December 7, 2018

At the Friday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

(And do remember to use the Althouse Portal to Amazon when you do your shopping.)

87 comments:

gadfly said...

Nary a comment on Mueller report on Manafort lies or SNY sentencing memos on Cohen with Individual 1 mentions.

Trump tweets "Totally clears the President. Thank you."

wild chicken said...

So, was Mueller's report a bug deal or nah? Twitter's letting me down.

wild chicken said...

Bug deal lol

Is it a BFD?

chickelit said...

@wild chicken: Let me summon Inga to explain it!

Hagar said...

No, they are still looking for something they can hang Trump with. They are sure there must be a pony in there somewhere.

Jonathan Turley was on Bret Baier this PM; both as a guest and on the "panel." He said several times there are "hints" that Mueller has things that "may become" troubling for Trump, but it sounded to me like it was all very lawyer-like things and secondary - like when Trump or one of the others had done something that itself was legal enough, but then used the wrong words or phrases about them when being interviewed by the FBI. That sort of thing.

Or. Trump has paid off sluts to avoid publicity all his life, but then when he paid off McDoughal and Stormy Daniels, Mueller "may" claim that was to illegally influence the election, or the way it was done was an illegal campaign contribution, or both, and whatever.

wild chicken said...

Hokay

rhhardin said...

How come the women don't pay off Trump to remain silent about their affair.

wild chicken said...

I expected Gregg Jarrett to
tweet since he wrote Russia Hoax but he's really quiet.

President-Mom-Jeans said...

Apparently that buck toothed commie twat who the retards of New York's 14th congressional district want to represent them doesn't like being called a bitch for threatening Donald Trump Jr. over him trolling her with a meme.

That was the main news of the day, after the nothingburgers being served up breathlessly by the lefty media today in the fake Russia investigation.

stevew said...

Home again, home again jiggedey jig! Moving my little sis into a new apartment tomorrow, then chill in' at A Christmas Carol with my bride, followed by dinner out. See what I'm doing? Ignoring the outrage and current events. You should too.

Saint Croix said...

I just figured out Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot means what the fuck.

That only took a couple of years!

narciso said...

They drilled a dry hole, two in fact, Cohen had no direct contact with the Russians Manafort seems to be holding out on Podesta, for reasons unclear

narciso said...

No don jr was pointing out what wonderful socialist revolutions devolve to.

Hagar said...

At that, riffing on the above PMJ, is it not "illegal" for a Member of the House to threaten a citizen with a Congressional subpoena for unspecified causes in reaction to a public statement - perhaps ungentlemanly, but not actionable - made by that citizen?

Michael Fitzgerald said...

Been online all day, not one mention of the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Not even by Democrat party members who would take the opportunity to bash GHW Bush for thinking it was on September 7.

Infamy dies in darkness.

narciso said...

Of course it is, she is one of bill Ayers seedlings

Hagar said...

The Manafort things are still about his doings in Ukraine and places that the previous Federal investigators concluded they did not like, but were not worth wasting their time pursuing.
Plus that he converted part of his dodgy gains into expensive suits and shoes that he brought home with him without reporting them as income, or something.

Hagar said...

I am beginning to wonder how my uncle once got a big block of Norwegian 100% goat cheese through customs. I am sure it was illegal for me to receive that and not report him.

tim in vermont said...


Blogger Saint Croix said...
I just figured out Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot means what the fuck.

That only took a couple of years!


Start working on “see you next Tuesday” now.

Grant said...

Gjetost is a wonderful thing.

FullMoon said...

Trumo says:
Mike Pompeo is doing a great job, I am very proud of him. His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell. Now it is a whole new ballgame, great spirit at State!

chickelit said...

narciso said...Of course it is, she is one of bill Ayers seedlings

She showed the same grasp of the law as David Hogg when he encouraged foreign campaign donations. Too bad there wasn't a Michael Moore around to correct her.

tim in vermont said...

The lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, had said that as the election neared, Mr. Trump directed payments to two women who claimed they had affairs with Mr. Trump. But in a new memorandum arguing for a prison term for Mr. Cohen, prosecutors in Manhattan said he “acted in coordination and at the direction of” an unnamed individual, clearly referring to Mr. Trump.

Isn’t it the lawyer’s job to see to it that the payments are made legally? If Trump paid them with his own funds, the payments were legal. Did he direct Cohen to make the payments in an illegal manner?

narciso said...


Remember this is the counterpart which represented Russia then and now, through David vitter


https://efile.fara.gov/pls/apex/f?p=171:200:16766494790941::NO:RP,200:P200_REG_NUMBER:6170
https://t.co/YduHrfwNT1?amp=1

JML said...

