Sunday, January 31, 2021

Sunday Evening

Tomorrow is...

Exciting And New

The Love Boat - particularly its assortment of guest stars - was wild.

Is Our Democrats Learning

Senator Schumer must have finally gotten around to reading some of the many fine blog posts on this very fine blog!

Nobody Who Went To Yale Could Be Bad

This fundamental belief is the real "elitism" that plagues our insidery media coverage, not, as is generally pretended, a failure to appreciate the foods at the Kansas State Fair, or whatever. Lots of people who went to "Yale" are quite obviously bad, so imagine how much worse everybody else must be!

Winter Fundraiser Day Final!

Last chance (not really) to give me all your money!


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America's Most Obvious Liars

Josh Hawley.

A mistake a lot of people make, especially overeducated people convinced that they are very smart indeed and that everyone else is very stupid by comparison, is truly thinking that their bullshit isn't just something they manage to get away with, but so clever that no one even notices it.

Brain Worms

I do think "we" all got accustomed to Trump being Trump, rather than recognizing that he's been sliding deeper into dementia all this time.
Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, who were expected to be two of the lead attorneys, are no longer on the team. A source familiar with the changes said it was a mutual decision for both to leave the legal team. As the lead attorney, Bowers assembled the team.

Josh Howard, a North Carolina attorney who was recently added to the team, has also left, according to another source familiar with the changes. Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris, from South Carolina, are no longer involved with the case, either.

No other attorneys have announced they are working on Trump's impeachment defense.

A person familiar with the departures told CNN that Trump wanted the attorneys to argue there was mass election fraud and that the election was stolen from him rather than focus on the legality of convicting a president after he's left office. Trump was not receptive to the discussions about how they should proceed in that regard.

In a couple of months people we'll be asking if "is Trump pretending to be president the sign of a deeply delusional man afflicted with dementia" or "is Trump pretending to be president part of some sort of 'cunning' political plan" and the answer will be: both. It's both.

Morning Thread

Generous Covid support checks will simultaneously overheat the economy and be bad stimulus because too many people will save them.

Discuss.

Saturday, January 30, 2021

It Is Quite Likely That Some Of Our Faves Are Implicated

Not everything that is corrupt is illegal, and not all corrupt acts are equally corrupt. But "everybody being a little bit corrupt" leads to a situation where no one wants to confront corruption generally.
Members of Congress, because of the nature of their jobs, have more inside information about markets than almost anyone else in America, except perhaps the executives of publicly traded corporations. And yet our elected officials trade hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock every year. As a result, congressional insider trading scandals bubble up regularly—more regularly, probably, since the passage of the 2012 law that forces members to disclose large stock trades. It is impossible to avoid the appearance of corrupt self-dealing if the people responsible for oversight of the economy, and for creating the laws that govern how the economy operates, are also allowed to personally trade individual stocks.

Controversial and Divisive

What's "funny" is that handing out $2000 checks, which is +56 in Georgia at least, is described as controversial because Republicans in Congress don't like it. Nothing gets +56, not even "Do you agree that puppies are cute?"

The Oldies

It's 2003 again!

Winter Fundraiser Day 6

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Perhaps Chaining Yourselves To Trump Is Not So Bright

Interesting. I don't say this stuff to give advice to Republicans. I say it to dislodge the conventional wisdom from media coverage. Sarah Palin was the most important and most popular political figure, in the eyes of certain influential reporters and publications but never in the polls, for years.

But What If They Didn't Go To YLS

Positive noises.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats are vetting civil rights lawyers and public defenders to nominate as judges, embarking on a mission to shape the courts after Republicans overhauled them in the last four years, according to senior party officials and activists.

Get It Done

Somewhat optimistic that the Biden people see their jobs as getting things done, even if that won't always be perfectly to my liking, and not cosplaying some West Wing fantasy.

Morning Thread

Not much point in building a big fence around the Capitol when the MAGA Chuds are all inside.

Friday, January 29, 2021

Friday Evening

The weeks are a bit less stressful now. Can't believe Biden's been president for 2 months already!

How'd That Work Out

We do have some recent evidence that "chaining your fortunes to Trump" might not be the best plan.
In fact, according to sources close to the campaigns, people in and around the White House, including the president's lawyer former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, put near-constant pressure on the two Georgia Republicans, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, to shape their runoff campaigns around his demands.

"It was a hostage situation every day," said one Republican strategist familiar with the campaigns who only agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity.

"We were always trying to guard against the tweet [from Trump]," the strategist said.

"Every week we had some new sort of demand," said another strategist involved with the campaigns. "Calling for the hand recount. The signature match. A special session. $2,000 [coronavirus relief] checks. Objecting to the electors."

"It was, 'If you do not do this, the president will actively work against you and you will lose,' " he recalled.

Why

Maybe I am dumb, but I think the continued fealty to Trump is a big mistake. I don't mean from my perspective! I mean from theirs. It isn't necessary. Their crazies will move on to something/someone else, if only they move on themselves.

Whoomp

Have Security Escort Them Out Of The Building

The kind of "NORMS VIOLATION" our elite political press should be more concerned about. That and the insurrection and assassination attempts.

The Real Racists

Are, of course, the people who point it out, not the big loud racists. Longtime readers of this very fine blog know that Dobbs was a very loud racist for years on Fox's sister organization, CNN.

Winter Fundraiser Day 5

I should be selling supplements or if I was really hardcore setting up a GUN AND AMMO store so you could all arm yourselves for the coming civil war that apparently we are causing.

But instead I just ask you to consider supporting my extravagant lifestyle directly, to alleviate the guilt that you must feel knowing that the Virgin Ben Shapiro has made millions off of his grift and I, sadly, have not.


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Democrats Are Going To Make Us Kill Them

Something already broke, Jim, you asshole.

