One approach to getting President Trump away from this problem is to portray it as too absurd to mean anything. And yet the Goldstone-is-a-clown defense will not work on anyone who's inside the mindset that the entire Donald Trump phenomenon is a giant clown show. In that view, the arrival of another clown makes it more of a clown show. That's the problem. It's a nightmare!
And The NYT has its effort to soberly process Mr. Goldstone. Excerpt:
He is currently on what he has termed a “gap year,” during which he is traveling around the world. So far, according to his Facebook page, Mr. Goldstone has made stops in Venice; Dubrovnik, Croatia; and Montenegro, among other places, and posted images of himself with young men — “muppets,” as he calls them — in each one. The last item he posted on Facebook was a photo of a sign for the Bathhouse of the Winds in Athens on Sunday....That article reveals that Goldstone — among many other things — wrote an essay that was published in The New York Times. Here it is, from 2010: "The Tricks and Trials of Traveling While Fat." Excerpt:
In China, traveling while fat turned farcical. I had been in Beijing less than 48 hours when I started to notice small children running up to me and touching my stomach before scurrying away in fits of laughter. Day and night they continued to approach me, poking and prodding at my belly.Tip: Do not rub Rob Goldstone's belly for good luck. It doesn't work.
On a walk through the Forbidden City, a local guide explained to me what was happening. “The kids think you are Buddha,” he said, “and they are rubbing your belly for good luck. You are Happy Buddha.”
That doesn't mean you should attempt to pop that belly. You know what I'm talking about? Watch the man sitting between Trump and Goldstone:
ADDED: Does that excerpt from the NYT article have a homophobic whiff? I had to look up the Bathhouse of the Winds in Athens. It's a public bath dating back to the first period of Turkish rule (1453 – 1669). It "functioned as a bathhouse until 1956" and is now run by The Museum of Greek Folk Art as a tourist attraction. And I had to look up "muppet" in the Urban Dictionary. It means "A person who is ignorant and generally has no idea about anything."
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But Allyson Camerata on CNN just now treated Goldstone's statement that the Russian government wanted Trump to win as if it was the gospel. CNN thinks Goldstone is credible. Hey, CNN. Goldstone makes up stuff. He lied to Trump, Jr.
Why doesn't the "worldwide leader in news" do a real investigation on this female Russian lawyer? How did she get into the country? Why was she allowed to overstay her visa? What is her connection to Fusion GPS?
"will not work"
The news itself is the clown show.
Those on whom it will not work are either the presenters or the soap opera audience.
I think it does have an undercurrent of "and this guy is gay" which is implicitly homophobic, since it seems designed to make Goldstone look somehow unserious.
On a different part of this, I've been puzzled by the ubiquitous use of the word "collusion" as if this was a crime (outside of anti-trust law). Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker: "“Collusion” is not a legal term in this context, nor is it a crime. Neither is listening to outlandish tales, even from foreigners. But Trump, Jr.,’s e-mails do raise questions of possible criminal behavior, starting with violations of campaign-finance laws. Federal law prohibits American campaign officials from soliciting from foreign governments “anything of value . . . in connection with” an election. In the meeting with Veselnitskaya, did Trump, Jr., or Jared Kushner, the candidate’s son-in-law, or Paul Manafort, then Trump’s campaign manager, who were also in attendance, solicit anything of value? The e-mails don’t clearly answer that question."
I think what we are meant to believe is that the Russians helped out the Trump campaign, and the Trump campaign gave the Russians something of value (a promise of policy??) in return. Can someone point me to the evidence of reciprocity? Without reciprocity, where is the collusion? If person A send person B a gift out of admiration, are A and B colluding?
Why doesn't the "worldwide leader in news" do a real investigation on this female Russian lawyer? How did she get into the country? Why was she allowed to overstay her visa? What is her connection to Fusion GPS?
The more you dig into that angle, the more it smells of a setup with Obama administrations fingerprints:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/341788-exclusive-doj-let-russian-lawyer-into-us-before-she-met-with-trump
And, as I mentioned yesterday, the lawyer's interpreter (Antoni Sarmochornov) was an employee of the State Department.
