US Politics, February 2018: Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots

sigh.....

A spokesman for Nunes responded to Schiff's letter by calling it an "increasingly strange attempt to thwart publication of the memo," saying changes were made that were "minor edits to the memo, including grammatical fixes and two edits requested by the FBI and by the Minority themselves."
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"The vote to release the memo was absolutely procedurally sound, and in accordance with House and Committee rules," Nunes spokesman Jack Langer said. "To suggest otherwise is a bizarre distraction from the abuses detailed in the memo, which the public will hopefully soon be able to read for themselves."

But senior Democratic committee official disputed that characterization of the alterations to the memo and said they did not resolve the factual problems that have been raised by the FBI or Justice Department.

"The changes are not cosmetic and almost all of them are unrelated to concerns about sensitive information. Instead, they try to water down some of the Majority's assertions," the official said. "While the Minority has continually pointed out flaws in the majority document, we have not requested any changes because we feel the whole document is fundamentally flawed."

good thread title

If Hope Hicks does down what 25 year olds will be left to run the government

BARRON

in case you were wondering, Trump's claim that his SOTU got the "highest ratings ever recorded", is in fact not true

Is there a website compiling the Trump utterances which are factually accurate? Or is it not worth creating a website featuring so little content?

good mourning!

#SOTU TV Viewers:
2018: 45.6M
2017: 47.7M*
2016: 31.3M
2015: 31.7M
2014: 33.3M
2013: 33.5M
2012: 37.8M
2011: 42.8M
2010: 48.0M
2009: 52.4M*
2008: 37.5M
2007: 45.5M
2006: 41.7M
2005: 38.4M
2004: 43.4M
2003: 62.1M
1993: 66.9M* (largest TV audience)

*Not an official SOTU pic.twitter.com/OZlUHmGQp4

— Fox News Research (@FoxNewsResearch) February 1, 2018

I don't know what's stranger, that Fox News is fact-checking Trump or that every speech that beat his was somehow "not an official SOTU"

2003 and 2010 don't have an asterix

oh. then, the first one I guess

"not an official SOTU" = the speeches delivered by new presidents to joint sessions of Congress; hence why they happened in 2017, 2009, and 1993 (and presumably 2001 etc)

People want to hear the first statements by new presidents, then their interest drops off. Trump will never beat these ratings.

sad

so we're really not gonna sanction russia (!) for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election?

not to defend the dorks at all, but my understanding is that they are already being sanctioned, just not getting extra sanctions. And the sanctions have not been lifted.

People want to hear the first statements by new presidents, then their interest drops off. Trump will never beat these ratings.

Nobody tell Two Scoops why W in 2003 was so high then.

Harold & Kumar have the answer to that iirc.

so we're really not gonna sanction russia (!) for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election?

sanctions mostly hurt ordinary citizens and shouldn't be encouraged imho

https://www.worldfinance.com/special-reports/the-impact-of-economic-sanctions

i'm worried about sanctions the Yam regime are putting on we the people

Why, the penny drops!

Mark Meadows says he's talked w/ Dems about how the border wall is offensive to some Latinos & now wants to make sure we "secure our border without sending a bad message"

— Liz Goodwin (@lizcgoodwin) February 1, 2018

I thought the whole point of the wall was to offend Latinos.

File under "news shocking to nobody":

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/01/politics/nunes-memo-donald-trump/index.html

lol even NAPOLITANO is concerned

http://thehill.com/homenews/media/371794-fox-news-napolitano-if-nunes-changed-memo-to-satisfy-political-needs-innocent

i don't understand what's so bad about the white house co-authoring a congressional memo that casts aspersions on an investigation into the white house's obstruction of justice when it comes to investigating conspiracy with a foreign adversary to interfere with an american election. aren't both sides bad?

there are some very fine people on both sides

Have there been any indications that Mueller is investigating Nunes? Because I can't help but wonder what he's getting out of all of this.

a tugjob

People want to hear the first statements by new presidents, then their interest drops off. Trump will never beat these ratings.

Which is why he's considering not running for reelection, but resigning and then running again. So he'll be a new president again. All about ratings, baby.

make sure we "secure our border without sending a bad message"

Maybe paint some pictures of tacos and other Mexican stuff on the wall?

I heard about a Chinese restaurant that became a Mexican restaurant, but they liked the art, so they painted sombreros on the pandas on the window.

https://i.imgur.com/J4bFtuY.jpg

Just a suggestion.

if he resigns, he'll prob get huge ratings.

WH saying Trump has read the memo; not sure how that's possible unless it's been converted into a book-on-tape

It's a picture book with his photo on every other page to keep him focused. 'There I am again!'

Did Putin sign off on the memo, y/n?

apparently the memo is only 4 pages, which is 3 pages longer than Trump's attention span. but maybe he did it in chunks.

The only way that memo could be read by him would be tweeting it at him in 400 character parts. Or print it on his toilet paper for, y'know, when he's tweeting.

Trump: (mutters to self while slowly scanning memo with a pained expression) Devin, what's this word?
Nunes: That's 'collusion', Mr. President.
Trump: 'Collusion', right, right. (continues muttering) What about this one?
Nunes: The word is 'FBI'.
Trump: And that one?
Nunes: That's your name, Mr. President.

Trump: Okay, I've seen that one before. And this word?
Nunes: That's a smear of steak sauce, sir. It's all over your hands.
Trump: But what word is it?

This is about what I would figure, making it even more of a muddle:

DEVELOPING: The White House has agreed to some redactions in the FISA memo at the FBI’s request, per multiple WH officials.

— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) February 1, 2018

i hope everyone just takes a deep breath and remembers how careless that crooked nasty woman was with classified information

The redactions are only going to set off the monkey house all the louder.

Well, exactly. As well as making a short and apparently contextless memo even shorter.

i hope something exciting happens soon... trump bores me

I'm sure Trump's followers will accept, with their trademarked grace and quiet dignity, the FBI-requested redactions in this memo about the FBI's conspiracy to destroy America.

i hope something exciting happens soon

famous last words

Pres. Trump says Sen. Orrin Hatch told him he was a better president than Washington and Lincoln

— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) February 1, 2018

Exciting!

lol if anyone would remember those dudes it would be Hatch

I'm all for free speech but anyone who makes a claim like that in seriousness should be jailed for life.

Or, in this case, immediately stripped of his Senatorship, at the absolute least.

He wss high when he said it

shut your hatch, orrin

Washington and Lincoln couldn't throw a spiral to save their lives

Losers who have never had their names on any casinos

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/01/politics/white-house-worried-wray-nunes-memo/index.html

Washington (CNN)Top White House aides are worried FBI Director Christopher Wray could quit if the highly controversial Republican memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance tools is released, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation tell CNN.

Wray has made clear he is frustrated that President Donald Trump picked him to lead the FBI after he fired FBI Director James Comey in May, yet his advice on the Nunes memo is being disregarded and cast as part of the purported partisan leadership of the FBI, according to a senior law enforcement official.

is this bad?

The Very Smart Genius is walking around saying "I can't wait to obstruct justice!" out loud to everyone he sees. https://t.co/HPNYeGeV8Y

— Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) February 1, 2018

Further muddle

NEW: The WH is worried that FBI Director Chris Wray might resign if the memo is released. Kelly trying to find a compromise that keeps Wray happy: https://t.co/qznaWcyied via @DanaBashCNN @jeffzeleny @evanperez

— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) February 1, 2018

Seems Bad

think how poor carter page feels, subject to FBI surveillance all because crooked hillary (and the kenyan's deep state minions) colluded with foreign governments (the UK and the former USSR) to conjure up the phony dossier

I mean this is negotiation in public, really. Not all that surprising that at least some in the WH kinda realize that they actually should find a way out of the box they've made.

what a country

can someone import all the drinking .gifs from the Director's Poll thread into this one?

omg Trump just resigned

j/k just needed an alt history cheer-up

of course Trump is better than Washington and Lincoln, Washington never once eliminated a government regulation and Lincoln set the slaves free, which was just hell on small business owners

I just want to be perfectly clear that when we look at guys like Devin Nunes (age 44) and what sort of young people are currently, in this age, drawn to active participation in GOP politics, that we're looking at the future of the party, not the past

— slackbot (@pareene) February 1, 2018

this really feels like the ending of the book Airframe:

"A senior Democratic committee official told CNN that there are “five material changes to different parts of the memo, including a modification that appears intended to water down the overall importance of the Majority’s purported ‘findings.’”

“The Majority document now in the White House’s possession is different in key respects from the document the Committee Majority voted on January 18, 2018 to make available to the full House of Representatives and which hundreds of House Members have read so far," the source explained. "We have identified five material changes to different parts of the memo, including a modification that appears intended to water down the overall importance of the Majority’s purported 'findings.' The Majority’s White House version otherwise also includes six less consequential grammatical and word modifications (as well as one font-related change to align with the rest of the document).”

What Republicans say: Rep. Trey Gowdy’s office says the congressman, a senior Republican on the panel, has no issues with the changes. They contend that the changes were minor and made before the Monday vote.

Nunes’ office did not respond to a request for comment. His office said last night there were only two edits made as a request from FBI and Democrats and the rest were minor and grammatical changes."

I mean the general public could determine for themselves if we were to see both versions of the memo, so really it's important that we release the memo now

let's all write our own memos

The Trump Administrsrion says once ISIS is gone, our troops will stay in Syria to fight Iran. FYI - this is a BIG DEAL that few in Congress seem to care about. https://t.co/AWfbXMaycq

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 1, 2018

"to fight Iran" is not mention in the linked NYT article at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEzRQYDVD_4

i hope they call this Dilbertgate years from now

"I got a letter from the government the other day. I opened and it said they were suckers."

omg Trump just resigned

― fuck you, your hat is horrible (Neanderthal), Thursday, February 1, 2018 12:40 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

j/k just needed an alt history cheer-up

― fuck you, your hat is horrible (Neanderthal), Thursday, February 1, 2018 12:41 PM (fifty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

neanderthal don't do this to me ever again unless you mean it

Trump will never ever formally resign, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of him just walking out of the WH one day and never going back or 'presidenting' again. Like, just pretending that this whole thing never happened so he can go back to his taco bowl lunches at Trump Tower.

He'll end his term, declare America great again, and then disappear in a puff of smoke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1tmkAFb_Os

https://media.giphy.com/media/3o6MbeBSWJ6rBmlLa0/giphy.gif
https://media.giphy.com/media/3orif68nbIeBrnIK1q/giphy.gif

among the lamest denials

Per Hatch spox, he has said that Trump “can be” the greatest president ever but has never said "is"

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 1, 2018

I'd be ok with him being the next Lincoln, at least in one specific regard.

you want him to be portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis?

sure if they use the same prop gun that was used in The Crow

It was good enough to fire McCabe, no one argues its factually inaccurate, but now days later they want to protect the names of those involved in a scandal that was big enough to fire a senior official a month before retirement? They don’t deserve a pass on that!

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 1, 2018

uhmmm, did you say "fired"

Interesting

Rick Gates' lawyers are asking to withdraw immediately, per new filing — reasons aren't given in the public filing, they say they're in an exhibit "which is the
subject of a motion to be filed under seal" pic.twitter.com/ap3ywROzFB

— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) February 1, 2018

Recall that @kpolantz reported last week that Sidley Austin's Tom Green had joined Gates' legal team: https://t.co/iqLsPmz4qa But Green hasn't entered an appearance in court for him as of now.

— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) February 1, 2018

Related, per Tillman's second tweet, to this story about Gates maybe negotiating something with Mueller:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/23/politics/rick-gates-new-attorney-mueller-russia-investigation/index.html

https://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/tom-green.png

all these people are such venal idiots i have no doubt most of them will go down for something or other

but venal idiocy as a concept and way of life appears to be going strong

see also: history

isn't there a way we can structure society so that venal idiocy can find no purchase in it

Have you considered Neolithic subsistence hunting/gathering?