Hoarders

The old joke is, "He who dies with the most toys, wins," but if you're worth 3 billion bucks, most of that isn't in "toys," it's in zeros on a computer screen and some real estate.

If your idea of "fun" is chatting with your friendly CNBC host on teeve, you're a nutter like Trump.

Just crazy old coots sitting on a pile of gold under the mountain. $3 billion can't buy any love from the kids and grandkids that $1 billion can't. Or from CNBC hosts or anybody else.

Morning Thread

 Invest in Eschaton World Industries. That stock only goes up up up!

Thursday, January 28, 2021

Money Is Wasted On The Rich

Who cares what he's saying, I'm just horrified that this (according to Wikipedia) 77-year old man worth THREE BILLION DOLLARS is going to spend one second of his life thinking about this bullshit and zooming into CNBC to talk about it. YOU CAN AFFORD TO DO ANYTHING!!! ANYTHING AT ALL!!!

Thursday is New Jobless Day

Almost forgot. 847K new lucky duckies. Can we get a full year of every week being higher than the worst week of the Great Recession? Almost there!!!

Bipartisanship Is Dumb

This is hardly a novel observation, but the job of the party in power is to govern and the job of the opposition party is to oppose. That's more clear in a standard parliamentary system than in our weird system, but it isn't less true (or shouldn't be) in our own, especially if one party actually has the trifecta.

Another way to say this is that there's nothing wrong with the obstruction that Minority Mitch engages in, except that our dumb Senate rules allow the minority party to get away with more opposition than they should be able to get away with. The problem is with letting him get away with it, and unnecessarily leaving the rules in place that allow it.

Lock Him Up

There are politicians who are good and bad (to me) for various reasons, but Cuomo is almost as much of a monster as Trump and I hope his career is over quickly.
ALBANY, N.Y. — The New York State attorney general accused the Cuomo administration of undercounting coronavirus-related deaths at nursing homes by as much as 50 percent, according to a report released on Thursday. The count of deaths in state nursing homes has been a source of controversy for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and state Health Department officials, who have been sensitive to any suggestion that they played any role in the number of nursing home deaths, which the state put at more than 8,500.
I can take the Fauci fans, but that period of "Cuomosexuals" made me want to have Dick Cheney shoot somebody in the face.

GameStop Takes

Too many things I don't know for me to have one, but here's dday's.
This is, and there’s no other way to put it, hilarious. A bunch of people trading stocks on their phones have brought some of the lords of finance to their knees. They weren’t using some amazing or novel strategy: The run-up in GameStop is just the “pump” of a pump-and-dump scheme, where hype pulls people into a stock before the rug gets pulled out. In fact, that’s what hedge fund managers do all the time, making bets and using research to puff up a stock, then taking the profits off moving a stock, through force of will—theirs—rather than the inherent value of the company.

The only real difference here is that ordinary investors are driving the train, and the hedge fund guys are getting run over. The hedge funders are mad because distorting corporate stock prices beyond the fundamentals is supposed to be their thing, not the work of the hoi polloi. Now, they’ve been outfoxed. If you can think of a better use of $600 stimulus checks, let me know. Never was there a more apt name for an app in this moment than “Robinhood.”

Written before all the easy mass market retail brokers stopped letting people buy (but not sell) the stock, it crashed, and all trading was prohibited, then allowed again, then up somewhat again.

The Enemy Inside

Seems like a problem.

Winter Fundraiser Day 4

We would like it to be otherwise, but in my experience powerful people and institutions are more likely to react to people screaming at them than people asking nicely. I do not think this is a particularly wise way for them to approach things, but it is what it is. But don't scream at me! I am not so powerful. I respond much better to cash incentives (this is of course a joke).

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Fear of the Q

I've said this about Democrats, but it's also true of Republicans. If you're an incumbent in a safe House seat, and you're worried about losing a primary, you're doing something wrong. I don't have a particularly positive view of Republican base voters, but I don't think "going the full Q" is the only way to appeal to them. An incumbent with name advantage, money advantage, and almost certainly local media support, who can't win is likely not trying too hard or doing anything right.

I'm not trying to Both Sides Dem and Republican primary challenges. I don't think saying "people should have free at point of service health care" and "Hillary Clinton wears a mask made from the skin of children she slaughtered in the basement of Comet Pizza" are in any way similar. But there's a bit of "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" from incumbent politicians in both of these situations.

I Like A Politician Who Tells It Like It Is

It's refreshing to have a Dem member of Congress who tells the truth about the GOP. People don't know how bad they are unless somebody explains it. Maybe some people need to be respectful to their distinguished colleages so that they can keep forming their ridiculous Gangs in the Senate, but some people should be out there explaining to The American People that they're a bunch of hideous racist fuckers.

Morning Thread

Get your morning on.

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Shutup, Tim Kaine

(Kaine is organizing a Gang Of Senators for censure, or some dumb shit like that).

And Speaking Of Snitches

Roll'em all up.
One of the Michigan militiamen accused of conspiring to overthrow the state government, kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and put her on trial for “treason” before Election Day has pleaded guilty in the foiled plot.

...

According to the plea agreement, Garbin has agreed to “fully cooperate” with the federal authorities, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Michigan State Police, and other law enforcement agencies.

Snitches Get Stitches

Hilarious.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys extremist group, has a past as an informer for federal and local law enforcement, repeatedly working undercover for investigators after he was arrested in 2012, according to a former prosecutor and a transcript of a 2014 federal court proceeding obtained by Reuters.

Funny But Not Funny

Winter Fundraiser Day 3

As I've said before, this little project is a lot less "try to affect The Discourse and SAVE THE WORLD" and a lot more "this is a place we gather on the internet to discuss the events of the day," though maybe we can do the former sometimes too.

