What’s absolutely maddening about this is that they clearly had instructions from on high to keep the park open at all costs. They tried to do the sensible thing and close the park to protect it but literally a day later they reopened it.
Once again, it’s politics and “protect Trump” over all else. Fuck that!
Edited to add that at least that’s a sign that they know damn well this isn’t hurting the Democrats. If it were, they’d close all of the parks to up the ante.
F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia
By Adam Goldman, Michael S. Schmidt and Nicholas Fandos
Jan. 11, 2019
WASHINGTON — In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/us/politics/fbi-trump-russia-inquiry.html
Crazy, not stupid?
The New York Times
The Boston Globe
Huffington Post…
all are running this story
…and carried by the New York Intelligencer
FBI Investigated Trump to Determine if President Was Working for Russia While in Office
Days after Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey, the bureau began to ask the question that had consumed much of the American public since it first learned of Trump’s Russian connections: could the president be working on behalf of Vladimir Putin, undermining American interests? According to a report from the New York Times, in May 2017, the FBI began to investigate if Trump was working – actively, or unknowingly – on behalf of the Kremlin while in office.
The inquiry took two modes: agents weighed if the president’s decision to fire Comey could be considered a threat to national security, and if the firing had a criminal aspect, constituting obstruction of justice. “Not only would it be an issue of obstructing an investigation, but the obstruction itself would hurt our ability to figure out what the Russians had done, and that is what would be the threat to national security,” said former FBI general counsel James A. Baker, who testified before the House in October 2018. While a potential obstruction of justice charge has already been reported, the detail of Trump as a target of counterintelligence is being made public for the first time.
Its always been in plain sight. From the beginning. And now with a shutdown, the courts are about to be affected in a major way too. Federal courts will begin to run out of money over the next two weeks, which will be even more deleterious to our democratic process by slowing down the administration of justice.
tRump is a fucking wrecking ball, destroying one institution after another, enabling are enemies and giving the slow burn to our allies, and proposing policies that hurt anyone that isn’t willing to give him the fealty of a monarch.
Is the bastard going to suffer? I don’t care how gets draw, or in what order as long as he does.
I am wondering what it would take to make some 20 GOP senators act to save the country by impeaching trump. Now we have strong indications he is/was an agent working for Russia (which in my book makes him a traitor…a term I do not use lightly) . What would it take to so badly shock us that we would turn this guy out of office? Grilling a live fetus on the WH lawn and then gnawing on it like a KFC chicken leg? Shooting a person at random from his limo? What is it gonna take?
Edit
It will take all the democrat senators and at least 20 republicans to convict trump in an impeachment trial in the senate.
Where is the editorial staff?
Is no one around TPM to post on this?
Everyone is picking this story up…
In addition to the other news outlets picking this up.
It was just reported on Ch 7 Boston,
DailyKos has a full, robust discussion underway…
This is of enormous consequence.
F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia
By ADAM GOLDMAN, MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and NICHOLAS FANDOS January 12, 2019
Emergency!
Build the Wall!
WOW…that’s all I can say! The level of stupidity is ALARMING!!
I was just wondering where the money for the Secret Service’s golf carts are gonna come from now that the government is shut down? Seeing how his Secret Service detail isn’t getting a paycheck for providing him protection, I seriously doubt they’re allowed to pay money to tRump’s golf courses to protect him during this shutdown. So it’ll be interesting to see if he takes off to go to one of his properties at some point during this period.
No like Trump, I think they are very teensy weensy.
It took me awhile to figure out I should be on the thread to find others who were reacting to this.
It is really chilling to have this out in the open somehow.
Josh has posted
Economics is called the dismal science, but this still does not give license to be an asshole. The key trick of Trumpism, or Mercerism to be more specific, is that any claim that distorts discussion is winning the discussion. By the time one is responding that the comment is off color, pulled out of your ass, bullshit, fake, etc. the thing that should be discussed hasn’t. There is an excellent British made-for-tv movie, Toby Haynes Brexit: The Uncivil War, which should be up on US HBO next week. There is a scene where it dawns on the Remain campaign chief Craig Oliver on how this game has been played, how 3 million people who never vote have been so shell-shocked by social media that the will run to the polls to “take back control” of their destinies. Kevin Hassett is playing the same game. Obviously, losing your house, your creditworthiness, your self-esteem is bad. Why wouldn’t a Trumpster tell you it’s a good thing?
Given the long experience of the UK and US with civil society and rule of law, it’s not surprising that this puerile debasement of public discussion seems foreign to some. It certainly is for those who have spent 16 or 20 years in the public education system. But the Russians have long had a word for it: poshlost. Here are a couple efforts to translate the term:
Another notable literary treatment is Fyodor Sologub’s novel The Petty Demon. It tells the story of a provincial schoolteacher, Peredonov, notable for his complete lack of redeeming human qualities. James H. Billington said of it:
The book puts on display a Freudian treasure chest of perversions with subtlety and credibility. The name of the novel’s hero, Peredonov, became a symbol of calculating concupiscence for an entire generation… [Peredonov] seeks not the ideal world but the world of petty venality and sensualism, poshlost’. He torments his students, derives erotic satisfaction from watching them kneel to pray, and systematically befouls his apartment before leaving it as part of his generalized spite against the universe.
Richard Taruskin summarized poshlost as “highfalutin bad taste,” applying the term to a performance of the Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution (Prokofiev).
Completely OT
YouGov survey: British sarcasm 'lost on Americans’
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46846467
“half of Americans wouldn’t be able to tell that a Briton is calling them an idiot”.
YouGov showed a number of common British phrases, including “with the greatest respect”, “I’ll bear it in mind” and “you must come for dinner”, to Britons and Americans.
“While not all the phrases show a difference in transatlantic understanding, there are some statements where many Yanks are in danger of missing the serious passive aggression we Brits employ,” YouGov said.
The starkest difference was in the phrase “with the greatest respect” - which most Britons took to mean “I think you are an idiot”, but nearly half of Americans interpreted as “I am listening to you”.
or maybe not, with greatest respect, mr Hassett, I think you are an idiot…
Did anyone tell this Rectum that all Federal Workers are NOT CONGRESSMAN!!
((Taking time off anyway)
Let me get this straight working w/o pay is better then taking days off with pay. Ok when are YOU going to start?
Hassett ought to be told to work 6 months without pay just to see how much better off he’d be.