You know Christmas is coming when they start playing commercials that feature odd rich people selling God knows what product. Seriously: What the hell are they selling? A car? A new scent? Designer douche?

wild chicken said...

Started to watch Chappaquiddick, got to where the Buick goes off the bridge, and then bailed. I can't watch that.

So we're watching White Christmas again.

tim in vermont said...

WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced the Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation in the Delaware Basin portion of Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin province contain an estimated mean of 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This estimate is for continuous (unconventional) oil, and consists of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources.

“Christmas came a few weeks early this year,” said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. “American strength flows from American energy, and as it turns out, we have a lot of American energy. Before this assessment came down, I was bullish on oil and gas production in the United States. Now, I know for a fact that American energy dominance is within our grasp as a nation.”


This is why I am not freaking out over the stock market right now. Unless of course the Democrats get complete control and keep all of that oil and gas in the ground, Macron style.

tim in vermont said...

European Parliament elections in 2019 are shaping up to be a major battle between centrist, pro-EU parties such as Macron’s LREM, and far-right formations that want to stop immigration and globalisation.

If Macron is a “centrist” what constitutes the “left” let alone “far left”?

R C Belaire said...

OK, here's something to ponder in your spare time:

What common American English word has the most letters but the fewest number of unique letters? For example, the word Mississippi comes to mind. It has 11 letters but just 4 unique letters.

So the metric for Mississippi is = 4/11 = .36364

Can y'all come up with a word with a lower fraction?

Christopher said...

If the only significant offenses boil down to Trump paying women to be quiet about consensual affairs then he's not getting impeached.

No politician would want to set that precedent.

narciso said...

Yes it's very near beer, by the way that's less than 20% of don Hewitt's payoff.

tim in vermont said...

Bookkeeper

tim in vermont said...

I always liked Kevin Hart. Who is going to do the Oscars now? Can they resurrect Chairman Mao? Is he far enough left? No, he had an eye for the ladies, and lots of them. as Chinese emperors have done traditionally.

tim in vermont said...

(CNN)In the hectic eight days after President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and top FBI officials viewed Trump as a leader who needed to be reined in, according to two sources describing the sentiment at the time.

They discussed a range of options, including the idea of Rosenstein wearing a wire while speaking with Trump, which Rosenstein later denied. Ultimately, then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe took the extraordinary step of opening an obstruction of justice investigation even before special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed, the sources said.


So all of those texts between agents and references to “Andy’s Office” WERE exactly what they sounded like. I remember them at the time telling us all that they were completely innocent.

Big Mike said...

I haven’t watched the Oscars in years. I don’t think this latest kerfluffle will change that.

Paddy O said...

Something I've been saying for years (and around here too!) but not so thoroughly or eloquently as Andrew Sullivan. America's new religions.

wild chicken said...

Is it illegal to buy someone's silence?

Or is this a process crime thingy?

narciso said...

It would have been entertaining, now it's going to be more like the agonizer booth.

MadisonMan said...

Gjetost is a wonderful thing.

Right up there with lutefisk.

tim in vermont said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bruce Hayden said...

“Isn’t it the lawyer’s job to see to it that the payments are made legally? If Trump paid them with his own funds, the payments were legal. Did he direct Cohen to make the payments in an illegal manner?”

About the only way that I can see them being made illegally, on the part of Trump, is if they were somehow made from campaign funds, which Cohan was unlikely to have had access to.

Jupiter said...

tim in vermont said...
Bookkeeper

6/10 = 0.6

He said "lower".

Humperdink said...

@tim in vermont. The timing of this news leak is curious. Comes on a day when the news cycle is all Cohen/Manifort, all the time. The DOJ apparently wanted this out there because it was coming out anyway (and obviously true). They wanted it smothered by the Cohen/Manifort release.

The DOJ's efforts to harpoon Trump are treasonous.

tim in vermont said...

Best I could do off the top of my head, Jupiter.

Random Onlooker said...

One thing for sure: Cohen made a terrible choice having Clintonista Lanny Davis as his lawyer.

Christopher said...

"Is it illegal to buy someone's silence? "

Depending on where the money came from (was it from the campaign or from Trump) it could be a violation of campaign finance laws which typically result in a fine of some sort.

The argument goes that Trump used campaign funds to pay at least two different women to remain quiet about consensual affairs that predate the 2016 campaigns so they constitute illegal campaign contributions.

Once more, if that's all they have then Trump isn't going anywhere until at least 2020.

Hagar said...