Yeah, I've come to the conclusion that that's pretty much the only alternative. I'm down for giving it a shot.

All should appreciate the FBI speaking up. I wish more of our leaders would. But take heart: American history shows that, in the long run, weasels and liars never hold the field, so long as good people stand up. Not a lot of schools or streets named for Joe McCarthy.

— James Comey (@Comey) February 1, 2018

haha wow

james comey is such a sanctimonious prick

The FBI's headquarters is the J. Edgar Hoover building https://t.co/d1yEfb53VM

— slackbot (@pareene) February 1, 2018

re Comey yeah fuck that guy forever. he's such a fucking doofus.

I hate comey so much

<3 Stretch Comey for tight troll game and trying to blend in with the curtains

I only like Comey as the catalyst to take down Trump. Other than that ... enjoy your book tour, dude.

Re: Hoover, I dunno, Hoover was a horrible villain but he did more or less found the FBI and serve as its first head, for about 50 years, over half the existence of the FBI, so it's kind if hard to write his name out of the agency's history.

Maybe we should write his name a letter suggesting that it take itself out of history.

They could rename it the Not J Edgar Hoover Building.

The J. Edger, A Film By Clint Eastwood Building

Comey is acting like the showboater Trump claimed he was...

He's back!

EXCLUSIVE: Anthony Scaramucci candidly recalls his battles with Bannon ("the creature from the Black Lagoon"), Preibus ("Rancid Penis"), and his undying fealty for Donald Trump https://t.co/4JGYyM4U9l

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) February 2, 2018

I mean, speaking of showboating

v unfair to the creature from the black lagoon imo

That artist rendering is pretty good, it almost has a Jack Davis cover of Mad vibe.

Per Hatch spox, he has said that Trump “can be” the greatest president ever but has never said "is"

Also, Orrin Hatch can be the greatest senator ever. But only if he pulls a Czolgosz on Trump.

There's a Joe McCarthy Drive in Buffalo! I never knew if it was named after the Senator and, if so, why. Maybe it's named for this guy, idk.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mcconnell-urges-mississippi-governor-to-consider-cochran-senate-seat/2018/02/01/7f455d68-079d-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html?sw_bypass=true&utm_term=.51ae590478db

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Anderson

After U.S. Senator Walter Mondale was elected vice president in 1976, the governor needed to appoint Mondale's successor. Anderson agreed with his lieutenant governor, Rudy Perpich, that Anderson would resign as governor, and Perpich, as the new governor, would appoint Anderson senator.

In what became known as the "Minnesota Massacre", nearly the entire DFL Party ticket was defeated in 1978, including Perpich and the candidates for both U.S. Senate seats, Anderson and Bob Short. Anderson's arrangement to have himself appointed to the Senate—and Perpich's role in that appointment—were deemed central factors in the defeats.

BTW, didn't all these GOP dum dums just maintain current FISA standards powers as of, like, a week or two ago?

if i remember high school history correctly, there was a Joe McCarthy Richard Nixon Studebaker, who was famous for his family brand of television sets

goddamn you for making me google that

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a bulletin from CBS News... JFK. Blown Away. What Else Do We Have to Say?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNfbcSBib64

he's tweetin'

"Rank & File are great people!"

???

ok, if this memo is released, does Christopher Wray resign? Should he resign? Is it better or worse if he doesn't resign?

Yeah I'm not sure how to feel about that. But get ready for your next Deputy AG, Rachel Lee Brand. Graduate of Antonin Scalia Law School.

I'm sure everything will be just fine.

surprise: the "rank-and-file" comment originated with President Hannity.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia/trump-blasts-fbi-justice-dept-bosses-in-showdown-over-republican-memo-idUSKBN1FM1FD

It’s hard for me to get excited about any of this. Of the 10,000 reasons Trump should not be president that Don Jr. meeting is like number 4,000. There have been dirtier campaign tactics than Trump alluding darkly to the contents of the leaked emails—remember the Swift Boat ads?

"Rank & File are great people!"

I've always been curious about 80s cowpunk. Maybe I should check those guys out. There's a compilation of their two Slash albums on Spotify...

https://open.spotify.com/album/4gRMsuakBOjK66HxAEYMXc?si=4z7I24DCTty15fMBED8n2Q

Acting ICE director: Politicians in sanctuary cities should be arrested and charged with crimes https://t.co/vmea2zKnvU pic.twitter.com/UrxuIURPMr

— The Hill (@thehill) January 3, 2018

Wasn't there a story from last year about the possibility that Christopher Wray was already heavily compromised by things he did with Christie re the Bridgegate scandal? I was wondering how he was bearing up prior to the current situation.

i'd like to see him try

xpost

The investigation probably is politically motivated to be honest. Mueller is turning over every rock to find financial crimes that obviously exist but are probably disconnected from the original narrative of “Russian interference in the election.” I’m not saying it isn’t understandable — Trump is a scumbag who disgraces the nation at best and an unhinged national security threat at worst — but I don’t think this is world’s away from the Starr report and I’m not going to faint with horror that Republicans are trying to disrupt it. Trump brought it all on himself by firing Comey and incriminating himself of course but he’s a dumb caveman.

What is the political motive of Republican Mueller, appointed by Republican Rod Rosenstein, after Trump fired Republican James Comey?

Not necessarily partisan but I don’t think these people want Trump to be president.

The republicans in congress i guess are onboard but my suspicion is that career intelligence officials realize this is a catastrophe. Also when it all started it wasn’t clear what kind of “republican” he would be — Bannon was still there

I don’t think this is world’s away from the Starr report

respectfully disagree -- starr started out investigating white water, which had zero to do with monica lewinsky. mueller is investigating russian interference in the election, especially quid pro quo with the trump campaign; trump's past crimes laundering money for russians is related to that

yes - anything that could give Russia (or others) leverage over Trump or his team is germane to the investigation, which helpfully means anything illegal they did needs to be looked at. it doesn't need political motivation to cast its net wide.

I don’t really have a point except that Trump might not have been wrong that people had it out for him. That’s why it’s weird when ostensible liberals act surprised thst he would dare — dare! — question the integrity of the FBI. Like come on these people are used to pulling the strings in ways that subvert democracy. That part isn’t wrong.

For brutally pragmatic reasons I hope the worst possible happens to Trump but the swirl of discourse around this Russia investigation makes me uncomfortable. Kind of misses the point about why Trump’s presidency is a catastrophe in the first place, which has nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with his resurrection of nativism.

xps

“If I were a betting man, I’d bet against the president,” said one of the lawyers.

The second attorney, who represents a senior Trump official, speculated that Mueller could try to bring an indictment against Trump even if he expects the move to draw fierce procedural challenges from the president’s lawyers – if only to demonstrate the gravity of his findings.

“It’s entirely possible that Mueller may go that route on the theory that, as an open question, it should be for the courts to decide,” the attorney said. “Even if the indictment is dismissed, it puts maximum pressure on Congress to treat this with the independence and intellectual honesty that it will never, ever get."

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/02/trump-russia-indictment-mueller-probe-384969

Here's a controversial take on Trump's assertion that people are out to get him: how about, rather, he spent decades getting away with shit and now the chickens are finally coming home to roost? It's like a dude who spent decades on the FBI most wanted list coming out of hiding and complaining because people are all the time chasing him now. Unfair! Sad!

I agree with reggie. The 'financial crimes' are part and parcel to how he became a Russian asset in the first place.

I don’t think he’s a russian asset. I think it just feels better. To people to see him as an alien invader than the monstrous product of our own democracy—thats why the story is so appealing. Maybe i’m wrong.

No, you're absolutely otm

Trump is an authoritarian, which has everything to do with him subverting law and trying to make a law agency do his bidding and nothing more.

There is a billboard in Fresno of Trump and Nunes on leashes held by Putin—some independent group’s ad to get out the vote. This kind of thing bothers me. It’s the imagery of conspiracy theories.

i think he's a monstrous product of voodoo economics, and the russians -- who know full well that reagan's amping up the arms race bankrupted the soviet union -- are laughing their asses off at this posterchild for american hypocrisy whom they've propped up financially for years now

xppst

treesh junior is emphatically OTM again.

Of COURSE federal employees are not robots; they are humans with opinions and when they see something horrid coming it's understandable that they would be alarmed.

And yeah, if Russia stuff is what hobbles Trump I won't be upset. But really the racism and sexism (and antipathy toward the downtrodden generally) are bigger problems for me than who met with who when and then lied about it.

Literally everything in the Mueller investigation (that we know of) is directly related to Russia, from loans to laundering to obstruction to cooperation/collusion to interference. I don't think Trump is an "asset," not formally. But that doesn't mean Russia doesn't have influence. And even if Trump himself is not an asset, clearly Manafort, Page, Flynn et al. have deep, close ties to Russia.

FWIW, every branch of the Starr investigation was related to Clinton, but not to each other. That was a real turn-over-every-rock witch hunt.

Trump but the swirl of discourse around this Russia investigation makes me uncomfortable. Kind of misses the point about why Trump’s presidency is a catastrophe in the first place, which has nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with his resurrection of nativism.

If you accept that the catastrophe central to Trump's presidency is an egregious compromise of national interests—domestically and abroad—in order to benefit a handful of supranational billionaires, Russia has everything to with it. Fomenting nativism is merely a lever toward that end (cf. Putin). It's entirely about money.

idk most conspiracies hinge on people doing in secret the sort of things that Trump is just doing out in the open

you can draw a pretty straight line from "accepts help of a foreign power to win an election" to trump's general baseline m.o. of "willing to screw over anyone to get what he wants" and yes that includes activating a white racist base to push him over the hump in swing states, just as it included breaking contracts he didn't feel like honouring, just as it included moving on them like a bitch and grabbing them by the pussy.

The FBI is not just 'pulling the strings in ways that subvert democracy', they have throughout their history pulled strings especially to harm left wing groups and help the right. And as a matter of fact, that is what they did in 2016 as well. What Trump and the Republicans are doing are trying to make them even more right wing, with even less regard for basic constitutional rules, and there's no reason to not fight that.

like the fact that the Trump's campaign's *only* change to the RNC platform was weakening support for Ukraine. or just deciding to not enforce sanctions that were unanimously approved by Congress. or his phonecalls with Putin "mysteriously" going undocumented. or Junior meeting w/ Russians who seem to explicitly offer a quid pro quo, followed by everyone in the admin lying off their ass about it. or Trump firing and/or attacking every single person who isn't "on his side". like, imagine what a fever dream it would be for the GOP if *any* of this stuff involved a Clinton. imagine if Congressional Dems had a quarter of the enthusiasm for this that the Republicans did over the tarmac meeting.

Y'all are frisky this morning!

I mean there's practically a bombshell on this story on a daily basis! I get the concern and all but I think we can stop being worried about Pizzagating ourselves at this point

otm The question of a financially private quid pro quo, in which one citizen's financial interests and history of money laundering are protected in exchange (for example) for a shift in U.S. posture toward Ukraine, is not "business as usual." It is alarming.

idk most conspiracies hinge on people doing in secret the sort of things that Trump is just doing out in the open

Seriously. It's neither conspiracy nor theory, it's all right there! The conspiracy theory is the unfathomable realization that there is probably a lot more we don't know.

xpost And again, whether or not Trump himself directly participated, if those around him and hired by him (and not fired by him!) were up to no good and he either encouraged or enabled that, that's criminal.

Yes. If people are seeing the Russia business strictly through the lens of "corruption" I guess I understand guarding against sanctimony as our govt is inherently corrupt. But that's not the big problem. The big problem is that the President is compromised.

"willing to screw over anyone to get what he wants" and yes that includes activating a white racist base to push him over the hump in swing states

GAH. Didn't we already cover this months ago?

