…so…not sure what the difference between apparent certainty & “substantial likelihood” might be but I guess it’s a step in the right direction?
…& you know what they say about long journeys & those first steps
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ivanka-trump-deposed/2020/12/03/story.html
…speaking of journeys
…some might have been less wise than others
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/couple-who-tested-positive-covid-arrested-after-boarding-flight
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/covid-surge-200-000-new-cases-100-000-hospitalizations
…& while we’re on the subject of surges that aren’t all good
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/turnout-map-2020-election
…& do-as-I-say-don’t-do-as-I-do
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/01/ppp-sba-data
…meanwhile the distraction theatre continues apace
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/02/most-petulant-46-minutes-american-history
How serious he is remains to be seen. Many allies believe his talk of another run in 2024, when he will be 78 years old, is more about maintaining his relevance, enabling him to raise funds, soothing his wounded pride and trying to shed the label of loser. But even if it is only for show, Mr. Trump’s talk of a 2024 race has already frozen the Republican field and could delay the emergence of a new generation of leaders while keeping the party tethered to the politically polarizing Mr. Trump for months or years to come.
…much in the manner of sideshow bob surrounded by rakes
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-white-house-s-census-power-grab-hard-sell-supreme-court
President Trump’s allies on Wednesday debuted their latest lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 elections results — this time in Arizona. But in literally the very first header on the suit, they misspelled the name of the court from which they were seeking relief.
“IN THE SUPRIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF ARIZONA …” the suit began.
One error? Sure. Things happen. Except it was the third time it happened in one week.
In two lawsuits from former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell last week, she misspelled the word “district” in three different ways — all, again, on the first page of the filing.
In a case in Georgia, the court was misidentified as “THE UNITED STATES DISTRICCT COURT, NORTHERN DISTRCOICT OF GEORGIA.”
And in Michigan, the court was identified as the “UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, EASTERN DISTRCT OF MICHIGAN.”
The Trump legal effort has been plagued by losses thanks to its baseless, frequently recycled, debunked claims. But it has also been plagued by a kind of sloppiness that seems to epitomize just how little care and consideration has gone into its efforts.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/03/trump-allies-sloppy-error-riddled-legal-effort
…it’s like the only people invovled are complete fuckwits who don’t know what competent looks like
But it’s hard to overstate just how useless is a press secretary who’s frequently not “aware” of discussions and developments and policy changes. When McEnany, for instance, says she’s not aware of any discussions between Trump and congressional allies on the election challenges, she’s neither confirming nor denying that they exist. Which is to say, her input has no value whatsoever. There are millions of Americans who are also not “aware” of such discussions, but they’re not paid $183,000 to speak for the president.
When was the last time she spoke with Trump — and what, if anything, was discussed? That’s what we wanted to know. McEnany hasn’t yet replied to our inquiry. So we have no way to confirm that she’s aware of it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/03/kayleigh-mcenany-isnt-aware-anything
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2020/12/01/sidney-powell-trump-fox
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/01/powell-cites-qanon-watkins
…or to put it another way
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/02/trump-inspired-danger-gop-georgia
The Senate runoffs in Georgia should not be allowed to become a festival of lies about whether socialism, radicalism or defunding the police are on the ballot. They’re not.
What is at stake: whether President-elect Joe Biden will have a chance to end the scourge of the covid-19 pandemic, get the economy moving again, and enact some bread-and-butter programs to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure and shore up our health-care system.
And voters must understand that as long as Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is the Senate majority leader and the base of the Republican Party is dominated by the far right — including “Stop the Steal” Trumpists — a divided government is not a recipe for compromise. Instead, it’s a ticket to obstruction and the very sort of partisan brawling that moderate voters can’t stand.
The belief that divided government guarantees moderate outcomes might once have been true when there was a solid moderate bloc in the Republican Party. But it should now be clear that it’s a destructive myth.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/divided-government-is-a-destructive-myth/2020/12/02/story.html
…why it’s almost as if they’re counting on their audience being dumber than the impressively shitty standard they’re setting
Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election — and, by extension, to democracy itself — is a Dunning-Kruger challenge. It aims to foster among his supporters the idea that they understand complex systems well enough to gauge improprieties. That their own assessments are as valid as those of actual experts such as Chris Krebs, the cybersecurity official Trump fired for having the temerity to note that there was no evidence of fraud in the contest.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/03/only-experts-trump-wants-his-supporters-rely-are-themselves
…& hammering some tried & tested buttons
Donald Trump’s win in 2016 never brought his followers the cultural power they’d hoped it would. Quite the opposite, it prompted many cultural institutions — from professional sports to Hollywood — to oppose Mr. Trump and his political project with more fervor.