Prof. Turley (above) kept talking about how Mueller appears peeved because Manafort, Cohen, et al. have not told him all that he wanted to know and seeks to punish them for this.

So, if Mueller just knows that they must know something, even if they don't, how is this different from attempted suborning of perjury?

narciso said...

But he hired an ex sdny attorney, he picked a bad time to quit _____

YoungHegelian said...

@Paddy O,

I would have liked AS essay better without the obligatory swipes at Trump and Christians voting for him. I mean, is that really such a hard question to answer?

When this issue is brought up among my liberal friends I ask them "How many orders of nuns has the Trump administration dragged before the SCOTUS?" After they stare at me blankly, I remind them that the Obama administration took the Little Sisters of the Poor to the Supreme Court. It's amazing how many of them have no memory of this fact, and so they think no one else should have any memory of it. They're surprised to discover that among the believers taking the Little Sisters of the Poor to the Supreme Court just had really shitty optics. I then tell them that If X = Religious Orders the Trump Administration Has Hauled Before the SCOTUS, get back to me when X > 0.

rcocean said...

Trump seems to be bad at choosing subordinates.

Sessions, Tillerson, Cohen, Flynn, Manafort.

He even kept Comey.

I hope he's getting better at it, and Barr won't be another disaster.

Paddy O said...

"I would have liked AS essay better without the obligatory swipes at Trump and Christians voting for him"

Oh, me too. I think the derision about Evangelical voting is really part of the distortion setup by the DNC. It's dismissing the vital key issues of abortion too, as well as really misunderstanding a coherent political theology approach. That said, it is creepy in some corners of Evangelicalism (Falwell, etc.) and I've realized that my genteel West Coast Evangelicalism doesn't have the same flavor. But, it's also using Evangelicalism as a self-described demographic.

But, at the same time, having that swipe at Trump might get AS heard by those who can't see the log in their own eyes. I'm struck by how little difference the Christian Left is from the Christian Right in almost every way. It's shocking.

I also love that he's digging into the fact a religion doesn't need a deity to serve the same function. I think that opens wide a much needed discussion about how some kinds of religious speech are privileged in our society while others are intentionally categorized out of the public and social square.

narciso said...

Take bolsonaro he's a foul mouthed sort on occassion but he knows who threatens the interests of evangelicals in Brazils northeast.

Sessions was picked for his stance on immigration and crime in general a similar pick to ashcroft,tillerson was his bridge to the establishment. Cohen came with the furniture, Manafort if not for the whole levandowski kerfluffle

YoungHegelian said...

@rcocean,

Sessions, Tillerson, Cohen, Flynn, Manafort.

I disagree with many on that list as being "obvious" bad choices. I'll grant Cohen & Manafort. But, Sessions was a sitting Senator, and ex-state AG, and a political reward to the evangelicals who turned out for Trump. I don't see him as having clear "disaster" written all over him.

Tillerson was a big gamble -- an outsider in the ultimate insiders club of the State Dept. But, State deeply & truly hates Trump, so where to find a SoS? Get an outsider & see how it goes. Well, it failed.

I still don't see what poor Flynn did that was wrong. He just strikes me as an innocent piece of collateral damage.

Also remember that because Trump is vocal about his staff dislikes & the media is even more vocal about department heads they despise (e.g. Tillerson), we see & hear about every single Trump personnel fuck-up 24x7. I have but two words for these people -- Janet Reno.

Janet Reno was AG for 8 years. She & Pres. Bill Clinton soon learned to loath each other. Clinton later said she was his worst appointment. He installed Webster Hubble at DoJ to run things day to day, thus reducing her to a figurehead. Did the press ever breath a word about this, thus damaging the image of their favorite Pervert-in-Chief & the nation's first female (& suspected lesbian) AG? In 8 years? After massive fuck-ups like the Massacre at Waco?

Nope. Not a peep. Bear that in mind when you hear about Trump's "mistakes".

narciso said...

Flynn is the only one I really respect because he told Obama what he didn't care to admit re al queda like Jimmy Carter with the Soviets till afghanistan

Narayanan said...

Tweedledum Tweedledee >>> 7/20 = .35

YoungHegelian said...

@Paddy O,

I think that opens wide a much needed discussion about how some kinds of religious speech are privileged in our society while others are intentionally categorized out of the public and social square.

Well, you're not going to get an argument from Little Mr. Continental Philosophy over here that our national discourse is woefully blighted on the subject that "onto-theological discourses" covers a lot more than folks who explicitly reference revealed texts.

Here's the syllogism at work among the secular Left:

Moral Arguments from Revelation Are Irrational
My Moral Arguments are not from Revelation

Therefore, My Moral Arguments are Rational.