It does not matter if you're just "activating" racists for electoral gains. If you practice racist politics you are a racist. If you benefit from racist politics you are a racist. If you even just kinda sorta like that racists vote for you, you are a racist.

Oh but please, let's talk more about who probably rode up in an elevator with a Russian and must surely have discussed something Russiany.

and yeah - the crazy thing about this, as Fredrik alluded to, is that the FBI *is* right wing; they 100% threw the election to Trump in the final weeks, as alerting the public that they had Clinton emails that they **already had copies of** was apparently more important than letting people know that Trump and many of the people in his campaign were under a far wider-reaching investigation - Michael Flynn was still working for him! the same people who Trump and 99% of GOP Congress are now accusing of being Deep State anti-Trump operatives are the ones who drafted that Clinton memo in the first place! it's infuriating - like an NBA team blatantly getting every foul call, then loudly complaining that the refs were biased against them because they missed a travel in the first quarter.

hey y'all i think everybody's made their points, let's let our president say the last word on this

The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans - something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2018

the comedy duo of Rank & File

not as good as Allen & Burns, better than Martin & Lewis

It does not matter if you're just "activating" racists for electoral gains. If you practice racist politics you are a racist.

agree 100% i didn't mean to suggest otherwise!

Trump using the word 'sacred' makes me want to vomit. Can't wait until he starts ending his tweets with a hearty 'Namaste!'

the sacred investigative process (which I am actively attempting to subvert)

Have a blessed day! MAGA!

I get what you're saying YMP, but racist politics are not illegal, but rather handsomely rewarded in this country. We spend two-thirds of these threads calling him a piece of shit for it. This is a big deal too. As is his crusade against the environment, the massive transfer of wealth to the 1%, the daily assault on the notion of 'truth', the blatantly un-constitutional conflicts of interest, the normalization of white nationalist talking points, the fact that the GOP is nearly unanimously selling out their values to protect this guy, and the fact that major, major decisions in this country are being made by the likes of Jared Kushner. We should be talking about all of it.

God damnit, I'm just so mad about this Donald Trump !!!!!!!!!

BTW, a year+ of non-stop leaks the dummy and his supporters have derided as illegal, and then we have weeks of preamble about a memo that actually *is* classified that he *wants* released, and that's the one thing that *doesn't* leak.

the GOP is nearly unanimously selling out their values to protect this guy

Question that the GOP is selling out any values here

okay good point

You're cool, Tracer and frogbs.

Just get somewhat frustrated with this because so much of it is about who met with who and where a hotel was/wasn't and whether a sanction is this or that and most people (to be honest) are like zzzzz.

Is there a poisoned umbrella-tip? Boxes of Pennsylvanian ballots being fed into a woodchipper? Trunkloads of rubles? A literal or even figurative smoking gun? No? Okay, back to zzzzz for most people.

Meanwhile if your politics is based on who is doing what to the downtrodden, especially those of color, Russia is only interesting inasmuch as it brings down these mousefuckers.

It looks like Manafort and Gates are mostly on the hook for things that have little to do with Russia, though that could just be the opening shot.

Manafort / Gates deserve to be behind bars and a prosecutor uncovering tax evasion, fraud, etc, in the course of a wider investigation has every right to put them there. The same applies to Trump.

Politically, the worst case scenario, imo, would be Mueller failing to demonstrate either financial crimes or illegal collusion but trying to nail Trump and key members of the team on obstruction - which would be perfectly valid as a legal strategy in a criminal case but likely to fuel the right-wing perception that the whole process has been a stitch-up.

it's perverse but the Russia stuff is like the dessert in the five-course meal of shit we're eating every day from this administration. there are lots of ridiculous characters, a mystery, international subterfuge...it's a hell of a lot more fun to think about than ICE rounding up schoolchildren or Puerto Rico still be in shambles.

xpost Given the stated expertise of a fair amount of his team involves money laundering, seems likely that's the main target.

xp But YMP I care deeply about all those things and see how erosion of our democracy at the hands of private interests is exacerbating these problems. Human rights suffer in an oligarchy.

actually what we should really be talking about is the fact that Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women and barging into underage girls' locker rooms, then was accused by over a dozen women of sexual assault and suffered no repercussions whatever for it

meanwhile the DNC had to spend a month apologizing because Harvey Weinstein gave them money

and the DNC is too "professional" to raise a fuss over steve wynn. the mind boggles at the fruits of our meritocracy

GOP isn't selling out their values, but they're pretty decisively laying their 'we have no values' cards on the table. I don't know how significant a long-term impact that will have on the affiliates who still unaccountably maintain that the party actually stands for things.

A literal or even figurative smoking gun?

Tbf, people related to the investigation have already died under mysterious circumstances, so ...

Also worth keeping in mind that the non-stop controversy and investigation has likely kept the worst potential shit from even happening. The impetus for all this stuff was not to take down Trump, but to prevent a bad actor (Russia) from doing worse. Trump unbound would likely further enable their international chicanery, which had and has a direct impact on elections and therefore politics and certainly democracy. It just so happens that Trump himself, through ignorance or evil or ineptitude, happens to be effect as well as cause of democracy's accelerated weakening/demise.

Is there a poisoned umbrella-tip? Boxes of Pennsylvanian ballots being fed into a woodchipper? Trunkloads of rubles? A literal or even figurative smoking gun?

How about a blackmail piss tape and a leaked* email where Trump Jr. directly attempts to engage in a quid pro quo with people connected to Putin?

*leaked, for whatever reason, by Junior himself**

**who also let it slip yesterday that McCabe was actually *fired*, another bombshell story that somehow didn't make headlines because things are so incredibly nuts right now

...it's a hell of a lot more fun to think about than ICE rounding up schoolchildren or Puerto Rico still be in shambles.

Again, I'm only interested insofar as it embarrasses and discredits and (one hopes) ultimately defeats these horrible people.

And as Josh says, the issue hampers their efforts to do yet more evil, so okay.

One thing for sure: one day this will end without a catharsis commensurate to the anger we have all built up. It will be a shame if so much indignation dies on the vine and doesn't manifest in longer-term electoral/legislative change.

It looks like Manafort and Gates are mostly on the hook for things that have little to do with Russia, though that could just be the opening shot.

I mean, in so far as Ukraine is not literally Russia (yet), but we're not talking six degrees of Vladimir Putin here. Even if the Manafort/Gates stuff was not directly related to Russia, it's not like a complete investigative non sequitur.

Also worth keeping in mind that the non-stop controversy and investigation has likely kept the worst potential shit from even happening. The impetus for all this stuff was not to take down Trump, but to prevent a bad actor (Russia) from doing worse.

haven't our intelligence communities already said that Russia's likely going to target midterms in the same way, and that our ability to do anything about it has been kneecapped by the fact that the Executive Branch still thinks the culprit is a 400 lb. guy in his mom's basement?

Have a blessed day! MAGA!

Will never not see this as MAGMA and forlornly dream of far, distant Kobaïa.

God damnit, I'm just so mad about this Donald Trump !!!!!!!!!

― frogbs, Friday, February 2, 2018 8:16 AM (ten minutes ago)

xpost
Trump and Vander = both neo-nazis who speak in a strange language of their own

Not directly related to this, but the handwringing in the war between FBI and Trump because 'they are both bad' is a categorical mistake. It's not about good or bad, it's about left and right. FBI is too far to the right, but Trump is trying to yank it even further to the right. The easy answer on what to do is to defend the institution from the attempt of rightward-yanking, and then yank it leftwards when we get the chance.

Seeing more and more reports that the memo is a bit of a wet blanket. It'll be spun, of course, but even so.

doesn't the whole Magma story begin with a colony of people escaping a tyrant

Forgive the link to Breitbart, which is a very bad website, but they got audio of Trump's speech to the RNC last night, and he bragged that "there aren't a lot of people" who can pass a dementia test like he can pass a dementia test. https://t.co/OUskfI5CWt pic.twitter.com/G2aMHOkJw4

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 2, 2018

Actually, what we should really be talking about is the fact that the one guy with the power to instantly end life Earth has a very diseased brain

doesn't the whole Magma story begin with a colony of people escaping a tyrant

By going to another planet, yes, not really a viable new direction for the Democrats though.

oh and by the way the Democrat lead in the generic Congressional ballot has cratered in the last few weeks so good luck with that "blue wave"

xp they would push a centrist program for ship-boarding priorities and try to make sure it included a bipartisan allotment of seats for the tyrant's side

So, um, what if they don't release the memo?

Fuck polling about elections 10 months away.

xpost That would be funny. Apparently unlikely at this point, but funny.

just chiming in here to say homan is a fascist and it's imperative that we dismantle ICE before he starts trying to arrest mayors & city council members. my stomach lurches at the shift of the wind that could bring about.

we need to be activating constituents to pressure Roybal-Allard in CA 40, Cuellar in TX 28, Price in NC 4, & Ruppersberger in MD 2 to commit to defund enforcement & removal operations & then we need to follow suit with whichever house dems get added to the House Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee after we take it back in November.

Mostly lawyerly speculation but some good quotes/viewpoints:

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/02/trump-russia-indictment-mueller-probe-384969

The ending is what I found most interesting:

One of the Russia defense attorneys also suggested what he called a “jujitsu move”: naming Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator in a larger obstruction of justice case that targets one or more associates.

Whatever Mueller and his deputies have planned, the attorney said, it is not likely to be anticlimactic.

“There’s a sense of confidence I feel when I’m with them,” said the same lawyer. “Their level of confidence has grown, and that’s a body language thing.”

actually what we should really be focusing on is everyone getting Super Ebola AIDS in three years

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/02/01/cdc-to-cut-by-80-percent-efforts-to-prevent-global-disease-outbreak/?utm_campaign=buffer&utm_content=buffer6a5e6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_term=.4316ebf41085

but hey at least all those hardworking people at Home Depot got their $200 bonus checks

Just to be clear: We are really and truly at a historical moment where actual adults are discussing whether the President of the United States is good or bad at a test that includes "identifying sketches of animals."

Sure, he's a known sexual predator and white-supremacist sympathizer. But let's seriously drill down on the important issue of: Can he correctly name a picture of a bunny?

a bit early for a stiff drink, but what the fuck, #nothingmatters

Countries where the CDC is planning to scale back include some of the world’s hot spots for emerging infectious disease, such as China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo. Last year, when Congo experienced a potentially deadly Ebola outbreak in a remote, forested area, CDC-trained disease detectives and rapid responders helped contain it quickly.

v sensible decision, good work everyone

where's the tax returns? president trump is conspiring with former KGB agents to break up the USA the way the USA broke up the USSR

I think I would be okay with that. Why didn't they just come right out and say so, they'd get a lot of support.

oh and by the way the Democrat lead in the generic Congressional ballot has cratered in the last few weeks so good luck with that "blue wave"

― frogbs, Friday, February 2, 2018 2:50 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

short-sighted.

Yeah, was just thinking the other day how good a job someone(s) has done at dividing the US. I feel like there's a phase which traditionally follows a 'divide' phase in the history of geopolitical maneuvering but I cannot for the life of me remember what it is.

cuddle puddle iirc

Thaaaaat's it, thx.

No idea how much faith to put into this, but I want to believe:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/opinion/sunday/republican-taxes-texas-blue.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur

That's not possible, because the Post says there might not be a blue wave.

Good point

Should've known posters would start freaking out about one poll showing tightening in November ten months out. Might as well stay home in November!

there’s a pretty rich mix of evidence — polling, special elections data, retirements, the history of the “out” party performing well in midterms — suggesting that the political winds favor Democrats. Now one of those indicators — an important one, the generic ballot — doesn’t look as good.

