COUNTRY was already doing cruel enough shit. The grass isn not greener in the rest of the Anglosphere.)

So I'm screwed.

My company is also screwed because we cannot operate with being able to hire "the best" (mostly means "people who have already done similar work to what we do", but we can't stay in business without this)
posted by ocschwar at 10:19 AM on July 6, 2018 [10 favorites]


I feel like I've finally made it (what "it" is remains to be decided). On Twitter just now I got told to "pick a side or go back to the other country" for being a dual Canadian. So there's at least one person out there who is on Team Deport White Middle Class Duals With An American Parent For Not Being Sufficiently Loyal American.
posted by soren_lorensen at 10:25 AM on July 6, 2018 [31 favorites]


Here’s another way to look at the Electoral College. Consider a big Blue state like California, and a bunch of small Red states like Wyoming. We could say that because Wyoming has more electoral-votes-per-capita, the election is biased in favor of Wyoming. But in fact, the situation is much more complicated. Like Barack said, there is no such thing as a “Blue” or “Red” state. Perhaps a quarter of the citizens of the Red states voted for the Democratic candidate, and their votes are not reflected in the Electoral College; they simply disappear. And perhaps a third of the citizens of the Blue state voted for the Republican candidate, and their votes are not reflected in the Electoral College. The fact that these votes don’t affect the Electoral College vote count is vastly more significant than the number of electoral votes per capita in each state. It leads to a situation in which candidates effectively don’t give a damn how many votes they get in non-competitive states. Whether they lose a state by 1% or 100% makes no difference to their chance of victory. Whether they win a state by 1% or 100% makes no difference to their chance of victory. So, the individual votes in those non-competitive states have much less value. The bias is in favor of individual voters in states where the election is closely run.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:31 AM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


One thing that happened recently that got little attention was a new policy change from USCIS: they'll now issue a Notice to Appear (in immigration court) whenever someone is denied an immigration benefit and so is out of status.

Also note that our immigration system is so Kafkaesque that it gives Kafka a bad name, and it's ridiculously easy to be "denied an immigration benefit" or otherwise fall "out of status." My law firm has an employee who's a Canadian national and his initial visa application and grant were very easy; however the last time he crossed the border and tried to renew it, they demanded additional paperwork that was never required before (and is not required by the forms). So he had to take multiple flights, at several hundred dollars a pop, to sort it out.

Totally ordinary, every day behavior with no perceptible hint of "screwing up" can still mess up your immigration status. It only works (to the extent it even does) by having agents who are willing to dig through everything and fix things that go awry - taking a hard line against legit visa holders is just terrifying.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 10:43 AM on July 6, 2018 [22 favorites]




With the release of the jobs numbers (213K jobs added, unemployment rate up to 4% as more people reported entering the labor market, but overall participation rate remaining steady at a post-recession 62.9%), I'm intrigued by Byron Auguste (former Obama economics advisor)'s words more than I usually am by random Forbes contributors: Skills And Tomorrow's Jobs Report: The Usual Suspects, as the usual suspects bemoan a "skills gap" that's a bunch of nonsense:
In their outstanding 2010 book, The Race Between Education and Technology, economists Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz showed convincingly that U.S. growth diminished and inequality rose when educational attainment slowed its century-long rise in the 1970s. This original rise was driven by the universal high school movement, massive expansion of public colleges and universities, the G.I. Bill and Pell grants, which expanded demand and supply of high-quality post-secondary education. By contrast, in the last 15 years, employers have reclassified middle-class jobs as “college graduate jobs” much faster than any rise in college degrees or notable changes to the skills obtained in college (Burning Glass Technologies calls this “up-credentialing"). When only 20% of administrative assistants have a bachelor’s degree but almost two-thirds of new job postings for admins require a B.A. to be considered, such practices make college degrees more of an arbitrary barrier than an inclusive bridge to middle-class work.
...
Scratch that: I mean we can’t just wait to find out. Showtime is over; game time is now. It’s well past time we leave our passive spectating ways behind. The U.S. has arrived at an inflection point in our economy, technology and demography that demands a reality check on the sorry state of our labor market, and the – i.e., our – institutional practices that produce it.

Our employers complain they can’t find the needed skills, but never assess the skills of most of their job applicants. We preach “meritocracy” and performance, but we practice “alma mater-ocracy” and pedigree. Policymakers say jobs are their No. 1 priority; businesses insist their most important asset is their people; we say college is essential, then rate colleges by how many applicants they can reject. Commentators stroke their chins and refer to impersonal forces of technology, markets and systems - as if these were created in some other way than cumulative and collective human choices. Our cluelessness can be comical, but its net effect is tragic: a U.S. job market that’s broken for half of Americans, in ways barely noticed by so many who make the rules. The so-called “skills gap” is really an opportunity gap, which generates a gap (chasm, in fact) in confidence and trust, dividing our country by income, education, class, gender, race and region.
The cheerleading here is well and good, though falling short of policy, but it's also particularly sad that this is the conversation we need to be having, how does our labor market let so many people down in so many awful ways, yet we don't have that discussion at all because the Trump-driven narrative is built entirely around a stuck-in-the-past agenda of trying to stuff people in non-existent steel plants and coal mines. We've seen story after story lately of employers bemoaning their inability to find workers, everything from airline pilots to summer pool lifeguards, As Annie Lowrey writes in Say Hello to Full Employment:
Some analysts have started warning about the same issue happening nationally, in some cases in pretty overwrought terms. The “number one problem [for businesses] is finding qualified workers,” Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said in a statement this week. “At the current pace of job growth, if sustained, this problem is set to get much worse. These labor shortages will only intensify across all industries and company sizes.”

Yet the experience of towns like Ames and Des Moines show that such “labor shortages” might be due to insufficient wages and crummy working conditions — not an unwillingness of workers to switch industries or improve their skills for a job. The trucking industry is instructive here: Trade groups have argued that it is facing a shortfall of 51,000 workers, yet businesses have not yet shown much willingness to cut hours, boost pay, and improve conditions to lure workers in. Indeed, across the economy, companies have shown a remarkable unwillingness to boost wages, with growth barely keeping pace with inflation even as the unemployment rate has dropped to 4 percent.

Low wages continue to be an extraordinary problem preventing workers from connecting with a good job and keeping potential employees on the sidelines — in Iowa and across the country. “Even though we’re such a low unemployment state, we are also low-wage state,” Buck of the United Way said. “People think that when you have a state or a community that has low unemployment, that everyone's doing great. That is not the case. We still have about 34 percent of central Iowans who are not making enough to be financially self-sufficient.”
How about a real conversation about work that doesn't fetishize coal miners and app developers and recognizes that many of the jobs that are deemed most "needed" are the ones that pay poverty wages? How about an immigration policy that reflects our need for labor instead of racism? How about political leadership that suggests business owners don't have a god-given right to unlimited $8/hour skilled labor with years of experience in the exact position? How about trade policy that doesn't directly incentivize offshoring? Nope, we're stuck with Trump's antiquated ideas of work.
posted by zachlipton at 10:52 AM on July 6, 2018 [58 favorites]


Meanwhile Fox deals with the truly important issues of our time, victimhood for Trump supporters:
Man Accused of Tossing Drink at Pro-Trump Teen [link to state media outlet]
posted by benzenedream at 10:58 AM on July 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


This confuses me (thinking on voter power above).
If an average of 64+% of Wyoming voters since 1968 vote GOP every single election, and the total voting population is just 56% of registered voters (250,701/444979 as of 2014) then just 35% of the voting capita grabbed 3 electoral college votes. Dependably, predictably since 1968. That's an electoral college vote for a GOP candidate per 53,160 Republican voter. Not a bad handicap to have in your pocket automatically for nearly five decades.
posted by Harry Caul at 10:59 AM on July 6, 2018


They're not confiscating passports (yet) but in Virginia, at least, driver's licenses will soon no longer be adequate ID for domestic air travel. Real ID is coming.
posted by emelenjr at 11:04 AM on July 6, 2018 [10 favorites]


Meanwhile Fox deals with the truly important issues of our time, victimhood for Trump supporters:
Man Accused of Tossing Drink at Pro-Trump Teen [link to state media outlet]


Top story on conservative forums a couple days ago: "puny antifa SMASHED at Patriot Prayer in Portland, watch this lib get his skull fractured, top kek"

Top story on conservative forums today: "getting a drink thrown at you and your MAGA hat stolen is terrorism and the first act of civil war"

Take it away, Umberto:

Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.

posted by Rust Moranis at 11:07 AM on July 6, 2018 [56 favorites]


I’m right now in the process of getting a us passport for my second daughter and we’re getting increasingly worried that it will be denied, even though we’re following the same process as for my first daughter.
posted by dhruva at 11:09 AM on July 6, 2018 [4 favorites]


Mod note: Seriously, folks, the megathread is not the place to discuss the inner workings of participation in the DSA.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 11:30 AM on July 6, 2018 [16 favorites]


ProPublica: The 6-Year-Old Heard on Border Facility Audiotape Is Still Separated From Her Mother
The last time Cindy Madrid Henriquez, a Salvadoran immigrant, spoke to her 6-year-old daughter Jimena on the telephone, the little girl, who is in an Arizona shelter, began by complaining about having to wash her hair with bar soap instead of shampoo. Her scalp was dry and itchy. She had dandruff. Then her questions grew into fears: What if her hair started to fall out? What if her scalp became infected? When, she finally wailed, was her mother going to come and save her?
posted by Hypatia at 11:39 AM on July 6, 2018 [18 favorites]


Top story on conservative forums today: "getting a drink thrown at you and your MAGA hat stolen is terrorism and the first act of civil war"

Yeah OK that's over the top but the incident was real, unprovoked & unacceptable. We need to call these things out ourselves when they happen because it's the right thing to do even when the optics are bad, which let's face it they are in this case. Every incident we excuse encourages the next. We can always reframe it but at the end of the day we have to call it out.
posted by scalefree at 11:40 AM on July 6, 2018 [6 favorites]


One thing that happened recently that got little attention was a new policy change from USCIS: they'll now issue a Notice to Appear (in immigration court) whenever someone is denied an immigration benefit and so is out of status.

I think the Dems need to start tagging Trump's policies as a #WarOnImmigrants and make sure all the tech companies and others that depends on an educated workforce are aware that he's crippling their ability to hire.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:47 AM on July 6, 2018 [7 favorites]


We can always reframe it but at the end of the day we have to call it out.

Nope. No amount of "we think it's very wrong to throw drinks at people for their Nazi hat" will convince Nazis, Nazi sympathizers or (most importantly) the bad-faith civility pimps. Wasting energy doing so is a mug's game.
posted by Rust Moranis at 11:48 AM on July 6, 2018 [71 favorites]


They're not confiscating passports (yet) but in Virginia, at least, driver's licenses will soon no longer be adequate ID for domestic air travel. Real ID is coming.

This has been a long running saga in Maine as well. I almost couldn't get my drivers licence renewed because my birth name is different than my current name.

Currently, Maine has an extension through October 10th. It will be interesting to see what happens then.
posted by anastasiav at 11:49 AM on July 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


As Trump takes aim at affirmative action, let’s remember how Jared Kushner got into Harvard (Andrew Prokop | Vox)

A lot of money, and two US senators, were involved.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 11:49 AM on July 6, 2018 [16 favorites]


No scalefree. The hat itself is a microaggresion. There's no place for it.
posted by Bacon Bit at 11:49 AM on July 6, 2018 [18 favorites]


We can always reframe it but at the end of the day we have to call it out.

I promise that I will spend as much time calling out violence against Trump supporters as they have spent calling out the murder of a woman in Charlottesville. There, I'm done.
posted by Etrigan at 11:49 AM on July 6, 2018 [74 favorites]


> but the incident was real, unprovoked & unacceptable

That was peak /r/WhyWereTheyFilming/. Anyway conservatives will swoon over videos of antifa getting their shit wrecked and then whine about having a drink spilled on them in the same breath because Umberto Eco's quote about the enemy being simultaneously too strong and too weak is their guiding philosophy..
posted by Space Coyote at 11:50 AM on July 6, 2018 [12 favorites]


The hat itself is provocation and the only acceptable way to deal with public displays of fascism is to destroy them.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:52 AM on July 6, 2018 [56 favorites]


Umberto Eco's "enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak" has always seemed like bullshit that could easily be applied in the other direction- just look at the way Trump and his administration is described by people in this thread. There's no contradiction that a politician can be strong in some areas and weak in others.
posted by dilaudid at 11:53 AM on July 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


There's no contradiction that a politician can be strong in some areas and weak in others.

That's not what Eco means.

I'm also going to take a hard pass on spending any energy calling someone out for being a little mean to a fascist. Like, as a lady just existing in the universe I've had worse things said and done to me by strangers and I wasn't even displaying an ideology. So, nah.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:00 PM on July 6, 2018 [65 favorites]


(I made a DSA post here.)
posted by schadenfrau at 12:02 PM on July 6, 2018 [21 favorites]


the incident was real, unprovoked & unacceptable

strongly disagree on...two out of three counts
posted by schadenfrau at 12:04 PM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


This is why you don’t put members of an apocalyptic death cult in charge of protecting the $&@!?ing environment:

Scott Pruitt’s faith guided his time in office and shielded him (Tara Isabella Burton | Vox)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:05 PM on July 6, 2018 [13 favorites]


There's no contradiction that a politician can be strong in some areas and weak in others.

The "enemy" for fascists much more frequently refers to minorities or shadowy cabals rather than individual politicians, so that's a misreading.

I think that the "too-weak and too-strong enemy" is a universal psychological mechanism on some level but it's enormously amplified among the far right. True, in every thread here you'll see different aspects of the administration called both dunderpatedly incompetent and demonically calculated. But you won't see Hillary Clinton named as the master of a global satanic pedophilia network who is also a sick and dying old woman literally kept upright with robotic components. It's a matter of scale.
posted by Rust Moranis at 12:08 PM on July 6, 2018 [15 favorites]


Living right here in San Antonio where the Whataburger/MAGAhat incident took place, I strongly suspect the MAGAhat provoked the confrontation.

Any given Whataburger employee will see dozens, if not hundreds, of MAGAhats every day. San Antonio is a blue city in a red state, but there's plenty of Trump supporters around here.

The video of the incident starts in the middle, while the two are already arguing. While we have no way of knowing for sure what happened we've got two basic possibilities:

1) A Whataburger employee who sees dozens, if not hundreds, of MAGAhats daily snapped at this MAGAhat basically at random

or

2) The MAGAhat started something and the employee lost it.

The second possibility seems more likely. I can't say for sure it's what happened, but it does seem more likely.

I'll also add that I'm far from unbiased here I think the MAGAhat is the Klan hood of the 21st century and my sympathies would be with the employee even if he had just randomly thrown a drink on the MAGAhat. But even given that I'm inclined to think the MAGAhat started it.
posted by sotonohito at 12:08 PM on July 6, 2018 [49 favorites]


The guys who fought antifa in Portland were the same ppl who threw a rally in a predominantly immigrant part of Portland in order to maximize fear. When one of their guys from that rally went and stabbed three people on the light rail, after those three people stood up to him harassing two Muslim teenagers, they decided to continue with a rally in downtown Portland. They flew people out for it. These are the same people who spraypainted swastikas around SE Portland, and went to a bar and yelled racial slurs at the Jewish bartender. I'm sorry, but throwing a drink is elementary playground shit. Boo fucking hoo, let them cry. They get to run around and stab people and beat people and nobody gives a shit, but then they get a drink thrown at them and suddenly we need to be up in arms. They can go die for all I care.
posted by gucci mane at 12:09 PM on July 6, 2018 [90 favorites]


Scott Pruitt’s faith guided his time in office and shielded him

I'm all for religious equality, but just as an abortion clinic shouldn't be run by a devout pro-life Catholic, the Environmental Protection Agency shouldn't be run by someone who is trying to bring about the End Times.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:11 PM on July 6, 2018 [16 favorites]


Scott Pruitt’s faith guided his time in office and shielded him

Even the headline is hard for me to read because the incredibly creepy appalling jesusy-ness of his resignation letter was already so intense, so horrifying to read. I know that people out there right now in this country believe and speak in this bizarre and nonsensical 14th century way but it's another thing completely to see it put down in words by someone other than an unhinged commenter in a local newspaper.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:15 PM on July 6, 2018 [17 favorites]



I'll also add that I'm far from unbiased here I think the MAGAhat is the Klan hood of the 21st century and my sympathies would be with the employee even if he had just randomly thrown a drink on the MAGAhat.


Swastikas were benign too once.

I don't think violence is the answer here, but nobody should be able to go out with a MAGA hat and not be called out for carrying the symbol of something ghoulish. We're at the concentration-camps-causing-pandemics-among-the-inmates point.
posted by ocschwar at 12:18 PM on July 6, 2018 [28 favorites]


But are they all this epically corrupt? Or is that just a special Pruitty thing? I mean, I assume no good things about them whatsoever, creepy moral voids as they all are, but even surrounded by the Trump crew his corruption was something relentless and special.
posted by Artw at 12:20 PM on July 6, 2018


Guys we don’t have to argue about whether or not a MAGAhat is sufficient for drinks throwing when we have a witness that says the teenagers were saying they wish it was legal to kill black and Hispanic people and they want the country to be white again.
posted by corb at 12:20 PM on July 6, 2018 [98 favorites]


By the way, I reject the notion of "antifa smashed by patriot prayer!" or whatever it is that they post, simply because on the face of it it feeds into the whole concept that fascism loves to deliver: that they are these inherently strong, virile males who are beating these weak, pathetic [enter slurs about liberals/"those people" here]. The entire media narrative is 100% anti-antifa, because they're simultaneously weak libs that need to be owned/snowflakes but also a terrorist menace. It's bullshit on the face of it, and they never post videos of the fascists getting their faces stomped even when that's what happens on the ground. Likewise, they also don't post photos or videos of these guys ganging up and punching women in the face. Even further than that, antifa can sit there and have whatever "weapons" they bring to the rally taken away, shot at by the police while they are unarmed, all while the fascists get to roll in with 2x4 wood planks and smash people in the head, still get their asses beat, but the media narrative will perpetually be "terrorist antifa riot at peaceful alt-right protest!" It's fucking bullshit. And I say this as somebody who is deeply conflicted with the idea of violence, yet has been in these violent confrontations.
posted by gucci mane at 12:24 PM on July 6, 2018 [20 favorites]


we have a witness that says the teenagers were saying they wish it was legal to kill black and Hispanic people

If this is true, those are in my opinion "fighting words", and the modest response of stealing the hat should be legally forgivable, even if it would otherwise count as assault.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:24 PM on July 6, 2018 [14 favorites]


Cornell Legal Information Institute: Fighting words are, as first defined by the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in Chaplinsky v New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942), words which "by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality."

Fighting words are a category of speech that is unprotected by the First Amendment.

posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:26 PM on July 6, 2018 [34 favorites]


@ZoeTillman: BREAKING: The US attorney's office in DC is dismissing all remaining Inauguration Day mass arrest cases. The government had been unable to secure any convictions at trial so far; there were 38 cases left.

Here's the motion to dismiss the remaining cases.
posted by zachlipton at 12:28 PM on July 6, 2018 [93 favorites]


Cohen Tells Friends: Trump Won’t Pardon Me
Michael Cohen has reportedly told friends that he’s pessimistic about the chances of receiving a pardon from his longtime client and friend President Donald Trump. The attorney—currently under criminal investigation in New York—has not yet been charged with any wrongdoing, but has told his friends he doesn’t think the President will ride to his rescue.
🎵c’mon baby / let’s do the flip 🎶
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:29 PM on July 6, 2018 [37 favorites]


In other legal news, Shera Bechard has apparently sued Broidy, Keith Davidson, and Michael Avenatti, and the complaint is sealed so we have no idea why. The lawyers are sniping at each other on Twitter. It's all a wild shitshow.
posted by zachlipton at 12:31 PM on July 6, 2018 [16 favorites]




It's an open question whether those specific racist things were said by the MAGA hat-wearer -- the best source on that seems to have retracted it. I still think it's more likely than not that he did, I'm just saying you can make your own judgement of the evidence before spreading the info, if you wish.

Regardless of the merits of drink-throwing or whatever, there's no question it will be magnified in a way that opposite-equivalent events aren't, for a number of related reasons. "Alt-righter beats up presumed foreigner" is "dog bites man", the assumed natural state of things. Reversing it, even in the mildest way, violates that order. It's the far-right version of being "wired for Republicans".

The phrase ~So much for the tolerant left~ isn't just about supposed progressive hypocrisy, but an intention to emphasize these roles -- liberals are supposed to be the tolerant ones, conservatives and deplorables are bound by no such rules. Also, the "moderate" and "extreme" wings can hide behind each other; as soon as a line is crossed into unequivocal violent racism, it's "How dare you associate me with that?" Yes, even as Trump and his rhetoric blurs the line more and more, calls the Charlottesville marchers "very fine", and so on.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 12:38 PM on July 6, 2018 [4 favorites]




The US attorney's office in DC is dismissing all remaining Inauguration Day mass arrest cases

The J20 dismissals are huge. That’s amazing, and it’s BS they even got that far.
posted by corb at 12:42 PM on July 6, 2018 [32 favorites]


I'd love to see the administration successfully sued for their malicious prosecution with no likelihood of success.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:50 PM on July 6, 2018 [29 favorites]


In other legal news, Shera Bechard has apparently sued Broidy, Keith Davidson, and Michael Avenatti

And this is why, as I said in the previous thread, you probably don't want to choose your attorney based on the last guy you happened to see on the teevee. Unlike a politician "name recognition" isn't necessarily something you want in your lawyer. I'm glad Avenatti is pissing off Trump. But it's clear he's mostly interested in the Michael Avenatti show and not, you know, the good of his clients or the country.

Still way better than Davidson and Cohen.
posted by Justinian at 12:50 PM on July 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


As Trump celebrates reductions in legal immigration and is working toward more, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Wants To Hire 40 More Foreign Workers.

Update: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida Seeks to Hire 61 Foreign Workers (That revised figure of job postings for foreign workers includes hiring 21 cooks in addition to the previously reported 40 waiters/waitresses.)
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:53 PM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


Florida Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo Blasts HHS for Barring Him From Visiting Detained Kids

That sounds dangerously close to actually giving a shit, or at least pretending to.
posted by Artw at 12:54 PM on July 6, 2018 [17 favorites]


Curbelo is also one of the Republicans who gives a shit about climate change (by virtue of representing a district that will be mostly underwater in the foreseeable future).
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:05 PM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


The WaPo has quotes from EPA employees leaving work yesterday, Scott Pruitt is finally gone, and this was the antic scene outside the EPA:
“It’s a good day for the agency,” said the employee, choosing his words carefully and, like others, declining to give his name because Washington propriety still persists in some ways. “He was destroying the agen— well, he was not a friend of the environment, and I don’t think he was a friend of the agency.” A pause. A search for other words. But the first ones fit, so he repeated them: “It’s a good day.”
posted by peeedro at 1:08 PM on July 6, 2018 [38 favorites]


1. Jack, a foreign student, files for an extension. He's always been in status. Changes address, informs USCIS; acknowledged. USCIS sends request for evidence to old address anyway. Extension of status denied for failure to respond. Jack is put in removal proceedings.

Just to specifically call out what is pretty handily implied here - when I was deep in the whole debt collection challenging world, there was a term for deliberately mishandled summons so that debtors could be issued judgements by default when they didn't show up: sewer service, as in served a notice to appear. In jurisdictions where summons by mail was allowed they'd be mailed or fake-mailed or deliberately mailed the wrong place, insuring the debtor wouldn't be there to challenge in court - often a challenge that lacked any real basis in fact. Getting a default judgment undone was an order of magnitude harder than just showing up in court and calling bullshit on the claim.

So, yeah, there's not a question in my mind that an agency staffed in part or full by racist shitbirds would engage in similar shenanigans.
posted by phearlez at 1:09 PM on July 6, 2018 [31 favorites]


“It’s a good day for the agency,” said the employee, choosing his words carefully and, like others, declining to give his name because Washington propriety still persists in some ways. this administration will absolutely weaponize the Hatch Act against anyone who crosses them.
posted by phearlez at 1:10 PM on July 6, 2018 [24 favorites]


You know how Trump's whole line is that people need to come into the country legally? Turns out we lock you up if you do that and claim asylum, but you have better chances if you cross the border outside a port of entry. Texas Tribune, The Trump administration is not keeping its promises to asylum seekers who come to ports of entry
In the weeks since President Donald Trump’s now-rescinded family separation policy created chaos and confusion across the country, the messages from his administration and prominent Republican members of Congress have been clear: Seek asylum legally at official ports of entry and you won’t lose your kids. There may be armed Customs and Border Protection agents standing at the halfway points of bridges — but simply wait a few days, declare to them that you are seeking asylum, and you’ll get a fair shake.
...
But there’s ample evidence to suggest otherwise. Court records and individual cases discovered by The Texas Tribune indicate that a number of asylum seekers who came to international bridges in Texas and California were separated from their children anyway — or were not able to cross the bridge at all after encountering armed Customs and Border Protection agents on the bridge. And experts argue there’s no basis to the government’s claim that there aren’t enough resources to process asylum seekers.
...
As the Trump administration seeks to detain more and more people while their asylum cases are pending — even if they’ve never been charged with a criminal offense in the U.S. — asylum seekers at ports of entry may actually be worse off than those who cross a different way.

If people end up in immigration detention after they cross the border illegally between ports of entry — typically by crossing the Rio Grande or walking through desert — then ICE can set a bond for them (the price they must pay for their release). Those detainees can challenge the bond before an immigration judge, and the judge can agree to release them with a lower bond or with no bond at all — although reports indicate it’s become harder for people to get released from immigration detention on bond.

But for those who are detained after seeking asylum at a port of entry, bond is generally not an option, and an immigration judge can’t release them. Once they’re in immigration detention, they are only eligible for what’s called “parole” — temporary release from immigration detention — and that decision is up to ICE.

Perez-Bustillo, of the Hope Border Institute, said that puts asylum seekers who tried to cross the border the “right” way at a disadvantage. “When it comes to discretion of ICE … you’re totally helpless,” he said.
So if you claim asylum the way Trump wants you to, you're stuck in immigration detention indefinitely unless ICE somehow decides to release you, while those who are caught by the Border Patrol get to see a judge and ask to be released on bond. Hell of a system we have.
posted by zachlipton at 1:23 PM on July 6, 2018 [57 favorites]


If what you mean “us” is “the Democrats”, then they absolutely have a lot to offer if they’re willing to stop looking for corporate donations and to take a hard line on unions. Not just the Sanders plan - but giving the NLRB /real teeth/. Fully staffing the agencies that investigate firings and violations of labor law so that people don’t have to wait months for a toothless response.

I for serious do not understand how you can be a Republican in identity and vote for Republicans in this last decade and yet type this without shame or any apparent sense of self-examination. The move to allow over-classification of people as exempt employees was done under the Bush administration. The lawsuits against the Obama administration's DoL efforts to make the overtime exempt salary something people could actually live on were filed by Republican operations. The Trump administration's DoL dropping the challenge to the ruling against them was done not by the Cheeto in Chief via some random Trumpist former bodyguard or something but Alexander Acosta, who among his other roles before being the current (well, at 4:22p 7/6/18 - who knows with this Administration?) Secretary of Labor, was one of Bush II's appointments to the NLRB in the early 00s.

I don't disagree. Democrats should absolutely be yelling this sort of shit from the rafters. But this ranks alongside the stuff about trying to appeal to those white evangelical conservatives - there's been a party that was already leaps and bounds better on these issues. Well yeah, okay, Batman was preventing the Joker from stabbing me in the eye but he was all gruff and stuff and never yelled I'll protect you, citizen! and I got knocked down and now look, my phone is cracked! So I just don't know that I can take a side here on this superhero registration act thing.
posted by phearlez at 1:28 PM on July 6, 2018 [19 favorites]



But there’s ample evidence to suggest otherwise. Court records and individual cases discovered by The Texas Tribune indicate that a number of asylum seekers who came to international bridges in Texas and California were separated from their children anyway — or were not able to cross the bridge at all after encountering armed Customs and Border Protection agents on the bridge. And experts argue there’s no basis to the government’s claim that there aren’t enough resources to process asylum seekers.
...


If you have the resources to snatch the kids, you have the resources to process the paperwork for an asylum request.
posted by ocschwar at 1:28 PM on July 6, 2018 [26 favorites]


Trump administration admits they’ve lost track of roughly 20 percent of toddlers’ parents

During a conference call with reporters and U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw on Friday afternoon, government officials acknowledged that as many as 20 percent of the youngest children ripped from their parents on Donald Trump’s orders won’t be reunified with their families any time soon.

"Oops, we created a generation of orphans. Better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission, right?"
posted by Rust Moranis at 1:35 PM on July 6, 2018 [26 favorites]


If you have the resources to snatch the kids, you have the resources to process the paperwork for an asylum request.

Only if you count "humanity" as a resource.
posted by Etrigan at 1:39 PM on July 6, 2018 [5 favorites]


phearlez: "I don't disagree. Democrats should absolutely be yelling this sort of shit from the rafters."

It's almost like the Democrats aren't yelling it from the rafters because they don't actually care that much, which is the original point that corb was making, your weird ad hominem nonwithstanding.
posted by TypographicalError at 1:44 PM on July 6, 2018 [4 favorites]


government officials acknowledged that as many as 20 percent of the youngest children ripped from their parents on Donald Trump’s orders won’t be reunified with their families any time soon.

Motherfuckers never intended to reunite anybody with anybody. As was mentioned earlier, they deleted the family ID number records.

Which raises the question: if reunification wasn't on the menu, what the fuck was the real plan?
posted by zjacreman at 1:45 PM on July 6, 2018 [47 favorites]


(And it should go without saying that if they guesstimate 20% will never be reunited, that means in reality it's 60% or more)
posted by Rust Moranis at 1:46 PM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


Reveal News, Defense contractor detained migrant kids in vacant Phoenix office building
A major U.S. defense contractor quietly detained dozens of immigrant children inside a vacant Phoenix office building with dark windows, no kitchen and only a few toilets during three weeks of the Trump administration’s family separation effort, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has learned.

Videos shot by an alarmed neighbor show children dressed in sweatsuits being led – one so young she was carried – into the 3,200-square-foot building in early June. The building is not licensed by Arizona to hold children, and the contractor, MVM Inc., has claimed publicly that it does not operate “shelters or any other type of housing” for children.
...
When Reveal asked MVM about the Phoenix office building, the company initially pointed to its earlier statement that it does not operate housing for immigrant children. After learning that neighbors had recorded video of children entering the building, an MVM spokesperson said the building “is not a shelter or a child care facility. … It’s a temporary holding place” for children being flown out of the Phoenix airport to other locations.

Asked whether the children were kept there overnight, the spokesperson said the building is intended to hold them for a few hours before flights but was unsure how long children actually ended up staying.
posted by zachlipton at 1:49 PM on July 6, 2018 [55 favorites]


"Oops, we created a generation of orphans. Better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission, right?"

No amount of begging should grant them forgiveness, but they should still be compelled to try.
posted by Gelatin at 1:51 PM on July 6, 2018 [7 favorites]


This Ought to Run in Campaign Ads from Now Through Eternity. Attention Optics Police: a crew of Republican senators spent the Fourth of July in...Moscow.

posted by scalefree at 7:10 AM on July 6 [25 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]


Putin is playing the whole GOP like a fiddle. They have no clue.
posted by Mental Wimp at 1:53 PM on July 6, 2018 [6 favorites]


It's almost like the Democrats aren't yelling it from the rafters because they don't actually care that much, which is the original point that corb was making, your weird ad hominem nonwithstanding.

There's only so many things that they can yell from the rafters. In case you haven't noticed the whole place is on fire right now.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 1:54 PM on July 6, 2018 [8 favorites]


@JuliaEAinsley: Govt lawyer tells judge she has dogsitting responsibilities so will have to leave town and cannot meet tomorrow for status update on 100 children under 5. I love my dog but...but this is a new one!

I...I do not actually have any words available to me that can follow that.
posted by zachlipton at 1:54 PM on July 6, 2018 [62 favorites]


Like hey, Republicans are currently rolling back to the Gilded Age but the mean ol' Demmycrats aren't taking my pet cause as seriously as I'd like so fuck 'em!
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 1:56 PM on July 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


I...I do not actually have any words available to me that can follow that.

"Jail for contempt."
posted by zjacreman at 1:56 PM on July 6, 2018 [44 favorites]


if reunification wasn't on the menu, what the fuck was the real plan?

Genocide.

The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as
...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
...
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
posted by Gaz Errant at 1:57 PM on July 6, 2018 [93 favorites]


These kids aren't orphans, if they're swiftly snapped up by white evangelical parents bent on brainwashing.

You know, the people who don't want to pay a lot for those burdensome, time-consuming, increasingly-restricted foreign adoptions.
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:58 PM on July 6, 2018 [10 favorites]


your weird ad hominem nonwithstanding.

I guess I don't think "why exactly should someone who has spent the last whatever bunch of years being an active part of hamstringing anything resembling this go out in public and talk about what ought to be done" is an ad hominem. I think maybe you don't really know what an ad hominem is; it's not a shield against maybe you're not a person with any grounds to carry this message, it's an end run around addressing an argument by attacking a person. It's not a defense against someone pointing out "hey bub, you know that you have been working against some measures so perhaps you're not really credible on the issue of the need for more measures."

I guess corb and you don't need to care that it reads as a variation on "so much for the tolerant left" but it's not an ad hominem to point it out.
posted by phearlez at 1:59 PM on July 6, 2018 [7 favorites]


I...I do not actually have any words available to me that can follow that.

"Jail for contempt."


haha, if only we were on that timeline. . . in this case it appears the judge has agreed to delay the hearing until monday on the basis of the fucking dog sitting claim. Honestly these people are such awful pieces of shit no one should let them watch their dogs, let alone be responsible for children.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 2:01 PM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


I haven't been able to sleep the past two nights. I'm both Jewish and Irish-American, and the forcible detention of children who have been separated from their parents means a specific thing in those two histories: tiny graves.

I pray I am wrong, but I am literally sick about this.
posted by maxsparber at 2:09 PM on July 6, 2018 [57 favorites]


A federal judge has apparently bought the dogsitting argument and will hear a status update from the government on Monday.

Er, I'm being told by someone I trust that someone she trusts that the dogsitting argument was not really the main reason it was postponed to Monday.
posted by zachlipton at 2:16 PM on July 6, 2018 [5 favorites]


Honestly these people are such awful pieces of shit no one should let them watch their dogs, let alone be responsible for children.

They actually care about the dogs, though.
posted by zjacreman at 2:16 PM on July 6, 2018 [4 favorites]


The thing about assuming these kids were bound for adoption by white evangelicals is it presupposes anyone had an actual plan here which involved eventual care for the kids. I haven't seen anything to support that. Everyone thought they were handing the problem off to someone else.

I think back to all the training I got as a teacher about my responsibilities to the kids, things like mandatory reporting and what would happen in a disaster situation, and I just... these fuckers never had a plan for the kids.

"It's someone else's problem," said countless bureaucrats and white dudes with badges and Stephen Miller and John Kelly and people who work for them, never once blinking at the fact that "it" refers to real live children.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 2:17 PM on July 6, 2018 [41 favorites]


They actually care about the dogs, though.

Precedent.
posted by Rust Moranis at 2:18 PM on July 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


Putin is playing the whole GOP like a fiddle. They have no clue.

Oh they have millions of clues from Putin, running through the bank accounts of hundreds of PACs.
posted by jason_steakums at 2:19 PM on July 6, 2018 [11 favorites]


I think back to all the training I got as a teacher about my responsibilities to the kids, things like mandatory reporting and what would happen in a disaster situation, and I just... these fuckers never had a plan for the kids.

Of course not, they won't get fired for this like you would.
I concur: their aim was passive murder.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:19 PM on July 6, 2018 [7 favorites]


Putin is playing the whole GOP like a fiddle. They have no clue.

Or, worse yet: they do.

They actually care about the dogs, though.

Now a Romney-appointed judge...
posted by Barack Spinoza at 2:20 PM on July 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


They know exactly what they're doing and they love it. Making Trump's America into Putin's Russia is their wet dream.
posted by soren_lorensen at 2:21 PM on July 6, 2018 [5 favorites]


I can't get over that we're forcing children to appear in court without a lawyer to represent them. Can you imagine being a judge, talking one on one with a five-year-old, and making a decision? It's a show trial, done in America on our watch, and it completely destroys the legitimacy of a court that allows it to happen.

I can't understand why any judge would even call the court to order with a kid that can barely tie their shoelaces standing pro se. It's so absurd it calls the entire system into question. Surely they have options? Can a judge really be forced to hold a hearing in conditions which are a manifest injustice? Who's going to enforce it? Just... do something else, please, please.
posted by 0xFCAF at 2:23 PM on July 6, 2018 [69 favorites]


Can a judge really be forced to hold a hearing in conditions which are a manifest injustice?

These are immigration judges. Doing just that is precisely their job. They don't have lifetime tenure like federal judges; they're hired and fired by Jeff Sessions, and Sessions gets to refer cases to himself to write binding precedent when he wants to.
posted by zachlipton at 2:26 PM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


Giving us dogsitters a bad name, now :(
posted by The otter lady at 2:26 PM on July 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


WaPo: Trump is set to separate more than 200,000 U.S.-born children from their parents – "[...] children — all U.S. citizens — will be placed in similar jeopardy if the Department of Homeland Security begins programs to deport more than 58,000 Haitians on July 22, 2019, more than 262,000 Salvadorans on Sept. 9, 2019, and 86,000 Hondurans on Jan. 5, 2020. Parents will be faced with the decision of whether to take their children — most of whom speak mainly English and know only life in this country — back to countries deemed by the State Department as not safe for travel, some with the highest homicide rates in the hemisphere. Otherwise, parents will have to leave their children alone in the United States or, if they’re lucky, with relatives, or foster parents who they may or may not know, or some with “adult sponsors” chosen by federal agencies."
posted by StrawberryPie at 2:28 PM on July 6, 2018 [53 favorites]


scaryblackdeath, I think this administration's constant ineptitude still gets them what they want most of the time. Evangelical Americans believed adoption could save children in the developing world from poverty—and save their souls. Guatemala is now closed to U.S. adoption, but before that, in 2007, and "several years before, an astonishing one out of every 110 Guatemalan children born was adopted in the United States" with a base charge of $35K per adoption.
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:29 PM on July 6, 2018 [11 favorites]


I can't get over that we're forcing children to appear in court without a lawyer to represent them

The best* part is, that isn't even a Trumpian innovation. Immigration "courts" are civil, not criminal, so there's no right to an attorney, not for as long as the modern immigration court system has existed (since 1983, it looks like?) Not even for infants.
* worst
posted by zjacreman at 2:31 PM on July 6, 2018 [6 favorites]


It's a show trial, done in America on our watch, and it completely destroys the legitimacy of a court that allows it to happen.

Immigration courts are not article 3 courts like other courts in the country. They're not under the purview of the judicial branch. It serves an executive decision function only.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 2:32 PM on July 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


And it all starts to come together (medium)
Matthew Elliott, CEO of pro-Brexit Vote Leave, was a partner at Awareness Analytics Partners (A2P) which has links to Trump, DeVos and the Koch brothers.
A2P was started in 2015 by Samantha Ravich who was on the Trump transition team, A2P partner Sean Noble runs a nonprofit funded largely by the Koch brothers, and A2P developed an app with a think tank funded by the DeVos family and Koch brothers.
(crossposted to Brexit thread).
posted by adamvasco at 2:34 PM on July 6, 2018 [20 favorites]


Immigration "courts" are civil, not criminal,

They're neither. They're article 1 courts. They're tribunals for administration functions and appeals thereof rather than being any sort of jurisprudence. They can't put someone in jeopardy for life, liberty, or property (i.e. an immigration court cannot sentence someone to prison, they cannot order fines) and if you want to do any of those things you need to hand the person off to an article 3 court for prosecution.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 2:37 PM on July 6, 2018 [10 favorites]


LA Times: Workers in this town may become victims of Trump's trade war, but they're behind him 'no matter what'
Asked whether she would rethink her support for Trump if she lost her job at the nail plant, Brogdon said probably not. The tariffs ultimately would be good for the nation — even if it left her unemployed.
“Overall, he’s done good,” she said. “I’m not going to be selfish just because of me.”
posted by monospace at 2:41 PM on July 6, 2018 [7 favorites]


WaPo: Trump is set to separate more than 200,000 U.S.-born children from their parents

Oh my fucking god
posted by schadenfrau at 2:41 PM on July 6, 2018 [30 favorites]


Keep Scott Pruitt Moist: The Dramatic Reading by MeFi's Own jscalzi.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:42 PM on July 6, 2018 [15 favorites]


Asked whether she would rethink her support for Trump if she lost her job at the nail plant, Brogdon said probably not. The tariffs ultimately would be good for the nation — even if it left her unemployed.
“Overall, he’s done good,” she said. “I’m not going to be selfish just because of me.”


Workers at the Harley-Davidson plant said much the same to a Financial Times reporter last week.

The dude's policy is actually taking food off the family table and you're all shrug, it's for the best, I'd rather starve than admit I was wrong to vote for him. It's baffling.
posted by notyou at 2:48 PM on July 6, 2018 [35 favorites]


Seems like the bigger story here is not dogsitting, which was overblown somewhat (sorry), but the government's position that 19 of the parents who have already been deported shouldn't be covered by the ACLU's lawsuit, even though their children under five are still here. The ACLU, unsurprisingly, argued that deported parents also should be reunited with their children. The government is supposed to provide the ACLU with a list of the 101 children under 5 and their status (the government doesn't know where 38 of the parents are), and the judge will entertain arguments about necessary delays on Monday based on those facts.

It seems the issue is less the dogsitting, and more that the lawyer in question is advancing these absurd arguments instead of working to reunite families.
posted by zachlipton at 2:49 PM on July 6, 2018 [12 favorites]


Govt lawyer tells judge she has dogsitting responsibilities so will have to leave town and cannot meet tomorrow for status update on 100 children under 5.

Just to be sure I understood what was being postponed, I went back to Judge Sabraw's June 26 order. It says all children under 5 must be reunified by July 10. That deadline was NOT extended. Today there was a status conference scheduled. That conference has now been continued till Monday July 9 either based on the dog or whatever else, but the July 10 deadline still stands.
posted by mabelstreet at 2:50 PM on July 6, 2018 [6 favorites]


Can something really be said to be a deadline if there is literally no chance of meeting it and there will likely be no meaningful sanction for missing it?
posted by Justinian at 2:53 PM on July 6, 2018 [19 favorites]


WaPo: Trump is set to separate more than 200,000 U.S.-born children from their parents

Wow I'd love to share my thoughts on this and what I think should be done about it immediately but I wouldn't do well in prison.
posted by poffin boffin at 2:56 PM on July 6, 2018 [35 favorites]


Justinian, is contempt of court not an option here because the whole thing is a fuckaroo that can't easily be unfucked? Meaning that the court won't sanction because the government is like sorry we can't put the toothpaste in the tube/
posted by angrycat at 2:56 PM on July 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


That's my believe, angrycat. Sure technically contempt of court is an option but I'll eat my nonexistant hat if it happens. The judge will issue some strongs words amounting to "stop or I'll say stop again."
posted by Justinian at 3:02 PM on July 6, 2018


"WaPo: Trump is set to separate more than 200,000 U.S.-born children from their parents"

One of the things that pissed the US off most about Castro was when he did this, although in reverse -- he allowed children to leave his murderous regime but their parents who opposed his regime and were political enemies had to stay. Parents had to decide whether to let their children join the Pedro Pan airlift to the United States to stay with strangers and hope for the best, or to keep their children with them knowing they and their families could be executed at any time for opposing Castro.

So, good news, the US is now basically the same as a tinpot banana republic dictatorship.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:05 PM on July 6, 2018 [28 favorites]


Not a lawyer, but would assume any sanctions from the judge will be more in the form of the government not getting the benefit of the doubt when it comes to presenting arguments and motions, etc.
posted by notyou at 3:06 PM on July 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


So, good news, the US is now basically the same as a tinpot banana republic dictatorship.

Not quite... the tinpot banana republic dictatorship has one of the best universal healthcare systems on the planet.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:11 PM on July 6, 2018 [37 favorites]


To be fair to the various Trump supporters who are suffering under his trade policies, its hardly inconceivable to like policy that personally hurts you if you think it's good for the country.

I mean, plenty of liberals who want higher taxes would end up paying more, right? And we don't say those people are idiots.

So sure, Trump's trade policies are dumb and terrible. But the persistent drum beat of "the working class doesn't know what's good for it!" just drives those people TO the GOP. We should try harder to understand these opinions as long as they're not just straight bigotry or whatever.
posted by tau_ceti at 3:18 PM on July 6, 2018 [4 favorites]


The dude's policy is actually taking food off the family table and you're all shrug, it's for the best, I'd rather starve than admit I was wrong to vote for him. It's baffling.

Racism is a helluva drug.

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." - LBJ
posted by chris24 at 3:19 PM on July 6, 2018 [25 favorites]


Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs has an insider version of Pruitt's resignation:
LATEST: Scott Pruitt is devastated by his ouster, I’m told.

He didn’t resign voluntarily, like Trump told us, but under pressure: John Kelly delivered a message from president that it was time to go.

Pruitt was at EPA hq today and said goodbye to staff.

Bloomberg: Pruitt Was Told to Resign in Call From White House, Sources Say
And the NYT's Maggie Haberman puts this in the context of Trump's off-the-rails speech in Montana last night:
Trump’s presentation at the MT rally was steeped in grievance. People close to him believe he was angry about having to fire Pruitt and lashed out publicly at almost everyone else (except Putin) in his remarks.

Some of his White House aides will paint him solely as angry at Pruitt. That was true over last few weeks. But Trump liked Pruitt personally and hated what in his mind was giving critics a win.
All this palace intrigue nonsense during the ongoing tragedy of Trump's child-separation policy only makes it seem pettier and crueller.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:20 PM on July 6, 2018 [31 favorites]




Trump is set to separate more than 200,000 U.S.-born children from their parents

These people are citizens of the United States, and they are innocent of any crime. Should the President of the United States be entitled to cause them irreparable harm? Or should he be prevented from doing so? The choice is with Congress and the Courts. If you have a congressional representative, call them on Monday, and ask them to sponsor legislation to prevent the President from irreparably destroying the lives of thousands of American citizens.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:23 PM on July 6, 2018 [15 favorites]


WaPo: Trump is set to separate more than 200,000 U.S.-born children from their parents

For scale, that's a Salt Lake City, or a Spokane, or 1/2 of a Minneapolis, or 1/3 of a Vermont: it's impossible to overestimate the magnitude of the individual and societal harm that will come from permanently fucking with that many young lives over a single casually callous decision.
posted by Rust Moranis at 3:23 PM on July 6, 2018 [28 favorites]


posted by notyou: Workers at the Harley-Davidson plant said much the same to a Financial Times reporter last week. The dude's policy is actually taking food off the family table and you're all shrug, it's for the best, I'd rather starve than admit I was wrong to vote for him. It's baffling.

Ok, stay with me for a minute. So, y'all remember Snow Crash , the Neal Stephenson novel about brain hacking via a language virus. (Sort of.) What if Rupert Murdoch is this simulation's/timeline's L. Bob Rife, and Fox News is just constantly transmitting a neurovirus that creates this sort of apathy in the infected even when in clear and present danger.

Listen, I'm not on the writing team or anything, I'm just saying, I have some notes. Perhaps the writers could arrange for a disruption in Fox News for a week or two, and see what happens? I mean, what could go wrong?
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 3:24 PM on July 6, 2018 [16 favorites]


So sure, Trump's trade policies are dumb and terrible. But the persistent drum beat of "the working class doesn't know what's good for it!" just drives those people TO the GOP. We should try harder to understand these opinions as long as they're not just straight bigotry or whatever.

Their opinions are "trade wars are good for reasons because Trump said so". That's not an opinion, its repeating the cult line. The only actual economist that backs it is fucking crank Peter Navarro. Every other legitimate expert is saying loudly this is insane. It's the economic equivalent of young earth creationism and climate denial. Just having a bad opinion does not entitle you to respect for it, especially when you flat out refuse to acknowledge actual facts, or evidence.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:25 PM on July 6, 2018 [42 favorites]


> We should try harder to understand these opinions as long as they're not just straight bigotry or whatever.

They cannot tell you why they feel that things will be better for the country, because objectively these policies cannot be better for the country. It's a cult for them, based on outright lies, fear, and racism. That is all we need to understand.

We've had a couple of years of "let's get to know the trump voter" better articles that have yet to prove that the voting was based on anything other than white supremacy, fear of the other, sticking it to liberals, punishing poor people, and kicking out anyone who doesn't think or look exactly like them. What point is there in trying to understand this further?
posted by MysticMCJ at 3:27 PM on July 6, 2018 [48 favorites]


But the persistent drum beat of "the working class doesn't know what's good for it!" just drives those people TO the GOP. We should try harder to understand these opinions as long as they're not just straight bigotry or whatever.

That's bullshit. These are the same people that buy the cheapest imported goods they can lay their hands on sending their fellow countrypeople to the unemployment line and, if they're lucky, on to minimum wage retail. The altruism of Trumpists, if it were real, would have saved the heartland from economic misery. No. It's just plain old cult worship of Dear Leader with a side of cognitive dissonance.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 3:28 PM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


Here's a thought maybe Trump voters should try to understand us for once. Crazy I know.
posted by Justinian at 3:29 PM on July 6, 2018 [94 favorites]


Yet you NEVER fucking hear anyone say "Trump supporters should try to understand others." Fucking NEVER.
posted by MysticMCJ at 3:29 PM on July 6, 2018 [77 favorites]


I've got some good simul-posting going on here with a few others, it would appear....
posted by MysticMCJ at 3:29 PM on July 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


Thread by @RadioFreeTom: "It's not that I disagree about policy with Trump supporters. It's that I know they don't give a shit about policy. There's no way to have a […]"

It's a thread that we should all take notice of, particularly the first:
It's not that I disagree about policy with Trump supporters. It's that I know they don't give a shit about policy. There's no way to have a policy argument with people whose eyes are always looking up to the television for a cue from Dear Leader about what to say next. /1
And the end...
For myself, I am resigned that Trump will be president for as long as he's president. How it ends is up to the voters. But I don't see the need to engage in the cynical bullshittery of arguing policy with people who will change their minds on anything in nanoseconds. /9

And for the love of God, don't tell me about what Trump's Real 'Muricans in the Heartland want. I know what they want: more government action, including money, delivered with a smile, inflated respect, and pity, earned or not. Those are utterly pointless discussions too. /10
As a recovering "we need to understand racist folksy white people" myself, I have come to the conclusion that he's entirely right. There's literally no point to trying to understand Trump supporters because they don't know what they want. They just want what Dear Leader wants.

It's just an evolution from "The Republican agenda is opposite to whatever the Liberals want, updated daily" of Obama's tenure.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 3:36 PM on July 6, 2018 [50 favorites]


@feliciasonmez: "Conversations in a locker room" are different from reported allegations of abuse, Rep. Jim Jordan tells @BretBaier in interview about Ohio State accusations

Five wrestlers have come forward to say he knew, and the best he has now is that it was literal locker room talk, which is not exactly a denial. Then he called the law firm that tried to contact him to investigate this "Hillary Clinton's law firm." He used this line yesterday as well. The firm is Perkins Coie, which has been trying to get in touch with him for months. Ohio State stated hired them to investigate the allegations. This isn't some kind of grand conspiracy here.
posted by zachlipton at 3:39 PM on July 6, 2018 [10 favorites]


doubling down on bad decisions is, like, human nature. we hate admitting we're wrong. this is not at all unique to Trump supporters.
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:41 PM on July 6, 2018 [6 favorites]


And the more you've tied your incorrect beliefs to your identity the less likely you are to admit those beliefs were wrong. Even when they have been proven demonstrably false. I know there's been stuff written about believers of apocalyptic cults and what happens when the apocalypse fails to materialize. You'd think they'd immediately be like "oh shit this whole thing was crap." But no, there's almost always a reason they were actually right even though the apocalypse manifestly did not happen.

Trump supporters have tied their belief in Trump very firmly to their identity. That's what a cult of personality is.
posted by Justinian at 3:45 PM on July 6, 2018 [36 favorites]


The best* part is, that isn't even a Trumpian innovation. Immigration "courts" are civil, not criminal, so there's no right to an attorney, not for as long as the modern immigration court system has existed (since 1983, it looks like?) Not even for infants.

I went to a meeting 10+ years ago about the lack of counsel in immigration courts, specifically about people with serious mental illness caught up in immigration proceedings. People who are floridly psychotic are expected to represent themselves. Citizens with serious mental illness have been deported because they lacked the capacity to prove citizenship. These horrors are all perverse, but they're not all new.
posted by Mavri at 3:48 PM on July 6, 2018 [7 favorites]



And the more you've tied your incorrect beliefs to your identity the less likely you are to admit those beliefs were wrong.


Which is why there are literally classes on critical thinking and logic, where one formally learns how to vet sources, and examine their own beliefs to see whether they are sound in respect to the facts.

It’s not a coincidence that the people most vulnerable to propaganda and magical thinking are also the least educated. Nor is it a coincidence that the party that wants to use propaganda and magical thinking in their campaigning is also strongly vested in dismantling access to education.
posted by Autumnheart at 3:55 PM on July 6, 2018 [25 favorites]


One of the things that pissed the US off most about Castro was when he did this, [...] So, good news, the US is now basically the same as a tinpot banana republic dictatorship.

Erm...

You know US subjugation of Latin Americans is not a new thing, right? It’s what a “banana republic” is. Learn your history.

The label “banana republic” has not applied to Cuba since 1959, because of what Castro did to overthrow half a century of US-backed and -installed tinpot dictators.

The worst atrocities in Cuba right now are being committed by the United States. That’s not new either.
posted by Sys Rq at 4:02 PM on July 6, 2018 [20 favorites]


Pence channeling his inner supervillain (it's similar to his outer supervillain).

NYT: ‘We Will Never Abolish ICE,’ Pence Says as He Slams Democrats

“So today, I want to make it clear to all of you and all of those looking on, under President Donald Trump, we will never abolish ICE,” Mr. Pence said. “And as the president said, we will never fail to applaud, and expand, and empower this agency with the resources that you deserve.” [...]

Later, as Mr. Pence was greeting ICE employees and taking photos with them, a pool reporter asked him if “child separations is a Christian thing to do.” The vice president did not respond.

posted by Rust Moranis at 4:08 PM on July 6, 2018 [43 favorites]


Can something really be said to be a deadline if there is literally no chance of meeting it and there will likely be no meaningful sanction for missing it?

I share your pessimism. On the other hand, Judge Sabraw was clearly aware of these difficulties when she set the deadline:

the practice of separating these families was implemented without any effective system or procedure for (1) tracking the children after they were separated from their parents,... and (3) reuniting the parents and children after the parents are returned to immigration custody following completion of their criminal sentence. This is a startling reality.... The unfortunate reality is that under the present system migrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as property. Certainly, that cannot satisfy the requirements of due process.

Order Granting Plaintiffs' Motion for Classwide Preliminary Injunction (S.D. Cal. No. 3:18-cv-00428-DMS-MDD Dkt. 83, June 26, 2018). This same order set the 14- and 30-day deadlines for reunification. Given the tone of the quoted portion of the order, Judge Sabraw does not seem to me to be likely to give only a slap on the wrist if the government fails to comply.
posted by mabelstreet at 4:31 PM on July 6, 2018 [11 favorites]


> And the more you've tied your incorrect beliefs to
> your identity the less likely you are to admit those beliefs
> were wrong.
Yes. I've seen this in action on a much-smaller-than-national scale and it's part of what has terrified me about Trump from the beginning.

I wrote this a little over two months before the election:
I'm having my own issues dealing with this election cycle. Years ago I had a job. It was a nice job before management of the group I worked in was handed over to a narcissistic liar. Projects failed, morale cratered, people were pitted against each other in a divide-and-conquer strategy, and by the time the smoke had cleared the most experienced and capable people had quit the organization (an extreme recourse, given that for most that involved leaving the community to find jobs elsewhere.) But if you've never dealt with somebody who lies as easily and reflexively as they breathe you really have no idea how destructive such a person can be or how little defense the average person has against someone who can be utterly convincing while peddling the most egregious bullshit.

Watching / listening to / reading Trump's amorphous, ever-shifting claims has been triggering anxiety and depression that I thought I had left behind me years ago, greatly magnified by the fear that we might be putting such a person in charge of not just one small company but the largest economy and most powerful military in the world.
Back then I couldn't believe that people couldn't see through the lies. I eventually came to realize that for many it's not a matter of not being able to, it's that they just prefer not to. Being told what you already want to hear can be incredibly seductive and the pathological liars who instinctively exploit this are consequently incredibly dangerous.

If you're not attracted by Trump's lies, count yourself fortunate but don't for a minute underestimate their appeal to a dismayingly large number of people. And my experience suggests that those who have bought into the small lies and held onto them when challenged will more eagerly swallow ever more preposterous whoppers -- many of his deluded victims won't be able to admit they were wrong about him and they will do whatever mental contortions are necessary to avoid facing up to the fact that they eagerly bought into a load of rubbish. We're a long way from the worst of this and I shudder to think how bad it's going to get before it's over.
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:34 PM on July 6, 2018 [42 favorites]


Here's a thought maybe Trump voters should try to understand us for once. Crazy I know.

3,000,000 more votes dude
posted by kirkaracha at 4:38 PM on July 6, 2018 [20 favorites]


Thread by @RadioFreeTom
Trump is going to do what Trump is going to do. He's not liberal or conservative. It's all just the blurted thoughts of an angry, frightened man who won an office he didn't really want. We have to get through it, but we don't have to pretend we're arguing about real things.
Ceterum autem censeo Trumpem esse delendam
posted by kirkaracha at 4:39 PM on July 6, 2018 [19 favorites]


WaPo: Twitter is sweeping out fake accounts like never before, putting user growth at risk
Twitter has sharply escalated its battle against fake and suspicious accounts, suspending more than 1 million a day in recent months, a major shift to lessen the flow of disinformation on the platform, according to data obtained by The Washington Post.

The rate of account suspensions, which Twitter confirmed to The Post, has more than doubled since October, when the company revealed under congressional pressure how Russia used fake accounts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. Twitter suspended more than 70 million accounts in May and June, and the pace has continued in July, according to the data.

The aggressive removal of unwanted accounts may result in a rare decline in the number of monthly users in the second quarter, which ended last week, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak. Twitter declined to comment on a possible decline in its user base.
posted by gwint at 4:54 PM on July 6, 2018 [13 favorites]


They sure blue tick a fuck ton of nazis though, which appears to relieve them of the obligation to follow the terms of use.
posted by Artw at 4:58 PM on July 6, 2018 [34 favorites]


Can something really be said to be a deadline if there is literally no chance of meeting it and there will likely be no meaningful sanction for missing it?

Now I know you never worked in the software industry.

Trump is set to separate more than 200,000 U.S.-born children from their parents

The racism in US policy towards Haiti is the defining constant of my growing up in Miami. Year after year growing up I saw the policy deck chairs get moved about a bit here and there for Cuban refugees - who similarly rode the gulf stream to refuge in the US - while the door was kept shut tight for Haitians. Most of Trump's awful feels new and groundbreaking. This feels like the same old song.
posted by phearlez at 5:21 PM on July 6, 2018 [4 favorites]


Can't Senate HSGAC drag Nielsen and Azar into a hearing at any time to get answers? Why isn't that oversight committee publicly throwing a fucking fit as a united front?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:28 PM on July 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


Also, McCaskill is the ranking member. I'm calling her office Monday.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:30 PM on July 6, 2018 [6 favorites]


The Washington Post buries some truly dismaying details under its bland headline: Ahead of NATO and Putin Summits, Trump’s Unorthodox Diplomacy Rattles Allies
During an April visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to the White House, a frustrated Trump was sharply critical of both British Prime Minister Theresa May and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. and European officials said. Asked about his comments, the president in a statement to The Washington Post said that “immigration is destroying Europe as we know it and it is very sad to be witness to what is happening.”

European Council President Donald Tusk has derided Trump’s “capricious assertiveness” and warned that European Union countries need to prepare for “worst case scenarios.” Trump, for his part, frequently tells European leaders how much he dislikes the European Union — and how it is “worse than China.”[...]

This report is based on interviews with U.S. and European officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations and Trump’s interactions with world leaders. The core of Trump’s freewheeling approach has been in place since his earliest days in the White House. Shortly after he took office, Trump began passing out his personal cellphone number to a handful of foreign leaders and in April 2017 White House aides were startled when officials in Canada issued a standard summary of a conversation between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump. In it, Trudeau complained of “unfair duties” and “baseless” claims about trade by Trump administration officials.

No one at the White House was aware the call had taken place. “We had no idea what happened,” a senior U.S. official said.[...]

In this instance, U.S. officials had to rely on Trump’s memory. A terse public readout described “a very amicable call.”

After the call, White House aides urged Trump to route all conversations with foreign leaders through the Situation Room, as required under federal records law, the senior official said.
And Putin is of course an even worse problem:
“The president thinks he can be friends with Putin,” former national security adviser H.R. McMaster complained during his time in the White House, according to U.S. officials. “I don’t know why or why he would want to be.”[...]

Some White House officials worry that Putin, who has held several calls with Trump, plays on the president’s inexperience and lack of detailed knowledge about issues while stoking Trump’s grievances.

The Russian president complains to Trump about “fake news” and laments that the U.S. foreign policy establishment — the “deep state” in Putin’s words — is conspiring against them, the first senior U.S. official said.

“It’s not us,” Putin has told Trump, the official summarized. “It’s the subordinates fighting against our friendship.”

In conversations with Trudeau, May and Merkel, Trump is sometimes assertive, brash and even bullying on issues he feels strongly about, such as trade, according to senior U.S. officials. He drives the conversation and isn’t shy about cutting off the allies mid-sentence to make his point, the officials said.

With Putin, Trump takes a more conciliatory approach, often treating the Russian leader as a confidante.
But as Trump said in Montana last night, "You know what? Putin's fine. He's fine. We're all fine. We're people."
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:37 PM on July 6, 2018 [31 favorites]


NYT, Shifting Strategy, Trump’s Lawyers Set New Conditions for Mueller Interview, in which Rudy reappears with new nonsense:
President Trump’s lawyers set new conditions on Friday on an interview with the special counsel and said that the chances that the president would be voluntarily questioned were growing increasingly unlikely.

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, needs to prove before Mr. Trump would agree to an interview that he has evidence that Mr. Trump committed a crime and that his testimony is essential to completing the investigation, said Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s lead lawyer in the case.

His declaration was the latest sign that the president’s lawyers, who long cooperated quietly with the inquiry even as their client attacked it, have shifted to an openly combative stance.
...
“If they can come to us and show us the basis and that it’s legitimate and that they have uncovered something, we can go from there and assess their objectivity,” Mr. Giuliani said in an interview. He urged the special counsel to wrap up his inquiry and write an investigative report. He said Mr. Trump’s lawyers planned to write their own summary of the case.
thatsnothowitworks.gif

As an example of the new stance, Mueller's team requested to interview Kelly a month ago and the White House has been pushing back. Their aim is to discredit Mueller before he acts:
The effort appears to be bearing some fruit. According to a Washington Post-Schar School poll released on Friday, 45 percent of Americans disapprove of how Mr. Mueller is handling the investigation, a 14-point increase from January.

“Nobody is going to consider impeachment if public opinion has concluded this is an unfair investigation, and that’s why public opinion is so important,” Mr. Giuliani said.
posted by zachlipton at 5:40 PM on July 6, 2018 [7 favorites]


I just want to quote one other bit from that Post story Doktor Zed so ably summarized:
Trump’s lack of preparation has added a further level of unpredictability to his interactions with foreign leaders, the officials said. The president rarely reads his nightly briefing book, which focuses on issues likely to come up in meetings, a second senior U.S. official said. To slim down Trump’s workload, aides have sometimes put the most critical information in a red folder, the official said.
So government employees spend long hours preparing briefings full of information he doesn't read, leaving him more Fox News time, and so they've taken to putting the stuff he really has to read in a red folder. I'm sure the red folder really gets careful attention though.
posted by zachlipton at 5:43 PM on July 6, 2018 [20 favorites]


As to Trump supporters. There was a study done years ago in Illinois about charting what happens to a group of true believers when the foundation of their faith collapses. This was a UFO cult, that was waiting for a specific time and place where the mothership would come to take them away. The study infiltrated the group to observe what happens when the mothership didn’t arrive. The group didn’t break apart, they became more fervent in their beliefs and started to actively proselytize. Trump made promises. Make America great again. Etc. As those promises fail to materialize, the true believers are just doubling down on their beliefs. The fact that his poll numbers are static amongst his followers seems to suggest that nothing he does or does not do will change their belief in him. To commit yourself to something so much that it is now a part of your identity puts you in a situation where input from outside your immediate sphere is blocked. 45 for some people arrived on the seen as an answer to some very fundamamtal questions they had, questions that arose through their own situation - anxiety and fear about being replaced by the other. On the Blue, we argue politics and sometimes ethics. We talk about other people’s religion, usually negatively. And Trump supporters, rightly so, get dumped on. But I think we need to change or at least add to our metaphors and models about how people behave surrounding our current government. 45 is a religious figure for a number of people. A savior of sorts. His rallies are revival meetings. The faithful get to be close to their savior. Political, ethical, rational speech will not change their minds.

None of this applies to the 1%ers who are just out to become more wealthy on the backs of the rest of us. That’s all just simple greed.
posted by njohnson23 at 5:51 PM on July 6, 2018 [16 favorites]


Can't Senate HSGAC drag Nielsen and Azar into a hearing at any time to get answers?

Sure.

Why isn't that oversight committee publicly throwing a fucking fit as a united front?

Because the Republicans who control everything it does, and who have absolute control over its subpoena power, don't give a fuck.

Also, McCaskill is the ranking member. I'm calling her office Monday.

Sure, but remember that the power of the ranking member over what the committee does is exactly none whatsoever.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:04 PM on July 6, 2018 [5 favorites]


Re: Trump as cult leader - sorry for the self-link so of course mods delete if appropriate - but the talk of Trump as cult/religious leader had me itching to post this, a video I produced when I was a Sinclair (!) TV reporter for ABC 30 in St. Louis, March of 2017: a pro-Trump rally in Missouri’s capital Jefferson City.

In which it seemed so obvious that the folks attending revered Trump in a way that didn’t reflect reality in almost any respect.
posted by jettloe at 6:05 PM on July 6, 2018 [35 favorites]


This is probably heading to derailsville, but let me just note one of the most telling Trumper demographics: the non-church-going self-identified evangelical Christian. Iirc, that's the Christian group most likely to have voted Trump, even beyond chrurch-goers. What they get from Trump is something they weren't getting previously because they don't go to church.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:13 PM on July 6, 2018 [27 favorites]


Missouri Context:

St Louis is the older brother, kind of wearing out at middle age but his kids seem to be up and coming well. Kansas City is the middle child. Does stuff well, flies under the radar. CoMo is your hippie youngest sister who was an accident. Jefferson City is your Fox News watching parents that you have to periodically visit.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:16 PM on July 6, 2018 [12 favorites]


I'm inclined to suspect that no one in ICE or the entire chain of command from the lowest ICE agent all the way to Trump actually had a plan beyond "LOL FUCK YOU!"

Maybe, possibly, they hoped that by hurting people of color it would frighten other people of color and keep them from coming to America (legally or not). But I'm pretty sure that was secondary to the primary "LOL FUCK YOU!" goal.

The reason they didn't have any plans for actually dealing with the kids is because no planning was involved. Not anymore than when a drunk in a bar hauls off and slugs someone, or a guy on the freeway screams in rage and tailgates someone.

The fact that taking kids away from their parents would be be cruel was about as far ahead as they thought. After that? Shuffle the kids off to somewhere to be someone else's problem.

Along the way, of course, other plans form. There's the plan of contractors to milk money from the government by building kiddie concentration camps. There's the plans of individual ICE agents and higher up ICE people to take the basic "LOL FUCK YOU!" plan and make it worse, thus the people who deleted all records linking kids to parents.

But Trump himself? The worst thing is that for Trump it was Tuesday. There was no grand plan, no plot, not even the slightest bit of thought, just cruelty for its own sake and a total lack of concern for the consequences or future.
posted by sotonohito at 6:23 PM on July 6, 2018 [29 favorites]


if you know a few trumpists, sure, it makes sense to try and understand where their ideas are coming from. it makes sense to try and see what makes them tick to see if you can gently bend them away from the path they're on.

The hard part is talking in a way that persuades them, not you.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:24 PM on July 6, 2018 [4 favorites]


Paul Manafort wants trial moved to Roanoke, says Northern Virginia too liberal (WaPo):
Attorneys for Paul Manafort asked a federal judge to move his fast-approaching criminal bank and tax fraud trial from Alexandria to Roanoke, Va., saying a more Republican-friendly jury would decide his guilt or innocence more fairly.

The president’s former campaign chairman’s prosecution has “become theatre in the continuing controversy” surrounding the president and his election, defense attorneys argue, and as a result, “It is difficult, if not impossible, to divorce the issues in this case from the political views of potential jurors.”
Even more noteworthy,
Also on Friday, attorneys for the special counsel made clear in a filing how they plan to link Manafort’s alleged bank fraud to the Trump campaign.

“The government does not intend to present at trial evidence or argument concerning collusion with the Russian government,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Uzo Asonye writes.

However, he said prosecutors will present evidence that a banker helped Manafort obtain $16 million in loans because he hoped to get a position in the Trump administration.

“In short, the defendant’s role with the Trump campaign is relevant and inextricably intertwined with the. . .bank fraud and bank fraud conspiracy charges. Here, it would be difficult for the jury to understand why the loans were approved without understanding that the lender approved the loans, in spite of the identified deficiencies, because the senior executive factored in his own personal ambition,” Asonye writes.
The lender in question is Stephen Calk, a small-time Chicago banker, who had doors open for him in Trump world after the $16 million loan to Manafort, which represented 23.5% of his bank's total capital at the time, and was possibly a quid quo pro in exchange for being named Secretary of the Army.
posted by peeedro at 6:45 PM on July 6, 2018 [24 favorites]


Trump on Rep. Jim Jordan allegations: “I don’t believe them at all. I believe him. Jim is one of the most outstanding people I’ve met since I’ve been in Washington. I believe him 100 percent. No question in my mind. I believe Jim 100 percent. He’s an outstanding man.”

Politico: A Cesspool of Deviancy’: New Claims of Voyeurism Test Jordan Denials "A half-dozen ex-wrestlers told POLITICO they were regularly harassed in their training facility by sexually aggressive men who attended the university or worked there."

Now we're up to six ex-wrestlers, and it's not simply how appalling the behavior is that they describe, it's also that every single one of them says Jordan knew about it.
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:49 PM on July 6, 2018 [27 favorites]


This Jim Jordan thing, man, you don't always get this perfect a recursive demonstration
Point — @christinawilkie: NEWS: Trump on Rep. Jim Jordan allegations: “I don’t believe them at all. I believe him. Jim is one of the most outstanding people I’ve met since I’ve been in Washington. I believe him 100 percent. No question in my mind. I believe Jim 100 percent. He’s an outstanding man.”

Counterpoint — NBC News, Fourth Ohio State wrestler says Rep. Jim Jordan knew about sexual abuse when he was coach:
I don’t believe them at all. I believe him. is exactly how you get someone knowing about abuse allegations and doing nothing and sweeping them under the rug. What you're saying about this dude? This refusing to believe people reporting something ugly? It's exactly what he was doing when he decided to just personally disregard reports rather than take some action and involve other, less biased people.

Now, to be honest I'm sure in Trump's case it's less about any actual belief in this person than simply not caring about anything but personal self-interest. But still, the hand-waving dismissal performance is so self-referential the news networks should flash a QED up over it.
posted by phearlez at 7:03 PM on July 6, 2018 [5 favorites]


Jim Jordan will be one of the chief questioners of Peter Strzok during his public hearing, will he not? Given Strzok's... outspokeness... in his texts I can't imagine how difficult it will be for him to refrain from saying he refuses to take ethical accusations from an enabler of mass sexual abuse.

I'm sure that would be counter productive. He probably shouldn't do it. But oh god would it be satisfying.
posted by Justinian at 7:09 PM on July 6, 2018 [13 favorites]


NEWS: Trump on Rep. Jim Jordan allegations

NEWS: [Also accused sexual predator] Trump on Rep. Jim Jordan allegations...

Seriously, any news story that carries Trump's comments on Jordan without reference to the legion credible accusations against Trump is again, complicit. It's without question that Trump doesn't just not care about sexual misconduct allegations, he and the entire Republican party are affirmatively on the side of every accused predator.

Hastert.
Roy Moore.
Jim Jordan.
Trump.

This is a fucking obvious pattern and practice of institutional acceptance, cover-up and continued promotion. Republicans affirmatively condone and promote sexual assault. It should be noted, every, single, time.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:12 PM on July 6, 2018 [76 favorites]


Don't forget Bill Shine, newly appointed communications director (just this week).

Shine was driven out of Fox News because even they'd found his behavior unacceptable.
posted by Nerd of the North at 7:21 PM on July 6, 2018 [29 favorites]


Sexual assault and pedophilia: that's the Republican way.
posted by gucci mane at 7:26 PM on July 6, 2018 [17 favorites]


to engage with the concept of "be nice to them so they won't get worse" theory in a less dismissive...

i am inclined to view this notion, in this context, as no more worth engaging than some glib nonsense from rudi guiliani, which is to say, suspicious of gaslight or worse, if engaging at all. accordingly, your first statement, anem0ne, was poetic and spot on.

in general, a good faith approach is a fine and likely faultless opening. the "be nice to them so they won't get worse" maxim, all context aside, paraphrases the "treat others as you would be treated" maxim, and could be innocently unobjectionable. it is a workable default approach. an opening posture.

should bad faith be encountered, that maxim may be set aside in favor of another geared to more adversarial posture.

i hear "be nice or they/we'll be worse" generally from the mouths of people i am already reasonably confident are not speaking in good faith, the nazi apologists and some among the champions of civility, and disregard it. waste of resource to argue; waste of attention to be drawn in by a(nother) guilianian illogic gambit. there are real things to worry about.

but since you do seriously consider it, i think some reason can be found for the assertion in considering the dynamics of the interpersonal engagement insofar as escalation tends to fix disputants more firmly in exaggerated extremes of their starting/actual/essential positions. not sure it sticks; suspect in my case the radicalization of my own position during vitriolic dispute sticks better the stronger my emotional investment/response is.

also, pretty much any imperative suggestion with an "or else" clause already violates any reasonable notion of civility. the speaker is either lying or willing to do the threatened thing, fatally undermining their credibility as a source of good-faith statements.
posted by 20 year lurk at 7:33 PM on July 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


I've tried to avoid bringing Supreme Court rumors into these threads unless there's an underlying point about the right tearing itself apart over just what sub-species of conservative justice they're looking for, but I want to highlight Politico's 'It looks all-American': Trump wants the whole package in Supreme Court nominee, in which physical appearance seems to play a significant role, and it's Trump's particular views on what looks "American" that are controlling.

I would also like to know on what possible standards this judgement was based:
In her interview with Trump, Barrett, who has only one year of experience on the bench, performed poorly, according to a second source familiar with the process.
posted by zachlipton at 7:34 PM on July 6, 2018 [11 favorites]


Shine was driven out of Fox News because even they'd found his behavior unacceptable

His wife is a real peach as well: Bill Shine’s Wife Darla Complained She Couldn’t Use N-Word and Spread Conspiracy Theories About ‘Blacks’
posted by bibliowench at 7:40 PM on July 6, 2018 [22 favorites]


it's impossible to overestimate the magnitude of the individual and societal harm that will come from permanently fucking with that many young lives over a single casually callous decision.

I've probably shared this before - I'm a blindingly white person but if you go back to my great-grandmother you find native Mexicans. She came north to flee racism, and that's basically why I find myself living in the midwest today. Things like racism have a long reaching impact, no matter how slight.

Her and her family, as I understand it, made a good life for themselves up here, and she was one of those women who blazed her own path in both schooling and jobs that had previously been only for men.

So I think it's fair to say my ancestors came out on top, right? No one was lynched or enslaved or anything like that. Yet it still impacted my life, and now here I am telling you about it.

But if 200,000 families are utterly destroyed? How many people might the branches of those family trees might hold 100 years from now, here and in Central America? And what sort of reputation might The Land of The Free and The Home of The Brave have earned for itself with all of them?
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:40 PM on July 6, 2018 [9 favorites]


[video] @MuslimIQ This is really depressing. Children are born knowing only love & unity. These kids are being indoctrinated with misinformation, hate, and propaganda. We must do better as a nation. 😓
posted by scalefree at 7:51 PM on July 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


MegaThread, I just want to tell you you're so great, and, I like, have all your albums and that one where Two unicycles and some duct tape left the cookies out for Tehhund was totes the best, and I that one where zalex met the worm citations of CROJ is all times, man, it's so cool you're here and everything.

So anyway this part of the Cracked.com list of 5 self-pwns of the alt-nazis, linked upthread, is just boggling my noodle, like, okay:

4
The "Alt-Right" Hates Alt-Furries

The world of furries is a strange and interesting place. It's not all squirrel costume sex, which is why I've never fully gotten into it, but I have seen videos, and they're oddly engaging. For our purposes, what you need to know about the world of furries is that it's a rich tapestry of lifestyles and philosophies. For example, while some furries are just folks who want to be anthropomorphic foxes, others are folks who want to be anthropomorphic Nazi foxes. And that's an issue for the other kind of Nazis, who are anthropomorphic dicks.

The group in question call themselves alt-furries. They very much still dress as animals, but those animals are dressed as Nazis. And if you're wondering how a furry dresses as a Nazi, just imagine Benicio del Toro's Wolfman, but with swastika armbands. However, regular right-wing folks like Richard "Ow, my face!" Spencer have shown the deepest depths of their intolerance by actually rejecting these furry Nazis, saying he disavowed them in a now-banned subreddit. He did not elaborate on his rationale, which probably would have made for amazing reading.

It's not even clear among the alt-furries which are actual Nazis and which are simply wearing the costume of a humanoid animal who is a Nazi (seriously, this is the subject of a bitter debate that resulted in one furry convention getting cancelled). [...]

I realize that you likely understand this controversy less now than when you had no idea it existed at all. Let's just move on.


Like. *bkshhh*. Wow. A new . . level. of. y'know. Wow. Anyway keep doing what you're doing!
posted by petebest at 7:57 PM on July 6, 2018 [24 favorites]


A late Friday surprise. WSJ, Trump Administration Expected to Suspend ACA Program Related to Insurer Payments
The Trump administration is expected to suspend an Affordable Care Act program that plays a key role in the health law’s insurance markets, a move that could deal a financial blow to many insurers that expect payments.

The suspension of some payouts under the program, known as risk adjustment, could come in the wake of a recent decision by a federal judge in New Mexico, who ruled that part of its implementation was flawed and hadn’t been adequately justified by federal regulators, people familiar with the plans said.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the program, may at least temporarily suspend the payments insurers expected to receive this fall, stemming from their 2017 business, and next fall, which would have reflected their 2018 business, the people said.
...
It isn’t clear if a suspension of the risk-adjustment payments could lead some insurers to seek higher rates for next year’s plans. Mr. Banerjee said some insurers might seek to “reprice for the coming year” if it is clear they wouldn’t be getting the expected money based on prior years’ business.
posted by zachlipton at 7:59 PM on July 6, 2018 [8 favorites]




@EricLiptonNYT: SCOOP: EPA, in last day that Pruitt is administrator, moves to circumvent limit on manufacturing of "super polluting" diesel trucks, undoing a 20-year effort embraced by Dems and GOP administrations to curb toxic emissions.

Cool, one last divinely-appointed Fuck You, World on his way out the door. Praise be.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:12 PM on July 6, 2018 [21 favorites]


Governor: Trump officials view placing migrant kids in foster care equal to family reunification

“The secretary told us on a conference call they do not have an intention to reunify these children with their parents,” Inslee said on MSNBC’s “All in With Chris Hayes,” appearing to refer to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. “They’re going to call it good if they can find anybody else who can serve as a foster parent or anybody else who can serve as familial relationship, and these kids don’t even know these strangers,” he continued.

As with others in this thread, I am also reaching the point where any comment I have to make would only put me in a deeper chamber under the Ministry of Love in a few years' time.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:39 PM on July 6, 2018 [76 favorites]


Normal event, normal era, normal country.

Expert says 'rogue' transmission on Chicago police radio channels was likely portion of Hitler speech

An unauthorized audio transmission over Chicago police radio frequencies Wednesday night seems to be a partial rebroadcast of an Adolf Hitler speech from a 1935 Nazi propaganda film, an expert said. [...]The audio interrupted police radio frequencies for about four minutes Wednesday evening.

Melissa Stratton, spokeswoman for the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, has said the city is investigating. She said it was a “rogue radio transmission,” a general term for unauthorized transmissions, and not a city user accidentally broadcasting his or her own audio.

[...] Another user said the transmission sounded like “someone telling a story, a very scary, intense, angry story.”

posted by Rust Moranis at 8:51 PM on July 6, 2018 [15 favorites]


The lender in question is Stephen Calk, a small-time Chicago banker, who had doors open for him in Trump world after the $16 million loan to Manafort, which represented 23.5% of his bank's total capital at the time, and was possibly a quid quo pro in exchange for being named Secretary of the Army.

GREAT recap of the core financial crimes from Maddow February 2018, where she discusses "Lender D", and the quid-pro-quo AND Calk's divorce proceedings.
posted by mikelieman at 9:00 PM on July 6, 2018 [4 favorites]


The disgusting ‘normal’ under Trump (Alexandra Petri, WaPo)
I understand that so many other nightmare things have happened that when the president of the United States makes a cruel crack about the #MeToo movement at a rally, it barely ripples on the surface. I understand that we as a country look at this man, our president, and say, “Yes, that sounds like him! That is exactly the sort of thing that he would say,” and then we leave what should be a full month of just outrage by the side of the road to fend for itself — maybe with an apologetic note that we hope to get back to it in 2019, when we will maybe not also have to be upset at the speaker of the House for not bothering to familiarize himself with who Scott Pruitt was even after he hit his 58th scandal. I understand that we cannot be indignant about everything all the time or we would never sleep.

But as 2018 barrels past this incident, let us at least pause and agree that it was disgusting in a now-familiar way.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:43 PM on July 6, 2018 [43 favorites]


@MarkHarrisNYC (New York mag):
I don't feel we need to understand Trump voters as much as we need to outnumber them.
posted by chris24 at 10:06 PM on July 6, 2018 [89 favorites]


I saw the ultimate "we need to treat them more nicely so they stop being awful people" link on twitter recently but damn me if I can find it. The problem is it was an image of an old newspaper article... possibly NYT... and thus unsearchable. The upshot? It was about how the Jews in Germany should be more understanding of the Nazis so that they don't become more entrenched in their awful Naziism. Yes, it was a real thing.

That's basically all I have to say about that. And anyone who feels like posting something about more understanding for Trumpies should just think about that article for a while.
posted by Justinian at 10:10 PM on July 6, 2018 [26 favorites]


If anyone else saw the same thing and has a link I would appreciate it so I can bookmark it. Hell for all I know it may have been posted to metafilter in one of the previous threads. Almost everything is.
posted by Justinian at 10:14 PM on July 6, 2018


Justinian: New York Times (of course), 1934.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:17 PM on July 6, 2018 [41 favorites]


@PeterAlexander Here’s the verbatim exchange from today’s status conference in the Southern District of California, via @JuliaEAinsley
FEDERAL JUDGE: "Will counsel be here this weekend or are you going back?"
ACLU LAWYER: "We will do whatever (inaudible). We will stay the weekend."
DOJ LAWYER: "I have dog-sitting responsibilities that require me to go back to Colorado but I will be back Monday."
FEDERAL JUDGE: "I would like to meet again perhaps 10 a.m."
posted by scalefree at 10:33 PM on July 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


If he didn't fly back, the dog would have to be put in a kennel. Who wants a dog to be in a cage over a weekend?
posted by xammerboy at 10:44 PM on July 6, 2018 [53 favorites]


alexandra petri is so angry she nearly turned in a joke-free column, and i don't blame her
posted by murphy slaw at 11:04 PM on July 6, 2018 [27 favorites]


I am reminded of why, as much as I love parts of MeFi, I don't post a lot. I posted my previous comment just before leaving for the evening, and I come back to find myself transformed into a giant strawman that's gotten pounded into the dirt.

I was not remotely suggesting that we try to empathize with Nazis or child-cagers, and I understand the impulse to declare anybody Trump adjacent to be unforgivable.

But for all that, I was talking tariff policy. It's not like people in the industrial Midwest suddenly decided they were anti-NAFTA or China because of Trump's magic spell. This has been a thing for years, and Trump's been giving them what they want on economics.

Are some of those people *also* irredeemable racists? Sure, and I agree there are a lot of them that can't and shouldn't be dealt with. I don't give a shit about "civility". But I'm not yet willing to say that anyone who is pro-Trump because of economics is an automatic Nazi.

We are already behind the 8-ball due to voter suppression, gerrymandering, and so on. We write these people off at our peril. So unless you're really looking forward to Civil War 2, my only point is that we shouldn't throw out previously Dem voter babies with the alt-right bathwater if we don't have to.
posted by tau_ceti at 11:24 PM on July 6, 2018 [20 favorites]


Some White House officials worry that Putin, who has held several calls with Trump, plays on the president’s inexperience and lack of detailed knowledge about issues while stoking Trump’s grievances.

No shit, Sherlock.
posted by soundguy99 at 11:38 PM on July 6, 2018 [17 favorites]


Here's a fun approach to blocking corruption: Rhode Island bill would keep Trump off 2020 ballot unless he releases his tax returns - "Rhode Island’s state Senate passed a bill this week that would keep candidates off the presidential ballot in their state if they don’t release five years' worth of tax returns." The Senate vote was 34-3; now it goes to the House.

There is some concern about whether it's constitutional for states to have their own requirements for the ballot, but I suspect that a challenge won't hold up on those grounds - plenty of states have filing requirements (including, "we're only listing one candidate per party"), and someone who didn't qualify to be listed would always be available as a write-in.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:21 AM on July 7, 2018 [17 favorites]


We write these people off at our peril.

We don't need their votes. We just need to get our voters to the ballots.

So unless you're really looking forward to Civil War 2

If there's a Civil War 2, it's not going to be because the leftists weren't polite enough to the people who believe that America will be great as soon as we get rid of all the social rights, legal safety nets, and business regulations of the last hundred years.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:26 AM on July 7, 2018 [75 favorites]


We write these people off at our peril.

I think a part of what's really frustrating is that Trump's tariff and immigration policies won't remotely solve any of the issues they say they will address. However, if we write off all of the people that support them as rubes and racists, I agree we'll never reach them. We need policy proposals that address the underlying (non-racist) concerns about local economic security and cultural identity. Perhaps policies supporting small businesses, infrastructure projects, etc. I don't mean to say we should stop calling out racists for being racist, but using a stick and a carrot is generally more effective than using either alone.
posted by xammerboy at 12:29 AM on July 7, 2018 [3 favorites]


Republicans on Russia trip face scorn and ridicule from critics at home.
Republican lawmakers who went to Russia seeking a thaw in relations received an icy reception from Democrats and Kremlin watchers for spending the Fourth of July in a country that interfered in the U.S. presidential election and continues to deny it.

“Cannot believe GOP, once the party that stood strong against Soviets & only a decade ago sought to democratize the Middle East, is now surrendering so foolishly to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the Kremlin’s kleptocracy — only two years ­after Russia interfered in U.S. election,” tweeted Clint Watts, an information warfare specialist at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and frequent featured expert before congressional panels examining Russian influence operations.

“Russians wooing with a shopworn song — repugnant as nails on a blackboard,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote in a Twitter post in response to the delegation’s trip. “They are enemies and adversaries, attacking us.”
posted by scalefree at 12:33 AM on July 7, 2018 [22 favorites]


We need policy proposals that address the underlying (non-racist) concerns about local economic security and cultural identity. Perhaps policies supporting small businesses, infrastructure projects, etc.

You know who literally published white papers describing exactly what you're asking for? And talked about job retraining, small business, etc all the time? It was one of the two candidates for President. Not the one who won.

The people who vote for Trump do not care about policy. They say they do but their voting is inconsistent with that hypothesis. When people show you who they are, believe them.
posted by Justinian at 12:37 AM on July 7, 2018 [111 favorites]


But I'm not yet willing to say that anyone who is pro-Trump because of economics is an automatic Nazi.

Putting the term Nazi aside, anyone today who self-identifies as a Trump supporter is a person who by definition has a value system that I find to be abhorrent, and beyond any pragmatism I can muster to try to reach. To use one of your examples, I hear: “Sure, Trump’s a bigot, a racist, a misogynist, and a compulsive liar. But we're totally aligned on our opposition to NAFTA, so I’ll hold my nose.”

Holding one’s nose at this point, knowing what’s public and incontrovertible about Trump, completely obliterates one’s moral compass in my view, and I don’t have it in me to do anything but fight the political fight against this sickness. Bless those who have the fortitude to try, but at this point it ain’t me.
posted by Brak at 1:02 AM on July 7, 2018 [38 favorites]


Here's a helpful reminder that Trump supporters are okay with concentration camps and stealing babies.
posted by Lyme Drop at 1:06 AM on July 7, 2018 [64 favorites]


A substantial percentage of Americans have always been okay with concentration camps and stealing babies... and slavery, and rape, and lynching, and many variations on genocide. The benefit of the Trump Administration is that it has made it so much easier to identify them.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:42 AM on July 7, 2018 [8 favorites]


anyone today who self-identifies as a Trump supporter is a person who by definition has a value system that I find to be abhorrent
...and that value system includes a dedication to lying, cheating and stealing that makes refusing to do business with any of them not just a moral decision but a very practical one.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:45 AM on July 7, 2018 [15 favorites]


Mod note: Please, for the love of whatever you love, please, please drop Round #2380572069275 of "should we be nice to / try to understand Trumpists?" Begging.
posted by taz (staff) at 2:24 AM on July 7, 2018 [40 favorites]


I think a part of what's really frustrating is that Trump's tariff and immigration policies won't remotely solve any of the issues they say they will address.

No! What's really frustrating is that those weren't issues to begin with!

Disagreement about trade policy is, I know, a fraught area for some of my brothers, sisters and others on the left, and I know there are people I respect that understand free trade and the broader neoliberal project to be entirely coextensive. That was what Seattle '99 was about. I remember. So I understand there's, uh, a diversity of opinion here. But literally nobody thinks tariffs and trade wars are a viable answer.

Similarly, there is no "surge" of people entering the country, border communities are not being "flooded" or "overwhelmed" with illegitimate entrants, asylum seekers or entirely legal immigrants. The whole thing is a racist mirage entire.

I don't have much hope for a fact-based media holding the Administration to account on these and similar questions, though Paul Krugman does his part. What I really, really don't want to see, though, is anyone here accepting these framings for so much as the time it takes to stab out a comment. These aren't the issues that confront us, and never were.
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:37 AM on July 7, 2018 [37 favorites]


Yep. Absolutely no immigration crisis at all. Border crossings are basically at a 40 year low. The only "crisis" for Trumpettes is that there are brown people living here and in a generation, more than them.
posted by chris24 at 3:05 AM on July 7, 2018 [36 favorites]


I sometimes troll Trump supporters by pointing out that it is too late to prevent the US from becoming majority minority. Kids under five already are. When those kids grow up and have their own kids, after their grandparents are gone, the US is going to be majority minority. Period. You could completely stop all immigration and ban birth control for white women, and it wouldn't stop those kids from growing up and replacing their whiter elders.

I take some hope from that. My kids are white, but I don't particularly expect that my grandkids will be, if I have any.
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:38 AM on July 7, 2018 [12 favorites]


(Of course, I also worry that this will just make Trump supporters work that much harder on building an apartheid era South African style system of minority rule...)
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:43 AM on July 7, 2018 [9 favorites]


Somebody shared this Twitter thread with me about what happened in South Africa in the mid 20th century. It seems like this might be the best historical analogy for where we are right now (out of many possible analogies...)
So, Trump. As I said, historical analogies are dangerous. But what I keep thinking about was the 1948 election, the one in which the National Party first got elected. Seventy years ago. 26 May. That was the turning point for South Africa.

Thing is, if you go back and read the papers at the time, what is so shockingly clear is that no-one realised what was in the process of happening. They all thought it would blow over soon.

You see, the National Party never won the popular vote. They had barely 37%. They only got in because of the electoral system. Rural votes were more heavily represented in Parliament. They barely squeaked in. It was never meant to happen. It was a glitch.

And Apartheid? Read the newspapers of the time. Very few in the English press took it seriously. It was a word and a couple of incendiary and racist slogans. Even the National Party itself did not have any detailed policies. It was clearly impractical, doomed.

In 1953, the NP achieved a solid majority. Still, people did not think they would last. 

In those days, coloured people in the Cape still had the vote. The NP passed an act taking them off the voter's roll. 

The Appelate Division struck it down as unconstitutional.

So what the NP then did was to pack the Senate, to ensure a two-thirds majority, and they changed the Constitution. That was 1955. That was the first time that it really became clear that big trouble was coming. Seven years after they got in. 

It took 40 years to get them out.
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:54 AM on July 7, 2018 [105 favorites]


I know Jared Diamond gets some serious side-eye in these parts, but I am reminded of his book Collapse, specifically, his evaluation of the Rwandan genocide. Yes, there were these racial tensions between Hutu and Tutsi and European colonists are at least in significant part to blame for these tensions. But IIRC Diamond argued that things burst into flame when people did not have very much at all, multiple households within single dwellings, lack of jobs, other bad economic things.

I also recall Susan Sontag writing about how, during instances of plague in medieval Europe, Jewish populations were attacked, the idea that Jews were responsible for plague.

Or heck, look at our own genocide with Native Americans.

Diamond's point is a simplistic one, but it seems to be accurate: whenever there's a struggle for resources, people go crazy. Now, white people are realizing that they'll have less of the pie. And going crazy about it.

We should not engage in defeatism, but I think we also have to acknowledge the human capacity for brutality and lack of reason in certain contexts. Trump voters are only a novelty in that this a new manifestation of an old human tendency.
posted by angrycat at 4:11 AM on July 7, 2018 [12 favorites]


yeah, but when haven't we struggled for resources? The nature of global capitalism is that it is a continuous competition for resources, and even if white people in America are enjoying some of the highest standards of living in recorded history, they're still upset because they don't have as much as they believe that they're entitled to.

I acknowledge that Trump voters are coming from a place of fear and defending what they believe should be theirs. I just don't accept their definition of what belongs to them or believe in the justice of their desires, because it often means that people like me should not have as much of what they have.
posted by bl1nk at 4:32 AM on July 7, 2018 [13 favorites]


The nature of global capitalism is that it is a continuous competition for resources, and even if white people in America are enjoying some of the highest standards of living in recorded history, they're still upset because they don't have as much as they believe that they're entitled to.

In absolute terms, again, there is no meaningful resource scarcity. Energy may be the exception, but even here renewable energy technology is developing so quickly that the fossil fuel industry will soon require significant subsidy to hold its own against solar and wind.

We'll probably need to develop different pathways for the production of material goods that are currently petroleum-derived, from shrink-wrap to spandex, but that too is an area where I actually and unusually do expect market-based innovation to fill the gap between supply and demand.

Too, there remains a giant sustainability issue involved in raising the entire seven-plus billion population of the planet to the level of material prosperity and personal mobility Westerners have regarded as ordinary since the end of the Second World War.

But in terms of the American economy? Any shortages or scarcities you or I will experience are (a) ones generated by the inherent, brutal inefficiency of our way of doing things — i.e. the proverbial fruit rotting in the fields because of a sudden evaporation of the immigrant labor necessary to harvest it; (b) supply-chain issues exacerbated by foolish trade policy; (c) strictly matters of demand for a particular brand of something, rather than the thing itself; or (d) issues arising out of our omnicidal treatment of the global ecosystem, like the predicted disappearance of the banana.
posted by adamgreenfield at 4:55 AM on July 7, 2018 [25 favorites]


My Dad and Henry Ford [SLTheNib]
posted by runcifex at 5:17 AM on July 7, 2018 [9 favorites]


Diamond's point is a simplistic one, but it seems to be accurate: whenever there's a struggle for resources, people go crazy. Now, white people are realizing that they'll have less of the pie. And going crazy about it.

I think it's more like, "White people traditionally had unrestricted/unregulated access to resources", and the change is now, there's scarcity and on top of "freaking out" there's the historical dominance edge appearing to disappear. The traditional resource complaint, "THEY are taking OUR jobs" + the escalated "Scarcity" == Crazy.

I think, at least.
posted by mikelieman at 5:21 AM on July 7, 2018 [3 favorites]


Glenn Greenwald is touring Russia this week to 'combat toxic views' about that country.
posted by octothorpe at 5:32 AM on July 7, 2018 [12 favorites]


Glenn Greenwald is touring Russia this week to 'combat toxic views' about that country.

I'd love to know who's footing the bill for this birthright trip.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:38 AM on July 7, 2018 [33 favorites]


Glenn Greenwald is touring Russia this week to 'combat toxic views' about that country.

Even if Russia had never attempted to meddle in the US (and Brexit) vote, it still would be a heavily corrupted kleptocratic mafia state.
posted by PenDevil at 6:02 AM on July 7, 2018 [34 favorites]


And almost cartoonishly anti-LGBT, which you'd think GG would care a tiny bit about.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:08 AM on July 7, 2018 [42 favorites]


Secretary of State Pompeo leaves North Korea with promise of more talks but no tangible breakthrough (WaPo):
Ahead of the new round of talks, Kim Yong Chol, North Korea’s septuagenarian former spy chief, teased Pompeo, suggesting that the “serious” negotiations the night before may have caused Pompeo to lose sleep.

“We did have very serious discussion on very important matters yesterday. So thinking about those discussions, you might have not slept well last night,” Kim said.

“Director Kim, I slept just fine,” Pompeo responded, according to a pool report provided by reporters accompanying the secretary of state.
Another sleepy Secretary of State. Also the State Department has denied the signed "Rocket Man" CD was given to the North Koreans.
posted by peeedro at 6:32 AM on July 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


AP: North Korea Says Pompeo Talks ‘Regrettable’
North Korea says high-level talks with a U.S. delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were “regrettable” and has accused Washington of trying to unilaterally pressure the country into abandoning its nukes.

The statement by an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman on Saturday came hours after Pompeo concluded two days of talks with North Korean officials led by Kim Yong Chol.

The statement says that the United States betrayed the spirit of last month’s summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by making unilateral demands on “CVID,” or the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea.

It says the outcome of the follow-up talks was “very concerning” because it has led to a “dangerous phase that might rattle our willingness for denuclearization that had been firm.”
Now that the media spectacle of the Singapore summit has faded, US-North Korean relations are headed back to square one. Incidentally, Pompeo did not meet with Kim this time, as he has in his previous trips, but what should he have expected after that decidedly undiplomatic "Rocket Man" CD gift?
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:41 AM on July 7, 2018 [9 favorites]


1. I think there's a widespread misunderstanding of ICE under Obama versus ICE under Trump. ICE under Obama was extremely bad and did many though not all of the same things as ICE under Trump. However, the increase in deportations under Obama was an increase mainly in name, and in fact Obama was no worse a deporter than other presidents. In some areas, Obama pulled ICE back - focusing only on "criminal" immigrants (which was also bullshit), ordering that ICE stay away from courts and churches, etc. The thing that Obama did that really paved the way for Trump was to start formally deporting people near the border and keeping records rather than informally deporting them. On the one hand, this saved Trump a couple of steps. On the other, there's no reason to believe that he wouldn't have taken those steps.

It's a tough circle to square - the American deportation machine was, in places, as murderous under Obama as under Trump, and although later in his administration Obama made some small modifications, he basically didn't do much to improve it. Cold rooms, withheld medications, busing people around the country, deporting people to dangerous places where they were killed - these things happened under Obama too. (On and off as my life allowed after about 2008, I went to protests and followed this issue; I mean, it has been something I've cared about for a while.)

At the same time, I think that the narrative that elections "don't matter" and "they're all equally bad" just isn't true, and you don't need to stand up and cheer for Obama's policies to agree. There's a difference between "we won't see acceptable change with the Democrats as they are now" and "the GOP won't make things worse".

2. With Greenwald: On one hand, I think irrational hatred of Russia and Russian things is an American problem. If he's going to go around and, eg, interview Russian leftists, do cultural stuff, do some detailed reporting about important inflection points in modern Russian history, inform people about things that are true (eg, their national healthcare system has been improved by Putin, it's a fact), I don't think that's bad. I would broadly support it, actually, and very similar work was done during the Cold War by various liberal and center left journalists.

If it's going to be woo-hoo, there are no problems here, mumble-mumble-no-homo, then I would not support that.

Lots of people on the left defended the Stalin-era USSR against their better judgment and personal knowledge because they thought the revolution was more important, including Paul Robeson, who was a very fine person and should not be judged by this. It would be wrong and misguided to assume that you need to defend Puin-era Russia because any counterweight to US hegemony is a good counterweight, but it wouldn't be unprecedented.
posted by Frowner at 6:42 AM on July 7, 2018 [23 favorites]


Jim Jordan is accused of turning a blind eye to Ohio State sexual abuse. Now he’s attacking the accusers. (Tara Golshan | Vox)
Rep. Jim Jordan, one of the most powerful conservatives in the House, has been accused by at least five men of turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse of possibly more than 1,000 athletes and students, when he was the assistant coach of the wrestling team at Ohio State from 1986 to 1994.

Jordan’s response: deny the allegations and raise questions about his accusers’ intents.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:49 AM on July 7, 2018 [16 favorites]


A little steel in the spine’: Rod Rosenstein, facing mounting criticism from Congress, is starting to fight back (WaPo)
Rosenstein has been in the hot seat ever since he appointed Robert S. Mueller III to investigate whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. The president dislikes him and conservative Republicans in Congress have toyed with impeaching him over Russia-related documents they say he won’t hand over. Those who work for Rosenstein know any day could be their boss’s last.

But in more than 14 months on the job, the former Maryland U.S. attorneyseems to be getting used to the constant controversy and criticism that comes from overseeing Mueller. Rather than walking on eggshells, he’s starting to fight back.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:52 AM on July 7, 2018 [4 favorites]




C’mon, now. I bow to no one in my appreciation for Paul Robeson, but nobody’s beyond reproach. His support of the Moscow party line was then, and remains, a blot upon his honor that just can’t be waved away.
posted by adamgreenfield at 6:57 AM on July 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


conservative Republicans in Congress have toyed with impeaching him over Russia-related documents they say he won’t hand over.

Good luck with impeaching Rosenstein and doing Trump’s dirty work for him. I think Rosenstein is fighting back because he knows even though Trump is holding a pair of aces he’s holding a suited 10-Jack and the flop was Q-K-A of that same suit. Trump thinks he has three aces with a potential four aces on the river while Rosenstein is quietly smiling because no matter what happens he wins.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 7:00 AM on July 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


Trump’s Trade War Is a Big Problem for Republicans in Politically Pivotal Iowa
(Ed Kilgore | NYMag)
So here's the thing: agriculture is very important to the *identity* of this state, but I'm actually not so sure how important it is to the *economy* of Iowa at this point. I think that Trump's appeal here is rooted in identity. They miss the America they [think they] grew up in. (That meme wasn't just popular on rightwing social media, for what it's worth. I also saw it shared by liberal and leftist Iowans, which sort of made me wonder where, if anywhere, I would fit in this America they grew up in.) They think that Trump is going to Make America Great Again by once again centering the perspective of white, patriarchal, Christian, non-urban people and by reinstating their dominance over America civic and cultural life. I am not sure that the average Trump voter in Iowa is going to abandon him because soybean farmers take a hit from tariffs. I'm not even sure they'll blame him: they might decide that George Soros manipulated the markets or something.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:13 AM on July 7, 2018 [5 favorites]


Hey, look over there at the front page of the New York Times… it's a tête-à-tête with Trump's favorite law professor! Alan Dershowitz Is Enjoying This—In an interview with The Times, Mr. Dershowitz talks about McCarthyism (Martha’s Vineyard-style) and why nuance doesn’t exist in politics anymore.

And on Twitter, @RealDonaldTrump (or whoever's typing this morning) is trying to tie their recent bot-purge and followers "the Failing New York Times and propaganda machine for Amazon, the Washington Post" when, as of last year, almost half of his were estimated as fake.
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:26 AM on July 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


So here's the thing: agriculture is very important to the *identity* of this state, but I'm actually not so sure how important it is to the *economy* of Iowa at this point.

It's not about raw percentages though. It's about knock on effects to other parts of the local economy. If the farmer isn't making money they don't invest in new capital resources. They don't invest in luxuries. The people who make and retail those see their fortunes fall, they don't buy as much, and so on. Soybeans cost more in China, prices go down domestically with increased supply, John Deere's dealerships are struggling, lays off a few people.

The economy in aggregate is very resilient to knock on effects because there's usually mixed fortunes in aggregate. Local economies? They'll be screwed without proper attention and rectifying action. A smart person conducting a trade war would look at the potential targets, obtain funding, and flood the area with counter-cyclical spending to mitigate the political and economic damage. For instance, you could pinpoint the areas that will be hardest hit, deliver assistance to counties to improve infrastructure and catch up on deferred maintenance of crucial road networks from farms which would help to offset any employment losses in ancillary industries and keep money flowing in the local economy.

Instead, Dear Leader is relying on his people thinking he's doing the right thing despite their getting the short end of the stick. Which is also a thing I guess. We'll find out if it works in 2020 if he's not driven out of the country on a rail before then I guess.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 7:27 AM on July 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


agriculture is very important to the *identity* of this state, but I'm actually not so sure how important it is to the *economy* of Iowa at this point.

The WaPo has some nifty graphics showing how the Chinese tariffs are targeted at both rural and Trump-voting districts and a breakdown of agricultural vs manufacturing tariffs, Iowa is well-targeted by both.

They also have a poll showing that 56% of voters think tariffs will be bad for jobs and 73% think tariffs will be bad for the cost of products. For both questions, tariffs poll worse in battleground congressional districts.

Caveat, this poll was performed by the Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. The Schar School is essentially a Koch funded academic policy shop, the phrasing of the poll question reflects that: "Trump announced plans to impose taxes known as tariffs on some goods that are imported to the United States. China has responded by announcing tariffs on some U.S. goods sold in China. Do you think this situation will be good or bad for the [jobs|cost of products] in the United States?"
posted by peeedro at 7:29 AM on July 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


I sometimes troll Trump supporters by pointing out that it is too late to prevent the US from becoming majority minority. Kids under five already are. When those kids grow up and have their own kids, after their grandparents are gone, the US is going to be majority minority.

That's based on the assumption that all those five year olds and under are going to grow up in the United States, and the events of the last month make it pretty damn clear that Trump and his vast swathe of vicious moronic goons are intending to prevent them from doing so.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:39 AM on July 7, 2018 [10 favorites]


"So here's the thing: agriculture is very important to the *identity* of this state, but I'm actually not so sure how important it is to the *economy* of Iowa at this point. "

Ag itself is like 3% of the Iowa economy, but manufacturing is 22%, and Iowa's ag & manufacturing have both been surgically targeted, making up 25% of the state's economy ... plus all the knock-on effects.

The other thing is that in rural parts of the state, Ag is often the biggest or even ONLY thing going in the county, and what few other jobs there are depend on agriculture. There'll be a grain elevator that employs people, a tiny branch railroad to the elevator, maybe a grain processor that cooks ethanol or makes pet food (Purina, f'ex, has a lot of facilities in rural parts of the midwest). The teeny towns with miniscule retail (maybe a grocery store or diner, some place that services and maybe sells farm equipment, gas station, pizza place -- although if you're lucky it's a gas station pizza place because Casey's makes good pizza!) are entirely dependent on farmers making money. So Des Moines isn't going to feel the heat from Ag tariffs, no, but a teeny rural county with 3,000 people total is going to be hit HARD and it's going to put a lot of pressure on their Congressmen (almost all men, almost all Republicans) when entire counties are going belly-up and there are no jobs to be had.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:40 AM on July 7, 2018 [34 favorites]


They miss the America they [think they] grew up in.

I mean, I miss being 8 years old, too? But time only goes in one direction and becoming an adult and noticing all the shit that went over your head before is sort of inevitable. Everyone seems to think that their generation invented both sex and capitalism.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:44 AM on July 7, 2018 [38 favorites]


With Greenwald: On one hand, I think irrational hatred of Russia and Russian things is an American problem. If he's going to go around and, eg, interview Russian leftists, do cultural stuff, do some detailed reporting about important inflection points in modern Russian history, inform people about things that are true (eg, their national healthcare system has been improved by Putin, it's a fact), I don't think that's bad. I would broadly support it, actually, and very similar work was done during the Cold War by various liberal and center left journalists.

His first interview is with RT with such gems as:
"Interestingly, where Russia is concerned, despite all the claims that Trump is a puppet of Russia, in many ways Obama was more cooperative with the Russian government than Trump was. Obama refused to send lethal arms to Ukraine whereas Trump did that. Obama refused to bomb forces of the Assad government – Trump has done that. Trump has expelled more Russian diplomats that Obama did."

And yet when Jeremy Corbyn stood up and said: before we blame the Russian government for this poisoning, we ought to see evidence that they are actually responsible, the British media treated him as though he had said something evil.

There are factions within the intelligence community of the United States, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI that hate Donald Trump and will do anything to destroy him, including leaking classified information against him. I believe that if there were evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russian government, when it comes to the hacking of the DNC or the John Podesta emails, we would have seen in by now. We have not seen it by now.
So no, he's not going on a PR safari to show us the real nicer side of the regular Russian people, he went to repeat Putin's disinformation verbatim.

Grennwald is a Russian asset, I'm not sure how this is still a debate.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:47 AM on July 7, 2018 [74 favorites]


So, not only was adopting out the stolen kids the plan all along, it is still the plan??

I think it's time to start pressuring governors to direct state National Guards to seize these facilities, before it's too late.
posted by zjacreman at 7:47 AM on July 7, 2018 [37 favorites]


So, not only was adopting out the stolen kids the plan all along, it is still the plan??

WaPo: Trump is set to separate more than 200,000 U.S.-born children from their parents – "[...] children — all U.S. citizens — will be placed in similar jeopardy if the Department of Homeland Security begins programs to deport more than 58,000 Haitians on July 22, 2019, more than 262,000 Salvadorans on Sept. 9, 2019, and 86,000 Hondurans on Jan. 5, 2020. Parents will be faced with the decision of whether to take their children — most of whom speak mainly English and know only life in this country — back to countries deemed by the State Department as not safe for travel, some with the highest homicide rates in the hemisphere. Otherwise, parents will have to leave their children alone in the United States or, if they’re lucky, with relatives, or foster parents who they may or may not know, or some with “adult sponsors” chosen by federal agencies."


It's not only still the plan, but the plan is expanding to 10 times what it is now, despite Trump having been ordered by a federal judge to cease, desist, and reunite all the families within 14 days.

And why should Trump give a shit about some pesky federal district or circuit court? In the Muslim Ban decision, SCOTUS (even with Kennedy still there) gave him carte blanche to do any fucking racist genocidal thing he wants to immigrants -- and brag about his gross bigoted unConstitutional reasons for it at rallies and on Twitter -- and they'll merrily look the other way.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:56 AM on July 7, 2018 [22 favorites]


It is obvious by now that the republicans had no intention of reuniting families. We see it in their deliberate record deleting and inhumane planning on nearly every front. Their goal was, AND STILL IS, to remove adults from becoming citizens, keep them from voting, stealing their children, and brainwashing kids to vote republican. If they can’t get the numbers by procreation, they’ll try to get the numbers in other ways, and it is clear nothing is too monstrous for them.
posted by erisfree at 8:08 AM on July 7, 2018 [23 favorites]


and brag about his gross bigoted unConstitutional reasons for it at rallies and on Twitter -- and they'll merrily look the other way.

Remember how in McCleskey v. Kemp SCOTUS told us aggregate statistics weren't evidence and we basically needed to have elected officials on tape with their racism for something to be racist...
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 8:11 AM on July 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


What, if anything, could discourage a Trump supporter from coming out to vote?
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:24 AM on July 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


So Des Moines isn't going to feel the heat from Ag tariffs, no, but a teeny rural county with 3,000 people total is going to be hit HARD and it's going to put a lot of pressure on their Congressmen (almost all men, almost all Republicans) when entire counties are going belly-up and there are no jobs to be had.
They're all men, and three out of the four are Republicans. But here's the thing: the majority of people in all four of Iowa's congressional districts live in urban areas. It's only a tiny, tiny majority in Steve King's district, but the other three are majority urban by a substantial margin. (2/3rds of the population is urban in the 1st and 2nd, and 3/4ths in the 3rd, which contains Des Moines.) All of Iowa's population growth is in urban areas. Most of the good jobs are in things like financial services and IT. In terms of identity, this is a rural, agricultural state. Compared to most of the US, it's a rural, agricultural state. But if you look at where people actually are and what they're doing, it's increasingly an urban/ suburban state with a service-based economy. And that's a source of identity crisis for Iowans, including a lot of Iowans who live in urban areas and work in non-agricultural, non-manufacturing jobs.

I'm not denying that the tariffs are going to cause a lot of pain for a lot of people in Iowa. But I think it's possible to overestimate the political effects. And if the Democrats are going to win back Iowa, they need to articulate an alternative political vision, rather than assuming that people are going to abandon the Republicans because they clearly don't give a flying fuck about the wellbeing of most people in this state.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:25 AM on July 7, 2018 [4 favorites]


What, if anything, could discourage a Trump supporter from coming out to vote?

While they follow Trump's moves with a cultish abandon, the same is not true for GOP leadership. They're seen as Establishment, Swamp, RINOs. Attacks on them could well hit home & demoralize the GOP Base.
posted by scalefree at 8:37 AM on July 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


Also, it's possible for a district to be heavily urban while still being heavily white, which as we all know is going to be a big predictor of GOP voting. Steve King's district is almost 50/50 rural/urban, but it's 95% white.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:37 AM on July 7, 2018 [3 favorites]




Also, it's possible for a district to be heavily urban while still being heavily white, which as we all know is going to be a big predictor of GOP voting. Steve King's district is almost 50/50 rural/urban, but it's 95% white.
Right, but that's kind of my point. It's easy for New York magazine to look at Iowa and say "oh, Trump's trade war is terrible for agriculture. It's going to cost him support in Iowa." But I think that's a basic misunderstanding of Trump's support in Iowa. It's not economic. It's about identity.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:43 AM on July 7, 2018 [12 favorites]


Here's what I don't understand about the mass deportation of parents coupled to adopting out the babies: the genesis of the plan is racism. Disgust at brown people. But all the babies left behind will be brown themselves. How does that work? I can't get my brain to the reprise of slavery, but ... where is this going, when presumably the racist trumpsters will turn their noses up at brown babies?
posted by Dashy at 9:03 AM on July 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


I keep thinking that too, Dashy. I thought the whole point of this was to get the brown out of town, as it were, not adopt it and give it a loving home (quite the opposite).
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:08 AM on July 7, 2018


Stolen generation shit is racist too.
posted by Artw at 9:08 AM on July 7, 2018 [18 favorites]


The genesis is racism, but for many of the Trumpsters their racism is a slightly more subtle bias against nonwhite "cultures" rather than anyone who happens to have the wrong color skin. These kids who would otherwise turn into gang members etc. can be adopted by "good" families and grow up to be Real Americans. Lots of that going around with evangelicals in particular.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:11 AM on July 7, 2018 [21 favorites]


white people are realizing that they'll have less of the pie. And going crazy about it.

I knew that something like Trumpism was probably coming, about 15 years ago or so? Whenever it was that the demographic projections after the 2000 Census came out and predicted a minority-majority population within however many years, anyway. The unfortunate, obvious, and inevitable thing I saw coming from that was a likely resurgence of white nationalism and explicitly white identity politics. At the time I don't think I expected it quite so soon, though. But it's something more people should've expected; the demographic change that's been ongoing in the USA over the past 40 years or so is pretty much unprecedented in the context of a modern country.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 9:18 AM on July 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


And further to the above, I am not really sure why people expect much different in a country that was explicitly founded on white supremacy and has maintained it, implicitly, ever since in a million ways large and small.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 9:19 AM on July 7, 2018 [10 favorites]


Wow, evangelism .... I think I was better off not knowing that. This gets exponentially worse every damn day, doesn't it.
posted by Dashy at 9:19 AM on July 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


The debate about why or if they're intentionally trapping nonwhite kids here despite hating them is part and parcel of Functionalism/Intentionalism version 2.0 and your opinion on 1.0 should guide you on this one.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:21 AM on July 7, 2018 [12 favorites]


These kids who would otherwise turn into gang members etc. can be adopted by "good" families and grow up to be Real Americans.

But if not, the USCIS policy memorandum zachlipton linked to yesterday mentions
An EPS [Egregious Public Safety] case is defined by USCIS and ICE as a case where information indicates the alien is under investigation for, has been arrested for (without disposition), or has been convicted of, any of the following [...] known or suspected street gang members
(emphases mine) I had a grimly humorous conversation with a older permanent resident acquaintance of mine about whether any of the senior citizen community groups he belongs to qualify as street gangs.
posted by XMLicious at 9:33 AM on July 7, 2018 [4 favorites]


A relative of mine (we are white) is a guns and gold hoarding unrepentant Trump voter and supporter. He and his wife have two adopted African American kids. He has used this fact as a How Can I Be Racist - Libtards Say All Trump Supporters Are Racist shield frequently.

He is racist as fuck.

He and his wife feel that they are bringing these poor kids up in a superior culture. They are vehemently anti-abortion, and literally feel that (Black) women who want to have an abortion owe babies to infertile (white) couples. They don't say "black" or "white." They say "ghetto" and "stable."
posted by Cookiebastard at 9:50 AM on July 7, 2018 [93 favorites]


when presumably the racist trumpsters will turn their noses up at brown babies?

Oh no, they get to play white savior all the time now. And I think in practice this will end in some Dickensian Cinderella-without-the-rescue pseudo-slavery child abuse horror shit. I mean, they’re not going to stop being racist just because they’ve “saved” a brown kid.

Fuck I am so angry. These people are so few and yet they are the source of so much horror and suffering it’s fucking incomprehensible.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:52 AM on July 7, 2018 [52 favorites]


From previous thread: Kentucky governor cuts dental, vision benefits to nearly 500K Medicaid recipients

Louisville Courier-Journal: Reports of Denied Dental Care Mount after Bevin's Medicaid Cuts
The Courier Journal on Tuesday night reported that some dentists said they had to turn away children and pregnant women after they were mistakenly showing up in the state's computer system as having no dental coverage — even though they were supposed to be exempt from the cuts.[...]

Dentists across the state have reported confusion and frustration among patients from the cuts, which followed a judge's order last week striking down Bevin's plan to overhaul the Kentucky's Medicaid program.

"I think there's just a lot of uncertainty," said Jennifer Hasch, manager of dental services for the Shawnee Christian Healthcare Center in Louisville. "Patients are really confused. It was so abrupt there's a lot of fear from people about whether it affects their dental coverage."

Many patients didn't realize they'd lost coverage until they showed up for appointments this week, they said.
The silver lining is that once again, GOP performative cruelty leaves open a legal challenge to their draconian cuts since Medicaid rules require sufficient notice of changes.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:03 AM on July 7, 2018 [24 favorites]


Maybe roll-backs of child labor laws will be accompanied by atavistic “apprenticeship” systems on the old 18th/19th century pseudo-slavery child abuse model which Cinderella was probably partly inspired by.
posted by XMLicious at 10:06 AM on July 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


Jesus, that article linked upthread about the minister facing deportation. If you're dumb enough to believe Trump's definition of "one of the good ones" would ever be the same as your own... you're right where you deserve to be, I guess.
posted by Rykey at 10:38 AM on July 7, 2018 [17 favorites]


...the cuts, which followed a judge's order last week striking down Bevin's plan to overhaul the Kentucky's Medicaid program.

So “the cuts” just kinda “followed,” did they? Maybe because of something some nameless, faceless judge did?

“...the denial of dental care, which Bevin unilaterally made after his previous plans to strip Kentuckians of their Medicaid coverage were found illegal in a court of law.”
posted by dirge at 10:38 AM on July 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


Prediction by Matt Miller, regarding today's AP story (on a June 2017 letter by Trump lawyers dissing Comey) and yesterday's NYTimes story,
@matthewamiller First new comments to the NYT, now a leak to the AP, tomorrow Rudy showing up on two Sunday shows. What explains this sudden new assault on the Mueller probe by Trump? Seems something is coming.
posted by pjenks at 10:40 AM on July 7, 2018 [16 favorites]


Krugman: How to Lose a Trade War

It's hard to take out a good essence of this, because of charts, but I like the snark here:
Is there a strategy here? It’s hard to see one. There’s certainly no hint that the tariffs were designed to pressure China into accepting U.S. demands, since nobody can even figure out what, exactly, Trump wants from China in the first place.
posted by mumimor at 10:49 AM on July 7, 2018 [18 favorites]


for many of the Trumpsters their racism is a slightly more subtle bias against nonwhite "cultures" rather than anyone who happens to have the wrong color skin

Yeah, sometimes I think we simplify this stuff too much, and just trying to fit everything under the very large umbrella of ‘racism’ doesn’t let us actually figure out and model what is happening. I think Trumpism is much less about direct racism based on the color of skin, and much more about xenophobia, fear of the stranger, of those who come carrying or possess already other cultures they can’t understand. (Though many are, of course, both xenophobic and racist, it is still important to be clear about where these ideas are coming from). People who are more xenophobic than racist fear that other cultures will supplant their own more than they fear the skin color, which is why they’re happy to adopt kids of other races, because they are rearing them in their own culture.

That’s also why Trumpism in particular seems to love and adore people who are of the race or religion that they spend a lot of time fighting, but who are acculturated into white American traditions and values. Ted Cruz post kissing the rod, Nikki Haley, Allan West. They don’t fear the color or heritage - what they fear (and what they inherently rejected, I think, in Jeb Bush) is changing, is their culture falling away as others merge with it or are lifted up.
posted by corb at 11:03 AM on July 7, 2018 [22 favorites]


where is this going, when presumably the racist trumpsters will turn their noses up at brown babies? posted by Dashy at 11:03 AM on July 7 [+] [!]

White saviour complex. These kids are in for a life of degradation and suffering to repent for the sin of being brown. They will spend every day being told how grateful they should be. The rod will not be spared. They will not be allowed to date the Chosen, i.e. white people in their congregations. We will have to rescue them if this comes to pass. Let us stop it before it happens.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 11:09 AM on July 7, 2018 [18 favorites]


I'm watching the BBC documentary about the Times' coverage of Trump: The Fourth Estate: The New York Times and Trump: The First 100 Days. (Link to a Guardian review, because how you get it depends on where you are). There are things to say about this, and they were probably all said in a thread five scaramuccis back, I don't remember anything these days. But there is a scene where Trump taunts and humiliates the press at CPAC, and it is so chilling. I'm trying to find words, because of course separating children from their parents is far worse than bullying journalists, but in that scene, the spirit of totalitarianism is made apparent. The way the mob (formerly known as middle class conservatives) turn towards the journos in the pool while Trump calls them enemies of the people is identical with any number of historic fascist rallies we have seen in documentaries.
posted by mumimor at 11:38 AM on July 7, 2018 [31 favorites]


@matthewamiller First new comments to the NYT, now a leak to the AP, tomorrow Rudy showing up on two Sunday shows.

From the AP leak to which Miller referred—Trump Lawyers Call Comey ‘Machiavellian’ in Note to Mueller:
Lawyers for President Donald Trump unleashed a blistering attack on former FBI Director James Comey in a confidential memo last year to the special counsel, casting him as “Machiavellian,” dishonest and “unbounded by law and regulation” as they sought to undermine the credibility of a law enforcement leader they see as a critical witness against the president.

The letter, obtained by The Associated Press, provides a window into the formation of a legal strategy currently used by Trump’s lawyers as they seek to pit the president’s word against that of the former FBI director.[...]

The June 27, 2017, letter was written by Marc Kasowitz, then the president’s lead lawyer, as Mueller and his team were in the early stages of their investigation into Trump associates and as they had begun examining whether the president, by firing Comey, had sought to stymie an FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
It's hard to see what direct bearing this memo has on the current phase of the Special Counsel probe. It's entirely possible this is just chaff Team Trump is deploying in order to head off further speculation about Cohen flipping.

Meanwhile, the NYT's Michael Schmidt forwards a message from a Team Trump alumnus, who's apparently jumping on this bandwagon: "Trump’s former personal lawyer, John Dowd, emailed me this morning. Praised legal team for fighting Mueller and had interesting defense of initial strategy to fully cooperate. Dowd told me previously he initially trusted Mueller but came to think he was out to get the president."
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:40 AM on July 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Is there a strategy here? It’s hard to see one. There’s certainly no hint that the tariffs were designed to pressure China into accepting U.S. demands, since nobody can even figure out what, exactly, Trump wants from China in the first place.

He wants the trade deficit to be either zero or positive towards the US because apparently that's "winning". For this to happen China would basically need to triple how much they buy from us or revalue the RMB dramatically or even both. The first would be laughable. The second would be laughable but also disastrous.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 11:44 AM on July 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


People who are more xenophobic than racist fear that other cultures will supplant their own more than they fear the skin color, which is why they’re happy to adopt kids of other races, because they are rearing them in their own culture.

Is there really that much of a line between racism and xenophobia, particularly at this point in history when we know scientifically that concepts of race related in any way to heredity have always been complete bullshit? I mean, is European anti-Semitism racism or xenophobia or inter-Abrahamic-faith sectarianism, and who the hell really cares?

There are always loopholes that allow Honorary Aryans and Civilized Tribes and freedmen Negroes who are “a credit to their race” and crap like that but it doesn't appear to have much of a material effect on outcomes.

It seems like an especially perilous endeavor to use such a distinction to absolve anyone of anything and anoint them as non-racist or non-xenophobic. That will just be turned to the service of more mental gymnastics for conceiving of justified kinds of rounding people up by the millions for mass population resettlement or justified kinds of baby prisons.
posted by XMLicious at 12:01 PM on July 7, 2018 [16 favorites]


Retweeted Talking Biotech (@talkingbiotech):
Social scientists find evidence that Russia is pushing messages to erode trust in American agriculture. This week's podcast.
posted by acrasis at 12:04 PM on July 7, 2018 [12 favorites]


AP: North Korea Says Pompeo Talks ‘Regrettable’

Huh. So ignorant bastards who show up with an insult pre-loaded by an indecisive sociopath and no handle on anything fail at their diplomatic mission for the country?

Weird.
posted by petebest at 12:08 PM on July 7, 2018 [15 favorites]


AP: North Korea Says Pompeo Talks ‘Regrettable’

Pompeo met for nearly three hours Friday with a senior North Korean official in Pyongyang to nail down specifics of commitments on denuclearization made at Trump’s summit with Kim.


So, Pompeo went to NK to ask them the exact same question that he called "insulting and ridiculous" when reporters asked him what "denuclearization" actually means.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:29 PM on July 7, 2018 [18 favorites]






On my bookshelf sits a copy of W. The First 100 Days: A Whitehouse Journal...halcyon days.
posted by bonobothegreat at 12:57 PM on July 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


Kansas GOP congressional candidate: 'Outside of Western civilization, there is only barbarism'

Ugh, maybe this is a good time to share my running list of the worst GOP candidates and office holders of this year and last...

