Intrigue At The Palace

Vox:

On Friday, January 6, FBI Director James Comey met with President-elect Donald Trump. His task was awkward; he needed to inform Trump that the FBI’s counterterrorism unit was investigating claims that Russia had embarrassing blackmail material on the billionaire real estate developer.

Something in Trump’s reaction disturbed Comey. “I felt compelled to document my first conversation with the President-Elect in a memo,” he recalls in testimony prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee. The compulsion to record the conversation was fierce and immediate; Comey didn’t even wait to get back to his hotel. “I began to type it on a laptop in an FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting.” From then on, Comey began documenting all his meetings with Trump. “This had not been my practice in the past,” he says.

On January 27, Comey again found himself in a strange situation with the president, caught by surprise when a dinner invitation that originally included his family turned into Comey having dinner with Trump, alone, in the White House’s Green Room. Trump immediately asked if Comey wanted to remain in his job, and said many other people would want it — a request Comey found strange, as Trump had already asked him to stay on as FBI director, and Comey had already accepted.

“My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship,” Comey says. Trump would soon make that perfectly clear. “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,” the president told his FBI director.

In subsequent meetings, Trump would ask Comey to “lift the cloud” Russia was casting over his presidency, to announce publicly that Trump was not being investigated, and to squelch the investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s activities. In their final conversation, Trump asked for Comey’s cooperation, saying, “I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know.” Comey says he did not know what “that thing” was. Shortly thereafter, Comey was fired.

Everybody's expecting a big show today when Comey testifies, but the smart money seems to be on Big-Nothing-Burger.  Why does the guy telegraph his moves by releasing a kind of script before he shows up?  He doesn't think anybody's going to confine themselves just to the points he outlined, does he?  But then again, it's not likely for him to drop the big one in open session. But then again again, this guy has pulled some pretty horrendous shit in the not too distant past.  

And wouldn't it be nice if one of the Press Poodles could manage to ask the question - Is any of this to be considered "usual and customary"?

So anyway, we see what we see today. And what we do know to be "usual and customary" is that we can count on the Poodles to sell us gigundous piles of car insurance and boner pills. This is USAmerica Inc - it's what we do.

Manage the expectations, and keep pushing Congress to do something honorable.

Mr Agrievement

Some points to keep in mind:

• Every accusation is a confession
• Every time he warns of dire consequences, he's making a statement of his goals

It's become pretty much the Republican Way - they're installing this top-down Daddy State authoritarianism as their operating system.  They want the government to be run more like a business because rules are for chumps and losers and cucks. Eat or be eaten. Killers are the ones who prevail. Fuck your due process. Muscle, force, dominance - it's the only thing that matters. So don't worry your pretty little head, Daddy will protect you - even if he has to protect you to death.

He was complaining about - and warning about - organized crime. And gee golly, now it would seem he's pretty mobbed up.

Also, it looks a lot like he was trying to wield the power of government to beat down on his competition.  He tries to sell it as leveling the playing field, but the field has been tilted in his favor since forever, so we've got a guy in a position of privilege and power bitchin' about what a poor defenseless victim he is - as always - and blaming people who just want a square deal for everybody. Playing the Opposites Game.

Newsweek: (updated piece from Fall 2016)

Donald Trump was thundering about a minority group, linking its members to murderers and what he predicted would be an epic crime wave in America. His opponents raged in response—some slamming him as a racist—but Trump dismissed them as blind, ignorant of the real world.

No, this is not a scene from a recent rally in which the Republican nominee for president stoked fears of violence from immigrants or Muslims. The year was 1993, and his target was Native Americans, particularly those running casinos who, Trump was telling a congressional hearing, were sucking up to criminals.

- and -

As Trump was denigrating Native Americans before Congress, other casino magnates were striking management agreements with them. Trump knew the business was there even when he was testifying; despite denying under oath that he had ever tried to arrange deals with Indian casinos, he had done just that a few months earlier, according to an affidavit from Richard Milanovich, the official from the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians who met with Trump, letters from the Trump Organization and phone records. The deal for the Agua Caliente casino instead went to Caesars World. (In 2000, Trump won a contract to manage the casino for the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians, but after Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts declared bankruptcy in 2004, the tribe paid Trump $6 million to go away.) And in his purposeless, false and inflammatory statements before Congress, Trump alienated politicians from around the country, including some who had the power to influence construction contracts—problems that could have been avoided if he had simply read his prepared speech rather than ad-libbing.

Lost contracts, bankruptcies, defaults, deceptions and indifference to investors—Trump’s business career is a long, long list of such troubles, according to regulatory, corporate and court records, as well as sworn testimony and government investigative reports. Call it the art of the bad deal, one created by the arrogance and recklessness of a businessman whose main talent is self-promotion.

- and -

Trump boasted when he announced his candidacy last year that he had made his money “the old-fashioned way,” but he is no Bill Gates or Michael Bloomberg, self-made billionaires who were mavericks, innovators in their fields. Instead, the Republican nominee’s wealth is Daddy-made. Almost all of his best-known successes are attributable to family ties or money given to him by his father.

The thing that sticks for me is that 45* has spent his whole life failing up. Because he was born into a network of the kind of people who are (eg) regular attendees at Davos, there's always somebody to bail him out, or the next bunch of suckers who can be talked into thinking he'll owe them something big if they prop him up, or some Coin-Operated Politician who can't resist the chance to play at a level he's only dreamed about - or whatever.

Anyway, he's acting like there's still some headroom for him - that he can bomb out in the White House, and get to another higher destination.

That one really scares me.

Now maybe it's just that he's Russkied up to the extent he seems to be, but if we don't get a good look at his tax and finance documents, we don't ever get to know.

PS) I wondered if a FISA warrant could've been aimed at some IRS records instead of signal surveillance, so I looked it up. Turns out the government can do that, but only if it's aimed at something owned or controlled entirely by a foreign entity, and I don't think even Obama's lawyers are clever enough to stretch it to 45*'s tax records. Damn.

My Man, Charlie

This reads like poetry.

Please, if it's not too damn much trouble, can you tell me what's being done in my name?

That has been the essential plea of the citizen of a democratic political commonwealth for going on 70 years now, since the war powers and their attendant influence detached themselves from -- or were abandoned entirely by -- the constitutional authority in which they were supposed to reside. That was the plea that was answered, officially, by the incredibly brave Frank Church and his committee, and by the House Committee on Assassinations (the case of the murder of a president in broad daylight is still open, by the way). That was the plea that has been answered, unofficially, by Ron Ridenhour about My Lai, and by Sy Hersh about a lot of the things the Church committee opened up, and by those guys in Lebanon with the mimeograph machine concerning Iran-Contra, and by Bob Parry and so many others during the era of Reagan triumphalism, and by people like the invaluable Charlie Savage and Jane Mayer and others when the country lost its mind after 9/11, and, yes, by Jeremy Scahill and whoever he talks to, and, yes, by Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, too.

Just tell me what is being done in my name.