But if you had a model that blended all those indicators together, how much would a 5-point swing on the generic ballot in January affect your prediction for November? I don’t know, because we don’t start building those sorts of models until late in the election year. But I’d guess you’d have to discount it pretty heavily; so maybe a 5-point swing in January translates to a 1-point or 2-point swing in your November prediction, or something.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-happened-to-the-democratic-wave/

The democrats pathetic cave on the shut-down would doom them in most years. Fortunately the news cycle moves at such speed these days that it'll probably be forgotten by the time the clocks change let alone november

The clocks go forward and back in Murrica, right?

Kinda feel like any data that keeps the Dems from feeling cocky and complacent is a good thing. Stay hungry.

pretty sure the last year has proved that stateside clocks only go back xp

Rephrase: TO THE EXTENT that it keeps Dems hungry, it's a good thing. Not so much if it actually pans out, obvs.

if trump fires rosenstein, and then mueller, then new york state indicts the trumps / kushners, season 2 of "the president" will be loads of fun

US clocks give the illusion that they're going forward only to occasionally go 'sike' and reveal that they've been standing still for half a decade.

alfred otm

It's entirely about money.

I agree with this re Russia, and as the cause of Yam's beating heart.

idk most conspiracies hinge on people doing in secret the sort of things that Trump is just doing out in the open

Conspiracies have been mostly unnecessary in this country since 1980. Just describe your malfeasance as beneficence and hardly anyone will challenge you.

The plethora of "bombshell stories" is one reason Jane/Joe Bigbox Worker may never get a handle on most of this. It's all one nonstop maelstrom of shit.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxposts even the people who are paid to pore over these stats on a daily basis wouldn't conclude "bye bye Democratic wave" based on the latest.

unless there's a mandatory 8 month hibernation coming up that I wasn't aware of

Actually, what we should really be talking about is the fact that the one guy with the power to instantly end life Earth has a very diseased brain

― frogbs, Friday, February 2, 2018 8:47 AM (fifty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, that he is bragging about acing a dementia screen might be more embarrassing than his whole electoral college bullshit

not that anyone really needs reminding but the last ten (eleven, really) questions of the MOCA are: remember the five words we asked you three minutes ago, and name the date/month/year/day/place/city

the whole point of the test is that virtually any human without dementia will get close to perfect score

just so you all can follow along at home: http://www.mocatest.org/pdf_files/test/MoCA-Test-English_7_1.pdf

I guess the Dems will have to run some non-generic candidates. Admittedly not their strength.

naming Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator in a larger obstruction of justice case that targets one or more associates.

Classic revive from the '70s!

xpost Come on, this is the first test Donnie was able to pass without his daddy paying off a teacher. Let him have this.

I wonder if he hung it up on the fridge next to his finger paintings.

xp Morbs I dunno I wonder if there won't be a real appetite for vanilla after all this

Lantern jawed centrist "not a criminal"

I dunno Hadrian, what flavor was HRC?

Rocky Road?

today's white house propaganda email was titled "African American History Month and the Bonds of Patriotism"
i'm sure it's just a little freudian slip

"Conspiracies have been mostly unnecessary in this country since 1980. Just describe your malfeasance as beneficence and hardly anyone will challenge you."

i agree. look at afghanistan. it's a money machine. over a trillion dollars spent since the start and nobody in the u.s. even blinks. or cares what is happening there.

xp

African American History Month and the Bonds of Patriotism
In his Proclamation this week honoring African American History Month, President Donald J. Trump drew attention to a special theme this year: “African Americans in Times of War.”

“For far too long, African Americans bravely fought and died in the name of freedom, while at the same time struggling to attain equality, respect, and the full privileges of citizenship,” the President wrote. “Because of their love of country, these heroes insisted on serving and defending America despite racial prejudice, unequal treatment, diminished opportunities, and segregation.”

As he did during his State of the Union Address this week, President Trump used personal stories from real Americans to illustrate the significance of this struggle. “We remember soldiers like Sergeant Henry Johnson of the Harlem Hellfighters, the all-black National Guard unit that was among the first American forces to arrive in France during World War I,” the President wrote.

Johnson was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and a Purple Heart.

'subtext' seems generous tbh

Prediction is a losing game nowadays but here are some things that would not surprise me:

1. Progressives/Democrats/leftists/coastal liberals continue to be anti-Trump and anti-Republican. They're not necessarily all angry enough to march in the streets every day but those who are politically engaged and committed will vote reliably for the Democrats that are on the ballot.

1a. That phenomenon is great and all, but it remains way too concentrated in urban and coastal districts that were already safely blue. Moving Brooklyn (or whatever) from 94% passionate D to 99% passionate D is not helpful nationally.

2. Rising stock markets and generally rosy economic indicators (rosy, that is, for those who are actually benefitting) may dampen many upscale Republicans' distaste for the Trumpoid style of politics. Individual Republicans may find him personally crude and "not like us." But they like what they're seeing in their portfolios, so they will not rebel no matter how many worrisome Twitter tirades the toddler tyrant unleashes from his golden toilet.

2a. Hate to get all Baffler-ish, but the selective blindness of heartland and Rust Belt white people remains as a persistent issue. A roaring stock market and dizzying corporate profits sounds like a good economy. And if you hear good economic news, you may credit the president and his party, even if you never personally benefit from that largesse.

xp no argument

YMP I think these are all safe bets, the caveat being a market bubble burst before 2020

Which is almost certainly a question not of 'if' but 'when' at this point, yes?

yeah for sure

xp to the tipping thread (god help us)
https://bnanews.bna.com/daily-labor-report/labor-dept-ditches-data-on-worker-tips-retained-by-businesses

Labor Department leadership scrubbed an unfavorable internal analysis from a new tip pooling proposal, shielding the public from estimates that showed employees could lose out on billions of dollars in gratuities, four current and former DOL sources tell Bloomberg Law.

Senior department political officials—faced with a government analysis showing that workers could lose billions of dollars in tips as a result of the proposal—ordered staff to revise the data methodology to lessen the expected impact, several of the sources said. Although later calculations showed progressively reduced tip losses, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and his team are said to have still been uncomfortable with including the data in the proposal. The officials disagreed with assumptions in the analysis that employers would retain their employees’ gratuities, rather than redistribute the money to other hourly workers. They wound up receiving approval from the White House to publish a proposal Dec. 5 that removed the economic transfer data altogether, the sources said.

perhaps tell these fuckers to fuck off here: https://www.regulations.gov/comment?D=WHD-2017-0003-0001

Be really surprised if the bubble bursts before Dems retake either chamber, at which point they will promptly be blamed by a roided-up echo chamber. the Trump-hostile MSM will mostly shrug and say “well it’s hard to argue with that”. Dems meanwhile will strongly agree to disagree and pout.

this indictable treason was only alleged two days ago

https://www.npr.org/2018/01/31/582099085/journalist-details-israels-secret-history-of-targeted-assassinations

2020 seems a long way away at the pace time is moving at the mo. where o where is paul virilio?

love a contextual virilio shout-out

*even the Trump-hostile

why haven't they released the memo yet?

Dems: [reasoned, point-by-point analysis of factors resulting in unfortunate state of affairs]
Reps: 'It's the Dems' fault! They're buttholes!'
Result: Dems take the fall, because we're all perpetually in third grade

i want to know why president clinton didn't just fire ken starr, the way the crazy GOP is talking these days

because ken starr was running a legit investigation, not a horrible partisan witch hunt like mueller, so clinton didn't have a leg to stand on

why haven't they released the memo yet?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, February 2, 2018 4:34 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

reading this AM that more august members of the GOP have been impressing caution upon the orange one

prob bc his party would have bailed on him

if there's one thing trump does well, it's taking advice

Well, as long as Stephen Miller gets that last word in...

It's not so much 'advice' as, like...I dunno, 'programming'?

'Do this.'
'Okay, sounds good.'
'No, don't do that. Do this instead.'
'Okay, sounds good.'

will is correct - it's easy to forget that 90s Clinton happened to be the president but wasn't as entrenched in the party establishment as he and Hillz are now. In 94 they were seen as exciting new blood, almost insurgent compared to the D power structure that preexisted them

seems likely that the events of the last few days will end up looming as large in the overall investigation as the comey firing, the trump jr meeting.

this is excruciating. it's nice that more of the GOP is telling him not to do it (in addition to the fbi, the justice dept, etc), but is there any doubt that once it's released the GOP will by and large stand by their man and execute the plan (using the memo as an excuse to ignore any findings/recommendations of mueller)?

is there any doubt that once it's released the GOP will by and large stand by their man and execute the plan

No.

Put your hand in the hand of the yam who has the plan to spam the land with yam

If there’s one thing the GOP doesn’t mind it’s insurgency in the service of plutocrats and racists

jonathan swan @ axios:

Inside the Trump administration, sources who've been briefed on the Nunes memo expect it will be underwhelming and not the “slam dunk” document it's been hyped up to be.

What we're hearing: There is much more skepticism inside the administration than has been previously reported about the value of releasing the memo, according to sources familiar with the administration discussions.

Trump still wants to release the memo. But there are a number of people in the White House who are fairly underwhelmed, and there's internal anxiety about whether it's worth angering the FBI director and intelligence community by releasing this information.

What’s next: Trump will almost certainly approve the memo’s release. The internal debate, now, is more around whether to make further changes to the memo — redactions to protect sources and methods — on the advice of the Intelligence Community.

so: good chance Trump saw the memo, didn't understand it, assumed it was as incriminating a Smoking Gun as all his supporters have made it out to be, and approved its release. But everyone else knows, yeah, not a Smoking Gun, not incriminating, not worth all this fuss. so he's going to release it anyway, it's going to be a bust, and the new conspiracy theory is that this will not be the real memo, there's something even more real floating out there, we just have to look for it. And then they will have hearings.

#releasethememo lol

real memo is clearly being housed on Hillary’s secret illegal server

they should run the memo by Punxsutawney Phil and see what he says.

if he sees his shadow, six more weeks of release the memo.

“7 more years of bullshit”

ok, so I guess he officially declassified it? If he did, can't the Democrats or whomever now release their own memo with impunity?

starr couldn't be fired by the president; he was an "independent counsel" and that office has subsequently been abolished afaict

despair without emotion
political Nostradamuses
ILX thread grief
wishing dead our nemeses

pundit tweet freak out
morbs & tombot shout it out
dirtbag leftie cash this way
what else do I have to say?

sources who've been briefed on the Nunes memo expect it will be underwhelming and not the “slam dunk” document it's been hyped up to be

Ah, so the previous hype will now be skeptically pooh-poohed by the people who hyped it in the first place, because The Story Needs To Change.

THIS JUST IN: Some officials have claimed that The Memo will cure cancer.

BREAKING: Some have claimed that claims that The Memo's ability to cure cancer is overblown and misleading.

THIS JUST IN: Those who claimed The Memo's anti-cancer properties are overblown are, themselves, known cancer advocates.

BREAKING: Pro-Memo / Anti-Cancer groups have claimed that anti-Memo / pro-Cancer groups are soft on cancer! Film at eleven!!!!!

THIS JUST IN: Our sources are now saying that The Memo has nothing to do with cancer, and that the sinister forces who are arrayed against the release of The Memo are actually rooting for AIDS!

at this point The Memo is simultaneously nothing and everything. It's Schrodinger's Memo.

Never forget: two weeks ago the discussion centered around the FBI's Secret Society of Hogwarts Members. That story's discredited too, which is the point: keep bullshit flying, confuse the public.

It's never unsafe to assume the general formulation 'Trump experienced something > Trump doesn't understand what he's experienced > Trump feels either personally vindicated or victimized based upon the most recent commentary he's heard about the phenomenon, regardless of whether the phenomenon in question even has any direct bearing upon him, because he's the only real person in the universe'.

All this melodramatic talk of "the memo" that we don't actually see is exactly the way Seinfeld episodes are constructed.

he just authorized its release

if it's so underwhelming, this could turn out to be a good thing

Unless Nunes was able to work Pizzagate into the revised draft.

