Chairslinger

Apparently Manafort forfeits nearly 50 million in assets with this plea. The charges involved state crimes, so he has now pled guilty to stuff Trump can't repardon him for even if he tries to once. And there's no mention of a big reduction in sentence. Manafort is going away for years, and I am starting to think there is some real validity to the argument that Manafort isn't staying quiet because he is scared of Trump being mean to him, he's scared of Russians killing him or his family if he rats.

It might have something to do with the Woodward book, which fills in some of the details about what was going on in the two weeks or so inbetween when Yates told them about Flynn and when they fired him. Seems like some whataboutism going on since Flynn did exactly what Trump is trying to claim Kerry is doing(lol, what did Kerry do....tell them "I am just a citizen with no claim to current or future authority, but if you just wait 2 and a half years we'll get this cleared right up!")

This explains a lot. Ted Cruz is a Gremlin. Someone got him wet after midnight, he spawned some minions out of his back, and they immediately went to work on his re-election campaign as that was the most evil thing to do right at hand.

Prior to Cohen's guilty plea I would have pegged the likelihood of Manafort flipping as very high with this news. But we really still don't know what happened with Cohen, so even if most signs point to Manafort needing to flip if he's going to plead, no way to know until they announce it. I mean, if Manafort pleads guilty with no co-operation he's likely looking at a hefty, if reduced, sentence here and enough years in the other case to put him away for the rest of his life. And on top of that, you make an already politically tenuous pardon more ridiculous by having admitted you are guilty! On top of that, while Mueller's team has handed off other cases they have kept this one for themselves. Indicating that they see it as one that goes to the heart of their central investigation. It is not hard to come up with examples of why Manafort would be important for evidence of Russian collusion. So it seems unlikely that cutting their losses to save some money would be a driving factor to let Manafort off at all easier then is absolutely necessary. But hey, like I said, doesn't make much sense to me but I also haven't made much sense of Cohen's deal, either.

Remember that Trump stooge on Hannity who said her book would show with Sciencey science that Trump is totally the most not-senile president ever? Yeah, she just got caught(kinda) lying about her credentials(her publisher is trying to take the bullet for her). The article is worth a read. It does more than just expose some hokey credentials. It breaks down some of her claims At times I almost expected her to break out phrenology.

"Nice Jumbotron you got there. Shame if something happened to it."

Ah. The "Jews should thank Hitler for giving them Israel" argument. Razor sharp analysis there, Susan. Maybe if we hand a few more SCOTUS seats to the Republicans to prove a point things will get really good. Keep bitching about the purity of Democrats while Ginsberg gets fitted for an iron lung, you fucking morons. And then we can listen to people bitch about how Democrats and their 47 seat minority in the Senate didn't fight hard enough to prevent the Supreme Court from attaining a 5 seat mini-Scalia majority.

Those kiddy cages aren't going to pay for themselves, folks.

This is one of those things that will matter only if voters show them it matters.

This seems like a good program marred only by the fact that it's exactly the type of small scale, nuts and bolts program Trump said we don't need because the wall is going to magically solve stuff like this.

What jumped out at me was when he was talking about the WTC coming down and how it meant he reclaimed the title of tallest building. Sure, that's thoughtless and gross. But what really got my attention was that after all those years, in the midst of a tragedy, you can hear a little bit of resentment and antipathy that the WTC ever took that title in the first place. This guy would hold a grudge over losing a thumb war 50 years ago.

I think a lot of politicians are overweighting the one relevant data point in Clinton's impeachment. Dems are obviously skiddish about talking impeachment, and Republicans are eager for it because they think it will be some magical elixir for their historical unpopular president. It ignores the most important issue, and one that I think speaks to the average voter. The GOP in the 90's never made their case that the investigation, much less the little wrong doing they actually proved, was serious enough to warrant impeachment. The claims against Trump are more serious than they were for Clinton. And, arguably, what is already known is more serious than they ever proved against Clinton(there is already a strong case for obstruction in what we all already know, for example). I think there is a bit of self delusion going on here among the GOP. They have focused so much on the Mueller interview and the "perjury trap" that they've convinced themselves that's where the danger lies. It's kind of a classic case of projection. They so often investigate things for political reasons with no meat on the bones that the perjury trap is actually their goal. So they think that is the goal here. Maybe they are thinking they can beat the wrap if all Mueller has on Trump is him lying about an ancillary topic. And you know what, maybe they could. Even though I think the fundamentals of Trump's support is more brittle then that of Clinton when impeachment seemed to help him, I think there would be disappointment, if not backlash, if that's all Mueller could get him on. The problem is that, as I said, I think the case is already stronger against Trump, and Mueller seems to show little interest in hinging his case on a perjury charge.

Look at the upper lefthand picture of Pompeo in that Twitter post. He is soooo wearing a girdle.

Funny you say that, after two decades of listening to me recommended the series Carl finally started listening to it on audiobook. I think the audiobook format finally got him over the hump of Jordan's dense prose. Keep in mind, New Spring is probably best listened to right before or right after book 7. Being a prequel you can read it just about anytime(though reading it before book 1 will spoil things) it's best read around book 7 simply because that's around the time Jordan wrote it. So that's when it feels like the pieces connect the most immediately.

Not only that. His staff then had them edit Waldo into the picture so they could keep Trump distracted with it.

I think so. This is news because the investigation showed it wasn't suicide. Initial impressions were that it might have been.

Take a moment and imagine Trump in year 8 after winning reelection.

There's a good chance that befote he leaves office we're going to hear reports that he called the Secret Service into his room one day furious and insisting they catch the perpetrator. And when they ask who he's talking about he'll be like, "Who do you think?! The guy who shit in my pants!"

I am having flashbacks to the NYT dial on election night 2016. I remember people started out joking about how the "dial is my god", but it all turned dark around 9 or 10 that night. Oh, but god forbid we give people in the service industry $15 per hour

You really missed an opportunity to clickbait your headline.

Oh, Trump has shown he is very interested in helping Isreal find a final solution to the Palestinian problem.

Seems like this guy would be well and truly Borked if not for the GOP disregarding everything in the pursuit of raw political power. Edit: Also, as someone who generally doesn't agree with far-left fever dreams, I have to say the GOP is doing just about everything they can to make a case for why President Warren and her Congressional majority should impeach Justice Cavanaugh in 2020 for being an illegitimate appointee.

Usually I am not the one Kal'ing things up by being the wet blanket. But it is crazy that the news has become obsessed with this Who Shot JR fiasco. I give it a 10% chance this anybody we've ever heard of, and 1% chance it's someone the general public has. Even on the off chance it's not some intern on Pence's speech writing team, at most it's someone like Kudlow who we've heard of, but the public would be like, "Huh?".

Kavanaugh is coming across as the kind of guy who would check with the NRC before issuing a ruling.

I was under the impression that Harris was restrained from being too direct with that information because of the various games Republicans are playing to restrict what Dems can ask about. I think in a vacuum the point about there being a lot of people at a lot of firms is a fair point. But in this specific case, her questioning and his reaction makes it pretty clear that, for whatever reasons, we've got a dirty little secret one side can't reveal and the other doesn't want to reveal.