Running list of all the awful Republicans in office or running for office this year...

Steve King

Roy Moore

Eric Greitens

Joe Arpaio

David Stringer

Don Blankenship

Arthur Jones

Dennis Hof (more Hof)

Corey Stewart

Paul Nehlen

Rick Tyler

James Allsup

Jamie Kelso

Craig Cobb

Patrick Little

Russell Walker

John Fitzgerald

And now..
Steve Fitzgerald

A partial summary...


Republican leaders have renounced some of these guys. But there is nevertheless a pattern of furs like this being attracted to the Republican party. Unless someone can put together a similar list for Democrats...
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:27 PM on July 7, 2018 [17 favorites]


I can't get over this bit of the Greenwald interview (and if he was misquoted by RT, he's had ample opportunity to say so by now):
RT: Have the last two years of inquiries and reports convinced you that Trump colluded with Russia?

G.G: No, if anything, it’s convinced me that it’s more unlikely than ever. There are factions within the intelligence community of the United States, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI that hate Donald Trump and will do anything to destroy him, including leaking classified information against him. I believe that if there were evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russian government, when it comes to the hacking of the DNC or the John Podesta emails, we would have seen in by now. We have not seen it by now.
The gall for Greenwald to complain about the NSA leaking classified intelligence information. The website he edits published an NSA report that assessed that Russian military intelligence targeted an election systems manufacturer and US local governments before the election. You might remember how they botched it; their source just pleaded guilty and will spend the next five+ years in prison.

Greenwald says he had nothing to do with that story, but it's still the site his name is synonymous with. He is right that it doesn't prove collusion, and he's also right we should be extremely careful with what is and isn't proven, particularly because it's hard to appreciate just how damning all the stuff we have proved is. But what kind of asshole oversees a website that gets someone thrown in prison, then jets off to the country whose wrongdoing they uncovered to mock their source? He's very careful in his answer to render what Russia actually did in the past exonerative tense; the actual crimes are waved over as merely "when it comes to the hacking."
posted by zachlipton at 1:29 PM on July 7, 2018 [45 favorites]


There are factions within the intelligence community of the United States, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI that hate Donald Trump and will do anything to destroy him, including leaking classified information against him. I believe that if there were evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russian government, when it comes to the hacking of the DNC or the John Podesta emails, we would have seen in by now.

The other equally valid conclusion is that these factions that hate Trump do not exist.
posted by PenDevil at 1:37 PM on July 7, 2018 [9 favorites]


the past exonerative tense

Love this. Will be using it (sadly) often.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 1:39 PM on July 7, 2018 [5 favorites]


Long, but worthwhile piece from John Lanchester in the London Review of Books, that looks at how the 2008 financial crisis (and lack of any real percussions for the perpetrators) put us on the path ending in the current state of politics.

After the Fall

Also illustrates that as well as abolishing ICE and trying to get Trump &co a nice trip to the Hague that if it can't be smashed then capitalism needs at the very least to be zip-tied and stuck in a cage. Nobody should be rich enough that they can buy an election/referendum/country.
The frustrating thing is that the policy implications of this idea are pretty clear. In the developed world, we need policies that reduce the inequality at the top. It is sometimes said these are very difficult policies to devise. I’m not sure that’s true. What we’re really talking about is a degree of redistribution similar to that experienced in the decades after the Second World War, combined with policies that prevent the international rich person’s sport of hiding assets from taxation. This was one of the focuses of Thomas Piketty’s Capital, and with good reason. I mentioned earlier that assets and liabilities always balance – that’s the way they are designed, as accounting equalities. But when we come to global wealth, this isn’t true. Studies of the global balance sheet consistently show more liabilities than assets. The only way that would make sense is if the world were in debt to some external agency, such as Venusians or the Emperor Palpatine. Since it isn’t, a simple question arises: where’s all the fucking money? Piketty’s student Gabriel Zucman wrote a powerful book, The Hidden Wealth of Nations (2015), which supplies the answer: it’s hidden by rich people in tax havens. According to calculations that Zucman himself says are conservative, the missing money amounts to $8.7 trillion, a significant fraction of all planetary wealth. It is as if, when it comes to the question of paying their taxes, the rich have seceded from the rest of humanity.
posted by Buntix at 1:40 PM on July 7, 2018 [54 favorites]


zeusianfog posted this link in a previous thread, but it deserves more eyeballs so here it is again:

Brianna Rennix and Oren Nimni, Current Affairs. Things You Can Do Beyond Calling Your Congressperson:
. . . 2. Go watch the immigration court [odinsdream commented about this experience upthread] . . . [eg] During one conversation, IJ Cassidy expressed concern with how the observers would use the information and whether their observations would portray him in a negative fashion. He then sought to explain his decisions.” Now just imagine how this guy behaves when no one is watching! . . . 3. Volunteer to accompany people to court, to ICE check-ins, or to visit loved ones in detention. . . .
The article links to MA org that does this; here's New Sanctuary, a NYC org. Here's a WNYC piece about how valuable it is for volunteers to just be there with detainees, quiet, witnessing: "The most challenging thing is for volunteers to simply be quiet," she said, acknowledging that New Yorkers can be pushy and are used to speaking out about perceived injustices. "You’re asking them to take a step back and to be quiet. And they don’t truly believe the power that they have just by being there." There's power in just being there for people who feel utterly alone and forgotten.

Hodgepodge of thoughts:

One critique of some protests at ICE detention centers that I've heard is, some detainees (especially this would apply to some kids) were frightened by the shouting because they didn't understand English, that the crowd was trying to support them. One solution I've heard is to sing Spanish-language kids' songs. De Colores is an easy one, and (a Latino friend tells me) well known in many countries. Here's a Nahuatl lullaby. Also, while driving, I've been practicing calling out loudly, "El pueblo unido sera jamas vencido!" & it feels glorious.

Y'all who are sharing your scripts for others to use, you're not just shouting in to the void. Please enjoy an exchange I had with a +65, White, Christian, introvert guy friend of mine:

Me: "Have you been contacting your Members of Congress?" Him, triumphantly: "...Sure I did! I called about the tax bill!" Me: "Er...have you contacted them more recently? Like about the kids?" Him: "...." Me, making an effort to have a neutral, mildly curious tone: "So...what is it that's keeping you from contacting them more? Cuz I could send you scripts from my friends, so all you have to do is copy and paste." Him: "..." I changed the subject, but sent him an email later reiterating, "What is it that's keeping you from doing this?"

He didn't answer directly, but he asked for scripts. After I sent them, he emailed, "Please keep the scripts coming. I may not use the same wording, but they will jolt me to action."

Also, I've posted before about a +65, White, Christian guy from church who's married to a Japanese-American woman, who said to me "Why are they saying such awful things about our President? He's the most brilliant man in the world!" I had coffee with him (this was before the news came out about the child separations). I suspect his wife may be a forced-birther, but this guy himself strikes me primarily as low-information and credulous.

First we established common ground, bonding about travel, interracial marriages, and what we think of the outgoing pastor. I segued into, "Of course there are good Christians and bad Christians." He agreed heartily. I asked him if he thinks the President behaves like a good Christian. He hesitated. I segued into how there are bad Christians who lie about Obama and other African Americans just because of skin color, "So that thing I said before about checking our sources, and double-checking what I want to believe and changing my beliefs if there's strong evidence that my beliefs are wrong, it's because I don't want to be misled by those kinds of people. Or by my own desire to be right all the time." He agreed that that was good. He handed me one of his information sources, a March 2018 investment newsletter quoting a financial expert saying, "Obama doubled the national debt!" I said my understanding was that Obama had been great for the economy and pretty good for the debt. I later emailed him a Forbes article about Republican vs Democratic administrations' effects on the debt, and added, "I find it odd that your newsletter criticizes Obama for the deficit, without mentioning anything about the more recent GOP 'tax reform.'" I included CBO links. He thanked me and said, "That information is important!"

I'm not trying to re-litigate "Trumpists: Redeemable or Not?" or assert that anybody needs to do what I'm doing. I'm just reporting on a specific case that I had the energy to take on. Knowing he's not one of the rabid ones gives me more energy, and I thought some of y'all might have been curious about what happened.
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 1:41 PM on July 7, 2018 [59 favorites]


Love this. Will be using it (sadly) often.

I got it from Vijith Assar's extraordinary (though I've twisted the meaning a bit) An Interactive Guide to Ambiguous Grammar. William Schneider seems to get the credit though.
posted by zachlipton at 1:41 PM on July 7, 2018 [9 favorites]




> The gall for Greenwald to complain about the NSA leaking classified intelligence information.

No kidding - His ENTIRE CAREER as we know it today was launched by NSA leaks - via Snowden. That set him down the entire path that he's on, and he was actually one of the most prolific publishers of the leaked NSA documents themselves.

So yeah, that's well beyond gall.
posted by MysticMCJ at 2:05 PM on July 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


Of possible interest: I'm a Maine voter with a landline. I just got a pretty extensive phone poll asking me A LOT of questions about Sen. Collins Supreme Court vote, including if I would feel "more favorable, less favorable, or about the same" if she voted against a SCOTUS candidate who opposed Roe. I kept waiting for it to be a push poll, but it never was.
posted by anastasiav at 2:11 PM on July 7, 2018 [12 favorites]


@dsa_louisville
A group of Louisville residents, including several @DemSocialists members, had a message for Mitch McConnell as he left a local restaurant today. Powerful people like Mitch deserve no peace while they enable the imprisonment of babies in concentration camps. #AbolishICE

[video]
posted by Artw at 2:21 PM on July 7, 2018 [36 favorites]


I am hobbled by my location.

I live in the reddest of red areas. Many days, I feel like one of the few remaining true humans in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I can't assume anyone around me shares my views. There are open displays of Trumpism everywhere.

Also, I am self-employed. I can't risk my business by being openly political.

But I can't do nothing.

I've decided to do what I can to reclaim the hallmarks of patriotism. The Republican party has been wrapping itself in the flag and jingoistic patriotism my entire 51 years of life.

I'm taking them back.

Today I screen printed a couple of t-shirts with the statue of liberty, and the "golden door" poem. I will wear them proudly. I will continue and expand. Next up will probably be the text of the Constitution. Or the text of the oath of office.

I cannot open a conversation about immigration, or racism, or egalitarianism, or liberal political philosophy. But I can put those messages front and center.

Yeah, and vote.

And help others to vote.

And continue to strive to be open, a safe harbor.
posted by yesster at 2:32 PM on July 7, 2018 [80 favorites]




Sahil Kapur: Interesting 2016 law article by Trump SCOTUS prospect Amy Coney Barrett suggesting true “originalism” requires reversing Brown v. Board of Education, invalidating Social Security as unconstitutional, and declaring West Virginia illegitimate.

Harvard law professor and Solicitor General under Ronald Reagan Charles Fried argues that the Robert Court is "Not Conservative".
The press and the rest of the commentariat have fallen into the habit of referring to the work of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch as “conservative.” That is wrong. In several of the most controverted areas that the Court has entered and in which its decisions have had a profound effect on law and on our national life—voting rights, gerrymandering, affirmative action, abortion, campaign finance, and most recently mandatory agency fees to public sector unions—the Court has undermined or overturned precedents that embodied longstanding and difficult compromise settlements of sharply opposed interests and principles. These decisions are not the work of a conservative Court.
...
Stability, continuity, and pragmatism are the watchwords of conservatism. The conservative asks why wholesale, radical recasting is in order. Have labor unions grown so strong that they threaten—as they did in Britain in the late seventies—to dominate the economy so that constitutional brakes rather than legislative adjustments are called for? The suggestion is laughable. Have previously disenfranchised groups grown so overweaning and the forces of bigotry so far dispersed that the protections of civil rights laws are no longer needed? The Congress as recently as 2006 did not think so. Has the influence in political campaigns of large amounts of money from a few wealthy individuals and organizations so decreased from 1907 or the 1970s that it is time not only to dismantle but to declare beyond the constitutional pale any meaningful regulation of money in politics? Conservatism surely recognizes the need to respond to changed circumstances. But the radical reversal, in the name of vague and manipulable abstractions, of settlements that work tolerably well is not that.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:57 PM on July 7, 2018 [24 favorites]


Organizing around debt, debt collectives and strikes

The episode of Season Of The Bitch about commercial debt, debt as a woman’s issue and economic violence, and how to fight back

The new economy project. Democratize the economy!

1 in 7 Americans are being pursued by a debt collector
posted by The Whelk at 3:04 PM on July 7, 2018 [11 favorites]




Please enjoy the Dean of UCLA Gary Segura absolutely roasting the NYT's Maggie Haberman, Nate Cohn, Alex Burns and Adam Nagourney to their faces.

For those of us who are pressed for time - the video you linked to is an hour long, is there a particular timestamp for a particularly good moment?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:18 PM on July 7, 2018 [13 favorites]


Douglas Rushkoff, Medium. Survival of the Richest: The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind

I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. [...] Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern.

Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” [...] The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival.


If and when the current crisis ends there'll be another and plausibly more brutal sci-fi dystopia immediately awaiting. The political reformation currently underway has to be able both to confront Trumpism and to prevent or account for the Neil Stephenson/Peter Watts cyberpunk hell at its heels. The only thing that can accomplish that is a hard and concerted left turn.
posted by Rust Moranis at 3:22 PM on July 7, 2018 [63 favorites]


Sahil Kapur: Interesting 2016 law article by Trump SCOTUS prospect Amy Coney Barrett

If you read it, you'll notice a line that jumps out at you: "possibly illegitimate Fourteenth Amendment." An article offering up various confederate gripes, such as the states that succeeded from the union no longer having representation in Congress (who the fuck cares whether the 14th "can claim no warrant to democratic legitimacy
through original popular sovereignty" when there was no democratic legitimacy because the entire point is that much of the population was disenfranchised?), is cited for this proposition.
posted by zachlipton at 3:27 PM on July 7, 2018 [12 favorites]


Since independent journalist Sarah Kendzior's out sick with strep throat and can't appear on cable news, she's posted a Twitter thread about some points she'd like to make about recent news events, particularly the GOP senators' 4th of July visit to Moscow:
The Kremlin's push to elect Trump had the removal of sanctions as a key goal, and the motivation for the GOP Senators visit was the same -- aiming at extending the mutually beneficial kleptocracy that the Trump team, the Kremlin, and its mobbed-up interlopers have consolidated.

Their visit was in violation of US sanctions policy and their collaboration threatens US sovereignty.

Remember that in addition to interfering in the election, Russia hacked the State Dept, DOD, DNC, RNC, nuclear plants, etc.

Gutless, disloyal GOP Senators give all this a pass.

Kremlin aggression has only grown since Trump has taken office, whether in Ukraine and Syria or in new attacks on the West, as in the UK.

Trump was reluctant to sign sanctions and has no intention of enforcing them, even when Russia attacks allies. These Senators abet that too.

We already see different actors who abetted Trump and the Kremlin become more blatant about their loyalty -- which is NOT to the US or the public good.

This will become more stark after Trump meets with Putin. Sale of US sovereignty may be marketed as a "bold new partnership".
Sure enough, on The Big Picture radio host Oliver Knox previewed his discussion with Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) on returning from his trip: "Johnson said it was time to “evaluate” whether to lift US sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea, saying they have failed to change Moscow’s behavior and cut US businesses out of Russian deals."

Meanwhile, Devin Nunes's latest ploy is referring 42 Obama administration officials, FBI agents and outside political activists to a House joint task force by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Judiciary Committee for an investigation into how the Obama Justice Department targeted the Donald Trump campaign (Washington Times). It's a shame Trump has pre-toxified the term "witch hunt" since this would be a dictionary definition example.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:27 PM on July 7, 2018 [38 favorites]


> Can we please go after Trump and his family for the laws we know he's broken? The illegal tax evasion loophole? Robbing his own charity? Real estate fraud? How can Democrats ask people to fight every step of the way when they can't even hold the president and his circle accountable when they flagrantly break the law? You want to give Trump a wake up call? Make him pay his taxes. Send his kids to jail.

How to Make Trump's Tax Returns Public - "New York's governor and other state authorities can ask right now for a criminal investigation of the president's taxes."
posted by kliuless at 3:33 PM on July 7, 2018 [10 favorites]


It's pretty clear that NK won't meaningfully denuclearize (not that we thought they would) so what happens now? Does Trump simply continue to claim he's solved the problem and the world is now safe and all the while NK happily goes about its nuclear business? And do we let Trump get away with that since forcing him to confront the reality that he got completely reamed by NK could result in a nuclear conflict?
posted by Justinian at 3:41 PM on July 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


EmpressCallipygos: “Please enjoy the Dean of UCLA Gary Segura absolutely roasting the NYT's Maggie Haberman, Nate Cohn, Alex Burns and Adam Nagourney to their faces.

For those of us who are pressed for time - the video you linked to is an hour long, is there a particular timestamp for a particularly good moment?”
The first 6 minutes contain the roasting. The rest appeared to be exactly the kind of mewling you'd expect from the participants.
posted by ob1quixote at 3:43 PM on July 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


"Kansas GOP congressional candidate: 'Outside of Western civilization, there is only barbarism'"

He missed a chance to quote Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska who in the early 40s vowed that "with God’s help, we will lift Shanghai up and up, ever up, until it is just like Kansas City"
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:48 PM on July 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


For those of us who are pressed for time - the video you linked to is an hour long, is there a particular timestamp for a particularly good moment?

The Dean's opening is the first 4-5mins. The NYT people come up right after and give their now characteristically signature petulant and pissy retorts then they get on with the planned roundtable.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:58 PM on July 7, 2018 [3 favorites]


sure, Nobel Peace Prize Winners Henry Kissinger and Donald Trump.

Why not just close up shop? It was a good run.
posted by petebest at 4:07 PM on July 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Jamelle Bouie, Slate: The Power of "Abolish ICE":
The message’s already-swift movement into the mainstream illustrates how the field of possible opinion in American politics is wide open in a way we haven’t seen since the 1960s, or even earlier. Demographic change—from racial and ethnic diversity to new, younger cohorts of voters—is working its way through our elections, and, after a generation of loose consensus around markets and deregulation, a resurgent left is pushing social democracy. “Abolish ICE” may not be a slogan for the present, yet, but there’s no question it’s a symbol of the party’s future.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 4:14 PM on July 7, 2018 [23 favorites]


> For those of us who are pressed for time - the video you linked to is an hour long, is there a particular timestamp for a particularly good moment?

There's also the HuffPost article: The New York Times Owes LGBTQ People An Apology For Its Trump Coverage
posted by christopherious at 4:14 PM on July 7, 2018 [18 favorites]


@brandyljensen
Dems are largely allergic to “Abolish ICE” as a message because it’s clear and uncompromising but, even more importantly, did not require a cadre of overpaid consultants to develop
posted by Artw at 4:31 PM on July 7, 2018 [53 favorites]


Worth noting that yesterday, Micahel Cavna's not-editorial-page cartoon "Warped" re-published a 20-year old cartoon: "If Donald Trump were the editor of People Magazine" in which he declares himself to be ALL of the "50 Most Intriguing People", reinforcing my belief that long before he became The World's Most Powerful Man, his true life goal was becoming The World's Most Famous, and that was 5 years before he got his own TV show. And what we call "Trumpism" far predated its namesake. He only made it OK to be more openly racist/sexist/bigoted/etc. and is most certainly gloating over his name being put on an "-ism", just as he gloated over everything else his name has been put on.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:05 PM on July 7, 2018 [5 favorites]


A bit of levity about these dark times: '80s Pop Star Rockwell (Amber Ruffin) Sings "White Women Watching Me" (YT - 2:21, Late Night with Seth Meyers; published on Jun 27, 2018)
posted by filthy light thief at 5:09 PM on July 7, 2018 [11 favorites]


So, ever since this trade war malarkey started, China has been working in the background loosening up credit for their businesses and easing reserve ratios for banks.

The result? The USDCNY is up to 6.64 to the dollar. You can see the fall in the yuan's value all through mid June until today.

So not only have we been driving up commodity prices causing pain for US businesses, our intent on shock and awe and going in like a bull in a China shop have seen our exports to China rise in price. Prior to all this bluster, China had been letting the yuan appreciate even reaching a new 12 month high. Now? They're just being prudent to protect themselves in this trade war.

We've basically fucked ourselves by having no plan and not being ready for anything other than China coming to us with an unconditional surrender, desperate to sue for peace.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 5:22 PM on July 7, 2018 [12 favorites]


Trump team doesn't care about winning the trade war (or anything) in reality. They just want some show concession to yell about at his rallies. No doubt we'll end up losing quite a bit.
posted by lumnar at 5:26 PM on July 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


He missed a chance to quote Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska who in the early 40s vowed that "with God’s help, we will lift Shanghai up and up, ever up, until it is just like Kansas City"

The references to this quote I'm seeing in a cursory search seem to trace back to a 1956 book called The Crucial Decade in which Wherry's 1940 speech is indeed portrayed as obtuse American ignorance of the actual interests of "the Asiatics" who had, as of the book's publication, recently taken up Communism on a national scale and/or been conquered by the Communist faction in a civil war.

The Spectator article's point that Americans and American politicians are regularly and reliably obtuse is entirely sound but I can't help but notice that the speech would have taken place three years after the Battle of Shanghai when the world would have been seeing photos of bombed-out city blocks, suffering like this (← content warning: injured probably-orphaned children), and film footage of streams of refugees from other parts of the city fleeing into the Shanghai International Settlement, which wasn't attacked by Japanese Imperial forces until after Pearl Harbor.

In the interest of trying to avoid the ignorance the Spectator's headline decries, I'm inclined to wonder whether Wherry's statement was an expression of solidarity with Chinese victims of war that was not carefully characterized in the course of alarm during the subsequent decade over the spread of Communism, less so than a claim in that particular instance that people in China wanted Shanghai to be like Kansas City. (Not that Americans weren't totally racist and ignorant and exploitative in general when it came to China and have continued to be since then, of course.)
posted by XMLicious at 5:27 PM on July 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


Dems are largely allergic to “Abolish ICE” as a message because it’s clear and uncompromising but, even more importantly, did not require a cadre of overpaid consultants to develop

Remember in 2017 when Democrats spent millions of dollars on consultants to come up with the most milquetoast and bloodless slogan imaginable: "A Better Deal"? I mean, I know that's the joke... but goddamn does that seem like decades ago.
posted by Justinian at 5:42 PM on July 7, 2018 [18 favorites]


I think the Democrats would be well served by turfing out most/all of their consultants and hiring community organizers instead. Remember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' worn out shoes? That's how you get voters, folks. You pound the pavement, you ring doorbells, you hand out flyers, you talk to people. You don't sit there and pay people big bucks to come up with catchy slogans. Sure, "Yes We Can" was a great slogan for the Obama team, but the fact that he got people to get up off the couch was what won him the Presidency.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 5:53 PM on July 7, 2018 [14 favorites]


Plus, Obama's slogan was invented by Dolores Huerta, not a roomful of consultants.
posted by mubba at 6:03 PM on July 7, 2018 [11 favorites]


It is really weird to me, as someone who knocked thousands of doors and ran canvasses in 2016 (and 2014 and 2012), to hear that people think that the Democrats haven't been knocking doors.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:07 PM on July 7, 2018 [43 favorites]


‘My son is not the same’: New testimony paints bleak picture of family separation

This is deliberate and systematic child abuse.
posted by Artw at 6:29 PM on July 7, 2018 [41 favorites]


The Democrats need to do more than "knocking doors" and "canvassing" as the results in 2014 and 2016 have shown; mostly following up with previous non-voters, helping them get bullet-proof voter registrations and escorting them to the polls (the 'busing in people' need to be a real thing, if you make them valid voters). Countering the Republican ratfucking takes a lot of work that goes beyond what has been done before.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:31 PM on July 7, 2018 [11 favorites]


The Senate I led put country over party. This one must do the same for Robert Mueller. By Bill Frist
Bill Frist is a heart and lung transplant surgeon, former U.S. Senate majority leader and senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
When I retired from the U.S. Senate in 2007 as its majority leader, my parting words were a prayer for my colleagues to rise above the passions of the moment and protect the institution as a bulwark for our country’s enduring values. The Senate I served in was not devoid of partisanship, nor should it be, but my hope was that patriotism would always take priority over party.

It is with some trepidation that I offer thoughts on how the good people still serving in the Senate should address a current crisis, but staying silent is no longer an option. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is under assault, and that is wrong. No matter who is in the White House, we Republicans must stand up for the sanctity of our democracy and the rule of law.
His message is...mixed. He spends too much space defending conservatism & Trump himself & he gets wishy-washy at several other points along the way. In the end I don't know how much his support of Mueller will matter. But I'll take it.
posted by scalefree at 6:36 PM on July 7, 2018 [9 favorites]


Sure, I'll take it, but I will never forger that Bill Frist gave an incorrect medical diagnosis of Terri Schiavo on the Senate floor after watching some videos, so he long since missed his off-ramp to rise above the passions of the moment.
posted by zachlipton at 6:43 PM on July 7, 2018 [34 favorites]


I'm going to venture a guess here: the 9000 or so children currently in the HHS orphanage system (it's what they are, and when the number of kids needing foster care so severely overwhelms the foster care system, it's what you have to have), the ones who actually did arrive at the border unaccompanied, they will be the target of the next ghoulish idea from Jefferson Sessions. And they're sitting ducks.

Which means we need to establish pre-emptively that they fall under the child welfare laws and regulations of the state where they put their heads down at night, even if it means overrulling McCullogh Vs. Maryland.
posted by ocschwar at 6:55 PM on July 7, 2018 [10 favorites]


Remember in 2017 when Democrats spent millions of dollars on consultants to come up with the most milquetoast and bloodless slogan imaginable: "A Better Deal"? I mean, I know that's the joke... but goddamn does that seem like decades ago.

Prince died 27 months ago. You can still see where the timeline went into the skid.
posted by petebest at 6:56 PM on July 7, 2018 [9 favorites]


@JoshMBlackman: "ABC will air The Bachelorette in its regular 8 PM EST time slot but will break in for Trump’s announcement and return to the show afterward."

We're really not being very subtle about how we turned politics into a reality show instead of the process by which we make important decisions that impact everyone's lives, have we?
posted by zachlipton at 7:15 PM on July 7, 2018 [36 favorites]


we turned politics into a reality show

I'm on record for saying this pre-2010, but 'Reality TV' is the most insidious and terrifying population control phenomenon since forever. I think I remember using "disease" and 'fucking disease' in my diatribes.

No one understood what I was getting at - many were still under the assumption that they were completely unscripted and just edited post to tell a story. I didn't get it then (was in grad school, most of my Canadian cohort were into reality tv of some variety as were my American ones), but I get it now - they don't care, belief is easy, contradictions to belief is annoying.

'Reality TV" really degraded the populace's discernment discrimination performance through normalization.

Now that Gerrymandering is being up-played, and 'physical' voter suppression methods being contested, the more insidious culture-war-via-media might be a battleground worth opening up. 'Rosanne' being cancelled might have been the first shot fired, but I thought that 'The Mick' on FOX had surprisingly progressive grace notes. Though still with a few pretty regressive ones.

<sarcasm> The most aggravating thing is that Trump is using annoying techniques that used to work for captive audiences like cliffhangers - I hate cliffhangers.
posted by porpoise at 7:37 PM on July 7, 2018 [39 favorites]


Just be thankful they're not having a rose ceremony.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:38 PM on July 7, 2018 [5 favorites]


Madeleine Albright: ‘The things that are happening are genuinely, seriously bad’
Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer
She agrees that we ought to be careful not to casually throw around the F-word lest we drain the potency from what should be a powerful term. “I’m not calling Trump a fascist,” she says. Yet she seems to be doing all but that when she puts him in the same company as historical fascists in a book that seeks to sound “an alarm bell” about a fascist revival.

She frequently nudges the reader to make connections between the president of the United States and past dictatorships. She reminds us who first coined the Trumpian phrase “drain the swamp”. It was drenare la palude in the original, Mussolini Italian. She quotes Hitler talking about the secret of his success: “I will tell you what has carried me to the position I have reached. Our political problems appeared complicated. The German people could make nothing of them… I…reduced them to the simplest terms. The masses realised this and followed me.” Sound familiar?
(Mods, I posted this in the Brexit thread first by accident (though it fits there as well))
posted by mumimor at 2:51 AM on July 8, 2018 [43 favorites]


cybercoitus interruptus, thank you for your comment above. I appreciate that you were not attempting to re-litigate anything. I appreciate that you were sharing more of the story. I especially appreciate the advice on what we can do beyond calling our MoC and what you, personally, are doing to resist this cruel and inhumane administration–and how great that makes you feel. After reading your comment, tears are rolling down my cheeks. I am so touched by your efforts; they make me feel so hopeful and connected, somehow, despite the isolation I normally feel as an American transplant to Europe.

Al-Anon, a fellowship for the friends and family members of alcoholics, emphasises the importance of sharing experience, strength, and hope. In my experience, there hasn't been a lot of strength or hope around to offer lately. The current bleak reality makes sharing positive experiences all the more valuable. Thanks to all of you, fellow MeFites, who share resistance tips as well as victories of any size. Thank you for being here. I love you all.
posted by Bella Donna at 3:07 AM on July 8, 2018 [11 favorites]




Not at all suspicious: Arron Banks met Russian ambassador 11 times
Brexit’s biggest funder, Arron Banks, met the Russian ambassador at least 11 times in the run-up to the EU referendum and in the two months beyond, documents seen by the Observer suggest – seven more times than he has admitted. The same documents suggest the Russian embassy extended a further four invitations but it is not known if they were accepted.

It is the third time the number of such meetings has been revised upwards. For two years, Banks insisted his only contacts with the Russian government consisted of one “boozy lunch” with the ambassador.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:44 AM on July 8, 2018 [28 favorites]




Holocaust Denier in California Congressional Race Leaves State G.O.P. Scrambling


If it makes you feel any better - this is my disctrict, and our incumbent, Democratic rep is too well-liked to lose, and we are a very blue district. Our election results.

Our local Indivisible group is not happy that this guy (John Fitzgerald) is running (not because he has a chance to win, but because anti-Semitism) and is calling on people to boycott Fitzgerald's business.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 4:44 AM on July 8, 2018 [19 favorites]


Johnson, one of the July 4th in Moscow traitors just (last night on satellite radio) came out against the Russian sanctions. He says they haven’t changed Russia’s behavior on Crimea.

So apparently Republican policy is that it’s now ok for Putin to annex whatever he feels should be Russian so... uh... watch out Finland?
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 5:28 AM on July 8, 2018 [32 favorites]


More like watch out Iran. If the strategy here is to say that sanctions don’t work, if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em, and the policy is to agree with and normalize the type of leadership that doesn’t respect sovereignty and responds with force to anyone who disagrees, then is this a trial balloon for just blowing the shit out of people and taking their territory? That’s a pretty terrifying position to take for the country with the world’s largest weapons stash and the crazy president.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:57 AM on July 8, 2018 [2 favorites]


Johnson, one of the July 4th in Moscow traitors just (last night on satellite radio) came out against the Russian sanctions. He says they haven’t changed Russia’s behavior on Crimea.

Say the people who freaked out when Obama tried to relax relations with Cuba after 55 years of sanctions not changing behavior.
posted by chris24 at 7:09 AM on July 8, 2018 [51 favorites]


Yesterday in Fascist Shunning:

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Woman calls Steve Bannon a "piece of trash" in local bookstore, police called

Louisville Courier-Journal: A group of protesters confronted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Bardstown Road in Louisville Saturday, calling out "Abolish ICE," before adding they know where he lives.

A side thought: Remember, before you confront fascist figures in public, there are poor schlubs out there who LOOK like well-known fascists but are not actually them. Before assaulting them in public, be sure to ask them to display a photo ID first. If it is actually Steve Bannon or Stephen Miller or such, asking them "Papers, please" will surely make them emit a boyish chuckle in fond recognition.
posted by delfin at 7:17 AM on July 8, 2018 [34 favorites]




So apparently Republican policy is that it’s now ok for Putin to annex whatever he feels should be Russian so... uh... watch out Finland?

I'm Canadian and very worried about which piece of the global pie the Republicans have been offered in exchange.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:32 AM on July 8, 2018 [6 favorites]


U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials
The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.
...
Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation
...
In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.
We are a puppet state.
posted by jedicus at 7:35 AM on July 8, 2018 [81 favorites]


It was a six-day daily newspaper when I worked there in the ‘90s, and now because of tariffs imposed on newsprint manufactured in Canada, the Star-Democrat newspaper in Easton, Md., will be a five-day daily.
posted by emelenjr at 7:45 AM on July 8, 2018 [5 favorites]


I think, at this point, what worries me most is that Putin doesn’t seem to be worried about what happens with the next American President. Like he’s hacked one political party completely and can make it dance for his own amusement, but he’s going so far with it, so blatantly, provoking anger and rage in so many people, that it’s almost like he’s not at all worried that his puppet party will ever lose power.

And that worries me.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:46 AM on July 8, 2018 [32 favorites]


We are a puppet state.

Or, raw power FIRST FIRST gone mad. Reading between the lines of that article shows the delegates having embraced trumpian policy of bully/terror tactics to get their own way in any kind of multilateral institution. Domination politics. Has anyone yet linked all of this to the Trumpian National Security Policy document, the way the recently resigned US Ambassador to Estonia did in his resignation message? He left before Helsinki Summit (HEL is just 2 hours by fast ferry from Tallinn)
posted by infini at 7:56 AM on July 8, 2018 [4 favorites]


what worries me most is that Putin doesn’t seem to be worried about what happens with the next American President.

Pruitt didn’t have a care in the world right up until reality caught up with him. As with any man in a position of power, don’t assume their confidence is earned.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 7:57 AM on July 8, 2018 [13 favorites]


I'm reading Elena Ferrante's Frantumaglia, and in a 2002 letter to her publisher she excoriates Silvio Berlusconi as a figure who has "completed the transformation of citizens into an audience, and is for now the most unprincipled exponent of the reduction of democracy to imaginary participation in an imaginary game. He succeeds thanks to his tendentious monopoly of the medium that best realises and imposes that suspension of disbelief.” Keep insisting that the stakes are real, keep asking about mechanics, keep insisting on the rule of law. It matters.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:58 AM on July 8, 2018 [42 favorites]


U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials

In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.


From the NYT article about this US-Russian Kabuki dance:
A Russian delegate said the decision to introduce the breast-feeding resolution was a matter of principle.

“We’re not trying to be a hero here, but we feel that it is wrong when a big country tries to push around some very small countries, especially on an issue that is really important for the rest of the world,” said the delegate, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

He said the United States did not directly pressure Moscow to back away from the measure. Nevertheless, the American delegation sought to wear down the other participants through procedural maneuvers in a series of meetings that stretched on for two days, an unexpectedly long period.
This is what the Russians call vranyo: "Vranyo is described as when a person knows he is lying and expects the other person to understand that. One of my colleagues said, 'He was lying to us, we knew he was lying, he knew we knew he was lying, but he kept lying anyway, and we pretended to believe him.'" (Moscow Times)
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:12 AM on July 8, 2018 [34 favorites]


it’s almost like he’s not at all worried that his puppet party will ever lose power

That would be because he knows full well that his puppets are not Republicans per se (though there undoubtedly are many such within their ranks) but gullible low-information Americans in general, of whom there are at least a hundred million.

As long as Putin and his army of trolls and bots can keep muddying the political waters to the extent that a significant fraction of the populace can't keep track of what's real and what's not, he can keep the US off-balance enough to lurch in directions he chooses, often enough to be useful to him. All he needs in order to thrive is a state of persistent political chaos. Doesn't matter whose chaos.

And sure, it helps his project to have one of those gullible low-information Americans in the Oval Office, but it would still work without him. The fact that the toddler got elected in the first place is a demonstration of that.
posted by flabdablet at 8:16 AM on July 8, 2018 [6 favorites]


Pruitt didn’t have a care in the world right up until reality caught up with him. As with any man in a position of power, don’t assume their confidence is earned.

Pruitt still has all the money he harvested from his job and will no doubt go on to find new and interesting ways of enriching himself through corruption whilst his replacement continues to destroy the environment, so it’s maybe not quite the inspiration we need.

Me, I like to think of the fall of the Ceaușescus.
posted by Artw at 8:21 AM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]


Politico: ‘A Cesspool of Deviancy’: New Claims of Voyeurism Test Jordan Denials "A half-dozen ex-wrestlers told POLITICO they were regularly harassed in their training facility by sexually aggressive men who attended the university or worked there."

Washington Post: Rep. Jim Jordan Faces New Accusation That He Must Have Known About Alleged Sexual Abuse At Ohio State

We're now up to seven former wrestlers accusing Jordan of looking away/covering up the sexual abuse.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:25 AM on July 8, 2018 [18 favorites]


Surely the real puppet masters are the corporations, no? Reading that article on breastfeeding, it was telling to read that sales of baby food (naturally, a market dominated by a few US and European companies) are flat-lining in richer countries, with only 'developing' (I hate that word) countries providing a 4% growth forecast
posted by Myeral at 8:26 AM on July 8, 2018 [6 favorites]


They could've changed the vote totals this time, how would we know?

Because we have exit polls, and now the idea that our elections have been and can be compromised has entered the mainstream, it’s gonna be harder to rig them, not easier.

I am worried about voter suppression though.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:30 AM on July 8, 2018 [3 favorites]


Mod note: One deleted. Gentle nudge not to fill time here by going down the road of general fears etc that we've been over many times; if there are no updates right at this moment, maybe check out something else on the site or elsewhere.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:33 AM on July 8, 2018 [6 favorites]




Clash looms over ICE funding

The administration is pressing Congress for $8.3 billion in discretionary funding for ICE in fiscal 2019 - a $967 million increase over this year's budget.

Terrorizing families and torturing infants is aparently expensive, and we’re paying for it.
posted by Artw at 8:52 AM on July 8, 2018 [10 favorites]


Giuliani's tour of the Sunday morning shows is going predictably well. Here are some summaries/excerpts from Twitter:

NBC Politics: Giuliani says President Trump's legal team wants "factual basis" for Mueller interview
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/giuliani-says-trump-legal-team-wants-factual-basis-mueller-interview-n889666


NBC's Meet the Press host Chuck Todd: "Rudy Giuliani tells me that if Michael Cohen "wants to cooperate, I think it's great." Giuliani says it's a good development because "it will lead to nothing." #MTP"

ABC's This Week: "Rudy Giuliani to @GStephanopoulos: "The reality is that there are biases that have to be explored surrounding Mueller...this is the most corrupt investigation I have ever seen" http://abcn.ws/2J8OGwg #ThisWeek"

ABC News: "NEW: Pres. Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani on Michael Cohen: "As long as he tells the truth, we're home free...Michael's not going to lie. He's going to tell the truth. As long as he does that, we have nothing to fear" https://abcn.ws/2tZ8JZd #ThisWeek"

Bonus Alan Dershowitz:
ABC's Evan McMurray"Alan Dershowitz to @GStephanopoulos: "You cannot question a president's motives when the president acts. If a president pardons, that's it. If a president fires, that's it. You can't go beyond an act and get into his motive or into his intent." #ThisWeek"

And @RealDonaldTrump primed the pump for Giuliani's media tour on Twitter last night with this rant:
Public opinion has turned strongly against the Rigged Witch Hunt and the “Special” Counsel because the public understands that there was no Collusion with Russia (so ridiculous), that the two FBI lovers were a fraud against our Nation & that the only Collusion was with the Dems!

The Rigged Witch Hunt, originally headed by FBI lover boy Peter S (for one year) & now, 13 Angry Democrats, should look into the missing DNC Server, Crooked Hillary’s illegally deleted Emails, the Pakistani Fraudster, Uranium One, Podesta & so much more. It’s a Democrat Con Job!
The problem with Team Trump's maligning the Special Counsel is that it's working.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:54 AM on July 8, 2018 [19 favorites]


We're going to be paying for it for decades.

The completely justifiable lawsuits will never end. Reparations will be in the billions.
posted by yesster at 8:56 AM on July 8, 2018 [10 favorites]


The problem with Team Trump's maligning the Special Counsel is that it's working.

@Anthony (The Daily Show):
Two months prior to Nixon's resignation, 54% of the public felt the media was giving Watergate too much coverage.
posted by chris24 at 9:13 AM on July 8, 2018 [62 favorites]


This is what the Russians call vranyo: "Vranyo is described as when a person knows he is lying and expects the other person to understand that. One of my colleagues said, 'He was lying to us, we knew he was lying, he knew we knew he was lying, but he kept lying anyway, and we pretended to believe him.'"

This must be why the Russians dig Trump so much; they can describe him in one word. Since they're able to define him so simply they know exactly how to deal with him.
posted by elsietheeel at 9:33 AM on July 8, 2018 [22 favorites]


Was just thinking today: what happened to the effort to try to stop the placement of a SCOTUS judge until after the November election, following the same principle that McConnell used to block Garland? Did the Dems in Washington give up on that already?
posted by StrawberryPie at 9:45 AM on July 8, 2018 [3 favorites]


McConnell had a majority in the Senate. Democrats don’t have enough votes to block the nomination.
posted by EarBucket at 9:53 AM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]


How do The Best People do statecraft? So glad you asked:

Punking Pompeo ("Inside Pompeo's Fraught North Korea Trip", Nick Wadhams, Bloomberg)

As U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touched down in Pyongyang at 10:54 a.m. on Friday he had few details of his schedule in the North Korean capital -- even which hotel he and his staff would stay in.

Not much was clear aside from lunch with counterpart Kim Yong Chol to start filling in the “nitty-gritty details’’ from the Singapore declaration signed between the leaders of the U.S. and North Korea, according to his spokeswoman Heather Nauert. A handshake with Kim Jong Un, at least, seemed certain.

In the end, Pompeo stayed at neither of the hotels where he thought he’d be. The North Koreans took him, his staff and the six journalists traveling with the delegation to a gated guesthouse on the outskirts of the capital, just behind the mausoleum where the bodies of regime founder Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il lie embalmed and on occasional display.

It was the start of a confused visit of less than 30 hours, marked by a pair of lavish banquets that the secretary and his staff appeared to dread for their length and the daunting number of courses presented by unfailingly polite waiters. He only learned of his own schedule hours ahead of time, and the meeting with Kim Jong Un never happened -- despite strenuous efforts from his staff.


Of course, all Americans, South Koreans, and to some extent the world loses in this opulent display of arrogant incompetence. But I'd be lying if I said there wasn't some freude in my schaden-O's from that article.
posted by petebest at 9:58 AM on July 8, 2018 [33 favorites]


Rudy Giuliani says he has “debriefed” all of Mueller’s witnesses

On the one hand if this is accurate it's worrying, but on the other, Rudy is so full of shit, his uncle works on experimental prototypes at Nintendo
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:10 AM on July 8, 2018 [24 favorites]


McConnell had a majority in the Senate

I am really wondering about John McCain here though. Can he actually make it to the Senate? In the extremely, extremely, unlikely event that Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski actually has a backbone to stand up for all women everywhere, that would be 49-50 in favor of Dems, and there's no tie to even break. All we need is one if McCain really can't travel back to DC. This isn't going to go down until September, and it's not like his brain cancer is going to get better in 2.5 months.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:12 AM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]


"Inside Pompeo's Fraught North Korea Trip", Nick Wadhams, Bloomberg)

I mean, Kim got to meet with the President of the US, something his father and grandfather did not get to do, and had to give up absolutely nothing except maybe some prisoners he was only keeping around just to have a card to play in a scenario like this. So you gave him everything he wanted, legitimized his regime and placed it on equal footing with the rest of the world, and you expect actual negotiations about denuclearization to happen? Absolute amateurs.
posted by dis_integration at 10:18 AM on July 8, 2018 [29 favorites]


> Giuliani's tour of the Sunday morning shows is going predictably well.

Yet another complaint about the fourth estate: Trump conspirators using the press to pass messages back and forth.
posted by klarck at 10:30 AM on July 8, 2018 [11 favorites]


Public opinion has turned strongly against the Rigged Witch Hunt and the “Special” Counsel because the public understands that there was no Collusion with Russia (so ridiculous), that the two FBI lovers were a fraud against our Nation & that the only Collusion was with the Dems!

NYT national security editor Amy Ficus examines the effects of Team Trump's campaign against the Special Counsel (n.b. Trump's personal attacks on Mueller started in March), per the Washington Post's new poll*.
That new WaPo poll showed a 14-pt increase in the percentage of people who disapprove of Mueller’s handling of the investigation, and a corresponding decrease in those who had no opinion. The attacks by Trump, Rudy and House R’s are having an effect.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/polling/department-justice-mueller-russian/2018/07/06/09a17592-8123-11e8-b3b5-b61896f90919_page.html

[...] I find it interesting that Trump et al have filled the vacuum of the unopinionated.
* "Do you approve or disapprove of the way U.S. Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller is handling the investigation into possible ties between Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government?"—Approve 49%, Disapprove 45%, and No Opinion 5%. Compare to similar polling questions: 11/1/17—Approve 58%, Disapprove 28%, and No Opinion 14%; and 1/18/18 Approve 50%, Disapprove 31%, and No Opinion 19%.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:48 AM on July 8, 2018 [4 favorites]


I'm having such a hard time wrapping my head around this whole breastfeeding thing. WTF.

How can they consciously threaten other countries who promote breastfeeding?! I get that they are soulless dirtbags who believe that breasts only serve sexual purposes, but I guess hearing all this in reality is hard. This also seems like they are trying to support ripping children from their mothers at the border because breastfeeding isn't a necessity per today's argument. I know they are pro-birth (not pro-life) but this doesn't make any sense.

So. Let me see if I have this correct: these Republicans now believe that if we get raped, it's our fault (because we shouldn't have been wearing a skirt out late at night - DUH) and we have to have our rapists' child because abortion is murder, AND we cannot feed the child in the most natural way possible.

We really are inching closer and closer to a Handmaid's tale.
posted by floweredfish at 11:12 AM on July 8, 2018 [41 favorites]


What if part of the increase in the Mueller disapproval rate is aimed at the pace of the investigation? Specifically, are more people dissatisfied that it's not moving fast enough and not handing out indictments like cheap Halloween candy already? I know by many metrics we're still within the Watergate timeline (just over two years between the break-in and the resignation) but the well-documented brazen stupidity of the currently-targeted gang of ratfuckers would suggest a few more heads should be on pikes by now.
posted by hangashore at 11:20 AM on July 8, 2018 [3 favorites]


In the extremely, extremely, unlikely event that Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski actually has a backbone to stand up for all women everywhere, that would be 49-50 in favor of Dems

If Trump nominated Barrett I think there's a reasonable chance they'd flip and her nomination would go down 48-51. But I think it's highly unlikely Trump does that. I think he'll nominated Hardiman or Kethledge and both Collins and Murkowski will vote to confirm. That gives the Republicans 50 votes no matter what, and in such a case I think 2-3 Dems also vote Yes and the nomination succeeds 53-46.
posted by Justinian at 11:21 AM on July 8, 2018 [2 favorites]


I get that they are soulless dirtbags who believe that breasts only serve sexual purposes, but I guess hearing all this in reality is hard.

I think it's less the sexy, sexy breastfeeding and more the desire to protect the profits of companies that make formula.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:31 AM on July 8, 2018 [64 favorites]


Re. the WHO breastfeeding topic, I suspect that the key point is this sentence: "...who described it as a marked contrast to the Obama administration, which largely supported W.H.O.’s longstanding policy of encouraging breast-feeding."

Obama supported it, therefore the Trump administration is against it. Bonus, of course, for the fact that some lobbyist cash can flow their way.

Also, I think this is part and parcel of the effort to transform citizens into consumers, and to replace democratic values and rights with consumer choice and purchasing power. E.g. if it cannot be sufficiently monetized, then 'it' cannot possibly be a right.
posted by skye.dancer at 11:45 AM on July 8, 2018 [35 favorites]


Regarding the WHO breastfeeding resolution, it really does look like a little game that Russia decided to make the US play, given that the Russians swooped in at the last minute and sponsored the resolution with no opposition from the US, and the Russian delegate quote: "We’re not trying to be a hero here, but we feel that it is wrong when a big country tries to push around some very small countries, especially on an issue that is really important for the rest of the world"
posted by maggiemaggie at 12:03 PM on July 8, 2018 [12 favorites]


California has completed it's count from the primary a few years weeks ago. 7.14million votes cast, up 60% from 2014 when 4.46million votes were cast.
posted by Justinian at 12:18 PM on July 8, 2018 [41 favorites]


The thing that makes me see it as a a game is the fact that the US fiercely opposed all the other countries except Russia, then Russia offers that smug quote. I'm sure the US is capable of being evil on its own, but they also seem to playing a few sadistic games lately.
posted by maggiemaggie at 12:19 PM on July 8, 2018 [4 favorites]


The Purge Producers Think It’s "Natural" that Trump’s 2020 Campaign Slogan is From Their Movie
Last year, the internet had some fun with the fact that President Trump’s proposed 2020 campaign slogan, "Keep America Great," had already been used by The Purge horror franchise. According to HuffPost, this hasn’t dissuaded the Commander-in-Chief from sticking with the slogan, and the films' producers aren’t at all surprised.

To be clear, The Purge producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller don’t think that Trump has seen their movies. Still, Fuller told HuffPost, "It felt kind of natural after we made the movie and then he used that."
posted by kirkaracha at 12:41 PM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]


Given the themes of the series that seems horrible appropriate. The bad guys of the series are basically pro-mass shooting repubs and NRA types, benefiting off of violence they set off and enjoying it from afar without expectation of getting personally touched by it.

No I wouldn't have said a few years ago that the dumb "all crime is legal" movie would have turned out to be hugely socially prescient either.
posted by Artw at 12:58 PM on July 8, 2018 [4 favorites]


And, like the Trump era, the Purge movies make absolutely no sense. So yeah, prescient.
posted by Justinian at 1:01 PM on July 8, 2018 [2 favorites]


it is not just the anti-obama fact of the WHO breastfeeding issue, food companies like those who produce formula are giant multinationals or in cahoots with other food companies to maximise their profit.


many multinational companies own diet lines & dieting companies alongside their incredibly unhealthy processed food and soda offers...it is significant that the USA also objected to soda taxes ....or changed the wording on them.


they basically have made human predisposition towards packing on fat for the lean months...an evolutionary advantage for 10s of thousands of years ....in an obesogenic environment they created...into a cash cow. Worse they have convinced humans who don't have a genetic predisposition towards the kinds of genes that pack on fat in times of plenty that their co-inhabitants of the earth must have had a massive loss of willpower at a certain stage, just like every developing nation suddenly lost their willpower, a population level loss of willpower....yeah that's likely.

the latest loss of willpower is the wild dingo populations of New South Wales. Fact, they're becoming fat by eating out of food bins especially around fast food joints. Funny that.


so when the huge multibillion dollar food industries have learned the lesson of big Pharma, why are we surprised? They treat patients in pain, or people with obesity, as cash crops, they get us going and coming really because when we try to get well...guess who also owns the addiction clinics and dieting chains?

why no-one can see that the present kleptocrat- in -chief in the white house was placed there by the combined special interests of Russian and US billionaires who need these sanctions dropped and need these 'pesky regulations" dropped...oh, and while you're at it, please try to dumb-down, or do I mean DeVossify the population so we can continue to pull the wool over their eyes with Fox News and Alt-Facts....

The breast-feeding and lets not support soda restrictions...that's completely part of the playbook that got us Pruitt, Mnunchin, Ross, Trump, Bannon, Miller et al
posted by Wilder at 1:02 PM on July 8, 2018 [23 favorites]


apologies, as I try to find my slides from IFSO2018 where I saw the slide I recall it is the Wild dog populations of NSW, dingos are by their nature, wild.
posted by Wilder at 1:13 PM on July 8, 2018 [2 favorites]



the slide showed the obesity curves for the USA, UK, Germany & Indian rates of obesity next to a curve that was titled WDP


we racked our brains for minor countries until the researcher told us it stood for the wild dog population in NSW


yes we are animals and considering we know there are 118 factors influencing obesity of which willpower is just 1 (Foresight report 2010) we STILL buy into a framed message that if only we bought more diet drugs, diet products, joined a gym, joined weightwatchers, etc., ignoring all of the Evidence from the Swedish Obesity Study and the global Health Weight Registry that willpower alone allows only 5% of people to lose weight and maintain that loss
posted by Wilder at 1:23 PM on July 8, 2018 [9 favorites]


Mod note: Let's call it good on the processed food stuff; kind of getting off into the weeds.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:31 PM on July 8, 2018 [9 favorites]


Say the people who freaked out when Obama tried to relax relations with Cuba after 55 years of sanctions not changing behavior.

You can't view Republican attitudes about Cuba policy as anything beyond leftover reflexive anti-communism and blatant, desperate pandering to the aging Cuban refugee population of Florida. Trying to make any other frame work is madness. Before their current run at being anti-family while claiming to be pro-family, you had their support of keeping Elian Gonzales with his cousins rather than reuniting him with his father. The descendants of these folks care less and less about maintaining the embargo but the old guard is largely Republican and getting them to keep coming out and voting means keeping them happy.

It's not hard at all to find the folks in congress who are believers that trade solves all problems, except when someone named Castro gets involved. These folks could shamelessly make back to back speeches about the importance of keeping out the embargo till Castro is out of power and how we're helping bring a taste of freedom to China with our trade there.

I guess this fair-weather commitment to trade was a good predictor of their willingness to shrug off Trump's nonsense so long as it helps them keep power.
posted by phearlez at 1:36 PM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]


> "Do you approve or disapprove of the way U.S. Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller is handling the investigation into possible ties between Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government?"

They may as well ask whether or not participants approve of the way their Timex keeps time. I follow these megathreads for links to some of the most astute analysis of Mueller's investigation - and yet it's all speculation based on his MO, standard practice and minutia like sequential blocks of indictment numbers. Mueller is inscrutable. There hasn't been a single unintentional leak. Those are extremely labile opinions - both approve and disapprove - that could turn on a single Friday news dump.
posted by klarck at 1:53 PM on July 8, 2018 [16 favorites]


"Do you approve or disapprove of the way U.S. Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller is handling the investigation into possible ties between Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government?"

The thing that encourages me is that the COURTS, where Mueller works, don't give a damn about approval ratings. And if the whole Campaign-Selling-Cabinet-Seats is true ( see Rod Blagojevich ) , Mueller MIGHT just opt to indict a sitting President, and let the courts work out the details.
posted by mikelieman at 2:03 PM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]


And if the whole Campaign-Selling-Cabinet-Seats is true

Did I miss a major story somewhere or is this pure speculation based on it being something Trump seems like the kind of person to do?
posted by Justinian at 2:42 PM on July 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


One of the British citizens exposed to Novichok in England has died. To be clear; a British citizen has been killed by a Russian attack using illegal chemical weapons of mass destruction. It's inconceivable that there won't be an extraordinary response to this, and yet I expect that to be the case.
posted by Justinian at 2:48 PM on July 8, 2018 [80 favorites]


.
posted by j_curiouser at 2:49 PM on July 8, 2018 [10 favorites]


The thing that encourages me is that the COURTS, where Mueller works, don't give a damn about approval ratings. And if the whole Campaign-Selling-Cabinet-Seats is true ( see Rod Blagojevich ) , Mueller MIGHT just opt to indict a sitting President, and let the courts work out the details.

The courts have no accountability over the President. Constitutionally the check on the President is Congress. Constitutionally the check on Congress are the People. What Giuliani is trying to do (successfully might I add) is lay cover for Republican members of Congress to hold the line and resist any sort of accountability for Trump jettisoning any investigations and subsequent charges.

If Trump were to fire Mueller tomorrow the ball would be in Congress’s court to impeach. If Giuliani has half of Americans unsympathetic to Mueller then he can point out the dice roll Congress take with their base if they decide to impeach. Republicans would be between a rock and a hard base. Not impeaching Trump could lose them an election. Impeaching Trump could lose a base for a generation.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 2:51 PM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]


Did I miss a major story somewhere or is this pure speculation based on it being something Trump seems like the kind of person to do?

Shit is happening so quickly it's hard to keep up.

THIS earlier comment by peeedro details the lender and what "was possibly a quid quo pro in exchange for being named Secretary of the Army."

And if you spend time googling Stephen Calk, you find out that he's JUST the kind of guy caught up in trouble who -- in money laundering type cases -- flips faster than The Flash at STAR*labs Pancake Breakfast.

I try to remember: (1) BREATHE, and (2) Trump et al are playing a game in the Court of Public Opinion, while Mueller is NOT playing games in the Court of Law. and (3) if we're talking good-old money laundering and influence peddling, that's something that NY can *easily* charge, avoiding all the pesky "Federal Pardons" thing.
posted by mikelieman at 2:57 PM on July 8, 2018 [9 favorites]


Ah ok. Not to be Captain Pedantry or anything but Secretary of the Army isn't a Cabinet position. That isn't a defense of selling the thing, obviously, but... not a Cabinet seat.
posted by Justinian at 3:04 PM on July 8, 2018 [1 favorite]




Perhaps in response to Russia's murder of a random allied civilian by WMD and in light of his coming meeting with Putin, Trump has tweeted a liberal-tears video compilation of non-supporters reacting to his election, with the message "They just didn't get it, but they do now!"
posted by Rust Moranis at 3:10 PM on July 8, 2018 [5 favorites]


The courts have no accountability over the President

Can you show me some citation from the Constitution or US Code which explicitly says that if someone who happens to be serving as President is indicted for criminal acts, that they are exempt from prosecution?

If there is a clear Constitutional prohibition or statute saying it can't happen, I DO want to see it!

Since tradition has been tossed out the window, and we are truly in a time of Constitutional Crisis where the Framer's world of personal honor challenged by duel does not exist, and can't prevent the abuse we see today, we are in uncharted waters. There isn't any reason NOT TO indict President Trump, and let the criminal courts figure it out.
posted by mikelieman at 3:14 PM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]


How can our legal system operate like this? Why doesn't one of these immigration judges just say "This is ridiculous. This kid can't participate in these proceedings. Find their parents and have them all here in my court in a week."
posted by runcibleshaw at 3:17 PM on July 8, 2018 [50 favorites]


Then it was the child’s turn for his court appearance before a Phoenix immigration judge, who could hardly contain his unease with the situation

Are you an attorney? Do you have 7 years experience? That's all it takes to be an Immigration Judge.

Not that Article I judges have much discretion, the governing statutes that set the rules for immigration hearings require these absurd results, and the judges have no protection from being fired for most any reason, but a whole bunch of people intent on changing this travesty applying to be Immigration Judges could be influential.

Reform of the immigration courts needs to be part of the Democrats comprehensive reform plans. Unrepresented kids need the unequivocal right to a government appointed advocate, at the very minimum.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:18 PM on July 8, 2018 [12 favorites]


Why doesn't one of these immigration judges just say "This is ridiculous. This kid can't participate in these proceedings. Find their parents and have them all here in my court in a week."

They literally can't. They're not "real" judges. They're employees of the executive charged with adjudicating immigration cases according to the governing regulations, which do not allow for every defendant to have a lawyer. They have a small window of discretion to determine specific factual questions regarding a persons immigration status, reasonable fear of harm if deported, etc, which can be overruled at any time by the Executive Office of Immigration Review within DOJ, or the Attorney General himself.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:22 PM on July 8, 2018 [15 favorites]


Can you show me some citation from the Constitution or US Code which explicitly says that if someone who happens to be serving as President is indicted for criminal acts, that they are exempt from prosecution?

The President can instruct attorneys general to fire any federal prosecutor that comes after him and fire said AGs if they refuse.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 3:25 PM on July 8, 2018 [2 favorites]


Re. the breastfeeding resolution:

"In addition to the trade threats, Todd C. Chapman, the United States ambassador to Ecuador, suggested in meetings with officials in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, that the Trump administration might also retaliate by withdrawing the military assistance it has been providing in northern Ecuador, a region wracked by violence spilling across the border from Colombia, according to an Ecuadorean government official who took part in the meeting.

The United States Embassy in Quito declined to make Mr. Chapman available for an interview."

Todd Chapman is apparently a career foreign service officer who was confirmed as ambassador under Obama. So I'm kind of stunned he would make threats like this unless he had been ordered to, it seems clumsy, heavy-handed and makes the country look very bad for not much gain imo.
posted by Rufous-headed Towhee heehee at 3:29 PM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]


The President can instruct attorneys general to fire any federal prosecutor that comes after him and fire said AGs if they refuse.

Force him to do just that, in that case. There’s no reason that we should be held hostage by threats rather than actions.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 3:31 PM on July 8, 2018 [8 favorites]


Force him to do just that, in that case. There’s no reason that we should be held hostage by threats rather than actions.

Nobody said anything about hostage. My entire original point is that Congress are who ultimately hold the President accountable.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 3:35 PM on July 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


They literally can't. They're not "real" judges.

As an example:
When 1996 legislation provided immigration judges with contempt power over attorneys appearing in their courts, INS managed to indefinitely block implementing DOJ regulations because the agency did not wish to afford immigration judges such authority over their fellow DOJ attorneys within INS; as a result, the judges still lack such contempt power 21 years later.
A real judge has the authority to manage the conduct of cases in their court, and can hold people in contempt if they don't comply. Immigration judges can't, despite the express wishes of Congress over 20 years ago, because DOJ makes the rules, and they've just decided to ignore that bit.

Immigration judges can't even do much when the government doesn't bother to show up at hearings. An immigration judge ordering the government to find the parents and have them brought to court is like a Wendy's drive-through worker ordering that Dave Thomas show up with the chili recipe: the entire system is designed so that can't happen.
posted by zachlipton at 3:39 PM on July 8, 2018 [16 favorites]


When i lived in louisville, i ate at the bristol bar and grille on bardstown road all the time. They have a great menu, and their pork dijonnaise is to die for. Having said that, I’m kinda ashamed a restaurant that was founded by hippies selling a $7 steak sandwich in the 70’s would have a pus-pot like mitch come thru the door.

Ahem.

So, now we’re not only the country that puts babies in cages, we’re anti-breastfeeding? WTF? This cannot stand. And Russia came to the rescue? This ain’t my America, folks. This ain’t anyones idea of America.
posted by valkane at 3:49 PM on July 8, 2018 [8 favorites]


The US experienced a WMD attack right after 9/11. No one seems to remember that too clearly. The FBI wrecked one man's career and drove another to suicide, without any physical evidence and sketchy science - eventually closing the case due to the suicide. Not very many people besides the FBI have much confidence that it was the right guy. Even his co-workers.

Now, we get to see how the UK handles it. I am not hopeful. The Foreign Office has to be shitting it's collective pants - what's the retaliation against Russia?

Is this Sarajevo? A spark in the tinderbox?
posted by j_curiouser at 4:01 PM on July 8, 2018 [13 favorites]


Thank you for your replies. Sounds like abolishing immigration courts should go hand in hand with abolishing ICE.
posted by runcibleshaw at 4:02 PM on July 8, 2018 [4 favorites]


Why doesn't one of these immigration judges just say "This is ridiculous. This kid can't participate in these proceedings. Find their parents and have them all here in my court in a week."

What they absolutely could do is say "I am told that my position requires me to condemn a child in proceedings he cannot understand and in consequence of an act for which he was not responsible. I have no discretion here other than to decline to play my part. Consequently, I resign."

If they were more gutsy they might first do something like declare all the people before them to be political prisoners and then resign, but under these circumstances resignation is their only moral choice.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:11 PM on July 8, 2018 [28 favorites]




I also can't stop thinking that most women are less likely to conceive again while breastfeeding. Just another way to chip away any tiny bit of control women have over if/when/how they get pregnant.
posted by nakedmolerats at 4:17 PM on July 8, 2018 [17 favorites]


The writers left an Easter egg in the Bannon story. A commenter on the Post's story said
Oh, and dear posters on the Washington Post reader board, the owner of Black Swan Books, Nicholas Cook[e] lll, could have called Steve Bannon to come into his shop to feel him out over asking for a pardon of his wife, Ellen, by President Trump.

Nick's wife was Treasurer of the National Episcopal Diocese in New York and was convicted of stealing over $2 million dollars in Church funds. Nick himself used to be a lawyer and a priest.
It's weird but true - the Federal judge who sentenced his wife Ellen is Trump's sister.

This incident just seems too squirrelly, too unlike, the other confrontations between citizens and Trump Adm. officials to be genuine. JMHO
That…that couldn't possibly…

Sure enough.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:28 PM on July 8, 2018 [37 favorites]


- the Federal judge who sentenced his wife Ellen is Trump's sister.


Trump has a sister?
posted by runcibleshaw at 4:44 PM on July 8, 2018 [4 favorites]


The US experienced a WMD attack right after 9/11. No one seems to remember that too clearly.

Recounting the Anthrax Attacks by Scott Decker is a good book, it does not make the head of the FBI look very good. That would be Robert Mueller, he is portrayed as a micromanager who fell for bogus bloodhound science, was unable to resist political pressures from the Bush administration and Sen Leahy, and goaded on by Nicholas Kristof to focus on an implausible suspect. Between the Amerithrax case and the implosion of Virtual Case File when I hear anyone suggest that Mueller is going to take down Trump, I quietly hope the he's learned some important lessons from his past failures.
posted by peeedro at 4:48 PM on July 8, 2018 [15 favorites]


Trump has a sister?

Maryanne Trump Barry
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:48 PM on July 8, 2018 [2 favorites]


I actually found via Google that thing about Cooke's wife embezzling from the Episcopalians, and I'm totally curious about whether they're still married. As best as I can tell, Cooke himself was never convicted of anything, although it's hard to see how he could not have known that his family's entire lavish lifestyle was being funded via embezzlement. His wife was sentenced to five years in prison.

Anyway, he's apparently a crook with the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability who played at religiosity while living the high life by stealing from the church, so he seems like someone who would be right at home in the Trump administration.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:57 PM on July 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


Jon McNaughton, conservative propagandist painter extraordinaire, has painted an image of Trump committing a Federal felony against Robert Mueller: 18 USCS § 111, Assaulting a Federal Officer while the officer is engaged in the performance of his or her official duties. In this case it's aggravated assault because he's touching the victim, punishable with up to 8 years in prison.
posted by scalefree at 5:00 PM on July 8, 2018 [2 favorites]


Trump's got two sisters, Maryanne Trump Barry and Elizabeth Trump Grau.
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:00 PM on July 8, 2018


The McNaughton [wonkette] piece scalefree is talking about.
posted by porpoise at 5:04 PM on July 8, 2018 [2 favorites]


Gah sorry, I meant to post a link to the image on Twitter. My bad.
posted by scalefree at 5:07 PM on July 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


Hang on, hang on. Three of five Brexit ministers have resigned the the last hour. It's like 1am in the UK. Wtf is going on and what does this mean for a Brexit? Might this have anything to do with the Russia murder by poisoning earlier today?
posted by triggerfinger at 5:10 PM on July 8, 2018 [43 favorites]


Trump's got two sisters, Maryanne Trump Barry and Elizabeth Trump Grau.

And two brothers, Fred Jr. and Robert. Fred Jr. died of alcoholism-related health issues, which caused Donald Trump to avoid alcohol and cigarettes.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:11 PM on July 8, 2018


Might this have anything to do with the Russia murder by poisoning earlier today?

Likely nothing so sane. They’re just not getting their preferred version of the shitty Brexit deal they’re not going to get out of the EU anyway, and so are throwing a fit and, if we are lucky, bringing down the government.
posted by Artw at 5:14 PM on July 8, 2018 [15 favorites]


The US experienced a WMD attack right after 9/11. No one seems to remember that too clearly.

Oh, I do. We had to hear about how George W. Bush Kept Us Safe for years after he went 0-2.

I was wondering earlier how soon it will be before Trump takes credit for firing Pruitt as Draining the Swamp when he hired Pruitt in the first place, and how it would be similar to Bush claiming he kept us safe after he didn't.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:16 PM on July 8, 2018 [33 favorites]


I was wondering earlier how soon it will be before Trump takes credit for firing Pruitt as Draining the Swamp when he hired Pruitt in the first place

I haven't seen Trump say it yet but it is absolutely SOP for his supporters to say that Trump firing the corrupt and/or incompetent people that Trump himself hired is proof that he is draining the swamp. That's absolutely their position.
posted by Justinian at 5:20 PM on July 8, 2018 [4 favorites]


Of course Trump's sister's name would be a homophone for Marion Barry. That's sloppy, even by the writers's standards.
posted by miguelcervantes at 6:17 PM on July 8, 2018 [9 favorites]


A journalist’s conscience leads her to reveal her source to the FBI. Here’s why. (Margaret Sullivan, WaPo)
It’s pretty much an inviolable rule of journalism: Protect your sources.

Reporters have gone to jail to keep that covenant.

But Marcy Wheeler, who writes a well-regarded national security blog, not only revealed a source — she did so to the FBI, eventually becoming a witness in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of President Trump’s possible connections to Russia.

“On its face, I broke one of the cardinal rules of journalism, but what he was doing should cause a source to lose protection,” Wheeler told me in a lengthy phone interview.

“It’s not a decision I regret,” she added.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:23 PM on July 8, 2018 [19 favorites]


Marion Barry was a deeply flawed man and his later in life slide into caricature was tragic. Never the less he was worth a thousand of Trump and I’d sign on for twelve years of him as president over 4 of DJT.
posted by phearlez at 6:39 PM on July 8, 2018 [12 favorites]


Literally Glen Greenwald: MSNBC is the deep state now.

Putin needs to hire GG a new writing team, the material is getting a little worn. It's like season 6 of True Blood up in here.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:39 PM on July 8, 2018 [13 favorites]


I have a friend who clerked for Maryanne Trump Barry. He credibly claims she is a center-left judge, a Garland-type, and that she had nothing in common with DJT other than the hair, which is kinda eerie.
posted by johnny jenga at 6:42 PM on July 8, 2018 [10 favorites]


I have a friend who clerked for Maryanne Trump Barry. He credibly claims she is a center-left judge, a Garland-type, and that she had nothing in common with DJT

Maryanne Trump Barry in 1992:

“Professional hypochondriacs,” the speaker said, were making it hard for “men to be themselves” and were turning “every sexy joke of long ago, every flirtation,” into “sexual harassment,” thus ruining “any kind of playfulness and banter. Where has the laughter gone?” As for boorish behavior, the best way to disarm it was with “humor and gentle sarcasm,” or better yet, that “potent weapon” of a “feminine exterior and a will of steel.”
posted by Iris Gambol at 7:01 PM on July 8, 2018 [9 favorites]


Politico, Ashley Gold, GOP thinks bashing tech companies will rally base
Republicans are turning their grievances about biased tech companies into a rallying message for a difficult election year.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel are among the GOP leaders vocally complaining about a host of Silicon Valley slights against conservatives, ranging from Facebook’s stripping of ad revenue from the video-blogging duo Diamond and Silk to a Google search result that paired the California GOP with “Nazism.”

So is Brad Parscale, who ran Donald Trump’s winning digital campaign in 2016 but now, as the reelection campaign manager for the social-media-loving president, says it’s past time for a reckoning with companies like Facebook and Twitter.

Conservative complaints about Silicon Valley have sprouted in the past year, echoing the frequent GOP accusations that liberal news media and a pervasive bureaucratic “deep state” are conspiring against Trump’s agenda. But the anti-tech message appears to be accelerating as Republicans fight to fire up their base and counter a feared Democratic “blue wave” in November.

Meanwhile, tech executives are scrambling to prove they don’t harbor anti-conservative prejudice. Facebook has held at least two previously unreported meetings with conservative groups and digital experts since April, and it launched an audit of potential bias with the assistance of former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and the law firm Covington & Burling.
It's the classic GOP grift, which worked so well with the press that they've expanded it ever more: work the refs with a constant stream of bad faith accusations of bias until you bully them into giving up, then claim it's still not good enough.

It's a suckers game. There is absolutely zero chance that the same people who dedicated the resources of the House Judiciary Committee to investigating the grievances of Diamond and Silk will ever under any circumstances say "ok thanks Facebook. We're pleased with the changes you've made and now agree you are unbiased American patriots." Facebook could replace their app with the Diamond and Silk fanclub page, and it still wouldn't stop the complaints. What did hiring a parade of increasingly unhinged Trump supporters get CNN? Nothing; they chant "CNN sucks" at Trump rallies louder than ever. The Times has opened its op-ed pages to host the Bari Weiss Home For Grifters and Incompetents, a project that has brought them not one iota of respect or trust from the right. These entities continue to treat Republican complaints as if they're legitimate grievances that could possibly be resolved instead of unwinnable culture war sniping used to maintain the illusion that the party controlling all three branches of government is perpetually oppressed.
posted by zachlipton at 7:07 PM on July 8, 2018 [55 favorites]


The Trump Foundation grift keeps on grifting…

Palm Beach Post: Trump Foundation donated to charities that booked galas at Mar-a-Lago
Nearly all of the $706,000 in donations made by the Donald J. Trump Foundation in Palm Beach County since 2008 went to charities that hosted lavish fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago — the president’s highest-profile business in the county.

While the timing and frequency of the donations suggest charities that fete at Mar-a-Lago — especially those that return after fundraising at other venues — are rewarded for their loyalty, several local charities said the donations were not a quid pro quo or a reward for doing business with Trump.[...]

Moving to Mar-a-Lago: Who got how much and when

A sampling of the charities that received a donation at the time they moved their fundraisers to Mar-a-Lago.

• The International Red Cross received a $21,000 donation in 2015, the year it decided to move its event from The Breakers back to Mar-a-Lago.
• The Salvation Army received a $25,000 in 2015, the year after it moved its event to Mar-a-Lago from the Breakers.
• The MorseLife Foundation moved its dinner dance to Mar-a-Lago in 2011 and the next year the Trump Foundation made a $25,000 donation.
• The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society moved its event to Mar-a-Lago in 2010. In April 2011, Trump called into Rush Limbaugh’s radio show during Limbaugh’s annual Leukemia/Lymphoma Cure-A-Thon and pledged to give $100,000. The foundation then made a $101,500 donation.
• The Dana Farber Cancer Institute began hosting its fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago in 2011. A year before, the Trump Foundation donated $100,000 to the institute’s headquarters and the foundation followed with a $25,000 gift in 2014 and another $22,500 in 2015.
• The Palm Beach Zoo — a regular at the Breakers — received a $25,000 donation from the Trump Foundation in 2013, which was the year it moved to Mar-a-Lago.
And the last time Trump contributed any of his own money to his foundation was 2008.
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:12 PM on July 8, 2018 [27 favorites]


Here's the cover story for next week's NY Magazine: Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart — Or His Handler? A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion. (The accompanying chart of all the players connecting Trump and Putin is almost beautiful in its baroqueness.)

MeFite POTUS45 megathread regulars won't find anything new in this article's overview of the available evidence about Trump's Russian ties, but such is the state of American journalism that it has to gently introduce the possibility that Trump colluded, and continues to collude with the Kremlin. It's mind-boggling that the US political establishment and the fourth estate aren't jointly raising alarm bells over the upcoming summit, yet here we are.
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:27 PM on July 8, 2018 [59 favorites]


What that article didn't mention (that I could see, I may have missed it), is that:
“Charities hosting large galas can pay Trump's club between $125,000 and $275,000 for a single night's revelry. Even lunchtime events can cost charities between $25,000 and $85,000.”
[Vox article about previous event cancellations].

So he's using other people's money to bribe the charities, and making (generally) an order of magnitude more personally. Effectively laundering and transferring the charity money.
posted by Buntix at 7:28 PM on July 8, 2018 [13 favorites]


So he's using other people's money to bribe the charities, and making (generally) an order of magnitude more personally. Effectively laundering and transferring the charity money.


Since the main reason he hasn't put any money in since 2008 is that he was (illegally) directing people paying him to instead donate to the charity, this is really more kickback than bribe. I mean, a kickback is basically a form of bribe, but it's a Trump type of bribe: it uses someone else's money.
posted by phearlez at 7:34 PM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]


It's mind-boggling that the US political establishment and the fourth estate aren't jointly raising alarm bells over the upcoming summit

Both are extremely happy being a client state in exchange for either judges/tax cuts or ratings/subscribers. There's no such thing as the collective interests of the United States.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:47 PM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]


The WSJ's inside report on Trump's Justice pick reveals his hallmark chaotic decision-making: Trump Takes a Final Look at Supreme Court Choices—President deliberates with advisers, who aren’t sure where he stands ahead of Monday announcement (Twitter paywall bypass)
President Donald Trump on Sunday polled outside advisers about his Supreme Court nominee and appeared to favor different finalists as the day wore on, wrestling with a decision that is crucial to his legacy and that could tip the court’s yearslong balance firmly toward conservatives.

On the eve of his planned Monday night announcement, Mr. Trump was undecided and was making calls and asking questions about a quartet of finalists: federal judges Brett Kavanaugh, Raymond Kethledge, Thomas Hardiman and Amy Coney Barrett, people familiar with the search process said.

During the day Sunday, Mr. Trump zeroed in on different aspects each finalist brought to the equation, and his own advisers weren’t certain where he would land, noting a final decision could come just hours before Monday’s televised announcement, set for 9 p.m. EDT. “It’s a jump ball,” said one person familiar with the search.

“We are close to making a decision,” Mr. Trump said Sunday afternoon as he prepared to return to Washington from a weekend at his New Jersey golf club. “Let’s just say it’s the four people. Every one you can’t go wrong. I’ll be deciding tonight or tomorrow sometime by 12 o’clock, and we’re all going to be meeting at 9 o’clock,” he said.

The president’s decision process included a round of golf Sunday with friends such as conservative commentator Sean Hannity, the people familiar with the process said. Mr. Hannity didn’t respond to a request for comment.[...]

White House aides, not knowing whom Mr. Trump would choose, devised rollout plans for each of the top contenders. They are preparing to lay out the nominee’s biography and judicial record in the hours after the announcement and are arranging for supporters to speak on TV.

The multiple candidates are aware of the process and have agreed to participate in it.

A central figure in the search is the White House counsel, Don McGahn, who is part of a conservative legal world that values judges who interpret the law by focusing on the precise legal text as written by Congress, as opposed to the purported reasons lawmakers had in mind when passing the law.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has played a minimal role in the selection, Mr. Trump’s advisers said.

One reason Mr. McGahn has stayed in his job while other senior White House aides have departed is that he prized the chance to help usher in two Supreme Court nominees, people familiar with the matter said.
The best case scenario is that this is just part of a gas-lighting campaign by the right-wing noise machine to amp up suspense over who Trump will pick. The worst is that White House aides remain unable to get Trump to focus on major issues and are delicately leaking this problem to a friendly press outlet.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:12 PM on July 8, 2018 [4 favorites]


If they were more gutsy they might first do something like declare all the people before them to be political prisoners and then resign, but under these circumstances resignation is their only moral choice.

One thing I don't understand is why 50% of the children with legal representation end up staying and hardly any without do. If there are legal arguments to be made, you would think an activist judge or two might take it upon themselves to make them on behalf of the kids.
posted by xammerboy at 8:27 PM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]


I tried googling for the quotes from numerous lawyers saying that anyone else who abused a charity the way the Trump family has would be facing jail time, but all I can find is links to Trump complaining about Hillary's crooked foundation.

We desperately need a public outcry on this. It's before a judge now, and maximum pressure should be applied now to ensure Trump is treated like anyone else. It's amazing to me that this scandal is getting lost in the shuffle. All that's needed here for the Trump family to finally be called out on their criminal behavior is greater exposure and public pressure.

Russia called out the U.S. because they are on the ball, and not about let an opportunity pass where they can stand up against the United States for baby's healthcare on a world stage. Letting Trump's truly egregious abuse of his charity for self gain pass is missed opportunity. It tells me, despite all I've been hearing about Democrats being ready and fired up for change, that they are not on the ball. If Democrats can't nail Trump on this, I have little faith they can handle the bigger stuff.
posted by xammerboy at 8:47 PM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]


Ecuador is one of the countries from which refugees flee and seek asylum in the US

Ecuador is politically stable, with low internal displacement, and a refugee destination, particularly for Colombians displaced by the civil war and American anti-drug activity.

Not trying to dispute the broader point about how shitty the U.S.'s behavior is here, just pointing out that Ecuador is... actually pretty nice!
posted by zjacreman at 9:02 PM on July 8, 2018 [25 favorites]


Michigan-2nd Dem. candidate Rob Davidson: I am an ER doc. I just got off the night shift and this is why I support healthcare for all. Healthcare is a right. My opponent @RepHuizenga believes his constituents need to have skin in the game and voted to cut healthcare from 20 million Americans. So I am running against him.

MI-2 is a PVI R+9 district. Davidson is running essentially unopposed in the primary to face incumbent R. Bill Huizenga, who hasn't faced a serious Democratic challenger since his election in 2010.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:36 PM on July 8, 2018 [66 favorites]


"need to have skin in the game"... you'd think that with regards to Health and healthcare, "skin in the game" is universal...
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:11 PM on July 8, 2018 [8 favorites]


- Ecuador is one of the countries from which refugees flee and seek asylum in the US

-- Ecuador is politically stable, with low internal displacement, and a refugee destination, particularly for Colombians displaced by the civil war and American anti-drug activity.


Ecuador is a destination for Colombians and Venezuelans, yet CNN lumped Ecuador in with Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador in its "What are migrants fleeing from when they cross the Mexico-US border?" piece last year.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:14 PM on July 8, 2018 [2 favorites]


WaPo: How to Resist Bad Supreme Court Rulings
The comparison of Trump v. Hawaii to Dred Scott hinges on the argument that the two cases are similarly egregious, turning on specious ideas about racial difference: then against black people and now against Muslim people.

That’s true, and certainly a reason we should study Dred Scott in this moment. But which lessons we draw from the past matters. The Dred Scott decision was a bad one, and yet it also exposed the limitations of the court’s power — and how lawyers and activists curbed its influence. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney overreached when he aimed to seal the fate of black Americans, and the resistance to his ruling is instructive for those who are seeking to do the same in the face of Trump v. Hawaii.

No sooner had the Dred Scott decision been handed down than it was under attack from many sides. African American activists and members of the abolitionist movement immediately opposed what was a blow to those who had long claimed that former slaves were free people and also citizens. At stake was whether the United States was destined to be a white man’s country or whether there was a future for an interracial democracy on the horizon.

Taney’s fellow jurists also objected to the blanket exclusion of black Americans from the body politic. Lower federal courts resisted in surprisingly effective ways. Their willingness to interpret Taney’s decision narrowly and treat black litigants like citizens was a blow that sapped Dred Scott of much real influence...
Also, Pacific Standard: David Faris Offers Democrats a Plan For Fighting Back
posted by triggerfinger at 10:55 PM on July 8, 2018 [18 favorites]


A reminder that all politics is local: A Group Is Trying to Revoke the Trump Hotel’s Liquor License Based on Moral Character.


Via the English edition of Der Forverts, which has its own characteristic take: Rabbis Say Trump Hotel Should Lose Liquor License Over ‘Good Character’ Law

[n.b., they do say that "The petition was filed by two retired judges and five local clergy members, including Rabbi Aaron Potek of the young adult outreach group Gather DC and Rabbi Jack Moline"]
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:19 PM on July 8, 2018 [30 favorites]




Mod note: A couple deleted; please post your UK/Brexit links over here. Thanks!
posted by taz (staff) at 5:16 AM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]


"need to have skin in the game"... you'd think that with regards to Health and healthcare, "skin in the game" is universal...

"Skin in the game" is one of those phrases that wealthy assholes use to justify withholding vital social services from those who need them despite the fact that they themselves are "playing the game" with someone else's skin.

Oh, and also, it's not a fucking game! It's life or death for many people.
posted by Servo5678 at 5:29 AM on July 9, 2018 [25 favorites]


Trump aide endure increasing public fury

“One night, after Miller ordered $80 of takeout sushi from a restaurant near his apartment, a bartender followed him into the street and shouted, “Stephen!” When Miller turned around, the bartender raised both middle fingers and cursed at him, according to an account Miller has shared with White House colleagues.

Outraged, Miller threw the sushi away, he later told his colleagues.”

No justice, no peace, no 80$ sushi.
posted by The Whelk at 5:38 AM on July 9, 2018 [124 favorites]




Outraged, Miller threw the sushi away, he later told his colleagues.

There is nothing more 21st-Century-conservative than throwing away $80 worth of food because someone was mean to you and then acting like it was a victory on your part.
posted by Etrigan at 5:48 AM on July 9, 2018 [119 favorites]


Sounds likely that someone out there found a really good meal in the trash. I hope that they shared it with friends and they all enjoyed it.
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:51 AM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]




valkane So, now we’re not only the country that puts babies in cages, we’re anti-breastfeeding? WTF? This cannot stand. And Russia came to the rescue? This ain’t my America, folks. This ain’t anyones idea of America.

Unfortunately, while it isn't your idea of America or mine, it most definitely is someone's idea of America. Around 25% of Americans seem to think this is absolutely what they want out of America, and another 25% shrug and accept it as long as they get their tax cuts.

To the hardcore Trumpists babies in cages is winning, and breastfeeding is icky and should be discouraged. There's a lot of men, and I notice this overlaps with being highly conservative, who view breasts as 100% ornamental and for adult men's sexual enjoyment, the idea of breastfeeding squicks them out and they hate it. I'm sure there's some women who feel the same way, though assuming they exist they don't seem to be as vocal about it as the self entitled douchebros who go on anti-breastfeeding rants.

As Mr. Glover observed, this is America. It is not our America, but it most certainly is America.

I really do think one thing that Trump's ascendance has done is that it's forcing a lot of privileged lefties to recognize what black people and women have been screaming for decades: that America is deeply divided and there are a **LOT** of Americans who actively hate the inclusive, egalitarian, model of America we'd like to imagine is universal.
posted by sotonohito at 6:13 AM on July 9, 2018 [41 favorites]


Trump aide endure increasing public fury

Included amongst the "fury" and "vicious" attacks: longtime residents of the neighborhood Pence is temporarily staying in putting up rainbow flags because, according to the writers of this bit of access-journalism hackery, that is an unwarranted attack on a decent man. Can't help sympathizing with the fascists by engaging in some good old-fashioned false equivalency.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:13 AM on July 9, 2018 [29 favorites]


Rudy Giuliani says he has “debriefed” all of Mueller’s witnesses

That's on top of another of his bold legal ploys during his appearance on ABC's "This Week": Giuliani seems to say Trump asked Comey to give Michael Flynn 'a break' (CNN)
After host George Stephanopoulos said to Giuliani that Comey says he took Trump's remark as direction, Giuliani responded that he was also told, "Can you give the man a break?" many times as a prosecutor.

"He didn't direct him to do that," Giuliani said. "What he said was, can you, can you ..."

"Comey says he took it as direction," Stephanopoulos interjected.

"Well, that's okay. He could have taken it that way, but by that time he had been fired," Giuliani responded. "He said a lot of other things, some of which has turned out to be untrue. The reality is, as a prosecutor, I was told that many times, 'can you give the man a break,' either by his lawyers, by his relatives, by his friends. You take that into consideration. But you know that doesn't determine not going forward with it."
And first thing this morning, Michael Cohen's new lawyer Lanny Davis tweeted, "Did @rudygiuliani really say on Sunday shows that @michaelcohen212 should cooperate with prosecutors and tell the truth? Seriously? Is that Trump and Giuliani definition of “truth”? Trump/Giuliani next to the word “truth” = oxymoron. Stay tuned. #thetruthmatters"
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:29 AM on July 9, 2018 [12 favorites]


ya know... I am not ready for a Michael Cohen hero turn. Feels unearned.
posted by Golem XIV at 6:32 AM on July 9, 2018 [19 favorites]


Josh Dawsey is the guy who tried to get SHuckS to give a straight answer, so I wouldn't lump him in with Haberman. The rainbow flag story is one small part of an article filled with actual fury.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:32 AM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]


Why America’s cheese capital is at the center of Trump’s trade war
Both men agree with Trump that there are serious issues with the trade of cheese but what they don’t like is the uncertainty that has come with this cantankerous, piecemeal trade dispute. “If we know what the rules are, we know what to do. But not knowing is this going to be six weeks, six months, six years? That’s really difficult,” Schwager said.

Dick Groves, publisher of Wisconsin-based Cheese Reporter, says he had not seen so much uncertainty in the industry in the 40 years he has been following it. “There’s a heck of a lot of uncertainty right now,” he says. Farmers are wondering if it’s time to kill some of their cows but no one knows what will happen next. “This thing is happening so quickly,” he says.

One of the worst consequences of the dispute for Schwager is that it has effectively removed the US from negotiations about real issues for the industry. European officials are striking deals with China, Mexico and other parties to protect the names of their cheeses – deals that have already forced Sartori to change the name of one of their products in Mexico, a move that led to customer confusion and declining sales. Those kinds of deals could hurt US cheesemakers for generations, he says.

“If we are not at the table, we don’t have a say,” says Schwager. “The intention of the administration is to level the playing field. The intention is good. Just not the tactics,” he says.
(My bolding) This is all fine and well, but the part I bolded underlines that this is a fight the US can never win. The EU goes to great lengths to protect it's original food products, such as Parmigiano and Roquefort. Even when the trade-war ends, they are not going to give on this issue, and if Mexico and Canada want to trade with the EU (which I guess they will even more now as the US has shown itself to be volatile and unreliable), they will have to respect the EU rules. tl;dr: it isn't just a case of Trump being an idiot here.
posted by mumimor at 6:35 AM on July 9, 2018 [11 favorites]


God, that Giuliani quote is so infuriating. Trump wasn't just a friend of the person being prosecuted, he's the head of the executive branch. If the district attorney had come to Giuliani and said "give the guy a break" would he have just seen that as a suggestion?
posted by runcibleshaw at 6:45 AM on July 9, 2018 [9 favorites]


God, that Giuliani quote is so infuriating. Trump wasn't just a friend of the person being prosecuted, he's the head of the executive branch. If the district attorney had come to Giuliani and said "give the guy a break" would he have just seen that as a suggestion?

What infuriates me most, is the lack of pushback:

Giuliani said was, "The reality is, as a prosecutor, I was told that many times, 'can you give the man a break,' either by his lawyers, by his relatives, by his friends. "

Obvious follow up: Comey wasn't prosecuting of Michael Flynn, but rather investigating him. Comparing apples to bowling balls.
posted by mikelieman at 6:52 AM on July 9, 2018 [10 favorites]


I am not ready for a Michael Cohen hero turn. Feels unearned.

It's like when Principal Snyder took a stand against the Mayor's final form. It's not really a hero turn, and it'll probably turn about the same for Cohen.
posted by Etrigan at 6:53 AM on July 9, 2018 [39 favorites]


Today in headlines guaranteed to make you smile even though they come from Politico: Beto-mania sweeps Texas.
posted by schadenfrau at 6:59 AM on July 9, 2018 [37 favorites]


[Comey] said a lot of other things, some of which has turned out to be untrue.

Citation needed, Mr. Giuliani.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:08 AM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


Today in headlines guaranteed to make you smile even though they come from Politico: Beto-mania sweeps Texas.

He just needs to be on Stephen Colbert in the Ed Sullivan Theater and he'll become a national phenomenon.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 7:18 AM on July 9, 2018 [13 favorites]


yesster: I've decided to do what I can to reclaim the hallmarks of patriotism. The Republican party has been wrapping itself in the flag and jingoistic patriotism my entire 51 years of life.

I'm taking them back.

Today I screen printed a couple of t-shirts with the statue of liberty, and the "golden door" poem. I will wear them proudly. I will continue and expand. Next up will probably be the text of the Constitution. Or the text of the oath of office.

I cannot open a conversation about immigration, or racism, or egalitarianism, or liberal political philosophy. But I can put those messages front and center.

Yeah, and vote.

And help others to vote.


First, fuck yeah to all this!

Second, I recently saw Jackie Kashian, who has a bit about realizing she's a patriot only because of the current shit-show. It's in her recording I Am Not the Hero of This Story (Amazon), which has a good mix of humor and politics, if that's the kind of thing you want.

And third, getting people to vote is not a small thing, don't discount it.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:32 AM on July 9, 2018 [18 favorites]


Rust Moranis: Douglas Rushkoff, Medium. Survival of the Richest: The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind

If zombie movies have shown me anything, it's that trying to be Smaug and hoarding your wealth ends badly every time. The uber-rich are outnumbered by everyone else, and the value of goods changes drastically when everyone is just trying to survive. In other words, befriend a farmer, if you yourself can't be a farmer.

Back to the news: following zachlipton's link of A late Friday surprise. WSJ, Trump Administration Expected to Suspend ACA Program Related to Insurer Payments (t.co shortened link points to this WSJ article), Trump Administration Freezes Payments Required By The Affordable Care Act (NPR, July 8, 2018)
The Trump administration said Saturday that it is temporarily halting billions of dollars of payments designed to help insurers meet the Affordable Care Act requirement that they provide coverage regardless of whether a person is healthy or sick.

The administration said it was withholding $10.4 billion in the so-called "risk adjustment" payments, citing a district court ruling from earlier this year in New Mexico. While the administration says it is required to stop payments because of the court decision, insurers say the move could result in higher premiums for millions of individuals and small businesses.

The risk adjustment program plays an important role in the ACA by pooling risk for insurers, transferring funds from insurers who enroll healthier members for relatively less, to those that take on higher costs in order to enroll sicker members. The idea is to insulate insurance companies from the cost of enrolling people with pre-existing conditions, and remove the incentive for insurance companies to cherry pick healthy people.

The New Mexico ruling found fault with the formula used by the government to calculate the payments, saying it was "arbitrary and capricious." [PDF] But another district court in Massachusetts upheld the formula.

The announcement came as insurers were awaiting an annual report that usually comes at the end of June, informing them of whether they owe money into the risk adjustment program or will be paid out for the previous year. Insurers say the sudden halting of those payments creates uncertainty at a critical time, as they are currently developing their premiums for 2019.

Insurance companies responded quickly on Saturday with their disapproval. In a statement America's Health Insurance Plans, the trade association for health insurance companies, said they are "very discouraged by the new market disruption brought about by the decision to freeze risk adjustment payments."
Trump Administration: willing to work on the weekend when it means fucking people over, but when discussing the fate of children? Dog sitting comes first. (Also, I have questions about the cost of a DOJ lawyer flying from Southern California to Colorado to "dog-sit," as compared to the cost of having anyone else do that same job, but that's not a discussion for here and now.)
posted by filthy light thief at 7:48 AM on July 9, 2018 [26 favorites]


KY Attorney General and bitter opponent of Gov. Matt Bevin Andy Beshear announces run for governor. Bevin is widely hated, but the state has fully switched over to red, and Beshear has his own baggage as the son of former Gov. Steve Beshear.

Republican Attorney Generals Association sees Kentucky as a "prime pickup opportunity". It's unclear that Democrats will have a replacement candidate and state Senator Whitney Westerfield lost by only 2000 votes to Beshear in 2015. KY could switch from having an activist Trumpublican Gov constantly dogged by suits from a Democratic AG, to a Democratic Gov dogged by lawsuits from a teaparty Republican AG. Or if Beshear loses, KY will lose the last bastion of Democratic control and live with a Republican trifecta for the first time since the 1920s.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:13 AM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]


Sounds likely that someone out there found a really good meal in the trash. I hope that they shared it with friends and they all enjoyed it.

I hope that too, and I also hope the flavour wasn't ruined for them by over-generous saucing with the chef's saliva.
posted by flabdablet at 8:15 AM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]


"Skin in the game" is one of those phrases that wealthy assholes use to justify withholding vital social services from those who need them despite the fact that they themselves are "playing the game" with someone else's skin.

It actually goes farther than that, since multiple economic theories are based on the idea that literal skin in the game (prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons) is not enough to ensure optimal outcomes. Anyone for anything you see that says "skin in the game" is not to be taken seriously.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:23 AM on July 9, 2018 [21 favorites]


This Miller-sushi thing kinda reminds me of the football fans that filmed themselves burning their team jerseys. Like, he already purchased the sushi, right? So, he just threw 80 bucks in the trash? Yeah, buddy, that'll show 'em!

So, reminder to those in the service industries: wait until after you get the money, then tell them they can go fuck themselves. :D "And 30 cents makes 20. Thank you for shopping here and I hope you and the people you work for die in a fire. Have a nice day!"
posted by snwod at 8:27 AM on July 9, 2018 [34 favorites]


"Do you approve or disapprove of the way U.S. Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller is handling the investigation into possible ties between Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government?"—Approve 49%, Disapprove 45%, and No Opinion 5%. Compare to similar polling questions: 11/1/17—Approve 58%, Disapprove 28%, and No Opinion 14%; and 1/18/18 Approve 50%, Disapprove 31%, and No Opinion 19%."

This just highlights the stupidity of polling since people have zero basis to judge the majority of Mueller's investigation because we know next to nothing about it.
posted by srboisvert at 8:34 AM on July 9, 2018 [14 favorites]


Polling stupidity is not the same as the stupidity of polling.
posted by Bovine Love at 8:41 AM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]


ya know... I am not ready for a Michael Cohen hero turn. Feels unearned.

This feel more like the 'lawyer takes shot at becoming a celebrity so his children can one day be instagram famous reality tv stars' thing that is going on these days.
posted by srboisvert at 8:53 AM on July 9, 2018 [6 favorites]


OPM guidance pushes quick, forceful action on Trump’s orders to weaken unions, due process
Guidance sent to agency heads last week gives his offensive, which also hit employee grievance procedures, high priority on Trump’s to-do list for deconstruction of the administrative state. Emphasizing that importance, the guidance also put the leaders on notice that they must explain failure to follow his executive orders to the preesident, through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

“President Trump has recognized the importance of strategic workforce management, placing it at the top of his agenda for modernizing the Federal Government,” OPM Director Jeff Pon told agency leaders in one of three memorandums providing direction for a trio of executive orders issued May 25.

They affect about 1.2 million federal workers, or 57 percent of the government’s nonpostal, nonmilitary workforce, who are represented by unions. More broadly, the orders and the guidance upend the way that agency and union leaders have cooperated for decades, while pleasing Republicans who have long called for firing feds faster. This precedes the administration’s “bold and aggressive” civil service reform plan, which Pon previously said will be revealed before the November elections.

Meanwhile, opposition to the orders is growing. A federal judge will hear arguments against Trump’s anti-union push this month.

Pon’s guidance explains the purpose of the orders and exhorts agency leaders to act with haste. Agencies were instructed, for example, to seek union-weakening collective bargaining agreements at “the soonest permissible opportunity.”
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:18 AM on July 9, 2018 [14 favorites]


Via the English edition of Der Forverts, which has its own characteristic take: Rabbis Say Trump Hotel Should Lose Liquor License Over ‘Good Character’ Law

I wouldn't mind if people started attacking Trump's businesses locally. Have you ever been to Chicago? He built a building and slapped his name on it so large that it's visible from every vantage point. I would love to see stuff like that go. I don't see why people can't make local petitions to simply shut down his businesses for the reason that they put off tourists.
posted by xammerboy at 9:24 AM on July 9, 2018 [8 favorites]


Doctor giving migrant kids psychotropic drugs lost certification years ago.
The psychiatrist who has been prescribing powerful psychotropic medications to immigrant children at a federally funded residential treatment center in Texas has practiced without board certification to treat children and adolescents for nearly a decade, records show.

On the Texas Medical Board’s website, though, Dr. Javier Ruíz-Nazario reported he had that specialized certification for treating children and adolescents. However, according to the website, he has not yet updated the board on the status of this board certification as required by its rules.

Ruíz-Nazario’s name appears on various court documents that allege troubling practices at the Shiloh Treatment Center south of Houston, including affidavits in class-action settlement motions in which children claim they were tackled and injected and forced to take pills identified as vitamins that made them dizzy and drowsy.

Many of the records specifically name Ruíz-Nazario as the doctor who prescribed the medication.
posted by scalefree at 9:41 AM on July 9, 2018 [52 favorites]


WTF are they doing to those kids?

Isn't there somebody in charge with the mandate and jurisdiction to get them out of that hellhole?
posted by yesster at 9:46 AM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]


Jurisdiction, yes. Desire, no.
posted by delfin at 9:52 AM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]


I simply cannot believe that I am reading about a decertified doctor prescribing psychotropic medicines to children in concentration camps. I live in London and will add my presence and my voice (such as they are) to the Trump protests this Friday. THIS HAS TO STOP! NOW!!
posted by Myeral at 10:02 AM on July 9, 2018 [66 favorites]


In my Angela Merkel fan fic...

I want them to just start laughing whenever he does anything like that. Just giggle. If he keeps going, they laugh harder. What's he going to do, invade? Of course not. He's a paper tiger. They know it. Trade war? Everyone's shown that they're better at those than he is.

Fuck it. Laugh at the clown when he does something stupid. That's what clowns are for.
posted by Etrigan at 10:41 AM on July 9, 2018 [23 favorites]


Updates from the now-concluded hearing in the ACLU's case regarding reuniting children under five with their parents, via @ZoeTillman:
According to the ACLU, the govt provided "incomplete information" by the Saturday deadline, and then provided revised info yesterday. The judge has set another hearing to discuss status for 10am PT today. Asked about the ACLU's assertions last night, an admin official issued a statement (no specific attribution permitted) saying the results of the admin's reunification efforts were "highly encouraging" and that DOJ was "eager" to present progress to the judge.

Latest hearing just ended in the family separations case in San Diego. Latest #s:
- Of 102 children ID's as potentially eligible for reunification under judge's order, 6 ineligible — 3 b/c of parent's criminal history, 3 b/c accompanying adult turned out not to be a parent
- Of 96 children under 5 remaining (102 originally ID's minus 6 deemed ineligible), DOJ says 59 are likely to be reunified by judge's deadline tomorrow — 54 basically confirmed, and govt is waiting for confirmation for 5 to make sure the parent passes the background check
- For 9 children, the parent has been removed from the US, and the govt has given the ACLU info about when the parent was removed and what country they were sent to. But the govt doesn't appear to know exactly where those parents are, so ACLU is going to help trying to find them
- For 4 children, parent is in state criminal custody, which means they can't be reunified right now
- For 8 children, parents are in fed criminal custody. Almost all, if not all, have ICE detainers, which means they can be reunified once they're in ICE custody
- 2 children have been reunified with a parent who had been released from immigration detention
- 4 children had been previously ID'd for reunification with a non-parent sponsor. Govt/ACLU determining if parent wants to be reunified with child instead
- For 9 children, the parent has been released from immigration detention — DOJ says they're in contact with 4 parents, still waiting for info on status of making contact with the other 5
- For 1 child: Status of the parent is unknown, govt is still trying to figure that out

So to recap: Based on representations by DOJ lawyer today, 54/96 children under 5 will likely be reunified by the judge's deadline of tomorrow, and could be 59 depending on background checks. Number could go up a bit depending on other factors listed above in the thread. For the parents and children who will be reunified by tomorrow, DOJ lawyer said they're expected to be then be released from ICE custody - they wouldn't be reunified at family detention facilities
posted by zachlipton at 10:55 AM on July 9, 2018 [26 favorites]


So Mr Anti-Elitist Cadet Bone Spurs doesn't like some of his potential SCOTUS picks because they went to public universities. He only wants graduates from Harvard and Yale.

I cannot even.
posted by suelac at 10:58 AM on July 9, 2018 [31 favorites]


Harvard and Yale grads are the gold toilets of the legal world, only the best for President Deals and America
posted by zjacreman at 11:10 AM on July 9, 2018 [26 favorites]




New news round-up at News You May Have Missed: Inauguration Day protestors have charges dismissed; Where are the kids?; Tariffs threaten the free press; Sessions rescinds more rights; Bloggers in India and Indonesia paid to write fake news; Scott Pruitt told to resign by Kelly; Literacy not a “right”; Unions must represent non-members for free; Teachers running for office; Resignations continue; Citizenship question lawsuit; New spins on Brexit and Russia; Organic food fraud; FDA advisors may be compromised; Hope for rhinos; and, World's second largest barrier reef is safer.
posted by joannemerriam at 11:29 AM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]


Daily Beast: The Original Donald Trump Super PAC Just Announced a Curious Reimbursement—The Make America Great Again PAC recently announced that it had refunded a years-old donation from a Florida real-estate developer.

The Trump-aligned super PAC Make America Great Again has now just revealed in FEC filings that it refunded $50,000 to donor Michael Dezertzov, a Florida real-estate developer who has partnered with Trump on several of high-profile real-estate projects, selling nearly $100 million in Trump buildings to Russian buyers. (This transaction occurred on Aug. 18, 2016, , coincidentally, the day before Paul Manafort resigned as Trump campaign chairman.) Meanwhile, $60,000 of the PAC's financing still remains unaccounted for.
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:31 AM on July 9, 2018 [11 favorites]


Finding a new black politician to endlessly harass must feel like a warm, cozy old bathrobe to them at this point.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:46 AM on July 9, 2018 [57 favorites]


GOP lawmaker rejects racism charge: 'My son is named after a black guy'

“I don’t give a shit about Corey Stewart,” Taylor told The Virginia-Pilot. “No one else does either except for Democrats who are trying to target me. [...] No one cares, except for a small teeny amount of people you met at the cupcake place. What are they trying to say? That Scott Taylor likes Corey Stewart so therefore he’s a racist? Do you think that’s going to play here? [...] My son is named after a black guy. I’m a military guy. We don’t give a shit about where you come from. Black, white, brown, gay, straight. I don’t care.”

It is unclear who Taylor’s 5-year-old son, reportedly named Sterling, is named after.

posted by Rust Moranis at 11:50 AM on July 9, 2018 [8 favorites]


BuzzFeed, Pregnant Women Say They Are Being Mistreated In Immigration Detention, Despite The Administration's Claims (cw: miscarriages): "Pregnant women in immigration detention under the Trump administration say they have been denied medical care, shackled around the stomach, and abused."
posted by zachlipton at 11:58 AM on July 9, 2018 [20 favorites]


Trump UK visit: police to mobilise in numbers not seen since 2011 riots.
One chief constable said the resources that had been asked for were on the scale required “if London was burning down”.
posted by adamvasco at 12:00 PM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]


Chuck Schumer giving a truly inspiring speech about the SC pick by heroically calling for action mumbling about Leonard Leo. I'm fired up and ready to go.
posted by Justinian at 12:10 PM on July 9, 2018 [9 favorites]


From adamvasco's link: “More mutual aid is being asked for than the [London 2012] Olympics, than for the terrorist attacks last year. I’ve never seen mutual aid requests like this Every force is sending their maximum and above.

“£5m [nationally] is the direct cost. You then have the cost of cancelled rest days. If I cancel a rest day to send an officer, that cost will be covered by the local force.”


I don't know whether to feel incredibly proud of all these folks ready to protest in the UK, or suspicious that this is actually necessary.
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:13 PM on July 9, 2018 [8 favorites]


Chuck Schumer giving a truly inspiring speech about the SC pick by heroically calling for action mumbling about Leonard Leo. I'm fired up and ready to go.

Tim Kaine posted this garbage on his facebook account:
I will meet with the Supreme Court nominee to ask them important questions. We need to know:

- Will you uphold the ACA, as prior rulings have? Pre-existing conditions may land on the docket.

- Do you respect precedent on a woman’s constitutional freedom to make her own reproductive health decisions?

- Will you respect equality protections for all Americans?

This nominee must also be scrutinized for whether they will be a sufficiently independent Justice. Someone too loyal to a president who says he has the power to pardon himself and whose extreme actions may very well crowd the Supreme Court docket would be a major warning sign.
No Tim, not remotely adequate. We want a firm commitment that you will not vote for Amy Comey Barrett again. You fucked us once already.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:26 PM on July 9, 2018 [29 favorites]


Boris Johnson just resigned as UK Foreign Secretary? Is there someplace with a good primer on what the hell exactly is going on Over There?
posted by Justinian at 12:27 PM on July 9, 2018 [5 favorites]


Oh, apparently there is a Uk centric thread on the blue. Keep calm and carry on then.
posted by Justinian at 12:29 PM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]


The Trump-aligned super PAC Make America Great Again has now just revealed in FEC filings that it refunded $50,000 to donor Michael Dezertzov, a Florida real-estate developer who has partnered with Trump on several of high-profile real-estate projects, selling nearly $100 million in Trump buildings to Russian buyers.

Thanks for painting that bullseye so big and bright you Nazi dummies
posted by schadenfrau at 12:34 PM on July 9, 2018 [5 favorites]


The courts have no accountability over the President. Constitutionally the check on the President is Congress. Constitutionally the check on Congress are the People.

Yes. This is the Constitutional law theory that as yet remains untested. Certainly as it relates to the president's executive authority this is true. When it comes to criminal behavior unrelated to the discharge of duties related to the office, it isn't so clear.
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:40 PM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]


Rewire news: Memo to Chuck Schumer: Stop Dithering and Start Fighting. Now.

What you don’t seem to get is that it inspires people to see leadership, to see people in power make clear they have convictions and principles and will fight to the end to support those principles on behalf of the good of all people. It is downright dispiriting to see you drone on about process and civility and plead with Trump to do the right thing. If ever in our history there was a man less concerned about the right thing, it is Trump. And if ever in our history we needed someone to lead come what may, it is now. Our democracy is at stake.
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:44 PM on July 9, 2018 [26 favorites]


Trump's former chauffeur has filed a lawsuit.

Noel Cintron, who worked as Trump’s driver for more than 25 years, said he was owed 3,300 hours of uncompensated overtime from his last six years on the job.

Mind you, Cintron was underpaid the entire time, but the statute of limitations allows him to pursue compensation for just those final years. Additionally:

Cintron also claimed his salary was increased just twice over a period of 15 years – from $62,700 in 2003 to $68,000 in 2006, and then to $75,000 in 2010. The second raise, he added, came with a caveat: Cintron alleged he was forced to surrender his health benefits, “saving Trump approximately $17,866.08 per year in health insurance premiums”.
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:44 PM on July 9, 2018 [23 favorites]


then to $75,000 in 2010. The second raise, he added, came with a caveat: Cintron alleged he was forced to surrender his health benefits, “saving Trump approximately $17,866.08 per year in health insurance premiums

That is not a raise.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:47 PM on July 9, 2018 [44 favorites]


GOP lawmaker rejects racism charge: 'My son is named after a black guy'

"Great, so you condemn Corey Stewart and his racist remarks then?" should be the reply.

Break this down into smaller chunks so any nitwit can understand it.
1. Do you think saying racist things is bad?
2. You think being racist is bad?
3. Corey Stewart said racist things that indicates he is racist. Do you think that is bad?

If you agree that all of those things are bad, then condemn the bad man. That is now both the easiest and ONLY way to prove your not racist bonafides. Anything else is trying to weasel out of condemning racism and trying to weasel out of giving that condemnation only reinforces the impression that the guy is racist no matter how many black friends he has or who he named his kid after.

It's like a less extreme example of punching Nazis and this guy is saying, "Look, I'm all for punching Nazis, I named my kid after a famous Nazi puncher. I just don't want to punch Nazis."

I really wish more journalists would frame things as yes or no questions and then keep dogging the person they asked until they get a yes or no answer. Keep reminding them that it's a yes/no question and that anything other than a yes/no response will be treated as a "no".

"Do you condemn racist McNazipants?"

"I named my fish Dredd Scott."

"That's a 'no' then?"

"Look, racism is bad and racist people are bad."

"So that's a 'yes' you DO condemn Mr. McNazipants?"

Even a response of "Yes but..." would be worlds better than the non-answers everyone gives now. Why is this guy trying to muddy the waters on whether he's against racism? We all know it's because he wants racists to vote for him and he's okay with racism even if he doesn't actively support it (which is just another form of actively supporting racism) so don't let him obfusticate, ask yes/no questions and don't stop until you get a yes/no answer. If they won't play ball, tell them you're going to write it up as a "no" unless you hear them respond "yes".
posted by VTX at 12:53 PM on July 9, 2018 [22 favorites]


Yes. This is the Constitutional law theory that as yet remains untested. Certainly as it relates to the president's executive authority this is true. When it comes to criminal behavior unrelated to the discharge of duties related to the office, it isn't so clear.

It's really beside the point though. The President is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States (to the point where it's put into his damn oath) and can de facto stop any federal investigation into himself. That's why Congressional impeachment is the check and probably why the impeachment check statement is so broad (virtually anything Congress says is a crime is a crime worthy of removal from office). The outrage of the President trying to avoid prosecution is supposed to be enough to trigger an impeachment and removal for subsequent prosecution.

It's the whole freaking point of Article II. The President administers this stuff, Congress you're the check.

The problem is the system has never been stress tested by power craven partisans acting in unison to cover for a President's crimes and there's nothing written that lets the courts step in and stop the insanity.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 12:58 PM on July 9, 2018 [6 favorites]


Guys, am I reading this right: Does this mean denying quorum won't do shit to stop them from voting Benczkowski into that DOJ Criminal Division AG position later this afternoon?

I'm so tired of feeling helpless. My daily call/fax seems to just be more screaming into the void at this point. I guess we're just going to let Trump install a back channel into Mueller's Russia investigation now? Is there ANYTHING we can do to stop this?
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 12:59 PM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]


The right wingnut crowd seems to be gearing up to be mad if Hardiman gets the nod tonight? Really? It's not enough for them for a reliable conservative to be on the Court, it has to be a frothing partisan fanatic to own the libs?

Hardiman looks to be the least-bad option among the 4 contenders. Still pretty bad.
posted by Justinian at 1:04 PM on July 9, 2018


The Secrets of Leonard Leo, the Man Behind Trump’s Supreme Court Pick (Jay Michaelson, Daily Beast)
When President Donald Trump nominates a justice to the Supreme Court on Monday night, he will be carrying out the agenda of a small, secretive network of extremely conservative Catholic activists already responsible for placing three justices (Alito, Roberts, and Gorsuch) on the high court.

And yet few people know who they are—until now.

At the center of the network is Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, the association of legal professionals that has been the pipeline for nearly all of Trump’s judicial nominees. (Leo is on leave from the Federalist Society to personally assist Trump in picking a replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy.) His formal title is executive vice president, but that role belies Leo’s influence.

Directly or through surrogates, he has placed dozens of life-tenure judges on the federal bench; effectively controls the Judicial Crisis Network, which led the opposition to President Obama’s high court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland; he heavily influences the Becket Fund law firm that represented Hobby Lobby in its successful challenge of contraception; and now supervises admissions and hires at the George Mason Law School, newly renamed in memory of Justice Antonin Scalia.
This is fine.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:07 PM on July 9, 2018 [42 favorites]


Hardiman looks to be the least-bad option among the 4 contenders.

So liberals won't be maximally unhappy. Therefore, unacceptable. I don't know why you are finding this hard to accept as the alpha and omega of their motivations. It's entirely on-brand.
posted by phearlez at 1:08 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]


Getting 95% of what they want is generally unacceptable to the hard right, as they view that as compromising on the other 5% and compromise is a Violation of True Conservatism.

This all-or-nothing attitude has let the Freedom Kook-us types seize defeat from the jaws of victory on many an occasion, so it's not necessarily a bad thing.

I tuned into Breitbart on Sirius this morning out of morbid curiosity, and their main concern was that Trump needs to pick whichever of the four will be the rightmost on the issue of immigration, full stop. Which tells you about what you need to know right now.
posted by delfin at 1:09 PM on July 9, 2018 [13 favorites]


Holy crow, Johnny Wallflower, that article is a Catholic conspiracies juggernaut. And Leo's barely 52, 53 years old?

Leo is a member of the secretive, extremely conservative Knights of Malta, a Catholic order founded in the 12th century that functions as a quasi-independent sovereign nation with its own diplomatic corps (separate from the Vatican), United Nations status, and a tremendous amount of money and land.

(It is the Daily Beast though, so in the bit about Opus Dei, "self-flagellation" is misspelled.)
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:37 PM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]




> Apologies if everyone else has always understood this, but-- he's trying to collect rent. Just like his dad. But instead of dunning Woody Guthrie & co., he's trying to dun Nato. Because shaking down tenants is how he was taught to display power and leadership and to interact with the world. It's a script that's been reinforced with him since he was little more than a fetus, and so, since that's what he knows how to do, and it's in his comfort zone, he's doing it.

On top of this, yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported in their article Summit Looms for a Strained NATO Alliance:
When German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Donald Trump shortly after he took office, the new U.S. president opened the meeting by telling her, “Angela, you owe me one trillion dollars.”

It was his estimate of a 14-year gap between what Germany spent on its own defense and what it had promised to spend under arrangements with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, according to an official briefed on the session.
This is Trump's idiot idea of a power play, and I will eat a MAGA hat if that $1T estimate has anything to do with reality.

In contrast, one of Putin's power plays is to dangle the possibility of a meeting and then rescind it. He used this on Trump, and he used it last week against the eight visiting senators.
posted by Doktor Zed at 2:12 PM on July 9, 2018 [10 favorites]


I have good news! Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa are hosting a podcast called Gaslit Nation
posted by fluttering hellfire at 2:26 PM on July 9, 2018 [18 favorites]


Kellyanne Conway's husband: I give my wife a 'harder time' about working for Trump than she gets walking down the street

I think he's saying we need to up our game.
posted by M-x shell at 2:29 PM on July 9, 2018 [48 favorites]


Can somebody make a new post about that Leonard Leo article that was posted above? Because that is fucking ridiculous.
posted by gucci mane at 2:31 PM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]


In other autocratic news, Turkey is a banana republic now.
Turkey’s lira plunged after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appointed his son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, as economic chief of his new administration, fueling investor unease that the government can calm financial markets.
The lira fell 3.8 percent to 4.7488 per dollar, extending one of the biggest slides across emerging markets this year. Albayrak served as energy minister since 2015.
So it looks like Erdogan is busy setting up the family business ready to Make the Ottoman Empire Great Again.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 2:43 PM on July 9, 2018 [13 favorites]




Yep I'm following the rumors about Kavanaugh with great interest.

The only reason I see for Trump to pick Kavanaugh is Trump's belief that Kavanaugh is the justice most likely to help shield him from Mueller. So maybe I should have assumed that would be the case. Of course any judge with an ounce of integrity would recuse if such a case came up about Trump. I'm sure he won't.
posted by Justinian at 2:47 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]


How can it not be Kavanaugh? There's that time in 2009 when Kavanaugh wrote a law review article arguing that Congress should act to shield the President from criminal investigations and civil suits while in office: "The indictment and trial of a sitting President, moreover, would cripple the federal government." How can Trump not go with the guy who thinks the President is too busy to be investigated for crimes?
posted by zachlipton at 2:51 PM on July 9, 2018 [22 favorites]


That feeling when you're desperately hoping for John Roberts to be the guy to preserve the rule of law in your country...
posted by Justinian at 2:53 PM on July 9, 2018 [14 favorites]


BuzzFeed, Some Members Of Trump's Exclusive Clubs Appear To Have Been Invited To An Air Force One Tour
Some members of President Donald Trump's exclusive Florida clubs appear to have been invited to an Air Force One tour last year, according to an invitation obtained by BuzzFeed News, which was cross-checked with records received through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Members would not confirm or deny that they actually attended, but the invitations would raise more questions about the blurry line between Trump's administration and his family’s private businesses. Although past administrations have given Air Force One tours to friends, family, and even donors, in this case, those attending would have paid Trump’s exclusive clubs thousands of dollars annually.

Two separate tours were scheduled at the Atlantic Aviation FBO at Palm Beach International for 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. on Feb. 18, 2017 — hours before Trump held his first 2020 campaign rally less than 120 miles away at the Orlando Melbourne International Airport hangar.
The guy is in office less than a month, and he's conducting plane tours for his customers.
posted by zachlipton at 2:59 PM on July 9, 2018 [15 favorites]


In other autocratic news, Turkey is a banana republic now.

Oh, and Erdogan also abolished the EU affairs ministry, fired most of its staff, and subsumed the rest into the foreign ministry, thanks to his newly authorized expanded powers. That will make the NATO summit more awkward, but he'll no doubt receive approval from Trump.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:11 PM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]


Members would not confirm or deny that they actually attended, but the invitations would raise more questions about the blurry line between Trump's administration and his family’s private businesses.

Because the Trump administration seems to be all grift all the time, I would maintain that the line is not at all blurry. It just doesn't exist.
posted by Mental Wimp at 3:13 PM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]


Getting 95% of what they want is generally unacceptable to the hard right, as they view that as compromising on the other 5% and compromise is a Violation of True Conservatism.

I think he should be allowed to appoint all 4 & swap them in & out depending on the nature of the case. It's only fair.
posted by scalefree at 3:15 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


He could sell it as being like tagging in & out in wrestling. Maybe they'll get to pick funny names & wear masks & costumes.
posted by scalefree at 3:17 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


Kavanaugh's 53, clerked for Kennedy, is an evangelical Roman Catholic, and already has most of the sought-after bona fides, including:

Senate Democrats have complained that a federal appeals court judge may have misled them at his confirmation hearings when he said he had no role in formulating detention policy when he was an official in the Bush White House.

Senators Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, a committee member, have questioned the forthrightness of the judge, Brett M. Kavanaugh, of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

NYT, July 3, 2007
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:26 PM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]


> Re. the WHO breastfeeding topic, I suspect that the key point is this sentence: "...who described it as a marked contrast to the Obama administration, which largely supported W.H.O.’s longstanding policy of encouraging breast-feeding."

Obama supported it, therefore the Trump administration is against it. Bonus, of course, for the fact that some lobbyist cash can flow their way.


Also, Trump is not a fan of the act itself: Trump called breastfeeding mom 'disgusting'
posted by homunculus at 3:35 PM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]


Vice: Trump was like a “predator” toward teens at parties in ’80s and ’90s, says BBC report

The report featured Monday on the BBC Panorama investigative documentary series, entitled “Trump: Is the president a sex pest?” included testimony from two women who said they encountered Trump at parties during his time as a real estate magnate and operator of beauty pageants. [...]

Pilling said she was not the youngest girl at the party, claiming there were girls as young as 14 attending. “I felt I was in the presence of a shark,” Pilling said, describing Trump.

posted by Rust Moranis at 3:42 PM on July 9, 2018 [19 favorites]


The correct term is “predator.”
posted by schadenfrau at 3:51 PM on July 9, 2018 [10 favorites]


The correct term is “predator.”

Superpredator seems more apt.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 3:55 PM on July 9, 2018 [11 favorites]


Control+F Epstein. No hits? Oh, c'mon now, fourth estate.
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:57 PM on July 9, 2018 [17 favorites]


NYT, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Trump Poised to Enter NATO Meeting as Wild Card Among Allies
Mr. Trump’s advisers are hoping to avoid a blowup akin to the one the president provoked at the Group of 7 summit meeting in Quebec last month, and have pointed Mr. Trump to evidence that NATO allies have responded to his aggressive pressure by increasing their own military spending.

But in private conversations, the president has been dismissive of the military alliance and the European Union, suggesting both entities exist to take advantage of the United States and strip it of capital.
...
During a phone call with Mr. Putin in March, when the president was urged by aides not to congratulate the Russian president on his electoral victory, Mr. Trump did just that. He told Mr. Putin that Russia and the United States should get along better. And he commiserated with Mr. Putin over Trump administration officials whom the Russian president said had tried to prevent the call from happening, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation.

“Those are stupid people; you shouldn’t listen to them,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Putin, the person said.
posted by zachlipton at 4:00 PM on July 9, 2018 [12 favorites]


Trump does not see himself as subservient to Putin, he sees Putin as an ally, therefore subservient to him. Depending on how skillfully Putin handles him (which is likely but not a sure thing), this alliance may not succeed; our hopes and prayers should be that it does not.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:08 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't know about that, Trump seems to think of Putin as a "friend", and has a strange obsession with Putin being his "best friend".
posted by gucci mane at 4:22 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


Pilling said she was not the youngest girl at the party, claiming there were girls as young as 14 attending. “I felt I was in the presence of a shark,” Pilling said, describing Trump.

Things that don't interest him he ignores, they may as well not exist. Like ambassadors; who needs em? Things that interest him consume him like fire, like destroying Obama's legacy or pursuing teenage girls. He's owned no less than three beauty pageants: Miss USA, Miss Universe & Miss Teen USA. He was forced to sell them all in 2015 after ethnic slurs against Mexicans made broadcasters distance themselves from him. While he owned them he was pretty creepy towards contestants. That's why he bought the pageants, so he could be creepy to the girls.
posted by scalefree at 4:24 PM on July 9, 2018 [9 favorites]


Trump Poised to Enter NATO Meeting as Wild Card Among Allies

Am I the only one reminded of Charlie Kelly declaring himself the WILD CARD after he cut the brake lines on the car he and his friends were all inside? Because it seems so relevant.
posted by Justinian at 4:29 PM on July 9, 2018 [25 favorites]


Some good news as we wait for the big news. @abogadatejana: Breaking! Judge Gee denies Trump Administration’s motion to modify the Flores Settlement Agreement (protecting detained immigrant children for 20 years) as "procedurally improper and wholly without merit."

Here's the order, and the Politico write-up: Judge rejects Trump request to alter agreement on release of immigrant kids:
Los Angeles-based U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee dismissed as "tortured" the Trump administrations legal argument to get out from under the so-called Flores consent decree agreed to back in 1997, dictating that children in immigration detention not be held more than 20 days.

"Defendants seek to light a match to the Flores Agreement and ask this Court to upend the parties’ agreement by judicial fiat," wrote Gee, an appointee of President Barack Obama. "It is apparent that Defendants’ Application is a cynical attempt...to shift responsibility to the Judiciary for over 20 years of Congressional inaction and ill-considered Executive action that have led to the current stalemate."

Gee's order says some immigrant families could be detained together if the parents' consent, but suggests that without that consent immigration authorities must release the children.
posted by zachlipton at 5:31 PM on July 9, 2018 [23 favorites]




Brought to you by Jay Pinho and Victoria Kwan, the co-creators of SCOTUS Map:
SCOTUS Watch tracks the public statements made by United States senators about how they plan to vote on the Supreme Court nominee, and tallies them into a likely vote count. This tally is based solely on their statements: we do not make estimates or guesses based on a senator's party affiliation or ideology.

Note that this only includes statements made by senators after the identity of the nominee is announced. (So, for example, Senator Doug Jones' statement to CNN on Sunday, July 8th would not count, as the nominee had not yet been announced.)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:39 PM on July 9, 2018


NBC reporting that Trump has selected Brett Kavanaugh, as expected, for the SCOTUS seat.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:53 PM on July 9, 2018


Is that a phone ringing in the previous thread? Because I called it.

Seriously, though. AP's confirmed the Kavanaugh nomination, so the media can stop covering this like it was a reality TV contest and start doing their job, say, by asking him up front and on the record if he'll recuse himself in any cases directly involving Trump.
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:04 PM on July 9, 2018 [17 favorites]


TIL Ed Meese is still alive
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:05 PM on July 9, 2018 [8 favorites]


He'll have a pre-canned non-answer to that question. I'm sure he's been coached extensively on how to answer it so all the Republicans and red state Dems can vote for him and still maintain plausible deniability.
posted by triggerfinger at 6:06 PM on July 9, 2018 [5 favorites]


Trump announces Kavanaugh, after shouting out Ed Meese, in the audience, to show how Reaganeque he is, mentioning Reagan a couple times for emphasis.

How could it have ever been anybody but the "Congress should make sure the President can't be investigated for crimes because he's very busy" guy? And now we get a national discussion on re-litigating the Clinton impeachment, Vince Foster papers, the works. Kavanaugh is 53.
posted by zachlipton at 6:06 PM on July 9, 2018 [16 favorites]


Kavanaugh leads with a big old lie about no other President hiunting linger for just the right justice, so that’s endearing. Clearly a conservative in the Trumpian “totally bullshit you, right to your face” mold.
posted by Artw at 6:15 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]


link to the venting MeTa.

