;)
The Commentariat -- February 3, 2018
Late Morning Update:
Emily Cochrane of the New York Times: President "Trump, who is in Florida for the weekend, took to Twitter to proclaim his innocence and denounce the investigation a day after the release of the highly contentious classified memo, which he had authorized to be made public. The document claimed that top law enforcement officials had abused their powers to spy on a Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, who was suspected of being an agent of Russia.... [Trump tweeted,] 'This memo totally vindicates "Trump" in probe. But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!'... The memo, while trying to paint the origins of the Russia investigation as tainted, did nothing to clear Mr. Trump of either collusion or obstruction -- the lines of inquiry being pursued by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. The memo in fact undermined Republicans' effort to cast doubt on the roots of the investigation by confirming that the inquiry was already underway when law enforcement officials obtained a warrant from a secret intelligence court to conduct surveillance on Mr. Page." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Cochrane's report is extraordinary. Right near the top, she provides a jarring correction to Trump's false assertions. Not he said/she said but he-said/he-lied. I've seen this kind of reporting happen before in a major media outlet. And then I've seen a correction. Let's see if Cochrane's accurate reporting stands.
Rebecca Morin of Politico: "The Department of Justice on Friday evening filed a motion seeking to dismiss a civil suit former top Trump campaign aide Paul Manafort brought against special counsel Robert Mueller. According to the DOJ's motion, Manafort alleged in his civil suit that 'the Acting Attorney General's order directing the Special Counsel to investigate certain matters exceeds the authority provided by the Department of Justice's Special Counsel regulations.' In addition, he claimed the indictment against him 'exceed the Special Counsel's authority under the Acting Attorney General's order.'... Department of Justice civil division lawyers defending Mueller's office and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said: 'These claims lack merit.'"
Victoria Guida of Politico: "The Federal Reserve took action against Wells Fargo for the first time in connection with the massive fake accounts scandal and other customer abuses that have been uncovered at the giant bank since 2016. In an unprecedented enforcement action announced Friday evening -- just as Janet Yellen closed out her final day as Fed chair -- the central bank said it will prevent the San Francisco-based lender from growing any larger than it was at the end of 2017 until it improves its governance and risk management. Wells Fargo will also replace three current board members by April and a fourth board member by the end of the year. The members were not named."
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Your Friday Afternoon DocuDud
Adam Goldman, et al., of New York Times: "House Republicans released a disputed memo on Friday compiled by congressional aides that accused the F.B.I. and Justice Department of abusing their surveillance powers to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page. The memo, which has prompted a political firestorm, also criticizes information used by law enforcement officials in their application for a warrant to wiretap Mr. Page, and names the senior F.B.I. and Justice Department officials who approved the highly classified warrant." (This is the same link as appeared yesterday under Eileen Sullivan's byline.)
... Here's a pdf of the memo, along with an authorizing letter from White House counsel Don McGahn. ...
... Here's an annotated version, by Aaron Blake of the Washington Post. ...
... President Trump reveals he has no idea what's going on:
... Spencer Ackerman of the Daily Beast: "Asked at the White House if he will now fire [Deputy AG Rod] Rosenstein -- a precursor to firing or constraining Mueller -- Trump said Friday, 'you figure that one out.'"
... Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, whom the Republican majority on the committee will not yet allow to release a rebuttal memo, have nonetheless written a public response to the release of the Nunes memo: "The premise of the Nunes memo is that the FBI and DOJ corruptly sought a FISA warrant on a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, and deliberately misled the court as part of a systematic abuse of the FISA process. As the Minority memo makes clear, none of this is true. The FBI had good reason to be concerned about Carter Page and would have been derelict in its responsibility to protect the country had it not sought a FISA warrant.... The DOJ appropriately provided the court with a comprehensive explanation of Russia's election interference, including evidence that Russian agents courted another Trump campaign foreign adviser, George Papadopoulos." It goes on. ...