He approved it the same way I agreed to the itunes terms and conditions

lol

he just authorized its release

So it's like national security procedural bukkake, or - dare I say - a pee tape of information?

this is gonna end the same way the first Nunes saga did - with a few hawks screaming for blood, most people saying "this isn't what you said it would be", and Nunes going back to his alternate dimension to fuck off for another 5 months until he comes up with something else.

xpost lol

The House servers are overloaded so here's the memo in its entirety minus the cover letter. https://t.co/hfOXZvgGca pic.twitter.com/qEadHNxgLY

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) February 2, 2018

these republicans would have shaken hands with the bin ladens in the oval office post-9/11. USA

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/national/read-the-gop-memo/2746/

Skimmed memo, missed bombshells. Carter Page, Fusion GPS, dossier, FISA, blah blah.

Basically "anti Trump dossier formed basis of investigation into whether what dossier said about Carter Page is true" shockah.

Leaving aside the expected Steele-trashing, I am not sure this is how warrants actually work: "This should include information potentially favorable to the target of the FISA application that is known to the government." Maybe the standards for FISA are different, but I don't think most warrant applications include "information potentially favorable to the target."

why do i have such a visceral dislike for yashar ali's tweets

John Kelly: Trump wants "everything out"

EXCEPT:

Trump's tax returns

Trump interview with Mueller

Democrats' rebuttal memo

The other FISA warrants

White House visitor logs

Bannon's House testimony

Stormy Daniels' story

The list of foreign customers at Trump properties

— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) February 1, 2018

All this melodramatic talk of "the memo" that we don't actually see is exactly the way Seinfeld episodes are constructed.

Lots of David Mamet movies, too.

So it's discrediting Steele and the dossier... is the whole investigation supposed to be based on or at least kickstarted by the dossier? I honestly don't remember. I thought it was just a piece.

Lol...this is even more underwhelming than even I expected

It's just a piece which is what Schiff has been screaming about

Is that... THE MEMO?

https://cinemathread.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/pulp-fiction-briefcase.jpg

a NROer who was part of #NeverTrump:

Here’s potentially the most important paragraph in the memo. It appears to confirm the NYT’s scoop — which was that the counterintelligence investigation began BEFORE the FISA applications against Page. Papadopoulos was already under investigation. Wow: pic.twitter.com/VadOFVYAUH

— David French (@DavidAFrench) February 2, 2018

FISA warrant for Carter Page begun back in 2013 (iirc) based in intel. FISA has to be renewed every 90 days or something, which it was, up to and including when the dossier was released, except the dossier just added extra credence to suspicions. I guess the GOP argument is ... the dossier is a questionable reason to renew FISA, because Steele didn't like Trump and there was some Dem money involved in hiring him? I don't get it, the Page FISA had been going for years before the dossier was compiled, so who the fuck cares? I mean, I know who, but who cares about them?

Part of this confidential memo (which was declassified against the urgings of the intelligence community) is an attempt to discredit Christopher Steele on the basis of his failure to maintain confidentiality.

Sorry, just have to scoop up the bits of my brain and skull that just showered my desk Scanners-style.

Republicans like when these things are sort of not all there, because it gives them more flexibility to create horrifying conspiracy narratives about "what it all means" and insistently point to something while they do it.

This memo is some weak sauce sophistry. "Christopher Steele was anti-Trump because he dug up dirt on Trump giving him reason to dislike and distrust Trump. This includes intel on Carter Page, who had already been under surveillance for years for being sketchy, but who unfairly had his FISA surveillance ok'd for the umpteenth time because this one guy who didn't like Trump found even more reason to OK it."

I'm not even sure, trying to put myself into GOP mindset, who I should be be mad at. Anyone anti-Trump? Christopher Steele? Clinton?

What Republicans thought they were getting with the Nunes Memo vs. what Republicans got with the Nunes Memo pic.twitter.com/kYTqFk2sLP

— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) February 2, 2018

Like, most of the people "named" have been fired by Trump already! Comey, Yates, McCabe ...

Trump: "I think it's terrible, if you wanna know the truth. I think it's a disgrace what's going on in this country. I think it's a disgrace. The memo was sent to Congress, it was declassified, Congress will do whatever they're going to do, but I think it's a disgrace what's happening in our country, and when you look at that, and you see that and so many other things, what's going on, a lot of people should be ashamed of themselves and much worse than that. So I sent it over to Congress and they will do what they're going to do, whatever they do is fine. It was declassified and let's see what happens. But a lot of people should be ashamed. Thank you very much."

Real quote or are you doctor casinoing us?

That's real!

lol I didn't even consider the possibility of that being real

I didn't even consider the possibility of that not being real tbh

Aside from 'whatever they (Congress) do is fine', I agree 100% with President Trump's statement.

Who would've thought that such an inarticulate man could accidentally issue such a damning self-critique.

Be funny if the end result of all this brouhaha is that everyone goes to jail except Carter Page.

so what i'm getting from the memo is:

the fbi was investigating both campaigns before the election, but only told voters about one of those investigations?

is that about the size of it?

I'm not even sure, trying to put myself into GOP mindset, who I should be be mad at. Anyone anti-Trump? Christopher Steele? Clinton?

From a GOP mindset? You should be mad at Clinton, sure, that's a given. But also ideally some black people. Obama for starters. Bonus points if you can get Colin Kaepernick into your anger somehow. #thetroops

Even Renato is struggling:

THREAD: What should we make of the Nunes memo? (Short answer: Not much.)

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) February 2, 2018

"Christopher Steele was anti-Trump because he dug up dirt on Trump giving him reason to dislike and distrust Trump.

It's the same thing with media being "anti-Trump". Anyone with half a brain and/or half a heart should be anti-Trump! Not like there needs to be this vast deep-state conspiracy to have people be against the worst human on the planet.

well that's it. mr. trump has been cleared. we can breathe easy now, and count on russian assistance in the midterms!

xxxpost No worries, I saw a Twitter reply the other day asserting that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were due to be impeached any day now.

Btw if you do a search for "nothingburger" on Twitter, u get a lot of tweets about the Memo this morning

Yup, one of my winger FB friends just posted something about this memo thing being "unprecedented," and that people will be going to prison over it. xp

surely the FBI has never before opened an investigation based on information from a source who didn't like the person they were giving intel against.

Anyone with half a brain and/or half a heart should be anti-Trump! Not like there needs to be this vast deep-state conspiracy to have people be against the worst human on the planet.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Friday, February 2, 2018 12:10 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Seriously, this is the kind of shit time travelers in movies jump into the past to prevent. The only way people are able to support Trump is to plug their ears and pretend that he's anything but what he appears to be. Steele probably had his soul inverted after being hyperfocused on him for any length of time.

christopher steele is the new peter strzok. buckle up, foxnations; detailed talking points are on the way :)

I just heard that quote on the NPR news, tune in at 2pm ET for a good shot at a repeat

it really didn't nake my eyes pop

he's consistent

Let's be real: the actual content of the memo matters zilch to the most frothing GOP-ers. It could've been a printout of uh.jpg and they would be raving about the horrifying revelations it contained.

'It's been confirmed that Hunter is three-years-old! Pizzagate is real!'

the funniest thing about this is that Steele dossier is legit

I know, even wingnuts aren't mentioning that. They're just attacking the sources, as usual.

the actual content of the memo matters zilch

otm. what matters is creating a perception about the contents of the memo, since very few people will bother to read it compared to the millions who will simply listen to news reports talking about it - and that with only half an ear. it's the usual FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) tactic.

And yet, memo confirms Russian investigation began pre dossier!

they'll try to spin that as proof that the Obama FBI was anti-Trump all along

This is evergreen but:

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/27067575_1591626400928367_5511878422745302231_n.jpg

xp plus, you are referring to the contents of the memo, which do not matter

er

https://cdn.someecards.com/posts/devin-nunes-high-school-haircut-twitter-Vyb.png

?

truth hurts

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DVDZgEwVoAAMC3v.jpg

again I'm going to say I certainly hope there's a deep state ready to shoot Trump in the head. If they could take Kennedy down certainly they can blow him away

Donald Trump's unperforated skull is a pretty ironclad argument against the existence of a 'deep state' imo.

i've heard that same argument against the existence of ufos

Ugh no the chud hagiographies would be vomit inducing.

Best would be a murder-suicide. Like one of the three shitty kids or Jared. If he only capped himself then he’d elicit sympathy, which fuck that.

xpost UFOs haven't threatened national security with their reckless tweeting. At least not to my recollection.

Sooooo... I guess if you’re a racist teabag fucknut this is similar to how you felt for 8 years?

Regardless of how he ultimately shuffles off that mortal coil, I still predict that Trump will ultimately wind up going the Mussolini/Diem/Bernie route of being indecorously tossed and paraded about like a department store dummy.

I've definitely wished some horrible things upon him, but my actual wish is that Trump winds up completely disgraced and shunned by humanity and penniless and lives to the excruciating age of...let's say 482.

how did republicans react when bill clinton made noise about firing ken starr (after kenn starr had indicted his campaign managers)? oh wait

Trump admin has ordered DOE to prepare for short-notice NV nuclear test "for political purposes" - read @wjhenn's shocking @TIME cover story https://t.co/OAE2oYitqS

— Molly Ball (@mollyesque) February 2, 2018

Trump getting ready to test that theory about his approval rating

*gulp*

it's been nice knowing you all

we'll meet againnnnnnnn

it's a totally normal nuclear test

at least we won't have to get one of these jobs

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/13/americas-fastest-growing-jobs-are-also-the-worst-paying/

Dow dropped 600 points today

I have an opinion about The Memo! Here it is:

American politics is mind-breakingly stupid and craven, it's degrading to every single human being in this country, and I don't blame people who completely tune it out.

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) February 2, 2018

From the Times story:

The catalyst for Friday’s fall appeared to be a government report that showed the strong United States economy might finally be translating into rising wages for American worker.

This is how fucked up the country is.

why would the market ever lose value with republicans in complete control of government? maybe we need to pure more obama/clinton loyalists?

*purge

Never mind all of that. Big news here

New Hillary Clinton emails released this morning https://t.co/tUcHGqTl3x pic.twitter.com/Sn8gHbrKz7

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 2, 2018

"political purposes"? "political purposes"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_keWS1i3RA

I mean, really. Someone is really doing a non-sarcastic, straight-up "but her emails"?

The catalyst for Friday’s fall appeared to be a government report that showed the strong United States economy might finally be translating into rising wages for American worker.

The best thing about the submersion of NYC is Wall Street goes first.

(not really, they'll move it)

that stock market shit makes me mad too but i just try to keep in mind that the stock market is largely irrelevant

It's relevant to the extent that it fattens our future food supply.

Completely unrelated, but please check out my new book, Serving the Rich. It's a page-turner!

if the stock market keeps this up (down) even racist billionaires will turn on 2scoops

right after Human Resources turns on some of us

Harf harf:

https://politics.theonion.com/fbi-warns-republican-memo-could-undermine-faith-in-mass-1822639681

FBI Warns Republican Memo Could Undermine Faith In Massive, Unaccountable Government Secret Agencies

-
WASHINGTON—Stressing that such an action would be highly reckless, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Thursday that releasing the “Nunes Memo” could potentially undermine faith in the massive, unaccountable government secret agencies of the United States. “Making this memo public will almost certainly impede our ability to conduct clandestine activities operating outside any legal or judicial system on an international scale,” said Wray, noting that it was essential that mutual trust exist between the American people and the vast, mysterious cabal given free rein to use any tactics necessary to conduct surveillance on U.S. citizens or subvert religious and political groups. “If we take away the people’s faith in this shadowy monolith exempt from any consequences, all that’s left is an extensive network of rogue, unelected intelligence officers carrying out extrajudicial missions for a variety of subjective, and occasionally personal, reasons.” At press time, Wray confirmed the massive, unaccountable government secret agencies were unaware of any wrongdoing for violating constitutional rights.