(For your convenience, The Abyss has already begun staring back into you.)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:18 PM on July 9, 2018 [13 favorites]


So the guy who said:
In particular, Congress might consider a law exempting a President—while in office—from criminal prosecution and investigation, including from questioning by criminal prosecutors or defense counsel. Criminal investigations targeted at or revolving around a President are inevitably politicized by both their supporters and critics. As I have written before, “no Attorney General or special counsel will have the necessary credibility to avoid the inevitable charges that he is politically motivated—whether in favor of the President or against him, depending on the individual leading the investigation and its results.” The indictment and trial of a sitting President, moreover, would cripple the federal government, rendering it unable to function with credibility in either the international or domestic arenas. Such an outcome would ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis.
...also proposed that Ken Starr ask the following questions of Bill Clinton:
"If Monica Lewinsky says that you ejaculated into her mouth on two occasions in the Oval Office area on two occasions, would she by lying?"

"If Monica Lewinsky says that you masturbated into a trashcan in your secretary's office would she be lying?"

"If Monica Lewinsky says that on several occasions you had her give you oral sex, made her stop, and then ejaculated into the sink in the bathroom off the oval office, would she be lying?"
Does not compute.
posted by triggerfinger at 6:23 PM on July 9, 2018 [14 favorites]


There's no chance Kavanaugh won't be confirmed. Zero. They might as well vote tonight, it's done already. The only one that maybe could've been defeated would've been Barrett.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:23 PM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]


Anti-abortion groups are coming out against him so there's something. Not that it will matter.
posted by dilaudid at 6:29 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]


Montgomery County in Maryland is about to be run by an extremely cranky socialist who won by a razor thin margin “MoCo has more people than 7 states and a unitary county executive, which means there's a solid case that Marc Elrich is going to be the most powerful socialist executive in the country, with a chunk of the Beltway media living in his jurisdiction.”
posted by The Whelk at 6:35 PM on July 9, 2018 [49 favorites]


Ben Wittes: have known Brett a long time—in a number of different capacities. I will have a lot to say about his nomination in the coming days. For now, I will just say that he is a scholarly and thoughtful judge, a genuinely ecumenical thinker, and an extremely fine person.

Ostensibly Democratic public intellectuals don't have to do this. You really don't have to give Joe Manchin cover to vote for the guy will uneqivcoably criminalize abortion and overrule democracy for the next 50 years.

Oh, look, the NYT had this just ready to go: A Liberal’s Case for Brett Kavanaugh. And this is a hell of a disclosure even for the laughable NYT: "(Disclosure: I was one of Judge Kavanaugh’s professors when he was a student at Yale Law School.)"

Cancel your subscriptions.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:36 PM on July 9, 2018 [47 favorites]


Mod note: Couple deleted; let's take emotional stuff over to the venting thread, and let's stick to updates in here.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 6:40 PM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]


“A Liberal”. Go fuck yourself, NY Times.

In a brief respite from hell news:
Hecklers spoil another Mitch McConnell meal by blaring 'Fight The Power'
posted by Artw at 6:41 PM on July 9, 2018 [55 favorites]


Does not compute.

He even seems to realize this, and offers a sort of explanation in his law review article. In short, he joined the Bush Administration, discovered Presidenting is hard, and developed a rather different view of executive power. After waxing poetic about how hard Bush's job was:
Having seen first-hand how complex and difficult that job is, I believe it vital that the President be able to focus on his never-ending tasks with as few distractions as possible. The country wants the President to be “one of us” who bears the same responsibilities of citizenship that all share. But I believe that the President should be excused from some of the burdens of ordinary citizenship while serving in office.

This is not something I necessarily thought in the 1980s or 1990s. Like many Americans at that time, I believed that the President should be required to shoulder the same obligations that we all carry. But in retrospect, that seems a mistake. Looking back to the late 1990s, for example, the nation certainly would have been better off if President Clinton could have focused on Osama bin Laden without being distracted by the Paula Jones sexual harassment case and its criminal-investigation offshoots. To be sure, one can correctly say that President Clinton brought that ordeal on himself, by his answers during his deposition in the Jones case if nothing else. And my point here is not to say that the relevant actors—the Supreme Court in Jones, Judge Susan Webber Wright, and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr—did anything other than their proper duty under the law as it then existed. But the law as it existed was itself the problem, particularly the extent to which it allowed civil suits against presidents to proceed while the President is in office.
Then he goes on to say Congress should defer civil suits against the President and that Congress should do the same "with respect to criminal investigations and prosecutions of the President."

In other words, he writes that he realized his work on the Starr Investigation made the country less safe once he learned the President had a lot to do, which really is not an impressive realization for a Supreme Court Justice to be coming around to.
posted by zachlipton at 6:41 PM on July 9, 2018 [21 favorites]


Really happy to say that the top response to NYT's tweet of that execrable "A liberal's case for Brett Kavanaugh" article is a GIF which seems to display a hippo's butt in the throes of diarrhea
posted by the turtle's teeth at 6:42 PM on July 9, 2018 [24 favorites]


RE: Marc Elrich

I voted for him specifically because I was so turned off by David Blair's bombardment of mailers, fliers, and even targeted Twitter ads. His campaign platform seemed to be entirely based on giving money to businesses. Blair basically spent his campaign money to convince me to find someone who wasn't him to vote for.
posted by runcibleshaw at 6:43 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


The True Believers are pissed that it's not Coney Barrett, according to my recon into deplorable online territories, so there's that.
posted by Ruki at 6:45 PM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]


T.D. Strange: Oh, look, the NYT had this just ready to go: A Liberal’s Case for Brett Kavanaugh. And this is a hell of a disclosure even for the laughable NYT: "(Disclosure: I was one of Judge Kavanaugh’s professors when he was a student at Yale Law School.)"

Their twitter hed is even worse: "The nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be the next Supreme Court justice is President Trump’s finest hour, his classiest move"

Aside from Rukmini Callimachi's Pulitzer Prize worthy reporting on ISIS, the whole paper needs to go in the dumpster.
posted by bluecore at 7:01 PM on July 9, 2018


It's an opinion piece, folks. Bring some context to this.
posted by Miko at 7:05 PM on July 9, 2018 [13 favorites]


Doesn't sound like we are getting a judge reluctant to overturn established law...
A judge who seeks merely to follow precedent can simply read previous judicial opinions. But an “originalist” judge — who also cares about what the Constitution meant when its words were ratified in 1788...
The last time the Supreme Court refused to overturn Roe was because it was established law people already organized their lives around. Republicans know this. Willingness to overturn precedent, especially previous Supreme Court decisions, is code for "will overturn Roe".
posted by xammerboy at 7:09 PM on July 9, 2018 [6 favorites]


@frankthorp: Key vote watch: @SenatorCollins says Judge Kavanaugh “has impressive credentials and extensive experience”

Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.
posted by triggerfinger at 7:10 PM on July 9, 2018 [32 favorites]


Hecklers spoil another Mitch McConnell meal by blaring 'Fight The Power'

Please keep posting these. I know they’re trivial amongst the “real” news, but knowing these assholes are losing peace in their private lives is some of the only good news I get anymore.
posted by greermahoney at 7:29 PM on July 9, 2018 [59 favorites]


Hecklers spoil another Mitch McConnell meal by blaring 'Fight The Power'

Can someone communicate suggestions to the people who are in position to heckle McConnell some more? Because I can make some more suggestions. For example, I wish someone would blast the crying of the children held in detection. I wish someone would blast McConnell's voice when he said he would hold up the selection of a new judge "because it shouldn't be done during an election year".
posted by StrawberryPie at 7:33 PM on July 9, 2018 [10 favorites]


It's an opinion piece, folks.

It is, but not all opinions are worth publishing in the most important papers in the world and are part of the endless stream of pro-Republican apologia after playing a big part in the endless "but her emails" and various pro-Trump opinion pieces before the election.

I mean, this editorial isn't going to do anything, but the space certainly could have been better used with a well thought out piece on why it should be inappropriate for a Justice appointed by a president under investigation to rule on related cases than this.
posted by Candleman at 7:36 PM on July 9, 2018 [34 favorites]


It's an opinion piece, folks. Bring some context to this.

That the paper of record had solicited, pre-planned and ready to publish the moment Trump's pick to overturn Roe was announced. A paper is not required to publish any opinion from any random Trump supporter or pre-planted messaging campaign rollout, they choose to participate in this, every, single, time. It's not just some professor's opinion, it's the NYT's editorial decision to endorse it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:36 PM on July 9, 2018 [63 favorites]


Tommy Vietor :"Brett Kavanaugh spent 5 years in the Bush White House. He undoubtedly sent tens of thousands of emails. All of those are public record and Democrats and the media should demand that they be posted online like Elena Kagan's emails were."
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:37 PM on July 9, 2018 [92 favorites]


You think the WSJ would've ran "The Conservative's Case for Paul Watford" the second President Clinton announced him? Fuck no. Ask yourself why the NYT does this.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:38 PM on July 9, 2018 [23 favorites]


The only reason I see for Trump to pick Kavanaugh is Trump's belief that Kavanaugh is the justice most likely to help shield him from Mueller.

I believe the thing I first heard a year ago - that Kennedy agreed to retire in exchange for Trump picking one of his clerks. Now that also would have applied to Harriman, so I’m not sure what influenced his choice between those two, but I think the major reason was “because backroom deal”.
posted by corb at 7:43 PM on July 9, 2018 [5 favorites]


"The liberal case for a Trump third term." NYT, November 2024
posted by perhapses at 7:44 PM on July 9, 2018 [66 favorites]


The connection of Kennedy-son-Deutschbank-Trump is still bothering me. Media really waved that off.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:47 PM on July 9, 2018 [51 favorites]


We're bound to see a lot of generally-anti-Trump Republicans talk about how this is a decent and acceptable choice. Their opinions will be framed as if they're being fair. It'll ignore how much work generally-anti-Trump Republicans did to get us into this nightmare in the first place.

An awful lot of them don't have a problem with most of what Trump does, but rather the way he does it. They want their dystopia with more dignity and the racism and sexism to come with a little less noise, but they still want all that.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 7:51 PM on July 9, 2018 [27 favorites]


Should the Kavanaugh discussion go in the SCOTUS thread?

Here's former Obama NSC Dan Shapiro on the coming storm:
1. I don't think we are fully grappling with the possibility that we could be on the on the cusp of a completely new era, a fundamental reshaping of the international order. And I don't mean over the course of the Trump Administration. I mean by next week.

2. It sounds outlandish to even say it out loud, and some can easily call this hyperbole. I hope to God it does not happen. But we would be insane not to grapple with the possibility.

3. Trump clearly wants to pull the US out of NATO. He doesn't believe in the alliance (or any alliances); he thinks our allies take advantage of us; he complains that NATO is worse than NAFTA(whatever that means); he seeks purely transactional relations with our closest partners.

4. Should other NATO members meet their 2% of GDP defense spending targets? Absolutely. Trump is on solid ground to push for it. But to consistently trash allies, undervalue their contributions to our security, threaten to withdraw US troops -- that's him wanting out.

5. Perhaps most damaging is that his rhetoric is building up hostility to NATO among his supporters. It's a huge breach in the consensus American support for the alliance that has undergirded Western security for 70 years, and it won't disappear when Trump does.

6. What's more, his passionate desire for friendship with Putin is emboldening Russia & risks doing further damage to European security. If he recognizes Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea, if he seeks to tone down sanctions on Russia over its aggression vs Ukraine, watch out.

7. This could play out in the next 2 weeks. If he sabotages the NATO summit the way he did the G-7, don't be surprised if he actually makes a move toward exiting NATO. Think he won't? On what basis? Because his staff restrains him? Because of his strategic understanding? Please.

8. If we get there, the implications are innumerable & terrifying: Russia pawing at Baltics &other E & C European states; breakdown of joint defense structures; withdrawal of US troops from Euro bases; less restrained German foreign policy; weaker US power projection to Eurasia.

9. That just scratches the surface. We honestly cannot begin to imagine living in a new era without these international organizing structures. Because for all of NATO's challenges, no sane person or American political leader has or would contemplate such a reckless move.

10. But it could happen. Our President doesn't know the history or strategy, doesn't listen to experts, personalizes everything & makes it transactional, & loves the drama of the outrageous move that dominates cable TV coverage. For him, pulling out of NATO is all gain, no cost.

11. Even as I write this, it sounds fantastical. I will be the happiest person on the planet if I look back at this thread and say, man, you were way overreacting. But we need to be ready for this awful scenario to play out.

12. I repeat: we are potentially on the verge of a wildly dangerous cascade of events that will devastate our interests, weaken our leadership, abandon our allies, embolden our adversaries, and make the world a darker and more brutal place.

13. We have done no planning for this course of action. No one thinks it is a good idea. But one man, whose knowledge and values are wanting, whose motivation is suspect, and whose supporters follow him blindly, could take us there. END
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:55 PM on July 9, 2018 [101 favorites]


Welp, if he takes us out of NATO wasn't the Cold War fought entirely in vain?
posted by Sphinx at 8:28 PM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]


Pompeo just did a goodwill visit in Vietnam so it wasn't a total loss
posted by Apocryphon at 8:35 PM on July 9, 2018


Roger Stone is already running ads linking Kavanaugh to a coverup of Vince Foster's death, if you thought this somehow wasn't the stupidest possible timeline.
posted by zachlipton at 8:43 PM on July 9, 2018 [19 favorites]


I’m sure many Americans are fond of their hegemony but that really isn’t the thing most people to be affected by the end of NATO are fearing.
posted by Artw at 8:46 PM on July 9, 2018 [5 favorites]


I guess it's as good a time as any to repost Howard Zinn's Don't Despair about the Supreme Court
The Constitution gave no rights to working people: no right to work less than twelve hours a day, no right to a living wage, no right to safe working conditions. Workers had to organize, go on strike, defy the law, the courts, the police, create a great movement which won the eight-hour day, and caused such commotion that Congress was forced to pass a minimum wage law, and Social Security, and unemployment insurance.
---
The right of a woman to an abortion did not depend on the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. It was won before that decision, all over the country, by grassroots agitation that forced states to recognize the right. If the American people, who by a great majority favor that right, insist on it, act on it, no Supreme Court decision can take it away.

The rights of working people, of women, of black people have not depended on decisions of the courts. Like the other branches of the political system, the courts have recognized these rights only after citizens have engaged in direct action powerful enough to win these rights for themselves.
posted by triggerfinger at 8:48 PM on July 9, 2018 [77 favorites]


Mod note: A few comments deleted; let's not relitigate the end of the British empire.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:56 PM on July 9, 2018 [28 favorites]


A disaster foretold (Spiegel Online)
Berlin is bracing itself for similar hectoring at the summit -- a continuation of the kind of treatment received by German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen during her recent trip to Washington. [... V]on der Leyen had actually gone to explain to the U.S. government why Germany would not be able to reach 1.5 percent by 2024. At the same time, she was armed with facts and figures to show how deeply the German military was engaged in the alliance.

But that didn't help the atmosphere. For one thing, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell surprised the Germans by flying to Washington to take part in all of the minister's discussions there. It was an unmistakable gesture: Donald Trump's watchdog was there to make sure that Berlin did not get off lightly.

Grenell left the attacking to John Bolton, Trump's national security advisor. Von der Leyen spent almost an hour in Bolton's narrow White House office, ensuring him that she had used almost all her political capital to push for an increase in defense spending.

Bolton listened, his staff diligently taking notes. But von der Leyen was unable to persuade the hardliner, and shortly before the end of the meeting, Bolton made the U.S. viewpoint clear, explicitly saying he was speaking in the name of the president. German engagement was nice, he said. But for the former businessman Trump, "only cash" mattered. Because Berlin hasn't delivered on that score, Bolton said, Trump was quite angry.
posted by runcifex at 9:04 PM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]


Welp, if he takes us out of NATO wasn't the Cold War fought entirely in vain?

The Cold War was a massive waste of resources and there was absolutely no possible winners.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:05 PM on July 9, 2018 [5 favorites]


The Cold War was a massive waste of resources and there was absolutely no possible winners.

But if deadlock was the best possible outcome, doesn't that mean everybody won?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 9:08 PM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]


Every interest group under the sun is doing the usual song and dance where they put out a press release about how Kavanaugh will be the absolute best/worst for their particular cause, and there's not a lot of point in reading through them, except for this bit in BuzzFeed's Brett Kavanaugh Will Mean Challenging Times For Environmental Laws :
"He is pretty consistently anti-environment on every front," Center for Biological Diversity senior counsel Bill Snape, a law professor at American University, told BuzzFeed News. "I call him Lord Voldemort," said Professor Snape.
posted by zachlipton at 9:15 PM on July 9, 2018 [96 favorites]


But for the former businessman Trump, "only cash" mattered. Because Berlin hasn't delivered on that score, Bolton said, Trump was quite angry.

I want more US articles to be based around Trump not knowing nor caring about the thing he's mad about. So many lines are written that, despite everyone else knowing better, treat his tantrums as legitimate. They pretty much never are. Don't pretend he's doing the thing he did because it's in interest of a goal. It's just a tantrum.
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:18 PM on July 9, 2018 [15 favorites]




Angry Naval Officer: “You can book a room at TrumpHotels. com. But neither our self-described "very stable genius" billionaire president nor anyone at the Trump Organization ever thought to spend $8 to buy http://www.TrumpHotels.org 👈
So I did." - Hat tip to Salem Macknee 🎩
Check it out 👆
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:37 PM on July 9, 2018 [46 favorites]


I’m sure many Americans are fond of their hegemony but that really isn’t the thing most people to be affected by the end of NATO are fearing.

In that mode, it's interesting to look back to February 2016 and consider the Rand wargaming of a Russian invasion of the Baltics.

We all considered the ramifications of a Russian invasion of the Baltics, and even speculated under what circumstances Putin would take the risk to invade. Unfortunately neither Rand nor we considered the most unlikely scenario; a US president influenced by Russia, either leaving NATO or refusing to commit forces. Leaving Europe (possibly without Britain) to deal with the crisis by itself.

So does anyone want to make any speculations about the status of the Baltic states come 2020? Finland? Poland?

I'd also like to hear from the people who at the time were dismissing the whole thing as insane American militarism, or a hollow justification to keep NATO alive after its Cold War usefulness had ended. Im curious to know what they think now.
posted by happyroach at 9:53 PM on July 9, 2018 [5 favorites]


Russian invasion of the Baltics has been the stuff of technothriller novels for decades. Difference is, the Balts are actually in the EU and the NATO. Ukraine never was, and has a substantial Russian minority- even now Putin has deigned to outright conquer and absorb the other half. Plus the Finns know a thing of two of stopping the Russian bear in the dead of winter. Not even in the Cold Was did Moscow dare annex them.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:01 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


Trump is The Mule from Foundation crossed with Baron Harkonnen and a poopy three year old. He out-played Rand (Seldon) - by accident.
posted by j_curiouser at 10:08 PM on July 9, 2018 [9 favorites]


The Cold War was a massive waste of resources and there was absolutely no possible winners.


Yeah, no. The alternative was definitely worse and we should recognize that while we maintain our capacity for self criticism and improvement. The USSR was a blight on humanity and it was good that it failed, even if it required a good shove from Capitalism. Jesus, even western Marxists realized this, way back in the 30s.
posted by notyou at 10:13 PM on July 9, 2018 [12 favorites]


Mod note: Aaaaaaaand here is where I ask us not to relitigate the Cold War and the USSR. Let's keep this thread for actual updates; if folks want to chat history, it'd be better to make another thread for it.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:16 PM on July 9, 2018 [21 favorites]


anyone at the Trump Organization ever thought to spend $8 to buy http://www.TrumpHotels.org

And they certainly wouldn't think of registering trumphovels.com
posted by Stoneshop at 10:21 PM on July 9, 2018 [8 favorites]


Hey all, we are back from Scandinavia, I have just been busy with personal stuff and catching up on what news I missed (typically quiet fortnight, I see).

ELECTIONS NEWS should resume Tuesday.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:18 PM on July 9, 2018 [54 favorites]


Look forward to ELECTION NEWS. Welcome back to the circus!
posted by xammerboy at 11:35 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


Some good news as we wait for the big news. @abogadatejana: Breaking! Judge Gee denies Trump Administration’s motion to modify the Flores Settlement Agreement (protecting detained immigrant children for 20 years) as "procedurally improper and wholly without merit."

OMG. If you're suffering from depression, read the decision. It's uplifting to be reminded that the Courts do not tolerate the Administration bringing their "Court of Public Opinion" matters to their court.

Such as, "Defendants’ reasoning suffers from the “‘logical fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc’ . . . literally, ‘after this, therefore because of this[.]’"
posted by mikelieman at 2:13 AM on July 10, 2018 [25 favorites]


Oh man, that is indeed some good smackdown. We all needed this:
It is apparent that Defendants’ [i.e., the Trump administration’s] Application is a cynical attempt, on an ex parte basis, to shift responsibility to the Judiciary for over 20 years of Congressional inaction and ill-considered Executive action that have led to the current stalemate. The parties voluntarily agreed to the terms of the Flores Agreement more than two decades ago. The Court did not force the parties into the agreement nor did it draft the contractual language. Its role is merely to interpret and enforce the clear and unambiguous language to which the parties agreed, applying well-established principles of law. Regardless, what is certain is that the children who are the beneficiaries of the Flores Agreement’s protections and who are now in Defendants’ custody are blameless. They are subject to the decisions made by adults over whom they have no control. In implementing the Agreement, their best interests should be paramount.
Moar, pls.
posted by darkstar at 2:45 AM on July 10, 2018 [65 favorites]




More about the new Sacha Baron Cohen mentioned upthread.

"Shot in secrecy, the satirist’s new show Who Is America? sees him take aim at Trump and the US political elite. It looks set to be something truly special"
It is, by all accounts, a startling clip. A vaguely recognisable offscreen voice asks “Is it possible to sign my waterboard kit?” Then Dick Cheney – the real Dick Cheney – replies with a chirpy “Sure!”. After scrawling his name on a beaten-up bottle, he gleefully declares “That’s the first time I’ve ever signed a waterboard!” Ladies and gentlemen, Sacha Baron Cohen is back.
posted by Buntix at 3:30 AM on July 10, 2018 [26 favorites]


metafilter: let's not relitigate the end of the British empire.
posted by maggiemaggie at 3:42 AM on July 10, 2018 [25 favorites]




...Unlike the Olympians who were minor children at the time they were abused, these former wrestlers were adults at the time they claim they were sexually abused by the Ohio State team doctor...

Uh...wow. I knew that the Trumpian thing to do is double down on wrongness, just like I knew that a random sifting of grit and household dust would best Louie Gohmert in any intellectual challenge, but it really is something else to see both principles demonstrated so vividly and resonantly in the selfsame statement.

There truly is no circle of Dantean hell quite adequate to the scale of Gohmert's vicious stupidity, is there? His willingness to excuse away atrocity, to do so in public and on the most fatuous possible grounds really does take some kind of bleak Triple Crown.
posted by adamgreenfield at 4:13 AM on July 10, 2018 [24 favorites]


Louie Gohrmert defends Jim Jordan:

I mean, when you've owned two hotels and three houses on Headupmyass Place your entire career, you don't just pull up stakes to go camp out on Saneperson Avenue with a tent and a rucksack. That'd just be stupid.
posted by Rykey at 4:25 AM on July 10, 2018 [12 favorites]


Louie Gohrmert defends Jim Jordan:

...Unlike the Olympians who were minor children at the time they were abused, these former wrestlers were adults at the time they claim they were sexually abused by the Ohio State team doctor...


Terry Crews should explain it to him.
posted by srboisvert at 4:40 AM on July 10, 2018 [13 favorites]


Slate's A Liberal's Case for Brett Kavanaugh is much more convincing than the NYT's.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:34 AM on July 10, 2018 [30 favorites]


I think it's telling that there is no surprise at all that Trump chose Kavanaugh. And I think there's a reason for that we all understood on perhaps a subconscious level.

Trump didn't pick Kavanaugh because of his judicial opinions, or his belief that the President should be immune to all laws and we all know it.

The instant the decision was between Kavanaugh and Barrett I knew it'd be Kavanaugh for one simple reason: Barrett is a woman and Trump is deeply misogynist. He hates, fears, and loathes, women and considers women to be basically nothing but elaborate masturbation aids.

No way, no how, not ever would Trump pick a woman to sit on the Supreme Court. And we all knew it, which is why the announcement of Kavanaugh was as unsurprising as the sun rising in the east. Barrett never had a chance and we all knew it.
posted by sotonohito at 5:48 AM on July 10, 2018 [16 favorites]


Something else I saw on Slate while reading the Kavanaugh article linked above:

Miss Massachusetts Contestant Returns Crown After Pageant Mocks #MeToo Movement
posted by M-x shell at 5:56 AM on July 10, 2018 [56 favorites]


No way, no how, not ever would Trump pick a woman to sit on the Supreme Court.

That's not true; his pattern of choosing Cabinet secretaries shows that he's more than willing to appoint a woman as long as he wants to curry favor with her husband.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:57 AM on July 10, 2018 [3 favorites]


New Yorker: Israeli, Saudi, and Emirati Officials Privately Pushed for Trump to Strike a “Grand Bargain” with Putin
During a private meeting shortly before the November, 2016, election, Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, floated to a longtime American interlocutor what sounded, at the time, like an unlikely grand bargain. The Emirati leader told the American that Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, might be interested in resolving the conflict in Syria in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Current and former U.S. officials said that bin Zayed, known as M.B.Z., was not the only leader in the region who favored rapprochement between the former Cold War adversaries. While America’s closest allies in Europe viewed with a sense of dread Trump’s interest in partnering with Putin, three countries that enjoy unparallelled influence with the incoming Administration—Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E.—privately embraced the goal. Officials from the three countries have repeatedly encouraged their American counterparts to consider ending the Ukraine-related sanctions in return for Putin’s help in removing Iranian forces from Syria[...]

Israeli officials lobbied for rapprochement between Washington and Moscow soon after Trump’s election victory. In a private meeting during the transition, an attendee told me, Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States and one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest confidants, said that the Israeli government was encouraging the incoming Trump Administration to coöperate more closely with Putin, starting in Syria, with the hope of convincing Moscow to push the Iranians to leave the country, the attendee said.

[...]A senior Israeli official declined to comment on Dermer’s message but said that “Israel does believe it is possible to get a U.S.-Russian agreement in Syria that would push the Iranians out,” and that doing so “could be the beginning of an improvement in U.S.-Russian relations over all.”

Separately, a former U.S. official recalled having a conversation after Trump’s Inauguration with an Israeli Cabinet minister with close ties to Netanyahu in which the minister pitched the American on the idea of “trading Ukraine for Syria.”[...]

The Americans who heard the Israeli, Emirati, and Saudi pitches in late 2016 and early 2017 assumed that the idea was dead. But ahead of the Helsinki summit, Trump started making statements that suggested he could be open to making a deal with Putin after all.
Should the Kavanaugh discussion go in the SCOTUS thread?

Yes, you're right. I'll start posting there.

posted by Doktor Zed at 6:03 AM on July 10, 2018 [4 favorites]


...encouraging the incoming Trump Administration to coöperate more closely with Putin, starting in Syria, with the hope of convincing Moscow to push the Iranians to leave the country....

JFC, why do these Likud idiots think Putin would ever lift a finger to force Iran out? The GOP senators just back from TraitorCon 2018 are already starting to chatter about lifting sanctions anyway with nothing in return!
posted by PenDevil at 6:08 AM on July 10, 2018 [7 favorites]


Argh, this fucking asshole:
Aaron Blake on Twitter:
Trump on gov't missing deadline for family reunification: "Well, I have a solution: Tell people not to come to our country illegally. That's the solution. Don't come to our country illegally. Come like other people do. Come legally."
I just can't believe how anyone can justify or excuse this kind of psychopathic behavior.
posted by PontifexPrimus at 6:41 AM on July 10, 2018 [39 favorites]


Just saw this being linked around on leftist sites, anyone know the context on it? Sure doesn't look good.

H.R.6054 - Unmasking Antifa Act of 2018
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 6:51 AM on July 10, 2018


Tell people not to come to our country illegally. That's the solution.

That's exactly what his followers believe. I think good people hope that each new horrific thing (the toddlers defending themselves, women having miscarriages, the kid with lice) will change minds. "Surely if my MAGA aunt sees this!" It doesn't. They're brutal, cruel, racist people who believe that no punishment is too harsh. I feel naive being so shocked, but I continue to be shocked.
posted by Mavri at 6:53 AM on July 10, 2018 [26 favorites]




This conflict of interest is barely a blip in Trumpland, but it should be noted.

Washington Post: Giuliani Works for Foreign Clients While Serving as Trump’s Attorney "Giuliani said in recent interviews with The Washington Post that he is working with clients in Brazil and Colombia, among other countries, as well as delivering paid speeches for a controversial Iranian dissident group [the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a.k.a. MEK]. He has never registered with the Justice Department on behalf of his overseas clients, asserting it is not necessary because he does not directly lobby the U.S. government and is not charging Trump for his services."

Also: "Giuliani has also lobbied the president to promote his son, Andrew, a low-level White House aide who has clashed with Kelly and others in the West Wing. The elder Giuliani said that before becoming Trump’s attorney, he asked about a promotion he believed Trump had promised his son, and the president responded in the affirmative. He said he has not talked to the president about the issue since becoming his lawyer."
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:04 AM on July 10, 2018 [14 favorites]


Mod note: Couple deleted - let's try to move the Kavanaugh stuff over to the SCOTUS thread
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:10 AM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


Self-described Nazis and white supremacists are running as Republicans across the country. The GOP is terrified.

The racist candidates are expected to lose


And that's what "terrifies" the GOP. It's not the threat of genocide that bothers them, it's the idea of losing that little bit of power.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:42 AM on July 10, 2018 [42 favorites]


The racist candidates are expected to lose, but they could drag their party down with them.

Remember October 2016? Remember how Trump was gonna lose by 20 points, the Senate was going to turn blue, and the GOP was going to collapse inward on itself because they ran a sexual predator who insulted Gold-Star families as a presidential candidate?

Assume nothing. We're going to have to work hard to make sure the honest-to-god, no-fooling-around Nazis don't vote their guys into office.
posted by Mayor West at 7:47 AM on July 10, 2018 [79 favorites]


Trump just pardoned the Bundy terrorists, because of course he did.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:54 AM on July 10, 2018 [29 favorites]


It should be easier to obtain citizenship then to buy a gun.
posted by The Whelk at 7:55 AM on July 10, 2018 [18 favorites]


Trump just pardoned the Bundy terrorists, because of course he did.

I'll say it again: Trump is such a coward that he even hates first responders so much that he'll pardon two assholes who admitted to intentionally setting fires to try to get firefighters killed.
posted by Etrigan at 7:56 AM on July 10, 2018 [34 favorites]


Wait, I misread the headline. Trump pardoned Dwight and Steven Hammond, whose arrest for arson on public lands was cited as a cause for the occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:57 AM on July 10, 2018 [6 favorites]


Trump just pardoned the Bundy terrorists, because of course he did.

Looks like he pardoned the Hammonds, which are the family of criminals in Oregon that the Bundys were "defending" at Malheur. Arson and poaching are now legal.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:57 AM on July 10, 2018 [17 favorites]


The real Purge is "all crime is legal, as long as it triggers the libs."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:58 AM on July 10, 2018 [62 favorites]


Trump just pardoned the Bundy terrorists, because of course he did.

Cool. We're officially in bizarro land where the head of the federal gov't is giving sanction to sovereign citizen, white supremacist terrorists who, paradoxically, want to destroy the federal gov't.
posted by dis_integration at 8:00 AM on July 10, 2018 [12 favorites]


Well, the federal gov't wants to destroy the federal gov't, so... hail Hydra and all that.
posted by Behemoth at 8:02 AM on July 10, 2018 [35 favorites]


Just saw this being linked around on leftist sites, anyone know the context on it? Sure doesn't look good.

H.R.6054 - Unmasking Antifa Act of 2018


Stunt bill. Only 4 sponsors. Referred to committee to die. You can look at all the bills in the Justice committee here. Probably worth looking at what bills made it out of committee to get an idea what they are likely to kick through. It's not impossible this makes it through and gets passed but something this slim - and which creates a federal rule for something some municipalities have already passed or passed and had kicked out - meh.

It's worth pointing out that while this is titled about Antifa there's a pretty legit reason on the side of light to want to up punishments on people who commit crimes while masked. Maybe once those sponsors have that pointed out to them they'll back of so as not to offend their constituency.
posted by phearlez at 8:12 AM on July 10, 2018 [7 favorites]


Dershowitz: Supreme Court could overturn a Trump impeachment

“Assume [Russian President Vladimir] Putin decides to ‘retake’ Alaska, the way he ‘retook’ Crimea. Assume further that a president allows him to do it, because he believed that Russia has a legitimate claim to ‘its’ original territory,” Dershowitz writes. “That would be terrible, but would it be impeachable? Not under the text of the Constitution.”

Best brush up on your Cyrillic, Alaskans.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:16 AM on July 10, 2018 [20 favorites]


Putin is about to con Trump in Helsinki. Here’s how.
With his KGB training, Putin will be well prepared for this meeting. Trump and his advisers should anticipate three main approaches.

First, having observed what has and has not worked for other leaders, Putin undoubtedly will offer Trump praise and flattery. Putin is sure to remark how Trump overcame the odds in a presidential election few thought he could win — most likely including, by the way, Putin himself.

Putin will emphasize Trump’s ability to be his own man, unbeholden to the “swamp creatures” of Washington. He will admire Trump’s candor and readiness to defy norms, especially by challenging allies who are “taking advantage” of the United States.

Second, Putin will blame all of the problems in U.S.-Russia relations on Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama. Not lost on those in Moscow is Trump’s readiness to seek to do the opposite of what Obama did. As Trump himself has said, Obama let Putin take Crimea. Putin will say that it was Obama who imposed sanctions on Russia and accused Moscow of interfering in the election in an attempt to discredit Trump’s legitimacy.

Third, Putin will appeal to Trump’s apparent desire to take a wrecking ball to the international order of the past seven decades, including institutions such as NATO, the European Union, the World Trade Organization and the G-7. Putin will claim that he and Trump have had enough of these institutions, which seek to block Russia and exploit U.S. generosity. Let’s start over, Putin will urge, to build the greatest partnership between Russia and the United States ever.

And, if none of that works, well, Putin has some beachfront property he can offer Trump.
There's more but those are the highlights.
posted by scalefree at 8:19 AM on July 10, 2018 [24 favorites]


Well, Russia sold that land to the US sometime in the 1800’s, so if that’s legitimate then let’s just allow all the other countries and Native Americans take their land back too, shall we? It’s almost like the Constitution doesn’t protect anything, according to these people.

Slightly off topic but I can’t get over the fact that Trump and Dershowitz (and Bill Clinton...) were on the pedophile express so often and yet nobody seems to give a shit. How is that not a major media item?
posted by gucci mane at 8:25 AM on July 10, 2018 [11 favorites]


Putin probably doesn't have to bother with "conning" Trump, you know?
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:27 AM on July 10, 2018 [21 favorites]


GOP bill would make first-time illegal border crossing a felony, send sanctuary city funds to ICE

[Diane Black's] Zero Tolerance for Illegal Entry Act would change the punishment for those apprehended illegally entering the U.S. for the first time to one year and one day in prison, which therefore makes it a felony. Today, the misdemeanor offense comes with jail term of up to six months.

Diane Black is a top recipient of private prison funding. The Slave State is champing at the bit.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:32 AM on July 10, 2018 [41 favorites]




It should be easier to obtain citizenship then to buy a gun.

Applicants for naturalization undergo more thorough background checks than presidential candidates.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:41 AM on July 10, 2018 [35 favorites]


Dershowitz: Supreme Court could overturn a Trump impeachment

That's insane. What is wrong with Dershowitz. The power to impeach is vested entirely with the Legislative branch. The Court's say in such a matter would be solely limited to questions as to whether the proper Constitutional procedure was carried out. They have no input as to the validity of the charges themselves.
posted by Justinian at 8:42 AM on July 10, 2018 [15 favorites]


That's insane. What is wrong with Dershowitz.

He's unfathomably dirty and believes he has no choice but to defend Trump and support the abolition of the rule of law.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:44 AM on July 10, 2018 [28 favorites]


From the Dershowitz thing: “The decision by the framers to have the chief justice preside over the trial of a president may suggest that the decision was not intended to be entirely political. Indeed, it would be wrong for the chief justice to participate, much less preside over, an entirely political process. Judges are required to stay out of politics,” Dershowitz writes.

So are we gonna uphold the Constitution or not? That's the process laid out. It may not be ideal, but that's the Constitution, the same one that says we can't put limits on anyone's guns. In or out -- which is it?
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:02 AM on July 10, 2018 [7 favorites]


Exactly. Being a bigoted pedophile is just barely even enough to prevent a white dude from winning a seat in the US Senate, let alone make a living off it like Dershowitz does. Anyone that allows his bigotry and pedophilia to flourish can do anything they want in Dershowitz's world.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:04 AM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


So, yeah, Dershowitz's writing is nonsense. The House can impeach for whatever it wants to, and the Senate can convict for whatever it wants to. Any Supreme Court that intervened to stop or overturn an impeachment conviction would be cutting its own throat as a significant legal entity. Either the justices who voted to overturn would be themselves removed (because an angry Senate already had the 2/3 to remove a president), or Congress would just strip their appellate jurisdiction.

I meekly suggest we might lump Dershowitz in with David Duke and the many other assholes whose assholery we don't need to do the play-by-play on?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:06 AM on July 10, 2018 [53 favorites]


On a related note: today's Ask A Manager has an intern who is refusing to work on anything involving a Trump VIP's visit to their museum.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:14 AM on July 10, 2018 [14 favorites]


Ratings updates from Cook, 7 move left, 3 move right:
AZ-01 (O'Halleran): Lean D => Likely D
AZ-09 (open): Likely D => Solid D
CO-03 (Tipton): Solid R => Likely R
CT-05 (open): Likely D => Solid D
MT-AL (Gianforte): Likely R => Lean R
PA-16 (Kelly): Likely R => Lean R
VA-07 (Brat): Lean R => Toss-up

NY-11 (Donovan): Lean R => Likely R
NY-25 (open): Solid D => Likely D
PA-01 (Fitzpatrick): Toss-up => Lean R
I'll take a broader look on where the ratings stand tonight.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:28 AM on July 10, 2018 [31 favorites]


Ask A Manager's response is just so wrong. The person refusing to do work on the VIP visit is a summer intern. That means that there is a good chance that she's not being paid. The scenario with the clearest outcome would be if the intern was let go. That way the intern would learn something about power dynamics in the workplace and the manager would have less wiggle room to lie to themselves about how reasonable they were being in demanding obedience from unpaid labor.
posted by rdr at 9:29 AM on July 10, 2018 [20 favorites]


Assuming that the Trumpkin in question is in line with the popular fascist view that religious liberties should supersede providing basic public services (c.f. kim davis and masterpiece bakeshop) then the intern refusing to participate in the VIP planning and providing a private tour seems like something they have zero grounds to object to.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 9:32 AM on July 10, 2018 [5 favorites]


PA-01 is a completely self inflicted wound. With the redistricting and the current political climate it should not be all that difficult for Democrats to win a district that Clinton carried by 2 points. But we've always gotta try to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
posted by Justinian at 9:33 AM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]


Putin is about to con Trump in Helsinki. Here’s how.

Putrumpkin village.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:35 AM on July 10, 2018 [8 favorites]


Washington Post: The data behind the cultural divide

Social attitudes that best predict that a person is white, 2016

1. Approve of police striking citizens
2. Own gun in home
3. Favor death penalty
4. Own rifle in home
5. Voted for GOP presidential candidate

"Trusts people" ranked #4 in 1976 and #8 in 1996 but does not appear on the list in 2016
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:36 AM on July 10, 2018 [70 favorites]


Quoting the Whelk: “We have to not just rebuild the left but also rebuild the idea of community. I want people to say: ‘Well, when I needed more groceries, the socialists were there’ or ‘when I needed fresh diapers, the socialists were there’ or ‘when we organised against our boss, the socialists were there.’ People don’t vote in this country ‘cause they don’t think it matters. I want to show them it matters by displaying a new way of how society can run that isn’t based around profit and exploitation.”

I think this is the most important thing for the resistance right now. To reach out by being useful. The Social Democrats in Scandinavia lost momentum by distancing themselves from everyday problems. (It's not a huge issue here, because even the far right are social democrats in Scandinavia today, but I think they need to get back on purpose in order to deal with current problems).
posted by mumimor at 9:42 AM on July 10, 2018 [64 favorites]


GCU Sweet and Full of Grace: I meekly suggest we might lump Dershowitz in with David Duke and the many other assholes whose assholery we don't need to do the play-by-play on?

I heartily second this. Enough of his noise.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:02 AM on July 10, 2018 [16 favorites]


5 polluting industries that won big from Scott Pruitt’s tenure at the EPA - Umair Irfan, Vox
Automakers, agriculture, coal, chemicals, and heavy truck makers all got regulatory relief from Pruitt.
Usually at the expense of everyone else.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:02 AM on July 10, 2018 [8 favorites]


@The Whelk: That was a really easy guessing game, but a great article!

If the argument can be kept on point in the way it affects the lives of ordinary people, I believe it works. We've seen (some) rollback on the disgraceful racism and erosion of civil rights as a result of reporting on the Windrush scandal in this way I think
posted by Myeral at 10:03 AM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


I think this is the most important thing for the resistance right now. To reach out by being useful.


Ever and always this. A lot of how we got is was the right using their power/influence to destroy existing support structures (whether unions, credit unions, or mutual societies, transport and delivery, etc.). They use foul means or more-foul means to replace actually working, efficient, progressive solutions with inferior but profit making and asset inflationary variants. Insurance companies, mortgage companies, healthcare companies, education companies, prison companies, military companies...

It's one of the greatest lies of capitalism, that it may not be perfect, but it's better than the alternative... said while standing on the massive pile of stabbed and poisoned corpses of better alternatives that it murdered.
posted by Buntix at 10:19 AM on July 10, 2018 [26 favorites]


The Hammonds contributed to a wildfire and nearly killed fire fighters that were battling it, but I guess it’s only #BlueLivesMatter now? Are fire fighters too lib now or something?
posted by gucci mane at 10:26 AM on July 10, 2018 [15 favorites]


Open Season On The Feds - Josh Marshal, TPM OpEd. Quoted in full:
As outrageous as the Dinesh D’Souza pardon was, I’m not terribly concerned that there’s going to be a ramp up in middle-aged racist charlatans using their mistresses as straw donors in federal campaigns. But President Trump’s pardon of the militia types who inspired the Bundy militia standoff back in early 2016 really is like announcing open season on federal law enforcement. It will also dramatically increase an existing problem: which is that far-right, white militias in the West can commit acts of terrorism and violate federal law more or less with impunity. As I wrote at the time, the whole exercise amounted to a kind of white privilege performance art. President Trump really is instituting factional government. If you support Trump, he’ll have your back against the law.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:28 AM on July 10, 2018 [64 favorites]


One of the things that’s been going around in the far-right “patriot” movement is where to hitch their wagon to next. Trump being elected has presented somewhat of a problem when YOUR GUY is the President. I think the pardons are, if anything, able to symbolically disentangle Trump from the day to day operation. He can’t force the BLM to act outside the law. He can, however, tell the people against the BLM he stands by them.

If anything it’s probably a strategy of threading the needle of being both anti-government whilst being the government. Hell, when he makes his empty threats from up high on his Twitter account shouting about the (somewhat true) weakness of Republicans controlling all three branches of government he sends the exact same message.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 10:36 AM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]


I think this is the most important thing for the resistance right now. To reach out by being useful.

Mutual aid: 'Cause it ain't just direct action that gets the goods.
posted by adamgreenfield at 10:38 AM on July 10, 2018 [12 favorites]


Are fire fighters too lib now or something?

Presumably it's bc the primary goal of firefighters is to actually save people from harmful situations rather than to brutalize minorities with extreme glee and complete lack of repercussions.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:50 AM on July 10, 2018 [52 favorites]


Are fire fighters too lib now or something?

Fire fighters are a community service that shows the benefit of pooling resources to benefit the public regardless of ability to pay. Clearly, they're Communist. They have red trucks, for God's sake!

(Srsly, though -- fire departments were used as an example of why single payer healthcare might benefit everyone in a similar way. Pay taxes, get a public service, use it when you need to. So maybe that model of success needs to be dismantled, in certain views? God knows libraries are being questioned these days...)
posted by Capt. Renault at 10:52 AM on July 10, 2018 [27 favorites]


Also I don't think there's a huge wealthy lobbying powerhouse that aggressively promotes and defends all aspects of firefighter "culture" in the same way that the NRA does for police departments nationwide, is there?

i feel like culture is a bad way to describe it but i'm tired and words are hard
posted by poffin boffin at 10:57 AM on July 10, 2018 [8 favorites]


huge wealthy lobbying powerhouse that aggressively promotes and defends all aspects of firefighter "culture"

If there were I don't think the firefighters would have to have boot drives.
posted by elsietheeel at 11:01 AM on July 10, 2018 [5 favorites]


Also, Trump did something stupid and firefighters called him on it one time. So, clearly, death to all firefighters.
posted by mordax at 11:03 AM on July 10, 2018 [11 favorites]


And I'm sure that at one point a fire marshal told him he really should upgrade the fire suppressant systems in his apartment buildings, so, y'know.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:06 AM on July 10, 2018 [30 favorites]


California Prosecutor Caught Posting Repulsive and Violent Comments About Maxine Waters

Update: Prosecutor who reportedly suggested Maxine Waters be shot is placed on leave (Washington Post)
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:11 AM on July 10, 2018 [36 favorites]


And I'm sure that at one point a fire marshal told him he really should upgrade the fire suppressant systems in his apartment buildings, so, y'know.

YUUUUUP, pretty much (except it wasnt the fire marshal).

Trump fought law requiring retrofit of sprinklers in New York City high-rises.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:13 AM on July 10, 2018 [6 favorites]


Also I don't think there's a huge wealthy lobbying powerhouse that aggressively promotes and defends all aspects of firefighter "culture" in the same way that the NRA does for police departments nationwide, is there?

Oh, just watch what happens when a single (uniformed) cop crosses him in the slightest way. Just like he did to the FBI, he'll throw every other "boy in blue" under any bus he can find if he thinks it'll save him.
posted by Etrigan at 11:14 AM on July 10, 2018 [4 favorites]


The thing I am having the most trouble with lately is the use of "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE VIOLENCE IN CHICAGO?" as some kind of attempted concern trollery/racist dog whistle power move. Because you will never, ever, EVER, EVER in your life hear this phrase followed up by sober thoughts on what could be done to stop the flow of guns into Chicago or to alleviate the poverty that drives crime rates or anything else to help the people affected by this violence. And you certainly will NOT see any overlap whatsofuckingever between the "What about Chicago?" folks and the people who actually do things to try and spur change, like the Dan Ryan Expressway protest. And why is that? It's because the "What about Chicago?" folks are only trying to get you to take your eye off the ball when it comes to racism, gun violence, and immigration and if they have any thoughts at all about how to address violence in Chicago, I promise you they begin and end with "deport and incarcerate more brown people."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:17 AM on July 10, 2018 [19 favorites]


And I'm sure that at one point a fire marshal told him he really should upgrade the fire suppressant systems in his apartment buildings, so, y'know.

You don't remember this from the 2016 campaign? At more than one stop, IIRC, the local fire marshal complained that the MAGA rallies unsurprisingly had inadequate or completely missing safety/egress plans, and he bellyached about the "regulatory overreach" nonstop. He's very very fucking lucky there weren't any stampedes.

tl;dr Yes, Trump literally hates firefighters.
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:22 AM on July 10, 2018 [27 favorites]


In regard to the Hammonds, this issue got big in the 90’s because the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge revoked their permit to let their cattle graze on the land, due to the fact that the Hammonds reneged on a special agreement between them and the feds.

According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, Dwight Hammond had repeatedly violated a special permit that allowed him to move his cows across the refuge only at specific times. Source.

They then got caught poaching deer by other hunters and starting fires to cover that up, and then in 2006 started a fire that put firefighters’ lives in danger, which is what prompted the federal prosecution of them.

From Wikipedia:

The 2001 Hardie-Hammond fire began after hunters in the area witnessed the Hammonds illegally slaughtering a herd of deer.[19] Less than two hours later, a fire erupted, forcing the hunters to leave the area but also intending to conceal evidence of the deer herd slaughter.[20] Steven's nephew Dusty Hammond testified his uncle told him to "light the whole countryside on fire," and that he was "almost burned up in the fire," having to flee for his life.[16][21] The Hammonds claimed they started the fire to stop invasive plants from growing onto their grazing fields.[22] The 2006 Krumbo Butte fire started out as a wildfire, but several illegal backburns were set by the Hammonds with an intent of protecting their winter feed. The backfires were set under the cover of night, without warning the firefighters they knew were camped on the slopes above.[20][23] The fires threatened to trap four BLM firefighters. One of those later confronted Dwight Hammond at the fire scene after he had moved his crews to avoid the danger.[20][21] Two days later, Steven Hammond threatened to frame a BLM employee with arson if he didn't terminate the investigation.[22]
posted by gucci mane at 11:29 AM on July 10, 2018 [31 favorites]


This is basically a pardon to throw to the ultra right wing militia types/sovereign citizens, and it’s an incredibly niche one at that. This is an issue tied up in land usage and ownership going back several decades at this point.
posted by gucci mane at 11:31 AM on July 10, 2018 [7 favorites]


This is basically a pardon to throw to the ultra right wing militia types/sovereign citizens

This is a license, is what this is. Just like Arpaio, this is saying "Do whatever you want, I got your back. Go ahead and bust some heads, and as long as they're the right heads, you're clear."
posted by Etrigan at 11:37 AM on July 10, 2018 [26 favorites]


Also I can’t get over the whole wimpiness of these militia guys. They rolled into a wildlife refuge with a fucking arsenal. Literally a bunch of bird nerds work there (I mean that lovingly) and they think they’re so tough coming in and occupying it with a bunch of guns and shit? Like, go roll up into an army base with that shit if you’re so tough and anti-government. And I know so many of the right-wing are super stoked that their boys got pardoned and that the Bundy debacle got screwed up but damn, y’all just bullied a bunch of ppl who were just trying to take care of some animals. It’s like all the ppl who love McVeigh even though he murdered a ton of kindergarteners.
posted by gucci mane at 11:38 AM on July 10, 2018 [26 favorites]


That's every mass shooter ever.
posted by Artw at 11:47 AM on July 10, 2018 [4 favorites]


odinsdream, imagine how displeased I was when I discovered that some ancap shit-disturber had pointed Wilson at the (rather critical) passage on that stuff in my most recent book, on Twitter.

I don't at all mind that he saw what I had to say: I would have said all the same things to his face, and after all I do still harbor a certain, perhaps sentimental belief in debating vexatious issues in the full light of the public sphere. What really left a bad taste in my mouth was that this played out on Twitter, where stochastic harm and directed swarms of sociopathy are par for the course. What a disgusting time we live in.
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:50 AM on July 10, 2018 [11 favorites]


His pardon of obvious criminals sends a clear message: I can break the law whenever I want.
posted by valkane at 11:58 AM on July 10, 2018 [7 favorites]




Also I can’t get over the whole wimpiness of these militia guys. They rolled into a wildlife refuge with a fucking arsenal.

Your comment reminded me of my KKK story. Definitely a lot of fear and insecurity behind right wing/conservative politics.
posted by TedW at 12:15 PM on July 10, 2018 [5 favorites]


Vox, Dara Lind, A new court ruling officially opens the door for Trump to separate some migrant families again:
In some cases, Monday night’s ruling says, the government can force parents to make a choice: stay with their children in immigration detention indefinitely, or remain detained by ICE while their children are sent to the custody of Health and Human Services (just as they were under the family-separation policy) and ultimately placed with another adult in the US.

“We the government,” a Department of Justice lawyer said Tuesday, interpret the judges as giving parents 2 options: “remain detained together” for longer than 20 days, or “release the child” and separate the family.

The Trump administration isn’t using that power — at least, not now. It stopped separating families as a policy after President Trump’s June 20 executive order, and it’s not going to try to resume them after Monday night’s judicial ruling.

But the door to resuming family separations is officially open. If the administration refrains from going back there, it will be by its own choice.
...
DHS doesn’t have to detain someone who comes into the US without papers. It can release them on their own cognizance to show up for their court hearing; use an ankle bracelet to monitor them; or enroll them in a case management program.

The Trump administration doesn’t see these as options, though. It has told the courts, over and over again, that parents simply won’t be released from detention. In the administration’s telling, the only two options are for parents to be kept with their children (with no time limit), or for the family to be separated.
Here's a thread of updates from the bench in the ACLU family reunification case, also via Dara Lind.

To summarize, 75 kids under 5 are "eligible for reunification, 63 of them today" and the government is on track to reunify 38-55 of them. The judge wants to hear Thursday how many have been reunified and wants an explanation for those who have not. Thursday will also be the first update for kids over 5, and that could be as many as 2,900 kids. The government also says that a number of Guatemalan kids and their parents are being deported today, saying that none of those families claimed a fear to return home; the ACLU doesn't really have evidence available to the contrary. Also, there's now a protective order requiring the government destroy DNA test information within a week, since I know some people were concerned about that.

So it's clear the government won't meet the deadline, which also hasn't been extended, and exactly what happens is to be determined.
posted by zachlipton at 12:15 PM on July 10, 2018 [16 favorites]


What's going on in PA-01? Is it just the whole machine-backed-a-random-millionaire-as-a-Democrat thing?
posted by shenderson at 12:16 PM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]


Here's the Cook write-up on PA-01:
PA-01: Brian Fitzpatrick (R) - Southeast: Bucks County
Lean Republican. In February, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court dealt Fitzpatrick a small setback when it slightly redrew this Bucks County seat, making it a point less Republican. But Fitzpatrick may have received an even bigger gift when multi-millionaire attorney and philanthropist Scott Wallace won the Democratic primary in May. Wallace has the ability to self-fund the race, but he's off to a very rocky start and may have problems money can't solve.

This Bucks County seat is a true swing district: it voted for Hillary Clinton 49 percent to 47 percent in 2016. It's the kind of seat that should be atop Democrats' target list in a wave. But Bucks also has a strong local identity, and the Fitzpatrick family has succeeded in building a strong, moderate brand (Fitzpatrick was just endorsed by Gabby Giffords and the AFL-CIO). It's also the kind of place where Wallace's wealth, elite pedigree and out-of-state addresses could backfire.

Wallace is the grandson of former FDR vice president Henry Wallace. He grew up in Bucks County, and his bio video notes he grew up "flipping burgers" there. But he hasn't lived there in decades, and until recently he was a registered lobbyist for non-profits who lived in Maryland. His Maryland homestead exemption claim and his ties to exclusive South African country clubs is ready-made for attack ads geared towards Bucks's parochial, blue-collar electorate.

Until recently, Wallace ran his family philanthropy, the Wallace Global Fund, which lists $140 million in assets and supports environmental causes and women's reproductive rights. In a 2016 blog post entitled "Why I am a Patriotic Millionaire," Wallace explains that he split his time between the DC area and South Africa, where he fought corporate influence and nurtured a young democracy. In the post, he's pictured on an expedition to Antarctica.

Plenty of DC Democrats have expressed excitement about Wallace's potential to spend whatever it takes to win, especially in the expensive Philadelphia market. In the primary, he loaned his campaign $2.5 million and crushed 32-year old Navy veteran Rachel Reddick on the airwaves, winning 57 percent to 36 percent. Reddick only raised $363,000 and was shunned by most party strategists, and Wallace attacked her for being a registered Republican in the past.

But Reddick might have made a much stronger general election nominee. Reddick had also only recently moved back to the district. However, her profile as a young, female JAG corps officer could have made her more difficult to attack as a carpetbagger (after all, Fitzpatrick, a former FBI agent, moved back from California to run for his brother's seat). And, her status as a former Republican might have made her more appealing beyond the Democratic base.

Instead, Wallace's general election efforts have gotten off to a very rough start. The day after the primary, the Forward published a piece documenting that the Wallace Global Fund gave $300,000 to groups supporting the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement against Israel. Wallace says he didn't control the expenditures and disavows BDS, but it took a month for one local Jewish Democratic group to reinstate its support for him.

On June 21, the Republican Jewish coalition began running a brutal ad attacking Wallace for owning "mansions in Maryland and South Africa" and "donating $300,000 to anti-Semitic organizations that promote boycotting Israel." The final tag line? "At home in South Africa, too radical for us." The ad forced Wallace to respond with an almost unheard-of June damage-control ad noting that he "lives in the house he was born in" and is a "strong supporter of Israel."

Meanwhile, Fitzpatrick has had no problem winning allies. He's garnered support from unlikely places: his support for additional gun safety measures earned him former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords's endorsement, and the AFL-CIO just endorsed him over Wallace. Moreover, as the only suburban Philadelphia Republican who isn't retiring or resigning, Fitzpatrick is sure to be the GOP's top priority in the region and will have the resources to defend himself.

In a year when other suburban Republicans are being lumped in with the Trump brand, Fitzpatrick is a genuine moderate with a good story to tell. He'll highlight his advocacy on behalf of Navy veteran Matt Bellina, a constituent who was diagnosed with ALS in 2014 at age 30, as the lead House sponsor of the Right to Try legislation signed into law earlier this year. He'll also benefit from residual goodwill from his brother and predecessor, former Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick.

A Monmouth University Poll taken in early June showed Fitzpatrick leading Wallace among all potential voters 49 percent to 42 percent, with a tighter contest among the most interested voters. Given the year and the new map, Fitzpatrick should be in more trouble. But even in waves, candidates still matter, and there's a wide path for Fitzpatrick and Republicans to disqualify Wallace as out of touch. The race moves from Toss Up to the Lean Republican column.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:20 PM on July 10, 2018 [9 favorites]


Read the above along with Slate, Mark Joseph Stern, Trump’s Office of Refugee Resettlement Is Budgeting for a Surge in Child Separations
In the documents obtained by Slate, ORR officials describe the budget implications of a potential surge in immigrant minors over the next three months. The ORR’s budgeting exercise is premised on the possibility that the agency could need as many as 25,400 beds for immigrant minors by the end of the calendar year. The documents do not indicate that ORR officials have specific knowledge that family separations will increase but do show that the agency is preparing for the possibility.

The internal documents estimate that if 25,400 beds are needed, ORR would face a budget shortfall of $585 million for ORR in fiscal year 2018, which ends on Sept. 30. Under this scenario, that shortfall would increase to $1.3 billion in the first quarter of fiscal year 2019, adding up to a total shortfall of $1.9 billion for the period between Oct. 1, 2017, and Dec. 31, 2018. The documents stress that these budget estimates represent maximum possible expenditures and that actual expenses may be lower. The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to multiple requests for comment about these figures or anything else relating to the documents.
ORR will cover these potential costs by reallocating funds from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program and $79M budgeted for refugee resettlement. So HHS is preparing to, if necessary, take money away from Americans with HIV/AIDS to give to contractors to house kids who should be with their family. America First, right?
posted by zachlipton at 12:21 PM on July 10, 2018 [29 favorites]


I've been participating in the Ask A Manager thread, and unsurprisingly, there are plenty of calls that the intern should just suck it up and do her job, and she would be immature and juvenile not to. And more calls to be Nice To The Nazis because being mean to a Nazi means you're as bad as they are. And further discussion about how we shouldn't go calling people Nazis, just because they want to imprison people based on their religious and ethnic background and use rhetoric from Hitler and Mussolini.

And in response to all that, a shit-ton of, "They are literally Nazis and we must and should strive to disallow participation in our society. Go intern." About the only caveat from this side is that the intern shouldn't come right out and SAY that she'd like to kick this VIP's ass, or whatever she said, and in general to not say those things within earshot of the boss.

Not super different from the evolving discussion in these threads, really.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:27 PM on July 10, 2018 [5 favorites]


I think Reddick would indeed have been a stronger candidate than Wallace but I mostly lay the blame for the potential loss here at the feet of poor candidate recruitment. Surely in this cycle they could have found a moderate Democratic with an appealing bio who is actually from the goddamn district.

But I guess he or she wouldn't have been hundredmillionaire which is apparently the most important qualification you can have.
posted by Justinian at 12:30 PM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


“We the government,” a Department of Justice lawyer said Tuesday, interpret the judges as giving parents 2 options: “remain detained together” for longer than 20 days, or “release the child” and separate the family.

Sounds to me like they are deliberately misreading OR as XOR to use nerdspeak, and the next judge to rule on it will give them a smackdown.
posted by ocschwar at 12:34 PM on July 10, 2018 [7 favorites]


While Judge Emmet Sullivan puts no pressure on prosecutors to end Gen. Flynn's cooperation (CNN), the WSJ reports, Mike Flynn Joins Global Consulting Firm—Former Trump adviser is awaiting sentencing for lying to federal investigators
As he awaits sentencing for lying to federal investigators, he is going into business with Washington lobbyist Nick Muzin and his New York partner Joey Allaham with a new firm called Stonington Global LLC, they told The Wall Street Journal.[...]

Stonington Global will provide consulting and lobbying services for U.S. and foreign clients, Messrs. Muzin and Allaham said in a statement. The firm also will “help private investors and sovereign-wealth funds develop and execute investment strategies.”[...]

Mr. Flynn will serve as the new firm’s director of global strategy. He will focus on business development, provide strategic advice to clients on military and intelligence activities, and would register to lobby if necessary, Mr. Muzin said.

While Mr. Muzin was working with the Qataris, a U.S. Republican allied with the United Arab Emirates, Qatar’s rival in the Persian Gulf, sued him. Elliott Broidy said in his suit that Qatar and its agents, including Mr. Muzin, stole and distributed his private emails. Qatari government officials and Mr. Muzin deny any involvement in the alleged hack.
Speaking of Broidy… A sealed legal complaint against GOP mega donor Elliott Broidy by his former mistress contains “troublesome claims that he wouldn’t want to become public,” a source with knowledge of the situation told The Daily Beast.
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:46 PM on July 10, 2018 [15 favorites]


So the guy awaiting sentencing for lying about his discussions with foreign governments is going to lobby for...foreign governments? This all seems very legitimate.
posted by zachlipton at 12:49 PM on July 10, 2018 [36 favorites]


That pardon also sends a message to Zinke that Trump doesn't give a shit about DOI employees in the field, and that Zinke doesn't have to either.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:50 PM on July 10, 2018 [11 favorites]


Buzzfeed's Zoe Tillman reports from the Ms. L. v. ICE case:
New: In Ms. L case, DOJ says 4 under-five children have been reunified; 51 are eligible & most can be reunified today; 20 are eligible but can't be reunified today; 26 not eligible for reunification right now; 1 they still don't know where the parent is
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4593359/7-10-18-US-Notice-of-Compliance-Ms-L.pdf

According to the government's latest filing, for the one kid under five where they don't know where the parent is, they say "records show the parent and child might be U.S. citizens" — no other info provided
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4593359/7-10-18-US-Notice-of-Compliance-Ms-L.pdf
That's correct, we may have reached a point where ICE is kidnapping and imprisoning US citizens.
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:55 PM on July 10, 2018 [68 favorites]


The judge declined to unseal the Bechard complaint immediately but did order an unredacted copy to be provided to Avenatti immediately. So this is gonna get good.
posted by Justinian at 1:18 PM on July 10, 2018 [17 favorites]


That pardon also sends a message to Zinke that Trump doesn't give a shit about DOI employees in the field, and that Zinke doesn't have to either.

Lawfare's Susan Hennessey: "I think it's relatively obvious the strategy here is to exhaust public outrage over pardons and habituate the base for when he uses the pardon power to protect himself, his family, and his cronies."

It's says a great deal, though, that Trump has to stoop so low as pro-Bundy militia members and Joe Arpaio in order to find people who might make his crew look acceptable by comparison.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:20 PM on July 10, 2018 [36 favorites]


That's correct, we may have reached a point where ICE is kidnapping and imprisoning US citizens.


Like it needs to get any worse but the full part of the filing actually says that we've been at that point for more than a year.

1 child cannot be reunified at this time because the parent’s location has been unknown for more than a year. Defendants are unable to conclusively determine whether the parent is a class member, and records show the parent and child might be U.S. citizens.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:22 PM on July 10, 2018 [12 favorites]


So it's clear the government won't meet the deadline, which also hasn't been extended, and exactly what happens is to be determined.

No consequences! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:28 PM on July 10, 2018 [6 favorites]


At what point do they start sanctioning/imprisoning the head of the agency and the supervisors on the ground? Can we fast forward to that part?
posted by Slackermagee at 1:41 PM on July 10, 2018 [6 favorites]


In a sane world (disregarding the fact that in a truly sane world, none of this would be happening at all), upon the very instant of the reunification deadline, the agency would be charged with kidnapping and false imprisonment for all the remaining detainees.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:46 PM on July 10, 2018 [9 favorites]


So, the white nationalist terrorists who want to sell a make-your-own-gun machine won in court and are actively doing some stuff towards that goal

To clarify, are you saying that Wilson and the Defense Distributed people are themselves white nationalists, or are you worried that their machines will be used by white nationalists? The Wired article refers to them alternatively as 'anarchists' and 'libertarians' which are definitely not the same, but still doesn't go into anything else.
posted by corb at 1:49 PM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


To clarify, are you saying that Wilson and the Defense Distributed people are themselves white nationalists, or are you worried that their machines will be used by white nationalists?

Based on interviews he's clearly an AnCap with strong subtextual racist ideology. There's no daylight between that and white nationalism.
posted by Rust Moranis at 1:54 PM on July 10, 2018 [10 favorites]


To clarify, are you saying that Wilson and the Defense Distributed people are themselves white nationalists

I can't speak for odinsdream, but yes, Wilson is absolutely a white nationalist. He founded Hatreon in order to crowdfund people like Richard Spencer and groups like The Daily Stormer (like goes to an Observer article, not Hatreon).
posted by jedicus at 1:58 PM on July 10, 2018 [32 favorites]


He’s an anarchist the way Sade was an anarchist.
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:18 PM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


Bloomberg, U.S. Poised to Publish $200 Billion China Tariff List
President Donald Trump is preparing to release a list of an additional $200 billion in Chinese products to be hit with tariffs, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The list could be released as soon as Tuesday, and likely this week, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter isn’t public. The publication of the list starts a weeks-long process that includes a public-comment period and hearings.

Stock futures fell and yields on 10-year Treasuries declined on concern of a widening trade war.
This thing is going to wind up touching every single import soon enough. Can Wal-Mart start labeling their shelves: price + Trump tax?
posted by zachlipton at 2:20 PM on July 10, 2018 [10 favorites]


but I mostly lay the blame for the potential loss here at the feet of poor candidate recruitment.

But I guess he or she wouldn't have been hundredmillionaire which is apparently the most important qualification you can have.

Wouldn't you lay the blame for the potential loss at the feet of the voters who put Wallace in the hot seat? 🤔
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 2:21 PM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


We didn't talk about the Emin Agalarov, did we? A quick summary, Donald Trump Jr. said he didn’t recall talking to Emin Agalarov. Agalarov remembers it.
Yet, in his testimony, Trump Jr. kept insisting that he didn’t know whether he had spoken to Agalarov. Over and over: I don’t know, not that I recall, etc.

In an interview with “VICE News Tonight” on HBO airing Tuesday, the mystery is solved. According to Agalarov, with whom Vice spoke, he and Trump Jr. did speak before the meeting was set up.

“I said, ‘Listen there’s some people that want to meet you,’ ” Agalarov told Vice. “They obviously want something that could potentially help them resolve things that you could be interested in or maybe not. If you can spare a few minutes of your time, I’d be grateful. If not, no problem. Obviously Don Jr. obviously being Don Jr. said, ‘Of course. I’ll do it if you’re asking.’ ”

This doesn’t exactly explain why there were three calls between the two men, totaling at least six minutes. It offers an explanation of the sales pitch that seems a little spare, but, without more information, it’s hard to say that it’s inaccurate.
The timing of Emin's music video a couple weeks ago, and now his little press tour, seems rather conspicuous given Trump's upcoming meeting with Putin.
posted by zachlipton at 2:34 PM on July 10, 2018 [10 favorites]


WaPo doing their best NYT impression with the opinion page:

I don’t know Kavanaugh the judge. But Kavanaugh the carpool dad is one great guy.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:48 PM on July 10, 2018 [5 favorites]


H.R.6054 - Unmasking Antifa Act of 2018

Of course reading this it will also apply to the klan "Whoever .... while in disguise ... threatens, or intimidates any person .... imprisoned not more than 15 years ..." - 15 years in jail for marching in a hood who knew
posted by mbo at 2:52 PM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


@DaniaPal: CMS guts the navigator program which enrolls people into health insurance. Funding slashed to $10 million, less than 1/6 the funding for 2016-17.

It was $63M/year two years ago.
posted by zachlipton at 2:52 PM on July 10, 2018 [16 favorites]


Based on interviews he's clearly an AnCap with strong subtextual racist ideology.

Goddamnit. Why must people be terrible.
posted by corb at 3:00 PM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


Kavanaugh the carpool dad is one great guy.

I got halfway through this before understanding that it wasn't intended as parody.
posted by contraption at 3:02 PM on July 10, 2018 [24 favorites]


The Big Picture radio host Oliver Knox previewed his discussion with Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) on returning from his trip: "Johnson said it was time to “evaluate” whether to lift US sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea, saying they have failed to change Moscow’s behavior and cut US businesses out of Russian deals."

GOP Senators Tell Contradictory Stories About Moscow Trip—A key Republican came back from the Kremlin seemingly shrugging off Russian aggression. His colleagues are confused as hell by his talk. Inside a controversial mission to Moscow. (Daily Beast) Wherein Ron Johnson's fellow "Moscow mules" push back against his earlier remarks—e.g. “You'd be hard-pressed to say that sanctions against Russia are really working all that well.” and “We’ve blown [Russian election interference] way out of proportion.”—and Johnson tries to walk them back as well.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:03 PM on July 10, 2018 [18 favorites]


Goddamnit. Why must people be terrible.

If you were starting form the position that downloadable-gun guy probably wasn't terrible you might want to re-examine your preconceptions.
posted by Artw at 3:04 PM on July 10, 2018 [24 favorites]


@AndrewFeinberg: @realDonaldTrump @WhiteHouse releases Executive Order to end competitive selection process for Administrative Law Judges, making them political appointees who can be fired at will.

@nycsouthpaw: Though it’s unlikely to be covered as such, this is v probably the biggest news today.

Over the long run, this could turn administrative hearings into complete farces that just do whatever the agency head wants anyway.
posted by zachlipton at 3:06 PM on July 10, 2018 [53 favorites]


DHS goons went to Breitbart to tell them "they give us their kids, they want their kids trapped here after they get deported!" Horrific.

Many Central American migrants slated for deportation are choosing to leave their own children behind in U.S. government shelters, says an official at the Department of Homeland Security.
posted by Rust Moranis at 3:06 PM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


the white nationalist terrorists who want to sell a make-your-own-gun machine won in court

Well, they won out of court. The DOJ stopped defending against Wilson's lawsuit, altered some regulations in his favor, and settled $40,000 on him for his troubles. Wilson's argument that he has twinned 1st and 2nd amendment rights to sell gun recipes and gunmaking machines doesn't seem to have been affirmed by a judge, which I think means he could still be thwarted by legislative or executive action. Of course, that would require turnover in Congress and the White House, and such actions could run against new judges ready to argue that James Madison was all about the computer-milled assault weapons.
posted by Iridic at 3:12 PM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]




'What if I lose her forever?' In Guatemala, a couple fears for their child still in detention in U.S.
Batres said he doesn’t recall agreeing to be removed without his daughter. But he adds that he is not quite sure what documents he signed. Batres never learned to read or write.

ICE Officers to Asylum Seekers: ‘Don’t You Know That We Hate You People?’
When I asked why, the Officers said that I had ‘endangered’ her by bringing her here… During this same conversation one of the officers asked me ‘In Guatemala do they celebrate mother’s day?’ When I answered yes he said, ‘Then Happy Mother’s Day,’ because the next Sunday was Mother’s day. I lowered my head so that my daughter would not see the tears forming in my eyes. That particular act of cruelty astonished me then as it does now. I could not understand why they hated me so much, or wanted to hurt me so much.”
posted by Artw at 3:16 PM on July 10, 2018 [25 favorites]


@carolecadwalla
So, the cat is officially out of the bag. Tomorrow’s ICO’s report on FT front page. Maximum possible fine for Facebook. Criminal enforcement against Cambridge Analytica. Huge investigation ongoing into MULTIPLE crimes potentially committed in referendum. The ICO is bringing it..
posted by Artw at 3:20 PM on July 10, 2018 [32 favorites]


@igorbobic: NEW: Flake says Senate will be voting on nonbinding ‘sense of the Senate’ motion tomorrow “including a role for Congress” in making a determination on Section 232 (trade authority). He expects it to pass with majorities of both caucuses

A nonbinding resolution is the most meaningless thing Flake has done since last night, when he dropped by the protests at the Supreme Court to passively sit and watch in a display of "uselessness as performance art."

Maximum possible fine for Facebook

Please note that this is apparently a half million pounds, or ~0.0001% of Facebook's market cap.
posted by zachlipton at 3:24 PM on July 10, 2018 [14 favorites]


CNN: Another Former OSU Wrestler Says Jim Jordan Knew About Alleged Abuse

According to the WaPo, a conservative crisis communications firm is now working to combat the allegations. No word yet on who is paying for this, whether it's Jordan's campaign or outside interests: Public relations campaign ramps up in support of Rep. Jim Jordan as he battles Ohio State allegations.
posted by peeedro at 3:24 PM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]


ICO, for those trying to look it up in the vast minefield of currencies and coffee using ico.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 3:24 PM on July 10, 2018 [4 favorites]


Facebook Is Fined by British Agency Over Cambridge Analytica Data Leak

The fine of 500,000 pounds, or about $660,000, represents a tiny sum for Facebook, which brings in billions of dollars in revenue every year. But it is the largest fine that can be levied by the British Information Commissioner’s Office, an independent government agency that enforces the country’s data-protection laws.

The agency has been investigating the potential misuse of personal data by political campaigns since May 2017. The examination took on new urgency after The New York Times and other organizations reported in March that Cambridge Analytica, which was based in London, had improperly gathered the data of up to 87 million Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica, which had ties to President Trump’s campaign, used the information to build psychographic profiles of American voters.

In an initial report of its investigation on Tuesday, the Information Commissioner’s Office said it had concluded that “Facebook contravened the law by failing to safeguard people’s information. It also found that the company failed to be transparent about how people’s data was harvested by others.”

posted by Artw at 3:27 PM on July 10, 2018 [13 favorites]


From Michelle Kosinski: Source with familiarity of discussions: Pompeo trip to NKorea went "as badly as it could have gone." North Koreans were just "messing around."

Who knew international nuclear diplomacy could be so complicated. What a fustercluck. I return to my previous comment wondering whether it is better to continue to let Trump lie about his success in NK to keep him from going nuts or to force him to confront the truth and possibly go nuts.
posted by Justinian at 3:35 PM on July 10, 2018 [29 favorites]


ICE Officers to Asylum Seekers: ‘Don’t You Know That We Hate You People?’

This is the kind of human interest story we need to see MUCH, MUCH more of. Real people who are being devastated by Trump's policies. Immigrants, women, LGBTQ - there's no shortage of subject matter. Media need to keep telling their stories until all the people who "don't like to get involved" in politics can no longer ignore what's going on. Someone tell the NYT.
posted by triggerfinger at 3:41 PM on July 10, 2018 [18 favorites]


@AndrewFeinberg: @realDonaldTrump @WhiteHouse releases Executive Order to end competitive selection process for Administrative Law Judges, making them political appointees who can be fired at will.

@nycsouthpaw: Though it’s unlikely to be covered as such, this is v probably the biggest news today.

Over the long run, this could turn administrative hearings into complete farces that just do whatever the agency head wants anyway.


This is a very, very big deal. It's essentially ending any judicial independence for all Article I judges. The VA could be ordered to deny any claim for a specific class of veteran. SSA judges could be capped at a specific percentage of claims they're allowed to pay. The SEC could be ordered to favor specific companies. They could fire everyone currently occupying an ALJ post tomorrow and replace them with people vetted through a committee headed by Stephen Miller.

This is what they meant by "deconstructing the administrative state". It's a direct assault on the very idea of having a professional servant class.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:45 PM on July 10, 2018 [90 favorites]


That Executive Order today is some classic Hitler.
posted by Harry Caul at 3:48 PM on July 10, 2018 [8 favorites]


This is a very, very big deal. It's essentially ending any judicial independence for all Article I judges

I'm curious where things like this come from. It's way too complex to have come from Trump.

Is this Stephen Miller? Sessions? Something that Heritage has kept on the back burner waiting for the right demagogue?
posted by duoshao at 3:56 PM on July 10, 2018 [4 favorites]


Wasn't there a big part of the Declaration of Independence about just this?

Oh yeah.

"He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
posted by yesster at 3:58 PM on July 10, 2018 [73 favorites]


Jesus, it's like the bullet list at the opening of this post is a fucking checklist. Checked multiple times.
posted by yesster at 3:59 PM on July 10, 2018 [7 favorites]


That Executive Order today is some classic Hitler.

Specifically, Trump appears to be turning US Administrative Law courts into a Sondergericht ( Special Court ) like Nazi Germany's Volksgerichtshof ( People's Court ). And we all know how that worked out.
posted by mikelieman at 3:59 PM on July 10, 2018 [7 favorites]


This is a very, very big deal. It's essentially ending any judicial independence for all Article I judges
I'm curious where things like this come from. It's way too complex to have come from Trump.
Yeah.. That's the part that really worries me. It's not that the order isn't bad in and of itself, but the idea that the crowd of hangers-on and sycophants surrounding Trump may be finally figuring out how to get him to sign off on their wish lists is truly terrifying.
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:00 PM on July 10, 2018 [24 favorites]


I'm surprised to see the EO just rolling out here's what to change in the CFR. Is the President exempted from the obligation to accept public comment?

This may not have gotten much coverage yet but I am betting it will ramp up. One, it's just arbitrarily using a clause in law passed by Congress to bail out of the system so it's a little up their ass; they're sycophants but they like their power. Two, every DC-area reporter has both friends in the federal service and lawyer friends and this relates to both. They'll push a line of questioning once their friends bend their ears about it.
posted by phearlez at 4:03 PM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]




But isn't something like this EO completely counterproductive to your ends if there is a reasonable probability of your opposition replacing you any time soon? Since they'll boot out your judges and replace them with their own? No, you don't have to point out the implication inherent in this thought. I'm just saying... anything that can be done with the stroke of a pen can be undone with the stroke of a pen?
posted by Justinian at 4:07 PM on July 10, 2018


I'm curious where things like this come from. It's way too complex to have come from Trump.

It broadly comes from the Supreme Court's ruling in Lucia v. SEC, which concluded that all of the SEC's administrative law judges were appointed improperly, and that was the product of a long line of conservative projects to attack the "administrative state." That pretty much meant the government had to act: basically every decision made by ALJs in every agency is suspect unless the government fixes it (the SEC already did). And if they have to fix it anyway, why not do it in a way that gives them more power? The Court declined to address the issue of removing judges (well, Justice Breyer raised the issue, but it wasn't resolved), and here we are.
posted by zachlipton at 4:08 PM on July 10, 2018 [6 favorites]


Is the President exempted from the obligation to accept public comment?

I don't know anything about Article 1 ALJs. In general, if a member of the public stands to be injured as a result of an executive action, the Administrative Procedures Act applies, but Congress can certainly exempt certain types of activity from the APA, especially if the action itself is purely ministerial or entirely up to the Executive's discretion.

if there is a reasonable probability of your opposition replacing you any time soon? Since they'll boot out your judges and replace them with their own

They don't expect that to happen. Like, ever.
posted by suelac at 4:10 PM on July 10, 2018 [6 favorites]


Well, even leaving out the obvious potential that they don't see that as a threat, you can't expect long term thinking from the party thats been covering their ears and saying "I can't hear you" about climate change for... forever.

Plus, Trump mostly cares about himself / his legacy. If he gets to do a bunch of stuff now, even if it does get undone later he still gets to bask in that now (and again, I don't think he really does long-term planning).
posted by thefoxgod at 4:10 PM on July 10, 2018


Mike Flynn Joins Global Consulting Firm—Former Trump adviser is awaiting sentencing for lying to federal investigators

Update: Mike Flynn’s Lawyers Say He Is No Longer Joining Consulting Firm
Hours after a new lobbying firm aimed at domestic and global clients announced it was partnering with former national security adviser Mike Flynn, attorneys for the embattled Mr. Flynn said the deal was off and the notice had been released as a result of a “misunderstanding” among the participants in Stonington Global LLC.

“General Flynn has not joined Stonington and did not personally issue any public statement,” Mr. Flynn’s attorneys Robert Kelner and Stephen Anthony said in a statement Tuesday. “He was aware that a statement was being drafted, but he did not intend that it be issued at this time.”
...
“We cannot comment on General Flynn’s considerations about the timing of the announcement, but we have faith in his patriotism and long history of service to our country,” Messrs. Muzin and Allaham said after Mr. Flynn’s lawyers issued their statement. “We look forward to working together.”
Uh, that's kind of a pretty big "misunderstanding."
posted by zachlipton at 4:12 PM on July 10, 2018 [25 favorites]


Did they expect that Flynn would be sentenced today and the hiring/announcement was supposed to follow that?

Anyway. The best people.
posted by notyou at 4:16 PM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


Did they expect that Flynn would be sentenced today and the hiring/announcement was supposed to follow that?

Certainly seems like he's expecting some kind of change in his legal situation soon.
posted by jason_steakums at 4:18 PM on July 10, 2018


Guardian. 'They thought they'd die': Ice shackled women for hours in hot van, suit says

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which filed the suit on Tuesday, alleged that the women were also denied food and water for roughly 12 hours during a 24-hour journey on a hot summer day in 2017, and that they experienced physical injuries, medical complications and psychological damage during the protracted transfer.

“The women all thought they were going to die, that they were going to experience their last breath together in that van,” said Vasudha Talla, an ACLU staff attorney. “The stench, the heat, the crying, the screaming – it was very traumatic for the women,” Talla said, adding that the women were “treated like cargo”.


The historical comparison you're thinking about right now is appropriate.
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:22 PM on July 10, 2018 [92 favorites]


There will be litigation over this, the AALJ Union is maybe the strongest union in the federal government, for whatever that’s worth at this point.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:27 PM on July 10, 2018 [8 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump: Just talked with Pfizer CEO and @SecAzar on our drug pricing blueprint. Pfizer is rolling back price hikes, so American patients don’t pay more. We applaud Pfizer for this decision and hope other companies do the same. Great news for the American people!

@ArmstrongDrew (Bloomberg News health):
Pfizer is *delaying* price increases, not canceling them. Goes back up on Jan 1, co says, unless Trump drug price blueprint is implemented. The Blueprint from @SecAzar is big, complex and requires new law and regulation. Would be a high bar to call it “implemented.”

So basically Pfizer is skipping six months of increase that they may then return to. A big deal to see a drugmaker give in directly to Trump on this. But lotta caveats (as with all things drug price). Probably not gonna hear the “list prices don’t matter” line from the industry on this
So another utterly meaningless "victory" for Trump that extends past the midterms, and then we'll just go back to business as usual. Sweet.
posted by zachlipton at 4:27 PM on July 10, 2018 [24 favorites]


During this same conversation one of the officers asked me ‘In Guatemala do they celebrate mother’s day?’

The woman who said that, Angelica Rebeca Gonzalez-Garcia, who has been living in Framingham, Mass., was reunited with her daughter at Boston's Logan Airport, last Thursday, thanks to the ACLU and US Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA 05). CNN videoed the reunion.
posted by adamg at 5:00 PM on July 10, 2018 [18 favorites]


This is a very, very big deal. It's essentially ending any judicial independence for all Article I judges. The VA could be ordered to deny any claim for a specific class of veteran. SSA judges could be capped at a specific percentage of claims they're allowed to pay. The SEC could be ordered to favor specific companies

And by could, I think they definitely mean 'would'.

One of the things that's really important to remember is how fragile norms are. Even if years from now this is overturned, it means unless everyone is super careful, the norm being independent public servants may be totally eroded - and so it may mean only replacing politically dependent judges with 'our' politically dependent judges, thus eroding faith in the civil service at large.
posted by corb at 5:01 PM on July 10, 2018 [16 favorites]


if there is a reasonable probability of your opposition replacing you any time soon? Since they'll boot out your judges and replace them with their own

Well also remember that this works well within the scheme of ignoring every norm and then demanding that your opponents follow them to the letter (see turtlebabble about giving Kav a fair hearing). You make this blanket decision with obvious implications, load up the service with your guys (of course they'll be (white) guys) and then, when the Executive Office turns over you flip the hell out over the new administration canning your clowns. Why I sweah, I nevah seen such a thing; every previous president has left all administrative law justices in their positions upon power change! Never mind that you're the people who changed the landscape in the first place.
posted by phearlez at 5:03 PM on July 10, 2018 [6 favorites]


Meanwhile, in NYC Julia Salazar says "Come over and egg my house if I ever vote against the movement."
posted by The Whelk at 5:03 PM on July 10, 2018 [8 favorites]


Daily Beast, Government Told Immigrant Parents to Pay for DNA Tests to Be Reunited With Kids: Advocate
The government recently told four immigrant women that they must pay for DNA tests to prove they are related to the children they were separated from in order to be reunited, according to the shelter that housed the women.

The tests are the latest ad hoc effort by the Trump administration to reunite families it had separated—in some cases because authorities took documents from adults proving they are related to their children. The tests are being administered by a private contractor on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the care and housing of children. HHS has refused to name the contractor, which may be a violation of federal law.

“None of them have the money [for the tests], so it’s going to fall back on us to push back on that,” said Ruben Garcia, the director of Annunciation House, an immigrant shelter in El Paso where the women are staying.

Three of the women are mothers of the children, Garcia said, and the fourth is attempting to reunite with her brother, a three and half-year-old boy.
...
The Office of Refugee Resettlement, responsible for the DNA testing, told The Daily Beast it “provides DNA testing at no cost to verify parentage.”
This would, of course, be easier if CBP and ICE didn't take away parents' paperwork in the first place.
posted by zachlipton at 5:06 PM on July 10, 2018 [35 favorites]


You will not be surprised to learn that the Seth Rich Conspiracy Theorist’s Event Fizzled Spectacularly (Will Sommer, Daily Beast)
After the technical issues were resolved, the much-hyped call with Burkman’s gravelly voiced anonymous tipster didn’t go well.

With the press and YouTube livestreamers crowded around the phone, Luke spun a confusing tale involving two assassins — or maybe three assassins — from the DEA and ATF tracking Rich to murder him and take a thumb drive containing confidential documents. The supposed whistleblower’s story grew as the call went on, with Luke claiming he had passed a lie detector test administered by the Secret Service and that he had also received vague help from the House Intelligence Committee.

Luke wouldn’t explain why anyone should believe him, and he grew flustered when asked to explain his claim that the House Intelligence Committee was involved in his investigation.

“Uh, they helped with… computer things,” Luke said.

Luke and Burkman also had shifting descriptions of the amount of danger the ostensible witness was in. On the one hand, they said he couldn’t reveal his name because he was still in the same region as Rich’s assassins. But at the same time, he felt comfortable enough to use his own voice on the call and reveal details about his supposed conversations with the assassins.

“Did you think about using a voice scrambler?” asked one reporter.

“Uh, does it matter?” Luke replied.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:27 PM on July 10, 2018 [5 favorites]


Legal scholar and blogger David Schraub warns about The Coming Era of Forced Abortions

He's laying out the legal pathway that might be used to force abortions on women, particularly migrant women, if Roe is overturned. I think it's much more probable that irregular migrants will be forced to give birth and then deported without their babies (who would be adopted by American families) but Schraub offers a plausible counter example:
... imagine this: Roe is overturned. The issue of abortion is, as promised, "returned to the states". A few months later, a prison guard rapes an inmate and then, to cover up the crime, forces her to terminate the ensuing pregnancy. Is the latter act a constitutional violation? I don't know that it is. Is it a clearly established constitutional violation (thank you, qualified immunity)? I don't see how. The constitutional underpinnings that say women cannot be forced to involuntarily terminate their pregnancies rest entirely on Roe v. Wade -- if that's overturned, the best you can say about the state of that right is that it is up in the air.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:35 PM on July 10, 2018 [6 favorites]




You will not be surprised to learn that the Seth Rich Conspiracy Theorist’s Event Fizzled Spectacularly (Will Sommer, Daily Beast)

Here's video of the full press conference including the call. It's an hour & 40 minutes of god only knows what nonsense. I think it was yesterday I saw a renewed plea from Seth's parents to stop this whole insane process.

Press Conference Offers New Evidence in the Seth Rich Murder – with Special Guest Dr. Jerome Corsi.
posted by scalefree at 6:20 PM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]




Lisa Page will not appear before House committees tomorrow. Her lawyer says she was given a subpoena on Saturday, and she has not been allowed to review the documents she'll be questioned about. She's asking for a new date.

This seems like House Republicans pulled a last-minute effort to get Page to say things they can throw back at Strzok, or in the alternative, whine about what she's hiding.
posted by zachlipton at 6:30 PM on July 10, 2018


ELECTIONS NEWS

** 2018 Senate -- MT: The Montana GOP had been pretty clearly trying to run a Green Party candidate in an effort to ratfuck Jon Tester. That failed today, as a judge ruled some of the candidate's signatures were not properly gathered, and ordered him removed from ballots.

** 2018 House:
-- NJ-02: The NRCC has pulled its endorsement of Seth Grossman after numerous racist statements of his came to light. This is a seat that's been GOP-held for many years and that voted Trump 51-46, and the GOP has basically abandoned it.

-- WI-01: Long New Yorker piece on possible Dem candidate Randy "Ironstache" Bryce.

-- Okay, so what's the general state of play on flipping the House? Quantitatively, the generic ballot has been drifting higher for the Dems since late May - it's currently D+8.9 (47/9/39.0) in the 538 average, the highest it's been all year. Historically, from this far out, the average moves towards the non-White House party about another 1.5 points by Election Day. Analysis of how big a lead the Dems will need varies, but is generally seen as somewhere between 6-8 points. Elliott Morris has the Dems at about 75% chance if flipping, based on where we are now.

Qualitatively, let's look at the Cook seat ratings:
Safe D: 181
Likely D: 12
Lean D: 8
Tossup: 24
Lean R: 26
Likely R: 29
Safe R: 155
Harry Enten ran an accuracy analysis on Cook ratings from seven months out; we're obviously closer now, but let's say it's the same. Based on that analysis, we get about 221 seats for the Dems, 214 for the GOP. That matches up pretty well with Cook's overall forecast of a Dem gain of 20-35 seats (they need to flip 23 for a bare majority). Also worth noting that Cook's Amy Walter has found that while Enten's numbers were accurate on average, in a given election, tossups/leans tend to break towards one party. So we might suspect Dem gains would be toward the higher end.

In short: obviously we are still five months out, but Democrats continue to be well positioned to take House control. I'm more reluctant to forecast the Senate, where a lot of races have not been well-polled, and fewer races means results don't average out like in the House. I'd probably put chances of Dem control around 25%.

** Odds & ends -- Gubernatorial races that will be a big deal for redistricting.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:35 PM on July 10, 2018 [44 favorites]


(Apologies if it's a double; I did look for it here; via Pwn All the Things's Twitter...)

Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s 188 majority opinions, 52 concurrences, and 57 dissents
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:49 PM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]


@jimsciutto: “At least” 38 turns out to be exactly 38. HHS tells CNN that as of 630p only 38 of 102 children under 5 separated from their parents have been reunited.

This does not inspire confidence that the thousands of kids over 5 will be returned.
posted by zachlipton at 7:00 PM on July 10, 2018 [22 favorites]


US Attorney in Boston issues statement that he basically has better things to do than going after marijuana users and growers now that recreational pot is legal in Massachusetts - such as combating opioid sales - but that he will go after legal producers who try to export their wares to neighboring states where pot remains illegal and producers who target children. Gangs better watch out, too (yes, he mentioned MS-13).
posted by adamg at 7:35 PM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


Mod note: A few comments removed; looks like there was a misunderstanding on a date on a shitty situation.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:36 PM on July 10, 2018 [4 favorites]


Chrysostom – thank you for your continued reporting on the state of voting. I tell you honestly, I'm a middle-aged white guy in a blue state and the news lately has been bringing me to tears, and practically the only ray of hope I have is the positive news you so often bring about the chances for more Democrats to be elected.
posted by StrawberryPie at 7:43 PM on July 10, 2018 [34 favorites]




As funny as the headline is, the tl;dr is that she won the REFORM PARTY's nomination with 9 write-in votes. Serrano ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.
posted by Justinian at 8:04 PM on July 10, 2018 [12 favorites]


The House Freedom Caucus is going down with the captain.
House Freedom Caucus @freedomcaucus
Jim Jordan is a man of integrity, and we believe him and stand with him 100 percent. If he had seen or heard something he would have acted. We continue to support his work in Congress to fight for everyday Americans.
Jacobim Mugatu: "Supporting people who are complicit with pedophiles? So hot right now."
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 8:21 PM on July 10, 2018 [29 favorites]


WaPo, Jeff Stein and David Weigel, Democrats ready ‘Abolish ICE’ legislation, in which a blueprint is offered for how this actually becomes a reality:
A Democratic proposal to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement would shutter the agency, probe whether its agents had flouted international law, and create a special commission to rethink how the federal government handles asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants.

The text of Rep. Mark Pocan’s “Abolish ICE” bill, obtained Tuesday by The Washington Post, was sent to House Democrats as they returned from the Fourth of July recess. The legislation, still being tweaked before release, is co-sponsored by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), both of whom are immigrants.

In an interview, Pocan (D-Wis.) said the legislation would allow immigration laws to be enforced but put an end to a 15-year-old agency that had diverged from its original mission.
It rather punts on the details, setting a one-year deadline to close ICE while leaving the issue of how its functions are handled up to a committee of lawmakers and advocates, but it's still exciting.

Bloomberg Law, Laura D. Francis, Deportation Referral Policy Could Be Employers’ 'Final Straw’
A new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services policy allowing the agency to refer foreign workers for removal proceedings in immigration court could make businesses think twice about sponsoring workers for visas.

“I think this could be the final straw,” American Immigration Lawyers Association President Anastasia Tonello told Bloomberg Law July 9. With the new policy adding to existing hurdles employers must overcome to sponsor a foreign worker for a visa in the U.S., they may just jump ship and move operations overseas, she said.

“This could really disrupt businesses and discourage businesses from sponsoring employees,” Tonello said.
If you read the whole thing, it paints a picture of an immigration system that's so now completely broken that it doesn't work for big companies transferring high-level managers, let alone everyone else without those kinds of resources.

PBS Newshour, Pavni Mittal, ‘My entire life is revolving around this’ — Thousands of women await visa rule’s uncertain future, in which spouses of H-1B visa holders, previously permitted to work by an Obama Administration decision in 2015, are waiting for the Trump Administration to follow through on its plans to revoke their employment authorization documents.

----

And in Supreme Court news, here's a whole area of questioning that needs to not be ignored: Did Brett Kavanaugh Know About Alex Kozinski? Will anybody ASK him?
posted by zachlipton at 8:28 PM on July 10, 2018 [38 favorites]


If you read the whole thing, it paints a picture of an immigration system that's so now completely broken that it doesn't work for big companies transferring high-level managers, let alone everyone else without those kinds of resources.

And they wonder why companies are investing in Democrats and diversifying their politician portfolios.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 8:41 PM on July 10, 2018 [4 favorites]


If he had seen or heard something he would have acted.

Next week it’ll be “If he had seen or heard something substantive he would have acted.”

By August it’ll be “If he had seen or heard something substantive from an actual victim he would have acted.”

September? “If he had seen or heard something substantial from an actual victim with proof he would have acted.”

October? “We’re pretty sure Nancy Pelosi was a wrestling coach in the 1980s.”
posted by Etrigan at 8:44 PM on July 10, 2018 [40 favorites]


And they wonder why companies are investing in Democrats and diversifying their politician portfolios.

Is this actually happening? I haven't seen any evidence that big business is doing anything other than drunkenly swimming in their piles of cash and dividends from the GOP #taxscam cuts and gearing up for the next round of tax cuts and revoking every New Deal program to pay for it after the GOP retains control in the midterms. If they're investing in Democrats now, I'd like to see hard numbers and ask exactly what they expect in return, because Trumpublicans delivered on trillions in cold hard cash.

Hard to see how they're going to give that up for some guest visas.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:50 PM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm pretty sure it was reflexive "both sides are corrupt amirite" snark, which is so 2016.
posted by Justinian at 8:52 PM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]


> A Democratic proposal to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement would shutter the agency, probe whether its agents had flouted international law, and create a special commission to rethink how the federal government handles asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants.

It is not enough to abolish ICE. A "probe" is not enough. Abolish and prosecute, or failing that, abolish and run a full truth-and-reconciliation process so that we can see what was done in our name by our government.

This has got to stop.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:05 PM on July 10, 2018 [27 favorites]


DHS Announces Implementation of Visa Sanctions

On July 10, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced, in coordination with the State Department, the implementation of visa sanctions on Burma and Laos due to lack of cooperation in accepting their citizens who have been ordered removed the United States. [...] As a result, Secretary Pompeo has ordered consular officers in Burma and Laos to implement visa restrictions on certain categories of visa applicants. Without an appropriate response from Burma and Laos, the scope of these sanctions may be expanded to a wider population. The suspension will remain in place until the Secretary Nielsen notifies Secretary Pompeo that cooperation on removals has improved to an acceptable level.

Don't accept the people we forcibly expel to you speedily and gratefully enough? Guess we'll have to forbid your entire country. Leaping for any excuse to limit entry from racially unacceptable nations.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:31 PM on July 10, 2018 [7 favorites]


At the moment, those restrictions apply only to certain government officials from those two countries, though there's certainly a threat that it could apply more broadly in the future.
posted by zachlipton at 11:09 PM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]


@John_Hudson [video]: Trump takes the gloves off immediately at NATO, slamming Germany on defense spending and ripping European countries for relying on Russian energy. Notably tense exchange with @jensstoltenberg who tried to emphasize unity

This is nuts. He's got a whole rant that "Germany, as far as I'm concerned, is captive to Russia because it's getting so much of its energy from Russia. So we're supposed to protect Germany [inaudible] its getting it's energy from Russia. Explain that. And it can't be explained, you know that."

Credit where it's due, yelling this at the Secretary General does defy explanation.
posted by zachlipton at 12:35 AM on July 11, 2018 [19 favorites]


I wonder what would happen if Stoltenberg came back over the top at Trump complimenting him on the size of his electoral win & the number of beautiful buildings & golf courses he owns. Total nonsequiter praise, just feed his narcissism & see what happens.
posted by scalefree at 1:02 AM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


Chrysostom: Gubernatorial races that will be a big deal for redistricting.

Georgia's on that list! 538 is cautious about whether Stacey Abrams can win, but I checked with my (white woman) friend in Georgia who says: "Stacey Abrams is a wonderful candidate and the individual I support. I have hope [but] the other side has a strong foothold. Fingers crossed. Years ago she came to a farmers market event. Lots of legislators did, but Stacey helped me haul watermelons to the bus for a bunch of people, in her heels, and the Georgia heat. She is different." So I donated to Abrams.
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 1:25 AM on July 11, 2018 [15 favorites]


Germany, as far as I'm concerned, is captive to Russia

Trump's Total Reflecting Materials Inventory.
posted by Stoneshop at 2:16 AM on July 11, 2018 [30 favorites]


Russian invasion of the Baltics has been the stuff of technothriller novels for decades. Difference is, the Balts are actually in the EU and the NATO. Ukraine never was, and has a substantial Russian minority- even now Putin has deigned to outright conquer and absorb the other half. Plus the Finns know a thing of two of stopping the Russian bear in the dead of winter.

Recently I visited Estonia to meet some relatives. My father's family fled the Soviets during World War 2, and I have been told of a great uncle who froze to death in the Siberian copper mines. (A couple of great aunts were also deported to the gulags but eventually made it back.) Anyway, we still have some distant relations over there. I got to see my great grandmother's grave site, which was a lovely and solemn experience. I asked where her husband had been buried and was told that the Soviets had bulldozed that cemetery in 1964 and turned the headstones into construction material, so no luck on that front.

Anyway, I forgot to ask for anyone's opinion on Estonia's status as a McGuffin for Tom Clancy plotlines, but I can safely report that the folks on the ground there are not quite so sanguine about the prospect of Russian irredentism. Many of them have been waiting for this almost since Estonia's independence was declared in 1991. In fact, Politico ran an article just yesterday about Estonia's preparations for a Russian invasion. This is what the commander of the Estonian Special Operations Force has to say on the topic:
“Modern warfare is asymmetric in nature,” Uhtegi told me. “It is difficult to find the enemy forces on the ground. It is difficult to identify them, fix their position and destroy them. But this is what we must prepare for here. Like Afghanistan, Iraq—but here.” [...] He continued: “There are always these discussions. Like, yeah. The Russians can get to Tallinn in two days. ... Maybe. But they can’t get all of Estonia in two days. They can get to Tallinn, and behind them, we will cut their communication lines and supplies lines and everything else. ...They can get to Tallinn in two days. But they will die in Tallinn. And they know this. They will get fire from every corner, at every step. [...] Territorial defense is very local. It has to be their responsibility. This village. This town. This bridge. This river. This piece of land. It’s theirs to defend... They must know their terrain and how to use it.”
See also this NYTimes article from October 2016, which concludes by quoting a former corporal in the Estonian Army who now helps to train the civilian defense corps:
"Partisan war is our way," Mr. Vokk said. "We cannot equal their armor. We have to group in small units and do a lot of destruction of their logistics convoys. We needle them wherever we can." Mr. Vokk served with the army in Afghanistan, where, he said, he gained an appreciation for the effectiveness of I.E.D.s. "They scared us,” he said. “And a Russian is just a human being as well. He would be scared.”
Long story short: no matter what happens to NATO, Estonia is preparing its military and its civilians for a guerrilla insurgency.

It is worth noting that the Baltic states are vastly smaller than Ukraine in terms of both territory and population, and that the percentage of ethnic Russians in Estonia and Latvia is about 25%, higher than Ukraine's 16%; this will almost undoubtedly figure into Putin's rationale for any invasion. The population of Ida-Viru county, closest to Saint Petersburg and the generation point for almost the entirety of Estonia's domestic power grid, is 73% ethnic Russian. For starters, Putin wouldn't even need to take all of Estonia back; he would simply need to take over Ida-Viru county in the name of defending the Russian emigre population, and he would then control the Estonian power grid.

He's got a whole rant that "Germany, as far as I'm concerned, is captive to Russia because it's getting so much of its energy from Russia. So we're supposed to protect Germany [inaudible] its getting it's energy from Russia. Explain that. And it can't be explained, you know that."

Interesting that Trump does not conversely offer any praise for Estonia, which has not only met its 2% NATO defense spending goals since 2015, but also had the lowest energy dependency rate in the EU as of 2016 (less than 7% imported, relative to the EU average of over 50%). Maybe he's been listening to Newt Gingrich, who insinuated back in July 2016 that Estonia has been derelict in its defense spending and that the USA should therefore not bother itself with coming to the aid of "a suburb of St. Petersburg." This despite the fact that the only time in NATO's history that the mutual defense clause was invoked was on September 11, 2001, when our allies came to our assistance.

I will not be surprised in the least if Donald Trump comes back from his chat with Putin having signed version 2.0 of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In fact, I am rather expecting something along those lines. Trump is an asset of the Russian government.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 4:32 AM on July 11, 2018 [73 favorites]


"Germany, as far as I'm concerned, is captive to Russia because it's getting so much of its energy from Russia."

No puppet, no puppet. You're the puppet.

Maybe next time we don't elect someone with the intellect and debate skills of a 10 year old.
posted by chris24 at 4:57 AM on July 11, 2018 [31 favorites]


Ten? You’re far too generous.
posted by Sys Rq at 5:10 AM on July 11, 2018 [12 favorites]


Yes, we definitely need to reach out to people who thought Obama was an embarrassment but worship this idiot.

Josh Dawsey (WaPo)
How Trump opened his time at NATO this AM: "Good morning, everybody. Good morning to the media -- the legitimate media and the fake-news media. Good morning to them. A lot of good people here. Surprising."


Jackie Calmes (LAT)
WH pool report on Trump's arrival for breakfast with NATO Sec Gen'l Jens Stoltenberg:
"After shaking hands, Trump remarked that the Secretary General likes him. 'He may be the only one, but that’s ok with me.'”

Trump's talking about US allies.
posted by chris24 at 5:13 AM on July 11, 2018 [16 favorites]


'Evil, exploitative and sick': Sarah Palin says Sacha Baron Cohen duped her

Sacha Baron Cohen might have a hit on his hands.
posted by michswiss at 5:14 AM on July 11, 2018 [41 favorites]


"Germany, as far as I'm concerned, is captive to Russia because it's getting so much of its energy from Russia. So we're supposed to protect Germany [inaudible] its getting it's energy from Russia. Explain that. And it can't be explained, you know that."

Trump's hammering on this point. Incidentally, MSNBC The Last Word producer Kyle Griffin observes, Quite interesting to watch John Kelly's face in the background as Trump says that "Germany is totally controlled by Russia." (via ABC).
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:26 AM on July 11, 2018 [6 favorites]


> Jim Jordan is a man of integrity, and we believe him and stand with him 100 percent. If he had seen or heard something he would have acted.

Coach Jordan was a mandated reporter. Not a lot of wiggle room for him here.
posted by klarck at 5:45 AM on July 11, 2018 [28 favorites]


Josh Kraushaar (National Journal)
#NC09 poll by Civitas: McCready (D) 43, Harris (R) 36.

An R+7 gerrymandered district.


Greg Sargent (WaPo)
‏Retweeted Josh Kraushaar
For context: This is a Lean Republican district, per Cook Political Report.

That means (put crudely) that around 30 GOP-held seats are in categories (Toss Up, Lean/Likely Dem) that are *easier* for Dems to pick up than this one should be.

---

Civitas is a very rightwing firm in NC. It's possible this is an attempt to raise money for Harris or scare voters, but typically Civitas has a very pro-R lean like or more so than Rasmussen.

This is interesting in the Civitas link:

"This gap between the two leading candidates grows even larger when looking at female support. McCready leads Harris by 16 points among likely women voters."
posted by chris24 at 5:45 AM on July 11, 2018 [16 favorites]


And an article from McClatchy on NC09 last month.

A Democrat who talks like a Republican could steal a major NC race from the GOP
...On paper, a socially conservative Republican should trounce just about any Democrat here in North Carolina’s Ninth District, which stretches from south suburban Charlotte east through more rural counties to the Fayetteville area. It went for President Donald Trump by nearly 12 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election and is a decades-long GOP stronghold. Yet like so many other typically Republican districts across the country, this year, it is very much in play.

Part of that is because progressives are energized, raring to defeat Trump at every electoral level, and they are activating here and nationwide. And part of it is because moderate suburban women who have little affinity for the Democratic Party are increasingly uncomfortable with today’s GOP — a party now defined by unshakable loyalty to Trump.

But perhaps most critically, the Democratic candidate here has figured out how to sound downright conservative as he talks about “regulatory relief” and respect for the military; his relationship with his pastor and his opposition to Nancy Pelosi. That helps as he aggressively targets the center-right moderates he will need to win over, knowing that he has the liberal vote around Charlotte all sewn up.

Now, the Ninth District race is emerging as a national test of just how far a potential 2018 Democratic wave can push into traditional GOP territory — and whether other conservative districts, from eastern Washington to the Little Rock, Ark. area to suburban Cincinnati, could suddenly be in jeopardy for Republicans...
posted by chris24 at 5:56 AM on July 11, 2018 [5 favorites]


Quite interesting to watch John Kelly's face in the background as Trump says that "Germany is totally controlled by Russia."

I suspect that Second Lieutenant Kelly learned really quick not to play poker.
posted by Etrigan at 6:17 AM on July 11, 2018 [25 favorites]


Maybe we don't assume Kelly is embarrassed or ashamed. A year ago we thought he was when Trump said Nazis were "very fine people" and then we discovered Kelly was a prime instigator/supporter of Trump's white supremacist policies. We thought he was offended by Trump's attacks on our institutions and military and then Kelly repeatedly lied while attacking a Gold Star mom and a congresswoman. He's a piece of shit Nazi and we should assume he's always so until proven otherwise. A momentary clip that people read what they want into doesn't mean anything. He could be frustrated that Trump wasn't tough enough or misspoke the talking point for all we know.
posted by chris24 at 6:34 AM on July 11, 2018 [68 favorites]


This despite the fact that the only time in NATO's history that the mutual defense clause was invoked was on September 11, 2001, when our allies came to our assistance.

Possibly dumb questions: does the mutual defense clause include cyber warfare and if so, shouldn't NATO be coming to our defense now? What happens if NATO tries to come to the defense of a member country and the compromised, authoritarian leader of the country is basically like "We dont need your help, fuck off." What then?
posted by triggerfinger at 6:40 AM on July 11, 2018 [7 favorites]


The population of Ida-Viru county, closest to Saint Petersburg and the generation point for almost the entirety of Estonia's domestic power grid, is 73% ethnic Russian.

After WWII the Eastern Europeans did not just shrug and continue to live among the German collaborators. I really don't understand how they were all so sanguine about the Russians among them in 1991.

I am not saying ethnic cleansing would have been acceptable. But stuff like unilateral border adjustments (Ida-Virtu to Russia, East Ukraine to Russia) and Uzbek levels of non-accommodation to the Russians remaining would have averted this time bomb.
posted by Meatbomb at 6:50 AM on July 11, 2018


Maybe we don't assume Kelly is embarrassed or ashamed.

If that was directed at my poker-face comment, feel free not to assume that I'm assuming that, nor what the "me" part of "we" thought about him back in the olden days, thanks.
posted by Etrigan at 6:50 AM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


Etrigan, my comment was prompted by the original comment you were replying to and your reply, but was a general comment about Kelly given past debates here and current waves on Twitter, not intended to be a slam on you or Dr. Zed.
posted by chris24 at 6:57 AM on July 11, 2018 [3 favorites]


"Axios, in conjunction with Survey Monkey, just dropped a big batch of polls from battleground states for the 2018 Senate elections, which are either good or bad news for Democrats, depending on how you look at it."
From: New polls show Democrats have a narrow path to a Senate majority: "What the latest Senate polls tell us about the state of the 2018 midterm elections." - Dylan Scott, Vox

Seems very improbable to me, but not impossible.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:15 AM on July 11, 2018 [7 favorites]


Winning the Senate will be tough, though I agree there's a decent chance. But Axios' spin was ridiculous.

Jim VandeHei (Axios)
🚨 Brutal poll: Axios - Democrats' Senate dream slips away


Nick Gourevitch (Dem pollster)
Retweeted Jim VandeHei
Odd use of a 🚨. Story here is not #DemsInDisarray. It’s 8+ point leads for Dems in Trump states of OH/WV/MI/PA/MT/WI/AZ. All the small single digit races in these could easily go one way in Wave (that’s why it’s called a wave).


Dave Weigel (WaPo)
Retweeted Nick Gourevitch
Imagine telling a Dem in January 2017 that a "brutal Senate poll" this summer would include Baldwin, Casey, Manchin, and Tester up by double digits.
posted by chris24 at 7:24 AM on July 11, 2018 [42 favorites]


Well, Merkel didn't let it rest...
"In less blunt language than the US president’s, the German chancellor made the point that she needed no lessons in dealing with authoritarian regimes, recalling she had been brought up in East Germany when it had been part of the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence."

It's only a matter of time that someone there snaps and tells Trump to his face in front of rolling cameras just how clueless he is.
posted by Namlit at 7:31 AM on July 11, 2018 [80 favorites]


(Cynical me wonders if Trump is railing against Germany buying natural gas from Russia because he wants them to switch to American coal?)
posted by lumnar at 7:32 AM on July 11, 2018 [4 favorites]


After WWII the Eastern Europeans did not just shrug and continue to live among the German collaborators. I really don't understand how they were all so sanguine about the Russians among them in 1991.

I am not saying ethnic cleansing would have been acceptable. But stuff like unilateral border adjustments (Ida-Viru to Russia, East Ukraine to Russia) and Uzbek levels of non-accommodation to the Russians remaining would have averted this time bomb.


I don't want to turn this into a derail, but I'll note that a territorial concession would have violated the Treaty of Tartu, which the Soviet Union signed with Estonia in 1920. Land concession also would have legitimized the Soviet policies of mass deportation and Russification, which was how that corner of Estonia became so heavily Russian in the Stalinist days. Given that the Soviet Union was collapsing, I guess the Estonian leadership thought it was worth it to push for their borders as originally defined. But in light of the miraculous fact that the Baltic independence movement was (a) successful and (b) almost entirely bloodless, I suspect that many people feared that violence would rapidly descend into chaos and more military incursions. On top of that, Russian troops actually remained stationed in the Baltic states for three or four years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I am curious about what you mean by "Uzbek levels of non-accommodation." What policies did Uzbekistan pursue to resist post-Soviet Russian influence?
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 7:33 AM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]




(Cynical me wonders if Trump is railing against Germany buying natural gas from Russia because he wants them to switch to American coal?)

Which would just be entirely stupid. Germany only gets ~13% of its electric generation through natural gas. The rest of the natural gas goes to direct heating of homes in natural gas furnaces. There's literally not even a market to compete. You can't take American coal and stuff it down a pipe and into furnaces like you can Russian natural gas.

It's not like those dastardly blue states like Mass who have forsaken coal for power generation and switched to natural gas en masse.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 8:02 AM on July 11, 2018 [5 favorites]



After WWII the Eastern Europeans did not just shrug and continue to live among the German collaborators. I really don't understand how they were all so sanguine about the Russians among them in 1991.

I am not saying ethnic cleansing would have been acceptable. But stuff like unilateral border adjustments (Ida-Virtu to Russia, East Ukraine to Russia) and Uzbek levels of non-accommodation to the Russians remaining would have averted this time bomb.


My Sudetenlandjuden ancestors were too German to be deemed Czech and too Jewish to be German.

Depending on how you squint when you read Czech law, my ancestry either makes me eligible for expedited Czech citizenship, or bans me from setting foot in the Czech republic.

Suffice it to say, I'm glad the Balts and western Slavs didn't Go There in 1991. If they had gone there, the Cold War would have heated up into WW3 instead of ending.

There are areas inside Russia proper where an ethnic backlash in 1991 drove Russians out (Yakutia, the Chuckchi regions), which is a major sore spot driving the Russian turn to revanchism.
posted by ocschwar at 8:12 AM on July 11, 2018 [5 favorites]


About German defense spending and defense spending in general:

I was taught as a kid that the Germans were not allowed to have a big military, because of the history of the two WWs. I guess things have changed after 1989, but I know many Germans still aren't really comfortable with military might.

Also, the US chooses to spend an absurd amount of money on defence. The rest of NATO isn't forcing them.

Making sense of whatever Trump says isn't meaningful, but the rest of us need to maintain gravity.
posted by mumimor at 8:19 AM on July 11, 2018 [21 favorites]


Meanwhile, on the Trump trade war front, Beijing says it's "shocked" by the US's new round of tariffs and calls them "totally unacceptable"), and the Commerce Ministry says it would take "necessary counter-measures", which suggests it will consider additional economic methods of fighting back (BBC).

And the economic effects of the trade war are beginning to appear in global markets, e.g. China's 25% tariff on soy beans, per Bloomberg: U.S. Soybean Prices Crumble as Trade War Sparks Brazil Rally “Premiums reflect the rising possibility of China being more dependent on Brazil’s soybeans," Luis Fernando Roque, an analyst at consultancy firm Safras & Mercado, said in a telephone interview from Porto Alegre.”

Unconvincingly, someone with control of @realDonaldTrump tweeted this morning, "I am in Brussels, but always thinking about our farmers." And then it goes on to lecture them about soy bean declines in 2012 and implicitly ask for patience while the trade war escalates.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:20 AM on July 11, 2018 [6 favorites]


Since I was in need of some good news, I decided to compare the recent Cook's report to previous reports which they have available on their website. First, how to read this. What's most important is not the total number of representatives in each column. That's the current status. What is significant is the number of seats that move to the possible flips.

July 10, 2018

Among Democrat incumbent seats
Solid Dem 181
Likely 9
Lean 2
Toss-Up 2 (In my calculations below 50% of toss-ups flip)
Leans towards Flipping 0
Likely to Flip 1

Among Republican incumbent seats
Solid Rep 155
Likely 28
Lean 26
Toss-Up 22
Lean towards Flipping 6
Likely to Flip 3

January 8, 2018 (six months ago)

Among Democrat incumbent seats
Solid Dem 172
Likely 10
Lean 5
Toss-Up 4
Leans towards Flipping 2
Likely to Flip 0

Among Republican incumbent seats
Solid Rep 175
Likely 24
Lean 19
Toss-Up 17
Leans towards Flipping 2
Likely to Flip 1

So, compared to January the Republicans are 20 seats down on solid candidates. They have increased Likely Republican by 4 and Lean Republican by 7: most likely from the solid Republican tally. The toss-up column increased by 5 and the leans/likely to flip column up by 8.

For July, using a scratch bit of calculation, about 35 seats are set to flip, 31 towards Democrats, 4 towards the Republicans. A net of 27.
In January, the same calculations came out to be, 29 seats set to flip, 22 towards Democrats, and 7 towards the Republicans. A net of 15.

(My scratch calculations: toss-ups are 50/50, leans are 67/33, and likelies are 80/20. In my calculations, solids do not flip. These calculations don't factor in a wave.)
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:22 AM on July 11, 2018 [7 favorites]


Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam, if you Google "Uzbekification", you'll see it really is a word. In short they immediately converted to the Latin alphabet, heavily pushed Uzbek language and culture, and in many many little ways made it clear that for Russians, they were no longer "at home".

Ain't no way Uzbekistan will be getting absorbed easily any time soon.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:30 AM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


The Bizarro newspaper cartoon (no relation to the Bizarro DC comics character) stumbled onto a very appropriate pun that will probably end up in the court pleadings of either Trump or some of his minions: "Not guilty on account of Sean Hannity."
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:34 AM on July 11, 2018 [13 favorites]


It's just performative until they actually put iron in the glove, but don't mistake this for anything but criminalizing opposition.

AP: Border Protection says NYC mayor crossed border illegally

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his security detail violated both Mexican and U.S. immigration laws by crossing the border on foot during a visit near El Paso, Texas, U.S. Customs and Border Protection alleges in a letter obtained by The Associated Press. [...] De Blasio, a fierce critic of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, went to the Texas border with about 20 other mayors from around the country on June 21, the day after President Donald Trump signed an order stopping family separations at the border. [...] “The mayor crossed the border with the direct approval and under the supervision of the border patrol supervisor at this port of entry,” Phillips said in an email Tuesday night to the AP. “Any suggestion otherwise is a flat-out lie and an obvious attempt by someone to attack the Mayor because of his advocacy for families being ripped apart at the border by the Trump Administration.”
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:46 AM on July 11, 2018 [43 favorites]


“The mayor crossed the border with the direct approval and under the supervision of the border patrol supervisor at this port of entry,”

This is what your NYPD and DAs would not call entrapment. You still have to follow the law even if the police say you can break it and let you do it.

Yeah the spokesperson is is right and they're doing this because they can but de Blasio was stupid enough to give them that opening.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 9:03 AM on July 11, 2018 [4 favorites]


Like most native people in this country don't understand how "HERE BE DRAGONS" the border is because they've been given these safe and narrow guarded paths through the quagmire. You stray from the well defined and safe path (i.e. by smuggling in something you shouldn't) and *bam* Immigration will come down on you with the entire weight of the United States Government. For some this will mean losing their property or liberty. Others (like me) might be banished if they step out of line the wrong way. Others might lose their children.

Immigration are not someone you want to fuck around with.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 9:09 AM on July 11, 2018


Josh Jordan
Europe dunking on Trump's lies in real-time now as well: "Trump claims that Germany is referring up to 70 percent of its energy from Russia. According to the federal government, it is 9 percent."
@StefanLeifert: Trump behauptet, Deutschland beziehe bis zu 70 Prozent seiner Energie aus Russland. Laut Bundesregierung sind es 9 Prozent. #NATOGipfel

Julia Ioffe (GQ)
Ran into an old source from Moscow here in Brussels and asked him how Moscow sees Trump. “As a total idiot, a useful battering ram who goes after the American elite and NATO.”
posted by chris24 at 9:11 AM on July 11, 2018 [48 favorites]


Buzzfeed. The Professor At The Center Of The Trump-Russia Probe Was A No-Show In Court: at a hearing in Palermo, Italy, Joseph Mifsud was described as “a ghost.”

Includes details of two attempts by Italian authorities to find Mifsud, who is probably so dead you guys. Like deader than dead.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:17 AM on July 11, 2018 [23 favorites]


What's the point of boosting defence to 4% when hardly anyone is at 2%? Is it to set up impossible parameters so that the USA can point to NATO as a failure?
posted by furtive at 9:35 AM on July 11, 2018 [8 favorites]


Definitely Not Sean Spicer: "Which would just be entirely stupid. Germany only gets ~13% of its electric generation through natural gas. The rest of the natural gas goes to direct heating of homes in natural gas furnaces. There's literally not even a market to compete. You can't take American coal and stuff it down a pipe and into furnaces like you can Russian natural gas."

Besides coal would have to be practically free before it would be worth dealing with the emissions and fly ash generated by coal power plants. No one is going to be converting to coal from gas except for stunt reasons.
posted by Mitheral at 9:37 AM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


Trump's weird criticism of Germany's importing Russian energy is even weirder considering his upcoming "friendly" meeting with Putin. How do explain to your 'best friend'/boss that you just told the customers of his most important export to stop buying from you?

And his failures at statistics are no surprise. If he were minimally competent at math, he wouldn't have had so many of his companies go bankrupt.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:40 AM on July 11, 2018 [4 favorites]


Is it to set up impossible parameters so that the USA can point to NATO as a failure?

Yes.

Greg Sargent (WaPo)
There was another exchange today at NATO that is also very important.

The Secretary General practically *begged* Trump to take credit for NATO countries boosting spending.

Trump was unsatisfied, suggesting this is all a pretext to rupture our alliances: This remarkable exchange at NATO perfectly captures Trump’s ugly bad faith

---

And in reality it's Obama's agreement with NATO to increase defense spending to 2% that has led to 4 years of increased spending, but Trump wouldn't even take credit for Obama's success for once. So you know it's not really about that.
posted by chris24 at 9:40 AM on July 11, 2018 [16 favorites]


They should probably consider going back to nuclear though, a midwinter Russian oil-shut off being far more likely than a tsunami.
posted by Artw at 9:41 AM on July 11, 2018 [3 favorites]


It's only a matter of time that someone there snaps and tells Trump to his face in front of rolling cameras just how clueless he is.

Aside from obviously all other people on earth whose lives are being made into actual hells because of our cretin in chief, the people I feel the most terrible for in these specific situations are the international interpreters who are forced to translate his wholly nonsensical word salad faithfully, word for word, to high ranking members of their own governments, and thus causing themselves to sound like gibbering morons with the intellect and vocabulary of a sea cucumber, instead of people who studied a foreign language for many years to gain not only native fluency but also a keen grasp of the vernacular.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:41 AM on July 11, 2018 [54 favorites]


Trump's weird criticism of Germany's importing Russian energy is even weirder considering his upcoming "friendly" meeting with Putin. How do explain to your 'best friend'/boss that you just told the customers of his most important export to stop buying from you?
I feel pretty confident that this is a line the Russians gave him. Putin tells Trump, don't worry about Merkel, we own her. We practically are her only source of energy. It's a lie, but who cares.
posted by mumimor at 9:43 AM on July 11, 2018 [5 favorites]


So this is weird and funny. My Congressman is Leonard Lance, R-NJ-07 and he has started dropping "insta-polls" in my email. They're not framed like push polls, either. Last week was "Do you support or oppose this proposal?" about abolishing ICE. This week he sent an email saying he opposes it (which is what the poll told him.)

There was also a poll about the Supreme Court nominee. The results have been a little surprising, particularly since this is just a poll of people on his email list - 45% strongly oppose Kavanaugh's nom.

His seat is only sort of vulnerable; his 2016 margin was a lot smaller, but he still won with 55% of the vote. I thought it was just wishful thinking on my part. I'm not sure if this means he's running scared, or if this is just part of his overall lack of leadership, or if maybe this is what reps are supposed to be doing, listening to their constituents. He also switched to doing telephone town halls, so I'm going to choose to interpret this as being scared for his seat.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 9:44 AM on July 11, 2018 [7 favorites]


@southerncenter: BREAKING: Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has rescinded the state's policy of sending money allocated to feed people incarcerated in jails directly to sheriffs in their personal capacities. The money must now go to government accounts. Stay tuned.
posted by melissasaurus at 9:46 AM on July 11, 2018 [56 favorites]


Trump's weird criticism of Germany's importing Russian energy is even weirder considering his upcoming "friendly" meeting with Putin. How do explain to your 'best friend'/boss that you just told the customers of his most important export to stop buying from you?

Because it's not about logic or numbers or reality. It's pure aggression, dominance politics, accuse people what you're accused of. He's a bomb thrower trying to destroy what he doesn't like or understand.
posted by chris24 at 9:48 AM on July 11, 2018 [15 favorites]


Mod note: Couple deleted; let's keep the "I'm afraid that ___" stuff over in the venting thread.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:54 AM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


Someone mentioned Robert Bork on twitter and reading his Wikipedia, I don't see why Democrats can't put up the same kind of opposition to Kavanaugh. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork)
posted by runcibleshaw at 9:57 AM on July 11, 2018


This is from February, 2017, but it feels relevant now...

Trump says American allies should spend more on defense. Here's why he's wrong.
These relationships, including the asymmetric military capabilities and the commitments provided by the United States, add up to security interdependence on Washington’s terms. Dependence on the US constitutes a huge source of strength in the international system. It means that the wealthiest states in the world both need — and cannot challenge — American dominance. Think about it: The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan are not engaged in great-power rivalries with one another, or with the United States. Instead, they are all part of an American-centric security architecture, in which the United States has muted their desire, and ability, to become military peer-competitors.

In short, this is a terrific deal for America. Only two great powers — Russia and China — stand as potential rivals to the United States. And these potential rivals are currently blocked from alliances with the wealthiest and most scientifically advanced partners in the world, because those countries are closely aligned with the United States. 
Relatedly, and from this week...

“America First!” means China wins
"China either is already the world’s largest economy or soon will be. In order to compete for world leadership in the coming decades, the US will need to represent a community of like-minded nations, not go it alone.
...
In a lot of ways, our banking power is better than military power. Unlike tanks or even nuclear missiles, our enemies have no answer for it. What are they going to threaten in return — to cut us off from the Russian or North Korean or Iranian banking system? Why would we care?

You might ask: How did we get power like this? Why do other nations let us keep it?

And the answer is that we have been entrusted with this kind of power because (for the most part) we have used it benignly. In theory, the other nations of the world could cut us out of the picture by deciding to use the yen or the Euro instead, or by getting together and creating a truly international currency and a truly international banking system to go with it. But the new currency would be like the Euro on a larger scale: negotiating and managing that new monetary system would be a huge headache, and who knows what holes and glitches it might develop? It’s just much more convenient for everybody to stick with the dollar and the US banking system, because our occasional abuses of that power have stayed within reasonable bounds.

