A Widening Loop

Just off-stage, while the big drama of Manafort is going on, this is almost lost in the shuffle.

Josh Marshall, TPM:

George Papadopolous, another of those first five campaign advisors announced in March 2016 (Carter Page was another), pleaded guilty on Oct. 5, 2017, to making false statements to FBI. Unsealed this morning.

More soon.

Remember, days after being appointed, Papadopolous went to work trying to set up meetings between the Trump campaign and “Russian Leadership – Including Putin.”

We’re reading through the Papadopolous charges now. They are pretty bad and go directly to the Russia issue. More soon.
Don't assume the Papadolpolous plea wasn't intended to come in under the radar. This 45*-Russia thing has more moving parts than a high-end German sports sedan.

I thought they'd start with the little fish, using them as bait for the lunkers.  Leading off with Manafort could be an indication of low-hanging fruit, which in turn could indicate either a target-rich environment, and/or the degree of difficulty tying the whole thing together.

Today's Tweet

Hoping for the best with today's indictment.

I would not only buy tickets to see this in theatre, but I would go on and choose my seats beforehand. pic.twitter.com/8Sz0vjuEkZ

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) October 28, 2017

 

What Does It Take?

"Fact: Donald Trump is a feckless racist catastrophe who would gladly light the world on fire just to see his name printed in the last newspaper ever published."

William Rivers Pitt at truthout:

You have to wonder what Jeff Flake and Bob Corker are thinking today. I'm sure neither were expecting their Sunday to be this quiet. These two stalwart bedrock pillar Senate Republicans dropped a couple of building-sized bricks on the White House last week, and all that came of the resulting DONK was yet another hashtagged rhetorical victory lap by Donald Trump.

According to normal political gravity, this was the sun rising in the West. Flake and Corker took Reagan's 11th Commandment -- "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican" – and fed it to the bears. Two major figures within the GOP brutally attacked a sitting Republican president on national television, using phrases like "debasing the nation" and "flagrant disregard for truth or decency," and in any other time in US history, it would have been a nine-days wonder.

It should be noted that Flake and Corker’s words assailing Trump do not bump them to the head of the line for beatification. Their profile in courage is shorter than the flyers you find on your windshield. Flake happily voted several times to strip millions of Americans of their health insurance not long ago, and Corker just voted to blow up a major consumer protection regulation. Both have voted with Trump 90 percent of the time.

The smiling hyena will still eat your children.

Job Hunting Tip

Interviewer:
What did you like best about your last job?

Candidate:
Sometimes people had birthdays and they'd have free cake.

Revisit And Relearn

An explainer from Carlos Maza at Vox - one I keep going back to.

Today's Tweet

Gotta love a good Twitter Poem

Resentment (#poem)

Heigh-ho resentment,
the magic elixer
lovingly
brewed
by the greedy,
tweaked
and spiced
and stirred
until
the right moment,
sprayed over a country
to free the last
bits of money out,
leaving the dregs
in a useless,
bloody ruin.

— Sue Stone (@knittingknots) October 28, 2017

 

How Green Was My Campaign Fund

Playing both ends against the middle - and vice versa

Those bills again are:

• 2013: HB 2261
• 2014: SB 459 and HB 848
• 2015: SB 1334 and SB 1349
• 2017: HB 1760 and HB 2291

I didn't check all the bills mentioned, but the ones I did check were all passed by percentages in the 90s - like a couple of votes short of unanimous.

The old saw holds that sausage-making is an ugly thing.

And the closer you look, the uglier it gets, especially when big corporations have government locked in a grip that seems unbreakable. 

But it's not any worse now than it was in the early 20th century.

That doesn't mean we just sit on our asses and wait for shit to get better - that should be obvious, but that's exactly what an awful lot of us seem to be doing.

Anyway, it's not easy; it's not supposed to be easy; the fact that it's hard to do is partly what makes it worth doing.

"We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win."

--JFK

Samantha Bee

As usual these days, we get better news coverage of the stuff that matters from half-hour comedy shows.

And stay with it to hear the Ingrid Michaelson tune.

Badboy Behavior

"...by my calculation, seeing Bill O'Reilly's dick is 21,000 times worse than radiation poisoning."

Keith

"It's painful to contemplate, but he is the FDR of Twitter"