;)
The Commentariat -- October 31, 2017
Many thanks to safari for his essential contributions on a Big News Day. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
** Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times: "Despite Trump's hysterical denials and attempts at diversion, the question is no longer whether there was cooperation between Trump's campaign and Russia, but how extensive it was.... Trump, more gangster than entrepreneur, has long surrounded himself with bottom-feeding scum, and for all his nationalist bluster, his campaign was a vehicle for Russian subversion.... We've had a year of recriminations over the Clinton campaign's failings, but Trump clawed out his minority victory only with the aid of a foreign intelligence service. On Monday we finally got indictments, but it's been obvious for a year that this presidency is a crime. ...
... David Graham of The Atlantic: "Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos should have never been anywhere near a major presidential campaign, and their hiring reinforces concerns about President Trump's judgment. Trump is not a policy expert...his real sell to voters was that he would be an effective manager and dealmaker.... The campaign's hiring processes suggest grave lapses in the president's personnel decision and his judgment." --safari ...
... Eric Levitz of New York: "Donald Trump promised American voters that his keen eye for talent ... would give him the insight necessary 'to hire the best people.'... Imagine if Hillary Clinton had campaigned for the presidency on a promise to make superlative hiring decisions -- and then, the FBI indicted two of the highest ranking members of her campaign for being undisclosed agents of a hostile foreign regime.... How would congressional Republicans respond to such a development?... If they had possession of undisputed facts this damning, there's no way congressional Republicans would encourage the public to focus on an elusive, hypothetical smoking gun connecting Putin and Clinton.... That would be doing the Democrats a favor by helping them move the goalposts of what constitutes a ruinous scandal.... And yet, at various points Monday, the Democratic leadership did the Trump administration that kindness." --safari ...
... New York Times Editors: "... whether Mr. Trump was aware of any of the specific details in the indictment [of Paul Manafort] is beside the point. He certainly must have known what he was getting in hiring Mr. Manafort. A Republican lobbyist and political consultant, Mr. Manafort has a long history of enriching himself working for some of the world's most unscrupulous and dictatorial leaders, including Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Jonas Savimbi in Angola and Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of Congo -- not a list most American presidential candidates would want to be on. More recently, he helped to elect the pro-Kremlin Viktor Yanukovych as president of Ukraine.... Mr. Manafort, in other words, embodies the sort of amoral, self-dealing denizen of the swamp that Mr. Trump pledged to drain when he got to Washington." ...
... Susan Hennessey & Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare: "President Trump, in short, had on his campaign at least one person, and allegedly two people, who actively worked with adversarial foreign governments in a fashion they sought to criminally conceal from investigators. One of them ran the campaign. The other, meanwhile, was interfacing with people he 'understood to have substantial connections to Russian government officials' and with a person introduced to him as 'a relative of Russian President Vladimir Putin with connections to senior Russian government officials.' All of this while President Trump was assuring the American people that he and his campaign had 'nothing to do with Russia.' The release of these documents should, though it probably won't, put to rest the suggestion that there are no serious questions of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.... It also raises a profound set of questions about the truthfulness of a larger set of representations Trump campaign officials and operatives have made both in public and, presumably, under oath and to investigators.... Things are only going to get worse from here." ...
... Mallory Shelbourne of the Hill: "President Trump on Tuesday dismissed the latest wrinkle in the special counsel's investigation into Russia's election meddling, saying the alleged actions of his former campaign chairman occurred prior to his involvement with the Trump campaign. 'The Fake News is working overtime. As Paul Manaforts lawyer said, there was 'no collusion' and events mentioned took place long before he.......came to the campaign,' Trump wrote on Twitter.... Trump also dismissed the volunteer foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in the course of its investigation into Russia's election meddling. 'Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!' Trump added.... Trump then added that he hopes 'people will start to focus' on tax reform." ...
... Scott Shane of the New York Times: "The guilty plea of a 30-year-old campaign aide — so green that he listed Model United Nations in his qualifications -- shifted the narrative on Monday of the Trump campaign's interactions with Russia: Court documents revealed that Russian officials alerted the campaign, through an intermediary in April 2016, that they possessed thousands of Democratic emails and other 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton. That was two months before the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee was publicly revealed and the stolen emails began to appear online. The new court filings provided the first clear evidence that Trump campaign aides had early knowledge that Russia had stolen confidential documents on Mrs. Clinton and the committee...." ...
... Robert Costa, et al., of the Washington Post report a "portrait of Trump and his White House on a day of crisis is based on interviews with 20 senior administration officials, Trump friends and key outside allies, many of whom insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters." Mrs. McC: Especially fun to read if you're prone to feelings of schadenfreude. ...
... ** Marcy Wheeler of The Intercept: "The biggest news of Mueller Monday ... may involve someone not named explicitly in either indictment: Attorney General Jeff Sessions. That's because Sessions has repeatedly testified to the Senate that he knows nothing about any collusion with the Russians.... But the Papadopoulos plea shows that Sessions -- then acting as Trump's top foreign policy adviser -- was in a March 31, 2016, meeting with Trump, at which Papadopoulos explained 'he had connections that could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin.'.... To be sure, Papadopoulos's plea perhaps hurts Trump the most. After all, Trump was in the March 31 meeting too, along with Sessions.... But unlike Trump, Sessions's claims about such meetings came in sworn testimony to the Senate." --safari...
