The phone and talk to each other at any time. They just love to make things sound dirty, and clandestine. Oh yeah, and this whole administration is nothing but the appearance of impropriety because it is improper

... I mean ... it's not anything like Chump meeting Putin in a foreign country in a locked room with no witnesses, except for the translator who is Russian and sworn to secrecy.

Completely on brand.

And most of his Republican Christian supporters are quiet and hiding. They know they can't defend this. In the oval office tonight they will conspire to come up with the best way to back scratch to give Trump cover, followed by Trump pardons, followed by JD pardons and then Trump will climb into his Billion dollar plane and happily be a man with no citizenship, circling the planet and stopping in one harem and another.

They are the new masters of moral relativism.

And if you listen to the media, especially right wing media, you won't hear a thing about it.

They blasted Dukakis because of *one* released prisoner, but gloss over Donnie's pardon of 1500 felons, some of whom have already committed more crimes.

They destroyed Gary hart for having an affair, but aren't bothered that Donnie cheated on all 3 of his wives.

Donnie's also done far worse than Hillary was ever accused of (and exonerated for) in terms of mishandling classified information.

Name a democratic "scandal" and Donnie's probably done it 10 times worse.


But the media quietly covers it and quickly moves on, falling all over themselves to be the first to publish his latest lies.

Nothing has changed. Republicans fundamentally believe in subverting democracy, "winning" any way they can.

Lying, cheating, stealing, suppressing the vote, and fundamentally denying the people the right to choose for themselves is all just a game for them.


But note how their crap goes hand in glove with an eagerly complicit media, even back then. Vague hints and the mere appearance of something was always deemed enough to destroy an entire political career -- if it's a democrat.

Democrats are crucified for not being absolutely perfect. Meanwhile, republicans are basically sociopathic members of a criminal gang, but the only real scandal on their side seems to have been poppy bush breaking his "no new taxes" pledge -- I.e., not being sufficiently right-wing.

never said that.

In March 1999, Vice President Al Gore was doing an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. In the course of that interview, he said:

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

And guess what? It's true.

Let's quite Vincent Cerf, a man often called The Father of the Internet,

"The Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the Vice President in his current role and in his earlier role as Senator."

Marc Andreesen, Internet pioneer who actually received federal funding thanks to Al Gore, who while Senator wrote the High Performance Computing Act also credits Gore. Another Internet expert, Dave Ferber says that without Gore the Internet "would not be where it is today."

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/al-gore-never-said-i-inve_b_48946

Beyond securing funding for the early internet while in congress, as vice president, Al gore was responsible for getting all parts of the government to put massive amounts of useful data on what was then a brand new "web".

Instead of commending him for this huge gift to businesses, academics, and ordinary people alike, the media, of course, simply mocked him for calling it the "information superhighway".


The media is very influential and with rare exceptions, uses its influence to support the right wing, big businesses, and billionaires at the expense of democracy, freedom, health, safety, and the rest of us.

to the big media conglomerates being able to control the media. They didn't want to give up that control of the media and that's why they went after Al Gore with a vengeance in 2000 and it's why they still refuse to tell the story that Al Gore got the most votes in Florida and W had no business ever occupying the White House.

I actually recorded that Wolf Blitzer interview of Al Gore and Wolf Blitzer knew it was the truth and never asked a follow-up question. The media made no effort to hide their bias against Al Gore in 2000 and made no effort to provide the public with accurate information.

I was just thinking about it yesterday. What a huge contrast to what we are witnessing every day with republican politicians.

The Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch scandal is right up there with tan suits, gourmet mustard, and of course, Hillary's emails. I have to say that republicans really have to work at finding (making up) scandals with their Democratic counterparts.

When you just tell the truth, you don't need a strategy

It is ok if you are a republican.

Bill Clinton consensual sex with an adult impeach him and clutch the pearls but Trump raping girls and
being part of an international sex trafficking ring well you don’t want to be partisan about things.

...to landing a man on the moon so much has changed. All of that propriety--we found out--was just Scotch taped to the pillars of our democracy--not held on by anything rooted in the texts we all thought meant so much. A series of non-binding handshake agreements that only held meaning when people agreed they did.

The loss of innocence has been stunning. It seems we have been grabbed by the democracy by a man with no compunction against forcing his depravity on us and then telling us it was our fault; he had to do it--for our own good.

We are all now victims of this brutal assault on our democracy. And even though we are bewildered and in shock, we must find our way to justice.

The rest of the country is getting the politics of the small towns in the South.

and something other than reality tv. It is ruining your country.

I can assure you the meeting won't be about what is best for the victims.

What's shocking is the blatant favoritism the press shows towards Republican politicians.

But unfortunately, they have a well funded marketing apparatus called Fox Noise that makes non-issues into mountains. And stupid people are all to eager to eat up the slop that they're shoveling!

That it's not newsworthy anymore. That's how far the media has fallen.

Rather anything released will be edited and memorized so they sll say the same thing.

They would bring her on set for the gossipy political banter. Those past days were idyllic compared to how deep the shit is now.

corporate media have normalized both impropriety, illegality and even violence done by the felon's "dark state" actors, to the point where their impropriety, illegality, even the violence no longer make headlines. It's as if their oppressive daily occurrence can no longer be suffered, and so are gradually shoved aside until they're ignored, a lot like landscape.

We seen him and his people groom, threaten, and shake down media to accept that the consumer market can't miss what it doesn't see or know about. Once the dishonesty and secrecy are background, media's journalistic load is lightened, so it can serve up "serious" announcements of investigations of political opponents, as the daily shiny foreground.

In this landscape one might expect media to shove things like boring data (BLS numbers) or unnecessary democracy (voter suppression on the run ups to 2026 and 2028) aside.

Chuck D on Air America used to call all this the "dumbassification of America."

Media owners have long forgotten to care that those (and they are many) who benefit most from all this are those who remain hidden behind the landscape.

Starting in 1959 (our first TV) my husband and I always watched the CBS Nightly News (with Douglas Edwards) and followed Cronkite until retirement. My husband still watches (NBC) but I gave up on Election night and haven't watched a single broadcast since. After so many years, it really feels strange but I find myself with major anxiety and I know that is something that will ruin my health!

Rec

From the ABC News article on the meeting being hosted by Vance tonight:
"On Wednesday morning, the family of Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre issued a statement asking why no survivors had been invited to the meeting at Vance's home.
They offered to attend in Giuffre's stead, as she died by suicide earlier this year."

But I don't know how true that is.

the fainting couch because Clinton got a haircut on a runway. Never mind Obama's tan suit uproar.

They never got over and thoroughly resented the fact he was such brilliant, and talented politician, without the benefit of family connections or money. It was an affront to their perceived superiority.

Trump may be who he is, but he came from family money. It makes all the difference in the world, unfortunately..

GOP is!)

"Conspiracy is a large category of crimes in which more than one person works together in secret with the object of committing a crime."