In short, we have been fairly faithful stewards of other nations’ trust.

Or, translating the same idea into Trump-speak: We’ve been suckers. We haven’t put America first. We haven’t used every tool at our disposal to drive other nations to the wall and make them do what we want.

But that’s why other nations trusted us in the first place. And over time, we have benefited a great deal from that trust."
I would just like to point out that "America First" also means Russia wins.
posted by OnceUponATime at 9:58 AM on July 11, 2018 [33 favorites]


(Cynical me wonders if Trump is railing against Germany buying natural gas from Russia because he wants them to switch to American coal?)

Can The U.S. Break Russia’s Gas Monopoly In Europe?

As U.S. Exports Gas to Europe, Russia Digs In
As the first shipment of American liquefied natural gas heads to Lithuania, Russian companies are lowering prices, changing sales methods and developing their own LNG facilities


U.S. liquefied natural gas exports quadrupled in 2017

There's a method to the madness these days, just follow the profitability factor
posted by infini at 10:01 AM on July 11, 2018 [3 favorites]


Trivia: Grassley and Hatch were both in office during Bork. Grassley voted to advance the nomination. Hatch wasn't on the committee, but was actually in consideration for the nomination.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 10:01 AM on July 11, 2018


> Someone mentioned Robert Bork on twitter and reading his Wikipedia, I don't see why Democrats can't put up the same kind of opposition to Kavanaugh. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork)

Well, the lack of Democratic control of the Senate would be one reason.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:02 AM on July 11, 2018 [40 favorites]


Everyone is talking about elections and polls while I was at the vet! [Leo is fine, btw]

GA gov: cybercoitus interruptus: "538 is cautious about whether Stacey Abrams can win"

I'm cautiously optimistic on Abrams. She seems to be running a good campaign, while the GOP is still locked in an extremely ugly runoff.

*

NC-09: chris24: "This is interesting in the Civitas link:

"This gap between the two leading candidates grows even larger when looking at female support. McCready leads Harris by 16 points among likely women voters."
"

This poll strikes me as a bit of an outlier, but not super much - Harris is a pretty extreme candidate. He's said that women shouldn't work out of the home, for example, which I imagine is not helping his favorables with women.

*

chris24: "Winning the Senate will be tough, though I agree there's a decent chance. But Axios' spin was ridiculous."

I didn't even bring up those SurveyMonkey polls because a) pollster has a D- from 438, b) they had some weirdness to them - they were out in the field way too long, and their demographics looked off, too, c) the Axios read on them was indeed ludicrous, and d) for all that, they basically confirmed the priors - Dems are doing quite well given their map, but they've got a pretty narrow path to a majority. FWIW, David Byler's Senate model agrees with my guesstimate of about a 25% chance of Dem takeover.

*
Cook ratings: dances_with_sneetches: "(My scratch calculations: toss-ups are 50/50, leans are 67/33, and likelies are 80/20. In my calculations, solids do not flip. These calculations don't factor in a wave.)"

FWIW, when Harry Enten took a look at historic accuracy of Cook ratings (at seven months out, so they're likely a bit more accurate now), he found:

Solid: 99%+
Likely: 85%
Leans: 70%
Tossup: 45% for incumbent party (i.e., tossups actually slightly tend to flip)
posted by Chrysostom at 10:12 AM on July 11, 2018 [18 favorites]



> Someone mentioned Robert Bork on twitter and reading his Wikipedia, I don't see why Democrats can't put up the same kind of opposition to Kavanaugh. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork)

Well, the lack of Democratic control of the Senate would be one reason.


6 Republican senators voted against Bork. I'm not like a math wizard, but if you can get 6 Republicans to vote against Kavanaugh, then he won't get confirmed, yes?
posted by runcibleshaw at 10:15 AM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


6 Republican senators voted against Bork, but the nomination failed by a margin of 8 votes. It's a lot easier to convince people to vote your way when their votes don't matter.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:18 AM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


Well let's just not even try, huh?
posted by runcibleshaw at 10:20 AM on July 11, 2018 [4 favorites]


> 6 Republican senators voted against Bork. I'm not like a math wizard, but if you can get 6 Republicans to vote against Kavanaugh, then he won't get confirmed, yes?

Joe Biden was the head of the Judiciary Committee. Using that platform, he was in control of the nomination process, and was instrumental in bringing things to light that made some Republicans question the wisdom of Bork's selection. The committee rejected his nomination 9-5, thanks in large part to Biden's ability to control the process. This NYT article linked from the Bork confirmation Wikipedia entry makes this clear.

Also, the GOP of the mid to late 1980s is not the GOP of 2018 in terms of polarization.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:20 AM on July 11, 2018 [25 favorites]


> Well let's just not even try, huh?

What a total straw man this is. We should use the tools available to us, which include public pressure, direct action, withholding quorum, and appealing to the senses of decency reelection probability of Senators like Murkowski, Collins, etc. But "the tools available to us" do not include a machine for bringing back the GOP of 1987 or making Dianne Feinstein the head of the Judiciary Committee.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:23 AM on July 11, 2018 [25 favorites]


@nycsouthpaw:
Here’s how I’d lay it out: Germany, last I checked, does about 2% of its overall trade with Russia. Lists of its top ten export and import trading partners do not include Russia. By contrast, Russia’s #1 import and #3 export partner is Germany. So who is more dependent on whom?
posted by chris24 at 10:30 AM on July 11, 2018 [23 favorites]




MSNBC's Rachel Maddow spotted something interesting in Mueller's footnotes: "Special Counsel's Office says Manafort has been surreptitiously sending emails from jail..."
Although the jail does not allow prisoners to send or receive emails, Manafort appears to have developed a workaround. Manafort has revealed on the monitored phone calls that in order to exchange emails, he reads and composes emails on a second laptop that is shuttled in and out of the facility by his team. When the team takes the laptop from the jail, it reconnects to the Internet and Manafort's emails are transmitted.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:47 AM on July 11, 2018 [54 favorites]


If you read the whole thing, it paints a picture of an immigration system that's so now completely broken that it doesn't work for big companies transferring high-level managers, let alone everyone else without those kinds of resources.

PBS Newshour, Pavni Mittal, ‘My entire life is revolving around this’ — Thousands of women await visa rule’s uncertain future, in which spouses of H-1B visa holders, previously permitted to work by an Obama Administration decision in 2015, are waiting for the Trump Administration to follow through on its plans to revoke their employment authorization documents.


Even when it works properly USCIS is terrifying for immigrants.

I'm a resident alien with a green card, which I noticed I had lost in February. No clue how. It just wasn't in my wallet one day when I thought to check.

So after tearing my entire apartment apart two or three times searching for everywhere it could reasonably or unreasonably be I surrendered to my fate. I applied for a replacement green card. Not quite as laborious as the initial application but still a lot. But here is the real kicker. The application fee was $540! Then I had travel outside the city I live in the USCIS they designated for me - a strip mall in a not-Chicago suburb out by O'Hare. So there goes half a day's work. Then after getting my bio-metrics checked I was told to go home and wait for my case to be adjudicated - it could take anywhere up to a year. I was given no documentation. Nothing. They apparently have a procedure for putting a sticker on your existing green card when you are getting a new one (renewal) but have nothing for if you are replacing a lost one. I was told if I needed to leave the country or change employers I had to go to a different office and make a case to show that I warranted a stamp on my passport.

So that was February. I got my replacement green card yesterday. So in the interim I was effectively an undocumented immigrant walking the streets of America and if I had any encounter with unfriendly authorities I could have been sent to a detention camp to await a hearing and possible extradition even though I had done everything I could to follow the law (other than somehow losing my green card).

Now I could afford the fee and I didn't get rounded up by ICE but I keep thinking about the process and how fucked up it is.

If an immigrant gets mugged and their purse or wallet is stolen they will be mugged twice. Once for the cash and ID in their purse or wallet and second time when they have to fork out $500+ to the US govt. Then on top of that they have up to a year of anxiety because their documentation isn't sorted out expeditiously (some websites are even saying the delays with USCIS are running into the 23 month range).

Even before this I didn't travel home to Canada for the first year and a half that I was in the United States because the only official documentation i had was a tiny piece of paper with a border guard's initial on it stapled to a page in my passport. It was only once I got my green card that I felt okay to visit my parents.

The border crossing when I first immigrated and got the tiny piece of paper in my passport - in Ireland - was likewise screwy and weird with the officials not really knowing what to do and involved lots of consulting and conferencing in the back offices.

Most of this I put down to bureaucracy and some mendacious government under-funding but I am just imagining how awful it will get when you go from a deliberate neglect to actual active malign intentions. I'd appreciate it if y'all can get this sorted out before my next renewal.
posted by srboisvert at 10:47 AM on July 11, 2018 [83 favorites]


They didn't send you a receipt notice for the I-90?
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:51 AM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


@rachelweinerwp: There's a lot in this filing. Manafort is sending emails. He told someone on the phone why he wanted the D.C. trial first: “think about how it’ll play elsewhere….There is a strategy to it,
even in failure, but there’s a hope in it."

@matthewamiller: What possible hope could he be referring to in this context other than a pardon? More evidence that’s why he’s holding out and not cooperating, even if it means “failure.”
posted by zachlipton at 10:56 AM on July 11, 2018 [18 favorites]


I'm only half-joking when I say that this may also be a tactical move by Mueller's team to ensure that Manafort remains actively involved with his defense, because if he were cut off from his attorneys then somebody competent might start running things.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:57 AM on July 11, 2018 [9 favorites]


Brooklyn Defender Services describes the case of their client, a mother of three seeking asylum, who passed a passed the credible fear interview. She was to be released and reunited with her sons (the youngest turned 3 last week without his mother) yesterday, but there was a technical problem and they couldn't give her a working ankle monitor, so they sent her back to jail last night. She's being "processed" now.
posted by zachlipton at 11:00 AM on July 11, 2018 [16 favorites]


[Manafort appears not to understand that all telephone calls from jail are taped except for those that fall under attorney-client privilege.]

I think its pretty clear he understands it perfectly well . . . there is another more plausible explanation: hes sure hell be pardoned so he dgaf what they hear.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:01 AM on July 11, 2018 [9 favorites]


We’re not doing eponysterical jokes ATM, right?
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:11 AM on July 11, 2018 [43 favorites]


"Also, Buzzfeed's Zoe Tillman notes: "In new filing, Mueller's office says Paul Manafort's prison privileges include a larger, private living unit; his own bathroom; his own phone; his own workspace; and he's not required to wear a uniform — they say he even described his treatment as “VIP”""

Not to argue for special treatment but isn't this sort of thing par for the course for people with money in at least some jurisdictions in the US? Paris Hilton got to stay in a "Special Needs" wing during her stay and Southern California's "Pay-to-Stay" system pulls in over a million a year from people wanting to avoid the normal prison experience.
posted by Mitheral at 11:13 AM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


On the Road With Beto: Is O’Rourke’s Personality-Driven Campaign Reaching the Right Voters? The next several months will be an experiment at break-neck speed to see if O’Rourke can overcome low name recognition and build a rapport with non-white voters.
posted by gladly at 11:18 AM on July 11, 2018 [8 favorites]


NYT, We’re Tracking the Ways Trump Is Scaling Back Obamacare. Here Are 14. A catalog of sabotage large and small.
posted by zachlipton at 11:23 AM on July 11, 2018 [20 favorites]


Also, in terms of comparisons, Manafort is in pre-trial detention -- so the parallel to conditions post-conviction aren't entirely apt.

Right. Pre-trial detention is not and should not be punitive. Ever for a deserving dickbag like Manafort. That it all too often functions as punitive is a real problem.
posted by Justinian at 11:34 AM on July 11, 2018 [6 favorites]


The reporting on this gives no indication that he's bitching about conditions either. The laptop thing might indicate his lawyers should be his cellmates, though.
posted by ocschwar at 11:36 AM on July 11, 2018 [6 favorites]


NYT, Rosenstein Asks Prosecutors to Help With Kavanaugh Papers in Unusual Request
Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, has asked federal prosecutors to help review the government documents of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times on Wednesday.

Mr. Rosenstein’s request was an unusual insertion of politics into federal law enforcement. While the Justice Department has helped work on previous Supreme Court nominations, department lawyers in Washington typically carry out that task, not prosecutors who pursue criminal investigations nationwide.

But in an email sent this week to the nation’s 93 United States attorneys, Mr. Rosenstein asked each office to provide up to three federal prosecutors “who can make this important project a priority for the next several weeks.” Names were to be submitted to Mr. Rosenstein’s office by the end of Wednesday.
Taking prosecutors away from their jobs to have them review Kavanaugh's papers. That's just great.
posted by zachlipton at 11:42 AM on July 11, 2018 [29 favorites]


They want to take two hundred and seventy-nine prosecutors out of the field to do something that should have been part of pre-nomination vetting? Excuse me, I gotta go print out the Fuck Fuck Fuckity Fuck thread, shred it, stuff a pillow, and scream into it for a while.
posted by Etrigan at 11:45 AM on July 11, 2018 [37 favorites]


They want to take two hundred and seventy-nine prosecutors out of the field to do something that should have been part of pre-nomination vetting? Excuse me, I gotta go print out the Fuck Fuck Fuckity Fuck thread, shred it, stuff a pillow, and scream into it for a while.

There's a huge number of documents to go through, on the order of millions of pages. It's a very big job.
posted by scalefree at 11:47 AM on July 11, 2018




What's the point of boosting defence to 4% when hardly anyone is at 2%? Is it to set up impossible parameters so that the USA can point to NATO as a failure?

Probably it is because Trump's economic policies can help them hit the target with his trade-war by hurting the world economy and lowering the GDPs of America's NATO Allies so their spending will appear to move up just because of existing short range spending commitments.

So you have to factor the economic damage inflicted by the Art of the Deal out if you want them to actually increase their military arsenal.
posted by srboisvert at 11:51 AM on July 11, 2018


It's a very big job.

So is grocery shopping for four kids. That's why I don't turn on the stove before I head to Meijer.
posted by Etrigan at 11:51 AM on July 11, 2018 [41 favorites]


So is grocery shopping for four kids. That's why I don't turn on the stove before I head to Meijer.

Vetting is not in Trump's interests. It is in ours.
posted by scalefree at 11:54 AM on July 11, 2018 [3 favorites]


Vetting is not in Trump's interests. It is in ours.

I'm not excoriating Rosenstein for doing this, I'm excoriating everyone else in the process for necessitating it.
posted by Etrigan at 11:57 AM on July 11, 2018 [23 favorites]


They didn't send you a receipt notice for the I-90?

The very top of the I-90 receipt, the I-797C, Notice of Action, tells you that it doesn't count as shit.
posted by srboisvert at 11:58 AM on July 11, 2018 [3 favorites]


After discouraging year, U.S. officials expect review of Afghan strategy
Officials said Trump has shown signs of frustration over the lack of progress since he unveiled a strategy last August that committed to an open-ended deployment of U.S. military advisers, trainers and special forces and increased air support for Afghan security forces. The goal was to force the Taliban militants to open peace talks with the Kabul government.
...
“The president has asked repeatedly what progress we’ve made in Afghanistan since he made his decision, and how much we’ve invested there since 2001,” said one senior official with first-hand knowledge of the ongoing debate over Afghan policy.

“He’s voiced his frustration about the lack of progress many, many times, basically asking ‘What have we got for all that money?’”
It's always about the money with him. Over 2,200 U.S. troops, over 1,000 coalition troops, and tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in the war.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:59 AM on July 11, 2018 [11 favorites]


“He’s voiced his frustration about the lack of progress many, many times, basically asking ‘What have we got for all that money?’”

Huh, it's almost like it's not America's longest war because every single one of the hundreds of thousands of people who have had a hand in it is less competent than Generalissimo Trump and his reform-school military academy education.
posted by Etrigan at 12:05 PM on July 11, 2018 [4 favorites]


My dim childhood memory regarding Bork is that he was blocked because he was successfully painted as crazy. If you want to block Kavanaugh, your best bet, in my opinion, is to go through his treasure trove of emails, find the crazy, and put a spotlight on it. All the op eds about what a great guy Kavanaugh is because he carpools are about reassuring people he's normal.
posted by xammerboy at 12:06 PM on July 11, 2018 [13 favorites]


reminder that we’re spending a trillion dollars to make an airplane that can’t fly in the rain
posted by The Whelk at 12:08 PM on July 11, 2018 [29 favorites]


"China either is already the world’s largest economy or soon will be. In order to compete for world leadership in the coming decades, the US will need to represent a community of like-minded nations, not go it alone.
...
In a lot of ways, our banking power is better than military power. Unlike tanks or even nuclear missiles, our enemies have no answer for it. What are they going to threaten in return — to cut us off from the Russian or North Korean or Iranian banking system? Why would we care?


This is the forest that's being missed for Trump's imaginary trees. China laid down more concrete in the last ten years than the United States throughout its entire history.
posted by xammerboy at 12:08 PM on July 11, 2018 [5 favorites]


Mr. Rosenstein’s request was an unusual insertion of politics into federal law enforcement.

I'm not sure what to make of this story. While it sounds like Rosenstein is doing something really weird and maybe bad, I've also heard that DOJ has suffered a lot of attrition over the last 18 months, so maybe it was a necessary move?
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 12:16 PM on July 11, 2018


My dim childhood memory regarding Bork is that he was blocked because he was successfully painted as crazy. If you want to block Kavanaugh, your best bet, in my opinion, is to go through his treasure trove of emails, find the crazy, and put a spotlight on it. All the op eds about what a great guy Kavanaugh is because he carpools are about reassuring people he's normal.

Thank you. This is what I was not able to articulate through my seething rage. Of course there were many procedural and political differences that made blocking Bork easier than it will be to block Kavanaugh. But turning the political tide against Bork seemed to involve a big PR push to turn both (some of) the Senate and the public against him. There's no reason that something like that can't be tried again here. Maybe it won't work, but as it has been frequently pointed out in these threads, there aren't many other official procedural avenues in the Senate to stop or delay the confirmation.
posted by runcibleshaw at 12:37 PM on July 11, 2018 [8 favorites]


reminder that we’re spending a trillion dollars to make an airplane that can’t fly in the rain

I keep seeing $1.4 trillion as the likely final figure but I find that very confusing considering that I have yet to see a single F-35-related article which suggests that actually being delivered as a finished project is even possible given the state it's in.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:42 PM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


Hey, know what would be the most amazing and unexpected way to make the F-35 boondoogle dramatically worse?

Undermine NATO commitment and long-term planning to the point that no one else wants to rely on it, or the US.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:47 PM on July 11, 2018 [10 favorites]


I'm sure if we just throw more money away at the problem then it will solve itself.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:48 PM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


It took 3 tries to get Kennedy. Bork got borked, then Ginsburg got reefer madnessed out, then Kennedy was nominated.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:50 PM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


Uh, is this a terrible intrusion of politics into federal law enforcement in order to protect Kavanaugh or sabotage Kavanaugh? I'm losing track of the plot.
posted by Justinian at 12:54 PM on July 11, 2018 [13 favorites]


There's no reason that something like that can't be tried again here.

They are trying that. Of course they're trying that. If you're not aware of them trying that, you shouldn't think "They aren't trying that" because of fucking course Democrats have been trying that against Kavanaugh, and against Gorsuch, and against the No Muslims bullshit, and against putting kids in concentration camps, and against every goddam idiotic thing Trump has been doing.

When you're not aware of them trying that for whatever the current disaster is, you should probably instead think "The media aren't reporting them trying that, either because reporting whatever dumbfuck thing Trump did today gets more eyeballs and more money, or directly and intentionally."

The obvious response is that there must be something they could do to get covered. You'd think so, but you'd also think there was something that could have made them stop But Her Emails, or something that would make them stop giving sloppy wet kisses to nazis, and so on, but nope.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:57 PM on July 11, 2018 [38 favorites]


Rosenstein may be doing something that could turn out to be a big favor for us all. He could've let Kavanaugh through 'un-vetted', but he's putting two hundred and seventy-nine prosecutors onto a rush job of digging up... well, maybe some dirt? Some of them are sure to not be loyal to Trump, and if some of that dirt gets leaked, well, it'll probably take a lot longer to find the leaker than to find the dirt worth leaking.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:02 PM on July 11, 2018 [14 favorites]


I got most of my information about the F-35 from this article on medium from a year ago. Someone recently linked to it on Twitter, but I cannot remember who. I couldn't quite work out from that article what portion of that estimated $1.4 trillion had already been spent and what the total cost to date has been. I think it's saying that the cost has been $100 billion, but that would mean the future cost is $1.3 trillion? That seems unpossible to me, but as I've already said, I'm not a math expert.
posted by runcibleshaw at 1:03 PM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


They are trying that. Of course they're trying that. If you're not aware of them trying that, you shouldn't think "They aren't trying that" because of fucking course Democrats have been trying that against Kavanaugh, and against Gorsuch, and against the No Muslims bullshit, and against putting kids in concentration camps, and against every goddam idiotic thing Trump has been doing.

When you're not aware of them trying that for whatever the current disaster is, you should probably instead think "The media aren't reporting them trying that, either because reporting whatever dumbfuck thing Trump did today gets more eyeballs and more money, or directly and intentionally."


Thank you! Case in point: Senator Tina Smith on the steps of the Supreme Court.

How did I hear about that? I follow my senators on twitter. Via regular media channels I did hear from various un-elected Federalist Society asswipes, though.
posted by Emmy Rae at 1:05 PM on July 11, 2018 [16 favorites]


@gelles: White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said John Kelly "was displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese."

@ColbyItkowitz: Just to recap. The WH press secretary says the chief of staff was pursing his lips and looking away while Trump was talking because he was pouting over not having eggs or waffles?

@KlasfeldReports: Setting aside the obvious reactions to this statement, Kelly is complaining about being served cheese in **Brussels.**
posted by zachlipton at 1:14 PM on July 11, 2018 [63 favorites]


Rosenstein may be doing something that could turn out to be a big favor for us all. He could've let Kavanaugh through 'un-vetted', but he's putting two hundred and seventy-nine prosecutors onto a rush job of digging up... well, maybe some dirt?

This is just speculation, but... Rosenstein may consider the Mueller investigation as possibly historically important, with the potential to touch the president himself. He may thus be very wary of Kavanaugh because of Kavanaugh's reported attitudes about what sorts of legal proceedings a sitting president should not have to participate in. So I think it's more likely that he's digging for dirt rather than somehow helping him.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 1:16 PM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


@gelles: White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said John Kelly "was displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese."

Wow. Just. Paging Aidy Bryant.

Make sure to put the subtitle: "SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS ACTUALLY SAID THIS" when you're just repeating this verbatim.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 1:18 PM on July 11, 2018 [17 favorites]


displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese

Complaining about pastries and cheese in a continental breakfast? On the very continent that inspired that type of breakfast?
posted by kirkaracha at 1:21 PM on July 11, 2018 [34 favorites]


Most of this I put down to bureaucracy and some mendacious government under-funding
Yeah, I'm not too sure about that. The more I read about immigration law and policies; it feels like the bureaucracy is specifically designed to make it nigh impossible to jump through all the hoops.

Knowing what I know of our history with using exorbitant fees and location restrictions on getting ids, voting, avoiding jail time for minor offenses, and even something as insignificant as getting a beauty salon certified; I'm pretty confident that bureaucracy and bullshit like this are specifically designed to prevent legal immigration without having to look like a bad guy.
posted by teleri025 at 1:21 PM on July 11, 2018 [3 favorites]


@gelles: White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said John Kelly "was displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese."

There is no justification for any journalist to ever attend a WH press briefing.
posted by PenDevil at 1:25 PM on July 11, 2018 [36 favorites]


@gelles: White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said John Kelly "was displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese."

There is no justification for any journalist to ever attend a WH press briefing.


. . . without a plate of cheese and pastries, you mean?
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 1:26 PM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


@gelles: White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said John Kelly "was displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese."

Let's pretend this were true. In that case, Kelly should be fired and replaced by a person who is capable of basic emotional control when working in international diplomacy.
posted by Emmy Rae at 1:28 PM on July 11, 2018 [45 favorites]


Mod note: Probably enough on the cheese and pastries thing.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:31 PM on July 11, 2018 [5 favorites]


Ever the Strong Man: Trump Blasts Merkel From A Distance, Smiles During Face-To-Face Photo Op (NPR, July 11, 2018 -- link text from an associated article, while the article itself is titled "Trump Blasts Allies At NATO Summit")
President Trump on Wednesday demanded that NATO allies increase defense spending immediately and double their current goal for burden-sharing in the defense alliance. As Trump gathered with leaders of NATO countries for a summit in Brussels, he also repeatedly said Germany's energy dependence on Russia undermines its independence.

He blasted the German government for not spending more on defense and suggested that a 3-year-old energy supply agreement has left Germany "captive" to Russia. Hours later, though, Trump took a softer line during a face-to-face photo op with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Because saying tough things face-to-face with other world leaders is harder than shitposting online or ranting to reporters who don't push back.

Trump's Harsh Words For NATO Meet With Pushback From Republicans And Democrats (NPR, July 11, 2018)
While President Trump is in Brussels attacking NATO members for not spending enough on defense and calling Germany "a captive" of Russia for its support of a new pipeline to deliver Russian gas, lawmakers in Washington are standing up for the 69-year-old trans-Atlantic alliance.

The House approved by voice vote a nonbinding resolution reaffirming U.S. support for NATO. House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters on Capitol Hill that "NATO is indispensable. It is as important today as it ever has been. We're reflecting that in a resolution that we're bringing to the floor today."

The Senate voted 97-2 Tuesday night to approve a similar nonbinding resolution to reaffirm the U.S. relationship with and support for NATO.

Democratic congressional leaders issued a rare joint statement harshly condemning Trump's remarks. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and her Senate counterpart, Chuck Schumer said:
"President Trump's brazen insults and denigration of one of America's most steadfast allies, Germany, is an embarrassment. His behavior this morning is another profoundly disturbing signal that the President is more loyal to President Putin than to our NATO allies."
But for all those "strong concerns," Senators Lindsey Graham and Paul Ryan agreed that NATO partners should pay more for defense (overlooking Trump's nonsense about the U.S. being owed anything, because each country invests in their own defenses, and they aren't paying the U.S. to defend them), and both echoed the Trump's point about Germany buying Russian gas, a concern that is actually echoed by Poland, the Baltics and some other Eastern European countries that have been desperately trying to block the construction of Nord Stream 2, which is meant to carry 55 billion cubic meters of gas a year from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.

Also, concerns mean nothing until you do something against Trump. Like put sanctions on Trump and Kuchner properties. Or impeach him. Just sayin'.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:42 PM on July 11, 2018 [16 favorites]


Mod note: One deleted; we've got a thread for 3-D printed guns over here.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:56 PM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


MSNBC's Rachel Maddow spotted something interesting in Mueller's footnotes: "Special Counsel's Office says Manafort has been surreptitiously sending emails from jail..."

So from this I have a few different theories (of which perhaps one or all may be true):
  1. The man is as much of a blithering idiot as the rest of the Trumpverse
  2. He is so delusionally entitled that he still thinks the rules don't apply to him.
  3. He is desperate to assure his past employers (i.e. war criminals, oligarchs, arms dealers) that he is not going to flip, he is really really really not going to flip, and has decided that life in prison is better than being party to a recreation of that infamous jail scene from Breaking Bad's "Gliding Over All".
I don't think it's #1, because up until his utterly irrational behavior during this investigation he's seemed like a pretty savvy guy. I figure #2 must be involved, because nobody works for war criminals if they think the rules apply to them. And call me a conspiracy theorist, but I am in favor of #3 too because seriously he has dealt with some seriously bad people, people who, if they could, would not hesitate to go after his family on top of him.
posted by Anonymous at 1:57 PM on July 11, 2018




Wake me up when Congress passes something **BINDING**. All the non-binding resolutions in the world mean exactly nothing. I mean, I'm glad that the Republicans are able to at least make a faint gesture in the direction of sanity, but their action today meant nothing at all.

Trump is vividly illustrating why putting all that power into the hands of a single person is a very bad idea. Some countries have multiple presidents, perhaps we should look into that model?
posted by sotonohito at 2:02 PM on July 11, 2018 [5 favorites]


When the team takes the laptop from the jail, it reconnects to the Internet and Manafort's emails are transmitted.

Couldn't his lawyers get in trouble for this?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:14 PM on July 11, 2018 [6 favorites]


Russian mining firm puts Trump's face on its asbestos products

Does what it says on the tin. No word of the actual grift and hazard involved.
posted by petebest at 2:30 PM on July 11, 2018 [14 favorites]


infini: US embassy warns Americans in London to 'keep a low profile' during Trump visit

Alternatively, they could join what the organisers of anti-Donald Trump protests have promised: a “carnival of resistance” that will begin as soon as the US president lands in the UK on Thursday. (The Guardian, July 9, 2018)

The army of first-time protesters who are getting ready to take on Trump -- More than 50,000 are to march in London when the president visits Britain – and for many it will be their first demo
The Stop Trump Coalition has helped organise dozens of coaches to London, and plenty of people are expected to protest for the very first time. “I’ve thought this ever since he got in – that this chap is so dangerous and I’m going to London to go to protest, even though I’ve never done it before,” says Robin Hodgson, 76. “I’ve been saying it for months and months and nobody really took me seriously.” Hodgson, from Malmesbury in Wiltshire, will be driving 17 miles to Swindon and then taking the coach to London. “There must be a lot of people like me,” he says, “and we need to get up and go on the bus and the train just to show him and teach him.”
The article opens with a stunning image of Cheddar Gorgeous, a 34-year-old drag artist and anthropologist from Manchester, then there's Hodgson in his garden, looking slightly miffed, and then there's Michelle Garcia, 26, an office assistant from the US, is the child of Mexican migrants, who is proper pissed.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:37 PM on July 11, 2018 [25 favorites]


In case you're wondering what hard work Congress is up to, Ways and Means is cooking up a scheme to allow people to take tax deductions up to $1000/year on gym memberships and fitness classes. $3.5B over 10 years, mainly to the wealthy.

Some of the academic research on the ineffectiveness of wellness programs for healthy people when it comes to reducing health care spending, if you thought this could pay for itself or anything.
posted by zachlipton at 2:38 PM on July 11, 2018 [12 favorites]


Federal court rules that TSA agents can’t be sued for false arrests, abuse, or assault

"According to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, TSA officials have sovereign immunity while working in their official functions as screeners and security agents under the Federal Tort Claims Act. While that law ordinarily doesn’t cover law enforcement officers, the court ruled in a 2-1 decision that TSA agents aren’t considered law enforcement and therefore are covered under the law.

...

According to Judge Krause, it would be up to Congress to enact legislation that could hold TSA agents accountable."
posted by bluecore at 2:38 PM on July 11, 2018 [12 favorites]


BuzzFeed, Darren Sands, Black Democrats Want To Know Why You're Not Standing Up For Maxine Waters
op Democrats and lawmakers of the Congressional Black Caucus are questioning non-black members of the House Democratic caucus who haven’t stepped up to publicly defend Maxine Waters.

They are also stewing behind the scenes over public rebukes from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, according to three sources familiar with internal conversations.

In particular, at least two black lawmakers were said to be angered by Pelosi’s usage of the phrase “make America beautiful again” in her tweet on the subject.
posted by zachlipton at 2:41 PM on July 11, 2018 [80 favorites]


petebest: Russian mining firm puts Trump's face on its asbestos products

This isn't just a cheeky move by a little company trying to drum up business through viral PR --
Uralasbest, one of the world’s largest producers and sellers of asbestos, has taken to adorning pallets of its product with a seal of Trump’s face, along with the words “Approved by Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States”.

The move follows the US Environmental Protection Agency’s recent decision not to ban new asbestos products outright. The EPA said it would evaluate new uses of asbestos but environmental groups have criticized the agency for not going further by barring them on public health grounds.

In a Facebook post, Uralasbest published pictures of its Trump-adorned chrysotile asbestos, writing: “Donald is on our side!” The post thanks Trump for supporting Scott Pruitt, the recently departed head of the EPA, “who declared that his agency would no longer deal with matters related to side effects potentially caused by asbestos”. It adds that Trump called asbestos “100% safe after application”.
"Helping Putin and Russian oligarchs amass fortunes by selling a product that kills thousands each year should never be the role of a U.S. president or the EPA, but this is the Trump administration," says Environmental Working Group's Ken Cook (Jessica Corbett for Common Dreams, July 11, 2018) The article includes a copy of Uralasbest's Trump Stamp photo.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:42 PM on July 11, 2018 [22 favorites]


Wow, I though asbestos was illegal everywhere.
posted by mumimor at 2:48 PM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


Uralasbest's Trump Stamp photo

I'd probably buy that t-shirt.
posted by box at 2:52 PM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


Pretty sure asbestos isn't illegal in the U.S.
posted by mabelstreet at 2:56 PM on July 11, 2018


...as in: "Pretty sure illegal isn't illegal in the U.S. [any more]" or what do you mean?
posted by Namlit at 3:00 PM on July 11, 2018


We know from previous megathreads, of course, that Trump himself approves of asbestos, and disputes the notion that it is capable of causing any meaningful harm.
posted by adamgreenfield at 3:01 PM on July 11, 2018 [5 favorites]


As in it has never been illegal:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has no general ban on the use of asbestos. However, asbestos was one of the first hazardous air pollutants regulated under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act of 1970, and many applications have been forbidden by the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
(from Wikipedia)
posted by mabelstreet at 3:04 PM on July 11, 2018 [5 favorites]


Wow, I though asbestos was illegal everywhere.


Nope. The EPA tried to ban asbestos by rule back in the 1980s, but the rule was struck down in court because the chemical-safety law at the time only allowed for a blanket ban if the agency could prove that there was no less burdensome way to protect public health. After the court held that the health data on fucking asbestos didn't clear that bar, EPA gave up trying to ban chemicals altogether using that law.

The insult-to-injury part is that in 2015 Congress passed an entirely new chemicals law that got rid of the "least burdensome" standard, and the bill writers made a big deal of how that would allow EPA to finally enact an asbestos ban. So of course now that the court decision from 1991 was no longer tying its hands, EPA under Scott Pruitt voluntarily stopped short of a ban.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 3:05 PM on July 11, 2018 [25 favorites]


CNN, KFile, Wife of top Trump aide had radio show where she said women in military should expect sexual harassment. She also spread anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, thought a flu pandemic could be a "setup" where the government was working with drug makers and would put people with the flu in FEMA camps, and declared sunscreen as a "hoax."

"The White House did not respond to CNN KFile's request about whether Bill Shine endorses his wife's views."

----

The California Democratic Party has announced it will no longer accept contributions from the private prison industry, and any donations from the past year will be donated to groups helping immigrants and groups helping people coming out of prison.
posted by zachlipton at 3:17 PM on July 11, 2018 [59 favorites]


She also spread anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, thought a flu pandemic could be a "setup" where the government was working with drug makers and would put people with the flu in FEMA camps...

Unsurprising. We also know there's a correlation between right populism and the outbreak (heh) of anti-vaxx sentiment.
posted by adamgreenfield at 3:22 PM on July 11, 2018 [6 favorites]


> Uralasbest's Trump Stamp photo

I'd probably buy that t-shirt.

In case anyone finds themselves needing it the text is “Одобрено Дональдом Трампом — 45-м Президентом США ★” or “ОДОБРЕНО ДОНАЛЬДОМ ТРАМПОМ — 45-м ПРЕЗИДЕНТОМ США ★”.
posted by XMLicious at 3:31 PM on July 11, 2018 [5 favorites]


WaPo, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh piled up credit card debt by purchasing Nationals tickets, White House says
Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh incurred tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt buying baseball tickets over the past decade and at times reported liabilities that could have exceeded the value of his cash accounts and investment assets, according to a review of Kavanaugh’s financial disclosures and information provided by the White House.
..
In 2016, Kavanaugh reported having between $60,000 to $200,000 in debt accrued over three credit cards and a personal loan. Each credit card held between $15,000 to $50,000 in debt, and a Thrift Savings Plan loan was between $15,000 to $50,000.

The credit card debts and loan were either paid off or fell below the reporting requirements in 2017, according to the filings, which do not require details on the nature or source of such payments. Shah told The Post that Kavanaugh’s friends reimbursed him for their share of the baseball tickets and that the judge has since stopped purchasing the season tickets.
I don't really care about his finances, and a history with debt should absolutely not be disqualifying for pubic service, but that's a lot of debt to all disappear in a year.
posted by zachlipton at 3:45 PM on July 11, 2018 [48 favorites]


"Shah told The Post that Kavanaugh’s friends reimbursed him for their share of the baseball tickets ..."

Weird. Kavanaugh split season tickets with friends, was reimbursed, but didn't immediately apply the reimbursement to the CC debt?

That'll happen when we go out to dinner and one person covers it on a card and collects everyone else's cash and then hey look, saved a trip to the ATM. I guess it can happen with baseball tickets.

Also: Silly Olds. Don't they know what Venmo's for?
posted by notyou at 3:55 PM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


In 2015, the most expensive possible Washington Nationals season ticket cost $25,920 (if you were willing to forego access to the Lexus Presidents Club, a Home Plate Box season ticket was a more reasonable $14,175).

That same year, Kavanaugh was paid $213,300.

How many tickets did he buy?
posted by box at 3:56 PM on July 11, 2018 [10 favorites]


@frankthorp: Sen @JeffFlake says he's no longer opposing circuit court judge nominees after today's non-binding motion vote passed in the Senate. Asked if he believes conferees will actually take the instructions and pass language to give Congress oversight over 232 tariffs, he said, "No."

What a completely useless waste of space. His little protest was to hold out for a non-binding resolution? A measure whose ineffectiveness at binding anything is right there in the name?
posted by zachlipton at 3:59 PM on July 11, 2018 [20 favorites]


I wish this absolutely perfect photo had gone more viral because nothing can better encapsulate the grinning dumbshit uselessness of Jeff Fucking Flake
posted by theodolite at 4:04 PM on July 11, 2018 [8 favorites]


"gee whiz. sure looks like a lot of politics over there. wonder what everyone's so worked up about. boy howdy"
posted by theodolite at 4:06 PM on July 11, 2018 [20 favorites]


What a completely useless waste of space. His little protest was to hold out for a non-binding resolution? A measure whose ineffectiveness at binding anything is right there in the name?

This couldn't possibly be more on brand for every NeverTrump Republican.

"We demand action! Now! But only if it does literally nothing!"

"Promise me a vote on my amendment! But I'll still vote for yours even if you don't!"

"I want a vote on reform! Or I'll vote for you in leadership again!"
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:09 PM on July 11, 2018 [5 favorites]


The credit card debts and loan were either paid off or fell below the reporting requirements in 2017

Hmm I wonder which two words in that sentence will end up having the most meaning over his tenure.
posted by poffin boffin at 4:13 PM on July 11, 2018 [8 favorites]


I love the phrase "Carnival of Resistance." I think we need to use it here too.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:16 PM on July 11, 2018 [10 favorites]


> I don't really care about his finances, and a history with debt should absolutely not be disqualifying for pubic service, but that's a lot of debt to all disappear in a year.

It's almost like money is the root of all evil or something. Seriously, you can answer "money" for any of the "why did...?" questions and at least receive partial credit.

Why haven't more Democrats stood up for Maxine Waters? Money. Lest we forget President "The Only Baby Who Belongs in a Cage" used to donate to the Democratic Party before the Republican Party completed enough of its transformation into an uncaring vessel of hatred to accept him. Oh, and Chuck Schumer received personal donations.

Why isn't the media covering the countless acts of resistance occurring in both established and non-established channels? Money. Because it may not be good for the country, but it's damn good for my ratings.

How did Russians attach puppet strings to their useful idiot in the first place? Say it with me, folks. I promise you'll receive at least partial credit.

...But maybe this is also why the DSA feels like such a potentially potent antidote for some people right now.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 4:17 PM on July 11, 2018 [32 favorites]




BK's the boss, and he issues the invitation -- he's responsible for picking up the tab. Besides, he clearly has the deep-pocketed friends to make that debt disappear.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:39 PM on July 11, 2018 [4 favorites]


Why haven't more Democrats stood up for Maxine Waters? Money. Lest we forget President "The Only Baby Who Belongs in a Cage" used to donate to the Democratic Party

The idea is that that Pelosi and Schumer didn't support the idea of direct action against administration officials because Trump used to donate to Schumer and other Democrats years ago? Really? That's a terrible theory.

Want to hear another theory? Pelosi and Schumer are old-school institutionalists who came up in a different political era and are having a tough time coming to grips with the fact that the ground has shifted under them, and in particular are still buying in too often to the idea that the way to get something good done for the country is compromise, civility, and reaching across the aisle.

But that Trump gave a couple thou to Schumer decades ago and so he's in the tank is possible too, sure.
posted by Justinian at 4:43 PM on July 11, 2018 [53 favorites]


I largely agree Justinian, but I have an even simpler theory: Pelosi and Schumer also like to eat in restaurants and prefer adherence to a set of norms under which they do so uninterrupted.
posted by zachlipton at 4:50 PM on July 11, 2018 [22 favorites]


Pelosi and Schumer's idiocy remind me of the time when my office was being plagued by calls from the printer cartridge scammers and they kept catching new people who assumed it was a legit company and agreeing to more and more orders. I sent around a furious allcaps email saying TELL THESE PEOPLE TO DIE IN A FIRE TELL THEM YOU WILL EAT THEIR CHILDREN, and one of the worst new hires, a 70something crony of my equally elderly boss, responded with a reply-all email chiding me that the professional and adult thing to do was to ask to speak to the scammer's managers, who would certainly clear up this whole unfortunate situation if only we were all just polite and friendly to one another.

we ended up losing another 10k because of him
posted by poffin boffin at 4:54 PM on July 11, 2018 [87 favorites]


General John Kelly Is Either Pissed at Trump or a Plate of Croissants
Sanders, ever the fount of helpful information, told the Post that General John Kelly's displeased body language was not directed toward the President or the things he was saying. No, instead, she contended, the general—who fought in the Persian Gulf War, the Iraq War, and Operation Desert Storm—was "displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese."

Honestly? Surprisingly relatable.

(I mean, also obviously untrue, as in the footage they are sitting in front of empty, clean plates so breakfast hadn't even started yet. But are we really expecting truth? At this late age?)
...
As a nation, we must rise up against the tyranny of continental breakfast. Don't tell me to come to your breakfast meeting at your fancy office building at a time when I should still be scrolling through hours of InstaStories in my bed and then try to play me with a cup of yogurt in a bowl of ice and a Nature Valley Bar. I will not stand for it. I will burn this whole Nakatomi Tower to the ground.
Ceterum autem censeo Trumpem esse delendam
posted by kirkaracha at 4:54 PM on July 11, 2018 [20 favorites]


The Senate just confirmed Benczkowski.
posted by sardonyx at 5:18 PM on July 11, 2018 [3 favorites]


Dick Durbin has issued a statement on Benczkowski's confirmation: "I cannot believe the Republican Party just rubber-stamped a nominee to hear the Justice Department's Criminal Division who has no prosecutorial experience, who chose to represent a Russian bank with deep ties to Vladimir Putin, and who would not commit to recuse himself from Russia-related matters if confirmed. This could prove to be a historic mistake."

Also, Manchin voted yes to confirm.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:39 PM on July 11, 2018 [44 favorites]


This could prove to be a historic mistake.

Mistake implies that all the negative effects of this confirmation are an accident rather than the intended result. It's not a mistake if the whole point is to fuck the Mueller investigation.
posted by Justinian at 5:44 PM on July 11, 2018 [37 favorites]


That's what makes Flake's waffling earlier today so baffling: surely, even if he was purely self-interested, he could at least exact a real vote?

That's the thing, every "waffling" statement is ONLY to get Jeff Flake and Susan Collins on CNN. That's it. Every. Single. Statement. They're all traitors. Every single Republican would willingly hand Putin the nuclear codes and tell him to fire our own missles on Los Angeles for another SCOTUS seat, a tax cut, or just to own the libs. That includes Flake, and Collins, and Murkowski. They vote for Putin's picks because they want Putin in power.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:14 PM on July 11, 2018 [18 favorites]


Flake is quitting, why does he even give a fuck about what McConnell thinks?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:46 PM on July 11, 2018 [4 favorites]


There are reasons to oppose this nomination, but the fact that he apparently took a long time getting paid back for baseball tickets he picked up for his former clerks is not one of them. Maybe some of the other debt is, of course.

I think the actual headline here is two-fold: he paid off $60-200K worth of debt in one year, in advance of Kennedy backing him for the job (exactly how that went down is rather vague right now); and the explanation the White House has given for this is entirely nonsensical.

Nobody takes out a loan against their retirement plan to buy baseball tickets for their friends. It's rational to front your friends money; it's not rational to front your friends money, for an entertainment expense, that you don't have.

I do not think Judge Kavanaugh is corrupt, and there are plenty of reasonable explanations for this, but since the explanation we've been given isn't one of them, I think it's fair to ask what actually happened.
posted by zachlipton at 6:47 PM on July 11, 2018 [58 favorites]


Since there's been a year's worth of news in the last week don't forget tomorrow (JUL 12) is Peter Strzok's public Two Minute Hate in front of House Judiciary. This Two Minute Hate should last hours; his non-public testimony lasted 11. With special guest star Jim "I'm ok with mass sexual abuse of students" Jordan.

I agree with zach. There is probably a good explanation for Kavanaugh's financial shenanigans. But we shouldn't simply take that on faith.
posted by Justinian at 6:56 PM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


Kavanaugh believes that ISP's have a First Amendment right to censor the internet and block or alter any and all content they feel like messing with.

If Comcast decides to use a program to alter news sites so that all anti-Comcast articles are rewritten as pro-Comcast articles, Kavanaugh believes this is not merely legal, but Constitutionally mandated.

Your next Supreme Court Justices ladies and gentlemen.
posted by sotonohito at 7:20 PM on July 11, 2018 [67 favorites]


To not abuse the edit window: in this means Kavanaugh also believes that your ISP has the right to edit your emails, comments on websites, etc as you submit them through the ISP's servers, or to monitor your VOIP calls and digitally alter your words so that the person you're speaking to believes you've said things you didn't.

It certainly means that Kavanaugh believes it is entirely acceptable for your ISP to insert banner ads, popups, block ads and replace them with their own ads, and so on.
posted by sotonohito at 7:23 PM on July 11, 2018 [15 favorites]


You know Achieve State Controlled Media is a Federalist Society wishlist item
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:24 PM on July 11, 2018 [8 favorites]


Meet the man behind the Hammonds pardon, who calls the Humane Society "terrorists":

How Forrest Lucas — the little-known millionaire whose company name is plastered on the home stadium of the Indianapolis Colts — wields power, propaganda, and even Sharon Stone to protect Big Agriculture.
Protect the Harvest has spent millions producing web videos and memes that spread across the dozens of Bundy-adjacent Facebook pages that have popped up in the last decade. It also focuses on messaging to children: There are anti-regulatory Protect the Harvest coloring activity sheets, and a pro-ag Protect the Harvest–branded teaching curriculum available for download on their website. In 2015, Lucas began producing feature-length films — starring Hollywood actors like Sharon Stone, Jon Voight, and Jane Seymour — to promote his strongly anti-regulation agenda.
...
Lucas’s investment in the Hammonds — and the Bundys, who’ve been invited to Protect the Harvest–sponsored forums — is a means to an end. They have become symbols of the way many rural Americans feel they’ve been wronged by federal overreach, and Lucas, much like Trump, leverages those feelings to build support for one of his overriding goals: wide-scale deregulation of big business.
...
In practice, this “accurate information” has centered on a cluster of issues that are closely tied to Big Ag’s priorities: portraying animal rights activists and environmentalists as out-of-touch liberals bent on ending the rural way of life; characterizing regulation and federal oversight, particularly on public lands, as a means of curtailing American liberty; and advocating for and providing platforms for public figures — such as the Hammonds — to function as symbols of widespread persecution of the ag community.
...
Taken separately, Protect the Harvest’s initiatives — the feature films, the fight against HSUS, the move to root out those studying global warming, the Right to Farm advocacy, the Hammond pardon — none of it seems, on its face, like a means of protecting business interests. It’s only when examined together, as part of a larger, motivating whole, that Lucas’s actual passion becomes clear. It’s not the small-time farmer. It’s certainly not the harvest. It’s not dogs, or hunting, or horses. Forrest Lucas prides himself on his identity as an all-American man. And nothing is more all-American than unfettered industry, and the profits that flow from it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:46 PM on July 11, 2018 [17 favorites]


Gabriel Debenedetti (New York mag):
On a campaign Facebook livestream just now, @BetoORourke said he raised *$10.4 MILLION* last quarter. That's, uh, a ton. (Cruz raised ~$4 million last quarter.)
posted by chris24 at 7:47 PM on July 11, 2018 [37 favorites]


I do not think Judge Kavanaugh is corrupt

His opening salvo on the national stage was to stand up and flagrantly lie and kiss-ass to the President, eradicating all semblance of jurisprudential indepedence and unbiased thought. He's corrupt in the worst kind of way. I'd like it better if he were just beholden to loan sharks or moneyed interests. Instead he's corrupt in the most horrifying way for a Supreme: completely and purely partisan, in the craven sort of way that makes you say things that imply you believe donald trump is a smart and wise person who makes careful and thoughtful choices.
posted by dis_integration at 7:49 PM on July 11, 2018 [65 favorites]


Beto O'Rourke's torrid fundraising leaves Ted Cruz in the dust, with another $10 million in last 3 months
Democrat Beto O'Rourke raised an eye-popping $10.4 million in the last three months -- catching up to Sen. Ted Cruz's six-year haul in just over 15 months as he seeks to topple the Republican darling.
...
The latest three-month haul leaves O'Rourke with $14 million for the last four months before Election Day. His fund-raising total now tops $23 million -- almost exactly the sum Cruz has raised for his Senate campaign account since winning the seat in 2012.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:52 PM on July 11, 2018 [20 favorites]


It was the cheese that let John Kelly down (Alexandra Petri, WaPo:)
Why did White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly shift and grimace in discomfort when President Trump spoke about Germany being “totally controlled” by Russia?

“[Kelly] was displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told The Post.

But it was nothing the president said, of course.

Kelly no longer hears anything the president says. Trump’s words are a kind of soothing low dog-whistle that plays in the background at all times, a sort of mosquito hum that he checks only periodically to make certain it is still complaining that anyone not from Norway would have the temerity to come to America seeking a better life, and then goes back to ignoring.

The reason Kelly shifted and bobbed uncomfortably in his seat while the president spoke about Russia and Germany, the reason Kelly wore the facial expression of someone who had hungrily devoured a mouthful of expired egg salad, was certainly not anything the president said. It was not shame or chagrin that we were saying this right in front of our allies. It is just that Kelly was enraged by cheese. And pastries!

Kelly had been insulted with a continental breakfast — Barely! Barely! — rather than a full, hot one. The organizers of this summit had clearly treated the critical problem of breakfast with scarcely more regard than this administration gives to reuniting children with their families. It had been an afterthought — or less! Kelly was right to shake with rage.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:10 PM on July 11, 2018 [15 favorites]


Kids

Reveal, Aura Bogado , Government contractor acknowledges migrant children were held overnight in vacant office building, in which that temporary shelter in Phoenix wasn't as temporary as advertised:
The defense contractor that initially stated it held migrant children in a vacant Phoenix office building only for short periods of time while awaiting flights acknowledged Wednesday that it sometimes kept them there overnight.

It was, MVM Inc. spokesman Joseph Arabit said in an emailed response, “a regrettable exception” to the company’s policy to find a hotel instead, if needed, when there are delays in transporting children in custody to various placements designated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. It also appears to violate the company’s contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
...
One of them also ran away – and remains missing. Phoenix Police Sgt. Vincent C. Lewis told Reveal that officers made a missing persons service call to that office on the morning of May 27, responding to an MVM staffer’s request. “The teen who fled from them was described as approximately 16 years old in the call, but the police report lists him as 17,” Lewis said.

The teenager, originally from Honduras, was first in the custody of Customs and Border Patrol in Tucson before he was handed over to ICE. He was being transported by MVM to his destination and was at the Phoenix office for roughly 40 minutes, Lewis said, when he took off. He hadn’t been at the office alone. “Although officers made no observations of any children during the contact with staff, the report states that the juvenile would have been one of approximately 90 juveniles passing through this transfer facility on their way to the airport,” Lewis said.
The Appeal, Carimah Townes, California County Law Enforcement Puts Kids On Probation for Bad Grades, in which the school-to-prison pipeline is incredibly short in Riverside County:
Andrew M.’s first interaction with the criminal justice system began with an orange.

On Feb. 9, 2017, when he was 13, Andrew was playfully kicking the fruit around with some friends on school grounds during lunch, when he accidentally sent the orange in the direction of a Moreno Valley officer standing nearby. The orange went through the officer’s legs, and Andrew was handcuffed and shepherded into the principal’s office, where the assistant principal searched his backpack and found marijuana. Andrew received a civil infraction for possession that day. A month later, he was instructed to show up at the police station to discuss probation. Sitting in a windowless room with his father, grandmother, uncle, and two officers, including one who was armed, Andrew was handed a contract and told that he could participate in the Youth Accountability Team (YAT) probation program for six months instead of going to juvenile court.

Andrew, now 15, is one of four named plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed in the Central District of California on July 1 against Riverside County, as well as the chief and deputy chief of the county’s probation department, over the Youth Accountability Team. According to the lawsuit, approximately 400 kids and teenagers in 17 school districts in Riverside County are funneled into the program for “pre-delinquent” or “delinquent” conduct each year—labels assigned by school administrators law enforcement officials, community members, and some parents for school discipline problems, mental health issues, poor academics, and family conflicts. One sixth grader was allegedly referred in part because school staff complained that he had used the “race card” against them.
----

Shenanigans, positive and negative

Reuters, Alison Frankel, As Trump claims power to pick federal agency judges, skeptics fear court-packing:
So why are Barnett and Zimmerman worried the Trump order could lead to big changes in the ALJ regime, which already encompasses nearly 2,000 judges working in dozens of federal agencies? There’s a short-term and long-term answer to that question. Right away, the profs said, the order seems to empower agency heads to hire new judges based on only their assessment of candidates’ “temperament, legal acumen, impartiality and judgment.” Replacing OPM’s objective hiring criteria with subjective standards, Zimmerman said, “opens the door” to politicization of the ALJ system.

The executive order also appears to give Trump administration officials discretion over the need to bring in additional ALJs. Under the current system, OPM decides when federal agencies need new judges. By cutting OPM out of the hiring process, the order shifts that power to agency heads.

That means, according to Barnett and Zimmerman, that Trump officials can stack administrative courts with new judges they’ve hand-selected. “I’m concerned that this packing is going to lead to a one-sided culture within the ALJ corps” and criticism that ALJs are biased and unprofessional, Zimmerman said in an email.

The profs said their deeper fear is that Tuesday’s executive order is a harbinger of ALJ purges
Politico, Annie Karni, Bannon hosts Europopulists in London ahead of Trump's visit: "With London distracted by soccer and Brexit, the president's former strategist has set up shop at a five-star hotel to fuel Europe's surging brand of Trumpism." Bannon's hanging out in London with Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen's boyfriend, and other Europeans of a similar bent, even staying up at 2am to do Hannity's show live.

NYT, Astead W. Herndon, Democrats Take Major Step to Reduce Role of Superdelegates. The DNC rules committee adopted a measure (the final vote is next month before the full DNC) that would no longer give superdelegates a vote during the first ballot. They'd still have a role to play in a contested convention.

----

Supreme Court

LA Times, David G. Savage, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh lauded late Chief Justice Rehnquist for dissenting in Roe vs. Wade and supporting school prayer:
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, gave a revealing speech last fall in which he lauded former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist for having dissented in Roe vs. Wade and for rejecting the notion of “a wall of separation between church and state.”

He also praised the late chief justice’s unsuccessful effort to throw out the so-called “exclusionary rule,” which forbids police from using illegally obtained evidence.
...
“It is fair to say that Justice Rehnquist was not successful in convincing a majority of justices in the context of abortion, either in Roe itself or in later cases such as Casey,” Kavanaugh said. “But he was successful in stemming the general tide of free-wheeling judicial creation of unenumerated rights that were not rooted in the nation’s history and tradition.”
...
Turning to religion, Kavanaugh said Rehnquist had maintained that the “wall of separation between church and state” was a misleading metaphor “based on bad history.”
Politico, Trump asks business groups for help pushing Kavanaugh confirmation
Business groups on Monday were asked to help push his confirmation, according to two people familiar with the request.

In the one-page document , which was obtained by POLITICO, the White House wrote that Kavanaugh has overruled federal regulators 75 times on cases involving clean air, consumer protections, net neutrality and other issues. Most recently, in PHH Corp. v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he favored curtailing the power of independent federal regulators.
...
Among the stakes for industry is a judicial doctrine that looms large for corporate America. In a 1984 opinion in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council Inc., the Supreme Court said the Environmental Protection Agency had the power to change a regulatory definition to make it easier for air-polluting industrial plants to get permits for new equipment.

The case was a win for the plants, but has come to haunt industry because it gave broad power to federal regulators. Corporations have been working nearly 35 years to overturn it. In 2014, Kavanaugh called Chevron “nothing more than a judicially orchestrated shift of power from Congress to the Executive Branch.”
I cannot overstate how much the right wants to get rid of Chevron deference and how significant that would be.

Steve Vladeck, One huge difference between Kavanaugh and Kennedy
Notwithstanding those admirable qualities, however, Kavanaugh’s many opinions concerning Guantanamo and related matters make it crystal clear that his confirmation would make the court far more deferential to the president’s exercise of aggressive war powers, would diminish the long - standing role of international law as a means of shaping executive authority and understanding congressional authorizations , and would more generally weaken the role of the courts as a check on the political branches in this profoundly important area of law.
----

Misc

Sec. Pompeo would like to be clear that the Taliban "cannot wait us out." Since it's their country, meaning they don't have anywhere else to be, and we've been at war for nearly 17 years, this doesn't give me much confidence in our strategy.

People in Contra Coasta County (Northern California) are receiving anti-Semitic robocalls from the campaign of Holocaust denier John Fitzgerald, the GOP candidate (he has no chance, it's a sold blue district). KTVU has audio of the call.

Ithaca Journal, Matt Steecker, 'You call the police': Man who took Tom Reed sign charged after GPS tracks him down, in which the Tom Reed campaign (R-NY-23) lojacks a yard sign, and a man is charged with petit larceny (he says he was cleaning up after the primary).

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Pluto) [Video]: "They are people who have loose affiliation with a deep state out to get Jim Jordan and this is the way they are manifesting their hatred for a man who is doing everything to fight for the regular folks in this country." It's getting awfully hard to keep track of all the deep state conspiracies. If I didn't know any better, I'd think they were just throwing that label around to anybody they don't like.
posted by zachlipton at 8:20 PM on July 11, 2018 [40 favorites]


Bloomberg: Mueller Wants Manafort Jury to Hear of Lobbying Decades Ago
U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller argued that jurors who will weigh whether Paul Manafort illegally lobbied for Ukraine should also hear about his work three decades ago for Saudi Arabia and other nations.

Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, is charged in Washington with failing to register as a foreign agent of Ukraine, laundering millions of dollars, and obstructing justice. Mueller asked a judge Wednesday to let him introduce evidence at trial about the Saudi lobbying as a prior “bad act,” showing Manafort’s “absence of mistake or accident” in failing to register his Ukrainian work under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA.

Prosecutors want jurors to hear about Manafort’s interactions with the Justice Department over FARA in the mid-1980s when he was at firms including Black Manafort Stone and Kelly.

Manafort registered under FARA as a Saudi agent from June 1984 through June 1986, even though he was a director of a federal agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, according to the filing. Federal law barred public officials from acting as registered agents of foreign principals, and President Ronald Reagan’s administration refused to grant Manafort an exemption, prosecutors said. Manafort resigned from OPIC in May 1986.
Also, CNN's Marshall Cohen reported earlier this afternoon from the Manafort courthouse: "TWISTS AND TURNS: Manafort sent to jail on 6/15. Since then, he repeatedly complained he was too far from lawyers to prep for trial. Judge said okay, fine, I'm moving you to a closer jail. Manafort then said he didn't like that decision. Judge just said tough luck, you're moving."
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:31 PM on July 11, 2018 [27 favorites]


White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said John Kelly "was displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese."

I hate to bring this up again, but I am sure you'll all be shocked to know that Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied to the American people (via USA Today):
Asked about how the breakfast went later, Stoltenberg quipped that he had "eggs and toast and orange juice and some good fruit salad – and it was paid for by the United States.”
J'accuse! There were eggs.

(In the interest of honestly, I will grant that it is possible that Kelly was denied eggs while they were granted to Stoltenberg, which would actually be frustrating and reasonable cause for making unhappy facial expressions, just not while sitting at a table devoid of food altogether.)
posted by zachlipton at 8:44 PM on July 11, 2018 [10 favorites]


I hope Peter Strzok answers Jim Jordan by weaving in some key buzzwords such as:

"We were wrestling with that idea..."
"I don't want to abuse the notion..."
"I did not have a mandate to report that information..."
posted by M-x shell at 8:55 PM on July 11, 2018 [18 favorites]


@MichaelAvenatti: Just rcvd word that my client @StormyDaniels was arrested in Columbus Ohio whole performing the same act she has performed across the nation at nearly a hundred strip clubs. This was a setup & politically motivated. It reeks of desperation. We will fight all bogus charges. #Basta She was arrested for allegedly allowing a customer to touch her while on stage in a non sexual manner! Are you kidding me? They are devoting law enforcement resources to sting operations for this? There has to be higher priorities!!! #SetUp #Basta

Tomorrow is already shaping up to be an unbearable day.
posted by zachlipton at 10:13 PM on July 11, 2018 [36 favorites]


If you're not aware of them trying that, you shouldn't think "They aren't trying that" because of fucking course Democrats have been trying that against Kavanaugh.

I believe Democrats are doing something, probably getting papers in order to petition a bureaucratic government entity to begin the slow and labyrinthine legal process for making Kavanaugh's emails public online. What I don't think they've done is (A) gone to local colleges and recruited an army to go to the library where the emails are stored and start sifting (B) hire a tv personality to publicly accuse Republicans of hiding Kavanaugh's public communications because they likely say terrible things (C) declare that while Kavanaugh's emails are being illegally kept from the public this SCOTUS vote is unlawful and that no Democrat will participate in the process. (D) Raise hell in any manner.

Democrats aren't really good at playing dirty pool, but some of these tactics are just going to the mat, playing politics, and having some hustle pure and simple. Democrats have to get good at doing these things, fast. So far, the most effective Democrat operative has been Michael Avenatti, which means there are no effective Democrat operatives. No offense, but we wouldn't even be here if Obama had simply appointed a judge in response to the Republicans decision not to hold a vote on Merrick Garland. Legal? Let the courts decide, but for God's sake please stop with the playing nice.
posted by xammerboy at 10:13 PM on July 11, 2018 [22 favorites]


NYT, We’re Tracking the Ways Trump Is Scaling Back Obamacare.

I knew the ACA would die that day in November, but I kind of naively thought it wouldn't go out like this. I assumed the GOP would push through things like repeal, malpractice reform, gutting women's health care, cross-state policies (i.e. preempting state insurance regulation), and whatever else they thought up over lunch. I didn't think it would help, of course, but I thought there could be some bent and crumbling pieces of the ACA to hide under and maybe some green specks in the ashes so I could imagine spring coming again. The tax reform shook that, but I'm starting to come to grips with this "just watch the world burn" nihilism.

Apparently it went down like this in Washington 25 years ago, as detailed in this Seattle Times piece. TLDR: a proto-ACA state law in '93, R's sweep in '94 and delicately pluck out the individual mandate, insurance death spiral complete in '96.

I never thought the '90s were warm but that is some seriously ice-cold politics. Scaling this to '21 is "The Road" bleak.
posted by netowl at 10:21 PM on July 11, 2018 [7 favorites]


“The indictment and trial of a sitting President, moreover, would cripple the federal government, rendering it unable to function with credibility in either the international or domestic arenas.”

That's all the qualifications Kavanaugh needed by Trump, the assurance he would never help impeach a sitting president, after spending several years of his life doing just that against a Democrat during the Starr investigation. What more assurance could you need that the guy is a pure political operative and completely full of shit.
posted by benzenedream at 10:37 PM on July 11, 2018 [18 favorites]


BK's the boss, and he issues the invitation -- he's responsible for picking up the tab. Besides, he clearly has the deep-pocketed friends to make that debt disappear.

Hmmm... Rosenstein's pulling in a couple of hundred prosecutors for document review... Mueller's doing a deep-dive into money laundering... I wonder if Mueller's good to take a run on the Honest Services Law, with the new rules?
posted by mikelieman at 11:53 PM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


Kavanaugh: “The indictment and trial of a sitting President, moreover, would cripple the federal government, rendering it unable to function with credibility in either the international or domestic arenas.”

The second and fourth word of that sentence can easily be replaced by others that are infinitely more fitting to the current situation. But those don't even register with Republicans.
posted by Stoneshop at 12:47 AM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


netowl: The Republicans can't roll back most of the Obamacare provisions without 60 votes, which they won't get. Which means that the Democrats will be able to restore Obamacare... and even improve it... once they are back in power. What you can undo with 50 votes you can restore with 50 votes. It's true that insurance companies will be reluctant to re-enter some of the markets if they death spiral even if the Democrats restore the mandate, etc, but that can eventually be dealt with.

The core of Obamacare, however, are the must-issue provisions, the lifetime cap bans, the prexisting condition regulations, and the subsidies. Those either cannot or in the case of the subsidies will not be killed by Republicans. They are trying to fuck enough people in the marketplaces that the Democrats give in and fully repeal... but as long as Democrats hold firm they can't force it.
posted by Justinian at 2:10 AM on July 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


That Stormy Daniels arrest is some bullshit. The same law is in place in many, many places. It is neither followed nor enforced, pretty much ever. I know this from, uh... research online. yes.
posted by Justinian at 2:13 AM on July 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


@annmarie (Bloomberg): #NATO UPDATE: DPA (German news agency) is reporting that Pres. Trump is said to threaten U.S. withdrawal from NATO. Now leaders are holding an unplanned emergency session #TicTocNews

On the other hand, this also came out of his mouth, so hard to tell whether anything he says has any meaning: @PhilipRucker: At NATO dinner last night, Trump bragged about Kim Jong Un summit and said he called golfer Jack Nicklaus to say, "They have 1,000 cameras at the Oscars and we had 6,000 cameras in Singapore. The buzz was fantastic,” an attendee tells WaPo.
posted by zachlipton at 2:30 AM on July 12, 2018 [6 favorites]


A couple other versions of that:

@A_Sloat: Trump objected to yesterday’s positive #NATOsummit2018 headlines - reportedly said he’s not happy & reinforced need for allies to meet defense targets by January or “US will go it alone” (unclear what that means). Summit moved to emergency session to discuss budgets.

@herszenhorn: North Atlantic Council @NATO's highest political body is now in emergency session after @realDonaldTrump threatens "grave consequences" and effective #US pull-out from alliance if allies do not immediately meet higher spending targets.

----

Oh, and Marc Short is quitting. Trump’s top Hill aide leaving White House amid Supreme Court battle
President Donald Trump’s legislative affairs director is heading for the exits just as the White House gears up for a major Supreme Court nomination battle and approaches a daunting midterm election landscape.

Marc Short, one of the administration’s longest-serving senior aides and a frequent spokesperson for the president on television, is planning to depart by July 20, according to a person familiar with the plans.

Short, who declined to comment on the record, is taking a position at Guidepost Strategies consulting firm and will teach at the University of Virginia’s business school, where he received his MBA, and will also serve as a senior fellow at the university’s Miller Center.
posted by zachlipton at 2:38 AM on July 12, 2018 [13 favorites]


I love the phrase "Carnival of Resistance." I think we need to use it here too.

And in the Carnival spirit, Scotland is preparings its snarkiest songs.

Donald Medley by Hoodoo Zephyr.
posted by Buntix at 2:40 AM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


Half of the US's 3.5% of GDP defense spending must relate to its other spheres of influence, such as the Pacific and the Middle East, including standing bases that can't just be moved elsewhere at a moment's notice. So if other NATO countries started spending 4% of GDP on their armed forces, Europe would quickly exceed the US in military capability in the Atlantic.

To pick up on one of the countries already exceeding the 2% target, UK GDP in 2016 was 2.619 trillion USD, so raising its defence spending from 2.1% to 4% of GDP would cost almost an extra 50bn USD, or £37.5bn at current exchange rates. That's two Brexit buses' worth a week. Let's fund our NHS instead.
posted by rory at 2:58 AM on July 12, 2018 [8 favorites]


It looks like Trump may be about to pull the US out of NATO.

@RVAwonk: "#BREAKING: Trump is about to give unscheduled remarks after an "emergency session" at the #NATO summit.

German media reports that Trump explicitly threatened to leave NATO if allies do not *immediately* start spending 2% of GDP on defense. (Defying 2014 agreement of 2% by 2024)"

Previous reports suggested he'd given a January 2019 deadline.

As a partial antidote to the above @AyoCaesar inflicting solar core level burns on Peirs Morgan.
posted by Buntix at 3:24 AM on July 12, 2018 [8 favorites]


I was just listening to the radio, and the Bruxelles reporter said Stoltenberg had deliberately asked Trump to tell about his experiences in Singapore, in order to avoid drama. The "working dinner" was supposed to be about Russia, but Stoltenberg didn't see that going well.

This morning's meeting was supposed to be about future inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, so it's no surprise that Trump through in a wench. Our PM came out of the emergency meeting saying there is no way we are going to increase military spending now, so I guess that is the general opinion (he doesn't go solo).

The Guardian's take: Trump throws Nato summit into chaos with fresh attack on defence spending
posted by mumimor at 3:25 AM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


Seems like we're staying in NATO, at least for the moment. Trump has announced an unscheduled press conference from the NATO summit. He's complaining about how much we pay and claims that everyone has "agreed to up their commitment...at levels that they've never thought of before." He seems surprisingly conciliatory, smiling, and this all seems like somebody gave him some numbers now (an additional $33B, he claims, though he hedges with his usual 'could be more') so he can claim he's won. They've been trying to hand him this fake win for a while now, but he's been refusing to take it. Then he launches randomly into "I hope that we're going to be able to get along with Russia. I think that we probably will be able to." He still "believe[s] in NATO" and thinks it's important.

I'm embarrassed to say that Trump's framing on this issue has been so effective that I did not know that the 2% GDP goal is actually a 2024 target. Trump has turned a longstanding future commitment into an emergency that must be fulfilled this instant. And he continues to insist European defense commitments are money owed to the US, which is never how it's worked. As Greg Sargent writes both her and with trade, "It's time to take seriously the possibility that Trump's demands are designed *not* to be met." These are demands that only serve to blow things up; there's no rational way they can ever be met. It's the language of abuse all over again.

----

AP, FBI agent: My work has never been tainted by political bias, with fire from Strzok's forthcoming testimony highlighting the central contradiction of GOP conspiracy theories: if he was so biased against Trump, why didn't he tell the world during the election?
He says that he was one of the few people during the 2016 election who knew the details of Russian election interference and its possible connections with people in the Trump orbit, and that that information could have derailed Trump’s election chances. “But,” he said, “the thought of exposing that information never crossed my mind.”

Although Strzok has said through his lawyer that he was eager to tell his side of the story, he makes clear his exasperation at being the focal point of a congressional hearing at a time when Russian election interference has been successfully “sowing discord in our nation and shaking faith in our institutions.”

“I have the utmost respect for Congress’s oversight role, but I truly believe that today’s hearing is just another victory notch in Putin’s belt and another milestone in our enemies’ campaign to tear America apart,” Strzok will say, according to the remarks. “As someone who loves this country and cherishes its ideals, it is profoundly painful to watch and even worse to play a part in.”
posted by zachlipton at 3:25 AM on July 12, 2018 [33 favorites]


Also, the US and NATO are already much, much stronger than any adversaries. The only people who need an expansion are the Military Industrial Complex. Which Trump just almost acknowledged directly. When he talks about Europe paying up, he means it: those 2% are about buying American hardware.
posted by mumimor at 3:45 AM on July 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


I shouldn't be watching this press-conference live, it makes me sick. And I'm not going to live-blog it, but he is not answering the questions, at all. I can see how is really good at talking at the Fox viewers, though.
posted by mumimor at 3:54 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


The only people who need an expansion are the Military Industrial Complex. Which Trump just almost acknowledged directly.

Which is hte same driver as the natural gas stuff. We should just step back from these chaotic disruptions to follow the money trail. Its quite clear not that all these tactics are about lining pockets. The china trade war tariff one though might be something that's been given to him to play with instead of hardware weaponry.
posted by infini at 3:56 AM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


I dunno, I think it's the other way around. Since I believe Trump is a Russian puppet, I think his job is to disrupt. If big money can get their way without disturbing Russian interests, that's fine too. If Trump gets a pay-off it's even better (the more corrupt he is, the more leverage Putin has over him).
Expanding military power may seem contradictory to Putin's interests, but Russia isn't really threatened by US military might if NATO and the EU are in disarray.
posted by mumimor at 4:03 AM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


A German photographer/professor I know.

Jörg Colberg
I don't think US media understand how much damage Trump has caused. In the German media I read, the language mirrors that describing a hostile power such as Putin's. German journalists openly discuss how Trump essentially might be Putin's puppet and how Republicans are a far-right populist party that's incapable of leading a democratic country. I've never seen anything like that before. And those are influential, mainstream sources, not the fringe.
posted by chris24 at 4:07 AM on July 12, 2018 [84 favorites]


This is a really interesting time to be reading Ronan Farrow's War on Peace. Really well written book, makes clear argument that our diplomatic efforts have been under attack since the end of the cold war, and while Obama repaired some of the damage, the State Department has not been doing well for a while. And this is where the experts are, where the dude who knows everything about say Pakistan's nuclear stockpile is. At least until dudes like him and many other essential people got fired by Trump.

I mean if your idea of interesting is being a citizen in a society in rapid decline and reading a book that explains just how fucked we are, it's real interesting.
posted by angrycat at 4:18 AM on July 12, 2018 [6 favorites]


mumimor, until now I'll be honest I've had trouble accepting the fact that he might be a Putin puppet, it felt too easy an answer, and its undeniable that his actions are consistently and continuously benefiting Russian interests. So now I'm moved to accept your explanation, that the venal greed isn't all there is but the tail that is wagging this dog. The rest are just opportunists, destroying the worth and value of American institutions, policies, and infrastructure from within. Oligarchically elegant if one pauses to consider the resemblance to post 1990 Russian context, and thinks of this as revenge.
posted by infini at 4:20 AM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


German journalists openly discuss how Trump essentially might be Putin's puppet and how Republicans are a far-right populist party that's incapable of leading a democratic country.

So, like Metafilter, then. We'll see how long it takes for the mainstream US media to catch up.

The WSJ's Rebecca Ballhaus drily sums up the meeting on Twitter: "Trump arrived 30 minutes late to today’s NATO summit, missed his scheduled meetings with at least two world leaders, prompted the secretary general to call an emergency session, held an impromptu 35-minute news conference, and is now leaving for the airport go fly to London."

Her report in the WSJ is less ironic but has some leaks that indicate how bad Trump's behavior was: Trump Reaffirms Commitment to NATO After Strained Emergency Meeting—U.S. president had warned allies that if they didn’t immediately meet the 2% goal, ‘I’ll do my own thing’
The NATO secretary-general ordered an emergency session on Thursday after President Donald Trump delivered heated remarks at a meeting of allied leaders in which he demanded members immediately meet the 2% military spending target set for 2024, according to diplomats and people familiar with the matter.

In a tense meeting expected to focus on Georgia and Ukraine, Mr. Trump swiftly changed the subject to military spending and warned allies that if they didn’t immediately meet the 2% goal, “I’ll do my own thing,” diplomats said. It was unclear to people in the room whether that was a threat to leave the alliance or to change the U.S. role in it.

In a lengthy tirade, Mr. Trump launched into a personal attack on Belgium and Germany’s military spending, according to one of the people familiar with the discussion. “I’m not happy,” he said, according to the person. He told allies that he wanted them to immediately meet the spending goal, or at least commit to a date now when they would do so.
And Trump capped all this off at his press conference by suggesting he could withdraw the US from NATO so without congressional approval, indicating he was open to suspending military exercises in the Baltic states if Putin asked, and referring to himself as a "very stable genius" again.
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:36 AM on July 12, 2018 [22 favorites]


Kim Jong Un snubbed Mike Pompeo for potato farm visit, state media suggests

The North Koreans continue to pull this ploy. The Washington Post reports that North Korean officials are a no-show for meeting about U.S. troop remains. "On Thursday, however, Department of Defense and United Nations Command officials were left waiting in the DMZ’s Joint Security Area. The expected North Korean officials never arrived, according to the official who requested anonymity as he was not permitted to talk publicly about the event."

Trump has lied about the soldiers' remains having already been sent back, which the Post notes in passing, but this move is clearly Kim's move to undercut Trump's false boasts.
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:46 AM on July 12, 2018 [14 favorites]


@StormyDaniels was arrested in Columbus Ohio

Is this the "Throwing people out of wheelchairs" Columbus Ohio police?
posted by petebest at 4:52 AM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


>>We'll see how long it takes for the mainstream US media to catch up.

They will never acknowledge it, because they cheered for his election and did everything in their power to drag down Clinton while promoting Trump. They are as responsible for him as Putin and Comey, so they will never acknowledge their own role or the truth of the disaster, no matter how bad it gets.


This. So This. Unless you've got a highly-refined newsfeed of some kind, this message will not be broadcast. It's as "conspiracy" as anything. And between the two situations we're so screwed. One of those two things has to give if we're going to make it out of here with any positive outcome.
posted by petebest at 4:58 AM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


Some happy-ish local news:

All of New Hampshire is in the 100 mile border zone, and CBP regularly sets up checkpoints on I-93 up in the Whites. So if you're, say, a DACA recipient decide to come up for a weekend trip in the mountains with your parents, guess what, CBP can tell you that your DACA status doesn't mean anything and your parents can get detained .

My city council, after issuing a resolution to condemn family separation a couple weeks ago, unanimously approved a resolution condemning the checkpoints last night, and will also be sending a letter along to our congressional delegation and the governor telling them to do something about this. And not only was the vote unanimous, but every single person who got up to speak during the comment period was in favor of the resolution.

It's not much, but despite appearances, we do have a small immigrant population here in town, both documented and not, and hopefully this is another thing to show them that they're welcome here.
posted by damayanti at 5:28 AM on July 12, 2018 [64 favorites]


I'm sure the tweets on this will be totally measured and sane.

Zeke Miller
BRUSSELS (AP) — French President Macron denies Trump claim that NATO powers agreed to increase defense spending beyond previous targets.
posted by chris24 at 5:37 AM on July 12, 2018 [22 favorites]


Peter Beinart/The Atlantic:
NATO Doesn’t Need More Defense Spending - America needs less
The Democrats, the Post, and the Times are wrong: America’s nato partners don’t need to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense, let alone 4 percent. And the fact that some of America’s most prominent progressive politicians and journalists think they should underscores just how detached liberal foreign policy has become from the values liberals supposedly prize.
For starters, the 2-percent figure is arbitrary. It doesn’t measure how much a country actually contributes to the common defense. As The Washington Post has noted, Greece meets the 2-percent threshold because it spends a lot of money on military pensions and on weapons systems aimed at deterring its fellow nato member, Turkey—neither of which makes America and Europe safer. Rachel Rizzo, an expert on trans-Atlantic security at the Center for New American Security, told me Germany could reach the 2-percent threshold by giving everyone in its Ministry of Defense a raise. That wouldn’t do much to enhance security either.
posted by mumimor at 5:47 AM on July 12, 2018 [23 favorites]


Was that Kay Bailey Hutchison between Trunp and Kelly? What is she doing there?
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:06 AM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


She's the current U.S. Permanent Representative (Ambassador) to NATO.
posted by Etrigan at 6:08 AM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


Yes, the 2% spending thing is a bad faith argument. It could be 20%, or 90%. Doesn't matter. The more ludicrous the figure is, the more he will sneer in the other party's face if they actually complete their end of the bargain. Trump has zero interest in meeting anyone halfway or in fulfilling his end of any bargain. He never has, because he regards integrity as weakness. Fulfilling your end of a deal, honoring a contract, not stiffing your contractors, paying your limo driver fairly -- all of that is for suckers and chumps who aren't big enough to bully their way into what they want. His tactic, as always, is to make an insane demand that no one actually agreed to and see if he gets laughed out of the room. If he doesn't -- if the other party even considers his demands, then he knows he has leverage and he will bully and extort the other party as much as he can.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 6:27 AM on July 12, 2018 [64 favorites]




And where do (or would) all these 2% or 4% commitments actually get spent? Who manufactures the greatest amount of defense 'products'?
posted by Myeral at 6:32 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


Ken Dilanian (NBC)
FBI agent Peter Stzrok: In the fall of 2016, I had info that could "derail, and quite possibly, defeat Mr. Trump. But the thought of exposing that information never crossed my mind....This investigation is not politically motivated, it is not a witch hunt, it is not a hoax."


Matthew Miller (MSNBC)
Retweeted Ken Dilanian
This is the point that explodes every accusation and conspiracy theory about Strzok. He could've ended the Trump campaign and prevented a Trump presidency with one phone call to the press, yet he never did.
posted by chris24 at 6:35 AM on July 12, 2018 [55 favorites]


I think it's good that these threads are now filled with American citizens looking for active ways to fight Trump's policies and/or bring about Democratic victories.

But my mental health kind of preferred it when they were all about the ways Robert Mueller was about to bring Trump down and other comforting notions.
posted by Mocata at 6:35 AM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


New from Gallup. 64-28 for Roe.

Rs 51-41 against Roe is much closer than I would've thought.

Nearly Two-Thirds of Americans Want Roe v. Wade to Stand
As the U.S. Senate prepares to hold confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the public is strongly opposed to any attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that made abortion legal nationwide. Currently, 64% of Americans believe Roe v. Wade should stand, while 28% would like to see it overturned. [...]

The American public stands firmly on the side of upholding Roe v. Wade. Gallup has measured the public's views of the decision periodically since 1989 and has found majority-level support for keeping the 1973 ruling in place, ranging from 52% to 68%. The current reading is on the higher end measured. [...]

Partisans' opinions are sharply polarized, with 81% of Democrats, 70% of independents and 41% of Republicans saying they do not want Roe v. Wade overturned. In contrast, 51% of Republicans, 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats want it reversed. [...]

Americans have decidedly mixed feelings about whether senators should cast their confirmation vote based on a nominee's stance on specific issues like abortion, if that nominee is otherwise qualified. Overall, 49% of Americans think senators are justified in doing so, while 46% of Americans think it is not justifiable.
posted by chris24 at 6:38 AM on July 12, 2018 [15 favorites]


Looks like Joe Crowley might not be conceding the seat yet... Mounting a third-party candidacy according to AOC:
@Ocasio2018 @repjoecrowley stated on live TV that he would absolutely support my candidacy.

Instead, he’s stood me up for all 3 scheduled concession calls.

Now, he’s mounting a 3rd party challenge against me and the Democratic Party- and against the will of @NYWFP.
posted by pjenks at 6:49 AM on July 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


It really pisses me off because if Hillary insinuated that we're going to pull out of NATO, Republicans would threaten to start Civil War II if she wasn't impeached by COB. Trump destroying the international world order? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 6:58 AM on July 12, 2018 [19 favorites]


Judge Doubles Down On Order To Move Manafort To New Jail
As more details have been revealed about the cushy set-up Paul Manafort has in his current jail, a federal judge doubled down on his order that Manafort be moved to a new detention center — an order Manafort unsuccessfully asked the judge to reverse even though he had complained about the location of the rural Virginia jail currently holding him.

“It is surprising and confusing when counsel identifies a problem and then opposes the most logical solution to that problem,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis said in a footnote in the latest order. “The dissonance between defendant’s motion to continue and motion opposing transfer to Alexandria Detention Center cannot be easily explained or resolved.”
posted by kirkaracha at 7:08 AM on July 12, 2018 [19 favorites]


The issue seems to be that on primary night Crowley lost the Democratic race but won the Working Families Party nomination, and there are some awkward hoops to jump through in order to keep his name off the ballot given that he won a recognized primary.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:20 AM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]




“It is surprising and confusing when counsel identifies a problem and then opposes the most logical solution to that problem,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis said in a footnote in the latest order. “The dissonance between defendant’s motion to continue and motion opposing transfer to Alexandria Detention Center cannot be easily explained or resolved.”

Sure it can. He's trying to cheat the system. He wants more of an advantage he can use to take advantage of the prison system which would include being able to smuggle emails out via his lawyers, which he might not be able to do at the new prison. If he can't expand his cheat & has to risk giving up the cheating he's already doing he doesn't want to do it.
posted by scalefree at 7:37 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


The Financial Times has another fascinating in-depth investigation into Trump's business affairs, this time in Toronto: Tower of Secrets: The Russian Money Behind a Donald Trump Skyscraper
Some of the money flows that the Financial Times has established raise questions about Trump’s vulnerability to undue influence now that he is in the White House. These include evidence that Trump’s billionaire partner in the Toronto project authorised a secret $100m payment to a Moscow-based fixer representing Kremlin-backed investors. That payment was part of a series of transactions that generated millions for the backers of the Toronto venture — a project that, in turn, made millions for the future president.[...]

Several experts on financial crime and espionage told the FT that the most troubling part of the interplay between Trump’s past in business and his present in public office was his potential susceptibility to blackmail. Keatinge, the Rusi expert on illicit finance, calls such a scenario “the number-one fear of any intelligence agency”. Knowledge of an illicit transaction might not be as sensational as the most notorious claim in the former MI6 officer Christopher Steele’s dossier on Trump’s Russian connections — that Russian intelligence had footage of the future president instructing prostitutes to urinate on the Moscow hotel bed in which the Obamas had once slept. But it could be at least as powerful if used as kompromat with which to pressure the president.
As always with Trump's business schemes that point to money-laundering, it defies easy summation as money circulates among Trump projects, Russian oligarchs, and shell companies. The cast in this case includes: Russian-born Canadian entrepreneur and Kremlin investment facilitator Alex Shnaider; Soviet émigré, investor, and KGB financial linkman Boris Birshtein (Shnaider's former father-in-law); the Solntsevskaya Bratva mafiya chief Sergei Mikhailov, a.k.a Mikhas; and Ukrainian steel trader Eduard Shyfrin, who became Shnaider’s partner. Trump is just the gaudy, gold-leafed tip of an iceberg of international corruption.
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:45 AM on July 12, 2018 [20 favorites]


Cohen Lawyer Says Trump May Have Committed ‘Impeachable Offense’

At this point Trump, if he has any sense, will realize he's fucked up bad. Will the right wing lawyer commentators on Fox spin this as a "pardon trap"?

It's really a damned if you do, damned if you don't for Trump at this point. Cohen is going to flip to help Mueller. If Trump pardons him to try and silence him, Mueller can compel his testimony or send Cohen to jail anyway. Trump fucked up ignoring the plight and the feelings of the guy that has all the information that could sink him.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 7:47 AM on July 12, 2018 [8 favorites]


Democrats brought giant pictures of Flynn and Papadapolus with “GUILTY” over their faces to the Peter Strozk hearing
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:56 AM on July 12, 2018 [50 favorites]


He could've ended the Trump campaign and prevented a Trump presidency with one phone call to the press, yet he never did.

The people accusing him of bias will never believe it. They cannot conceive of having information that sinks their "enemy" and not employing it on ethics grounds. It just doesn't compute for them.
posted by Bovine Love at 8:01 AM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


Judge Doubles Down On Order To Move Manafort To New Jail

Judge Ellis also pointed out to Manafort, “However, defense counsel has not identified any general or specific threat to defendant’s safety. They have not done so, because the professionals at Alexandria Detention Center are very familiar with housing high-profile defendants, including foreign and domestic terrorists, spies and traitors.”

(Manafort better hope the detention center has a full hospital, 'cos after that ruling, he's going to need to visit a burn unit.)
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:06 AM on July 12, 2018 [60 favorites]


This Strzok hearing is a spicy clown show.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:06 AM on July 12, 2018 [8 favorites]


House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Gowdy: "[Strzok] talked about being able to 'smell the Trump supporters', but he didn't talk about being able to smell the supporters of any other solitary candidate. But to him, that isn't bias."

This is a new standard, that police must always privately insult the supporters of the people they're criminally investigating equally compared to other people they might investigate. Evidently, Peter Strzok did not pass the Smell Test.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:10 AM on July 12, 2018 [10 favorites]




Strozk just said he cannot answer some questions bc the FBI counsel believes that answering them would compromise parts of the Mueller investigation and now GOP Congresscritters are threatening him with contempt. . . for following orders as an FBI agent.

Eric Swalwell asks if theyll also hold Bannon in contempt retroactively for not answering questions even though HE was under a subpoena.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 8:12 AM on July 12, 2018 [48 favorites]


"Your honor, none of the evidence of my client's behavior is relevant... because the entire investigation is null and void! I have definitive proof that the investigator privately told his colleague that he DIDN'T LIKE my client!" [gasps in courtroom, Judge calls for order, several people faint]
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:13 AM on July 12, 2018 [23 favorites]


This is a new standard, that police must always privately insult the supporters of the people they're criminally investigating equally compared to other people they might investigate.

I'm sure when we see the New York FBI office's texts regarding Hillary this wil still be his line.

Also, if Ds win the House, we will be able to see the New York FBI office's texts. Vote.
posted by chris24 at 8:16 AM on July 12, 2018 [15 favorites]


I don't know how to even summarize the Strzok hearing so far....for the last 15 minutes, Gowdy is badgering Strzok to answer how many interviews were conducting during the start of the investigation. Strzok continues to invoke FBI privilege, which leads to the fighting between the oversight committee about procedure. In short, the Rs continue to be soulless, evil, and manipulative, working between the 95% of bullshit speech to get their soundbites.


In response to the badgering, I would give every penny I have for Strzok to repeatedly reply: "Do you WANT me to compromise an ongoing investigation? WHY do you want me to compromise this investigation?" He has to give some form of the canned "on advice of FBI counsel I cannot answer" for 'reasons' I suppose, and although he's pushing back some I Would love for him to turn this back on the rogue committee members.

Make this clear that the Rs are doing everything they can to undermine this. Make it clear that the badgering of Strzok is explicity designed to obstruct the FBI investigation.

(Gowdy is still talking. A face rarely deserved punching more.)
posted by andruwjones26 at 8:18 AM on July 12, 2018 [15 favorites]


I'm sure when we see the New York FBI office's texts regarding Hillary this will still be his line.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Goodlatte said in his opening statement that if Hillary Clinton was investigated by FBI agents who had talked about her in similar terms, we would be having the same sort of hearings. But there is no "if". She was. There were no hearings.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:21 AM on July 12, 2018 [44 favorites]


Wow, I can totally see why Lisa Page sexted Peter Strzok.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:23 AM on July 12, 2018 [16 favorites]


But one Government Reform I would like to see out of this Committee is that sexting should be conducted using personal phones. Otherwise, bad things happen.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:25 AM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


This Strzok testimony is starting to look like some 21st century US history in the making. And kudos to his attorney who seems very well prepared for this.
posted by Harry Caul at 8:26 AM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]




I am RIVETED to the Strock hearing. This is extreme governmenting. I advise everyone to make sure they block out some time for the replay later in the day if they can't listen in.
posted by mikelieman at 8:27 AM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


There appears to be a pre-designed trap upon where Strzok would decline to answer questions and be threatened with contempt, Swalwell and the D's were ready to draw the exact same parallel with Steve Bannon and demand according to the same rules Bannon should be subpoenaed. The left is fighting more than I expected and I am pleasantly surprised. This is some unbelievably high level drama, appropriately suited to the the Reality TV Presidency.

Unfortunately, to the uneducated (and likely 45 supporter) who already hates the image of dysfunctional Washington, today's televised fighting just furthers the narrative that "oh both sides are corrupt, dysfunctional etc..." It boggles my mind how anyone on the right could spin this, but spin they will. Through the chaos they got their bullshit Gowdy soundbite.

Everyone sees and gets what they want to in this.
posted by andruwjones26 at 8:31 AM on July 12, 2018 [13 favorites]


Strozk's explanation for the "we will stop him" text is so fucking compelling - shout out to Khizr and Ghazala Khan.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 8:36 AM on July 12, 2018 [16 favorites]


House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Gowdy: "We're a fifty-fifty country, and we accept that, but we're a 100% country when it comes to law enforcement that doesn't prejudge innocence before investigations are over."

The election of Donald Trump has overturned many societal norms, one of which is apparently the ability of investigating police to privately say, "I think this guy did it".
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:38 AM on July 12, 2018 [18 favorites]


Cummings (D-Md) giving Strzok some room to openly explain his defenses here.
posted by Harry Caul at 8:43 AM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Gowdy: "We're a fifty-fifty country, and we accept that, but we're a 100% country when it comes to law enforcement that doesn't prejudge innocence before investigations are over."

This is literally the first thing in an investigation after "A crime has been committed", you fucking rutabaga. Do police in TreyGowdyWorld start at the A's in the phone book and rule people out alphabetically? Do you think that there are a bunch of uncaught serial killers named Zimmerman?

Why do you think they call them "suspects", for that matter? It's because someone suspects that they aren't innocent in their "prejudgment", and that is why they are investigating them.

This fucking guy, I fucking swear.
posted by Etrigan at 8:46 AM on July 12, 2018 [56 favorites]


@KevinMKruse: Its Gowdy's great impression of King Joffrey throught this testimony that really completes the moment (links to josh marshalls tweet of the video of Strzok explaining why he thought the US wouldnt elect someone who openly mocked the parents of dead soldiers).

Id always kind of considered him to be a Malfoy-adjacent type but with the video the Joffrey comparison may be more apt.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 8:47 AM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


Do you think that there are a bunch of uncaught serial killers named Zimmerman?

Unpunished murderer, yes.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 8:49 AM on July 12, 2018 [38 favorites]


I am so mad that our local NPR station, one of the biggest npr stations, has once again decided to run nonsense talk radio babble rather than carrying the congressional feed. I can't get to a tv, and npr was the only possible broadcaster of the feed in a market controlled by clearchannel and simulacrum.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:50 AM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]




Strozk's explanation for the "we will stop him" text is so fucking compelling - shout out to Khizr and Ghazala Khan.

Watch this clip here. It's awesome.
posted by chris24 at 9:02 AM on July 12, 2018 [56 favorites]


Chairman Goodlatte is trying to say that because jurors are informed to not discuss the case they are in trial for, it was inappropriate for Strzok to discuss his political opinions with anyone, ever.

Ooookay.
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:07 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


>> Strozk's explanation for the "we will stop him" text is so fucking compelling - shout out to Khizr and Ghazala Khan.

> Watch this clip here. It's awesome.


I was about to post the exact same link - normally I'd just skip it, but instead, let me reiterate - you really really should watch that clip. Or read the description.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:08 AM on July 12, 2018 [37 favorites]


Chairman Goodlatte is trying to say that because jurors are informed to not discuss the case they are in trial for, it was inappropriate for Strzok to discuss his political opinions with anyone, ever.

The same cognitive delusion where certain Republicans think that young children should have considered United States immigration law when it comes to accompanying their parents across the border illegally.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 9:12 AM on July 12, 2018 [6 favorites]


Goodlatte's equivocation of jury member duty on case details with average citizen's behavior is textbook weaksauce.
posted by Harry Caul at 9:12 AM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


Hearing Update: Goodlatte is making it clear that this is entirely about personal bias being a disqualification from working an investigation. Human beings must be amorphous objective robots in order to work on any sort of law investigation. He compares the position Strzok was in to the people seated on a grand jury, who would be disqualified from serving if they expresssed discriminatory preferences towards a race/gender/ethnicity.

And Strzok correctly calls him on this bullshit, because besides the totally separate experiences of serving on a jury vs working for the FBI, discrimination against a class of people is entirely different than judgement against an individual! And the individuals in this case are strongly suspected of committing crimes, to the point where we have several guilty pleas. But the investigators must not develop feelings of animus towards the suspects, because then "they're biased?" Of course Elliot Ness was biased against Capone- he was trying to bring a criminal to justice, you can't do that kind of difficult work and not develop subjective feelings.


I'm so sick of this question about bias, because bias doesn't matter when FACTS AND RECORDS exists proving unequivocally that certain things happened, who was involved, and how those things went down. The case is based on EVIDENCE, bias is irrelevant.

(On preview, things have moved on in the hearing but this opening argument by Goodlatte looks to pave the way for further attacks.)
posted by andruwjones26 at 9:17 AM on July 12, 2018 [16 favorites]


As a party Republicans are against facts.
posted by Artw at 9:21 AM on July 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


Why does the C-SPAN chyron say "Clinton Email Investigation"?
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:22 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


By Goodlatte's criteria, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh absolutely shouldn't be on the Supreme Court.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:25 AM on July 12, 2018 [36 favorites]


Nadler and Raskin saying they’re going to release the full transcript of Steozk’s closed door testimony at 5pm.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:29 AM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


I can’t watch the Strzok testimony without immediately thinking he’s Comey. For some reason I keep thinking him and Comey look the same, sound the same, and speak the same way, and have similar body mannerisms.
posted by gucci mane at 9:29 AM on July 12, 2018


NEW: Paul Manafort has arrived at Alexandria Detention Center. Here's his mugshot.—The Washingtonian's Brittany Shepherd
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:29 AM on July 12, 2018 [28 favorites]


Ever the Strong Man: Trump Blasts Merkel From A Distance, Smiles During Face-To-Face Photo Op (NPR, July 11, 2018...

That posture is one someone uses when they're feeling trapped by the conversation and want to signal their intention of leaving soon. Trump is so full of tells that I'd like to get him into a high-stakes poker game forwith.
posted by Mental Wimp at 9:34 AM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


> Watch this clip here. It's awesome. ---- I was about to post the exact same link - normally I'd just skip it, but instead, let me reiterate - you really really should watch that clip. Or read the description.

John Hodgman
One reason this is so bracing is that since the election, the tactic of most establishment white dudes (on both sides) has been to blandly ignore, forget, and/or smugly eye-roll past what a moral monster Trump was and is.
posted by chris24 at 9:35 AM on July 12, 2018 [78 favorites]




Why does the C-SPAN chyron say "Clinton Email Investigation"?

Because reality is mostly composed of rejected jokes from the cursed writer’s room of Hell’s hottest late night show.

I am starting to really believe it.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:38 AM on July 12, 2018 [24 favorites]


Let Them Eat Hate: The Pop-Up Protests of a Weakened Democratic Party - Justin Charity, The Ringer
The great power imbalance between Trump and his opponents has shattered the pretense [of civility in politics], perhaps irreparably.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:54 AM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


I'm hopeful that before the end of the day we'll see an article about all the deeply biased and shitty things Goodlatte has said in private texts or emails or whatever about Democratic voters, political opponents, etc. Either from some journalist who cares or as a result of any random staffer who's had it with his shit, which feels more likely. After a display like this, there's just no way Goodlatte is a pleasant boss to work for.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:56 AM on July 12, 2018 [15 favorites]


@AP BREAKING: Lawyer says charges against porn actress Stormy Daniels have been dismissed following arrest at Ohio strip club.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:59 AM on July 12, 2018 [55 favorites]


That posture is one someone uses when they're feeling trapped by the conversation and want to signal their intention of leaving soon. Trump is so full of tells that I'd like to get him into a high-stakes poker game forwith.

Don't take any markers, he sure as shit will never pay up.
posted by phearlez at 10:00 AM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


Goodlatte says there are *72* more members who want to ask questions to Strzok.

Are those members on the committee? Isn't that what committees are for?
posted by M-x shell at 10:25 AM on July 12, 2018


CNN, Trump administration to turn away far more asylum seekers at the border under new guidance. This kind of slipped past most everyone yesterday, but it's even more sweeping than the interim guidance:
Under new guidance given Wednesday to the officers who interview asylum seekers at the US' borders and evaluate refugee applications, claims based on fear of gang and domestic violence will be immediately rejected. In addition, the guidance tells officers they should consider whether an immigrant crossed the border illegally and weigh that against their claim, potentially rejecting even legitimate fears of persecution if the immigrant crossed illegally.
CNN, Oliver Darcy, Facebook touts fight on fake news, but struggles to explain why InfoWars isn't banned:
When asked by this reporter how the company could claim it was serious about tackling the problem of misinformation online while simultaneously allowing InfoWars to maintain a page with nearly one million followers on its website, Hegeman said that the company does not "take down false news."

"I guess just for being false that doesn't violate the community standards," Hegeman said, explaining that InfoWars has "not violated something that would result in them being taken down."
So Facebook has an event to tout their progress on addressing the problem, but says that fake news doesn't violate the community standards. I realize Facebook is stuck here, but what progress is there exactly?

Axios, Trump wants tough new Air Force One paint job, in which Trump thinks the current paint scheme is a "Jackie Kennedy color" and requests the new aircraft should "look[] more American," apparently red, white, and blue. The Air Force kind of likes it the way it is.

Vern Buchanan bought yacht after voting for House version of GOP tax bill, in which Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL-16) celebrates his vote on the tax bill by buying a multi-million dollar yacht the same day. The tax bill is estimated to personally save him $2.1 million/year.
posted by zachlipton at 10:33 AM on July 12, 2018 [57 favorites]



We know from previous megathreads, of course, that Trump himself approves of asbestos, and disputes the notion that it is capable of causing any meaningful harm.


He probably just wants to drive some of that sweet mesolothemia lawyer ad revenue to his business partners.
posted by srboisvert at 10:38 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


Dont mess with texas - Rep Jackson Lee (D-TX) pulling out a brand new 8x10 of ol paulie manaforts mugshot (from this am) during her questioning at the Strozk hearing:

Rep. Jackson Lee holds up Paul Manafort’s very recently released mugshot while questioning Strzok.

Link to a twitter post by Kyle Cheney w the photo of Jackson Lee holding the photo of manafort.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 10:42 AM on July 12, 2018 [31 favorites]


Donald Trump vows to end Africa's 'vicious' conflicts

Africans on my timeline vocally wishing he'd go back to forgetting them. It all connected to the hidden proliferation of American military presence up and down the continent.
posted by infini at 10:44 AM on July 12, 2018 [8 favorites]


Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish: "The issue seems to be that on primary night Crowley lost the Democratic race but won the Working Families Party nomination, and there are some awkward hoops to jump through in order to keep his name off the ballot given that he won a recognized primary."

This is it. New York makes it exceedingly difficult to get yourself off of the ballot.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:48 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm seeing mentions that the Trump administration has reunited about 1/2 the children under 5 and has declared the rest "ineligible"?! claiming that the parents are criminal or aren't really parents or something. I can't find much more than that but surely we aren't letting them get away with this?
posted by obliquity of the ecliptic at 10:49 AM on July 12, 2018


I'm hoping we get to see more of the "Toddlers get to stand up for themselves in court" stuff, it shows just how despicable this administration really is.
posted by Sphinx at 10:51 AM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]




Punch-drunk Europe would do well to study the fate of American liberals. The more Donald Trump denigrates Nato, the greater outrage he provokes in Europe. Moral certainty feels good. But it can bring on intellectual blindness. Time and again, Mr Trump’s domestic critics have chosen righteous indignation over analytic clarity. Women could never vote for Mr Trump, Democrats reassured themselves. Then a majority of white women did. The US would never withdraw troops from Europe, says Brussels. Yet Mr Trump could do precisely that. Which side of the Atlantic would have the most to lose?
posted by infini at 11:07 AM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]




WSJ: Michael Cohen Purchases New York City Apartment for $6.7 Million
Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer who is under federal investigation, bought a $6.7 million apartment in April in a new Manhattan skyscraper that is being developed by two of Mr. Trump’s longtime friends, according to people familiar with the transaction.

Located at 111 Murray Street in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, the project is being developed by a partnership of real estate companies Fisher Brothers, Witkoff and New Valley. New Valley is headed by Howard Lorber, a real estate developer and longtime friend of Mr. Trump. Steve Witkoff, the founder of Witkoff, is also a longtime friend of Mr. Trump.[...]

Mr. Cohen financed the purchase by securing a $3.5 million short-term mortgage from the developers, rather than getting financing from a bank, according to public records. While developers occasionally offer to finance purchases in their projects, such developer financing is unusual in Manhattan, real-estate attorneys say. People familiar with the deal said Mr. Cohen would have had trouble securing traditional financing because the unit did not yet meet the city’s legal requirements for occupancy.

People familiar with the transaction said Mr. Cohen had been in a rush to close due to an impending tax event. He’d sold a unit at New York’s Trump World Tower for roughly $3.3 million in October 2017, and needed to reinvest the profits within a fixed time frame to avoid incurring immediate taxes on the sale, they said. Mr. Cohen and his wife personally guaranteed the loan, according to people familiar with the deal. Mr. Cohen didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The knives are coming out for Cohen…
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:15 AM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


The knives are coming out for Cohen…

How so? I might be missing something here.
posted by Brainy at 11:34 AM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


By "knives", do you mean hush money payments? Cos that's what it looks like.
posted by dazed_one at 11:42 AM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


Someone please stab me with a $6.7 million apartment.
posted by Etrigan at 11:44 AM on July 12, 2018 [51 favorites]


"People familiar with the transaction" = people out to release incriminating evidence against him. Possibly people in Trump's orbit. Possibly to send the message "Hey Cohen, we know your dirty laundry. Cooperate with Mueller and it all comes out."
posted by Twain Device at 11:44 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


Anonymous sources leaking a recent shady financial deal by Cohen to the Trump-friendly, Murdoch-owned WSJ is likely pushback against the recent statements by Cohen and his new lawyer. These "people familiar with the transaction" are probably from within Trumpworld, not least since the arrangement was made between Cohen and two people identified as longtime friends of Trump. The alternative theory is that someone from the investigation or associated with it leaked this to put further pressure on Cohen, but that seems less likely, given the choice of media outlet.

There are almost certainly going to be more leaked stories like this in order to make Cohen look as untrustworthy and corrupt as possible.
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:46 AM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


Obviously Cohen is untrustworthy and corrupt. He was Donald Trump's attorney for years.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:52 AM on July 12, 2018 [26 favorites]


I'm unclear how exposing the corruptibility of his former lawyer and right-hand man will help President Trump's case here but if that's the strategy he wants to take then please, continue.
posted by Tevin at 11:53 AM on July 12, 2018 [25 favorites]


> There are almost certainly going to be more leaked stories like this in order to make Cohen look as untrustworthy and corrupt as possible.

Not sure if mudslinging a guy you've had on payroll for the last 10 years is a winning strategy. More likely, once again, Trump conspirators are sending messages via the press.
posted by klarck at 11:55 AM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


Talk about projection. Republicans are really looking for a witch in Strzok. It'd be less embarrassing if they were actually good at it. I don't think Gowdy and Jordan really know what the fuck they're even trying to dig up.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 11:57 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


And also if it were someone from the investigation looking to put pressure on him, they'd just do it in person or through his lawyer. The prosecution/investigators have no reason and nothing to gain by trying to apply pressure publically. If Trump's cronies tried that they'd be arrested for attempting to tamper with a witness. It's more deniably witness tampering if they're leaking anonymous tips to journalists.

The only other source for the leak would be from Cohen himself or his team but I don't see what they'd have to gain by doing so so the most plausible explanation is that it was leaked by someone to harm Cohen.
posted by VTX at 11:57 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


Axios, Trump wants tough new Air Force One paint job, in which Trump thinks the current paint scheme is a "Jackie Kennedy color" and requests the new aircraft should "look[] more American," apparently red, white, and blue. The Air Force kind of likes it the way it is.

JFK picked the color, not Jackie. From the article:
  • It was JFK who chose what Loewy called the 'luminous ultramarine blue' that has appeared on every version of Air Force One (and some other Presidential aircraft) from 1962 on.
  • We're told he wants the presidential bed aboard Air Force One to be larger and more comfortable — more like the executive livery package on his personal plane than the current, couch-like sleeping configuration aboard Air Force One.
  • Trump may only get to enjoy his dream ride if he's reelected: The new 747s are very unlikely to be in presidential service before Jan. 20, 2021. Two planes still need to be converted from commercial aircraft into flying White Houses.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:05 PM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


"How can you possibly believe what Cohen says about Donald Trump's impeachable offenses!? He's obviously lying in order to plea-bargain his way out of [insert latest revelation about Cohen's criminality]!"—every Fox News talking head except Shep Smith if Cohen flips

Team Trump doesn't care about how bad this makes Donald look by association. They just want to offer their base some kind of reason to publicly support their dear leader and/or excoriate his former fixer. Watch how this filters through the right-wing noise machine (once it's done with Strzok), starting from the respectable WSJ, progressing down the Fox News lineup, and finishing in the pants-on-head regions of the Internet, like the world's most paranoid game of "telephone".
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:06 PM on July 12, 2018 [10 favorites]


Cohen is just a small-time waterboy. Trump barely even knows him.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 12:13 PM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


Gohmert's questioning is disgraceful and sickening. Strzok is clearly steaming and he should be.

This is it. New York makes it exceedingly difficult to get yourself off of the ballot.

Yeah, I don't see any evidence Crowley is doing anything underhanded. This seems to be an example of AOC's inexperience and is the sort of thing that should be handled privately between staff. It's a bit concerning that it wasn't.
posted by Justinian at 12:16 PM on July 12, 2018 [11 favorites]


Watching these GOP reps grill Strzok is like confronting a series of aggressively dumber mini-bosses in a side scroller or something.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:17 PM on July 12, 2018 [32 favorites]


There's a huge contrast between the (R) and (D) behavior in the Strozk testimony happening right now.

"BUT HER EMAILS" is STILL being litigated.

In the face of overwhelming evidence of a compromised president.

This is what a third-rate "democracy" looks like.
posted by yesster at 12:18 PM on July 12, 2018 [34 favorites]


The Strzok interrogation is absolutely kookoo bananas.

The Republicans continually harping on "bias" is like Trump's mirror squared. Trump's infinity mirror?
posted by Sublimity at 12:24 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


Checking into the other side of this political insanity, they think that the Republican members are BTFO out of Strzok. So yeah, I guess we just live in two realities now.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 12:28 PM on July 12, 2018 [6 favorites]


Yeah, I don't see any evidence Crowley is doing anything underhanded. This seems to be an example of AOC's inexperience and is the sort of thing that should be handled privately between staff. It's a bit concerning that it wasn't.

It sure sounds to me like she tried that route and he refused to take her calls, which doesn't exactly reflect well on him or his staff and indeed makes it more likely that something like this would come out in public.
posted by Copronymus at 12:37 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


Watching these GOP reps grill Strzok is like confronting a series of aggressively dumber mini-bosses

Parasitic Intransigent Reactionary GOHMERT
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:42 PM on July 12, 2018 [10 favorites]


House GOP to bring Dem ‘abolish ICE’ bill up for vote

And the "Abolish ICE" trap is sprung. ICE contains both the Enforcement and Removal Operations department which rounds up undocumented immigrants for deportation, and the Homeland Security Operations department which chases international bad guys. If you say "abolish ICE" meaning the first, you can accurately be accused of asking to disband the teams that stop drug smuggling and human trafficking and female genital mutilation and more.

Almost no-one knows that HSI is part of ICE, including two Federal agents I talked to last weekend who were *sure* that HSI is a separate department. (And in fact it would like to be – as linked previously in these threads, most of the agents in charge in of the HSI field offices sent the Secretary of Homeland Security a letter last month asking to be separated from ICE so that they aren't associated with ERO's activities.)

So ICE ERO separates toddlers from their parents, Democrats vote to "abolish ICE" – boom, "Democrats love criminals". Or they vote not to "abolish ICE" and they lose liberal support. Hashtag politics at its most depressing.
posted by nicwolff at 12:43 PM on July 12, 2018 [6 favorites]


It sure sounds to me like she tried that route and he refused to take her calls, which doesn't exactly reflect well on him or his staff

If that's what happened, sure, but it seems unlikely to me that it is. We may or may not find out the details in the future.
posted by Justinian at 12:46 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I don't see any evidence Crowley is doing anything underhanded.

There's a deeper but angry article on Jezebel that notes that the Working Families Party is also pissed at him for not stepping aside.

All he has to do is admit that he lives in the home where he lives and where his family lives in the community where his kids go to school.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:47 PM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


Hmm, that's more in-depth information from Jezebel. You guys could be right which would be a big problem. I hope Crowley isn't trying to pull some bullshit.
posted by Justinian at 12:48 PM on July 12, 2018


Metafilter: You guys could be right which would be a big problem.
posted by Melismata at 12:50 PM on July 12, 2018 [28 favorites]


He keeps saying that he isn't running so I'm betting on him just being pissy about losing and covering it up with "principles."
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:50 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


> And the "Abolish ICE" trap is sprung.

When have Republicans ever needed a shred of factual basis to attack Democrats? And what is the difference between the world where Democrats "fall" for this "trap" and the one where they don't?
posted by tonycpsu at 12:54 PM on July 12, 2018 [33 favorites]


@nicwolff, I don't doubt that Rs will take that line of thinking, but the article at the Hill says this: "The Democratic bill, introduced Thursday, would create a commission to examine ICE’s responsibilities and then recommend transferring them to other agencies." which doesn't seem to square with your summary of concerns. What am I missing?
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:56 PM on July 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


It does give an opportunity for traitor Dems to seize that narrative and run with it, I guess, in their quest for ever more perfect republican-supporting “centrism”. But again, they were going to do that anyway.
posted by Artw at 12:58 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yeah, what Emmy Rae said:
That group would be required to “identify all essential functions of ICE that uphold the Constitution,” then “identify the appropriate federal agencies that shall be tasked with executing activities such as combating financial crimes, cybercrimes, trade fraud, human trafficking and drug smuggling.” It would be up to the commission to “approve the agency’s suitability for that function based on such agency’s track record of transparency.”

The legislation also would ensure that “total federal employment is not reduced with the abolition of ICE” but would prioritize jobs that deal with the “legal, health, and social-service needs of detained individuals.” And it would give the commission a kind of “truth and reconciliation” mission, asking it to study “failures to comply with congressional oversight requirements, violations of constitutional protections and U.S. laws, failures to comply with agency policies and directives, violations of human rights, and any other longstanding patterns of medical neglect, solitary confinement, wrongful death, and other abuses for which ICE is wholly or partially responsible.”
posted by tonycpsu at 12:58 PM on July 12, 2018 [23 favorites]


Gowdy is still on this dumb text message question.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 12:58 PM on July 12, 2018


I hope Crowley isn't trying to pull some bullshit.

My first thought was that he baited AOC to make her look crazy and inexperienced, diluting her sudden considerable public power, and she took the bait by making a public accusation that she can’t yet back up. Maybe the smarter thing to do would have been to signal boost the WFP complaints. So possibly the inexperienced thing is relevant.

I don’t think Crowley is going to quietly retire. He’s going to try to come back. and my guess would be that there are other powerful established Democrats who aren’t comfortable with the size of AOC’s platform and want to take her down a peg or two.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:03 PM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


And the "Abolish ICE" trap is sprung.

I prefer to think of it as an "Abolish ICE" briar patch.
posted by contraption at 1:06 PM on July 12, 2018 [18 favorites]


To clarify: I don’t know if Crowley is planning to actually spoil the election, but it would be real dumb to do so. He still has a lot of power and a lot of friends and a lot of people who owe him favors or want to see him in a position of power. He’s not retiring from public life.

The knives were going to come out for AOC as soon as she won. I hope she and her team are more prepared for that than this seems to indicate.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:07 PM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


So ICE ERO separates toddlers from their parents, Democrats vote to "abolish ICE" – boom, "Democrats love criminals". Or they vote not to "abolish ICE" and they lose liberal support. Hashtag politics at its most depressing.

Yeah, I know that we're all drowning in cynicism, but this kind of concern trolling isn't helpful in the least. You're not alone in thinking that the slogan "Abolish ICE" is too radical because people don't understand what ICE does, and that you can't just abolish a federal agency. Well, first, it's a slogan. It doesn't contain policy nuance. It's not meant to. It's meant to be a short punchy statement that rallies support behind a general idea. I'm not sure that "abolish the parts of ICE that have committed human rights abuses, but save the parts that may perform necessary law anti-terrorism functions, while at the same time saving jobs" will trend as well on Twitter or fit on a protest sign. And, on preview, it seems like that's exactly what this abolish ICE bill is meant to do. Lastly, the idea that liberals and/or Democrats should not do something because Republicans will paint them as "criminal lovers" is absurd. They're going to do that anyway. Hedging your bets because the party of white supremacy might paint you in a bad light is one of the reasons that people see Democrats as craven cowards.

So, yes, abolish ICE. Salt the earth where it grew so we may never see its like again.
posted by runcibleshaw at 1:08 PM on July 12, 2018 [63 favorites]


There's no trap cuz there's no danger.

Drew Savicki
The reality is that there are no particularly vulnerable House Democrats. A vote on abolishing ICE won't change that. Only a few House Dems can seriously be considered vulnerable this year


Kyle Kondik (Sabato)
This is a key point on any potential show vote in the House -- Crystal Ball rates every single House Dem incumbent as Likely D or better other than Conor Lamb, who is running in a new district against an incumbent after a special elex win.
posted by chris24 at 1:14 PM on July 12, 2018 [28 favorites]


Crowley has, twice today, said he's not running and that he'll support AOC. If he's lying, that should be shouted from the rooftops. Beyond that, I don't think demanding he register to vote in Virginia to get off the New York ballot is reasonable, particularly since this is hardly a swing district where doing big things is necessary to avoid catastrophe. I get it—he does seem tp pretty much live in Virginia—, but running him off the voter rolls of the place he calls home is a little much.

AOC won big in the primary. It's a solid blue district. Is there reason to believe she could somehow lose to a candidate who is both not running and actively saying to vote for her?
posted by zachlipton at 1:16 PM on July 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


Axios, Trump wants tough new Air Force One paint job, in which Trump thinks the current paint scheme is a "Jackie Kennedy color" and requests the new aircraft should "look[] more American," apparently red, white, and blue. The Air Force kind of likes it the way it is.

JFK picked the color, not Jackie.


Your response to Trump's standard m.o./misogyny of calling something womanly to insult it has the disadvantage of being merely factual and correct. That hasn't been a successful way to return fire for a few years now.
posted by phearlez at 1:21 PM on July 12, 2018 [16 favorites]


G-d. This Strzok hearing is making me wish that Peter Strozk could challenge Gowdy to a duel on the field of honor. Which is one of those things the Framers took for granted.
posted by mikelieman at 1:23 PM on July 12, 2018 [31 favorites]


Strzok is clearly so much more capable than Gowdy, who seems very impressed with himself.

Coleman, by contrast is not very impressed by Gowdy.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 1:27 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


I know it's quite minor in the scheme of things but I can't help but feel that Rep Watson Coleman should, after all this time and all this questioning, know how to pronounce Strzok's name. It's simple professionalism.

On the other hand the Republicans are traitorous fucks so, you know, both sides and all that.
posted by Justinian at 1:27 PM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


@jaketapper: Apparently we’re back to Congress believing that infidelity says something about someone’s character, is that right?

That question should be posed to every single GOP politician who brings up Strzok. Every time. Ever.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 1:30 PM on July 12, 2018 [42 favorites]


Your response to Trump's standard m.o./misogyny of calling something womanly to insult it has the disadvantage of being merely factual and correct.

I regret the error.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:30 PM on July 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


I know it's quite minor in the scheme of things but I can't help but feel that Rep Watson Coleman should, after all this time and all this questioning, know how to pronounce Strzok's name. It's simple professionalism.

On the other hand, she did just give him the remainder of his time -- uninterrupted -- over 2 minutes, thus I will forgive the pronunciation issue ( and "Pronounced as" should always be a field for Person records.. )
posted by mikelieman at 1:31 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


I know it's quite minor in the scheme of things but I can't help but feel that Rep Watson Coleman should, after all this time and all this questioning, know how to pronounce Strzok's name. It's simple professionalism.

Are you really expecting that from the people who like to say "Democrat Party"? Get used to disappointment.
For all their whinging about "civility," they should use people's names properly.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:32 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


zachlipton: "AOC won big in the primary. It's a solid blue district. Is there reason to believe she could somehow lose to a candidate who is both not running and actively saying to vote for her?"

Not really. If he really doesn't actively run, as he's said, he'll probably get a few points based on name recognition alone. The district is sufficiently blue that that won't even come close to mattering.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:33 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


Are you really expecting that from the people who like to say "Democrat Party"?

(Watson Coleman is a Democrat)
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 2:03 PM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


CBS News, Maine governor Paul LePage says he'd go to jail before he expands Medicaid
Maine's fiscally conservative governor says he'd rather go to jail before expanding Medicaid and putting the state in "red ink." Gov. Paul LePage made the remark Tuesday during a call-in on WVOM-FM.

Nearly three out of five voters last fall voted to expand Medicaid to 80,000 Mainers by July 2. Advocates are encouraging Mainers to sign up.
Imagine being this much of an asshole. That said, I think we should take him up on the offer.
posted by zachlipton at 2:06 PM on July 12, 2018 [57 favorites]


It Just Got Easier for the FCC to Ignore Your Complaints (Klint Finley for Wired, July 12, 2018)
It may soon be harder to get the Federal Communications Commission to listen to your complaints about billing, privacy, or other issues with telecommunications carriers like AT&T and Verizon.

Today, the agency approved changes (PDF) to its complaint system that critics say will undermine the agency's ability to review and act on the complaints it receives.
...
The FCC has two complaint systems. Formal complaints cost $225 to file and work a bit like a court proceeding. The informal complaint system is free. According to the FCC website, the agency doesn't work to resolve individual informal complaints, but reviews them for trends or patterns that can lead to investigations or actions against carriers.

The changes approved today mostly deal with formal complaints about utility poles. But they include small changes to the informal complaint system that critics say will have an outsized impact on how the agency handles complaints.

At issue is the removal of the words "review and disposition" from the informal complaint rules. The term "disposition" means "resolution."

In a letter on Tuesday, two Democrats in the House of Representatives argued that under the revised rule, FCC staffers would forward consumer complaints to the targeted company, and advise to file a formal complaint, for $225, if they’re not satisfied with the company’s response.

An FCC spokesman told WIRED Wednesday the change to the informal complaint process was only intended to clarify that the agency doesn't act on individual complaints.

But critics worry that by removing the reference to review and disposition, FCC staff will no longer have the authority to review and act on informal complaints.

"Now the FCC can ignore informal complaints completely if it wants to," says Gigi Sohn, a former FCC lawyer who is now a fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law and Policy. "This FCC’s contempt for the public it is legally mandated to serve is remarkable."
Ajit Pai finalizes vote to limit FCC reviews of customer complaints -- Real change or not, the FCC won't rule on complaints unless you pay $225. (Jon Brodkin for Ars Technica, July 12, 2018)
But the decision was panned by FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, the commission's only Democrat, who said the FCC has reviewed informal complaints in the past.

"This is bonkers," she said at today's meeting. "No one should be asked to pay $225 for this agency to do its job. No one should see this agency close its doors to everyday consumers looking for assistance in a marketplace that can be bewildering to navigate. There are so many people who think Washington is not listening to them and that the rules at agencies like this one are rigged against them—and today's decision only proves that point."

Rosenworcel disputed the chair's claim that the commission's existing practices aren't changing. The FCC receives 25,000 to 30,000 informal complaints a month, she said.

"After they are filed, the agency studies the complaint, determines what happened, and then works with providers to fix consumer problems," Rosenworcel said. "For decades, this has been the longstanding practice of this agency. But for reasons I do not understand, today's order cuts the FCC out of the process. Instead of working to fix problems, the agency reduces itself to merely a conduit for the exchange of letters between consumers and their carriers. Then, following the exchange of letters, consumers who remain unsatisfied will be asked to pay a $225 fee to file a formal complaint just to have the FCC take an interest."
FCC: now a mere conduit for complaints, unless you are willing and able to pay.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:07 PM on July 12, 2018 [30 favorites]


Reading that article, it looks like Working Families Party is not really experienced on how politicians work, like, at all.

For Crowley to vacate the line, he apparently would need to let the Working Families Party run him for some weird clerkship or something where he is bound to lose - which means he has a bizarre loss on his record in a race he has no interest in running in.

Their solution to that is that he should change his residency to Virginia, which would basically give up forever any hope of being involved in New York politics, which is where all his connections and influence lie.

It’s actually a way bigger ask than “can you not run”, and AOC and WFP are showing no awareness of this.
posted by corb at 2:10 PM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


which means he has a bizarre loss on his record in a race he has no interest in running in

What's the value of a politician's record, though? If he loses for dog catcher, what effect will that have on his career? Actually curious, here. My (uninformed) instinct is that while it may be a blow to one's pride, it functionally would have no effect on Crowley's life.
posted by wemayfreeze at 2:15 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


CBS News, Maine governor Paul LePage says he'd go to jail before he expands Medicaid
My reaction: Okey doke!
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:17 PM on July 12, 2018 [18 favorites]


My reaction: Okey doke!

Yeah, I really wish the media would stop reporting on LePage as if he were a normal person.
posted by Melismata at 2:21 PM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


Their solution to that is that he should change his residency to Virginia, which would basically give up forever any hope of being involved in New York politics, which is where all his connections and influence lie.

Feh. He was known for being an absentee rep anyway. And it's not as if Virginia would be a horrible place to set up political shop. The state as a whole elected T-Mac (a New Yorker) and most of northern VA was represented in Congress by a guy with a thick accent from his native Massachusetts for seven full terms.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:24 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]




House Republicans Vote to Gut Lauded Law That Saved America's Fisheries (HuffPo/Mother Jones)
House Republicans on Wednesday voted to weaken a much-praised 1976 law that helped revive the commercial fishing industry in the United States and bring its fisheries back from the brink of collapse.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), would remove annual catch limits on numerous fish species and roll back requirements for recovering overfished stocks. Many scientists, fishers and ocean advocacy groups say that will likely result in overfishing.
It still has to be approved by the Senate. via
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 2:28 PM on July 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


Their solution to that is that he should change his residency to Virginia, which would basically give up forever any hope of being involved in New York politics, which is where all his connections and influence lie.

After that loss he clearly needs to rebrand himself. Why not take a turn for the authentic, change his residency to the place where he's lived for 20 years, and start campaigning for one of the DC Senate seats we're going to open up after we kick the bums out and take the government back?
posted by contraption at 2:32 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


Judge Orders Trump Administration To Reconsider Asylum Claims Of Iranians (July 12, 2018)
A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to reconsider the asylum requests of nearly 90 Iranians individually. The government had issued a blanket denial to all of them. They have been stuck in Vienna, Austria, for more than a year, but they have family in the United States.
...
They've waited in Vienna after closing down their lives in Iran, selling houses, quitting jobs, leaving everything behind. Some are elderly, children, single moms. Their American relatives applied under a unique refugee program set up by Congress - it's known as the Lautenberg Amendment - aimed to provide refuge for Iran's persecuted religious minorities. They were cleared to travel to Vienna by the U.S. government. Without an embassy in Tehran, Austria is the place to complete the processing. But in February, the U.S. sent all of them the same notice - application denied, quote, "as a matter of discretion."

The California judge ruled that the Trump administration has the authority, the discretion, to decide on refugee applications but cannot violate the law. The law was set out by Congress. Each refugee must have an individual ruling, which the judge wants in 14 days. The mass denials are unprecedented, says Mariko Hirose, who argued the case. She's with the International Refugee Assistance program in New York. More than 30,000 Iranians have been resettled since 2004.
Fuck yes, judges who are holding this administration in account and setting deadlines!