Lawyers are laying the groundwork for a new legal defense fund to aid those who have at one point served candidate and now President Donald Trump and who have been pulled into the ongoing Russia probe.

The fund, called the “Patriot Legal Expense Fund,” is being looked to as a way to provide financial support for any legal bills incurred by any individual who “was an employee, consultant, fundraised or volunteer” on behalf of President Trump’s campaign, according to a document labeled “draft” that was posted on the Office of Government Ethics website.

The document, written by lawyers from Wiley Rein LLP, is dated Jan. 29, 2018, but it is unclear who started the fund or how much in assets the funds currently hold.

However, separately the Trump campaign which spent $1.1 million on legal fees last quarter included a $10,000 payment to the same law firm for “legal consulting,” according to FEC filings. A source with knowledge says the campaign did hire the law firm to start the fund, but that the campaign will have no role in the day to day management or the funding of the project.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/legal-fund-development-trump-administration-campaign-staff-pay/story?id=52795689

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/02/six-insurgent-candidates-just-out-raised-their-establishment-democratic-opponents/

"The fundraising upsets reflect a burst of progressive energy that is also powering Democrats more broadly. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, challenging Ted Cruz, once again out-raised the Texas senator. The National Journal counted some 30 Democrats out-raised incumbent Republicans this past quarter."

Lmao such a great self own

The BBC thinks this is OK to broadcast. But if it depicted high profile women, there would be outrage.
Why the double standard? pic.twitter.com/xcdxpEJD3E

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) February 2, 2018

Piers Morgan is just dumb as a rock

He's crying wolf while his avatar is almost the exact same thing. Kissing Trump's ass. It's perfect. And a perfect self-own indeed.

He knows exactly what he’s doing.

lmao wikileaks are such craven fucks. i hate them so much

JUST KEEP FUCKING PAMELA ANDERSON AND LEAVE US ALONE, WIKIGUY

Maybe it's time to come to terms with this simple fact: that there is a substantial minority of the population for whom "America" signifies something other than a set of principles. "America" to these people is a purely cultural construct. It has nothing at all to do with an idea. (Except to the extent that "idea" is interchangeable with "the American Dream" i.e. prosperity.) And these people will never, ever, ever embrace America as an idea because they are frightened of its logical extension. They are shitty, unpatriotic Americans and they are going to have to be stopped somehow.

But how are they going to be stopped? What if there is no electoral failsafe?

final number: Dow closed down 666 points

...

Asked after the memo’s release if Trump might fire Rosenstein, the president told reporters: “You figure that one out.”

i am the god of hell fire. and i bring you

So the week when there's a super blue-blood eclipse and the GOP train literally crashes into a trash truck, the down closes down 666.

this is fine

slightly relieved satan will be taking the helm from here, to be perfectly honest

Better to reign in hell ...

I got hip to this simulation when the Big Puppeteer named our oil-man in the State Department REX TILLERSON

A little on-the-nose there, chief

REX TILLERSON is an anagram for LUCIFER ROX.

ROFL FILCHERSON

It dawns on me I'm not drinking nearly enough at the moment

there is, to be fair, not enough booze

Ironically, if Trump were a lifetime drinker we might not be in this mess. Forgoing alcohol and cigarettes has probably added years to his otherwise horrible life.

I keep waiting for someone to start spiking his Diet Coke and send him on a bender.

Like, why does that have to be the one arena of life where he demonstrates restraint and discipline?

Here's hoping his cholesterol picks up the slack

As others have said, piers Morgan knows what he’s doing. Acknowledging his existence is like pointing at someone taking a shit on the sidewalk.

He's like Katie Hopkins, but with a tinier cock.

thanks for the display name suggestion stevie

hey there’s apparently a weed surplus in oregon, let’s get on that

The Diet Coke thing is actually kind of interesting. He obviously is barely in control of his mental facilities even on the best of days... and if his diet and weird statements from his doctor are any indication - he clearly has no interest in being open/honest/proactive about his health.
I’m pretty sure you could slip him some acid and he would never say anything.

What in the

Devin Nunes: “This is just the first memo. There will be another one dealing specifically with the State Department’s role in all of this.”

— Ned Ryun (@nedryun) February 2, 2018

"Trey Gowdy made fun of me today! How can I get him back on my side?"

i'm just sitting here writing whatever the fuck memos i want

state department = euphemistic for hillary, right?

what the actual fuck

Suave:

.@BretBaier asks Devin Nunes if he read the actual FISA applications:
"No, I didn't," he says.
Says he sent Trey Gowdy to do that job.

— Katie Watson (@kathrynw5) February 2, 2018

ouch

Snowden concurred, writing: “I required the journalists who broke the 2013 domestic spying stories (as a condition of access) to talk with gov in advance of publication as an extraordinary precaution to prevent any risk of harm. Turns out our standard of care was higher than the actual Intel committee.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/snowden-bashes-nunes-i-was-more-careful-with-govt-secrets-than-you-are?ref=home

Some news: Devin Nunes’ Democratic opponent, @JanzforCongress, raised over 00,000 today alone with news of the memo release, per a senior campaign aide.

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) February 2, 2018

lol at ilxcode... The "00,000" should read as "$100,000"

ha ha, i gave janz money this morning and thought i was being an idiosyncratically cool dude

sort of seems like it's not out of the question nunes could lose this race btw

Nunes just seems like a lonely guy with a blog. "Tune in next time, readers, when the Devinator will finally turn his attention to blowing the lid off - you guessed it - STAR TREK: INSURRECTION. Should be up next week if work allows, and more to come after that, so spread the word!"

He’s famous now. And that’s what that Kanye song says everyone wants.

eephus, we still think you're idiosyncratically cool

i'm just sitting here writing whatever the fuck memos i want

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Friday, February 2, 2018 6

I'm just sittin here watching the memos go round and roouuuunnd

the memo is stained with the skidmarks of American justice

Indeed, White House National Security Council senior director for Asian affairs Matthew Pottinger was reported as saying in a recent closed-door meeting with US experts on Korean Peninsula issues that a limited strike on the North “might help in the midterm elections.”

The Post’s Anna Fifield identifies the paper Hankyoreh as “left-wing” and that it is the only paper currently reporting it. I don’t know more about the source. But this sounds like something we need to know more about very quickly. The report suggests Trump may see such a move not simply in the context of the standard efforts to help in a midterm election but to ward offer facing the prospect of impeachment or actual investigations under a Democratic congress.
--
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/very-very-bad

cool, my worst fears are materializing

Didn't dummy's nominee for ambassador to South Korea have to drop out because he disagreed about use-of-force?

fwiw if you search Pottinger's name on twitter it's a bunch of brookings inst types who know him saying it makes no sense and doesn't sound like him

I know Matt and can’t imagine him saying something so dumb and crass. https://t.co/DgMqYLk0hC

— Andrew Exum (@ExumAM) February 3, 2018

This story is being widely shared but it is very dubious. It says "it was reported" Pottinger said this but not by who. No other details- when, where, source. I have been in several off the record meetings with Pottinger & he never said anything remotely like this. https://t.co/lkFF0lDrFk

— Tom Wright (@thomaswright08) February 3, 2018

If Pottinger said it and it’s verified then he should be shitcanned immediately. But I just don’t believe this story. https://t.co/x2OrU5mTQn

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) February 3, 2018

No, politics creeping into the NSC is wrong, but the people who die in a mushroom cloud won't care if it was because of pathological national security reasons or craven political reasons. Small comfort that Pottinger supports first-strikes because of bad theory, not bad politics https://t.co/1Fpi4veKYT

— Van Jackson (@WonkVJ) February 3, 2018

cool background pic van jackson has, love that

Hang on, Nunes says he has another memo! pic.twitter.com/x4xizhDnAc

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) February 3, 2018

I assume the scare quotes here mean "Trump" is an alias! Who is he, REALLY?

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!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2018

i wonder if he actually believes that the memo totally vindicates him, or if it's just truth-independent (the word now used because, after one year of hearing them endlessly and becoming inured to them, lies are dead) messaging to his supporters. either way, you have to be a total dumbass if you actually read the memo and think it vindicates him in any way.

collusion is dead

i would love to never read a trump tweet again

the word now used

"Their"

another classic trump typo, should have been "collusion is sex"

I know I'm wrong about this, but something about the memo debacle feels like so much air has been let out of the buffoon. He buys into the bs drumbeat behind the Nunes memo, everyone agrees the memo is totally devoid of anything (even if it is still somehow full of shit), and yet he seems to be the only one incapable of recognizing there is nothing there, let alone that it doesn't even mention his name. Probably because he never read it. It makes it just that much harder to take any of his accusations seriously, which is saying something for a guy already one step up from an aged Hollywood monkey trained to flap his lips to pretend he's talking.

It also only mentions rosensteins name once in passing. Pretext to fire anyone, this is not.

something about the _____ debacle feels like so much air has been let out of the buffoon

dummy Republicans keep pushing the line somehow the dossier was used to get fisa warrant to spy on Trump campaign. But memo says absolutely nothing about that. Investigation of trump campaign, via Papadopoulos, began before the dossier and the memo just talks about fisa warrants for Carter page, which is not the same thing at the Trump campaign.

also heard the maddening argument that just as Trump is in trouble for seeking help from a foreign power, Russia, Clinton did the wrong thing by seeking information from her own foreign power, Christopher Steele, who is British. As if there is no difference between England, a longtime ally, and Russia, a longtime adversary.

The point they tend to make is that Steele was getting information from Russian sources.

Trump vindicated himself. marvelous. it's like he has his stooges doing their most mediocre to obscure the real reason for their devious scheming, and then he tweets out the real reason for the memo verbatim.

love that Russian sources on Russian crimes are somehow bad. It's almost as bad as learning bad things about Trump and then deciding you don't like him.

Not to go too far down the rabbit hole but the Trump-fan talking point is that the Russian government probably knew about Steele and planted false information in the dossier to discredit both sides. The dossier, in combination with the ongoing rumours of assistance from Ukraine, is why it’s probably important that Trump is nailed for offering a quid pro quo for info - or requested more than just intel - otherwise the door is open for Fox, etc to keen harping on the ‘both sides do it’ stuff.

lol uh-oh Nunes:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/03/politics/memo-dossier-christopher-steele-carter-page/index.html

xpost I'm interested in your perspective: if the dossier is hypothetically faked or untrustworthy, then why is Trump pushing so hard against it? Why is he so resistant to the investigation if he has nothing to hide? Wouldn't an investigation reveal it to be fake? he could just say it is BS and then say any investigation will prove his point. But the harder he pushes back, the more prolonged the investigation gets, and the worse and worse it looks.

xpost I mean they had to expect someone would have leaked some of the contents of the rebuttal memo once the release of the minority memo was rebuffed.

Nunes is really good at bed-crapping.

Nunes already admitted he didn't look at the fisa requests. because what could possibly be gleaned by facts that you can't get from shady inference?

yeah his bitch-boy Gowdy did.

xpost I'm interested in your perspective: if the dossier is hypothetically faked or untrustworthy, then why is Trump pushing so hard against it? Why is he so resistant to the investigation if he has nothing to hide? Wouldn't an investigation reveal it to be fake? he could just say it is BS and then say any investigation will prove his point. But the harder he pushes back, the more prolonged the investigation gets, and the worse and worse it looks.

Could be a bunch of reasons:

a) he knows the investigation will turn up unconnected financial crimes
b) he was actively working with the Russian government but not how the dossier says
c) he genuinely believes he hasn’t done anything wrong

He wants to argue (falsely, it appears) that the whole investigation is tainted by having been triggered by the Democrats pushing Steele’s dossier to the FBI - so anything coming out of it is illegitimate. Marcy Wheeler (who is a big proponent of the collusion theory) argues the dossier, and Democrat’s involvement in spreading it, unhelpfully muddies the water.