... Oops! Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "The court that approved surveillance of a former campaign adviser to President Trump was aware that some of the information underpinning the warrant request was paid for by a political entity, although the application did not specifically name the Democratic National Committee or the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, according to two U.S. officials.... A now-declassified Republican memo alleged that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was duped into approving the wiretap request by a politicized FBI and Justice Department.... But its central allegation -- that the government failed to disclose a source's political bias -- is baseless, the officials said." ...
... Oops! Karen Tumulty & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Though President Trump and his allies hope that the controversial release of a GOP-written memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI will tarnish the legitimacy of the entire Russia probe, that argument may be undercut by a single sentence buried near the end of the four-page document. It confirms for the first time that the event that set the FBI's counterintelligence investigation in motion was not the surveillance of Trump adviser Carter Page -- a subject upon which most of the memo dwells -- but rather that it was opened as the result of information the bureau had received about ... George Papadopoulos.... 'The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok,' the memo noted in its final paragraph.... Papadopoulos appears nowhere in the 16 reports that Steele wrote between June and December 2016 that are now known collectively as the Steele dossier." ...
... Matt Ford of the New Republic: "Only in the memo's final paragraph do its authors acknowledge that [George] Papadopoulos's loose lips sparked the FBI probe. They also note that information from Papadopoulos also made its way into the FISA application targeting [Carter] Page, but don't explain further. Instead, the memo pivots to the texts between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page [no relation to Carter!], a frequent topic of chatter in conservative media. Trump-aligned outlets often describe their conversations as evidence of an internal FBI conspiracy against the president. But the Wall Street Journal reviewed more than 7,000 text messages between them and reported on Friday that it found 'no evidence of a conspiracy against Mr. Trump.'... The memo's authors apparently intended to suggest that the dossier's dramatic allegations had been debunked. But 'minimally corroborated' indicates that the FBI was able to find evidence supporting at least some of the dossier's contents. In essence, Trump declassified a document attacking the Steele dossier that also undercuts his political defenses against it." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: There's much more to Ford's analysis, including a humorous lede: "It would be easy to compare Congressman Devin Nunes's release of a declassified memo on purported surveillance abuses to Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s vault. But this would be extremely unfair to Geraldo, who didn't know ahead of time that it would be empty." ...
... JeffBo Straddles the Fence. Max Greenwood of the Hill: "In a statement issued shortly after the memo's release, [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions acknowledged GOP concerns about Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI officials' actions, but said he remained confident in the agency's employees.... Sessions said he would ensure the DOJ addresses the concerns raised in the memo, which accuses FBI and Justice Department officials of misusing their authority to obtain a secret surveillance warrant on Carter Page.... 'Accordingly, I will forward to appropriate DOJ components all information I receive from Congress regarding this,' he said. 'I am determined that we will fully and fairly ascertain the truth....'" ...
... Daily Beast: "Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday went off-script during a speech to praise Rod Rosenstein shortly before the release of a GOP-authored memo reportedly targeting the deputy attorney general. During his remarks at a Department of Justice event on sex-trafficking issues, Sessions thanked Rosenstein and Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, saying, 'Those two -- Rod and Rachel -- are Harvard graduates, they're experienced lawyers. Rod had 27 years in the department. Rachel's had a number of years in the department previously and so they both represent the kind of quality and leadership that we want in the department.'" ...
... Sen. John McCain (R-Az.), Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also issued a statement: "The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests -- no party's, no president's, only Putin's. The American people deserve to know all of the facts surrounding Russia's ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why Special Counsel Mueller's investigation must proceed unimpeded. Our nation's elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin's job for him." ...
... Jen Kirby of Vox: "Former FBI director James Comey -- who's been known to subtweet the Trump administration since he went public on Twitter -- reacted with a scoff. 'That's it?' Comey wrote. 'Dishonest and misleading memo wrecked the House intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence Community, damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen.'... Others familiar with the intelligence community have echoed that sentiment, arguing the release of the memo needlessly undermines the government's intelligence-gathering capabilities beyond the Russia investigation -- namely clandestine agencies' ability to recruit informants and sources." ...
