zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — further gleanings in the fields of MSNBC, my dialysis entertainment ]
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Butterflies, no comment.

Hoawk, ditto.

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Feb 12 Nicolle:Wallace:

Brand new reporting suggests that special counsel Robert Mueller may have evidence of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and that the investigation into a conspiracy or quid pro quo between Donald Trump campaign and the Russians is alive and kicking. Testimony from one of Miller’s top deputies delivered behind closed doors and in front of a judge in Paul Manafort’s case is akin to a unicorn sighting. It’s a rare transcript of a Mueller prosecutor describing in his own words one of the investigative theories around the question of conspiracy.

Note reference to a unicorn sighting at top of that screen-grab

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MTP 2/13/2019
DJT: We haven’t gotten it yet, we’ll be getting it, we’ll be looking for landmines, because you could have that you know, it’s been known to happen to people ..
ChuckT: The landmines he’s referring to aren’t real landmines in front of his wall, I think he’s meaning political poison pills {metaphor for metaphor!!] ..
ChuckT: Kasey, it seems as though everyone is playing a little political kabuki theater here ..
It’s a sort of security blanket, rhetorically ..
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Melber 2/13/2019:
42 Rep Hakeem Jeffries: While Paul Manafort and others who were formerly associated with the Trump campaign continue to play checkers, while Mueller is playing 3-dimensional chess ..
45 Rep Hakeem Jeffries: This is an Ari Melber freestyle that I’m doing right now — appropriate on this show, by the way
47-8 Rep Hakeem Jeffries: That’s not the Hakeem Jeffries playbook, that’s the James Madison playabook .. *****
this was a split decision — if this was a boxing match ..
54: you’re talking about a double back-flip ..
56: he’s the quarter-back of the [] .. who’s calling the play? ..
59 triangular (check this) ..
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Hardball 2/13/2019:
14: david corn: you have to believe there’s aa lot of nodding & winking going on in that [cigar room] meeting and afterwards ..
what they [russians] mean by peace is they win, you lose ..
32: Chris M: many of the President’s Republican allies — is that what you call them, allies? stooges sometimes ..
I represent West Point: that’s $250m that’s been appropriated, not contracted — so when Kevin McCarthy talks about a tool in a toolbox, he’s talking about a hammer to smash the new science buildings for those cadets, their new dorms — that’s the next generation of military leaders ..
36/7 it’s a game — it’s a game to hide a failure when he could have had a good deal earlier ..
55 Up next, a Trojan Horse in the White House .. [see War Hawk chyron above] *****

All In Chris Hayes 2/13/2019
06: Why is Trump’s campaign chairman, the guy who’s quarterbacking his campaign, taking some time out to meet with Konstantin Kilimnik who, according to court papers, is somebody the FBI has identified is somebody associated with Russian intelligence .
19-20 rep jeffries: .. a russian operation to affect or interfere ith our elections, and that was a full courtr press. But what we also see is that there was a full court press of human intelligence agents or people with connections to the Russian intelligence agencies, who were obviously targeting the Trump campaign to get something out of them ..
35 barbara boxer: if this is the way he plays, he should take his marbles and go home ..
36: he’s cruising for a bruising ..
37: you [jim manley] said mcconnell was basically ready to go to war ..
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Rachel Maddow 2/13/2019:

In that case, the case of Mike Flynn and his abrted sentencing hearing, you might notice a little melody, a little tune that recurs, that is becoming sort of a theme song for all
When we look at these cases, when we can now see, over time, with all of these cases and all these dozens of indictments and dozens of
.defendants, we can now see a little bit of a recurring melody, a little theme that you can recognize in how judges react when they hear about, when they see evidence about the alleged or confessed crimes of the people who have been caught up thus far in this investigation ..
We also see that tune, all over today’s news, in multiple cases ..
That same theme, that same little melody seems to be applying when it comes to the new case of Roger Stone tune ..
But in the middle of all these things, the theme, the melody, is not quite recognizable. I mean, who has won, going up against the Mueller investigation ir any of the related prosecutions?
That theme, which we can hear is running threrough all of these different cases and all of these different stories that bre in today’s news, is its loudest and clearest tonight when it comes to the President’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort ..

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Bryan Williams 2/13/2019:
Is it fair to cast this in Hannah-Barbera terms and say that the folks on Capitol Hill are anxious to maybe just gently pull the pin out of this grenade, get it passed, and toss it down Pennsylvania Avenue?
You really need to go for this .. to the mat ..
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Nicolle Wallace 2/14/2019:

Because being at war with Nancy Pelosin will feel like a walk innthe park compared to the subversive, quiet, silent, sneak attacks from Senate Republicans. I mean, Nancy Pelosi is a master tactician, a master strategist, and a brilliant public sort of leader band general of her troops. Mitch McCaonnell is, sort of, plays cloak-and-dagger, and this White House won’t see his attacks coming ..