That reaction helped fuel a sort of Möbius strip of grievance: We came to power because we were the overlooked, hated silent majority. But, when we came to power, our opposition hated us and treated us unfairly. The result of that treatment is the loss of our power and proof that the system is rigged against us. Once again, we’re the overlooked, silent majority.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/opinion/trump-media-culture-war.html
…which…again
https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/michael-flynn-firing-lie-leak-liability/index.html
…work better when preaching to the choir than they do when addressing the court
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/02/politics/immigration-public-charge/index.html
…& the tangerine tantrums don’t stop
Trump is said to be livid at Barr, with one official suggesting termination possible
…social media failed to come through for him so now he needs to find a way to put the boot in…even if he pretty definitely doesn’t grasp how quickly his twitter antics’ consequences would come home to roost if he actually got anywhere with this one?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/01/trump-repeal-section-230-ndaa
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/02/congress-trump-veto-threat-defense-bill
…not that there’s a connection between the defense bill & this little bit of fit-pitching…but seriously…with that not panning out for him…of all the things to go after facebook for hiring non-americans seems like a poor choice
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/03/facebook-doj-immigration-lawsuit
…when really they need more people on staff if anything
…not that there’s really any sign that poor choices aren’t the GOP’s favorite kind
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-fed-pay-freeze/2020/12/02/story.html
…well
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iran-killing-embroils-trump-israel-one-final-diplomatic-mess
…those & the ones that involve killing as many people as possible
…meanwhile
The president-elect has taken care of aging parents and been a single father to two young boys. He knows from his own experience that today’s caregiving crisis is not a symptom of the pandemic but a preexisting condition. If there ever was a president who understands why this issue must be a priority, it’s him. And if there was ever a moment caregivers needed a full-time champion in the administration, it’s right now.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/melinda-gates-broken-caregiving-system/2020/12/02/7story.html
…on the other side of the aisle
…people are trying to do actual stuff that seems like…well…politics?
…or at least as near as we can get under current circumstances
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/12/03/congress-economic-stimulus-coronavirus
…even when it involves giving some stuff up
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-democrats-election-committees/2020/12/03/story.html
…& it might seem like a token effort
But the razor-thin margin is far from the only reason the race is engulfed in chaos.
…but I guess it depends what you compare it to?
…of course there’s more than one kind of missing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/mexico-losing-conrol/mexico-disappeared-drug-war/
…& context is important
In a way Trump might have been right about his 46-minute rant being his most important speech ever. If I were to do an Oliver Stone/”Nixon”-like treatment of the Trump presidency I would lead with snippets of this, maybe with scenes of different people watching it on their TV and screens, silently, and some people watching the broadcasts where the networks refused to air it and why, and fade to black. Then, as the opening credits roll, there could be a montage of headlines about pre-candidate Trump, offering millions to anyone who could find evidence of Obama’s non-American birth certificate, his NYT full-page ad calling for the death penalty for the (ultimately exonerated) Central Park 5, etc. Then, we begin with the descent on the escalator at Trump Tower and go from there. There will be flashbacks, of course. The main problem with the movie is that except for Mike Pence you couldn’t really write roles for anyone not in the Trump family. Nixon has Ehrlich, Halderman, Mitchell. Who remembers anyone from the revolving door of the Trump administration? Betsy DeVos I guess, Stephen Miller, Fauci…You could throw in Mitch McConnell, I guess, but have the two of them ever actually met?
Luckily for aspiring screenwriter for me it’s going to be years before my ideal audience would want to revisit this ghastly episode in this Republic’s eventful history, so I have lots of time to think about this.
…presumably if you were going to do the thing justice (poor choice of words) you’d need to cast the various people who’ve been convicted/pardoned/taken plea deals/been indicted
…your cohen/manafort/flynn/parnas/stone types…& of course billious bill barr & the ever-crazy slate of “lawyers”…in fact I think you’d have a pretty extensive cast of bit players the more I think about it?
Yes, but that in a way is the problem. So many crooks and nut jobs that come and go. Paul Manafort, for example (and I can’t believe I even remember his first name.) What does he look like? And what did he do again exactly? The Department of Homeland Security: There have been five heads, the last two acting. Within that is ICE. That’s a good plot line, the obsession with The Wall, kids in cages, family separations. Who heads that? Wiki tells me there have been seven, the latest one taking office just three months ago. Trump famously has screwed up relations with most of the countries on earth. The Secretary of State is now Superspreader Mike Pompeo, but there have actually been four altogether, two acting, and the first “real one”, Rex Tillerson, who I think was an oil executive? turned on Trump when he was fired by tweet. Who had a prominent role in “Nixon”? The Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, whom you might have heard of.