Facebook and general antipathy to "the comments" elsewhere by institutions unwilling to put the minimum into moderation destroyed most internet forums. There's twitter, but a party that everyone crashes is not the same as a community.

No big point here, just musing out loud as I do during fundraisers.


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Peep Through Your Blinds

Can we prosecute elites?

No that would be time consuming and wrong. We should look forward and heal!

Can we dissuade others from paying lots of money to them for dubious reasons?

No it is not right to "cancel" people.

Can we at least be mean to them in restaurants?

No, not that either.

I don't think it's crazy to suggest that if it's always "The Purge" for elites, it might cause some problems.

Bring It

Blame who you want, but that this wasn't a priority 11 years ago...

Maybe The Hedge Fund Managers Should Learn To Code

Haven't been following this closely, and not sure what the best article on it is, but this is funny...

Ignore Me

A problem with doing a blog like this is that it's hard to do punditry without doing all the annoying things that pundits do. Ah, you say, if you hate musicals, why are you starring in Cats? Yes it's always a bit of a contradiction.

It is actually best that the people in charge ignore the daily bullshit cycle, which involves ignoring people like me. I mean, hopefully they listen to me and ignore people like Joe Scarborough, but still.

I doubt they thought it at the time, but I don't think the Obama people ever transcended the daily bullshit cycle. Hopefully the Biden people manage to.

Morning Thread

Congress didn't care when the Trump administration regularly violated court orders. Just throwing that out there.

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Tuesday Evening

In a few years it'll be the Democratic Party and the Q Party.

Slaughtering Trump's Enemies

The Q people long seemed sad and ridiculous, because it was ridiculous, but even before we could imagine a bunch of them and some fellow travellers storming the Capitol to kill the Vice President and various members of Congress, the core of their "belief" was a day of reckoning when Trump's enemies would be executed, and that number grew over time from a few hundred to a few hundred thousand. And now a couple of them are in Congress.

MR. BIDEN'S VILE ASSAULT ON THE PRESS IS WORSE THAN TRUMP'S

HE IS TRYING TO CANCEL MR. DOOCY!!!

Sounds Kinda Bad

Probably should be jailing these people. Just a thought.
The commander of the D.C. National Guard said the Pentagon restricted his authority ahead of the riot at the U.S. Capitol, requiring higher level sign-off to respond that cost time as the events that day spiraled out of control.

Local commanders typically have the power to take military action on their own to save lives or prevent significant property damage in an urgent situation when there isn’t enough time to obtain approval from headquarters.

But Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard, said the Pentagon essentially took that power and other authorities away from him ahead of a pro-Trump protest on Jan. 6. That meant he couldn’t immediately roll out troops when he received a panicked phone call from the Capitol Police chief warning that rioters were about to enter the U.S. Capitol.

That's Progress

I'll take it.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday will order his Department of Justice not to renew its contracts with private prisons, one of multiple new planks of Biden’s broad-focused racial justice agenda.

Biden is poised to sign four additional executive actions after laying out his racial equity plan at the White House at 2 p.m. ET, according to his press schedule. Vice President Kamala Harris will also attend the event.

But still rolling back to 2016.

Lunch Thread

Had to step out for a bit. What has Joe the Biden accomplished today?

Winter Fundraising Day 2!

"Blogging" is making a return on hybrid email list/blog sites like substack. Good for whatever works for people, but blogging behind paywalls isn't really blogging. I don't fault people for having paywalls - whatever works/pays the bills! - but it's just another example of the "open internet" not making a comeback.

The ad supported internet had its problems (the internet is still ad supported, just google and facebook ate it all), and major sites which made themselves unreadable with all of the badly behaved ads helped to hasten its demise, but at least you could link to things! You can read this sucky blog for free! Or chip in. Up to you!


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You Can Watch Just About Anything At Any Time - Why Would You Watch That

What I don't get about these grifts is that you need an audience, and while I know that the sophisticated high brow content I provide here at atrios dot blogspot dot com has a highly selective appeal, I still don't get how there is any audience for Rudy 911.
Giuliani, the lawsuit alleges, knowingly spread falsehoods about the company to bolster Trump’s failing attempts to overturn the reality of his election loss. But Giuliani had another incentive for doing so, the lawyers wrote: He “cashed in by hosting a podcast where he exploited election falsehoods to market gold coins, supplements, cigars, and protection from ‘cyber thieves.’ ”

60 Votes

You aren't going to get 10 Republican votes in the Senate for *anything.* Forget the fantasy liberal agenda, or even a version of it so watered down that it isn't recognizable. "Obstruct Democrats and make them look bad" was the plan even when there were 59 Democrats in the Senate! It's definitely the plan now.

There are options other than "nuke the filibuster." We will see...

Morning Thread

I see Mitch backed down after some Dems pinky sweared not to destroy the filibuster.

If you further reduce the effective power of Congress (to just taxation and spending bills), the other branches will step in. Congress ain't perfect, but it is the most democratic bit of our system.

Not only will they step in. They have to.

Monday, January 25, 2021

Q

That there is a global elite pedophile ring is not actually crazy.
The monthslong review by Dechert LLP found no evidence that Mr. Black was involved in the criminal activities of the late Epstein, who was indicted in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges involving underage girls, according to a copy of the law firm’s report that was viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

In its report, Dechert found the fees that the billionaire had paid Epstein were for legitimate advice on trust- and estate-tax planning that proved to be of significant value to Mr. Black and his family. Mr. Black paid Epstein a total of $148 million, plus a $10 million donation to his charity—far more than was previously known.

"[L]egitimate advice on trust- and estate-tax planning." Sure rich guys need that, what was Mr. Epstein charging for this valuable service? Computer, enhance.