... Spencer Ackerman: "'Deputy Director [Andrew] McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information,' the memo claims, referring to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Asked if that was a true representation, a source familiar with McCabe's testimony responded: '100% not.' A senior Democratic House intelligence committee official agreed." ...
... Bryan Logan of Business Insider: "... Devin Nunes admitted on Friday that he did not view the underlying intelligence on which he based a memo that accuses the FBI and the Justice Department of improperly surveilling Trump associates during the 2016 election. Hours after the memo came out on Friday, Nunes gave an interview on Fox News during which anchor Bret Baier asked him if he wrote the memo. 'Yes,' Nunes replied, saying other Republican lawmakers, like House Oversight Committee chair Trey Gowdy, also contributed. 'Did you read the actual FISA applications,' Baier asked.... 'No, I didn't,' Nunes said, before adding that Gowdy was part of a designated group that reviewed the intelligence, took notes, and reported it back to committee members." ...
... Devin Isn't Done. Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "In a Fox News interview on Friday, Representative Devin Nunes of California ... said his panel was still proceeding with a separate investigation. He hinted that it focused on the State Department's role in the Russia investigation during the Obama administration.... [AND there's this.] Mr. Trump could have more ammunition in the coming weeks as the Justice Department's inspector general finishes a report widely expected to be critical of the F.B.I.'s handling of the final months of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server. As part of that inquiry, Michael E. Horowitz, the inspector general, has uncovered text messages between two F.B.I. officials working on that case and also the Russia investigation in which they express intense dislike for Mr. Trump. Mr. Horowitz is expected to reserve particularly harsh criticism for the two officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page." ...
There Must Be a Pony:
... Cristiano Lima of Politico: "Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) said on Friday that the House intelligence memo on alleged FBI malfeasance showed 'clear and convincing evidence of treason' by law enforcement officials, despite lingering concerns in the intelligence community over its credibility.... Gosar, in a statement, blasted the FBI's use of a surveillance warrant to gather information about a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.... 'The full-throated adoption of this illegal misconduct and abuse of FISA by James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein is not just criminal but constitutes treason,' Gosar wrote in a statement[, citing the Nunes memo as evidence]." ...
... Wonder Where Goser Got His Unhinged Ideas. Joseph Wulfsohn of Mediaite: Friday night, Sean "Hannity said that Former FBI Director James Comey, Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were 'all complicit' for approving surveillance on Carter Page. 'The FBI misled and purposefully deceived a federal court while using an unverified, completely phony opposition research bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton to spy on an opposition campaign during a presidential election!' Hannity exclaimed. 'Now that type of abusive power, that type of corruption, that shredding of the Constitution -- it is unprecedented in American history.'" ...
... Matt Zapotosky & Beth Reinhard of the Washington Post provide some background on Bruce Ohr, who shows up as another nefarious character in Devin Nunes' spy novel memo. Looks as if the DOJ has demoted Ohr twice because of his tangential association with Fusion GPS. ...
... Ken Dilanian of NBC News: "House Republicans and their allies have long argued that the House memo released Friday would demonstrate that the Trump-Russia investigation had its roots in an FBI fraud. But the Republican memo doesn't support that theory, even if everything alleged in it is true. (And Democrats, the FBI and the Justice Department insist that much in the memo is deeply misleading.)... As the memo makes clear, the Mueller investigation did not grow out of the dossier, and the memo sheds no light on what role, if any, the dossier has played in the special counsel's inquiry."
... There's No There There. Zack Beauchamp of Vox: "... there is only one conclusion a fair reader [of the Nunes memo] could draw: There is absolutely nothing here. There is no proof in the memo that the FBI is biased against Trump, no proof of abuse of surveillance powers by the FBI, and no proof that the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia is fundamentally flawed. The memo is a piece of partisan spin, and not a particularly compelling one at that." Beauchamp compares the "grandiose" claims in the memo to the paucity of evidence supporting those claims. ...
