US Politics May 2019: " If I was burned at the stake, I would ask for a mirror"

was this a big story in the states?

Yes and no. It's a big deal to all the actors and technicians/crew people etc. who've moved to Georgia to work, and are now dealing w/the possibility that Netflix, Disney, and other production companies will be boycotting the state.

democrats need to subpoena mueller and make him testify.

to refuse to testify, to claim that everything he has to say is already in the report, is supremely arrogant. it suggests that any possible relevant question has already been addressed and is perfectly unambiguous in the report. and it also suggests that there are no relevant meta-questions about the report - when was the decision made to not recommend any charges based on DOJ policy; did he feel that Barr's "summary" of his report was accurate, etc

"I got me elected" for June title, or "and if it was true, it was a typo".

please don't feature yet another was/were grammatical fuck-up as the title, it is embarrassing

xp

One easy question to ask in front of cameras:

"Did you establish that the president is innocent of obstruction?"

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/445983-dershowitz-shame-on-robert-mueller-for-exceeding-his-role

I mean, he's not completely wrong in identifying Mueller's aim as encouraging impeachment. Of course, he completely skates around the fact that Mueller obviously thinks that's the limit of what he can do with the mass of criminal evidence he documented.

I thought Mueller would be eager to see his report be acted on. So yeah, finding this refusal to testify any further questionable.
Would have thought that as a lifelong epublican he would want to get rid of the factor that is undermining the party as anything other than a group of enablers. Wonder how he feels about Mitch McConnell who seems to be about as negative for things like the rule of law which I thought he loved.

why is anyone listening to a kid diddler's lawyer who might himself be a kid diddler? harvard can be such a scourge

xp that hofeller story is interesting in the "things you knew had to be true, and.... oh looky there" way

it's the most infuriating-poignant story I've read this week

Alfred, maybe you can answer the question of whether the Supreme Court can consider those documents even though oral arguments are finished

My understanding is that SCOTUS can vote to rehear a case, but John Roberts and His Furious Five just ain't gonna do it. Roberts cut his teeth during the Reagan years thinking of delicious ways to gut the VRA.

Ugh

This is a good roundup of conservative cognitive dissonance in response to Mueller's statement yesterday.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/conservatives-stunned-by-mueller-implying-trump-not-innocent.html?utm_campaign=nym&utm_medium=s1&utm_source=tw&__twitter_impression=true

I think it's quite notable that all these commentators are essentially correct in their assessment of Mueller's comments, but are unable to make the logical leap to grasp that yes, the Mueller report is in fact an exhaustive catalog of criminal behavior and that he's making an impeachment referral to Congress. They are too close to the truth to assume that they are straight up lying. I think they really might not understand that the facts are sitting there for anyone willing to put the effort in to see.

well, they're right-wingers. they have to be told what to do. crave it, even. without instructions they are just inert

well it's exactly the same as how Lefties get spoonfed their info and beliefs from CNN and HuffPost. EXACTLY THE SAME.

Sure, but it seems like they are suddenly and inadvertently stumbling onto the truth, which strikes me as a significant change.

it is kind of astonishing that some of them are just NOW realizing what the mueller report actually said and why, even though all Mueller did was literally just repeat what was in the summary of the report. unbelievable.

i mean, i guess tbf when the #BENGHAZI stuff was going on i didn't pay special attention to what the republicans were saying, because it was pretty clear that there wasn't much there and that it was just a ploy to bring down clinton.

to a conservative, the mueller report probably seems like the same thing - just a partisan witch hunt that has no merit. so maybe they didn't ever read the report. and they're not just in a bubble that keeps inconvenient truths from getting in - they're in a bubble that actively distorts and lies. so some of them just never had heard anything that was truthful about the report. they had to wait until mueller said it live on tv to figure it out.

but wow, holy shit

Which is why televised impeachment hearings might work to help shift people away from or further away from following trump. Hopefully enough fact would filter through to even the most ardent enabler.

This is basically everything. https://t.co/39ma74yDaK pic.twitter.com/02Sa8IsXcW

— John Glaser (@jwcglaser) May 30, 2019

i guess some people are "reading" people, and others are "mouths forming words out loud" people

“I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.”

trying to figure out if she's just trolling the reporter there

White House officials did not immediately explain how driving up the cost of Mexican goods might stem the flow of migrants. If the tariffs damaged the Mexican economy, more of its citizens would try to cross the border to find work in the United States, experts said.

