The “collective nerve endings” that matter are the nerve endings of Trump haters, and they are “frayed and numbed” and insufficiently “alive” because they’ve received so many “ugly” messages that they can’t feel the ugliness anymore. And yet supposedly, the ugliness has been dammed up. I guess the “dammed-up” image is useful (metaphorically) because it suggests a vast quantity of ugliness that hasn’t got out yet and so there’s potential, if the “floodgates” open, to batter the near-dead nerve endings and finally, at long last, get the reaction against Trump that Remnick is so sure he deserves.
The particular ugly message to which the collective nerve endings were insufficiently alive, was Trump’s reaction to Congressman Schiff’s satirical restatement of Trump’s Ukraine phone call:
“Rep. Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian President, and read it aloud to Congress and the American people. It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for Treason?”Some of us in the electorate have nerve endings sensitive enough to have felt the ugliness of what Schiff did and we may have enjoyed Trump’s vigorous pushback, but Remnick (unsurprisingly) sees Trump as the ugly one here. Trump’s suggestion that Schiff be arrested for treason is over-the-top, but Schiff was stating false facts and relying on the people’s ability to hear and process satire and that’s the same cover Trump claims.
But, sure, it’s unseemly, by conventional standards, for the President of the United States, the head of the executive branch, to be speaking comically about the deployment of the prosecutorial power.
This post gets my “civility bullshit” tag, because Remnick is adamant that Trump should not be talking like that, but he gives Schiff a pass.
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249 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 249 of 249BREAKING!
Democrats just passed a law forbidding any Republican from saying the word "Biden" or "Hillary Clinton" outside of US jurisdiction.
BREAKING!
Democrats just passed a law forbidding any republican from saying the word "Biden" or "Hillary Clinton" to any person not in the USA.
It is also illegal to point out a "Beiden's" or a "Hillary Clinton's" use of power for personal enrichment.
Now i think those were the records that incriminsted ed burke.
John Althouse Cohen @3:11:
I continue to believe the proper term is sedition, although I recognize this is not the term the President and most others are using. The 2016 NSC/NSA/CIA/DOJ/FBI election shenanigans are matters of sedition in terms of the full political weaponizing of federal law enforcement and the bureaucracy.
These items are not treason. Treason is an entirely different matter. I also believe it is counterproductive for the Left to be accusing the President of treason, when it is clear no such thing was committed. We spent an exhaustive, dishonest Mueller fiasco bearing that out.
If some high-level people in the alphabet soup agencies listed above do not go to jail for their sedition, the civility of our Republic is doomed for many administrations to come — regardless of political affiliation.
I hope you will acknowledge that.
BREAKING!
Democrats just passed a law forbidding any republican from saying the word "Biden" or "Hillary Clinton" to any head of state in international waters.
It is also illegal to point out a "Biden's" or a "Hillary Clinton's" use of power for personal enrichment.
Ritmo fears his colluding creative writing inclined reps and suck up media hacks being constrained.
Yeah..they could just stop the partisan bs.
Were you similarly upset at Obama admin spying on journalists who dared to stray?
BJM said...
Unseemly?
Three years of RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA was unseemly, however the left's pivot to UKRAINE! UKRAINE! UKRAINE! is perverse."
We are getting a geography lesson here. First we started in Russian ,now we are in Ukraine next we will be in Belarus.
Trump is clean up President :
Heracles who
Cleaned the Augean stables in a single day with floodgates redesign.
Most apt, Narayanan! Congress should be referred to in future as the Augean stables. At least until they get flushed out completely.
Wrong direction, 'georgia, sweet georgia'
The names 'are killing words'
“... in order for democrats, liberals, progressives et al to continue their illogical belief systems they have to pretend not to know a lot of things.” — David Mamet
A perfect capture of where we are now.
