A Little Night Narratology

 

Got fixated on a peculiar detail of the government case against Alexander Smirnov, the main witness in the Republican complaint according to which Hunter Biden and Joe Biden took $5 million each in bribes from Hunter's Ukrainian employer, Mykola Zlochevsky, and nobody else seems to be paying attention to it. 

Smirnov, a double agent working for Russian intelligence services and the FBI, gave the latter the story of the bribery, with advice as to how they could go about gathering evidence to back it up, and the Bureau gave it to Rep. James Comer and Senator Charles Grassley, who hoped to use it as a gigantic and appalling climax to their attempt to impeach the president, except, as we now know, when the special prosecutor found a moment to check the story out (34 months after receiving it), it turned out to be completely bogus, Smirnov's invention or that of his Russian handlers, and the Republicans' impeachment case, such as it was, is smashed to pieces, Smirnov is now under indictment for his deceit, and the prosecutor is trying to have him detained before trial, as a flight risk.  

It's in that document, special counsel David Weiss's request to deny bail to Smirnov, that the story of his collaboration with Russians emerged publicly for the first time, in the context of Weiss's long-delayed investigation of Smirnov's allegation—a story of Russian intelligence services promulgating disinformation to help elect Donald Trump to the presidency, which is, as you know, one of my favorite kinds of stories to tell, and the first big one of the 2024 campaign—so of course I was looking at it, and noticed this narrativium-packed paragraph (where Public Official 1 is the president and Businessperson 1 is his son):

Ho de ho

At one point, [Stephanie] Grisham says Graham kicked a White House staffer out of Bedminster "so he could take her room."

"Senator Freeloader was sitting at a table by the pool, a big grin on his face, lapping up the goodies he was getting like some potentate," Grisham writes. "He said to me with a creepy little smile, 'Isn't this great? Man, this is the life.'" (David Edwards/Raw Story)

For the Record: I Was Proved F*ing Right

Used this back in 2018.

Or at least that's where Professor Rosen seems to have ended up, though he doesn't seem clear himself whether he's saying it or not:

Here's the AP: "Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure deal was thrown in doubt Friday as Republican senators felt 'blindsided' by his insistence that it must move in tandem with his bigger package." https://t.co/1PhLSHt4ao

Again: Why did @AP buy the "we were blindsided" gambit? 2/2

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) June 26, 2021

Schrödinger's Group of 21 Update

Photo by J. Scott Applewhite/AP, via.

Jordan in comments trying to figure out what I was saying:

I'm having real trouble following this (not because your explanations and analyses have been lacking in any way, but just because it's so complex and multilayered).

Basically, you're concluding by saying that the deal is done — both parts of it — despite McConnell etc. publicly bitching, because if it wasn't, then Biden wouldn't be talking about it being accomplished...right?

To clarify, I'm afraid it was basically bad writing--or blogging, web-logging, in the most literal sense, just typing up information as it came in. I'm feeling very uncertain whether this was a brilliant plan or an awful error.

I started off just to record how Rosen jumped on me, with the idea that I'd then try to figure who was right—was it a group of 10 senators or was it 21?—but can't even draw a conclusion on that at this point, let alone on the significance of what happened. The thing Jordan mentions is from inside the argument with Rosen (what do Biden's remarks mean, what are they evidence of, with reference to that?). Rosen later sent some tweets without tagging me, complaining that USA Today had been irresponsible in claiming that it was a group of 21. He still thinks he and The Times were right, and I can't say I even have a right to disagree, only at best that I don't think it matters much who was right: I mean, I still don't know the answer, but my best defense is that the question itself, 10 or 21, wasn't at all the major thing.

For the Record: Schrödinger's Group of 21

 

President Biden with the Group of Ten Minus Two (Tester and Collins invisible behind Portman?), or something. Photo by Jacquelyn Martin/AP via Deseret News. 

They already claim to have 11 Republicans. https://t.co/BFe61ZM6cL I think it's that earmarks are back

— Specter of Happiness (@Yastreblyansky) June 25, 2021

I just meant to be helpful, I'd got this thing nobody was talking about from Wonkette, reading for the previous post. But Professor Rosen kind of snapped at me.