Melismata: I really wish the media would stop reporting on LePage as if he were a normal person.

The mainstream U.S. media has not yet figured out how to deal with people who intentionally flaunt societal norms, lie constantly, and break laws, while also being politicians in position of serious power. But how do you report on such people? "Would-be dictator, Governor LePage, flaunting regulations and pretends that laws don't apply to him"?
posted by filthy light thief at 2:32 PM on July 12, 2018 [26 favorites]


Trump gave an exclusive interview to the fucking Sun (UK) to bash May (cover):
WORLD EXCL: Donald Trump warns Theresa May her soft Brexit blueprint will "kill" any future trade deal with the US. Full @POTUS interview with @TheSun from 11pm. Trump tells me: "If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal". Trump also reveals to me PM ignored his advice on Brexit negotiations: “I would have done it much differently. I actually told Theresa May how to do it, but she didn’t listen to me".
posted by zachlipton at 2:32 PM on July 12, 2018 [13 favorites]


Insane gibberish advice on insane gibberish, basically.
posted by Artw at 2:34 PM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


But how do you report on such people? "Would-be dictator, Governor LePage, flaunting regulations and pretends that laws don't apply to him"?

Walter Cronkite did it during the Chicago riots. Why can't we follow his example?
posted by Melismata at 2:35 PM on July 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


Those Homeland Security agents and Child Sex Traffic agents are the ones calling to abolish ICE. The name is so tarnished they literally can't do their jobs in the agency's current incarnation. Their job requires they have the trust of immigrants, which they will never, ever, ever get back now. Good luck getting any one to report a sex trafficking ring or a terrorist if it means getting involved with ICE. These agents have literally already sprung this "trap" in reverse, stating that ICE is making the country demonstrably less safe and made it harder to catch child sex traffickers. You would think that would make a serious dent in the conversation, but I just listened to series of news pieces on this and it didn't even come up.
posted by xammerboy at 2:37 PM on July 12, 2018 [61 favorites]


Walter Cronkite did it during the Chicago riots. Why can't we follow his example?

Because we don't own the billion-dollar media conglomerates. Corporate news organizations will only do the right thing when it's way past time for it to be of use.

And now this.
posted by petebest at 2:43 PM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


Maybe we could replace ICE with ice 9.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:44 PM on July 12, 2018 [8 favorites]


NPR, A Family Of Woodchucks Ate Paul Ryan's Car
House Speaker Paul Ryan explained Thursday that a family of woodchucks moved into his Chevy Suburban recently, eating the wiring, and rendering the car useless.

"My car was eaten by animals," Ryan said, to laughs from an audience at an event hosted by the Economic Club of Washington D.C. "It's just dead."

The car was parked at his mother's house in his hometown in Wisconsin, and when she came back from her annual trip to Florida for the winter, it wouldn't start. As a top congressional leader Ryan has a security detail and hasn't been allowed to drive in three years.

"So I towed it into the dealer, they put it up, and they realized that a family of woodchucks lived in the underbody of my Suburban," Ryan said.
Woodchucks...welcome to the Resistance.
posted by zachlipton at 2:45 PM on July 12, 2018 [91 favorites]


zachlipton: "I actually told Theresa May how to do it, but she didn’t listen to me"

Mansplainer in Chief.

Killing in the name of ... taking a hard-line stance on drug use: Cities Planning Supervised Drug Injection Sites Fear Justice Department Reaction (NPR, July 12, 2018)
Harm reduction advocates hope supervised injection sites can follow the path of needle exchange programs which have gained wider acceptance over the years, thanks to their role in containing the spread of HIV and AIDS. There are now needle exchange programs in 39 states.
...
When officials with the Justice Department are asked where Sessions stands on the issue, they offer a statement issued late last year by a U.S. attorney in Vermont saying health workers at a supervised injection site would be vulnerable to criminal charges and the property could be at risk of being seized by federal law enforcement.

Burris says there could be a public backlash to Justice Department lawyers asking a judge to sign warrants for the arrest of social workers and nurses working to save lives in the facilities, but the fear of a hardline response is still giving local officials pause.

In Philadelphia, where overdoses kill four times as many people as murder, it has been six months since top city officials, including the mayor and the city's district attorney, announced they were advancing the idea of a supervised injection site. Now, city officials say they are still searching for private funders and launching new outreach efforts in many neighborhoods to help make the controversial concept more palatable.
Because this administration doesn't really care about drug addicts, otherwise Trump’s opioid strategy wouldn't be ‘missing in action’ as 115 people die every day (Joe Davidson for Washington Post, May 21, 2018)
Opening statements at congressional hearings often are predictable. But not those at a House hearing on the opioid crisis and the Trump administration’s inadequate reaction to it.

It’s too bad no one from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) testified at Thursday’s Oversight and Government Reform Committee session, which was called to discuss the office’s reauthorization. Had its officials, or Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway, who leads his opioid initiative, been there, they would have heard moving, heartfelt stories from the panel’s bipartisan leadership that went beyond the usual perfunctory remarks.

But White House aides like Conway rarely, if ever, testify before Congress. The White House also likes to keep nominees facing confirmation under wraps until the Senate acts. Trump has nominated James W. Carroll Jr., the acting ONDCP director, to the full-time post.

Had they appeared, they would have been called to explain the absence of a long-overdue government-wide opioid strategy to combat what Trump has declared to be a nationwide public health emergency.
Then again, this is the same administration whose "zombie" infrastructure week celebrations are a running joke that industry leaders don't find so funny (NPR, May 15, 2018). Lots of bluster, wholly unreliable on follow-through.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:46 PM on July 12, 2018 [11 favorites]


Is that the equivalent of "the woodchucks ate my homework"?
posted by Melismata at 2:47 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


It really is amazing how stupid this country is about harm prevention. Safe injection sites have been an evidence-based tool to successfully reduce overdose death in so many countries....but we just NIMBY and bootstraps and stigma that shit here. I work in the dept at UPenn that has docs that work at Prevention Point and are pushing the boulder up a hill for our citizens. The pushback and lack of federal support is maddening.
posted by lazaruslong at 2:50 PM on July 12, 2018 [12 favorites]


Whatever you want to say about Trump's demand that NATO members pay more into the system, it's a political winner. I've looked at the comments for dozens of articles and they're full of members equating NATO countries with "deadbeats" who take advantage of welfare, food stamps, and other government programs. Apparently this argument that someone doesn't somehow get a free lunch is infinitely scale-able, context independent, and immune to discussions about what makes the most sense. I'm torn over whether Democrats should fight this tooth and nail or find some political triangulation argument to counter it. Democrats just pointing out that NATO is in fact a good thing isn't working.
posted by xammerboy at 2:54 PM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


It really is amazing how stupid this country is about harm prevention

They don't care about harm prevention. They want to punish people who they feel haven't lived up to their moral standards (and conveniently claim moral superiority in the process). Any claims to the contrary are just platitudes.
posted by downtohisturtles at 2:55 PM on July 12, 2018 [24 favorites]


It really is amazing how stupid this country is about harm prevention.

More evil than stupid. Our prevailing philosophy seems to be that as long as society is telling you not to do drugs, be poor, have unprotected sex, etc., then if you do it anyway and die because our safety net is made of razor wire you deserved what you got. Mercy and compassion are for the people too privileged to need them.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:59 PM on July 12, 2018 [21 favorites]


How much asshole could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck an asshole?
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:04 PM on July 12, 2018 [12 favorites]


Whatever you want to say about Trump's demand that NATO members pay more into the system, it's a political winner. I've looked at the comments for dozens of articles and they're full of members equating NATO countries with "deadbeats" who take advantage of welfare, food stamps, and other government programs.

Yeah but also "Whatever you want to say about Trump's [whatever dumb bullshit], it's a political winner. I've looked at the comments for dozens of articles and they're full of members [parroting said bullshit]" is true for everything Trump and GOP. News article comment sections have been the domain of that stuff forever, only nowadays with a sprinkle of bots thrown in.
posted by jason_steakums at 3:05 PM on July 12, 2018 [16 favorites]


Way more than a sprinkle. If not bots, people being paid to propagandize. Do not look at comment sections for your ideas of genuine political opinions.
posted by dilaudid at 3:07 PM on July 12, 2018 [16 favorites]


I would not trust comments on articles anywhere as a test of political winnership, lest you want to figure out what the bots are spreading.
posted by localhuman at 3:09 PM on July 12, 2018 [6 favorites]


I can't, you know, trust the Sun to accurately report Trump's remarks, but unless the quotes are fabricated (and they're consistent with his past statements), this interview is bonkers. He shows up in the UK and promptly "accuse[s] EU leaders of destroying its culture and identity by allowing in millions of migrants" (aligning himself with the hardest right EU parties), "tore into London Mayor Khan for not standing up to terrorists," "insisted former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson would make 'a great Prime Minister,'" among other madness.

Can you imagine what would happen if May showed up in the US and gave an exclusive interview to a tabloid saying Mitt Romney would be a great President, de Blasio gives into terrorists, and spreading white supremacist garbage?

He also claims he's more popular with Republicans than "Honest Abe," apparently thinking there are accurate Civil War-era opinion polls.
posted by zachlipton at 3:15 PM on July 12, 2018 [27 favorites]


If not bots, people being paid to propagandize.

This overlooks the fact that the real actual human people who factually and in real life truly support trump are extremely stupid.
posted by poffin boffin at 3:18 PM on July 12, 2018 [13 favorites]




Perhaps Trump meant he is more popular with present day Republicans than Abraham Lincoln currently is.

It certainly seems credible that among those who still identify with the GOP, Donald Trump may well better represent their ideas of greatness than someone like Abraham Lincoln.
posted by wildblueyonder at 3:24 PM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


I love it. Pelosi going after Jordan and seemingly promising an investigation if Ds win the House.

Pelosi: 'Jim Jordan had a duty to protect' Ohio State wrestlers
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that Rep. Jim Jordan had a "duty to protect" the Ohio State wrestlers who have alleged sexual abuse by the team's doctor.

"Jim Jordan had a duty to protect them," she said in her first comments about the scandal. "They said he failed. They, the people who are accusing, said he failed. Rather than deny and dismiss them, he should fully cooperate with the investigation."

When asked by CNN whether Congress will hold its own investigation, the California Democrat responded, "At some point -- we'll just see how this goes forward."

"He is someone who has always said about everybody, 'Oh, my gosh, look at his record, so and so should have known this, so and so should have known that.' Well, many people say he did know and by his own standard, he should have known."

Pelosi called the allegations "heartbreaking" and "devastating." "I commend those who've come forward and brought their personal pain into the public so that there can be an investigation, as there should be so that young people who play in sports can be protected."
posted by chris24 at 3:24 PM on July 12, 2018 [25 favorites]


He also claims he's more popular with Republicans than "Honest Abe," apparently thinking there are accurate Civil War-era opinion polls.
Or else he correctly senses that increasingly the remaining people self-identifying as Republicans were not all that wild about the whole "free the slaves" thing.

[on edit: wildblueyonder beat me to it..]
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:24 PM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


“I guess when they put out blimps to make me feel unwelcome, no reason for me to go to London...when they make you feel unwelcome, why would I stay there?"
THE BLIMP WORKED.

He needs to be made to feel unwelcome everywhere he goes.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 3:33 PM on July 12, 2018 [113 favorites]


Washington Post: ‘Whiplash’: Inside Trump’s NATO ambush, a signature spectacle casting allies as bit players
The NATO summit was concluding on course here Thursday, with European leaders pleased that their unruly American counterpart had been surprisingly well behaved, if not truly conciliatory.[...]

Then President Trump showed up, a half-hour late and with another agenda. He effectively took a meeting over Georgia and Ukraine hostage by seizing the floor and, one by one, scolding and shaming countries for their defense spending.

Trump was on such a tear that some diplomats said they feared he could well try to withdraw the United States from NATO, rupturing the existing world order. For more than an hour, the transatlantic alliance was caught in the chaos of Trump’s making — until the president called an impromptu news conference to announce that everything, in fact, was just fine.[...]

Thursday’s events in Brussels were a signature Trump spectacle, with other presidents and prime ministers cast as bit players in his drama. Trump was unpredictable and unreliable. He was direct and at moments crass with the United States’ historical partners, vague on substance and misleading with facts and figures. He grabbed the spotlight for himself, sending the entire Western alliance scrambling to satisfy his whims and desires — “whiplash,” as one attending diplomat put it.

And he declared unprecedented victory, though his partners said little new had actually been agreed upon.
And as always with Trump, the more we learn of what went on behind closed doors, the worse it becomes.
Several officials who had been in the room when Trump amped up the temperature appeared physically exhausted afterward. One let out a full-body shudder. Another, a long, nervous belly laugh.

In Thursday’s session, as Trump commandeered the conversation, he berated and harassed individual leaders over defense spending. He had figures at the ready, indicating his assault was orchestrated. And, in comments open to interpretation, Trump told his counterparts that if they did not meet their 2 percent targets by January he would “do his own thing,” according to two officials briefed on the meeting.

At one point, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg tried to calm his tirade and promote unity within the alliance, but Trump snapped.

“No, we are not playing this game,” Trump said, according to one official who was present. “Other presidents have done this, but I’m not going to.”[...]

Officials said their nerves were frayed by Trump’s erratic performance — and perhaps that was exactly the point.

“He goes after Germany, and then he seems happy at dinner, and then he’s acting like he wants to end NATO, and then he’s saying how great NATO is and how he loves NATO,” said a foreign official who attended the summit. “No one has any idea what he will really do, and my sense is that he likes it that way.”

The official, like many others who commented on the interactions in the private meetings, spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating or angering the U.S. delegation.
It's absolutely appalling to watch Trump try to turn the NATO alliance into another of his abusive relationships. Putin must surely be delighted.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:33 PM on July 12, 2018 [42 favorites]


“I guess when they put out blimps to make me feel unwelcome, no reason for me to go to London...when they make you feel unwelcome, why would I stay there?"

What will it take to put a blimp up in Washington DC?
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:38 PM on July 12, 2018 [39 favorites]


Doesn’t he usually get extra crazy like this when he feels threatened, usually by some story that’s about to break or some development in the Mueller investigation or something?

What silver lining are we likely to have on our mushroom clouds this time?
posted by schadenfrau at 3:39 PM on July 12, 2018 [8 favorites]


It certainly seems credible that among those who still identify with the GOP, Donald Trump may well better represent their ideas of greatness than someone like Abraham Lincoln.

The Party of Lincoln Rockwell.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:41 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


I assume he'll sign an executive order outlawing blimps first thing tomorrow morning.
posted by poffin boffin at 3:44 PM on July 12, 2018 [6 favorites]


What silver lining are we likely to have on our mushroom clouds this time?

Everyone gets a free life-time supply of strontium
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:45 PM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


@woodruffbets: Gosar to Strzok: "I'm a dentist, so I read body language very very well"

Gosar's point seems to be that Strzok looked like he cared deeply about Trump's attacks on Khizr and Ghazala Khan, which makes him biased, but Strzok nicely turns it around by saying he's not sure what the question is, asking if Gosar is likening his experience testifying to visiting the dentist.

I wasn't aware dentists had any particular claim to understanding body language.

@KevinMKruse: Now that the House Judiciary Committee has established that it's vital to explore in depth the private messages of an investigator, I can't wait to read all of Brett Kavanaugh's emails from his days working for Ken Starr.
posted by zachlipton at 3:52 PM on July 12, 2018 [59 favorites]


Anybody know a good unionized blimp shop?
posted by contraption at 3:52 PM on July 12, 2018 [12 favorites]


does this mean #TheResistance will take to the skies in mighty airships? are we doing a steampunk storyline this season? I'm so tired
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:54 PM on July 12, 2018 [41 favorites]


Crowley-AOC mess

Guy played "Born to Run" for her and everyone says, "oh, what a class act," meanwhile I am familiar with the lyrics to "Born to Run" ...
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 4:02 PM on July 12, 2018 [8 favorites]


Oh, and Marc Short is quitting. Trump’s top Hill aide leaving White House amid Supreme Court battle

And his successor as legislative affairs direction will be Shahira Knight, a top economic adviser to President Donald Trump who played a central role in shepherding the Republicans’ tax bill through Congress. (Politico)

I don't know whether it should impress us that she took point to push that shitpile up Capitol Hill or serve as warning if that's her chief accomplishment.
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:07 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


“I guess when they put out blimps to make me feel unwelcome, no reason for me to go to London...when they make you feel unwelcome, why would I stay there?"

The number of Londoners saddened by this statement struggles to reach the single digits
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:17 PM on July 12, 2018 [24 favorites]


WaPo, Jared Kushner lacks security clearance level to review some of the nation’s most sensitive intelligence in White House role:
July 12 at 7:08 PM Email the author

Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser and President Trump’s son-in-law, lacks the security clearance level required to review some of the government’s most sensitive secrets, according to two people familiar with his access.

For the first year of the Trump administration, Kushner had nearly blanket access to highly classified intelligence, even as he held an interim security clearance and awaited the completion of his background investigation.

But when White House security officials granted him a permanent clearance in late May, he was granted only “top secret” status — a level that does allow him to see some of the country’s most closely guarded intelligence, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security issues.

Kushner has not been approved to review “sensitive compartmented information,” better known as SCI. The Central Intelligence Agency determines who can access this information, which primarily involves U.S. intelligence sources and surveillance methods, they said.
Also, please enjoy the dentist video from the hearing, particularly the facial expression of the lawyer in the background.
posted by zachlipton at 4:18 PM on July 12, 2018 [18 favorites]


My understanding of the President's classification power is that if the President hands Jared Kushner some Sensitive Compartmented Information, Jared Kushner is perfectly entitled to read it. I can imagine this happening if, for example, the President doesn't want to read something, implausible as such an event may be.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:22 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


I love that we're even entertaining the idea that Trump even knows what level anything he reads (lol, reads) is classified at. He has no fucking clue and doesn't fucking care. If he reads something that he wants Jared to pass off to the TrumpOrg working group on Trump Hotel Pyongyang, he's just going to tell Jared or hand him the info.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:27 PM on July 12, 2018 [8 favorites]


> @woodruffbets: Gosar to Strzok: "I'm a dentist, so I read body language very very well"

I wasn't aware dentists had any particular claim to understanding body language.
Back when I played poker to earn my livelihood I can assure you that as a class dentists did not enjoy any particular reputation in that area. "Oh no, he's a dentist!" is not something you ever heard at the tables.
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:29 PM on July 12, 2018 [60 favorites]


there was that one detective show, though. You know: The Dentalist.
posted by Iridic at 4:34 PM on July 12, 2018 [29 favorites]


And now my brain throws detectives Holmes & Yo-Yo to me, which featured John Schuck, who also played the dentist 'Painless' in MASH
posted by Harry Caul at 4:40 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


The Seven Wildest Moments From Peter Strzok’s Explosive House Hearing
Nadler: Point of order, Mr. Chairman.

Goodlatte: The question is directed to the witness.

Nadler: And I have a point of order before he answers the question.

Goodlatte: The point of order is not well taken.

Nadler: You don’t know what the point of order is. You can’t say if it’s well taken.

Goodlatte: The witness will answer the question.

Nadler: Mr. Chairman, I raised my point of order and I insist on it.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:40 PM on July 12, 2018 [22 favorites]


Does anyone know if a provably politically motivated arrest for a crime which has never been enforced constitutes a tort? Avenatti has dug up some compelling stuff on the motivation for the Daniels bullshit. It seems like it should be but I sort of doubt it is.
posted by Justinian at 4:44 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


Like it seems an obvious violation of your civil rights to me but if you technically did violate a bullshit statute does that change things?
posted by Justinian at 4:47 PM on July 12, 2018


Malicious prosecution. Difficult but not strictly impossible, although if there's technically a law against touching even if never enforced that probably defeats the element of no reasonable probable cause, and I don't think dismissing the charges would count, she would've had to be acquitted as an element of any civil suit.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:51 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


Before asking Strzok how many times he lied to his wife during today's heading, Louie Gohmert was perhaps best known for his hot takes on the aphrodisiac effects of the Alaska pipeline on caribou fucking.
It seems that Gohmert is also something of an expert on animal husbandry. Here’s his theory: The caribou very much enjoy the warmth the pipeline radiates. “So when they want to go on a date, they invite each other to head over to the pipeline,” he informed his colleagues. It’s apparently the equivalent of being wined and dined. And that has resulted in a tenfold caribou population boom, he concluded.

“So my real concern now ...if oil stops running through the pipeline...do we need a study to see how adversely the caribou would be affected if that warm oil ever quit flowing?” he asked.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:52 PM on July 12, 2018 [8 favorites]


@joshtpm, 7:40 PM - 19 Jun 2018
In the before times there was a man named Mooch. And he told Ryan Lizza that Steve Bannon sucked his own cock. And then he was gone.
Point of order: that wasn't in the before times.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:55 PM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


to be fair, between the caribou fucking and today's thrilling display, gohmert also somehow found the time to be very worried about the grave threat of GAYS IN SPACE ~AND~ gave the world this great gift
posted by halation at 4:57 PM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


NYT, White House Orders Broader Access to Files About F.B.I. Informant
The White House has rebuffed concerns among American intelligence and law enforcement officials and ordered that more lawmakers be given access to classified information about an informant the F.B.I. used in 2016 to investigate possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to two American officials with knowledge of the decision.

Both the director of national intelligence and the director of the F.B.I. tried to keep the classified documents tightly restricted, fearing that a broader dissemination of operational reports and other sensitive material could lead to more leaks of detailed information about the role of the confidential F.B.I. informant.

Some American officials believe, in fact, the reason the White House made the decision was to provide political ammunition to President Trump’s Republican allies who have argued — without any evidence — that the F.B.I. investigation was opened in July 2016 as an effort to keep Mr. Trump from becoming president.

The F.B.I. files about the informant will now be available to all members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, instead of to just a group of congressional leaders known as the Gang of Eight. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump or a lower-level White House official authorized the move.
posted by zachlipton at 5:27 PM on July 12, 2018 [6 favorites]


The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey shares an e-mail he received from SHS about Trump's bonkers Sun interview:
"The President likes and respects Prime Minister May very much. As he said in his interview with the Sun she "is a very good person" and he "never said anything bad about her". He thought she was great on NATO today and is a really terrific person. He is thankful for the wonderful welcome from the Prime Minister here in the U.K."
Sarah Sanders

Sent from my iPhone
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:31 PM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


Some American officials believe, in fact, the reason the White House made the decision was to provide political ammunition to President Trump’s Republican allies who have argued — without any evidence — that the F.B.I. investigation was opened in July 2016 as an effort to keep Mr. Trump from becoming president.


I mean, yeah, isn’t that sort of the point? To not have a puppet of a foreign regime in charge of the country?
posted by gucci mane at 5:33 PM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


What will it take to put a blimp up in Washington DC?

We're about to find out.

Trump baby blimp to go on 'world tour'
The organizers behind the blimp depicting President Trump as a baby that will fly over London next week during Trump’s trip to the United Kingdom announced that they will now take the blimp on a world tour.

The organizers wrote on a crowdfunding site for the 20-foot-tall balloon that “people have have been SO generous and supportive that we now have WAY more money than we can sensibly spend just on Trump's UK visit in July!”

“So - Trump Baby is going on World Tour!” the organizers wrote. “All the details are still TBC but once little Donald has been run out of Britain in July, we will start to put together an itinerary - so if your community is unlucky enough to be expecting a visit from the orange sex pest, please get in touch after the 14th.”
If you follow the link you'll find a link to the Crowdfunding page within the text but in keeping with MeFi policy I'll refrain from posting it here.
posted by scalefree at 6:19 PM on July 12, 2018 [35 favorites]


More on Trump’s bonkers interview with the Sun:

Donald Trump gives bomb-throwing interview to British tabloid (Jen Kirby | Vox)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:37 PM on July 12, 2018


@ACLU:
Update on our family separation case:
The Trump administration failed to meet the deadline to reunite all kids under 5. We’ve asked the court for specific remedies to ensure this does not happen again. We won't allow the government to waste time.

The administration claims to have reunited 58 children as of today. The government said they would give us notice of a time and place for each reunification so that we could arrange for nonprofits to be onsite to help families and verify reunifications. That didn't happen.

Not only did the government fail to give notice, we heard reports of troubling situations, including ICE leaving a parent and kids, one of whom is 6 months old, alone at a bus stop. The government's lack of communication caused hardship for families who have been through enough.

We're asking the court to order the government to take 7 steps to prevent failure going forward. Finally, we want the court to order the government to reimburse families for reunification travel costs and DNA tests. @realDonaldTrump, it's far past time to do the right thing by these kids.
Houston Chronicle, Lomi Kriel, Half of migrants under 5 reunited with parents, though rest remain ‘ineligible’:
The government said it had reunified 57 separated children in government custody who are under the age of 5, including six in San Antonio, but deemed another 46 “ineligible for reunification.” Of those, 22 children could not be reunited, either because their parents have criminal backgrounds or face criminal allegations, or because they were not related to the person with whom they crossed the border. One parent had a communicable disease. Another 12 parents have been deported and 11 remain in federal or state custody for other offenses.

One child, who would qualify for U.S citizenship because Gelernt said his mother is American, has been in federal foster care for more than a year. The government said the parent’s location is “unknown.”

“That opens up the reality that there are likely many U.S. citizen children who have been separated from their parents,” said Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Commission, a national advocacy group.

In at least one other case, she said an American child had been separated from his family at the border and sent to a state welfare agency because he did not qualify for placement with the Office of Refugee Resettlement., which is charged with the care of immigrant children.
posted by zachlipton at 6:39 PM on July 12, 2018 [29 favorites]


The G-Man Fights Back: Peter Strzok Zaps His Republican Inquisitors
(John Cassidy | The New Yorker)

“Republicans sought to put the senior F.B.I. agent on the griddle before the cameras in a joint hearing. But it was they and their President who got burned.”
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:40 PM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


Wikipedia: Paul Gosar
Paul Anthony Gosar[1] (/ˈɡoʊsɑːr/; born November 27, 1958) is an American politician, former dentist and body language expert who has served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Arizona since 2011. He currently represents Arizona's 4th congressional district, which includes most of the rural western portion of the state, as well as a few suburbs of Phoenix. He represented the neighboring 1st district during his first term and is a member of the Republican Party.
posted by scalefree at 6:40 PM on July 12, 2018 [20 favorites]


Thoughts from listening to LawFare podcast*:

(1) NATO's strategy was to mollify Trump. They began their meeting saying they agreed with him about paying more, noted that his leadership had inspired them to pay more this year than ever before, and agreed to a plan to pay more in the future. The fact that Trump responded by basically calling them deadbeats, threatening to "go it alone", and upping his ask to 4% of their GDP, strongly suggests that this is a political play. Trump's fighting with NATO because he believes it will play well with his base. NATO couldn't have been more accommodating.

(2) ICE was created to consolidate all border agencies to improve all border related security communications, but in doing so they lumped immigration services together with a number of organizations only interested in criminal prosecutions. This changed how immigration services viewed itself, especially its mission, from one that included the care of immigrants to one that treats them all as criminals foremost. This is bad for all agencies involved, those whose mission is to find, say terrorists, foremost without regard for immigration status and those who want to deal with immigration without treating all immigrants like terrorists.

* To be clear, my own thoughts from topics discussed there.
posted by xammerboy at 6:41 PM on July 12, 2018 [6 favorites]


The G-Man Fights Back: Peter Strzok Zaps His Republican Inquisitors

Yep, this was the consensus of mainstream media and even sane conservatives.

Daily Beast (Never Trumper Rick Wilson): Republicans Thought Peter Strzok Would Be a Punching Bag. He Just Knocked Them Out

WaPo (Philip Bump): Peter Strzok just gave a hard-to-rebut defense of the objectivity of the Russia investigation’s origins

Weekly Standard (Michael Warren): Republicans Swing at Strzok and Miss
posted by chris24 at 6:47 PM on July 12, 2018 [19 favorites]


In today’s installment of Republican Law-and-Order Hypocrisy:
VIDEO: Arizona lawmaker brags to deputy about speeding

PHOENIX - A deputy's body camera video showing [Republican] State Rep. Paul Mosley bragging about how fast his car can go and how fast he drives on a regular basis “as long as it’s safe” was made public Thursday. The deputy's report indicates that Mosley also claimed legislative immunity to avoid the ticket.

Now Mosley is facing an ethics complaint filed by Rep. Mark Finchem.

The video was recorded in March when Mosley, a Republican who was elected to represent District 5 in 2016, was pulled over for speeding north of Parker.

According to ParkerLive, which posted the body camera video, Mosley was stopped by a La Paz County sheriff's deputy. The deputy said Mosley had been weaving in and out of traffic along State Route 95 -- at 97 mph. The speed limit in that area is 55 spm. According to Mosely, 97 is not all that fast for him.

"Well, I was doing 120 earlier," he told the deputy, while the video was recording. "Yeah, this goes 140. That's what I like about it. ... Yeah, I go 130, 140, 120. Yeah, I come down I-10, I was going 120 almost, you know, if there was no traffic."

...The deputy admonished Mosley about the dangers of such speeding.

“I informed Mosley that 97 mph in a 55 mph zone is considered criminal speed," according to the deputy's report as quoted by a statement from the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police. "Mosley stated he was just in a hurry to get home to surprise his family in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Mosley also told me that I should just let him go and that I shouldn’t waste anymore of my time dealing with him due to his immunity as a government official.”
Rep. Mosley is also on record saying education should not be compulsory for children, on the grounds that “education is still a privilege”.
posted by darkstar at 6:47 PM on July 12, 2018 [41 favorites]


In other "come on writers, really?" news, Chris Wallace has a post-summit interview with Putin.

State news is just skipping the middleman now.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 6:54 PM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


Robert Kagan, WaPo: Things will not be okay
Democratic alliances are unraveling, and global peace could be next.
But even Trump must know the likely response in Europe. The insults and humiliations he inflicted on allied leaders will not be forgotten or forgiven. They will make it impossible for European leaders to win public support for the spending Trump disingenuously claims to want. What German leader after such a tongue-lashing could do Trump’s bidding and hope to survive politically?

Any student of history knows that it is moments like this summit that set in motion chains of events that are difficult to stop. The democratic alliance that has been the bedrock of the American-led liberal world order is unraveling. At some point, and probably sooner than we expect, the global peace that that alliance and that order undergirded will unravel, too. Despite our human desire to hope for the best, things will not be okay. The world crisis is upon us.
posted by monospace at 7:19 PM on July 12, 2018 [24 favorites]


“Russia’s information attack against the United States during the 2016 election cycle sought to take advantage of the greater trust that Americans tend to place in local news,” NPR reports. (via Politicalwire)

The information operatives who worked out of the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg [...] created a number of Twitter accounts that posed as sources for Americans' hometown headlines.

NPR has reviewed information connected with the investigation and found 48 such accounts. They have names such as @ElPasoTopNews, @MilwaukeeVoice, @CamdenCityNews and @Seattle_Post.

Another example: The Internet Research Agency created an account that looks like it is the Chicago Daily News. That newspaper shuttered in 1978.

The Internet Research Agency-linked account was created in May 2014, and for years, it just posted local headlines, accumulating some 19,000 followers by July 2016.

Another twist: These accounts apparently never spread misinformation. In fact, they posted real local news, serving as sleeper accounts building trust and readership for some future, unforeseen effort.

"They set them up for a reason. And if at any given moment, they wanted to operationalize this network of what seemed to be local American news handles, they can significantly influence the narrative on a breaking news story,"Schafer told NPR. "But now instead of just showing up online and flooding it with news sites, they have these accounts with two years of credible history."


Local news sleeper accounts. via NPR. We're not in Kansas anymore, @Toto.
posted by petebest at 7:24 PM on July 12, 2018 [68 favorites]


Adam Jentleson [can we get Democratic party strategy (not policy, mind you) to be run exclusively by ex-Reid staffers please?], This is how Senate Democrats should try to stop Brett Kavanaugh
First, Democrats need to focus on the most important takeaway from the GOP’s refusal in 2016 to even hold a hearing for Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee: Conservatives win because they maintain unity, and progressives need to do the same. That means no hall passes get handed out on this vote.
...
Second, Senate Democrats should publicly declare that they have lined up 49 votes against Kavanaugh as quickly as possible so that they can shift into a full-court pressure campaign against their vulnerable Republican colleagues.
...
Third, Democrats should make a clear declaration that every one of Kavanaugh’s writings and public utterances must be made publicly available so that it can receive the robust public scrutiny befitting such a pivotal nomination. McConnell tipped his hand by indicating that he was concerned that Kavanaugh’s massive paper trail may be problematic — Democrats should take the hint.
...
Fourth, if Republicans reject Democrats’ requests, Democrats should force the issue by using the substantial power of the minority to grind the Senate to a halt and scuttle other Republican priorities — including funding the government when the current fiscal year ends Sept. 30 and refusing to allow confirmation of the dozens of other right-wing judges McConnell plans to confirm between now and the end of the year.
I don't have a ton of hope in stopping Kavanaugh, but if the Republicans get to relitigate Clinton's emails for years, why the hell shouldn't we use this confirmation process to relitigate the Starr Report and the worst excesses of the Bush Administration?
posted by zachlipton at 7:31 PM on July 12, 2018 [59 favorites]


Arizona lawmaker brags to deputy about speeding

So he's an illegal. Does his family now get torn apart?
posted by jetsetsc at 7:37 PM on July 12, 2018 [23 favorites]


Daily Beast, HHS Plans to Delete 20 Years of Critical Medical Guidelines Next Week
The Trump Administration is planning to eliminate a vast trove of medical guidelines that for nearly 20 years has been a critical resource for doctors, researchers and others in the medical community.

Maintained by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], part of the Department of Health and Human Services, the database is known as the National Guideline Clearinghouse [NGC], and it’s scheduled to “go dark,” in the words of an official there, on July 16.

Medical guidelines like those compiled by AHRQ aren’t something laypeople spend much time thinking about, but experts like Valerie King, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Director of Research at the Center for Evidence-based Policy at Oregon Health & Science University, said the NGC is perhaps the most important repository of evidence-based research available.

“Guideline.gov was our go-to source, and there is nothing else like it in the world,” King said, referring to the URL at which the database is hosted, which the agency says receives about 200,000 visitors per month. “It is a singular resource,” King added.
I'll reach out on Twitter, but if you happen to know any Archive Team folks who might be able to help save a copy in the next few days, ping me.
posted by zachlipton at 7:56 PM on July 12, 2018 [49 favorites]


This was partially mentioned in a quoted passage from a Politico article above, but I'd like to highlight it:

Facebook's "committee to study political bias on its platform" will be led by Jon Kyl, a former Republican Senator who is CURRENTLY WORKING FOR THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION as the "sherpa" for Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee, lobbying for support for Kavanaugh.

The Daily Beast: Silicon Valley Is Bending Over Backward to Cater to the Far Right


To examine concerns about alleged liberal bias on Facebook, "Kyl will team with the right-wing Heritage Foundation to 'get feedback directly from conservative groups and advise us on the best path forward.'"
posted by bluecore at 7:58 PM on July 12, 2018 [33 favorites]


Silicon Valley Is Bending Over Backward to Cater to the Far Right

It's pretty inarguable at this point that twitter is run by overt white supremacists. Facebook isn't that far behind, they're just more conscious about maintaining their ad revenue model.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:03 PM on July 12, 2018 [21 favorites]


David Roberts (Vox)
Any institution in the position to make editorial judgments on the basis of fact is going to come down harder on conservatives, because there are exponentially more lies coming out of the conservative movement.
- Cons have bullied institution after institution into believing (or at least acting like) coming down harder on conservatives is self-evidently bad, evidence of "bias," independently of the facts. I don't know why anyone thought Facebook would be any smarter about this.
- Conservatives have forced the same choice on institution after institution, person after person: pursue accuracy, & live w/ relentless charges of bias & partisanship, or buy some protection by pursuing "balance." One after another, they've made the wrong choice. And here we are.

---

The issue going back decades is that Rs have successfully convinced/bludgeoned the media into pursuing idealogical balance not factual balance, and one of the ideologies is based on lies and bad faith which is treated the same as the truth on the other side. And the more they get away with, the bigger the lies and worse the bad faith get.
posted by chris24 at 8:06 PM on July 12, 2018 [43 favorites]


Yeah it'll be great when Facebook et. al. are further controlled by the fascists and the unknown algorithms suddenly start only showing people right-wing propaganda fed to them from Russian troll farms. Nbd
posted by gucci mane at 8:07 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'll reach out on Twitter, but if you happen to know any Archive Team folks who might be able to help save a copy in the next few days, ping me.

Nevermind. It already got archived. They are extremely awesome.
posted by zachlipton at 8:08 PM on July 12, 2018 [43 favorites]


ELECTIONS NEWS

** 2018 Senate:
-- MO: Remington Research poll has Hawley up 48-46 on McCaskill [no MOE listed]. As FYI, Remington is a GOP shop that has been the only pollster so far to show Hawley in the lead; they had him up four points back in January. They also find a right-to-work ballot initiative failing handily.

-- MT: Another Remington Research poll has Tester up 49-46 on Rosendale [MOE: +/- 2.0%].
** 2018 House:
-- NY-19: DCCC in-house poll has Dem Delgado up 49-42 on incumbent GOPer Faso [MOE: +/- 4.2%].

-- Interesting tidbit from Enten. You've no doubt noticed that you usually only hear of internal polling that's favorable to the candidate putting it out - the trailing candidate has internals, too, they just don't put out a press release saying they are losing by 20 points. Turns out that this is reflected in the election results - there's a strong correlation since 2006 between % of internal polls released by one party, and swing to that party in seats. So far this year, 86% of internals released are from the Dems.
** Odds & ends:
-- South Carolina being sued over voting machine vulnerabilities.

-- The Massachusetts Senate has unanimously passed automatic voter registration. This bill earlier passed the House with a veto-proof majority, so it should be law even if Gov Baker vetoes.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:12 PM on July 12, 2018 [37 favorites]


News article comment sections have been the domain of that stuff forever, only nowadays with a sprinkle of bots thrown in.

It’s not just comment sections and bots. This morning on my run I watched as an older rich white man sieze hold of a conversation three older white women were having about the day and news and begin to mansplain the evils of America’s alllies getting something for nothing and charging us rent for it to boot! I live in Newport Beach, Ca, and few zip codes have benefited more from the post war economic order that placed America at the hub. And yet there he stood on the bluff overlooking Balboa Island and Newport Harbor, the Pacific Ocean stretching to Santa Catalina Island on the horizon, his face growing redder with indignation at the inequity of it all.

The air is bad out there and the people are worse.
posted by notyou at 8:15 PM on July 12, 2018 [22 favorites]


I sent an email in support of the National Guideline Clearinghouse (which until today I'd never heard of!) to just about every email I could find on the HHS website. Maybe I'm howling into the void; maybe someone will listen?
posted by reductiondesign at 8:20 PM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


Regarding the "HHS Plans to Delete 20 Years of Critical Medical Guidelines Next Week" posted upthread – a quick spot check of the contents in the Internet Archive suggest it's pretty well preserved there. It's not a replacement for guideline.gov (a lot of people probably don't even know about IA), but it's better than nothing, and it means the content won't be lost completely.

Of course, that's completely separate from this being an example of how the current administration continues to destroy everything good in the government.
posted by StrawberryPie at 8:22 PM on July 12, 2018 [6 favorites]


Jörg Colberg:
Germany’s previous FM has an idea: “If he [Trump] wants to get billions back for the US’ military expenditures, then we should ask for billions back that we have to spend on refugees resulting from failed US military interventions such as in Iraq.” (https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2018-07/sigmar-gabriel-donald-trump)
posted by chris24 at 8:29 PM on July 12, 2018 [64 favorites]


This is buried in The Sun's interview and is absolutely insane:
On our way out, we met Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly. The former US Marine Corps general took me aside and said: “I read The Sun every day. I love Britain.”
Also, @juliettekayyem: Text from calmest UK diplomat I know. Excuse the language: "we are all fuming right now. All month we’ve been preparing for tomorrow and he drops this shit right after the dinner?? Fucking ridiculous. Tomorrow will be a proper shit show now."
posted by zachlipton at 8:33 PM on July 12, 2018 [18 favorites]


Regarding the "HHS Plans to Delete 20 Years of Critical Medical Guidelines Next Week" posted upthread – a quick spot check of the contents in the Internet Archive suggest it's pretty well preserved there. It's not a replacement for guideline.gov (a lot of people probably don't even know about IA), but it's better than nothing, and it means the content won't be lost completely.

It's important to note this means that those medical guidelines will not be updated to reflect future research.
posted by I paid money to offer this... insight? at 8:37 PM on July 12, 2018 [28 favorites]


It's important to note this means that those medical guidelines will not be updated to reflect future research.

You're right, and I should have not made it seem that this (removal of the original site) was not a big deal.
posted by StrawberryPie at 8:40 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


Regarding the "HHS Plans to Delete 20 Years of Critical Medical Guidelines Next Week" posted upthread – a quick spot check of the contents in the Internet Archive suggest it's pretty well preserved there. It's not a replacement for guideline.gov (a lot of people probably don't even know about IA), but it's better than nothing, and it means the content won't be lost completely.

I dropped a link to the story to Jason Scott just in case it's not complete. We go way back, he'll see it.
posted by scalefree at 8:44 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


To precisely which Trump fiasco is the UK diplomat from Kayyem's text referring? The racist immigration shit? Or something else?
posted by Justinian at 8:46 PM on July 12, 2018


I dropped a link to the story to Jason Scott just in case it's not complete. We go way back, he'll see it.

Thanks (and sorry for getting this into derail-y territory. I'll shut up now). He's got this already.

To precisely which Trump fiasco is the UK diplomat from Kayyem's text referring? The racist immigration shit? Or something else?

From the context of the "he drops this shit right after the dinner" bit, I think it's the Sun interview in general, which dropped right toward the end of the dinner, probably dissing May as she's hosting him in particular.
posted by zachlipton at 8:49 PM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


Why even have him visit? Surely by now everyone already knows that he's going to be an arsehole wherever he goes. So what's the point of inviting him? Better off leaving him in America. Any government that isn't autocratic is going to have a terrible time when Trump turns up because he fundamentally doesn't respect them.
posted by awfurby at 8:55 PM on July 12, 2018 [10 favorites]


I'm sick of the civility stuff, too. When is somebody (besides probably Merkel) going to stand up to Trump at one of these things and shut him down? He's a gigantic baby.
posted by gucci mane at 8:58 PM on July 12, 2018 [25 favorites]


The Obama-Biden Bromance Continues. This Time in a Mystery Novel.
In the year and a half since Barack Obama left office, dozens of books have been written about his administration, including memoirs by his official photographer, stenographer, speechwriter, communications director, his foreign policy advisers and his director of national intelligence, not to mention the Obamas’ own forthcoming memoirs.

But only one book includes a scene where Obama bursts into a motorcycle gang clubhouse in Delaware, casually toting a sawed-off shotgun, to rescue Joe Biden from a mob of angry, heavily armed bikers.

“Looks like you all know who my pal is,” Biden tells his antagonists with satisfaction.

“He’s the guy who killed Bin Laden,” one of the stunned bikers says.

The unlikely scenario sprung from the twisted mind of Andrew Shaffer, author of “Hope Never Dies,” a new mystery novel starring the 44th president and his vice president as a pair of crime-busting amateur sleuths. It’s the first in a planned crime series, with Obama playing a cerebral, detached, analytical Holmes to Biden’s bumbling, impulsive Watson.
Hope Never Dies: An Obama Biden Mystery (Obama Biden Mysteries) Kindle Edition
posted by scalefree at 9:00 PM on July 12, 2018 [33 favorites]


"NATO's strategy was to mollify Trump. They began their meeting saying they agreed with him about paying more, noted that his leadership had inspired them to pay more this year than ever before, and agreed to a plan to pay more in the future. The fact that Trump responded by basically calling them deadbeats, threatening to "go it alone", and upping his ask to 4% of their GDP, strongly suggests that this is a political play."
Or the type of arsehole who went in planning to demand X, got angry when he heard everyone was planning to short-circuit his bluster by saying "yup, X is fine with us", and decided the way not to look weak was to up the ante by demanding X2.

Horses, not unicorns, people. Trump's behaviour is basically that of every shitty arsehole manager everywhere…
posted by Pinback at 9:23 PM on July 12, 2018 [13 favorites]


Amateur?!? Oh, Shaffer's probably planning for Mrs. Obama and Dr. Biden to be the professional detectives.

Vice President Joe Biden is fresh out of the Obama White House and feeling adrift when his favorite railroad conductor dies in a suspicious accident, leaving behind an ailing wife and a trail of clues. To unravel the mystery, “Amtrak Joe” re-teams with the only man he’s ever fully trusted: the 44th president of the United States.

And Diamond Joe's Trans Am cameos on the cover? Fine, purchased.
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:23 PM on July 12, 2018 [10 favorites]


It just dawned on me that if and when we fight our way out of this nightmare and manage to get a sane chief executive installed, that person is going to need to do exactly the thing Republicans harangued Obama for at the start of his presidency. They're going to have to go, hat in hand, on a massive global apology tour to beg forgiveness from every ally Trump has fucked over and insulted during his time in office.
posted by contraption at 9:31 PM on July 12, 2018 [18 favorites]


I'm sick of the civility stuff, too. When is somebody (besides probably Merkel) going to stand up to Trump at one of these things and shut him down? He's a gigantic baby.

If Brexit is going to work, Britain needs favorable trade with the U.S. When Trump tells May a soft Brexit may mean the end of their future trade deals with the U.S., he's not just being uncivil, he's threatening to tank England. If the U.S. leaves NATO, there is a real chance of Russia invading eastern Europe. European leaders have no choice but to take whatever Trump dishes out.
posted by xammerboy at 9:40 PM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


Though since he's going to be doing both of those things anyway all involved should plan for it.
posted by Artw at 9:42 PM on July 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


I shouldn't be in any way surprised, but it's disappointing to see both the Times (UK) and Telegraph report Trump's bashing. Of May approvingly and of Khan not at all, and then move on to Melanie's "glamour". Retch.
posted by ominous_paws at 9:49 PM on July 12, 2018


Of those, 22 children could not be reunited, either because their parents have criminal backgrounds or face criminal allegations

Cool. So I guess if you've done some crime at any point in your past or if you're even accused of a crime, the punishment is your children are taken from you forever. Got it.
posted by triggerfinger at 10:24 PM on July 12, 2018 [30 favorites]


And we all thought there was no Deep State. Read the thread, decide for yourselves. Mike Farb runs UnHackTheVote.

@mikefarb1 #unhackthevote

Supreme Court Justices

Religious Fundamentalists

And

Bots

Oh My!

What you weren’t taught in school about how your Gov’t works.

Thread
posted by scalefree at 11:52 PM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


A day before President Donald Trump’s arrival here, leaders of Europe’s rough-edged populist movement quietly filed into a five-star hotel in London’s Mayfair district, unnoticed by summer tourists enjoying their clotted cream.

Louis Aliot, a right-wing French politician and boyfriend of the French populist firebrand Marine Le Pen, walked through the lobby to a conference room tucked away behind the restaurant serving afternoon tea. So did Nigel Farage, the right-wing British politician and Brexit mastermind who the local tabloids say is “banned” by his government from meeting with President Donald Trump during his visit.

Ben Harris-Quinney, chairman of a prominent London conservative think tank, lingered by the concierge booth as he discussed ways Trump’s British fans can offer him a warm greeting amid planned protests and a giant inflatable diapered Trump baby set to fly over the city. “We’re trying to tell the story that there is a strong well of support,” said Harris-Quinney.

They had all come to see Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who had set up a bare war room, of sorts, in a conference room at the hotel to confer and conspire with leaders of Europe’s surging populist movement. Bannon’s goal, he said in a brief interview between meetings, is to help “contextualize Trump” for a European audience that hates him and a fiery tabloid media culture that he believes doesn’t give the American president a fair shake.

It is a reminder that Europe’s version of Trumpism is thriving — from England to France to Italy — even if Trump himself may not make much of a splash when he arrives here Thursday night.

posted by infini at 1:16 AM on July 13, 2018 [9 favorites]


It’s time for Finland to bring its referee shirt out of storage: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are coming to town.

The Finnish capital has been forced to snap out of summer vacation mode and fall back into its former role as a mediation point for world leaders as it prepares to host the U.S. and Russian presidents on Monday. But unlike past gatherings held in the name of bringing stability to Europe, this one will host two men who have thrown the Continent into disarray.

“Finns have mixed feelings about this,” said Janne Riiheläinen, a Finnish national security commentator. “We have built our image as this mediator-type country, and there is pride in being a host. But there is also fear about what Trump and Putin could agree on here.”


I just had a lunch scheduled for city center on Tuesday moved to Wednesday in case the city hasn't recovered.
posted by infini at 1:40 AM on July 13, 2018 [11 favorites]


ABC's Meredith McGraw on Trump's behavior during his inflammatory tabloid interview:
BBC interviewed the Sun reporter who said Sanders tried to end the interview but Trump “swatted her away” and “kept on talking” well beyond the allotted 10 min

His final impression: “He is unchallenged in his own organization, it’s like being in the court of a medieval emperor”
The Sun's douchey Tom Newton Dunn is revelling in Trump as the perfect tabloid interviewee.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:56 AM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


If Brexit is going to work, Britain needs favorable trade with the U.S. When Trump tells May a soft Brexit may mean the end of their future trade deals with the U.S., he's not just being uncivil, he's threatening to tank England. If the U.S. leaves NATO, there is a real chance of Russia invading eastern Europe. European leaders have no choice but to take whatever Trump dishes out.

#1: Brexit cannot work. US or no US, doesn't matter, it's unworkable. May was a fool to invite Trump in the first place, and although it is obviously a problem that Trump is stoking the Tory fire, it probably doesn't make that much of a difference.

#2: Even without the US, NATO is much stronger than Russia. The problem is more that NATO is so integrated, it will be hard to take the US out, a bit like taking the UK out of the EU.

I wonder wether the non-US NATO leaders are like the rest of us, waiting for Mueller to work his magic, and worrying that the Republicans are too corrupt to take action, even when it is proved that Trump is the Manchurian candidate.
posted by mumimor at 2:00 AM on July 13, 2018 [18 favorites]


I wonder whether it would be possible to call his bluff - ask "oh, well, when do you expect to withdraw your troops from the bases in our countries, so we can make plans?" as if we actually believed that nonsense about them defending us from TEH EVILE rather than maintaining a low-key military occupation and having staging posts around the world. Which is, let's face it, what it is.

Or actually, not call his bluff - ignoring him personally, but actively approach the U.S. embassy and military asking about their plans for withdrawal. They're hopefully still together enough to be flustered by apparently serious requests regarding politically suicidal and strategically absurd policy decisions. That would be fun.
posted by Grangousier at 2:13 AM on July 13, 2018 [7 favorites]


Britain, Time to Let Go of the ‘Anglosphere’ - The other members of this outdated idea of family couldn’t care less. (NYTimes opinion piece By Michael Kenny and Nick Pearce)
posted by mumimor at 2:26 AM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Trump to The Sun

“Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a shame.

“I think it changed the fabric of Europe and, unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was and I don’t mean that in a positive way."

“So I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad."

“I think you are losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist ten or 15 years ago.”
For UK Mefites, is is fair to say that this is saying the quiet parts quite loud in a way that say, UKIP, would usually avoid?

@Max_Fisher: I get why many in the US are focused on Trump’s slights against May, but the significance of this rhetoric within Europe is hard to overstate. Intentionally or not, it aligns neatly with the views of the European far-right. Even Marine Le Pen can be careful not to talk like this.

@SamGyimah [a Government minister: Minister for Universities, Science, Research & Innovation] : Where are your manners, Mr President?

Also, the balloon is in the air!
posted by zachlipton at 2:34 AM on July 13, 2018 [36 favorites]


For UK Mefites, is is fair to say that this is saying the quiet parts quite loud in a way that say, UKIP, would usually avoid?

No. UKIP are not that shy.
posted by Dysk at 2:43 AM on July 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


I wonder whether it would be possible to call his bluff
That's the goal I think.
Not to destabilise Europe, Europe can look after itself if it had to.
But to get the EU to start planning for a post-America world, to get Trump to actively diminish American power globally is a massive achievment for Putin.

I doubt Russia is looking to start World War 3 or invade Finland but shifting the axis of the world away from American dominance? If they can spend a chunk of change and get the UK to Brexit themselves into oblivion too, well why wouldn't they take a swing at that?
posted by fullerine at 2:48 AM on July 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


I don't think they're planning to start WW III, but I'm pretty sure they'd really like to invade all the small Eastern European countries that used to be a part of the USSR. And of course Trump wouldn't want to risk money or lives defending the Baltic states.
posted by jrochest at 3:39 AM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


For UK Mefites, is is fair to say that this is saying the quiet parts quite loud in a way that say, UKIP, would usually avoid?

No. UKIP are not that shy.


This poster, for example.

UKIP is essentially the BNP with a bigger PR budget. That said, they wouldn't be anything at all if not for the media pandering to them, either through common cause in the case of Murdoch organs, or to sell the spectacle for ratings as with the BBC.

Trump's interview is without a doubt going to embolden the NF wing of UKIP support, and result in more xenophobic assaults in the UK. Because unlike any of them he's been elected to a fairly significant position of political authority and can whitewash/normalise their bigotry.
posted by Buntix at 4:13 AM on July 13, 2018 [7 favorites]


It's kinda amazing how he's pretty much the worst at everything.

Simon Rabinovitch (The Economist)
Well, that's a bit awkward. China's trade surplus with the US has exploded since Trump took office: now at a record $294bn (on a rolling 12-month basis).
GRAPH
posted by chris24 at 4:23 AM on July 13, 2018 [28 favorites]


Peter Strzok Summoned Before Congress Again For Texts Calling Trey Gowdy ‘A Pissy Little Shithead’ (The Onion)
WASHINGTON—Following immediately on the heels of his hearing before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, FBI agent Peter Strzok was again summoned to testify before Congress Thursday about texts calling Trey Gowdy a “pissy little shithead.” “Now what exactly did you mean when you said Trey Gowdy was a ‘dickless fuck-weasel who couldn’t investigate his way out of a goddamn paper bag’?” asked Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte during an oftentimes heated exchange in which Strzok defended sending numerous text messages to former FBI attorney Lisa Page that referred to the Republican Congressman from South Carolina as a “slavering, knuckle-dragging dipshit.”

“Mr. Strzok, I have a message here from today at 11:45 a.m. in which you call Representative Gowdy a ‘reprobate fuckface whose biggest claim to fame is pissing away $8 million of taxpayer money for a dumbass, partisan circle-jerk,’ suggesting that this level of bias existed from the earliest stages of this morning’s questions. There are dozens more messages just like this, calling our distinguished colleague a ‘pointless fuckwad’ and a ‘moronic scumbag’ that I would like submitted for the record.” At press time, Goodlatte had called for Strzok to be held in contempt for refusing to answer questions about how far he believed Gowdy’s head was up his own ass.
[fake] but cathartic.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 4:26 AM on July 13, 2018 [77 favorites]


NBC: Pentagon goes into 'damage control' mode to reassure NATO allies
Hours after President Donald Trump departed NATO headquarters Thursday, U.S. military leaders embarked on a full-scale “damage control” operation with calls to their counterparts across Europe to reassure them that America will abide by its defense commitments in the region.

The outreach, directed by the Pentagon leadership, came after Trump threatened to reassess those commitments during a gathering with NATO allies in Brussels, according to multiple current and former diplomatic and military officials familiar with the calls.

The overall message from senior military officials in a series of phone calls to members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been that U.S. military bases in their countries will remain open and American troop levels in the region will not be reduced.

The Pentagon-led effort was meant to counter Trump’s withering criticism about the security alliance that rattled European leaders. “One thing you need in this alliance is predictability,” one diplomatic official said.

The direct conversations were aimed at “reinforcing alliance commitments,” after Trump “made it clear alliance commitments were on the table,” according to one U.S. official familiar with the discussions.
posted by chris24 at 4:26 AM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


For UK Mefites, is is fair to say that this is saying the quiet parts quite loud in a way that say, UKIP, would usually avoid?

Not so much. Regrettably, the British have a considerable amount of form in this area.
posted by adamgreenfield at 4:31 AM on July 13, 2018


Right now I just hope that the result of the Russia summit isn't Trump coming out saying he got a great deal selling Alaska back to the Russians for some magic fucking beans or something.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 4:32 AM on July 13, 2018 [13 favorites]


I just had a lunch scheduled for city center on Tuesday moved to Wednesday in case the city hasn't recovered.

I hear certain of the old-line Finnish restaurants in town are owned by people who share Trump's views on immigration, though he'd probably find the pyttipannu not sufficiently well-done for his taste.
posted by adamgreenfield at 4:36 AM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Greg Sargent (WaPo)
The White House won't say whether Trump's threats at NATO resulted in any further concessions by our allies, the NYT reports:
White House officials ignored requests to clarify what the president had said or offer any information on which the allies had responded to his threats with promises of more military spending.
---

And just to raise your blood pressure in frustration on Friday the 13th...

Dean Obeidallah (Daily Beast)
WATCH Hillary at Oct 19, 2016 debate warning Trump will try to break up NATO because it's on "Putin's wish list." She also predicts Putin was hacking 2016 election to help Trump win which was just confirmed by GOP led Senate Intel Committee. Like today Trump denies Russia did it:

VIDEO
posted by chris24 at 4:38 AM on July 13, 2018 [51 favorites]


people who share Trump's views on immigration

That's the leverage this administration has, wherever they go. You'll find these people even in the source countries. This mindset, however, must be balanced against his possible invitation to Putin to take whatever he wants from eastern Europe. Now, that will be a nightmare of the karhu's wide open mouth that'll counterbalance any of the attraction of anti-immigration.
posted by infini at 4:40 AM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Live feed of Trump protests [Guardian on YouTube]


@BBCJamesCook: "Inside the Trump/May relationship, including the weird detail that the US president rants to the British PM about how much he hates Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. Absorbing piece by @paulwaugh. http://bit.ly/2LgHDU9 "

Sturgeon won't be meeting Trump, and instead will be becoming the first UK Prime/First minister to march in a Pride parade
posted by Buntix at 4:43 AM on July 13, 2018 [27 favorites]


Now, that will be a nightmare of the karhu's wide open mouth that'll counterbalance any of the attraction of anti-immigration.

Because if the anti-immigration crowd are anything it’s thoughtful and consider all possible consequences of actions.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 4:51 AM on July 13, 2018


"Inside the Trump/May relationship, including the weird detail that the US president rants to the British PM about how much he hates Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon."

Scotland feels the same. From the national paper The Scotsman:

A denunciation of Donald Trump: The 45th US President is an appalling human being
Donald Trump, due to arrive in the UK later today, is a racist, a serial liar, and either a sex abuser or someone who falsely brags about being one in the apparent belief that this will impress other men in a metaphorical “locker room”. ...
---

Mark Leggatt (Scottish author)
This is in a Scottish national newspaper, The Scotsman. Unprecedented in 193 years of daily publishing.
Print version screenshot
posted by chris24 at 4:56 AM on July 13, 2018 [88 favorites]


Because if the anti-immigration crowd are anything it’s thoughtful and consider all possible consequences of actions.

The fear of the bear has been with them since before immigration of any note began in Finland. Its even less based on logical thought.
posted by infini at 5:05 AM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Orange Baby blimp via Reuters, for the Twitter-allergic.

Subtler and better than expected. More funny.

Ah, I remember when this disaster was more funny. Good times.
posted by petebest at 5:08 AM on July 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


From Harry Leslie Smith, "Survivor of the Great Depression, RAF veteran Activist for the Welfare State":
There will be no violence, and no destruction of property. There will only be from thousands, the steely determination that fascism must be defeated before all of our lives can return to normal. Be strong and know, we beat fascism before and we can do it again. #TrumpUKVisit
Go Harry!!!
posted by jgirl at 5:08 AM on July 13, 2018 [39 favorites]


From the Huffington Post UK piece that James Cook tweeted about: What's It Like To Be In The Room With Donald Trump? How Theresa May Deals With The Deal-Making President
“So, have ya Brexited yet?” Blunt, folksy and utterly unconventional, the question down the phone line to Theresa May was pure Trump. As an icebreaker, it is hardly an easy opener for a woman whose entire premiership has been created, and dominated by, the UK leaving the European Union.[...]

And what’s just as surprising is that Trump has used this opening line not just once, but several times since he entered the White House.

“It’s like Groundhog day, like you’ve never met him before,” one former staffer said. “It’s not like the usual small talk. It’s every time he starts the call. Everyone rolls their eyes as if to say ‘you know nothing’, but of course Theresa just sidesteps it.”[...]

When Trump and May met over lunch in the White House [in January 2017], a strange exchange unfolded. The President was on script, telling her how pleased he was to have her visit, because his Scottish mother loved the Queen and loved the UK.

But then, according to one eye-witness, Trump’s National Security Adviser, Mike Flynn, tried to ease the conversation by mentioning that other leaders had wanted to be the first through the door. Vladimir Putin was among them. This prompted Trump to say: “You didn’t tell me that. Why not?” He then proceeded to harangue the former general, while May and her team looked on, amazed.

“It was jaw dropping, the whole thing, from beginning to end,” one former insider says. “It’s like pinning a jelly to wall. He has got no attention span, in fact I thought he had some kind of ADHD by the time we left. He was all over the place. And his team are so subservient to him, yes sir, no sir. It was pathetic, grown men like [Mike] Pence acting like puppies.

“Trying to have consistent conversations was difficult. It was like the Little Britain sketch where he would wander and then suddenly you were ‘back in the room’.”
And Trump's endless grievances and bad behavior furnish this lengthy article with numerous examples (from anonymous leakers, of course).
One former staffer says an example is the way the President continually takes up valuable phone time attacking the Scottish First Minister. She has made clear her loathing of his politics, and her predecessor fell out with Trump over his golf course developments.

“He totally hates Nicola Sturgeon. He spends lots of his time bitching about Sturgeon. He loathes Salmond too. But why spend so much time talking about Sturgeon in a phone call with Theresa May?”

Some of May’s former staff think she can be too accommodating at times. During the general election campaign he launched at Twitter attack on London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

“I felt she should really strongly have backed Sadiq then and said he was wrong,” the staffer says.

“And she didn’t and it really frustrates me because Trump values that sort of thing, who values strength. He likes the pitched battle in a sense, that’s what he respects. She sort of fudged it, I think that’s wrong domestically but also in terms of the way you deal with him.”
The Number 10 insiders try to put a brave face on this by saying May "doesn’t let it bother her" and "just brushes it off", but those stoic tactics have never worked with Trump.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:14 AM on July 13, 2018 [19 favorites]


Scotland feels the same. From the national paper The Scotsman...

Oh hell YES, Scotland. Goddamn it, I am proud of the land of my ancestors today. That right there is the good stuff. Thanks, this is what I needed with my coffee this morning.
posted by lazaruslong at 5:24 AM on July 13, 2018 [16 favorites]


“I guess when they put out blimps to make me feel unwelcome, no reason for me to go to London,” he told the Sun newspaper. “I used to love London as a city. I haven’t been there in a long time. But when they make you feel unwelcome, why would I stay there?”

Finally, a use for GW Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner.
posted by nikaspark at 5:26 AM on July 13, 2018 [32 favorites]


Cornell Law School Is Exploring the Possibility of Suing Individual ICE Officers
The Attorney IO report—assembled in collaboration with three former Supreme Court clerks and law professors at Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Georgetown and Penn Law—noted how an “implied Bivens-style damages action” could be taken against individual officers. The 1983 Supreme Court decision in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics held federal officers responsible for paying out monetary damages in the event of constitutional violations.

“This has huge ramifications for individual ICE employees,” said the report. “The Bivens decision said that while the government has certain immunities, individual officers may be sued personally for violating people’s constitutional rights. In such cases, the officers themselves would have to pay money damages and not their employer (ICE).”
posted by lazaruslong at 6:07 AM on July 13, 2018 [78 favorites]




And yes, that's the one that was recorded.
posted by Devonian at 6:17 AM on July 13, 2018 [41 favorites]


"Headlines"
posted by infini at 6:21 AM on July 13, 2018




I believe it's Mr. Brexit.

And since he doesn't know or care anything about it, it therefore must reference that other stuff. Steve Russia and the Mercer Analytica Putin Money Boys.
posted by petebest at 6:31 AM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


And Cadwalladr's next tweet includes a graph that is perfectly arranged! A pet peeve of mine is that news orgs often scramble up their graphs (to make them seem more complex and impressive or something?) but look at this beauty!
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 6:37 AM on July 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


Trump & Brexit are not 2 different things. They are the same thing. Same companies. Same data. Same Facebook. Same Russians. Same Cambridge Analytica. Same Robert Mercer. Same Steve Bannon. Same Breitbart. Same Alexander Nix. Same Donald Trump. Same Nigel Farage.

When the definitive history of twenty-first century information operations is written, this will be the sole and only case study.

I mean, why look further? Rarely if ever in the history of nations has there been such wildly disproportionate return on investment. We are witnessing a landmark event in the history of asymmetric warfare. It would almost be fascinating — if, that is, just like that other kind of shock and awe, it didn't produce real human suffering, on a scale almost too great to measure.
posted by adamgreenfield at 6:40 AM on July 13, 2018 [32 favorites]


Oh good lord, the reports of Trump's batshit nonsense at the joint press conference with May weren't exaggerating.

The Toronto Star's Daniel Dale is live-tweeting/fact-checking it, for his sins. Here are some highlights so far:
—Trump is asked to elaborate on how immigrants have damaged the "culture" of Europe. He says: "I think it's been very bad for Europe...Europe is a place I know very well and I think what has happened is very tough...you see the same terror attacks that I do."

Trump doesn't explain what he meant by "culture." He says: "I know it's politically not necessarily correct to say that, but I'll say it, and I'll say it loud. I think they better watch themselves, because they are changing culture."

—Trump: "We've become an oil exporter, which wouldn't have happened under the past regime or a new regime if it weren't us." The U.S. has official data on oil exports going back 100 years. It's still not a net exporter.

—For the 45th time, Trump falsely claims, of China, "We're behind, every year, for many years, $500 billion." The U.S. has never once had a $500 billion trade deficit with China. It was $337 billion last year.

—Standing beside May, Trump repeats, "Boris Johnson I think would be a great prime minister." He says he also said May herself is doing a "fantastic job."

—For the 9th time, Trump falsely claims the EU won't take American farm products. (The U.S. sold $11.6 billion in agricultural products to the EU last year.) For the 20th time, Trump falsely claims the trade deficit with the EU is $151 billion. ($102 billion including services.)

—Trump on his Brexit advice to May: "I think she found it maybe too brutal."

—Trump adds new imaginary details - "at the 9th hole, overlooking the ocean" - to his total lie about being in Scotland the day before Brexit and predicting it. (He wasn't in Scotland until the day after, didn't predict it the day before.) Says we all probably remember this.

—Trump cites his smart scientist uncle in saying he has a good understanding of nuclear proliferation: "I understand nuclear. Look up Dr. John Trump at MIT...I used to talk nuclear with him."
In a classic Trumpian response to the narcissistic injury of the UK protests, he's humiliating his hosts and spouting self-aggrandizing bullshit. Meanwhile, he's clearly decompensating.
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:43 AM on July 13, 2018 [58 favorites]


Cornell Law School Is Exploring the Possibility of Suing Individual ICE Officers

This was better than morning sex.

So can we also sue Donald J. Trump for just...everything?
posted by schadenfrau at 6:59 AM on July 13, 2018 [16 favorites]


Cornell Law School Is Exploring the Possibility of Suing Individual ICE Officers

Can they do cops next?
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 6:59 AM on July 13, 2018 [12 favorites]


He calls his own administration a regime. I mean, it looks like he called past presidential administrations “regimes”, too. It’s a small thing, but linguistically unsettling.
posted by erisfree at 7:05 AM on July 13, 2018 [37 favorites]


He's BAAAack

Sacha Baron Cohen hits back at Sarah Palin as Roy Moore admits being duped (Benjamin Lee, Guardian)
A character of Sacha Baron Cohen’s has responded to Sarah Palin’s claim that she was exploited, calling it “FAKE NEWS”.

The former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate called the comedian “evil, exploitative and sick” in a Facebook post on 10 July after he duped her into an interview for his new show Who Is America?

In response, Cohen has posted a letter on Twitter as a new, previously unrevealed character, Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr, PhD, who runs the site Truthbrary.org.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:05 AM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


Unless Sacha Baron Cohen shows he's pranked Trump, his aides, or his cronies, these previews of his coming programme are less than tantalizing. Palin and Cheney—while still awful people who belong in prison—are yesterday's news.
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:14 AM on July 13, 2018 [11 favorites]


Christina Wilkie: Trump: "I don't take questions from CNN. Fake news. Let's go to John Roberts of Fox. A real network."

Remember when every news network stood up for FOX and made Obama call on them like they were a legitimate news organization?

CNN deserves this. They worked harder than anyone to elect him.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:15 AM on July 13, 2018 [35 favorites]


@gelles
BREAKING: Rod Rosenstein is holding a press conference at 11:45a for a "law enforcement announcement"
posted by Artw at 7:16 AM on July 13, 2018 [11 favorites]


Ok I’m actually excited for Cohen’s new show now. From the article Johnny Wallflower posted:
Palin had claimed Cohen disguised himself as a “disabled US veteran” during the interview before she walked out.

“I did NOT say I was a War Vet,” the letter reads. “I was in the service – not military, but United Parcel and I only fought for my country once – when I shot a Mexican who came onto my property.”
I burst out laughing, but it was the kind of sound you make when you realize that our most ridiculous satirists can’t keep up with reality. Like that...that needs a fake tag, now.

Oh man. That show is going to start out hilarious and then get real, real dark.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:18 AM on July 13, 2018 [16 favorites]


Daily Beast: Jill Stein’s Recount Cash Pays for Her Russia Legal Defense

That's Magnificent-Bastard-level grift right there.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:20 AM on July 13, 2018 [57 favorites]


That's Magnificent-Bastard-level grift right there.

A blind man in New Jersey saw that one coming.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 7:21 AM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


—Trump cites his smart scientist uncle in saying he has a good understanding of nuclear proliferation: "I understand nuclear. Look up Dr. John Trump at MIT...I used to talk nuclear with him."

Trump, visit MIT.

I fucking dare you.

Do a town hall in 26-100.
posted by ocschwar at 7:23 AM on July 13, 2018 [27 favorites]


Trump on his Brexit advice to May: "I think she found it maybe too brutal."

This whole section of the press conference (it was the only bit I saw, because I couldn't really stomach any more) was terrifying. Trump kept repeating how his advice was too tough and brutal for Theresa May to accept, but she's coming round to it, she's coming round to it, while not actually ever elaborating on what his horrible proposals actually were, so we can all sit here and imagine them instead.

And to be honest I don't want to imagine anything anymore or ever again.
posted by dng at 7:26 AM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


@gelles
BREAKING: Rod Rosenstein is holding a press conference at 11:45a for a "law enforcement announcement"


Matt Ford @fordm:
This is virstually identical to how DOJ phrased it when Rosenstein announced Mueller's indictments of Russian nationals in February.

[not getting my hopes up or anything, but maybe thinking about what ill be getting wasted on if its one of the trump children - except tiffany, she doesnt deserve that]
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 7:26 AM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


Johnny Wallflower: In response, Cohen has posted a letter on Twitter as a new, previously unrevealed character, Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr, PhD, who runs the site Truthbrary.org.

Ha ha ha ... oh fuck, here's where we get in trouble with parodying the far right - Crooked Hillary looks a lot like normal extremist nonsense with GIFs sent in emails by your rabid anti-Hillary relatives.

In other news: FBI To Start Using A 2nd Database For Gun Background Checks (NPR, July 13, 2018)
A major change which aims to keep more weapons out of the wrong hands is in the works for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's gun background check process.

Examiners will be given access to a large, previously untapped database of more than 400 million records as they determine when gun purchases can go through nationwide.
...
The FBI's plans for change are spelled out in reports and meeting minutes from its Criminal Justice Information Services Advisory Policy Board from December 2016 to June 2018. The board has been conducting a pilot program using the N-DEx database and called it "valuable in providing information" before the waiting period ran out. It's not clear when the FBI will begin implementing the new plan, but the process is expected to take anywhere from nine months to two years. The N-DEx database will serve as a secondary search once a red flag is found in the NICS system, as was the case with [white supremacist, Dylann Roof].
We have enough guns to go around already, why not extend the waiting period so a thorough check of everyone is possible? And while we're at it, let's make domestic violence a HUGE FUCKING RED FLAG.

Congressional Republicans Struggle To Push Back On Trump's Tariffs (NPR, July 13, 2018)
Congressional Republicans are growing increasingly worried that President Trump is on the verge of a trade war with China. But they're also realizing there's almost nothing they can do to stop him.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., put it bluntly during an event at the Economic Club of Washington on Thursday.

"You would have to pass a law to say don't raise those tariffs and the president would have to sign that law," Ryan said. "That's not going to happen."

Republicans were already worried that allies like the European Union, Canada and Mexico have already begun to retaliate for U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Now they say they fear even more blowback as the Trump administration imposed another $200 billion in tariffs on goods from China.

The Senate voted 88-11 to constrain presidential authority to use national security as justification for taxing foreign goods, but the measure was nonbinding. While some in Congress are agitating for even stronger responses, most admit there's virtually nothing they can do to stop Trump from waging a trade war.
*cough* impeachment *cough*
posted by filthy light thief at 7:26 AM on July 13, 2018 [40 favorites]


Daily Beast: Jill Stein’s Recount Cash Pays for Her Russia Legal Defense

That's Magnificent-Bastard-level grift right there.
In June, The Daily Beast reported that the the U.S. Green Party candidate’s campaign, which raised $7.3 million for recounts in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, had in 2017 stopped disclosing its monthly spending with the Federal Election Commission. Later that month, the Jill Stein for President committee filed a slew of reports that reveal spending on lawyers who are not trying to get inside any voting machines.

At the end of May 2018, according to the most recent FEC filing, the Stein campaign paid the “Partnership for Civil Justice” $66,441.60; that is on top of a $31,536 payment made in January, and more than the Stein campaign had in cash on hand by November 2016.
...
In May 2018, the Stein campaign also paid $9,325 in attorney fees to Miller & Chevalier. In August 2017, Politico described it as “a boutique firm in Washington” that had taken on the case of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman. Manafort, accused of by special counsel Robert Mueller of money laundering, is currently in jail.

Stein has not been accused of any wrongdoing with respect to the various Russia investigations, but she has drawn attention from investigators for, among other things, her attendance at a December 2015 party in Moscow celebrating the 10th anniversary of state broadcaster RT. There she dined with Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser whom Mueller indicted for making false statements.

In December 2017, Senate investigators requested documents from the Stein campaign as part of its own look into Russian government interference in the last presidential election. Stein has largely complied.
...
While retaining legal counsel is Stein’s right, it is also not a recount, the justness of which may be left for those gave to that cause to decide.

In a November 28 press release, the Stein campaign assured such donors that “recount funds are being held in a dedicated account, separate from Stein’s Presidential campaign treasury, and will be used to pay for all costs associated with the recounts.”
posted by filthy light thief at 7:33 AM on July 13, 2018 [12 favorites]


Jill Stein’s Recount Cash Pays for Her Russia Legal Defense

This bit made me curious:
Though all recounts were terminated by the end of 2016, the Stein campaign continued litigating in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where it seeks access to the source code used by the states’ proprietary voting machines.
So is the source code supposed to be fully opened to the public or is Stein hoping to have it for herself (and by extension whoever she chooses to share it with)? Are there any law-talking people that know how to interpret these cases or get more information on them?
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:36 AM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


For a bit of comic relief, the German satire programme ZDF Heute-Show has Photoshopped photos of Trump's UK visit and switched images of him with the Trump Baby Blimp. The results are hilarious.
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:44 AM on July 13, 2018 [53 favorites]


I'm sick of the civility stuff, too. When is somebody (besides probably Merkel) going to stand up to Trump at one of these things and shut him down? He's a gigantic baby.

I was hoping that Queen Elizabeth or possibly Putin would laugh in his face and take him down. Probably wouldn't happen for reasons of politeness.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:45 AM on July 13, 2018


"You would have to pass a law to say don't raise those tariffs and the president would have to sign that law," Ryan said. "That's not going to happen."

You could pass it with veto-proof majorities if you wanted, but that requires voting with Democrats and actually pushing back on Trump, so "That's not going to happen."
posted by jason_steakums at 7:46 AM on July 13, 2018 [32 favorites]


So is the source code supposed to be fully opened to the public or is Stein hoping to have it for herself (and by extension whoever she chooses to share it with)?

Publicizing the ES&S and Diebold DRE machines' source code would be an enormous public benefit that I would consider roughly in keeping with the intent of the donation I made. As far as sharing it with unnamed nefarious actors. I am 100% sure they already have it**. The only people who don't have it are us.

(** Not based on published evidence, just my understanding of how spies work, what they want, and how easy it would be to infiltrate those companies.)
posted by M-x shell at 7:57 AM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


I was hoping that Queen Elizabeth or possibly Putin would laugh in his face and take him down. Probably wouldn't happen for reasons of politeness.

Oh, I suspect that Queen Elizabeth could throw him major shade, she'll just do it in such a way that only the clever people in the room know that that's what she's donig.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:01 AM on July 13, 2018 [14 favorites]


Probably wouldn't happen for reasons of politeness.

I mean. The guy still controls the US military and has an insane amount of power to just generally fuck shit up because he feels like it. The trade war is already not so great; he could absolutely unilaterally take it from "this will be a permanent injury" to "everything is now on actual fire."

So I'm sort of ok with world leaders continuing to humor him if it minimizes the ongoing damage, even if it's just because they have to look out for themselves. Plus... it's also not really their job to stand up to him.

That's our job.

Speaking of which...I think contraption asked about union shops that make blimps? This article says the union rat was made by Big Sky Balloons, who appear to do a lot of rat-based business.

Fuck it, I'm calling them.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:01 AM on July 13, 2018 [26 favorites]


They are, uh, not open to it.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:03 AM on July 13, 2018 [26 favorites]


Who makes the giant rubber ducks? Maybe they'd be open to making 'baby' balloons. It's an open source pattern, right?
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:10 AM on July 13, 2018


Black voters exist in the Midwest. Democrats, ignore us at your peril.
The bottom line is this: Progressives of color can win in the Midwest precisely because they exist in numbers large enough to do so. And where they don’t, it’s helpful to remember that political outcomes aren’t written in the stars. They’re authored on the ground and subject to a thousand different daily influences.

It’s as good a time as any, then, as so many look out on an economic landscape that threatens to leave them futureless, for candidates to push left and argue forcefully for bringing the walls of American racism and oligarchy crashing down.

The road to discovering this is, ironically enough, the same one Duckworth suggests. As she said in that same much-discussed interview, “You need to be able to talk to the industrial Midwest, you need to listen to the people there.” The Midwest’s black and Latino voters have plenty to say.

posted by tonycpsu at 8:12 AM on July 13, 2018 [42 favorites]


Ha ha ha ... oh fuck, here's where we get in trouble with parodying the far right - Crooked Hillary looks a lot like normal extremist nonsense with GIFs sent in emails by your rabid anti-Hillary relatives.

The site is virtually indistinguishable from Breitbart/Infowars/Tucker Carlson stuff.

I'm not sure even Cohen is a talented enough satirist to slice it thin enough for that to work.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:13 AM on July 13, 2018 [12 favorites]


His final impression: “He is unchallenged in his own organization, it’s like being in the court of a medieval emperor”

I have consistently found this is the most useful predictive tool. If Trump were a medieval king dealing with Parliament, what would he try to do?
posted by corb at 8:29 AM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


“Medicare-for-all” means something. Don’t let moderates water it down. - Tim Higginbotham and Chris Middleman, Vox. They are organizers with the Democratic Socialists for Medicare for All campaign.
Centrists want to co-opt the phrase and apply it to something weaker than a single-payer system.
...
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat 10-term House Democrat Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th District — the political upset of the year — in part because she championed Medicare-for-all (in addition to free college tuition and a jobs guarantee, among other progressive policies).

Immediately, some pundits began to try their best to explain her victory in a light most favorable to moderate liberals.

Part of their agenda involved watering down what “Medicare-for-all” means. It is very important that Medicare-for-all advocates resist these efforts and clarify exactly what we’re fighting for.
...
Let there be no doubt — Medicare-for-all is a universal, public program that would provide comprehensive medical care to all American residents, totally free at the point of use. Any attempt by pundits or lobbyists to muddy the waters around this proposal is an obvious attempt to co-opt the campaign’s momentum with an eye toward weakening future legislation and protecting the interests of health-industry profiteers.

Ocasio-Cortez’s moral clarity on the campaign trail worked to great effect with New York City voters. Medicare-for-all reflects that resolute vision, one in which our common well-being and dignity take obvious precedence over the profits of a few. For millions of American voters, there’s nothing ambiguous about it.
'People over profits' versus 'profits over people'.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:37 AM on July 13, 2018 [41 favorites]




Ocasio-Cortez just endorsed Zephyr Teachout for New York AG. I would really like to see Teachout pick up some momentum so she can get the nom. Her stated goal of bringing action against Trump for violations of the emoluments clause may sound wonky to casual observers, but I honestly believe it may be the best possible chance to take Trump down. Going after Capone for his taxes was wonky, too, but it worked.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:42 AM on July 13, 2018 [12 favorites]


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat 10-term House Democrat Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th District — the political upset of the year — in part because she championed Medicare-for-all (in addition to free college tuition and a jobs guarantee, among other progressive policies).

Somewhat pedantic, but I think they're better off using the phrase "tuition-free college" versus "free college tuition" in terms of getting your average person on board with the idea.
posted by schoolgirl report at 8:43 AM on July 13, 2018 [12 favorites]



Here's the CSPAN link to watch Rosenstein's press conference.

Or here, justice.gov/live
posted by slipthought at 8:44 AM on July 13, 2018


"Tuition-free" makes it sound like you don't have any lessons.
posted by dng at 8:45 AM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


"Tuition-free" makes it sound like you don't have any lessons.

You mean it makes it sound like a cut-rate college? Hmm, I don't see that, but interesting take.
posted by schoolgirl report at 8:47 AM on July 13, 2018


listening to the background audio from the DOJ link, someone is doing a remote, discussing that there's an indictment coming from the Magistrate's office. I need some good news on Grand Jury Friday!
posted by mikelieman at 8:49 AM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


"Tuition-free" makes it sound like you don't have any lessons.

I think this is a reference to the British-English usage of tuition to mean tutoring?
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 8:49 AM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


I suspect that Queen Elizabeth could throw him major shade

I want to point out that the Queen has met privately with almost every major world leader since 1953. Certainly all the leaders of Commonwealth countries, and every U.S. president.

Shame she has to go out on this wanker, though.
posted by Grangousier at 8:50 AM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Jake Tapper: #URGENT: New indictment/s expected in Mueller probe

CNN: Prosecutors from Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office and the Justice Department’s National Security Division visited the courtroom of a federal magistrate judge in DC this a.m. to return a grand jury indictment.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:51 AM on July 13, 2018 [14 favorites]


per @peterwalker99
"Melania Trump's press secretary is insisting Donald Trump *did* predict Brexit day before the vote, when it's not in dispute that he did it the day after, and that he lies about it.

There's dozens of videos showing him arriving on 24 June.

These are curious times we live in."

----
quoting: @StephGrisham45: He did. It actually is true. I was there. June 23.
----
She also said: "Nope. I have photos. I also have a newspaper from the morning after Brexit. I remember sitting in a pub the night before, watching the results come in."


====
From @carolecadwalla: "British Twitter!
Trump-Russia Twitter is losing its mind over this. It may be..it could be...don't get your hopes up...indictment time (4.45pm)"

Not that the Russian cy-ops people necessarily known anything we don't, but if anyone was likely to...
posted by Buntix at 8:51 AM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


While we wait with bated breath for Rosenstein press conference, I just want to say the new Sacha Baron Cohen show looks extremely promising because it appears he got not only the deplorables of yesteryear (Palin and Cheney) but also e.g., Sheriff Joe.
posted by Aubergine at 8:51 AM on July 13, 2018 [9 favorites]




I think this is a reference to the British-English usage of tuition to mean tutoring

It does, sorry. I didn't know of the American usage, so it sounded like describing something as meat-free (meatless) rather than free meat (costless). (I wasn't trying to be irritating)
posted by dng at 8:57 AM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


the hot mics/journalist comments are interesting - I cant hear it all so its just occassional chuckles and "what else is new?"

Got to say that this overshadowing Trumps meeting with the Queen is extra sweet.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 8:57 AM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


Ok that was hilarious - i think its Pete Williams doing a live broadcast and just said "though my colleagues in the press room are listening to me hoping i know something . . . [devolves into laughter]"

couple more minutes
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 8:59 AM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


It seems pretty telling that the American meaning of tuition is "the money you pay for education" and the British meaning is "education".
posted by runcibleshaw at 9:00 AM on July 13, 2018 [31 favorites]


There were hints that it was a new Mueller indictment to be announced. And it is. More soon.

It's about damn time
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:01 AM on July 13, 2018


Background chatter in the room says 12 Russian intelligence officers being indicted.
posted by Tabitha Someday at 9:01 AM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


yeah, they just read the whole thing out and then said "wait when is it embargoed until? when he walks on stage?"
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 9:01 AM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]




I hear a voice I recognize... a CNN guy though I can't place it... talking about indictments for the Russians hacking the DNC and releasing it through Guccifer. I don't know if that's his speculation or a source or what.

or what Tabitha said.
posted by Justinian at 9:01 AM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Folks, the liveblogging does not work here. Please save up your comments until you have something understandable to people who aren’t watching.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:02 AM on July 13, 2018 [20 favorites]


12 Russian intelligence officials charged with hacking into DNC and HRC campaign and disseminating info.

And yet, Trump will still come out of his meeting with Putin saying "He said they didn't do it and I believe him".
posted by schoolgirl report at 9:04 AM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Josh Marshall: think theres a non-trivial chance theyre waiting to announce charges until trumps photo op is done (not kidding)

we may be waiting longer.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 9:04 AM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


12 Russian intelligence officials charged with hacking into DNC and HRC campaign and disseminating info.

OK, if the cat's out of the bag, I'm heading to MeFi Chat for live-blogging and reactions.
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:05 AM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


And yet, Trump will still come out of his meeting with Putin saying "He said they didn't do it and I believe him".

Well, you know how the law works, innocent until pardoned, and all that.
posted by dng at 9:06 AM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


12 Russian intelligence officials charged with hacking into DNC and HRC campaign and disseminating info.

Wake me when they charge 12 Russian intelligence officials with hacking into RNC campaign and not disseminating info.
posted by M-x shell at 9:07 AM on July 13, 2018 [9 favorites]


The info that this was about the Russians was embargoed. A DOJ guy came out and told the reporters that the livestream viewers heard Pete Williams' hot mic the info early so they are lifting the embargo. So apparently we livestream viewers did a bad thing. Heh.

The news about the Russians is breaking on TV right now, in the middle of Trump meeting the Queen. He is going to be so angry and I love it.
posted by Justinian at 9:09 AM on July 13, 2018 [40 favorites]


Indictment is confirming that "Guccifer 2.0" and "DC Leaks" was the Russian GRU. A whole lot of people promoted and interacted with those accounts both publicly and later we learned privately, including Don Jr. and Roger Stone. And Sean Hannity. And Julian Assange.

Also includes a weird statement that the outcome of the election was not affected. Hard to see how they could know that given the widespread affect of the hacked information. Looks like a sop to Trump that he's immediately going to pounce on.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:13 AM on July 13, 2018 [35 favorites]


Roger Stone was talking to the GRU. Roger Stone was talking to the GRU, people.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:15 AM on July 13, 2018 [50 favorites]


Well, not Jr or Jared, but by showing he's investigated and confirmed enough for multiple indictments that Russian agents hacked DNC/HRC Mueller really smacks down the conspiracy theory on the right that Russia didn't really do it and that it was an inside job. The whole "they never let the FBI have the server", "Seth Rich!", "DWS's Pakistani computer guy!" thing.
posted by chris24 at 9:16 AM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


The indictment stating that there is no allegation in the indictment that the outcome was affected isn't the same as the indictment alleging that the outcome was not affected. It's a precise statement meaning that the indictment takes no position on whether the outcome was affected. And leaves room for a later indictment to make that allegation (though I would not ever expect that to happen outside of literally changing vote counts).
posted by Justinian at 9:19 AM on July 13, 2018 [26 favorites]




Meanwhile, in the UK, Buzzfeed's Mark Di Stefano reports, "The Queen has now been waiting more than 10 minutes." Trump obviously has no clue how unpardonably rude this is—or if he does, then he wants to the UK to hate him even more.
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:22 AM on July 13, 2018 [42 favorites]


Rosenstein did a bit of a sermon at the end about DoJ following the rule of law, presuming innocence until someone is proved guilty, and how we should all be Americans right now, not Republicans or Democrats. I’m having trouble parsing the subtext to work out if he meant “we’re not coming to save you, sorry,” or “GOP, please get your shit together.”
posted by Andrhia at 9:26 AM on July 13, 2018 [9 favorites]


Meanwhile, in the UK, Buzzfeed's Mark Di Stefano reports, "The Queen has now been waiting more than 10 minutes." Trump obviously has no clue how unpardonably rude this is—or if he does, then he wants to the UK to hate him even more.

No shit. He can trash-talk any politician he likes, but this... I hope the smoke alarms in the white House have fresh batteries.
posted by Devonian at 9:27 AM on July 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


Tell me this is related - that Trump is obsessively refreshing Twitter and watching cable news about the indictments, and his staff is fidgeting because the Queen is waiting? Too delicious to be true. I hope the corgis bite his ankles when he shows up, though.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:27 AM on July 13, 2018 [18 favorites]


The other thing about him keeping the Queen waiting - she is standing, so they come on the same footing of equality to the meeting, neither more important than the other. His trying to show her how important he is that he can make the Queen wait also means he is making an elderly woman wait in 80 degree heat. Even if you don’t like royalty, it’s rude by any standards.
posted by corb at 9:27 AM on July 13, 2018 [66 favorites]


Holy cow, from the indictment: "On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for U.S Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate's opponent."
posted by schoolgirl report at 9:28 AM on July 13, 2018 [76 favorites]


Daniel Newhauser (National Journal): NEWS: As Rosenstein announces indictments, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows is filing a motion to impeach him for DOJ noncompliance, source tells me
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:29 AM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


Meanwhile, in the UK, Buzzfeed's Mark Di Stefano reports, "The Queen has now been waiting more than 10 minutes."

BBC live feed had him arriving on time. Her arrival to the dias beforehand was protocol, and approx 5/6 mins beforehand, not 10.
posted by infini at 9:29 AM on July 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


At least one Congressional candidate (not known if they are a sitting Rep or Senator) directly requested stolen material.

Also: Your reminder that the DCCC stolen materials were not broadly released. Midterms are four months from now.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:29 AM on July 13, 2018 [27 favorites]




please be Paul Ryan please be Paul Ryan
posted by azpenguin at 9:37 AM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


At least one Congressional candidate (not known if they are a sitting Rep or Senator) directly requested stolen material.

Twenty bucks says their name starts with "D" and ends with "ana Rohrabacher."
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:37 AM on July 13, 2018 [48 favorites]


Josh Barro (BI)
Interesting -- this indictment is being transferred from Mueller to the National Security Division of DOJ. This means it's another thing you can't disrupt by firing Mueller.
posted by chris24 at 9:38 AM on July 13, 2018 [68 favorites]


Now, Kaloyeros is going to jail for handing the money straight to Cuomo’s largest campaign donors.

Related-not-related, a friend of mine works in local news. His description of Cuomo's off-camera behavior toward female reporters is not flattering. Cuomo can't get shitcanned fast enough.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:39 AM on July 13, 2018 [10 favorites]




Go read that tweet that scalefree posted above:

Supreme Court Justices
Religious Fundamentalists
And
Bots
Oh My!
What you weren’t taught in school about how your Gov’t works.
Thread

Who appoints our Supreme Court? The President?

Or a Catholic fundamentalist who controls a network of right-wing groups funded by dark money?
A few days ago our colleague @AltDIA made an interesting discovery. An apparent botnet of Twitter accounts tweeting identical messages: "As a Hoosier, I'm calling on @SenDonnelly to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court." You can see this botnet in action here [photo].

We thought this was unusual, and somewhat disturbing. A Twitter botnet lobbying for a Supreme Court nominee? Is this really what our Democracy has com to? We had a closer look at the image in these tweets. JCN? Judicial Crisis Network? Who are these people?

A quick search of Twitter led to this interesting bit of research by @RobertMaguire_
@RobertMaguire_ Within minutes of Trump's announcement of Neil Gorsuch's nomination last year, the dark money group Judicial Crisis Network launched a site called http://ConfirmGorsuch.com .
Looks like someone has sites ready to go for tonight's announcement as well. Apparently someone had already set up several websites in support of conservative judicial contenders. On July 9th these sites were all in "maintenance" mode:
confirmkethledge.com for Raymond Kethledge
confirmbarrett.com for Amy Coney Barrett
confirmhardiman.com for Thomas Hardiman
confimkavanaugh.com for Brett Kavanaugh
As soon as Kavanaugh's nomination was announced, his site went "live". And sure enough there is a link to Judicial Crisis Network at the bottom of the page. [photo]

Justice Kennedy announced his resignation on June 27. Did Judicial Crisis Network set up these domains and websites that quickly? How far in advance was this planned? We were curious, so we checked the dates of the domain registrations and hosting.

Turns out this was planned LONG ago.

The Confirm Kavanaugh domain was purchased in February 2017. The Confirm Kethledge and Confirm Hardiman domains were purchased even earlier - in December 2016! Hosting was set up for those three domains in May of 2017. Confirm Barrett was purchased and hosted in November of 2017.

Guess it always pays to be prepared. You never know when a Supreme Court vacancy might be up for grabs.

Can seats on the Supreme Court be purchased? Can United States Senators be influenced by bot infested social media propaganda? Is this how Democracy is supposed to work?
Who are the people behind Judicial Crisis Network? Whose money are the spending in their effort to swing our Supreme Court to the far right?
Judicial Crisis Network spent $7 million to block the confirmation of Merrick Garland and $10 million on ads to secure Neil Gorsuch's confirmation.
Where did they get this kind of money? Mainly from a single anonymous donor. Someone donated nearly $18 million dollars to this organization. Who was it? No one knows. [photos]

Did a single ANONYMOUS donor buy a seat on the United States Supreme Court.
And who is calling the shots there? Who is buying those domains? Who is creating that short list of judicial nominees for our puppet president to "nominate"?

That man is Leonard Leo. Read this beautifully researched Daily Beast article about him. Read it and weep.
The Secrets of Leonard Leo, the Man Behind Trump’s Supreme Court Pick

A Catholic fundamentalist who controls a network of right-wing groups funded by dark money. Leonard Leo is on leave from the Federalist Society to personally assist Trump in picking a replacement for Justice Kennedy.
His beliefs? Human life begins at conception. Homosexuality is immoral. Food is for nourishment. Sex is for procreation. This man is working to send us back to the days of public stonings for immoral behavior. Back to the days of shame and intolerance.

Is this the man we want to shape our future as a nation?
And I suppose if we ant a glimpse on the next four Supreme Court Nominees e only need to look here.
confirmkethledge.com for Raymond Kethledge
confirmbarrett.com for Amy Coney Barrett
confirmhardiman.com for Thomas Hardiman
confimkavanaugh.com for Brett Kavanaugh
We are now in a country where a select few are making the decisions that affect all of us. There are no more rules. Not for them.

Entire tweet in threadreaderapp.
posted by triggerfinger at 9:41 AM on July 13, 2018 [75 favorites]


@sarahjeong: "oh come on, the guy in charge of the russian social media sockpuppets is NOT named potemkin, for fuck's sake" (screenshot of indictment doc.)


Spoiler: He is.
posted by Buntix at 9:44 AM on July 13, 2018 [64 favorites]


"On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for U.S Congress."

I'm putting down my marker this was Trumpist Rep. Matt Gaetz (FL), but I'd give odds on his Florida colleagues Rep. Ron DeSantis and Rep. Francis Rooney who similarly have been incredibly vocal in their attacks on Mueller

Also sent a shitload of data to a "then-registered state lobbyist and online source of political news." Who would that be?

We already learned last year from the WSJ that FL GOP operative Aaron Nevins working with Guccifer 2.0.
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:44 AM on July 13, 2018 [12 favorites]


The Confirm Kavanaugh domain was purchased in February 2017. The Confirm Kethledge and Confirm Hardiman domains were purchased even earlier - in December 2016! Hosting was set up for those three domains in May of 2017. Confirm Barrett was purchased and hosted in November of 2017.

That's the part that really gripped me. The advance planning on this is rather shocking. The phrase "the fix was in" comes to mind.
posted by scalefree at 9:51 AM on July 13, 2018 [28 favorites]


The PDF of the indictment (from the Special Counsel's Office website).
posted by ltl at 9:51 AM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]




That's the part that really gripped me. The advance planning on this is rather shocking. The phrase "the fix was in" comes to mind.

All of these people came off the same Federalist Society list, though, right? Has anyone checked domains for other people on the long version of that list that never made it to the short list?
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:56 AM on July 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


It can't be Louie Gohmert.

Even Russian hackers have standards.

As for the domains, it neither shocks nor alarms me that much. Trump had a shortlist of potential SCOTUS reactionaries handed to him long before his inauguration, and he has no reason to move away from that list, so of course the right-wing machine would look at the number of elderly SCOTUS judges and have ready-to-move web sites and propaganda machines set up far in advance. If someone retired or died abruptly, they want no delay between that and slamming in a relatively young troglodyte replacement.
posted by delfin at 9:59 AM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


That indictment describes the Russian Officer googling powershell commands for Exchange servers.

From the details in the description of the activities in the indictment, it appears that we had been up on them with our own surveillance at the time.

Kudos to Rosenstein. He just reset the framing of the entire Russian Witch Hunt. ( There appear to be 2 dozen Russian Witches found at this point... )
posted by mikelieman at 10:00 AM on July 13, 2018 [15 favorites]


Re the member of Congress who requested docs from Guccifer on or about August 15, 2016: Hacker drops more DCCC documents, this time about Florida House races [August 15, 2016; Politico]
Guccifer 2.0, the hacker persona many believe is connected to Russian intelligence, posted new stolen Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee documents on several Florida races Monday.
"Here are the DCCC docs on Florida: reports, memos, briefings, dossiers, etc.," Guccifer 2.0 wrote on the same WordPress site that has posted many leaked documents from the DCCC and Democratic National Committee hacks. "You can have a look at who you are going to elect now. It may seem the congressional primaries are also becoming a farce."

The documents include information on races in the 7th, 10th, 13th, 18th and 26th districts of Florida.
posted by melissasaurus at 10:01 AM on July 13, 2018 [15 favorites]


I'm putting down my marker this was Trumpist Rep. Matt Gaetz (FL), but I'd give odds on his Florida colleagues Rep. Ron DeSantis and Rep. Francis Rooney who similarly have been incredibly vocal in their attacks on Mueller

Ok, I'm in: Jason Chaffetz
posted by octobersurprise at 10:03 AM on July 13, 2018 [7 favorites]


TPM: Rosenstein Briefed Trump On New Indictments Earlier This Week—“'I briefed President Trump about these allegations earlier this week. The President is fully aware of the department’s actions today,' Rosenstein said in a press conference announcing the new indictment.”

That means everything Trump has done during his trip, from disrupting the NATO summit to undermining the US-UK "Special Relationship", he did with the awareness these indictments were coming. He even told the press that although he would bring up election interference with Putin in Helsinki, there wasn't anything he could do about it. "Look, he may. What am I going to do? He may deny it. All I can do is say, 'Did you?' And, 'Don't do it again.' But he may deny it. You'll be the first to know."

Trump is a Kremlin intelligence asset full stop.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:05 AM on July 13, 2018 [72 favorites]


Which is the same day Trump gave his "Russia if you're listening, I hope your able to find the 30,000 emails..." news conference.

Katy Tur, who traveled with the Trump campaign and wrote a book about it, replies
Trump and his campaign tried to claim he was kidding. He was not. At that same press conference, minutes later, I asked if it gave him "pause" to ask a foreign government to hack into the emails of any American citizen. He said no and then accused me of trying to "save" Clinton.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:05 AM on July 13, 2018 [81 favorites]


Rohrabacher and Nunes seem like reasonable guesses by reason of their blatant ongoing behavioral issues and because they're both that fucking stupid. But really, the guesses can go on forever.

I would say, though, that it almost certainly won't be Paul Ryan, because he would've had a Congressional flunkie do it.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:06 AM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Which is the same day Trump gave his "Russia if you're listening, I hope your able to find the 30,000 emails..." news conference.

This is going to be another example of how you can get away with stuff if you do it in plain sight that you would never get away with if you acted surreptitiously. Trump called for the Russians to commit a crime in this speech. And then they committed the crime later that day. This is conspiracy. "It's just a prank, bro" is not a defense.
posted by Justinian at 10:06 AM on July 13, 2018 [56 favorites]


Doktor Zed, you're giving Trump way too much credit. He has the attention span of a turnip.
posted by Melismata at 10:07 AM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Who wants to bet that before the July 27 speech, Roger Stone told "Guccifer" to watch for a public show of support?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:09 AM on July 13, 2018 [7 favorites]


So, I've been watching this whole tea with the Queen (a la Dick Whittington's cat) thing on the Beeb and I'm getting a huge sense of 'she's doing her duty to the nation and the minimum required for an American president, the role, not the man' - even the photos the Beeb is sharing are weirdly set in the middle of a corridor. Lets see what comes up now that the tea is over and they've gone golfing.
posted by infini at 10:09 AM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


This man is a [unprintable]
posted by infini at 10:11 AM on July 13, 2018 [18 favorites]


Doktor Zed, you're giving Trump way too much credit. He has the attention span of a turnip.

Yes I take great umbrage at the thought of referring to anything he does as "intelligence".
posted by poffin boffin at 10:13 AM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


This is going to be another example of how you can get away with stuff if you do it in plain sight that you would never get away with if you acted surreptitiously. Trump called for the Russians to commit a crime in this speech. And then they committed the crime later that day.

Alternate theory: It's mainly evidence that you can get away with anything if nobody ever calls you on it, ever, because they chose not to, no matter how blatant it is.

This is conspiracy. "It's just a prank, bro" is not a defense.

I guess we are now at a fork between "I never *knowingly* colluded", "I was *ironicaly* colluding", and just pretending nothing has happend whatsoever and still going with "no collusion" as the line of defence. Or all three. It will probably continue to work through sheer inertia.
posted by Artw at 10:13 AM on July 13, 2018 [7 favorites]


I don't know about the confirmXXX domain reservation thing...registering domains and parking them just in case is a cheap and simple thing to do. The cost of having a domain snapped up later by a political opponent or just some opportunist who tries to sell it back to you is much higher.

If I was the Federalist Society I would do this for literally every person on my list, before I released the list. And my budget for it would be minuscule in the scale of lobbying expenditures. We should look at whether those dates correspond to changes in the list, and how much of the list they covered with domain registrations. It could actually give insight into which candidates they were pushing seriously and which were not considered promising.
posted by allegedly at 10:14 AM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


This is conspiracy. "It's just a prank, bro" is not a defense.

Popehat has some thoughts on that
posted by runcibleshaw at 10:14 AM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


the delightfully evocative phrase from season 2 of spartacus comes to mind: "words fall from mouth like shit from ass"
posted by poffin boffin at 10:14 AM on July 13, 2018 [9 favorites]




you're giving Trump way too much credit. He has the attention span of a turnip.

Although I'm convinced Trump is cognitively impaired, he's absolutely able to focus on his self-interest and self-preservation. We underestimate him at our hazard.

His last line of defense will definitely be that he's too distracted to have participated in collusion, though.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:15 AM on July 13, 2018 [12 favorites]


I'm getting a huge sense of 'she's doing her duty to the nation and the minimum required for an American president

Oh please, QE2 has been married to Prince Philip for over 70 years. Trump is an ordinary day for her.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 10:16 AM on July 13, 2018 [29 favorites]


> Looks like someone has sites ready to go for tonight's announcement as well. Apparently someone had already set up several websites in support of conservative judicial contenders. On July 9th these sites were all in "maintenance" mode:

This opens a whole new world of possibilities for my struggling domain parking business.
posted by klarck at 10:17 AM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Popehat has some thoughts on that

I wish he'd expand on what, precisely, constitutes "agreement". Like if I posted on a message board "If someone assassinated Thomas Becket they would be highly rewarded", someone then assassinated him later that day, and then my actions over the next 2 years appeared to indicate I was rewarding that person... by Popehat's analysis that would not be a conspiracy?

What's the difference between an agreement and what I postulate?
posted by Justinian at 10:18 AM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


Timeline of Roger Stone communications with Russian GRU officers and Wikileaks
August 21, 2016: Stone tweets : “Trust me, it will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel . #CrookedHillary.”
...
October 2, 2016 (Sunday): Stone says on Alex Jones’s show: “An intermediary met with him [Assange] in London recently who is a friend of mine and a friend of his, a believer in freedom. I am assured that the mother lode is coming Wednesday . It wouldn’t be an October surprise if I told you what it was but I have reason to believe that it is devastating because people with political judgment who are aware of the subject matter tell me this.”

October 2, 2016 (Sunday): Stone tweets : “ Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.”

October 3, 2016: Stone tweets : “I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon. #LockHerUp”

October 5, 2016 (Wednesday): Stone tweets : “Libs thinking Assange will stand down are wishful thinking. Payload coming #Lockthemup.”

October 7, 2016: WikiLeaks’ publication of Podesta’s emails began two hours after the “Access Hollywood” story is published by the Washington Post.
posted by gucci mane at 10:19 AM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Hey, also, QE2’s son, Prince Charles, once asked an aboriginal Australian if they still throw spears at each other. In 2002. In the third millennium of our Lord he still asks that. No, Trump fits right in at Windsor.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 10:19 AM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


@rudygiuliani
The indictments Rod Rosenstein announced are good news for all Americans. The Russians are nailed. No Americans are involved. Time for Mueller to end this pursuit of the President and say President Trump is completely innocent.
Hahahaha. Dude.
posted by notyou at 10:20 AM on July 13, 2018 [71 favorites]


He says that something like that would more likely be "aiding and abetting" rather than conspiracy, provided you can show intent for the crime to actually happen.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:20 AM on July 13, 2018


What's the difference between an agreement and what I postulate?

Look, if you don't pinky-swear, then I just...I mean, it's like you don't know anything about agreements
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:22 AM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Mueller’s new indictments remind us of two core truths about the Trump-Russia story

Crimes were committed and Trump has sought impunity for the criminals. (Matt Yglesias | Vox)
First, regardless of the culpability of anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign, real crimes were committed in 2016 with real victims.

Second, both as a candidate for office and then continuing onward as president-elect and president, Donald Trump has worked to shelter the people who committed those crimes from exposure or accountability.

These points are worth dwelling on because they cut against two commonplace narratives about the case.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 10:24 AM on July 13, 2018 [50 favorites]


This all assumes no back-channel communications leading up to or following Trump's outburst, of course.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:24 AM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Also, page 16 of the indictments shows the GRU’s messages to Roger Stone verbatim. He’s referred to as “person who was in regular contact with senior officials of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.” So Rudy can go fuck himself, we have Russian GRU pegged with communications to Roger Stone and the dissemination of stolen data to Aaron Nevins.
posted by gucci mane at 10:25 AM on July 13, 2018 [33 favorites]


This all assumes no back-channel communications leading up to or following Trump's outburst, of course.

It’s not like Mueller has millions of pages of correspondence between Trump and his personal lawyer to look for it and subsequently prove it if found...
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 10:26 AM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


They're getting closer to the real meaty indictments, the next set could be the big ones. Consider in here we have "Organization 1", which is almost certainly Wikileaks, and knowledge of that organization coordinating the timing of the hack releases, as well as an individual in contact with the Trump campaign.

The White House is predictably claiming that this indictiment clears them.

Rudy Giuliani claiming that the Russians were caught, we're all done here, time to fire Mueller.

So that's where the talking points are going, Russia did it, we caught them, now it's all fine and we can be best friends with Putin like nothing happened, no harm no foul. They're going to hand waive away treason because they won an election off it.

In a sane world the President would demand that the GRU officers be turned over immediately. If a Democrat takes over in 2020, they must make that demand, and expel every Russian diplomat if its not met. Break off all diplomatic relations, all travel between the countries and all financial transactions. Russia attacked us just as much as if they'd done it with missiles. Republicans committed treason in aiding them. It's time to reset relations to the Cold War footing unless they make MASSIVE amends.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:27 AM on July 13, 2018 [20 favorites]


The White House is predictably claiming that this indictiment clears them.

Rudy Giuliani claiming that the Russians were caught, we're all done here, time to fire Mueller.


Counterpoint: Donald Jr. did tweet his confession to the campaign officially meeting with Russian Criminals (who had violated 52 USC 30121 ) , which was itself unlawful under 18 USC 2, and 18 USC 371. And since they had lied about it, a soupçon of 18 USC 1001 for added flavor.

Which -- so far -- hasn't been mentioned, other than reading between the lines of Rosenstein's "THIS indictment doesn't include any Americans"
posted by mikelieman at 10:36 AM on July 13, 2018 [12 favorites]


Trump is a Kremlin intelligence asset full stop.

It feels weird to see the words "Trump", "intelligence" and "asset" together in the same sentence like that.
posted by Grangousier at 10:40 AM on July 13, 2018 [14 favorites]


The Russian indictments are important, but I don't see how they change anything for us ... yet.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post columnists are forced to address utter nonsense like this:
Trump denies he said something that he said on a tape everyone has heard: The president’s complaints about “fake news” are often dishonest. But rarely has it been so transparent.
In retrospect, the Cheney-era claims about "making their own reality" were only a few years ahead of their time.

Oh, and in other misogyny news: Trump’s tough words for Merkel and May raise questions about his relationships with female leaders
President Trump’s attacks on the British prime minister and German chancellor prompted diplomats to ask why a president who prizes his “great chemistry” with world leaders seems to go out of his way to damage two powerful female allies
Hmm. It's a mystery, no doubt.
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:40 AM on July 13, 2018 [40 favorites]


Jason Zweig; WSJ: @jasonzweigwsj
Oh, *now* I understand.

It's a "-vich" hunt!
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 10:42 AM on July 13, 2018 [46 favorites]


"The conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, wrote to a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump"

See, no collusion! With the Russians. I colluded with Person X, and they colluded with the Russians.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:45 AM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


Five new ratings changes from Cook, all to the left:
FL-06 (open): Solid R => Likely R
FL-16 (Buchanan): Likely R => Lean R
IL-13 (Davis): Likely R => Lean R
ME-02 (Poliquin): Lean R => Toss Up
MI-08 (Bishop): Lean R => Toss Up
Current totals:
Solid D - 181
Likely D - 12
Leans D - 8
Toss up - 26
Leans R - 26
Likely R - 28
Solid R - 154
posted by Chrysostom at 10:51 AM on July 13, 2018 [32 favorites]


From the indictment, I think this is as specific a version as we've ever been told publicly:
72. In or around July 2016, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators hacked the website of a state board of elections ("SBOE 1") and stole information related to approximately 500,00 voters, including names, addresses, partial social security numbers, dates of birth, and driver's license numbers.

73. In or around August 2016, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators hacked into the computers of a U.S. vendor ("Vendor 1") that supplied software used to verify voter registration information for the 2016 U.S. elections. KVALEV and his co-conspriators used some of the same infrastructure to hack into Vendor 1 that they had used to hack into SBOE 1.
One other interesting detail is that the FBI was on to them for this in August 2016 and "issued an alert," which caused Kovalev to delete his search history. That we know this is an indication of just how inside their operation US intelligence was, yet the administration has denied it ever happened for years.
posted by zachlipton at 10:57 AM on July 13, 2018 [22 favorites]


T.D. Strange: As Rosenstein announces indictments, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows is filing a motion to impeach him for DOJ noncompliance, source tells me

My brain inserted words here, initially believing that Meadows filed a motion to impeach Trump. Nope, he's trying to get rid of Rosenstein because of identifying ... 12 Russian intelligence officers? Because that's all that this is, highlighted by NPR's coverage:
There is no allegation in the indictment that any American participated knowingly in the GRU cyberattacks, Rosenstein said.

Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller is continuing to investigate whether anyone in the United States conspired with the Russian attack on the election.

But Rosenstein said that responsibility for this prosecution — which is unlikely to go forward to a trial in court as Russia is unlikely to extradite the suspects who've been charged — would pass from Mueller's office to the National Security division of the Justice Department.
So what's Meadows' problem with Rosenstein?
posted by filthy light thief at 10:59 AM on July 13, 2018 [9 favorites]


Chuck Todd on MSNBC says he interprets Rosenstein's call for putting America before partisanship as a signal that the next indictment or indictments are going to be potentially extremely politically sensitive. As in we're at the cusp of the potential shitstorm when Republicans start getting indicted and we see if the rest of the party are traitors or not. I think we know the answer.
posted by Justinian at 11:00 AM on July 13, 2018 [85 favorites]


So what's Meadows' problem with Rosenstein?

It's still that Rosenstein won't turn over all of the active Russia investigation documents to Meadows so Meadows can hand them straight to Trump. Specifically, Meadows is demanding all correspondence between DOJ and the professor guy that they used as an informant (this is the evolution of the "Obama wire tapped Trump tower" line of attack in Republican elected and media world). Meadows issued a subpoena, Rosenstien gave some documents, but largely refused on grounds of national security/active investigation. That's what the impeachment would be over. It's the same pretext they've been trying to use to fire Rosenstien and get at the Mueller investigation for months.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:06 AM on July 13, 2018 [14 favorites]


Note that there is zero chance Rosenstein is successfully impeached and removed. It would require Democrats in the Senate to go along with it.
posted by Justinian at 11:09 AM on July 13, 2018 [13 favorites]


How many?
posted by lazaruslong at 11:09 AM on July 13, 2018


17. It's a 2/3 vote.
posted by Justinian at 11:11 AM on July 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


Ah okay cool. Yeah, that ain't happening.
posted by lazaruslong at 11:11 AM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


The bigger danger is the House votes to impeach and while the Senate won't convict, Trump uses the impeachment as cover to fire him.
posted by chris24 at 11:12 AM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


I think the point of the impeachment is to spur Trump to action, not really that Congress would actually impeach and remove. They're trying to provoke the Saturday Night Massacre.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:12 AM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Pardon, it's 2/3 of those present so with McCain busy moving on to the next phase of existence it would require "only" 16 since 66 is 2/3 of 99. 50 Republicans + 16 Democrats. (And they wouldnt get 50 Republicans).
posted by Justinian at 11:12 AM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


They're trying to provoke the Saturday Night Massacre.

We're always fighting the last war, aren't we.
posted by Melismata at 11:16 AM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Mixed messages coming from Democratic leadership:
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Friday called on President Donald Trump to back out of his upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin after indictments were handed down charging 12 Russian intelligence officials with hacking various computers, including those at the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC, to meddle in the 2016 election.

“These indictments are further proof of what everyone but the president seems to understand: President Putin is an adversary who interfered in our elections to help President Trump win,” Schumer said in his statement.

President Trump should cancel his meeting with Vladimir Putin until Russia takes demonstrable and transparent steps to prove that they won’t interfere in future elections,” Schumer added. “Glad-handing with Vladimir Putin on the heels of these indictments would be an insult to our democracy.”
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi says:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sent out a statement shortly after, saying that while Trump should still attend the summit, he “must demand and secure a real, concrete and comprehensive agreement that the Russians will cease their ongoing attacks on our democracy.
I have to agree with Chuck on this one. And I have to admit some surprise that Nancy seems to be implying that Trump ever in a million years would demand, let alone secure, any kind of diplomatic victory / assurance with any country especially Russia.
posted by lazaruslong at 11:18 AM on July 13, 2018 [32 favorites]


Justinian, good points.

Which makes the next few months really interesting scary, because sitting Republicans may act like cornered animals and lash out, as they might lose their power in the near future.

A comment from The Hill, from back in April 2018:
GOP leaders have been silent on the calls from key House conservatives to censure or impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — a move that would fire up the GOP base, but could also turn off moderate and independent voters in the midterm elections.
This makes sense, given opinion polls, though The Hill let the GOP pollster set the tone, counter to what anything in the short article says: GOP pollster: Most Americans want to see better relations with Russia (July 13, 2018)
Republican pollster Brett Loyd said Friday that he believes a majority of Americans want to see improved relations with Russia.

"I think [with] Russia there's going to be some sentiment and you're going to have some leftover Cold War [feelings]. You're going to have people that are voting that are 65-plus that haven't had the greatest experience with Russia," Loyd, president and CEO of the Polling Company, told Hill.TV's Joe Concha on "What America's Thinking."
...
According to a Fox News poll released Thursday, a majority of U.S. voters say Trump is not tough enough in his handling of Russia. Just more than a third of those polled said Trump's response has been "about right," while 53 percent say they think Trump is "not tough enough" on the Kremlin.
Maybe that's why Sens. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), Steve Daines (Mont.), John Hoeven (N.D.), John Neely Kennedy (La.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), John Thune (S.D.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.), plus Rep. Kay Granger (Tex.) were in Moscow on July 4th, to be tougher on Russia. (Washington Post opinion, July 6, 2018)
Their excellent adventure included a ballet performance of “Sleeping Beauty,” and fairy-tale notions pervaded their official meetings, too. “I’m not here today to accuse Russia of this or that or so forth,” Shelby told Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. “I’m saying that we should all strive for a better relationship.”
Nope, trying to improve their own standing with the puppetmaster.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:20 AM on July 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


This ... this ludicrous, narcissistic toddler ... with his transparently transactional view of international diplomacy. I just ...

NYT: Trump, on His Best Behavior, Heaps Praise on May as ‘Tough’ and ‘Capable’
Mr. Trump said that the first thing he had done upon his arrival at Chequers on Friday was to offer a mea culpa to Mrs. May [...] “I said, ‘I want to apologize, because I said such good things about you,’ ” Mr. Trump said [...]

Mr. Trump also said that he stood by his praise of Mr. Johnson. “He’s been saying very nice things about me as president,” Mr. Trump said. “He thinks I’m doing a great job. I am doing a great job, that I can tell you, just in case you haven’t noticed. Boris Johnson, I think, would be a great prime minister.”
I'm sure conservatives will be up in arms about the President going on a foreign apology tour ... any moment now?
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:25 AM on July 13, 2018 [7 favorites]


He is such a coward with women. He disses May in an interview one night then lies to her face about it the next day.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:28 AM on July 13, 2018 [25 favorites]


Paragraphs 23b, 29, 32a kind of indicate that Mueller has Yermakov's browser or search history. Is that, can that be?
posted by klarck at 11:28 AM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Is that, can that be?

Possibly
posted by drezdn at 11:30 AM on July 13, 2018


Lets settle this like adults

Its only 4.7%, the lady at the state alcohol chain outlet told me, but its only distributed in the larger supermarkets. I'll have to see if I can find some for posterity.
posted by infini at 11:32 AM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


Paragraphs 23b, 29, 32a kind of indicate that Mueller has Yermakov's browser or search history. Is that, can that be?

Reading through that, there's a non-zero chance either US or Allied Counter-Intel was up on the GRU computer and network with their own keyloggers... Which would be like Sense-8 Narrative Level and associated Fanboy Squee-ing by myself.
posted by mikelieman at 11:36 AM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Trump doesn't explain what he meant by "culture." He says: "I know it's politically not necessarily correct to say that, but I'll say it, and I'll say it loud. I think they better watch themselves, because they are changing culture."

Oh, he's saying it loud all right: "culture" in this context is straight-up white supremacist talk. This is disgusting.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:42 AM on July 13, 2018 [45 favorites]


This video of the Queen showing Trump how to walk is so weird.

Reading through that, there's a non-zero chance either US or Allied Counter-Intel was up on the GRU computer and network with their own keyloggers... Which would be like Sense-8 Narrative Level and associated Fanboy Squee-ing by myself.

Dutch intelligence was watching Cozy Bear through their own surveillance cameras at one point.

The indictment doesn't lay out a great timeline of when all of this became known to US investigators, but how much of this we knew before the election and weren't told is a pretty central question to understanding Obama's legacy and the decisions that resulted in the election. It's also central to understanding McConnell's role.

Also, Piers Morgan just interviewed Trump for a half hour on Air Force One, so that's going to be awful.
posted by zachlipton at 11:45 AM on July 13, 2018 [23 favorites]


The bigger danger is the House votes to impeach and while the Senate won't convict, Trump uses the impeachment as cover to fire him.

This is one time the numbers break in our favor. They'd need 56 Dems to flip in the House. It's not jinxing it to say that's never going to happen.
posted by scalefree at 11:46 AM on July 13, 2018


@Robillard: Former Nebraska Democratic Rep. Brad Ashford says on Facebook that Russians hacked his campaign e-mails in 2016

Not quite sure what the significance of that is, but it's odd.

And Greg Sargent on McConnell's role in all this. I do think a key question know is what did he know and when did he know it? He was briefed on the hacking and asked to make a bipartisian statement condemning Russian interference. He refused. Did he know the facts that were in this indictment?
posted by zachlipton at 11:50 AM on July 13, 2018 [23 favorites]


Marcy Wheeler (@emptywheel) has her initial thoughts up here, and is tweeting further comments as well (but not within one easily linkable thread). Some highlights:
-"This is a detail I’ve known for quite some time: Hillary’s campaign actually faced far more persistent hacking threats than previously known. Of absolutely critical importance, the indictment makes it clear that GRU hackers spear-phished Hillary’s personal office on July 27, after Donald Trump asked Russia to find her emails. [indictment excerpt] I know a key witness in that part of the hack has been waiting to share his story (he’s quite happy this is finally out), so expect far more details on this in coming days."

-"The journalist who obtained the Black Lives Matter documents was then Breitbart and current Sputnik journalist Lee Stranahan."

-"Note: Some of the info in this indictment you're giving NSA credit for I know (from a witness) Hillary's people contributed to as well. She didn't have slackers for infosec like the DNC did."
(emphasis mine)
posted by melissasaurus at 11:59 AM on July 13, 2018 [37 favorites]


This is one time the numbers break in our favor. They'd need 56 Dems to flip in the House. It's not jinxing it to say that's never going to happen.

Impeachment in the House is simple majority. Conviction in Senate takes two thirds. They can definitely impeach without a single D vote. And in fact lose a dozen R votes and still impeach.
posted by chris24 at 11:59 AM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


This is one time the numbers break in our favor. They'd need 56 Dems to flip in the House. It's not jinxing it to say that's never going to happen.

The House only needs a simple majority to begin impeachment. The 2/3 threshold only applies in the Senate, when they vote on whether to remove the official from office.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:00 PM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Most Americans want to see better relations with Russia

Most Americans also want to see criminals not criminate.
posted by srboisvert at 12:01 PM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


Ah, my bad. Thought it was 2/3 of each.
posted by scalefree at 12:01 PM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


The bigger danger is the House votes to impeach and while the Senate won't convict, Trump uses the impeachment as cover to fire him.

Also, cover from whom or what? If 45 just sacked him on some other pretext, would the GOP actually do anything about it?
posted by Devonian at 12:04 PM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


Aside from general things like swaying public opinion and riling up the base, the potential connection between a vote to impeach Rosenstein (which is doomed to fail) and a potential Saturday Night Massacre is this: if 1/3 of the Senate will vote to impeach Rosenstein, then Trump can proceed with firing Rosenstein under the assumption that those senators will make it impossible to impeach Trump over that firing, which they are now on record openly supporting.
posted by allegedly at 12:07 PM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


Via Matt Miller @moneyries:"Roger Stone tells CNN he does not believe he is the unnamed person in the indictment: “My contact with the campaign in 2016 was Donald Trump. I was not in regular contact with campaign officials.” From @mj_lee"
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:09 PM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


Stone is the unnamed person. That's essentially certain. So any statement he makes now must be looked at as either panicked blundering or laying the groundwork for a defense. I have no idea which this is but he's the unnamed person. He knows it, we know it, he knows we know it.
posted by Justinian at 12:11 PM on July 13, 2018 [17 favorites]


Brian Buetler: Republicans Want Russia To Get Away With It
The fact that Rosenstein gave Trump days’ worth of advanced notice gives us (and perhaps Mueller) a retroactive glimpse into Trump’s consciousness. He knew the indictments were coming and nevertheless spent the week reviving his attacks on the investigation, and sundering American alliances to consummate his corrupt relationship with the Russian government. This further substantiates his complicity, at least retroactively, in the attack on the election. The question is whether the advanced word of the indictments leaked to the Hill, and thus implicates his Republican allies in Congress. Consider their behavior over the past few days.

With the indictments looming—indictments of Russians who attacked the United States—they actually accelerated their efforts to undermine the Mueller investigation.
...
We can’t know whether Trump tipped any of these Republicans off about the indictments, but it beggars belief to imagine Trump of all people kept this information tightly held. Even if he told no one, he still conscripted unwitting Republicans to redouble their efforts to discredit Mueller, knowing the grand jury would likely return indictments against Russian intelligence officers by week’s end.

During the election, Republican leaders abetted Russia’s efforts to help Trump win. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went so far as to scuttle the government’s plan to disrupt the attack, so the attack could continue unimpeded, and with minimal public scrutiny of Trump’s involvement. They are now helping Trump insulate Russians from the consequences.

It’s uncontroversial—in fact it’s obvious—that congressional Republicans have been waging a propaganda war against the Justice Department to protect Trump from exposure to Mueller, and Russia has derived collateral benefit from that war in obvious ways. These indictments crack open the door to the possibility that they are helping Trump protect the Russian operatives who subverted the election directly, and of their own accord.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:13 PM on July 13, 2018 [38 favorites]


Rick Wilson identifies the Republican candidate in florida as Brian Mast, FL-18.
posted by Justinian at 12:14 PM on July 13, 2018 [13 favorites]


David Corn throws a bit of cold water on the Broidy-is-covering-for-Trump speculation, Yet Another Twist in the Crazy Tale of a GOP Fundraiser’s Affair With a Playmate
Then, I was introduced to another person with a particular insight into Broidy’s actions: a private investigator. In 2016, this PI, who requested he not be named, was hired to trail Broidy and surveil the businessman. His customer was a Broidy associate to whom Broidy owed money. The investigator spent several months on this case, looking to document Broidy’s lifestyle and spending patterns. He tells me that his big discovery was that Broidy was mostly a homebody, who spent much of his time either at his office or his house.

But there was one other address Broidy visited regularly: an apartment building in Beverly Hills, where he seemed to have a girlfriend. The PI says he never got the name of the apparent gal pal, but shared the building’s address with me. (For the obvious reason, I am not going to disclose it.) However, I was able to find the names of various tenants—a list that included Shera Bechard, the Playmate in the Broidy case.

This may not conclusively disprove the Campos hypothesis. But it does appear Broidy had a preexisting relationship with Bechard over a year before the $1.6 million settlement was reached. It’s possible Trump and Broidy each had an affair with her, although this piece of information does bolster Broidy’s account. (By the way, two unnamed sources “familiar with the matter” recently told HuffPost that Bechard has never met Trump.) Bechard did not respond to a voicemail left for her.
posted by zachlipton at 12:16 PM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju checks in with Senate Intel:
Another sign Mueller is light years ahead of Senate Intel and rest of Hill: Asked Warner what was new to him in the indictment and he said a “vast amount of information” is new to the Senate Intelligence Committee
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 12:18 PM on July 13, 2018 [35 favorites]


Metafilter: He knows it, we know it, he knows we know it.
posted by Melismata at 12:22 PM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Brian Mast, FL-18.