So if what if volker has been the mole all along:
https://mobile.twitter.com/outergirlcom/status/1179233975878987776
President Trump was warned not to make this a Twitter administration. He's an economics major with a made up New York gangster behavior an accent actually. I was very afraid and intimidated by Adam Shiff. Lazer sharp intelligence and a straight poker face. David Remnick may have slipped if so in favoritism towards Adam Shiff. Like-minds tend to think alike, so I've heard. Trump is a number guy an tht is very important to all Americans. Comedy has not settled quite well in politics, not yet. Maybe after the left buttcheeks start kissing right middle fingers, with or without peanut butter. No jam or jelly !
Guys, stop teaming up against the President. Patience is a virtue.
Are people still posting here?
I thought the blog was shut down.
The New Yorker has an article about student debt, featuring the plight of a student who dreamed of living in New York, coming from Pennsylvania, and ran up huge debts to be a student in New York. Both the student and the parents are scrimping to pay off the debt. The student stayed in New York and found a job outsourcing work to foreigners. She finds it not fulfilling.
Huh. Someone dreams of living in New York? You learn something new every day.
Even the unclassified elements are unimpressive
https://mobile.twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1179216014074155008
Growing up in the DC area, I remember when David Remnick wrote for the WaPo sports section. Yeah, he shoulda stuck with that.
Ms. Althouse- you are killing your blog. Keeping out the Chucks, Ingas, and others isn't worth your time, and it certainly isn't worth the loss of conversation that 2+hours between updates is causing. I haven't bothered reading the comments most of the time the last several days because responding to them isn't an option after about noon.
Congress should definitely make a law abridging the freedom of the press, right?
Sure, why not? Once Democrats started legislating 2a out of existence, it pretty much opens the others up, don't you think?
My President is tweeting some earth scorching news tonight.
IMPEACHMENT? Guess Trump shouldn't' have pissed in Obama's bed.
If there is evidence of psychopathy in American politics right now, it’s what Democrat propagandists are doing to their followers.
"Congress should definitely make a law abridging the freedom of the press, right?” - Pee Pee Tapes the Unembarrassed
They don’t seem to have a big problem with the right to bear arms! Maybe breaking up ownership of the press, keeping it from being concentrated in the hands of so few would be a good idea....
Naaah! The job of the press is ‘air cover’ for kleptocrats like Biden and Clinton! That’s what the founders envisioned!
"The fast flow of instantly appearing comments is over”
Inga is our Yoko.
The proper decorum of a sitting president when facing down unrelenting and undeterred coup makers should involve public construction of gallows.
That last link is re the supposed 'first hand info' which isnt.
Indeed:
https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/02/americans-have-every-reason-to-be-suspicious-of-the-whistleblower-complaint/
“Ms. Althouse- you are killing your blog. Keeping out the Chucks, Ingas, and others isn't worth your time, and it certainly isn't worth the loss of conversation that 2+hours between updates is causing. I haven't bothered reading the comments most of the time the last several days because responding to them isn't an option after about noon.”
I agree.
It is the comments that bring back your regulars, and much of that is for the conversation. The moderation has adversely affected the conversation because it kills the immediacy, the back and forth, that form conversations.
Hardest for me is the overnight stretch, when the two of you retire. The various open comment threads here used to be where I would wile away my insomnia. Not anymore. There is now a black hole, where there used to be late night conversations. It can happen during the daytime too - I don’t know how many times I checked back for comments on this thread yesterday. It seemed like most of the day. Which probably means that the two of you were actually doing something more enjoyable in your lives than moderating comments. I should be happy for you. But instead, I seem to be going through the psychological pain of extinguishing a behavior through reduction in rewards.
“They don’t seem to have a big problem with the right to bear arms! Maybe breaking up ownership of the press, keeping it from being concentrated in the hands of so few would be a good idea....”
Often, I think that the left doesn’t understand the dynamics of gun ownership. Their rampant cheating and destruction of civil norms, now including, apparently, impeachment for purely political reasons, causes many in this country to arm up, and then do it some more. I am not burying guns and ammo yet, but do know how to do it in such a way that they will be hard for gun sniffing dogs and metal detectors to find. For the first time, I may end up leaving some of my guns up here in MT, when we migrate south for the winter. I expect that this would be a 2nd Amdt Sanctuary County, with any feds sent here to seize guns arrested for violating the 2nd Amdt. You know things are getting bad, when this sort of thing is now openly discussed.
