DL Open Thread: Weds., July 24, 2019
How Trump Administration Has Given Blank Check To Gun Exporters. A sign of the exporters’ appreciation? Their convention is taking place at Trump’s DC hotel.
How China Is Trying To Address Its Massive Trash Problem. Step 1 is recognizing that you have a problem.
ICE Held A US Citizen For Three Weeks Because They Could. Hey, to ICE, traveling while Latino is an offense worthy of prison.
Has Bill Barr Already Won? Going first colored the entire reaction to the Mueller Report. Tell the big lie often enough…
Here’s The Shit The Rethugs Will Throw Today. Oldies, but it’s all they’ve got.
With the Mueller hearings scheduled to start within an hour of my posting this, feel free to comment on what you’re seeing and thinking about that.
As always, what do you want to talk about?
Mueller says in his opening statement that he will honor any and all restrictions that AG Barr has demanded be placed on his testimony. He’s a private citizen now, but he’s voluntarily gonna stay under Barr’s thumb. Not exactly stepping out on a limb.
Nadler is asking leading yes or no questions that illustrate clearly that the president was in no way ‘exonerated’ by the report. Good job.
Boy, this John Ratcliffe guy is an asshole. No questions, just a screed.
The Rethugs seem to be making a legalistic argument that, if the Special Counsel can’t indict a sitting president, then they shouldn’t have listed all the shit that Trump did.
In fact, it’s a concerted effort.
Rep. Chabot going off on a Fusion GPS tangent. Of course, the argument is that it was the Steele dossier that kicked off the investigation. Which it wasn’t.
Rope-a-dope stuff.
This Louis Goemert is a nut. Mueller hired a ‘bunch of people who HATE the President’. All those R’s who supposedly hate the President.
This Jim Jordan guy is a total asshole. He’s into the Papadopoulos stuff, talking about some guy named Mifson, who allegedly lied to, according to Jordan, start the whole thing. He’s apparently the key to the whole thing, according to Jordan.
A break now. These Rethugs are nothing but criminal enablers.
The fact that Mueller testified that he doesn’t know about “Fusion GPS” is a red flag. He’s either lying or he is completely incompetent.
Gumshoe RSE is on the case.
All this shows is that the GOP is corrupt, root, stem and branch, and that Democrats are too timid (or corrupt themselves) to do anything about it.
Too many are not listening to what the 4 are actually saying, calling out that very corruption.
Mueller agrees not to cross the DOJ parameters. The Rethugs cite situations where Mueller would have to cross the lines, and Mueller says he can’t comment. The Rethugs express outrage and/or puzzlement.
Mueller’s a fucking patsy. It’s clear to me that Barr and the Rethugs have coordinated these attacks knowing full well that Mueller’s sense of duty or whatever will prevent him from blowing up these ridiculous attacks.
This country’s fucked.
Blame the Democrats. There really was nothing to gain by this testimony, and plenty to lose.
Man, would I love to get in a poker game with the “strategists” of the Democratic Party establishment. They’d leave so broke they’d have to solicit more money from their corporate paymasters.
Yep. Did they really think that the Rethugs WEREN’T going to do what they did?
If you play by Marquis of Queensbury rules, they’re gonna knock you out every time.
As to Mueller, he didn’t even bother to reply to the Rethug meme that all the lawyers were Democrats? There were more R attorneys than D attorneys on his team, but when someone makes such a false allegation and it is not challenged, it becomes true.
And couldn’t Mueller have once, JUST ONCE, reiterated that the reason why he couldn’t/wouldn’t comment on matters was precisely because he had agreed with Barr’s order not to do so? It made him look deliberately unresponsive, a point the R’s were only to happy to hammer home at every turn. Again, a charge unanswered becomes the truth.
A cross between Thurston Howell, III and Mr Magoo, with a pinch of Lurch thrown in for good measure….It’s a shame what they did to him.
Gotta say, he was much better, MUCH better, in the afternoon. The idea of Russia throwing the election got his dander up. He even said that they’re meddling ‘as we sit here’.
“Throwing the election”? Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, Mueller’s boss at the time, stated that there was “no evidence” that the election was impacted at all.
Obama’s take:
“There is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could even rig America’s elections, in part because they are so decentralized. There is no evidence that that has happened in the past, or that there are instances that that could happen this time,”
And just for fun, here is Adam Schiff, gladly accepting information from Russians:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=NxHrn6Byz3g
You truly are a moron. When you’re running an investigation, you accept tips from people. Talking to someone on the phone isn’t what dozens of Trump campaign people did.
When you’re running an election, you don’t accept stolen emails from foreign intelligence services.
Only a fucking stone-cold idiot doesn’t see the difference.
I just threw that in there “just for fun”. What about the fact that the official stance of the investigation, was that the election “wasn’t impacted at all” by the Russians? BTW, what “stolen emails” did Trump accept from the Russians?
John Podesta’s.
We have no way of knowing what effect the Russians had on the election beyond what we’re told, and the last thing they’re going to tell us is that our elections are fraudulent. The whole game depends on people believing that we’re some form of democratic republic rather than the oligarchy we so obviously are.
Believing the official position means you have to believe the Russians broke into computers but then didn’t do anything once they got in there. This is equivalent to thinking someone broke into your house but didn’t take anything. It’s possible, but I’m not buying it.
Hey RSE are you simply a Russian troll or a homegrown disloyal Republican? It does not matter, you are all the same. Will some one please get rid of this freak?
Homegrown disloyal Republican, I’d bet.
And BTW – The extent and impact of the interference by the Russians was the proximal cause the obstructions, which nobody (not even RSE) denies happened.
Can you imagine if there was a special council who had evidence of Obama profiting from Russian deals, money laundering and having all the crooked appointees and Russian connections? The republican party and their white trash shills stand for nothing except their own bigoted egos !
I don’t know why anyone should be surprised that Mueller’s testimony was guarded and lackluster. We are talking about crimes committed by the President of the USA. That raises serious questions about the structure and integrity of the American system per se. The system will never allow that to happen on a significant and demonstrable scale. Here’s what you can also expect. Trump will never be impeached and convicted in the Senate even if the Dems control both houses. When Trump leaves office, he won’t go on trial for anything that could land him in prison, not even on the state level. If an American president went to prison, it would demonstrate in unmistakable terms that the American system of government is flawed because it resulted in a criminal holding the highest office in the nation. Nothing is going to happen.
Probably. But the sad truth of that is bound up in the unwillingness of Demcorats to do anything. The system depends on an opposition. We don’t have one in this country.