Amen to that Rayne.

We need to expose the campaign finance system as the rotten money laundering scheme it is. If we don’t, our entire democracy will be bought and paid for by Russian oligarchs and organized crime.

Hard to imagine the principles of the Constitution surviving that.

There’s always a decent chance there’s an NRA connection. The NRA needs to know it won’t get pilloried for its Russia connections, and arranging for a prominent trip to Russia is a way to shore up support from potentially sensitive members of the GOP — who among them will feel comfortable speaking up if the news gets worse for the NRA?

Perhaps only tangentially related to this topic, but anyway: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/23/politics/trump-letter-to-pelosi/index.html

So, Trump is gonna show up next Tuesday night to deliver the State of The Union address.

Hmmm..what about that joint resolution that is the real gateway for setting the joint session of Congress in the House chamber for the speech?

Thank You Rayne. This is really a time to help one another. Action is the key.

Some of the Senators have full message machines or are not answering. You might consider going to their local numbers. That is the only way I can contact McConnell who has been missing in action for 33 days.

His current quote: “Time to put the country ahead of politics.” I would say he is 33 days too late.

God, I love you guys. (Polygender term? Is for me.) I note others visiting here also have similar appreciation.

And I observe a train of thought developing through comments on several recent posts that is aligned with mine, perhaps many coming to similar conclusions about the Mueller probe.

This is worthwhile:

http://www.philly.com/opinion/commentary/trump-mueller-investigation-buzzfeed-michael-cohen-tower-russia-impeachment-20190120.html

I hate to be long-winded (one of the things I’m best at, tho?) but it’s late, the thread’s not active, & likely I won’t be back for awhile. Hope you’ll receive this as a drive-by throwing flowers.

A little introduction, since this is first time I’ve posted here. I’ve kind of removed myself from the world, for wilderness beauty & primitive life, but I can’t cease to witness what’s happening. In my world, it’s perfectly valid to find out about major news events by talking to your neighbor over the pasture fence, and leave it at that. If you’ve got background, all you need is a headline to understand the story. If you see where your neighbor’s bias leans, you can almost sketch the larger picture. Maybe a few times a year I’ll take a deep dive, and quickly update all my timelines in detail.

Since 20 December 2018 I’ve been watching the tectonics line up, an underlying structural development that to me shows the end of the Trump Presidency in sight. The event of that day was Mattis’ resignation. In my response, sotto voce, I made much of Syria, but of course Mattis did not mention Syria. It’s symbolic. Consider me as taking some artistic liberty with the subject:

The Last 100 Days of the Trump Presidency (Part 1)
https://medium.com/@jadamsjefferson/the-last-100-days-of-the-trump-presidency-cc-thomas-l-friedman-f6cbfad543c

By the way, I’m not prognosticating how this goes down. There are too many variables; I don’t assume anything obvious. Dem leadership have been rightfully leery of impeachment talk – as Friedman notes, it’s Republican momentum that has to carry the ball. My initial sense was that Dems could only hinder the process by getting too out front and too much in the way, so Tlaib’s outburst was a little concerning; but I think it was the right message from the right source.

Anyway, I’m keyed in, now. It takes a lot of work from here, but I’m making an effort to stay on top of what’s happening. And when I saw the Buzzfeed can-of-worms sitting at the nexus of the entire journosystem braced up on Two. Anonymous. Sources. I almost felt a kind of panic.

My very first thought recalled some bogus docs that were transomed to Maddow – there was a connection to The Intercept – that she was savvy enough to recognize as a plant intended to discredit dissidents with false evidence they might run with. There was at least one other incident of something like this I recall in the past year or so, a trap that was sidestepped. So when Peter Carr spoke out on behalf of the Mueller team, I felt a shudder; but his disavowal was so carefully parse-able it could have been koans. A riddle.

Tracking down the Delphic explanation, I came to emptywheel, scanned and sifted as best I could through Marcy Wheeler’s immensely penetrating oracles on both Peter Carr and DAG Rosenstein, and almost 200 comments so on point and mostly civil I could not ask for keener illumination.

So I put my admiration for you all in the topic sentence, how much you care, how deeply you love, how hard you’ve labored to stay true to the best of what this country was meant to be.

And I go forward feeling a whole lot better, almost relieved, even if the buzzkill-blowback still looks like a mess. Essential questions are answered, for me. Who is leaking this information, and why? How much of it is true? What is the meaning of the nuanced disputation from Mueller’s office? And why Buzzfeed, of all outlets? The sources can’t be ignorant who they’re dealing with; and Buzzfeed’s got to have some self-awareness of what they’re doing. What the leakers want, and what Buzzfeed wants, is the same; and Buzzfeed is equipped to stand on it precisely because of the road they’ve been down. Even the seemingly casual, journalistically sloppy, empty formality of running an abbreviated headline past Mueller’s office before publication looks to be cagey and instinctive.

You may not see it – this is just my take. I agree with Marcy – and I’m grateful for her clarity of perception and expression – that the “two federal law enforcement officials” that the Buzzfeed authors claimed were “fully, 100 percent read-in” to the evidence had to be connected with the transit of Michael Cohen’s docket through the SDNY. The tension she spells out in the objectives at variance between the SDNY and the Special Prosecutor’s office makes it all make sense.

The fact that Leopold and Cormier had been working on their article “for months” seems significant to me, but it could mean a few different things. The most straightforward view is that “the law enforcement sources familiar with [Michael Cohen’s] testimony to the special counsel” see themselves like the adults hiding under their desks in the West Wing, who would write an anonymous New York Times Oped to say, “Don’t fret, we’ve got everything under control.” Except that in this case, they’re in a position to take decisive action.

I recognize that this is not the only way of deciphering the motives of those involved. But if you were in a position to know precisely how Mueller has circumscribed his own purview, to give Trump a pass on bad behavior when you don’t think that is just or right for the country that you serve, you might want the truth to get out, no matter what.

I’m not saying Mueller’s team is lying with their denials, only that, as regarding the ringleader-in-chief, someone thinks they’ve taken too conservative an approach to immoralities too corrosive to be pardoned.

Will it ultimately have the desired effect? Or will it pan out to be counterproductive? Could it, indeed, unmoor the whole Mueller effort?

Can’t tell you. But I’d tell Nancy Pelosi right now she needs to make a prime-time address to the nation, and she should request live air time from all the networks. This is a moment for stepping up to leadership, to face the criminal & humanitarian crisis in Washington, and the pain being inflicted upon all American citizens by a renegade commander with a weapon leveled directly at our livelihood and way of life.