But then, I realize that the left understands this at some emotional level, because, along with their 1st Amdt encroachments, all of the top tier Dem Presidential candidates have signed onto hard core gun grabbing. And they are esp aiming at AR-15s, etc this time around because they know that those guns, while useful for hunting and self defense, are the ones most useful for defense against the government, and the nihilist socialists who are using everything at their disposal to take it over. And, thus, at the core of the 2nd Amdt. Never mind, that with millions, maybe tens of millions of these firearms in private hands, they are almost never used for murder in this country (not the case across the border in Mexico). I expect that some on the left have done the calculations, and have realized that every time they talk gun control, they lose several years, maybe a decade or so of new gun purchases that they would have to seize, and they are falling farther and farther behind. And I think that is part of why they are panicking.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/02/americans-have-every-reason-to-be-suspicious-of-the-whistleblower-complaint/
It stinks. It is all the Deep State, esp the CIA, working with the Democrats, to take out our duly elected President. Some of the stink:
- the IC IG was previously the top attorney for the heads of the FBI’s National Security organization at the time when they were engaged in rampant illegalities, including falsely certifying the original FISA applications, based on the bogus Steele Dossier - that they knew to have been sketchy and uncorroborated. It was also the same time that one of those heads (Bill Carlin) was forced to admit to the FISC that his organization had allowed contractors illegal unsupervised unfettered access to NSA databases through FISA 702 searching, that these contractors then used for opposition research on their political enemies (primarily Republicans, but likely also including Bernie Sanders and his campaign). Carlin then immediately retired.
- the fact that the “whistleblower” had second hand knowledge of the telephone call is very likely prima facie evidence that the person or persons who leaked to him violated the Espionage Act, by disclosing classified (Secret) information to someone without a legitimate Need To Know. Crickets from the IC IG.
- related - both the ODNI and the DOJ OLC have determined that the IC IG lacked jurisdiction to accept the complaint, since it did not concern IC matters, but rather foreign relations. He accepted it anyway.
- the complaint was illegitimately taken directly to the House and Senate intelligence committee chairs, since, again, it involved foreign relations, and not intelligence matters, and, thus, could not constitute an “Urgent Matter”.
- it seems likely now that the ICIG complaint form was modified to allow 2nd hand complaints, despite the 2nd hand testimony being inadmissible in court as hearsay, after the complainant initially contacted the ICIG.
- the complaint appears to have been written by lawyers, and not the complainant. There is a strong suspicion now that it was written by Pencil Neck Schiff’s staff.
NRO: Executive Impeachment
George F. Will writes that the impeachment inquiry into President Trump will “affirm Congress’s primacy.” Indeed, by granting Congress the power to impeach, convict, and remove a sitting president, the Constitution reiterates the preeminence of the legislative branch.
What’s interesting is that the three most recent impeachment inquiries began not as exercises of congressional prerogative, but as investigations within the executive branch. Watergate involved the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Justice. The Clinton impeachment catalyzed after the independent counsel delivered his report on the Lewinsky affair. Last week, despite resisting internal pressure for nine months, Nancy Pelosi announced the current inquiry only after an anonymous whistleblower lodged a complaint against the president with the inspector general of the Director of National Intelligence.
If, in the end, the House votes to impeach President Trump, the executive branch will have in effect impeached its titular head. The bureaucracies, especially the security services, will have revealed themselves as active players in determining their own leadership.
“In modern organizations,” John Marini writes in Unmasking the Administrative State, “those who work in the administrative structures often understand their interest in terms of institutional loyalty and their professional association, rather than the larger political good understood in terms of the nation or the Constitution. In short, the bureaucracies have developed the instinct for self-preservation at all costs.” Under such conditions, impeachment is less constitutionally clarifying than it might seem.