PVI R+5 district vacated by Patrick Murphy to run for Senate, first time candidate Mast won by 10pts in 2016 but the race was considered competitive for the entire election up until the Democratic wipeout on election night. His opponent was another of these Schumercrat self-funded candidates and "former" Republican who served on Rick Perry's 2016 advisory panel.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:24 PM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


MSNBC reports that a spokesperson for Mast is denying that he is the candidate referred to in the indictment. So we'll see! Wilson seemed pretty certain.
posted by Justinian at 12:28 PM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


So how does the New York Times select their "NYT Picks" comments? Their picks for the Times article on the indictment is 50/50 for and against Trump, including a literal but-her-emails post and several severely fact-challenged comments against the Mueller investigation. This doesn't seem like an issue where they should be looking for a fake balance.
posted by stopgap at 12:29 PM on July 13, 2018 [12 favorites]


Brian Mast, FL-18

Who lost both legs in Afghanistan, so if he's tied up in this, look for a fuck-point-ton of "How dare you disrespect the troops by continuing this witch hunt!"
posted by Etrigan at 12:29 PM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


@seungminkim: White House spox Lindsay Walters on today's indictments: "Today’s charges include no allegations of knowing involvement by anyone on the campaign and no allegations that the alleged hacking affected the election result. This is consistent with what we have been saying all along”

Two words doing a lot of work there: "knowing" and "alleged." The White House apparently no longer feels comfortable claiming the campaign wasn't involved, just that they didn't do it on purpose. And while "alleged" is an appropriate term for a reporter to use in describing government allegations from an indictment, it's a deeply inappropriate term for the administration to use in casting doubt on the allegations of its own Justice Department and intelligence agencies. It's not like these folks are so cautious to discuss "alleged MS-13 members" or anything not involving Russia.
posted by zachlipton at 12:30 PM on July 13, 2018 [12 favorites]


I'm putting money on there being multiple people that fit the description in the indictment. Either one person was specified to scare all of them into thinking it is them, or the Feds don't know there are others. Based on what Mueller has uncovered so far, I'm wagering its the former.
posted by Twain Device at 12:31 PM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


This doesn't seem like an issue where they should be looking for a fake balance.

Literally no such issue exists.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:35 PM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


This video of the Queen showing Trump how to walk is so weird.

#Dontyouthinkhelookstired?

Seriously, Trump looks exhausted, and his speeches/interviews have been increasingly erratic during this trip—plus we already know that he doesn't travel well. The best he can hope for is a little rest over the weekend at another of his fucking money-laundering golf courses before he has to get on a plane again for Monday's summit. Putin, however, will arrive rested and ready, without even having to cross time zones to arrive in Helsinki. Trump is in no condition to negotiate with him, even if we had full confidence in his loyalties. The summit is shaping up to be a diplomatic massacre.
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:36 PM on July 13, 2018 [31 favorites]


emptywheel doesn't think it's necessarily Mast.

@emptywheel Folks; On Gaetz and DeSantis and other FL MoCs. They all got helpful information via Aaron Nevins, so wouldn't have needed to ask personally. They're corrupt and shitholes and benefitted but don't accuse them of being the MoC w/o clear proof.
posted by klarck at 12:37 PM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


Oh, he's saying it loud all right: "culture" in this context is straight-up white supremacist talk. This is disgusting.

Even if there was any ambiguity as to his meaning, then the fact that what he's saying now is just a slightly more vaguely worded version of his speech in Poland this time last year clarifies.

Re Trump having known about the upcoming indictments, ISTR (but can't find) someone upthread posited that the reason he was flailing even more beligerantly off the rails than usual was because he knew there was some news about to break that was likely to put him one step closer to jail*... Not entirely clear on the rules, does successful Trump predicting mean they have to make cake for all the rest of us, or we all have to make cake for them? I do wish to subscribe to their newsletter, though.

Also Bawbag.


* And the way Mueller is approaching does suggest he's not playing n-dimensional chess so much as Othello/Reversi. He's laying down areas that can't be flipped or challenged first, which means that by the time he starts going after the real major players they will already be in a cage of evidence.
posted by Buntix at 12:39 PM on July 13, 2018 [15 favorites]


Literally no such issue exists.

Point taken. But it's especially absurd for the NYTimes to think that foreign interference in our elections would be an issue where they need to present "both sides."
posted by stopgap at 12:40 PM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Devonian Also, cover from whom or what? If 45 just sacked him on some other pretext, would the GOP actually do anything about it?

I'd imagine cover in public opinion, not among Congressional Republicans. I'm certain that if Trump fired Mueller and said it was specifically because the Russian investigation was annoying to him the Congressional Republicans would say it was fine.

What's worrying them, and possibly Trump as well, is public opinion. If Trump fires Mueller for no good reason then it's going to depress Republican turnout and increase Democratic turnout at the very least. But if he has an excuse that is plausible, at least to the less politically engaged people, then the reaction against firing Mueller will be limited to people like us here on MeFi and basically not have any effect on the elections.

Even a dictator has to be wary of being **too** outrageous and infuriating to the general public and Trump isn't a dictator and must be even more cautious about public opinion.

Trump may not understand that, but his handlers certainly do. Firing Mueller without some sort of pretext is dangerous to the political futures of all Republicans.
posted by sotonohito at 12:40 PM on July 13, 2018


I wish he'd expand on what, precisely, constitutes "agreement". Like if I posted on a message board "If someone assassinated Thomas Becket they would be highly rewarded", someone then assassinated him later that day, and then my actions over the next 2 years appeared to indicate I was rewarding that person... by Popehat's analysis that would not be a conspiracy?

IANAL, so I'm probably going to do a poor job of explaining this. Conspiracy is kind of like contract law. If I say in public "man, I'd pay $1000 for someone to build me a website", and you go off and build me a website without telling me, you can't show up and sue me for $1000 just because you did what I asked for. A contract requires mutual agreement, and your one-sided decision to take my offer isn't enough. Trump's one-sided "Russia, if you're listening" isn't criminal conspiracy unless there was a back-and-forth communication where the offer was accepted.

If I said "man, I'd pay $1000 for someone to kill that guy", and then you kill that guy without telling me first, and then I find out you killed that guy and pay you $1000, that's probably aiding and abetting. (It may also be other crimes, I'm just making this specific analogy.) But to quote Popehat on this, "Aiding and abetting requires specific intent to promote a specific crime. It's a tough standard [...] I doubt what appears to be Trumpian bluster/hyperbole/shit-talking qualifies for specific intent to cause the crime [...] Postscript: That could change given information that Trump knew about specific hacking efforts."

Convicting Trump on criminal charges for this is tricky because it requires proving not only that he asked for something and is rewarding the people who did it, but that he actually asked for the specific crime, knows the specifics of who did the crime, and is rewarding them for that. But since the remedy for this crime is likely impeachment and not criminal charges, this analysis doesn't actually matter much for Trump.
posted by allegedly at 12:43 PM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


Seriously, Trump looks exhausted, and his speeches/interviews have been increasingly erratic during this trip—plus we already know that he doesn't travel well.

I maintain that the man is in the early (perhaps even the mid) stages of Alzheimer's. It fluctuates with time but motor skills deteriorate if the person gets tired. The exhaustion would also explain why his behaviors have been even more erratic than normal.
posted by Anonymous at 12:46 PM on July 13, 2018


@gknauss:
“There are no indictments!”

[People indicted.]

“There are no indictments related to election meddling!”

[People indicted related to election meddling.]

“There are no indictments of Americans related to election meddl— I’m totally setting myself up here, aren’t I?”
posted by gwint at 12:49 PM on July 13, 2018 [59 favorites]


Trump's one-sided "Russia, if you're listening" isn't criminal conspiracy unless there was a back-and-forth communication where the offer was accepted.

Could be incitement, or some related crime, but as stated, you need collaboration for a conspiracy, not just an invitation.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:50 PM on July 13, 2018


Source of nerve agent contamination identified

Counter terrorism detectives investigating the contamination of two people by the nerve agent Novichok believe they have found the source of the deadly substance.
[...]
On Wednesday, 11 July, a small bottle was recovered during searches of Charlie Rowley’s house in Amesbury. It was taken to the Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down, Wiltshire, for tests.
Following those tests, scientists have now confirmed to us that the substance contained within the bottle is Novichok. Further scientific tests will be carried out to try and establish whether it is from the same batch that contaminated Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March – this remains a main line of enquiry for police.
Inquiries are under way to establish where the bottle came from and how it came to be in Charlie’s house.

posted by mikepop at 12:50 PM on July 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


Seriously, Trump looks exhausted

Relatable.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:51 PM on July 13, 2018 [17 favorites]


The White House statement on the Mueller indictments had a glaring omission
(Li Zhou | Vox)

It didn’t condemn Russia at all.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:53 PM on July 13, 2018 [30 favorites]


Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi says:

Pelosi has now joined Schumer in calling for the meeting to be called off.

Nancy Pelosi
.@realDonaldTrump must immediately cancel his meeting with Putin. #ProtectOurDemocracy
posted by chris24 at 12:53 PM on July 13, 2018 [43 favorites]


Convicting Trump on criminal charges for this is tricky because it requires proving not only that he asked for something and is rewarding the people who did it, but that he actually asked for the specific crime, knows the specifics of who did the crime, and is rewarding them for that.

But isn't he open to being criminally charged with obstruction of justice for impeding the investigation into those crimes? That seems to be the case just from the publicly-available evidence.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:53 PM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm sure Seth Rich's parents will get a deserved set of apologies now. Right?
posted by Harry Caul at 12:57 PM on July 13, 2018 [9 favorites]


But it's especially absurd for the NYTimes to think that foreign interference in our elections would be an issue where they need to present "both sides."

I now suspect that part of the NYT is dirty - editors, reporters, owners, who knows - in either plain money laundering and tax evasion or Russian entanglement. Domestic white collar crime or kompromat, either could explain the aggressively bad reporting and editorial bias.
posted by jointhedance at 12:58 PM on July 13, 2018 [24 favorites]




jointhedance, I'm inclined to agree; they have been so egregious that it beggars belief that it's merely a misguided attempt at "balance."
posted by emjaybee at 1:01 PM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


I now suspect that part of the NYT is dirty - editors, reporters, owners, who knows - in either plain money laundering and tax evasion or Russian entanglement. Domestic white collar crime or kompromat, either could explain the aggressively bad reporting and editorial bias.

There's no need to reach for conspiracy theories when it's already clear that large, profitable news outlets prefer right-wing governance for the same reasons most large corporations do. Plus, Trump specifically is making a killing for them, with his constant spectacle.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 1:01 PM on July 13, 2018 [21 favorites]


But it's especially absurd for the NYTimes to think that foreign interference in our elections would be an issue where they need to present "both sides."

So true. Which reminds me that Chuck Todd will be interviewing Matt Lauer on NPR about Huma Abedin's new fabulous single life at 10pm Eastern, right after the White House's 2-hour Infrastructure Week disco swing party. I mean, in this timeline that's not even that improbable.
posted by petebest at 1:01 PM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Convicting Trump on criminal charges for this is tricky because it requires proving not only that he asked for something and is rewarding the people who did it, but that he actually asked for the specific crime, knows the specifics of who did the crime, and is rewarding them for that.

I feel like it would be easy to construct a hypothetical which would clearly appear to be a crime but would also appear to fail by the same test you and popehat are applying? I'm not a lawyer so obviously he's probably right and I'm not. But if a mob boss asked that a problem witness be "handled" and then that witness gets murdered I don't feel like "I said handled not murdered so I wasn't asking for a specific crime" would be a good defense. It might be tried but it wouldn't succeed.
posted by Justinian at 1:02 PM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


@rudygiuliani
The indictments Rod Rosenstein announced are good news for all Americans. The Russians are nailed. No Americans are involved. Time for Mueller to end this pursuit of the President and say President Trump is completely innocent.
So.. I know that nobody here is under the impression that Giuliani is acting or speaking in good faith here but I would still like to encourage you to consider the context for these remarks and also to share it with friends who maybe haven't thought much about his role in this circus, because what Giuliani's doing is monstrous on a level that's remarkable even for the Trump administration.

Giuliani is not some person who is confused about how criminal investigation and prosecution proceeds. Before he was Mayor of New York he was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York -- arguably the most significant and powerful prosecutorial position in the entire country. In that role he supervised prosecutions of organized crime families. He also sent to federal prison innumerable people who did not enjoy the remarkable level of presumption of evidence he has extended to Trump and the people who surround him.

So when Giuliani makes statements dismissing and undermining the investigation and the indictments that it is producing it is not reasonable to conclude that he believes what he is saying. Rather he is lying and hoping that many individuals will believe him because they remember the public acclaim that was heaped on him in the wake of one of America's most traumatic events. By cynically exploiting the recognition and credibility he was handed as a result of the 9/11 attacks to peddle pro-Trump lies, Giuliani is desecrating the memory of that day just as surely as if he went to every victim's grave and shat on it, only by going on Fox News or Twitter he can dishonor them all at once rather than having to put real effort into it.

For his behavior, Giuliani deserves to be a pariah and not a public figure. Please remember that and remind your friends any time he opens his mouth to lie to us again.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:05 PM on July 13, 2018 [83 favorites]


Brian Mast, FL-18......Who lost both legs in Afghanistan, so if he's tied up in this, look for a fuck-point-ton of "How dare you disrespect the troops by continuing this witch hunt!"

Well, he surely he deserves to be treated as well as Sen. Max Cleland was.
posted by thelonius at 1:09 PM on July 13, 2018 [12 favorites]


Via Matt Miller @moneyries:"Roger Stone tells CNN he does not believe he is the unnamed person in the indictment: “My contact with the campaign in 2016 was Donald Trump. I was not in regular contact with campaign officials.” From @mj_lee"

So this didn't last very long. @esaagar [Daily Caller]: NEW: Screenshots of Roger Stone's DM's w/ Guccifer confirm he is the person close to the Trump campaign listed in Mueller's indictment. He insists to me he looked at Guccifer's model and did NOT pass them along to anyone in the campaign
posted by zachlipton at 1:10 PM on July 13, 2018 [23 favorites]


FWIW I long ago gave up any respect for Guliani and for me his actions over the past 17 years have far outweighed any good will I felt for the bastard in the immediate hours and weeks that followed 9/11
posted by nikaspark at 1:12 PM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


“An Amateur Boxer Up Against Muhammad Ali”: Washington Fears Trump Will Be No Match for Putin in Helsinki
(Susan B. Glasser | The New Yorker)


Lol no please let’s not insult amateur boxers who train very hard

this is Homer Simpson vs Drederick Tatum
posted by schadenfrau at 1:16 PM on July 13, 2018 [28 favorites]


Roger Stone tells CNN he does not believe he is the unnamed person in the indictment: “My contact with the campaign in 2016 was Donald Trump. I was not in regular contact with campaign officials.

First Papadop, Page, even Manafort were basically coffee boys, not really part of the Trump campaign. Now Trump himself isn't part of the Trump campaign.
posted by chris24 at 1:19 PM on July 13, 2018 [30 favorites]


ANY normal president, R or D, would cancel the Putin meeting after today's indictments. Actually, most would cancel already when they were notified by the special counsel, unless the special counsel had for some reason advised against it.
This is not normal.
posted by mumimor at 1:21 PM on July 13, 2018 [28 favorites]


this is Homer Simpson vs Drederick Tatum

It's not even that - it's a 10-year-old school bully up against a seasoned mugger who hangs out at the local bar and occasionally rolls drunks.

Let's not over-rate Putin - he's living proof of the principle that you don't need to out run the bear: he's just sneakier than the opposition, but if the opposition are not very sneaky (Merkel, Macron) or simply not that smart (Trump, mainly, but also the British government) then even a relative dullard like Putin can run rings round them.
posted by Grangousier at 1:23 PM on July 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


ANY normal president, R or D

He has about a 90% approval rating among Republicans and the party is unified around him. He IS the normal Republican president now.
posted by Rust Moranis at 1:25 PM on July 13, 2018 [39 favorites]


I agree we don't need to view Putin as the second coming of Cardinal Richelieu but what's the evidence that he's a dullard?
posted by Justinian at 1:26 PM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


I feel like it would be easy to construct a hypothetical which would clearly appear to be a crime but would also appear to fail by the same test you and popehat are applying?

In general, criminal law raises high barriers to convicting person A for a crime committed by person B. That's intentional! In spite of that, there are still blatant injustices from things like felony murder.
posted by allegedly at 1:27 PM on July 13, 2018


He IS the normal Republican president now.
Fair enough, but that isn't normal, we shouldn't let the Republicans make treason normal.
posted by mumimor at 1:29 PM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Fair enough, but that isn't normal, we shouldn't let the Republicans make treason normal.

Being Republican shouldn't be normal.
posted by Rust Moranis at 1:32 PM on July 13, 2018 [22 favorites]


The opposition to Putin isn't Trump, it was Obama and Clinton, who he defeated utterly.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:33 PM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


Trump is a Kremlin intelligence asset full stop.

Trump is more of an American security vulnerability exploited by russia.

A political Buffer of Shit Overflow Exploit.
posted by srboisvert at 1:38 PM on July 13, 2018 [23 favorites]


I agree we don't need to view Putin as the second coming of Cardinal Richelieu but what's the evidence that he's a dullard?

Putin's former boss at the KGB, in an interview in a Brazilian newspaper, called him a "mediocre" agent and said that he was assigned to Dresden because "only second class agents went there". He gives him credit for his opportunism, but that's about it.

I now suspect that part of the NYT is dirty - editors, reporters, owners, who knows - in either plain money laundering and tax evasion or Russian entanglement.

No, they just really, really loathe Clinton (like a lot of New Yorkers).
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:39 PM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


what's the evidence that he's a dullard?

Oh, none, it's just he's an arsehole and I feel like being rude about him. He's basic sneaky and smart enough to employ much smarter people to do the heavy lifting w/r/t plotting. But ultimately he's not smart enough to build a country that's won't eat itself from within, and his only tool is destabilisation - and destabilisation causes crises, but it can't solve them, and it's the power that settles the current extended crisis that will be the top dog when this is all over. The only power that looks anything like a candidate is China, though. I know, isn't it?

He looks (metaphorically) tall because he gets to stand next to (metaphorical) children, and he seeks (metaphorical) children to tower over because he's (metaphorically and actually) 5' 5".
posted by Grangousier at 1:44 PM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


because he's (metaphorically and actually) 5' 5".

Well, TIL that when I put on Fluevogs I am taller than Vladimir Putin.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:46 PM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


Actually, having typed that, I stand by dullard. A dreary, unimaginative, petty little man. A dullard. Yes.
posted by Grangousier at 1:47 PM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


White House official who supported more refugee admissions is out [Yeganeh Torbati; Reuters]
Jennifer Arangio, a senior director at the White House National Security Council for International Organizations and Alliances, left [Thursday] after months of open disagreements with officials who support slashing refugee admissions, including White House senior policy advisor Stephen Miller and Department of Justice official Gene Hamilton, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. [...]

Arangio served on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign as the national director of women engagement, according to her LinkedIn profile.

During her time on the NSC, she advocated for robust refugee admissions as a tool of foreign policy to convince other countries that the United States was sharing the load of responding to global conflicts, one of the U.S. officials said.

In September, the Trump administration is set to announce a new cap for refugee admissions for the next fiscal year, and White House discussions over the new level have already begun.

The cap for this year, 45,000, is the lowest since the modern refugee program began in 1980, and the actual number may be far lower. Refugee admissions are currently on track to reach only about half the number allowed by the cap, according to refugee advocacy groups.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:48 PM on July 13, 2018 [14 favorites]


I think we've seen that utterly lacking any moral fiber or empathy can get you a lot farther than smarts.

I just don't get Gowdy blowing so hot and cold on all this though. He was such a monstrous prick to Strzok yesterday and today he's all "We shall get to the bottom of this Russia business forthwith!" Pick a lane, my dude.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:53 PM on July 13, 2018 [15 favorites]


Friday, September 29, 2017: Tom Price Resigned From Trump Cabinet Amid Private Jet Investigations
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned Friday in the face of multiple investigations into his use of private charter and military jets to travel around the country at taxpayer expense. Later, the White House placed new requirements on officials' air travel plans.

A statement released by the White House Friday afternoon said that Price had "offered his resignation earlier today and the president accepted."

President Trump had said multiple times this week that he was "not happy" about the optics of Price's travel.
You mean Trump was mad that Price looked like the corrupt politician he was. Got it.

HHS: All But One Of Tom Price's Plane Trips Broke Federal Rules (NPR, Friday, July 13, 2018)
While he was secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price took 21 plane trips. All but one of them – including 12 chartered flights – broke federal regulations, the HHS inspector general said on Friday, adding that the trips wasted at least $341,000.
...
The report (PDF) from the office of HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson says that the current HHS Secretary, Alex Azar, should try to recoup the $341,000 that was improperly used.

The total cost of travel for Price and his staff on the trips in question was $1,185,045, according to the inspector general's report. Over the seven months Price led HHS, he took trips to international destinations such as Tokyo, Berlin, Geneva and Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City, and to domestic cities from Seattle to Augusta, Maine.

As NPR reported last fall, "Most of the trips were between cities where inexpensive commercial flights were also available."

In one three-day trip from Washington, D.C., that included stops in San Diego, Salt Lake City and Aspen, Colo., the HHS overpaid by $36,313 – even though Price's itinerary included a total of less than four hours of official engagements.

Price announced last fall that he would reimburse U.S. taxpayers for chartering private planes for official travel, as NPR reported.

"Today, I will write a personal check to the US Treasury for the expenses of my travel on private charter planes. The taxpayers won't pay a dime for my seat on those planes," he said in a statement on Sept. 28.

The next day, he resigned.

The inspector general's report says Price repaid the government $51,887 for his own travel costs and $7,503 for those of his wife.
That's a grand total of $59,390, or $281,610 shy of fully paying back what he owes the American people.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:56 PM on July 13, 2018 [37 favorites]


@lukebroadwater: In a few minutes, state officials will hold a press conference regarding “links between a Russian-backed company and the Maryland State Board of Elections.”

The press release is in that tweet:
We were briefed late yesterday, along with Governor Hogan, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the software vendor who maintains portions of the State Board of Elections voter registration platform was purchased by a Russian investor in 2015 without the knowledge of State officials.
They do not believe there was a breach, and they make clear that they are not the state mentioned in today's indictment and that Maryland doesn't use the vendor mentioned in the indictment. But ByteGrid LLC, which hosts the state's voter registration database and other election infrastructure is backed by a Russian oligarch, Vladimir Potanin. Maryland repeats they have no evidence of a breach, and they'll audit everything.
posted by zachlipton at 1:57 PM on July 13, 2018 [38 favorites]


From Politico: House conservatives prep push to impeach Rosenstein.

A reminder that Rosenstein being replaced is effectively firing Mueller for purposes of triggering the nationwide protests IIRC.
posted by Justinian at 2:01 PM on July 13, 2018 [29 favorites]


NYTImes opinion by historian and journalist Garrett M. Graff: The Real F.B.I. Election Culprit
The New York field office, one of only three headed not by a special-agent-in-charge but by a full assistant director, has always been a particular challenge for bureau leaders — it’s fiercely independent, combative and notoriously leaky. The office, which works closely with the local United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, a job held by both Mr. Comey and Mr. Giuliani, is sometimes referred to inside the Justice Department as the “Sovereign District of New York” for charting its own course.

The office has long been a source of meddlesome leaks, in part because of the intermixing of F.B.I. agents and New York Police Department officers who have close relationships with the city’s press corps. The lowest point in these relations came in 2009, when the investigation of the would-be subway bomber Najibullah Zazi — a critical emergency investigation that had remained secret when it was focused in Denver, Zazi’s hometown — leaked quickly once the would-be attacker and case arrived in New York, both to the media and to the suspect’s family itself.
posted by mumimor at 2:06 PM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


Indicting 12 Russian Hackers Could Be Mueller's Biggest Move Yet (Garrett M. Graff for Wired, July 13, 2018)
News that paid employees of the Russian government—military intelligence officers, no less—interfered and sought to influence the 2016 presidential election, coming just days before the victor of that election will meet Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, amounts to nothing less than an international geopolitical bombshell.

The new charges, which come in an 11-count, 29-page indictment, lays out Russia's alleged efforts in the excruciating detail and specificity that has become the Mueller investigative team's hallmark. They also undermine President Trump’s long-running efforts to obfuscate whether the US could determine who was behind the attacks. He’s previously speculated that it could be “some guy in his home in New Jersey,” and said, “I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?”
The timing was something my (fuzzy afternoon) brain didn't recognize.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:06 PM on July 13, 2018 [9 favorites]


Current totals:
Solid D - 181
Likely D - 12
Leans D - 8
Toss up - 26
Leans R - 26
Likely R - 28
Solid R - 154


These are the house races right? So am I reading this correctly that the Democrats would have to win all of the races which are more D than "Toss up" plus at least 17 of the Toss up seats? That seems like a rough road.
posted by runcibleshaw at 2:07 PM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Updates from the hearing in the Ms. L family separation case, via @elisefoley:
Judge Sabraw: "There is substantial compliance, there is good faith being demonstrated" by the government. Says parties are working together in a successful way given “enormity of the undertaking.”
...
The ACLU is arguing the government needs to provide information on a regular basis on reunifications vs. just saying they’ll get it done.
The judge seems very on board for frequent check-ins on family reunifications. "Yes, many, in short order."
ACLU attorney says they heard this morning that an adult was deemed by the government to not be a parent even though they showed paperwork that they adopted the child.

DOJ attorney says there’s a possibility that a significant number of purported parents will have no evidence and DNA testing will be needed. She says if all of those had DNA testing it wouldn’t be possible to meet the court deadline. The government hasn’t submitted its plan for reunifications to court yet, but says it will later. Judge Sabraw says it's difficult to do anything concrete when they don't know what the government's proposing.

Judge asks for list of parents in ICE custody who were separated from their children, plus list of the kids, by 9 am PST on Monday. Then will set deadline for list of parents deported, released or in DOJ and state custody, potentially as early as Wednesday.
posted by zachlipton at 2:10 PM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


I agree we don't need to view Putin as the second coming of Cardinal Richelieu but what's the evidence that he's a dullard?

Given its starting position there's no fundamental reason why Russia should not have proceeded from the foment of the 90s to an economic miracle under Putin like China had beginning in the latter days of Deng Xiaoping or like post-WWII Western Europe or Japan. (West Germany and Japan recovering and thriving not just following on from oppressive authoritarian ideologies, but from extensive bombardment and military defeat, while under military occupation by the Allies.)

But that didn't happen under Putin despite considerable hindsight from those preceding examples; he fucked up getting the economy going so badly that the entirety of Russia's small modern economic heft is pretty much due to its lumbering Soviet-legacy resource extraction industries and he had to start invading neighboring countries to unite the populace against economic unrest and hang on to power.

(Minor props for avoiding devolution to Banana Republic status while relying so heavily on resource extraction, I guess. But again, something that China and its leaders did soooo much better, with systematic aggressive reversal of domestic/foreign joint ventures to forcefully obtain the expertise and technology of the international investors and overseas companies who thought they were going to get to re-enact colonialism.)
posted by XMLicious at 2:24 PM on July 13, 2018 [26 favorites]


Democrats to Trump: Russia is behind the 2016 hacks. Cancel your Putin meeting.
(Li Zhou | Vox)

“Get your butt on a plane back to the United States.”
posted by Barack Spinoza at 2:37 PM on July 13, 2018 [47 favorites]


These are the house races right? So am I reading this correctly that the Democrats would have to win all of the races which are more D than "Toss up" plus at least 17 of the Toss up seats? That seems like a rough road.

The idea from past waves is that the side experiencing the wave wins almost all the tossups and a bunch of the "Leans X" and a handful of "Likely X" seats. Yeah if one side wins most of the seats labelled "tossup" that means they weren't actually tossups but that's only apparent in hindsight.

But you're right that its a rough road. That's why Democrats need to win the popular margin by 6-8% in order to take the House. If the vote splits 50/50 between Ds and Rs the Rs would probably gain seats despite already having a decent majority. Functioning, healthy democracy at its best amirite?
posted by Justinian at 2:37 PM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


@Ssullivan101: Federal judge in family separation case just said that it doesn't make any sense for any of these parents who have been improperly separated to pay any of the costs of reunificaiton. DOJ lawyer pushed back and said @HHSGov didnt' have the resources to pay for the kids flights.

Yet they have the resources to pay $700+ day to keep them separated? The judge will apparently hear more about cost issues on Monday.
posted by zachlipton at 2:38 PM on July 13, 2018 [46 favorites]


mikelieman at 1:00 PM: Kudos to Rosenstein. He just reset the framing of the entire Russian Witch Hunt. There appear to be 2 dozen Russian Witches found at this point...

Paul Waldman, Washington Post: If this is a ‘witch hunt,’ it sure is finding a lot of witches
For the benefit of those who continue to claim that the Russia investigation is a great big witch hunt with nothing to show for its efforts, let’s remind ourselves of what it has produced to date:
  • Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is currently in jail ...
  • Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, Rick Gates, pled guilty ...
  • Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pled guilty ...
  • A Trump foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, pled guilty ...
  • Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian associate of Manafort, was indicted ...
  • Richard Pinedo pled guilty ...
  • Alex Van Der Zwaan, a Dutch banker and son-in-law of a Russian oligarch, pled guilty ...
  • Thirteen individuals and three companies were indicted ...
  • And now, eleven Russian military officials have been indicted for hacking into [DNC etc.] email [...] One of those 11, plus another Russian official, have also been indicted for hacking into the systems of state election agencies.
And that’s just so far.
No collusion, and no puppet. (You're the puppet.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:39 PM on July 13, 2018 [73 favorites]


Judge Sabraw: "There is substantial compliance, there is good faith being demonstrated" by the government. Says parties are working together in a successful way given “enormity of the undertaking.”

All of the work going on now to reunify the families is within HHS, and I'm willing to believe everyone at HHS involved in the case is indeed acting in good faith.

DOJ and DHS, however...
posted by ocschwar at 2:48 PM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Adam Davidson, The New Yorker: Where Did Donald Trump Get Two Hundred Million Dollars to Buy His Money-Losing Scottish Golf Club?
This property has not received the attention it deserves. It is, by far, the biggest investment the Trump Organization has made in years. It is so much bigger than his other recent projects that it would not be unreasonable to describe the Trump Organization as, at its core, a manager of a money-losing Scottish golf course that is kept afloat with funds from licensing fees and decades-old real-estate projects.

...

Using what appears to be more than half of the company’s available cash to purchase Trump Turnberry makes no obvious sense for any business person, but especially for Donald Trump. It is a bizarre, confounding move that raises questions about the central nature of his business during the years in which he prepared for and then executed his Presidential campaign.

...

Although we cannot say that Trump himself knowingly engaged in money laundering, we do know with certainty that much of his business in the past decade was in the industries most known for money laundering, in the locations most conducive to money laundering, and with people who bear the key hallmarks of money launderers.
This is the first installment of a new weekly column about Trump's financial activities.
posted by theodolite at 2:58 PM on July 13, 2018 [75 favorites]


Indicting 12 Russian Hackers Could Be Mueller's Biggest Move Yet (Garrett M. Graff for Wired, July 13, 2018)

One is named Potemkin. Stop it, writers, right now.
posted by Mental Wimp at 2:58 PM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


So Trump had a family member who spoke nuclear with him? The US once had a President who truly was a nuclear engineer. Jimmy Carter was the president who responded to the only nuclear power plant incident in America's history.
posted by X4ster at 2:59 PM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


With the Kremlin contining to troll us, Russia Today interviews Putin international aide Yuri Ushakov: We Consider Trump Partner, Not 'Competitor' - Putin's Adviser
When asked what the Kremlin thinks about Donald Trump calling Vladimir Putin a 'competitor,’ the Russian president’s adviser said that Moscow considers the US president to be a 'partner.'

Yury Ushakov told journalists ahead of the forthcoming summit in Helsinki that having the meeting itself is important for establishing "the chemistry of relations" between the two leaders.

“The goal of this meeting, as we see it, is to finally start changing the negative situation in relations between the US and Russia for the better,” Ushakov said, adding that it should involve “some concrete steps aimed at … bringing mutual trust to some acceptable level.”[...]

Ushakov reiterated that Russia has never interfered in the US elections and had never intended to do so.

“I would like to state it once again, ahead of the forthcoming meeting, that the Russian state has never interfered and is not going to interfere in the internal affairs, not to mention the election process, of the US,” the Kremlin official said.

If Washington has any evidence of Russian meddling, Moscow is ready to discuss this issue, Ushakov said. One possible venue for that could have been the joint US-Russian panel on cyber-security, which was discussed by Putin and Trump at the G20 summit in Hamburg last year, but came to nothing due to reluctance from the US.

Moscow is concerned about attempts by US officials who oppose better relations between the US and Russia to “speculate” on the “fictitiously trumped-up” topic of alleged Russian meddling, Ushakov said.
Despite the bizarre lack of an announced agenda, Ushakov says Trump and Putin will discuss the US global missile defense system, along with other issues relating to arms build-up and the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and Russia-American cooperation over the Syrian civil war. They may also discuss, Iran, North Korea, and Ukraine. None of this is normal.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:02 PM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Julian Sanchez (Cato Institute, Just Security, Reason)
Not to be that guy, but the indictment is a pretty ingeniously crafted political document. There’s basically no way for an elected Republican to call this anything but an invaluable service to the country. It doesn’t directly accuse any domestic political actor of wrongdoing, but it’s also peppered with blinking neon signs pointing to domestic loose ends left to tie up. Basically, it’s impossible to frame this indictment as “witch hunt,” but also impossible to read it & say “well, now they’re done & the Mueller probe should wrap up."

---

National Review (David French): Mueller’s Latest Indictments Show That ‘Witches’ Are Very Real
As Mueller reveals more facts about Russian interference and indicts more individuals for troubling crimes uncovered as part of his entirely legitimate investigation, it’s time for the GOP to tell the president that the hunt needs to continue, because the witches are very real.
posted by chris24 at 3:04 PM on July 13, 2018 [40 favorites]


> The indictment is ... impossible to read it & say “well, now they’re done & the Mueller probe should wrap up."

But, but, Rudy said...
posted by RedOrGreen at 3:07 PM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


Jimmy Carter was the president who responded to the only nuclear power plant incident in America's history.

Better than that, how about Jimmy's involvement in a major Canadian nuclear plant incident:
On December 12, 1952, an accident with the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown resulting in millions of liters of radioactive water flooding the reactor building's basement and leaving the reactor's core ruined.[11] Carter was ordered to Chalk River to lead a U.S. maintenance crew that joined other American and Canadian service personnel to assist in the shutdown of the reactor.[12] The painstaking process required each team member to don protective gear and be lowered individually into the reactor for a few minutes at a time, limiting their exposure to radioactivity while they disassembled the crippled reactor.
posted by hangashore at 3:09 PM on July 13, 2018 [18 favorites]


Hey, now that we know Guccifer was GRU and Wikileaks was working with the Russians, remember when the House Intelligence Committee refused to subpoena Roger Stone's DMs with Guccifer and Junior's DMs with Assange?
posted by chris24 at 3:11 PM on July 13, 2018 [43 favorites]


Intercept, Debbie Nathan, Immigrant Mothers Are Staging Hunger Strikes to Demand Calls with Their Separated Children
Other inmates have abandoned the food because they are staging hunger strikes. One woman told me that she had been allowed to call her child only once in several weeks of detention. She went on a hunger strike — una huelga de hambre, as she called it — for two days. As a result, she said, she had gotten one call each day for the previous three days. She said that a rolling hunger strike has been occurring at Port Isabel for the past two weeks, with some 15 women fasting for a couple of days, then eating while another impromptu group fasts. Port Isabel has not made public the number of people it is detaining, but one woman said that each women’s dorm has 25 people in it, and there are five dorms.

Mothers in Port Isabel walk around in a constant state of grief and anxiety, some displaying symptoms of post-traumatic-stress disorder. Most have had only a handful of calls with their children. One said she has been separated from her 12-year-old since early June and has not talked to him even once — nor does she know where he is, except that he is in New York state. Several told me that they have a hard time remembering what day or date it is. Hours after she was released on bond from Port Isabel last week, one woman recalled how she and other detainees got together, discussed their problems remembering what had happened to them even as recently as the day before, and decided as a group to request a visit to the facility’s psychologist. “We were worried we were losing our minds,” she said.
posted by zachlipton at 3:21 PM on July 13, 2018 [34 favorites]


My wife just showed me a Twitter movie of Trump wandering around in front of the Queen and generally getting in her way and I went into a rant, which might make sense and be of interest. As I mentioned upthread, she's personally known almost every major world leader (hell, maybe all of them, probably not Stalin, but all the rest, yes?) since 1953. That gives her an incredible amount of influence. Not power - she can't tell people what to do, but influence. She knew Kennedy, and Nixon and every Australian prime minister, and every, I don't know Japanese Emperor, and everybody, and you pay attention to someone with that experience of power, at least if you're interested in power. She's basically at the top of the status pyramid simply by virtue of her longevity and of the status the UK has somehow retained (and is leaking like a smashed pipe right now).

For my own part... I kind of like The Queen, I respect her (I mean, really, as a person who made a genuine role out of a ridiculous position), I don't revere her. I'm unoffended by rude comments about her, while also being not especially amused. This isn't me getting into a patriotic huff.

But I finally realised: Trump has literally no understanding. He doesn't understand status, he doesn't understand influence, he doesn't really understand power. He understands bullying, but real power? No. Showing respect to the elder - and at this point, the Queen is the supreme elder, the capo dei capi, for right or wrong - empowers you, puts you in the same class as them; Disrespecting the elder shows you're not worthy of consideration.

Because of that total failure to understand, he's a colossal failure that we're waiting to happen. He will fail, it's just a question of when.
posted by Grangousier at 3:31 PM on July 13, 2018 [103 favorites]


‘Kiss my you know what’: Schumer hamstrung in SCOTUS fight
“I’ll be 71 years old in August, you’re going to whip me? Kiss my you know what,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) when asked if Schumer can influence his vote.
...
But it could prove impossible for Schumer to persuade senators like Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana to vote against Kavanaugh. All three supported Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch last year, and all three say that their decision won’t be swayed by Schumer no matter what he does this year.

“My decision won’t have anything to do with Chuck Schumer,” Donnelly said.

“I’m going to vote the way I’m going to vote regardless of what the leader says,’ Heitkamp said.
...
“Giving red staters a pass on every tough vote is neither strategy nor leadership. If you care about standing for something, sometimes you have to ask members to do hard things,” Jentleson said. “Reid knew when to do that and this is one of those moments.“
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:40 PM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


I just want to share that I have updated my 2016 Active Measures site. It includes details from the new indictment in the "how do we know Russians hacked the DNC" section, a new "Brexit" section separated out from the rest of the "collusion" details, a few more details about the roles other countries played, particularly via George Nader and Erik Prince, and generally updated information throughout. There are new links on all four of the pages linked from the top navigation.

Please do share if you find it useful. Or just quote it or plagiarize it (with my blessing) or mine links from it. I want to get this information out there.
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:53 PM on July 13, 2018 [75 favorites]


Vox, Dylan Scott, Michael Cohen’s mysterious communiques with a big pharma company, explained: Novartis paid Cohen $1 million. A new Senate report casts doubt on claims the company got nothing from him.
It’s easy to forget, but remember that time Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer who finds himself right in the middle of Robert Mueller’s investigation, was paid $1 million by one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world?

Yeah, that happened — and a trove of new documents, released Friday by Senate Democrats, give us a little clearer picture of what exactly was going on with Mr. Cohen and Novartis.
...


There isn’t necessarily any smoking gun of wrongdoing here and we shouldn’t be surprised perhaps that a major drug manufacturer would use every tool at its disposal, including money and influence, to figure out how to advance its interests.

But I think there are at least two important lessons from this new report:

Communications between Cohen and Novartis executives extended beyond the one meeting that the company initially disclosed, after which it said it had decided it no longer wanted Cohen’s services.
Cohen and Novartis’s CEO certainly appeared to discuss Trump’s agenda on drug prices, an agenda that, as we have reviewed at length, always seems to be favorable toward pharma.
...
Cohen was shepherding drug pricing policy ideas between Novartis and an unknown third party.

As part of those extended communications, Jimenez sent Cohen in June a list of policy recommendations about how to lower drug prices. Cohen referenced an unknown third party and he later indicated that he was expecting to receive a report soon from that third party and he would then share it with Novartis.
This all seems like a 5-alarm scandal but for the much larger conflagration today. Also note Cohen signing his email "Yours, Essential Consultants LLC."
posted by zachlipton at 4:03 PM on July 13, 2018 [20 favorites]


Showing respect to the elder - and at this point, the Queen is the supreme elder, the capo dei capi, for right or wrong - empowers you, puts you in the same class as them; Disrespecting the elder shows you're not worthy of consideration.

She's a woman, though. He hates women.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:11 PM on July 13, 2018 [17 favorites]


I guess our Florida congressperson isn't Devin Nunes, but it would be great if there was a wave of people speculating that it was, because then more people would start to see his actions in that kind of light and we'd get to the bottom of that shitshow much sooner.
posted by M-x shell at 4:14 PM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


“An Amateur Boxer Up Against Muhammad Ali”

The problem with all the prizefight metaphors for the Trump-Putin meeting isn't who the two fighters are. It's framing the conversation as occurring between adversaries or competitors.

So I'm gonna go with Lonely Goatherd marionette + Julie Andrews.
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:21 PM on July 13, 2018 [37 favorites]


I guess our Florida congressperson isn't Devin Nunes, but it would be great if there was a wave of people speculating that it was, because then more people would start to see his actions in that kind of light and we'd get to the bottom of that shitshow much sooner.

Ah, Devin Nunes (i.e., Stupid Littlefinger A.K.A. Stupidfinger). I’d really like to finally know what his depth of complicity is here.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 4:27 PM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


McClatchy DC delves into Trump's shady golf-club finances again: Trump Lost Millions at Golf Courses In Scotland. U.S. Voters Weren’t Told That.
President Donald Trump’s pair of golf resorts in Scotland have steadily lost money, with losses calculated at $23 million the last year his company reported figures to United Kingdom officials.

U.S. voters may not know that.

That’s because Trump told U.S. officials that Trump Turnberry earned $15 million and Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeen earned $3.8 million in what he describes as “golf-related revenue” for roughly the same period of time.[...]

Trump’s two Scotland developments lost money for three years in a row with losses doubling in 2016 from the year before, according to documents the Trump Organization filed with Companies House, a British government agency that tracks a company’s revenue, expenses and profit.

In an October 2017 report outlining the $23 million in losses in 2016, the company said some of the problems stem from shutting down the Turnberry resort for six months for renovations.

Yet Trump reported $15 million in revenue at Turnberry and more than $3.8 million at Aberdeen between January 2016 and mid-April 2017, according to his personal financial disclosure statement filed in June 2017. Both properties are valued at more than $50 million. each.

One authority on the golf course business who declined to speak publicly about the president said some wealthy business owners accept when their properties lose money, especially in the short term, if they believe the value would likely grow, or if they offset the losses with profits from another business.

The discrepancy could make sense if the Trump Organization only licensed or managed the developments, as it does for many of its resorts, but news reports indicate Trump purchased the Scotland properties.
If Trump purchased his Scottish golf clubs, notably at a time when banks were reluctant to lend him money, this raises the question of the source of his investment—and of course, if money-laundering was involved. As Eric supposedly boasted about the Trump Org's golf investments, "Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia."
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:56 PM on July 13, 2018 [18 favorites]


@JoanAlker1: Politico is reporting that more than 1/4 of Arkansans subject to first work requirement implemented in Medicaid have failed to complete just the first red tape hurdle. This illustrates why substantial coverage losses will ensue and this “policy” is not about helping people work.
posted by zachlipton at 4:57 PM on July 13, 2018 [26 favorites]


And Wikileaks is trolling us, too. Their cover blown and their status as a GRU cutout publicized, they don't have many other options. They haven't issued any statement about the new Mueller indictments, but they did tweet a video supercut of all the times Trump brought up Wikileaks during the 2016 campaign.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:24 PM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Politico is reporting that more than 1/4 of Arkansans subject to first work requirement implemented in Medicaid have failed to complete just the first red tape hurdle.

I’m a public librarian in Arkansas. The state DHS came out to train us on helping people through this requirement. It can only be done on a website which requires an email address, doesn’t have a mobile version, and mandates monthly check-ins that include uploading documents.

In a mostly rural, wrong-side-of-the-digital-divide kind of state, it’s a total shitshow, and frankly I’m surprised the percentage of people that haven’t met the requirement isn’t even higher.
posted by box at 5:49 PM on July 13, 2018 [96 favorites]


To be absolutely clear; byzantine documentary and bureaucratic requirements which fail to be met by a large number of otherwise eligible beneficiaries are often not a bug, they are a feature intended to prevent people from receiving benefits to which they are entitled. It saves money and punishes the supposed moochers.
posted by Justinian at 5:55 PM on July 13, 2018 [51 favorites]


Roger Stone is giving a live interview on CNN right now. Just fyi.

Probably shut up and get a lawyer, buddy? Or don't. I actually prefer it if you go to jail so...
posted by Justinian at 6:03 PM on July 13, 2018 [7 favorites]


Box: thanks for sharing your experience. I can't even imagine trying to guide people through that, especially given how far you might have to drive to get to a library with a scanner. Do you mind if I share your comment on Twitter?
posted by zachlipton at 6:26 PM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Remember the service purporting to out Russia propoganda http://www.propornot.com? They caught a lot of flack for targeting left leaning sites and blogs, specifically counterpunch.org, but details in today's indictment confirm that the "Alice Donovan" identity cited for some stories was the GRU.
THREAD: There's a small but telling detail in Mueller's new indictment of the #12Russians.

It mentions "Alice Donovan", a GRU persona that also published articles in the old far-left magazine Counterpunch... Which we highlighted as a Russian propaganda outlet in Nov 2016. /1 The @washingtonpost previously reported, on Christmas 2017, that the GRU was creating entirely fake "journalist" personas to pitch propaganda articles at credulous/complicit useful idiots & assets in the US.

It mentioned "Alice Donovan" as an example. /2 Till now, the public didn't know that Russian military intelligence created the "DCLeaks" Facebook page using the EXACT SAME FAKE-JOURNALIST PERSONA they were using to feed propaganda to horseshoe-bottom outlets like @NatCounterPunch... But now we know. /3 Note how this technique - Russia creating entirely fake "journalists" to pitch articles to credulous/complicit useful idiots & assets in the US - has not been extensively discussed in Congressional hearings, Facebook/Twitter's Russian propaganda audience counts, etc. /4ny measure the scale of Russian propaganda's audience in the US would have to include the hits on articles supposedly written by "Alice Donovan", a fake-journalist persona created by Russian spy-propagandists. Here's some of their work here: /5 https://muckrack.com/alice-donovan/articles … Russia's attack is ongoing, & much bigger than just Internet Research Agency-style troll farms (plural) running fake accounts, which Facebook/Twitter/Google/etc have tried to focus on as narrowly as possible.

Here's fake-"Alice"'s Twitter - it's still up: @_alicedonovan_ /6

...

There's MUCH more to come on all this. What we are seeing, as with the Congressional hearings on Russian propaganda's use of Facebook & Twitter, are just tips of a MUCH larger propaganda (& espionage) iceberg.

There's been a LOT of collusion. /18
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:27 PM on July 13, 2018 [40 favorites]


I'm sure Seth Rich's parents will get a deserved set of apologies now. Right?

That's so sweetly naive.

'No, Goodbye!': Newt Gingrich Shamefully Dodges When Asked to Apologize for Debunked and Harmful Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory.
"In light of the Mueller indictments, I called @newtgingrich to see if he would like to apologize to the Seth Rich family for peddling the conspiracy theory that Rich was killed for supposedly leaking the DNC docs to Wikileaks," [CNN reporter Oliver] Darcy wrote on Twitter.

All he got in response, he said, was the short reply: "No, goodbye!"
posted by scalefree at 6:37 PM on July 13, 2018 [25 favorites]


Chris Hayes: "Of the many ironies in this [Russian hacking] story, surely at the top is the fact that the Clinton private server appears to have been the most secure and impregnable of the servers that were targeted."
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:42 PM on July 13, 2018 [107 favorites]


Wow. Counterpunch. Not surprising, but that used to be a regular read.

I guess Doug Henwood will be along at some point.
posted by notyou at 6:52 PM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


Trump is "absolutely terrified of any sort of stairs"

How does he manage coming down the staircase before a state dinner?
posted by jgirl at 6:53 PM on July 13, 2018 [7 favorites]




Lovely Twitter thread covering the sights and sounds of the massive London protest, with many excellent sign pics. My fave so far is "Feed him to the corgis."
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:06 PM on July 13, 2018 [20 favorites]


Do you mind if I share your comment on Twitter?

Leave my name out, but, otherwise, you do you.
posted by box at 7:08 PM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]




John Aravosis:
1) Look at the reaction in just the past few days to @jonathanchait’s think-piece about “what if” Trump really is a traitor? People were beside themselves, including some in the media. Our country was attacked for a foreign enemy. Trump still refuses to admit it. 2) But it’s worse than that. Mueller’s indictment today suggests that the Russians got Trump’s “if you’re listening” message and attempted to hack Hillary that very evening. And today, Mueller’s indictments go public, we learn a shocking amount of new detail of Russia’s attack… 3) And what does Trump do in response to new proof that the Russians attacked our country? Trump calls the investigation a hoax, and the White House issues a totally defensive message suggesting no Americans were involved, aka they’re not to blame. No criticisms of Russia. 4) At this point into a Hillary Clinton residency, no hyperbole, had she done what Trump did after Russia helped her win by hacking our election, she’d be lucky if she were only impeached and removed from office, and not hung for treason. 5) The Republicans in the House are now trying to impeach Rod Rosenstein in order to stop the Mueller probe. They are actively helping a foreign enemy of the United States get away with an attack on our country. If Democrats did this, there would be a civil war by now. 6) But @jonathanchait writes a story about something we all know in our hearts to already be true - Donald Trump is compromised by the Russians - it’s the only credible excuse left for Trump’s behavior — and the establishment becomes verklempt with shock. 7) I still go back to the riots the Republican party would be organizing had Democrats won the presidency with the help of our enemy, and then we tried to kill the investigation of what happened. There would be literal violence by the Republicans. 8) I don’t want violence. But I’d like something a little more than just a shrug of the shoulders and a poo-poo directed towards those among of us who are admitting what the rest of us already know in our hearts be true: Donald Trump is a traitor.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:14 PM on July 13, 2018 [72 favorites]


Thanks to Robert Mueller, Trump and Putin Now Have a Summit Agenda
(Susan B. Glasser | The New Yorker)
What a difference a couple of hours makes. At noon in Washington, as Trump was arriving for afternoon tea with the Queen of the United Kingdom, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Rod Rosenstein, announced the bombshell indictment by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, of a dozen Russian military intelligence officers, for stealing Democratic Party e-mails during the 2016 election. Suddenly, the Helsinki summit took on a whole different urgency. Would Trump, finally, belatedly, actually, confront Putin directly about this state-sponsored attack on the American political system? Would the President persist in questioning the findings of his own government experts when it came to the Russian hacking? Would the summit even take place, given the indictments? Should it?

In fact, we already know Trump’s answer to those questions. Rosenstein dropped another astonishing revelation into his press conference: President Trump had been aware all along about the charges against Russian actors, and had been briefed on them by the Justice Department even before he left for Europe. “The President is fully aware of the department’s actions today,” Rosenstein told reporters as he announced the indictments, which lay out in methodical detail the ways in which agents of the Russian government systematically worked to infiltrate the Democrats’ 2016 campaign with the apparent goal of helping Trump win the American Presidency.

Trump knew the indictment was coming when he bragged about what an easy meeting he would have with Putin. He knew it was coming when he once again attacked the investigation by his own government as “rigged.” And he knew it was coming when he rambled on about an agenda for the Helsinki summit that would cover just about everything but the Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Talk about brazen.

On Friday, the only White House comment after the indictments was not a condemnation of the Russian campaign, as outlined in damning detail in the indictment, to subvert American democracy. No, it was simply a partisan statement of support for the President, noting that all those charged in the case were Russians. “This is consistent with what we have been saying all along,” the statement said. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph Giuliani went further, calling it “vindication,” a claim so breathtaking in its brazenness that the Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, responding on CNN, joked that if Trump were taken away in handcuffs by federal agents, Giuliani would call that vindication, too.

Democrats in Congress, and at least one Republican—the ever more isolated Senator John McCain—immediately demanded that Trump cancel the Helsinki summit, at least, as McCain put it, “if President Trump is not prepared to hold President Putin accountable.” But, of course, Trump is prepared neither to take Putin to task nor to cancel the summit he has spent months pushing his staff to arrange for him.

Trump, in fact, is the one who initiated this mystifying get-to-know-you summit, and he did so despite warnings from many in and out of his Administration. They knew, they had to know, that such a summit could be reckless and counterproductive—and politically risky in the extreme. No other politician in such a circumstance would even consider a summit now with Vladimir Putin. But Trump is not like any other politician: he is the first, and only, American President whose legitimacy in office has been tainted by a state-sanctioned Russian campaign to help him win. This was going to be the summit without an agenda. Mueller and Rosenstein have just forced one on Trump that he did not want.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:24 PM on July 13, 2018 [11 favorites]


Here's a de-Twitterfied thread from an old friend, Pete Zatko aka Mudge of the hacker groups the L0pht & Cult of the Dead Cow; corporate infosec firm @Stake; DARPA cybersec program manager for Military Networking Protocol (MNP), Cyber Insider Threat (CINDER) & Cyber Fast Track (CFT) programs; Google security researcher & founder of groundbreaking infosec firm Cyber Independent Testing Lab. I have every reason to believe the accuracy of what he says. He was writing it live as I started copying, I think he's done now.

@dotMudge So... I suppose it’s time to share a bit.

I have always worked to try to educate the government so they can make better informed decisions that will benefit all citizens.
During the last election the Democrats reached out to me.

I was happy to help and made it clear that if a reasonable candidate from an opposition party asked for my advice I would provide similar counsel in regards to improving computer, network, and information security.
I lean a particular way, but my goal is to do the greatest good irrespective.

They were ok with that.
I devoted a lot of personal time attempting to educate people. Some of these people were considered experts in the field, although none had operational or technical experience and I called them on that. They did have management and government experience, which is important.
I argued internally for a lot of improvements and changes (CFAA, ECPA, title 10/50 challenges, protecting vuln research, etc.).

The most effort was expended on trying to get them (and any political candidacy that would listen to me) to implement rudimentary OPSEC protocols.
Biggest pushback, from people now touting themselves as candidates for security advisors to new politicos, was surprising:

They refused to require 2fa: it would be annoying.

They pushed back on gsuite to enable document control/access/auditing: another email is too much.
I walked them through previous compromises of both parties in prior elections.

The bare minimum defense, which GOOG has made pretty easy to achieve (they were already using GOOG), which disproportionately raises adversary costs, was too much to ask.

It gets better/worse.
I offered to deploy 2fa, hardened computers, and configure the communal (cloud) work systems to protect their information. No cost.

It was turned down. But I tried.

A bunch of things happened They are well known and politicized in various ways.

But wait, there’s more...
After the election my name started to float around inside the Oval Office of the incumbent as a possible option for the “Cyber Czar” (or similar) role.

People reached out to me to see if I would be receptive.

I relayed that if I could help my country I would consider it.
Shortly after that I get contacted by Russia Today (RT) asking if I would do an on air interview on voting security (not an area in which I am publicly known to be involved). Strange.

I’ve spiked on foreign lists before.

Back channels confirm/imply I’m ‘interesting’ again.

I get an OOB message that I’m off the table. I ‘helped’ the opposition party so I’m tainted.

I think both parties have (different) serious issues, which is why I’ll try to improve either of them if I see an opportunity.

But now I’m in an interesting place: ...
The people who asked for my counsel fought basic hygiene, which made the subsequent compromises easier/possible.

The new administration considered me an enemy because I tried to educate the opposition party (even though I was willing to educate anyone).

and then..
Shortly after my name gets tossed around inside the executive branch RT reaches out to me.

That could be a coincidence, probably was (my old colleagues imply otherwise). But whatever.

The topic was a bit disconcerting though (hacking national elections) 2016/2017...
posted by scalefree at 7:41 PM on July 13, 2018 [47 favorites]


Marcy Wheeler has put up a good and very readable timeline of the hacks
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:42 PM on July 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


Democrats refusing two factor authentication after the need had been explained to them is too on brand, like running x4 more TV ads than social media and stretching for Arizona instead of defending Michigan or Wisconsin.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:46 PM on July 13, 2018 [14 favorites]


He's not finished yet it seems. More from Mudge...

@dotMudge Only a few days later I start getting interesting iMessage spam (I don’t open it or click on anything). iMessage spam is relatively costly... good job Apple.

A few days later white screens of death (common for failed jailbreaks) each time shortly after I power cycle.
I can’t confirm that this isn’t/wasn’t some of ‘my’ own kit being thrown back against me.

It looks like it, and it also only worked against a few minor revs prior to what I was running.

Similar failure modes to what you see in the failures above after Apple patched.
posted by scalefree at 7:48 PM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


Trump is "absolutely terrified of any sort of stairs"

I think I've already said this in an earlier thread, but I suspect this is because his uncorrected vision is poor but he's too vain to wear glasses in public. His alpha-male bullshit probably considers them a sign of weakness. He's afraid of stairs because he can't see them clearly.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 7:53 PM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


Mudge: the Final Chapter.

@dotMudge So what I ‘choose’ to take from all of this is:

A) Occasionally I warrant nation state interest (yay?)

B) I don’t warrant high end stuff (that I know of)

C) The recent indictment is very forthcoming compared to what the IC/DoJ normally reveal.

End of Line

/HT MCP
posted by scalefree at 7:53 PM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


JK Rowling (twitter followers: 14.3M) just retweeted this tweet from editor and columnist Alex Massie which I think speaks for a lot of us here in America as well as people like them viewing from across the pond:
Apart from disgust, the dominant emotion when Donald Trump visits your country is sadness. To think the great American republic - and experiment - has been reduced to this. To think we have all been degraded like this.
posted by Justinian at 7:55 PM on July 13, 2018 [65 favorites]


Democrats refusing two factor authentication after the need had been explained to them is too on brand
You have no idea. No. Idea. I don't think I can say the careless and lazy behavior I observed and that staffers attempted to involve me in while I was interning for a congressional reelection campaign in the "quiet times" last year. I'm worried that such obvious negligence would be enough to bring down a popular Democrat (though of course IOKIYAR). Democratic campaigns are not just vulnerable to attack, but from what I've seen, no one would ever even be able to tell that they've been compromised.
posted by books for weapons at 7:59 PM on July 13, 2018 [18 favorites]


Roger Stone knowingly communicated with GRU operatives. There is no “Guccifer 2.0” anymore, it’s “Russian GRU officers”, as laid out by the most recent indictments that literally show messages from Roger Stone to these GRU intelligence officers. There is no longer a cover that “no Americans” communicated or “colluded” with Russian intel. They did. High-powered Republicans were communicating with Russian intelligence officers, and disseminating information for them. They are traitors and need to be thrown in prison for life, or executed.
posted by gucci mane at 8:08 PM on July 13, 2018 [62 favorites]


Holy shit, cDc speaks. (Moo.) I'd like to hear what GM Ratte has to say...

Maybe now they'd like to tell us exactly how much they had to do with the early Anonymous ops? Because the answer is not nothing.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:15 PM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Aaron Nevins fits into this as well. He cheated. He disseminated illegally produced information from a known Russian intelligence unit. Get in line for the guillotine, fucker.
posted by gucci mane at 8:15 PM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Donald Trump was five years old when Elizabeth became Queen.

I'm not sure that has any actual relevance, but I find it telling nonetheless.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:16 PM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


That's why Trump considers his summit with Putin so important; so he can have a press conference afterward declaring that the two leaders have signed a treaty making Russia into Our Closest Ally, so the collusion can't be illegal, right?
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:23 PM on July 13, 2018


The summit isn't optional, it's his mandatory employment review.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:30 PM on July 13, 2018 [16 favorites]


I believe it was emptywheel on Chris Hayes today who essentially said that one plausible explanation for why Trump is so insistent on this one on one meeting with noone else in the room is that he knows he's busted and he needs to ask Putin what the fuck to do now. I believe she was mostly joking but still.
posted by Justinian at 8:39 PM on July 13, 2018 [21 favorites]


My current insane what if? Thought is that he goes to the Putin meeting and just doesn’t come back,
posted by The Whelk at 8:41 PM on July 13, 2018 [11 favorites]


My current insane what if? Thought is that he goes to the Putin meeting and just doesn’t come back,

We're hoping Trump just ghosts us. That's a weird thought.
posted by curious nu at 8:43 PM on July 13, 2018 [24 favorites]


He'll probably make a 'deal' where we stop caring about Crimea, drop all sanctions and in exchange Putin will invite the US to a new treaty organization called NOTNATO.
posted by localhuman at 8:46 PM on July 13, 2018 [7 favorites]


From the indictment:
On or about June 22, 2016, Organization 1 sent a private message to Guccifer 2.0 to "[s]end any new material [stolen from the DNC] here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing." On or about July 6, 2016, Organization 1 added, "if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after." The Conspirators responded, "ok... i see." Organization 1 explained, "we think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary... so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting."
WikiLeaks is entirely uninterested in acting as anything resembling the news organization devoted to transparency they claim to be.
posted by zachlipton at 8:47 PM on July 13, 2018 [36 favorites]


You have no idea. No. Idea. I don't think I can say the careless and lazy behavior I observed and that staffers attempted to involve me in while I was interning for a congressional reelection campaign in the "quiet times" last year. I'm worried that such obvious negligence would be enough to bring down a popular Democrat (though of course IOKIYAR). Democratic campaigns are not just vulnerable to attack, but from what I've seen, no one would ever even be able to tell that they've been compromised.

Is there any push for just getting off the internet entirely and using paper? There have to be people who still remember how things used to be orchestrated nonelectronically.
posted by dilaudid at 8:57 PM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


WikiLeaks is entirely uninterested in acting as anything resembling the news organization devoted to transparency they claim to be.

Glenn Greenwald hasn't tweeted one thing about today's indictments except RTing this.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:02 PM on July 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Glenn Greenwald hasn't tweeted one thing about today's indictments

No, he did: Pointing out the importance of the presumption of innocence of the defendants. The defendants being members of the military wing of the GRU assigned to cyber espionage.
posted by gwint at 9:09 PM on July 13, 2018 [45 favorites]


I came across a very interesting reminder after reading the discussion upthread of Popehat's take on the "Russia, if you're listening"/Russian attempts to get Clinton's emails on the same day thing and whether it can count as conspiracy: the Veselnitskaya meeting in Trump Tower came before that. So, ample opportunity to plan that signal out ahead of time.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:09 PM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


Writers.. I am getting a little tired of your sense of humor.

Maryland told its voter registration vendor financed by Russian oligarch
[...]
State officials say they were told they were told their voter registration system, ByteGrid LLC, is financed by AltPoint Capital Partners, whose fund manager is "a Russian" and largest investor is Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin.
What could possibly go wrong?
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 9:11 PM on July 13, 2018 [15 favorites]


From the emptywheel timeline, linked above, a breif section:

July 14, 2016: Conspirators send WikiLeaks an email with attachment titled wk dnc link1.txt.gpg providing instructions on how to access online archive of stolen DNC documents

July 18, 2016: WikiLeaks confirms it has “the 1Gb or so archive” and would make a release of stolen documents “this week”

July 22, 2016: WikiLeaks releases first dump of 20,000 emails

July 27, 2016: Trump asks Russia for Hillary emails

July 27, 2016: After hours, conspirators attempt to spearphish email accounts at a domain hosted by third party provider and used by Hillary’s personal office, as well as 76 email addresses at Clinton Campaign


August 2016: Kovalev hacks into VR systems

August 15, 2016: Conspirators receive request for stolen documents from candidate for US congress

August 15, 2016: First Guccifer 2.0 exchange with Roger Stone noted


Earlier I would have said Trump's call for Russia to hack HRC was bog-standard blathering. But this indicates it was a "signal" for KGB* agents to attack the likely president-elect.

* yes, GRU, but KGB resonates more

[on post: I am the poor man's jason_steakums]

posted by petebest at 9:14 PM on July 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


June 9 - Trump Tower meeting.
July 18-21 - Republican National Convention, platform language on Ukraine changed.
July 27 - "Russia, if you're listening..."/Russia most certainly is.

Pretty tidy timeline. And it makes the various attempts to set up a back channel to Putin make a lot of sense, Trump's just dealing with people like Veselnitskaya and making public signals because Putin's not completely dumb and stays at arm's length, but that's not good enough for Trump.

Also, Manafort has probably been drenched in flop sweat all day, he's right in the middle of all that.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:22 PM on July 13, 2018 [9 favorites]




Glenn Greenwald hasn't tweeted one thing about today's indictments

Did he ever come through with a legal defense fund for (now convicted and imprisoned) Reality Winner, the source he burned trying to give him info about these hacking attempts?
posted by PenDevil at 10:33 PM on July 13, 2018 [9 favorites]


Lest anybody think we're out of the woods.

‘Warning Lights Are Blinking Red,’ Top Intelligence Officer Says of Russian Attacks.
WASHINGTON — The nation’s top intelligence officer said on Friday that the persistent danger of Russian cyberattacks today was akin to the warnings the United States had of stepped-up terror threats ahead of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

That note of alarm sounded by Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, came on the same day that 12 Russian agents were indicted on charges of hacking the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Mr. Coats said those indictments illustrated Moscow’s continuing strategy to undermine the United States’ democracy and erode its institutions.

“The warning lights are blinking red again,” Mr. Coats said as he cautioned of cyberthreats. “Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.”
posted by scalefree at 10:46 PM on July 13, 2018 [39 favorites]


Illinois State Board of Elections "very likely" the board mentioned in today's indictment of 12 Russians:
“We think it’s very likely,” Matt Dietrich [of the ISBE] just told reporters, that the Illinois State Board of Election is the “SBOE 1” described in the federal indictment.
There's nothing particularly new here, although it's slightly notable that the Illinois State Board of Elections wasn't warned of the indictment, although they have been closely cooperating with the investigation. And again, as I have said before, Illinois has been extremely up front and forthright about the hacks (unlike other hacked states) and has taken proactive steps to address it and kept voters whose information was accessed informed every step of the way, so props for that.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:58 PM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


I feel mudge's pain. My last gig was a major managed services firm - specializing in phones and telepresence, but that meant they also built out the network infrastructure for VOIP, and used the experience to push into pure network managed services.

The "build login" is left in place by the Build Team for ease of support for the Data Support Team (name changed to protect the hapless.) for everything.

Every firewall, router and switch this company has deployed at their customers uses the same login and human-memorizable password, firewalls and routers allowing admin logins from the internet, and we all memorized it, for more than a decade. I left there in May of this year. I was screaming about it to every manager I could get to listen a moment for the half-decade I was there.

What we really need is for White Hat social engineering experts to get into the game. Con people into protecting the public trust. Cutting off cynicism at the knees, promoting a healthy skepticism without making anyone feel stupid, making new systems (2FA, looooking at you) more convenient than old systems.*

(*Username, which is a rando hex+punctuation thing six chars long, six digit user selected pin, hit an icon on your phone's lock screen and look at the front camera when it buzzes. Memorize twelve chars, which we will not be making you replace with great frequency, tap and smile. YES THIS IS POSSIBLE! ->roars and eats pieces of the set like Animal on the Muppet Show<-)
posted by Slap*Happy at 11:00 PM on July 13, 2018 [18 favorites]


I came across a very interesting reminder after reading the discussion upthread of Popehat's take on the "Russia, if you're listening"/Russian attempts to get Clinton's emails on the same day thing and whether it can count as conspiracy: the Veselnitskaya meeting in Trump Tower came before that. So, ample opportunity to plan that signal out ahead of time.

If that's their signal, all I can say is, man are they ever clumsy. I bet there was a subtler signal but Trump fucked it up and spilled the beans right in front of everyone.
posted by M-x shell at 11:02 PM on July 13, 2018 [11 favorites]


Glenn Greenwald hasn't tweeted one thing about today's indictments

Did he ever come through with a legal defense fund for (now convicted and imprisoned) Reality Winner, the source he burned trying to give him info about these hacking attempts?


Is it possible Greenwald burned her on purpose? Incompetence is a pretty common cover for malfeasance.
posted by M-x shell at 11:07 PM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


If that's their signal, all I can say is, man are they ever clumsy. I bet there was a subtler signal but Trump fucked it up and spilled the beans right in front of everyone.

Even when it happened, the moment read like Trump had some ugly secret he'd been sitting on and he decided to lean on it in a pissy little tantrum. I had no more of a clue than anyone else who'd been following the election closely on the blue, but it sure didn't seem like nothing at the time. Yet it was also just one more moment that should've stopped the entire shitshow out of an endless stream of such moments. Another sign that the Republican party as a whole simply could not (and cannot) be trusted in any way. Even as an expression of sentiment, that should've been the end of it right there.

But ultimately, yeah. Knowing what we know now? He knew shit was up, he knew he had to shut up about it and isn't smart enough to articulate it anyway, but he's also a pissy old man with no self-control and so he had to say something because a lady reporter had the nerve to ask him a question.

And then, if memory serves, they stopped putting him up on those daily press conferences. Because that wasn't a suspicious signal at all, either.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:16 PM on July 13, 2018 [22 favorites]


> If that's their signal, all I can say is, man are they ever clumsy. I bet there was a subtler signal but Trump fucked it up and spilled the beans right in front of everyone.

Only months after asking for the hack, @SarahKendzior noted that Trump had no press conferences for the rest of his campaign. So yes, Trump just plain fucked that up.
posted by klarck at 11:42 PM on July 13, 2018 [41 favorites]


So this is something I've only just realized. This was a cyber attack by GRU, Russian military intelligence, on US critical infrastructure. Such things are covered under NATO's Article 5, Mutual Defense. Even if the US doesn't ask for it NATO could invoke Article 5 to defend us.
posted by scalefree at 1:05 AM on July 14, 2018 [27 favorites]


Only months after asking for the hack, @SarahKendzior noted that Trump had no press conferences for the rest of his campaign. So yes, Trump just plain fucked that up.

I observe that there has been no press conference by Trump addressing these revelations. Innocent people don't act like that.
posted by mikelieman at 1:09 AM on July 14, 2018 [7 favorites]


This was a cyber attack by GRU, Russian military intelligence, on US critical infrastructure.

We need it said loud and clear. This was an act of war.
posted by xammerboy at 2:08 AM on July 14, 2018 [35 favorites]


Article 5 does not require a kinetic response. These are largely uncharted waters. Even if invoked it's unclear what form NATO's defense of the US would take.
posted by scalefree at 2:16 AM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


We need it said loud and clear. This was an act of war.

Y'day afternoon I made a point to call Senator Shumer's office, and commented that I was not happy with his lightweight framing, and used the terms "Act of War" and "Reparations".

THEN I called Senator Gillibrand's office, and said the same thing PLUS my expectation that Senator Gillibrand keep Senator Schumer on track, since he's a little "Old School" and doesn't always get that none of this is normal, so normal actions aren't enough.
posted by mikelieman at 2:33 AM on July 14, 2018 [34 favorites]


Schrödinger's Investigation; simultaneously there never should have been an investigation and why didn't that investigation do more.

Also, you didn't stop me when I was actually in the vault, so you can't go after me for robbing the bank. It's your fault really I stole the money.

And of course, no condemnation of the Russians, in fact still implying the Russians didn't do it by blaming a FBI/DNC conspiracy theory.

@realDonaldTrump
The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration. Why didn’t they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election? Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t the FBI take possession of it? Deep State?
posted by chris24 at 4:06 AM on July 14, 2018 [7 favorites]


For his behavior, Giuliani deserves to be a pariah and not a public figure.

New Yorkers have been telling all y'all that since like the late 90s.

During his term as mayor - which began in 1993, by the way - he oversaw a police department that was accused of abuses of power, up to and including shooting of unarmed suspects. The Abner Louima case and the Amidou Diallo case happened during his watch. Three members of his cabinet were brought up on criminal proceedings. He threw Yassir Arafat out of a Lincoln Center event, to which Arafat had been specifically invited. He was the defendent in 26 civil liberties lawsuits during his administration - and lost 22 of them. He vetoed a bill that would have legalized owning ferrets as pets, based on a personal whim - and when a ferret owner contacted him in an on-air talk show to complain, Giuliani insulted the man for a good two minutes, calling him "sick". He cut services for the homeless. He snubbed African-American community leaders and introduced racial profiling. He often locked horns with the city Board of Education, at one point saying that he wanted to "blow them up". In 1996, he threatened legal action to compel NYC-local cable networks to start carrying FOX News, when it was just being launched. He tried to hatch a scheme whereby people from other states could visit NYC only if their states accepted NYC garbage.

Honestly, the only reason everyone knows him today is that he happened to be in the very last couple months of his final term in office in 9/11, and is reasonably good at handling crisis situations; so he got national visibility for that one single incident. But everything that preceeded that incident was far more indicative of the man, and we've been trying to tell everyone that but it has been falling on deaf ears.

It makes total sense that he and Trump are chummy now. They're of a piece.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:07 AM on July 14, 2018 [80 favorites]


Well, he's up and tweeting. He wants to know why Obama didn't stop the twelve Russians and also where the DNC server is and why the FBI doesn't have it.

"Deep state?" he says.

I can't figure out the implication of the Obama reference. Is he saying, this can't be true, because if it were, Obama would have stopped it, or that the greater crime is failing to act as opposed to stealing the presidency? "Yes, I stole the presidency, but Obama should have stopped me"? The entire point is that it took place during the election. Of course it was during a different administration. Because it took place during the campaign. That is how time works.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 4:08 AM on July 14, 2018 [26 favorites]


Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t the FBI take possession of it? Deep State?

Suggested in the indictment, WE had Allies up on the GRU's computers, probably capturing DNS queries along with rootkit and keylogger, and WATCHED the hacks happen, so there was no reason to analyze a victim's computer.

Man, I can't wait until Phase 3 of the indictments, where the reveal the people in the United States who were all part of this..
posted by mikelieman at 4:11 AM on July 14, 2018 [27 favorites]


I can't figure out the implication of the Obama reference. Is he saying, this can't be true, because if it were, Obama would have stopped it

As everyone knows, Mitch McConnell was holding Merrick Garland hostage at the time.
posted by mikelieman at 4:13 AM on July 14, 2018 [7 favorites]


I can't figure out the implication of the Obama reference. Is he saying, this can't be true, because if it were, Obama would have stopped it, or that the greater crime is failing to act as opposed to stealing the presidency?

You give him too much credit. His self-defence arguments have barely progressed beyond "but Mom, it's not fair, he started it!"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:22 AM on July 14, 2018 [29 favorites]


I can't figure out the implication of the Obama reference.

This is like not being able to figure out why the drunk guy hit someone standing behind him during an argument. It’s because he’s flailing, that’s all. He didn’t sit down with his lawyers and political advisors and hammer out a complex multi-tiered public-relations strategy. He just started flailing, and of course “Hit the black guy” was the first thing he thought of.
posted by Etrigan at 4:29 AM on July 14, 2018 [22 favorites]


ALL SENSIBLE PEOPLE: DEMOCRATS, REPUBLICANS, AMERICANS SHOULD AGREE - IT'S A WITCH HUNT

sysly, make this a meme and throw it in his face
posted by lalochezia at 5:05 AM on July 14, 2018 [11 favorites]


Also Guliani put the crisis command center in the World Trade Center despite everyine telling it was bad idea cause it was a likely target
posted by The Whelk at 7:00 AM on July 14, 2018 [30 favorites]


Giuliani also didn't do shit for 7 years about the FDNY radios that didn't work during the 1993 WTC attack. When he finally did something in 2000, he gave a $14m no-bid contract to Motorola. And then they never field-tested the radios. So when they were released in March 2001 and a firefighter died when his radio didn't work and his distress call was unheard, they pulled the new radios and went back to the ones that had failed in 1993. And then they failed again on 9/11 and 120 firefighters in Tower 2 died because they didn't hear the warnings that it was about to collapse.

He's always been piece of shit who, if there is a god, will die as awfully as those firefighters.
posted by chris24 at 7:20 AM on July 14, 2018 [102 favorites]


"Yes, I stole the presidency, but Obama should have stopped me"?

This is the same line he used in one of his debates with HRC when the subjext of his money and his tax returns came up. You were a Senator; why didn’t you stop me?

People bought it then, too.
posted by notyou at 7:26 AM on July 14, 2018 [16 favorites]


I can't figure out the implication of the Obama reference. Is he saying, this can't be true, because if it were, Obama would have stopped it.

To coin a phrase, it's "verbal chaff". Words designed to distract rather than mean something.
posted by scalefree at 7:34 AM on July 14, 2018 [12 favorites]


Hadn’t seen the most recent takes from the folks over at lawfareblog shared here yet:

Russia Indictment 2.0: What to Make of Mueller’s Hacking Indictment

The Lawfare Podcast: Emergency Edition: GRUccifer 2.0 Indictment
posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:35 AM on July 14, 2018 [8 favorites]


It's kettle logic. I didn't collude. Clinton was the real colluder. And if I did, it's not really a crime anyway. And if it's a crime, Obama should've stopped it. Etc., etc.
posted by chris24 at 7:37 AM on July 14, 2018 [17 favorites]


He just started flailing, and of course “Hit the black guy” was the first thing he thought of.

Trump's frothing, swivel-eyed base loves when he hits Obama. This tactic appeals to racism at its most atavistic, and it hasn't let him down yet.

As for other successful tactics Trump's now doubling-down on, the Toronto Star's Daniel Dale and his colleagues have completed a truly Herculean task: Trump Has Said 1,340,330 Words As President. They’re Getting More Dishonest, a Star Study Shows
Since Trump’s inauguration speech on Jan. 20, 2017, we’ve fact-checked every word Trump has spoken or tweeted since his inauguration speech on Jan. 20, 2017. Up until July 1, 2018, the end date for the analysis, we had counted 1,929 false claims.[...]

Our conclusions:

There’s a lot of dishonesty: Of all the words Trump said and tweeted as president as of July 1, 5.1 per cent were part of a false claim. Expressed differently: Trump uttered a false word every 19.4 words.

Trump’s dishonesty density is increasing: The issue isn’t just that he’s talking more these days. It’s that what he’s saying is less truthful.

In weeks that started in 2017, 3.8 per cent of Trump’s words were part of a false claim. In 2018, it’s 7.3 per cent. Expressed differently: in 2017, Trump said about 26 words for every one false word. In 2018, it’s down to about 14 words per one false word.

Word count aside, his raw number of false claims has spiked: Trump made 2.9 false claims per day in 2017. He’s made 5.1 false claims per day in 2018.[...]

He’s quite dishonest in interviews: Unsurprisingly, Trump has uttered more false claims in his many speeches, 648 of the 1,925, than anywhere else.

What’s more notable about the data: Trump makes the second-most-false claims, 380, in interviews. This is interesting because of how few interviews he gives — it depends on how you count, but it’s under 60 — and how friendly most of the interviewers are. According to presidential tracker Mark Knoller, a CBS reporter, Trump had given 26 interviews to Fox News since taking office as of mid-June; he’d given no more than six to any other outlet. So Trump is usually not being pressured into false claims because of tough questioning, he’s just making them.
Is there any surprise that Trump's legal team and allies are doing everything they can to prevent Mueller interviewing him under oath?
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:44 AM on July 14, 2018 [49 favorites]


Artw: "Roger Stone says he’s the 'US person' mentioned in Mueller indictment

Interesting... tactic.
"

It's probably to short circuit speculation that it is one of dozens of other Republicans. Better to get all that bad press concentrated on one person who can be dismissed as a coffee getter than spread around especially since it could then be a local issue.
posted by Mitheral at 7:53 AM on July 14, 2018 [5 favorites]


Anyway. What a strange thing to tweet 36 hours before he meets with those 12 indicted dudes’ boss.
posted by notyou at 8:10 AM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]


Artw: "Roger Stone says he’s the 'US person' mentioned in Mueller indictment

Interesting... tactic."


He also earlier said it couldn't be him because he'd only talked with Trump, not campaign officials. Which is... not helpful to Trump's case when it is clearly Stone in the indictment. So now Stone's saying it is him and he did talk to campaign officials so he can claim later he didn't say anything about it to Trump, just others.
posted by chris24 at 8:31 AM on July 14, 2018 [6 favorites]


There can be no valid reason for this, it's cruelty for the sake of cruelty - against children. It's sadism, pure & simple.

Cleaning Toilets, Following Rules: A Migrant Child’s Days in Detention. A portrait of life in the shelters for the children detained after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Do not misbehave. Do not sit on the floor. Do not share your food. Do not use nicknames. Also, it is best not to cry. Doing so might hurt your case.

Lights out by 9 p.m. and lights on at dawn, after which make your bed according to the step-by-step instructions posted on the wall. Wash and mop the bathroom, scrubbing the sinks and toilets. Then it is time to form a line for the walk to breakfast.

“You had to get in line for everything,” recalled Leticia, a girl from Guatemala.

Small, slight and with long black hair, Leticia was separated from her mother after they illegally crossed the border in late May. She was sent to a shelter in South Texas — one of more than 100 government-contracted detention facilities for migrant children around the country that are a rough blend of boarding school, day care center and medium security lockup. They are reserved for the likes of Leticia, 12, and her brother, Walter, 10.

The facility’s list of no-no’s also included this: Do not touch another child, even if that child is your hermanito or hermanita — your little brother or sister.

Leticia had hoped to give her little brother a reassuring hug. But “they told me I couldn’t touch him,” she recalled.
posted by scalefree at 8:31 AM on July 14, 2018 [56 favorites]


In about 20 years, half the population will live in eight states < WaPost on who that other half will be, and their influence over the makeup of the Senate.
posted by Harry Caul at 8:42 AM on July 14, 2018 [24 favorites]


In about 20 years, half the population will live in eight states < WaPost on who that other half will be, and their influence over the makeup of the Senate.

And (from the article), 70% will live in 15 states, which means 30% of the country will be choosing 70% of the Senate, and those 30% will be old, white, and just the fucking worst.

This is why I keep going on about sustainability and freaking out about people who are all, "oh civil war isn't a possibility unless you count secessionist conflicts." Like motherfucker, that is EXACTLY what I'm worried about, because our current political model is simply not sustainable, full stop. It will have to change, one way or the other, and I am really hoping we choose the way that doesn't involve a long, protracted, secessionist conflict.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:54 AM on July 14, 2018 [59 favorites]


We are operating orphanages.

There's no other proper word for it. The kids came in enough numbers to overwhelm the foster care system and the group homes we have. The next step is orphanages.

So it's time to do it PROPERLY. Instead of industrial sized orphanages in disused Walmarts, go back to the old blueprints. Smaller. In homes that look like homes. WIth staffing scaled to make lockups unnecessary.
posted by ocschwar at 9:04 AM on July 14, 2018 [3 favorites]


We are operating orphanages.

There's no other proper word for it.


There are many proper words less pleasant than "orphanages" that describe what we're operating.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:08 AM on July 14, 2018 [55 favorites]


So it's time to do it PROPERLY. Instead of industrial sized orphanages in disused Walmarts, go back to the old blueprints. Smaller. In homes that look like homes. WIth staffing scaled to make lockups unnecessary.

Callousness & cruelty are an integral part of the plan. It's intended to send a message - "stay away!" Homelike, caring environments don't send that message; they will never willingly comply.
posted by scalefree at 9:12 AM on July 14, 2018 [10 favorites]


Rust Moranis: There are many proper words less pleasant than "orphanages" that describe what we're operating.

Also most of the children aren't orphans.
posted by Too-Ticky at 9:15 AM on July 14, 2018 [28 favorites]


Well, it's 10000 kids, of whom 8000 really did come unaccompanied. They deserve a fairer deal too.
posted by ocschwar at 9:20 AM on July 14, 2018 [3 favorites]


Summary
46 R support (including McCain, likely to be absent)
41 D oppose
13 uncommitted (5 R/8 D)

Brett Kavanaugh confirmation tracker: where every senator stands on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
posted by scalefree at 9:26 AM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


In about 20 years, half the population will live in eight states < WaPost on who that other half will be, and their influence over the makeup of the Senate.

It doesn’t look like they’re accounting for the effects climate change and today’s economic and health care policies will have in the next 20 years. I can’t help but think that there isn’t going to be a ton of growth in states that are not only within the hurricane zone, but also have social policies of “Go fuck yourself”, and that doesn’t even account for Trump normalizing the practice of just not allocating federal aid to areas wiped out by natural disasters. You can’t support a population if you don’t have infrastructure, and Republicans are antagonistic to infrastructure.
posted by Autumnheart at 9:28 AM on July 14, 2018 [3 favorites]


13 uncommitted (5 R)

5 Lucys still weighing their options on football placement.

You can’t support a population if you don't have infrastructure, and Republicans are antagonistic to infrastructure.


South Carolina could be populated by a single MAGA-hatter living in rubble full of mutant lizards and he'd still have the same number of Senators as California.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:32 AM on July 14, 2018 [23 favorites]


suffrage for the mutant lizards
posted by dragstroke at 9:34 AM on July 14, 2018 [10 favorites]


Mod note: One deleted; let's ease back on the riffing/predictions/these fuckers/it's horrible etc. If nothing's going on at this very instant, that's okay and an opportunity to check out other things on the site or out in the world.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:39 AM on July 14, 2018 [6 favorites]


My current insane what if? Thought is that he goes to the Putin meeting and just doesn’t come back, - We're hoping Trump just ghosts us. That's a weird thought.
Philip Roth's prescient nightmare The Plot Against America, ends exactly this way. Nazi puppet Lindbergh and his 'America First' agenda disappears amidst the height of camps appearing, riots and a rising resistance. Makes his reign seem like some strange national fever dream.
posted by Harry Caul at 9:42 AM on July 14, 2018 [14 favorites]


Marcy Wheeler interview on this week's On the Media. The audio is posted, but the transcript doesn't appear to be up yet. Wheeler talks about why she went to the FBI with information about a source.
posted by compartment at 10:27 AM on July 14, 2018 [5 favorites]


Josh Marshall: I keep coming back to this paragraph. Broke in again after original break in. After they were clearly in contact with top Trumpers. Second time focused on analytics, actionable data if you’re running the other campaign, especially if you’re doing complex targeting. To be fair, Trump won by millions of votes. So the effect on the ... no wait, Trump won by a few tens of thousands of votes in three key states.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:42 AM on July 14, 2018 [68 favorites]


Second time focused on analytics, actionable data if you’re running the other campaign, especially if you’re doing complex targeting.

It's impossible to know just from this what we're talking about, but more and more it sounds like the Russians stole everything. Trump's campaign knew Hillary's strategy, state by state tactics, even the individual voters she was reaching out to and how. What didn't they have? This is like if Nixon stole the entire DNC building instead of wiretapping some phones and stealing some documents.

Another thing I don't get is that Trump defenders often say the campaign simply received the information as can happen through any news outlet, but now we know they were actively asking for sensitive information. Is it legal for a campaign to order a reporter to find and give them their opponent's private voter information?
posted by xammerboy at 11:48 AM on July 14, 2018 [8 favorites]


Tim Miller (senior R strategist, NeverTrumper) :
If your view is that the Russia op didn’t change a single vote then you are saying campaigns don’t matter and we should just vote the day the candidates are announced. Because Wikileaks/DNC hack was a central part of the Trump campaign message and the media’s coverage of the race
posted by chris24 at 12:10 PM on July 14, 2018 [73 favorites]


One thing I saw pointed out on Twitter after this broke is that if the Trump campaign had Clinton's voter models, then they had the ability to break those models -- to find the edge cases where they would not detect faltering support as long as it faltered in exactly the right demographics and regions, and then target only those demographics and regions.

And what's the story of how she lost Michigan and Wisconsin? Faltering support that the campaign's models didn't detect.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:16 PM on July 14, 2018 [69 favorites]


According to the right wing of America, Hillary lost those places bc she didn’t campaign there.
posted by gucci mane at 12:22 PM on July 14, 2018 [3 favorites]


> Trump's campaign knew Hillary's strategy, state by state tactics, even the individual voters she was reaching out to and how...This is like if Nixon stole the entire DNC building instead of wiretapping some phones and stealing some documents.

I think the argument is it's OK as long as you get a foreign intelligence service to do it for you.
posted by nangar at 12:32 PM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]


Yes and they made the decision where to bring the candidate...based on their model of where they needed support.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:32 PM on July 14, 2018 [6 favorites]


@mattyglesias
Remember last week when the Senate GOP caucus decided to celebrate July 4 in Moscow?

Kinda weird call.

posted by Artw at 12:37 PM on July 14, 2018 [23 favorites]


Colberts take on the Strzok hearing:
Red Hot Congressional Strzok Fest 2018
It's fun and all, but I'm mostly posting it because there are some some shocking details I didn't notice when it was on (probably because I was so shocked I couldn't handle it all)
posted by mumimor at 12:41 PM on July 14, 2018 [11 favorites]


One thing I saw pointed out on Twitter after this broke is that if the Trump campaign had Clinton's voter models, then they had the ability to break those models -- to find the edge cases where they would not detect faltering support as long as it faltered in exactly the right demographics and regions, and then target only those demographics and regions.

But Clinton's team would also have had Clinton's voter models, the ability to break those models, and to find edge cases, too. It's not like there was a secret weakness here.
posted by This time is different. at 12:42 PM on July 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


Innocent people don't act like that.

That's been Josh Marshall's observation since the start -- whatever they're guilty of, Trump and his advisers sure act like they're guilty.
posted by Gelatin at 12:44 PM on July 14, 2018 [10 favorites]


According to the right wing of America, Hillary lost those places bc she didn’t campaign there.
Also according to some that were in her campaign.
posted by Harry Caul at 12:47 PM on July 14, 2018 [3 favorites]


I can't figure out the implication of the Obama reference. Is he saying, this can't be true, because if it were, Obama would have stopped it

As everyone knows, Mitch McConnell was holding Merrick Garland hostage at the time.


It's worse than that. When presented with the evidence of Russian interference and Obama's plea that they denounce it together, Mitch McConnell told Obama that he would deny knowing what he knew and accuse Obama of partisan interference in the election. For, let's note again, pointing out the Russians were interfering in the election in Trump's favor.

McConnell, as much as Trump, is guilty of treason.
posted by Gelatin at 12:49 PM on July 14, 2018 [131 favorites]


Yeah, Ezra Klein has made the point before that there may not be a legal definition of collusion, but there is still a specific thing people have in mind. Collaborating, coordinating, some sort of overt action. While knowing that this collaboration was with foreign entities. That's what at least I've been looking for - both the guilty mind and the guilty acts. I don't know if that fits into any particular legal statute, and I don't really care. That's what will make a public case for collusion.

Until now we didn't have enough publicly known evidence to clear that bar - it was still possible that Russian parties did their thing without the Trump campaign doing more than stumbling around. Now we know that there was active ongoing contact between various Russian and American parties. That's the guilty act. The indictment says that the American parties may not have known they were talking to Russian entities - so the guilty mind is still missing. But it's very strongly implied. This is collusion.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 1:13 PM on July 14, 2018 [8 favorites]


Mod note: Couple comments deleted. Folks, I get why it's come up, but I'm gonna roll out the yellow CAUTION tape around the sinkhole of discussion that is the Dems' strategy in the 2016 campaign; we've lost too many good draft-horses trying to pull people out of there.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:30 PM on July 14, 2018 [66 favorites]


Via Matt Miller @moneyries:"Roger Stone tells CNN he does not believe he is the unnamed person in the indictment: “My contact with the campaign in 2016 was Donald Trump. I was not in regular contact with campaign officials.”

Mother Jones's David Corn: At the RNC convention in Cleveland, Stone told me he was in meetings with Trump campaign officials.

Stone, like Trump, lies constantly and shamelessly. His lies go beyond attempting to deceive us—he wants to spread enough of them so that they undermine our collective confidence in ever learning the truth.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:53 PM on July 14, 2018 [23 favorites]


One thing Rosenstein said in the press conference:

"Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers is here with me today because we intend to transition responsibility for this indictment to the Justice Department’s national security division while we await the apprehension of the defendants. Ed O’Callahan is also with me. He’s been managing the special counsel investigation."

Does spreading pieces of the SC investigation (further?) into National Security help to blunt potential Benczkowski mischief, or is this simply standard procedure when dealing with indictments of foreign nationals?
posted by ipe at 2:09 PM on July 14, 2018


70% will live in 15 states, which means 30% of the country will be choosing 70% of the Senate, and those 30% will be old, white, and just the fucking worst.

I know it's far-fetched and would never happen, but we could really use an organized scheme of moving liberals into low-population red states and taking over. CA and NY have plenty of people to spare. There are some beautiful places in KY, TN, WY, MT. Set up new, planned, liberal enclaves. The cost of living is going to be loads cheaper. There's no reason it couldn't happen. I guess the smart thing would be to turn all the purple states blue first--so prioritize FL, NV, NC, PA, WI, OH. Until we can hold another constitutional convention and do it less stupidly next time, there might not be any other option but to make the demographics work for us.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:22 PM on July 14, 2018 [17 favorites]


Does spreading pieces of the SC investigation (further?) into National Security help to blunt potential Benczkowski mischief, or is this simply standard procedure when dealing with indictments of foreign nationals?

Protects against Rosenstein impeachment/firing is my understanding.
posted by scalefree at 2:25 PM on July 14, 2018


Mod note: A few deleted; Elon Musk, schmelon schmusk.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:52 PM on July 14, 2018 [33 favorites]


But Clinton's team would also have had Clinton's voter models, the ability to break those models, and to find edge cases, too. It's not like there was a secret weakness here.

To get a bit tin foil-y here is a thread documenting when the Trump campaign suddenly cancelled a ton of ad buys to start buying ads in Wisconsin.
posted by PenDevil at 3:06 PM on July 14, 2018 [10 favorites]


Stone, like Trump, lies constantly and shamelessly.

Stone is Elim Garak, only less cuddly: "Never tell the truth when a lie will do."
posted by notsnot at 3:09 PM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


Hmm. I would argue he lacks the inate decency of a disgraced Cardassian intelligence officer.
posted by Artw at 3:11 PM on July 14, 2018 [28 favorites]


To get a bit tin foil-y here is a thread documenting when the Trump campaign suddenly cancelled a ton of ad buys to start buying ads in Wisconsin.

"on or about September 2016" the Russians steal Clinton's analytics in the second break-in. October 7, 2016: Trump may be advertising in Wisconsin for first time in general election

-Russia hacked DNC analytics sometime in Sept
-Early Oct, Trump campaign abruptly redirected their ad spending, claimed changes were "data driven"
-New ad investments were heavily in states that narrowly handed Trump the electoral college
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:13 PM on July 14, 2018 [44 favorites]


Even Russians hate Trump.
A majority of Russians say they have a negative view of President Trump, according to a new poll from state pollster Russian Public Opinion Research Center.

The poll, conducted earlier this week, found that 71 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view of Trump, compared to 10 percent who had a favorable view. Nearly 20 percent of respondents said they had no opinion.

A large majority of respondents, 77 percent, said specifically that they view Trump as “self-centered,” and just 16 percent said they think the U.S. president is “trustworthy.”
posted by chris24 at 3:13 PM on July 14, 2018 [5 favorites]


Matt Yglesias: Given Trump’s innocence — and the fact that he, uniquely, is in position to know the truth of his own innocence — firing Comey rather than letting him just finish the investigation seems like a real unforced error.

I wonder how many people won't recognize the desert-dry sarcasm here? And of those how many watch Fox News? Also, I wish there was a MeFi style guide. I never know which words to link when linking to a tweet so I just randomly link stuff.
posted by Justinian at 3:35 PM on July 14, 2018 [10 favorites]


Masha Gessen pointed out that Putin will never allow Trump or the United States to be seen as anything but an enemy. All of Putin's political power is based on that narrative, and Russians believe whatever is said on state news. Making concessions to Putin will lead to nothing but an endless series of counter-accusations and games, just like with Kim in North Korea.
posted by xammerboy at 3:40 PM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]


Also, I wish there was a MeFi style guide. I never know which words to link when linking to a tweet so I just randomly link stuff.

I got your style guide right here (proposed).
  1. Include the Twitter handle
  2. Link the timestamp to the tweet
  3. Block quote the tweet text or an excerpt
    Like this: <blockquote>Tweet tweet tweet</blockquote>
posted by kirkaracha at 3:48 PM on July 14, 2018 [10 favorites]


Or maybe Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) instead of just the handle.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:51 PM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


Yes, I’ve moved to using blockquote for extended quotations, always link the first tweet of a thread if quoting the whole thread, and include the persons real name if they’re a journalist (not the twitter handle), and if not very widely known, their publication. Articles are easier, title plus the best pull quote with the blockquote tag.

People complained about linking the text of a tweet with the link just linking to the tweet, so I try not to do that but still do occasionally if it’s just something scarcastic or funny and I want to make clear it’s not my words originally. If it’s a single tweet, the persons name/identification as the hyperlink followed by the content of the tweet seems like the best compromise.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:02 PM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]


Brian Klaas (WaPo)
Imagine the bombshell it would be if we found out Trump sent a secret message to the Russian government asking them to hack Clinton on July 27th & they did the same day. He did exactly that publicly. Our cognitive bias is silly, thinking covert messages are worse than public ones
- I’ve written about this phenomenon previously: a scandal doesn’t have to be secret. It can be in plain sight and that doesn’t make it any less serious.
WaPo: Trump shows that a scandal doesn't have to be secret to be scandalous
posted by chris24 at 4:03 PM on July 14, 2018 [57 favorites]


You should really read the whole thing.

Daily Beast (David Rothkopf): The Way Trump and the GOP Deal with Russian Attacks is ‘Textbook Treason’
...This is an extraordinary moment. It is without equal not only in American history but in modern history. A hostile foreign power intervened in our election to help elect a man president who has since actively served their interests and has defended them at every turn.

Trump may deny collusion. But given that this the attack continues, denying it is collusion, distracting from it is collusion, obstructing the investigation of it is collusion — because all these things enable it to go on.

That the president is abetted in his aid for the Russians — again, in the midst of this ongoing attack — by the leadership of the Republican Party makes the situation all the more extraordinary and dangerous. As they seek to undermine the investigation, they serve Russia as directly as if they were officers of the GRU. Some now reportedly seek to impeach Rosenstein on trumped up charges. To attack one of the leaders of our national defense as we are being attacked and to do so to benefit our foreign adversary is textbook treason.

That is strong language. But consider this: If we updated our definitions of war to include cyberwar, then aiding a foreign power engaged in such a war against us would certainly meet the Constitutional definition: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

When only semantics protect our president and our ruling party from the harsh sentences treason demands, we need to recognize the severity of the situation. But more importantly, we need to recognize one of the most important implications of yesterday: that while we who watch or chat on cable news have lost the plot here, while GOP makes it about personal attacks on FBI officers, while the President makes it about him, while many of us make it about partisan politics, Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein have kept their eye on the ball.

They recognize as does Coats and as do the leaders of our intelligence community and as does every law enforcement and national security expert with whom I have spoken that this is, above all and most urgently, is a national security crisis for the United States...
posted by chris24 at 4:08 PM on July 14, 2018 [89 favorites]


Trump has avoided legal responsibility for crimes all his life, and he obviously believes his current status ("I'm President, bitch") protects him even more. And I still believe his main goal for the summit is to acquire a formal alliance with Putin/Russia that he believes would protect him from all responsibility for his Russia-related crimes, even as his best (and worst) legal advisers tell him it wouldn't.

But the collusion conspiracy cooperation is far more complex than any of us understand (certainly far more than Trump can understand or accept in his self-centered little mind); the string needed to connect all the people and entities would be more than a bulletin board can handle. After all,the Republicans were rat-funking the system long before Trump started his campaign, with the goal of getting any GOP candidate elected, and Russia (and others ) just helped.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:18 PM on July 14, 2018 [11 favorites]


Congressman Reads Trump to Filth Using a Republican Burn Book
...one Congressman, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, took advantage of his free afternoon off from work to crack open a burn book written by the Republicans themselves and give an oratory performance that will leave you clutching all the pearls in the ocean.

After hours of congressional leaders grilling Strzok about negative things FBI agents tweeted about Trump during the campaign and claiming it was part of Deep State Conspiracy, it was Raskin's turn and, like our first president, Alexander Hamilton, he did not throw away his shot.

Raskin started reading off insults Republicans like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio lobbed at Trump and then asked Strzok if he'd directed them to say those things and if it was part of a Deep State Conspiracy. Honey, rhetorical question shade is perhaps the deepest (state) shade there is and I live.
I mean, the whole thing is gold.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:40 PM on July 14, 2018 [91 favorites]


I keep trying to parse that article title and I’m having absolutely no success.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 4:44 PM on July 14, 2018 [16 favorites]


read someone to filth: (at first especially in the black LGBT community) To thoroughly insult, to comprehensively call attention to the flaws of (someone).

That was a new one for me.
posted by shenderson at 4:48 PM on July 14, 2018 [14 favorites]


Metafilter: to comprehensively call attention to the flaws of
posted by paper chromatographologist at 5:00 PM on July 14, 2018 [13 favorites]


like our first president, Alexander Hamilton, he did not throw away his shot.

Uh, yeah... That's why Hamilton lived to a ripe old age of 95 and was not shot and killed by Burr in a duel...
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 5:02 PM on July 14, 2018 [3 favorites]


Now that we have that cleared up, can we take a moment to step back and appreciate (from last year) R. Eric Thomas's "[Maxine Waters] swore to read for filth, the whole filth and nothing but the filth."

He also explores the distinction between a read and shade:
I'm tempted to elect Congresswoman Waters as this week's Shade Bae, but shade is subtle. Waters doesn't have time for subtlety. Waters knows that desperate times call for shadier measures. She is reading this town for filth.

Dr. Carla Hayden may be the Librarian of Congress, but Congresswoman Maxine Waters has read everything in that building, honey.
posted by zachlipton at 5:04 PM on July 14, 2018 [17 favorites]


Uh, yeah... That's why Hamilton lived to a ripe old age of 95 and was not shot and killed by Burr in a duel...
Regret to inform that taking anything R. Eric Thomas says as a claim to literal historical fact is not the first step on the path to enlightenment.

posted by kirkaracha at 5:14 PM on July 14, 2018 [6 favorites]


WIth Brian Benczkowski not yet a week at the DoJ, the Washington Post has a slew of fresh Mueller probe leaks from inside: Mueller, Pushing to Wrap Up Parts of Russia Probe, Faces Question of American Involvement
[P]eople familiar with the investigation said the special counsel is pushing to wrap up a significant portion of his investigative work by the end of summer.

There are various factors that could alter Mueller’s efforts and timeline, most notably whether the standoff over an interview with Trump is resolved or ends up being litigated in court, according to the people, who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

As recently as this week, Mueller’s team has discussed interviewing more witnesses, a sign that a part of the probe remains very active, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mueller has discussed scenarios for winding down at least some of his office’s work in the coming months, the people said, emphasizing that the special counsel views his primary responsibility to be investigating — not necessarily prosecuting — any wrongdoing linked to the Russian interference efforts.
As for the protracted negotiations between Trump's lawyers and the Special Counsel's team over a formal interview with the Donald:
Trump’s lawyers — who expect their interview terms will be dealbreakers for Mueller — have not yet gotten any response from the special counsel or his deputies.

“We don’t expect Mueller would agree,” said one person briefed on the discussions. “But if he did, well, then we’d face a really interesting choice.”

Despite the impasse, Trump attorney Jane Raskin continues to regularly negotiate with Mueller’s deputy, Jim Quarles, over the possible setting of the interview, including the time, place and setting, according to people familiar with her role.
And Mueller continues to prepare for handing over new prosecution cases to other DoJ attorneys, just in case:
Meanwhile, inside the Justice Department, law enforcement officials have discussed several scenarios in which the prosecutions of people who may be charged as a result of Mueller’s investigation are farmed out to other offices to handle any future trials.

In those scenarios, these people said, some prosecutors on Mueller’s team could move with their cases to Justice Department headquarters or individual U.S. attorney offices, these people said.

The transferring of some cases has already begun. Last month, a new group of Justice Department prosecutors were assigned to a previously filed case of Russian people and companies accused of using fake social media accounts to try to influence American voters in 2016. At the time, people familiar with the probe said the new prosecutors were being brought on board because the case would probably be turned over to the federal prosecutor’s office in Washington.

Law enforcement officials have discussed similar transfers of other matters that Mueller is investigating, according to two people familiar with those discussions.
(Caveat lector: Trump allies prohibited from intercommunication will use leaks to the press to circumvent these restrictions.)
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:14 PM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


Farming out the actual trials to other offices is smart, it preserves the investigations in the event Mueller is eventually fired.

I'm not sure that "[P]eople familiar with the investigation" implies a government source though, that still implies Trump defense counsel to me, not really a change in attribution that would obviously be Benczkowski. He was just confirmed Wednesday, that's not enough time (yet) to be read into the complex Mueller investigation and leaking intentions.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:23 PM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


As for the protracted negotiations between Trump's lawyers and the Special Counsel's team over a formal interview with the Donald

God damn it, these questions have already been answered.

Leon Jaworski subpoenaed Nixon for tapes during Watergate. It went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said Nixon had to comply with the subpoena.

Ken Starr subpoenaed Bill Clinton. Clinton agreed to testify to the grand jury under oath on video in exchange for Starr withdrawing the subpoena.

So, can a president be subpoenaed? Yes. Should Trump have to testify under oath, on camera, to the grand jury? Yes.

I know it's extremely unlikely anything useful would come out of a potential Trump grand jury appearance. But we're supposed to have the rule of law and there is precedent.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:35 PM on July 14, 2018 [41 favorites]


The Piers Morgan interview (cw: Daily Mail) went great. A solid half of the article is devoted to Piers gushing over the plane and himself, and then we hear from Trump, and it's truly astonishing how ignorant he manages to be without even being asked questions:
‘Can I pick one up and call someone?’ I asked, reaching down to phone Lord Sugar and boast about where I was.

‘NO!!!!!’ exclaimed another aide. ‘Do NOT touch those phones… please. Thank you, sir.’
...
Trump revealed the Queen told him the names of all the presidents she had met. ‘Harry Truman was the first president that she got to meet and know, and she went through a whole list. It was a very nice moment, Piers, very nice.’
...
‘We would make a great deal with the United Kingdom because they have product that we like. I mean they have a lot of great product. They make phenomenal things, you know, and you have different names - you can say “England”, you can say “UK”, you can say “United Kingdom” so many different - you know you have, you have so many different names - Great Britain. I always say: “Which one do you prefer? Great Britain? You understand what I’m saying?’

‘You know Great Britain and the United Kingdom aren’t exactly the same thing?’

‘Right, yeah. You know I know, but a lot of people don’t know that. But you have lots of different names. The fact is you make great product, you make great things. Even your farm product is so fantastic.’
...
'You take a look at what’s happened in Paris, you take a look at what’s happened in London. You look at what’s going on - it’s changing Europe, and I don’t mean in a positive way. I’m not the president of Europe, I’m the president of the United States, and we have a strong border, we have a tough border. And we have a different problem, but similar in certain ways.’

As we spoke, over 100,000 anti-Trump protestors were marching through the streets of London.

‘Some of them are protesting in my favour, you know that?’ he insisted. ‘There are many, many protests in my favour.’

Hmmm. I must have missed those.
...
Trump, as with many things including gay marriage and guns, has flip-flopped over abortion – one of the most contentious hot button issues in the U.S.

‘Well, look, I’m a conservative as you know,’ he replied. ‘I have my views, but I’ve been told it’s truly best not to talk about it. That’s a little bit of an interesting stance but that’s the right thing to do, now…’
posted by zachlipton at 5:39 PM on July 14, 2018 [23 favorites]


‘You know Great Britain and the United Kingdom aren’t exactly the same thing?’
‘Right, yeah. You know I know..’


No. No, you don't.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:43 PM on July 14, 2018 [27 favorites]


When only semantics protect our president and our ruling party from the harsh sentences treason demands

I have heard defense of Republian trason phrased something like, we aren't at war with Russia.

Well, that didn't stop the US from executing Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for treason.

The burden of proving treason is high, but there's a reason foreign money is not allowed in by law in a US election. Aiding, abetting, and covering up for a foreign government that -- as the recent indictments make absolutely clear -- actively interferes in an election is treason.

(To say nothing of then acting in that government's interest against our own allies.)
posted by Gelatin at 5:45 PM on July 14, 2018 [17 favorites]


"‘Some of them are protesting in my favour, you know that?’ he insisted. ‘There are many, many protests in my favour.’
Hmmm. I must have missed those."


*snerk* Also, who protests in favor of anything?

but we could really use an organized scheme of moving liberals into low-population red states and taking over. CA and NY have plenty of people to spare.

On the one hand, this is true. On the other hand, a lot of liberals would be likely to be unsafe if they moved to certain states if they're different and set off anyone's OMG WEIRDO MUST DESTROY buttons. I think that one only works for certain sorts.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:50 PM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


Well, that didn't stop the US from executing Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for treason.

Espionage, not treason.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:57 PM on July 14, 2018 [6 favorites]


I'm not sure that "[P]eople familiar with the investigation" implies a government source though, that still implies Trump defense counsel to me, not really a change in attribution that would obviously be Benczkowski.

Sorry, I should have marked that for irony (I don't know if Benczkowski has even shown up for his first day of work—but Ezra Cohen-Watnick has certainly settled in there). Nonetheless, that's a remarkable number of leaks to spring up in the wake of Mueller's latest indictment, and a lot of the information imparted about the probe's future plans would be very helpful for Trump's lawyers to learn. Color me suspicious.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:59 PM on July 14, 2018


‘We would make a great deal with the United Kingdom because they have product that we like. I mean they have a lot of great product. They make phenomenal things, you know, and you have different names - you can say “England”, you can say “UK”, you can say “United Kingdom” so many different - you know you have, you have so many different names - Great Britain. I always say: “Which one do you prefer? Great Britain? You understand what I’m saying?’

Again with the branding. He sees himself as a marketing consultant, that the most important thing is your popularity. It's all he sees in anyone, that their worth is defined by their popularity & ratings. He's the epitome of the Bill Hicks "marketers: kill yourselves" bit.
posted by scalefree at 6:20 PM on July 14, 2018 [21 favorites]


'Make America Great Again' hats could double in price after new US tariffs: Merchandiser
We usually sell the MAGA hats for around $9 to $12. But it could go up to $20 if we had to make them in the U.S. and embroider them here," [the merchandiser] said.
posted by jgirl at 7:00 PM on July 14, 2018 [18 favorites]


The NRA may have been illegally coordinating with Senate campaigns by sharing the same contractor, which had no firewall between its NRA work and campaign work... But did contract with the NRA under a different name than it used to contract with campaigns...

From Mike Spies at Politico: "The Mystery Firm That Became the NRA’s Top Election Consultant"
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:17 PM on July 14, 2018 [27 favorites]


Reminder that politics isn't so divisive elsewhere in the world, and that climate change isn't a Chinese hoax to all politicians: Ireland becomes world's first country to divest from fossil fuels (Damian Carrington, Environment editor for The Guardian, Thu 12 Jul 2018)
The Republic of Ireland will become the world’s first country to sell off its investments in fossil fuel companies, after a bill was passed with all-party support in the lower house of parliament.

The state’s €8bn national investment fund will be required to sell all investments in coal, oil, gas and peat “as soon as is practicable”, which is expected to mean within five years. Norway’s huge $1tn sovereign wealth fund has only partially divested from fossil fuels, targeting some coal companies, and is still considering its oil and gas holdings.

The fossil fuel divestment movement has grown rapidly and trillions of dollars of investment funds have been divested, including large pension funds and insurers, cities such as New York, churches and universities.
Enough of that -- maybe you were wondering what was on Trump's mind as he was being a right prick to the Queen of England? Donald Trump was 'thinking about my mother' when he met Queen Elizabeth (Tanya Edwards for Yahoo Lifestyle, July 14, 2018)
President Trump and first lady Melania Trump had tea with Her Majesty, the queen of England, on Friday, and he revealed to Piers Morgan what was going through his head at the time. It’s a pretty relatable reaction: He was thinking about how his mother would be proud.
Proud that you were a dick? Your mom must have hated the queen.
“Well, first of all, I was thinking about my mother. My mother passed away a while ago, and she was a tremendous fan of the queen. She thought she was a woman of elegance, and my mother felt she was a great woman,” Trump explained. “I remember, even as a little guy, if there was any kind of a ceremony to do with the queen, my mother would be watching the television — she wanted to see it.”
Oh, you got in the way of the Queen so your mom wouldn't miss you? Oh right, don't think too hard about the words from a narcissist and habitual liar. And don't let anyone say that he didn't bow to the queen or show her more deferential treatment because that's how he treats all world leaders. After all, he saluted a North Korean general, FFS (Washington Post, June 14, 2018).

Back in the U.S., Judge Dana M. Sabraw of Federal District Court in San Diego is still pissed off at the b.s. from Health and Human Services (NYT, July 14, 2018)
“Unfortunately, H.H.S. appears to be operating in a vacuum, entirely divorced from the undisputed circumstances of this case,” he said. Its position, he added, was inconsistent with explicit statements from top government officials — including the president himself — that the reunifications proceed, and quickly.

Judge Sabraw also said that the department had itself sped up its vetting procedures before the court order, and that safe reunifications “can be accomplished in the time and manner prescribed.”

“It is clear from Mr. Meekins’s declaration that H.H.S. either does not understand the court’s orders or is acting in defiance of them,” he said.
...
The administration faces a much more daunting task ahead. Only 57 children under the age of 5 were reunited in the first phase, while 2,551 other children remain in custody, according to the latest government estimates.

Judge Sabraw on Friday laid out a set of intermediary deadlines, intended to prevent the last-minute execution of the first phase. He said that the government must confirm all parent-child relationships by July 19, a week before the final reunification deadline, and give at least 12 hours’ notice before a reunification of the location and identities of the parent and child.

Advocates hoped that the new deadlines would allow them to mobilize in time to provide the reunited families with emergency shelter, clothing and food. Many of the families will be released in states far away from their relatives or support networks. Some were released last week without any money or place to go, including the mother of a 6-month-old baby who, according to court documents, was left by immigration agents at a bus station until she obtained a bus ticket around midnight.
Reunification is not the end of this nightmare scenario.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:52 PM on July 14, 2018 [23 favorites]


For anyone who has not yet seen Get Me Roger Stone, it's still on Netflix. The whole cast of characters is interviewed - Stone, Manafort, dipshit in chief, even Tucker Carlson, for some reason. It's really good.
posted by triggerfinger at 8:05 PM on July 14, 2018 [5 favorites]


@DanteAtkins [John Garamendi's comms director]: Alright, so, it's coming from all sorts of sources, now, so, news is, Kevin De Leon has won the California Democratic Party endorsement for US Senator with a reported 65% of the vote. I'm very flabbergasted.

De León hosted an "abolish ICE cream social" for delegates last night. Feinstein, who still has a huge lead in the handful of public polls, was hoping for a no-endorsement.
posted by zachlipton at 8:20 PM on July 14, 2018 [31 favorites]


In contrast to the Washington Post's leak-driven journalism, the Daily Beast does solid research for its report on Mueller's expanded team of prosecutors: Inside Mueller’s New Army—As the special counsel zeroes in on Russia’s online arsonists, he’s brought in a new crew of cyberspy fighters—and a straight-up street crime prosecutor, too. "In the past six months, the number of prosecutors working on cases he has brought has expanded significantly, with new additions casting light on the special counsel’s potential priorities and focuses. Court filings show that at least half a dozen new names are participating in Mueller’s work, all current Justice Department prosecutors. Their backgrounds vary widely, from prosecuting violent crimes to cyber attacks."

The new attorneys include: computer crime veteran Ryan K. Dickey, who joined the Special Counsel team in November and who prosecuted the original Guccifer; Heather Alpino, a counterintelligence specialist from the Justice Department’s National Security Division; public corruption expert Jonathan Kravis, who also worked in the Obama White House Counsel’s office and who dealt with Emmet Flood at that time; Eastern District of Virginia assistant U.S. attorney Uzo Asonye, who is best known for his work on fraud and financial crimes and who'll be handling Manafort; Deborah Curtis, the deputy chief of the Counterespionage Section of the DoJ's National Security Division, will be handling the Internet Research Agency case; and Kathryn Rakoczy, who will be working with her and who is a bit of an odd fit since she prosecutes violent crime cases, mainly street crimes. (Rakoczy may not be that unusual a choice for Mueller since he rejoined the Justice Department in 1995 as an unglamorous homicide prosecutor.)
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:21 PM on July 14, 2018 [8 favorites]


Follow @NaderDIssa (Chicago Sun-Times) on the scene of Chicago Police rushing protesters following a police shooting. In a truly absurd statement, police say the man they shot was "exhibiting characteristics of an armed person." I'm sure the NRA is rushing to condemn the idea that looking like you could be armed means you should be summarily executed, right?

Also, ouch. @cmarinucci: The final count in the US Senate endorsement race: 217 votes for @kdeleon (65 percent) versus 94 (28 percent) for 'no endorsment" and 22 (7 percent) for @SenFeinstein, @CA_Dem party sources say
posted by zachlipton at 8:39 PM on July 14, 2018 [19 favorites]


Feinstein, who still has a huge lead in the handful of public polls, was hoping for a no-endorsement.

There were reports a few hours ago she was trying to buy off delegates for a no-endorsement.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:42 PM on July 14, 2018


In a truly absurd statement, police say the man they shot was "exhibiting characteristics of an armed person."
Taking it in context with police actions in recent years I presume what they mean is that, if they feel like it, they reserve the right to shoot anyone with arms.

(Others to be decided on a case-by-case basis.)
posted by Nerd of the North at 8:44 PM on July 14, 2018 [11 favorites]


Feinstein is, as I've said, exactly the sort of Democrat in a deep blue state that progressive activists should be focusing on. So good on them. She'll still win since she's such an institution here but maybe pour encourager les autres and all that.
posted by Justinian at 8:54 PM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]


I know it's extremely unlikely anything useful would come out of a potential Trump grand jury appearance.

I want to see him in a venue where he can't lie without consequences, where he doesn't know what Mueller knows. I want to see him in a venue where he has to answer a question straight. Mueller may have to go to the Supreme Court to subpoena him, but I think it would be worth it. I'm not holding my breath that we'll ever discover a tape of Putin and Trump agreeing to "let the collusion begin", so I think this questioning may be our best best for nailing him.
posted by xammerboy at 9:16 PM on July 14, 2018 [12 favorites]


California Democratic Party Snubs Feinstein, Endorses de León in Senate Race
There were also rumors of sharper tactics. Three separate sources told me that the Feinstein campaign offered individual delegates “party building” funds, in the form of promises to do fundraisers for county central committees and candidates, if they switched their votes to no endorsement. The Feinstein campaign firmly denied that this happened.

The vote is a huge boost to de León, who has been lagging in polls and only scored 12 percent of the overall vote in June’s open primary. The endorsement means that de León will be featured on official party slate mailers in the fall. It may also give de León the legitimacy to raise the kind of campaign funds he’ll need to be competitive in a race where Feinstein has outraised him by massive numbers.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:17 PM on July 14, 2018 [8 favorites]


Re. the breastfeeding resolution:

"In addition to the trade threats, Todd C. Chapman, the United States ambassador to Ecuador, suggested in meetings with officials in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, that the Trump administration might also retaliate by withdrawing the military assistance it has been providing in northern Ecuador


A wild twitter theory regarding that odd Ecuador breastfeeding resolution. Linked here, but I'll summarize:

1) Julian Assange is currently hiding out in Ecuador's London embassy.
2) Ecuador is in talks to evict Assange.
3) The new Mueller indictments of Russian GRU officers lead directly to Wikileaks as a conduit.
4) Now suddenly the Trump administration is threatening Ecuador?
posted by bluecore at 9:18 PM on July 14, 2018 [32 favorites]


@DanteAtkins [John Garamendi's comms director]: Alright, so, it's coming from all sorts of sources, now, so, news is, Kevin De Leon has won the California Democratic Party endorsement for US Senator with a reported 65% of the vote. I'm very flabbergasted.

For fun, go compare how Romney did at the party convention and compare it to how he did in the Utah primary.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:35 PM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


The CDP/Bauman has been carrying water for De León since before he announced his intention to run. I'm not surprised he got the endorsement (okay, maybe a little) but I haven't seen the evidence that he's building the sort of local canvassing operation that would actually win the state.

On the other hand, I volunteered for Feinstein a few times last year and if anyone could lose this race...
posted by books for weapons at 9:48 PM on July 14, 2018 [3 favorites]


Valid point, Chrysostom. However, this should serve as a reminder to Feinstein that the progressives are in no mood for her to be playing nice with Trump or the Republicans. When Ocasio-Cortez won her primary, that was a shot across the bow.
posted by azpenguin at 9:49 PM on July 14, 2018 [12 favorites]


One suspects that at this point the Trump Justice Dept probably doesn't want Assange anywhere near the US (and a grand jury) - maybe they're even trying to figure out how to smuggle him directly to Ecuador ...
posted by mbo at 10:01 PM on July 14, 2018


The first episode of Sacha Baron Cohen's show aired, and while it's very clear they're getting these people to read uncritically off teleprompters, the guns for kids in school clip, featuring Dana Rohrabacher, Joe Walsh, Trent Lott and Larry Pratt, is still amazing. The only surprising thing is that Matt Gaetz comes across as the smart one.
posted by zachlipton at 10:13 PM on July 14, 2018 [10 favorites]


Or whack him. Julian doesn't believe in allies any more than Trump does.
posted by scalefree at 10:15 PM on July 14, 2018


My first thought after hearing about the indictment was that now Assange is either going to Russia or going to be dead.
posted by mumimor at 12:27 AM on July 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


Trump tells May not to negotiate with the EU but to sue them.

Like that would make for a better outcome. Totally Trump though.

Last week there was a hint that Trumpism was rubbing off, as during the meeting at Chequers May threatened ministers who hinted they might resign depending on the outcome of the negotiations, that they would have to find their own way home.
posted by Stoneshop at 3:10 AM on July 15, 2018 [6 favorites]


Last week there was a hint that Trumpism was rubbing off, as during the meeting at Chequers May threatened ministers who hinted they might resign depending on the outcome of the negotiations, that they would have to find their own way home.

Well, that worked well for her.
posted by dng at 3:37 AM on July 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


Sue where? The European Court of Justice she's trying so desperately to elude?

I realise at this point he's basically just a loose cannonball bouncing around smashing everything, but the lack of a grasp of reality that comment suggests is breathtaking. It makes the Brexit headbangers look pragmatic by comparison.

Also, May revealing this might be seen as a tit-for-tat for Trump bragging about his conversation with the Queen (even though all he revealed was that she said something non-committal, it's still a breach of etiquette. It would have been fun, if not quite her métier, if she'd called it a bloody stupid idea. Though, as that concept is out side his narrow range of expectations, it's likely he wouldn't have noticed it anyway).
posted by Grangousier at 3:52 AM on July 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


Well, not just sue where, but sue who, what, how, why. It's not as if the EU has forced us to leave.

Maybe he's the only person who really does believe all those divorce metaphors the newspapers love to use.
posted by dng at 4:03 AM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


It would have been fun, if not quite her métier, if she'd called it a bloody stupid idea.

A proper diplomat would have been able to deduce her opinion from the length of the pause between her being asked that, and her (totally neutral) answer.
posted by Stoneshop at 4:31 AM on July 15, 2018 [12 favorites]


He's quoted as repeating himself saying "I've been told I'm not allowed to talk about what the Queen said"

ah fuck the asshole

anyway, here's a great open letter to Putin and Trump from the Helsingin Sanomat, the leading newspaper in Finland

In the United States, Trump's soft line on Russia has been characterized as ”Finlandization”, which is a term that refers to the careful policy of non-alignment that was adopted by Finland after World War II. We Finns have never liked this term. However, Finland had clear reasons for the policy it developed in the Cold War. It is more difficult, however, to guess what the motives of the current US leadership could be.

The United States used to have a strong and principled line toward Russia, while we Europeans have sought to smooth out the differences. Now, however, Europeans are afraid that the United States will take this line too far, well beyond what Europe has done.

In foreign policy, President Trump often seems to be in search of short-term political benefit at the expense of US allies, the international community, and the long-term interests of his own country. This is a cause for worry before the presidential summit – especially since the other side of the table is occupied by such a skilled negotiator as Putin.

This assessment does not stem from anti-American sentiment, but rather precisely from respect toward the United States. We know that Americans themselves have very different opinions on the direction of their foreign policy. Like many times before, the sharpest criticism of the United States right now is coming from Americans themselves.

The US has become the leading country in the world because it has usually managed to balance its great powers with wisdom and self-restraint. It is just like Pippi Longstocking, the strongest girl in the world, says: If you are very strong, you must be very nice – otherwise, nothing will go right.

This does not mean that the United States has not benefited from the world order it has created. It has benefited from it quite a lot.

Russia and the United States have recently started resembling each other in ways that are sometimes surprising. One of these is the way in which both countries' leaders wish to edit reality to suit their own preferences, even at the expense of the facts. As a small country, Finland has never had the luxury of doing this. Instead, we believe, to quote the words of our former President J. K. Paasikivi, that acknowledging reality is the beginning of all wisdom.

posted by infini at 4:41 AM on July 15, 2018 [46 favorites]


Just Sitting Down With Trump, Putin Comes Out Ahead NYTimes News Analysis By Andrew Higgins and Neil MacFarquhar
Mr. Trump’s persistent tirades on the expense of NATO and his fury at the trade practices of the European Union, which he recently described as “possibly as bad as China, just smaller,” have startled even Russian pundits who have for years watched as Mr. Putin, like Soviet-era leaders before him, tried in vain to undermine the trans-Atlantic alliance.

“We are witnessing something surprising, something that even the Soviet Union was not able to accomplish: Divide the U.S. and Western Europe. It didn’t work then, but it seems to be working with Mr. Trump now,” Tatyana Parkhalina, president of the Russian Association for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, said on a recent talk show on state-run television.
posted by mumimor at 4:51 AM on July 15, 2018 [6 favorites]


police say the man they shot was "exhibiting characteristics of an armed person.

That's an awful lot of words to say "black".
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 5:16 AM on July 15, 2018 [77 favorites]




Politico finds the NRA used shell companies to funnel millions into GOP Senate campaigns, possibly in violation of campaign finance law.

One of the major beneficiaries of this fuckery was Tom Cotton. Remember how the NRA took a bunch of money from Russia? Remember how Tom Cotton jockeyed for the CIA director job by signaling that he would run interference on the Russia investigation?

I wonder, vaguely, when I will stop being surprised that the Republicans have for real become the party of treason? Possibly never?
posted by schadenfrau at 6:07 AM on July 15, 2018 [67 favorites]


Feinstein and De Leon: I remember discussing who to vote for in my local FB Indivisible group - and the consensus was, in times of crisis, years of Senate experience, seniority, and influence is not something to just throw away lightly, even if we really want the leftmost candidate. It's a bit more complicated than "Feinstein is too centrist for present-day California" - she is, but she has the seniority I mentioned above. If anyone other than Trump were President I'd vote De Leon without hesitation.