$148 million

Add Some Counts

Bully For Me

Somewhere between "the bully pulpit is all powerful" and "how dare you suggest the president can possibly get anybody to do anything, that is impossible" is the truth. For some reason it became fashionable to argue the latter during the Obama presidency. The thing is, Obama can be a real dick. He was a real dick in all of his campaigns. All of them. But when in office, he was not a dick, at least not to Republicans.

This isn't about Obama, though. I think Joe Biden is a dick, too! Let Joe be Joe.

Afternoon Thread

Winter fundraiser fun! Thanks to all.

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Box Turtle John

Flashback:
For the record, it’s true that Cornyn dropped the “box turtle” reference from a 2004 speech to the Heritage Foundation. But the reference appeared in an advance copy of the speech that was given to The Washington Post, and the newspaper ran it. Here’s the quote:
“It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right … [N]ow you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife.”
That speech was written by Ben Domenech, now Mr. Meghan McCain, though that bit was "borrowed," perhaps with permission, from a blog commenter at Red State.

Biden's "unity" rhetoric is dumb because of course they were going to claim anything that doesn't appeal to the worst Nazis in their party is not unifying, and because the press will let them get away with blaming Biden for their own failures, but...

LOL

And we will take our suit to the Stewards of Gondor.

Take It All

I'm no Bob Loblaw but I don't think Rudy is going to come out of this unscathed.
(CNN)An election technology company that has been the focus of consistent conspiracy theories by Donald Trump and his allies has sued the former President's lawyer Rudy Giuliani for defamation after he pushed the "Big Lie" about election fraud on his podcast and TV appearances.

Dominion Voting Systems is seeking more than $1.3 billion in damages.

"Just as Giuliani and his allies intended, the Big Lie went viral on social media as people tweeted, retweeted, and raged that Dominion had stolen their votes. While some lies -- little lies -- flare up on social media and die with the next news cycle, the Big Lie was different," lawyers for Dominion wrote in the lawsuit, filed in DC District Court on Monday morning. "The harm to Dominion's business and reputation is unprecedented and irreparable because of how fervently millions of people believe it."

Total Mystery

How do people find all this information about Fauci's kids.
It was the harassment of my wife, and particularly my children, that upset me more than anything else. They knew where my kids work, where they live. The threats would come directly to my children’s phones, directly to my children’s homes. How the hell did whoever these assholes were get that information? And there was chatter on the internet, people talking to each other, threatening, saying, “Hey, we got to get rid of this guy. What are we going to do about him? He’s hurting the president’s chances.” You know, that kind of right-wing craziness.
His kids are obviously not "kids" in the sense of being young, but there is really no divide between "The MAGA Chuds who engage in online harassment" and "The MAGA Chuds who worked in and around the White House and their friends."

2021 WINTER FUNDRAISING FUNSTRAVAGANZA

It's that time again. Thanks to all who help me keep this thing going!

I managed 4 years of the Trump administration and deserve some hazard pay! Joke, but while this is in some ways an *easy* "job," not being able to tune out, well, ever, is not always so fun!


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Onward to the Hawley administration!

WHAT'S TRUMP MAD ABOUT TODAY

These were often dumb stories even when he was president, as he has the attention span of an adult Mayfly, but they're extra dumb now and they sadly aren't going to go away any time soon, because journalists have sources they depend on and stories to write.

Morning Thread

There are various stories one can tell about why the 2010 midterms happened the way they did, but with a 9.8% unemployment rate it would have been ridiculous to think any other outcome was likely.

Sunday, January 24, 2021

Sunday Evening

Could (almost) half a million dead and an armed insurrection which almost assassinated the Vice President and the Speaker of the House among others get the usual suspects off their bullshit? No, no they could not.

The Good Stuff

Keep it coming.
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order reversing the ban on Transgender military service Monday, January 25, the Los Angeles Blade learned Sunday.
Though "rolling back to 2016" should be just the start!

Message To Reporters

Chuck's gotta take control, too, but I've seen so many tweets from reporters over the past few days about what Mitch does and does not want and, well, who gives a shit.

Sunday Afternoon

Tomorrow is...

Resign, Bitch

Sooner.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-York) is facing calls to resign after a published report said he collaborated with former President Donald Trump in a scheme to overturn legally certified election results in Georgia.

The New York Times reported Perry, who is just starting his fifth term, connected Trump with Philadelphia lawyer Jeffrey Clark, who was an acting assistant attorney general at the U.S. Justice Department and who was sympathetic to Trump’s effort to push an election-fraud lie to stay in power. It said Trump considered firing Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who was not willing to pursue Trump’s claims in Georgia.

Afternoon

Hug an insurrectionist!

Destroyer of Worlds

Remember when some top economists helped plunge the world into the austerity economics recession based on a silly empirical result with absolutely no theoretical foundation (nothing that made any sense even within the framework of economics), then that silly empirical result was shown to be a spreadsheet error, and everyone just said, "Ah, well, nevertheless, the point still stands."

Almost everything in our discourse is like that.

They're Our Only Hope

I know yelling at Democrats (don't worry, they probably can't hear me) annoys some people here on atrios dot blogspot dot com, but a lot of time and money and, yes, hope, goes into putting these people in power, as our elected representatives, and it isn't too much to ask for them to take what was given to them.

Fuck You. Ours.

I know I'm exaggerating a bit here, but senators tweeting, "Please, Senator McConnell, let us run the Senate that we won" aren't going to do it...

We'll see tomorrow...

Morning Thread

It's the morning.

Saturday, January 23, 2021

Saturday Afternoon

Moments of peace.

