Cohen only paid the guy 13K and an MMA glove and pocketed the rest.
Perfect.
In this same vein, I'm thinking of watching Netflix fyre festival documentary tonight. It seems inarguable that if the fyre festival guy weren't in prison he'd be working in the White House today.
Reiterate I'd love some lawyer insight into Barr and his memo and testimony.
Not that I'm impatient or anything. It's only the fate of your Republic.
The Fyre documentaries look worthwhile, but all the comparisons I've read boil down to "they're both good, each have their pros and cons, neither is clearly the better one to watch" which is frustrating.
It just occurred to me: the fyre festival is the subject of a sober sign-of-the-times documentary; the Theranos story is being made into a feature film as a crime thriller.
Where's the wacky screwball comedy about Juicero? Someone in Hollywood needs to get on this.
"You don't get to squeeze 500 million pouches without making a few enemies."
I don't think they ever squeezed that many pouches.
History repeats, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
When does it stop repeating? Is there one specific tragedy this farce is a repeat of, or several, or what? Does it necessarily repeat on the same scale, and if not, in which direction is it more likely to go? Are we somehow getting both at once?
8: I don't think Marx intended for that line to be taken so seriously.
9. All of Marx's works are out of copyright, so no problem.
And he would be obliged to waive anyway, right?
Where's the wacky screwball comedy about Juicero?
"You know, for kids. Or other people who can't squeeze a bag."
The Fyre documentaries look worthwhile, but all the comparisons I've read boil down to "they're both good, each have their pros and cons, neither is clearly the better one to watch" which is frustrating.
Vox says the Netflix one is better.
Didn't the Netflix one have one of the organizers involved as a producer?
Yeah, but it was the FuckJerry guy, who seems to have had a fairly peripheral role in hyping the thing, at least according to Vox.
Also, the Hulu one apparently paid McFarland a load of money for an interview. Fuck that.
It's Friday before a three day weekend, the stories of suborning perjury are circulating, and I'm wondering if something really appalling isn't going to drop at the end of the day in hopes it will be buried.
Good thing you don't spend your weekends blackout drunk and wandering the woods.
The news cycle still works assuming people still did that.
They'll never see you coming.
Anyway, eight inches of snow in the woods isn't that bad, but two inches of snow followed by freezing rain followed by more snow isn't a good time to be drunk with nature.
Pittsburghers have 78 words for shitty weather.
Grown adults will say absurd things like "slippy" instead of "slippery" if there is ice on the sidewalk.
Kids nowadays will use "rapey" or "stabby" to describe people who seem inclined to that sort of thing.
I need to stock up on food. We're in for mixed snow and rain on Saturday followed by a massive drop in temperature on Sunday. Ice, hooray.
My plan to watch Fyre last night failed because apparently it is being released today.
Trump and Fox announced another caravan today. I imagine there are warehouses full of people in Central America and every time another impeachable offense is revealed Trump pushes a button and a thousand people are released towards the US. (I realize there probably aren't any people actually coming, or at least no more than the usual flow, and Trump/Fox [but I repeat myself] call it a caravan whenever they need a distraction.)
Give them CB radios and call it a convoy.
I'm surprised the current administration hasn't brought back the color-coded alert system, designed by the Bush administration to detect whether Kerry was polling better.
Why would Muslims illegally crossing the border leave their prayer rugs at the border? It's not like the commandment is to pray five times a day only when in Mexico.
Funny how their are no pics in this day of ubiquitous cell phones.
Impressive that Klobuchar lined up her questioning of Barr an admission that suborning perjury to Congress by the President would be a crime. (He probably has different opinions on whether that's prosecutable, and is ready and willing to cover everything up, but it's good video.)
Also I'm intellectually satisfied at the better explanation that has emerged of what should trigger impeachment: behavior showing that unless removed, the President is going to continue to use his powers to subvert the rule of law and cement his power in his favor. So they don't have to be literal crimes, they can be maladministration, but it has to be a certain subtype or either. This explains why Clinton shouldn't have been impeached, with more specificity than "the crimes, if any, weren't of that level of seriousness", which was the best I was able to articulate it in the past.
33: Did you read Yoni Applebaum's article in the Atlantic? I read enough of it to be convinced.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/impeachment-trump/580468/
Re: Clinton, if I remember correctly the lawyers around here have said that he didn't actually commit perjury at all, right? For two reasons. First, he said "I did not have sex with that woman", in a context where "sex" had been very carefully defined to only include intercourse, and second, because what the person is lying about must be material to what the person is under investigation for, and Lewinsky wasn't material to Whitewater. Still dishonest of him in a moral sense, of course, but a non-president probably wouldn't have been convicted in a criminal court on those grounds.
I could easily be misremembering minor details and maybe major ones, sorry, not going to look this in more detail on a work computer. But does that sound familiar to anyone?
34: Yes, I read that, but I think I was more directly thinking about something in JMM.
Applebaum's article was good in many ways, but I was super-annoyed at one of the tacks it took, "You should worry about Trump because he's threatening the institution of the imperial presidency!"
Trump attempts to displace headlines by announcing another meaningless meeting with Kim Jong-un.
35: I don't remember the details well enough to argue it, but yeah, something like that. I'd say strongly and confidently that no one would ever have been criminally prosecuted for comparable lying -- calling it "perjury" is something that could be argued over, calling it something that would have led to a criminal conviction in any plausible circumstance is just wrong.
