US Politics January 2019: we are #ready to drop something much, much bigger

Last sentence of that statement is what I want to hear.

Hey, full morning already!

“but be careful Nancy!” This is the language of a hostage-taker pic.twitter.com/Ys4th5TQ2Z

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 20, 2019

dems can now point to this tweet and fairly argue that by holding the line they’re preventing mass deportations of 10M people

— Women For Kilgore Trout (@KT_So_It_Goes) January 20, 2019

Also

Rudolph Giuliani tells @CNNSotu that Trump may indeed have spoken to Michael Cohen about his congressional testimony beforehand. "And so what if he talked to him about it?" Denies Trump told Cohen to lie.

— Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) January 20, 2019

.@GStephanopoulos: "Did Donald Trump know that Michael Cohen was pursuing the Trump Tower in Moscow into the summer of 2016?"

Rudy Giuliani: "According to the answer that he gave, it would have covered all the way up to... November of 2016." https://t.co/kEzanELn3I pic.twitter.com/kxSUAXFhtk

— ABC News (@ABC) December 16, 2018

💥BAM! Rudy just said: "Collusion is not a crime; it was over with by the time of the election." That's some goal-post-moving confession right there.

He also said Trump told the special counsel that he pursued Trump Tower Moscow deal all the way to November 2016. https://t.co/TIuXX2NOJX

— Jennifer Taub (@jentaub) January 20, 2019

Buzzfeed guys were on CNN a few minutes ago and they were pretty adamant their story was sound.

^^^

BuzzFeed News is strongly standing by its Michael Cohen story. BF reporter @a_cormier_:“I have further confirmation that this is right. We are being told to stand our ground…The same sources that we used in that story are standing behind it, as are we.”
pic.twitter.com/f0asZFEDFK

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) January 20, 2019

one obvious thing about the special counsel's statement on the buzzfeed story that i haven't heard anyone say: what the fuck is with the placement of the second comma? for such an important, carefully worded statement, wtf happened there? it's impossible to read out loud without sounding like a mistake was made

"BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate."

looks like two hours ago trump retweeted the father of really dumb teenage fartknocker jacob wohl, who claimed he knew of someone with a claim that mueller sexually assaulted her before holding a disastrous press conference in a holiday inn in front of a couple dozen angry journalists and several thousand confused people on periscope, whose tweet begins "Journalism is DEAD."

good mourning!

Did Fox touch that story? I thought everybody I was aware of running it played it as broad farce so it might have undermined the Fox message. So if he's not looking at any other news sources he might not be aware of it. Plus it was more than 5 minutes ago so who remembers things like that?

I don’t think Fox ran with it. But not that he’s at all discerning about who and what he amplifies.

Did the Pres just say he'd offer amnesty if Pelosi held out for a bigger deal? https://t.co/jNyIQImRny

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) January 20, 2019

xpost Marcy Wheeler piece on the Buzzfeed correction (plus recent WaPo piece) pretty useful. In the Post they reveal the correction may have come at the behest of Rod Rosenstein, which may mean indeed that it came at the insistence of Whitaker; both are I assume privy to what Mueller has, but only one is probably actively trying to protect Trump. Yet as Wheeler points out, Buzzfeed's sources are likely in SDNY, not from Mueller (who does not leak). Cohen is a cooperating witness for Mueller but *not* for SDNY, which means they have different uses for him (and slightly different investigation/prosecution strategies). The vague correction might have been a way to keep this matter at arm's length for Mueller, because they will need Cohen's testimony to bolster evidence and also Cohen's own claims, since Mueller's focus is not necessarily on the president (who can't be indicted) but on his cohort (who can). Ergo the Buzzfeed story can be not wholly accurate, as far as Mueller is concerned, yet at the same time entirely accurate, as far as SDNY is concerned.

Did the Pres just say he'd offer amnesty...

Even if he said it unambiguously and repeated it five times, it doesn't mean he would do it. This man doesn't fuck around when it comes to lying or going back on his word.

I keep thinking if there are 11 million people hear illegally, they must be working somewhere. It seems like if they had gone after the people that have been getting cheap under the table illegal work force bypassing current labor laws, they probably could fix their problem. How many billions of unpaid taxes are in that group. The thing is the same people that are all build the wall are the same ones using the illegal cheap labor. They tried this back in the 90s and the industries balked about 'regulation'. Don't see at all why this is not a bigger part of the narrative by either side in this debate other than both sides like taking money from people exploiting these employees.

you really don’t see why? hmm...

