Rage

 

Saying, "No, no, what fire? Sit down and watch the movie" in a crowded theater. https://t.co/XmGkHYPt8q

— Your Strenuous Flu (@Yastreblyansky) September 9, 2020

Jeez, this new Bob Woodward book, Rage, covering the last two years of the Trump administration, previewed in the WaPo by Robert Costa and Philip Rucker. People are focused on a couple of big revelations—first, that Trump deliberately downplayed the danger of the coronavirus 

“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a Feb. 7 call [with Woodward]. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.”

“This is deadly stuff,” the president repeated for emphasis.

The Post story has audio of that: it's a response to a question on what he learned from Xi Jinping about the virus, direct from the leader of the country he'll be denouncing for its secrecy and deception a few weeks after that.

Fix it behind closed doors

Per Jason Easley at Politicus USA: McConnell clarified this afternoon that nobody's allowed to read the bill until after they pass it.

Nobody gets the real reason for Flynn's guilty plea , which is that it's to distract us from the Senate Republicans passing this obscene tax bill (I don't know that it's really obscene, of course, and perhaps they're airbrushing out all the pubic hair as we speak).

The following report from CNN and some other material is offered without comment:

Victimless espionage

Spy vs. Spy, Gangnam style. Image (with animation!) by Makatako at Deviant Art.

Yeah, that's the problem:

But the investigation takes place in an administration that has taken an especially hard line on the handling of classified information.

Scott Gration, ambassador to Kenya, resigned after a 2012 inspector general’s report accused him of flouting government rules, including the requirement that he use State Department email. “He has willfully disregarded Department regulations on the use of commercial email for official government business,” the report said.

Leaders--can't live with 'em...

Via really insane winger site.

Timothy Lee in the Washington Post gets to something really important:

Debates over government transparency are usually framed as a contest between the executive branch and the rest of us. Transparency is supposed to help Congress, the courts and the public hold the president accountable.

But history suggests that transparency is important for another reason: it helps the president himself keep control over his subordinates.

Whatever is going on at DHS and DOJ and their agencies is undoubtedly worse than Obama intends it to be, more evil and more inept; and whatever lies he and Father Brennan tell about it are meant to conceal not so much the activities themselves as Obama's inability to stop or mitigate them. Gods forbid he should look weak!

That's why we need to have his back and not let him get away with stuff at the same time. Leaders are like teenagers. I love my son to death, but I don't trust him more than about ten feet.

In other revolutionary news:

Turkish court orders halt to redevelopment of #TaksimGeziPark http://t.co/fOzy8YaQdP
— Occupy Wall Street (@OccupyWallStNYC) July 4, 2013

Freedom!!!

Gezi Park June 2007. Photo by Robokow. Wikimedia Commons.

Hoist on their own canard

It's a sign that you're getting a little too concerned with secrecy when you start hiding things from yourself. From Politico via Jesselyn Radack at Kos:

At a hearing last month, prosecutors in the case against Pfc. Bradley Manning noted that they didn't receive [important emails from the judge and defense] but could not explain why. Chief prosecutor Capt. Ashden Fein said at a hearing Thursday that the messages had been "blocked by a spam filter for security." However, it fell to defense attorney David Coombs to explain precisely why the e-mails about evidence issues in the Manning case never made it.

"Apparently, they were blocked because the word 'WikiLeaks' was somewhere in the e-mail," Coombs said.

Because they didn't get the emails, they didn't turn over documents to the defense that they were supposed to turn over, or explain why they didn't want to turn them over. The fail is bad enough, according to Radack, that Coombs feels entitled to move for dismissal of all the charges.

From The City of Secrets: Nashville's Temple Code Unveiled.