Note, BTW, that IC IG Michael Atkinson came out of the Civil Service, where he had been Senior Counsel to DOJ National Security Division AAGs John Carlin and Mary McCord. (Sorry - my previous post had them working for the FBI, and Carlin’s wrong first name).
First Drudge, and now Althouse. The internet is shirking before our very eyes.
I don’t know how many times I checked back for comments on this thread yesterday. It seemed like most of the day.
I agree. I think she is getting bored with the blog and I am not surprised with the abuse by trolls and crazies like Ritmo, who I see is back today.
It's good for other blogs and I see familiar IDs at neo and Ricochet, which is ferocious at auto-moderating.
Welcome to Chicagoboyz, too.
Remnick trying to remove his painful, painful, nerve endings...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqE14og1cQ8
I'm giving the new model Althouse blog a chance to breathe, get a stride that I can adapt to. It may be easier for me since I typically only visit 3-4 times a day for a few comments anyway-- I may look in at some of the other places recommended too.
Looks like Trump is dealing with combinations too powerful to be suppressed by normal judicial procedures . . .
Narr
And look, it's Democrats again!
“Welcome to Chicagoboyz, too.”
If you seriously start blogging a lot more about politics there, I would follow. I drop by most days, but rarely check out the comments, because my passion right now is the coup being attempted that is the subject of one of Ann’s posts today, and not why, for example, the eighth (?) Air Force was idiotic to send their bombers over Germany without fighter escorts. That sort of thing - trivia that I enjoy over, but never obsess over enough to read the comments. The only comments I read there are in response to your posts, probably more in support than anything. Thinking I need to comment more though to give you more positive feedback to get you posting more.
I have no pity for these people.
There is a lot of interest there in non-political topics. Lots of repeat postings. A lot of the political posts are mine but I try not to make it all political. There are a whole series of my posts on health care reform and about Calvin Coolidge I did some years ago.
Is it a double standard to put more of our focus on what the president is saying, when we're in the middle of a race to see if he should be reelected, than on what one Representative is saying? The whole country is going to vote on the president, but only one district in California votes on Schiff. Why isn't it reasonable for that to inform what gets more coverage in national media?
@JAC, only one district may vote on Schiff, but as a committee chairman he has been elevated to a position of responsibility, and he needs to be responsible. Which he isn't.
Congress should definitely make a law abridging the freedom of the press, right?
Please confirm opposition to the repeated calls for employees, agents, and stringers of corporate media to be licensed by the federal government and to thus enjoy immunities from defamation liability and special access to government officials, while bloggers and streamers would not be licensed or so privileged.
I hope you will forgive me, but this is the first time that I've stumbled across your blog.
(1) It should be clear to any sentient being that Schiff’s remarks were a parody of Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president. He announced as much at the beginning of his comments: “Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the president communicates.” Near the end of his remarks, Schiff stated “This is in sum and character what the president was trying to communicate with the president of Ukraine,” again pointing out that his comments did not purport to be a transcript of Trump’s conversation – after all, the White House version of the transcript already had been released and the whole world was aware of its contents.
(2) Even some Republican members of Congress understood Schiff’s parody at that time. Representative Mike Turner noted in the hearing that “the American public are smart, and they have the transcript. They’ve read the conversation; they know when someone’s just making it up.” https://www.factcheck.org/.../schiffs-parody-and-trumps.../
(3) Of course, certain members of the Republican House leadership were ignorant about the contents of the transcript released days earlier. Recall Kevin McCarthy’s humiliation and embarrassment when he accused Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes” of adding the word “though” (as in quid pro quo) to the transcript. https://www.cnn.com/.../kevin-mccarthy-ukraine.../index.html
(4) With respect to the venerable Ann Althouse, it seems that she was probably too busy admiring herself and counting the contributions in her PayPal account from fawning followers to bother reading the actual transcript. She cites the “ugliness of what Schiff did.” Clearly she is someone who failed to understood what even Mike Turner understood – Schiff’s comments were clearly satire – as Schiff clearly noted at the beginning and end of his remarks.