If the Creek Do Rise, What Else Will? Protect Yourself!

 

Lindsay Graham, in his hypothetical, is fully armed, watching all his neighbors get killed by a gang. https://t.co/vlbEWUn0Gt

— A.R. (Ancient Router) Moxon (@JuliusGoat) March 28, 2021

Central, South Carolina (pop. ca. 5,385), home of Senator Lindsey Woolsey Graham, isn't in central South Carolina, but up in Pickens County in the state's far northwest, and not exactly in a hurricane zone, or prone to earthquakes or volcanoes

Pickens County, SC, via Wikipedia.

but that doesn't mean it's without its perils, as people learned last year in nearby Easley, and and all along the Calhoun Memorial Highway (Route 93) pretty much every year, when the spring rains come and the creeks rise.

There's Some Magic

 

This Axios rubbish interview with Lindsey Graham 

What they're saying: "Donald Trump was my friend before the riot. And I'm trying to keep a relationship with him after the riot. I still consider him a friend. What happened was a dark day in American history, and we're going to move forward."

• "I want us to continue the policies that I think will make America strong. I believe the best way for the Republican Party to do that is with Trump, not without Trump."
• Mitt Romney didn't do it. John McCain didn't do it. There's something about Trump. There's a dark side and there's some magic there."

Flashback: When Swan noted Trump is not showing remorse for his election challenge and still arguing he won in a landslide, Graham invoked McCain.

• "I tell (Trump) every day that he wants to listen that I think the main reason he probably lost in Arizona is beatin' on the dead guy called John McCain," the senator said.

gave me a weird feeling of understanding suddenly what Graham is actually up to. Because I've always resisted the blackmail explanation, which just seems stupid to me (if he's gay, everybody in South Carolina knows it and doesn't care, and I just don't see him as involved in anything actually perverted like Gaetz or somebody). 

For the Record: Airborne

Photo by Reuters, via.

Story on today's Morning Edition:

(2) in September Woodward publishes this story, showing that Trump had lied to the public. Trump explains that he did this in order to avoid "panic".

— Airborne Panic (@Yastreblyansky) September 22, 2020

(4) today we get the further explanation that the draft erred in using the word "airborne" which might cause a "panic".

— Airborne Panic (@Yastreblyansky) September 22, 2020

Huge News II

Where it all started, on a Dominican beach. Maybe not this one. Via CNN Travel.

The primary subject of the Yates hearing, of course, was dear old General Flynn, and his panicky series of phone calls when he was on vacation in the Dominican Republic at the end of December 2016, after President Obama decreed a new set of Russia sanctions to punish Russian interference in that year's presidential campaign, in which he advised Ambassador Kislyak on how the Russian government should respond, or rather not respond, to facilitate the Trump decision to make sure the Russians wouldn't be punished after Trump entered office; and, as Yates said,

these were not conversations that were just off the top of his head. But rather, he had been coordinating all of this with his Deputy National Security Advisor [K.T. McFarland], who was at Mar-a-Lago with other transition team members. And it was a very deliberate planned set of conversations with the Russian Ambassador to essentially tell them, “Don’t worry about it. Things are going to change what’s... in place.”

Following which, whoever knew about the calls (and it's still not clear who that was, beyond Flynn and McFarland) decided to keep their content a secret from those who didn't (starting, perhaps, with Mike Pence and Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer and going on to everybody else), to the extent of lying about it to the general public and to the FBI, the latter of which is illegal.

I want to talk about how Republicans have tried to turn this story into the story of a crime committed by the FBI against General Flynn, as represented in the rhetorical gyrations of Lindsey Graham's questioning of Sally Yates last week, but first it's a good idea to work through the known facts, of which I keep getting a better idea.

Flynn Update Update

Via Reddit.

Re the White House meeting of 5 January 2017 following the intelligence community briefing on Russian election interference and what we now know as the Steele dossier, yesterday I wrote:

And it was also three days after the intelligence community first learned of the Flynn-Kislyak calls of 29-30 December, so that was also part of the discussion (though not apparently part of the discussion in Trump Tower).

