Someday we'll find it, the pee-tape connection.
Yeah, I'm thinking more and more that Mueller is another stability fetishist: he's been prosecuting campaign officials to show he's serious, but if he's found worse stuff than we already knew, he decided it was too much of an "ordeal for the nation" and let it blow away.
Nothing happened that's not in the OP. Just expressing the same emotion.
Some bolstering reminders from ProPublica.
Like six things happened this week that a few years ago would have been startlingly bad news of the kind that only happened maybe once or twice year. I'm a little jumpy.
I think the opposite of the OP. I think:
1. The report is going to be a bombshell.
2. Significant parts of it will be released fairly quickly.
3. All relevant parts will see daylight eventually.
While we have all become inured to the craziness and the criminality, Mueller has been evaluating the matter according to a set of standards that haven't changed over the last two years.
Trump, his kids and his campaign are guilty of many things and, having lived lives of privilege and impunity, they don't even really recognize the necessity of a coverup. They're going to get busted, and Trump is going to need to break out that pardon pen.
While we have all become inured to the craziness and the criminality, Mueller has been evaluating the matter according to a set of standards that haven't changed over the last two years.
I don't know that Mueller's office constitutes some sort of political-standards time capsule. I mean, it could - the no-leak discipline has been impressive - but I don't think we have any idea. Being a respected FBI director isn't an imprimatur; so was Comey.
the no-leak discipline has been impressive
There are two potential explanations for this: He's either an unusually serious law-enforcement guy (in a way that Comey was not but Patrick Fitzgerald was), or he's in the tank for Trump. I think the latter is pretty unlikely.
I mean, if he's going to go after Manafort, it seems certain that there are others who share that level of culpability. Makes me want to start following Don Jr. on Twitter.
Oops. WSJ now reporting that Mueller is recommending no further indictments.
They've stuffed all his mates, but not him, so he don't care.
He was never going to indict the president. The report will still be a bombshell. There is no evidentiary standards that will convince Senate Republicans to abandon Trump, so the report won't that. But it will shape public opinion about the president.
Yeah, no indictments recommended doesn't mean a lot of shit isn't in the report. (Sitting president blah blah blah.)
But it's pretty obvious the kids have committed multiple felonies, and they're going to get away with it. Even the basic fact that Kushner has to revise his SF86 like 3000 times suggests he knowingly lied about things.
It's important to document the craziness and the criminality, and to have all of that on public record. But getting rid of Trump is a political problem that can only be solved through political (i.e., electoral politics) measures. All the Democrats have to do is win the next election...
O God, yeah, everything is awful, just the worst.
(And this morning I spent too much time reading articles like "Brexit: What Just Happened?" and "Brexit: All You Need to Know." I am flabbergasted by the combination of arrogance and incompetence, of stubbornness and sheer stupidity. Everything is awful. And Theresa May is perhaps not very bright?)
But it will shape public opinion about the president.
Specifically, it will help centrists pretend that Trump has been exonerated.
Let's not limit ourselves. It will also help "leftists" pretend Trump has been exonerated.
And give the media another excuse to treat Democratic investigations, if they ever seriously start them, as purely partisan.
19: Ugh, fair point.
Maybe I'm too pessimistic after hearing E.J. Dionne's anemic commentary on NPR today, but I worry that there are centrist Democrats who will take this as a sign that they should back off investigations and just get to work on passing good legislation.
Time to stop listening to the news and start watching animated children's shows again.
they should back off investigations and just get to work on passing good legislation.
Like making yachts tax-deductible if put into a college tuition trust.
Also, the cop who shot Antwon Rose in the back when he was unarmed and running away got off.
I can't hear you I'm watching spideyverse
Rep. Lee (my rep and Rose's) is on TV and doing well. I've never heard her speak before.
How the fuck does Donald Jr. not get indicted?
And I'm going to repeat this because it really made me angry.
The failsons are going to skate. This makes me furious.
Wait and see. That Mueller isn't briging more indictments doesn't mean that SDNY or NY sate aren't.
The amount of discussion considering that we don't really know anything that we didn't yesterday is maddening. I just got my Saturday NYT delivery, and it's the entire top half of the front page.
So you're saying it got 2/3 of the coverage of Comey's bullshit Clinton email letter.
What about all those unsealed indictments in DC or Virginia or wherever? Wasn't there speculation that these were filed by Mueller?
DC. Quite well-supported speculation, IIRC.
I'm afraid that by the time the part of the report gives the url of the pee tape gets released to the general public, the site will crash from too many hits at once.
@16, yeah but attempting to do anything against that is very messy.
And I'm going to repeat this because it really made me angry.
That is horrifying and appalling.
14: armsmasher!
also, everything is terrible.
The Barr letter is some pretty heavy handed spin.
Disagree. It reads like what it is, a lawyer's letter; "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." I think that's totally plausible on the beyond reasonable doubt standard. What matters is the substance of the report. It is vital the House see the entire thing, including what can't yet be made public.
I'm sure this is naive and shortsighted and I wasn't supposed to pin my hopes on Mueller, etc, etc, but I'm still finding these first few days wildly disappointing.
