MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
The attorney general's decision underscores the gravity of the discoveries, which included one set of documents found at an office space Biden used and another set found in the garage of his Wilmington home.
By Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein, and Kelly Hooper @ Politico.com, updated 1/12, 3:57 EST
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that he was appointing a special counsel, former U.S. attorney Robert Hur, to review the storage of sensitive documents discovered in spaces used by President Joe Biden during the years preceding his return to the White House.
“The extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel for this matter,” Garland said during a news conference at the Justice Department. “This appointment underscores for the public the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters, and to making decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law.” [....]
Comments
Yesterday I posted the related news and my comment on the political ramifications here on the "GOP" thread.
by artappraiser on Thu, 01/12/2023 - 7:37pm
by artappraiser on Fri, 01/13/2023 - 1:28pm
This really is the difference. Unfortunately probably won't matter politically, especially because so many anti-Trump people made a big hay out of him just having the documents as if no one else would dare do such a thing
by artappraiser on Sun, 01/15/2023 - 3:47pm
Who is Captain Chaos on Twiiter since 2008, and WHY does he he spend time tweeting partisan jokes like this to his 2,666 followers?
He gets his jollies preachng to a small choir, so nobody, not Russia, nor the RNC, nor Trump campaign, nor the Babylon Bee is paying him to do this It''s just that it's insidious partisan divisiveness based on obliterating nuanced differences.
It's a level of partisanship that makes me sick to my stomach. It's like he does it for a hobby and I wish he'd at least do it as a fan of a pro sports team and not with politics. He admires political war room spinners and wishes he was one. It's disgusting to have so much invested in hating the other side to want to pass disinfo disguised as humor as a team.
And yes, Dem partisans do it too.
by artappraiser on Tue, 01/17/2023 - 2:55pm
Some old accounts have been recycled, so can't assume it's actually the same person/bit on 15 years. Gotta love new Twitter claims of purity and reform.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 01/17/2023 - 5:46pm
by artappraiser on Tue, 01/24/2023 - 12:48am
Has anyone addressed how many papers a VP/Přes handles over 10 years?
We're at about 1 poorly saved every 3-4 months now?
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 01/24/2023 - 2:05am
Dunno. Get there's a legal difference. BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER POLITICALLY and that's the point Japecake is making and I agree with him. You can argue the legal/ethical differences all you want (and they are there) and the number difference, but to most people (and voters) it's the same fucking thing, just arguing how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. Makes Dems look like fools for squawking so much about Trump doing it. You either respect the nature of such docs or you don't.
by artappraiser on Tue, 01/24/2023 - 3:25am
Well, no - you respect foremost to keep critical info out of the hands of enemies. Trump sharing Israeli info with the Russian ambassador was near treason. Trump making a mistake and having a few docs would draw scorn, but not such condemnation. Trump grabbing scads of docs intentionally while ignoring both classified info laws and the Presidential Records Act is men's Rea, once again believing himself above the law and acting on it, including refusing to cooperate. Both-sides-doitism may win the media cycle, but it's not a valid intellectual position here. (Potentially we learn something in Biden's case that changes things - so far not by a long shot)
Is George Santos's multilayered never-stop-lying persinality disorder the same as Elizabeth Warren's lies about being native American? Only from an extremely coarse & forgiving analysis of facts.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 01/24/2023 - 7:47am
Who are you trying to convince? You don't have to convince me.
To many who don't read what Biden is up to all day and didn't read what Trump was up to all day and don't obsessively research what he was up to, that just sounds like a partisan argument. Many don't care about foreign policy at all. Many probably think some of the Hunter Biden stuff is highly fishy too.
by artappraiser on Tue, 01/24/2023 - 11:31am
Here's Mike Pence showing how it's done - largely the way Bidens done it. Trump is the outlier. Sandy Berger was an outlier. Oetraeus was an outlier. Most sane honest people don't fight the classifying agency or hide stuff. Classification's goal isn't to put people in jail - it's to try to guarantee safe but efficient use. We *want* the right people to be using the sensitive documents to handle whatever security-minded important tasks need doing. We don't want ex-pols to take home to blackmail people for revenge and leverage, which is a side of Trump that exists all too well. Do Dems not explain it well enough for the MAGAhats? Sorry, it's difficult to counter intentional distortion. But Pence's guys will get it. Where are the Romney Republicans? Or do her have to concede all to the fringe lunatics who sadly have a Republican majority simply cuz it's tuff for them to understand?
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 01/24/2023 - 5:26pm
a far lefty:
by artappraiser on Tue, 01/24/2023 - 12:44pm
A reminder, Oetraeus got a slap on the wrist for pretty outrageous misuse, setting a bad semi-precedent.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 01/24/2023 - 3:40pm
Officially equal now; the political outrage over Mar-a-lago docs is ruined, it's now "they all do it"
by artappraiser on Tue, 01/24/2023 - 1:32pm
It's just a late-night monologue joke now
by artappraiser on Tue, 01/24/2023 - 2:19pm
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 01/24/2023 - 4:21pm
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 01/25/2023 - 2:41am
Politics vs.court of law.