Who Radicalized You

One frustrating thing during the Bush years was that too many people who knew better decided not to say so. I'm not sure if Beschloss was one of those people, but my general impression of him is of someone who goes on the teevee and reassures you that the system is working and the people in charge are good, and at worst a bit misguided.
“This is the only president in American history who incited an insurrection against Congress that could have resulted in assassinations and hostage-taking and, conceivably, the cancellation of a free presidential election and the fracturing of a democracy,” Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, told me. “That’s a fact, and it won’t change in 50 years. It’s very hard to think of a scenario under which someone might imagine some wonderful thing that Donald Trump did that will outshine that. He did, literally, the worst thing that an American president could ever do.”

Hours Can Seem Like Days

I clicked on my google calendar and was puzzled that it was for "January 2021," momentarily thinking that was several months ago.

Long month!

Gotta Make It Hurt

We've seen what is quite alright with a significant number, if not outright majority, of elected Republicans, and as more and more Boeberts move into power it's only going to get worse. I mean, Jesus, if you can't even figure out how to stop them committing felonies by illegally carrying guns around in the Capitol...

Welp

They're still trying to sneak guns past the House metal detectors instead of running to a country with no extradition.
In charging papers, the FBI said that during the Capitol riot, Caldwell received Facebook messages from unspecified senders updating him of the location of lawmakers. When he posted a one-word message, “Inside,” he received exhortations and directions describing tunnels, doors and hallways, the FBI said.

Some messages, according to the FBI, included, “Tom all legislators are down in the Tunnels 3floors down,” and “Go through back house chamber doors facing N left down hallway down steps.” Another message read: “All members are in the tunnels under capital seal them in. Turn on gas,” the FBI added.

"Uspecified" is not the same as "unknown."

Morning Thread

What lessons can we draw from the fact that a bunch of elites who planned and participated in a coup attempt, including an armed insurrection, are for the most part less concerned about the consequences than I am when I forget to pay the water bill?

Friday, January 22, 2021

You Have To Admit, You Kinda Miss Him

Don't worry, just a joke. (I'm sure there will be takes like this, if there haven't been already).

Happy Hour Thread

Only think happy thoughts!

Afternoon Thread

The post below isn't a knock on what they're doing *now*, or even the electeds doing it, it's just a response to many years of the Democratic-Industrial Complex (think tanks, aligned media, certain electeds) dismissing obviously good ideas and their proponents as childish and dumb before (taa-daaa!) embracing them. And good for them on the embracing part!

Is Our Democrats Learning

Dumb hippies have been telling them to do things like this for years, but I suppose it'll be a Very Serious Proposal now (which is fine, whatever works).
Senior Democratic lawmakers are moving to fulfill President Biden’s desire to expand the child tax credit by drafting legislation that would direct the Internal Revenue Service to send recurring monthly payments to tens of millions of American families, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share knowledge of the internal discussion.

Under one draft of the plan being discussed, the IRS would be tasked with depositing checks worth $300 every month per child younger than 6, as well as $250 every month per child aged 6 to 17. That would amount to $3,600 over the course of the year for young children, as well as $3,000 a year for older children, the officials said.

Obscuring everything in the tax code, so maybe you get some money once per year but are never quite sure why, has been really dumb.

Suck. On. This.

Friday, Friday

Busy with stuff. What'd I miss?

Morning Thread

At some point Chuck Schumer needs to get a bit annoyed at the fact that every journalist still talks about the Senate as if Mitch is in charge.

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Shush Nigel

This kind of fake scandal was given life by our media with Obama becaue he was the uppity black guy who didn't really deserve to be there, and DISRESPECTING THE MOTHER COUNTRY was just not done. We were supposed to see Obama as subordinate to a dead English prime minister, somehow. Biden gets to say, "Fuck you, Nigel, I'm Irish, and I don't give a shit" and our great media will run with it.

Expel Them

Detrumpification

The GOP Political-Media Complex As Abuser

One problem with Democrats is that when one of them gets caught up in some fake scandal, too many of the rest think they somehow brought it on themselves.

There's nothing you can do to escape the wrath of Bad Daddy. It's random, but he'll see you cowering in the corner eventually.

Afternoon Thread

By executive order of President Biden.

The Greatest Time Of His Life

I've said this before, but related to this, I underestimated just how much Donald Trump would fucking *love* being president. I figured it would actually require some minimal amount of unpleasant work, and that would be enough to turn him off the whole endeavor. Silly me, he just didn't do any work, even the bare minimum. More importantly, it was the TV-brain narcissist's dream existence. He could watch the Donald Trump Show on teevee all day long, and make the entire world jump just by poking his phone with his sausage fingers. Nothing else could compare to that.

Tan Suits and Pelotons

I think the "Fox to CNN pipeline" has been crimped temporarily, if not severed, but it's a mistake to think that all right wing horseshit bubbles up from the fever swamps of right wing media. Our "objective" journalists are quite capable of coming up with it all on their own.

I was looking back to 2009, and a big focus of the media on Obama's inauguration was how expensive it was, with mostly made up numbers escalating as they added in any random thing they could think of. You know, uppity black guy thinking he deserves an extra fancy party!

Indeed

Yinzers

Pittsburgh (Allegheny County) went big for Biden, though Ted tried to disenfranchise them all. Presumably Pittsburgh is invoked because of coal and steel. There are 4500 coal mining jobs in all of Pennsylvania, and I'm pretty sure that number is "zero" in Allegheny County. There are still some steel jobs, but I don't think it hits 5 figures.

Pittsburgh is reasonably prosperous, but it's Eds and Meds, not coal and steel.

These people are just liars and one would hope that after 4 years reporters would... haha I kid.

Abuser

I'm sure most of the population has other, more pleasant hobbies and blissfully tuned out for 4 years, but some of us couldn't do that. I'm not overstating things and saying I WAS PERSONALLY IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH DONALD TRUMP, but I think anyone who has had *that person* in their lives knows of the constant low level stress of wondering when they are going to wander into the room and just blow everything up with their latest nonsense.

And he could just tweet it out!

