5003

On the other hand, Manafort basically walks. He doesn’t meet the stated criteria for early Covid-19 release (old and has served half his sentence) so instead he gets to go home and pretend to be a prisoner there. And didn’t they seize his homes?

5004

He’s not alone. There are nearly 2500 federal prisoners on home confinement.

Given that he is 71 years old and home confinement is meant for older inmates, I’m not sure if he is less deserving of home confinement than any of the others.

Of note, there are only about 4600 federal inmates over 65, and about half of all federal inmates are in low or minimum security prisons like Manafort.

All but one.

5005

The DJT admin is OUTRAGED about ‘unmasking’, set aside the fact that it’s a legal process and the Trumpers have done it more than anyone. Tiresome bullshit.

5006

And my late father, who was 88 when he died in June 2016, did as well. At least he was spared seeing DJT and his minions create “American Carnage.”

5007

That is a great tagline to summarize the past 3+ years.

5008

As posted above, no bigger fan of ‘unmasking’ than DJT. Even though he has no fucking clue what it even means.

5009

LOL!

That’s a spicy meatball!

5010
5011

One hopes that mainstream media learned its lesson over the years and is thoughtfully approaching this news with context so people can understand what it means.

Narrator, over image of scandalous newspaper headline with no context: they didn’t.

5012

DJT is catnip to the ‘lamestream’ media, zero doubt there. It’s disgusting.

5013

What was it? Well, I am coming to that. Obamagate, like the Myriad Crimes of Hillary Clinton (to which it was both prequel and sequel, like “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”) was almost Escher-esque in its design. It had no beginning and no end, and, of course, everyone knew all about it. Also, it was obvious to everyone how bad it was. It was a devious, sinister plot, but also Donald Trump was able to get to the bottom of it very easily, mainly by absorbing articles from FoxNews.com or the personal websites of former Fox News personalities.

This perspicacity is immediately evident when you hear Donald Trump talk about Obamagate. Only he can reveal with stunning clarity the depth and horror of this intrigue, in which “some terrible things happened” and “it’s a disgrace that it happened,” which we know from “if you look at now all of this information that’s being released.” “And from what I understand, it’s only the beginning.”

Summary

“What is the crime exactly that you’re accusing him of?”

“You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.”

— President Trump responding to Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker

Obamagate began long ago, long before Trump even got elected, before he even knew he was running. It began before America, before time, in those early days when President Barack Obama lit the furnace of the sun, just before he fixed the paths of the planets in such a way that millennia in the future, Donald Trump would stare directly into a solar eclipse. And, of course, everyone knew about it.

Obamagate was the biggest political crime in American history by far, a fact that Barack Obama did not hesitate to tell Richard M. Nixon, causing him to shed bitter tears in an as-yet-unreleased tape. It was bigger than Teapot Dome. It was bigger than anything anyone blamed Ulysses Grant for allowing the people who surrounded him to do. Nothing could be worse than Obamagate. It went all the way to the top, where Obama floated inside a sinister Masonic eye at the apex of a pyramid on the back of a dollar bill, holding all the strings.

What was it? Well, I am coming to that. Obamagate, like the Myriad Crimes of Hillary Clinton (to which it was both prequel and sequel, like “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”) was almost Escher-esque in its design. It had no beginning and no end, and, of course, everyone knew all about it. Also, it was obvious to everyone how bad it was. It was a devious, sinister plot, but also Donald Trump was able to get to the bottom of it very easily, mainly by absorbing articles from FoxNews.com or the personal websites of former Fox News personalities.

This perspicacity is immediately evident when you hear Donald Trump talk about Obamagate. Only he can reveal with stunning clarity the depth and horror of this intrigue, in which “some terrible things happened” and “it’s a disgrace that it happened,” which we know from “if you look at now all of this information that’s being released.” “And from what I understand, it’s only the beginning.”