What don't you and Marcy get about that difference?
by artappraiser on Thu, 01/26/2023 - 12:35am
The fucking media isn't the "court of public opinion" - it's assholes with a job to do, to try *explaining* nuances to the tiki-torch masses. I don't say they have to succeed - it's a tough job, i worked in media - but at least they should give it a fucking try before tossing in the towel. And these are people who largely write sitting on their asses pondering - not investigative or war journalism, such as Russian reporters getting a slug in their back or Ukrainians getting hit by gunfire. Explain how 2 violations of the same law can differ by degree and intent - is that so fucking much to ask when writing words, vs "i dunno, Vern, it all looks pretty messy and complicated to me..." This is the grist of half of Tom Tomorrow's amusing but sad cartoons, the clueless talking head.
Marcy's self-appointed job includes explaining why *some* Jan 6 rioters are charged with insurrection and why some aren't, and how the 5 or 6 intertwining groups that day differ, and how the DoJ is documenting how the organized groups deliberately used the teeming rube masses as an attack weapon in order to show intent & execution from the President's circle on down. This is complex and murky overall, si requires patience and digging and sifting/collating - tens of thousands of hours of videos, photos, tweets, Signal calls, texts, etc. to pull together in a cohesive, persuasive fashion - something the Jan 6 committee largely did without too much help from that mainstream bothsideism press (tho a lot of info from citizen reporters on the internet tracking down participants and social media comments.) And if it wasn't obvious, why this all takes so much time, why Rudy & Trump & Bannon aren't in jail yet. Even a Tweeter with 400k followers can't get that "Proud Bit trial was delayed 4 weeks, so the prediction for end of year has also been delayed". Basic logic lije that.
Sure, if it's Tucker Carlson or Aaron Maté I know which way they spin, no surprises. I'm talking about the rest.
Part of how Trump stays "relevant" is the kneejerk reaction to out his every brainfart in the front page in bold, and then afterwards futiley trying to explain why it's not right. Promote, then try to tear down. Of course the Republicans it right is taking the opportunity to parade the 3 confidential docs cases as identical, whether they are or aren't. At the moment, 2 look similar - we don't have full details - and 1 is wacky obstinate criminally insane. How fucking tough is it to say "Biden & Pence cases seem tame; Trump's is a gross violation"?
Trump doesn't even fucking read - he used David Pecker and Michael Cohen to seek revenge with every piece of documentation he ever retained - the guy has filed about 3000 lawsuits in his life. He walked out of the White House taking as much useful dirt for revenge as he could manage - we knew it at the time, because there was some timely reporting that he was ignoring pertinent laws.
So yes, maybe our 4th Estate is now a lost cause, but that's the issue - not whether the public is confused. And where I live, the press is largely still working *despite* media ownership that favors the liar-in-chief. And some of the worst headline brainfarts sadly come from NYT and WaPo even tho there's (unrealistic?) hope that they would lead the sane & sober news evaluation while CNN is again wooing the conservative eyeballs by "cleaning up" (aka sanitizing) their reporting. Much of small town reporting is dead, but this is straight & simple DC + public records stuff (except the docs themselves can't be evaluated in context because they're confidential to varying degree, so we're stuck with a # of docs metric, whether enemy's nuclear missiles or Sec'y of State travel agenda.)
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 01/26/2023 - 2:57am
Oh please most voters will read neither the NYTimes nor Marcy. I stand by the original statement that many are not going to see anything now but special political persecution of Trump; so does Axelrod! Some may even like that it's happening, while seeing it as 'not fair'. It's the way the cookie crumbles, sometimes shit hits the fan. And hey, when did you become such an FBI fan?
by artappraiser on Thu, 01/26/2023 - 3:08am
you yourself explained right here why most voters' eyes would glaze over,
This is complex and murky overall, si requires patience and digging and sifting/collating - tens of thousands of hours of videos, photos, tweets
by artappraiser on Thu, 01/26/2023 - 3:12am
Sorry, you're confusing Jan 6 - which is super complex and messy - with Trump walking out of WH with docs who knew he shouldn't & being resistant to any cooperation, whiie Biden & Pence were more careful and responsive to NARA.
And again, I'm not expecting the public at large to understand well, even less so when the press goes along with oartisans' "it's too tuff".
Here's another one many in the press blew, but some like Charlie Savage/NYT got right - even as his paper-mates bolloxed it:
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 01/26/2023 - 5:43pm
And here a reporter repeats Trump's phrasing vs an accurate one:
That's a Politici/MSNBC bang-up job
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 01/26/2023 - 6:15pm
by artappraiser on Thu, 01/26/2023 - 12:56pm
Team Trump grabbing docs last day before Biden's inauguration, as announced realtime: rats stealing a sinking ship.
Yes, there's a reason the Trump secret docs aren't the same as Biden & Pence's. Part is a gross neglect & torturing of the law, vs the much more calm & measured & precedented (& legal) departures and treatment of docs by Pence and Biden. And Pence and Trump *both left at the same time* - 2 weeks after the failed coup, a week after Trump's 2nd impeachment.
It's not too hard to see 2 categories of handling classified docs by departing politicians - the way that largely follows the rules, the ways it doesn't.
In any huge complex operation one can focus on the small details, but we easily see criminal intent and abandonment of duty yet again in Trump's lack of following the rules. Of course many from the rightwing will try to muddy what's not very muddy, but we don't have to play that silly game if we don't want to.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-day-office-sensitive-documents-al...
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 01/28/2023 - 6:15am