Velshi & Ruhle 2/14/2019:

All we can try and do is to ride the bucking bronco of change as it happens .. *****

Pelosi 2/14/2019?:

The President making an end-run around Congress ..

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Two Bolton tweets:

Once again, the people of Venezuela have taken to the streets in support of a peaceful democratic transition to Interim President Juan Guaido. It is time for the Venezuelan military high command to stand alongside its people, not with Maduro’s Cuban patrons. pic.twitter.com/8KS7zZzfb2

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) February 13, 2019

Once again, the people of Venezuela have taken to the streets in support of a peaceful democratic transition to Interim President Juan Guaido. It is time for the Venezuelan military high command to stand alongside its people, not with Maduro’s Cuban patrons. pic.twitter.com/8KS7zZzfb2

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) February 13, 2019

[ by Charles Cameron — thug, pit bull, face-off, head-to-head, hardball, hard-charging, trolling, dueling, jabbing, ripping, hammering, gutting, hit job.. ]
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Those are the screen-grabs — here are some of my fallible transcriptions of spoken snippets with metaphoric or other interest:

From the Whitaker hearinn:

Congressman, I’m not a puppet to repeat what you’re saying ..

2/11/2019, Chris Matthews, Hardball:

00 We’ve got an explosive show for you tonight ..
We’re also following the face-off in El Paso, TX, where President Trump and Bedo O’Rourke are holding dueling real-time rallies over the border wall .. ***
11 Mimi Rocah, More, more dominoes, more chips to fall ..
39 This is getting to be quite a cage match between a lot of people and his guy, Trump ..
53 Klobachar: You have to pick your battles with him ..

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The dismissive / offensive Trump tweet reference to the Trail of Tears:

Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2019

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2/11/2019, Ari Melber, The Beat:

Building a case like this .. it’;s sort of like Impressionism.

When you get up close, not sure what you’re seeing, when you step back, aha!

It also raises the question of whether Rudy Giuliani’s style is more Cubist ..

Or Jackson Pollock, just throwing stuff at the wall ..

It’s surreal, it’s surreal. And by the wayu that’s the painting school, I think, Giuliani is in. It’s surrealism, surrealism, pure Dali ..

And so you say, melting clocks all around — that makes good sense to me ..

Great conversation!

Donald Trump ploughing all kinds of time watching television and tweeting at critics, who say he spends too much time watching television and tweetierng at critics. —
Andrew Weissmann is a very, very powerful weapon in the government’s arsenal ..
Trump and Beto O’Rourke holding dueling rallies near the border ..

Hallie Jackson 2/12/2019

27 We never thought we we were going to find a contract between Trump and Vlad saying, Hey, let’s collude ..
President Trump and Beto O’Rourke do their owb kind of Texas Two-step there, split-screen style, in El Paso, Texas .. *****

Nicolle to Brennan:I feel like you just exploded what I call a truth bomb ..

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I’m closing this post here and taking the remainder of my chyrons &c into a new post, making this look very much like the beginning of a series. We’ll continue with posts on other topics from strategy to imagination, and those not interested in my collection of metaphors, chyrons and headlines can safely ignore this series.

[ by Charles Cameron — chyrons as news haiku, and various news and docu screengrabs ]
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I’ve described chyrons — those verbal banners in the bottom third or fifth of a TV news screen — as the newsperson’s haiku. Headlines have long served a similar purpose, with their writers, seldom the authors credited with the articles in question, preferring puns to emphasis — puns, the “lowest form of wit” as they are sometimes mistakenly termed, James Joyce qv.

Chyrons, now — shorter than most headlines, and therefore tighter in their demands — are an art-form that sometimes calls forth subtlety and wit. I love them, not least because they’re visual verbals.. combining the eye-catching quality of the visual with the point-making clarity of the verbal — a double hit.

Here, then, from today’s haul of yesterday’s chyrons:

That’s the killer — a major war. Here are two more for context:

And let’s not forget ISIS:

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Here’s a sporting metaphor — I suppose I should say, both literal and figurative?

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Two versions of Roger Stone‘s fight:

And Dems fighting words, with flying without a pilot as a bonus:

CNN for a change, and the tax returns — so many, many fights!

Back to MSNBC:

Comic strip!