There is more to come about Obamagate, and we will be stunned, because the horror of it all is clear. One of the many facets of Obamagate is that it prevented people from telling Michael Flynn that lying to the FBI was a crime, even if they were investigating something else; had he realized this, he would not have lied to the FBI, probably? It is a commonly known fact (just as commonly known as that Obamagate is ancient and horrible) that it is polite to lie to the FBI unless you are explicitly instructed not to.

This was the genius of Obamagate! President Obama knew that Donald Trump was his greatest political rival, even though he was not running against Donald Trump (and could not) and Donald Trump was technically his successor, not his rival (Obamagate did not account for this) and so, deviously, he handed power peacefully over to Donald Trump in the routine way. We are not sure if this is part of Obamagate, but we think it must be, that Obama also prepared a pandemic exercise for the incoming Trump team, but cleverly organized it so that nobody who would remain in the Trump administration would pay attention and no one who was paying attention would remain in the Trump administration. And you see how masterfully it all worked out!

Obama is still president to this day, which is why everything that goes wrong is his fault. But that will change soon. Donald Trump is here and can point this out. The rule of law is suffering from the people in charge of the government right now. Their pandemic response has not been all that could be hoped. It is a total disaster and an absolute fiasco, what is going on in the White House right now, or, as I guess we must refer to it, Obamagate. And everyone knew exactly what it was.

5014

News accounts constantly claim new information “boosts” or “lends ammunition” to a particular political attack, or “raises new questions” about its target. These journalistic conventions are so all-pervasive that we barely notice them.

But they’re extremely pernicious, and they need to stop. They both reflect and grotesquely amplify a tendency that badly misleads readers. That happened widely in 2016, to President Trump’s great benefit. It’s now happening again.

… Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale insists this illustrates “the depth of Biden’s involvement in the setup of Gen. Flynn to further the Russia collusion hoax.”

This is steaming nonsense. But news accounts are reporting on this in purportedly objective ways that subtly place an editorial thumb on the scale in favor of those attacks.

For instance, the Associated Press ran this headline: “Flynn case boosts Trump’s bid to undo Russia probe narrative.” Axios told us:

Biden’s presence on the list could turn it into an election year issue, though the document itself does not show any evidence of wrongdoing.
CNN informed us that this is “the latest salvo to discredit the FBI’s Russia investigation and accuse the previous administration of wrongdoing.”

But here’s the problem: These formulations do not constitute a neutral transmission of information, even though they are supposed to come across that way.

The new information actually does not “boost” Trump’s claims about the Russia investigation or “discredit” it. And if there is “no evidence of wrongdoing,” then it cannot legitimately be “turned into an election issue.”

There’s no way to neutrally assert that new info “boosts” an attack or constitutes a “salvo” or is “becoming an issue.” The information is being used in a fashion that is either illegitimate or not, based on the known facts. Such pronouncements in a from-on-high tone of journalistic objectivity lend the dishonest weaponizing of new info an aura of credibility.

5015

I was a little surprised to see Greg Sargent on the byline for this, since he has been so guilty of doing exactly this.

I think it is naive to think that some sort of journalistic best practices will save MSM from participating in the Trumpist project of shifting the Overton window to totalitarian fascism. They are going to have to realize that the only way to fulfill their journalistic mission is to treat Trumpism as a threat to the American way of life, and to regard Trumpists as the enemy just as they are cast as an enemy by the Trumpists.

5016

But first they will have to decide that the clicks they get on those stories aren’t worth it.

Which isn’t going to happen.

5017

The struggle for them is figuring out how to do so in a way that paints both sides as being equally to blame.

5018

Countdown to JUST THE HEADLINE being posted all over on twitter, with people saying “Even the AMAZON POST agrees about Obummer!”

When I can’t tell the difference between a WaPo or NYT headline and an Onion one, maybe papers should take more care.

5019
5020
5021

Appealed all the way to SCOTUS no doubt.

5022

Miller missed the point.

These are not “extensive investigations”. They are bogus politically motivated “investigations”.

Trump already knows he will be subject to extensive investigations, assuming democrats hold power anytime before he dies.