a quick poll about Russia and Donald Trump

which one?

my fave north american trotsky org is solidarity, and their journal against the current is really good

none of you poseurs have a regular donation to any maoist organizations though.

wait there are non-annoying political factions in the US? please explain

mister, we could use a man
like leon trotsky once again
those...were...the...days!

in my experience calling a girl annoying is guy for "im gonna try and fuck that chick". its an instant break up in my book.

― sunny successor, Wednesday, March 5, 2008 8:47 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol

@jim - IMT

credit where it's due to them for having the domain marxist.com

somehow doing Putin's bidding again, right Satan/Maddowists?

Reuters reports:

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday called on Russia to pull its troops from Venezuela and said that “all options” were open to make that happen.

The arrival of two Russian air force planes outside Caracas on Saturday believed to be carrying nearly 100 Russian special forces and cybersecurity personnel has escalated the political crisis in Venezuela.

“Russia has to get out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. Asked how he would make Russian forces leave, Trump said: “We’ll see. All options are open.”

are you talking to anyone here?

wait did Satan get a new show?

Fuller House iirc

wait did Satan get a new show?

― d'ILM for Murder (Hadrian VIII), Thursday, March 28, 2019 4:41 AM (thirty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he has a whole network.

more like a medium tbh

just based on stuff we already know mueller could have indicted don jr, fact he didn’t prob means he wussed out from going too close to the pres. i figure he had something that technically implicated trump but was kinda small beans and was like ‘eh fuck it’ .. trump was acting hilariously suspicious the entire time and it clearly kept him up at night, his tweets last weekend were fn nuts lol. the way libs reacted to russia stuff was obvs some kinda mild post traumatic denial and produced some of the cringiest content in history but tbh i think the investigation was a success

Just remembered this SNL sketch from a year ago where Robert Mueller says there's no case on collusion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CKGA9w-B6A

Even SNL knew this might be the case. Taibbi and Greenwald are just embarrassing themselves, although I don't think at least Greenwald is able to feel shame.

^Satan

(for Gummy Gummy's benefit)

He’s now shifted into the “we already always knew that all along anyway” phase of grief.

I thought Chapo was very good on this this week. In a nutshell: everything we need to impeach Trump is and already was in plain sight from the beginning. But the Democratic Party lacks the political guts to do it (even now tha they have a house majority) so instead people hoped for a legalistic/extra-political solution.

Nixon was never in danger of being impeached for his biggest crimes (Cambodia, genocide in Indochina etc).

man alive otm

what people? Rachel and the Maddows?

But the Democratic Party lacks the political guts to do it (even now tha they have a house majority) so instead people hoped for a legalistic/extra-political solution.

didn't we have a discussion like... two weeks ago about whether impeachment would be politically useful at all? guts have nothing to do with it

xp c'mon everybody was *hoping* for a legalistic-political solution...it might have been a pipe dream but even skeptics would have liked to see it happen

^extra-political

This backlash on the Russia stuff (when it is so obviously there!) is as bad if not worse than R's howling TOTAL EXONERATION

"would have liked to see it happen" /= pinning one's hopes on a long shot.

I would like to marry Jake Gyllenhaal, but this doesn't mean I stop using OKCupid or dating.

yeah, post-election most dems could not envision surviving through a full term Trump Presidency so the idea that he should be arrested/impeached kind of got ahead of things like evidence-gathering and political practicality.

It's like on 9/11 when all the smug people said "are you surprised?"

the sudden credulity around these parts for Mueller and the Feds by ppl shouting "Pigs!" the past two years is amusing

it's the solarized version of Trump now heaping praise on an investigation that just a week ago was a phony and rigged

So itt now the "TITTWIS how right I was and how wrong u were"

Alfred I totally think Jake Gyllenhal remains in your wheelhouse

As I've said before, impeachments are, if anything, much more political than elections because an impeachment intends to undo the results of an election. Voters are generally angry at politicians all the time, but they get particularly livid when politicians attempt to override their (rather meager) prerogative of selecting their own overlord.

Unless and until a large chunk of Trump voters begin to feel he is a danger to the nation, the Democrats should be very nervous about impeachment. They have to build a case that convinces the country, not just Democrats, otherwise they will bring down voter wrath upon themselves. Mueller also seems to have felt his case needed to be absolutely clear cut, but unless we see the whole case he built, we'll never know how strong it was.

Alfred I totally think Jake Gyllenhal remains in your wheelhouse

― d'ILM for Murder (Hadrian VIII), Thursday, March 28, 2019

https://media.giphy.com/media/4XvDy9HmgPmUM/giphy.gif

I would like to marry Jake Gyllenhaal, but this doesn't mean I stop using OKCupid or dating.

that's exactly what it means for me

Maybe he's poly

In any case, it’s clear we are in the midst of a massive bum’s rush spearheaded by what should be the notorious Barr letter. I explained some of what seem to me the details here. Others here at TPM and elsewhere have too. We have a letter written by an AG specifically appointed to clean up if not cover up the Mueller findings. It gives the President a clean bill of health based on a narrow claim that there was insufficient evidence to establish a crime in the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia. Because of this, per Barr’s argument, the idea that Trump could have obstructed Justice in the course of his cover-up was all but a legal impossibility.