It’s important to remember that the collusion / organised crime narrative doesn’t hinge on a single thing in the dossier being true - and that’s almost certainly for the best given how sloppy and implausible it looks in places.

why is Trump pushing so hard against it?

Aside from the strong possibility that he is obstructing the investigation because he is guilty of crimes he thinks will be uncovered, his entire history suggests that Trump is incapable of not hitting back when he feels attacked, so that even if he were pure and innocent, he'd be acting this way. Which is stupid and reactionary, but we already knew that.

boy I'd love to find the "Trump won't be any worse than Hillary" shitbags right now and meet them behind an alleyway

Aimless otm

The 2 things most nuts about this may be that 1) even if Hillary wrote a personal check to Steele for this information , it would have no bearing at all—zero—on its permissibility as evidence. Prosecutors routinely leverage biased interests to collect information, and 2) nothing (as far as we know) abt the Steele Dossier has been disproved! All we know about it's validity is that about a third of it has been substantiated.

"its" I should run for president

boy I'd love to find the "Trump won't be any worse than Hillary" shitbags right now and meet them behind an alleyway

i have one who appears occasionally on my fb to comment on stories i might share, like the one where the cnn guy says he regretted the false equivalencies they pulled during the election coverage. my friends barely engage him anymore and i think he's just raging at hillary now to negate the guilt he feels over what has happened, but he was seriously "but her emailsing" last week.

This happened w/ me over the holidays w/ someone I really respect and care about and I had to change the subject while she was still talking

I haven't reread the Steel Dossier since buzzfeed published it, but it was pretty clear that a lot of it was pretty unbelievable. It's value was mostly as a comedic distraction, and if the GOP hadn't been using this as their fig leaf for a counterattack they would have found something else. With the Nunes memo out it's pretty clear that everything with the dossier was above board, except for the still slightly debatable decision to publish it.

I haven't read the dossier since it was leaked either, but I recall the vast majority of it being perfectly in line with everything everyone was saying both before and since its release. With the exception of the pee tape, and as we talked about in this thread before, if that were revealed to be true as well it would shock literally no one at this point.

holy shit that Paul Ryan tweet boasting about a secretary making $1.50 more a week

almost seems like he's making fun of her but I think the GOP really is that out of touch

1. costco membership covered!!
2. shop for big deals
3. excess money saved b/c deals can be invested for future!!
4. personal responsibility ftw!

he's totally setting her up for success upon success

ryan deleted it lol

that a costco membership doesn't even give you anything -- just the right to buy things -- seems fitting

it's utterly baffling to me that he thought that was a good thing to put out there. Also baffling, that this teacher (if she actually exists) thinks this is a great deal for her.

must be nice for Randy Bryce, dude is writing your attack ads for you

he's got this already

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DVIUGHgWsAYOTEP.jpg

and is asking for $1.50 donations to "repeal and replace" paul ryan. hell yeah.

er sorry i guess that's not directly related but he reposted it and in context it's a great comeback for the $1.50 line

The Koch Brothers got .4 billion. https://t.co/Fy47Ksr2Gh

— Randy Bryce (@IronStache) February 3, 2018

- Nunes’ memo fails to demonstrate that the government lacked enough evidence beyond a dossier from former British spy Christopher Steele to obtain a FISA warrant on Page.

- Steele’s expertise on Russia and organized crime would have outweighed any concerns a FISA court would have had about the funding of Steele’s work by partisan actors — funding sources that Steele may not have even known about.

- Nunes’ memo “provides no credible basis whatsoever” for removing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

- Nunes’ memo shows that Republicans “are now part and parcel to an organized effort to obstruct” Mueller’s probe.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/democratic-rebuttal-calls-nunes-memo-deliberately-misleading-n844426

Their was no Collusion

theirs is no collusion

yours is no disgrace

haha ymp I had the same thought

their was no collusion
cause, it's time, it's time, in time with your time, and its news
Is captured for the queen to use

Trump getting all Yessed out on a Saturday night.

I've Seen Some Good People, I Assume

lol at the trending #YoMemoJokes

wait can I take that back

I meant to say

I've Seen All Good People, On Both Sides

I was mega stressed out this weekend and while some of it was related to work/personal life/just the fact that I have massive anxiety, I realized poring over this whole fiasco has drained me to the point of wanting to punch strangers in the face.

and the funny thing is....I felt the same way a year ago. the whole country is in an abusive relationship atm.

The invaluable Marcy Wheeler makes sense of releasing the memo and the GOP's phony hysterics about civil liberties.

Every single privacy activist I know cares about privacy in significant part to ensure the rule of law and to prevent the arbitrary exercise of justice to focus just on select groups like Muslims or Chinese-Americans, rather than those who pose the greatest risk to society, like people allegedly doing Russia’s secret bidding. Yet the actions of Ryan and Nunes reverse that, using a sham concern for civil liberties as a way to prevent themselves, their associates, and the president from being subject to the rule of law like the rest of us would be.

If we’re going to have this secret surveillance ― and Nunes and Ryan insist we need it ― the key to protecting Americans is drafting the law to provide protections and ensuring those standards are met. Section 702, as Nunes and Ryan reauthorized it, fails that test, because it permits the warrantless access of completely innocent Americans’ communications. And for all its bluster, the Nunes memo doesn’t tell us critical details we need to assess whether what happened to Page was improper specifically, or simply indicative of known concerns about outside consultants that Nunes and Ryan have long ignored (and continue to ignore with all other Americans)

how long before someone pulls a Pentagon Papers and leaks the actual intel that spurred the memo or the FISA application itself?

i think if trump somehow got rid of mueller that would happen immediately

it wouldn't be prudent to leak that yet, for anyone who wants the investigation to succeed

we've been going about it all wrong, tapes about grabbing pussies won't kill Trump's popularity. release a tape where he says he loves Muslims and gays, that'll kill him with his base

No, they'd go all dilbert and assume he was brilliantly playing the long game and trolling the libs and alinskying us by forcing us to be held to our own blah blah blah...

Remember that his base assumed the feud with Bannon was orchestrated between the two of them, as a genius act of misdirection. I saw this offered in apparent earnest.

WTF are you all talking about, Trump has said many times how much he loves Muslims and the Gays, and how much they love him, and how much he employs them. It’s only the Radical Muslims and the marriage-destroying Gays that will get what’s coming to them, and that’s due to their own choices. Obviously.

Trump loves everyone, like Jesus.

Speaking of which, does the guy even go to church? Did he even join a church? No one cares right? Only when it's Obama?

he doesn't go to church. church goes to him

Trump could be in the act of gutting one of his supporters like a fish and that supporter would give his own evisceration a thumbs-up because tribalism.

the 'tax cuts for the wealthy' crowd is revving up their attack on (republican) rod rosenstein

https://pjmedia.com/trending/report-deputy-ag-rosenstein-threatened-subpoena-gop-intel-reps-calls-texts/

oh PJ media, yeah trustworthy source that

story only picked up on red sites currently

bellwethers for what these assholes will push soon. i wish it weren't the case but it is sadly

if Robert Mueller is fired, wouldn't it wind up becoming a federal court case like the Archibald Cox case eventually did?

I feel like he should fight fire with fire and say "I'm not fired and this investigation continues"....

sometimes I have to remind myself that even with a Democratic Congress, it took 9 months after the Saturday Night Massacre for the first articles of impeachment to be approved. justice is slow sometimes (when it arrives at all).

"I'm not fired and this investigation continues"....

As I recall, when Cox was fired, a new special prosecutor (Leon Jaworski) was named and the Watergate investigation was allowed to continue. Trump would certainly order the Mueller investigation halted, defunded, and the investigative team dismissed. He thinks like that.

That action would precipitate an immediate crisis and the filing of articles of impeachment by House democrats. Ryan would do all he could to bury that crisis for Trump, but the election in November would become all about that crisis, no matter the outcome in the House.

just curious, if you are career government like Rosenstein, and all this bullshit is going on around you, and you know you're in crosshairs for bulshit reasons, how do you go about your day supporting this monkey?

it must be kinda hard

John Brennan hired as MS/NBC pundit

Isn't it a little strange to constantly rail about "state TV" when it comes to RT & Fox and then hire CIA Directors & General as your "news analysts"? https://t.co/YqOHP3dfQa - also, remember this? Anyone who likes to rail about "state TV" should: https://t.co/nYEQDpNGs9

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 4, 2018

“So what if I’m on Hannity? Look at who else is on cable news!!!!”

In what twisted mind does that tweet make sense?

Dr Morbius hired as Hannity mouthpiece

xp the same mind that equates J. Edgar Hoover with some rando biology prof from UT Austin because the latter said something mean about him.

fuckin christ

http://www.newsweek.com/holocaust-denier-republican-nomination-illinois-congress-race-799222

Literally about to post that!

This means that if he wins the Illinois GOP will support him right quick.

check, please

they actually publicly condemned him in a statement but couldn't keep him off of the ballot and apparently had nobody else interested in running. still though....even though he's going to get his ass kicked, a neo-Nazi will be getting thousands of party line GOP votes who literally think Democrats are worse than Nazis.

Interestingly (or not), the GOP couldn't get its shit together because that is such a heavily democratic area. But the reigning old guard Dem, Dan Lipinski, is getting primary challenged from the left in response to his relatively conservative voting record.

I don't know whether to be thankful or bummed that I'm in IL-9. I'd kinda love to be part of that ass kicking.

jake and elwood otm

https://m.popkey.co/19ba7c/0D7q8.gif

“The Illinois Republican Party and our country have no place for Nazis like Arthur Jones,” party chairman Tim Schneier said in a statement to the Sun-Times. “We strongly oppose his racist views and his candidacy for any public office, including the 3rd Congressional District.”

there is no place for nazis, except here, where there is a place for nazis, because no other republican can be found to oppose him

Our reliable but unexceptional local rep, Danny Davis, is getting primaried by a couple of good candidates.

I wonder how Conor Lamb will do in PA next month. The narrative is that they are trying to keep it from becoming a national race so that perhaps the lack of hype will depress GOP turnout (for a typical Trump asshole).

Meanwhile, stock market back to ... correcting itself.

Trump stayed up all night talking to the stock market and convinced it to go up

https://leapsmoothies.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/power-of-positive-thinking.jpg

Dear T and F, GG does not work for Fox News.

love,

wheeeeee

Life expectancy, UK vs. US:
🇬🇧 male: 79.4; 🇺🇸 male: 76.9
🇬🇧 female: 83.0; 🇺🇸 female: 81.6

Healthcare spending (OECD):
🇬🇧: 9.9% of GDP
🇺🇸: 16.6% of GDP

Uninsured:
🇬🇧: 0
🇺🇸: 28 million https://t.co/Qjcx4N2owz

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) February 5, 2018

lol brexit

🇬🇧

Morbius you do understand that all of the talking heads are compensated, right? I imagine Hannity pays better than MSNBC daytime, too.

could be; i can't pretend i care.

ICYMI

Shortly after suggesting Democrat claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia is akin to “McCarthyism” — a reference to irrational, unfounded accusations of communist-ties made by late Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s — Donald Trump Jr. said the Democrat Party are “left of commies.”

Donald Jr., who made the comments during an appearance on Fox News with host Jesse Watters, attacked Democrats and the media for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Kremlin election tampering — as he deems the investigation to be a witch hunt against President Donald Trump.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/donald-jr-compares-russia-investigation-to-mccarthyism-then-says-dems-are-left-of-commies/

now there's a man with a solid grip on a) history and b) politics

More of this please: http://www.dispatch.com/news/20180205/trump-sexual-harassment-accuser-running-for-ohio-house

One of the women who came forward to accuse President Donald Trump of sexual harassment that took place before his election plans to run for an state House seat in northern Ohio, House Democrats say.

Rachel Crooks, a former Trump Tower receptionist who accused Trump of forcibly kissing her in 2005, is expected to file today to run in the 88th House District, where she will challenge two-term Rep. Bill Reineke, R-Tiffin.