That really is the problem. You would need a reasonably objective character to center the narrative, someone normal to establish contrast with the insanity. To ground it, in other words. The Trump regime has been a nonstop parade of nuts, kooks, sociopaths, imbeciles, incompetents, grifters, and criminals. There’s no way to ground it, showing it through the eyes of a reasonably trustworthy narrator. Without that, it’s basically a fever dream, uncoordinated madness. Like Salvador Dali without any art or thematic elements.
I discussed this with The Better Half and he came up with a very good idea.
“What was that movie we saw about Margaret Thatcher? I was bored but you couldn’t get enough of it. I don’t remember anyone else in it, except for her husband George or whatever–”
“Denis. ‘The Iron Lady.’ Meryl Streep and Jim Broadbent. Yes. And that movie was controversial because Thatcher was still alive when it was released and portrayed as in some mental decline. Told almost entirely in flashbacks. This might just–you’re a genius.”
A white house staffer, like one of the WH Butlers would be a *perfect* character… they’re “in the background,” but see ALL the comings & goings😉
Reminds me of this:
Stone could just re-make Natural Born Killers and re-name all the characters for Trump people.
Since RIP brought up Barr, someone help me understand what’s going on here.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/12/3/1999764/-White-House-liaison-banned-from-DOJ-building-as-schism-between-Trump-and-Barr-appears-to-grow
Barr has been completely willing to do anything Trump asked, no matter how dubious or evil. NOW he’s pushing back? What’s the point? What’s his endgame? I mean, he’s going down with the ship here. It’s like the Titanic is sinking, and just before the deck goes under, he jumps overboard, but gets sucked down by the whirlpool. Too little, too late.
What am I missing?
I don’t think he’s pushing back as much as there is zero evidence for him to work with. he can’t redact his way out of this one.
…I fear I am unequal to the task but I can speculate wildly?
…so I don’t know that you’re missing something in particular…but on a general basis we know trump was of the opinion that “good” attorneys don’t write things down…& that he’s a massive fan of abusing any & all positions particularly if doing so can subvert the mechanisms of justice to keep his tail out of the many cracks it ought by rights to be wedged in
…so I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say it has at times seemed like trump & his various associated have been made privy to information they ought not to have been in relation to stuff like the mueller report/his impeachment/the various plea deal agreements offered to the likes of manafort & cohen…& that he fully expected that level of service to be maintained even in the current circumstances despite his having lost his bid for re-election
…barr on the other hand is at least conversant with the actual law & not entirely divorced from reality so he has to know that the ice has gotten thinner & the risk/reward ratio has shifted…particularly since the various efforts to scream fraud are so utterly specious…so it wouldn’t surprise me if he is belatedly covering his ass against being himself charged with acting improperly/illegally?
…his whole “make me AG because I say you’re immune from prosecution” bid was pretty clearly going to land well with a guy who probably will thinks nixon’s claim that “when the president does it it isn’t illegal” was a masterstroke rather than a telling admission…& his tl:dr memo was craven & bullshit but extremely effective…so naturally rather than show an ounce of gratitude for keeping his orange ass covered trump assumed that all added up to having the DoJ in his pocket & considers a refusal to flout the law to be an unforgivable betrayal on barr’s part rather than an admission that you can only say the quiet part so loud for so long before the facade of legality crumbles & everyone concerned ends up neck deep in shit
…the liaison seems to have been merrily making deals on a transactional basis that they not only had no business making but which significantly implicate barr himself on at least an implicit basis so 86ing her makes some sense even if nothing else about it really does?
…basically I guess I’m saying that although I’d tend to take the view that it ought to be very much too-little-too-late it’s barr’s attempt to drawn a paltry line in the sand & make clear that he might have been happy to say all kinds of crazy shit to bail out a sitting GOP president & keep him out of the clutches of the law & the democrats this is one hill of insanity he’s not prepared to die on?
Re the Liason, too… it seems she’s apparently buddy-buddy with
Goebbel…. Steven Miller, so it MAY be a matter of Barry cutting her loose, so that she& Miller can’t hang him out to dry…Because you KNOW that after moving up from Bachmann’s office, to the Racist KKKebler-elf’s team, and then ass-kissing his way into all the policy decisions he’s gotten to make in the WH, there’s no WAY Goebbels-Junior there wants to give up his powers long-term.🤨
I suspect with the White House hack it is less about Barr and more about the attorneys at DOJ refusing to go along. They know the laws and regulations 100% and are threatening (or carrying out threats) to document every shady thing she is asking, informing him and his staff in writing, and forcing him to choose between explicitly signing off or else taking action against her.