During Trump's shut down, E-Verify is down.

Checking employment eligibility of potential hires was by far the most effective means of deterring undocumented immigration, but some knob wants steel slats that will face a decade of environmental lawsuits and never be built, and threw the gates wide open.

they chant "build the wall" because it lends their whiteness a further prestige.

Fox & Friends Apologizes for Accidental Graphic Saying Ruth Bader Ginsburg is Dead https://t.co/mR2CxtLbKJ pic.twitter.com/mVZFSbbygQ

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) January 21, 2019

“This was a technical error that emanated from the graphics team.”

We accidentally made a graphic.

why can’t someone “accidentally” run over Steve Doocey with a forklift

Why can't someone 'accidentally' permanently disable Fox News's ability to broadcast?

very sinister

i don't understand how something like that could happen

obit stuff is often made ahead of time, nothing malicious, just being prepared. so this is just a problem with an entry in a database somewhere.

“This was a technical error that emanated from the graphics team.”

i.e. Technically, it's an error. She's not dead yet.

good mourning!

day 31 of the shutdown.

I’m sure I’m not the only one here who’s tried to child-lock a parent from Fox News.

it looks to me like the shitbag's Saturday afternoon "offer" was all McConnell trying to maneuver things back to a conventional give-and-take negotiation, which of course legitimates shutting down the government as a legislative negotiating tactic. He can't possibly expect that this offer will go anywhere in the House though, much less peel off the necessary amount of GOP Senators, nor does he have any leverage to get Trump to offer more/compromise more, so I don't see this going anywhere productive.

(my apologies if we already covered this over the weekend - Sat at 3pm is a stupid time to announce anything!)

once upon a time, two political parties unanimously agreed on a budget in the senate and sent it to the president for his signature

but ann coulter and rush limbaugh got mad. it didn't seem racist enough

so trump added a giant symbolic wall of racism to the mix and everyone went home for a month

but it didn't seem racist enough

so trump decided to treat human lives like a bargaining chip with fluctuating value, and offered 3 years of their lives to the deal

But he was still hungry.

lol

I sense a new trend in "the pulse-of-America" puffpieces

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-voters-now-blame-him-for-the-government-shutdown/2019/01/20/416051de-1b55-11e9-9ebf-c5fed1b7a081_story.html?utm_term=.2e0252866ebd

i know people have problems w/ this analogy, but this extended shutdown/meltdown really is the point where we're effectively "negotiating" or dealing w/ a man with the mentality of a toddler (without the capacity for affection) and we're suffering from there being noone to be able to lock him in his room for a few hours.

Ken Janicki, a 66-year-old retired technology worker who voted for Trump, sipped on his coffee the other day and put it in blunt terms.

“I am all for border security, a full wall around this country,” he said. “You come in legally, I’ll welcome you to be my neighbor. But you come in illegally and I’ll introduce you to my friend Smith and my other friend Wesson.”

America!

And when he visits Paris he flips a table when none of the restaurant staff understands his English

xpost I also think even the average American increasingly views him as dishonest, or at the very least an unreliable negotiating partner, so they know where the Democrats are coming from.

we're suffering from there being no one to be able to lock him in his room for a few hours.

Constitutionally speaking, the Republicans in the Congress could end this at any time, by passing a budget, sending it to Trump to be vetoed, then overriding the veto. They pretend they are unable to act, but it is entirely their choice.

they know that if they betray the President they will all get primaried

Which makes them fully complicit in the shutdown. <- my point

Right

10% absence at TSA yesterday and these numbers are creeping up https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases

Trump seems like the type who'd be a big believer in the sunk cost fallacy.

confession: I don’t gaf about the TSA

controversial opinion!

passengers standing in line for more than an hour tend to gaf about that. their anger is going to be directed somewhere, but chances are good it won't be directed at the working stiffs who aren't getting their paychecks.

I gotta stay, the smoothness with which MIA and goddamn LaGuardia ran this morning stunned me. At 7 a.m. I waited in no line and the airport was deserted (it was also nine degrees outside and on a holiday weekend but still!)

A full wall around this country and its many islands and x-claves.

no trump voters will get incensed over illegal immigration into Guam or American Samoa.

Going through security at Newark and SFO this week was super painless. I kinda figured that TSA workers were dropping a lot of the security theater aspects of their job.