Trump has generally denied the accusations made by Crooks and roughly a dozen other women. Crooks has called Trump a “pathological liar.”

Aaron Fisher, executive director of the Ohio House Democratic Caucus, said he thinks that Crooks’ entrance into the race makes the seat a pickup opportunity for the party, which is trying to climb its way out of a deep minority. The district includes Sandusky and Seneca counties.

Crooks, of Tiffin, who currently works as a foreign students recruiter for Tiffin University, had expressed interest in running for office, and House Democrats have been actively recruiting her for about a month, Fisher said.

Vote for Crooks!

there's gotta be a good campaign slogan there somewhere

psyched to see just how utterly repugnant a campaign her opponents can spin up against her

"Russia Russia Russia with no evidence at all!"

www.nunesmemo.com

Huh. Anyway, linked to the Janz campaign!

If it means that Janz thinks that it's a stick to beat Nunes with, all the better.

oh for an actual stick to beat nunes with

Nunes is a self-beating stick

oh this is good

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/pentagon-agency-can%E2%80%99t-account-for-hundreds-of-millions-in-spending-report/ar-BBIINjN

Note that the 18 Democratic senators writing to Trump about North Korea apparently are okay with the US instigating a war as long as we've "exhausted every diplomatic option," which can mean anything https://t.co/0oFeMVQdfD pic.twitter.com/TRa3c7Rs7Y

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) February 5, 2018

^ "instigating a war", as in we attack them? what the fucking fuck? someone plz send some strongarm goons to explain war to those senators, personally.

This article explains well the attitude I get here toward yr American president:

There were no significant protests against Trump’s visit last year, in contrast to the mass demonstrations that have been threatened ahead of any Trump trip to the U.K.

That is not only because anti-U.S. politics have lost ground in France in the last 20 years or so. It has a lot to do with the fact that the French struggle to take Trump seriously — even when he threatens North Korea. As a French diplomat who advised Macron noted: “The French see him almost as a fictitious character. Whether funny or scary, you don’t stage protests against a Commedia dell’Arte character.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/does-emmanuel-macron-like-donald-trump-back/

fact weirder than fiction, it's true

Huh. I know John Lapp slightly from school

the derp state is real

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/02/05/michael-goodwin-fbi-memo-proves-deep-state-is-real-and-press-is-part-it.html

can we just throw all regular fox news viewers into the ocean

“a good start”

What did the ocean ever do to you?

haha, sorry ocean

haven't u ever seen Open Water

fuck the ocean!

Michael Goodwin's opinion column linked above is an amazing journey into the mind of Michael Goodwin.

The ocean would reject them and we’d have a bigger Pacific trash gyre?

GOP expected to ok the release of the Democratic rebuttal memo, because why not, they know Trump is going to refuse to declassify it.

let it hurt him and not them, I suspect is their mindset. and now Nunes' memo has been out a week so a rebuttal memo (in their minds) will look like sour grapes.

it's a win-win

I am sort of hoping Dems will decline to release a memo of their own on principle—to preserve sanctity of FISA process—which in turn would provoke Nunes et al into ginning up anther #releasethememo! outcry. And then, yes, let them have it.

Someone noted the smartest thing Trump could have done was to not declassify the GOP memo, so it would have stayed secret suspicions of vast crime and corruption and not some limp dick non-revelation. But obviously Trump is not smart. In this case, not declassifying the Dem response would likely be the *dumb* thing to do, which means he will probably go that route, too.

BTW, aren't we just a couple of days away from the promise of a DACA solution and/or another budget showdown? And don't we have another debt ceiling deal looming as well? How's that fabled McConnell negotiation by honor system holding up?

More punting than in the Super Bowl:

One scenario being discussed in leadership circles on both sides of Capitol Hill is to detach immigration and budget negotiations. That would allow a “global deal” that covers government spending, disaster aid and the debt ceiling, all of which Trump and Congress have to deal with in coming weeks.

Under this scenario, Congress would pass a stopgap this week to fund the government through late next month, possibly March 22 or March 23. The Senate would then proceed with debate over the Dreamers’ issue, while lawmakers finalize a deal on boosting budget caps for two years. An omnibus appropriations measure would then be drafted that funds federal agencies through Sept. 30. The package would include disaster aid for Florida, Texas, California, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virigin Islands estimated at $81 billion — and possibly far more once the Senate finishes with it — as well as an increase in the debt ceiling.

All these legislative items would be voted on next month, whether or not the immigration issue is resolved. The Trump administration also would have to forgo immediate action against the Dreamers under this scenario, allowing the issue to play out in the federal court system or with DACA somehow extended another year.

Senate Democrats believe that the Senate could pass both a budget caps deal and a Dreamer package. Ryan would then have to juggle both as he tries to get them through the House while avoiding a challenge to his leadership.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/05/government-shutdown-2018-house-republicans-389943

fucking spineless

Trump says Democrats are "treasonous" for not applauding him at the State of the Union. "Can we call that treason? Why not."

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 5, 2018

So the Dow is now down roughly 300 points since Trump started speaking

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 5, 2018

also the government shuts down in 80 hours iirc

probably a good idea for trump to start lowering the bar for treason tbh

I think suffered several embolisms after reading Trump's casual employment of the word 'treason' just now. That vaguely man-shaped blob of reactive protoplasm just has no motherfucking clue about anything whatsoever.

Keep thinking that they’re nearing the “we’re not evil or treasonous, but some of our team was just stupid and inexperienced” line.

And that Many of the partisans are actually really stupid, and they will keep on maga-ing after the line is far past.

But then we blow far past that line and we all just keep maga-ing.

It's probably too much to hope that we'd finally get our articles of impeachment in the event of a legitimate market crash, huh.

remember that one time bill clinton appointed a special prosecutor to investigate ken starr's investigation of whitewater?

https://www.axios.com/white-house-trump-lawyers-approved-of-a-second-special-counsel-6edafd54-c4d7-4ae6-80b7-c7c312b8ca51.html

obviously all stock market gains are due to trump making america great again, and all drops are due to democrats being treasonous illegal immigrants. try to keep up here.

All past stock market gains were in anticipation of Trump one day getting elected. Everything is failing in to place.

what happened to the 'taking the knee' demonstrations? anything at the superbowl?

everyone stood at the superbowl. the stock market appears to be taking the knee today, though

w/o hazarding a guess at what the average ilxor stock portfolio looks like, I'm gonna risk offense by confessing I hope the market plummets to not-quite-catastrophic levels

is that bad?

No. It's human.

Money is the only language the GOP speaks

maybe i should consider moving my 401k contrib from 0.5% to zero

Catastrophe is inevitable; capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction. The only question is whether or not we're better off with it happening sooner or later.

the treason thing is not surprising at all. just more projection. everything trump is guilty of – he's accused Hillary/Obama/Dems of at one point or another. if it came out trump is actually a secret muslim Kenyan with fake documentation, i would not be the least bit surprised. maybe the Kenyan part at a little bit – but mostly not surprised.

The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/boycott-the-gop/550907/

A response!.

Nunes admitted the application had mention of Steele's political motivation. He was critical of the way it was written but this is clearly his M.O. Dominate the news feed on the thin memos and confuse the public with an overabundance of info.

Today he actually accused Democrats themselves of abusing power. Using his seat on the Intel committee to wage war on the minority party.

God this shitbeak needs to be questioned by Mueller.

part of me thinks he never really wanted that memo released, but rather to have it remain like Hillary's 33,000 DELETED EMAILS...why, who knows what extent of corruption could be revealed, if only those sneaky, lyin' Demonrats would let you see it!! What Are They Hiding??

color me surprised that ponnuru focuses on a word that never comes up in rauch / wittes instead of, you know, responding to the substance of their points

With the cult of right wing media, I'm often surprised there are not even more nuts going into pizza places looking to fight the Illuminati. I blame laziness as it's just easier to drink beer, watch TV and bitch.

House committee voted to release Dem memo.

Almost don't know which I prefer. Trump refusing to declassify will give credence to the Democrat claims.

Part of me is also afraid that Schiff's memo might suck. After all, if Nunes was all that worried about it, he'd have fought harder to stifle it.

But i think i do want it released

Be funny if it were literally, word for word, the exact same memo.

i don't get the impression Schiff is a complete fucking idiot.

I like to take random sentences out of news stories these days and imagine going back in time and challenging the me of, say, 2010 to try to make sense of it. Like this one:

Automated Twitter accounts, called bots, then appeared to push the “Little Adam Schiff” hashtag on the social media platform.

Burn everything

Maybe “Russia” is real after all. Trump does seem really unhinged about it.

“Treason” are a new level I think. He’s saying the Democrats committed a capital crime.

All of them!

Must have been one doozy of a back-channel debate btw WH and Paul Ryan as to which of them has the political capital to stymie Schiff's memo. Clearly that is the President—he will probably refuse on the grounds that it is 11 pages compared to the Nunes memo's 4 (or some such stupid bullshit) with zero blowback from his base.

treason not to applaud the king

It’s all too dumb.

No halfway serious person could think that being president is an appropriate job for someone this ignorant and impulsive. I don’t understand how the Republicans don’t die of shame for maintaining this facade. I would rather die than be Paul Ryan right now.

It’s sick.

Not in the surfer bro sense

the most important thing in the world to republicans is cutting taxes on rich people. nothing else comes close

it creates wealth

it unshackles the entrepreneurial jism

My imagination isn’t large enough to comprehend how that’s even psychcologically possible but the evidence is undeniable.

Possible for them to prioritize thus

I can understand believing in free markets or being sociallt conservative or whatever but like sucking up to the boy king so your patrons get paid? It’s revolting

those patrons are going to create wealth for everybody don't you get it. they're going to invest and create jobs and get this country moving. it's simple!

can't you feel that sweet tax relief coursing through the veins of this great nation even now

it's a real "happy ending" for our wealth creators

Thx trace

afraid that Schiff's memo might suck

What I've read so far by Schiff (or his staff, which would amount to the same thing here) has been sharp and concise. However, at 11 pages written for internal consumption by the committee, it may be too lawyerly and exhaustive for public comprehension.

I don’t believe they believe that. I’m not even one of these anti-market people — I see how liberalized economies create more wealth even as they have many other disruptive/destructive effects — but I don’t believe they think making wealth even more concentrated than it is will have a transformative effect. And even if it did, they’re debasing themselves by doing Trump’s bidding.

xp Tracer

But whatever. Carry on. Republicans just dont have a sense of pride I guess.

in their own way they are very proud. republicans are a tribe who don't care what the rest of us think. they admire the leaders of their tribe (kochs, bradleys, coors, mellon-scaifes, mercers, etc), seeking to augment the power of their leaders, and everyone else may as well be subhuman

dude if you give rich people tax breaks they will open more businesses and take more risks to create great new products and industries. and then that creates jobs and a dynamic economy! it might LOOK like concentrating wealth to a poor blinkered slob like you, and maybe at first it is, but eventually it's gon damn well trickle on down and the rising tide's gonna lift all the boats. that money will find its natural location and get invested in a market-driven way instead of being PLANNED socialistically which we all know if inefficient and useless. what, are POOR people going to create new businesses?? lol!!!!

the problem is, the system's just never really been given a chance

we've been fighting with one hand tied behind our backs

I wish I believed they believed that.

That would be so much less disgusting.

the particular kind of elected fiscal-conservative ideologues you're talking about don't need to believe their policies will have transformative effects though, because they systematically refuse to believe our society has any fundamental problems in need of transforming, except that all individual poor people each raise their children wrong, and so forth. oh and government taking their money. but the potential waiting to be unlocked is just, you know, some more money, not some shower of benefits turning a lifeless planet into a green blooming world.

I get it. I still think it’s wild they are so protective of this gal they’ll bend over backwards to protect the obvious lunatic in te white house.