Making the news show as an obvious clown show is the current political move.
Then leave them with their soap opera and move on.
There's the exposure zinger (news is an entertainment choice and not serious) and the annihilation zinger (make them move to another idiotic story).
But idiotic stories will be forever.
A video of the North Korean newsbabe doing the Trump Jr. story would be great TV.
The more you dig into that angle, the more it smells of a setup with Obama administrations fingerprints...
Clearly the whole thing has been an Obama hole card. Not a coincidence it was turned over days before the Senate vote on Obamacare.
They only need to pick off a couple...
If this continues, Trump is going to lose Rachel Maddow.
Okay, Tucker Carlson concerned face is funny.
I prefer fopdoodle.
Trumpworld has always been a place of blustering, vulgar, entertaining self-promotion and hucksterism. Look at DJT taking down the posturing Vince McMahon in the WWE Battle of the Billionaires that turned into the famous CNN gif. This is show biz all the way (and closely related culturally to an Althouse favorite, the Gong Show).
Nonetheless, Trump got elected POTUS and has generally conducted himself with surprising dignity (we'll ignore some of those tweets) since taking office. The grand and the good are beside themselves that an outer-boroughs showman beat them, ignoring the sleazy nature of many of the Obama/Clinton antics that preceded Trump's win. For many of us, Trump was and is the better choice. But we are always going to have Trumpworld, where a clownish figure like Rob Goldstone can get a hearing with DJTJr.
It's not a bug; it's a feature. Trumpworld doesn't burnish Trump's image or make the office of POTUS more august, but it is who he is and where he lives. The elites said the same things about Andrew Jackson. The republic will survive and thrive.
The last two nights running Tucker used the face to confront a pair of Conservative Neo-Cons demanding Trump go to War now and exterminate Russia's client State Syria. Both called Tucker a quisling traitor for asking them questions they refused to be asked... or they would probably kill Tucker too for aiding the enemy in wartime.
His demeanor literally drives them insane by posing questions.
Sesame Street did have a Donald Trump muppet for an episode.
The e-mails don’t clearly answer that question."
Actually they do if we use any definition of soliciting that was generally accepted prior to this kerfuffle. The answer is no.
Did the Obama campaign solicit the venue of the Brandenburg Gate from the Germans?
It doesn't particularly bother me that Trump doesn't view the Russians as enemies either.
If speaking to her were actually a crime, and she were a cop, it would be entrapment, not solicitation.
We don't know for sure if the Russian lawyer over stayed her visa.
As it stands right now, it appears she was issued two visas-
One in Dec 2015 for a court case under normal procedures.
One in June 2016 for nobody knows why by Loretta Lynch using a special waiver.
It's happened. They've cried wolf often enough that I don't care if Don Jr. undermined the entire West. Time magazine has him on its cover with "Red-Handed" across his chin. It's like living with a 17 yr. old. I'm tired. I'll be over here having a beverage until the teenager grows up and gains life perspective.
She's a lawyer representing a client considered unsavory, making the case that je has been misjudged. If that makes her guilty of her client's crimes, what does that say about Hillary, who laughed about getting a child rapist, whom she knew was guilty, of the hook.
You left out the "first" before the "period of Turkish rule". It took Lord Byron to rid Greece of the Turks for good.
The Left: This is serious stuff. I mean, this is serious stuff.
Regarding Mr. Goldstone, I would simply repeat the official wisdom from Dean Wormer in Animal House: "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son"
Two 1-billion-bbl oil deposits were confirmed within the last couple of weeks in the Gulf of Mexico. Guess they'll have enough for that wall aferall.
This Russian lawyer apparently doesn't speak a word of English and she travels with a translator. The 20 minute meeting probably had about five minutes of .English; all spent on overturning an American statute.
What a joke.