... Ezra Klein of Vox: "At this point, it would be a truly remarkable coincidence if two entities that had so many ties to each other, that had so much information about what the other was doing, and that were working so hard toward the same goal never found a way to coordinate." -- safari: Klein runs down a timeline of major events. ...
... Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico: "... after eight years running one of the biggest and most active public corruption operations as the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, [Preet] Bharara knows a little about how to read indictments and plea deals, and with Monday's big news out of the Mueller investigation, it looks to him like much more is coming. 'Hard to tell, but the George Papadopoulos guilty plea tells us (a) Mueller is moving fast (b) the Mueller team keeps secrets well (c) more charges should be expected and (d) this team takes obstruction and lying very, very seriously,' Bharara said.” Includes audio. ...
... Moving Goalposts. Judd Legum of ThinkProgress: "Trump's personal attorney [Jay Sekulow] went on CNN on Monday afternoon and defended the Trump campaign's secret communications with Russian government cutouts about emails stolen from the Clinton campaign.... According to Sekulow, there was absolutely nothing wrong with Papadopoulos having these conversations. His only error was lying about the conversations to the FBI.... In other words, Sekulow is defending the Trump campaign's discussions with a Russian intermediary to damage the campaign of Hillary Clinton with stolen emails." [Emphasis added] --safari ...
... Cristian Farias of New York: "Just as the president was screaming on Twitter that he or his campaign hadn't colluded with the Russians, Robert Mueller ... unsealed a criminal case against George Papadopoulos, who has already pled guilty to one count of lying to the FBI for ... attempting to collude with the Russians.... But by every objective measure, Papadopoulos, minor actor though he seems to be, is the biggest bombshell of Monday's revelations -- and Mueller's first major signal of what he's been up to since his appointment last May...[D]uring a March 31, 2016, meeting to discuss national security policy with the campaign, he 'in sum and substance,' according to Mueller's prosecutors, boasted to Trump and others gathered for the occasion that he could hook up a meeting between the then-candidate and Putin.... In addition, as USA Today's Brad Heath rightly notes, though Papadopoulos was convicted in early October, he was arrested and charged in July.... [T]he former campaign aide, who by then had already done enough to merit a federal charge, 'met with the Government on numerous occasions to provide information and answer questions.'" --safari ...
... Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos' guilty plea Monday appears to hint toward even more threads of the ongoing Russia collusion investigation than what the court revealed. Lawyers from the Justice Department's special counsel office have repeatedly hinted at how Papadopoulos would contribute to a larger, sensitive investigation. 'The criminal justice interest being vindicated here is there's a large-scale ongoing investigation of which this case is a small part,' Aaron Zelinsky of the special counsel's office said during Papadopoulos' October 5 plea agreement hearing, records of which were unsealed Monday." --safari ...
... Jacqueline Thomson of The Hill: "Former Trump campaign aide Carter Pagesays he 'probably' discussed Russia in emails with fellow ex-staffer George Papadopoulos, who has pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about his contacts. Page told MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Monday night that the two had met a couple times during the early days of the campaign and that he was 'probably' in 'a few' email chains with Papadopoulos." --safari ...
... The Hits Just Keep on Coming. Politico: "A former foreign policy adviser to ... Donald Trump's 2016 campaign secretly pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to the FBI about his outreach to Russian officials, court records made public on Monday show. George Papadopolous, 30, entered the guilty plea in a closed courtroom in Washington on Oct. 5, special counsel Robert Mueller's office announced. Unlike the just-unsealed indictment against Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and adviser Rick Gates for money laundering and other charges, the single felony count against Papadopolous directly relates to 2016 presidential campaign activity." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... The charging document against Papadopoulos, unsealed yesterday, is here. Update: Far more interesting, the unsealed "Statement of Offense." Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post runs down the who's-who in the statement. ...
...Zack Beauchamp of Vox: "Monday's big Russia-related news shows that special counsel Robert Mueller is treating his probe into election collusion like a mob case -- with President Donald Trump potentially playing the role of Al Capone." --safari...
... Matt Apuzzo has the New York Times story: "A professor with close ties to the Russian government told an adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in April 2016 that Moscow had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton in the form of 'thousands of emails,' according to court documents unsealed Monday. The adviser, George Papadopoulos, has pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about that conversation. The plea represents the most explicit evidence connecting the Trump campaign to the Russian government's meddling in last year's election." (Also linked yesterday.)
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Well, that's funny, because President Lizalot keeps tweet-screaming, "there is NO COLLUSION!" (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Rebecca Savransky of the Hill: "President Trump on Monday called for the focus to be shifted to Hillary Clinton after his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort turned himself into the FBI after being indicted on 12 counts, including conspiracy against the United States. 'Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????' Trump tweeted. 'Also, there is NO COLLUSION!'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Yes, I too was wondering why there hasn't been more focus on stuff Trump made up. ...
... Good Riddance. Addy Baird of ThinkProgress: "Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort surrendered to the FBI Monday morning, and he could face up to 40 years in prison if he is found guilty on all charges." --safari ...