Which is pretty interesting in itself, because in the Grenell list of unmasking requests there are no requests between 28 December and 5 January—IC seems to have learned about those calls by some other means. Or as I suspected Flynn's identity may have been obvious, to Clapper in particular. But chief of staff Denis McDonough did make an unmasking request the same day as the IC briefing.

Looks like I was onto something!

Ellen Nakashima/Washington Post explains,

It was the FBI, not the NSA, that wiretapped Kislyak’s calls and created the summary and transcript,... former officials said.

“When the FBI circulated [the report], they included Flynn’s name from the beginning” because it was essential to understanding its significance, said a former senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive intelligence. “There were therefore no requests for the unmasking of that information.”

Because it wasn't masked in the first place. Emily Litella Award for the week goes to Lindsey Graham.

All those requests were for calls relating to other skullduggery Flynn was involved in, the majority of them (30 out of 48 requests) being on something we may have not heard of at all yet, clustered around 14-16 December and invoked by a ton of NATO personnel, the ambassador to Russia, the Department of Energy, the Treasury department, and something called the Syria Group as well as CIA and FBI.

Emptywheel guessed most of this long before Nakashima reported it, and wrote it up a week ago (shame on me for missing it). She considers, but doubts, the hypothesis that the remarkable flurry was over Flynn's nutty scheme for building nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East—and a hypothesis that interests me more, that it could have concerned Flynn's and Kushner's early December Trump Tower meeting with Kislyak, the proposal for a back channel of communications with the Kremlin, Syria cooperation, and sanctions (administered by Treasury), plus Kushner's follow-up meeting 13 December with Sergey Gorkov of Vnesheconombank (VEB), but it's not clear what the Energy department would have had to do with it (but the department does have responsibilities in administering sanctions related to nuclear materials, like those the Obama administration slapped on the state-owned Rosoboronexport firm in 2015 over exports to Iran or Syria).

Lindsey's Song

Sen. Lindsey Graham: "President @realDonaldTrump has been more right about China than probably anybody in the last 30 years." pic.twitter.com/ct7fMAZ94a

— The Hill (@thehill) April 18, 2020

To the tune of:

a kook, a crook, a piece of shit
a mook completely out of it
and presidentially unfit
I've looked at Trump that way

but now I think he's always right
a source of wonder and delight
I pray to him most every night
and talk him up by day

I've looked at Trump from both sides now
in spite, in love, and still somehow
I'm not quite certain what I think
I guess I'll pour myself—a-a drink

my tastes are wet, my humor's dry
I take my pleasures on the fly
I've always been espoused to my
political career

but now I'm feeling so forlorn
my friends all stare at me in scorn
I'm sorry but I wasn't born
to be a mutineer

I've looked at Trump from both sides now
from high, from low, and still somehow
I can't remember what I think
I guess I'll pour myself—a-a drink

He sure as hell misjudged Lindsey-Woolsey

Funeral Monday for five Syrian Democratic Forces fighters killed in battles against Turkish-led forces. Photo by Delil Souleiman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, via The New York Times.

When I was trolling the trolls yesterday with my apocalyptic prediction

It's too late. It's going to take a lot more than that to stop a raging war and house 130,000 refugees (so far). What will happen presumably is Kurds make an accommodation with Assad regime-Iran-Russia now they know US cannot be trusted, Turkey will ally with Qaeda-ISIS.

— YASTAROTH DUKE OF HELL (@Yastreblyansky) October 13, 2019

I wasn't expected it to be fulfilled before nightfall (I mean nightfall in New York, not Syria), but that's what happened, more or less.

For the Record: Lindsey

Illustration by Ben Wiseman/New York Tiimes.

To me, the Mueller report is vindication of President Trump:

* No collusion between Trump campaign and Russia.
* No underlying crime.
* No obstruction.
* The president and administration overwhelmingly cooperated with the Mueller investigation.

Time to move on.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) April 23, 2019

I sent a message to Senator Lindsey Graham:

Clear examples of obstruction are all over the Report. Here's a few from vol. II p. 5 pic.twitter.com/qyXienfwWl

— 100% Accurate Sentiment (@Yastreblyansky) April 24, 2019

Congratulations, America

TrumpCare is dead!

Goldwater would never vilify ethnic minorities. unless, you know, in order to get votes.