If Goldstone is gay and he is open about it, why not just say he's gay.......Goldstone undermines the stereotype that all gays are meticulous about grooming and fitness. Maybe the gay community could overlook his weight problem, but if he's a supporter of Donald Trump, he'll get the full Milo. I don't think Goldstone's politics are manifest right now. If he says something damaging about the Trumps, he will get the Harvey Milk treatment. To see how this works, look at how the courage and decency of James Comey have become increasingly clearer as he has spoken out against Trump...... I'm not knowledgeable about the world of beauty pageants, but my guess is that sleazy publicists are part of the fauna. I would put a beauty contest held in Moscow to have a level of sleaze comparable to one held in Mexico City. The target audience of the contestants is probably not the judges, but the cartel members and the oligarchs. But, again, I'm not that knowledgeable. Maybe further reporting, depending on Golstone's politics, will show how Goldstone rose above or sunk below the scum.
Darrell:
We just put a tariff on Mexican oil to pay for the wall.
Steyn has to learn understatement.
Steyn's tweets went downhill when everything became a promotion for Steyn, too.
His exposure requires amusing takes on stuff faster than they occur to him.
Once a week is better.
According to the American Pro-Democrat Hack Press - It is ILLEGAL to do any opposition research on Comrade Hillary.
Red Handed! Treason! Off with Trump Jr's Head!
Goldstone is not the right type of gay. I was right that he paid for trade.
The more of these breathless, pearl clutching, OMG RUSSSIA!!!!! stories that the media trots out, which ultimately turn out to be a big nothing, the more people are just tuning out.
It is as if none of these young media types have ever heard of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" or have ever learned anything about human nature. The drip drip drip of ridiculous, unfounded and finally made up stories is making the public immune to more stories.
Perhaps, someday, there may be a real story with real truth to it. By then however the public will be yawning and moving on to something else. Trump and his whole family could be caught doing a Russian folk dance, in Red Square, wearing those big furry hats, and no one will care because all of the false, hysterical media stories.
Probably, there are some people who believe all of this gruel being offered up by the media. Those are the same people who believe that reality TV is real too.
David Harsanyi - Whataboutism charge is dishonest
"Folks who complain to me about “whataboutism” have a weird propensity to lecture me about historical precedents. Can we talk about the past or not? Take Paul Begala — a guy who led the mocking of Mitt Romney when the candidate called out Barack Obama’s Russian appeasement — who recently asserted that in his “34 years of campaigns, [he] never, ever heard of getting help from a hostile foreign power.” Never? He’s never heard of Charlie Trie, the man who was funneling millions to the Clintons on behalf of Chinese interests? He’s never read the leaked emails that showed the Clinton campaign working with Ukrainians to find information damaging to Trump? Never?"
One of the people at the heart of the latest edition of the Russian hoopla is Bill Browder of the Hermitage Fund. He is the one who got the lawyer, Natalia Vayskelnitska into the country without a visa. She was here on "parole" to participate in a legal proceeding involving a Russian company. (Side question: Can anyone elaborate on this parole thing?)
I thought I recognized the name Browder. I'd heard of Earl Crowder who was paid by Satlin's Soviet Union to run the Communist Party of the USA. CPUSA engaged in espionage, recruited agents and engaged in a lot of evildoing during the 20s to 50s and beyond. He was also, apparently, involved in the plot that murdered Trotsky in capacity as head of CPUSA
Earl Browder had a son Felix, born in Moscow Russia in 1927. Bill Browder is Felix son and Earl Browder's grandson.
I've seen no mention at all of this anywhere. whether it means anything relevant or not, it does seem like an interesting piece of trivia. Or, if it does mean something, an interesting piece of non-trivia.
John Henry
Did you hear Tucker say John Denver was "bad taste"?
He can leave on a jet plane and not come back again.
@John,
The visa parole thing explained.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/341788-exclusive-doj-let-russian-lawyer-into-us-before-she-met-with-trump
The article appears to be mid-edit.
Ralph L said...
Did you hear Tucker say John Denver was "bad taste"?
He can leave on a jet plane and not come back again.