... Nancy LeTourneau of the Washington Monthly: "Keep in mind that the pressure to flip will be huge on Manafort and Gates due to the fact that Mueller closed the pardon loophole by partnering with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Betsy Woodruff of The Daily Beast: "Mueller's investigators dug into the not-too-distant past, dredging up allegations of tax evasion, money laundering, and lobbying done in secret. 'NO COLLUSION!' the president tweeted. But seasoned observers quickly saw that the charges were more ominous for the White House than they at first appeared.... For special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of seasoned federal prosecutors, not much is off limits. And that could spell all kinds of trouble for a president who has sought to keep his finances private, surrounded by top aides who have all kinds of interesting financial entanglements of their own." --safari ...
... BUT. The "Adult" Is Delusional. Reuters: "White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said on Monday [in an interview on Fox News] a special counsel should be appointed to investigate Democrats over a uranium deal during the Obama administration and a dossier compiled on Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign." --safari (See more on Kelly's bright ideas in Maggie Astor's NYT story, linked below.) ...
... AND. Jonathan Chait: "The [Republican] party apparatus is gearing up for a frontal attack on Mueller in particular, and the idea that a president can be held legally accountable in general.... Republicans have developed a bizarre theory of alt-collusion, which holds that the real interference was Russia feeding false allegations against Donald Trump to private investigator Christopher Steele. Since the FBI investigated Steele's charges, the FBI is the agency that colluded. And since Robert Mueller is close with the FBI, Mueller, too, is tainted.... In today's [Wall Street] Journal op-ed page, two Republican former Department of Justice staffers, David Rivkin and Lee Casey, who frequently pop up in the media to defend party-line arguments..., urge Trump to issue sweeping pardons to everybody involved in the scandal, himself included, so as to hopefully neuter Mueller's investigation.... Two courses of action -- neutering investigations into himself, and ordering them against Democrats -- seem to be linked in Trump's lizard brain.... [Paul] Ryan, of course, is tacitly allowing his chamber's investigative bodies to run point for Trump.... We are watching an important marker in the GOP's slow metamorphoses into an authoritarian party[.]" (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... AND. Jamiles Lartey & Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "Republicans and conservatives outside the party are increasingly split on special counsel Robert Mueller's fitness to lead the investigation into possible illegal contact between Trump campaign aides and Russian actors during the 2016 election.... The fracture flared over the weekend.... [T]he Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Fox News -- all owned by Rupert Murdoch -- suggested Mueller ought to resign.... Such calls were not directly tied to the news of charges. Rather, they were triggered by the report late last week that Hillary Clinton's campaign helped fund the infamous 'Steele dossier.'... They were echoed by New Jersey's Republican governor, Chris Christie, who said on Fox News on Friday that someone of Mueller's integrity 'will step aside, and should'." --safari ...
... AND. Alternate Universe. Jason Wilson of the Guardian: "In the symbiosis between Trump and conservative media, it's hard to tell who is leading and who is following.... Like Trump himself, conservative media figures attempted to distance the administration from Trump's former campaign manager, and barely mentioned the guilty plea of former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos, at all...Breitbart News was also uncharacteristically reticent on Monday. There were initially only two stories on the Manafort indictment.... Rush Limbaugh, had a fresh approach to reframing the story.... Rush hinted that Mueller had only charged Manafort in order to tighten the screws on Tony Podesta.... For now, the mission is distract, reframe, and try to refocus on Democrats." --safari (See Anna Palmer's related story on Podesta, linked below.) ...
... AND. Conservative Media Assisted by Friendly Russian Trolls. Denise Clifton of Mother Jones: "In the days before charges against three former Trump campaign officials were unsealed on Monday, Russian influencers tracked by the Hamilton 68 dashboard were pushing stories on Twitter about 'collusion' between Russia and Hillary Clinton -- a narrative regarding a 2010 sale of uranium rights that has long since been debunked.... Since Friday, when news reports made clear that the special counsel's team was moving ahead with indictments, the dashboard began registering a sharp increase in attacks specifically against Mueller." --safari ...
... Bipartisan Swampsters. Betsy Woodruff & Spencer Ackerman of The Daily Beast: "The indictment of former Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort is likely causing bipartisan headaches.... The indictment describes a cozy, coordinated relationship between Manafort, Ukraine's Putin-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych, and two unnamed Washington lobbying firms, beginning in 2012.... Multiple lobbyists tell The Daily Beast they are confident that the Podesta Group and Mercury LLC are the two firms the indictment refers to ... 'Manafort and Tony [Podesta] were inseparable and driving the same train,' added a person familiar with the Mueller probe.... Tony Podesta was a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. His brother John ... chaired that campaign." --safari ...
... Anna Palmer of Politico: "Democratic power lobbyist Tony Podesta, founder of the Podesta Group, is stepping down from the firm that bears his name after coming under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. Podesta announced his decision during a firm-wide meeting Monday morning and is alerting clients of his impending departure.... The investigation into Podesta and his firm grew out of investigators&r' examination of [Paul] Manafort's finances. Manafort organized a PR campaign on behalf of a nonprofit called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. Podesta Group was one of several firms that were paid to do work on the PR campaign to promote Ukraine in the U.S."