With all respect—well, some respect, I'm only human—to Senator McCain for his agonizing decision to vote for once the way he thinks instead of the way Mitch McConnell wants him to (Steve M thinks only the specter of possibly approaching death could have gotten him to do the ethical thing—funny to imagine the old reprobate is the only actual Christian, fearing God and Judgment, in the whole GOP), and some more respect to Senators Murkowski and Collins for doing it on a more regular basis as if they really believe that's what Senators are supposed to do, I think the momentousness of McConnell's defeat on Skinny Trumpcare is getting a little exaggerated.

I mean, because it really was inevitable that Trumpcare would be defeated, as I'd been hoping. As has been widely pointed out, the floor managers could only get as many votes for it as they did by promising the Senators that it would never become law, and billing the vote as merely a necessary first step to convening a conference committee to effectively write yet another new bill, but by now we've seen the full range of what they can come up with in the way of repealing the Affordable Care Act (which precludes doing it with any Democratic votes and thus requires 50 Republican ones). There just aren't any approaches that can get enough Republicans to vote for it, because the party doesn't have a coherent position on health care, and can't, really, as long as it seeks to bring together the wealthy libertarian and the poor nativist. Whatever came out of the conference wasn't going to be any different.

McCain's vote should be regarded as a kind of mercy killing of a freakish creature that just was not viable, a two-headed calf with a blocked intestine.

Maybe they meant "influenced by a blunt"

Image by duh at Thom Hartmann.

Headline at Washington Post Wonkbook:

Lindsey Graham’s comments on drones were very blunt

What the newly declared presidential candidate said:

"If I’m president of the United States and you’re thinking about joining al-Qaeda or ISIL [Islamic State], I’m not gonna call a judge," Graham said. "I’m gonna call a drone and we will kill you."

Note on Yemen

Updated 3/28/2015

The Main Bazaar in Old Aden, 1930s. Wikimedia Commons.

Iran Daily did a remarkably good Shorter for their dek text, though it's hard to see how they could have been doing it on purpose:

US Republican Senator John McCain has applauded the offensive launched by Saudi Arabia and its allies against Yemen, speculating that the “conflict will probably escalate” into a regional war in the Middle East.

C'mon folks, let's put your hands together and give it up for regional war! One can only hope, huh, Uncle John?

Not that he can't find something to have a sad over:

Core element of their mental architecture

The Tehran Twist, 1960s, via Dr. Kaveh Farrokh.

Brooks asserts today that there are "three major strains of anti-Semitism circulating, different in kind and virulence, and requiring different responses," but seems to have lost track and made his 800 words with only two strains, strangely, and it's pretty clear there's only one he really cares about:

Verbatim David Brooks, "How to Fight Anti-Semitism", New York Times, March 24 2015:

In the Middle East, anti-Semitism has the feel of a deranged theoretical system for making sense of a world gone astray....

This form of anti-Semitism cannot be reasoned away because it doesn’t exist on the level of reason. It can only be confronted with deterrence and force, at the level of fear....

Big old tough guys

Pavel Gubarev, in gubernatorial regalia. Photo by lenta.ru via Kiyiv Post.

From Sabrina Tavernise's astounding reporting for the Times:

Four rebels in fatigues were wandering through the ruins, looking through people’s belongings and riffling through guidebooks and bags. When asked who was responsible for the crash, they looked incredulous and said that it had of course been the Ukrainian military.

Cheap shots and literal butter

Wedding cake via Tracy "Dezzie" Rhodes at PinupLifestyle.

Bitch SLAPP

Rep. Steve King of Iowa worrying about whether wedding-cake buying couples might just be pretending to be gay in the interests of mounting a discrimination suit against the bakers:

KING: The one thing that I reference when I say “self-professed” is: how do you know who to discriminate against? They about have to tell you. And, you know, are they then setting up a case? Is this about bringing a grievance or is it actually about a service that they’d like to have?

Who's the boss?

Why can't Obama just put Putin in his place—you know, like Superman did with Dr. Doom? Via Auggie18.

Senator Linsey-Woolsey Graham, on CNN (via Crooks & Liars):

Well, number one, stop going on television and trying to threaten thugs and dictators. It is not your strong suit. [jump]