Denver should have stuck to jet planes.
"Denver was killed on October 12, 1997 when his experimental Adrian Davis Long-EZ plane, aircraft registration number N555JD, crashed into Monterey Bay near Pacific Grove, California, while making a series of touch-and-go landings at the nearby Monterey Peninsula Airport.[38] The National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) accident ID is LAX98FA008.[39] Denver was the only occupant of the aircraft. The crash seriously disfigured Denver's head and body, making identification impossible by dental records, and his fingerprints were used to confirm that the fallen pilot was the singer.[40][41]"
I am Laslo.
One of the people at the heart of the latest edition of the Russian hoopla is Bill Browder of the Hermitage Fund. He is the one who got the lawyer, Natalia Vayskelnitska into the country without a visa.
No I'm pretty sure you have that wrong. Browser is a staunch opponent of Vaselnitskaya. I believe he was Magnitsky's partner (or had some kind of business relationship with him) and I think Browder instigated the Magnitsky Act, which Vaselnitskaya lobbies against.
I did read a profile of Browder that indicated he'd broken from family tradition by starting a hedge fund, but I don't think the Communist history was revealed (it just sounded like they were very liberal) so that bit is interesting.
I seem to have read that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya does not speak any English. Looking at some interviews with US newsmedia, she always seems to speak Russian. If she does speak English that seems strange.
So if she does not speak English, her appearance in the audience seems double extra strange. Why would someone attend a proceeding that they could not understand? It is not for information but something else. What?
John Henry
Robert Goldstone and Natalia Veselnitskaya are truly the real life versions of Boris and Natasha.
John Denver was the Amelia Earhard of country singers.
It doesn't particularly bother me that Trump doesn't view the Russians as enemies either.
Unless we are actually at war with them, I don't think we should be viewing any country as an enemy, with the exceptions of North Korea and Iran who are, after all, trying to develop nuclear weapons with the avowed intent of using them to destroy the US.
Other countries maybe a adversaries, but even those should be viewed with the perspective that they have interests and those interest may coincide with US interests and they may conflict with US interests and we should do our best to work with them, keeping in mind that we should place our interests first.
Remember when the media withheld videos that showed Obama with people that conspiracy theorists thought he was doing things with?
Good times.
Blogger Browndog said...
We don't know for sure if the Russian lawyer over stayed her visa.
Yes we do. She did not overstay her visa because she was never issued one. She applied and was turned down. The reasons for that would be interesting to know.
She was here on what is called "Immigration Parole" which is granted to someone for the purposes of taking part in a civil suit.
https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/humanitarian-or-significant-public-benefit-parole-individuals-outside-united-states
This can be issued for the duration of the suit. I believe the suit was over so why was she still here?
John Henry
Blogger Titus said...Goldstone is not the right type of gay. I was right that he paid for trade.
--
Not Fab..
Blogger CStanley said...
No I'm pretty sure you have that wrong. Browser is a staunch opponent of Vaselnitskaya..
Right you are. My bad.
His name does keep cropping up and the Stalin connection, albeit tenuous, is interesting. Perhaps not meaningful but interesting to a history buff like myself.
Earl Browder's Soviet code name was "Father" in the Venona transcripts. "Father of all evil" maybe?
John Henry
John Henry
Well the middle part of Wm Browder's story, as I understand it, is that he started doing business in Russia when Medvedev was elected and had hopes that the country was reforming. He soon saw this wasn't the case and that's when Magitsky began uncovering things which ended up getting him killed.
So basically, it makes me wonder if his family's Communist history was a backdrop that he was reacting to.
It would have been really cool if there had been a Godfather moment in the hearing.
Senator: Could you identify the gentleman behind you?
Hagen: Senator, that is Mr Vincenzo Pentangello and he doesn't speak any English. (Subtext: He is here to keep an eye on Frankie and make sure he does not say anything that might harm Michael Corleone)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FeMvQR-0VA
John Henry
Speaking of Boris and Natasha, I am currently watching a riveting, 20 part, miniseries about them.