Silly rabbit. Judicial processes are for agitprop.
And, the report is out of Mueller's hands now. Shit's gonna leak.
I thought companies stopped using olestra.
Everybody is watching basketball anyway.
I don't know that it will leak for a while. Trump's people are leaky in general, but it's very possible this is only in the possession of Barr and one or two others, and keeping this under wraps is 100% the job he was hired for. He'll probably redact what Congress gets.
A hacking fuckhead being a hack.
Too many current instantiations of that formula in politics and media today to enumerate.
Although Barr comes to mind. The media spin is beyond maddening.
I'll make sure to only mention the 'P** Tape'.
Yeah, I'm impressed at the success at anchoring Barr's memo accomplished. We don't want it to affect us, but it definitely still is.
Always already time to keep working on saving ourselves.
the success at anchoring Barr's memo accomplished.
100%.
I really don't understand how that stuff works in terms of the tone of the coverage. Some weeks everybody is reporting that Trump is a shit and usually I can't tell what he did shitty that week that was worse than what he did shitty the week before. And then he goes a week with tweeting and he gets stories about how he's growing or something. Clearly there's some context I'm not aware of happening behind the scenes, but it must be a really fucking stupid context.
I knew it would be bad, but every mainstream fuckhole is exceeding my negative expectation.
Look at I knew it would be bad, but every mainstream fuckhole is exceeding my negative expectation.
Look at this utterly incredible NY Times front page for example. ( I do wonder if a "Barr says" will get added in, right now it reads "MUELLER FINDS NO TRUMP=RUSSIA CONSPIRACY"). This is a front page that will live in infamy.
KM to the hideous former governor of Wisconsin.
57: I'm not even upset, because I knew this was going to happen. As soon as no one else got indicted, the fact that the media spin would be "Trump exonerated!" was foreordained.
It probably speaks badly of me that I'm unable to react, and you're still angry, since it's objectively infuriating.
57 was me.
Sadly, the bad Scott Walker is still with us.
Something something expectations management.
I am upset that Mueller had the discourtesy to release his report while I'm rubber-necking Brexit.
I turned down a job offer in the UK because I couldn't figure out what was going to happen. I thought maybe it would resolve before I had to decide, but May managed to drag it out past the deadline I had to decide.
She stopped an immigrant, just like the Brexit people want.
Now that job will be filled by a Polish plumber who has been taking night classes.
Respectable Republican daddies regrettably letting us know that although autocratic kleptocracy is distasteful to them but sadly their hands are tied is very comforting to mainstream political media.
The unhealthy banality of useless blog commenting, is it right for you?
The unhealthy banality of useless blog commenting, is it right for you?
So far the media is taking the biggest hit for the Mueller report. From the right and now from the left, too.
45 has said all along not to believe that Demonrat Müller (who is the real fascist?). So...
So far the media is taking the biggest hit for the Mueller report. From the right and now from the left, too.
So far, much of this criticism is coming from people who are part of the media. Intetcept and Fox might say they're not part of the media, but from where I stand they are.
Is there any reason to pay attention to effectively pro-Trump leftists? It's probably going to be easier to get votes from other groups
The massage is in the media.
I have been baffled by this whole thing. I thought the relentless pace of indictments and trials of Trump associates for various crimes, and the ongoing revelations about Wikileaks being part of the Trump campaign, was good enough to establish whatever people started hoping for at the beginning of the administration.
Who was expecting a deus ex machina? This must revolve around MSNBC. I never watch that (or any TV news). The people buying merchandise about how Mueller was our hero who would clap Trump into irons seem to be the people who also watch MSNBC. Likewise the pro-Trump leftists making fun of the media are making fun of Rachel Maddow and... ? Does "the media", for the purpose of lamenting that the media has been obsessing about Russia, consist of MSNBC?
"Racists who can't get health insurance without Obamacare" are probably far more numerous and open to persuasion.
I generally think myself fortunate not to have cable or internet at home (I use my phone mainly). I miss so much that is missable.
I feel like the two paragraphs of 77 are making opposite points.
From the right and now from the left, too.
For some values of left, I suppose. I mean we're talking about the likes of Glenn Greenwald, Michael Tracey, and a handful of shitposting tankies here.
81: I thought the left attacking the media was referring to the mainstream left attacking the mainstream media (CNN, New York Times) for taking the Barr summary of the Mueller Report as gospel.
Those are pretty much who I blame, along with Comey, for the stories that got Trump elected. The fucking shit fuckers.
I think if CNN didn't exist, we'd have President Cruz, which might be worse.
I've seen "tankie" being used repeatedly in the last week- definition?
The obstruction section is straight up bullshit. It says that the fact the no underlying crime could be proven bears on the President's intent. That's not the case for any other obstruction investigation I've ever heard of (remember how Republicans said it didn't matter that the blowjob was consensual, just that he lied about it?) It basically says if you do a good enough job obstructing the underlying investigation, so that the underlying crime can't be proven, you can't be charged with obstruction. Which is pretty much a guide for Republican scandals- Iran Contra was successfully obstructed, Watergate wasn't.