... Indictments? What Indictments? Esme Cribb of TPM: "House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Monday said charges brought against members of ... Donald Trump's campaign are not going to have any effect on Congress. 'I really don't have anything to add, other than: Nothing is going to derail what we're doing in Congress,' Ryan said on conservative Wisconsin talk radio station WTAQ." Mrs. McC: All we care about is cutting taxes on the rich & shoving the rest of you lazy bastards out of your hammocks of complaceny and dependence. ...
... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Adam Peck of ThinkProgress: "On Monday morning, when it was revealed that ... Paul Manafort and an associate were the target of the indictment Fox & Friends were busy discussing Google's hamburger emoji. But the outlet's smokescreen campaign took a darker -- and far more deplorable -- turn on Monday afternoon with the publication of an anonymous article attacking two judges who are involved in the indictments, including the only black magistrate judge in the nation's capital." --safari ...
... Reuters: "Facebook Inc said on Monday that Russia-based operatives published about 80,000 posts on the social network over a two year period in an effort to sway U.S. politics, and that about 126 million Americans may have seen the posts during that time.... The 80,000 posts were published between June 2015 and August 2017 and most of them focused on divisive social and political messages such as race relations and gun rights, Facebook said." --safari
** Julian Borger of the Guardian: "The Trump administration is working on a nuclear weapons policy that is intended to mark a decisive end to the era of post-cold war disarmament, by bolstering the US arsenal and loosening the conditions under which it would be used.... The document is still being debated with a target for completion by the end of this year or the beginning of next.... The White House denied the report but it has repeatedly made clear it aims to adopt a more aggressive nuclear stance." --safari
John Kelly -- If Only Northerners Had Been Nicer about Slavery. Maggie Astor of the New York Times: "If, by appearing on Laura Ingraham's show on Monday night, John F. Kelly was trying to do damage control after the indictments of Trump associates earlier in the day, it did not work. Instead, Mr. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, resurrected the debate over Confederate monuments -- previously fueled by his boss, President Trump, over the summer -- and the Confederacy itself. He called Robert E. Lee 'an honorable man who gave up his country to fight for his state,' said that 'men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand,' and argued that 'the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War.'... The reaction was swift and unforgiving, with many commenters ridiculing Mr. Kelly for suggesting that slavery was an issue on which a compromise could or should have been reached." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Let's be clear: Kelly isn't "tone-deaf." Rather, he thinks slavery is no big deal, something that people "of good faith" can disagree on -- kinda like anchovies on pizza. Sorry, Gen. Johnny, "compromising" on enslaving human beings is not like ordering anchovies on only half the pizza. P.S. It might be a good idea if you Googled "3/5ths Compromise" & "Missouri Compromise." And and and. Asshole. ...
Oh, and the general will take questions now. But only from reporters who had family members who fought and died for slavery.... -- Akhilleus, in today's thread ...
... Mallory Shelbourne of The Hill: "The former White House ethics chief [Walter Schaub] on Tuesday slammed chief of staff Gen. John Kelly as 'a racist' after the top advisor to President Trump said the Civil War started due to 'the lack of an ability to compromise.' 'It appears John Kelly is going as a racist for Halloween. I suspect he's also going as one for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday...'" --safari ...
... Brent Griffiths of Politico: "White House chief of staff John Kelly defended his criticism of Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) on Monday night by continuing to insist she was insensitive and self-congratulatory during a ceremony to dedicate an FBI building in Florida. 'Well, I'll go back and talk about ... her comments and at the reception afterwards,' Kelly told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. 'Well, I'll apologize if I need to. But for something like that, absolutely not. I stand by my comments.'" Evidence quickly emerged after Kelly's press conference earlier this month that he made false statements about Wilson. Mrs. McC: It's okay for a white guy to lie about a black female official. Did I mention that Kelly is an asshole?
Swampster. E.A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "On Monday, nonprofit watchdog group the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) accused [Ryan] Zinke's dormant congressional campaign of dodging rules prohibiting individuals from converting political donations into individual revenue. According to an official Federal Election Commission complaint, the campaign allegedly purchased an RV from Zinke's wife, then sold it to a friend at a steeply discounted price a year later, lowering the car's price from $59,100 to $25,000. The recipient, Ed Buttrey, is a Montana state senator rumored to be in the running to be nominated Interior assistant secretary.... Zinke's other ethical close-calls, as the CLC noted, are plentiful." --safari
Tax Cuts Profiting No One. Paul Krugman: "The wealthy donors for whom the G.O.P. will apparently do anything, up to and including covering up for possible treason, will get no joy from their tax cuts. I don't mean that history will judge them harshly, although it will. I don't even mean that plutocrats as well as plebeians will eventually suffer if America becomes a lawless, authoritarian regime. I mean that a few hundred thousand dollars extra will do little if anything to make the already wealthy more satisfied with their lives.... The party's willingness to turn a blind eye to corruption with a hint of treason would be horrifying whatever the motivation. Still, there seems to me to be an extra dimension of awfulness to the whole situation once you realize that all this betrayal serves no real purpose, not even a bad one."