Done by BBC in 1972 starring Anthony Hopkins. Available on Youtube.
Search War and Peace.
John Henry
"You left out the "first" before the "period of Turkish rule". It took Lord Byron to rid Greece of the Turks for good."
Thanks. I've added the word.
Denver crashed just off of Lovers Point. At the time, it was joked in flight school that Lover's Point had the clearest water in the ocean because you could see all the way to Denver.
Goldstone, Christopher Steele, Natalia veselnitskaya, international men of mystery (and women! )
The best line in the Tucker Carlson clip came from Tucker himself, after Steyn was talking about using the "I heard from a Russian oligarch..." line in a sleazy bar. Tucker replied that "...it works in the Hamptons..." which is a dead-on shot at the fools from the NY Media Establishment, who overrun both the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard, rendering both places uninhabitable during the prime summer weeks.
Oh well, we'll just have to enjoy those places after the A-list private daycare operations in Manhattan go back on "regular" hours. The beaches are better then, anyway.
"Nobody goes there anymore, too crowded." - Yogi Bera
whoever used muppet (reporter or Goldstone) what was meant was twinks.
He's using muppet to refer to dumb but attractive young men the same way we might refer to dumb but attractive blondes as airheads. It's a Briticism.
"whoever used muppet (reporter or Goldstone) what was meant was twinks"
That's the impression I had reading the article, yet my internet research indicates that is not how the slang "muppet" is used. That's particularly bad of the NYT. I think, in context, they led us to think like that.
Have an eggroll, Mr Goldstone
Not good for a pop singers' publicist to refer publicly to any young people as muppets, if the Google definition is accurate.
Sorry if I'm getting off topic too much with Veselnitskaya related stuff, but another thing about her parole visa status is that the Goldstone email said she was flying in from Moscow for the meeting. So it wasn't even the case that she had overstayed whatever permission she had to be in the country in June 2016, she re-entered the country at that time (unless Goldstone was lying or wrong, of course.)
Young boys, huh. It could be a transgender thing. Transsocial, too.
A muppet, a marionette, a puppet performs at his master's will.
It seems the NYT hopes to implement the WaPo Watergate strategy with disparate circumstances.
That's particularly bad of the NYT. I think, in context, they led us to think like that.
As David Hyde Pierce said, “My life is an open book, but don’t expect me to read it to you."
What counts as homophobia is way too broad.
Back before the gay mafia gays were just entertaining, clever and funny in my experience.
A stereotype isn't a phobia.
Who was the James Bond villian girl Rush was referring to yesterday? Or wanted to refer to.
The gay fashion experts are partly doing it as clever gays, the stereotype.\
Concerned in a guy way with stuff a regular guy is not concerned with.
The juxtaposition is the intended humor.
What counts as homophobia is way too broad.
Amen. Political gays want it to be a binary: either out and militantly proud or shamefully closeted. But ordinary gays sometimes prefer something in the middle, as characterized by the David Hyde Pierce quote above; some people catch the wink and others do not. We can hardly blame the New York Times for catching the wink.
Very funny, and with the Scott Adams video from yesterday, a nice corrective to the hyperbolic insanity about all things Russian. Of course, Tucker and Marc Steyn could have done an equally funny take-down of Trump Jr. (or other assorted Trumpians, to say nothing of the Team Dem denizens) too. AS Adams said yesterday, today's humor is the news. It's all a clown show from top to bottom, no matter from what angle you care to look at the news -- the talking heads, the empty suits (dresses?) they are talking about, the events they are focusing on, the fake outrage, the blatant hypocrisy, and on and on.
Despite it all, the good ship USA keeps sailing onward, still and ever the place people want to come to. What a country we live in.
"Does that excerpt from the NYT article have a homophobic whiff?" Of course. Prog homophobia and slut-shaming and fat-bashing are all OK, if directed at the right person to support the right narrative. Prog political ethics are strictly situational.