Whatever happens, there is no way CA will send an R to the Senate (no R made it out of the jungle primary anyway), so we can breathe easy on that.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 6:12 AM on July 15, 2018 [6 favorites]


I assume a competitive senate race in CA will also help with enthusiasm and turnout for democrats
posted by C'est la D.C. at 6:35 AM on July 15, 2018 [5 favorites]



I assume a competitive senate race in CA will also help with enthusiasm and turnout for democrats


I really hope so! Even if the Senate is a foregone conclusion, we have several competitive, and a few long-shot but why not, House races, and if we can flip some of the current R's to D's - it would be sweet to hand Rohrabacher's and Nunes' seats to Rouda and Janz respectively! - that would help us a lot. So if a De Leon endorsement gets more Democratic and DSA voters off their couches, hooray! Everything helps!
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 6:39 AM on July 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


One of the major beneficiaries of this fuckery was Tom Cotton. Remember how the NRA took a bunch of money from Russia? Remember how Tom Cotton jockeyed for the CIA director job by signaling that he would run interference on the Russia investigation?

I wonder, vaguely, when I will stop being surprised that the Republicans have for real become the party of treason? Possibly never?


It's like one of the interesting moments in the last season of BSG, when the chief, in the process of helping put down the mutiny, shines a light in the guts of the ship and realizes the whole thing is falling apart.

The rot is really deep, and I don't know what magical Cylon goop there is to heal the ship.
posted by angrycat at 6:53 AM on July 15, 2018 [10 favorites]


republicans have been waging a war against poor and minority americans for my entire life (and i'm not exactly a spring chicken), i'm not surprised at all they're accepting russian aid and comfort at this point
posted by entropicamericana at 6:55 AM on July 15, 2018 [18 favorites]


Can truth survive this president? An honest investigation. (Carlos Lozada, WaPo)
Post-truth. Death of truth. Gaslighting. Truth decay. Whatever you call it, the devaluing of truth — and, by extension, of expertise and the pursuit of knowledge — should pose enough of a concern on its own without worrying about the collateral damage. Except, these authors argue, the collateral damage includes the American experiment.
Lozada reviews five books about the state of truth in contemporary politics. Great header GIF.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:08 AM on July 15, 2018 [13 favorites]


I wonder, vaguely, when I will stop being surprised that the Republicans have for real become the party of treason? Possibly never?

The public -- or the media at least -- still don't seem to understand there's an honest to god white supremacist conspiracy going on stretching from Moscow across Europe to Washington. It's loosely allied to other ethno=nationalist impulses in places like Israel, Turkey and India.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:28 AM on July 15, 2018 [40 favorites]


Can truth survive this president? An honest investigation. (Carlos Lozada, WaPo)

The titles are:
The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump by former New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani
Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us by conservative political commentator and Never Trumper Amanda Carpenter
On Truth by retired Cambridge University professor of philosophy Simon Blackburn
Post-Truth (Mit Press Essential Knowledge) by Boston University philosophy professor Lee McIntyre
Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life by RAND Associate Director Jennifer Kavanagh and CEO Michael D. Rich

(I'd add The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by U.S. Naval War College professor and Never Trumper Tom Nichols to this list.)
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:43 AM on July 15, 2018 [32 favorites]


"I think the European Union is a foe," Trump says ahead of Putin meeting in Helsinki

The people he represents - the Kochs, the Mercers, Russia, international fascism - do indeed see the EU, or any other bulwark against international chaos, as a foe to be defeated, so I guess in this case he’s being honest about doing their bidding.
posted by Artw at 8:14 AM on July 15, 2018 [45 favorites]


Johnny Wallflower: Can truth survive this president? An honest investigation. (Carlos Lozada, WaPo)

The article cites discussions and events to remind us that the "war on truth" has been a GOP tactic back to GWB's time, linking to this article: Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush (Ron Suskind for New York Times, Oct . 17, 2004)
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: "Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you." When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, "Look, I'm not going to debate it with you."

The 9/11 commission did not directly address the question of whether Bush exerted influence over the intelligence community about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. That question will be investigated after the election, but if no tangible evidence of undue pressure is found, few officials or alumni of the administration whom I spoke to are likely to be surprised. "If you operate in a certain way -- by saying this is how I want to justify what I've already decided to do, and I don't care how you pull it off -- you guarantee that you'll get faulty, one-sided information," Paul O'Neill, who was asked to resign his post of treasury secretary in December 2002, said when we had dinner a few weeks ago. "You don't have to issue an edict, or twist arms, or be overt."

In a way, the president got what he wanted: a National Intelligence Estimate on W.M.D. that creatively marshaled a few thin facts, and then Colin Powell putting his credibility on the line at the United Nations in a show of faith. That was enough for George W. Bush to press forward and invade Iraq. As he told his quasi-memoirist, Bob Woodward, in "Plan of Attack": "Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . . I'm surely not going to justify the war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray to be as good a messenger of his will as possible."
Without religion, Trump is just trying to re-shape reality to his will, no fig leaf of listening for the will of God (which poses its own slew of problems with separation of church and state and such).
posted by filthy light thief at 8:30 AM on July 15, 2018 [18 favorites]


Make Aquabuddha Great Again

Politico: Rand Paul on Russian election meddling: 'We all do it'

Paul also blamed former President Barack Obama for not doing more to halt Moscow's aggression, echoing a series of tweets from Trump on Saturday. “I wish President Obama had been more aggressive in pursuing it," Paul said.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:38 AM on July 15, 2018 [6 favorites]


"I think the European Union is a foe," Trump says ahead of Putin meeting in Helsinki

This is, of course, insane, but it's perfectly in line with Trump's messaging this trip. His full remarks are vaguer and more equivocal, but he instinctually knows that this bomb-throwing soundbite will be the headline his followers will see.
"Well, I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now, you wouldn't think of the European Union, but they're a foe. Russia is foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly they are a foe. But that doesn't mean they are bad. It doesn't mean anything. It means that they are competitive. I respect the leaders of those countries. But, in a trade sense, they've really taken advantage of us and many of those countries are in NATO and they weren't paying their bills."
As I said, this is insane, although it perfectly reflects Trump's crudely Darwinian, zero-sum worldview. Still, rhetorically placing US allies EU/NATO on the same level as Russia and China—who have actively hacked US government systems, engaged in espionage against the country, and engaged in numerous minor military provocations while Trump has been occupying the Oval Office—is absolutely despicable.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:43 AM on July 15, 2018 [11 favorites]


Joe Walsh tries to explain how he was duped by Sacha Baron Cohen but comes off looking even dumber somehow.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:03 AM on July 15, 2018 [6 favorites]


Joe Walsh tries to explain how he was duped by Sacha Baron Cohen but comes off looking even dumber somehow.

The root cause of the GOP's descent into this is decades of vetting by the Koch brothers. They selected by adherence to their platform, not by intelligence or character. And now Borat has a free hand with their proteges.
posted by ocschwar at 9:06 AM on July 15, 2018 [18 favorites]


I feel like Republicans are in their secret cabal meetings going "are we ready for end game? Do we have enough of the proles?"
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 9:08 AM on July 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


Put aside the political stuff in the Sacha Baron Cohen interview news coming out lately. If you watch the video, Cohen looks like he's been made up to be a member of Primus in the Wynonna's Big Brown Beaver video. What kind of idiot do you have to be to not recognize a dude in heavy special effects makeup?
posted by runcibleshaw at 9:27 AM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


But he had an award! From Israel! It all made sense until 3am the next day!
posted by Artw at 9:29 AM on July 15, 2018


Here's the Showtime trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen's "Who is America."

I don't how these people fell for it, but this is some incredible shit.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:38 AM on July 15, 2018 [28 favorites]


What kind of idiot do you have to be to not recognize a dude in heavy special effects makeup?
The racist other-ing kind, who only see subhumans everywhere anyway. Quite easy to fool people who have little touch with humankind already.
posted by Harry Caul at 9:45 AM on July 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


> the "war on truth" has been a GOP tactic back to GWB's time
"Truthiness"
posted by farlukar at 9:50 AM on July 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


I don't how these people fell for it, but this is some incredible shit.

God, he looks like a muppet

That's like, intentionally bad
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:52 AM on July 15, 2018 [6 favorites]


the closing clips of the Sacha Baron Cohen thing are too painful to watch. I can’t believe people were willing to say those things.
posted by samthemander at 10:09 AM on July 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


I can’t believe people were willing to say those things.

I can. I've heard people say these things. You don't have to go far on the net before you find pictures of small children handling semi-automatic weapons.
posted by dirigibleman at 10:19 AM on July 15, 2018 [7 favorites]


HOLY SHIT WHAT. SBC looks like a Team America: World Police! marionette and how the hell did all of those major pols fall for any of that!?

This is slicing it REALLY thin, as mentioned elsewhere, and since this is the fucky timeline, this actually ends with parody becoming reality with armed "talented" first grade kids, doesn't it?


Can I finally start singing Gir's "doom song" again?
posted by loquacious at 10:22 AM on July 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


That's like, intentionally bad

I'm guessing it's a variation of the Nigerian Prinse effect again. Intentional typos in a phishing email will weed out anyone with an ounce of common sense, letting the scammer focus just on the gullible fools. Similarly, after Cohen walks up to someone with that hilariously bad disguise, if they're still on the hook he knows he's got them for good.
posted by xigxag at 10:23 AM on July 15, 2018 [28 favorites]


Or: certain magical words and phrases turn off all critical thinking in Republicans. Everyone knows this, but it’s generally not useful knowledge as it can only be used to persuade them to do awful things.
posted by Artw at 10:28 AM on July 15, 2018 [8 favorites]


I just watched this. Bernie came off well, the guns for toddlers people were predictably appalling but I'm never really sure about the non-famous people* he dupes. Seems like it might be a little bit of punching down in some cases. The Republican couple he had dinner with seemed gracious enough though.

*except those sexist fratbros in Borat because fuck those guys
posted by triggerfinger at 10:36 AM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


LA Review of Books contributing editor and independent journalist Idrees Ahmad (@im_PULSE) has an alert on Greenwald's financial (over)compensation by Intercept-owner First Look Media:
This is insane. Ebay founder [Pierre Omidyar] @pierre has been paying Glenn Greenwald up to $518,000 per annum to blog about a mythical "deep state" that has been colluding with Hillary Clinton to undermine America's "elected president" Trump for resisting WW3 and "regime change" in Syria.
replying to Charles Davis (@ charliearchy): According to First Look's 2016 IRS filing, Greenwald (Enzuli Management) made 3X what Laura Poitras did. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/800951255/201733149349302448/IRS990
[Enzuli Managment LLC; Description of services: Journalism; Compensation: $476,525]
Note that according to First Look's IRS filings, it appears Greenwald is receiving 3 times the salary his Intercept co-founder Laura Poitras is. Which is outrageous, considering that Greenwald's career was made by the Snowden story, which was Poitras's scoop, not Greenwald's.
Meanwhile, this morning Greenwald's been tweeting in defense of Rand Paul's statement on Russian election meddling: 'We all do it' (Politico).
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:42 AM on July 15, 2018 [36 favorites]


What a sad, sad end for Greenwald. He could’ve been a legitimate journalist making the world a better place. Instead, he’s just another paid shill.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 10:45 AM on July 15, 2018 [11 favorites]


$518,000 goes a long way in Brazil. No kompromat necessary.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:46 AM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


So, back to the Strzok testimony -

A couple of (D) members of the House mentioned that they would seek to release transcripts of Strzok's testimony to the (closed) Intelligence Committee.

This hasn't happened, has it?

And why didn't they call their own bluff, and do it right then, in the hearing, by hitting "send" on their smartphones?
posted by yesster at 10:53 AM on July 15, 2018


I still stand by Greenwald never having been a legitimate journalist, like, ever. At times his interests might have seemed aligned with anti-war efforts, but that’s not the same thing in the slightest.
posted by Artw at 10:53 AM on July 15, 2018 [16 favorites]


The closed testimony from Strzok is going through DOJ redactions before being released.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 10:55 AM on July 15, 2018 [6 favorites]


Donald Tusk (European Council president)
America and the EU are best friends. Whoever says we are foes is spreading fake news.

---

Face The Nation
.@margbrennan asks @TGowdySC if Rosenstein should be impeached as some House Republicans have suggested:

Gowdy: No. For what? Impeach him for what?

VIDEO
posted by chris24 at 11:13 AM on July 15, 2018 [11 favorites]


What a sad, sad end for Greenwald. He could’ve been a legitimate journalist making the world a better place. Instead, he’s just another paid shill.

Oh, quite a bit worse than a paid shill: an active, effective asset of an enemy state. (And yes, I think that locution is appropriate.) He has a good deal more to answer for than mere venality.
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:13 AM on July 15, 2018 [16 favorites]


Mod note: A few removed. Let's not get too deep into chatter just because nothing is happening.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 11:40 AM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


Tim Miller (senior R strategist, NeverTrumper): If your view is that the Russia op didn’t change a single vote then you are saying campaigns don’t matter and we should just vote the day the candidates are announced. Because Wikileaks/DNC hack was a central part of the Trump campaign message and the media’s coverage of the race

And from another senior R strategist who led Kasich's campaign and was a senior advisor on Bush I and McCain's.

John Weaver
This needs to be said: Russian interference & the probable conspiracy DID IMPACT the 2016 election. Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant or lying. Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million. Barely won key states to win the EC.
- Russian attack & sophisticated actions tied Clinton campaign into knots as right wing & many in mainstream media breathlessly used these emails stolen by Russia (& actually very little news in these emails). Gave Trump talking points & threw him lifeline on more than 1 occasion.
- There is anecdotal evidence some voters inclined to support HRC either didn't vote, were pushed to Stein (yet to be investigated) or in some cases threw up their hands & voted Trump. How many? We'll never know, but the election deserves an asterisk for sure.
- I believe Russia's activity had much Western sophistication & precise targeting, which leads one to believe a bigger conspiracy. We'll see. But Putin did have his thumb on the scale & Trump knows it. So does everyone else.
posted by chris24 at 11:43 AM on July 15, 2018 [53 favorites]


I still stand by Greenwald never having been a legitimate journalist, like, ever. At times his interests might have seemed aligned with anti-war efforts, but that’s not the same thing in the slightest.

After all his professional training is as a lawyer. He’s an advocate, not a journalist.
posted by notyou at 11:45 AM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


cc: Donald "immigrants are ruining culture" Trump


Khaled Beydoun
Dear France,

Congratulations on winning the #WorldCup.

80% of your team is African, cut out the racism and xenophobia.

50% of your team are Muslims, cut out the Islamophobia.

Africans and Muslims delivered you a second World Cup, now deliver them justice.
posted by chris24 at 12:03 PM on July 15, 2018 [101 favorites]


David Gergen on CNN just said that this summit would be an ideal moment for Trump to pivot.

Jesus Christ, really? Really? Some days I don't know why I get out of bed. He did follow up and say he didn't think that would happen but come on. They pay the guy for this sort of analysis?
posted by Justinian at 12:13 PM on July 15, 2018 [30 favorites]


Not just Gergen, Smerconish is still treating this as an opportunity for Trump to do something right, too.

I don't know why they persist in this delusion of normalcy.
posted by yesster at 12:34 PM on July 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


The Guardian's Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) continues to draw the connections between Brexit and the 2016 election interference:
NEW: Mueller’s investigation reaches Britain. Exclusive insight into UK’s forensic referendum data investigation which is now working with FBI. Cambridge Analytica data ‘accessed from Russia’

Mueller laid out the Russian intelligence op on Friday. Next comes the data. Which is where UK’s Elizabeth Denham comes in she is the data cop.

This is really significant. On Friday, we learned from Mueller that Russians stole DNC data analytics. We reveal today, Denham was with FBI last week & that Cambridge Analytica’s servers were accessed from Russia

It all comes down to data. Mueller is following the data trail. & Denham is following the data trail. This is vast, complex & transnational. And these 2 firms at heart of Brexit - Cambridge Analytica & AIQ - are linked not just to one another. But also to Trump.
From her interview in today's Observer with ICO's UK Information Commissioner: Elizabeth Denham: ‘Data Crimes Are Real Crimes’
There is an overlap between what the special counsel is doing in the US and what Denham is doing in the UK, and what became clear last week is that there is a zone of convergence between the two. As Mueller continues to disentangle the web of relationships at the heart of the Trump campaign and laid out a detailed picture last week of the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton by Russian intelligence officers – including crucially, the theft of the campaign’s data analytics – Denham has been quietly carrying out a narrower but in some ways just as forensic investigation in almost as much secrecy.

There is even, the Observer has learned, an ongoing channel of communication between them. A source familiar with the FBI investigation revealed that the commissioner and her deputy spent last week with law enforcement agencies in the US including the FBI. And Denham’s deputy, James Dipple-Johnstone, confirmed to the Observer that “some of the systems linked to the investigation were accessed from IP addresses that resolve to Russia and other areas of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States]”.[emphasis added, because this appears to be the first direct connection of CA and the Russian hacking]

It was a recent discovery, he said, but an explosive one, potential evidence of a direct link between the company at the heart of the Trump campaign – and files holding information of 220 million US voters – and the Russian government’s disinformation campaign.[...]

The [ICO interim report on its investigation into the use of data analytics in political campaigns] points to a whole range of evidence of a relationship between Cambridge Analytica and AIQ [the Cambridge Analytica-linked company used by Vote Leave] that had been denied for so long by both. Between Vote Leave and BeLeave – setting out evidence that echoes allegations put forward in the Observer by the whistleblower Shahmir Sanni – and other investigations include the relationship between Arron Banks’s Leave.EU campaign and his insurance company. Notably, she has taken action against AIQ – the company used by the official Vote Leave campaign – and issued an enforcement notice to ban it from processing UK citizens’ data.
Incidentally, not only is the calm and methodical Denham a Canadian—“Which is a whole other level of control,” she points out—but she's also an ice hockey fan—“It’s our national sport and if you’ve watched an ice hockey game you’ll know that we are not that gentle.”
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:37 PM on July 15, 2018 [25 favorites]


Cynthia Kouril
Thread here. I used to be a federal prosecutor. I read the Russian hacking indictment the day it came out. It details crimes by BOTH Russian GRU officers and American citizens. It is irrelevant whether the US persons knew they were dealing with GRU. THAT IS A RED HERRING! You can commit a crime where the other side of the transaction is an undercover cop or agent. All that matters is that you knew you were committing a crime and believed you were dealing with other criminals. So, if you thought the criminals you were dealing with were Lucchese crime family, but they turned out to be Bonanno crime family, YOU HAVE STILL COMMITTED A CRIME. Hell, you have still committed a crime even if the other party is legally incapable of committing a crime.

Also, the timing of this indictment relative to the last dates of crimes mentioned in the indictment suggest that this phase of the investigation was over many months ago and this indictment was held in secret for quite a while. Why release now?
1) it completely negates the silly "no underlying crime" objection to the proposed obstruction of justice charges.
2) it contains so much unnecessary detail, that it is clearly a "speaking indictment" meant to telegraph to the GRU that their operation is blown wide open. This is good in terms of defending the 2018 elections b/c it could constrain GRU efforts as they scramble to figure out just how bad their own security breach is. Good way to defend against cyber attack is to give adversary something else to do with their time.

So, 3 takeaways: 1) there IS AN UNDERLYING CRIME, 2) AMERICANS COMMITTED CRIMES WITH THE GRU, 3) this indictment is also a defense against 2018 cyber crimes.

Last thought, the part about the Congressional candidate wanting the analytics sets up possibly proving how GRU influenced the outcome of the election. Otherwise you would have to believe that all campaign do nothing to move voters one way or another/analytics are worthless.
posted by chris24 at 12:39 PM on July 15, 2018 [71 favorites]


Arrest Made After Paraglider Interrupts Trump’s Scotland Infomercial
On Friday night, a paraglider violated the no-fly zone around the Trump Turnberry resort in Ayrshire and buzzed the president and his hotel with a Greenpeace banner that said Trump was “well below par.”
...
Trump has repeatedly plugged Turnberry while on his high-profile, taxpayer-funded trip to Europe, calling the 112-year-old resort a “magical place” before leaving a NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday, then referencing it again during a Friday news conference with British prime minister Theresa May.
...
Trump got in another round of golf at Turnberry on Sunday morning before leaving Scotland to meet Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, where the only Trump-branded entity with questionable value will be the president himself.
@realDonaldTrump, 2:43 AM - 14 Jul 2018
I have arrived in Scotland and will be at Trump Turnberry for two days of meetings, calls and hopefully, some golf - my primary form of exercise!
Trump holes up at his Scottish golf resort, tweeting about Russia before next week’s Putin meeting
Trump hit the links Saturday, playing the course using a golf cart, which he drove. Most players at Turnberry, unless they have a note from their doctor, are required to walk the course, though they can hire caddies to wheel their bags of clubs.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:47 PM on July 15, 2018 [10 favorites]


Watch, the foe thing will be overlooked and the focus will be on the "low expectations" of the Summit part of the interview. Time to give the camera hog a dose of his own medicine.
posted by infini at 12:49 PM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


With the Helsinki summit almost here, the Jerusalem Post offers background on the Israeli interests behind it: Intelligence Report: Israel Needs Trump and Putin in Syria—Netanyahu seeks support from Trump and Putin as Israel’s ‘free hand’ in Syria approaches its end.
Though he hasn’t been present there, the spirit of Israel’s prime minister hovered all over the summit meeting between the US and Russian presidents in Helsinki in mid-July. Benjamin Netanyahu worked laboriously mobilizing all his influence in Washington to persuade Donald Trump to meet Vladimir Putin. [emphasis added—hat-tip to TPM's Josh Marshall][...]

The Israeli prime minister, however, is mainly interested in two topics: Iran and the civil war in Syria. He needs both leaders to back his policy on these fronts.

On July 11, four days before the summit, Netanyahu was set to meet Putin and sit next to him in his private box at a Moscow soccer stadium watching together one of the two World Cup’s semi-finals.

It will be Netanyahu’s 10th meeting with the Russian leader in the last three years. He has more Putin's hours than any other leader in the world.[...]

A few weeks ago, Russia announced that its official position is that when the war is over, “all foreign forces” will have to leave Syria. Israel was satisfied and encouraged by this statement.
We'll see if Putin and Trump strike a "grand bargain" over Syria as David Ignatius and Emily Wheeler separately believe.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:25 PM on July 15, 2018 [7 favorites]


NYT, Patricia Cohen, Paychecks Lag as Profits Soar, and Prices Erode Wage Gains
Corporate profits have rarely swept up a bigger share of the nation’s wealth, and workers have rarely shared a smaller one.

The lopsided split is especially pronounced given how low the official unemployment rate has sunk. Throughout the recession and much of its aftermath, when many Americans were grateful to receive a paycheck instead of a pink slip, jobs and raises were in short supply. Now, complaints of labor shortages are as common as tweets. For the first time in a long while, workers have some leverage to push for more.

Yet many are far from making up all the lost ground. Hourly earnings have moved forward at a crawl, with higher prices giving workers less buying power than they had last summer. Last-minute scheduling, no-poaching and noncompete clauses, and the use of independent contractors are popular tactics that put workers at a disadvantage. Threats to move operations overseas, where labor is cheaper, continue to loom.

And in the background, the nation’s central bankers stand poised to raise interest rates and deliberately rein in growth if wages climb too rapidly.

Workers, understandably, are asking whether they are getting a raw deal.
NYT op-ed, David Leonhardt, $111 Billion in Tax Cuts for the Top 1 Percent
More inequality? Yes, please. Federal tax policy in the 21st century has been like a tug of war. Thanks to President Trump, the rich are winning it once again.

The top-earning 1 percent of households — those earning more than $607,000 a year — will pay a combined $111 billion less this year in federal taxes than they would have if the laws had remained unchanged since 2000. That’s an enormous windfall. It’s more, in total dollars, than the tax cut received over the same period by the entire bottom 60 percent of earners, according to an analysis being published today.
posted by zachlipton at 1:40 PM on July 15, 2018 [47 favorites]




Meet Ash Sarkar, the Communist Who Called Piers Morgan an "Idiot"

Of course her name is Ash. Piers got... *puts on sunglasses*... burned when he messed with her.

I would happily apply for the job of telling Piers Morgan that he's an idiot every half hour for the rest of my life, even if I was only paid in sandwiches.
posted by dazed_one at 3:04 PM on July 15, 2018 [9 favorites]


CBS Moneywatch, Worker wages drop while companies spend billions to boost stocks
Worker pay in the second quarter dropped nearly one percent below its first-quarter level, according to the PayScale Index, one measure of worker pay. When accounting for inflation, the drop is even steeper. Year-over-year, rising prices have eaten up still-modest pay gains for many workers, with the result that real wages fell 1.4 percent from the prior year, according to PayScale. The drop was broad, with 80 percent of industries and two-thirds of metro areas affected.

"Now, economic confidence has been good, we're in a strong economy, GDP is growing, but the question has been, where's the paycheck?" said Katie Bardaro, vice president of data analytics at PayScale.

The answer is, largely, in the companies' coffers. Businesses are spending nearly $700 billion on repurchasing their own stock so far this year, according to research from TrimTabs. Corporations set a record in Q2, announcing $433 billion worth of buybacks — nearly doubling the previous record, which was set in Q1.
I hate to sound like Bernie Sanders, but why isn't this, tightened up and dropped into a :30 spot playing everywhere, the entirety of the 2018 Democratic midterms campaign?
posted by zachlipton at 3:08 PM on July 15, 2018 [49 favorites]


"Now, economic confidence has been good, we're in a strong economy, GDP is growing, but the question has been, where's the paycheck?" said Katie Bardaro, vice president of data analytics at PayScale.

The only tax cuts that won’t affect the 1% and actually boosts take home pay for low income earners is an expansion to the EITC. Anything else is lies.

If you want higher wages you raise minimum wages to put upward pressure from the wage floor. It doesn’t always work (I’ve worked at jobs above-minimum that became minimum on a minimum wage rise) but it’s not going to hurt.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 3:25 PM on July 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


Congratulations, everyone! Did you hear? The White House has declared the War on Poverty “largely over and a success.”
The report, “Expanding Work Requirements in Non-Cash Welfare Programs,” declares that, by a certain measure of Americans’ buying power that includes both labor income and government assistance, poverty in the United States has nearly disappeared since President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a “war on poverty” more than 50 years ago.
posted by zakur at 3:34 PM on July 15, 2018 [19 favorites]


CNN's Kaitlan Collins (@ kaitlancollins): President Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet one-on-one for 90 minutes tomorrow.* From 1:20 PM local time/6:20 AM EST to 2:50 PM EEST/7:50 PM EST, followed by an expanded bilateral meeting/working lunch, finishing with a joint press conference at 4:50 PM EEST/9:50 AM EST.

* They were originally anticipated to meet for only 30 minutes to an hour, with only interpreters present.

None of this is normal. None of this is acceptable.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:39 PM on July 15, 2018 [49 favorites]


Congratulations, everyone! Did you hear? The White House has declared the War on Poverty “largely over and a success.”

Counterpoint: Statement on Visit to the USA, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
My visit coincides with a dramatic change of direction in US policies relating to inequality and extreme poverty. The proposed tax reform package stakes out America’s bid to become the most unequal society in the world, and will greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income inequality between the richest 1% and the poorest 50% of Americans. The dramatic cuts in welfare, foreshadowed by the President and Speaker Ryan, and already beginning to be implemented by the administration, will essentially shred crucial dimensions of a safety net that is already full of holes. It is against this background that my report is presented.

The United States is one of the world’s richest, most powerful and technologically innovative countries; but neither its wealth nor its power nor its technology is being harnessed to address the situation in which 40 million people continue to live in poverty.
The full report is available here.
posted by zachlipton at 3:41 PM on July 15, 2018 [29 favorites]


Well, one of my less-used email addresses somehow ended up on a "Trump Campaign Headquarters"* emailing list and I haven't unsubscribed because I want to use it to keep up with what the enemy is up to. And currently their current 'send us money' appeal involves 'offering' in exchange for a $50 donation the new book "Trump's America: The Truth about Our Nation's Great Comeback" 'by' Newt Gingrich (and his usual ghostwriters) ($16 at Amazon), which is probably the most complete collection of the lies, exaggerations and misinterpretations that make up Trump's economic message.

I was considering posting quotes from the emails' GOP/Trumpist propaganda farts here, but haven't had the stomach for it, but if enough of you insist...

*"Paid for by the Republican National Committee
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
We believe this is an important way to reach our grassroots supporters with the most up-to-date information regarding the efforts of the Republican Party and President Trump, and we’re glad you’re on our team. It’s because of grassroots supporters like you that we will Make America Great Again, and we appreciate your support. Thank you for all that you do!"

posted by oneswellfoop at 3:52 PM on July 15, 2018


I get wanting to win.

I even, sort of, get how people can cheer for and support a scumbag who is "on our side".

What I'm totally baffled by is how the Republicans so quickly switched from telling everyone they were "real Americans", questioning the patriotism of liberals and Democrats, chanting USA USA USA, starting the stupid fucking flag lapel pin thing, to suddenly cheering for Russia and declaring that it's fine for Russia to be helping Trump get elected.

I'd always assumed that even if the Republicans had a view of what America should be (to wit, a white Christian ethnostate) which was inimically opposed to mine I thought that at least they and I had a rough agreement that America should exist as a sovereign nation and it was bad for American politicians to owe fealty to foreign powers or to be under foreign influence.

One of the things I remember being a huge Republican talking point was outrage at the UN and other international organizations specifically on the grounds that those groups were a threat to American sovereignty.

Was all that just a lie, or is there something going on I'm missing?

Because I suppose I can see all the hyper jingoistic sloganeering and chanting and so on as mere lies masking a pursuit of power at all costs up to and including sacrificing America, but I really did think they were honest in their proclamations of American exceptionalism and America as the best and most amazing place ever. Their jingoism embarrassed me, and seemed childish and simplistic, but I thought it was honest.

So was I just naive in thinking that, or what?

Or are they just engaged in a massive amount of cognitive dissonance and doublethink and convinced both that America is the best and most awesome and must never be subject to even the slightest foreign influence while simultaneously thinking that it's fine for Putin to meddle in our elections and own Trump?

I know humans are really damn good at self deception, so I suppose it's possible that they're doing that, but dang does that seem like a really huge dose of self deception even for poor conservatives.
posted by sotonohito at 4:02 PM on July 15, 2018 [29 favorites]


On top of all the other suspicious conditions and contexts, the biggest reason I'm suspicious of a 90-minute meeting between the two of them is the impossibility of anyone holding Trump's attention about anything for 90 minutes straight.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 4:07 PM on July 15, 2018 [36 favorites]


So was I just naive in thinking that, or what?

No, Orwell really had our number on this. We just need an official Enemy and a target for our rage, and it doesn’t really matter who it is. Find a better, more suitable one, and yesterday’s Enemy can be anything up to including our new best friend...until their time comes ‘round again.
posted by adamgreenfield at 4:08 PM on July 15, 2018 [12 favorites]


Congratulations, everyone! Did you hear? The White House has declared the War on Poverty “largely over and a success.”

The WaPo's coverage took that extra step to remind readers that before declaring "mission accomplished", Republicans have spent over 50 years railing against anti-poverty programs because they don't work, The Trump administration has a new argument for dismantling the social safety net: It worked.
posted by peeedro at 4:12 PM on July 15, 2018 [11 favorites]


oneswellfoop: I was considering posting quotes from the emails' GOP/Trumpist propaganda farts here, but haven't had the stomach for it, but if enough of you insist...

I get them much like you do, and anyone else who is interested in outposts from the other side is probably already getting them too. They're uniformly disgusting, and I'd prefer to limit the dissemination of their shitty rhetoric. I say save it for your private deleting pleasure.

One thing I do appreciate about them though; they serve to remind me that the emails I get from the DNC/Sanders/MoveOn/ActBlue/ect. are essentially the same plea for $$$, and that money needs to get the fuck out of politics.
posted by carsonb at 4:13 PM on July 15, 2018 [8 favorites]


Find a better, more suitable one, and yesterday’s Enemy can be anything up to including our new best friend...

We have always been at war with EUrasia. We have always been friends with Russia.
posted by Justinian at 4:18 PM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


What I'm totally baffled by is how the Republicans so quickly switched from telling everyone they were "real Americans",

It’s really not a switch. They just truly feel as though people who don’t agree with them aren’t real Americans, so there’s no line to be crossed. We’re “them.”
posted by schadenfrau at 4:27 PM on July 15, 2018 [8 favorites]


Draco Gowdy shutting down impeachment of Rosenstein actually may be more important than it appears despite Draco being a complete asshole shill in most respects. Trump can't very well use an impeachment vote in the House to fire Rosenstein (even though it would fail in the Senate) if such a motion never even makes it out of Committee. And Gowdy defecting would prevent it from getting out of committee.

He's still the bastard lovechild of Malfoy and Joffrey though.
posted by Justinian at 4:31 PM on July 15, 2018 [10 favorites]


In a New Yorker 'opinion' piece, "Peter Strzok, Trey Gowdy, and the Co-Opting of Government Oversight" the following from Strzok's testimony was quoted (and dissected):
“The suggestion that I, in some dark chamber somewhere in the F.B.I., would somehow cast aside all of these procedures, all of these safeguards, and somehow be able to do this is astounding to me. It simply couldn’t happen. And the proposition that this is going on, that it might occur anywhere in the F.B.I., deeply corrodes what the F.B.I. is in this society, the effectiveness of their mission, and it is deeply destructive.
Of course it could and DID occur in the FBI, many times and most recently in the collectively Anti-Hillary/Pro-Trump New York office which effectively conspired with the Russians in publicizing the HerEmails leaks.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:37 PM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


One thing the new indictments did is make perfectly clear exactly how derelict in his constitutional duty to defend the United States Trump has been and is being. While the media would often previously get the vapors at the T words, we're now seeing them more and more in mainstream publications.

NYT (Charles Blow): Trump, Treasonous Traitor
Put aside whatever suspicions you may have about whether Donald Trump will be directly implicated in the Russian investigation.

Trump is right now, before our eyes and those of the world, committing an unbelievable and unforgivable crime against this country. It is his failure to defend. [...]

Trump should be directing all resources at his disposal to punish Russia for the attacks and prevent future ones. But he is not. America’s commander wants to be chummy with the enemy who committed the crime. Trump is more concerned with protecting his presidency and validating his election than he is in protecting this country.

This is an incredible, unprecedented moment. America is being betrayed by its own president. America is under attack and its president absolutely refuses to defend it.

Simply put, Trump is a traitor and may well be treasonous.
posted by chris24 at 4:46 PM on July 15, 2018 [81 favorites]


Republicans look at Russia and see an authoritarian racist homophobic islamophobic oligarchy with a state religion. What's not to love and look up to? As far as they're concerned, Russia is living the dream. And they're quite frankly too stupid to recognize that they're being played for suckers. Putin doesn't give a shit if these knobs ~admire~ him but he'll happily use the fact that they do in order to secure Russian hegemony.
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:47 PM on July 15, 2018 [32 favorites]


Oh this is fun, for certain values of “fun”:

Thinkprogress exclusive (Joe Romm): Former Fox News reporter warns, Trump “still colluding” with Russians

I think Fox News is basically Russia Today West at this point, right?
posted by schadenfrau at 4:50 PM on July 15, 2018 [13 favorites]


The New York Times has a bombshell leak on the eve of the Helsinki summit: U.K. Poisoning Inquiry Turns to Russian Agency in Mueller Indictments:
The same Russian military intelligence service now accused of disrupting the 2016 presidential election in America may also be responsible for the nerve agent attack in Britain against a former Russian spy — an audacious poisoning that led to a geopolitical confrontation this spring between Moscow and the West.

British investigators believe the March 4 attack on the former spy, Sergei V. Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, was most probably carried out by current or former agents of the service, known as the G.R.U., who were sent to his home in southern England, according to one British official, one American official and one former American official familiar with the inquiry, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.

British officials are now closing in on identifying the individuals they believe carried out the operation, said the former American official. At the same time, investigators have not ruled out the possibility that another Russian intelligence agency, or a privatized spinoff, could be responsible.
Speaking of Russian intelligence operations, Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos (@simonamangiante) tweets, "Wednesday 18th July #capitolhill I will testify in front of the #houseintelligence committee"
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:18 PM on July 15, 2018 [13 favorites]


This piece of unwelcome news from yesterday's Wall Street Journal shouldn't be overlooked during the media frenzy over the Helsinki summit: FBI Official Overseeing Election-Meddling Task Force Has Left—Departure of Jeffrey Tricoli for private-sector job comes just months before Nov. 6 midterm elections
A senior FBI official overseeing a government task force that addresses Russian attempts to meddle in U.S. elections has left the government for a job in the private sector, a departure that comes just months ahead of the 2018 midterm contests.

Jeffrey Tricoli had been coleading the FBI foreign influence task force until June, when he left government work for a senior vice president job at Charles Schwab Corp. , the company confirmed.

Mr. Tricoli, an 18-year veteran of the FBI who became a section chief of the bureau’s cyber division in December 2016, didn’t respond to requests for comment sent to his personal email and LinkedIn account. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment on Mr. Tricoli’s status, saying the Bureau doesn’t discuss personnel matters.

The reason for Mr. Tricoli’s departure wasn’t clear. But it adds to questions among some tech companies and lawmakers about how much the administration, and the task force in particular, are doing to protect future elections from Russian meddling.[...]

It wasn’t clear if a replacement for Mr. Tricoli has been selected. In January, Mr. Tricoli said publicly he was leading the task force alongside an unnamed counterpart in the FBI’s counterintelligence division.

Some technology companies and congressional investigators say privately that the task force has produced little in the way of concrete recommendations or initiatives since being formed last year, and that it lacks a clear agenda.

“So far there has not been a lot of substance yet from the task force,” said a congressional intelligence panel staffer who has been briefed on its activities. The official said it wasn’t unusual for new government task forces to progress slowly, however, comparing the foreign influence unit to the initially sluggish efforts by the Obama administration to address online terrorist propaganda.
This sounds like someone's bailing out before the ship hits the sand.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:25 PM on July 15, 2018 [8 favorites]


Hillary Clinton
Great World Cup. Question for President Trump as he meets Putin: Do you know which team you play for?
posted by chris24 at 5:45 PM on July 15, 2018 [75 favorites]


Apropos of nothing, having watched multiple videos now of refugee family reunifications where the kid is so traumatized as to have almost no reaction to seeing their families after weeks or months -- somebody needs to hang for this.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:52 PM on July 15, 2018 [52 favorites]


Judd Legum: It's pretty much a standard GOP talking point that Russian hacking had no impact on the outcome of the election

You know who thought it would have an impact?

Donald Trump

He mentioned Wikileaks 163 times in the final month of the campaign
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:58 PM on July 15, 2018 [50 favorites]


Clinton coming out with that? Now?

I think the gloves are off.
posted by yesster at 6:00 PM on July 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


@maggienyt takes her ball and fucks off home. She will be missed by... well, whoever misses lukewarm centrist takes on why we should be nice to nazis.
posted by Artw at 6:01 PM on July 15, 2018 [26 favorites]


I think while the GOP may be moving the goalposts to "OK, so Russia meddled, so what," they haven't accepted the actual "so what," which is that Trump is beholden to Russian interests. I think in the minds of the rank-and-file Republican voter who *does* believe that Russia influenced the election, the explanation is something like they did it out of their immense respect for Trump and belief he would be a powerful and effective world leader, and their respect for him extends as respect for all of America, and hey we're great buddies now, maybe we can team up and bully everyone else, and America is still a land of jingoistic exceptionalism.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 6:03 PM on July 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


This article by Claire Berlinski in Politico is great. I don't think I've read a clearer explanation of why the US established the post-WW2 Western international order, and why Amrica's outsized military contributions are a matter of nationalist strategy, not generosity: Europe’s Dependence on the U.S. Was All Part of the Plan

I'm never sure whether Trump's positions are inspired by his venality, his begrudging parsimony (when it comes to others), or by a malign foreign influence. All three rationales meet in this case, because America's power is the direct consequence of its own sacrifice. It's literally not the sort of thing that Trump could ever understand.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:03 PM on July 15, 2018 [22 favorites]


@maggienyt takes her ball and fucks off home. She will be missed by... well, whoever misses lukewarm centrist takes on why we should be nice to nazis.

She's gonna go cuddle up by the fire with her million dollar advance for the Trump book she's writing and being ever so careful to preserve her access for, the rest of us be damned.
posted by chris24 at 6:04 PM on July 15, 2018 [11 favorites]


@maggienyt claims "No reason or prompt other than that it’s not really helping the discourse." as though quitting the public online sphere in between the major breaking stories of Mueller's new indictments and the Helsinki summit is normal behavior in a journalist.

n.b. Not only is she one of Trump's preferred recipients of his personal anonymous leaks, but she's also chummy with Roger Stone and uses him for sourcing (no doubt unattributed as well as attributed). The likelihood that Stone is the unnamed American liaison with the Trump campaign who was in contact with Guccifer 2.0 now taints all of her campaign reporting.
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:18 PM on July 15, 2018 [41 favorites]


This is just so . . . weird right now.

Our President is out of the country.

Preparing to meet with the leader of our greatest historical adversary.

With no witnesses.

Right after our entire U.S. intelligence community explained , in detail, what that leader's government did.

WHICH IS ALSO

right after Said President trashed all of our historical allies, on the international stage.

And we saw everything being normalized in front of our eyes.

The whole kayfabe crap at NATO. And what the fuck was that at Theresa May's country estate?

This is truly all bonkers, right?
posted by yesster at 6:23 PM on July 15, 2018 [141 favorites]


This is truly all bonkers, right?

Yes but it's also bonkers outside of the regular definition of bonkers.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 6:30 PM on July 15, 2018 [9 favorites]


Jeffrey Tricoli had been coleading the FBI foreign influence task force until June, when he left government work for a senior vice president job at Charles Schwab Corp. , the company confirmed.

[…]

The reason for Mr. Tricoli’s departure wasn’t clear.


Really? Does this help? Seems pretty obvious that Schwab, Trump’s biggest fan, waved a sufficient amount of money in Tricoli’s direction to lure him away from his post. I believe there are several names for that sort of thing.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:36 PM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


This is truly all bonkers, right?

We left bonkers behind June 15, 2015 and we never stopped going. They don't have a word for whatever this is. It's what world-historical upheaval looks like, I guess.
posted by dis_integration at 6:40 PM on July 15, 2018 [16 favorites]


Haberman stepping back from twitter for a while seems like a trivial nonstory to me. I must be missing something. Twitter is such a wretched hive of scum and villainy that I'm surprised more public figures don't step away.
posted by Justinian at 6:42 PM on July 15, 2018 [13 favorites]


We left bonkers behind June 15, 2015 and we never stopped going. They don't have a word for whatever this is. It's what world-historical upheaval looks like, I guess.

I placed my "bonkers departure" stake at January 10, 2016, the day we forked into an alternate parallel universe.

YMMV.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:47 PM on July 15, 2018 [8 favorites]


I'm surprised more public figures don't step away.

She's not a public figure, she's a "journalist". I'm sure there are plenty of New Yorkers who aren't sure just how they feel about Nazis.
posted by Sphinx at 6:53 PM on July 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


Just a thought re: Brexit, Trump's UK visit and the EU.

Brexit is a mess right now - the pro-Brexiteers are telling the lie that the UK can leave the EU and still keep trade concessions. They know they can't though, and nobody has any idea what to do.

However Trump as good as signalled to them that if the Conservatives get rid of Theresa May and install Boris Johnson as PM, he would be open to a new trade deal with the UK.

That would give the pro-Brexit crowd a "victory" - enable them to leave the EU claiming they have a better trade deal with the US, and that would give Trump a new client govt in the UK.
posted by awfurby at 7:01 PM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


Haberman stepping back from twitter for a while seems like a trivial nonstory to me.

The timing of it is… odd. Also, while Twitter is absolutely a wretched hive of scum and villainy for the general public, it's like a crack house for journalists. That she's taking a break, when she's normally in the thick of the scrum with her colleagues, seems strange when the news is heating up like this.

Anyroad, as for real news, the Daily Beast has a scoop: Russia Hawk Axed From National Security Council Right Before Trump-Putin Summit—Retired Col. Richard Hooker is pro-NATO, skeptical of Russia, and out at the White House.
Shortly before Donald Trump detonated a NATO summit, shanked the beleaguered British prime minister and prepped for a face-to-face love session with Vladimir Putin, his White House quietly divested itself of a senior official hawkish on Russia and bullish on the transatlantic military alliance.

The circumstances of retired Army Colonel Richard Hooker’s departure from the National Security Council on June 29 are in dispute. It’s not clear whether Hooker was forced out or if his detail on the NSC came to its natural end. But what’s not in doubt is that for the past 15 months, Hooker was senior director for Russia, Europe and NATO.[...]

[T]wo government officials said it wasn’t Hooker’s policy views that got him into trouble. Hooker ended his tour on the National Security Council early after he discussed information pertinent to Russia with foreign officials without proper authorization, according to two government officials.

The United States routinely shares intelligence with its allies, but the information Hooker allegedly shared was information that had “not been approved to be shared with allies,” according to one government official with knowledge of the incident. It’s not clear if these concerns about improper information sharing were communicated to Hooker as part of the discussion around his departure from NSC.[...]

Several colleagues expressed astonishment and disbelief that Hooker would have been accused of compromising information and doubted he would have done so. Two of them believed Hooker was always supposed to return to NDU when his NSC detail expired and said that remains the plan. NDU representatives did not return messages seeking comment.
It sounds like Bolton's continuing to purge the NSC of his predecessor's hires and is throwing in a round of back-stabbing to boot.
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:05 PM on July 15, 2018 [13 favorites]


This is all looking like the civilized world is about to lay down the law on both Trump and Brexit.
posted by yesster at 7:10 PM on July 15, 2018 [13 favorites]


I’d love to be that optimistic.
posted by Artw at 7:28 PM on July 15, 2018 [32 favorites]


Hush, Artw, some of us are trying to make it work and you're killing the mood.
posted by contraption at 7:30 PM on July 15, 2018 [9 favorites]


What I'm totally baffled by is how the Republicans so quickly switched from telling everyone they were "real Americans"... to suddenly declaring that it's fine for Russia to be helping Trump get elected.

Or the Medicare for all thing? Draining the swamp? Ending tax loopholes? Golfing?

When I first read 1984 I thought all the people just pretended to believe in a new reality on a dime. I also thought people would only do that under a totalitarian system. Surely, no one would choose to be told what's true and what to think about it? I was wrong. I see the Trump base as totally disconnected from reality, and they love it.
posted by xammerboy at 7:48 PM on July 15, 2018 [10 favorites]


Along similar lines to the CBS Moneywatch article above, from the Sunday Chicago Tribune:

Inflation hits 6-year high, wiping out wage gains for the average American
The 2.9 percent inflation for the 12-month period ending in June is a sign of a growing economy, but it's also a painful development for workers, whose tepid wage gains have failed to keep pace with the rising prices.

The cost of food, shelter and gas have all risen significantly in the past year. Gas skyrocketed more than 24 percent, rent for a primary residence jumped 3.6 percent and meals at restaurants and cafeterias rose 2.8 percent.
And of course, this was @realDonaldTrump circa 2012: "Gas prices are at crazy levels--fire Obama!"
posted by p3t3 at 8:03 PM on July 15, 2018 [13 favorites]


Yes, this is possibly the most mind-boggling aspect of the events of this whole mind-boggling thing. I was in highschool when you could start a fist-fight by calling someone a "Russki." The rural southern kids around me were just tragically out of touch with anything resembling current events, but they were damn sure that Russia was the absolute opposite of everything great about the grand old U S of A.
These kids grew up to be the EXACT same people who love this president and think this is better than ok, it's great!! I would get my face smashed in if I traveled back in time to the playgrounds of my youth and suggested that a Republican US president would be in thrall to Russia this way in the future.
posted by thebrokedown at 8:08 PM on July 15, 2018 [27 favorites]


The MAGA Trolls Meet Their Match In Sacha Baron Cohen And "Who Is America?" (Charlie Warzel, BuzzFeed)
As the last two years have shown, the #MAGA style of politics is less an ideology than it is about breaking the system through an insurgent style of media hacking and alternate-reality creation. There’s maybe no better example than last January’s #ReleaseTheMemo campaign. In the span of a few weeks, Rep. Devin Nunes tossed out dubious allegations against his own government, weaponized the pro-Trump media, and forced the country to obsess and speculate over a largely political (and ultimately underwhelming) document. Basically: He broke the system.

Though the stakes may be somewhat lower, Baron Cohen’s brand of comedy wields a similar kind of recklessness. Comedians like Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and even Samantha Bee have largely reframed their comedy as a form of resistance to Trump and Trumpism, but do so while adhering to the traditional rules of late-night television. Others, like comedian Kathy Griffin — who famously and tastelessly posed for a photo shoot with a fake severed Trump head — have tried and failed to push the boundaries of acceptable satire. Baron Cohen, however, isn’t just unafraid but giddy to break the system and all the conventions and civility that come with it. He wholly rejects the "they go low, we go high" ethos, opting instead to wrestle in the mud with his subjects.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:15 PM on July 15, 2018 [7 favorites]




I tried to watch the Sacha Baron Cohen show just now, and... man. I just couldn't. It made me so uncomfortable. Kind of like the first time I saw The Office, like I couldn't cringe hard enough. But where I got through that reaction and enjoyed The Office, I don't know if that's going to happen here, because the difference is, there are actual stakes here and they seem too high for this. This is not a made-up paper company in Scranton PA. This is the country I live in tearing itself to pieces. I got as far as Cohen's NPR-listening hyperliberal having dinner with two die-hard Republicans and confiding that his wife had had an affair with a porpoise, and it was just too much and too stupid and way too fiddling-while-Rome-burns, and I had to turn it off.

Maybe I'll try it again later, it could just be that I'm too stressed to enjoy it today. Maybe other folks will watch it and love it to death. I'm just struggling to find the entertainment here right now.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 8:36 PM on July 15, 2018 [12 favorites]


One thing that must be remembered - the "Russkis" we were taught to hate were the Commies, the Soviets, the U.S.S.R., and we defeated them and the Evil Empire broke up (leading to new Axis of Evil enemies), so if we beat the Evil Russians, then whoever is ruling Russia now can't possibly be Evil, right?

And I think it's wisest that the Democrats/Resistance/Good Guys hold our fire until we see the output from the Summit of RatBastards. Trump is likely either to shoot himself in the foot or draw a big bulls-eye on himself and we may aim at the wrong target if we fire too soon.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:38 PM on July 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


The only thing with watching on Who Is America was what they already gave away in the preview. The waste artist was worthless and the npr lib was worthless. The conserving his energy scooter conservative could be fun, but it was too one note this time.
posted by bootlegpop at 9:05 PM on July 15, 2018


I tried to watch the Sacha Baron Cohen show just now, and... man. I just couldn't. It made me so uncomfortable.

Just watch the guns skit, which is jaw dropping. The rest of it is making fun of rubes who otherwise seem like okay people.
posted by xammerboy at 9:32 PM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


A number of Democrats called for the summit to be cancelled post-indictments. They include Schumer, Pelosi, and Democrats from the Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees. Schumer did so less than an hour after the indictments came down, and they used strong language. And John McCain did his usual, tweeting "if President Trump is not prepared to hold Putin accountable, the #HelsinkiSummit should not move forward."

They can hold a Sunday night press conference nobody would notice or care about to say that again, sure, but I'm not sure why that would help.
posted by zachlipton at 9:35 PM on July 15, 2018 [15 favorites]


Maggie Haberman quits Twitter on the same day as Ben Sasse makes his triumphant return.

Human waste of oxygen Ben Sasse:
Things Every American Should Know Before the Trump-Putin Helsinki meeting:

1. Exactly who is Vladmir Putin, the Russian leader our president is about to meet with in Helsinki? And what does he want?

It’s a complicated question. But here’s what we do know…2. Putin is a murderer. He has ordered the assassinations of political adversaries and used outlawed chemical weapons to do it. He oversees Russian military units that shot down Malaysian flight 17 and murdered almost 300 civilians. 3. Putin is a crook and a liar. He has broken almost every agreement he has signed with the United States, including on Syria and Ukraine. He has become one of the world's richest men through embezzlement and stealing from his own people.4. Putin is an enemy of America. He sees us as his main enemy and is engaged in ongoing attacks on our nation through information warfare and hacking our infrastructure. It’s not just that he messed with our election in 2016; he attacks us regularly, and will again in 2018. 5. Remember, Putin ordered the influence operations that have been exposed in the most recent indictments, did not hesitate to invade Ukraine and Georgia, organized a coup in Montenegro, funded xenophobic political parties across Europe, and crippled Estonia with cyberattacks. 6. No matter how much Putin flatters the President, he is a KGB thug who jails political opponents, encourages/orders the murder of Russian dissidents and defectors at home and abroad, and who directs a military that bombs women, children, and the injured in hospitals in Syria. 7. I don't think President Trump should be dignifying Putin with this meeting. When Reagan met with Gorbachev, he did so from a position of strength & moral clarity about the evil empire that the Soviet Union was, and w/ a clear purpose to end the Soviet Union's threat to the US. 8 (of 8).
President Trump should have only one message for Putin tomorrow: Quit messing with America.
Left unsaid but unmistakable: "And if he does not, I will never under any circumstances use my powers as a constitutional officer of the United States to make him. I will never vote against any of his nominees, no matter how compromised or unqualified. I will never vote against any of his policies. I will never even threaten to withhold my vote to extract concessions to any of this."

Ben Sasse doesn't like having a traitor as a President, but he sure as shit likes reaping the benefits of fucking over the poors and owning the libs a whole lot more.

More moral leadership from the NeverTrump caucus.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:45 PM on July 15, 2018 [30 favorites]


I'd presumed thirty minutes was more than sufficient to sign the paperwork and do whatever necessary to transfer the 19.5% of Rosneft to Trauma, does it actually take a full ninety?
posted by riverlife at 10:21 PM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


Any thoughts on the bizarre Trump tweets referencing “retribution,” “dissension,” Moscow and St. Petersburg? The syntax and phrasing seems off, even for Trump. My conspiracy theory would be that this is a message from the Russians posted publicly on his (compromised) Twitter account as a reminder that they have damaging information on Trump from his activities in Moscow and St. Petersburg, exactly as speculated in the Steele dossier, to ensure he doesn’t withdraw from the summit.
posted by stopgap at 10:26 PM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


I do find the idea of him being in a focused one on one meeting for more than fifteen minutes without becoming bored and distracted rather strange. At ninety minutes... we’ll, before they get to the end of the conversation he will have forgotten the beginning.
posted by Artw at 10:36 PM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump: President Obama thought that Crooked Hillary was going to win the election, so when he was informed by the FBI about Russian Meddling, he said it couldn’t happen, was no big deal, & did NOTHING about it. When I won it became a big deal and the Rigged Witch Hunt headed by Strzok!

This guy seems in a really solid state of mind to meet Putin in a couple hours, right?
posted by zachlipton at 10:47 PM on July 15, 2018 [25 favorites]




Those thoughts don't seem to lead anywhere, though. They boil down to "the wording of these tweets is weird and ominous". Which is true but unhelpful. I don't need to be familiar with the work of Dugin or with the eschatology of evangelical Christianity to know those tweets are weird and ominous sounding.

If she has something to say she should say it. We don't need more ominous but empty handwaving.
posted by Justinian at 10:57 PM on July 15, 2018 [6 favorites]


Buzzfeed:
Any resemblance Who Is America’s tactics bare to the pro-Trump media apparatus only makes the outrage from the Roy Moores and Sarah Palins of the world more comedically sweet. Like any good troll, Baron Cohen knows how to checkmate his subject so that he or she looks foolish regardless of the outcome. Admit you’ve been duped — as some, like former representative Joe Walsh, have done — and you’re gullible and ashamed; protest and you’re a poor sport or a hypocrite. Either way, Baron Cohen wins.
Personally I just can't care any more whether Sacha Baron Cohen "wins".

Satire used to serve a purpose; it used to make people think. It no longer serves that purpose. The fact that truthbrary.org is completely indistinguishable from the rest of the garbage sucked down in 128-ounce servings by the triumphantly gullible rubes whose heroes SBC can still find nothing better to do than mock makes its existence part of the problem, not part of the solution.

SBC might well be more willing to get down in the mud than most comedians, but all that means is that he ends up stinking of pig shit because this is 2018, not 1998, and he can't tell the difference any more.
posted by flabdablet at 11:43 PM on July 15, 2018 [9 favorites]


So, here's my first thoughts.

Q: If the author is a Russian Putin asset, how are his tweets appearing on Trump's feed?
A: They were pushed via Trump's compromised cellphone.
Q: What's the message, what's the purpose?
A: Given that it's written as a prophesy, it's a message that will be better understood after fulfillment than before. The purpose of any prophesy is proof of authenticity.

Anything beyond that gets extremely speculative, I'll refrain.
posted by scalefree at 11:54 PM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


The fact that truthbrary.org is completely indistinguishable from the rest of the garbage sucked down in 128-ounce servings by the triumphantly gullible rubes whose heroes SBC can still find nothing better to do than mock makes its existence part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The distinguishing feature is that a comedian made it and is using it to fool people into increasingly obvious lies. The core joke is not the truthbary.org site, it's that he's weaponised naked tribalism - instead of playing a character people can project their own prejudices on, he's created characters that people project their own tribalism on. He then leads people into doing something that, if it wasn't for the tribalism, they should see is a terrible, terrible idea.

While people are willing to believe that their tribe insulates them from believing rolled-gold horseshit, they're not going to see it as a problem. That effect is spoiled when you see Joe Walsh, who looks so reasonable up on the TV, using the same voice to read out what sounds like a sincere pledge to arm toddlers, with a scientific explanation that's just a bunch of pop star names. I've seen the Twitter people disappointed in their guy for falling for this.

The failure of satire in the age of Trump has been assuming that a cutting remark and an assertion of a shared reality is enough to undo tribalism on the other side. This looks more promising: it's the marks humiliating themselves, demonstrating their non-functional bullshit detector for their own side to see. If they were as smart and insightful as they thought, they wouldn't have walked into this.
posted by Merus at 12:29 AM on July 16, 2018 [31 favorites]


@ABC White House Correspondent @tarapalmeri
A senior US diplomat tells me that Russia has made “strong indications” that they’re ready to make offers on Ukraine at #PutinTrumpSummit
posted by scalefree at 12:31 AM on July 16, 2018


Put another way: I don't believe anyone's going to posting a clip of Who Is America to YouTube with the title [Baron Cohen's mark] DESTROYS Comedian
posted by Merus at 12:34 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Eh? Russia can’t offer to withdraw from Crimea because they’ve never admitted to annexing it.
posted by um at 12:35 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Things like this seem like they'll at least be important historical documentation, as far as Sacha Baron Cohen's work is concerned.

According to this, Baron Cohen wrote his thesis at Cambridge on the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Mississippi.
posted by XMLicious at 12:41 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


@ABC White House Correspondent @tarapalmeri
A senior US diplomat tells me that Russia has made “strong indications” that they’re ready to make offers on Ukraine at #PutinTrumpSummit
posted by scalefree at 12:31 AM on July 16 [+] [!]


I'm certain they will: they've just learnt from North Korea that you can make any promises and just not deliver.
posted by mumimor at 12:46 AM on July 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


Mod note: Probably time to make a separate thread for the Sacha Baron Cohen discussion.
posted by taz (staff) at 1:10 AM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


You know who likes Trump's tweet, literally? The Russian Foreign ministry.
posted by zachlipton at 1:52 AM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


Satire used to serve a purpose; it used to make people think.

Horse, water, etc. And those horses vote now, because Boaty McBoatface taught them how.

Maybe making evil people look like shmucks is what it takes to sway the thought-averse.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:03 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


Holy shit, it just came out that Glenn Greenwald is getting paid 518k a year at Intercept (3 times more than the highest paid female, LP) while Intercept is running a gofundme to pay their bills. What scum.
posted by bootlegpop at 2:47 AM on July 16, 2018 [36 favorites]


So surprised that Russia like a tweet that blames the US and the rule of law for Russia's attack on the US. Seriously, every Republican needs to be asked constantly if they think Russia's attack on us was real and our fault or theirs. Again, Mueller and Rosenstein gave us a gift to expose Trump's and Rs betrayal. Won't matter to the cultists, but still important and I think useful for sane Americans.

@realDonaldTrump
Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!
posted by chris24 at 2:56 AM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


So the Great Dealmaker is going into his secret meeting with Putin begging for forgiveness? I'm mostly hopeful that he'll do more damage to himself than to America.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:05 AM on July 16, 2018


What I'm totally baffled by is how the Republicans so quickly switched from telling everyone they were "real Americans", questioning the patriotism of liberals and Democrats, chanting USA USA USA, starting the stupid fucking flag lapel pin thing, to suddenly cheering for Russia and declaring that it's fine for Russia to be helping Trump get elected.

Remember this exchange from February 5, 2017, two weeks after Trump took office?
O'REILLY: Do you respect Putin?
TRUMP: I do respect Putin.
O'REILLY: Do you? Why?
TRUMP: Well, I respect a lot of people, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna get along with them. He's a leader of his country. I say it's better to get along with Russia than not, and if Russia helps us in the fight against ISIS, which is a major fight -- and Islamic terrorism all over the world --
O'REILLY: Right.
TRUMP: Major fight -- that's a good thing. Will I get along with him? I have no idea. Very possible --
O'REILLY: He's a killer, though. Putin's a killer.
TRUMP: Lot of killers. We got a lot of killers. What, you think our country's so innocent?
I remember it. I remember being appalled that our president -- our figurehead and ostensibly a defender of democratic ideals -- would so glibly drag our country's name through shit to defend a kleptocratic thug like Vladimir Putin. Even though I had already come to the conclusion that Trump was in Putin's pocket, I was still shocked at the naked, self-abasing cynicism of this statement.

If Trump had used his campaign to decry American abuses of international law and order, or to promise a drawdown of CIA black-ops fuckery, then at least his statement could claim some kind ideological consistency. Even then, though, it should have been the basis for saying that both countries need to do better. But instead, Trump got elected on jingoism and then turned around and dropped this turd on America in an attempt to *defend* Putin's abuses.

Trump uses America First jingoism precisely to the extent that it serves his interests, which are Vladimir Putin's interests. The moment that "America First" buts up against "we can do better than Putin's Russia, and so can Russia," then Trump decides that "America First" really means "Fuck America, we're all down here in the mud with Putin anyway."

Trump is an asset of the Russian government.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 3:09 AM on July 16, 2018 [45 favorites]


Not to mention the invasion of Crimea as well. But our fault right Donny?
posted by chris24 at 3:15 AM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


So the Great Dealmaker is going into his secret meeting with Putin begging for forgiveness?
Nonono, he just makes sure he can point the finger in another direction should he get criticised by Putin. I bet he is banking on the Great-Statesmen-lamenting-together-about-the-stupidity-of-their-people-effect.

[also it isn't spelled asset]
posted by Namlit at 3:18 AM on July 16, 2018


Donny's getting the treatment like he gave the Queen. The boss gets to be late I guess.

@NorahODonnell:
Looks like Putin will keep Trump waiting. He’s landing about 45 minutes late at 5:47 EST, just about the time he was supposed to be arriving at the Presidential Palace. #HelsinkiSummit
posted by chris24 at 3:21 AM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump: Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!

Ministry Foreign Affairs, Russia
Retweeted Donald J. Trump
We agree
posted by chris24 at 3:57 AM on July 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


I hope everyone here will read this, and share it with everyone you know, and then print it out and mail it to your Senators and Representatives.

Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow
Babies in cages were no ‘mistake’ by Trump but test-marketing for barbarism


"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 4:30 AM on July 16, 2018 [18 favorites]


If there wasn't already a pee tape, there sure as hell will be one by the time Putin's done with Trump today.
posted by klarck at 4:50 AM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


NYT: F.B.I. Confidence in Leadership Fell in Year After Comey’s Firing
One year after President Trump fired the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, agents say they have less confidence in the ethics and vision of the bureau’s new leadership, according to internal survey data.

The survey results further undercut one of the explanations that President Trump and his aides gave for firing Mr. Comey and replacing him with Christopher A. Wray. Mr. Trump said the bureau was in turmoil and agents had lost confidence in Mr. Comey. The internal data suggest that Mr. Trump either misread those views or mischaracterized them.

As a whole, morale at the F.B.I. remains high, despite a barrage of attacks by the president and his allies. Agents said they are proud to work at the F.B.I., believe in the mission, look forward to going to work and believe their job makes a difference. Scores in those areas remained steady.

By themselves, the numbers do not explain the decline in leadership scores. Mr. Wray was largely unknown to most agents when he came into office during one of the most tumultuous times in F.B.I. history. He brought with him a fresh leadership team and a more low-key style than his predecessor. He has also opted not to spar publicly with Mr. Trump, even as the president has attacked the bureau and accused agents of being part of a “witch hunt” against him.

Neither the overall positive results nor the declining leadership scores back up Mr. Trump’s version of events, in which he brought in Mr. Wray to stabilize a wobbly, discredited agency.
posted by chris24 at 5:00 AM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


The internal data suggest that Mr. Trump either misread those views or mischaracterized them

Ahahaha what?! He said on national tv why he fired Comey and it had nothing to do with FBI moral. Jesus are we all just circling a little bowl like goldfish?
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:08 AM on July 16, 2018 [50 favorites]


You know, I didn't live through the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I don't know if everybody knew how close to fucked the, like, entire planet was at that time, but I have read about it, so I grew up knowing how close to fucked we were, and I've had enough nightmares about nuclear war, being a child of the eighties, that I am personally offended at this current mangling of history w/r/t Russia U.S. relations.

It's like, even if the divergence from reality didn't have tremendous, disastrous real-world consequences, I'd take mighty umbrage the wild misrepresentation of recent history.
posted by angrycat at 5:17 AM on July 16, 2018 [13 favorites]


YLE, Finnish state broadcaster, live blog
posted by infini at 5:24 AM on July 16, 2018


From the other side of the mirror, here's some of the highlight coverage of the Helsinki summit from Fox News (@ FoxNews ) as Trump and Putin sit down together for the cameras:
.@POTUS: “Mr. President I’d like to congratulate you on a really great World Cup.”
.@POTUS: “We have a lot of good things to talk about and things to talk about. We have discussions on everything from trade to military.”
.@POTUS: “I think we will end up having an extraordinary relationship, I hope so.”
.@POTUS: “I really think the world wants to see us get along. We are the two great nuclear powers.”
.@POTUS: “It’s great to be with you.”
On that note, isn't it time for a new thread while Trump and Putin have their private tête-à-tête?
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:25 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Very awkward body language... but @realDonaldTrump did offer Vladimir Putin a wink. @SkyNews

he's fucking winking at Putin right before 90 minutes of unrecorded treason time
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:25 AM on July 16, 2018 [47 favorites]


Wouldn't want to piss off the boss on the day of your performance review.

Peter Baker (NYT)
At start of meeting with Putin, Trump says they will talk about trade, nuclear weapons, missiles and China, makes no mention of Ukraine, Syria, poisoning in the UK or election intervention.
posted by chris24 at 5:26 AM on July 16, 2018 [9 favorites]


he's fucking winking at Putin right before 90 minutes of unrecorded treason time

Evergreen tweet from Sarah Kendzior (@ sarahkendzior): Trump doesn't want to get caught and be punished, but he delights in being caught and going unpunished
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:29 AM on July 16, 2018 [55 favorites]


Norah O'Donnell (CBS)
🚨 DNI chief Coats when asked what he’d say to Putin: “My message would be: We know what you’re doing and we know you know what you’re doing and what we’re doing … you make the choice. But if you want to stay in this tit for tat we’re going to beat you."


Benjy Sarlin (NBC)
Retweeted Norah O'Donnell
A significant wing of the administration is basically writing fan fiction about a different presidency
posted by chris24 at 5:36 AM on July 16, 2018 [68 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump: Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!
>>>
Ministry Foreign Affairs, Russia - Retweeted Donald J. Trump: We agree


Paul Danahar (BBC)
Retweeted MFA Russia
The remarkable thing about this is that the Russians are so confident that they have the measure of this administration that they don’t mind rubbing people’s noses in it.
posted by chris24 at 5:41 AM on July 16, 2018 [19 favorites]


The remarkable thing about this is that the Russians are so confident that they have the measure of this administration that they don’t mind rubbing people’s noses in it.

They're acting as if this administration will be the only administration, or the last.
posted by dng at 5:45 AM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


Oh look, Ben Sasse is saying more polite words to admonish the man he could singlehandedly stop by refusing to vote with McConnell.

Ben Sasse
Retweeted Donald J. Trump
A better thing, Mr. President, would be to declare: "Russia is the enemy of America and our allies, and we will expose and respond to their continued cyber-attacks against our nation."
@realDonaldTrump: Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!
posted by chris24 at 5:50 AM on July 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


The way Trump is greeting Putin, with the winking and secret hand sign, is like when he kissed Comey. He believes he has an ally, but he has no idea.
It's not that I don't believe Putin has his hand way up Trump's back, I'm certain he does. But Trump is literally too stupid to be in on the game.
posted by mumimor at 6:01 AM on July 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


Nothing bad has ever come of Germany focusing on Europe and being outside the US sphere of influence.
Germany’s foreign minister told the German Funke newspaper group on Monday that his country can no longer “completely rely” on President Donald Trump’s White House following his characterization of the European Union as a “foe” on trade, Reuters reported.

“We can no longer completely rely on the White House,” Heiko Maas told the newspaper group. “To maintain our partnership with the USA we must readjust it. The first clear consequence can only be that we need to align ourselves even more closely in Europe. Europe must not let itself be divided however sharp the verbal attacks and absurd the tweets may be.”
---

But always fun to see the UN Migration Agency trolling Trump and the racist fascists.

@UNmigration
🇫🇷 🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷

Loris ☑️
Pavard ☑️
Varane ☑️
Umtiti ☑️
Hernandez ☑️
Mbappe ☑️
Pogba ☑️
Kante ☑️
Matuidi ☑️
Griezmann ☑️
Giroud ☑️

Impressive display by migrant footballers at the #worldcup final yesterday!
posted by chris24 at 6:07 AM on July 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


@funder Scott Dworkin
“We completely fucked up. And we fucked America in the process. We even had Senators dumb enough to be in Russia for the Fourth of July. The party is Trump, not a real Republican Party. The real GOP needs to impeach his ass now. He’s a traitor.” Sr Republican Senate Staffer to me

They are gone. The Republican Party is 100% Russian owned now and will not be returning from that - the question now is whether thats fatal blow to them or to America.
posted by Artw at 6:18 AM on July 16, 2018 [62 favorites]


Apropos of that:

The Daily 202: GOP senators downplaying Russian interference shows how Trump has co-opted the party (James Hohmann | WaPo)

“Over the past several days, as Trump again engaged in a spree of whataboutism and moral relativism ahead of today’s summit in Helsinki with Putin, far fewer GOP lawmakers have called him out.”
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:21 AM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]




UPDATE FROM HELSINKI: A Russian news wire is reporting that the #TrumpPutin one-on-one talks lasted 2 hours and 10 minutes and have now ended.

2 hours and 10 minutes with Putin, alone, unrecorded (by the US at least) and totally undocumented. This is treason.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:37 AM on July 16, 2018 [77 favorites]


This is rich. Days after getting pwned by Peter Strzok, Trey Gowdy says public hearings are ‘freak’ shows. ‘I don’t do many of them.’
The assertion raised some eyebrows among those who have observed a succession of public hearings chaired by Gowdy.
posted by zakur at 6:43 AM on July 16, 2018 [37 favorites]


Kate Brannen (Just Security): .@sbg1 raises an important point on @CNN: There have been no NSC principals committee mtgs on this mtg w/ Putin. No debate, let alone agreement, from Trump's cabinet on what the deliverables should be today.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:54 AM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


#TreasonSummit is trending on Twitter, by an almost six-to-one margin vs. #Helsinki2018. (Russian trolls and bots are getting in on it, too, according to Hamilton 68.)

Also, is anyone working on a new thread?
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:55 AM on July 16, 2018 [9 favorites]


His body language is just insane
posted by infini at 7:02 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Modern cameras sound remarkably close to distant automatic weapons fire.
posted by Bovine Love at 7:16 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'll be happy if we didn't sell Alaska for magic beans. I'll be happier if we didn't sell Crimea for magic beans.

Right now that's about as good as it gets.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 7:27 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Germany’s foreign minister told the German Funke newspaper group on Monday that his country can no longer “completely rely” on President Donald Trump’s White House following his characterization of the European Union as a “foe” on trade, Reuters reported.

“We can no longer completely rely on the White House,” Heiko Maas told the newspaper group. “To maintain our partnership with the USA we must readjust it. The first clear consequence can only be that we need to align ourselves even more closely in Europe. Europe must not let itself be divided however sharp the verbal attacks and absurd the tweets may be.”


That rattle you felt under your feet is the result of every single Greek citizen raising an eyebrow.

Seriously, the good thing about US hegemony in Europe was the US's distance and therefore disinterested relationship to inner EU economic disputes. If the EU is going to move to German hegemony, the Germans have to start acting disinterested even though they obviously are not.
posted by ocschwar at 7:34 AM on July 16, 2018 [8 favorites]


We have to assume that this summit was forced by Putin, right? Because even Trump can tell that now is a really bad time to be doing this, image-wise. So the fact that he’s doing it anyway means someone else is forcing him, and Putin is the person who obviously benefits from the summit, therefore the most likely suspect.
posted by bakerybob at 7:36 AM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


Maybe the only reason Trump had a 1-to-1 meeting with Kim Jong-Un was to establish a pattern so it didn’t look weird at his 1-to-1 meeting with Putin.
posted by bakerybob at 7:41 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Never thought I'd be hoping for Bolton's hawkishness to be persuasive with Trump.
posted by chris24 at 7:42 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


Because even Trump can tell that now is a really bad time to be doing this, image-wise.

Trump lives in a bubble where he believes he is the master of his own image and takes no advice about it. I think after everyone told him to drop out after the pussy-grabbing tape, and he didn't, and then he won, he does not care what anyone tells him about his "image" and he just does whatever he thinks is the most manly thing to do. The one-on-one meeting was almost certainly Trump's idea. He really liked it, and he thinks its awesome.
posted by dis_integration at 7:46 AM on July 16, 2018 [21 favorites]


So, I don't know much about Leah McElrath, but she's gathered a string of tweets by 45, which are disturbing for a couple of reasons, many of which may seem tin-foil hatty in a normal timeline, but in this clownfest, who the hell knows?

But, my first thought, on reading them, was that it was dominionist, but she's right, the language isn't quite on target. She's tiptoeing around suggesting that these tweets are code for operatives in the field to do...something? I'm not sure, I got lost.

But, potential sleeper cells aside, the tweets themselves are clearly a new writer, and it is obviously not the gibbering moron on the throne.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:46 AM on July 16, 2018 [21 favorites]


I kind of got the vaguest sense she was suggesting the tweets may have in fact been written by russia(n agents)?
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 7:50 AM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


I read those and I, unfortunately, think she might have something here.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:53 AM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


Bill Shine just took the WH Communications Director job. Probably the simpler answer to the question of who wrote the weird tweets is: the new guy is finding his way around the office.
posted by notyou at 7:58 AM on July 16, 2018 [27 favorites]


Loris ☑️
Pavard ☑️
Varane ☑️
Umtiti ☑️
Hernandez ☑️
Mbappe ☑️
Pogba ☑️
Kante ☑️
Matuidi ☑️
Griezmann ☑️
Giroud ☑️

Impressive display by migrant footballers at the #worldcup final yesterday!


Several of those players were born in France and are only 'migrants' because France is still shitty about birthright citizenship.
posted by srboisvert at 8:08 AM on July 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


Leah McElrath is a generally reliable Twitter commentator and culture writer for Salon, but she's not a Russian authority or intelligence analyst. I'd like to see what experts makes of those suspicious tweets, because she's absolutely correct in pointing out how unusual they are. She notes, for instance, that the usual Kremlin trolls and bots haven't engaged with this Twitter thread—and Trump never threads his tweets—and she says the last time she saw this was the day after the election. (Some people with Russian backgrounds are telling her the thread's tone sounds very familiar, although that could be simply rubbing on someone who's been immersed in dealing with Russians lately.) Still, uncharacteristically weird.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:10 AM on July 16, 2018 [15 favorites]




The US is now taking countries that engaged in retaliatory tariffs to the WTO.
“Instead of working with us to address a common problem, some of our trading partners have elected to respond with retaliatory tariffs designed to punish American workers, farmers and companies,” Lighthizer said in a statement. “These tariffs appear to breach each WTO member’s commitments under the WTO agreement.”
*bangs head on the desk until the stupid stops hurting*
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 8:11 AM on July 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


Several of those players were born in France and are only 'migrants' because France is still shitty about birthright citizenship.

They're all also (except for Mbappe) 'migrants', in that they play football outside of France.
posted by dng at 8:11 AM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


Seems pretty obvious the point of the WTO complaint is to lay some (bullshit) basis for leaving the WTO when they tell the administration the complaint is ridiculous.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:25 AM on July 16, 2018 [9 favorites]




Well, if you don't have elections Russia won't be able to interfere with them. It's pretty simple.
posted by dng at 8:32 AM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


In any other administration, Wilbur Ross "forgetting" to sell his investments and "accidentally" making a multi-million dollar profit (previous thread) would be a 5-alarm scandal with hearings and resignations. Here it barely moved the needle against the level set by Pruitt.

And there are still more scandalous revelations about Ross going on in the background of Trump's unprecedented behavior abroad.

Forbes reports: Wilbur Ross’ Calendar Reveals Dozens of Meetings With Companies Tied to His Personal Fortune Having received notice last Thursday from the US Government Office of Ethics about his improperly filed financial disclosures, Ross released this appointment information late that night. His timing ensured it disappeared in the news cycle while Trump was making headlines with his disruptions of US relations with NATO and the UK.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:34 AM on July 16, 2018 [20 favorites]


Interesting idea I think was referenced in Putin's comments about 'sharing' duties of US cybersecurity analysis. As if.
posted by Harry Caul at 8:34 AM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


Sarah Kendzior, who I trust not to be Tin Foil Hattie, regarding the weird tweets:

Thread. I agree with Leah that Trump did not write these tweets and that they were disturbingly messianic in tone. They didn't try to imitate Trump's voice; this is something new entirely.
posted by Sophie1 at 8:34 AM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


From the look of it the 'interesting idea' is the same joint cyber-security force that was brought up before. Also Russia want to examine the evidence showing that they hacked the election...

So yeah, velociraptor meet henhouse.
posted by Buntix at 8:35 AM on July 16, 2018 [13 favorites]


Asked about whether or not the twelve indicted Russians were discussed, Trump is now talking about...the electoral college.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:37 AM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


This is some weird shit
posted by theodolite at 8:38 AM on July 16, 2018 [25 favorites]


Asked about whether or not the twelve indicted Russians were discussed, Trump is now talking about...the electoral college.

Well but after all there’s a clear connection between the two.
posted by notyou at 8:39 AM on July 16, 2018 [29 favorites]


Putin now offering to let Mueller's people question the indicted GRU agents . . . with the expectation that americans would reciprocate by allowing russia to investigate intel officials of the US
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 8:42 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


Putin has an "interesting idea" about election interference? We're so fucked.

"I see you've brought approximately 200,000 GRU officers into our homeland, which is a cool thing."
posted by Rhaomi at 8:43 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


Putin is literally getting into domestic electoral politics on the podium talking about Bill Browder routing $400m to Hillary.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 8:43 AM on July 16, 2018 [9 favorites]


Metafilter: 2018: This timeline: yawning chasm of mind-bending reality distortion encompassing basically all of the known universe at this point:This is some weird shit
posted by lazaruslong at 8:44 AM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


This press conference.

Putin, speaking first, just said that American and Russian 'special services' should work together, and that establishing peace and stability in Syria might be one of the first joint projects... the Russian state has never interfered in American elections... joint commission on cybersecurity... Senators visiting Russia was presented as a historical event, should be a regular occurrence... thanks Finland.

Trump thanks Finland, congratulates Russia and Putin on one of the best World Cups ever... points out that Russia and the United States were allies in World War II... says that our relationship with Russia has never been worse than it is now, but that this changed four hours ago... 'Democrats who want to do nothing but resist and obstruct'... spent a great deal of time talking about Russian interference in elections... Putin feels very strongly about it, and has an interesting idea... Russia wants to work with us to end the problem in North Korea... 'radical Islamic terrorism'... 'open communication between our security agencies'... 'first steps toward a brighter future'... thanks Putin... 'a very constructive few hours'... meeting again in the future, often, and hopefully we will solve every one of the problems we've discussed today.

Questions from Russian journalist for Trump: You said the US could provide gas to Europe--are you serious? Come on, bro, Russia sold fuel to Boston last winter. Also, you called Putin an adversary, a rival.

Trump: actually, I called him a competitor, and a good competitor.

Putin: we should have an agreement about international fuel prices.

Question from Reuters: you said foolishness, stupidity, and the Mueller probe are the source of the decline in US/Russia relations. Do you think Russia is all responsible?

Trump: There was no collusion.

Reuters: Will you consider extraditing the Russian officers?

Trump: I'll let Putin answer that. Also, Democrats lost the election. Also, there was no collusion. In one case, the FBI said there was no lie. Somebody else said there was.

Putin: Where did you get the idea that Trump trusts me or I trust him? You can trust no one. Could you name a single fact that definitively proves collusion? Candidate Trump talked about restoring relationship with Russia, and people in the US liked that idea. Now, these twelve alleged intelligence officers. Trump mentioned it, and I will look into it.

We have an existing extradition treaty that Mueller can use to send an official request that we interrogate these individuals--our law enforcement can send the results to the United States. We can also let Mueller's team be present for the questioning. If we did this, we'd expect reciprocity for e.g. Bill Browder, who gave millions of dollars to Hillary Clinton, and the US intelligence officers who helped him take money out of Russia.

Reporter: did you want Trump to win the election?

Putin: Yes.

This is not normal.
posted by box at 8:45 AM on July 16, 2018 [83 favorites]


I'm pretty sure that's Putin's way of asking Trump to turn over Bill Browder.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:45 AM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


Putin: "Yes I did, I wanted him to win." [real]
posted by Sophie1 at 8:45 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]




“We can no longer completely rely on the White House,” Heiko Maas told the newspaper group.

Oh, you can. Just not in the way you were used to, but you can completely rely on the WH to shit all over any treaties, alliances and norms that it can find.
posted by Stoneshop at 8:46 AM on July 16, 2018


I liked this movie's ending with the kid yelling 'Wolverines!' a lot better.
posted by Harry Caul at 8:47 AM on July 16, 2018 [18 favorites]


Welp, America as an independent country no longer exists. Good job GOP!
posted by Artw at 8:49 AM on July 16, 2018 [17 favorites]


Putin just handed trump a literal soccer ball while saying "the ball is now in your court"

Im not convinced it doenst contain one of those Saudi orbs.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 8:50 AM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


Several of those players were born in France and are only 'migrants' because France is still shitty about birthright citizenship.

Birthright citizenship is a rarity, especially east of the Atlantic, and we only have it in the 14th Amendment because the Republicans didn't want to play stupid lawyer tricks about who was or was not a citizen when they put the amendment through. (And we still wound up playing stupid lawyer tricks about it and still are.)

France's shittiness in this regard is the norm. America is the exception, and one that Trump is trying to undo.
posted by ocschwar at 8:50 AM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


I liked this movie's ending with the kid yelling 'Wolverines!' a lot better.

Kevin M. Kruse
Been a bit since I saw the original "Red Dawn," but the mayor's kid who collaborates with the Russians isn't supposed to be the hero, right?
posted by chris24 at 8:52 AM on July 16, 2018 [19 favorites]


i didnt think this presser could get crazier . . . i was wrong.

asked why he doesnt believe the intelligence community and wont he ask putin to denounce the hacking, trump goes on about hilary's server and missing emails.

stunning.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 8:52 AM on July 16, 2018 [26 favorites]


When asked to denounce Putin's interference, all Trump can say is DNC server, and Hillary's 33,000 emails and that Putin was "strong and powerful"
posted by Brainy at 8:52 AM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


Reporter: Do you believe US intelligence agencies, or Putin? Will you denounce Russian interference and tell Putin to not do it again?

Trump: Where is the server? Putin said it wasn't Russia, and I can't see why it would be. What happened to Hillary's emails? They wouldn't be gone so easily in Russia, whose president generally offered to cooperate with Mueller.

Putin: I know how dossiers are made up. If the US is a democracy, then the final conclusion can only be delivered by trial. George Soros' posture is not that of the United States. The final say is for the court to deliver.
posted by box at 8:55 AM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


sotonohito: Their jingoism embarrassed me, and seemed childish and simplistic, but I thought it was honest. So was I just naive in thinking that, or what?

I've experienced a very similar confusion over the last three years. Although I've long disagreed with Republicans on many issues, I assumed that we at least agreed on a few basic principles. Things like: American sovereignty is important. Fair elections are important. A petulant, know-nothing narcissist shouldn't be the President.

Part of my struggle over the last three years has been adjusting to the realization that, well, that ain't the case. Republicans were happy to pay lip service to those principles, so long as it suited their purposes. But the second a demagogue proved viable in the polls, they were just as happy to discard them, and to pretend like they'd never said any of those things. (I'm talking about both the politicians and the voters.)

Turns out that all they really care about is the pursuit of power, and they aren't even bothering to pretend otherwise any more.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 8:55 AM on July 16, 2018 [58 favorites]


Mod note: Heya, folks, I know it's nutty but please less with the liveblogging, focus more on fewer, richer digests of what's going on.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:55 AM on July 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


Jonathan Lemire from the AP has brass fucking balls.

Holy fucking shit. He just asked Putin point blank about Crimea and Kompromat. Forget brass balls, this man has BALLS OF STEEL.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 8:56 AM on July 16, 2018 [58 favorites]


When asked directly about kompromat, Putin's reply includes Moscow and St. Petersburg, just as in Trump's strange tweets from yesterday. Trump immediately ends the press conference.
posted by stopgap at 8:57 AM on July 16, 2018 [80 favorites]






This is world-historical. Consider suspending the rules.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 8:59 AM on July 16, 2018 [28 favorites]


Mod note: I am sympathetic but the world-historical value of the ensuing MetaFilter discussion will be more or less nil if the site falls over because everybody's posting one-liners in a gigantic thread. Writing one longer comment instead of five shorter ones will not undercut the nature of the moment. I appreciate folks meeting me halfway here.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:02 AM on July 16, 2018 [39 favorites]


Sitting US Senator saying the President is so obviously Putin's puppet that he must have the craziest kompromat you can think of on him.

Tom Namako (Buzzfeed)
.@BuzzFeedBen: "Do you think Vladimir Putin has anything on him?"

@SenJeffMerkley: "I think it's likely."

...

Smith: "Your view is that the pee tape is real?"

Merkley: "Something close to that. Something close to that."

VIDEO
posted by chris24 at 9:03 AM on July 16, 2018 [31 favorites]


The only necessary kompromat is the collusion.
posted by dng at 9:06 AM on July 16, 2018


Fair enough. Thanks for the explanation, Cortex.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 9:07 AM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


It's been my view for a couple of years now that we can't escape the pee tape. It's coming. Every human being will see the pee tape. History will be pre-pee tape and post-pee tape.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:09 AM on July 16, 2018 [13 favorites]


The GOP would rather have Putin running the country than the Democrats. After today that's undeniable. What do we do about that?
posted by theodolite at 9:09 AM on July 16, 2018 [64 favorites]


What do we do about that?

Remake "The Mouse that Roared", and surrender to Putin.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:11 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


I feel that if we lived in a world with even a few good Republican MoCs the motherfucker would be impeached before AF1 hit the tarmac.

Of course, we don't live in that world. The American Experiment is ending in one of the most ignoble ways possible. Honestly, 5 years ago I could not have imagined the U.S. becoming a Russian puppet state in my lifetime.
posted by Gaz Errant at 9:12 AM on July 16, 2018 [38 favorites]


If you really want to explode in a supernova of rage, imagine how many times Hillary would have been impeached by now if she pulled the same stuff Trump, his cabinet, and his children pulled.

it's true! it's true! [sobs] i'm a rage-aholic! i just can't live without rage-ahol!
posted by entropicamericana at 9:15 AM on July 16, 2018 [42 favorites]


Every human being will see the pee tape. History will be pre-pee tape and post-pee tape.

I'm picturing all the video screens in Times Square, Piccadlly Circus, and Shibuya Crossing simultaneously showing this horror, thousands of people unable to look away, cars running onto the sidewalks, etc.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:17 AM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


When do we start sitting the least shitty Republican MOC down to explain that, after November, there will be those who are investigated and prosecuted for treason, and those who receive some consideration, and the way to become one of the latter is to stand up and impeach this traitor now.

Oh my God, that is so logical and yet it feels like a fantasy, because this is a waking nightmare of bullshit.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:19 AM on July 16, 2018 [29 favorites]


A pee tape would be irrelevant.

Point to me a single reason why any of Trump's supporters would care. Show me a single moment since Trump won the GOP nomination that suggests to you that Republicans in Congress would do a damn thing about it. The only significance of a pee tape would be its stunning insignificance.

Can we shut up about the pee tape?
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:21 AM on July 16, 2018 [86 favorites]


Have any sitting Republican senators been questioned in the Mueller probe?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:21 AM on July 16, 2018


Why do we need a tape? Does "Russia bailed out Trump financially so he could keep his gold-plated-toilet lifestyle while being a terrible businessman," not work as an explanation?

Trump is a being who is mostly impervious to shame and lies constantly. He'd say it was a fake tape and that would be it for his followers.

What he can't live without is money, and Russia is his last supplier. He will do whatever they want so long as they keep his grift going.
posted by emjaybee at 9:22 AM on July 16, 2018 [34 favorites]


Why do we need a tape?

Same reason we (for certain values of "we") needed to hear Papa John say the thing he thinks.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:23 AM on July 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


When do we start sitting the least shitty Republican MOC down to explain that, after November, there will be those who are investigated and prosecuted for treason, and those who receive some consideration, and the way to become one of the latter is to stand up and impeach this traitor now.

They think treason will win, and they have sided with it. Pride might make a few of them make squeaking noises but they are not going to do shit because America is already lost and abandoned to them.
posted by Artw at 9:23 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


Reminder that what is purported to be on the pee tape does not actually involve any naked orange flesh. So please everyone stop framing it as if it does because just the insinuation is giving me the screaming fantods.

Anyway, not only is the pee tape irrelevant for kompromat, it would 1000% be irrelevant to Trump's supporters, including those in Congress.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:23 AM on July 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


Guys, the idea of a deep state 25th amendment thing is actually looking really, really good right now. Like there is nothing left to lose. We have a Potemkin President in the white house, and an entire political party has decided to commit treason. It's all gonna burn down one way or the other.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:25 AM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


Watching the Very Serious People screeching "Trump doesn't respect NATO?! TRUMP DOESN'T RESPECT NATO?!" and it's like Trump doesn't respect anything, including (maybe especially) your Norms. WELCOME TO THE PARTY, PAL!
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 9:28 AM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


Any two Republican Senators could stop Trump's SCOTUS pick until he's interviewed by Mueller under oath. Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse could do it together, today. Right now before Trump gets back on the plane.

They won't, of course. Because every single Republican accepts that the US is now a client state of Russia because they hate Democrats more than they want to continue US sovereignty.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:28 AM on July 16, 2018 [94 favorites]


Why do we need a tape? Does "Russia bailed out Trump financially so he could keep his gold-plated-toilet lifestyle while being a terrible businessman," not work as an explanation?

That was one of the things that people tried in 2016 and you know what happened.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:29 AM on July 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


Anyone here in video production? Want to make an ad about the GOP as the party of treason? I'd throw in money to put that on the air in as many markets as possible.

I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:30 AM on July 16, 2018 [16 favorites]


This honestly feels like sitting at her bedside watching my mother die.
posted by Brainy at 9:32 AM on July 16, 2018 [49 favorites]


I am still vaguely stunned by the level of blatantness even though nothing new and no new information that should surprise anyone

I guess not so much stunned as horrified, because of what the blatantness implies: they think they've won, they think there is nothing that can be done about it, they don't think they even need to pretend anymore and there is a good chance they are right.
posted by Artw at 9:33 AM on July 16, 2018 [27 favorites]


I realise this is one of those comments, so might not last longer than several seconds, but is it at least slightly ironic that one thing that might save the US from dictatorship right now is a CIA-backed military coup?
posted by Grangousier at 9:33 AM on July 16, 2018 [13 favorites]




On Election Night, the thing that kept me awake all night – the terrifying thing, which still completely terrifies me – was the idea of us becoming Russia.

And here we are. We're well on our way and nothing is being done about it. My Congresscritters are all "I WROTE A LETTER." and that's that. With this presser, we just witnessed a completely treasonous act. I have the feeling deep down that the interesting solution thing will be, hey, Russia will help us out with elections! The GOP will be on board. It'll all be totally "secure". And then... well... yeah.
posted by hijinx at 9:34 AM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


Ok, I'm honestly not thinking clearly at the moment, but if anyone who is and who watched the thing wants to put together a script for calling Congress people...

I feel like right now I'd just make monster noises.

But the judicial appointment, and the implied threat of Russia interfering in the 2018 midterms, are fucking emergencies. Like I don't want my reps to be writing letters and making statements, I want fucking civil disobedience.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:37 AM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


Someone tell me if I'm wrong about any of this.

This was a one on one meeting, with no set agenda or any of the usual summit prep work on the US side. Trump's foreign policy team was hardly involved.

After the meeting, both presidents come out with lengthy prepared statements, which they read before taking questions. Putin's statement is pretty standard summit-ese about great strides, coming together, etc. Trump's statement wholeheartedly supports every Russian position. It is written in an anodyne style similar to Putin's, and he reads it haltingly, as if for the first time.

Like, they just gave that to him, right?
posted by theodolite at 9:39 AM on July 16, 2018 [129 favorites]


> On Election Night, the thing that kept me awake all night – the terrifying thing, which still completely terrifies me – was the idea of us becoming Russia.

Me too, except I'm Canadian.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:39 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Me too, except I'm Canadian.

In that case you should be worried about becoming Finland.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 9:40 AM on July 16, 2018 [20 favorites]


Here's a script, schadenfrau.
posted by tofu_crouton at 9:43 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


I have the feeling deep down that the interesting solution thing will be, hey, Russia will help us out with elections! The GOP will be on board. It'll all be totally "secure". And then... well... yeah.

Russia requested to send election monitors in 2016.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:44 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


And now Pelosi.

Nancy Pelosi
Every single day, I find myself asking: what do the Russians have on @realDonaldTrump personally, financially, & politically? The answer to that question is the only thing that explains his behavior & his refusal to stand up to Putin. #ABetterDeal
posted by chris24 at 9:45 AM on July 16, 2018 [38 favorites]


This was a one on one meeting, with no set agenda

- NATO dissolution
- WTO exit
- Brexit support
- EU fascist support
- Syrian refugees, how to exploit crisis
- Fake launch codes
- New hotel for Don Jr.
posted by benzenedream at 9:50 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


> In that case you should be worried about becoming Finland.

I mean, all Putin has to do is say the word and there will be U.S. tanks in Toronto a day or two later.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:51 AM on July 16, 2018


MetaFilter: may seem tin-foil hatty in a normal timeline, but in this clownfest, who the hell knows?
posted by petebest at 9:53 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


Not enough, Nancy.

tofu_crouton's script from Twitter, hastily transcribed for the twitter averse:
Hi, my name is [name]. I am calling from [where you're at].

I'm calling to ask [MOC] to do everything in their power to condemn President Trump's actions at his press conference today, including considering a resolution of censure. The President just endorsed an adversary who directly lead operations against our elections -- as proven by our intelligence community.

Congress can't stand by and do nothing, as Trump erodes and subverts our democracy. I demand action, and it has to go beyond statements issued on social media.

[MOC] needs to show their constituents that they will fight for our democracy.
My suggested addition:

What are you planning to do to protect our country and our elections? Where is [MOC]'s line in the sand?


Capitol switchboard: 202 - 224 - 3121
posted by schadenfrau at 9:53 AM on July 16, 2018 [51 favorites]


Since I have reps on various Senate and House committees related to security and intelligence, I also add something like:

As a member of the committee for Homeland Security, Representative X should be extremely concerned about our President speaking publicly about his lack of trust in our intelligence community. It weakens our reputation abroad and I expect Representative X to condemn the President's actions and words at the Helsinki Summit.
posted by tofu_crouton at 9:58 AM on July 16, 2018 [9 favorites]


Don't know how reliable the source is, seems fairly legit from other tweets/connections, but @pacelattin "I am told there is an EMERGENCY meeting of GOP Senators that was just put out via phone over Trump's betrayal of the United States on National TV."

Some journalists (mostly) being shocked: @RyanLizza, Anderson Cooper - via @ParkerMolloy, @RickWilson, @DanRather, @AshleyRParker.

@hannahtraining with a selection of screenshots of journalists all tweeting variations of "If that's what he's willing to say in public what the hell did he say in private.


When asked directly about kompromat, Putin's reply includes Moscow and St. Petersburg, just as in Trump's strange tweets from yesterday. Trump immediately ends the press conference.

So that much abused trope about using key phrases to active a brainwashed agent via post-hypnotic suggestion. That's still pseudoscience, right?
posted by Buntix at 10:01 AM on July 16, 2018 [31 favorites]




Nobody's picking up at any of the New York Senators' offices, and the second time I called the Capitol switchboard it just hung up on me.

So either they know this is a shitshow or I'm unlucky.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:02 AM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


For those using the script above, I would also say: "Censure would be a first step. Removal from office is absolutely merited and something I hope MoC will pursue."
posted by Emmy Rae at 10:02 AM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


More on Fox. Degree of treachery seems to be such that they vaguely need to acknowledge it even as they cover for it.
posted by Artw at 10:03 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


I mean I'm about to ask why none of them have staged a goddamn hunger strike
posted by schadenfrau at 10:03 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


Me too, except I'm Canadian.

In that case you should be worried about becoming Finland.


In the early 1950, my grandparents took my father and left Finland for Canada out of fear that the Russians would invade again. My grandfather was a sniper in the Winter War. It's probably a good thing he's no longer alive to witness this mess because I can say without a hint of exaggeration he'd be homicidally apoplectic over it.

A Soviet shadow looms over the Putin-Trump summit in Helsinki:

When the news broke that a Putin-Trump summit would be held in Helsinki, some comments made my ears prick up. In the international media there was talk of Finland having been chosen as a venue because it is “neutral ground”, a country deemed to have a history of neutrality, and where east-west meetings had been held during the cold war. But Finland today is nothing of the sort. It is a member of the European Union. It is not somewhere in a grey zone between Europe and Russia.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:04 AM on July 16, 2018 [17 favorites]


US official: "This was not the plan"

It was totally the plan, maybe not your plan.
posted by Artw at 10:08 AM on July 16, 2018 [89 favorites]


This was a one on one meeting, with no set agenda

Two on two, translators on both sides. Trump's was Marina Gross, a State Dept translator.
posted by scalefree at 10:08 AM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


Honestly, at this point I don't think there WAS collusion.

Collusion implies cooperation between two active parties, not just one side giving marching orders and the other side simply obeying them.
posted by delfin at 10:12 AM on July 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


FOX: "I'll give him the benefit of the doubt to maybe jet lag and time differences, but holy moly."

Just as a reminder, Trump was in the UK for three days before Helsinki, which is only a two-hour time difference. It's not like he made the seven-hour skip between Washington and Helsinki all at once.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:14 AM on July 16, 2018 [27 favorites]


An emergency meeting being set up by GOP senators doesn't mean a goddamn thing since they're not prepared to take action.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 10:15 AM on July 16, 2018 [29 favorites]


An emergency meeting being set up by GOP senators doesn't mean a goddamn thing since they're not prepared to take action.

They're probably fine tuning talking points, and aligning them so that tonight's sound bites are all the same.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:18 AM on July 16, 2018 [51 favorites]


> While it was widely expected from planning conversations that President Trump wouldn’t change tactics here in Helsinki and aggressively confront Putin on election interference, the hope and plan was that he would do what he has done before: pivot.

“Pivot”? From what? To what? Based on what? And when did this alleged earlier pivot occur?


> FOX: "I'll give him the benefit of the doubt to maybe jet lag and time differences, but holy moly."


Yes, if there’s one thing Donald Trump has earned and fully deserves, it’s everyone’s benefit of the doubt.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:19 AM on July 16, 2018 [13 favorites]


The source for this "GOP emergency meeting" looks to be some random dude on Twitter.
posted by neroli at 10:19 AM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


Bloomberg: Judge Orders Temporary Halt to Deportation of Migrant Families
A U.S. judge in San Diego ordered a temporary halt to the deportation of migrant families who are in the midst of being reunited after they were separated under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” crackdown on illegal border crossings, Bloomberg News reports.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said at a hearing Monday he will consider lifting his order after the government submits further arguments.
(that's the full article as of now)
posted by melissasaurus at 10:21 AM on July 16, 2018 [23 favorites]


Neil Cavuto, seriously no fucking liberal, said "not even offering the mildest of criticisms . . . that sets us back a lot" after calling the presser "disgusting"
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 10:21 AM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]




Josh Marshall, banging the same drum he's been banging since July of 2016, but who appears to have retained more of his sanity than I have in the process:
The worst case scenario has been obvious for some time:

[And in] the future, when we know more details, we will have a difficult time explaining how any serious people continued to think there must be some innocent explanation.
Putin has clearly already won. His goal was to destabilize the US in furtherance of Russian geopolitical priorities; that goal is accomplished. We are destabilized. One of two major political parties has betrayed the rest of us to a foreign power, foreign agents appear to control or are poised to control all three branches of the Federal government (jesus CHRIST writing that makes me feel like a crazy person, AND YET), and Putin has successfully thrown our very elections into doubt while our electoral process and political organization continue to favor minority control of the majority. This is unsustainable.

What would it take to stabilize not just our government, but our society? I shudder to think of the scale of what has to be done, and I shudder to think of the consequences. This has gone so far that we can't just win an election and then pretend it didn't happen. There have to be investigations, and prosecutions, on a previously unthinkable scale -- like the entire leadership of the GOP -- and fundamental change to how our political system is structured, like on the Constitutional level, or this wound will not heal. And yet all of those things will lead to fierce batshit insanity from people who have a lot of guns.

This is where we are. John Lewis wasn't kidding. It's the work of generations.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:24 AM on July 16, 2018 [115 favorites]


> Neil Cavuto, seriously no fucking liberal, said "not even offering the mildest of criticisms . . . that sets us back a lot" after calling the presser "disgusting"

Even Joe Walsh of all people is done with Trump, referring to him as a traitor.

[note: Joe Walsh remains a piece of human garbage but I guess that's my point - if even the toddler-arming ICE-supporting garbage thinks Trump is a traitor because of this ...]
posted by komara at 10:27 AM on July 16, 2018 [27 favorites]


Its not the treason they dislike, its the submission.
posted by dng at 10:33 AM on July 16, 2018 [25 favorites]


Neil Cavuto, seriously no fucking liberal... Even Joe Walsh of all people...

Sorry, but get back to us when they advocate doing the slightest fucking thing besides pursing their lips meaningfully. Have they said that Kavanaugh shouldn't be confirmed because Trump is compromised? Have they called for impeachment? Have they exhorted their audiences to vote out Trump's enablers?

Then they don't get the benefit of the goddamn doubt either. Trump is the result of their work -- if they want to admit to manslaughter instead of murder, then fine: they get to go to prison too, because people are fucking dying and will continue to die due to Cavuto and Walsh's efforts over the last generation. Until they start to do the fucking work, they get no credit for saying "Yeah, this is fucked up."
posted by Etrigan at 10:34 AM on July 16, 2018 [40 favorites]


I just finished calling all three of my elected Congresspersons. Left a message with Tammy, and spoke to very polite staff for Wrong Johnson and Mark Pocan.

And now I'm descending into a panic attack. Folks, this is not good.

CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES
posted by rocketman at 10:36 AM on July 16, 2018 [16 favorites]


Even Joe Walsh of all people is done with Trump, referring to him as a traitor.

Words are wind. The GOP may stomp their feet and furrow their little brows and express their "serious concerns" but they won't actually vote against Trump's agenda or do anything meaningful. The GOP, via Trump, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Putin.

I greatly fear how this is all going to end.
posted by nubs at 10:36 AM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


Wave an Israeli mercenary in front of Walsh and he’ll be back to saying treason is good in no time.
posted by Artw at 10:39 AM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


https://twitter.com/democracynow/status/1018838274004193280

Now at http://democracynow.org : @ggreenwald of @theintercept calls the Trump-Putin meeting "excellent," adding that President Obama also sought diplomacy with Russia. @Cirincione of @plough_shares calls it "a danger to America and to the West."
posted by bootlegpop at 10:40 AM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


Can we all agree Glenn Greenwald is a stooge, now? And kindly omit his future propaganda from this thread?
posted by Barack Spinoza at 10:42 AM on July 16, 2018 [116 favorites]


Walsh rollback begins:

@mattwalshblog
It's not "treasonous" that Trump stood next to Putin and sided with him over his own administration, denying the empirical and proven fact that Russia did interfere in our election. It's not treason. But it is completely insane and wrong and worthy of condemnation on all sides.

He’ll be condemning anyone who failed to stand with President Putin in no time.
posted by Artw at 10:43 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Greenwald is only useful if you want to know what the Kremlin is trying to peddle on the left, so please identify him as a Russian asset in the future.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:45 AM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


Getting your walshes mixed up, Artw
posted by ocschwar at 10:45 AM on July 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


Walsh rollback begins: It's not treason. But it is completely insane and wrong and worthy of condemnation on all sides.

That's not Joe Walsh. It's Matt Walsh, an extreme "Christian" Trumpist. That he'd even lightly criticize Trump would be remarkable. That it's this strongly is amazing.
posted by chris24 at 10:46 AM on July 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


Lavrov hasn't been this happy since the day Trump gave him code word–classified, above top secret intelligence in the Oval Office.

Per the Russian Foreign Ministry's Twitter account, МИД России (@MID_RF):
Negotiations were "better than super," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks between Russian and US leaders Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.
http://tass.ru/politika/5378318
#Russia #Putin #Trump #Helsinki #Finland [Google translation from the Russian]
Now that the shit-show of the joint press conference is over, we need to watch out for the Trump administration gives away to Putin in the aftermath of the off-the-record negotiations.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:46 AM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


The GOP may stomp their feet and furrow their little brows and express their "serious concerns" but they won't actually vote against Trump's agenda or do anything meaningful.

That's the thing though. It's not Trump's agenda. Domestic affairs is all the GOP's agenda. Trump is Grover Norquist's proverbial "a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen". He can do whatever the fuck he wants so long as he shows up with his fingers and a pen when Congress presents him with a bill and he can do whatever he want as far as international graft goes. So long as he doesn't sell an aircraft carrier for a goat and two camels they don't give a shit what happens in the international sphere so long as they can rule like Barons pulling an inbred, developmentally disabled King's strings.
posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 10:47 AM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


So is DNI Coats obliged to resign at this point right? Trump just told the world he doesn't give a shit what he tells him he'd rather take the advice of whatever foreign strong man flatters him the most, first siding with Saudi over Qatar and putting 10 000 troops at risk and now this.
posted by PenDevil at 10:48 AM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


People who would seem obligated to resign as a result of todays shitshow:

DNI Coats
Ambassador Huntsman
Sec Pompeo

[they will not]
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 10:52 AM on July 16, 2018 [13 favorites]


I hate to say this, but I’m starting to think the only way to save the republic is by manipulating their fragile, fragile masculinity.

Like, just start bird dogging GOP MOC to call them Putin’s bitch. Point out that they’re submissive, disgusting cowards. Putin’s little water boy or whatever the fuck.

I mean, women have done it for generations, we can probably do it one last time before we install the matriarchy.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:54 AM on July 16, 2018 [33 favorites]


what i'm interested in is what does uberhawk and old school americun warmonger john bolton think when donny shuts him out of the room to chat with buddy vlad

i mean he's happy with the chaos and un bashing tho, but russia? with thuh thuh president ?

in his mind is he like a conservative version of picard "THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS"
posted by lalochezia at 10:54 AM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


The thing is, Greenwald is a noteworthy figure in the media that many people who are otherwise credible take seriously for no reason that I can understand. I haven't seen that stance around here so much recently, but who knows what lurkers think.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/16/debate_is_trump_putin_summit_a_danger

And, I mean, if he literally is an asset, it's worth knowing what the widely read 518k making little shithead asset is trying to peddle, so people know how to tell their friends who still listen to him that, no, dude is a toolbag, and here's why-hence my posting the full link for context above.'
posted by bootlegpop at 10:56 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


what i'm interested in is what does uberhawk and old school americun warmonger john bolton think when donny shuts him out of the room to chat with buddy vlad

Not difficult, think of how many wars he could be free to start without NATO and the UN in the way.
posted by dilaudid at 10:56 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


DNI Coats
Ambassador Huntsman
Sec Pompeo


Bolton. Trump.


Garrett M. Graff (CNN)
Considering that the bar for success for the Putin-Trump Summit was effectively simply "not committing actual treason," it's amazing how much worse and more disgusting this is than imagined....
posted by chris24 at 10:56 AM on July 16, 2018 [35 favorites]


> And yet all of those things will lead to fierce batshit insanity from people who have a lot of guns.

I was thinking about this last night. The hardcore trumpists have basically been cultivated over time as sleeper cells... They have been propagandized and radicalized over time, and this has happened in effective isolation, since it's very easy to turn a social media presence and news consumption habits to one that reinforces your world view, and lose all reality.

This all gets a bit more frightening when you realize that a great amount of the mindset of those on the extreme right was likely influenced, reinforced, and strengthened by foreign operatives. It would be a page right from what we have warned about with regards to the face of "terrorism" moving from coordinated groups to lone wolf style attacks. Much ado was made over how ISIS was more about encouraging individuals to operate on their own, and while we have talked about the rise of domestic terrorism here as well as how the rhetoric from the extremists in the GOP as well as FOX news and the like reinforce this, the "batshit crazy" faction that thinks FOX is too moderate has been living off of a feed of news and posts from foreign operatives, with anything that could counter their mindset being reinforced as FAKE NEWS from the head of the fucking nation.

I'm not saying that the right wing extremists only exist because of Russia by any means - but I do believe that they have been greatly amplified, and this would be an evolution of old spy tactics over time, scaled up with a modern, larger, and cheaper toolset. Espionage is often more about looking for opportunities to use existing "assets" - knowing or unknowing - as opposed to having a grand coordinated conspiracy over years, and I can't help but think of this in ways other than foreign agents effectively running a recruitment operation for domestic terrorism.

Like, I've known all of this has been going on, we've talked about it here often, but I've never thought of it quite in those terms - as a recruitment operation for domestic terrorism. It fits right into the goals of destabilizing the US... A resilient, persistent, and stochastic domestic terrorism threat. There is not going to be easy "deprogramming" of anyone who has been drinking deeply from those sources, as the fundamental distrust of that sort of deprogramming is also well rooted.

A while back I would have thought that this sort of thinking was purely in the realm of conspiracy theories... but it doesn't seem that way anymore, and we have hardly scratched the surface of what has happened with regards to foreign influence.
posted by MysticMCJ at 10:56 AM on July 16, 2018 [35 favorites]


Dude hasn’t tried to peddle anything different for a good ten years.
posted by Artw at 10:57 AM on July 16, 2018


I find it interesting how many people are calling the press conference "disgusting." That's a conservative trigger word. Research has shown people on the right are more likely to feel disgust and be motivated by it than people on the left. This is the kind of language we need to be spreading. Trump is disgusting. His behavior is embarrassing and cowardly. He's weak and fragile and ill.

Those are the emotional arguments that will resonate with Republicans, for better or worse. This moment could be a turning point if only the media amplifies that message. All the indictments in the world won't convince a Trumpist as much as the gut-deep twinge that comes from their leader being painted as cringing and submitting and flattering our enemy.
posted by threeturtles at 11:02 AM on July 16, 2018 [85 favorites]


With the added “bonus”: it is disgusting!

Trump’s rambling attacks on Mueller and Democrats at the Putin presser, annotated

Rather than condemn Russia, Trump ranted about Peter Strzok, Michael Flynn’s prosecution, the DNC server, and a “Pakistani gentleman.” (Andrew Prokop | Vox)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 11:06 AM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


Can we all agree Glenn Greenwald is a stooge, now? And kindly omit his future propaganda from this thread?

GG is now on the Louise Menche scale of people that never should be mentioned seriously again in any context. In fact we can go ahead and rename it the Greenwald-Menche scale.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:08 AM on July 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


Justin Amash
A person can be in favor of improving relations with Russia, in favor of meeting with Putin, and still think something is not right here.
posted by chris24 at 11:09 AM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


threeturtles: I find it interesting how many people are calling the press conference "disgusting." That's a conservative trigger word. Research has shown people on the right are more likely to feel disgust and be motivated by it than people on the left. This is the kind of language we need to be spreading.

Alexandra Erin has recommended "Dirty Donald" for getting under his skin specifically. The reasoning is elaborated well in a January twitter thread.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 11:11 AM on July 16, 2018 [9 favorites]


WITCH HUNT UPDATE: HOLY CRAP! NOTHING BUT WITCHES!! THAT'S A LOT OF WITCHES!!! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH ALL OF THESE FUCKING WITCHES??!!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:11 AM on July 16, 2018 [79 favorites]


Josh Marshall flags up unbelievably-not-the-stupidest-member-of-Congress Trey Gowdy's statement:
“Russia is not our friend. Russia attempted to undermine the fundamentals of our democracy, impugn the reliability of the 2016 election, and sow the seeds of discord among Americans. Our intelligence community, including the current one, concluded this, as did the Majority House Intelligence Committee report, as did our fellow Americans who served on grand juries which returned true bills on two separate occasions. I am confident former CIA Director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, DNI Dan Coats, Ambassador Nikki Haley, FBI Director Chris Wray, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and others will be able to communicate to the President it is possible to conclude Russia interfered with our election in 2016 without delegitimizing his electoral success.
The emerging Republican narrative, the best defense they've got, is that he's not committing treason, he's just so damn insecure that he refuses to accept anything that could suggest he had one iota of help getting his precious electoral votes. It's a hell of a thing that extreme narcissism that puts the country in danger is their best argument.

While we're doing reactions that won't be backed with any action. John McCain: “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory...No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.”
posted by zachlipton at 11:11 AM on July 16, 2018 [57 favorites]


Putin’s little water boy or whatever the fuck

In terms that the alt-right will understand: Watch America Cucked Again #WACA
posted by flabdablet at 11:15 AM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


I’m still trying to wrap my head around those cryptic tweets about Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
posted by gucci mane at 11:16 AM on July 16, 2018 [27 favorites]


I hate to say this, but I’m starting to think the only way to save the republic is by manipulating their fragile, fragile masculinity.

Like, just start bird dogging GOP MOC to call them Putin’s bitch. Point out that they’re submissive, disgusting cowards. Putin’s little water boy or whatever the fuck.

I mean, women have done it for generations, we can probably do it one last time before we install the matriarchy


No, I refuse to use misogynistic language and tropes to describe Trump's treachery. Misogyny was one of the things that got us into this mess, and it's not going to get us out.
posted by rue72 at 11:18 AM on July 16, 2018 [38 favorites]


The Alt-Right is way more pro-Russia than it is pro-America. It’d just cheer for that headline.
posted by Artw at 11:20 AM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


Mod note: Couple deleted; let's reel in the chatter and the mile-a-minute "how about if --" stuff.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:23 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


The way to fight all this twisted nihilism is not to play clever rhetorical games, it's to provide what no political party has in decades - a cogent, clear, easily understood ideology and platform that will provide immediate material benefits to most of the electorate.

We gotta go full socialist, baby!
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 11:23 AM on July 16, 2018 [27 favorites]


That's not Joe Walsh. It's Matt Walsh, an extreme "Christian" Trumpist. That he'd even lightly criticize Trump would be remarkable. That it's this strongly is amazing.

Matt Walsh is kind of hilarious because before Trump he was a completely unremarkable Christofascist stooge and discovering that his fellows mostly love misogyny and racism on their own and not because they think Jesus endorses them, sparked some entertaining meltdowns back around mid-2016.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:24 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


> Words are wind. The GOP may stomp their feet and furrow their little brows and express their "serious concerns"...

If they can convince even a fraction of Republicans to vote for Democrats, just temporarily and just to save American democracy, that means something, and can make a difference in upcoming elections.
posted by nangar at 11:27 AM on July 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


DNI Dan Coats: "The role of the Intelligence Community is to provide the best information and fact-based assessments possible for the President and policymakers. We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.

Note the use of the word "ongoing" there. He's been quiet lately. That he felt compelled to crawl out from beneath the bus the President just ran him over with to say anything (albeit not mentioning his boss in any way at all) is interesting, though he ought to resign.
posted by zachlipton at 11:36 AM on July 16, 2018 [20 favorites]




Fox & Friends weekend host and daughter of US Ambassador to Russia.

Abby Huntsman
No negotiation is worth throwing your own people and country under the bus.
posted by chris24 at 11:41 AM on July 16, 2018 [33 favorites]


Even Never Trump Evangelicals Might Be Swayed by the Supreme Court -- Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination is one sign of unity among divided denominations. (Emma Green for The Atlantic, July 15, 2018)
Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination is the consummation of one of the big bets behind the 2016 election. Many white Christians voted for Donald Trump because they believed he would appoint conservative justices who would protect religious liberty and advance the pro-life cause. Now, ostensibly, they’ve been vindicated. With less than two years in office, Trump will very possibly see the confirmation of his second Supreme Court nominee, another handpicked choice of the conservative legal establishment.

At the time, however, it wasn’t at all clear how this bet would play out. Particularly in the evangelical world, the divisions over the 2016 election were bitter. A number of prominent leaders stepped out to urge their fellow Christians to consider what their vote would say to the world. Two years later, their largely positive reaction to Kavanaugh’s nomination is one sign that the intense political fractures in the evangelical world are fading—at least on the surface, and at least for now.

“I’ve never seen the SBC this unified,” said one of these leaders—Russell Moore, the head of the political arm of the Southern Baptist Convention—in an interview on Wednesday. That unity has emerged in personal relationships and attitudes, he said, but it also seems to be the case in politics. Eighteen months into the Trump era, evangelical leaders are looking for ways to come together under this administration, even if existential questions about the future of the evangelical movement remain.

When Kavanaugh’s nomination was announced, Moore’s office—the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, or ERLC—put out a jubilant statement. “Supreme Court nominations are a crucial aspect of any president’s legacy,” it read. “With Judge Kavanaugh, President Trump has an opportunity to shape the direction of the Supreme Court for a generation or more.” On Wednesday, Moore told me he was “very happy” with the pick: “[Kavanaugh] is a thought leader,” Moore said, “not just someone who’s parroting slogans.”
Fuck, that doesn't sound good for anyone outside of the Evangelical circles, which is a bad reason to pick a supreme court justice. He's only 53. We'll be stuck with him for decades, unless we can actually roll back any of of these Trump era picks.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:41 AM on July 16, 2018 [8 favorites]


While I understand the national and geopolitical concerns, I get the feeling that today's performance by Putin and Trump is more indicative of the global oligarchy tightening its stranglehold on power in major countries than of traditional Cold War posturing between Russia and the US. It's no less concerning for that, but the oligarchy angle should really change how we combat this selling out of our future. I wonder if the states can exercise any control over oligarch assets that might be parked in their jurisdiction, such as real estate holdings.
posted by Existential Dread at 11:45 AM on July 16, 2018 [15 favorites]


Merriam-Webster is at it again.

Dictionary.com will not be outdone.

Dictionary.com
Patriot: A person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion.

Traitor: A person who commits treason by betraying his or her country.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/traitor
posted by chris24 at 11:46 AM on July 16, 2018 [44 favorites]


If they can convince even a fraction of Republicans to vote for Democrats

This is the new iteration of "If they can convince even a fraction of Republicans to vote for Clinton" or "...to reject Gorsuch" or "...to vote against the tax giveaway" or or or...

"Even a fraction of Republicans" have managed to vote in a non-Trumpist way on one fucking thing so far, and that was purely based on ego and was obviated later by those same Republicans voting for essentially repealing the ACA rather than entirely repealing it.

So yeah, I'm going to continue to say "Fuck 'em" until they do something besides possibly, theoretically, maybe convincing a small fraction of their racist, misogynist, scumbag fellow travelers to take the merest action that isn't actively evil.

Windbags delenda est.
posted by Etrigan at 11:48 AM on July 16, 2018 [21 favorites]


John Weaver
@JonHuntsman Resign, if you have any honor.


Evan Smith (Texas Tribune)
Retweeted John Weaver
Weaver was chief strategist for Huntsman presidential campaign in 2012
posted by chris24 at 11:50 AM on July 16, 2018 [72 favorites]


While I understand the national and geopolitical concerns, I get the feeling that today's performance by Putin and Trump is more indicative of the global oligarchy tightening its stranglehold on power in major countries than of traditional Cold War posturing between Russia and the US.

I think this is truly on the mark. The most effective way to fight this sort of global takeover and corruption might be for smaller local governments or even groups of protesters to start seizing or occupying oligarchs' assets. Hit them in the pocketbook, make world domination expensive.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 11:50 AM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


Schumer is speaking now. He’s not mincing words. Casting Trump’s behavior in historical terms. Raises the possibility that Putin holds damaging info over Trump (!)

The New Yorker has a live blog going all day. Worth checking out.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 11:50 AM on July 16, 2018 [25 favorites]


That's the thing though. It's not Trump's agenda. Domestic affairs is all the GOP's agenda.

This is what I keep having to point out when people ask why the GOP won't condemn Trump: he's giving them what they want. He's giving them a conservative Supreme Court judge, he's dismantling national regulations, he's giving them tax cuts. He will sign whatever anti-GLBTQ or anti-abortion legislation they give him. They don't need to be compromised by Russia, because on a purely practical level, he's giving them everything they've campaigned on for decades.

They are also used to working with morally compromised strongmen for larger goals, so to them Trump is no different from Somoza. If they're willing to cut deals with Saudi Arabia, why not Trump?

The thing that worries me is the confidence that these things can't be reversed. This indicates to me two scenarios:
1. They're guiding that even if the House and Senate flips, they're still going to have enough power to prevent counter-legislation. Especially if they have the big prize, the Supreme Court.
2. They think they can win in 2018,V and again in 2020.

I'm beginning to think scenario 2 is the most likely. If they can interfere in the elections in a few key states, they can keep a majority.

I'm anticipation a major "election fraud" push by the Justice Department in a couple months, and possibly ICE threatening to target polling places. They don't need to even have their arrests of citizens upheld, if they can prevent them from voting. I'm also anticipating a strong possibility of court challenges to Democratic victories, with the new Supreme Court voting in favor of the Republicans.

The question we need to ask, is "What are the Republicans capable of doing this fall in order to maintain power?" And then do our best to help eden ourselves against it m
posted by happyroach at 11:51 AM on July 16, 2018 [24 favorites]


This is the new iteration of "If they can convince even a fraction of Republicans to vote for Clinton" or "...to reject Gorsuch" or "...to vote against the tax giveaway" or or or...

I think there's a difference between GOP voters and GOP officeholders. There are a non-negligible number of people who voted for Obama, then Trump.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:53 AM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


Meanwhile, back at the ranch. DOJ: Russian National Charged in Conspiracy to Act as an Agent of the Russian Federation Within the United States. That's an indictment of Mariia Butina:
The court filings detail the Russian official’s and Butina’s efforts for Butina to act as an agent of Russia inside the United States by developing relationships with U.S. persons and infiltrating organizations having influence in American politics, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation. The filings also describe certain actions taken by Butina to further this effort during multiple visits from Russia and, later, when she entered and resided in the United States on a student visa. The filings allege that she undertook her activities without officially disclosing the fact that she was acting as an agent of Russian government, as required by law.
Who is she? Flip back to Tim Mak's reporting last year: The Kremlin and GOP Have a New Friend—and Boy, Does She Love Guns. She's, um, not subtle, ran around bragging she was "part of the Trump campaign’s communications with Russia," hangs out with Paul Erickson, and is all over the strange NRA-Russia connections.
posted by zachlipton at 11:55 AM on July 16, 2018 [42 favorites]


Trump has interacted directly with Maria Butina, on camera. You can watch the video here.

"During a public question and answer session at FreedomFest, a libertarian convention in Las Vegas in July 2015, Butina asked Trump what he would do as president about “damaging” US sanctions. Trump suggested he would get rid of them."
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:02 PM on July 16, 2018 [8 favorites]




There is a truly disturbing historical parallel to Putin's relationship with Trump, and it centers on a leader Putin has quite self-consciously modeled himself after: Stalin.

When Chinese communism was little more than a tiny hopeless band of insurgents hiding out in the mountains, Stalin reached out and chose their leader for them.

The other revolutionaries were by all accounts aghast and entirely unwilling, but Stalin made Russian support contingent on Mao's elevation to authority, and the rest is, as they say, history.
posted by jamjam at 12:04 PM on July 16, 2018 [8 favorites]


How on earth did anyone expect him to question Putin on something which put him in power? That very fact alone would make him dig in his heels repeating numerous times that there was no collusion. His seat is at stake.
posted by infini at 12:06 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


The west coast hasn't even had lunch yet. Happy Monday. This morning has been a long year.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:08 PM on July 16, 2018 [80 favorites]


RightWingMediaWatch: Drudge Report headline blares PUTIN DOMINATES IN HEL, alongside a *very* interesting choice of photo (mirror)
posted by Rhaomi at 12:08 PM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


Liz Cheney
As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I am deeply troubled by President Trump’s defense of Putin against the intelligence agencies of the U.S. & his suggestion of moral equivalence between the U.S. and Russia. Russia poses a grave threat to our national security.
posted by chris24 at 12:17 PM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


I really wish the media would stop covering Trump as if there are two sides. He's a straight up traitor and what he says, what he does and who he does it with should be covered in precisely that way.
posted by bluesky43 at 12:17 PM on July 16, 2018 [35 favorites]


The Butina affadavit is quite the read (my transcription):
On March 14, 2016, BUTINA emailed US Person 2 and said that the RUSSIAN OFFICIAL confirmed to her "his desire in our Russian-American project," and that a representative of the Russian Presidential administration had expressed approval "for building this communication channel." BUTINA additionally assured US Person 2 that he should not worry as "all that we needed is <<yes>> from Putin's side. The rest is easier."

On October 4, 2016, US Person 1 sent an email to an acquaintance. The email covered a number of topics. Within the email, US Person 1 stated, "Unrelated to specific presidential campaigns, I've been involved in securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin and key POLITICAL PARTY 1 leaders through, of all conduits, the [GUN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION]." Based on my training, experience, and familiarity with this investigation, I believe that this email describes US Person 1's involvement in Butina's efforts to establish a "back channel" communication for representatives of the government of Russia
Organizing the Russian presence at the 2017 National Prayer Breakfast get a fair amount of space as well. US Person 1 is not very smart.
posted by zachlipton at 12:20 PM on July 16, 2018 [41 favorites]


Actual possible good news dept:
FCC sends Sinclair mega-deal to likely doom

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced Monday he has "serious concerns" about Sinclair Broadcast Group's acquisition of Tribune Media, saying he would send the transaction through a lengthy administrative process often viewed as a deal-killer.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:22 PM on July 16, 2018 [25 favorites]


Love to be a fly on the wall at NRA headquarters right now.
posted by azpenguin at 12:24 PM on July 16, 2018 [20 favorites]


I really wish the media would stop covering Trump as if there are two sides. He's a straight up traitor and what he says, what he does and who he does it with should be covered in precisely that way.