Before the election I think the rank and file was a lot more nervous about defiance, but now they know that with so many people willing to go against him and only a couple of months in office, Barr’s hands are tied as far as retribution, since personnel actions take a long time in the federal government. And while Barr is a monster, he isn’t so dumb as to get his fingerprints all over anything more that could require him testifying under oath in the future. He probably has enough to worry about.
I think Barr knows he could end up in jail like the rest of the Trump crime family if he keeps playing these games & just wants to fade away until the next criminal administration summons him to cover their crimes.
Barr’s clock is ticking. He’s 70. Although given recent developments since 2016 that’s like being in your mid-40s. Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, all 70 or older.
You know who’s still alive but not causing trouble is George Schultz. He turns 100 in a few days.
Just a couple of years ago Schultz was majorly involved in damage control at Theranos after the point where it was clear to him that Elizabeth Holmes was a fraud, to the level where he was threatening a whistleblower.
That whistleblower was his own grandson. Schultz essentially cut out him of his life and warned his children to stay away from the grandson in order to stay on the good side of Holmes.
Once a piece of shit, always a piece of shit.
It’s interesting that the turnout map shows NY state having so many counties with a decrease in turnout. Probably not coincidental that some of those counties are heavily Republican.
Whoops. Someone needs to explain the law of unintended consequences to the folks over at Parler:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/02/parler-pornography-problem/
Paywall, so I’ll summarize: Turns out that allowing “all free speech” also includes pornography. Parler is being spammed by significant amounts of porn.
Now, based on the average Parler user’s position on pornography, this could be a feature, not a bug. And increasing moderation to remove porn would doubtlessly reduce traffic. Tumblr never recovered after banning porn.
So let’s conjecture a bit: What happens when clearly illegal pornography shows up on Parler? Because child pornographers will absolutely start doing business there.
They’ll simultaneously claim protection in the form of Section 230, while also screaming that Section 230 needs to be repealed because Facebook.
Ah, cognitive dissonance. A Republican art form.
The same cognitive dissonance that lets the Q-nuts on 8kun rant about “save the kids” but also exist on the same platform (and post?) kiddie pr0n.
…I was going to include that link in the DOT but I couldn’t figure out how to fit it into my vague rant-trajectory
…given the userbase I hope they hate it as much as folks did when the gawker comment section had problems with obscene material & the whole thing tanks…but I guess I’m biased on account of being a fan of irony?
It will be whataboutism and deflection’s finest hour:
bUt I tHouGHt LiBrULs wAnTEd aLL sEX tO bE LeGAL.
“Because child pornographers will absolutely start doing business there.”
Hell, with the overlap in white-supremacists/Nazis/and “Trad” folks *already* over there, I suspect it’s not as much an issue of “will absolutely start doing business there” as it is, the VOLUME of business being done.
Because while *not* one, singular, overlapping, circle, there IS plenty of overlap between the sorts of dudes who want a “pure, young, biddable” trad-wife, and the sorts of dudes who’d like that in 14-18 year old form, because–to quote one of the Duck Dynasty asshats, one should “Marry ’em young”
😒🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤬
nothing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s all projection with these folk, and they are the ones behind Qanon and pizzagate, blaming everyone left of Hitler for child molestation and trafficking. So if (er, when…) any shows up, it will probably be to a welcome crowd…
Well, I figured the FBI and probably Homeland Security were already watching parler because of domestic terrorism risk, at least they can work on this topic, too.
2 birds, 1 stone and all that.
I read this the other day:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/biden-mask-mandate-covid-vaccine-tv-b1766023.html
How much you want to bet that every Republican in Real ‘Murca will make it a point to publicly declare their freedumb so they can Own The Libs? It will be yet another classic case of “I’ll show me” because these people are irredeemable morons.
I know this isn’t the complaint department, but I just thought of a complaint. Today is our wedding anniversary and my wife is thousands of miles away. She’ll be back a couple days after Christmas, but I generally get waffles on my anniversary.
Happy Anniversary to you and your wife. 🧇
…you deserve waffles
…hopefully once the mrs gets back you can do some belated anniversary celebrating…& drop some suitably broad hints about those including waffles in lieu?
…either way…happy anniversary
Happy anniversary Luigi, and happy future wife’s home belated anniversary!
At least it’s Fur Face Friday!
https://backtalkvillage.blogspot.com/2020/12/fur-face-friday.html?m=1
…hurrah…& thank you
i really need to sign up over there at some point and lurk
but i dont have any new pics to share atmo anyways
tho currently candy is high as a kite and living of chicken breasts…specially cooked for her (doctors orders..lol)
she had to have a couple teeth pulled
anyhoos…the special treatment is making the other 2 a little jealous
but candy dont care….shes high as a kite