Quite apart from strategic homophobia etc., the best example of prog situational thinking is the whole Russia hysteria itself: progs screwed our anti-Russian allies (O vs. Poland), eagerly pursued a reset (Clinton--well, semi-prog), cooperated in Syria (Kerry), promised still more flexibility (O), derided Mitt for treating Russia as adversary (O + MSM), profited from collaboration with Russian business interests (Podesta), got direct payments from Russia (Bill), arranged profitable cozy deals for Russian interests (Clintons and uranium)--but then turned as soon as the collusion smear could be used for domestic political purposes. The utter cynicism by prog officials and their MSM allies tells us cynical conservatives that we are still not cynical enough.
I suspect that the word "moppet" was misquoted here as "muppet".
Rob Goldstone conspires to be funny. Seems like a character right out of a Marx Brothers farce.
Saturday Night Live should try very hard to have him as their host.
With the opening music from the long-running TV series, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents".
(Charles Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette.)
Goldstein perfectly channels Hitchcok's voice and girth.
#NotMyClown
Goldstone reminds me of a gay Bluto Blutarsky from Animal House -- not that there's anything wrong with that.
CS Stanley,
Yes, I have been trying to determine if she flew back to the US precisely for this meeting. It really does raise questions about how she got approval. If she really did get special approval from the DoJ to fly back in early June of 2016, that is just another supporting detail for the theory it was a set up by the Obama Administration.
So far, the only evidence I have for this Goldstone's comment in the e-mails.
Has anyone asked Goldstone for his e-mails to and from the Agalarovs? My observation is that no one has done so.
It sure was convenient for Obama that she met with Trump Jr and opened up the ability to spy on him through abuse of the Patriot Act. I will say that, extremely convenient.
Funny that a couple months ago, it was all "incidental intercepts" of Americans conversing with foreigners caught by the NSA, now everybody is saying that insiders leaked it to get at Trump Jr like last week.
When the guy who was working on the story for the New York Times claimed he had been working on it for months. More pissing on our backs and calling it rain from our betters.
I read that Traveling While Fat thing but I didn't know it was Goldstone who wrote it. I almost never look at the author of an article. It's like when David Foster Wallace killed himself, on my birthday by the way, and I found out, crap, that he had written all these cool articles I liked and now he's dead.
Sample Commenter is spot on, funny how all of that "incidental surveillance" against trump seems more like a fishing expedition meant to sink his candidacy. Part of me thinks they didn't really pursue it will much vigor until it was way too late, hence the late spilling of the peegate dossier in January. If they couldn't sink his candidacy maybe they can sink his presidency? Either way no one in Washington seems to be too exercised about finding out and that includes both parties.
"Tip: Do not rub Rob Goldstone's belly for good luck. It doesn't work."
How do you know?
@Yancy Ward
Scott McKay is wondering much the same:
"If this whole thing doesn’t look like an old-fashioned dangle to you, then you haven’t watched enough spy movies.
If timelines are interesting to you, there is this — reportedly, the Obama administration sought permission to electronically monitor Trump Tower in early June, and the FISA court would not grant it. But in October, that warrant was given.
...Remember how Hillary Clinton was accusing Trump of being a Putin’s puppet at the October 19 debate?
Which theory is harder to believe?
That Trump, who had never run for office before and who was panned as a clown by the Democrats and the media right up until Election Night last November, orchestrated a grand coup d’état with the assistance of the Russians to “hack” an American election, and that it was so well hidden that the Don Junior meeting is the only real evidence unearthed so far of the whole thing…
…Or that the Obama administration and the Democratic Party used their immense power to attempt to ensnare the Trumps in a damaging narrative that would either discredit him and the Republican Party as traitors in the event of a Clinton victory or cripple his administration in “scandal” should he pull an upset?
Who had the means, motive, and experience to pull off the deeds in question? Who had the power to let Veselnitskaya into the country, and what purpose would be served for such permission?
We don’t know the half of this story. But frankly, this business with The Russians is all of a sudden a lot more interesting than it’s been the whole time the media has been flogging it.
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