NPR Morning Edition had on a Reagan-era nuclear policy guy this morning, and when the interviewer tried to claim that maybe Trump had some good policy points, the Reagan guy was having none of it. It was so refreshing (yet enraging that NPR is still--STILL--treating Trump as if he's a normal president).

I do not understand what the calculus is in the NPR editorial offices. Every single individual in the organization must know the current regime is antithetical to all they stand for, and the individual non-drive-time shows mostly acknowledge the insanity of the situation (Sam Sanders, PCHH, etc). But Morning Edition and ATC continue to report and interview guests as if this were just another ordinary inside-the-beltway political tussle. It's horrifying, and I want to tell them: this will not save you. I don't think they'll hear me.
posted by suelac at 12:24 PM on July 16, 2018 [50 favorites]


Jim Sciutto of CNN is reporting that an Administration official has confirmed to him that the DNI Coats statement was not cleared by the WH. . . he may have resigned* in a highly unusual style. [the part after the ellipses is my view not the reporting]
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:25 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


More background on Butina, her boss Alexander Torshin, and their relationship with Trump and Trump Jr...

Torshin met with Don Jr at the 2016 NRA convention...

He claims to have met with Trump himself at the 2015 convention...

(Butina attended both of those conventions as well.)

He hosted an NRA delegation in Moscow which included Sherriff David Clarke...

Torshin is being investigated for money laundering by authorities in Spain, who have wiretaps of the discussions leading up to his meeting with Don Jr, and turned them over to US investigators...

And according to NeedToImpeach.com:
In May 2016, Butina and Torshin tried to set up a meeting between Putin and Trump. Days later, NRA member Paul Erickson also tried to set up a backchannel for Trump and Putin. Erickson and Butina are friends, and incorporated a shell company together.

At Butina’s Trump inauguration party, Erickson told guests that Butina was on Trump’s transition team.

Butina also said in grad school that she was part of the Trump campaign’s contact with Russia."
Paul Erickson is an NRA activist who wrote to Sessions' former Chief of Staff, then working for the Trump campaign: “Putin is deadly serious about building a good relationship with Mr. Trump,. He wants to extend an invitation to Mr. Trump to visit him in the Kremlin before the election. Let’s talk through what has transpired and Senator Sessions’s advice on how to proceed.”
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:27 PM on July 16, 2018 [18 favorites]




So:

-Russia didn't interfere
-Russia interfered, but everybody does it, it's not like there was collusion
-Some campaign officials used their stuff, but nobody knew it was Russians
-YOU ARE HERE: Okay, there was collusion, but it was just the NRA, not the campaign, big whoop
-Yeah, we colluded, fuck you
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:29 PM on July 16, 2018 [37 favorites]


The Butina affadavit has her DMing "I am ready for further orders" to Alexander Torshin on election night and man do we need better writers
posted by theodolite at 12:29 PM on July 16, 2018 [79 favorites]


"I've been involved in securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin and key POLITICAL PARTY 1 leaders through, of all conduits, the [GUN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION]"

This sounds like the DOJ (not even Mueller in this case) saying they have the goods on GOP leaders working with Russia. I think there's no doubt (based on their actions) this means McConnell and probably Ryan too. I don't know if DOJ is sending a message that they should cooperate or finally try to rein in Trump, but it sure does look like a message DOJ knows everything, the jig is up, and the frogmarches are coming eventually, regardless of what the GOP does now.
posted by stopgap at 12:29 PM on July 16, 2018 [15 favorites]


Suelac - NPR has deteriorated into a mamby pamby media organization, presumably fearful for their funding. Yay for the Reagan era guy - a statement I never thought I would make. I'll see if I can find the interview - it might help tamp down the rage I feel at the moment towards this disgrace.
posted by bluesky43 at 12:29 PM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


Why Binyamin Netanyahu Is Fudging East European History [SLEconomist] Cozying up to Nazi revisionists over the objections of Yad Vashem
posted by benzenedream at 12:33 PM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


I really wish the media would stop covering Trump as if there are two sides. He's a straight up traitor and what he says, what he does and who he does it with should be covered in precisely that way.

For what it's worth, here's a quick scan of the WaPo's editorial section:
  • Trump just put Russia first
  • If you work for Trump, quit now. Save your souls.
  • Trump has just composed the most elaborate thank-you note in history
  • Trump is now repaying Putin for helping him win the presidency
  • For Republicans, Russian sabotage of our elections is no big deal

    No defenses of the summit yet, the half-dozen pro Trump columnists the Post employs are waiting for their talking points.

  • posted by peeedro at 12:35 PM on July 16, 2018 [28 favorites]


    NPR has deteriorated into a mamby pamby media organization, presumably fearful for their funding.

    I know, but I don't see how they don't see: nothing they do will save them. Catering to Trump and the right gets them nothing, and only loses them their old progressive support. They are trying to walk a fenceline, but the guys on the right are going to knock them off, regardless of what they do.
    posted by suelac at 12:36 PM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


    Anyone with a bigger red-yarn corkboard than me know who U.S. Person 2 is? RUSSIAN OFFICIAL is Torshin, U.S. Person 1 is Erickson, GUN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION is NRA, etc., but that one seems juicy.
    posted by theodolite at 12:36 PM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


    Yeah, I think the print media is better. but listen to the interview Suelac referred to above - Adelman was the arm control advisor to Reagan and his reply to her "let me push back a bit on that assessment". Here's the link to morning edition Adelman

    Adelman's interview is down the page. I don't want to turn this into an anti-media rant but honestly, this is not journalism. This is some fake 'let's be balanced' bullshit that misinforms.
    posted by bluesky43 at 12:40 PM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


    Haberman flouncing yesterday now seems more interesting.
    posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:45 PM on July 16, 2018 [19 favorites]


    Jeff Flake is on CNN via phone expressing grave concerns. Grave. Concerns.

    Jake Tapper presses him on what actions he will take. Flake quickly pivots away. So: nothing.
    posted by Justinian at 12:50 PM on July 16, 2018 [78 favorites]


    I get a little tired of the EVERYTHING IS A BOMBSHELL takes, but this NRA/Butina thing definitely seems like it is going to end up being a very big deal.
    posted by Chrysostom at 12:51 PM on July 16, 2018 [56 favorites]


    just a reminder that NPR only gets ~10% of revenue from the federal government [2013 source]. they can live without it.
    posted by benzenedream at 12:54 PM on July 16, 2018 [8 favorites]


    Guys NPR is partly underwritten by Koch Industries, which also sponsors Marketplace. Here's a direct quote from NPR on-air personality, David Folkenflik:
    So you can look at the Koch brothers and say they just invest in things. They are through Koch Industries. They underwrite NPR, among other entities. And they seem to have had no effect here or at the Poynter Institution, a journalism outfit.
    I noticed the disclaimer/tagline that made it sound like Koch Industries was some kind of innocent nonprofit sponsor/donor about 1.5 years back.
    posted by Unicorn on the cob at 12:55 PM on July 16, 2018 [34 favorites]


    This Is the Moment of Truth for Republicans
    There are exactly two possible explanations for the shameful performance the world witnessed on Monday, from a serving American president.

    Either Donald Trump is flat-out an agent of Russian interests—maybe witting, maybe unwitting, from fear of blackmail, in hope of future deals, out of manly respect for Vladimir Putin, out of gratitude for Russia’s help during the election, out of pathetic inability to see beyond his 306 electoral votes. Whatever the exact mixture of motives might be, it doesn’t really matter.

    Or he is so profoundly ignorant, insecure, and narcissistic that he did not realize that, at every step, he was advancing the line that Putin hoped he would advance, and the line that the American intelligence, defense, and law-enforcement agencies most dreaded.

    Conscious tool. Useful idiot. Those are the choices, though both are possibly true, so that the main question is the proportions.
    posted by kirkaracha at 1:04 PM on July 16, 2018 [85 favorites]


    Chait: At Summit With Russia, Trump Betrays His Country in Plain Sight
    My recent story argues that we have underestimated the possibility that the Russia scandal is much worse than it looks, that the depth and extent of the president’s covert ties to Russia might run deeper and longer than many people expect. Even for those of us harboring serious suspicions about this, Trump’s performance in Helsinki was stunning. I expected some artifice, some superficial gestures of Trumpian independence, perhaps some finger-wagging for show at Russia’s naughty behavior, and assurances it would not recur. What transpired instead was far worse, and far more blatant. Trump is engaged in an act of open betrayal against his own country.
    ...
    Possibly the most damning admission was one Trump made in his prepared remarks. Trump noted that he put his own standing at risk by accepting Putin’s offer of a meeting. “Nothing would be easier politically than to refuse to meet,” he said.

    For all Trump’s lies, here was one truth. It is why nobody in his administration except Trump wanted to attend the meeting at all. And it has been vindicated by the sour response his performance received from his usually-slavish partisan following back home. Yet Trump, a man of few core beliefs and a fanatical attachment to polling, his reelection standing, and how his daily events play on television, nonetheless plunged ahead with an event bound to harm all three. It is no undue paranoia to ask why.
    Brian Buetler: Trump and Putin Colluded in Plain Sight
    If Trump weren’t president, we’d see this for the trolling it is: Putin wants to be read into the Mueller investigation, and “in exchange” also be read into other U.S. intelligence and counterintelligence operations. A doubly destructive proposition for the U.S, with no upside. Trump called it an “interesting idea,” and an “incredible offer.”

    There is next to no chance that the Justice Department will agree to such a proposal, but the precise terms here matter less than the fact that Trump endorsed the idea of sharing critical intelligence with the Russian government, which the target of the operations. Trump can and probably will cite Putin’s “offer” to attack Mueller in bad faith—if it’s not a witch hunt, why won’t Mueller interrogate the suspects?—but more importantly, he signaled his willingness to compromise U.S. intelligence and law enforcement operations at Putin’s request as an implicit quo for the quid of further Russian election sabotage.
    ...
    Soon enough, Trump will conscript the rest of the Republican Party into this corrupt relationship. Earlier this month Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) returned from a visit to Moscow and downplayed the seriousness of Russian election interference. This weekend, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) dismissed it as routine foreign intelligence collection, saying “we all do it,” and calling the Mueller investigation a “witch hunt.”

    Trump is only one step ahead of his enablers in Congress. And if and when Russian cyberattacks target Democrats again in the near future, supporting foreign threats to American sovereignty when they take aim at liberalism will become an acid test for what conservatives call patriotism.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 1:09 PM on July 16, 2018 [36 favorites]


    Congressman Adam Schiff:
    Mariia Butina, a Russian national, has been charged with acting as a surreptitious Russian agent and establishing a secret back channel with the GOP through the NRA.

    More likely to come on this; no wonder GOP members of HPSCI refused our request to bring her and others in.
    posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 1:11 PM on July 16, 2018 [68 favorites]


    Hillary Clinton, eight days before the election (transcript)
    Because what's most striking about all of this -- and I would argue most important for voters to consider – is the relationship between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    As former Secretary Madeleine Albright put it, and I quote her, 'We have never seen a mind meld of the kind between the Russian leadership and a candidate for the presidency of the United States.' Michael Morell, who ran the CIA and grew up just a few miles from here, has said that Putin is manipulating Donald. Putin is a trained intelligence officer from the old KGB. He knows he can use flattery to get into Donald's head -- to make Donald the Kremlin's puppet. And It seems to be working.

    Donald has signaled to Putin that he will let Russia do whatever it wants, from Ukraine to Syria and beyond. He's even said Putin is a stronger leader than President Obama. And it gets worse. The U.S. intelligence community has now confirmed that the Russian government, which means Putin, is directing cyber-attacks against targets in the United States to influence the outcome of our election.

    So ask yourself, why would Putin be trying to get Donald Trump elected President? Could it be because of all of the nice things Donald has said about him, or the fact that he's promised to adopt pro-Kremlin policies, or maybe because of his extensive business dealings with Russian oligarchs with ties to Putin? Since Donald still won't release his tax returns, and don't hold your breath, we don't know the full extent of his business relationships --but what we do know is disturbing.

    And we know this: We are dealing with something unprecedented in the history of our country. A foreign adversary trying to influence our presidential election. That should scare everyone, Democrat, Republican, and Independent. With the election just eight days away, this can't wait any longer. Donald Trump should immediately disclose all of his ties and connections to the Kremlin and its associates. The American people deserve to know the full extent of these links and how they relate to what the Russians are doing in our election.
    posted by kirkaracha at 1:19 PM on July 16, 2018 [137 favorites]


    Washington Post Editorial Board: Trump just colluded with Russia. "in refusing to acknowledge the plain facts about Russia’s behavior, while trashing his own country’s justice system, Mr. Trump in fact was openly colluding with the criminal leader of a hostile power."
    posted by BungaDunga at 1:21 PM on July 16, 2018 [77 favorites]


    I think being read into our investigations is a great way to help Putin "take care of people" in our country who are trying to expose Putin's incursion into the 2016 election.
    posted by nikaspark at 1:24 PM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


    On the subject of Trump's tax returns; has he ever bothered to update his excuse from "They're all under audit in perpetuity and for some reason that makes it a bad business move for me to publish them"?
    posted by contraption at 1:31 PM on July 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


    Hill Reporter
    Senator Warner, Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Implies that Trump Just Committed an Impeachable Offense in Helsinki.
    “For the President of the United States to stand next to Vladimir Putin — who personally ordered one of the largest state-sponsored cyber-attacks in our history — and side with Putin over America’s military and intelligence leaders is a breach of his duty to defend our country against its adversaries".
    posted by adamvasco at 1:33 PM on July 16, 2018 [72 favorites]


    Massive info dump thread on the already known NRA/Republican links to Russia from Casey Michel (Thinkprogress):
    A couple key takeaways:

    1. Butina and Torshin, based on the DOJ's complaint, are exactly who many suspected over the past year: Russian operatives with no interest in "gun rights" in Russia, but who spied an opening with the @NRA as a conduit to the Republican Party.
    2. There's no indication in the DOJ's complaint that Butina or Torshin used the NRA to launder money into Trump's campaign. (But that doesn't mean it didn't happen. More FEC complaints keep piling up on the topic: https://thinkprogress.org/new-fec-complaint-details-unanswered-questions-about-the-nras-relationship-with-sanctioned-russians-0564c4fbd10b/ …) 3. The DOJ's complaint appears to confirm that Butina's/Torshin's work with the @NRA was part of a broader, years-long attempt at wooing social conservatives, especially members of the U.S. Religious Right. (For a look at how those ties first developed: https://thinkprogress.org/history-of-christian-fundamentalists-in-russia-and-the-us-a6bdd326841d/ …) 4. It's a terrible, horrible, no-good day for the @NRA, which has just been described in a DOJ complaint as the "conduit" between Russia and the GOP that was so long suspected, and that so many fantastic reporters (especially @timkmak and @jeisrael) had previously covered. 5. Very possible that, in the long-run, this DOJ complaint linking Russia and the @NRA ends up as bigger news than the Trump-Putin summit today.

    A couple of our articles/investigations that help shine light on other contours of the Russia-@NRA links revealed today:

    1. On how ties between Russia, the NRA, and U.S. Religious Right first began, years and years ago:

    2. Everything we know about the Tennessee lawyer who first introduced Torshin to @NRA leadership -- and who praises Putin every chance he gets:

    3. On the same Tennessee lawyer's ties to @MarshaBlackburn -- whose Congressional campaigns he used to lead:

    4. And on the tangled web between Russia, the @NRA, and (of all things) Tennessee politics, a web that still continues to this day:

    5. For kicks, here's a 2015 picture of both Torshin and Butina with Wisconsin Gov. @ScottWalker:
    posted by T.D. Strange at 1:34 PM on July 16, 2018 [44 favorites]




    For the lawyers among us:

    Could Hillary Clinton sue Donald Trump over election interference?

    I feel as though the writers would be drawn to this.
    posted by schadenfrau at 1:35 PM on July 16, 2018 [18 favorites]


    On the subject of Trump's tax returns; has he ever bothered to update his excuse from "They're all under audit in perpetuity and for some reason that makes it a bad business move for me to publish them"?

    It was updated to: ha ha, we won so we're never going to do it.
    posted by AndrewInDC at 1:36 PM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


    I'm reading the Butina affidavit and increasingly freaking out. At first I'd hoped [GUN RIGHTS ORGANIATION] referred to some fringe Russian-American outlet. But nope, it's 100% the NRA, and [POLITICAL PARTY 1] is clearly the Republicans. It's all laid bare in paragraph 18:
    On or about March 24, 2015, BUTINA emailed U.S. Person 1 with the subject line of "The Second Pozner."1 The body of this email also contained a project proposal. BUTINA noted to U.S. Person 1 in the email that she was sending the "Google Translator text. Maybe I could translate it myself but it would take at least a day because the text is very specific." She went on to note that she "will be happy to answer to any your questions [sic] and follow your recommendations before a [sic] finally send it." The first line of the proposal reads, "Project Description 'Diplomacy.'" It goes on to state that a major U.S. political party [hereinafter "POLITICAL PARTY 1"], would likely obtain control over the U.S. government after the 2016 elections; that POLITICAL PARTY 1 is "traditionally associated with negative and aggressive foreign policy, particularly with regards to Russia. However, now with the right to negotiate seems best to build konstruktivnyh [sic] relations;" and that "[c]entral place and influence in the [POLITICAL PARTY 1] plays the [GUN RIGHTS ORGANIATION]. The [GUN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION] [is] the largest sponsor of the elections to the US congress, as well as a sponsor of The CPAC conference and other events."
    And a footnote states that "The Second Pozner" likely refers to Soviet apologist Vladimir Pozner, though I'll note for the record that his father of the same name was a straight-up spy working as a mole inside the US government.
    posted by Rhaomi at 1:38 PM on July 16, 2018 [41 favorites]


    Could Hillary Clinton sue Donald Trump over election interference?

    The DNC already filed that lawsuit. It was tossed out of court though the judge was clear that his ruling was not based on a finding that no cooperation between Trump & the Russians occurred but for more technical reasons. Such a lawsuit would be tossed again and for the same reasons. In order to proceed you'd likely need Mueller to come back with some very serious findings in which case the lawsuit is probably extraneous anyway.
    posted by Justinian at 1:39 PM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


    Erin Banco at NJ Advance Media has been single-handedly digging deep on the Seychelles story (remember that's also a thing? I forgot. There are so many things), and she has a new installment: Seychelles meetings probed by Mueller included several Russians: exclusive
    Participants of other meetings that week in January, which focused generally on Syria, energy and sanctions, hailed from Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel and the U.S., according to three people with knowledge of the meetings.

    All three requested to remain anonymous because they feared retribution from their respective governments. The presence of several other Russians raises questions about Kremlin influence in the meetings.

    Several of the meetings focused on the lifting of Russian sanctions to facilitate trade, the sources said.

    It's unclear how many representatives from each country attended the meetings, some of which were informal conversations over dinner. But new information points to more than 10 Russians, some linked to the Kremlin, participating in discussions.
    ...
    The plane that carried the Russians to the island in January returned in March around the same time as George Nader -- the Lebanese-American businessman cooperating with Mueller who helped broker the meeting between Prince and Dmitriev.

    The Russian plane left the island in March with 20 passengers and flew back to Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow.

    Other individuals on the island the same week as Prince in January 2017 included Alexander Mashkevitch, an alleged financier of Bayrock, an investment vehicle linked to Trump; and Sheikh Abdulrahman Khalid BinMahfouz, according to flight records. BinMahfouz's father, before his death, was a billionaire and the former chairman of Saudi Arabia's first private bank.
    posted by zachlipton at 1:39 PM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


    Jeff Flake is on CNN via phone expressing grave concerns. Grave. Concerns.
    Every time he does this the very next question ought to be: "would you say that these concerns are more or less grave than the very grave concerns you expressed [on previous occasion] and will it lead to any more direct action than those concerns did?"

    And it would be nice if they would put up an image of Lucy pulling away the football behind him, just in case strongly hinting that he has played this game a thousand times already and no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt is not enough to accurately convey to even the dimmest members of the audience his lack of sincerity.

    Not that I think that this would result in Flake realizing the error of his ways and taking any useful action but at least he'd stop wasting our time on television. Assuming the pilot project works with Flake, they should then move on to Ben Sasse..
    posted by Nerd of the North at 1:39 PM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]




    The DNC already filed that lawsuit. It was tossed out of court though the judge was clear that his ruling was not based on a finding that no cooperation between Trump & the Russians occurred but for more technical reasons. Such a lawsuit would be tossed again and for the same reasons. In order to proceed you'd likely need Mueller to come back with some very serious findings in which case the lawsuit is probably extraneous anyway

    The DNC filed two such suits. One, filed in the district court for Washington, D.C., was dismissed on the grounds that none of the contested conduct happened in DC. The other, in the Southern District of New York, is still live (but has yet to have anything significant happen either way).
    posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:44 PM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


    The DNC already filed that lawsuit. It was tossed out of court

    Wait, what?

    I googled "DNC Russia law suit tossed out of court" and I found this from two weeks ago.... Judge tosses suit alleging Trump campaign conspired with Russia in DNC hack... But that says:
    Two DNC donors, Roy Cockrum and Eric Schoenberg, and former DNC staffer Scott Comer, filed the suit last year, alleging that the hacking invaded their privacy and that the Trump campaign and Stone had a role in unlawful activity. [...] The DNC was not a party to the suit the two donors and the former staffer filed last July. However, in April of this year, the DNC brought its own lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan, accusing the Russian government, the Trump campaign, Trump's son Donald Jr., Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and various other figures of roles in events related to the hacking. That case is still in its early stages.
    As far as I can tell the suit which was actually filed by the DNC is still ongoing. Am I missing something?
    posted by OnceUponATime at 1:44 PM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


    You are correct, sorry I got the two lawsuits confused. One of the lawsuits was tossed and the other is just beginning. I do expect it will be exactly as successful though.
    posted by Justinian at 1:46 PM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


    Yeah, all the informed commentary I read on the complaint was that it is, at best, a mess. Although Mueller has been providing a lot of fodder for amendments.
    posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:51 PM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


    @donmoyn
    Butina's group was also the one that flew David Clarke to Moscow
    posted by Artw at 1:54 PM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


    Surely, this can't be a coincidence? From the investigative journalist Scott Stedman on Twitter:

    "November 11, 2016: Maria Butina DM's Torshin asking him what "our people" thought about a Secretary of State contender.

    Late November 2016: Christopher Steele says Kremlin intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney."
    posted by un petit cadeau at 1:55 PM on July 16, 2018 [51 favorites]


    Axios has its many, many problems, but it's useful if you want to know how the White House is trying to spin this: Swan, Allen, Trump's Helsinki humiliation:
    A number of people who’ve discussed election meddling with Trump, including current senior administration officials, say his brain can’t process that collusion and cyberattacks are two different things.

    Trump seems constitutionally incapable of taking anything Mueller finds seriously.

    He views the entire exercise as a "witch hunt" cooked up by Democrats and Deep State conspirators to undermine his election win.

    Ego prevents him acknowledging the possibility that any external action could have interfered with his glorious victory.

    The handful of White House staff we have privately communicated with since today’s press conference are not proud of the man they work for. But he doesn't expect any to resign.
    So the best they've got is that something is horribly broken inside Trump's brain and he's "constitutionally incapable." Having come to this conclusion about the man they work for, they will do nothing.
    posted by zachlipton at 1:57 PM on July 16, 2018 [44 favorites]


    Fuck. I know it’s been a year where there’s a bombshell every week but Russia blocking Mitt Romney as SoS because he wasn’t friendly enough to them feels huge.
    posted by BeginAgain at 1:58 PM on July 16, 2018 [43 favorites]


    I'm beginning to think the Republican visits to Russia may be apartment hunting.
    posted by srboisvert at 2:02 PM on July 16, 2018 [39 favorites]


    That humiliation scallops picture never gets old.
    posted by fluttering hellfire at 2:02 PM on July 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


    Or the WSJ version, Trump Questions Finding of Russia’s 2016 Meddling as He Appears With Putin
    Heading into the summit, the White House had planned for Mr. Trump to “push Putin” at the news conference, one White House official said. The White House thought any confrontational approach from Mr. Trump toward the Russian president would come as a surprise and “make him look good.”

    “Obviously, it didn’t happen,” the official said.
    The thing is, it would have worked so damn well if he had just managed to pull it off. If he acted remotely confrontational toward Putin for 30 seconds, the pundit class would be screaming "pivot" and "American leadership" for weeks. His comms staff knows this, so they tried to get him to do it. And nope. He can't. His views on Russia are the one thing he doesn't ever waver on.
    posted by zachlipton at 2:02 PM on July 16, 2018 [38 favorites]


    Every time he does this the very next question ought to be: "would you say that these concerns are more or less grave than the very grave concerns you expressed [on previous occasion] and will it lead to any more direct action than those concerns did?"

    Our thoughts and prayers go out to those concerns ... Which died gravely.
    posted by ZenMasterThis at 2:06 PM on July 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


    With all this NRA-Russia treason going on it suddenly makes sense why the NRA wanted Ollie North to run it.
    posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 2:10 PM on July 16, 2018 [41 favorites]


    I've been planning to delurk during a pause in the craziness, but, y'know... *waves in all directions*...

    I'm yet another loooong-time lurker who finally ponied up my five bucks to say THANK YOU MEFITES ONE AND ALL for helping to keep me informed and upright in these times. I learn so much here and share it widely with the people around me, which can be a delicate business in central NC.

    To stay sort-of on topic: I regret my mockery of candidate Mitt Romney when he described Russia as the biggest threat to US interests in the modern world. I thought this was some kind of blinkered Cold-War hangover, not realizing that they've been building up to full-scale, data-driven cyberwarfare. Nor that so many Americans would willingly turn their backs on fact and reason, given the slightest nudge.
    posted by Piso Mojado at 2:16 PM on July 16, 2018 [100 favorites]


    Even Fox News hates the way summit was handled: Putin eats Trump's lunch in Helsinki

    (Although, don't get it twisted... they're still Fox News: "There was nothing inherently wrong with Trump’s summit with Putin.")
    posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:17 PM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


    That humiliation scallops picture never gets old.

    Try the Mittballs; they're delicious.
    posted by kirkaracha at 2:20 PM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


    Person 2 is former deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn right?
    posted by Roger_Mexico at 2:20 PM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


    DirtyOldTown: Even Fox News hates the way summit was handled: Putin eats Trump's lunch in Helsinki

    Probably should add a [METAPHOR] tag to that
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 2:22 PM on July 16, 2018 [9 favorites]


    I thought this was some kind of blinkered Cold-War hangover, not realizing that they've been building up to full-scale, data-driven cyberwarfare.

    To be honest we have no idea that Mitt wasn't referring to them in the blinkered Cold-War hangover manner. He certainly didn't exactly come out corroborating HRC and the rest of the Democratic Party when they were publicly talking about foreign state actor interference.
    posted by PenDevil at 2:25 PM on July 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


    So, remember a few months ago when the NRA had that finely-parsed statement that they'd gotten a small amount of money from some Russians, but it was mostly for membership dues or magazine subscriptions, and that they did not use foreign money to influence elections?
    posted by azpenguin at 2:29 PM on July 16, 2018 [18 favorites]


    If you’re an elected official and have anything other than an F rating from the MRA, I’m sorry, but I’m going to look at you sideways. Moreso now. This NRA story could ultimately be bigger in a sense than Trump’s pathetic display in Helsinki today.

    [on edit: leaving Freudian typo in]
    posted by Barack Spinoza at 2:31 PM on July 16, 2018 [43 favorites]


    Person 2 is former deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn right?
    Wow. I'd completely forgotten about him, but . . involved early in the Tr campaign (2015 on) active during transition, and has many many years as CoS for Sessions. Dang.
    posted by Harry Caul at 2:31 PM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


    Pure showmanship - after all the nations he insulted and turned upon on his tour, he saved America for last.

    I think this might be a sea change though: bipartisan backlash, because he flubbed it on the world stage. Even the basest of the base can feel the public humiliation whether they admit it or not. Plus the further indictments at home. Walls, crumbling.
    posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 2:33 PM on July 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


    If he acted remotely confrontational toward Putin for 30 seconds, the pundit class would be screaming "pivot" and "American leadership" for weeks.

    FFS, Putin even tries to throw Trump a bone towards acting this way at the press conference, when asked about Crimea, and Trump is too stupid and/or sycophantic to run with it:
    PUTIN (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): [The] posture of President Trump on Crimea is well known, and he stands firmly by it. He continued to maintain that it was illegal to annex it.
    Trump fails to mention Crimea.
    posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:35 PM on July 16, 2018 [35 favorites]


    Axios has its many, many problems, but it's useful if you want to know how the White House is trying to spin this: Swan, Allen, Trump's Helsinki humiliation

    I know I keep banging on about this, but Jonathan Swan is one of the troika of "Trump Whisperers", along with the NYT's Maggie Haberman and the WaPo's Philip Rucker: “Trump phones Maggie Haberman of The New York Times directly, as well as Philip Rucker of The Washington Post, and Jonathan Swan of Axios, feeding them stories attributed to ‘a senior White House official,’ creating the impression that [the] White House leaks even more than it already does,” wrote reporter Ronald Kessler in The Trump White House: Changing the Rules of the Game. (Observer). Their journalism is useful, not least because of this, but literally everything they publish has a big "caveat lector" sign over it thanks to their direct access to Trump.

    Speaking of Philip Rucker, he manages to soft-pedal Trump in Helsinki, writing "President Trump on Monday refused to support the collective conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, saying that Russian President Vladi­mir Putin had given him an “extremely strong and powerful” denial during their private talks here." This is what Trump said: "My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin; he just said it's not Russia. I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be." Trump took a side, and it wasn't the American one, but Rucker can't seem to say this in plain language because he needs access.

    By the way, the Washington Post has published a full transcript of the Trump-Putin news conference for any one with a strong stomach. Trump's semi-coherence is undeniable when it's written out—and it looks even worse alongside Putin's cogent, if translated, remarks.

    It was pathetic, grown men like [Mike] Pence acting like puppies.

    Pence continues to perform as Trump's lap dog…

    MSNBC's Michael Del Moro(@MikeDelMoro): “VP PENCE: 'what the world saw, what the American people saw, is that President Donald Trump will always put the prosperity and security of America first.'”

    posted by Doktor Zed at 2:36 PM on July 16, 2018 [13 favorites]




    FFS, Putin even tries to throw Trump a bone towards acting this way at the press conference

    That was amazing. Putin essentially handed Trump the Crimea issue and gave him the green light to go to town and Trump simply ignored him. That was Putin literally telling Trump to knock Russia on Crimea to make it look good! Putin teed it up and Trump was too stupid to swing.
    posted by Justinian at 2:38 PM on July 16, 2018 [86 favorites]


    Actual leader from GOP leadership? well, county-level leadership anyhow:

    Southeast Ohio Republican Party leader resigns over Trump-Putin meeting


    Good on you, Chris Gagin, Bellmont County GOP Chairman. (I mean, i still have loads of questions about your acceptance of openly racist policy from a clearly disturbed rapist)
    posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 2:42 PM on July 16, 2018 [32 favorites]


    I wonder if this disaster is going to come down on Jared Kushner considering one of the biggest boosters for this lovefest was Netanyahu (who is in tight with the Kushners for many years) in order to get the US and Russia on the same page about Iran and Syria. If Kushner pushed for this summit to happen partly on Bibi's behalf I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that Syria never even came up except for Trump doing little more than asking Putin to take care of ISIS for him.
    posted by PenDevil at 2:45 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


    These people all realize that Trump has no idea what he's doing and is in way over his head, right? Right? All these people acting surprised is really starting to grate on me.
    posted by Melismata at 2:48 PM on July 16, 2018 [26 favorites]


    One thing that I didn't realize about the Butina indictment until I just saw someone on Twitter mention: it did not come from Mueller's office. It came from the National Security Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Now, is it possible they were investigating this independently of Mueller? Possibly. But people are finding it somewhat unlikely that Mueller's team wasn't already well aware of this Butina/Torschin/NRA thing before. Some are speculating that this might have been farmed out from Mueller's side either because: 1) distributing the cases around makes it harder to squash the cases if the special counsel's team gets disbanded, or 2) this thread is technically outside of the special counsel's mandate so needs to be sent to the relevant DoJ office.
    posted by mhum at 2:50 PM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


    Trump’s Appeasement Summit
    Robin Wright | The New Yorker
    For decades, American historians have viewed the summit between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in 1961, as the worst ever between Washington and Moscow. Kennedy described the encounter, in Vienna, as one of the low points of his life; his weakness led Khrushchev to test the United States by deploying nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba. That disastrous bit of summitry has now been topped by President Trump’s meeting on Monday with the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, and his public renunciation of U.S. intelligence reports and a recent Justice Department indictment of Russian officials for meddling in the 2016 election. Senator John McCain called Trump’s remarks “one of the most disgraceful performances in memory” by a U.S. President. John Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, said Trump’s deference to Putin was “nothing short of treasonous.” In a tweet, he charged that Trump’s comments were “imbecilic” and that they indicate the President is “wholly in the pocket of Putin.” His action “rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ ” Brennan added, “Republican Patriots: Where are you???”

    Despite the Justice Department’s indictment, on Friday, of twelve Russian intelligence agents, for interfering in the 2016 election, Trump fully embraced Putin’s bare-faced denial. “He just said it’s not Russia,” Trump said at a joint press conference, after the meeting. “I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.” He even heralded—as an “incredible offer”—Putin’s suggestion that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, come to Moscow to question the twelve agents, with Russian officials present, in exchange for Russia being allowed to interrogate any U.S. intelligence officials it believes have been involved in covert operations against Russia.

    In Helsinki, Trump may have done far more damage than Kennedy did, Robert Kagan, a former State Department policy-planning staffer who is now at the Brookings Institution, told me. “Whereas Kennedy in the end was trying to strengthen the American position, Trump is actively and deliberately weakening it,” Kagan said. “By undermining our alliances and destroying the American-led world order, he is leading us back toward the kind of dangers that we saw in the first half of the twentieth century. There may not be anything so dramatic as the Cuban missile crisis right away—Russia is not in the position the Soviet Union was in—but over time the costs and dangers are likely to be much higher.”

    Trump has changed the policy of every American President, Republican or Democrat, since the United States and Russia became global rivals and nuclear powers, Kagan said. “We have never before had an American President who shared Moscow’s goals,” he added.

    Richard Burt, the chief negotiator of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Soviet Union and a longtime adviser to Republican candidates, called Trump’s diplomacy “more P. T. Barnum than Henry Kissinger.” The President’s victories are “all hype,” he added.

    ... Putin clearly tried to play alpha dog with Trump from the start. At an opening photo call, the optics were awful. Putin looked bored. He slouched back into the side of his chair, his legs spread. He often didn’t even look at Trump. Trump, wearing his omnipresent red tie, sat forward in his chair. His fingers tapped against each other, perhaps instinctively, perhaps nervously. Notably missing in comments at either of their public appearances was any mention of Russia’s alleged use of chemical weapons in Britain, its alleged shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17—the fourth anniversary is Tuesday—over Ukraine, which killed nearly three hundred people, or its alleged interference in European elections.

    Trump accomplished little in the way of substance in Helsinki. “Putin wanted to communicate that a new era in U.S.-Russian relations had begun, something Trump was all too happy to associate himself with,” Haass told me. “Trump engaged in moral equivalence in blaming both countries for the poor state of relations. As was the case in Singapore, he exaggerated what had been accomplished by the summit. Most egregiously, he criticized the Mueller investigation and refused to back his own intelligence and law-enforcement agencies.” The one positive development may be movement on outstanding arms-control issues, although neither leader provided any details.

    Nina Khrushcheva, the granddaughter of the former Soviet premier, called the Trump-Putin summit a “photo op for both, a victory story that serves their respective narratives.” Now an American citizen and professor of international relations, at the New School, in New York, Khrushcheva worked as a research assistant to the legendary American diplomat George Kennan. “As Kennan used to say,” she told me, “all foreign-policy decisions should never serve interests of the moment and look forward to at least five, ten years. With Trump, this is all for the moment. For Putin, for as long as he needs to stay in power.” She added, “I am seeing Trump as a follower rather than a leader in this relationship.”
    posted by Barack Spinoza at 2:51 PM on July 16, 2018 [18 favorites]


    I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that Syria never even came up except for Trump doing little more than asking Putin to take care of ISIS for him.

    Oh, Syria came up. Trump doesn't care, but Putin does. He most likely said, "Here is what we are doing in Syria..."
    posted by OnceUponATime at 2:51 PM on July 16, 2018


    Trump is on Hannity at 9pm. It will get worse. He never fails to double and triple down and make an even bigger mess.
    posted by chris24 at 2:52 PM on July 16, 2018 [36 favorites]


    When Chinese communism was little more than a tiny hopeless band of insurgents hiding out in the mountains, Stalin reached out and chose their leader for them. The other revolutionaries were by all accounts aghast and entirely unwilling, but Stalin made Russian support contingent on Mao's elevation to authority, and the rest is, as they say, history.

    I have no idea what analogy you are trying to draw regarding Putin and Trump, but that is some weird historical stuff you are smoking regarding Stalin and Mao. In other words, nonsense.
    posted by JackFlash at 2:57 PM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


    Blake Hounshell (Politico Editor-in-Chief)
    I'm going to have to revise this...
    Politico (2/18/18) - Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic: Why I have my doubts about whether Trump colluded with Moscow. By Blake Hounshell
    posted by chris24 at 2:57 PM on July 16, 2018 [19 favorites]


    I've never been more annoyed that my father was incredibly lazy about teaching me much Finnish than I am at this present moment.

    So here I am relying on Google translate for this:

    ”Maidemme suhteet eivät ole koskaan olleet niin huonot kuin nyt”, Trump sanoi Linnan Val­tiosalissa seistessään Venäjän presidentin Vladimir Putinin rinnalla monta tuntia kestäneiden neuvottelujen jälkeen. ”Se muuttui neljä tuntia sitten.”

    Kuulijat naurahtivat Trumpin sanoille hieman epäuskoisesti.


    ...which Google translate renders as:

    "Relations between our countries have never been as bad as now," Trump said in the Linnan Valtiosali when he was sitting next to Russian President Vladimir Putin after several hours of negotiations. "It changed four hours ago."

    The listeners were trumpeting Trump's words with some unbelief.


    I was kind of hoping the headline:

    Trump tuhosi Helsingin huippukokouksen yhdellä iskulla – amerikkalaiset tyrmistyivät Trumpin ”antautumisesta” Venäjän presidentille)

    ...was more or less "look at these two assholes," but Google says:

    Trump destroys Helsinki summit in one stroke - Americans stunned Trump's "surrender" to the Russian president
    posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:59 PM on July 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


    The spin here has veered off into a new direction, and naturally, it's racist: @jonlovett: Tucker Carlson just said that Mexico is actually doing more to interfere with our elections than Russia because Mexico is trying to "pack our electorate."
    posted by zachlipton at 3:04 PM on July 16, 2018 [51 favorites]


    Tucker Carlson just said that Mexico is actually doing more to interfere with our elections than Russia because Mexico is trying to "pack our electorate."

    A reminder that fascism's reaction to any crisis is to punch down. Sufficient Russia-fuckery revelations will bring about violence against perceived domestic enemies just as readily as a failed war or an economic collapse.
    posted by Rust Moranis at 3:10 PM on July 16, 2018 [83 favorites]


    I think this might be a sea change though: bipartisan backlash, because he flubbed it on the world stage. Even the basest of the base can feel the public humiliation whether they admit it or not. Plus the further indictments at home. Walls, crumbling.

    We thought that after Charlottesville too, though.
    posted by adamgreenfield at 3:16 PM on July 16, 2018 [33 favorites]


    Kim WhyNot on the twitters:
    Remember this?

    June 12, 2017: "Putin wanted Hillary to win." - Donald Trump

    June 16, 2018: "I wanted Trump to win." - Vladimir Putin
    posted by Joe in Australia at 3:18 PM on July 16, 2018 [56 favorites]


    "Mexico is trying to "pack our electorate.""
    Actually, it's the other way around.
    posted by omegar at 3:20 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


    June 12, 2017: "Putin wanted Hillary to win." - Donald Trump

    Why go that far back?

    June 9, 2018
    "I love our country. I have been Russia's worst nightmare. If Hillary got in -- I think Putin is probably going, 'man, I wish Hillary won' because you see what I do," Trump told reporters before heading off the G7 meeting in Quebec.
    posted by OnceUponATime at 3:23 PM on July 16, 2018 [16 favorites]


    We've seen literally dozens of "sea change" moments over the last three years. We've seen literally dozens of rounds of Republicans making concerned noises. And they've done literally nothing to actually oppose him.

    There's exactly one meaningful move the GOP could make, and that's working with Democrats to begin impeachment proceedings. And that won't happen. In fact, they've been doing everything they can to discredit and obstruct that path.

    The GOP's sense of shame won't save us. They have none. There is no bottom. Even if we believe that their concerned noises are sincere, they value their own power more than their sense of decency. Party over country.
    posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:23 PM on July 16, 2018 [56 favorites]


    We thought that after Charlottesville too, though.

    Nothing Trump can do would make his followers reject him. The only reason the Helsinki summit surprised me was that it was a bad performance, even for Trump. I used to think that Pence was chosen so the Republican leadership could replace Trump with someone relatively normal, but no: for whatever reasons of fear, cupidity, or corruption, they specifically want Trump.
    posted by Joe in Australia at 3:28 PM on July 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


    Dearborn [sic] has many many years as CoS for Sessions.

    The NYTimes had a story connecting him to Erickson and Butina back in December.
    posted by Roger_Mexico at 3:31 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


    Oh, Syria came up. Trump doesn't care, but Putin does. He most likely said, "Here is what we are doing in Syria..."

    Putin's not dumb enough to think Trump can remember any policy details. All he did in the meeting was unload a full package of PUA tricks. The policy implementation details will come via the rest of the compromised Republicans via the NRA and other soft money back channels who will say "Putin wants X" and Trump will think "Maybe this will finally make him love me".
    posted by srboisvert at 3:32 PM on July 16, 2018 [16 favorites]


    From the Chris Wallace interview with Putin:
    Wallace: Why is it that so many people who were political enemies of Vladmir Putin are attacked?

    Putin: Well, first of all, all of us have plenty of poltiical rivals. I'm pretty sure President Trump has plenty of political rivals.

    Wallace: But they don't end up dead.

    Putin: Well, not always -- well, haven't Presidents been killed in the United States? Have you forgotten about -- well, has Kennedy been killed in Russia or in the United States? Or Mr. King? What -- and what happens to the clashes between police and, well, civil society, and some -- several ethnic groups? Well that's something that happens on the U.S. soil. All of us have our own set of domestic problems
    Putin does go on to acknowledge that they have unfortunately "some crime" in Russia. And then really ominously: "And to some extent, Russia's statehood is maturing. And there are some side effects."

    More in this thread, including Wallace trying to hand Putin the indictment, and Putin refusing to take it.
    posted by zachlipton at 3:37 PM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


    Can anyone think of why Putin might not have echoed Trump with "I wanted Hilary to win" or something similarly strategic?
    posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 3:37 PM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


    JackFlash may well be right that what I said about Stalin and Mao above is "nonsense".

    I thought I'd linked to an article which laid it all out in a previous comment, but I couldn't find it, and looking at other articles on the relationship between the two men makes it seem very unlikely.
    posted by jamjam at 3:37 PM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]




    Let's catch up on what I said just over a year ago today
    To keep President Trump in the clear here, you have to believe all of the following things:

    * Trump Jr, Kushner, and Manafort enthusiastically met with a Russian operative to get Russian dirt on Clinton and never mentioned this to Trump (what?) and
    * This meeting happened but the Russian didn't actually have any promised information, even though they've lied about the content of this meeting at least three times so far and
    * No other meetings where Clinton dirt was given to the Trump team occurred, even though nearly every Trump campaign principal has now been shown to have lied about their contacts with Russians and
    * The fact that Russia is the only thing Trump meaningfully diverged from the GOP platform on just happens to be a coincidence and
    * Trump's firing of Comey under admittedly false pretenses because he wanted to put the Russia thing away was done despite the fact that none of his Russian activity is problematic and
    * Everyone in Trump's sphere is acting like they're covering up something to do with Russia but this is just a coincidence and nothing bad actually happened

    Every single one of those has to be true for Trump to not have committed impeachable offenses. Frankly I don't believe any of them.
    Trump Jr, Kushner, and Manafort enthusiastically met with a Russian operative to get Russian dirt on Clinton and never mentioned this to Trump - almost certainly false. Also, Manafort is now in jail.

    No other meetings where Clinton dirt was given to the Trump team occurred, even though nearly every Trump campaign principal has now been shown to have lied about their contacts with Russians - categorically false - Roger Stone was in contact with Guccifer 2.0. Paul Manafort was in contact with the Russians

    The fact that Russia is the only thing Trump meaningfully diverged from the GOP platform on just happens to be a coincidence - Not a coincidence, because we now know that Manafort got the GOP platform changed as part of his efforts to get out of debt from a pro-annexation Russian oligarch

    Trump's firing of Comey under admittedly false pretenses because he wanted to put the Russia thing away was done despite the fact that none of his Russian activity is problematic - just as obviously false now as it was then

    Everyone in Trump's sphere is acting like they're covering up something to do with Russia but this is just a coincidence and nothing bad actually happened - Nope! Since writing this, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, and Michael Flynn have been indicted or pleaded guilty.

    Lock. Him. Up.
    posted by 0xFCAF at 3:40 PM on July 16, 2018 [59 favorites]


    Turns out that Butina was doing all this while in the country on a F-1 Student Visa.

    F1 visa students are not allowed to work off-campus.

    But that's really secondary to tying the Russian Government -> NRA -> GOP, isn't it?
    posted by mikelieman at 3:43 PM on July 16, 2018 [18 favorites]


    Jesus. Chuck Schumer is "appalled" and thinks what Trump said about the Russian investigation was "thoughtless". Furgawdsakes Chuck, where is the outrage?
    posted by bluesky43 at 3:45 PM on July 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


    One of the questions that keeps popping up here, and elsewhere, is WTF is up with the Republicans acting as if there was no problem with the upcoming elections, often with some dark speculation about preparation for Fascism or canceled elections.

    I think a big part of the answer is that they don't need to cancel elections, or enact Fascism, or what have you. They think, with some justification, that they've basically won forever in the long run even if they lose in the short term.

    Absolute worst case scenario, from a Republican standpoint: the Democrats take the House and Senate in 2018 and use that to block Trump and start some investigations. Even worse: imagine that the Democrats take the Presidency and hold the House and Senate in 2020.

    I think for a lot of Republican big wigs the answer to that is: so what?

    Think about it.

    We talk about the demographic death of the Republican Party, but that's only when talking about actual numeric majorities. By 2040, assuming trends continue, the Republicans will not only own the Senate forever, they'll own a 60 vote super majority in the Senate forever.

    Even with the massive gerrymandering going on, the House isn't as rock solid, but they're looking at a likely majority in the House for the foreseeable future once the blue wave passes.

    And the EC means they have a very good chance at the Presidency no matter how small their numeric majority is.

    They're feeling secure because even if the Democrats get the trifecta in 2020 and pass a nationwide anti-gerrymandering law they own the Supreme Court and it will be struck down by a 5-4 vote.

    Basically the Republicans are feeling secure and unworried about future elections because they're looking at 2018 and 2020 as short term losses and a permanent Republican majority (in terms of seats) starting in 2022.

    The Republican strategists are long term thinkers and they're perfectly willing to see a couple years lost to get big gains.

    Trump is taking a wrecking ball to the federal government, even with a Democratic trifecta in 2020 they're going to spend most of their time doing first aid on the worst of Trump's damage, not taking proactive measures that the Republican Supreme Court will strike down.

    I'm not trying to be all doom and gloom here, but I do think the Republicans have realize they've got a good chance at owning the government forever without having to cancel elections, risk starting civil wars, or otherwise do anything but vote suppression and gerrymandering.

    At the very least they know for a stone cold fact that they will own a permanent Senate majority very soon and that's playing completely by the rules.

    Why should they be worried?
    posted by sotonohito at 3:46 PM on July 16, 2018 [47 favorites]


    NPR just reported that Butina was/is a graduate student living in the DC area.
    posted by bluesky43 at 3:47 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


    Jesus. Chuck Schumer is "appalled" and thinks what Trump said about the Russian investigation was "thoughtless". Furgawdsakes Chuck, where is the outrage?

    He delivered a blistering statement earlier. I’m no Schumer fan (to put it exceedingly mildly) but he was pissed earlier.

    See, e.g., in WaPo:
    Pelosi, Schumer: Trump’s news conference suggests Putin has something on him
    posted by Barack Spinoza at 3:48 PM on July 16, 2018 [18 favorites]


    Can anyone think of why Putin might not have echoed Trump with "I wanted Hilary to win" or something similarly strategic?

    There's two possibilities. One, he was not fully briefed on the Republican position that Clinton would have been preferred by Russia. This actually is a possibility. Dude isn't omnipotent. Second, the more shit you make people eat and the more you draw them in to the conspiracy the harder it is for them to admit they fucked up. Every little step bringing them further under your thumb seems like no big deal but makes it that much harder to get out. That's also possible.

    I think it's 50/50 which happened.
    posted by Justinian at 3:49 PM on July 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


    Putin essentially handed Trump the Crimea issue and gave him the green light to go to town and Trump simply ignored him. That was Putin literally telling Trump to knock Russia on Crimea to make it look good! Putin teed it up and Trump was too stupid to swing.

    It's so hard to get good help nowadays.

    Like others upthread, I, too, am getting sick unto death of the media doing its mealy-mouthed, faux-surprised, "Golly jeepers, why, oh why, is Donald Trump siding with Russia and cozying up to Putin and selling the US down the river? [scratching head] We just can't figure it out." He's a god damn treasonous traitor, OK? Got it? Traitor traitor traitor traitor, wholly-owned subsidiary of the Russian Federation. Putin's little Renfield. Benedict Arnold.

    As for what Trump may have said to Putin privately, I worry for the folks in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.
    posted by FelliniBlank at 3:50 PM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


    At some point in the last two years (it's all a blur at this point), members of Congress were giving an (intelligence?) briefing behind closed doors. When they emerged, the journalists present noted that they seemed shocked, shaken, and oddly silent (I think the phrase "seen a ghost" was invoked). Does anyone remember exactly when that happened? Seems...relevant.
    posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:54 PM on July 16, 2018 [29 favorites]


    You know it went well when even this craven prick is covering his ass.

    Newt Gingrich
    President Trump must clarify his statements in Helsinki on our intelligence system and Putin. It is the most serious mistake of his presidency and must be corrected—-immediately.
    posted by chris24 at 3:58 PM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


    What has me spooked is the brazenness of it. Trump and Putin talked for two hours in private, and Putin doesn't give Trump a way to answer the indictment question without completely outing himself? It worries me that Putin doesn't even care to give Trump and the Republicans a fig leaf.
    posted by diogenes at 3:58 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


    It worries me that Putin doesn't even care to give Trump and the Republicans a fig leaf.

    Why would he? Putin wants to sow discord. If we impeach Trump, prosecute Trump, whatever whatever, it further splits the country, and that makes Putin happy.
    posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 4:00 PM on July 16, 2018 [20 favorites]


    It might have been after this Jan 2017 meeting that reporters seemed to think House members were 'shaken.'
    posted by Harry Caul at 4:01 PM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


    Why would he? Putin wants to sow discord. If we impeach Trump, prosecute Trump, whatever whatever, it further splits the country, and that makes Putin happy.

    But he also wants to weaken the EU and NATO, and it seems like that would work better if the US president doing the weakening wasn't an outed Russian asset.
    posted by diogenes at 4:02 PM on July 16, 2018


    Does anyone remember exactly when that happened?

    March 2017.
    posted by shenderson at 4:02 PM on July 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


    Why should they be worried?

    Speaking for myself, I don’t plan to let any Democratic government go back to business as usual. No. For me, these are now a necessity:

    - pack the Supreme Court and remove anyone tainted by corruption or who is manifestly unfit for office (Thomas)
    - overturn or revisit any decisions tainted by corruption
    - investigate and prosecute all political corruption, starting with Russian fuckery, but including oligarch bullshit, finance, etc. like create an ongoing department for this
    — abolish the electoral college or render it otherwise irrelevant
    — comprehensive law enforcement reform
    — medicare for all
    — tax the rich, create a New Deal around infrastructure repair and dealing with climate change, the rest of the wish list
    — change the senate to proportional representation
    — further constitutional amendments: an ERA, something guaranteeing health care and housing, outlawing slavery in all cases etc

    And I have never been the leftist most person in the room. (Well not in any of the rooms I willingly hang out in.)

    I mean, Jesus fucking Christ. They have made this zero sum. It’s about survival. When we win, we have to go all out and change the rules of the game afterwards.
    posted by schadenfrau at 4:06 PM on July 16, 2018 [106 favorites]


    @kyledcheney: MCCARTHY says here won’t be a House vote Wednesday on Democrats’ abolish ICE bill. Officially ends gambit Rs made to try and force Democrats’ hand.

    @rachaelmbade: Backstory: Ryan told McCarthy and Scalise no. Fun times !

    Instead, they will vote on "a resolution supporting ICE."
    posted by zachlipton at 4:08 PM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


    madolin conspiracy: I've never been more annoyed that my father was incredibly lazy about teaching me much Finnish than I am at this present moment.

    Let's try then:
    ”Maidemme suhteet eivät ole koskaan olleet niin huonot kuin nyt”, Trump sanoi Linnan Val­tiosalissa seistessään Venäjän presidentin Vladimir Putinin rinnalla monta tuntia kestäneiden neuvottelujen jälkeen. ”Se muuttui neljä tuntia sitten.”

    Kuulijat naurahtivat Trumpin sanoille hieman epäuskoisesti.
    "The relations between our two countries have never been as bad as they are now", Trump said in the Hall of State while standing next to the Russian president Vladimir Putin after several hours of negotiations. "This changed four hours ago".

    Listeners chuckled at Trump's words, incredulous.
    Trump tuhosi Helsingin huippukokouksen yhdellä iskulla – amerikkalaiset tyrmistyivät Trumpin ”antautumisesta” Venäjän presidentille
    Trump destroyed the Helsinki summit with a single blow - Americans stunned at Trump's "surrender" to the Russian president.
    posted by Soi-hah at 4:10 PM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


    What has me spooked is the brazenness of it. Trump and Putin talked for two hours in private, and Putin doesn't give Trump a way to answer the indictment question without completely outing himself? It worries me that Putin doesn't even care to give Trump and the Republicans a fig leaf.

    Completely agree with sotonohito here. They think they've won. They have the court, demographics shifting to disproportional rural control favors Republicans even without gerrymandering, which they also have, and even now its not clear that Democrats can even win back the House. All of that is before you factor in future Russian ratfucking, which will happen, because every Republican is openly asking for it to happen. They think they can't lose. There's no power anywhere that can stop a Russian-US dark alliance absent a "color revolution" in the US, and at that point Putin wins too. Putin has definitively won no matter what happens. Republicans think they've also won, and proving them wrong will require destroying the country. Neither of them feel like they have anything to hide.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 4:11 PM on July 16, 2018 [19 favorites]


    Mod note: Cool it with the "we'll have to destroy the country" stuff. Plenty of actual events to talk about without getting into projections about horrible shit that might happen/that we have to do/etc.
    posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 4:14 PM on July 16, 2018 [20 favorites]


    File under: What You Wish For, Be Careful

    Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and America’s “geopolitical suicide”
    Zach Beauchamp | Vox

    “The Trump-Putin meeting reveals how Trump is killing American power.”
    posted by Barack Spinoza at 4:29 PM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


    The best description I've ever heard of Trump is that he's a weak man's idea of a strong man. Seems like that truth was really revealed to everyone today.
    posted by Sublimity at 4:30 PM on July 16, 2018 [43 favorites]


    @amandacarpenter: Whoa. Erin Burnett reports that Michael Anton, Flight 93 essay writer turned Trump national security advisor who left the WH this year, cancelled his appearance tonight because he could not defend Trump's performance today.

    *Hires a battalion of trombonists to play womp womp womp*
    posted by zachlipton at 4:32 PM on July 16, 2018 [43 favorites]


    Y'all, I can't recommend enough, for mental health purposes, downloading at least the sample chapter of Hope Never Dies. It is exactly the cheesy junk food my mind needs at this moment.

    (Disclaimer: I'm a lawyer, not a doctor. This book is not a substitute for therapy, meds, etc. You may find it comparable to the benefits of a good cry followed by a laugh though. No guarantee that you won't experience those in reverse order)
    posted by mabelstreet at 4:41 PM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]




    That meeting will be Trump demanding they all defend him from criticism.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 4:47 PM on July 16, 2018 [28 favorites]


    Probably just Trump meeting with the other Putin-owned Republicans to share all the highlights of his slumber party with Putin.

    Meanwhile, here's tomorrow's NY Daily News front page. Ouchie.
    posted by FelliniBlank at 4:52 PM on July 16, 2018 [26 favorites]


    Waste of space and newly spawned dignity wraith Theresa May: Trump's Nato approach helped make a difference, says May
    posted by Joe in Australia at 4:58 PM on July 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


    An Easy Win for Putin in Helsinki
    Joshua Yaffa | The New Yorker
    Reporting from Moscow
    posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:07 PM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


    Probably just Trump meeting with the other Putin-owned Republicans to share all the highlights of his slumber party with Putin.

    Or possibly handing out the Rosneft checks.
    posted by notyou at 5:10 PM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


    The NY Post is posh establishment ultra-con, they never were on the Trump Train.

    But if you lose Newt and McCaine at the same time the Post unleashes a political cartoon of the President shooting Uncle Sam in the head as it's front page...

    ... this it totally the last days of the Whig Party all over again, isn't it? Trump is the New Millard Fillmore.

    I would expect the business class to defect to the Democratic Party, the Social Democratic Party becoming the new standard bearers of good governance, the dwindling Republican Rump to cling to the racists and dominionists, and the Libertarians to get a small but significant bump from those who like playing with guns and "rolling coal" on cyclists.
    posted by Slap*Happy at 5:24 PM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]




    The NY Post is posh establishment ultra-con, they never were on the Trump Train

    It’s the NY Daily News. Not the NY Post
    posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:26 PM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


    the NY Post is posh establishment ultra-con,

    NEWS. Daily News. Much better paper than the post.
    posted by vrakatar at 5:33 PM on July 16, 2018


    ... an apparently emergency meeting with unspecified members of Congress in the Roosevelt Room.

    If it's the "delegation" that went to Russia on the 4th of July I'm going to lose my shit.
    posted by diogenes at 5:34 PM on July 16, 2018 [17 favorites]


    How in-the-loop was GOP leadership re: the July 4th junket? Becaaause:
    I now can confirm nobody in either party's leadership -- Ryan, Pelosi, McConnell, Schumer -- knows what this meeting is.
    posted by Rhaomi at 5:38 PM on July 16, 2018 [20 favorites]


    I'm also confused about Ajit Pai's turnabout on Sinclair. What is that about? It is absolutely not for the right reasons, right? What does he really have to lose here? Today is baffling in so many ways.
    posted by triggerfinger at 5:39 PM on July 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


    the NY Post is posh establishment ultra-con

    NY Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
    posted by gwint at 5:41 PM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


    Looks like the nutjobs are backing away from trying to impeach Rosenstein for now.

    WaPo: Freedom Caucus leaders want Rosenstein investigated for alleged threats
    posted by chris24 at 5:43 PM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


    One of Trump's recent EO's politicized the hiring of administrative law judges. Coverage focused on their role in adjudicating Social Security, but Pai's decision explicitly forwards the Sinclair merger to an administrative law judge for review. Perhaps a Trumpist judge could use their power to enact something even more broadly fucky than Pai could as FCC chair alone?
    posted by Rhaomi at 5:46 PM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


    This excerpt from Hillary Clinton’s speech, given only 8 days before the 2016 election, is extraordinarily, spot-on prescient when viewed now.
    posted by darkstar at 5:46 PM on July 16, 2018 [28 favorites]


    Can anyone think of why Putin might not have echoed Trump with "I wanted Hilary to win" or something similarly strategic?

    Putin's whole public image - being a bare-chested, tiger-killing, horseback-riding manly man - would never let him be on the record as supporting a) an eventual loser and b) a woman. Plus there's more chaos this way.
    posted by Sparx at 5:47 PM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


    I don’t think there was much conversation between Trump and Putin, per se. Trump’s profoundly disordered mind, by many accounts going back decades, cannot perform, track or maintain any such thing. I expect his consciousness is pretty far from normal or typical. Putin must have entered that conversation with techniques in mind simply to manipulate and use this easy, easy mark as thoroughly as possible.

    Looking at the photos from this grotesque summit, Trump’s body language is completely submissive. Unless you’ve learned and practiced otherwise, all of us broadcast ourselves loudly and clearly through facial expression, gesture, posture, eye use, and more—as my dogs remind me daily, they don’t need language to know most of what I need to tell them (especially on those not-too-rare occasions when they know things I haven’t said yet).

    All of us are pretty brilliant non-verbal communicators, which means that we can all read what’s loudly on display there. And while Trump may have some verbal skill or talent as a manipulator/abuser, he has no guile—his fundamentally broken mind just prevents it. He looks like a chastised child around Putin because that’s how he feels. Which is terrifying, of course.

    My sense is that too many people don’t quite get that we’re all living in a Narcissist’s magical reality, because he’s the President so we have to live there too (like the angry, all-powerful kid on that Twilight Zone episode). And whatever agenda or grand plan is being enacted here, I’m more certain now that Trump is not a part of it and really is just a horribly useful idiot for the Mercers or Durgin or whoever else is actually messing with the world toward their own ends.
    posted by LooseFilter at 5:49 PM on July 16, 2018 [24 favorites]


    Guess who's still working hard to distance himself from Trump.

    Michael Cohen
    As I said to @ABC @GStephanopoulos, “I respect our nation’s intelligence agencies who determined that Russia, had in fact, interfered or meddled in our democratic process. I repudiate Russia’s effort...and call on all Americans to do the same.”
    posted by chris24 at 5:54 PM on July 16, 2018 [16 favorites]




    (Dugin, not Durgin, of course)
    posted by LooseFilter at 5:59 PM on July 16, 2018


    Rand Paul is bought and paid for, time to get your rubles worth.
    posted by Sphinx at 6:03 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


    Rand Paul and David Duke.
    posted by Artw at 6:06 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


    Compelling piece to share here from Quinta Jurecic in the Atlantic. None of Trump's statements today were particularly new or original; it's all shit he's said before, basically. The reason this got a reaction from some on the right wasn't what he said, but that he looked weak.
    posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:09 PM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


    Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander.

    Admiral James Stavridis
    I like and respect Ambassador Dan Coats our Director of National Intelligence and head of the US intel community. But I am not sure how he goes to work tomorrow -- knowing that his boss values his assurances no more highly than those of Vladimir Putin.
    posted by chris24 at 6:15 PM on July 16, 2018 [55 favorites]


    "Who's ready for Trump-Hannity?" asks Daniel Dale (@ddale8), as he embarks on another of his live-tweet/fact-check sessions of Trump-watching.
    Trump starts talking about the compromising material rumours: Putin said "as strongly as you could say it" - "they have no information on Trump." (Putin did not deny this directly.) Trump: "If they had it, it would've been out."

    Trump: Americans don't believe the stuff from the "witch hunt." Also: "I thought President Putin was very, very strong."

    Hannity quickly begins asking Trump about the non-election-related contents of his interactions with Putin, such as their conversation about Syria.

    Trump: "Iran is falling apart." He says "not that you want to hurt anybody," but he suggests he'd be "behind the people" of Iran if they wanted to oust the regime.

    Hannity, studiously avoiding the news, is now asking about Trump's conversations with Putin about the International Monetary Fund.

    Trump is boasting about his accomplishments with North Korea, like the recent absence of missile tests and nuclear tests. He adds, "You saw the nice letter he wrote." He concludes, "President Putin is very much into making that all happen."
    Strap yourselves in, 'cos it's going to be a bumpy ride. Hannity's making Piers Morgan look like Jeremy Paxman.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 6:23 PM on July 16, 2018 [9 favorites]


    Trump on Hannity (after an endless 15 minute monologue claiming that Trump exhibited "peace through strength" today, and a whole lot more nonsense), taped just after the press conference.

    Hannity's opening question is to tell Trump he was very strong for asking where the servers are, in case you somehow thought this would be an interview. Trump says they discussed "nuclear, war and peace, economic, Syria, and Urkaine" and came to "a really good conclusion on Israel" (what that is, we don't know, and it wasn't asked).

    Trump proceeds to mock Obama for saying global warming is our biggest concern, because "nuclear warming is our biggest problem by a factor of five million." Asked about whether they discussed the START treaty, Trump offers no specifics and starts talking about North Korea. Then he starts complaining about the cost of NATO and randomly declares that we "could be" paying for 91% of the cost of Europe's defense. If even Trump is using speculative language around his figures, they're beyond wrong.
    posted by zachlipton at 6:25 PM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


    Grassley came out with some weaksauce 'missed opportunity' spin.
    posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:26 PM on July 16, 2018




    Everyone knows these FOX interviews on state TV are edited together to try and make some sort sense of his word salad / dementia right? They're not chronological responses to the softball questions, its ex post facto damage control and trying to make him seem coherent.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 6:31 PM on July 16, 2018 [22 favorites]


    Compelling piece to share here from Quinta Jurecic in the Atlantic.


    "Just as Charlottesville made it no longer quite so taboo to describe the president as sympathetic to white supremacy, perhaps Helsinki will allow mainstream commentators to more comfortably acknowledge the danger of the Trump presidency on the world stage."
    posted by chris24 at 6:33 PM on July 16, 2018 [9 favorites]


    Josh Marshall said something interesting: if you continue to be surprised then you need to adjust your expectations.
    I can't ever seem to move my expectations low enough that Trump doesn't surprise me.
    posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:35 PM on July 16, 2018 [21 favorites]


    Trump on Putin's offer to help "investigate" the hackers: "I was fascinated by it. So they have a treaty where they work together with the United States because everyone says we don't have an extradition treaty...so his prosecutors would prosecute it. So he said Robert Muller's people would go work together with them," but they probably won't want to: "the 13 angry Democrats, you think they'll want to go? I don't think so."

    Trump honestly seems to believe this is a genuine offer of helpful assistance. The way he said "fascinated" really made it seem like he's legitimately fascinated by the prospect this could happen. Hannity proceeds to egg him on by ranting about how awful Mueller and his team are.

    Finally, @ddale8: Trump: "You look at Flynn, it's a shame." He calls Paul Manafort "a nice man," saying, "It's like Al Capone." (Presumably how he was taken down for a crime Trump thinks is peripheral.) The "interview" is over.
    posted by zachlipton at 6:36 PM on July 16, 2018 [9 favorites]


    Vladimir Putin is a white supremacist oligarch who made his fortune through fossil fuel extraction and who hates gay people and women, I'm really baffled as to why folks are surprised that the modern Republican Party would have any issue with him and keep expecting Concerned Republicans to rescue us. Vladimir Putin is the archetype of what the GOP has been hurtling to for close to a decade now.
    posted by mostly vowels at 6:38 PM on July 16, 2018 [72 favorites]


    A group has started #OccupyLafayettePark, apparently of Clinton people, and plans to stay around the White House until Trump resigns (or realistically, they're removed). Michael Avenatti says he's showing up tomorrow, so you know, some drama.
    posted by zachlipton at 6:42 PM on July 16, 2018 [24 favorites]


    Finally, @ddale8: Trump: "You look at Flynn, it's a shame." He calls Paul Manafort "a nice man," saying, "It's like Al Capone." (Presumably how he was taken down for a crime Trump thinks is peripheral.) The "interview" is over.

    Look, we're not going to relitigate the Al Capone trial in this thread.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 6:44 PM on July 16, 2018 [43 favorites]


    I don't know if this will do anyone else any good, but tonight in talking with the spousal character, I came up with some kinda weird body-gestural system that makes me more able to put news and history where it should go in my mind.

    Like, I was super angry with NPR tonight in its coverage of whatever-t-f happened today. The reporters kept letting out nervous giggles, kinda. Ari Shapiro was throwing things over to people and then coming back with some kinda nervous chuckle. I have to keep walking away from the constant coverage, in whatever vein they think they're useful. And I was telling that to the spouse while kind of gesturing near the top of my head. Like that shit, important or not, that they take up and drop just spirals around up there, at the top of my head. Things I should ignore but can't ignore but still should ignore.

    But the giggles from the reporters seemed to indicate that whatever happened today was bigger and scarier and that they should perhaps be dropped to a more important level. This spouse of mine is a literal student of history who has a job that genuinely is doing important good stuff, and the spiraly head stuff tends not to reach him so much. I was trying to tell him that today felt dumber and bigger, "like on this level," and kind of just spiraled my hand around that area where my anxiety tends to hit, right around the bottom of my sternum. It was like that was where I had normally been feeling the news and like the anchors were in disbelief that it might just be that serious. And I was annoyed at them, because it has never been at the dumb top-of-head level. It has been at least that serious, and it is now, and it has been.

    The real levels feel like they're toward the bottom of the guts, like your guts and legs and everything all drawn in just a couple of inches under your bellybutton. This is the level of feeling my values real deep, like humanity is important and everyone is connected and all that kindness and compassion and sheer rage and stuff is kept down in there. I feel like to some degree I am afraid of that place and yet live in that place and boy, if it isn't frustrating when the media we have pretends it's not real.

    Anyway, I share this whole thing, this head-chest-guts thing in the hopes that that mental/physical picture helps one of y'all lovely people. I've been getting more acquainted with that deep deep guts-level sorrow and anger and love more and more since the election and have to catch myself when I spend too much time on that top-level nonsense. Acting out of the guts and being good to neighbors and strangers and family and friends seems to help ease the dumb other levels. Next step seems to be taking that kinda stuff in hand and finding a way to carry it upward and do the top-level day-to-day that matches. I think I've been doing all right so far. Working on doing better. But from the bottom up. You're all great.
    posted by lauranesson at 6:45 PM on July 16, 2018 [31 favorites]


    None of Trump's statements today were particularly new or original

    No. They're really not, but saying you believe Putin had nothing to do with the election while standing next to Putin immediately after indictments came down with hard evidence of Russian involvement? Right after a non-stop world tour smackdown of our allies? That's the I am 100% owned by Russia version of shooting someone during a parade on 5th avenue. The Republican party is taking Russia's side over their own Justice department's. They don't care that Russia tampered with an American election. Any argument that this was a witch hunt, that Trump is misunderstood, etc. that's all over.
    posted by xammerboy at 6:50 PM on July 16, 2018 [53 favorites]


    Everyone knows these FOX interviews on state TV are edited together to try and make some sort sense of his word salad / dementia right? They're not chronological responses to the softball questions, its ex post facto damage control and trying to make him seem coherent.

    Sure... everyone except people who rely on FOX for their news.
    posted by Rykey at 6:57 PM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


    Everyone knows these FOX interviews on state TV are edited together to try and make some sort sense of his word salad / dementia right?

    Yes, although it's important to resist the urge to look away. First, knowing the Fox News message is as informative as any senior GOPer's, if not more. Second, it's a reminder of how gone Trump's mind is (e.g. "The soccer ball was really very nice," he delightedly told Hannity).

    And lastly, sometimes it's vital to know how surreal things have become, just to recalibrate our expectations. Per Dale:
    We're back from commercial break. Hannity began by reciting Trump's tweet about how critics wouldn't be satisfied if he was given Moscow by Russia.

    "I said that," Trump responds.
    Fuck me, readers, we are through the looking glass.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 7:02 PM on July 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


    WaPo, Maria Butina, Russian gun-rights advocate who sought to build ties with NRA, charged with acting as a covert Russian agent. Yes, yes, we've covered that. Two details though:
    Over the weekend, law enforcement officials became increasingly concerned that Butina appeared to be planning to leave the Washington area, according to people familiar with the matter. Investigators were concerned such a trip could pose operational challenges for their work and decided to make an arrest, these people said.

    Although special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is aware of the details of the Butina case, the investigative work began before he was appointed to that job, and it has continued to be handled by federal agents and prosecutors outside of his office, these people said.
    posted by zachlipton at 7:05 PM on July 16, 2018 [31 favorites]


    Butina was an imminent flight risk! Good catch.

    The moment called for Trump to stand up for America. He chose to bow. (Dan Balz | WaPo)
    When the history of Donald Trump’s presidency is ultimately written, July 16, 2018, will have a special entry. On a day when the setting called for a show of strength and resolve from an American president, Trump instead offered deference, defensiveness, equivocation and weakness.

    If anyone can recall a performance by a U.S. president that rivaled the one seen around the world Monday, let them come forward. In the meantime, Trump’s extraordinary joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin will stand on its own, for sheer shock value and for the reality of an opportunity lost.

    Here was a president turning his back on the collective work of U.S. intelligence agencies, looking the other way at indictments returned last week by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III against 12 Russian military intelligence officers who sought to undermine American democracy during the 2016 election, and falling back as he so often has on attacks against Hillary Clinton, criticism of Democrats and boasts about the size of his electoral college victory.

    ... Monday’s news conference was the capstone to an international trip in which, at every opportunity, the president undercut U.S. allies in Europe while playing nice with Putin. He did this through repeated derogatory tweets, backroom hectoring of European leaders (especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel), interviews with the British media (in which he attacked British Prime Minister Theresa May) and the U.S. press, and in public settings with other world heads of government.

    Together they added up to a moment that will leave a mark on Trump’s presidency. That’s not to say it will fundamentally change the course of his presidency, given the fluidity of events, the reality that attention spans are short and the probability of more shocks from various directions that will put the focus elsewhere. Nothing much changes minds about the president, and this trip and Monday’s news conference might not, either.

    But as a reportable moment, as a measure of character and leadership, what the world witnessed will help to shape ultimate judgments about Trump. Time and again, in the face of strong and direct questions by two American reporters, Jeff Mason of Reuters and Jonathan Lemire of the Associated Press, the president refused to stand up for the country he was elected to represent and protect.
    posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:17 PM on July 16, 2018 [23 favorites]


    Fact: NRA took Russian money and spent it on GOP

    Fact: NRA and GOP actively prevent any kind of gun control even after school shootings

    Message: NRA and GOP are killing our children for Russia

    Does anyone know how to amplify that message?
    posted by M-x shell at 7:20 PM on July 16, 2018 [58 favorites]


    Hold the fucking phone, Jeff Flake is introducing a non-binding resolution! This changes everything!

    How can you be this spineless? It shouldn't actually be possible, but NeverTrumpers find a new low every goddamn day.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 7:26 PM on July 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


    Good grief.

    Trump second-guessed DNI Coats on cybersecurity before sit-down with Putin
    Eleanor Mueller | Politico
    posted by Barack Spinoza at 7:33 PM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


    The mitzvah that Trump did for the #Resistance today was to stand in front of the world's cameras and show what a subjugated American president looks like. Anyone who cares can see what's up.
    posted by sacre_bleu at 7:46 PM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


    Mod note: One deleted; better to dig into feelings in the venting thread.
    posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:51 PM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


    "I grabbed him by the presidency. When you're a dictator, he lets you do it..." - Mike Luckovich editorial cartoon
    posted by chris24 at 7:53 PM on July 16, 2018 [23 favorites]


    I wonder who currently has Trump's interpreter in a room right now.
    posted by srboisvert at 7:56 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


    I wonder who currently has Trump's interpreter in a room right now.

    Her name is Marina Gross and Mueller is sure as hell debriefing her along with every person Trump even talked to on the trip.
    posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 8:01 PM on July 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


    baby Trump blimp Is coming to the US.

    celebrate the wins where you can find them.
    posted by nikaspark at 8:06 PM on July 16, 2018 [22 favorites]


    Everyone focused on Trump's remarks this morning, with obvious reason, but something Putin said was interesting: Standing beside Trump, Putin makes a clear reference to the subject of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

    Putin claimed that Bill Browder and his "business associates" evaded Russian taxes and donated $400 million of their ill-gotten money to the Clinton campaign. Putin's people would be present for the interview of the US intelligence officials supposedly responsible for directing this donation in exchange for Mueller's team being present while the Russian hackers were interviewed.

    As Ken Vogel puts it: We tried to fact-check PUTIN's claim that @BillBrowder's associates donated $400M in un-taxed Russian $ to @HillaryClinton's campaign, but it was so completely without evidence that there were no pants to light on fire, so I hereby deem it "WITHOUT PANTS."

    Putin's language though closely matches Don Jr.'s eventual explanation for what happened at the Trump Tower meeting.

    Putin echoed another Trump talking point as well, during his Fox News interview, that the hacks were good because they supposedly revealed the DNC was biased:
    The idea was about hacking an email account of a Democratic candidate. Was it some rigging of facts? Was it some forgery of facts? That's the important thing that I am trying to -- point that I'm trying to make. Was this -- any false information planted? No. It wasn't. These hackers that are being discussed...as we're getting told, they hacked a certain email account and there was information about manipulations conducted within the Democratic Party to incline the process in favor of one candidate. And as far as I know, the entire party leadership resigned. They admitted the fact of their manipulations. So, that's one thing -- that manipulation is where public opinion should stop, and an apology should be made to the public at large...instead of looking for the responsible -- the party at fault.
    Strange as it is to see Trump echoing Putin's talking points, it's even weirder to see Putin keep echoing Trump's. He sounds like a more hinged version of Sean Hannity here, arguing that it's all worth it because the hacked emails were real. It's about as close to a "if I did it, you should thank me" as I can imagine.
    posted by zachlipton at 8:11 PM on July 16, 2018 [25 favorites]


    I think interpreters are state department officials. I assume (?) there are strict rules about translators and confidentiality. Can they be subpoenaed?
    posted by triggerfinger at 8:20 PM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


    A couple thoughts from looking quickly at comments on Reddit's The Donald:
    (1) These people have an insane amount of energy. Many comments are veiled death threats.
    (2) About half the posters and comments have some kind of racist insignia attached to them.

    But more importantly a quick look shows how dangerous Trump's comments are. These "patriots" almost all seem to believe the government is the enemy, and liberals Communists literally trying to kill Americans with various plots. Also, 2 seconds in and I am convinced this group will never turn on Trump. For this group, he really could shoot someone on 5th ave and get away with it.

    Some example comments:

    America is sick of the news "reporting" by telling America what is right (war with Russia) and what is wrong (speaking with our adversaries). Even if from whom in Russia. There are other agendas and groups in Russia. I view it as if it was Russia it could be that computer hacker expert in their parents basement or a non nationalist or deep state party.

    What if Seth Rich knew the 12 russians 'hackers' and they were good guys that ran interferrence so he could hack without anyone noticing. Seriously guys... just remember, it was the US intelligence agency that lied and colluded together to create falsified evidence to get us into the Iraq war. They literally made up crap, fake witnesses, even had Mueller, who was FBI director then, testify they had US stateside evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions to sell to terrorists as well, all to get us into an endless war.
    posted by xammerboy at 8:23 PM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


    Lost in the news is that May caved and decided to go with a hard Brexit after all. No, the conservatives weren't giving her much of a choice, but I can't help wondering if Trump's threat that a soft Brexit meant no trade deal with the U.S. didn't help push things over the edge. If so, that's one huge real world consequence to Trump's visit and braggadocio. It's hard to remember sometimes that Trump is not a joke. He's dangerous, and we'll be living with the consequences for years to come.
    posted by xammerboy at 8:29 PM on July 16, 2018 [17 favorites]


    Kyle Griffin: MSNBC
    Republican Sen. Pat Toomey: "[Putin] should not object to the hackers recently indicted being brought to justice. Absent his cooperation in achieving that justice, the United States should impose tough new sanctions on Russia."
    posted by chris24 at 8:34 PM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


    I'm pretty skeptical that Trumpists actually believe half of what they claim to believe. I think they often just pretend to believe whatever absurdity it takes to justify their ugliest impulses, and are happy to revise those claims moment by moment. Much like their leader.

    This has the added benefit of causing anxiety and confusion in opponents who are foolish enough to approach Trumpists' claims as if they are made in good faith.
    posted by escape from the potato planet at 8:34 PM on July 16, 2018 [19 favorites]


    r/The_Donald is largely Russian propoganda
    posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:35 PM on July 16, 2018 [21 favorites]


    Putin’s Puppet. Franklin Foer outlines some of Trump's historical ties to Russia and basically concludes that there's no way anyone with this level of Russia involvement couldn't be compromised. I'd like to see this argument put forward more publicly.
    posted by xammerboy at 8:36 PM on July 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


    Can anyone think of why Putin might not have echoed Trump with "I wanted Hilary to win" or something similarly strategic?

    When you're stage-managing a narcissist, you don't throw a tiny barb at his ego if you don't think he has the critical faculty to handle it.

    Also, it contributes to making Putin look strong to his people.
    posted by sebastienbailard at 8:47 PM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


    This has the added benefit of causing anxiety and confusion in opponents who are foolish enough to approach Trumpists' claims as if they are made in good faith.
    "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
    - Jean Paul-Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate.
    posted by Justinian at 8:49 PM on July 16, 2018 [62 favorites]


    Franklin Foer reporting what Sarah Kendzior told us 2 years ago.
    posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:51 PM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


    I'm pretty skeptical that Trumpists actually believe half of what they claim to believe.


    Trust me, I live in Trump land and they do believe it. We still have giant Trump signs on the way to the next big town. You can't imagine what they believe. It's pervasive. They love Melania, they love Trump, they say, I love you Mister President. They love him, unequivocally, they love him and anyone who doesn't love him is not a patriot.
    posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 8:52 PM on July 16, 2018 [20 favorites]


    I, too, am frustrated at the male writers who have recently come around to embracing the things Sarah Kendzior has been saying for years as if they're brand new insights, but in this particular case, check the datestamp on Franklin Foer's article.
    posted by zachlipton at 8:53 PM on July 16, 2018 [20 favorites]


    Jeff Sharlet:
    When I published THE FAMILY, about the organizers of the National Prayer Breakfast, "respectable" pundits scoffed at the idea that it was used as a backdoor to American power. The #nationalprayerbreakfast is all over the affidavit for Russian spy Maria Butina. I wrote two books, THE FAMILY & C STREET, about its organizers, the most influential - & secretive - Christian conservative group in DC, known as The Fellowship & internally as The Family. Lobbyists & foreign nationals use the #nationalprayerbreakfast as "a way to gain entrée to all sorts of people,” the late Michael Cromartie, an evangelical Washington think tanker declared. “And entrée they do get.” #RussianPuppet The Family - & spies like Maria Butina - use the National Prayer Breakfast precisely because it's not transparent. “It totally circumvents the State Department and the usual vetting within the administration that such a meeting would require,” an internal source boasts.
    If you haven't read The Family it's profoundly disturbing, and links prominent Republicans like James Inhofe, Chuck Grassley, Sam Brownback and blasts from the past John Ensign all together with what can only be called a messanic/dominionist/zionist cult behind the National Prayer Breakfast. That all of this treason happened at the National Prayer Breakfast with the Christian dominions and Israeli interests trying to link in Putin's Russia on the party makes a lot of sense.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 8:57 PM on July 16, 2018 [68 favorites]


    Trump confirms he and Putin talked about the Mueller probe and how horrible it was.

    Imagine the mayor of a podunk town talking about police investigations on the golf course with the subject of the investigation. It'd be a scandal, but we have the president doing exactly that and bragging about it.

    -----

    Sorry if this has been linked to but On the Media had a decent clarification on what "compromised" means. In the real world it's not like inserting a mole and grooming him as part of a long term plan. It's doing people favors and getting them to do you favors. At some point they've crossed the line and they need you just to help cover up the favors you've already exchanged.
    posted by mark k at 8:57 PM on July 16, 2018 [22 favorites]


    ELECTIONS NEWS

    ** 2018 Senate:
    -- FL: Gravis poll has Sen Nelson up 47-43 on Scott [MOE:+/- 2.3%].

    -- TN: PPP poll has Bredesen up 44-41 on Blackburn [MOE:+/- 4.1%]. This poll was funded by a Dem-aligned PAC. Meanwhile, Emerson poll has Bredesen up 43-37 on Blackburn [MOE:+/- 4.1%].

    -- NJ: Gravis poll has Sen Menendez only narrowly leading Hugin, 43-41 [MOE:+/- 4.1%].

    -- VA: Corey Stewart emblematic of a state GOP that is throwing away any chance at electability.
    ** 2018 House:
    -- IA-03: Anzalone Liszt Grove poll has Dem challenger Axne up 45-41 on GOP incumbent Young [MOE:+/- 4.4%]. This is an Axne internal.

    -- 2Q fundraising numbers are in, and Dem challengers have outraised GOP incumbents in more than 50 races.

    -- 538 generic ballot average is D+8.9 (48.3/39.4).

    -- This is the first election since 1996 where every district in Texas has a Democratic challenger.
    ** OH-12 special -- GPA Strategies poll has GOPer Balderson up 48-43 on Dem O'Connor. [MOE:+/- 4.0%]. This is an O'Connor internal. Election date is August 7.

    ** Odds & ends -- AZ gov: Politico poll has generic Dem ahead 41-34 on GOP incumbent Ducey. [MOE:+/- 2.0%].
    posted by Chrysostom at 9:02 PM on July 16, 2018 [31 favorites]


    This time, Trump really might have screwed the putsch.
    posted by jamjam at 9:58 PM on July 16, 2018 [34 favorites]


    This is some high-octane nonsense in search of a defense right here:
    Republican Senator Says Trump Lied About Russian Meddling During Summit as a Bizarro Form of Statecraft
    Everything I’ve seen and all the facts are very clear: Russia did meddle in our election. That was very clear. So I think what actually happened, I think Mr. Putin just got out-Trumped by Trump. If Mr. Putin thinks he can tell a whopper, he’s not gonna be outdone by this president. And so if Mr. Putin is going to look at him and try to straight-faced tell him that they didn’t meddle, our president can look right back at him and tell just as big a whopper back to Putin as Putin told him.
    posted by Joe in Australia at 10:05 PM on July 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


    Can anyone think of why Putin might not have echoed Trump with "I wanted Hilary to win" or something similarly strategic?

    Russian state television talked endlessly about what a great president Trump would make during his campaign. Also, Putin and Hillary are mortal enemies. It would have been an obvious lie. In this context, ad admission he really did tamper with the election.
    posted by xammerboy at 10:07 PM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


    what i'm interested in is what does uberhawk and old school americun warmonger john bolton think when donny shuts him out of the room to chat with buddy vlad

    Bolton recorded a promotional video and spoke at round-table forum for Torshin and Butina's The Right to Bear Arms group in 2013 while he was serving as the chairman of the NRA's international affairs subcommittee. Compromised like the rest of them.
    posted by peeedro at 11:35 PM on July 16, 2018 [31 favorites]


    Twitter dude who spotted the closed press WH meeting with congressman tomorrow now has sources claiming it's for discussing "Tax Reform 2.0". Attendees include:

    Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX)
    Rep. Mike Bishop (R-MI)
    Rep. Diane Black (R-TN)
    Rep. George Holding (R-NC)
    Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH)
    Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL)
    posted by Rhaomi at 12:28 AM on July 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


    As seen from Russia, From the NYTimes: An Easy Win for Vladimir Putin
    By Elena Chernenko - Ms. Chernenko is the foreign editor at Kommersant, an independent newspaper in Russia.
    And this summit was mostly about optics. Expectations for real policy deliverables were low on the Russian side. Although Mr. Trump is more popular in Moscow than in many capitals — especially in Europe — his erratic behavior and disregard for conventional diplomacy worry many people here, too.

    The way Mr. Trump castigated American allies on the way to Helsinki and spoke with open admiration of his Russian counterpart also, of course, played into Mr. Putin’s hands. But when he tweeted hours before the summit that “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity,” it was a gift Moscow would not even have hoped for. No wonder the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reposted it with the words “we agree.”

    Watching the joint news conference held by the two leaders, it was clear that Mr. Putin had the wind at his back. He made a far more confident impression than his American counterpart. In his opening statement, he articulated several concrete proposals — on arms control, terrorism, Syria and bilateral economic ties. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, devoted much of his initial statement to justifying his decision to meet with Mr. Putin in the first place.
    The whole thing wasn't exactly surprising, who could have imagined any other outcome? Obviously, it could have been worse, Trump could have handed over the Baltic nations, but I guess Putin realized that would've been overreach at this point. Trump is an idiot, he came in unprepared as usual and Putin drove him around in circles. Also, Trump is a traitor who is owned by the Russians. One commenter noted that Putin even had to help Trump not look too stupid and treasonous during the press conference.
    But now the truth is out, all the mainstream media have given up on the false equivalences and are using the word treason, either in their editorials or in quotes. Even Fox viewers must have noticed that something really unusual happened, even though they get a watered-down version of what just happened. As someone noted above, the only defence the administration has is that Trump is stupid. This is a turning point, though I don't know where the turn is going to take us.
    posted by mumimor at 1:22 AM on July 17, 2018 [4 favorites]


    I kind of feel the GOP's words of concerns are psychologically functioning like that old thing where you pay the priest to pray for you so you can sin around as much as you want and still go to heaven.
    posted by angrycat at 2:58 AM on July 17, 2018 [32 favorites]


    > Trust me, I live in Trump land and they do believe it.

    I will go to my grave not understanding this. Look at him. LOOK AT HIM. But I guess it’s a combination of decades of marinating in a toxic propaganda stew multiplied by their gratitude for finally being offered an avatar every bit as proudly racist and ignorant as they are.
    posted by The Card Cheat at 3:13 AM on July 17, 2018 [44 favorites]


    Republican former governor of NJ and EPA head under Bush (and NeverTrumper) calls for Trump to resign.

    Christie Whitman
    Mr #President, you should be ashamed. To deny your own country and government in favor of a foriegn leader whose country has, for decades, tried to undermine the #UnitedStates is irrational and dangerous. Please step down, you are not fit to lead this great #nation. #TrumpPutin
    posted by chris24 at 3:49 AM on July 17, 2018 [43 favorites]


    Timing is definitely on the nose:
    @jonswaine
    On the day a Russian agent is charged with infiltrating the NRA, the Trump administration announces the NRA and similar groups can keep the identity of their donors totally secret
    posted by Joe in Australia at 3:53 AM on July 17, 2018 [79 favorites]


    Well, this is a bit dicey for the NRA isn't it. For much of their membership, Red Dawn is up there with Star Wars.
    posted by snuffleupagus at 4:08 AM on July 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


    Twitter dude who spotted the closed press WH meeting with congressman tomorrow now has sources claiming it's for discussing "Tax Reform 2.0". Attendees include:

    Not included: Party leadership.

    WTF?
    posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 5:01 AM on July 17, 2018 [8 favorites]


    Retirement Bills in Congress Could Alter 401(k) Plans [Richard Rubin & Anne Tergesen, WSJ]
    Lawmakers are starting with a bipartisan bill [Retirement Enhancement and Savings Act (RESA), S.2526] that would encourage more small employers to offer retirement savings plans and make it easier for companies to offer annuities that turn workers’ savings into a guaranteed annual income. [...]

    Retirement and savings incentives will make up one of three bills in the “Tax Reform 2.0” package House Republicans are assembling, said Rep. Kevin Brady (R., Texas), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

    The centerpiece of the House GOP tax package is an extension of last year’s tax cuts beyond their 2025 expiration date; that is unlikely to draw enough Democratic votes to become law. But Mr. Brady said he hoped the new retirement bill will attract bipartisan support.

    Mr. Brady said he plans to start meeting with House Republicans this week and that he’s consulting with the Trump administration. [...]

    Mr. Brady isn’t reviving a controversial 2017 idea to lower the cap on pretax retirement-account contributions to as little as $2,400 a year, down from $18,500 now. That would have pushed people into so-called Roth-style accounts, where people pay taxes before making contributions and make tax-free withdrawals in retirement.

    Rep. Mike Bishop (R., Mich.), a Ways and Means member, said lawmakers also want to make Health Savings Accounts easier to use. Currently, those with HSAs can deposit money tax-free and make tax-free withdrawals for medical expenses. When HSAs are used for nonmedical expenses, the account owner owes income tax on distributions—and a 20% penalty if younger than 65. Ways and Means last week approved a series of bills to loosen HSA restrictions.
    posted by melissasaurus at 5:21 AM on July 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


    The Murdoch-owned and very Trump-supporting WSJ Editorial Board:
    Details from the private Trump-Putin talks in Helsinki will spill out in coming days, but Monday’s joint press conference was a personal and national embarrassment. On stage with the dictator whose election meddling has done so much harm to his Presidency, Mr. Trump couldn’t even bring himself to say he believed his own intelligence advisers like Dan Coats over the Russian strongman.

    “I have—I have confidence in both parties,” Mr. Trump said. “So I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.” Denials from liars usually are strong and powerful.

    The charitable explanation for this kowtow to the Kremlin is that Mr. Trump can’t get past his fury that critics claim his election was tainted by Russian interference. And so he couldn’t resist, in front of the world, going off on a solipsistic ramble about “ Hillary Clinton’s emails” and Democratic “servers.” He can’t seem to figure out that the more he indulges his ego in this fashion, and the more he seems to indulge Mr. Putin, the more ammunition he gives to his opponents.

    For a rare moment in his Presidency, Mr. Trump also projected weakness. He was the one on stage beseeching Mr. Putin for a better relationship, while the Russian played it cool and matter of fact. Mr. Trump touted their personal rapport, saying the bilateral “relationship has never been worse than it is now. However, that changed as of about four hours ago. I really believe that.” In four hours?

    Mr. Putin focused on his agenda of consolidating Russian strategic gains in Syria, Ukraine and arms control, and suggesting that the American might help. Mr. Trump even seemed to soften his stance against Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany.

    By going soft on Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump will paradoxically find it even harder to make deals with the Russian. Republicans and Democrats will unite in Congress, as they should, to limit his diplomatic running room. Mr. Trump may decide to court Mr. Putin anyway, like Barack Obama did Iran’s mullahs, but political isolation concerning a foreign adversary is a weak and dangerous place to be.
    posted by chris24 at 5:23 AM on July 17, 2018 [18 favorites]


    > Trust me, I live in Trump land and they do believe it.

    >I will go to my grave not understanding this.


    Yes, and the new refrain is, "Can you imagine how much worse it would be if Hillary won?!"
    posted by slipthought at 5:29 AM on July 17, 2018 [17 favorites]


    CA-48 poll (Monmouth)

    Rouda (D) 46%
    Rohrabacher (R) 43%
    posted by T.D. Strange at 5:30 AM on July 17, 2018 [51 favorites]


    Twitter dude who spotted the closed press WH meeting with congressman tomorrow now has sources claiming it's for discussing "Tax Reform 2.0".

    The day after Trump's complete capitulation to Putin the only thing on the agenda for Republicans is "Tax Reform." As pointed out before, Republicans are fine with "a little light treason" as long as they get their tax cuts for the rich.
    posted by JackFlash at 5:32 AM on July 17, 2018 [16 favorites]


    And the world moves on from us.

    DPA Intl (German wire service)
    #BREAKING: Japan and the European Union have signed a free trade agreement that will cover a third of the global economy, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says.
    posted by chris24 at 5:34 AM on July 17, 2018 [54 favorites]


    I thought this was a photoshop, but it's not. This is Maria Butina — arrested for being a Russian spy — in the Oval Office with Trump.

    At the closed to US press meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak in the Oval Office.

    NYT original

    Another angle from the Daily Mail.

    Remember the only reason we have these photos is they were released by the Russians.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 5:47 AM on July 17, 2018 [71 favorites]


    Et tu Fox & Friends?

    Saagar Enjeti (Daily Caller)
    Fox and Friends host @Kilmeade: "I will say this to the president when Newt Gingrich, when General Jack Keane and Matt Schlapp said the president fell short and made our intelligence apparatus look bad it's time to pay attention."
    VIDEO
    posted by chris24 at 5:56 AM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


    Sarah Kenzidor also posted the photo from the Lacvrov meeting but I have to say I’m not sure it’s her. In side by sides they certainly look similar but not enough to make me think it’s the same person. . . But someone should probably insist on an accounting of who was actually present and show us a human being who is not in jail today who just looks a lot like her . . .
    posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 5:57 AM on July 17, 2018 [4 favorites]


    The Washington Post anonymous White House aides' further spin on the Helsinki summit: ‘Very Much Counter To The Plan’: Trump Defies Advisers In Embrace of Putin
    Ahead of the meeting, staffers provided Trump with some 100 pages of briefing materials aimed at laying out a tough posture toward Putin, but the president ignored most of it, according to one person familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal deliberations. Trump’s remarks were “very much counter to the plan,” the person said.

    “Everyone around Trump” was urging him to take a firm stance with Putin, according to a second person familiar with the preparations. Before Monday’s meeting, the second person said, advisers covered matters from Russia’s annexation of Crimea to its interference in the U.S. elections, but Trump “made a game-time decision” to handle the summit his way.

    “I think that the United States has been foolish,” Trump said at one point, referring to tensions with Russia. “I think we’ve all been foolish. We should’ve had this dialogue a long time ago; a long time, frankly, before I got to office.”

    A senior White House official disputed the idea that the president acted unilaterally, and said he had numerous sessions with senior administration officials preparing for the summit in addition to briefing materials.
    They also try to blame Mueller's indictments for upsetting Trump before the meeting:
    The president spent much of the weekend “growling,” in the words of one White House official, over the Justice Department’s indictment Friday of 12 Russian intelligence officials for interfering in the 2016 election. He fretted that the release of the indictments just before the meeting could hurt him politically, the official said.

    But a senior White House official said Trump had been in favor of announcing the indictments before the trip so he could raise the issue privately with Putin.

    Trump also made it clear that he was more excited to sit down with the Russian president than he had been to visit with NATO allies earlier in the week in Brussels.

    “He loved the summit with Kim Jong Un,” the White House official said, referring to the North Korean leader with whom Trump met last month in Singapore. “He thinks he can sit down eye to eye with these guys, flatter them and make a deal.”

    In advance of the Putin meeting, White House officials repeatedly told European allies “not to worry,” according to diplomats familiar with the discussions. No deals would be made between Putin and Trump, they said, and no secret promises would be offered that could threaten the balance of power on the continent.
    And finally, they trot out the old "oppositional defiant disorder" excuse they've used for Trump before: "Trump had grown frustrated that his own government had been so negative about meeting with Putin and wanted a one-on-one meeting so it would not leak, aides said. One senior White House official described Trump’s public remarks as striking a deliberately “contrarian” tone."

    Twitter dude who spotted the closed press WH meeting with congressman tomorrow now has sources claiming it's for discussing "Tax Reform 2.0".

    Twitter dude is Gregory Korte (@gregorykorte), the award-winning White House correspondent for USATODAY and a veteran reporter from the Cincinnati Enquirer. We give the 4th estate a lot of stick on the Blue, but identifying them and acknowledging their credentials is the least we can do. Although Korte doesn't cite his sources for this guest list, infuriatingly, he presumably has an adequate D.C. network, as opposed to some Twitter (*cough* Scott Dworkin *cough*).

    In any case, it would be naive to imagine Trump won't attempt some kind of ploy to compensate for the summit fiasco—to say nothing of what kind of grand bargain he and Putin may have struck behind closed doors—so we need to keep our ears to the ground.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 5:58 AM on July 17, 2018 [25 favorites]


    “very much counter to the plan”

    o they expect us to believe there was a plan now
    posted by um at 6:12 AM on July 17, 2018 [19 favorites]


    Sarah Kenzidor also posted the photo from the Lacvrov meeting but I have to say I’m not sure it’s her. In side by sides they certainly look similar but not enough to make me think it’s the same person. . . But someone should probably insist on an accounting of who was actually present and show us a human being who is not in jail today who just looks a lot like her . . .

    Cari Lutkins
    posted by slipthought at 6:15 AM on July 17, 2018 [4 favorites]


    Sarah Kenzidor also posted the photo from the Lacvrov meeting but I have to say I’m not sure it’s her. In side by sides they certainly look similar but not enough to make me think it’s the same person. . . But someone should probably insist on an accounting of who was actually present and show us a human being who is not in jail today who just looks a lot like her . . .

    If they released White House visitor logs we could know for sure. But that's a thing democracies used to do.
    posted by T.D. Strange at 6:16 AM on July 17, 2018 [40 favorites]


    The woman in the Lavrov meeting doesn't really look like Butina.

    Butina does, however, appear in photos with tons of other GOP officials, as activist Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) catalogs in this Twitter thread. Snapshots show her posing with Gov. Scott Walker, former NRA President David Keene, NRA chief lobbyist Wayne LaPierre, former senator Rick Santorum, then-Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr., GOP political operative Paul Erickson, then-Governor Bobby Jindal, and many more.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 6:17 AM on July 17, 2018 [20 favorites]


    Daniel Dale, Toronto Star: @ddale8
    The photo going around Irresponsible Twitter is not of the woman charged yesterday with being a Russian agent.
    posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 6:24 AM on July 17, 2018 [20 favorites]


    Any chance the next thread could be "Surely This..."?
    posted by Sophie1 at 6:31 AM on July 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


    So the entire country calling him a weak, cowardly traitor has got to leave a nasty narcissistic injury. how will he lash out next to soothe himself?

    I’m guessing he’ll do something terrible to immigrants again, but unpredictability is part of the fun
    posted by schadenfrau at 6:38 AM on July 17, 2018 [11 favorites]


    I vote for the next thread title being None Dare Call It Treason.
    posted by Devonian at 6:39 AM on July 17, 2018 [21 favorites]


    Wall Street Charging Bull Putin dildo protest

    That was quite an investment -- none of that stuff is cheap.
    posted by rabbitrabbit at 6:42 AM on July 17, 2018 [14 favorites]


    escape from the potato planet: At some point in the last two years (it's all a blur at this point), members of Congress were giving an (intelligence?) briefing behind closed doors. When they emerged, the journalists present noted that they seemed shocked, shaken, and oddly silent (I think the phrase "seen a ghost" was invoked). Does anyone remember exactly when that happened? Seems...relevant.

    I've wondered about this a lot since it happened, but the damndest thing is that they might not have learned anything more than we already know because what we know is bad enough.
    posted by InTheYear2017 at 7:02 AM on July 17, 2018 [7 favorites]


    Mod note: Couple comments deleted. Please don't copy-paste huge textdumps, keep it limited to a couple key paragraphs. Also, there's a whole thread about Queen Elizabeth's brooch, so let's take that over there.
    posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:04 AM on July 17, 2018 [7 favorites]


    Voter Suppression Is Warping Democracy

    A new survey from The Atlantic and the Public Religion Research Institute shows that black and Hispanic citizens are more likely than whites to face barriers at the polls—and to fear the future erosion of their basic political rights.
    posted by Devonian at 7:12 AM on July 17, 2018 [36 favorites]


    The shocked Feinstein/Grassley event was from March 15th, 2017 (NBC News Twitter)
    posted by Roger_Mexico at 7:19 AM on July 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


    If they released White House visitor logs we could know for sure. But that's a thing democracies used to do.

    In the interest of accuracy, the Obama administration only released visitor logs after lawsuits and a lot of hassle. They memory-holed the first half-year of the administration. I'd give a kidney to have the man back, but the Obama administration was fucking trash on transparency. Sunlight called them a mixed bag but I think they were quite generous considering the behavior of DoJ during those eight years with regards to protecting whistleblowers and seeking media sources. By the criteria of compared to the flanking Republican administrations he was good, but citizens deserve better and we shouldn't slag Trump by pretending we didn't have to sue Obama to get him to do some of these things.
    posted by phearlez at 7:32 AM on July 17, 2018 [52 favorites]


    Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX)
    Rep. Mike Bishop (R-MI)
    Rep. Diane Black (R-TN)
    Rep. George Holding (R-NC)
    Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH)
    Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL)


    Swing states. My guess is midterm voting: getting info on how to cheat, or a list of Putin approved “election advisors” to contact, or an number of conspiratorial things that make my insides deeply uncomfortable.

    Anyway, look at this list of traitors!
    posted by erisfree at 7:32 AM on July 17, 2018 [13 favorites]


    Well, this is a bit dicey for the NRA isn't it. For much of their membership, Red Dawn is up there with Star Wars.

    This doesn't even require very strenuous mental gymnastics. Red Dawn was about resisting the Soviet Union, not the Russians.

    "Saint Reagan was able to defeat the atheist Communists of the Soviet Union, transforming it back into the Jesus- and capitalist- friendly modern Russian Republic. But the Communist infestation of the United States has only grown stronger since then. Help Trump make America great again by defeating these vermin at the ballot box in November, or with guns if necessary after that."
    posted by Slothrup at 7:38 AM on July 17, 2018 [12 favorites]


    I'm gonna make a very brief new thread. It's like stone soup. You'll have to contribute flavor yourselves.

    Please stand by, or yell at me if you are already making one.
    posted by Emmy Rae at 7:39 AM on July 17, 2018 [29 favorites]


    All of those congresspeople are on the Ways & Means Committee, and none of them are (to my knowledge) Rohrabacher types, so it's possible this actually is a tax thing. Remember, Trump doesn't think Helsinki was a disaster - this is just Tuesday for him.
    posted by theodolite at 7:41 AM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]




    > Trust me, I live in Trump land and they do believe it.

    I will go to my grave not understanding this. Look at him. LOOK AT HIM. But I guess it’s a combination of decades of marinating in a toxic propaganda stew multiplied by their gratitude for finally being offered an avatar every bit as proudly racist and ignorant as they are.


    They do believe it. They often have multiple children from multiple mothers, like Trump. They often feel like outsiders in their communities, like Trump. They very often have fathers who denigrated them (there was a LOT of that where I grew up, the 518 and 607, and my father was like that), like Trump. They often have family members who abuse/d alcohol, like Trump. They very frequently have trouble writing a cogent sentence, like Trump (although he plays to that.) They often have family members who "went away" (I do not mean to a state school) and got an education and a white collar lifestyle they cannot relate to and resent even though they may benefit from gifts, furthering their outsiderism. They have little regard for politicians above the town and county level and figure there'd be some sort of corruption no matter who is in office. And "they" would "take away the guns."

    My thrice-married younger brother (only one kid, thank god) recently told me via instant message that "he [Trump] is trying to do what he was elected for. People are tired of saving the world when our country needs help. And some media is fake. Not all." (Great to hear; I am a job-hunting former reporter.) I asked about the impact of tariffs on his employer, a small manufacturer. "Business is through the roof and we got a bonus at the first of the year and a raise." Some of their steel comes from Canada, and he's not sure about the iron.

    So I asked about promoting white supremacy, not filling ambassador posts, deterring legal immigration and tourism, and calling the press the enemy. "Deep subject. I stay away from politics." Once it gets complicated, they shut down. I've already tried to explain the Heller decision and Federalist 29 and 46. For context, we are first-gen high school grads; youngest sibling and I have grad degrees and youngest is rolling in dough through hard work and grit. And this area of the 518 is only second gen red.
    posted by jgirl at 7:41 AM on July 17, 2018 [67 favorites]


    Voter Suppression Is Warping Democracy

    For Republicans, whose agenda of distributing the other half of the nation's wealth to the ultra-rich is not popular, this concept is a feature, not a bug.

    Democrats don't say enough that Republicans cheat because their agenda is not popular. People tend to favor Democratic policies, including and especially FDR-style New Deal economic protections like Social Security.
    posted by Gelatin at 7:46 AM on July 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


    Thank you for that, jgirl. It's an excellent reminder for those of us living in liberal enclaves that the problems outside of it are real.
    posted by Melismata at 7:50 AM on July 17, 2018 [9 favorites]


    It's like stone soup. You'll have to contribute flavor yourselves.

    We're at the tail end of the thread and MeFi loves a recipe, so here's Italian superchef Gennaro Esposito's zuppa di sassi.

    posted by progosk at 8:00 AM on July 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


    Today feels like a frozen moment - people still can't quite believe what our President did, and it seems like the usual defenders are a bit at a loss about how to proceed. If there were even a handful of Republicans in positions of power who had an ounce of patriotism left, as opposed to naked self-interest, it seems like today could be a day the dam breaks.

    NYT: President Trump stood next to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and publicly challenged the conclusion of his own intelligence agencies that Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election. ... Some Republican lawmakers specifically criticized the president. Others tempered their remarks.

    WaPo breaking: Trump says summit with Putin was ‘even better’ than NATO meeting as growing number of Republicans criticize his Helsinki comments.

    And yeah, having written that, I realize that all I'm saying is "Surely this ..." - and of course the answer is the same as before. If it wasn't pussy grabbing, and it wasn't insulting a former prisoner of war senator or a dead soldier's parents, and it wasn't being revealed as an ignorant buffoon on live nationally-televised debates, and it wasn't the drip-drip-drip of secure back channels to Russia and "if it is what you say I love it especially later in the summer" - if it wasn't any of those, then it won't be this either.

    The GOP wants their tax cut bills signed, the Evangelicals want their Supreme Court Justice confirmed, and the rest of the country can go right to hell.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 8:01 AM on July 17, 2018 [18 favorites]


    and the rest of the country can go right to hell.

    It's not just the one country.
    posted by Devonian at 8:06 AM on July 17, 2018 [14 favorites]


    And yeah, having written that, I realize that all I'm saying is "Surely this ..." - and of course the answer is the same as before.

    It's not like the whole administration is done or his approval is going to plummet or anything. But when you find yourself writing

    it seems like the usual defenders are a bit at a loss about how to proceed

    ...that is an open window for messaging to get through to at least a few more people without being countered. Strike while the iron is hot! Every percentage point counts.
    posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:07 AM on July 17, 2018 [24 favorites]



    Thank you for that, jgirl. It's an excellent reminder for those of us living in liberal enclaves that the problems outside of it are real.


    I should add that the brother (I am oldest of three BTW) I wrote about is in the now highly unusual position of working not only for a small US manufacturer, but also USING the product he manufactures. When was the last time we heard much about that -- buggy whips? I won't name the product because it would quickly identify us, but as a volunteer fireman he USES it. Amazing.

    But just a few miles away, there are no places like that to work. So people are angrier. Trump says things they can't say -- about POC, about immigrants, and the rest of it. The manufacturers (third or 4th gen of the company who grew up in town) have sometimes talked about relocating. People commute there from nearly 50 miles away. NY state taxes are horrendous. The area is crumbling, economically and physically. Farmers are selling out daily.

    When Hillary Clinton talked about "working people, white people" that was the closest I've seen to any acknowledgment of struggling red staters. Rural whites' problems are much like POC's issues -- but liberals seldom touch on this. I saw this all of the time in my reporting.
    posted by jgirl at 8:11 AM on July 17, 2018 [15 favorites]


    I wish you could give a lecture in my area, jgirl. I know people who say "what do you mean, they can't afford to shop at Whole Foods?"
    posted by Melismata at 8:13 AM on July 17, 2018 [4 favorites]


    ...But the Communist infestation of the United States has only grown stronger since then. Help Trump make America great again...

    Except that Trump is best buddies with today's Communist dictators and gushes about how loved Kim Jong-Un is.
    posted by XMLicious at 8:13 AM on July 17, 2018


    "Communist dictator" is an oxymoron. Un may say he's a communist but that doesn't make it so. There's not really any meaningful philosophical or ideological reason for Trump to oppose him.
    posted by One Second Before Awakening at 8:16 AM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


    That’s a pretty obvious “no true Scotsman” argument.
    posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:24 AM on July 17, 2018 [9 favorites]


    I realize that all I'm saying is "Surely this ..." - and of course the answer is the same as before

    Well, I don't know. Everybody doesn't have the same event horizon. Trump crossed mine forever when he called Mexicans rapists and murderers at (if I remember right) the first rally of his campaign. And as things have progressed, I've become more radicalized. I'm shocked at how uninvolved politically I was a couple years ago, and I'm saying that as someone who actually did volunteer and vote and talk politics semi-endlessly and all that all the way to November 2016.

    I think that these "surely this?" moments aggregate, the movement against Trump and the Republican Traitors keeps building. Our representatives in government are often powerless to do much more than what any of us do individually, and so it can feel like we don't have a voice. But we still do have our own voices.

    When I need inspiration and hope, which is a lot of the time, I think of the Women's March on Versailles. They were dismissed as a bunch of powerless angry women, but they weren't powerless, they effectively ended the king's reign right then and there. Of course, it's not 1789 anymore and the world is different. But we still have power inside of each of us and it's worth using it. Now is the time to be brave and live our ideals.

    When Hillary Clinton talked about "working people, white people" that was the closest I've seen to any acknowledgment of red staters. Rural whites' problems are much like POC's issues -- but liberals seldom touch on this. I saw this all of the time in my reporting.

    I will never in my life understand this sentiment. Trumpers aren't assholes because we weren't nice enough to them, they're assholes because they're entitled and throwing a tantrum. If anything, they should be de-centralized in societal discourse even more in order to put their entitlement in perspective. And their tantrums should definitely not cause us to pay greater attention to them or cater to them more, because that will only teach them that tantrums work. If they never learned the lessons that the rest of us did in childhood -- you are not the center of the universe, whining doesn't get rewarded, etc -- then I guess they'll have to learn now.
    posted by rue72 at 8:28 AM on July 17, 2018 [48 favorites]


    Gennaro Esposito's zuppa di sassi.

    Want Giancarlo Esposito's recipe for pollo instead?

    Like you said, we're at the tail end of the thread.
    posted by adamgreenfield at 8:28 AM on July 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


    Un may say he's a communist but that doesn't make it so.

    For the millionth time, please: KIM is the family name. Jong-Un is the personal name. Calling him "Un," in addition to being disrespectful and, you'll forgive me, ignorant, is like calling the current occupant of the Oval Office "ald."
    posted by adamgreenfield at 8:31 AM on July 17, 2018 [37 favorites]


    Talking points! Get yer GOP talking points! Talking points over here buddy!
    posted by PenDevil at 8:31 AM on July 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


    Mod note: With regret I'm gonna say, let's not dive into recipe-posting, and let's definitely not dive into "should we be nicer to Trumpists/misunderstood rural whites/etc" because we have been over that chain of discussion one hundred million times and I can tell you every last point people will make about it. If there is nothing going on for a short time here, people can go check out other threads rather than just chatting nervously in here to kill time.
    posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:31 AM on July 17, 2018 [15 favorites]


    That’s a pretty obvious “no true Scotsman” argument.


    I mean, I didn't go any deeper on this because this thread is not the place for a nuanced discussion of what communism actually is. I'll just elaborate for this post and then leave it alone. In Marx's view of communism, it's a political/economic system that has transcended rulers and formalized power structures. He actually acknowledged that communism could not properly function until we've reached a state of post-scarcity, that's why socialism is supposed to be the bridge from capitalism to communism.

    Communism is a beautiful, liberatory idea, and that's why authoritarian strongmen throughout the 20th century cloaked themselves in its trappings to justify their seizure of power.

    Also, my bad about the Un thing, I was typing that post in a hurry.
    posted by One Second Before Awakening at 8:31 AM on July 17, 2018 [7 favorites]


    Trump Says ‘Nuclear Warming’ Is Biggest Problem
    I know President Obama said global warming is our biggest problem and I would say that no, nuclear warming is our biggest problem, by a factor of about five million.
    posted by kirkaracha at 8:47 AM on July 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


    Talking points! Get yer GOP talking points! Talking points over here buddy!

    Jon Passantino (Buzzfeed)
    WH's Trump quotes are highly misleading. Here’s what they lopped off:

    Trump in 1/2017: “It could’ve been others also”

    7/2017: "and I think it could have been other people in other countries”

    3/2018: "probably there was meddling from other countries and maybe other individuals"

    ---

    Not to mention it all breaks down when if he knew Russia did it, and had said it before, he wimped out with Putin.
    posted by chris24 at 8:48 AM on July 17, 2018 [9 favorites]


    HansNichols of NBC News: JUST IN: Rod Rosenstein was summoned to the WH today, four days after he indicted 12 Russian Intelligence Officers. He was seen leaving the WH at 11:28AM. Unclear if he met with President Trump, who is still in the residence and hasn't showed up in the West Wing this morning.
    posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:57 AM on July 17, 2018 [19 favorites]


    I just heard Adam Schiff make a good point (paraphrasing): obviously, the Russians recorded the conversation between Trump and Putin, and if they didn't have kompromat on Trump before, the certainly have it now. If Trump was that embarrassing in front of the cameras, imagine how he was in the closed room...
    posted by mumimor at 8:58 AM on July 17, 2018 [23 favorites]




    Remember when Lynch briefly, casually and coincidentally meeting with someone related to an investigation - who wasn't her boss, or married to her boss - was a huge scandal?
    posted by chris24 at 9:06 AM on July 17, 2018 [17 favorites]


    > Immediately after his news conference, Trump's mood was buoyant, people familiar with the matter said. He walked off stage in Helsinki with little inkling his remarks would cause the firestorm they did, and was instead enthusiastic about what he felt was a successful summit.

    And the NYT continues:

    Aboard Air Force One back to Washington, Mr. Trump’s mood grew foul as the breadth of the critical reactions became clear . . . Aides steered clear of the front of the plane to avoid being tapped for a venting session with Mr. Trump.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 9:08 AM on July 17, 2018 [16 favorites]


    > So I asked about promoting white supremacy, not filling ambassador posts, deterring legal immigration and tourism, and calling the press the enemy. "Deep subject. I stay away from politics." Once it gets complicated, they shut down.

    Behold the fruits of decades of cuts to education and the relentless denigration of critical thinking skills.
    posted by The Card Cheat at 9:09 AM on July 17, 2018 [49 favorites]


    I called my Republican Senator Joni Ernst's DC office to ask whether she had followed through on her pledge to decide whether to support the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act after reading the full text of the bill, which she received three months ago. The staffer, who seemed genuinely eager to help me, searched for a long while and was unable to find anything. I then asked if Senator Ernst had made any statements about whether Special Counsel Mueller should be able to complete his investigation. The staffer was sure she had heard something related to this, but was unable to find it after a few minutes. I thanked the staffer, but suggested that we could make this easier by simply accepting that protecting the Special Counsel was clearly not a priority for the Senator. The staffer said that she could not speak for the Senator on this matter.

    I said that if Senator Ernst truly believed that Special Counsel Mueller should be able to complete his investigation, it was vital that she vote against the President's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. There are many people in this country who would be eligible to serve on the Supreme Court, yet the President selected the only one who has written a law review article saying that the President should be immune from investigation while in office. Of course, the President selected this nominee while the President himself is under investigation, and while the President is continuing to refer to that investigation as a rigged witch-hunt, and while the President openly trusts in the word of a foreign dictator over the findings of his own Department of Justice and his own intelligence community. The reason for this is that the President of the United States is an asset of the intelligence services of the Russian Federation. He is guilty of treason and should spend the rest of his life in jail. All the Republican politicians who knowingly support and enable him need to end their part in this criminal conspiracy against the United States. Republican politicians and their staff need to speak out and take action now, or end up on the wrong side of history and, ideally, the wrong side of a prison wall. I was thanked and my message will be passed along
    posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:13 AM on July 17, 2018 [50 favorites]


    I'm gonna level with you, I don't speak Debate Club.
    posted by One Second Before Awakening at 9:24 AM on July 17, 2018 [16 favorites]


    Dictionary.com: Quisling: A person who betrays his or her own country by aiding an invading enemy, often serving later in a puppet government. #NothingLikeAGosling #OrADuckling.
    posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:25 AM on July 17, 2018 [33 favorites]


    Mod note: Ok, let's call it done on "what really counts as communism for One Second Before Awakening"; not going to be a fruitful avenue of discussion.
    posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:31 AM on July 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


    Immediately after his news conference, Trump's mood was buoyant, people familiar with the matter said. He walked off stage in Helsinki with little inkling his remarks would cause the firestorm they did, and was instead enthusiastic about what he felt was a successful summit.

    Aboard Air Force One back to Washington, Mr. Trump’s mood grew foul as the breadth of the critical reactions became clear


    I mean, beyond everything else — and make no mistake, "everything else" is world-historically egregious — he's just such an embarrassing rube. He's a mark! He's a mark, and everyone with two neurons to strike together knows it. It is mortifying.
    posted by adamgreenfield at 9:33 AM on July 17, 2018 [72 favorites]


    Trump will 'address' his meeting with Putin, at 2pm. I guess that emergency meeting with swing state/traitor/Tax2.0 stooges will be postponed? Simultaneous?
    posted by Harry Caul at 9:39 AM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


    Aides steered clear of the front of the plane to avoid being tapped for a venting session with Mr. Trump.

    I never ceased to be amazed by the leaks that portray our president as some idiot Hohenzollern who tripped over all his dead cousins and accidentally landed on the throne.

    Don’t leak, you fools. Resign and yell your story on the record!
    posted by dis_integration at 9:39 AM on July 17, 2018 [28 favorites]


    Joel Pollak, Breitbart's chief brown-noser, says Trump’s Summit with Putin Was a Success the Media Can’t Admit (no link because are you kidding me).
    Judging from their remarks at the press conference that followed, the two leaders touched on every major important area of foreign policy: Syria, where the U.S. wants Russia to keep Iran at bay; North Korea, where the U.S. wants Russia to help it pressure the Kim regime to denuclearize; Iran, where the U.S. is attempting to re-organize international pressure; and Ukraine, where the U.S. wants Russia to de-escalate.

    President Trump, as promised, challenged Putin on the subject of Russian interference in U.S. elections. It was Putin, not Trump, who pointed that out — adding: “I had to reiterate things I said several times, including during our personal contacts, that the Russian state has never interfered and is not going to interfere into internal American affairs, including election process.”

    Putin also volunteered the information that Trump had insisted the Russian annexation of Crimea was “illegal.” So much for appeasement. […]

    Trump’s critics are seizing on a single phrase: “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”

    He never “attacked” U.S. intelligence agencies, nor did he explicitly take one side over the other. He said that he trusted Putin — as he should have done, if his goal was to improve relations. He added that “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia who carried out the hacking, nudging Russia toward a less adversarial posture. […]

    The meeting was also noteworthy for what was not said. Putin complained about the U.S. pulling out of the Iran deal, but he was quiet about reports that the U.S. had killed hundreds of Russian military contractors in Syria (without losing a single American). Putin also said nothing about U.S. airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

    He dared not complain. That is because, far from being weak, Trump has been tougher than his predecessors toward Russia, letting his actions speak louder than his words.

    The ultimate test of the Helsinki summit lies in the future. The Soviet Union was thought to have “won” the historic conference in Helsinki in 1975, until the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Accords helped bring down communism.
    Guys, it was diplomatic jujitsu! Trump is a genius whose command of world affairs is too deep for us to fathom!
    posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:42 AM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


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    This one defied easy summation—so much has happened in the past week that choosing highlights/lowlights was daunting.
    posted by Doktor Zed at 9:43 AM on July 17, 2018 [11 favorites]


    he's just such an embarrassing rube. He's a mark! He's a mark, and everyone with two neurons to strike together knows it. It is mortifying.

    What has yet to be written about is what is intelligence (what an ironic word) going to be doing now, going forward? How will they frame their relationships in Europe? with the UK? with the other 3 eyes? along the Russian border? Who will trust them - even if they're trustworthy in and of themselves - when their actions will nevertheless have to be grounded in the context of the state and the state's security? Which, as the world (and HEL) is discovering is up for grabs. True, there's only 2 and half more years to go before there's another American CinC but 30 months is a long time, especially in today's hyper connected global little village accessible in everyone's powerful pocket devices. Waiting it out only worked as a strategy until the vitriol and bile spewed in 280 characters became consistent, even if not factual. And, the likelihood of a further 4 years is now looking even more probabilistic.
    posted by infini at 9:46 AM on July 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


    > Guys, it was diplomatic jujitsu!

    From the new thread: In Russia, beneath the widespread jubilation over Putin's triumph, a few folks worry Trump capitulated so spectacularly that it's almost certain to provoke backlash.
    posted by RedOrGreen at 9:48 AM on July 17, 2018 [2 favorites]




    Just to emphasize, I don't use the phrase "Communist dictator" to impugn the Limerick Soviet or Manabendra Nath Roy or the leftmost kibbutzniks, the point is that we should really rub it in the face of every Trump supporter and "conservative" that they're on the side of the Communist-identifying totalitarian rulers who poison their own family members and declare themselves President For Life. They really need to be called to account for it after a century of obtuse wielding of "Communist" as an epithet, along with everything else.
    posted by XMLicious at 9:54 AM on July 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


    So I asked about promoting white supremacy, not filling ambassador posts, deterring legal immigration and tourism, and calling the press the enemy. "Deep subject. I stay away from politics." Once it gets complicated, they shut down.

    The important thing here is to plant the seeds of doubt. It might not immediately be a tree but one day maybe!

    I find semi-emotional appeals to posterity are particularly good. A simple "What do you think your grandchildren will think of you for holding this position?" is pretty good with even the most obnoxious because almost everyone wants to be loved by their current or future grandchildren. Or bring up a historical school integration photo on your phone and say "Which person do you think you are in this photo?" and if they chose the hero ask "Do you think other people in the future will agree with you?". Then just leave it at that maybe with a "Just sayin". There is no need to win the argument instantly and every extra thing you say will give them reasons to dismiss your entire point. Just plant the seed of doubt. If they are at all persuadable they will water it on their own.
    posted by srboisvert at 10:02 AM on July 17, 2018 [12 favorites]


    It’ll work on them not in the slightest. Fuckers are rehabilitating Stalin right now.
    posted by Artw at 10:05 AM on July 17, 2018 [5 favorites]




    Not to go into the specifics of communism or whatever, but regarding a much broader issue, the "no true Scotsman" (NTS) fallacy definitely doesn't hold for normative, constructed categories. For instance, I think we all agree that claiming that Nazis were not in fact socialists is not committing the NTS fallacy. Similarly, many single-party dictatorships over the last century have had "Democratic" in their name, and we can consistently claim that this is a misuse of "Democratic" without running into NTS fallacies. Descriptively, the liberal media is the main purveyor of "fake news" if we look at usage statistics these days; there too, we can and should claim that this is a misuse of "fake news" however prevalent it may be, and saying so is not an instance of the NTS fallacy. A current major debate within the left is over the meaning of "Medicare for all", where descriptivists would let the center-left reframe the phrase to cover a public-option-style "for all", while the original promulgators of the term (the far left) resist that redefinition. Whichever side you prefer, it is certainly a legitimate debate, and the left's attempt to retain the meaning of words and phrases like "medicare for all," fake news, socialism, communism, etc, is not all just NTS errors, particularly in an environment where the right has for decades strategically coopted left terminology in order to vitiate it.
    posted by chortly at 10:44 AM on July 17, 2018 [12 favorites]


    🍶🍪🍪
    posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 10:57 AM on July 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


    A simple "What do you think your grandchildren will think of you for holding this position?" is pretty good with even the most obnoxious because almost everyone wants to be loved by their current or future grandchildren.

    Does anyone read the MeFi comments by those of us who were raised in these families? Because a few of us post about it pretty regularly (over many years), and there's this thing called "child abuse" we have in common.

    In more direct words: they do not want to be loved by current or future grandchildren if those kids are any different from them. Child abuse is rationalized (example) as having been deserved by evil children, a child being under the influence of Satan, being a girl, et cetera and so forth.

    The personal is political. The seeds of fascism start at home. I am jaded about the US largely because I've been talking about this since I was six years old, and people so very rarely connect "churches that condone child abuse" with "people with closed belief systems who influence politics and who do not account for the future of anyone different from them."

    They literally don't account for the future of their own children. Why would they do more for people even more different, from their perspective?
    posted by fraula at 5:03 AM on July 18, 2018 [15 favorites]


    Heck, they don't even care if their grandchildren have a planet to live on.
    posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:22 PM on July 18, 2018 [6 favorites]


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