Maybe the first few years weren't so bad, but with covid, the election, the coup, and the fact that his pudding brain was increasingly realizing that whatever constraints he had thought he faced weren't actually so constraining...

Thursday Is New Jobless Day.

900K new lucky duckies. About 10 months of every single week higher than the Great Recession, but economists are going to be out there downplaying it, as some have done all along, to prevent government from doing anything.

Is That You, Rand?

They always do this, and it's important to point and laugh at them when they try it. If you think Biden was talking about you, Rand, then I guess he was.

Who Lied

Years ago after one dust up about overuse of anonymous sources (W. era), reporters argued that sources wouldn't lie to them because they'd burn those sources if they did. That almost never happens, and I've seen some reporters argue explicitly that it shouldn't happen, as it is on the *reporters* to verify those facts, and if they don't, oopsy. So there should be no consequences for the sources, or the reporters, so...

Well at least here the reporters are getting the real story, but also quite often the real real story is about the lies, so...

“Charlie Flynn is an officer of an incredibly high integrity,” McCarthy said. “Multiple combat tours. He has buried a lot of people. This guy has given a lot to this country. It is incredibly awkward for this officer every day for what is going on with him and his brother, but he puts his head down in, and he is locked in to serve the Constitution.”

Army officials, before and after that interview, denied that Flynn appeared during the call.

“HE WAS NOT IN ANY OF THE MEETINGS!” one Army official said on Jan. 12 in an email to The Post.

Like several others interviewed, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

After being approached with the accounts of multiple officials on the call, the Army sent a statement confirming Flynn participated.

ALL CAPS guy should be outed, for the ALL CAPS.

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

In The Evening

Taking it a bit easy today. Will get back to yelling at Democrats tomorrow!

Ignore Them

Repeating myself, I know, but if you ignore the dumb pseudoscandals, the hacks that keep trying to throw them at you will give up.

No need to indulge dumb journalists with dumb questions. "Are you serious with that question? 400,000 people are dead." That kind of thing.

Afternoon Thread

Maybe everything stops getting worse. Optimism!

Vice President Harris

I'm cynical and grumpy, but it is a big fucking deal. Especially after Donald Trump.

I don't have kids and I don't claim much knowledge, but lots of concepts of "normality" seep into their little brains without anybody realizing it, and that a bunch of kids spent 4 years with the bad racist orange man as "the president," even if they agreed with their parents that the dude sucked, can't be entirely healthy. Re-warping their brains with some different representation will hopefully be healthy.

Day 1 of the failed Biden/Harris administration!

Embiggened

The writers understand, too, that the most powerful people are unlikely to face consequences, but that at least some who are responsible will.
Federal authorities on Wednesday arrested Joe Bigs, a right-wing media personality and a member of the Proud Boys who promoted the pro-Trump event that led to a riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Biggs will faces at least three charges, federal authorities said. The complaint against Biggs notes that another Proud Boys member was seen breaking the window of the U.S. Capitol building with a clear plastic shield, and that Biggs was apparently filmed inside the Capitol in a video posted to to right-wing social media platform Parler.

Finally That Dumb Show Is Over

I admit the writers kept us on our seats through the final few episodes, though the president getting covid was a bit too obvious. They even managed to bring back a few early season characters, perhaps to set up the inevitable sequel. That losing his twitter account was the greatest punishment our villain could receive reveals much about both him and us.

Well That Was Some Weird Shit

Had the strangest dream.

Inauguration Thread

Not saying this *was* Haberman, but she was 42 when this was published.

What Will We Call The New Tea Party

It was a neat trick that for 4 years 'Trump supporters' were somehow distinct from 'Republicans,' and now we will inevitably have some other exciting new political movement that isn't precisely associated with either of them, but they love America and freedom and are skeptical of Democrats but could be persuaded (but never are).

They will be the protagonists of our politics story, as they always are. Angry, racist, relatively affluent white people who are covered obsessively by our political press who somehow never manage to convey who they actually are, who is funding them, and what they actually want.

Fly Away

And he's gone. 3:35 until they switch the nuclear codes.

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Back On Their Bullshit Already

(narrator: they never got off their bullshit)

Georgia's Worst Humans

Alice O'Lenick

Happy Hour Thread

19 hours to go...

So Sad When A Bromance Ends

I Want My 2.5 Months Back

Obviously *I* am not the greatest victim of the malevolence of the Trump administration, but spending the last several weeks regularly waking up in the middle of the night and scrolling through my phone to see just what the fuck is going on has kinda sucked.

Mitch's Game

"Doing the right thing" isn't it, of course, but perhaps it's "taking back control from the Trumpists."
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, said on Tuesday that the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 had been “provoked by the president and other powerful people,” stating publicly for the first time that he holds President Trump at least partly responsible for the assault. “The mob was fed lies,” Mr. McConnell said, referring to attempts by Mr. Trump to overturn the election based on bogus claims of voter fraud. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.”

Pour A Drink For Dale

Unlike most journalists, while obsessively documenting the lies he understood and conveyed that the problem was usually not the lies themselves but the constant lying.

Let Us Put All Of This Behind Us

There will be legitimate and relevant news going forward, of course, but if I give in to the temptation to just point and laugh at Trump or Trumpkins just because, remind me that HE IS OUT OF OFFICE AND THEY DON'T FUCKING MATTER ANYMORE.

OK we will be allowed the occasional moment of collective Schadenfreude when they step on rakes. But only occasionally.

But Mah Pillow

Ah well.
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell said in an interview Saturday that Bed Bath & Beyond and Kohl’s are among the retailers that will stop selling his products due to his continued support of conspiracy theories related to President Donald Trump’s election loss.
Another victim of the deep state.

Is W. Bad Again?