... Quinta Jurecic, et al., of Lawfare cover most of the bases in their analysis of the Nunes memo. Here's something that may not have got enough attention: "To the extent the complaint is that the FBI relied on a biased source in [Christopher] Steele, the FBI relies every day on information from far more dubious characters than former intelligence officers working for political parties. The FBI gets information from narco-traffickers, mobsters and terrorists." The lawyers' overall conclusion is something that party leaders like Paul Ryan (and of course President Disgraceful) should have known, but don't know or care: "At the end of the day, the most important aspect of the #memo is probably not its contents but the fact that it was written and released at all. Its preparation and public dissemination represent a profound betrayal of the central premise of the intelligence oversight system.... They revealed highly sensitive secrets by way of scoring partisan political points and delegitimizing what appears to have been lawful and appropriate intelligence community activity." ...
... Paul Rosenzweig, in Politico Magazine, handily demonstrates how -- even if you pretend the Nunes memo is a serious document -- it utterly fails to meet its objectives. For instance, it's supposed to help Trump get rid of Rosenstein. But the initial FISA application on which the memo rests -- the one that supposedly relied entirely on the Steele dossier, was granted in October 2016 -- months before Trump appointed Rosenstein deputy AG. Rosenstein had nothing to do with it. Moreover, since FISA reauthorization apps must rely on new information obtained during surveillance ops, Rosenstein could not have relied on the Steele dossier at all; he & the FBI had to present to the FISA court new info learned in the course of surveilling Page. ...
... Mrs. McC: Even though this process is easy for you to understand, it is not something Trump would be able to comprehend. When Trump doesn't want to hear something, he doesn't. So the fact that Rosenstein is "innocent" of relying on the Steele dossier is immaterial. Over at Fox "News" they're still telling Trump that this is worse than a thousand Watergates. That's what he knows. ...
... Judd Legum of ThinkProgress: "The [Nunes memo], while rehashing a lot of known facts about the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, is more notable for what it does not say. The memo does not say that counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign started with the Steele dossier[.] The memo does not discuss surveillance of a member of the Trump campaign[.]... The memo all relates to issues with the surveillance of Carter Page beginning in October 2016. Page stepped down from the Trump campaign in September because of controversy regarding his continuing contacts with Russians.... The memo does not present the Steele dossier as the exclusive basis for FISA warrant. The FBI, in an extraordinary statement, said the memo was incomplete and presented a false narrative. This suggests there is additional information about Page that is not disclosed in the memo.... The memo does not establish that the Steele dossier was unreliable[.]... The memo does not include anything that implicates Robert Mueller or his investigation[.]" ...
... Jonathan Chait: "Amid all the lies Donald Trump has told about the Russia scandal, there is one underlying truth: The intelligence community truly fears him and considers him unfit for the presidency. This is not because the intelligence community is traitorous, or left wing, or (as Donald Trump Jr. sneeringly put it) wine-spritzer-drinking elites. It is because the IC had early access to a wide array of terrifying intelligence linking Trump and his orbit to Russia. People who spend their lives protecting their country from foreign threats saw in Trump a candidate who had at some level been compromised by one of them. [Re: the Trump-Russia investigation, Trump] treats the effect as the cause. [FBI agent Peter] Strzok, as the context of his texts reveals, was a moderate Republican who voted for John Kasich in the GOP primary. [Christopher] Steele was a Brit who had not shown any strong passion for American politics. They developed intense preferences in the 2016 election outcome in large part because they had access to intelligence about Trump and Russia. They did not create this intelligence to support their political beliefs....
The stench of bad faith covers the entire effort. Trump has not even bothered to conceal his belief that the memo gives him an excuse to replace Rod Rosenstein, Robert Mueller's supervisor, with a more pliant figure. Trump believes to his core that he is entitled to federal law enforcement run by personal loyalists, and that any investigation of him is per se evidence of disqualifying bias. Nunes's memo places the House Republicans foursquare behind that grotesquely authoritarian belief. ...
... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "The right-wing argument goes that Clinton operatives cooked up a scandalous piece of fiction, got [Christopher] Steele to pass it along to some Trump-haters in the F.B.I., who then persuaded their bosses at the Justice Department to open an investigation, and here we are, eighteen months later, with Robert Mueller and his investigators hounding an innocent President.... Yet, for the conspiracy theorists, the contents of the memo matter less than the support they've received recently from at least some elements of the Republican Party leadership, including Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, who earlier this week said the memo should be made public and talked about the need to 'cleanse' the F.B.I. Trump is capable of anything. If Trump uses the memo as a pretext to fire Rod Rosenstein..., Ryan and other senior Republicans will be wholly complicit in causing a constitutional crisis."
... See also some fine commentary in yesterday's Comments thread. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: According to the Nunes memo, Christopher "Steele was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations -- an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones article by David Corn." But according to Glenn Simpson's testimony before Congress, it was Steele who terminated his relationship with the FBI after reading a New York Times report of October 31, 2016 which indicated the FBI had found no connection between the Trump campaign & Russian operatives despite Steele's knowledge that the FBI was aware of such connections. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: No one seems to notice that among the "disgraceful" people TrumpNunes & Co. are implicitly fingering are the judges on the FISA court. These judges are appointed (with no oversight) by Chief Justice John Roberts, who -- like Rosenstein, Comey, Wray, & Strzok -- is a Republican. The argument in the memo is that at least one of these judges (and possibly as many as four) is a potted rubberstamp plant who blithely issued & renewed surveillance warrants against upstanding American patriot Carter Page based on undocumented assertions in informal memos written by Christopher Steele, a former foreign agent with ulterior political motives (oh, and maybe on a Yahoo! report by Michael Isikoff based on Steele's findings). The treacherous plot against the Donald is remarkably widespread & embedded deep in the Republican party. ...
... Despite all this, Dahlia Lithwick thinks the memo will work as intended: "This memo has the twin benefits of being both incomprehensible and boring. It serves as a glittering distraction from a host of other insanities unspooling around the administration's consequential failures of governance and immolation of normalcy. But the other purpose of this memo, as has long been predicted, is that it serves as scaffolding for Donald Trump to fire deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein without having to use the pretext that his defining fault is that he is a 'Democrat from Baltimore.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is the same argument I made before release of the memo. I'm a little less convinced of it now, because the memo itself is even dumber than I thought it would be. But it's still obvious that the only Americans who are going to find out there's no there there are those who don't get their "news" from Fox "News." Perhaps our only hope are late-nite comedians. We'll have to see what, if anything, they do with the memo Monday & Tuesday. Likely, they'll be talking about the Super Bowl instead. ...
AND Another Thing. Shane Harris of the Washington Post: "K.T. McFarland, President Trump's onetime deputy national security adviser, has withdrawn from consideration to be the U.S. ambassador to Singapore, the White House confirmed Friday. McFarland has been under scrutiny in the special-counsel probe into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Democratic lawmakers say she may have given inaccurate information about her knowledge of conversations that Michael Flynn, her former boss at the White House, had with Russia's ambassador to the United States during the presidential transition.... Last July, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) asked McFarland in writing whether she had spoken to Flynn about his contacts with the ambassador during the ... transition. 'I am not aware of any of the issues or events described above,' McFarland replied. But court documents filed in connection with Flynn's guilty plea contradict that statement."
AP: "The Trump administration announced on Friday that it will continue much of the Obama administration's nuclear weapons policy, but take a more aggressive stance toward Russia. It said Russia must be convinced it would face 'unacceptably dire costs' if it were to threaten even a limited nuclear attack in Europe. The sweeping review of US nuclear policy does not call for any net increase in strategic nuclear weapons -- a position that stands in contrast to ... Donald Trump's statement, in a tweet shortly before he took office, that the US 'must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes'.... The Trump nuclear doctrine breaks with Obama's in ending his push to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US defence policy."