And an MRI instance, medicin aat its most inquisitive:

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Okay, a screengrab from the documentary on the Oslo and Otoya terrorist actions by Anders Breivik, 22 July — Breivik as network cog and Knight Templar:

Oh hell, let’s close with two grabs from another docu, Evil Genius, first episode, the first grab noting the way a scavenger hunt was part of the bank-heist murder:

And the second demonstrating the route the scavenger hunt was designed to take, marked on the map in red — note the arrow at the end of the trail landing up where it had started — a clear and fascinating image of ouroboros:

Too good to miss! And that’s it for now..

[ by Charles Cameron — continuing my miscellaneous collections, with metaphor, paradox &c a specialty ]
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Two recent headers caught my eye:

and:

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You can see why I like those two — there’s something very attractive about the way those headlines double back on themselves.Writers know this self-referential form — the serpent biting it’s tail, or ouroboros — I’ve been suggesting for some time that it’s also a useful heuristic marker of matter of special interest, worth particular attention by intel, natsec and geopolitical analysts.

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Okay, another item — a double number his time — for the collections series:

This is from about a week ago, I think, and belongs in my war as metaphor category.

Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote, or perhaps said, “The world is so full of a number of things, I ‘m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” I’m that happy, I have to admit, though I’ve no idea whether kings themselves are — hey, given that Shakespeare himself wrote “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown…”

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Gov. Northam‘s predicament is one I won’t comment on, but Rev Al Sharpton had a few comments I found worth noting:

This (KKK outfit) is a terrorist uniform .. a terrorist, racist outfit ..

You’ve got to be consistent if you’re going to take a moral stand ..

Clan robe is a terr– Clan represents lynchings, murder, bloodshed; there’s no way to act like you didn’t understand ..

When Sharpton didn’t feel the Northam had sufficiently plumbed the depths of black dismay at the confluence of KKK and blackface on his page, the Rev — at least to my ear — put considerable emphasis on the concept of terrorism — the KKK as home-grown, native-born, internal, domestic, normal, pretty much, right-wing terrorists.

And they’re still around:

Georgia, 2016

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Anyway, I’ll continue dropping visuals in here, and relegate most of my text collections to this and other comments sections.

[ by Charles Cameron — a kleptocratic analysis ]
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There’s a different take on what liberals take to be the narrative Mueller will finally spell out (and Trump dispute) in its full Dostoevskian despair and glory: it’s to be found in Masha Gessen‘s New Yorker piece, The Trump-Russia Investigation and the Mafia State:

What we are observing is not most accurately described as the subversion of American democracy by a hostile power. Instead, it is an attempt at state capture by an international crime syndicate. What unites Yanukovych, Veselnitskaya, Manafort, Stone, WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange, the Russian troll factory, the Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos and his partners in crime, the “Professor” (whose academic credentials are in doubt), and the “Female Russian National” (who appears to have fraudulently presented herself as Putin’s niece) is that they are all crooks and frauds. This is not a moral assessment, or an attempt to downplay their importance. It is an attempt to stop talking in terms of states and geopolitics and begin looking at Mafias and profits.

Just to ensure we don’t think she’s arrived at her conclusion via a hint from Mueller, Gessen specifically notes:

I’m not invoking the Mob because Stone encouraged an associate to behave like a character from “The Godfather Part II,” as detailed in his indictment.

To wit:

On multiple occasions, including on or about December 1, 2017, STONE told Person 2 that Person 2 should do a ‘Frank Pentangeli’ before [U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] in order to avoid contradicting STONE’s testimony. Frank Pentangeli is a character in the film The Godfather: Part II, which both STONE and Person 2 had discussed, who testifies before a congressional committee and in that testimony claims not to know critical information that he does in fact know.

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Nope, she’s on a different tack entirely — has been since the very beginning:

From the first allegations, in July, 2016, of Russian meddling in the U.S. election campaign to the arrest of President Donald Trump’s former adviser Roger Stone last week, many of us who write about Russia professionally, or who are Russian, have struggled to square what we know with the emerging narrative. In this story, Russia waged a sophisticated and audacious operation to subvert American elections and install a President of its choice—it pulled off a coup. Tell that to your average American liberal, and you’ll get a nod of recognition. Tell it to your average Russian liberal (admittedly a much smaller category), and you’ll get uproarious laughter. Russians know that their state lacks the competence to mount a sophisticated sabotage effort, that the Kremlin was even more surprised by Trump’s election than was the candidate himself, and that Russian-American relations are at their most dysfunctional since the height of the Cold War. And yet the indictments keep coming.

If that piques your interest as it piqued mine — by all means read Ms Gessen‘s piece in its entirety. Me, about now I’d be very interested in Ambassador McFaul‘s take.

And Julia Ioffe‘s.