Still mad people forget how bad he was. Like my 30s were just a complete waste.
SPOTTED: GEORGE W. BUSH and TUCKER CARLSON having dinner at the private home of a neighbor on the exclusive Gasparilla Island, Fla., where they both have homes.

Morning Thread

1 more day...

Monday, January 18, 2021

Joining The 34% Club

Trump joins W. and Carter with the 34% final Gallup approval rating.

We used to joke a lot about W.'s poll numbers here at atrios dot blogspot dot com. I suppose it mattered to me that more people realized he had fucked things up that much (Iraq, Katrina, ...). Since then I've accepted that it's really really hard for a Republican president to get below 40%.

With minutes to spare, My President did it!

Trump's Harshing My Buzz

More to all of this than winning the games, but it is still fun to win the games, and especially fun that Warnock and Ossoff won their games, because of who they are, where they did it, and who they beat.

Less than 48 hours...

Covid Was His Chance

Democratic voters love redemption arcs, and they *love* "reasonable Republicans," and they just can't wait to find one to vote for (see: the numerous Republican governors in supposedly very blue states). I don't mean millions of partisan Democrats would've voted for Donald Trump, but if the guy had just managed to maintain a "new tone" for about 3 days straight once a month, and appeared to take the situation seriously, he would've won.

Just Gotta Nominate That Nice Moderate Joe Biden

The group of "pretending to be somewhat reasonable" Republicans/conservatives spent the early primary season lecturing Democrats that they needed to nominate a moderate like Joe Biden, both for asserted electability issues (maybe correct!) and to avoid a vicious backlash (ah, well, nevertheless).

Lots of AlmostNeverTrumpers would not have been behind most of the Dem nominees (certainly not Sanders, but they would have invented reasons for most of the rest). As for where they would have been on the long coup attempt? I suppose we'll never know...

Whoomp

Welp

...no longer thought to be a threat, apparently.

The Ones Who Knew Him Best

The reason to push for the shunning of everybody who worked with Trump is that we know that they knew - even more than we did - just how dangerous it was to leave that man in charge of a superpower, our superpower.

And they didn't care.

Foxy

Maybe Jake Tapper won't defend them as his sister organization at this current moment in time, but it will take one elaborate PR stunt about "getting back to news" and journalists will be back to defending them from criticism.
But there was one curious provision that Fox insisted on: The settlement had to be kept secret for a month — until after the Nov. 3 election. The exhausted plaintiffs agreed. Why did Fox care about keeping the Rich settlement secret for the final month of the Trump re-election campaign? Why was it important to the company, which calls itself a news organization, that one of the biggest lies of the Trump era remain unresolved for that period? Was Fox afraid that admitting it was wrong would incite the president’s wrath? Did network executives fear backlash from their increasingly radicalized audience, which has been gravitating to other conservative outlets?

Sunday, January 17, 2021

Lock'em Up

All of them.
(AP) — Members of President Donald Trump’s failed presidential campaign played key roles in orchestrating the Washington rally that spawned a deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to an Associated Press review of records, undercutting claims the event was the brainchild of the president’s grassroots supporters.

A pro-Trump nonprofit group called Women for America First hosted the “Save America Rally” on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse, an oval-shaped, federally owned patch of land near the White House. But an attachment to the National Park Service public gathering permit granted to the group lists more than half a dozen people in staff positions for the event who just weeks earlier had been paid thousands of dollars by Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. Other staff scheduled to be “on site” during the demonstration have close ties to the White House.

The Trump Family Variety Hour

A certain segment of elite political journalists are going to try to make this ill-conceived spinoff a reality. Better they do The Trump Family Goes to Gilligan's Island!

Nothing Will Change

I understand Kellyanne was yucking it up with Bill Maher. Lindsey Graham will continue to be the voice of "reasonable Republicans," and no one will make it explicit that if he is the "reasonable Republican," then the rest of them...

Always The Victims

Fuck their feelings, and fuck them too.

Everybody's Working For The Weekend

Calm before the ... calm, hopefully.

Saturday, January 16, 2021

Create Your Own News Cycle

Thinking back, I'd say a big mistake Obama people made was too often surfing the waves of the daily news cycle bullshit, responding to the cable news nonsense of the day.

Create your own news, and Onion Joe can throw his signature "Come on, man" at them if they try to get a response about the fake outrage of the day.

Also Sowing, Reaping

Sowing, Reaping

Baked

I'm sure this dumb show won't really end with all the bad people getting what's coming to them, but you never know.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Far-right media personality Tim Gionet, who calls himself “Baked Alaska,” has been arrested by the FBI for his involvement in the riot at the U.S. Capitol, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.

Whose Party

This will be hilarious.
The newest and most-buzzed about possibility, however, surrounds the president’s daughter Ivanka. The senior White House adviser is set to decamp to Florida after her father’s presidency comes to a close. And though talk of her launching a primary challenge to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has given off the faint whiff of political fan-fick, in reality, Trump officials say, there have been machinations behind the scenes.

One person in contact with the president said that Jared Kushner is viewed as “working single-mindedly to protect and promote his wife’s ‘political career.’” And two sources, including one top GOP fundraiser, said that Trump ally and mega donor Tom Barrack had been pressing fellow Republican financiers to put together some type of operation that could lure Ivanka into entering the race.

Well Then

Going to be a lot of buck passing, but we also need some precise finger pointing.
WASHINGTON — In the days leading up to the mob attack on the Capitol, congressional security officials never let House and Senate leaders know that the Capitol Police had warned they might need National Guard backup, according to a congressional aide and other people familiar with the matter.

The police request, made to the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms, was prompted by intelligence that showed Trump supporters planned to target the Capitol itself as Congress certified the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, according to a congressional official. The Capitol Police asked the sergeants-at-arms to request that the National Guard be placed on standby.