33.1 Yeah, I've totally come around on this. I was convinced earlier by Josh Marshal's argument against impeachment and in favor of the slow bleed by a thousand cuts of congressional hearings and investigations. But I now think the House needs to begin impeachment proceedings immediately.
Chimpeach the Chimperor!
38: After listening to Slow Burn I wondered if it could be argued that he suborned perjury -- it seemed to me he definitely was urging Lewinsky to lie about their relationship.
35: The question is whether it was material to the investigation of Paula Jones' accusation, which was a lot more specific than just generic Whitewater. Showing a pattern of pushing female employees for sex might be relevant there. The actual facts of the Lewinski relationship (where she initiated some pretty overt flirting at the President, and engaged in a consensual relationship) don't support Jones all that well, but a different fact pattern might, and lying about the relationship prevented that from being investigated.
The "rule of law" frame sweeps away all that, honestly, tedious rehashing. Whether it was a crime or not, or a crime-that-might-ordinarily-be-prosecuted or not, Clinton's stuff revolved around covering up personal-life embarrassments. Whereas Trump has consistently been abusing power in a way deserving impeachment, and that would still be the case even if he had somehow crafted his actions to avoid crossing any statutory line.
I have just been struck by an idea, which pleases me. I shall call it the Zombie Index, and it runs thus: the dysfunctionality of a developed democracy is directly proportional to the degree to which that democracy's public discourse is concerned with zombie issues; that is, by disputes which which have by any reasonable empirical standard been conclusively resolved, and yet continue to be discussed.
32: There was a pic of the prayer rug the last time they made up this story in 2014. It turned out to be a soccer jersey. It had Adidas stripes on it.
Anyway, Journey is the thinking person's Foreigner. Always a classic.
Mike and the Mechanics are the thinking person's Mr. Mister.
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I've seen this Hamlet already.
|>
Hawke is the hipster Hamlet, basically.
I think I'll watch till Bill Murray gets shot.
Schrieber does a creepy Laertes.
Murray too. And Stiles a weirdly flat affect Ophelia.
Coffee not Pabst. But shitty stupid hat.
Did Shakespeare actually write polonius for someone he hated, so the audience would throw horseshit at him?
Really, those hats people wear on the Altiplano.
Murray super creepy. Is he fitting her with a wire or just feeling her up? This his daughter.
Yes, a wire. Still totes creepy.
I feel like this stock footage is full of references I don't get.
Murray is good at getting shot.
They're standing around in a laundromat talking about disposing of dead bodies. A laundromat employee is just sitting right there.
The pilot is wandering around the passenger cabin drinking. Did they use to do that?
Kyle McLachlan is good. What happened to him?
I remember that I watched that movie because my high school English teacher gushed about how "postmodern" it was when it came out. (From her, this was always a term of the highest praise.) I don't actually remember the movie much, though, although the laundromat part rings a bell.
It's super meta but not really in a good way. Like if I didn't know Hamlet already I'm pretty sure it would be incoherent garbage.
66 He's still making movies, and most notably starred in Twin Peaks: The Return a couple of years ago.
70: It's just copied from The Lion King, minus the happy ending.
Have you written your congresscritters?
The bipartisan "Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act," put forward Thursday by U.S. Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Bob Menendez of New Jersey, would dedicate new resources from the U.S. State Department, FBI, and other intelligence agencies to documenting abuse of Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslims in the XUAR, as well as Beijing's intimidation of U.S. citizens and residents on American soil.
[...]
A complimentary bill--HR 649--was proposed Thursday by U.S. Representatives Chris Smith of New Jersey and Tom Suozzi of New York, who warned in a statement that the XUAR has "become nothing short of a police state" and urged fellow lawmakers to "take a stand against this violation of human rights and show the Chinese government that this is unacceptable."
Pretend that was humorously delivered by the benign, non-judgemental figure of Bill Murray or Mads Mikkelsen.
Watched half of Fyre last night. It's good so far, but no real surprises. It's impressive how many of the people they interviewed perfectly match my stereotype of what someone involved with something like Fyre would look and act like.
66: He was a supervillain on Agents of Shield a couple of years ago. He was good, too.
Do white-tail deer understand windows? Like if they see their own reflection, would they be tempted to charge it? If they saw a person on the other side staring at them, would they realize they could just jump through the thing?
You may well be the commenter best placed to find out.
It's just staring. I don't want to shut the blinds because I work better with a bit of natural light.
It's probably for the best that I opened the blinds instead of raising them. Now I look like I'm protected by bars.
He's sleeping now. Or at least closed his eyes.
All I can say is, thank God for the Fourth Amendment.
Stand your ground. Pre-heat the oven.
There's at least four deer out there. Only one is watching me.
There were as many as five and they were eating various plants.
Past tense. So the freezer is big enough.
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Yet this contestable division of provincial space was not entirely the product of conflicting human ambition, for behind the clamor of its tribal and imperial creators rises the relentless whine of mosquitoes.|>
Still there. I'm going to get Lyme disease if these things don't leave before spring.
I guess they're going to spend the whole day there.
92. How late does bow hunting season run?
I have a compound bow in the basement. No arrows though.
THE COMPOUND BOW IS THE MOST POWERFUL FORCE IN THE UNIVERSE.
What happens if a deer dies in your yard and you don't want to eat it?
Just leave it out on the sidewalk. Someone will take it.
Moby or someone asked about Chinese real estate bubbling a while ago. This isn't that, but it's adjacent.
That doesn't sound like, but it is interesting.