Justin Juvenal of the Washington Post: "A federal judge in Washington blocked the Trump Administration's proposed transgender military ban, writing in a strongly worded opinion that the policy 'does not appear to be supported by any facts.' U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued the preliminary injunction Monday, finding that a group of transgender service members would have a strong chance of prevailing in their lawsuit to have the ban declared unconstitutional. The injunction remains in place until the lawsuit is resolved or a judge lifts it.... Department of Justice spokeswoman Lauren Ehrsam issued a statement, saying the department is 'currently evaluating the next steps.' Department attorneys had previously asked for the suit to be dismissed."
Jonathan Watts of the Guardian: "The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased at record speed last year to hit a level not seen for more than three million years, the UN has warned. The new report has raised alarm among scientists and prompted calls for nations to consider more drastic emissions reductions at the upcoming climate negotiations in Bonn." --safari
Oliver Darcy of CNN: "NBC News and MSNBC have severed ties with 'Game Change' co-author and veteran journalist Mark Halperin, days after multiple women told CNN he sexually harassed or assaulted them during his time at ABC News. An MSNBC spokesman told CNN on Monday morning that Halperin's contract with both had been terminated. (Also linked yesterday.)
Beyond the Beltway
AP: "Two [NYPD] detectives threatened an 18-year-old woman with arrest over a bottle of prescription pills, handcuffed her, drove her around in their police van and then raped her, authorities said Monday in announcing charges against the two. The detectives, Eddie Martins and Richard Hall, were arraigned Monday on a 50-count indictment that included rape and kidnapping counts, said the acting Brooklyn district attorney, Eric Gonzalez. He said DNA recovered from the woman matched both defendants." --safari
Long Ago & Far Away
A Quincentennial of a Significant European Event. John Gjelten of NPR: "Five hundred years after a rebellious act by a single German monk divided the Christian world, religious leaders on both sides of that split have finally agreed their churches share responsibility for the historic rupture. On Oct. 31, 1517, an outspoken university lecturer and Augustinian monk named Martin Luther posted a list of objections to the dominant Roman Catholic beliefs and practices of his time. Chief among his grievances was the church's claim that Christians could buy their way out of punishment for sin -- and thus shorten their time in purgatory -- by purchasing a letter of 'indulgence' from their local parish. In practice, much of the money went into the pockets of corrupt local princes." ...
... Brandow Withrow of the Daily Beast: "Luther's belief that Scripture alone is the sole authority for doctrine enabled him to question the church. Scripture, he argued, said that Christ's death fully satisfied the penalty of sin. The Protestant mantra became: justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone. At the time, Luther had no intention of leaving the church he hoped to reform, but his theological fury led to his inevitable excommunication as a heretic and the splintering of Christendom. But now that chasm between Protestants and Catholics appears to be closing. Pope Francis once surprised reporters by calling Luther a 'reformer,' who rightly protested the 'corruption of the Church,' though 'some methods were not correct.'"
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Well, so much for the idea of General Kelly serving as a steadying influence on President* KKK. Anyone who thought that Kelly’s personal attack on a black woman for having the temerity to open her mouth might have been a one off, a case of the old boy waking up on the wrong side of the bed, we can now be assured that this was no isolated bit of dyspepsia.
General Kelly wants everyone to know that Robert E. Lee was a good guy. He assured the feverish white supremacists and just plain ol’ garden variety racists listening in on Trump TV (Fox, where else?) that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. It was all just an inability to compromise.
Why, if those pain in the ass abolitionists had just listened to reason, them darkies would still be in chains, not in Congress straightening out lying generals. Also, country was no big deal then. It was all about states and states’ rights. And if someone, say, Robert E. Lee, f’rinstance, decided to indulge in a little treason and shoot you in the head because you didn’t think Virginia should hold high the banner of slavery, well then, what’s the problem? Both sides were to blame.
I’m sure all the Nazis out there are thrilled. Oh, and the general will take questions now. But only from reporters who had family members who fought and died for slavery, and maybe the other side, even though they didn’t compromise.
And that’s just what he said on national television. Imagine what he tells the little king in private. The Confederate re-writing of history and denmbasement of hard facts continues apace.
And while the Trumpies are all doing the Massa Down on the Old Plantation Rag, we can hear John Boehner down the end of the bar saying “Trump? Sure he says and does a lot of racist things, but he’s no racist.” He really did say this, in that interview where he said “Fuck this guy, and fuck that guy, and that guy over there? He sucks too.” So let me see if I can parse this logic: it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck. Must be a rhinoceros. Gee, with reasoning powers that great, it’s a wonder he wasn’t one of the greatest Speakers ever.
Oh, wait..
But here we go with the same sort of pretzel logic so many employ who can’t afford to have Trump seen as the guy who refused to rent to blacks, took out a full page ad advocating the execution of innocent black kids, thinks that white supremacists are nice people, fires up the race baiting dog whistles at every opportunity, portrays black Americans as lazy moochers, thinks he should be able to ban all Muslims from entering the country, depicts Mexicans as murderers and rapists, and hires as chief of staff a guy who thinks the Civil War was some kind of misunderstanding.
But he’s not a racist.
Riiigght...he’s a rhinoceros.