(1) It should be clear to any sentient being that Schiff’s remarks were a parody of Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president. He announced as much at the beginning of his comments: “Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the president communicates.” Near the end of his remarks, Schiff stated “This is in sum and character what the president was trying to communicate with the president of Ukraine,” again pointing out that his comments did not purport to be a transcript of Trump’s conversation – after all, the White House version of the transcript already had been released and the whole world was aware of its contents.
(2) Even some Republican members of Congress understood Schiff’s parody at that time. Representative Mike Turner noted in the hearing that “the American public are smart, and they have the transcript. They’ve read the conversation; they know when someone’s just making it up.” https://www.factcheck.org/.../schiffs-parody-and-trumps.../
(3) Of course, certain members of the Republican House leadership were ignorant about the contents of the transcript released days earlier. Recall Kevin McCarthy’s humiliation and embarrassment when he accused Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes” of adding the word “though” (as in quid pro quo) to the transcript. https://www.cnn.com/.../kevin-mccarthy-ukraine.../index.html
(4) With respect to the venerable Ann Althouse, it seems that she was probably too busy admiring herself and counting the contributions in her PayPal account from fawning followers to bother reading the actual transcript. She cites the “ugliness of what Schiff did.” Clearly she is someone who failed to understood what even Mike Turner understood – Schiff’s comments were clearly satire – as Schiff clearly noted at the beginning and end of his remarks.
@JAC, only one district may vote on Schiff, but as a committee chairman he has been elevated to a position of responsibility, and he needs to be responsible. Which he isn't.
Schiff's district hasn't voted Republican since 1972 meaning that any braindead Democratic can win there. CA-28 is considered a very safe seat for D's. Note that "safe seats" breed extremists in both parties.
He announced as much at the beginning of his comments:
Could you point that out ? I don't recall any such admission.
I see we have a new troll or Inga has another ID. It is so effective to ridicule the people you are addressing. Usually that means you are posting to admire your own wit, not to try to convince anyone.
Responding to Michael K -- I thought it was obvious that the text that I quoted indicated Schiff's intentions. He said: “Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the president communicates.” Near the end of his remarks, Schiff stated “This is in sum and character what the president was trying to communicate with the president of Ukraine,” again pointing out that his comments did not purport to be a transcript of Trump’s conversation – after all, the White House version of the transcript already had been released and the whole world was aware of its contents.
My point about Ms. Althouse is that she apparently failed to read the actual transcript of Schiff's remarks, which would have alerted any reasonable person that Schiff did not purport to be quoting Trump.
Responding to Michael K -- I thought it was obvious that the text that I quoted indicated Schiff's intentions. He said: “Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the president communicates.” Near the end of his remarks, Schiff stated “This is in sum and character what the president was trying to communicate with the president of Ukraine,” again pointing out that his comments did not purport to be a transcript of Trump’s conversation – after all, the White House version of the transcript already had been released and the whole world was aware of its contents.
My point about Ms. Althouse is that she apparently failed to read the actual transcript of Schiff's remarks, which would have alerted any reasonable person that Schiff did not purport to be quoting Trump.
Responding to Michael K -- I thought it was obvious that the text that I quoted indicated Schiff's intentions. He said: “Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the president communicates.” Near the end of his remarks, Schiff stated “This is in sum and character what the president was trying to communicate with the president of Ukraine,” again pointing out that his comments did not purport to be a transcript of Trump’s conversation – after all, the White House version of the transcript already had been released and the whole world was aware of its contents.
My point about Ms. Althouse is that she apparently failed to read the actual transcript of Schiff's remarks, which would have alerted any reasonable person that Schiff did not purport to be quoting Trump.
Sorry, TD, but the quoted disclaimer from Schiff is just as dishonest as the rest of what he said. No, it's not remotely any kind of summary of what Trump said.
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