Thomas Heath of the Washington Post: "The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 2.5 percent Friday -- closing down 666 points -- and suffered its worst week in two years as concerns over rising interest rates and inflation from an overheated economy triggered a long-feared sell-off. It was the worst day for stocks since President Trump took office -- and a stark reversal from the optimism that has propelled the markets higher for most of the past year. The market has been on a historic nine-year bull run. The U.S. and world economies are so strong that people think the situation cannot last. Concerns were fueled by a Labor Department report that wages in January were 2.9 percent higher than a year ago and unemployment held at 4.1 percent. A tightening labor market sparked fears that interest rates will rise." ...
... Matt Phillips of the New York Times: "Investors have spent much of the last year shrugging off geopolitical and economic risks.... Instead, they have focused on the strength of the United States economy, driven by banner corporate profits and President Trump's push to lower taxes and reduce regulation. The optimism helped lift stock markets ever higher, extending the boom into its ninth year. Now, investors are suddenly skittish. On Friday, stocks tumbled by more than 2 percent, propelling the market to its worst week in two years. The immediate catalyst was the jobs report, which showed the strong United States economy might finally be translating into rising wages for American workers -- a sign that higher inflation could be around the corner. But what is really worrying investors is that the fuel behind this stock market boom, namely cheap money from global central banks, may disappear sooner than they thought. In recent weeks, the shift in sentiment has played out across the world's largest financial markets. As stocks have sold off, Treasury yields have surged. The dollar has slumped.... In a strange way, investors are nervous that the global economy is doing too well."
Ian Kullgren of Politico: "Humane Society President and CEO Wayne Pacelle resigned Friday amid a spiraling crisis over sexual harassment allegations against him and a former top executive. Things had gotten progressively worse for Pacelle -- one of the most well-known animal rights advocates in the country -- since news broke last week of an internal investigation of allegations dating back to 2005. The board of directors cut the investigation short on Thursday and cleared Pacelle of wrongdoing, but Pacelle, facing a staff revolt and fleeing donors, stepped down less than 24 hours later."
Beyond the Beltway
Eli Rosenberg of the Washington Post: "The ... state employee responsible for sending out the emergency ballistic-missile alert that panicked the state of Hawaii for 38 minutes last month was fired from his job at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency last week. The agency's top official, Vern T. Miyagi, resigned. [In a TV interview,] the man repeated claims that officials in Hawaii released: that the worker heard 'this is not a drill' at some point during a training exercise and assumed that the threat of an incoming missile was real.... An investigation released by the state described the employee as having a poor work history; other members of the emergency management agency's staff said that they did not feel comfortable with his work."
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Reader Comments (22)
The Evil Elf’s fence straddling is the result not of Sessions’ respect for the rule of law (his is about on a par with his crook of a boss) or the department and agency he oversees (Justice and the FBI), or a fine sense of precedence and honesty, but the same sort of CYA instinct that causes rats to desert sinking ships.
Mind you, Sessions isn’t in the water yet, but he wants to position himself for a quick escape if it appears the SS Trump starts to list. He no doubt recalls all the Nixon henchmen who did time while the boss strolled on the beach and gave interviews to David Frost about how they all fucked him. He’s as corrupt as they come, but he hasn’t stayed around this long without knowing how to be able to declare his ass clean as a whistle despite the turds hanging off his coattails.
It’s just outrageous that news outlets (the so-called mainstream, as opposed to the bug-eyed wingnut operations) such as Reuters, are still describing this hyper-partisan hack job as an “explosive memo”. Explosive diarrhea perhaps, but that’s the extent of its shock value. Just ridiculous. Nunes must be floating as his big moment on the world historical stage is lengthened beyond the three seconds it merits by such shoddy yellow journalism. His work should be pilloried as the baseless, treasonous tripe it is.
Let me don my Adam Smith (or is it Cassandra?) hat for a moment and comment on the current "correction" of the giddy Pretender market.