Pelosi argued on Jimmy Kimmel that "there's a school of thought" that acquittal in the Senate after impeachment means you can't be tried criminally after leaving office ... what? https://t.co/QVBItiMez4 pic.twitter.com/h5mnrdHGE5

— Quinta Jurecic (@qjurecic) May 31, 2019

wut

that's a real moment for this gif

https://media1.tenor.com/images/d470329d3016e1491ac301c87d30a72f/tenor.gif?itemid=8555658

more like cathy garn-WHAAAAAAAT am i right

It’s not just Maddow. The Times has come to “prefer,” as sources put it, that its reporters steer clear of any cable-news shows that the masthead perceives as too partisan, and managers have lately been advising people not to go on what they see as highly opinionated programs. It's not clear how many shows fall under that umbrella in the eyes of Times brass, but two others that definitely do are Lawrence O’Donnell’s and Don Lemon’s, according to people familiar with management’s thinking. Hannity’s or Tucker Carlson’s shows would likewise make the cut, but it's not like Times reporters ever do those anyway. I’m told that over the past couple of months, executive editor Dean Baquet has felt that opinionated cable-news show are getting, well, even more opinionated. Baquet and other managers have become increasingly concerned that if a Times reporter were to go on one of these shows, his or her appearance could be perceived as being aligned with that show’s political leanings. “He thinks it’s a real issue,” one of my Times sources said. “Their view,” said another, “is that, intentionally or not, it affiliates the Times reporter with a bias.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/the-times-gives-maddow-the-cold-shoulder

Good morning!

Peter Baker is on Morning Joe all the time. Is this acceptable?

at the moment, it is acceptable

It’s unclear whether they, too, would be encouraged to stay away from Lemon or Maddow or O’Donnell going forward, but the way cable-news contracts work is that contributors are obligated to appear on a network generally, not on this show or that. At the same time, several sources pointed out that political reporters generally gravitate toward shows like Morning Joe and Anderson Cooper 360 anyway. In CNN’s case, according to a network source, the only Times contributors who typically go on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon are the opinion columnists Charles Blow and Frank Bruni, who aren’t bound by the same strictures as Times newsroom staff.

I'm surprised the Times hasn't banned the use of adjectives yet.

oh my god this 5% tariff on Mexican goods until people stop crossing the border is just about the dumbest thing I've ever heard

he will back off that shit no doubt

larry kudlow is low-key one of the dumbest people in the admin

I don't really think those NYT restrictions are unreasonable. Better for the op-ed writers to go on those shows.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/pete-buttigieg-brother-in-law-accuses-2020-candidate-of-lying-about-his-family-for-political-gain

Well if the Washington Examiner says it's so...

Trump will do what he did last night.

"Tariffs cancelled as Mexico did a good job last week of stopping migrants. But I was ready!"

for the third time, a lone GOP house rep has heroically stopped a disaster relief bill

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/third-republican-blocks-attempt-pass-disaster-aid-house-n1012031

"there's a school of thought" that acquittal in the Senate after impeachment means you can't be tried criminally after leaving office ... what?

Probably based on the idea that the 'double jeopardy' restriction would apply-- deep waters that have never been judicially explored, so it should not even be a consideration.

But impeachment isn't technically a "criminal" trial, even though the Senate "convicts" you

Grancy is grasping for excuses

Maybe if we quit asking her publicly about it every ten minutes

if she's waiting for some event to happen before starting impeachment proceedings, what is that event?

The president is, of course, a crook. The Speaker of the House declined, once again, to take up Mueller’s implicit invitation to do something about it. The Speaker is still waiting, either for impeachment to somehow ripen further on its own, without the people in charge of impeachment doing anything about it, or for the 2020 election.

There is—still!—a school of thought that says Nancy Pelosi, whose record till now is unquestionably that of a tough and canny politician, has a real plan, and that she is patiently holding out for the right moment to act against Donald Trump. What that right moment may be is a mystery. It’s not the special counsel delivering his report and then declaring his share of the work to be completely finished, because that just happened. It’s not a Republican member of the House breaking ranks and announcing that his colleagues have a duty to impeach Trump, because that already happened, too.

https://hmmdaily.com/2019/05/29/nobody-knows-whats-going-to-happen/

Nancy's Right Moment is the new Obama Long Game

I think she's waiting for that pesky red line to stop inching forward at just the moment when Trump would've otherwise stepped over it.

I just don't get what she's supposed to say about it *publicly* at this point.

Telegraph a low moving process to her opponents?

...she is patiently holding out for the right moment to act against Donald Trump. What that right moment may be is a mystery.

If Pelosi is waiting for Trump's poll numbers to drop as a result of his stonewalling the House, she's deluded. But it seems more likely that she is listening to her caucus and hearing too much hesitation, fear and doubt to feel able to charge ahead. I'd say the right moment would be when the timidity of her caucus transforms into some backbone and resolve.