We are beginning the beguine of the "outings" of the weasels and the wolves which has made plenty of people very nervous and unsettled. I am so looking forward to what is coming down the pike and what that will be might just cause the "chaos" that Trump talked about in his inauguration speech. Wouldn't that be a kicker!
As far as Kelly goes–––explains why he hasn't succeeded in his "minding" of the baby buffoon.
I, too, want to thank safari for all the skinny on the fat news of the day.
My daughter celebrated her birthday yesterday and thanked many including "Robert Mueller who gave me such a personalized, thoughtful gift that I just know will keep on giving."
Don't assume that Trump knowingly hired crooks for his team, because you can't use the words Trump and 'knowingly' in the same sentence.
Does anyone else detect the hint of smug sleaze from White House gossip columnist, Robert Costa, that I do?
Or am I reacting subjectively (and wrongly) to the way he presents himself to the camera, which likely says more about me than about him?
About Kelly: Endured an overlong Lawrence O'Donnell riposte last week to a Fox piece that said O'Donnell called Kelly a racist, when he had not. He'd implied it maybe, but he hadn't said it.
Now he can.
The idea currently being floated by the Trump Lie Machine is that he barely knows any of these guys. Papadopoulos? Who he? Manafort? Met him once or twice. Besides, all that stuff happened waaaay before he worked for Trump, and by the way, he only worked for Trump for maybe half an hour, at best. Half an hour with a fifteen minute break.
The facts, as they almost always are in a Trump affair, are much different. Trump has known Manafort for decades (here's a handy timeline). He met him, along with fellow swamp dweller and soul sucker, Roger Stone, through hall of fame ratfucker Roy Cohn (who became a sort of godfather to all three of these nascent weasels). When Stone and Manafort began their money-making ratfucking firm, Trump was their first client. He needed some end-arounds of various laws and regulations (doesn't he always?) and Stone and Manafort obliged.
Trump knew exactly who he was getting when he hired Manafort: someone who didn't care about niceties like laws and regulations. Trump wanted someone like himself. Someone who would gut punch the opposition and then stomp them when they were down. Collect dirt, make up lies. You don't hire a mob fixer because he's good at baking cookies. And later on you don't pretend to know anything about his background. So you don't hire a chiseling operator, corner cutter, and end-around guy like Manafort because you want to run a national campaign on the up and up. Trump hired Manafort because he was a chiseling operator, corner cutter, and end-around guy, not in spite of those qualities.
Can you see Donald J. Trump EVER hiring some straight arrow rule follower? Fuck no. That's why his hero was Roy Cohn, not Joseph N. Welch. He doesn't care about "decency at long last", that's for schmoes and losers.
As for actual collusion, I think Marvin has a good point. I'm gonna say that there won't ever be a perp walk for the Orange Goon. Trump may come across as an evil genius to some, but he's no Nixon. He wants to be a bad ass and he's done plenty of shady shit, but it's still not clear whether collusion was the goal or whether the Trump Team of Katzenjammer Kids were just flailing around looking for any dirty trick they could find. Of course none of that matters if there is an actual smoking gun that proves the Trumpies knew what Russia was up to and looked the other way. Trump doesn't strike me as a mastermind who sits up nights dreaming of slimy tricks. That's why he hires people like Manafort. And Lewandowski, and Conway, and Kelly, and Flynn, and Sessions, and Zinke, and Pruitt, and Devos, and--well I was gonna say Carson, but Carson is as clueless as Trump in his current job.
Nonetheless, you don't surround yourself with sleazebags, shady operatives, weasels, and liars unless you feel comfortable in that milieu. Trump thrives in it. He wouldn't survive in a clean house. He needs the dark corners full of crap and the trap doors and dirty tricks he can pull on unsuspecting visitors while picking their pockets.
And who knows? There is a reason Trump still has a thing for Vladimir Putin. It could be that his "business" deals put into play before 2016 and assisted by shadowy Russian oligarchs and banks kept him in hock to those guys and pre-empted any attacks on his part.
The long and short of it is we have a weak, stupid, inept, incredibly unethical, amoral, racist, greedy-ass, cowardly thug in the White House. That alone is probably as bad as actual treason.
And to say, as Sarah Liarby Sanders has been whining, that none of this (the Manafort indictment) has anything to do with Trump is like saying cigarettes have nothing to do with lung cancer.
Smoke 'em if you got 'em, Donnie. While you still can.
Ken: back months and months (years? feels like years--) back, I liked the fact that Robert Costa was "on the case," as I thought he had integrity. But-- I think he has drunk the koolaid, has liked the status of White House reporting, and can't be counted upon to do much more than drool over the happenings there. So, yeah...yuck.
Without the Three Horse(wo)men of Trump's Apocalypse, Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell, I don't think we would ever get the truth about anything.
@Marvin: My lucky day, too yesterday! (Share the same birth date as your daughter, Grace Slick, AND Ivanka Trump!)
Getting the indictment details was indeed a great start to the day...and then even luckier that with nearly half-a-million without power in Maine and many of my nearby friends still in the dark, my little pocket in the community stayed lit.
@Ak: What an excellent OpEd piece and analysis above.