But the sergeants-at-arms, Michael C. Stenger of the Senate and Paul Irving of the House, rejected the request without raising the issue with either the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, or Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to the aide and another person familiar with the matter.

The Hero Of My Story

A lot of these people (Trump, obviously, but the rest, too) are addicted to being the Main Character and their brains are just going to dissolve when they no longer are.

I'm sure people have thought about this more than I have, but I don't think this is the normal way the celebrity and fame are talked about. Maybe less about glamour and adoring fans, and more just about reality bending more towards the inherent belief that we are personally the center of all things.

Morning Thread

The My Pillow guy is president now.

Friday, January 15, 2021

Seditious Conspiracy

Of course the writers would give the My Pillow guy one last major moment.

Atrios, WRONG

Don't know if I ever posted anything saying so, but as some point (around its inception) I definitely thought Wikipedia was a dumb idea. WRONG. Happy 20th birthday.

Jenna Ryan For Your Realtor

Time to just arrest the writers for this nonsense. ...wow, CANCELLED
“Can’t face federal charges for exercising my right to freedom of speech and assembly,” she wrote last week, adding that she was “an innocent person who is not a professional rioter; someone just living and standing up for what I believe in.”

“You can never cancel Jenna Ryan,” she wrote. However, by Monday, she said her publisher had canceled her self help book that was due out next month.

Losers

I actually worry that "the president told us to go kill the vice president so of course we did our patriotic duty" will be a surprisingly effective defense, but the idea that Trump cares about these gross losers who failed him is hilarious.
ST. LOUIS (AP/KMOV.com) -- St. Louis attorney Albert Watkins is representing a man pictured in viral photos of the Capitol unrest and is making a direct plea for a pardon.

Jake Angeli, whose legal name is Jacob Anthony Chansley, was taken into custody Saturday in Arizona. An indictment unsealed Tuesday in Washington charged the 33-year-old with civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, disorderly conduct in a restricted building, and demonstrating in a Capitol building. It’s unclear whether the new charges are felonies or misdemeanors. Chansley was previously charged with two misdemeanors stemming from the violent riot — entering a restricted building without lawful authority and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

Shit Liars Until The End

They should all be in prison for mass murder.
When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced this week that the federal government would begin releasing coronavirus vaccine doses held in reserve for second shots, no such reserve existed, according to state and federal officials briefed on distribution plans. The Trump administration had already begun shipping out what was available beginning at the end of December, taking second doses directly off the manufacturing line.

Welp

Gonna hit 400,000 soon.
PUBLISHED 1:05 PM ET OCT. 07, 2020

WASHINGTON — The nation’s top infectious disease expert gave a chilling warning Tuesday that the U.S. coronavirus death toll could nearly double in the coming months.

“The models tell us if we don't do what we need to in the fall and winter, we could have 300,000 to 400,000 COVID-19 deaths," Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said during a virtual event for American University.

Unpopular President

A small thing, but still emblematic, is that the press never really treated Trump as "unpopular." All those diner safaris treated Trump voters as the majority that Democrats needed to win over, when they weren't in the majority in the 2016, 2018, or finally 2020 elections.
The poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds Trump leaving office with a 38% job approval rating; 60% disapprove, matching (but not exceeding) his peak disapproval in August 2018. His career average approval rating is the lowest for any president in modern polling, back to 1939, and he is the first president in that time never to achieve majority approval at any point.
Obama wasn't super popular, and it was fair to portray him that way, but he was more popular than Trump and that rarely came through in coverage.

Of course Clinton was more/at least as popular as Reagan, and you know how that went, also, too.

Morning Thread

We did have some laughs.

Thursday, January 14, 2021

And Why Not The House Staffers

I suppose the Senate staffers are a bit higher up the evolutionary tree, generally.

Plans

Better do it.

Lock Him Up

It'd be hilarious if Trump tries to grant a blanket pardon to one of his sons but not the other (I don't care which).
The D.C. Attorney General’s office has notified Donald Trump Jr. that it wishes to interview him as part of a lawsuit alleging that President Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee improperly funneled money to the president’s business, an official in the attorney general’s office said Thursday.

America's Worst Humans

Javanka
Many U.S. Secret Service agents have stood guard in Washington’s elite Kalorama neighborhood, home over the years to Cabinet secretaries and former presidents. Those agents have had to worry about death threats, secure perimeters and suspicious strangers. But with the arrival of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, they had a new worry: finding a toilet.

Instructed not to use any of the half-dozen bathrooms inside the couple’s house, the Secret Service detail assigned to President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law spent months searching for a reliable restroom to use on the job, according to neighbors and law enforcement officials. After resorting to a porta-potty, as well as bathrooms at the nearby home of former president Barack Obama and the not-so-nearby residence of Vice President Pence, the agents finally found a toilet to call their own.

Thursday Is New Jobless Day

...adding that every week has been worse than the worst week of the Great Recession since this began in March.

Did Yesterday Even Happen

Feel like the ability of any event to having a lasting impact is fading. In 2025, President Cotton will pay tribute to the Great Patriots of 2021 (the insurrection) and it won't be scandalous because no one will remember what event he is talking about.

Morning Thread

Nobody could have predicted.
Trump has instructed aides not to pay Giuliani’s legal fees, two officials said, and has demanded that he personally approve any reimbursements for the expenses Giuliani incurred while traveling on the president’s behalf to challenge election results in key states. They said Trump has privately expressed concern with some of Giuliani’s moves and did not appreciate a demand from Giuliani for $20,000 a day in fees for his work attempting to overturn the election.

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Goldfish

Watched a bit of CNN with all the hosts not putting up with the GOP's bullshit.

Which is good, but will they remember in a month?

Tapper's righteous rage about Kevin McCarthy is fine, but won't mean much if this is all forgotten in a month. Welcome to The Lead, Kevin!

Worst Television Show Ever