Narayanan said...

*She & Pres. Bill Clinton soon learned to loath each other. Clinton later said she was his worst appointment.*

Why do you believe these perjurers to support your opinion?

YoungHegelian said...

@NS,

Why do you believe these perjurers to support your opinion?

What?! Because Clinton was her boss, & in personnel matters, that's kind of what counts, isn't it?

If Janet Reno showed some kind of leadership skills that somehow peeped out from under the covers to prove Pres. Clinton's assessment wrong, I never saw them. If you did, feel free to present them.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Depending on where the money came from (was it from the campaign or from Trump) it could be a violation of campaign finance laws which typically result in a fine of some sort.

The argument goes that Trump used campaign funds to pay at least two different women to remain quiet about consensual affairs that predate the 2016 campaigns so they constitute illegal campaign contributions.”

The absurdity is that money was flowing the other way - from Trump to his campaign, notblike Dems, where they seem often to live big on campaign contributions. Sure maybe an argument could be made that the funds that were used would have gone towards his campaign instead, if they hadn’t been used to silence the bimbos. But I suspect that is about as close as they are going to get to claiming that campaign funds were used for this purpose.

narciso said...

I come from Miami, you're soft pedaling what a conflicted corrupt apparatchik she was.

YoungHegelian said...

@narcisco,

I come from Miami, you're soft pedaling what a conflicted corrupt apparatchik she was.

How? I'm simply claiming that 1) She was an incompetent AG & 2) the press hid the fact that both they & the Clinton Admin knew she was incompetent from the American public.

Narayanan said...

,,,not one mention of the anniversary of Pearl Harbor,,,

How credible are rumors about FDR wanting and egging Japan into attack USA?
I Trust the Left to know inside scoop on that one.

narciso said...

She was incompetent if you thought justice was consideration to any degree, in that sense she was just as ordered.

Oh Manafort's judge Amy berman Jackson was William Jefferson's atty

narciso said...

FDR was strongly anti Japanese perhaps due to his grandfather's time as a China trader, states portfolio was handled by Stanley hornbeck son of missionaries who thought likewise.

Narayanan said...

@YH ... Not blaming you for expectations but I always wonder ...
Why do people project their personal desire for competency on to political performers such as Bill Hillary et al who are grifting to see what they can do and get away with??!!
Which they amply evidence when you look for.

fivewheels said...

narciso's use of the word "sense" leads me to senseless, which leads me to senselessness.

4/13 = .307

Narayanan said...

So Narciso ...
Would it be wrong to say "Russia Collusion" by Democrats goes as far back as FDR brolove for Stalin?

Narayanan said...

Whatever else Putin may be, he's not communist.
No use to the Left except as punching bag and deflection.

narciso said...

That would be accurate, the first diplomat if note to try to reset was William bullit who sought to engage the Soviets he was in the wilderness for a while with John reeds ex girlfriend when FDR was elected he became the first envoy to Moscow but he learned from the experience and became an ardent anticommunist

William said...

Trump was big time real estate developer--in NYC where it takes a certain amount of sleaze to keep the concrete pouring. I don't think Trump considers sleaze a disqualifying trait in a subordinate. Rather the opposite...... I'm certain that if you investigated the crowd at the Clinton Foundation with the same assiduity that they went after Trump's associates you would find some indictable offenses......I'm more cynical and distrustful of Mueller than I am of Trump. Also, I think the newscasters who expressed shock at Trump's pussy grabbing tape were either guilty of far worse offenses or were discreetly mum about their knowledge of far worse offenses......Trump doesn't look good except by comparison, and then he looks very good indeed.

narciso said...

He still held a grudge against Wilson no good deed, publishing a psycho biography with Freud in 1967.

Michael Fitzgerald said...

Fivewheels@10:49 PM... Excellent!

narciso said...

Cant make this up:

https://mobile.twitter.com/spignal/status/1070980126010150912

Big Mike said...

Also, I think the newscasters who expressed shock at Trump's pussy grabbing tape were either guilty of far worse offenses or were discreetly mum about their knowledge of far worse offenses......Trump doesn't look good except by comparison, and then he looks very good indeed.

Yes. How much did CBS have to pay to settle the sex assault charges of Don Hewitt, legendary founder and producer of “60 Minutes”? A bit north of $5 million? Yet CBS News wishes to lecture us about Trump’s peccadillos?

walter said...