@Ken: Re: Costa: He has taken the place of moderator Gwen I. on the PBS Friday night "people talking around a table" program at eight. Perhaps his tone has changed since this move––you know, more measured and professional? He seemed to me to be the one journalist on T.V. who had a plethora of leakers at the W.H. in his pocket. He always reported as only he had the info. Of course, come to think of it, so did Mark Helphrin in the days before all those womens cried foul.
@MAG: Speaking of electrical power.... It has been several decades since I've had to live paycheck-to-paycheck, but like the generations who lived through the Great Depression, I've never felt rich or privileged (and in fact, I'm neither).
But last night I felt rich AND privileged. Late last week, I had a whole-house stand-by generator installed in anticipation of winter outages. Well, I awoke in the middle of the night to find all the power in the town was out. I got right up & went to work. Lights, check. Internet connection, check, Computer check (sort of, I'm having major problems). And there was that spanking-new generator humming away.
If you live in an area where you experience frequent and/or long power outages, it's well-worth mortgaging your children to get the essential circuits on a generator. There is a real sense of well-being that comes from not being totally dependent on at least one aspect of "the system."
Marie
With friends like this...
Leaving the Trump mess off to the side for a moment, if I may, I can't say how disappointing was the news about Kevin Spacey. Not that he came out as gay. But that he has given plenty of new ammunition to the homophobes and haters by conflating "gay" with "pederast". Thanks, Kevin, you douchebag. He might as well have come out and said, yeah, I jumped on that 14 year old kid and tried to sexually molest him BECAUSE I'm gay!
I don't really care about his coming out. Great. Happy for him. Good luck. But we really could have done without his propping up one of the most heinous fictions about homosexuality. If he were trying to be a dick (à la his "House of Cards" character, Frank Underwood) he couldn't have planned it better.
He has become the new Fox/Wingnut/Christianist poster boy for the "Gays are Perverts" crowd.
Because we don't have enough of that bullshit.
I first heard of Robert Costa when he was writing for ... the Daily Caller. As a result, he is well-sourced in Republican circles. He probably is not quite as partisan as the average denizen of Winger World. Still, as several have suggested with your impressions of Costa, it looks like you can take the boy out of Right Wing World (where "smug" is a positive attribute), but you can't take RWW out of the boy.
@Akhilleus: And now Spacey blames his behavior on demon rum. Not that he can remember what happened.
What about this, Kevin? You were 26 years old & you invited at least one child to a party. As an adult & host of the party, you were responsible for the kid's safety & well-being. You don't get roaring drunk (as you claim) when you have young people to take care of. Not only did you more than likely assault a minor, by choosing to drink (or whatever) too much, you didn't even attempt to fulfill your in-loco-parentis job.
And now Netflix has scrapped "House of Cards."
How the mighty have fallen-- see Spacey, Kevin. I agree-- totally shameful that the kid was 14 at an adult party and no one was acting on his behalf-- And soooo horrible that this turns out to NOT be a gay encounter but a molestation and Spacey uses it to announce his personal business. Another self-unaware numbnut and I was quite surprised. If Netflix MEANT to punish him, they could drop the last season, but of course it's already in the can, so-- business is business-- Ghouls everywhere today-- happy Halloween!
Professor Krugman's conclusion that the much ballyhooed tax cuts, in the end, amount to next to nothing to the monied class demonstrates the baleful influence of the unblinking, demented eye of a warped ideology.
Never mind if it won't help the economy, or improve the country, or induce the wealthy to become "job creators" (a reprehensible lie; it's never happened and it never will), but the rich need their tax cut, dammit. It's a piece of the Confederate holy grail right up there with the return of white dominance, Christian control of schools, immigrant hatred, minority imprisonment, and guns with no controls.
At least if there was a point to it, besides an extra hundred grand for people making $10 million a year, there might be room for some sort of argument in its favor.
But there isn't. And they.don't.care.
Of course a larger concern for most Confederates is that they simply don't want to have to pay for anything. Especially if there's a chance that lazy mooching blahs and Mexican rapists might benefit. It's funny how they're always yapping about people who want stuff for nothing. They're right in that same boat. Only thing? They're in it by themselves. Reminds me of a wingnut lady I once heard on a talk show complaining about having her tax money used to fix potholes. "Why I should I pay for that?" she moaned, "The government should take care of pot holes."
And that, dear friends, is the same thinking that brought us Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and the little king, who all subscribe to the same idea.
Boy, that's leadership for you, in'it?
Bea ... four and a half years ago, after we lost power from the derecho, my wife wanted the assurance of whole-house standby power. So we put in a 20KW natural gas fueled generator with full auto transfer switching.
It works great. Other than a few minutes-long storm outages, the power in our neighborhood has not failed in the past four and a half years!
@Patrick: But the power would have failed 17 times had you not purchased that generator! What I had in the back of my mind in buying the generator was a superstitious suspicion that it would prevent outages.
Turns out that around here, outages can come any time. Even tho there have been massive outages in the area (as MAG suggested) because of a major storm that passed through, the storm ended where I live yesterday. We didn't have any outages during the storm but then, with no wind or other weather issues, the power cut out for several hours. It wasn't on purpose either, because when I reported the outage, the power company was unaware of it.
Anyway, you & your wife probably feel more secure than you would if you didn't have the backup.
