On That NYT Story

The good news is - we have some of the best people working on the problem.

The bad is - we don't know who they are.

The worse news is - "the best people" might turn out to be the bad guys.

Jon Meacham on The 11th Hour with Brian Williams:

The NYT piece:

By Adam Goldman, Michael S. Schmidt and Nicholas Fandos

Jan. 11, 2019

WASHINGTON — In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr. Trump also had a criminal aspect, which has long been publicly known: whether his firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.

Agents and senior F.B.I. officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. But the president’s activities before and after Mr. Comey’s firing in May 2017, particularly two instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said.

Today's Tweet

This one finally went a little viral. 

I live for the day I can truly imagine hearing Robert Culp's last line in this clip spoken by federal agents.

What the fresh hell. This is REAL. Filmed in 1958- about a conman who grifts a small town of suckers into building a wall. History not subtle enough for you? GUESS THE GRIFTER'S NAME
(And watch until the end) pic.twitter.com/6FA3p6KC00

— Alex Hirsch (@_AlexHirsch) January 9, 2019

Sounds Like The Real Thing

Brent Terhune - because satire can wear a red hat.

The Time Line

45* lives in SmarmSpace - the tiny little void between your promise to do something and your actions to fulfill that promise.

I can put my signature on a contract, but if I don't feel obligated by my own ethical standards, then when it comes time for me to deliver, I can choose any other option I care to think about.

Donald Trump has made his whole life about living in SmarmSpace.

The Wall is the perfect example.

Philip Bump, WaPo:

Back in April 2015 — an era so distant in American history that it barely shimmers in and out of view, cloaked in the haze of everything that’s happened since — Donald John Trump promised the United States that he would build a wall on the border with Mexico and that Mexico would cover the cost.

It was at an event in New Hampshire covered by Paul Steinhauser of NH1 News, targeting the state which, as it turns out, would provide Trump with his first victory in electoral politics. But at the time — despite Steinhauser’s accurate assessment that it wasn’t — it seemed like a joke. The TV guy was going to build a wall for free, huh? Okay. Good luck.

The point, though, is that Trump's insistence that Mexico would pay for the wall is, in fact, older than his campaign itself. At that New Hampshire event, he even said how it would happen, in broad strokes.

Follow the string of events thru the WaPo piece and watch how the thing "evolves". Because of course it does. It goes from a straight up statement that this thing is definitely going to happen no matter what - to a vague suggestion of something that he might think about mulling over sometime down the road or whatever, we'll see, maybe.

That's typical 45* - finding the SmarmSpace, or manufacturing some as needed.

But now he's in more of a panic than usual because even Limbaugh and Coulter and Ingraham and Hannity have been making noises about how he's a big loser and a total liar if he doesn't come thru on it. He won't survive without his Wranglers to keep the Rubes in line, and he's making all the noise he needs to make it look like this shitty impotent response is really a brilliant move on his part, because it's exactly the way he planned it all along.

BTW - the shutdown may in fact be part of the plan. He's been pimping the bullshit about a crisis, and an invasion, and bad guy Muslims streaming across the border blah blah blah.

Meanwhile, there are stories coming out about TSA (and other security folk) not bothering to do their work because they don't get paid even though they're required to show up on the job. TSA. FDA. Coast Guard and and and. That's a lot of people looking the other way.

Don't think for a minute 45* won't welcome something horrible happening because of his shutdown. It gives him his Reichstag Fire by way of a tidy little variation on Stochastic Terrorism.

And then we're off to the races.

Quickie Meme

Right now in America the President is making an argument he doesn’t believe 

for a solution that’ll never happen 

to solve a problem which does not exist 

because it’ll excite people who don’t know the difference.

Trump-Russia

One of the hardest things to accept about the Trump-Russia saga is how transparent it is. So much of the evidence is hiding in plain sight, and somehow that has made it harder to accept.

That's the big take-away from a piece by Sean Illing at Vox, talking about Craig Under's new book House of Trump, House of Putin.

Sean Illing:
I’ll ask you straightforwardly: Do you believe the Russian government successfully targeted and compromised Trump?

Craig Unger:
Yes, absolutely. But let’s go back in time, because I think all of this began as a money-laundering operation with the Russian mafia. It’s well known that Trump likes doing business with gangsters, in part because they pay top dollar and loan money when traditional banks won’t, so it was a win-win for both sides.

The key point I want to get across in the book is that the Russian mafia is different than the American mafia, and I think a lot of Americans don’t understand this. In Russia, the mafia is essentially a state actor. When I interviewed Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who is a former head of counterintelligence in the KGB and had been Vladimir Putin’s boss at one point, I asked him about the mafia. He said, “Oh, it’s part of the KGB. It’s part of the Russian government.”

And that’s essential to the whole premise of the book. Trump was working with the Russian mafia for more than 30 years. He was profiting from them. They rescued him. They bailed him out. They took him from being $4 billion in debt to becoming a multibillionaire again, and they fueled his political ambitions, starting more than 30 years ago. This means Trump was in bed with the Kremlin as well, whether he knew it or not.

- and -

Sean Illing:

Okay, to play devil’s advocate, can we say definitively that Trump knew who he was dealing with or what he was getting into? Or did he just naively have his hands out?

Craig Unger:

Look, I can’t prove what was in Trump’s head, or what he knew or when he knew it. But I document something like 1,300 transactions of this kind with Russian mobsters. By that, I mean real estate transactions that were all cash purchases made by anonymous shell companies that were quite obviously fronts for criminal money-laundering operations. And this represents a huge chunk of Trump’s real estate activity in the United States, so it’s quite hard to argue that he had no idea what was going on.

Americans have been taught that the rich guys are all really smart and hard-working and pretty honest about most things - honest enough anyway - and willing to "tell it like it is".
(In case you've missed it, 45* puts that shit right out front every chance he gets)

And while these "captains of industry" can be ruthless and calculating and petty enough to fuck everybody over trying to boost their quarterly dividends by a few extra pennies, we're mostly convinced that at least they're on our side when it comes to national unity and loyalty to the USofA.

We are being rather abruptly disabused of this dangerous misperception - finally.

A Thought

When referring to the past, we think of people being young, but things being old.

Today's Pix

Click 'em

Today's Tweet

45* is a petty tin-plated strutting martinet. He has no confidence in his own ability to deal with much of anything unless he believes he has some kind of absolute power to force you into going along with whatever he wants to do.

And every day, he makes it clear that his feelings of inadequacy are perfectly justified.

He is The Daddy State.

When I asked the President if he would sign spending bills unrelated to the border wall, he repeatedly demanded to know if that is what I would do. It may be tempting to answer such a question, but that is not my job. pic.twitter.com/8HxsSep5eV

— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) January 9, 2019

And A Bag Of Cheetohs

NY Daily News:

Porn star Stormy Daniels folded clothes on Instagram Live Tuesday night while President Trump went on live television to try and sell Americans on the idea that it’s necessary to build a wall on the nation’s southern border. Both broadcasts started at 9 p.m. and lasted 10 minutes. Daniels, who filmed the skit in her underwear, played Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall" while doing her chores. She said she attracted 100,000 viewers.