Blogger Saint Croix said...
I just figured out Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot means what the fuck.
--
It also means "Where's the floss?"
But really..the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a very difficult dance...not pleasant to watch.

walter said...

gadfly said...
Nary a comment on Mueller report on Manafort lies or SNY sentencing memos on Cohen with Individual 1 mentions.
Trump tweets "Totally clears the President. Thank you."

--
Hey gaddy,
Rosenstein said none of this supposed Russian shit matters regarding results of 2016.
Now..do you think ops on team Hil had "hands clean" such as your non-committal pompous ass self?

Yancey Ward said...

I don't think senselessness will be easily topped if the metric is unique letter/word length.

Consider the word booboo. Just two unique letters, but the ratio is still 0.33.

Can you think of another English word that could take better advantage of -lessness the way sense does?

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

All true Americanskis are to voting for re elect Trump 2020! His system is work great in Putins' Russia and is to working for Make America Great Again! What a country!

Ralph L said...

The Judean desert now has the quality of Essenelessness.

wildswan said...

Paddy O said...
"Something I've been saying for years (and around here too!) but not so thoroughly or eloquently as Andrew Sullivan. America's new religions."

As Huck Finn said "the statements was interesting but tough."

wildswan said...

Sullivan seems to think that support for Trump is cultish because media attacks get nowhere. But, as was said several times above, it more a case of people thinking that the media needs to get the log out of its own eye before it points out the sliver in someone else's. It's more than turning the collective eye away from Dems sins and onto the Repubs. It's shaping a narrative about Trump which is actually a description of the Clintons. The Clintons used their offices to make money, the Clintons used Russian intel to try to affect the election, the Clintons paid off bimbos, the Clintons breached national security, the Clintons are dividing the country with the lies about Trump. The way Hillary Clinton exposed US secrets is so horrible that it's almost impossible to face even if you detest her and belong to the other party. But if you don't look squarely at her treasonous betrayal then it's hard to see why the Clintons and those around them, like 44 and the heads of intelligence who allowed the betrayal are now fighting so hard against Trump. It's hard to believe they would lie and lie and lie about Trump until you look right at the fact that the Clintons carried out and the others allowed the Great Betrayal. But they did it, mainly I think because they all thought their treasons, little and big, would never become known to anyone in power.

And then, Clinton lost the election.

omigodomigodomigod, is there really a God? As Sullivan shows there was a religious crisis in America already which was creating a political crisis, anyhow. And now the Clintons were about to be exposed and also all their enablers. And they have been exposed but only to Trump supporters. The rest of the country is still looking firmly away. There's a space marked "Here be monsters" in their consciousness and they avoid it. And project it all on Trump. Like all big things, like Pearl Harbor, it's a very simple giant catastrophe. As Sullivan says it's enough to make one religious again. But most people are behaving like dame Quickly at Falstaff's death and assuring each other that things aren't so terrible that we need to mention God, there's no need to go that far.

Humperdink said...

Big Mike asked?: "Yes. How much did CBS have to pay to settle the sex assault charges of Don Hewitt, legendary founder and producer of “60 Minutes”? A bit north of $5 million? Yet CBS News wishes to lecture us about Trump’s peccadillos?"

Add to that, the CBS's Les Moonves situation. The #MeToo miners are going be digging into that vein of CBS's gold rather soon.

wildswan said...

I see Trump as very intelligent man subject to all the male passions and pursuing their realization in the American style. Wealth, beautiful women, towering buildings, football, casinos, luxury. But during his voyages into what is fun to do he saw what the global elites were doing to the American people and he came out for us. Why he cared when so many don't is a mystery. He knew how the system worked at the top and he gained the support of the workers, always the largest group in any country. The elite find him an utterly formidable opponent and the air is rent with their squealing. This Mueller stuff is an example of elite keening at the loss their devouring cannibalistic feast on the American people. And how I love to hear it.

tim in vermont said...

Blogger Char Char Binks said...
All true Americanskis are to voting for re elect Trump 2020! His system is work great in Putins' Russia and is to working for Make America Great Again! What a country!


I know, right? Meanwhile the media is all “Emergency! Emergency! Everybody to get from street!"

tim in vermont said...

Senselessness is pretty good.

Bad Lieutenant said...

.
Senselessness is pretty good.


Shhhhhhhhh!

Jim at said...

Mike Pompeo is doing a great job, I am very proud of him. His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell. Now it is a whole new ballgame, great spirit at State!

See, that's the type of thing I wish Trump didn't tweet. It's a personal shot that doesn't accomplish anything.

Beat the hell out of the media? Sure. Call out the Dems? Absolutely.
So Tillerson acted like an ass and took a swipe at Trump. Big whoop.
Pick your battles.