My sentiments exactly about Patrick's power generator. If he didn't have it, it would be a return to the Middle Ages six times a year.
And speaking of backup systems, unfortunately for us as Americans, our backup systems are pretty much kaput. Oh, they're there. We have them. They're constitutionally guaranteed. They just don't work.
Our checks and balances, that is. The system that is supposed to protect us from lying traitors and greedy grasping pricks like the current president*. Senate? Nope. House? Nope. Supremes? I doubt it, more later, but it's not looking good.
Is there a warranty on this stuff? Did the Federalists, Jay, Madison, and Monroe, and Jefferson and a few of those other guys issue warranties? If so, I'd like to take my democracy back and get a new one. It ain't workin' as promised. They said we'd have checks and balances. Instead we got assholes who are planning on writing checks from my account to balance their own checkbooks. Is there a Democracy Better Business Bureau I can complain to?
"Thanks for taking my call, ma'am. I want to report a very bad, no good democracy. Vote suppression, gerrymandering, cheating, a legislative branch that has hung out a 'Gone Fishin'' sign and won't answer the door. I knocked a bunch of times. Once, a guy with a gun came out and told me to beat it. We got a Supreme Court that has guys on it who wouldn't know justice if it ran them over then backed up and hit them again. And the executive branch? Don't get me started. Anyway, I want my money back. I thought we had a democracy, not an authoritarian kleptocracy. Say what? You have a used National Socialist Party in the back room? Sorry, I think you must be mistaken. I saw those guys in Charlottesville. They're big supporters of this fat guy who lives in the White House. Okay then, I'm going home and reading The Republic again. Lotta good that'll do me. Plato will just say 'See? Toldjaso'."
So the point here is that if we did have a backup, we wouldn't need it. We have one. But IT doesn't work either.
Must've been made in Russia.
One of the most damning revelations about the latest indictments is the absolutely hollow and shallow rebuttals to the charges put out by every single Republican willing to show their face today. Not a single talking point bears consideration as they've collectively drown in the kool-aid of their alternative universe, perfectly inflated to soothe the flailing confederates as the articles linked above describe the stark differences in information-reality that we live in today as a nation. Their best response is deflection to tax cuts, which just further shines the light on their traitorous motivations and disinterest in the security of our democracy.
I'm sure any patriotic U.S. attorney, and any American for that matter (myself included) rooting for the common good popped a bottle of bubbly as they watched Paul Manafort, ratfucker extraordinaire, walk in to the FBI office with his shit-grin wiped off his face. May bankruptcy rain financial pain upon thee! Karma finally kicked down his door, literally and figuratively.
Mueller seems to be laser-focused and a master of mind games. I can smell the pant-shitting in the West Wing all the way across the Atlantic.
Speaking of shallow and hollow rebuttals, how about the purely stupid rebuttals?
Senator Ayn Rand Paul is questioning why Robert Mueller had to look at corruption. He was only supposed to look at Russia, whines Aqua Buddha.
"'This shows you what happens when you get a special prosecutor going. They said he'd look into Russia and he found tax evasion six years ago,' Paul told WKU Public Radio. 'I'm concerned that we give so much power to prosecutors that they just go sifting through everything from the past decade. They find something and latch on to it, but it had nothing to do with why they were instituted.'"
So if a special prosecutor is looking at money laundering and it turns out that the suspect murdered eight people, according to Randy, he should overlook those tiny indiscretions because their investigation is beyond the scope of the special prosecutor's mandate. How convenient. Especially for idiots.
Remember the other day when I posted a link to a report that Li'l Randy thought it was essential that Joe Sixpack get to decide which science proposal gets grant money? I wondered what might be the value of having someone with zero knowledge of the issues at hand and zero experience make such decisions. Well, never let me say that Aqua Buddha is inconsistent. Because now, he is weighing in on how a professional prosecutor does his job. "Why is he doing this?" whines the Littlest Libertarian Fraud.
It apparently never occurs to the Little One that there's a process in place and a plan afoot. It's as if he's a six year old watching someone playing chess and wondering why the rules for CandyLand aren't being followed. "Isn't there a shortcut through Gumdrop Mountains? Why is he going this other way?"
Sorry Randy. There's no King Kandy in Chess. Go home. Hey, it's been a while since your supporters stomped any women. Knock yourself out.
Akhilleus,
But it's not just any old garden variety corruption. It's corruption directly tied to Russia, corruption that paved the path for the Trumpskies to follow on their road to (dare I say it?) their deliberate collusion with the Putinskies.
Apparently Randy needs to seen a good oculist. He can't see for nothing.
And can't wait to hear Lil' Randy splain why and how Manafort came to be his campaign director in the first place. Musta been sheer coincidence...his Russian ties wholly unnoticed by the Pretender.
And, oh yeah, why Manafort left when he did. Wanna know that too.
Ak, also, to those same people who are so very very concerned that the investigation isn't adhering precisely to it's original mandate, where was that whinge when Whitewater turned into Bluedress? As well as your point that the financial corruption has everything to do with Russia where Bluedress had nothing to do with Whitewater. So far at least, the investigation is only looking at who and what the miscreants screwed metaphorically, not literally. Though the sleaze is so rich in this, I'd be surprised if there isn't even more of the latter than the former.