What's the best way to devalue a currency, encourage inflation and overheat an economy?
To give things away hand over fist, and keep doing it.
Deregulation is one form of such largesse. Because it lessens or eliminates costs or risks, it cheapens whatever enterprise was regulated, whether it be coal mining or financial speculation. Glut followed by bust is an inevitable result.
Handing over national assets, like mineral rights directly or clean air and water indirectly, at low or no cost to plunderers is another. Again, both present and future value of the gift is diminished.
Then there's the much discussed great tax scam, guaranteed to balloon the national debt and cheapen the dollar.
All are "good" for business in the short term. All invite inflation and are sure to create and inflate a bubble.
We don't have to dig deep into history to find a rough parallel. Bush II's crash should have made that evident to the densest dullard.
But then we get the Pretender who, if he thinks at all, might be thinking he can buy higher poll numbers and maybe a second term with higher prices and devalued dollars.
Not when the few dollars he gave workers with his tax hoax disappear in higher prices before the end of the year.
I would hope before November.
One other serious consequence (among many) of this “memo” is what its release says to allies who share intelligence with the US. Forget about discretion and the security of your sources and methods, or the results of your work. If it’s politically beneficial to Trump, he’ll rat you out faster than you can say “Three Quarter Pounders and a big ass Coke”. The Brits have already learned this lesson, but you can imagine what the intelligence services in Germany, France, Canada, even Israel, must be thinking right about now. “This clown is dangerous! Don’t tell him shit.” Just another way Trump makes America unsafe.
Prick.
Ken,
It’s all about what’s best for Trump. Our economic future or current wherewithal doesn’t add into it. If president* Asshole can get a few more votes now by sinking us into a recession in three years, that’s fine with him. He’ll blame Obama. Or Clinton. Or the FBI.
Who'da thought presidentin' would be so complicated #dilemma .... ?
Friday news dumps serve to make bad news disappear over the weekend especially if there are other events. (Like the Super Bowl). By the time that story dies down Nunez will have his little doctored memo on the State Department crimes ready to throw out in another news dump. All this to give Trump a big enough security blanket so he can purge the justice department.
@AK: Yesterday you mentioned Gavrilo Princip, that little Bosnian nationalist who shot Archduke Ferdinand. When you tell the story again you may want to add this chestnut: Gavrilo was an ardent fan of Walt Whitman–-carried a book of his poems in his pocket with underlined passages and one of those passages had to do with orders "to being down Kings" therefore following Walt's orders he did indeed bring down a king and consequently started WW1. Could we then say an American poet was responsible for the outbreak of this war?
HANNITY would! His shameful performance over this memo knows no bounds. One day––oh, make it soon–-this deplorable human being will have his day of reckoning.
And what I find most disturbing about all this is the issue of TRUST–-this has been broken and it will take years to mend, I fear.
@KEn: thanks for the economic lesson–-you are so right!
To piggy back on Ken's comments here is a piece about the hidden reality regarding those bonuses after tax cuts––they don't always live up to their billing:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/business/bonus-tax.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad
Thanks, PD.
You prompted me to re-read what I wrote (apparently too late) last night. Tried to make sense but failed.
The "higher prices and devalued dollars" should have been "larger paychecks in devalued dollars" or some such...I think that's where I was heading, when I should have been heading to bed.
I have to say that I never thought that Trump Inc. had any deliberate, direct political contact with Russia. Yes, some meaningless meetings, but no specific effort to affect the race. Thanks to the Republican congress, I have changed my mind.
BTW, I read the memo. My guess is 10% of Trump supporters read it and half have no clue what it means to say.
Just learned about a notorious book I had never heard of, one that ties the right to the far right and has been fodder for fools for decades:
THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS:
The premise of this book plays directly into the white nationalist rhetoric; the idea of white genocide. The idea that through immigration, if left unchecked, the racial character and content of a culture can be undermined to the point of oblivion. This book was a favorite of Steve Bannon who quoted its contents on occasion, also Steve King has mentioned it fondly.