A tankie is a Stalinist (you might think there weren't any, but 10 minutes of reading reddit would reveal to you that you are wrong). I think the term comes from people who support the Soviet Union sending in the tanks to crush the Hungarian Uprising in 1956.
The Barr summary is a very short letter consistent with a very damaging report. What matters is the content and the use that can be made of it in the next election. Without 2/3 of the Senate this was always going to be the case.
A little-known fact about the Martha Stewart trial is that the judge refused to allow Stewart to present evidence related to insider trading, because she wasn't being tried for insider trading. Her argument was that she was on trial for lying, obstructing and conspiring about matters related to insider trading, and if she wasn't guilty of insider trading, then she had nothing to lie about. The judge didn't buy that, and his ruling was upheld on appeal.
Patrick Fitzgerald nailed Scooter Libby on similar stuff, and pointed out that had Scooter not lied and obstructed, there would have been enough evidence to bust him for the underlying crime.
81 You're probably right and I misread it.
Who was expecting a deus ex machina?
As with heebie in 80, this doesn't strike me as consistent with the first graf. Given what we know, the fact that Don Jr., at least, isn't facing time in the dock is disappointing.
I suppose I can imagine a plausible case on procedural grounds for not indicting Don Jr. and the others, but I'm at a stage where I really don't much care about the rule of law. That ship has sailed. I thought there was really a chance that Trump et al would get a tenth of the shitty treatment that Bill Clinton got. Heck, I'm still hopeful that they'll get a 20th of that treatment once the report comes out and other prosecutors are heard from.
I am not worried about some gross procedural injustice being visited upon, say, Jared Kushner. In fact, I'm actively rooting for it.
10 minutes of reading reddit would reveal to you that you are wrong
Probably because the only way I would read 10 minutes of politics Reddit is if I were being tortured to do so in northern Siberia.
I count on Unfogged to curate Reddit for me.
I stick to the backpacking forums there.
92 That's what Nicole Cliffe on Twitter is really good for.
On the media subthread, I'll just offer a drive-by quote of what I posted on twitter in response to a Yg thread about why MSNBC is such shit about the actual issues:
Sort of like how NYT subscriptions went way up after the 2016 election with opponents of Trump looking for quality reporting on the carnage to come, and the NYT responded by hiring a bunch of conservatives to lecture their subscribers.
I'm still resentfully not reading the Times after the 2016 elections, and I really miss the recipes and theater reviews. If they'd just sell me everything but national news and politics I'd buy it.
The Times has really terrific recipes.
She also has a justifiably surprised reaction to the idea that you can't be held liable for obstructing an investigation unless the underlying crime is substantiated.
As well as a fanatical devotion to the Pope.
That's the real reason she went to prison
The Avenatti news is a real kicker.
I only recently learned that the Sinéad O'Connor protest on SNL in the 90s was about the church sex abuse scandals and not just because she hated the pope or something. At the time I had no context for it (I didn't know anything about the church abuse, being Jewish and living in a not very catholic area) and therefore all I heard was the narrative that she was anti-catholic or something.
Then Madonna tore off some guy's penis or something, the 90s were crazy man.
I feel like the two paragraphs of 77 are making opposite points.
I mean, I thought we were going to hear "Haha, the weirdos who bought Covfefe merchandise - is their face red". Not "Haha, the news media - is their face red".
The Avenatti news is a real kicker.
JFC! First I saw.
94: She's moved more of this to her paid email newsletter. They getcha coming and going!
People who can't do SAS have to earn money in the strangest ways.
Avenatti complaint. It alleges that Avenatti (in recordings) demanded, as conditions of non-exposure, not just compensation for his clients, but direct hiring of his firm for an "internal investigation", fee at least $15m, and allowing Nike to "self-report" misconduct.
I've read enough legal documents this week so I'm not going to check myself, but why Nike? Or did he just cold-call random large multinational billion dollar companies and threaten whoever called him back? Or is it related to that kid who blew out his shoe in a game?
111: He claimed to have evidence that Nike was paying college athletes.
If he committed extortion that doesn't mean he didn't have an actual case. Presumably his new notoriety gets him more calls from potential plaintiffs.
Four days ago he tweeted an article about the sentencing of three people associated with Adidas for fraud, paying to get certain college basketball players in the pipeline for pro ball and Adidas contracts; his tweet implied there was more to come. Not sure who the plaintiffs would be in those cases, but it seems likely Nike has similar vulnerabilities.
112: Correction -- high school athletes and their families.
Is it collusion if only one party has all the ideas?
He claimed to have evidence that Nike was paying college athletes.
Well, somebody should.
William H. Macy should kick in something.
FINE JUST BLAME THE JEWS WHY DON'T YOU.
Sorry. Meant to blame only Israel.
It would be funnier if Devin Nunes were involved.
They're attacking the professor who liked the "Fartenberry" sign, this time for pointing out white supremacists.
That's just really good minimalist vandalism.
Done by a sociologist, which really improved my opinion of sociology.
Based on the first few paragraphs that's an incredibly stupid article, Roger. It's like you took 19 as a prompt.