This was the kick off for an ongoing campaign not only to claim “complete exoneration” as the President and his supporters insist but to further insist that the whole investigation and scandal was a hoax and the product of lies. This leads to demands for members of Congress to resign and Trump’s campaign going so far as to demand that Trump’s critics no longer be allowed on the public airwaves. Mitch McConnell, perhaps the craftiest and most cynical man ever to head up the US Senate (think about that for a second), says the Mueller Report proves President Obama didn’t do enough to protect the country from Russian subversion.

In other words, the Mueller Report is a game-changing blockbuster of such gravity that we will apparently never be allowed to see it in any other than a few dozen carefully chosen words or further summaries. To date, if you look closely, we’ve seen maybe two or three dozen words of it, out of a document that reports suggest is voluminous. This whole show is such an immense pile of bullshit it really beggars the imagination.

That Barr and Trump would go this route is hardly surprising. And no I don’t expect Schiff or others will be run out of Congress. But let’s see clearly what the angle here is. Use this period between the Barr letter and whatever portions of the actual report emerge to sufficiently cow the press, the public and the opposition party out of ever mentioning the story again and – just as important – aggressively reporting on all the other instances of presidential and administration corruption.

The big league players at the Times, the Post and other marquee publications have gone along with this to a surprising and yet frankly not terribly surprising degree. This seems to be maybe changing a bit as the days wear by. But honestly, I’ve seen enough over a long enough time, that the ‘analyst’ voices at these publications, as opposed to the reporters, will almost always, and certainly at first, give way to conventional wisdom, power and the desire (perhaps not even entirely consciously) to score points with bad faith actors. “The darkest, most ominous cloud hanging over his presidency was all but lifted on Sunday with the release of the special counsel’s conclusions … The end of Mr. Mueller’s inquiry also left Democrats on the defensive and will force them to decide how vigorously to continue pursuing allegations of misconduct by the president and his allies.”

In so many words, we don’t know anything until we see this report. And anyone who doesn’t see that is a chump or a fool. I actually have a relative confidence that we will see the Mueller Report. It’s possible parts do need to be restricted for national security reasons. But anything that falls into that category, which should be very small, should of course be fully available to Congress. I don’t think it will be possible to keep this fully under wraps. The point is more to create a new set of realities – press-cowing, false storylines, room for more bad-acting – in the interval in which we are supposed to make our judgments based on Barr’s letter and when we actually see the thing.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thanks-and-no-thanks

y u p

also on TPM, some useful thoughts from a fed prosecutor, trying to read the tea leaves on what's actually in the mueller report:

3. The non-charging decision on obstruction by Mueller cannot be explained as a failure of evidence. On conspiracy or coordination, it appears Mueller made a clear decision not to charge because of a lack of evidence. As too many members of the media seem to get wrong, this was not a “no evidence” situation, but rather a failure to get to the required level of admissible evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. And the level of proof had to be something in between probable cause (you can’t get 500 search warrants without it) and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I have no problem with that decision from a prosecutorial discretion standpoint. There was lots of evidence of an underlying conspiracy, but it was always going to be very difficult to prove the President’s direct involvement with sufficient admissible evidence (classified intercepts from foreign governments won’t do it). And Manafort and Stone holding the line seems to have been the stopped the Mueller team short. Mueller made a decision not to charge conspiracy because of a lack of evidence, so why not obstruction? If it’s a 50-50 call and a pure “jump ball” that’s easy. You decline. If it’s “more likely than not,” the civil standard, you also decline. Even if it’s “clear and convincing” evidence that doesn’t rise to the level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, you decline the case. So what is going on here? To me, the only answer is that they had a chargeable obstruction case but stopped short of making a decision to charge the President–because he’s the President. It could have been the policy not to indict a sitting President, it could have been the legal and policy arguments around executive authority, or it could have been out of deference to the legislative branch and its impeachment prerogatives. Any way you cut it, I just can’t see Mueller shying away from a tough evidentiary call. If we ever get to see it, I fully expect the actual Mueller report to contain a devastating case against the President for obstruction of justice. This is why we should expect to see Barr, the White House, and the Republicans in Congress fight like hell to keep as much of the report as possible away from the public and House Judiciary. Democrats cannot let this go.

wrong link there Karl

oopsy daisy, thanks: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-barr-gambit

so apparently the mueller report is over 300 pages long

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/us/politics/mueller-report-length.html

well, after all this time I’d hope so

the kenneth star report was 500+

double spaced at 1.1, margins .8 inches on the sides

Bett er be 12 pt times new roman one inch margins single spaced!

Michael Tracey
‏@mtracey

I'll be going on @SamSeder at approximately 1:20pm EST to explain why Marcy Wheeler, aka @emptywheel, is the Judith Miller of the Trump/Russia saga -- except her ethical violations were much more egregious, damaging, and extreme. Tune in!

I didn't hear this yet, but my wife says Sam was screaming at him.

Monica Lewinsky reminds me a little of Lorelei Gilmore now.