An old and deeply rooted belief and one that is now showing its ugly face in the mirror of the Trump administration.
This illuminating (at least for me) piece is by Sarah Jones at the New Republic.
https://newrepublic.com/article/146925/notorious-book-ties-right-far-right
Interesting piece by Ann Jones in Mother Jones about why fp^6 should fear immigrants from Norway.
"If he and his supporters in Congress decide to build that East Coast wall after all, they might be able to get the Norwegians to pay for it. Not to keep them out, but to keep us in."
Definition of delusional-
NYT:
Trump Says G.O.P. Memo ‘Totally Vindicates’ Him
@Marvin Schwalb: I agree with you in every particular. So thanks, Devin!
Don't mean to sound too harsh, but don't think we want someone with a "poor work history" too near any kind of red button.... in Hawaii....or anywhere else.
Do we?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/us/politics/assisted-living-gaps.html.
No doubt, as this article says, some of our elderly are subject to abuse in our nursing homes and assisted living facilities, but the fundamental and preponderant abuse visited on the elderly has to be that 62% of those in nursing homes qualify for Medicaid after a lifetime of work whose reward allowed them to save only enough to certify them as poverty-stricken.
As we say here, ain't capitalism awesome.
I'm waiting for Canada to build a wall. I hope to see Cape Breton before that happens.
@ Marvin: He's not delusional, just repeating the disinformation spewed out by Fox and their collection of lying or pig ignorant "experts" who continue to quote the Nunez fabrication. Just note that the trump booboisie of mittelAmerika don't read either.
@Ken: I think your "higher prices and devalued dollars" goes well with "larger paychecks in devalued dollars." trumps tariffs will increase prices to Americans who have smaller dollars. Inflation is already @ 2%. The real take home wage increased 1.2% from June 2015 t0 June 2016. In 2017 the real weekly wage increased 0.4% with an additional 0.3% due to a longer work week. Trump claims a bigger wage increase based on inflated dollars. In Feb. 2016 a US$ got you $1.4028 Canadian. Today that US$ is worth $1.2422 Canadian. Of course to go with the huuuge increase in wages trump also claims an unprecedented 2,000,000 more jobs.Only 200,000 fewer than were created in 2016.
It would seem at last that the real potus is the foreign born Rupert Murdoch, with his intimate ties to Chinese spies and Russian kleptocrats, operating through the frump megaphone at fox mews. I was going to call it the frump whisperer, but they are hardly whispering. Murdoch has practised with the Australian and British governments, but is now achieving unpresidented success with the subduction of the US government.
It will be interesting to see what Powell's responses will be to frump's harmful economic jerks. If he will be more amenable to Koch policies than Yellen has been. I can't imagine frump appointed him without a "friendly" conversation about "loyalty".
Wait! Stop the presses! The Confederate tax scam is a huge success. Squeaker Ryan announced that some secretary somewhere is thrilled to be saving $1.50 a week. That’s a WHOLE $1.50 a week. More than twenty cents a day! What a windfall. He tweeted this enormous news and passed on the report that this lucky lady will be living high on the hog with that extra $78 a year! That’s two caffe mochas at Starbucks every month. Oh wait, not EVERY month. Forget about July and August. But the rest of the year? Pure luxury.
Ryan took time off from counting the half billion dollars he got from the Kochs for ramming through this fraudulent piece of shit tax scam. I’m betting they will save a tad more than that $78.
Here’s the thing. Isn’t this guy supposed to be the genius of the GOP? The budget and economics titan? The math nerd? My seven year old knows enough not to point to an extra buck and half a week as proof of a great deal for Americans.
Not just a liar and a fraud, but a stupid liar and fraud.
Sorry, Ryan got a half million from the Kochs as a reward for being a good little tax scammer, not a half billion. The half billion is probably what one of the Kochs will get for their tax break, not the $78 millions of Americans will see.